00:00:26 John Daub: Good day to everybody out there. I am in Kaihin Makuhari. I'm gonna let these people go by for a second. So my mission today is to basically show you how to get to Makuhari Messe (convention center). Makuhari Messe is a big convention hall over here. I'm at Kaihin Makuhari Station, which is the main station from Tokyo Station to get here. You take this train and from here I'm gonna walk there. It's not that far, but I think that this guide is gonna give you an inside look into what to expect if you do come here because tens and tens of thousands of people come to Tokyo to go to conventions here like the Tokyo Game Show and other anime and manga conventions. So let's get out of here.

00:01:32 John Daub: People are pretty polite. They don't walk up this side even though it's crowded. So this side people are coming up, so it's pretty orderly. The estimated time of arrival is about 12 to 15 minutes, so it shouldn't take very long. Right now, I have what is like a Suica. That's how I'm gonna get out of the station. It's probably a good idea to get a Suica or an IC card to make it easier. You don't have to wait in line to get tickets. Okay, here we go. This one's from Osaka. It's called Icoca, but it works here in Tokyo.

00:02:28 John Daub: Boom! Welcome to Makuhari, everybody. All right, orientation on this station here. So there's two sides of it. You want to go at the south exit, minamiguchi (south exit), the south exit to get to Makuhari Messe here is what it looks like. That's what the south exit looks like. There it is right there, south. So it's pretty clear. Now, behind me, that's the north exit. The north exits are where all the buses are, so if you want to go to the Aeon Mall, to Costco, to some of the buildings over a little bit further away, or if you want to go to Zozo Marine Stadium, which is where the Lotte Marines play, that's a baseball team here, you can catch a bus from over here. Well, we're gonna go this way. This is the south exit. And clearly states it pretty you can't even miss it Makuhari Messe right there you can't get any clearer than that all right here's the exit you're now in Chiba prefecture this is no longer Tokyo.

00:03:42 John Daub: And basically you just walk straight it's very easy to get there Makuhari is a new city it even says so right here they're proud of that fact on the left side is I guess we call it an outlet center they have a lot of outlet stores brand shops that have created the shopping mall here and you can get things at a discount I usually don't shop at the outlet park much it's the outlet park in the center but it's there so people going to the conventions will stop in there but the thing is when you come here for the Tokyo game show it is so crowded you probably can't even get 4G wi-fi people just from the station all of the time are just going to the station and they're just going to the mall and they're just all the way there it's like one big line once again this is the Japanese baseball team the Marines they have a mascot looks like a duck because they're on the sea or is it a seagull I can't really tell and the Marines have a I believe it's a 100 yen bus that takes you to the stadium during game day which is very cool so let's get to Makuhari Messe.

00:04:58 John Daub: Now Makuhari Messe is one of the biggest convention halls in Japan it's massive and the reason why they have it out here is because there's such a lot of land available it's cheap it's very very convenient there's the station that's Kaihin Makuhari Station it's very convenient to get here from Tokyo Station and it's not that far of a walk and one of the reasons why I like coming out here is because you get that sea air you can smell the difference between the quality of the air between Tokyo and Makuhari it's sort of got this weird I'm going to take you up okay hold on I'm going to take you up this way so we're just basically going straight from the station this place is packed when they have conventions but today's a weekday so there's nothing going on at Makuhari Messe right now so I'm going to go up these stairs here and you'll start to see it has like this weird feeling of being in the tropics you'll see these tropical trees sometimes which is pretty cool because it's a lot different than being in central Tokyo.

00:06:17 John Daub: So now we're going up the steps towards Makuhari Messe it's a really nice spring day the cherry blossoms have ended in Tokyo but hanami (cherry blossom viewing) lives on as visitors from abroad make their way into Tokyo one week late okay QVC which is a big TV selling has their headquarters here as well as a lot of companies have headquarters here Trekkers thank you we are the vending machines I think they're down there they're closer you can kind of see it already Makuhari Messe the big convention hall we're gonna hang a right here now these buildings have a lot of offices and what I like about this is if you need to get a convenience store go to the convenience store or use the restroom sometimes this is a better idea than waiting to get to Makuhari Messe because it's so crowded on event days it's tropical look this is Chiba Chiba has like this weird tropical feeling to it could be like Miami or something where's Crockett and Tubbs all right and it's pretty much going straight.

