00:05 John Daub: We are live in Shinjuku and I thought I would take you on a quick trip around the Southern Terrace, which is the south exit of Shinjuku Station. One of the busiest stations in the world. This is the cafe that Jennifer and I went to about three months ago. It was a lot warmer then. This is December 5th, a Wednesday, and it's not too busy down here. It's still early, about 5pm, but just dark enough where you can make out the Christmas lights. Here's some at the entrance. There's Shinjuku Station right there in the background, and up there is the Docomo Tower. You can see the sun has set so it's just dark enough where the lights are beautiful. They've really come to life.

01:01 John Daub: The Southern Terrace has been here forever. They built this way back in the 1990s and since then it has started to evolve. There's a new entrance to Shinjuku Station, which is one of the world's busiest, and that's just about done. So wow. Not enough talking. Let's do some looking. This is really, really beautiful. Thank you, Adney. You can even see the reflection off the window, the windows on the Starbucks here. It's just such a beautiful season for being in Tokyo. I wish they played some Christmas music here. It just doesn't have that spirit yet.

02:18 John Daub: Oh this is insane. There must be like a million LED lights here. I wonder how they came up with the color pink. It's kind of like a champagne-looking pink. Alright, we're taking the love route. This is... If I was on a date, I'd be so here right now. But I'm not so it's weird. But it's really beautiful. Oh check it out. There's a nice shot of the Docomo Tower. It's really nice. So if you're in Tokyo and you're looking for this location, I put a link in the description on where this is, just in case you wanted to make it. There's a lot of people taking selfies. Wow. Thanks for the super chat, Nosh. It's been a while. No date, just hanging out.

03:38 John Daub: They really do a good job every year of making this area really colorful. I should have called Jennifer or something. But I just happened to be here in Shinjuku. And yeah, whenever you get the chance, you have to come and take a look at the lights here because it really is stunning. Now in Tokyo in general, I think there's not a lot of that Christmas spirit that you get in New York City or London or a lot of the markets in Germany or in Europe. But you still get a little bit of it. And it just depends on you. If you come here with friends or if you come here with people, you can start to feel that spirit a little bit. Most of Tokyo's Christmas spirit comes in the form of LED lights. I guess they manufacture them or something because I think per capita, per person, there must be like a million lights per person in Tokyo. This might be the number one spot. There's a building over there with a little bit of Christmas spirit. But most of it's right here. Shinjuku Southern Terrace on champagne-colored pink fire. It's what we call a rosé, as Jennifer would say in French.

05:30 John Daub: Alright, at the end of this, there's usually like this pavilion where you can stand with your date and get a picture. And sometimes there's some sort of nifty technology involved. Oh, Luke's Lobster. I had that with Peter von Gomm when we rode the motorcycle. That's really good. That's kind of expensive. Alright. Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, this is what I'm talking about. So if you come here on a date, there's like this really unusual technology, love, romantic, machine, sparkly thing. I'm serious. I don't know how else you would describe it. You see it in the distance? It's a lot weirder up close. Oh, so that's where the Shake Shack is. Eddie Bauer here. I didn't know about that. I never come down this way. Look, yeah, this is like a date picture type of something.

06:45 John Daub: Whoa. What the heck was that? What color is your heart? Touch this. Okay. Here? Oh! My heart is this color. Nice. Thank you. Wow. That's my heart's color. Let's try it again. Maybe it made a big mistake. You gotta cover both of them. Alright. Here's my true heart. Oh! It's kind of like a yellow. That's pretty neat. What does that mean? It says yellow. Feeling of freedom. Alright. Yeah, there you go. I kind of want to be satisfied with peace. I wouldn't mind pursuing the ideal perfection and having good intuition. I thought I had that, but I don't apparently. I need this big time. Yeah, I need it big time. But now, I got yellow. I was like, you need two hands. I kind of want like this, but I guess if you come with a date, it's a good place where you can share your love with the sparkly, high technology, colored, sparkly ball of glass light thing. It is pretty cool.

