00:07 John Daub: Hey everybody, so this is Minami Takahashi, one of the bridges in central Tokyo that's very close to the Sumida River. This is the Only in Japan livestream. Hi, I'm John and I'm gonna take you on a walk from here, which is not too far from Tokyo Station—about 20 minutes that way into the center. I'm more towards the river at Minami Takahashi, which was built in Meiji 37—there was a bridge here then—but this one was built in Showa 7, which is 1932, and it cost about $700 in today's currency. Minami Takahashi is where we're gonna start this adventure.

01:03 John Daub: I love these areas in Tokyo because if you compare it to Akihabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku—the areas that you all know—this is so much quieter. It's a totally different side of the city. As you can see, I'm looking at the canal—it's very quiet. There are some boats around this area so you can park your boats if your house is near here, get in and take it out this way. There are locks here, so if the Sumida River out there ever gets too high, they can close these locks if there's a typhoon warning and it will protect this neighborhood somewhat. Without the locks, you never know, but during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, these locks were shut down—their green lights turned red. I remember there were sirens in the city and they were locking down every time there was a big aftershock.

02:13 John Daub: It is really one of my favorite areas to be in the city. Here's looking back and all around this bridge—our apartment complexes. These are places that I would love to live along the riverside. Hi everybody. So once again, we are live walking through central Tokyo. I'm gonna take you right now through this neighborhood to the Sumida River to where Tsukudajima and Tsukishima is, and then we're gonna make a left and go towards Eitaibashi, which is one of the most beautiful bridges to me because they light it up. It's about 5 p.m., so we're getting close to the time where they might be lighting it up—if we get lucky, we'll be able to take a look at it.

03:21 John Daub: Right now over here, you can see some of the high-rise apartment buildings, and this is Chuo Ward. The buildings aren't quite as high in this area—you can see a lot of them around here are smaller—but we're going to where the big ones are. Let's cross. The temperature is getting warmer—it's not quite spring yet, and you can see on the trees where I show you there's a lot of cherry blossoms. It's not quite there yet, but you can see some of the cherry blossoms are just about to bud and they're getting a little bit pink, which is a good feeling because you know that the hard winter is over. It's definitely gonna be getting colder again before it gets warmer—it kind of goes like this before spring breaks and the weather is fair. So I still need a winter jacket because at night it's cold, and daytime with the sun out it's pretty warm. Tokyo is quite nice right now.

04:21 John Daub: All right, we're gonna take a right here and you can see this bridge which would take you to some of where the high-rise apartments are on Tsukudajima. Tsukudajima is one of the man-made islands. Right now I'm not on one of the man-made islands—this bridge takes you over to them—and Tsukishima and Kachidoki is where the Olympic village is gonna be. So if I went over this bridge and made a right I would eventually get to where the Olympic village is being built. These high-rise apartments up there—I actually looked at them to see if I could afford the rent. I went up to the 46th floor to take a look—the view is awesome. But I have to tell you, the rent is astronomical—about $2,800 a month in a two-room apartment, what we say two LDK: two rooms plus living, dining, kitchen, for about $2,700 a month. I can't afford that, but it was nice to get a chance to look at it.

05:53 John Daub: Some of these other apartments are even more expensive. This one here is not as high as that one, but the rent was more expensive because the rooms were bigger and more luxurious—they were all carpeted in this apartment building. I thought that was weird because in Japanese houses traditionally we have tatami, but they don't do that anymore in Tokyo because it's too hard to take care of, so all the rooms now are hard-floored. But this one had carpet in it, and the price was even higher—probably because a lot of celebrities are living in there. I couldn't afford it anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. Oh, so now the sun is just setting—it looks really nice. This is why I really want to live on the riverside if I can. So it's gonna take a while to search for the best place that I can afford, because I am on the prowl for a new apartment.

06:50 John Daub: All right, let's take a look from this bridge. This is the Chuo Ohashi and there's some ume—plum blossoms—so at the end of February the plum blossoms come out; they're kind of a deep pink, light purple. Sumida River and this bridge, the Chuo Ohashi, will take you to Tsukudajima and Tsukishima, and the lighting is really beautiful. All right, I'm gonna go to this point and swing the camera over—you're gonna get a view of one of Tokyo's most famous landmarks from this point. So the river boats that leave from Asakusa going to Odaiba—they'll go underneath this bridge. Swing now and you can start to see it—that in the distance is the Tokyo Skytree. It's really beautiful, and on the bottom of it, that bridge closest to us with the boat going underneath is the Eitaibashi, or Eitai Bridge, and that's where we're gonna walk to. It's a really beautiful bridge when it's illuminated, and it's not quite there yet—it's still daytime. Eventually the sun will go down and the atmosphere of the city just totally changes.

