00:00:08 John Daub: Wow, it's hard to believe that it's November and the Christmas lights are already out. Absolutely beautiful. This is Tokyo. Hey everybody, we're going to be walking the 1.2 kilometer Marunouchi Nakadori (Marunouchi Inner Street) all the way to Tokyo Station where there's over 200 trees that have over 1 million LED lights. This is the 17th year that they've been doing this and joining me on this report is Mrs. Claus over there in the corner. Ho ho ho. All right, ho ho. Let's go see some Christmas lights. Good evening. Good evening ma'am.

00:01:02 John Daub: So this is Christmas time in the city and Tokyo is famous for having some amazing LED illuminations that seem more like LED illuminations than Christmas lights. But nevertheless, it is that time of the year, 'tis the season where we all give thanks to what we have and we have over a million LED lights so I give thanks to that. So join us as we walk. And actually, Kanae is very hungry. Greetings from Norway. Hey, there's a Christmassy place. Yeah, she's starving. So on the other end of this live stream there's going to be dinner. It's almost 9 p.m. which means it's going to be about like 7 a.m. in New York and it's like 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in California.

00:01:47 John Daub: So people are asleep in the U.S. so everybody be quiet. We want to wake the U.S. up. This is the time of the day where there's probably no Americans on. Hey, Dan in Japan, we... Hey, grab some curry, something. Awesome. All right, cool. How are you? There you go. Yeah. We're going to use that for dinner. All right. So this street, as I was saying, is 1.2 kilometers long. It's Marunouchi Nakadori and it's a street that's inside between the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives and the Yamanote line. It goes between a lot of office buildings and it's famous every year for having these really beautiful lights.

00:02:47 John Daub: Oh you found something. Oh look how pretty that is. Hey Kuroi Karasu89 thank you very much and Kyle Boggs oh wow we could use that. Starting to get a little bit chilly, could use some hot cocoa. If we find anything on the way we're gonna get some, get something to drink or something to eat. We're gonna see what if there's any street food or something like that on the way. Here I'm waiting for a traffic light to cross. There's a lot of construction going on left and right. Come up at the money honey. Oh that's the Mitsubishi. There's a Mitsubishi Museum, that's a memorial museum of the guy who was in charge of Mitsubishi.

00:03:44 John Daub: This is a nice restaurant over there I bet. All right okay all right let's take a look in there. There's Tiffany's, anybody who wants to buy earrings or rings. All right we're going to make a right into this area it's very Christmassy inside of here. This is also a new kind of a new area. Oh there's some. That's where Jennifer likes to go, La Cafe La Boutique de Joel Robuchon. Yeah Jennifer likes this Joel Robuchon guy apparently she knows him or something. I wonder if he's in town and if he's in his restaurant today.

00:04:28 John Daub: All right so this kind of opens up into what looks like could be a little bit of a Saturday evening. We have also some other things. It's really nice to be sort of European based on the bricks. Whoa it's quiet, it's a Saturday evening and this is the central business district so there's not a lot of people around. It's mostly just those who are either killing time or just hear who lived by like God. We don't live too far away it is pretty nice around here, Brick Square.

00:05:02 Kanae Daub: She does look kind of, uh, Philadelphian. Maybe European.

00:05:11 John Daub: Alright. Alright, Mrs. Claus, let's go this way. Hey guys. We're watching what you're watching too. Can I take off my hat?

00:05:19 Kanae Daub: Oh, she doesn't like the Christmas hat. I made her wear it. Um, I guess so.

00:05:28 John Daub: Okay, you can take it off. Are you embarrassed?

00:05:30 Kanae Daub: Yeah. Because it's not Christmas time.

00:05:33 John Daub: So she's slightly embarrassed by the Christmas hat. Yeah, okay. It's a city. Sorry. Alright, Go ahead, take it off. Oh look, they have the poinsettias. The poinsettias are out. And the wreaths. I mean, you know what? Christmas in...