08:29 John Daub: Alright. So, that's pretty much it. I think that's the end of the line. Look. They're in love. They're in love and they're pushing it. The guy loves himself. He's pushing it. Blue. Oh. I forgot what blue means, but... It all means love. It's all about love. So, this is the Christmas time. And we're going to be doing a lot more Christmas live streams. Okay? I'm going to take you all over the city and look at some things that have that Christmas spirit. Because once Thanksgiving is over, once December 1st hits, I'm like you. I want to start feeling all of that Christmas spirit. And if that means coming to places like this with you, I'm going to be doing that a lot over the next couple of weeks.

09:24 John Daub: Now, I am going back to the United States at the end of this month. Well, closer to the middle of this month. So, I'll be in New York. So, if you're in New York City and you want to do a meet up, this might be kind of fun. So, I'll be in New York on the 20th of December or the 21st. And I'll go on Facebook and make an event page. And if anybody wants to meet up in New York City, that would be pretty cool. We did one in Kuala Lumpur, which was really, really fun. We had a lot of people coming out because I made that like in a day. Alright. So, thanks again for the super chats. Thanks Trekaris and Nosh Abroad for moderating and making sure that people keep it clean. I do like that building, the Docomo Tower. That was built around the same time as I came to Japan. And it has a lot of personality to it. It kind of looks New York Empire State Building-ish.

10:43 John Daub: Alright, let's go over to the bridge, look down at the trains, and then I'm going to say goodbye to you because I got to go back home. I still got work to do. Oh, and by the way, this is the... I'm doing the Christmas Instagram postcard giveaway. So, I'm trying to get to people who can't support on Patreon. So, I have all of these postcards. Here's one from the cover. I put in some pictures and some information about the show. And this one is from the Capsule Hotel. The one... It just has 7 million views! Just insane! And I made a postcard out of it. And everyone who's supporting on the Patreon postcard club is getting one. But I made some extra ones. And I wanted to give postcards to those who can't support financially. But they're really supporting the series in other ways like watching and sharing and being a part of these live streams by chatting and watching. And that means a lot to me. And I know that not everybody can support financially. That's not really... That helps a lot. But that's not really what's important at this time of year. It's about sharing and giving, I think.

11:54 John Daub: I have a postcard a day. I'm trying to give out to everybody. Not everybody, but one or two people. Actually, I've been giving out three a day. But I'm trying to get as many people who want to be a part of this a postcard. And just go on Instagram and tag me. And a screenshot of your favorite show or something. And I go in there and I look at the things that people have tagged. Don't tell me your sob stories. I think I've had already about a dozen people tell me why they should get it because there's something wrong with them. And that's not... That's kind of sort of sad. This is the season of happiness and giving. And everyone should be happy. There's Shinjuku Station right now live. That's the Chuo Line coming in. This place is really... Looks the same as it did 15 years ago. 18 years ago. So, and a shout out to Gretchen out there. Gretchen, she's not doing too well. But she sent me a message. And she's in the hospital. And she can't move. And I just want to give a shout out to her. I promised her I would shout out on the live stream. So, we're all praying for you, Gretchen. And hang in there. Stay positive, okay?

13:20 John Daub: I like getting all the messages. So, I'm doing a quick roundabout. I did this with Jennifer. I did this exact same loop with Jennifer. This is Tokyu Hands, one of my favorite stores. They got a ton of Christmas presents in there. They always have really unique stuff in there. Osmo has reached the end of the line. I did, by the way, get a second battery. So, I do appreciate it. Somebody gave me a super chat in Hokkaido and said, go get a second battery. And I ordered that on Amazon. So, that was pretty nice. I love the view of the city from this area. If you go up to the roof on the top of this Times Square building, they have one of the best bathroom views. From the bathroom, I guess it was across from what's now the Uniqlo up there, you can see all of the skyscrapers over in this direction. It's one of the best bathroom views of the city. That might be an episode. Tokyo's best restroom views.

