00:00:03 John Daub: Haha, so I'm trapped in Shinagawa Station. That down there is Shinagawa Station. This is Shinagawa Station. I came here on the Asakusa, the Toei Asakusa subway line. Now, Shinagawa is one of the biggest stations in Tokyo. This is my one-day pass that I got for the Toei subway line. It's 700 yen and you can go anywhere on the Toei Subway network, but it's not good for all these other networks, so I don't know how to get out of here. They make a very clear point that you can't get out of here.

00:00:43 John Daub: So if I'm changing to the JR, it says here no exit. It's really clear. Transfer to the JR line only and you need to have a JR ticket. These people are transferring because they have a Suica, Pasmo, or IC card. I don't have that. I have a one-day pass. And it's really complicated. This station has always been a nightmare for me because there's so many train lines.

00:01:13 John Daub: It's not just the companies. It's also the fact that there's local trains, express trains. You see the red one here is for Yokohama. The blue one is for Haneda. And if you want to go on a local train, I think it's this one. It says local where everyone's standing right now. And then there's a green train. It's just really confusing, although it's made by color. It looks really beautiful. And there's a platform with a sign here that tells you the times that are leaving.

00:01:50 John Daub: But I don't want to take a train. I want to get out of here. I can't go that way because it says no exit. There's an exit up here. Hold on a second. All right, but this is JR2. There's no exit here as well. In there is where all the JR trains are. So, basically, if you've come here on a one-day pass or you're trying to change to another train, you have to in advance make sure that your train ticket has been purchased with a transfer inside of it. If not, or you buy it with an IC card, which is a Suica or Pasmo. If you're like this, I'm gonna show you a little shortcut or actually, it's more like survival train skills.

00:02:46 John Daub: Now, this is the Keikyu line. This is also the Asakusa, Toei Asakusa subway line. It's very confusing. This train line connects Haneda Airport with Narita Airport. The two airports in Japan and Tokyo are connected by this train. All right. You can see this is the end of the platform. And down there, that's JR. This is where I was showing you the Yamanote line goes right through there. And here's the back of Shinagawa Station here. I got to get out of here. I got stuff to do. I'm hungry.

00:03:21 John Daub: So I'm gonna take this Ichinichi Pass. Oh, the 7-Eleven guy was smiling. Oh, look. Look at this. Inside on the train platform, you can get soba, and it's really cheap. It's like $3. You can get it from a vending machine here. Maybe I don't have to leave the station to eat. It looks pretty good, too. But I gotta get out of here. I've been here too long already.

00:03:59 John Daub: It's pretty cool, the train platforms in Tokyo have evolved over the last couple of decades. When I came here twenty years ago, these train platforms, they didn't even have tones. A lot of them just had bells like, blblblblb, and it scared the heck out of me. Now they've sort of settled into having more relaxing tones to keep people more relaxed, I guess. As you can see, this the other side of the platform.

00:04:25 John Daub: Form Japan. And they have the Olympics showing. They have the Olympics showing all over the city right now, I guess, because it's just in the neighboring country in Korea. All right, I can't go out here. Let's go down and I'm going to get out of here. There's only one exit. This is what makes, there's two exits to transfer to JR. There's only one exit to get out of here and you have to go down. It's almost a secret, it's almost like a secret entrance or exit.

00:05:08 John Daub: All right, got to take this pass and I can't get out of here because this is a subway pass. When I left to come to Shinagawa, I changed, even though it's the same train, I changed to a private railway, which means that I can't get out of here with this card. Watch. I'm going to try to get out of here. All right, I'm going to get out of here. Can I get out of here? Watch this. No, look. So I got to take this train pass and go to the fare adjustment. And in the back, there are these booths called for fare adjustment. I put it in here and it will tell me how much I owe.

00:05:56 John Daub: Wait a minute. That's not good. Oh, this pass is bad. Usually the fare adjustments will tell me I owe 130 yen. It'll give me a new ticket and give me my pass back and a new ticket and I can go out with that ticket. As a result of this pass not working for some reason, I got to go in and ask the booth people. So excuse me while I embarrassingly do this. All right, hold on a second.

00:06:49 John Daub: It's a little hard to use. Oh, this is the bill. 140 yen. It's a little expensive. Yes, it is. All right, that's 150 yen. I'll leave it here. Thank you. You're welcome. How embarrassing. I wanted to use the vending machines. So it cost me 140 yen to leave the station. Now I'm out.