00:07:58 John Daub: We got a little map here this is the complex over on this side two skies two tall buildings I wouldn't call them skyscrapers and inside there there is a Lawson's or a convenience store there's some ramen there's an ocean garden almost at Olive Garden so there's a couple of other restaurants here which I think will oh an Indian restaurant looks so good I'm hungry so we're gonna go this way the wind is picked up because we are basically this is the sea and Makuhari also has a beach which is pretty wicked now the water is not that clean I think it's because a lot of the ships coming from the Pacific they enter into Tokyo through this area and I don't know it's just sort of not the best not kind of not the cleanest water to go and but people do swim and I don't think there's anything wrong with the water in this area all right so you got some big hotels here I think one of them is the Apa Hotel Resort Apa Hotel is a chain of hotels that oh that's a new Hotel Okura it's a new Okura most expensive hotel unless you know some companies putting you up for the night the prices are reasonable out here but there really isn't anything else to do besides the events that there looks like an abandoned building like I was saying there's not that much to do here tourism is not that high except for the events this looks like an abandoned hotel because there's some abandoned places that I think would be pretty cool to check out it is a little bit creepy looking now this is supposed to be the quote-unquote new town There's buildings that are abandoned.

00:10:01 John Daub: Alright, we're here. I told you it wasn't going to take very long. This here is Makuhari Messe. Get to the other side. Well, we're not quite there yet, but you can see it's just a massive, massive convention hall. Let me see if I can cover this up. A massive, massive convention hall. Tokyo Game Show, the entrance is over here to get in. So you're actually just about halfway. So the way we came, you can either go on the left or on the right. And both of them can connect right here. And you can come on in. This is the Kaihin Makuhari Station. It's a reasonably close walk. That's why you don't really have to take a bus, even though some guidebooks recommend that you do that.

00:10:51 John Daub: Now, if you want to go to Costco, which is where I did the Costco sushi taste test, and I've shopped at Costco Japan, there's a massive Aeon Mall about 500 meters. It's about half a kilometer this way. You see where that tower is just over there? It's massive. It's one of the biggest shopping malls I've ever been inside. And there's a Costco there as well. So I'm going to go there and eat some lunch. That's sort of why I'm here. I got to get some supplies. I go to Costco maybe once every two months. And I'm out of coffee, which means I'm out of gasoline for editing videos. So I needed to gas up for another hardcore edit tonight. But there's really not that much out here except for the convention hall. So I'm going to go to Costco Japan. I don't see a lot of people live streaming here today. It's just us. I'd love to take you to the beach, but it's sort of out of the way. So if you want to go to the beach, you just keep going straight and past this new Hotel Okura. And the beach is all on this side. If you go this way and you keep walking along the beach, you get to the baseball stadium.

00:12:06 John Daub: Oh, thank you, beach. Mr. Vogel, I appreciate it. We're on our way to Makuhari Messe. Gosh, I have some really fond memories here. And it's sort of weird to come here when there's nobody here. I got the entire convention hall to myself. It's absolutely massive. Take a look at the map. It clearly says Makuhari Messe. So we are here. We're down there. See that little dot? That's us. And then we have eight massive halls that the Tokyo Game Show takes up all eight of these. And I think that there's stuff going on in this international exhibition as well. International exhibition is across right here. And they usually have. Last time I was here, they had a big dinosaur exhibition, which is super cool. And here's a map of where we walked. Just in case you want to use this for reference. You take a look. It's not that far. We just walked from here to here. And you can see the beach is right there. There's the stadium. This is the ocean. So we're very close to it. We got a nice breeze, very fresh air from out here coming in. And Makuhari Messe is just massive.

00:13:29 John Daub: And when I come here for the Tokyo Game Show, and I'm thinking of coming this year as well, but instead of doing one for the main channel, I want to live stream it. That means I got to get a dedicated Wi-Fi, which is going to be really hard. Or go on media day where there's not as many people here. But it's fun. It's just always exciting to be at the Makuhari Messe. Not normally on event days. Check it out. It is absolutely crowded with people. You can't even see the ground if a convention is going on. But today, we have the entire place to ourselves. It's international. You can see it. It tells you welcome in English, Korean, Chinese, and English again, but with a weird font. To make it look cool. Yeah, there's nothing going on. It looks like a ghost town. Messe is a German word. I didn't know that. No humans. I'm the only one. This could be like one of these zombie apocalypse zones. This would be awesome to film like an episode of Walking Dead or something. Makuhari Messe. And this would be like a horde would be in the center here. And the people would run out and go, Hey! Whoa, it's a horde! Get out of here! Run the other way! Yeah, that's I think that's how I could see the scene going. Something like that. It does look abandoned. This is a Tuesday, so there's not much going on here.

00:15:17 John Daub: I believe that there are some things going on for the Olympics during 2020. Because it's such a big event hall, they have something has to be going on here. You can see my reflection here. This is the Tokyo 2020 Olympic logos. And you can see there's some surfing logos. There's some swimming events. This is going to be one killer Olympics because they have skateboarding, they have surfing, they have baseball, they have goalball. What is it? What is this sport? Goalball? Is that like handball but with a goal maybe? Sitting volleyball. Has anyone ever heard of this? This might be the most bizarre sport I've ever seen. So how do you, how do you move around? You just use your body? You just use your butt cheeks and walk your body around? I've never seen sitting volleyball before. That must be something new. Taekwondo, fencing. These are normal sports. Wrestling. And here's beautiful Chiba. Chiba is famous for surfing. They do have some good waves. It's not amazing waves, but it's good waves. Just, I never heard of this sitting volleyball before. That's really bizarre. And this wheelchair fencing looks pretty cool. I'd like to see that. Very neat. Chiba. It's just empty here. Rent is so cheap. I bet.

