00:01 John Daub: Hello again, we're live! Behind me you can see Nihonbashi. That's where I did the last live stream from about 15 minutes ago, and I'm still in the area to show you another really historical marker. One that I think is really cool because I've been living in Japan for about 20 years now, and this place that I'm about to show you is something that I learned about from reading this book. It's Shogun. And a lot of you that are interested in Japan probably might have picked it up, given it a read. It's a pretty thick book. This book is about 20 years old, and it smells like an old library. But I wanted to get a chance to bring you to this spot since I'm in the area. This is a spot that I came and found after reading this book. I went online—we didn't really have the internet too much in Japan at that time—but I found out where there was a marker that represented where the blue-eyed samurai used to live.

01:00 John Daub: And a lot of the stuff in the book is factually correct, which I thought was pretty interesting. So I'm still in Nihonbashi. This is the mercantile area of Tokyo. Lots and lots of buildings, lots and lots of ambulances. There's a hospital nearby. Live streaming, you never know what's gonna happen. I hope whoever's in there is okay.

01:39 John Daub: So I'm on the main road here, and I'm gonna be taking a detour down this side street. Right behind me is Mitsukoshi Department Store, and down this side street is where I'm gonna be showing you. There's the subway station, the Mitsukoshi-mae subway station and the Nihonbashi subway station. So let's take a look down this alley. I'm gonna show you something from this book, Shogun. We're gonna bring this novel to life. Not a lot of people know about this. It's not something that's in guidebooks. It's not something that is promoted. It's just something for geeks like myself that I try to find the truth behind the stuff that I read and the stuff that I see, and I found it.

02:38 John Daub: This area is pretty cool because it's where the old and the new has sort of come together. You can see this alley. This is Tokyo's manhole cover. It's a sakura leaf. And there's a lot of old cafes or some trendy shops. This area of Tokyo is really coming to life with the 2020 Olympics coming. Nihonbashi is a pretty important area and it's right in the center of the city. This is literally—well, pretty darn close—I would say the Imperial Palace where the emperor lives, that might be the center of the city. This is just maybe 800 meters away, less than a kilometer away. So we're pretty center right now. We're bringing an old novel to life.

04:08 John Daub: Did I pass it? That would stink if I passed it. No way. Oh, there's the building right there. Oh, okay. I sort of just passed it. So look back. You can see this department store and there it is. Between the two buildings, that marker right there represents a piece of history of Tokyo's international past.

04:45 John Daub: And Tokyo does not have a very big international past. A lot of Tokyo's history is closed where the country didn't allow foreigners in. But there was a time where a guy named William Adams—he was a white guy from Europe. He was English. And his boat came to—I guess it was Shizuoka on the peninsula there in Izu. And they captured him and they brought him to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the shogun at the time. And this marker represents where his house used to stand. He was given a house by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

05:32 John Daub: And the plaque here reads: In memory of William Adams, known as Miura Anjin or Navigator, the first Englishman to settle in Japan, coming as pilot on board of the Charity in 1600. This is a long time ago, everybody. Who resided in a mansion built on this spot, who instructed Ieyasu—the first Tokugawa shogun—on gunnery, geography, mathematics, etc. And constructed for him several ships on the European model while rendering valuable services in foreign affairs and who married a Japanese lady, Miss Magome, and died on April 24th, 1620 at the age of 57 years old, built by some Japanese in May 1951. And you can see here's the Japanese explanation.

06:29 John Daub: If you have read Shogun, this has some meaning to you. Because it takes you from the pages of this book, from the pages of history, and brings you straight into the real world. That's super cool. And this stone is very, very hard to find. So hopefully, if you come to Nihonbashi, where the bridge is over there, you'll be able to walk over and if you have time and you have read this book or you've seen the mini-series, which I think you can get on DVD, Shogun by James Clavell, you're going to find this marker.

07:09 John Daub: And if you know anything about the history of Japan, you're going to know how important this foreigner was, William Adams. And you know, I guess we who live here in Japan, the longer you stay here, the longer you start kind of seeing the way that he lived his life. If you study history on what happened to him, and you can see he just totally fell in love with Japan and he became Japanified. And at the end, I believe he could just leave at any time, but he decided to stay in Japan. And he ended up dying. His grave site is down in Nagasaki. Nagasaki was the hub, the port where at that time Japan was closed.

07:48 John Daub: Foreigners could not—he saw in the 17th century, William Adams, this guy saw Japan that was closed to everybody in the world. And what he saw with his blue eyes. Blue eyes is something that, you know, only Japanese had seen at the time. And now this stone, this stone is hidden between two buildings, still exists here in Nihonbashi and it marks where his house used to be. His house, of course, I don't think he paid anything. I think William Adams, when you're the shogun's friend, you could probably get anything that you want. You just snap your fingers at the time, he goes, yeah, I'm William Adams. He probably got seats in all the good restaurants back in the 1600s.

08:37 John Daub: But you can see the stone between the red building, do you see it? Right there. Tokyo's full of these secret places. I think if you look up here, you want to find it. There's the highway that goes through there. You can look for this jewelry store, Tagawa, and the red building here, which is a—it's not a sushi shop, but they're promoting it. And then that stone is really hard to see, everybody. So now I think with this video, you're going to be able to find it. Right over there, straight ahead is the Mitsukoshi department store, which is very famous. So use that as markers. This alley here, you'll find it.

09:22 John Daub: And if you do, bring your copy of Shogun with you and then reread it when you come to Japan. Because, you know, James Clavell, he did a pretty good job writing this. Back then there was not a lot of information on Japan, but he got some things wrong, but he got a lot of stuff right. After seeing that marker, he said, you know, I'm going to go to Japan. And so, you know, I'm going to go there and reading the inscription, you have a lot of respect for James Clavell and you have a lot of respect for Japanese history and William Adams.

09:54 John Daub: William Adams, because if you study Japan and you want to know about foreigners living in Japan, and I'm one of them, I'm not going to be in any history books, but William Adams is because he's the first one who came and made a big impact on Japan. Well, the first—there are probably some religious people here from Portugal, but he's the first guy to make an impact on Japan. He had the shogun's ear. That's pretty cool.

10:22 John Daub: There's a lot of really—that's gyoza. I'm getting hungry. Maybe. That's a pretty cool looking gyoza restaurant. Do you think William Adams would approve? There's 36 seats. There's bags of rice. So that's the Nihonbashi area. So this video right before it, I made a video on the Nihonbashi bridge, which is about 300 meters, 200 meters away. Look at all these little trendy shops. Saigon kitchen, coffee shop. Again, this is different from when William Adams was here. A lot of really trendy shops coming through.

11:36 John Daub: So there you have it. I just wanted to make a really short video on some Japanese history. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. Comments below and I'll try to answer them. Especially if you try to come and find this spot and you get lost. Yeah. Use this video as a marker. Living history. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm going to turn the camera around for the last couple of seconds. Thank you very much everybody, wherever you are in the world. Have a great day, great night. Bye from Tokyo.