00:05:51 John Daub: Oh look, they got packages in the window, like little Christmas gifts. This is crazy. So in the US, Christmas usually starts traditionally after Thanksgiving. Because Thanksgiving is a very important holiday in the United States. And it seems a little bit premature to start to celebrate Christmas before you've celebrated Thanksgiving. So we've celebrated the day that we give thanks for all that we have. Yeah, you know what? In Japan, we don't get Thanksgiving. We don't have it. So we just go straight to Christmas. Halloween just ended a little bit over two weeks ago. And we've moved right into Christmas. And that, my friends, would be odd to most people in the United States. But I'm always like, let's just get on with it. Let's just move right to Christmas. I'm kind of for that. We could do Thanksgiving and Christmas in the same stroke. They can run parallel.

00:06:51 John Daub: This area has gone through a lot of changes as well. A lot of renovations, new buildings. Once again, you can see there's the Marunouchi Brick Square, they call this. It's a nice new building. Oh, this is where the PricewaterhouseCoopers House or PWC was. I went in there and met with them a few years ago. They have an office inside. Oh yeah, let's go check it out. Christmas tree. We're going to crash this building's Christmas tree because it looks pretty nice. It's like everyone's taking pictures because it is really pretty. Hey, Limping Biscuits. His dad works at PWC. Yeah. I don't know if my friends still work in there, but they wanted me to do a project for them. Wow. All right. It's pretty neat. It's the building across from the Brick Square. It's very nice.

00:08:08 John Daub: Kuroi Karasu89 writes in, I would like to show you around my city, Augsburg near Munich. Hey, please check Instagram message. Yeah, that's pretty cool because we're going to be, thanks for the message, we're going to be in Munich on the 17th, 18th and 19th. We leave in the morning, but that's pretty cool. Yeah, definitely. Okay, I'll check my Instagram messages. Oh, that's going to be fun. We're planning to do a meet up at Marion's Platz. Oh, we got some nice ornaments here. I like those ornaments. They look like icicles. Oh, this is a beautiful building. Check that out. Very nice. Look at the tree. I love it when they put trees and it makes it look like it's outside, but it's really inside. This is inside of an office building. The Marunouchi Oazo Plaza. These do look like icicles. They could be diamonds. Hey, now. You break them, you buy them. Very nice. All right, let's go. Let's go back outside and continue our trip.

00:09:22 John Daub: So, Arachinuchon. Thank you very much. Cookie spaghetti while I watch you both. Warm drinks on me. Thank you very much. Should we like that? She's like that because this is going to be, I'll put a picture from our dinner date after this. This is what it's going to go to. Or if we can find some warm drinks on the way. It's going towards that. I really appreciate it. All right. Follow this guy. He knows where he's going. All right. So, we're going to come out in the intersection. I'm going to go in the middle of the street and show you what this is like. And it's great because the lights sort of, you can see them reflecting off of the buildings around it and it makes the area even brighter. So, I like that. And if it rains a little bit, I bet you it's even more beautiful because then the lights will reflect off of the streets. I love that kind of lighting.

00:10:34 John Daub: Now, there was, I think it was about 17 years ago, but there was this thing called the Marunouchi Illumination. It's usually in Kobe and Kobe has ridiculous Christmas lights. It's like on another scale. The Millennium or Marunouchi, I forget. Really? But it had, this whole walkway was filled with like a billion lights. And I don't even know who counted them, that poor guy who had to count a million lights. But it was absolutely, I think if you Google it, you'll see in the history of Tokyo, they had this amazing walkway. And there were just people who were walking like at Disney, like you're waiting in line at Disney. You know, the death march? And they're just walking along the street. Look, but it's not really a death march if you're looking at the pretty lights. It was just that pace. I'm just using that as an example how slow it was. But you don't want to move any faster than that.