00:07:27 John Daub: But that's sort of complicated, right? Because if you come here on a one-day pass, you can't leave on that pass because it's a totally different network, even though it's the same train. So the Tokyo trains can be really confusing. Shinagawa has the JR, has the Keikyu line, has a bunch of lines. You can see them up here on this panel. Right now we're here in Shinagawa. But it requires you to get another ticket. They do have English though.

00:08:11 John Daub: So everything will change to English or Chinese or Korean. It will announce in a very loud voice everything in English. And they make it extra large to make you even more nervous. So it's a little bit of a challenge. So if you want a ticket, it'll tell you, look at all the train lines you can buy tickets for. It's so confusing. You have to know the train line that you're doing. Keikyu line, which is the one I came on.

00:08:35 John Daub: But if you want to get a transfer ticket, you need a connecting ticket, not a single trip ticket, a connecting ticket. So I'm taking the Keikyu line and I want to change to, let's say, the Toei line. And it'll give me a price that's more expensive. But this ticket includes the transfer. So you don't have to go to the exchange booth. I do like how everything is made in English. And they take bills up to 10,000 yen, which is basically $100.

00:09:09 John Daub: But if you can see, look at this booth. This is, all the train lines. It's extremely confusing, Shinagawa Station. And it is hard to get out. So in advance, before you transfer, you should know what line and buy a connecting ticket. And then you can use both lines without having a problem. Or you use the IC card. And then you can use the monorail. The prices are higher, but it includes a chain. And you can get a receipt as well. I'm going to push cancel. Boom. Bye-bye. It resets to Japanese. Pretty cool, huh?

00:09:42 John Daub: All right. So before I end this live stream, I'm going to just take you a little bit into Shinagawa Station. Just so, the JR part, because most people are going to be using that. This here is Shinagawa Station. Right now, live. Pretty cool. Up there on the top. If you can't read Japanese, it clearly says Shinagawa Station. Which doesn't mean a lot to Westerners if you can't read the kanji. Like what are those characters? That happens to be where I am.

00:10:14 John Daub: Let's walk into Shinagawa Station. Shinagawa Station is someplace I gotta go to renew my visa every year. Up there. Shinagawa Station. So we're gonna do a quick walk through. I like to take the escalator. Everyone stands to the right, left. Stands to the left. We're gonna walk on the left. Now we're inside of the JR station and I want to show you where I was lost. All right this is inside the JR on the other side is where the Keikyu line goes so I couldn't come through here I had to go out and around very confusing I'll be honest with you.

00:11:13 John Daub: It took me a long time to figure out how Shinagawa Station works like years before I got used to buying connecting tickets years before I got used to they didn't have this Suica or Pasmo electronic IC cards they just had tickets and if you use the tickets it's very confusing unless you know these secrets. All right this is sort of like Shinagawa Station is sort of like a space hall look they put like a bazillion TVs so when you're walking they kind of flow with the traffic all of these space TVs. I think if I was going to go to the launch of a shuttle to go to Mars this would be the corridor that I would be walking through to get to the space shuttle or rocket so it feels like that it feels like you're in the future going to your spaceship for a connecting flight to Uranus or any other planet you choose.

00:12:29 John Daub: In the morning between seven and nine thirty a.m this is literally filled everyone has black suits it's one of the two things that makes it look like that now it's a very business oriented area salary guys and ladies in dark suits and that's all it is just everyone's going one traffic and you just if you take a picture from up here looking down it's the most amazing like a human waves of black suited people just walking through the corridor in one direction.

00:13:04 John Daub: Now this is a large hall because this is where the Shinkansen connects. And Shinagawa became a Shinkansen station about, I don't know, like 8 or 10 years ago? Before that, the only way to get to Osaka, you had to go to Tokyo Station in Tokyo, or Shin-Yokohama. But now they have Shinagawa because there's a lot of business traffic. I'm telling you, this is such a confusing station. Shibuya and Shinjuku are also really confusing. Tokyo Station is sort of more spread out and easier to navigate, but Shinagawa, I think because it's so crowded with business people, there are certain times where this is just, I don't know, hell on earth. It's really hard.

00:13:56 John Daub: And here's the back of Shinagawa. This is where... Oh, thank you, Noshabroad. You can get an IC or a Suica pass, but I left mine at home, so that means I gotta go to the ticket system today. Or, so Noshabroad brings up a great question. Why not just use... I've got everything on an IC or a Suica card, and I'm gonna tell Nosh exactly why. Because I got this.