08:53 John Daub: Vogel, hi John—I'm going to Japan in three weeks, traveling from Okinawa to Hachinohe. Wow, okay—Hachinohe is in Iwate, Aomori—we're talking five weeks; that's a good trip. Do you have any suggestions for my trip? Not really—people ask me for suggestions. I think it depends on the time of year that you go and about your own personality—what do you like to do? Museums? More culture? Anime and manga? All I can tell you is eat a lot, and between Okinawa and up in Tohoku you're gonna have an amazing array of different foods from around Japan. It depends on the time of year that you visit Japan—there are four seasons here, something you're used to in the United States, but from people in India and Southeast Asia there's like monsoon season and dry season, so it's totally different. Each season is very special, very different—the foods change, the activities change, the attractions change based on the season. There's never a perfect time to come to Japan because there's always something—there's always an attraction to each one of those four seasons.

10:26 John Daub: All right, let me just show you one time because we're gonna be leaving this area. Over there, I looked at the apartments over here too—you see this one thin building right here? That's the Kachidoki Plaza Tower, and my friend used to live on the 36th floor of this building. The rent was $3,200 a month, but the view from the balcony was amazing—he had all of the Sumida River and then he looked straight down on the Tsukiji market. Every morning he would be able to see—he was high enough where you didn't get a lot of the noises, but close enough where you could see the action outside the window. If you're into the culture then wow—you know what, I can bet to answer that would take like 30 minutes, so just gonna keep it simple. But you know what? I think I might do a livestream just answering people's questions about traveling in Japan—that's a good idea. So I'll schedule that like a week in advance, and then we'll be able to take on everybody's questions because there's so many things that people have specifically that they want to ask.

11:47 John Daub: Let's take a look at this ume tree—it is beautiful. I'm gonna jump up here—wow, so if you do come to Japan in February, you do have some blossoms; very nice. I actually looked at this apartment as well—I think this is the Riverside apartment and the rent was a lot cheaper. Very nice—the rent in this area was a little bit cheaper on this side and it was more expensive over there. I don't know why—if you run from here you can get to Tokyo Station in about 15 minutes; that's pretty central. All right, now we're gonna walk through Shinkawa Park in Koto-ku to Eitaibashi. Here's a map to let you know where we are—this area again, you see there's four bridges here: one, two—where we walked the bridge was over here—three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There's so many canals and bridges—this is not something a lot of people realize: Tokyo is a canal city; it's not Venice, but it really is a lot of waterways.

13:13 John Daub: Again, this is the main artery, Sumida River, and you can see all of the waterways. Back in the Edo period, like 150-200 years ago, a lot of commerce ran through the canals—these didn't exist; these are all man-made. So Tokyo Bay started from here—so Eitaibashi, which is right here, was quite an important bridge; it was sort of the gateway into the city. And this goes towards Asakusa where Sensoji Temple is—Sensoji has been around since the year 700; that's when they founded the temple. There's a lot of deep history, and if you take these boats that float along the Sumida River, it's about 700 yen—you can get onto a boat in Asakusa and it takes about 40-45 minutes and it'll float you all the way to Odaiba. You can take the train—it would cost you half the amount—but man, when you take the boat they explain to you all of the history of every one of the bridges as they go underneath it, in English as well. It's like a tour and also transportation—the boats look like I call them space boats because they look like they're from outer space; they could submerge any moment, but they don't.

14:36 John Daub: Yeah, here's underneath the bridge—this is the Chuo Ohashi bridge underneath; there's a barge under there, but no homeless. It's pretty low so you can't get big boats in there. A lot of celebrities do live up in these high-rise apartments in Tsukudajima—I can't afford it. However, down there you can see there's another built-up area—that's Toyosu. Toyosu is a new area—this didn't exist about 15 years ago; you wouldn't have seen many buildings at all, but they built it up over there. That's where the new Tsukiji market is gonna be moved—Tsukiji market is now over here and it's moving over there. From the riverside it's easy for me to point and give you advantage of how it's all moving. There's another bridge in the distance and you can see a ton of construction—so a lot of places where I don't think it's just construction; I think this is where the ports are that are loading up boats to go off to the Pacific. Most commerce goes through Yokohama though, I believe.