00:11:36 John Daub: But now they've been doing it, I guess it was since then. They've been doing it for the last 17 years. And since the advent of LEDs, the illuminations have just gone to another level in Tokyo over the last 20 years. We didn't really have LED lights on this scale 20 years ago. I think it just started to come about 8 or 9 years ago. I think around when the Tokyo Skytree opened up, Tokyo just totally embraced LED lights. And now there's billions of them around the city. So the other illuminations that you can go to, so we're going to walk, it's 1.2 kilometers, so it's going to take about 20 minutes, 15 minutes to get to Tokyo Station. So the other illuminations in the city that are popular are Roppongi. Which I think is less Christmassy and more light. There's not a lot of Christmas spirit there. It's just a lot of light. And it's almost like a science fiction light show that they put on there. And I have a live stream from there from last year if you want to go and check it out. Shiodome, which is near Shimbashi, has a very beautiful one. That's, last year was put to music from Disney, which demonetized the live stream. But it was still beautiful to see. I was with Peter von Gomm. And, you know, I was with my son, Joji, his son on that one. And Roppongi is, besides Midtown, there's also another street next to...

00:13:14 John Daub: Oh! Hold that thought. Check it out. We have a Christmas tree inside of a building. Oh, we're already here. That's Tokyo Station. Whoa, that was fast. It's a modernized building. Yeah, Alright, we're going to get inside. But first, where's the rest? There's nothing in Ikebukuro. There's probably something in Ikebukuro. Shinjuku's Southern Terrace in Shinjuku, outside of the south exit, has an amazing illumination that's kind of romantic. They make it like a date thing where you can take pictures together. Omotesando is also really beautiful. Omotesando, the avenue between Aoyama and Harajuku is like... They call it the Champs-Élysées of Tokyo. And it's really beautiful. They've been illuminating that since the beginning of time. You can see everyone's taking selfies and pictures.

00:14:28 John Daub: So this area is... We're really close to Tokyo Station, so you can see a lot of people are around this side of the city. This part. Where we started, it was more not quite as full. Alright, let's go inside. Follow the lady who won't wear the hat. The Marunouchi Bright Christmas 2018. It's for the history. I don't know. I feel bad for the tree. Hey, Japanese study!

00:15:10 John Daub: Kanae, what kanji do you use for your name? Kanai? Kanji? How can I say?

00:15:18 Kanae Daub: I don't know. Can you air draw it? Kanai. So it's three characters, right? Yeah. There's three characters. I don't know. It's hard to write. We don't have any paper.

00:15:42 John Daub: That's not it, Kiki. That's not it. But the first letter is. Kiki's got the first letter. Hey, you guys. You write it in and I'll tell you if you get it right. How about that? Let's play the opposite game. I kind of feel... This is really beautiful. Andre Port Melbourne, thank you very much.

00:16:04 Kanae Daub: It's like a sweater. Kiki, not quite. Ah, no.

00:16:08 John Daub: Two out of three? No. One out of three. It's like a sweater. Yeah, they made it out of yarn and it looks like a sweater. Is what she's saying. Check it out. I don't know. It's alright, this style. It's cute, I guess. I feel bad for the tree. Because it's... It's boxed in. It's a tree. But the tree is boxed inside of this sweater. Why would they do that? This defies... I mean the tree is not a human. It's not like cold. It's a tree. But they've enveloped I guess or wrapped or sheltered the tree inside of a sweater. Well it is interesting that's true. How many old ladies did it take to knit this?

00:17:07 John Daub: Hey where's the star? Whoa the star is a ball of twine, a ball of yarn. It's pretty cool. You see that? Alright, Kanae's reading the explanation here. Alright I don't know if you guys can see that. Alright, knit tree with Yumi or you yummy. That looks like a city in China. I'm not sure. There's not really any explanation. Can you see? I can't see that. The idea is from Norway. From Norway? Oh really? So this idea came from Norway. I can't really see it. This is the main Christmas tree of the event. A towering 8 meter structure featuring traditional Nordic. I can't read it. It's really blurry. So it's Nordic in origin. Sorry. This kid tried to go in there. It was funny. That was hilarious. The kid tried to climb the gate and then now the lady's putting the gate back. That would have been awesome if he tried to climb the yarn. Actually that would have been really cool. So that's a knit Christmas tree. Never seen anything like that. Hey, Dodgy writes in that Dodgy is Nordic and this is your tree. Well from your area. Wow.