14:57 John Daub: Oh, this is really nice too. So, this is the back end of the Shinjuku station. And looks like they're just about finished with it. I'm gonna take you past here and then we're gonna say goodbye. For now. Because there's so many more places with amazing Christmas lights that I want to take you over the next couple of weeks. Okay, I'm turning it around. Check it out. Oh look, there's a lovely couple in love. Kiss her. That's so romantic. Actually, they look like they're breaking up. This is a nice little street. Getting psyched to go home. This is nice. So you can sit up here. This is all brand new. You can sit up here and watch the trains go by. That's really cool. This is all part of the new Shinjuku station. This is the front of the new exit. Oh wow. Looks like they have an amphitheater here. You can do performances. Not bad, Shinjuku. Not bad. I'm impressed.

16:40 John Daub: Oh, I just saw a shooting star. Hold on. Did you see it? Did you see it? Yeah. Oh, there's another like romantic zone. Hold on. You can walk underneath here. I don't know what that is. It looks like the Suica penguin. Oh, it is. It's a Suica penguin. Super urban intelligent car. That's what Suica means. That's the answer. Super urban intelligent car. I had no idea. Oh, this is really interesting. This is important information. Wow. Thank you, Suica. High five. Tyler. Thank you very much. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas to you, my friend. Keep up the awesome live streams. Also, don't forget to call Peter after the last check. I will call him. You know what? I'm going to take Peter von Gomm out to get him a brisky or something because he's been really, really helpful for us this whole year, hasn't he? I mean, he's been, he's, I'm so happy that he's done so many live streams for this channel. And I want to give a shout out. He just put up a new video on his YouTube channel. He's on his own channel. So Tyler, thanks for bringing up Peter von Gomm. He just put up a video and it's pretty spooky. That's what he does. He's got that voice that just makes it a little bit creepier.

18:44 John Daub: Yeah, that's a nice place. These kids are, they're doing something with Instagram probably. That's what the kids do. They saw me. That's pretty nice. Again, this, this, this is the, what we've done is we've done a complete circuit. So this here is a ball of light. It is pretty nice. I mean, what I like the best about it is that they have these disco balls inside, which makes it pretty groovy. Minami Rumi, Minami Rumi, the south light, I think that's what it means. Minami is south and lumi is illumination, so Minami Lumi. Ah, Shinjuku Minami Illumination. This is the Shinjuku South Illumination. So what is that, like rest in peace? Did it like not survive? I guess it's supposed to end in 2018. Kind of groovy. All right, so we're putting that behind us.

19:58 John Daub: That was fun. I'm happy to have been able to share this Shinjuku Christmas light experience with you. Thanks for joining me on this trip. We got more coming. Once again, for the supporters on Instagram who can't support financially to get a postcard, I'm giving them out for this Christmas season. So pick a favorite. I guess the people who are getting the postcards are the ones that are picking a favorite screenshot and then they're tagging me in it. And then I can go in and I can see their thoughts and I ask them by direct mail for their address and I sent six postcards out already. So it feels good. You know, like I'm the postcard Santa. I don't know why I feel like postcard Santa. It's so cool to get the postcards out because I took 70 of them to the post office today. And the post office lady always, she's always looking at the locations where they're all going around the world. And then from that spot, when I hand it to them, it starts going all over the world and all these different places. And that feels pretty cool because my image is the postman dropping it off in a mailbox somewhere on the other end of the world and having all these pieces of paper from this one point, just distributed around and it's pretty amazing.

21:16 John Daub: All right, so there you go. This is the Southern Terrace in Shinjuku. I appreciate you watching this live stream. I'm going back home to edit some more videos. We got, I'm working on a video for Fukushima, the onsen in Yokan. If you've been on Instagram, you've seen a lot of the pictures or if you've seen the streams from there, I'm working on that for the main channel. I have a 360 degree video again, virtual reality video from the bath, which is pretty, pretty sick. It's scary, but was pretty cool. Hashtag feed Jennifer. Not bad at all. Put like sauerkraut on that. That looks good. Feed John, forget Jennifer. Hey Jennifer, are you watching this? You want one of these? Jennifer likes these croissants. Oh wow, these look really good. This is the number one bakery in Tokyo. Or sorry, has the number one bakery in Tokyo. This is the number one breakfast in Tokyo, according to TripAdvisor. Wow, stop it, no. Why? That's dessert, I'm hungry for dinner. Merry Christmas everybody, happy holidays all around the world. I'll be back. So goodbye from Shinjuku Station. Bye bye.