16:00 John Daub: Like I know a lot of stuff but sometimes I get information wrong—that's the dangers of doing a livestream. But I'd say most of it will be corrected by viewers who are very active and telling me what I'm wrong, which is fine—it's good for everybody; we have the right information. So we're walking right now towards the Skytree, which in itself is really new. I remember when I was living on the other side of the city near Chiba—I would see this building being built; it looked like just a stub, and this goes back to like 2008. What is that thing? And then every month it was getting bigger and bigger, and then I saw on the news about the Tokyo Skytree—I didn't even know they were building it until they'd gotten about halfway up, and then I believe it opened in 2012. Ever since, it's been a kind of a point in the city—634 meters high, the tallest freestanding tower in the world, overtaking the CN Tower in Toronto. Might be some angry Canadians coming in and telling me the information is wrong, but that's okay—"I believe so."

17:26 John Daub: But it is just too nice of a day not to walk with you along the river. Again, if I'm looking for an apartment, I don't mind living in the lower areas—this would be like Brooklyn if this is Manhattan. This is the mainland side of the Sumida River—this is also history; this is the side where the Imperial Palace is, where the Emperor lived. So everyone on this side really was like Brooklyn, and this was sort of like Manhattan—this part of the area was the prime real estate, and this Sumida Gawa separated one side of the town and the other. If you look, all the bridges—there's just so many bridges going across Tokyo through the Sumida River. So many bridges—there's a lot of history in each bridge; I can't cover it all in one livestream; each bridge deserves its own episode. I'm getting closer to the Eitaibashi, but the lights aren't going on—I kind of overestimated the time it would take.

18:47 John Daub: Now this is called Shinkawa Park—kawa (river), shin (new), so it's the New River Park. I wouldn't say it was a real natural-looking park—it's mostly cement and tiles—but it's a nice place to picnic if you have a bento box lunch, chill out on the steps here, enjoy the river. You'll see tons of boats coming through here, especially on the weekend. And if you're watching in end of July, oh the lights are starting to come on—okay, not quite, but I can see them; they started coming on—you see where the blue is on these? These are all like neon lights—I don't know what they did inside of it, but it just illuminates and it's one of the most beautiful bridges on the Sumida River; it's not quite there yet. Behind me as you can see is Tsukudajima, which does look like Manhattan—if you remember the map before, it's actually like a triangle in the center of Tokyo Bay; that's all man-made where those buildings are. Where I am right now is not reclaimed land, I believe. Eitaibashi—this area of Tokyo is also getting a little bit renewed with the Olympics coming, which is a good thing.

20:21 John Daub: And I saw that there was a really nice cafe that overlooks the river and serves craft beer and really nice sandwiches and burgers. And when I hear that, I just stop in my tracks and go, burgers—I gotta go there. My friend Andrew, who brews his own craft beer here in Tokyo, told me that the place is a little pricey but it's really good. And here we have the scene—this is the wide angle from Eitaibashi. You can see the Skytree on the left side, people going from one side to the other. It's free—I wonder if it used to cost money a long time ago; there were trolls on each side—you can only cross if you're a fan; I answered the riddle—what is your favorite color? Red? No, blue! Monty Python reference. Okay, so we've kind of ended—we've come to the end of this river community tour. If you were to go this way, it will take you to Monzen-Nakacho, I believe, and if you go this way it will take you to Tokyo Station. And there's a map right here to confirm what I've just told you—or at least it'll give you some bearing on where we are.

22:05 John Daub: So I'm now here—well, they wrote it in English. And if you go this way towards, this takes you to Nihonbashi. Yeah, as I told you—thank you BS Fatboy. And this way will take you to Monzen-Nakacho. This is Eitaidori, Eitai Bridge, the main Sumida Gawa bridge. Oh, and there comes one of the river boats I was telling you about—good timing. Let's wave to them—boat's truckin'! There's nobody on board—here comes another one. These are yatai-bune (restaurant boats), I think they're called. A lot of these boats that you see crossing have restaurants on the boat, so you can eat dinner on a yatai-bune—you see the lanterns inside of it? You can eat dinner and drink alcohol and enjoy a cruise—and there's lots of these boats. Oh, check it out—there's two people on the roof! Oh, that's awesome! I should livestream from there—I'm waving to them—not getting any wave back. Ahoy, sailors! Hey! Hey, you! Hey, get your head down! Put your head down! Okay, whew—that was close, man. I think you would've made it, but he did put his head down—that was pretty funny.