00:18:59 John Daub: The Marunouchi building is on the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. So Tokyo Station is just on the other side of the building. We can go over there. But I think now that we've gotten to take a look at the Nordic sweater tree and the Christmas trees inside of the sweater, which I guess makes this unique. You see there's the tree. It's different, right? I like it. Just different. Nice. I guess. Yeah, I was confused at first. Like what? What? Where's the tree? Oh, it's inside the sweater. Inside the sweater. That makes a lot of sense. So you can see this sweater tree if you make your way to Marunouchi building. All right. Let's go back outside and check out the rest of the illuminations. This way we're here. So we walked the 1.2 kilometer road in 15 minutes. It's a pretty good pace. Yeah. So what do you guys think? When does Christmas start in your country? Why don't you chat in and let me know? Love to hear from you. Where are you watching from? What country are you in and when does Christmas or if you don't celebrate Christmas, you can tell me about what holiday you celebrate and when that starts spread the cheer. Oh yeah, we can see Tokyo Station from here.

00:20:40 John Daub: That's weird. What is that? So they're doing construction and there's a statue of construction. I like this. Only in Tokyo. All right. So from here, you get a nice view of Marunouchi. Which is the city. And now from here we look back and you can see there's Tokyo Station. Boom. Sorry, it's not as clear, but they finished the renovations. I'm very happy to say that finished yet last year. This area was a big construction zone for several years and it looks absolutely beautiful. The Tokyo Station Hotel, which is very pricey, is located just inside there. They have a good tea time, but it's a little bit of a mess. But it's a good place to go. I think that's like really expensive to like everything's expensive in there. I think they're trying to pay. They're paying for the entire renovations and construction by selling $50 tea. And they'll probably make up all of the costs in six months because it's usually quite crowded. I had a business meeting there. It was a receipt of business expense. My business can't afford $50 tea.

00:22:09 John Daub: This is the building we're in. That's the Marunouchi building. It's one of the tallest ones here. And there's a twin Marunouchi building on the other side right there. So there's the Shin-Marunouchi building, which is the new one and the old Marunouchi building, which is when we were just in. And there you go straight away to the Marunouchi building. This is I really love this side of Tokyo Station because there's a picture. What wedding? Yeah, wedding photo. Let's crack. I'm not invited. It's just taking wedding photos. That's genius. She's really cold. Feel bad for her. Yeah, it's a nice idea to come out here. I thought about doing running out in the middle of Hachiko, but that's just stupid. Nice. So as I was saying, this is one of my favorite views because there's a picture from 1934. This is before World War Two. And there's a picture of Babe Ruth, who was a Yankee back then in a convertible car arriving in Tokyo, driving the convertible through a parade for him. This is 1936. And you can see the background of I'll see if I can get put it on Instagram. But in the background was the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. And for me, that kind of connects a past era with what I'm seeing right now. And that's so cool because I was a big Babe Ruth fan. And I love the way he would always make time to. Not just eat hot dogs, but, you know, he would stay and sign autographs for kids and he treated. He really had a special like friendship with kids because he himself didn't have a very good childhood and he lived in orphanages. Wow. It's just really beautiful.

00:24:27 John Daub: PMX writes, I was just at Tokyo Station 20 minutes ago. Welcome back to Tokyo. Welcome back. All right. So that's about all I have here. Anything else that we can show them? What's what else is famous here? Can I? I'm not sure. Oh, oh, wait. There's one more Christmas tree in the JP Tower building. There's one more Christmas tree. All right. We're going to end with one more Christmas tree. Okay. Yeah. In the JP Tower building, we can cut across here inside the JP Tower building. And this is the new Tokyo Central Post Office. And if you're a Patreon member, if you're part of the postcard club, I've been sending the postcards here because they put a big massive Tokyo stamp on it, which is so cool. Like when they stay cancel the stamp, they stamp it with Tokyo. So I like to send the packages from here. They only do that here in the Central Post Office. So inside of there, I've heard that there's a humongous Christmas tree. So we're going to try this. Hey, Darren writes in from London. This is cool. I'm reading now where you guys are from from Australia. This is awesome. From New Jersey. Oh, what exit on the turnpike? Good morning from Toronto, Singapore, Egypt. Whoa. It's hot down there. Finland, it's cold up there. The Netherlands. Oh, the Netherlands. I'm doing a report on Vermeer. They have an exhibit here. So I've been filming Vermeer stuff all day. Melbourne from Hachiko in Shibuya. Well, the answer is just a ride back. Paris, France. By the way, we're doing a meet up in Paris, I think on the 20th of December. So we'll be in Paris doing a meet up there. Malaysia, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Philippines, Taiwan, Alberta, Paris. Hey, Houston, Northern Canada, Washington State. This is cool. New Zealand, Spain, Malaysia. Oh, I love them. I haven't been in Malaysia in a while. Was there last year? That was great. Scotland, Mexico City.