00:14:31 John Daub: If you're using the subway a lot, this pays for itself after three rides. If you're using an IC card, there's no real discount. You're just spending money like left and right. If you have a pass, a one-day pass, that allows you to... Right now, every ride I take from here on out for the rest of the day is free. Because I have this pass, except for getting out here. So, the one-day pass has a value if you're gonna be riding just the metro, or riding just the subway.

00:15:05 John Daub: So, I'll tell you, this pass, which allows me on four of the subways, the Toei Shinjuku Line, Asakusa Line, Mita Line, and the Oedo Line, which is the circle subway line, I can ride this all day for 700 yen. Okay? That's about $6.50. All day. Alright? This is also good on buses. Almost all of Tokyo's buses will accept this pass. Because they're city buses. Toei means the city of Tokyo subway. There's also Metro, which is a private company. They have the most subway lines in Tokyo. There's two subway companies.

00:15:39 John Daub: Now, Metro and this pass, you can get a fusion pass. It's 900 yen. And with 900 yen, I can use the Metro subway and the Toei subway. This is just Toei only. Because I live on a Toei line. That allows me to use, I think, it's something like 13 different subway lines or 14 different subway lines without the city. I can go to just about anywhere with that. If you want to add JR to that, it's about 1,500 yen or about $13, $14 for a day pass. And if you're on the train all day, this pays for itself. It's not worth using an IC card to get around. It's more convenient, but you're going to save more money with the passes.

00:16:21 John Daub: So I'm just saying that as somebody who rides the subway a lot. There's days where I take a one-day pass because I know it's going to pay for itself. Whenever I go get my visa renewed, I stop off at this cafe, Dean & DeLuca. I don't know how they pronounce it. But it's in New York. And it's nice to see them here in Japan. And I can sit at the window and I'll say, thank goodness my visa renewal and all of the procedures are over. For me to stay in Japan for another few years. I don't have to do that anymore, but it used to be like that. So there you go. Escape from Shinagawa Station. I'm a free man now.

00:17:05 John Daub: This is what the station looks like going the other way. So between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., those black suited salary men come this way. And as you can see, I'm still fighting the traffic. Everyone's coming the other way. It's good to stay to the side. You don't want to be taken by waves of humans. Because they will take you down hard. If you try to fight the grain, try to fight the traffic, and you go through the middle, you will not be able to make it. It's a wall of humans. It's crazy.

00:17:45 John Daub: And you can see it best from up here. You see these windows? If you, in the morning, go up there, stake out a place at 7 in the morning, and get a coffee, and you can see there's people up there drinking a coffee. Boom. You see them up there? This is Blue Bottle Coffee. Alright. Everybody who goes to Shibuya Hachiko, the scramble, to see the people crossing the street, that's fun and all that. This is better. This is a secret human crossing zone.

00:18:21 John Daub: Because this whole Shinagawa place, this Shinagawa walkway, not only does it look like the future, it's like a human, it's the most interesting human flow area of Tokyo. One of the most interesting. There's other places. But for me, to see everyone dressed the same in black suits and white shirts, walking to their office in the morning, is just an incredible sight. So I'll have to do that at another time. There's lots of, that might be an episode of human traffic in Tokyo. Because this is pretty cool. The patterns of people.

00:18:56 John Daub: Because I've been living here for so darn long, it's easy for me to see how the patterns work. I know where the good places are. Should do a tour or something, right? Take you guys on a tour if you come to Tokyo. I just sent out the postcards to the postcards clubs for everybody who's on Patreon, so thank you very much for the support. I'm gonna be doing some more live streams. Peter and Jennifer contacted me. They want to get on. Jennifer's become a live streaming maniac. And she streams, like, everything that she does, apparently. I'm going to the restroom. I think she streamed that before. She's gonna kill me.

00:19:43 John Daub: But I do like Shinagawa Station. Besides the fact that it's easy to get lost, it does look like the future. Right? Look at that tunnel. I mean, it looks like you're walking to a portal, to your space shuttle, spaceship, to go to space. And that is really cool. If you want to get tickets, there's a lot of offices here. I love the advertisements. And this one here is the only American beef advertisement. And I don't know why they promote... This is a hard sell to eat American beef in Japan.

00:20:16 John Daub: I have to be honest with you, with the Wagyu and the Japanese beef, the domestic market is just so good. This is a hard sell. But I have to respect America for putting up a... American beef for putting up a sign inside Shinagawa Station. You know? I wouldn't give up. I don't give up that easy either. You know? If I was American beef, I would fight too. But I have to tell you, I prefer the Wagyu just because... I know that they've been raised in better conditions and it's a better meat. And I don't eat so much beef that I need to eat the cheaper beef. I'm good with the more expensive beef because I don't eat that much of it. And I respect the life of the cow. Not enough to spare its life, but just enough to... that it has a comfortable life before it hits my fork and knife.