00:17:18 John Daub: All right. Let's put these Super Chats to good use. So I'm going to get a drink here for y'all. What do you think I should get? Wow. Peach flavored water. I haven't seen that before. Again, right near the most popular drink in Japanese vending machines. It's green tea. Cause I just put up a Only in Japan main episode and they had this. No, it's all sold out. Look. Urikiri (sold out). Urikiri. Why? They're all sold out, man. I was going to go for this because it's small and it's strong. Must be concentrated. You just shove a whole piece of ginger in there or something.

00:18:04 John Daub: They do have a cafeteria. Again, there's the bus stop, but what's the point? It takes us five minutes to walk here. That's the baseball. This one also goes to the baseball stadium. And there you go, there's the entrance. Should I Rocky? I'm going to Rocky this thing. Here we go. Let's Rocky this thing. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da. Da da da da da. Da da da da da. Chiba! This isn't the only time I've done this. Art Museum but hey we can go in hold on a second there's anything that we just rocky those stairs well let's take a look you guys with me so for the Tokyo Game Show this is the way I come and the press I always get a press pass and they set it up over here and you have to give them two business cards and then there's the entrance and the banner Tokyo Game Show but today it's just us literally there's no humans this is kind of creepy what is this there's nobody here there's like no events happening there's no people there's not even zombies you think at least there'll be some kind of undead something it does look like an airport but in general this down here in September is just filled with people because of the Tokyo Game Show and now it's just it looks like a gymnasium. It's a massive, massive empty space right now, which is a shame.

00:20:24 John Daub: Oh, man, this is awesome. I wonder if you can do like a 50-yard dash. Now, you could do a full quarter mile. You could run all the way from there to the other side. I think that's like a kilometer. No way. That's awesome. All right, so come back here in September, and we're going to do a live stream for the Tokyo Game Show. Oh, there's a human. Let's say hello to the human. He wouldn't acknowledge me. Could be walking dead. He didn't acknowledge me. I tried to make eye contact, and he kept his head down. Walking dead. It's awesome. Whoa, there's like a zombie police guard. Check it out. So there you go. That's Makuhari Messe. Eight event halls plus an international forum on the top. What looks like a concert event hall, which is right here, which is pretty killer. You can get some concerts in here, and there's an international conference hall. It's international. So Japanese can't use it. You need a passport. I'm just kidding. You can. Anybody can go there, and the station is on the top. So don't take bus. Walk it, and it's not that bad. This is entertaining for you. It was for me because you kept me company. Now I'm going to Costco to get some pizza because that Costco has some pretty darn good pizza.

00:22:27 John Daub: The last thing I'm going to show you is we're going to end because, you know, this is like 20 minutes of just going to a convention hall. This here is Chiba-kun. Chiba-kun is the mascot for Chiba, and they want to welcome you to Chiba Prefecture, which is the prefecture of Chiba with these vending machines. And I'm going to share these vending machines with you. So hi to Chiba-kun with the international event hall back here. And this is Chiba-kun, the yurukyara (mascot) for Chiba Prefecture, a very active place. And I like what they've done with this vending machine. They put in some Japanese designs. You have the crane, the cherry blossoms. Chiba-kun flowers and an array of drinks like what can you find in here? Peach Fanta, which I drank in a competitive peach drink and with this one, which is peach coke. So they're all both of the peaches are here and blood red orange Fanta. So they have the entire fruit range here. This one is a new drink by Canada Dry. It's called the Tansan. And Tansan means carbonated water, tansansui (carbonated water). But Tansan means Mr. Tan or people with tans. And that could and I could qualify for Mr. Tansan.

00:23:54 John Daub: You want me to get that? All right. I do it because I love you guys. I'm going to get one. I don't know what should I get? All right. I'm lost. So should I get the Tansan, Mr. Tansan because I am tan naturally? Or should I go for the strawberry? Or should I go for the strong ginger ale? Or should I go for something that I absolutely don't want to drink at all like peach water or peach coke, which I already drank or blood red Fanta? What do you think? And over here we have the peach Fanta. But I've already drank that on another stream. Peach water, strong Canada Dry, ginger ale, peach Fanta, ginger ale, blood red, Tansan, blood red first one. Buy both. Whoa, he's insane. Real gold. Blood red for the win. Momo Fanta, Tansan, Monster. No monsters. Blood red, Kuu. Okay. I'm looking at the stream. I'm really confused. You guys are all over the place. It's between the blood red and the Tansan right now. All right. Who's going to say it? Three, two, one. Blood. Okay. I said three, two, one, and the first one that popped up is the one I'm going to buy. All right. So this is the blood red Fanta. And this is because you guys are special. I got 500 yen. This thing is going in to the machine. And I'm getting this blood red Fanta for you guys.