00:26:42 John Daub: I'm from your mom, Joshua. Joshua. What your mom probably says too, Joshua. Joshua, how dare you? I'm from Sweden, from Westeros, Malaysia, Scotland, Los Angeles. No one's wrote in my favorite planet. Very few people stoop to such level of immaturity. Except for me and Joshua. We're the only people who are that childish. You can see the Yamanote line on the left side making its way from Yurakucho. And entering into Tokyo Station. It really, if you do come to Tokyo, just stop whatever you're doing. And just spend a couple of minutes walking around the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. It's been redone and it's just so beautiful. Hey, Becca Ortiz, happy early Christmas and holiday from Becca. Thank you, Becca. Thank you for that. Thumbs up for Becca. Oh, it's green light. Yeah, you know, I'm really excited because Florence CI has entered to it. Florence CI and I are now at the same maturity level. I've been, I know that planet. I've never been there. But it's the seventh or eighth planet depending on the rotation of Pluto or something. Never really figured it out. Somebody even said Pluto's not even a planet. Signs. My dad always said if you take pictures on a trip, always take one picture of signs so you know where you were. So there you go. I don't know. That was good advice. Because back then, we didn't have digital cameras. So I would always take slide film. And I would take slide films of signs every now and then. And that would be whenever I, on the slides, would introduce a new city. I would start off with the slide of the sign that I took, which is really cool because it put you in the location. Wow. I just love Tokyo Station's Marunouchi side. And they've added a little purple to the top of the roof there. And that's cool.

00:28:54 John Daub: Alright, let's go inside the JP Tower building. You still hungry?

00:29:02 Kanae Daub: Hungry. She's super hungry.

00:29:03 John Daub: We're gonna have a late dinner. We're having a late dinner in this area. Alright, let's go in and enter. This is the JP Tower building. JP means stamp in Japanese. So if you do go to the post office, you can go for, ask for JP, you're gonna get a stamp. J-P-T-O-W-E-R. Let's go inside. I've heard. And by the way, the central post office, just for the record, is open 24 hours. There's a little window that you can go to. See, it's still open. The window is right there. Yeah, there it is. You see the window where the guy is? That's the central. So that is still open. And you can send stuff 24 hours a day. I've had to do that where I needed to get it postmarked.

00:29:53 Kanae Daub: No! Oh my god. No! Oh!

00:30:04 John Daub: What? What's going on here? Excuse me, post office. I expect my... Look, and the post office is the only one who can wait, you know? It should be like this. Alright, for the record, it will look like this. But, actually, look at that mound of snow. That's beautiful. But, it's the only place in the city that decided, you know what? We're not going to take advantage of early Christmas. It starts on November 21st. Yeah, 21st. Yeah. Until Christmas Day. And they take the tree down on Christmas Day. How sad is that? It's not even... Christmas isn't even finished in the United States and they're taking it down here. Oh man. That's... You know, post... Only the post office would think like this. This is post office's practical thinking. I don't... The rest of the city does not think practically. What... The way... The way we think, like... They don't even... They haven't even finished... Putting up the tree yet. The rest of the city is like... Had Christmas for like... I don't know. Two weeks now. The day after.