23:52 John Daub: If you look under the bridge, you'll see—that's the Sumida Ohashi, the Big Sumida Bridge they call it—it's not that big. We're gonna go underneath it—it's quite low, the Eitaibashi. And these river boats get quite close to the top of the bridge, as you can see. And there's even more bridges—from here you can see four other bridges, and this is the highway they built in 1964 for the Olympics—they built it real fast. The highway system that goes—it's really ugly; it's not that nice, but it does the job. I think it costs about seven or eight dollars to get onto the highway—it doesn't matter where you get off of it; it's just one flat fee of like seven or eight dollars. Alright, so this is the Eitaibashi—the lights are just going on right now; we're a little bit early. But I'm gonna put a link in the description of where we started, and I'll put a link to where we finished. And if you want to, you can come out and do the walk—this will keep going all the way to Asakusa if you follow the Sumida River up.

25:44 John Daub: I'm actually right now looking at the map to see if I'm close to this Eitaibashi cafe—that would be pretty cool. Where would that be? Oh, you know what? Let's take a look and see what we can discover. We're gonna take a side alley, maybe—at least check it out. I think it might be that place that's lit up—we can take a look. Just browsing—oh yeah, this is it. It says here, Bira—craft beer. Very cool, and it's just next to the river. And you can see up there is the second floor—there's nobody up there. Oh, do you think I should go in for beer? Alright, we got some super chats from the people. You know what? If it's open I might just go in and have one drink with you, and then I can answer some of your questions. Cafe is open from 11:30 to 12—this is the Eitai Brewing Cafe. Very cool, and you know what? I think I'm gonna do that.

27:19 John Daub: I actually have another video I have to edit to get online ASAP about living to 100—it's a pretty cool video, but it's a lot of editing. Here's another bridge. This cafe overlooks Eitai Ohashi. Mr. Vogel, thank you very much—I think I will go in there and get something for you; this one's on our friend Mr. Vogel. Alright, so here we go—I'm gonna cut the stream for a second and get a seat, okay? You know what? I'm just gonna keep going. Alright, let's keep going—I'll be in here. Konnichiwa. Ii desu ka? Hello. Hi, I'm John—wow, there's no one here. Oh, you're sitting outside—oh, nice. Alright, so this is where I'm sitting—right on the river. How cool is that? Very cool. Well, we got copyrighted music, so that's not so good. Let me see if I can ask them if they could close the door for a second.

29:02 John Daub: Alright, so I got—they make their own beer here, and they have three different varieties, which is pretty cool. I closed the door because they have copyrighted music which I can't use in the background, so I'm gonna get in trouble, I think. Ah, dai okisaizu—of course I want to get the big one; why would they give me the small one? No way. Alright, so let's take a look at the menu. Oh, here comes the space boat—no way; hold on, space boat! You see it? It's a big one—that's what I was talking about; it could submerge at any time; it looks like it's from a James Bond movie, but it's not. It's totally gonna go underneath the Eitai Bridge—you see? Pretty tight fit—space boat! I get excited when I see this space boat. Alright, so they do have food, but I'm not really hungry at all—I don't eat unless I'm hungry; I haven't been hungry. So we're just gonna have a quick beer, okay? Here's what the menu looks like—because they're very nice to let me take over their entire restaurant, I guess. This is the Eitai Brewing.

31:08 John Daub: Oh, the beer's coming—shibarashii, arigatou gozaimasu. I got a bucket full of popcorn—check that out. Okay, so this is the Eitai Brewing IPA, and it's a really good beer. That one over there kind of smells really good. I'm looking right now at the Tokyo Skytree—do you see that? It's right there. Okay, you can see it just in the corner—yeah, very good. So, kanpai everybody. And we couldn't have had better timing—the lights really went on for real. You can see what I'm talking about: the Eitaibashi now has turned a little neon blue and it's getting—it looks like something from Disney, doesn't it? Check it out. And at night it just glows so beautifully, that blue glittering off the water top, dancing with the little waves that are going back and forth, especially when the boats go by. It's really quite a sight. And I'll put the camera over here—yeah, you can see the bridge. So this is a real treat to end the livestream here at the Eitai Brewing, overlooking—this is like the perfect spot for a cafe. And I'm shocked that there aren't more people here—this is not typical of Tokyo; I don't see a lot of places where you can come outside and drink like this. Cheers—that's good; that's really good.