00:21:10 John Daub: Alright. So there you go. I hope this was useful. It gives you a little bit of insight on if you do come to Japan and you want to ride the train, you have options. And those options make it really confusing. And you should be aware. Avoid Shinagawa at all costs unless you have an IC card or a pass. And if you do have a one-day pass, you can come through here. But don't linger. Get out.

00:21:41 John Daub: Here are the tickets for the JR line. You can see where we are right now. This is the Yamanote line that goes around. And the Chuo line... Oh, thank you, Chuo-Taku. I'm gonna buy some chocolates for sure because it's Valentine's Day. That's an awesome Valentine's present, by the way. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody, too. These are important trains to know in Tokyo. There's the Yamanote line and the Chuo line. The Chuo line cuts straight across. And that's central Tokyo right there. We're in Shinagawa. And this is an important hub because it's right at the bottom. Tokyo Station, Akihabara, Ueno, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ebisu. And there's Ichigaya in the middle. This is where the Imperial Palace is. Ichigaya, Yotsuya, Iidabashi, and Suido-bashi. I like Suido-bashi. That's where Tokyo Dome is.

00:22:38 John Daub: So I hope that's pretty helpful. Even the JR is in English. So you can either charge your card or get a ticket. And if you get a ticket, once again here, the JR vending machines are also in English. Guidance will be displayed in English. And they really pump out an embarrassing English announcement. It will be displayed in English just so everyone around you knows that you're not from around here.

00:23:05 John Daub: Let's see if I push in the Korean. The screen will display in Chinese. It's a different Chinese. Does it say that it's speaking in Japanese if I push this? Nothing. And you know why they do it? Because it's so embarrassing when they speak her out that the language has changed. And when you change it back to Japanese, they don't want to hear that because they don't want to be embarrassed. So, but that's good that everything is changing because the Olympics is coming. We didn't have foreign menus or ability to change it in the past. But now...

00:23:49 John Daub: Oh! It's another John! I'm actually live streaming. Yeah, you're on live right now. Yeah, is it cool? Yeah, I'm alright. This is John. Hi. Hi. That was cool. Wow, that's really cool. I just saw this guy. By the way, I finished the first episode of the JR video. So I sent it to Ruth to try to get some feedback on how we can make it better. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I'm sure... I do know she's expecting that. I was talking with her today on that. So, yeah, actually, we met on another issue, but... Yeah. That came up. Okay, okay. Well, once the first one's approved and I get the format down, it's just like... Yeah, after that, it's just boom, boom, boom, right? Paste, paste, paste. Right on. Well, enjoy your live streaming and everything and have fun and... Thank you. Like us. Don't... Happy Valentine's Day. What are you doing for Valentine's Day? I'm actually waiting for somebody. Oh, you're waiting for somebody. Everybody get out of here. John's waiting for somebody. Okay, all right, we'll get out of here. All right, bye-bye.

00:24:59 John Daub: I wonder who he's waiting for. Should we stick around, hide behind a pole and see what's going on there? I like that, you know, wherever I go in the city, I'm bound to bump into somebody who I know and say hi. So John and I have worked together before and we're in the same organization. We have a couple of friends in common and it's nice to see John just standing there in the station. I'm curious, who's he meeting? Because he has a Valentine's Day date, huh? Do you guys have any Valentine's Day dates? What are you doing for Valentine's Day? You can write down in the comments or leave me a message below.

00:25:37 John Daub: If these videos are helpful, I'm going to do more of them. There's Tokyo Station, there's Shinagawa, Shibuya, there's Ichigaya, which I showed you before. There's tons of other stations that we can focus on. It's kind of fun. And inside each station, there's lots of different shops. There's places to eat. There's information booths. There's my friends probably walking around. It's crazy. And yeah, I'm happy that I'm able to take you with me on these little mini adventures around Tokyo.

00:26:09 John Daub: This time around, I'm going to be in Tokyo. I'm going to be walking around Shinagawa. So I hope this was useful for you. I'm going to turn the camera around so you can look at how chaotic the taxi stand is, I guess. And right in front of me is the Shinagawa Prince Hotel or GOOS I think it's called. Anyways, have a good day, a good Valentine's Day. We're at the end of the day. We're getting close to the end of the day here. I hope you enjoy this live stream. And see you, everybody, next time. Thanks for the super chats too, by the way. I appreciate that. Shinagawa Station.