00:25:27 John Daub: It's been awesome. This, which one? Middle, left, right? Which one? Oh, I just go in the middle. Boom. Here we go. They played a jingle. That wasn't just the coins falling. They played a jingle when the coins were coming out. Very cool. All right. Put that in my pocket. Oh, it's all shaken up because it fell. Blood orange Fanta. This is cool. Like they made it look like a really bloody nice. It even says blood orange on the bottom in katakana. All right. Let's try this out here. Open slowly. I know it's all sugar. Look, you know, I'm drinking this for you guys because I wouldn't normally drink this. You know what I drink normally? I drink just carbonated water. I'm putting a tripod on the bottom here. I just drink carbonated water normally at home. I don't drink any sugar drinks because I found out that when I was drinking Coca-Cola, up here, I was drinking Coca-Cola. I actually didn't care about the sweetness of the Coca-Cola. I just wanted the bubbles. I just liked the bubbles. They hurt and felt good. It's like when you break wind, there's this discomfort and then that good feeling and it's done. I'm just saying. It's like when you drink the carbonated water, there's this slight discomfort and then it just feels good. And I guess that's something similar to that.

00:27:08 John Daub: There we go. That's what I mean, Mr. Acrea. All right. Open it slowly. This could go wrong or it could go right. It's smoking. Wow. All right. Here we go. This one's for Nosh. And Nosh, by the way, while I'm drinking this, hold on a second. I like Fanta. Fanta, it's not too sweet. And it's not too heavy. It's more refreshing than sweet. I like it. All right. Thumbs up. I can't taste anything that would say, this is blood orange. But what I do taste is a really sweet, slightly tangerine-ish sweet drink. That's about it. Fanta is good. So just for Nosh abroad. Because I know Nosh, when we were at Hibiya a couple of days ago looking at Godzilla, I bumped into two YouTubers and I got a Facebook message from one of them this morning. I'm going to tell you which one. And very, very nice guys. They were following up to say hi and that they apologized. That's right, Tuotaku. That they apologized for interrupting the livestream. And I said it was no bother at all. In fact, it made it even more awesome. And yeah. I think. Our schedules, if they meet up, hopefully we get a chance to hang out a little bit this summer. So yeah. It was pretty cool. And I remember they were saying that they saw some of the same people who watch the livestreams, which is also probably watching right now. And Nosh is one of them. So thank you for bringing us together, Nosh. You know, you encouraged me, my friend. And I like that. We're looking out for each other. Nosh is one of the moderators. Or somebody who will block you if you are very rude to other people. I appreciate that kind of help.

00:29:14 John Daub: There you go. There's Makuhari in the distance. This is the new town. And my final destination. I'm not going to take you there. Yeah, Nosh is an MVP, man. Right there is the Aeon Mall. And I'm going to go there and get some Costco supplies. I hope they've restocked on the good coffee. I like the Rwandan coffee. There's something exotic about Rwandan. Kilimanjaro is just not heavy enough. But Rwandan, man. Whoa. No cars. This place on the weekdays is like zombie town. Literally, there's no... Look. You see anybody behind me? A few cherry blossoms. And they really stand out. There isn't too much of a difference. Look at the streets. Look at this. There's a car. Wide avenues. No cars. This is... If I'm going to rent a car and practice driving, I'm going to do it out here. Because this is the safest place. The only thing that could destroy me would be running into a tree. Look at these wide avenues. I like it.

00:30:43 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks for joining me on this spontaneous and somewhat pointless unless you're coming to Chiba for the convention hall right there. Live stream. I think this is going to be useful. I think this is going to be a really useful live stream for people who are coming to Chiba. And who knows what... Guys, watch this one get like a million views or something just because a big convention is going to happen. Everyone's going to share this video to help to get to the final destination. And if it was helpful, leave a comment below. And there's a link in the description with the map in this area so you can check out where I was. But I do hope it was very useful for you and you had a good time watching this. Come with me as we make our way to the Aeon Mall past Makuhari Messe. Oh, they're filming something. Past Makuhari Messe. I went past Ikea on the way here. We say Ikea in Japanese and in American we call it Ikea. But here we call it Ikea. Ikea. So I passed Ikea on the way here. There's people behind me. I'm going to speed it up. So I'll see you guys later. Thanks for joining me. Got to take my blood red orange Fanta. Thank you guys. Fanta thanks you too. Have a good one. Later, later. Oh, nice hat. Bye.