33:18 John Daub: Did you have any questions about Tokyo? I'm happy to answer—let me bring the camera over here. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have, because it's going to take a little bit of time to finish this beer. So if you have any questions, ask away—I'll be here for the next couple of minutes. Or someone might just show up and drink with me—what do you think? How's the river pollution-wise? It's not bad—you know, I heard stories from my neighbor Mr. Seiichi, my 97-year-old neighbor, that in the 1970s, late '60s to early '80s, the pollution was awful and the river smelled really bad—you would just get this odor off the river, especially up there towards Asakusa. And now the river is quite clean—I do see people sometimes swimming in it, and you can swim at Odaiba Beach, which is Tokyo Bay. You know what? I probably wouldn't purposely swim in it, but you can water ski on the Sumida River; you can windsurf—there's lots of little sports that you can do, not professionally, but people do it out there near the bay.

34:48 John Daub: Oh, and there are lots of Airbnbs along the river, but I've noticed that the Airbnb prices in Tokyo are really getting high—some of them are as competitive, if not more, than hotels. But the advantage of staying in an Airbnb is that you are literally right on the water, and some of those properties are just beautiful. So I can see why you'd pay a premium to stay in such a beautiful location like that. Wow, that's good beer. So in about five minutes I'm going to end this livestream, but we're going to be able to see the bridge really light up—I wanted to show you that to end this. Oh, is it easy to get around Tokyo? It's easy to get around Tokyo—there's about 13 or 14 subway lines: four Toei or city subway lines, in Metro I think there's nine. The subway you can get around just on the subway, but if you throw in JR, which has the Chuo Line that goes across the city and the Yamanote Line that goes around the city—those are the main lines you need to know. But it's very easy to get around the city of Tokyo.

36:51 John Daub: So there's about five interchanges in Tokyo that you should know—one of them is Otemachi near Tokyo Station; if you know Otemachi it's easy for you to go. But you know what? You can pretty much walk anywhere in the city—you don't have to take the subway everywhere; the distances sometimes between stations can be like two or three minutes walking. So if there's any advice I can give you is maybe consider walking if the distances aren't too much—or if there's three or four of you, take a taxi because sometimes that's cheaper than taking the subway. Costs can be about two or three dollars per person and a taxi can start at around five dollars now—the prices of the taxis have gone down, or the starting price at least; it used to be seven dollars to start a taxi ride—now they've lowered it to I think 400-something yen, but it starts to go up higher much quicker. Alright, so here comes another yatai-bune—now you can see the colors of the bridge have really come to life.

38:34 John Daub: Do you live in this area? No? Are you a tourist? No, I'm not—it's close to Tokyo. Oh, it's close to Tokyo? Yes, I live on the Iroha River—oh, I didn't know that. Where are you from? America—oh, I went to America; oh, where did you go? I went to Los Angeles—oh, I went to New York; oh, that's a different place. Alright, so I'm going to end this livestream—I just wanted to show you the bridge when it gets dark and give you a little taste of what the Sumida Gawa looks like at night. I really appreciate those super chats behind this beer for me, guys—appreciate it; cheers to that. I believe Jennifer and some of my other friends are doing livestreams, so you don't want to miss that because I'm really supportive—especially Jennifer who's doing such an amazing job with her livestreams; she's very frequent in her eating—if you know the show, know what I'm talking about. So here's some popcorn for you, and wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a really great day, great night. And I will see you on the next livestream probably tomorrow—I'm trying to get Peter von Gomm to do a livestream with me in the next couple of days; he's been quite busy. Peter, you're supposed to—why aren't you here, Peter? Show us the chicks for God's sake, John—Peter, why aren't you here? I thought you were working at NHK today—Peter had a narration gig today. Dude, I'm right now drinking beer on the river, and I asked you if you wanted to come and Peter said he had to go to work.

40:50 John Daub: And by the way, a quick plug on Peter's channel—he just released a really well-made story of a man who was wrongly incarcerated. He told a story of a man who was incarcerated wrongly, and it's an important story—I thought it was really well done; it's his best work. See? Peter's chatting in here—so there you go, Peter; there's your shot. I just got home—why did you go home, Peter? You should have been here. Should I say something? He's studying the menu. All right—see you guys, everybody; see ya. And there's the view I promised you—Eitaibashi. Bye-bye.