00:31:12 John Daub: Hey, we got... Beautiful J. John... Thanks, John, for these live streams. I have learned so much about Japan from watching both of your channels. Thank you so much for making YouTube fun and interesting. You're very welcome and thank you for the support. This is all going towards her dinner. She eats more than me. Slightly more. I'm happy with the leftovers. Uh... Can I just introduce me? In the basement here, there's this really unique place that has freeze dried everything. Yeah. Yeah. What's it called? Amano. Amano. Yeah. Amano freeze dried shop. And they have like... They have freeze dried soup and all that. But they've also freeze dried... Oyakodon. Freeze dried oyakodon. Mabo nasu. Freeze dried mabo nasu. Freeze dried food. And I thought maybe I would do a live stream on that someday. Freeze-dried custard. What? Pasta. Freeze-dried pasta. Well, that's kind of like ramen noodles. So they got freeze-dried and that's downstairs in the basement. It's kind of a unique thing. Japan likes to freeze-dry everything. Freeze-dry. I wish you could freeze-dry Christmas and then, you know, in the middle of summer, you just put it in the microwave and you can thaw out Christmas. You know, and it's just as fresh.

00:32:53 John Daub: All right. Well, we're going to exit. We're going to stop the live stream inside of Tokyo Station here. So we're going to cross the street and join you. I do, guys, I really do appreciate the support of the channel. This is a lot of fun. Just kind of walking around the city. We're going to be going next time to another area of the city to look at the Christmas lights, just like last year. I didn't go to the other side of Roppongi and I haven't been to a couple of other places. Last year, I went to the other side of Roppongi and I haven't been to a couple of other places. Last year, I didn't go to Omotesando either. So we might be going to Omotesando later on, which is the Champs-Élysées of Tokyo. That'd be really cool. So check that out. I guess it'll be sometime next week. We will be on tour, Kanae and I, in Mumbai. I'm looking for some people in India that might be able to help us with planning a meetup. I don't know whether or not to do it at the Gateway of India or at YouTube Space, which is really far away from the center of the city, or do it at Leaping Windows. Leaping Windows is a place that I've been to before. So I could use your help to help the planning.

00:33:53 John Daub: You know what I'm going to do? Kanae, hold on. I'm going to put the wide angle lens on. There we go. Alright, this is the wide angle lens now. So it's going to be... I really love the domes of Marunouchi. Check it out. It looks very European and Austrian maybe. Reminds me of... I think it's the appearance of the central Vienna a little bit. It's pretty cool. So this is the south entrance to Marunouchi and Tokyo Station. It's a lot better than the other side. It's got that history. Check out these floors. I heard that they also put kinetic... something kinetic in there that takes the energy from all the people walking on it and it charges some battery that lights up the light in the middle maybe. I don't know. I just made that up. Most of the stuff I say is factually based. That was not. Alright, and you can see... And you can see there's the... No, this is for the... What I'm saying is this is for the Imperial Palace. You just walk straight. So if you leave out of this tower, just walk straight to where the Christmas lights are, and you're at the Imperial Palace. It's pretty cool. And if you come with your running gear, it's a five kilometer loop around there. Just neat.

00:35:36 John Daub: Alright, so we're gonna go and eat. Thanks, everybody. We made it all the way. If you're joining us right now, late, just go back and watch the replay. It should be in 720p HD, so you can see how beautiful the Christmas lights are. This is the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. It's a 1.2 kilometer road that leads from just about Ginza and Yurakucho, and you can follow Marunouchi Nakadori all the way to Tokyo Station, and it's a pretty neat little walk that you can do. If you're in Tokyo now, it'll be running, I think, until the beginning of 2019. You'll be able to see this illumination. So, we're going to dinner. Have a great day, great night, wherever you are. Have a lovely morning, Americans that are just waking up. Everyone in the U.S. is waking up right now going, oh, I missed the live stream. But we're gonna do another one later on. Hey, Ramsalyn just got on. It's 9:30 p.m. Yeah, here it's 9:30, but I think where you are, man, it's like 5:30 or 6. The time difference is always hard. All right, guys. Bye, everybody. Merry Christmas. Early Merry Christmas.