00:00:11 John Daub: Greetings everybody, welcome to Odaiba in central Tokyo. We seem to be having some connection issues, I apologize for that. But the question is, is it safe to be swimming in the city of Tokyo? And if you saw the sign in the beginning, the answer is no. The answer is no, because it's actually advertised right there, no swimming allowed. And the reason why is because in the 1960s, all of the public beaches in the city of Tokyo were closed due to pollution. So there was no swimming after the 1960s, just the pollution levels were really high. This was the industrial age of Tokyo where a lot of factories were dumping into the rivers, into the Sumida River, into the Futamatagawa, the Tamagawa, the Tama River.

00:01:02 John Daub: And I think it was until around a few years ago, nobody was going in here to swim at all. And now you can see the line of people, and there are some kids that might be going in, up to their chest sometimes. But nobody is swimming. And the reason why is just the pollution levels are a little bit too high. Except last year. Last year, according to a Japan Times article, and I put a link in the description, people were swimming in Tokyo Bay. And Minato Ward, which is the ward that this is—there's 23 wards in Tokyo, Minato is one of them—they had waiver forms that people had to sign before they went in to go swimming. That one, they understood the rules. And number two, I guess they promised not to put their heads under the water or something.

00:01:55 John Daub: And I think it was all the way up to about 2003, according to the article, nobody was even going near the water of Tokyo because it was just absolutely ridiculously polluted. There were E. coli levels that were 20 times the norm. Up to about 2017, which is not a good sign. This almost reminds me of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Remember when they had the boating events, the water out there was polluted. I think it was like 200 times the legal limit of sewage, raw sewage in the water. There's a lot of debate about that, but it's getting to 2017. It's starting to become a necessity. Triathlon events will be held here, literally right in front of you, right here. And they're going to be having cones marked off and the triathletes will be swimming the course on this part of Tokyo Bay, which is a little bit quieter, hopefully a little bit cleaner.

00:03:01 John Daub: But it's not typical for anybody to go swimming. I'm going to go and show you the water on the edge. You can see it's not the cleanest looking water in the world. It's kind of a brownness to it. It is cool. It's nice and cool. And that's as far as I'm getting in. No, Toby (crow), I'm not going to get in. I'm not drinking the water. With that said, we do have a lot of windsurfers here. You can see behind me, there's one of them. You can rent windsurfing at a beach house over here.

00:04:01 John Daub: Tokyo Bay is one of the most beautiful places for me to go and watch. On the ends here, you can walk over here to one of these islands, but you just can't swim. However, last year in August, for a little bit less than a month, you could swim and you made a little area to swim here. But according to the article, once again, it was hilarious. They said there was like a dozen lifeguards in attendance and only two or three people would swim. People are just not over the phobia that there's just a ton of pollutants in the water here. So that was kind of funny. There was more staff than there were actual swimmers.

00:04:47 John Daub: That might change because it is getting hot and there are more tourists and people don't know about the no-swimming signs. Yeah, I do apologize for the wind. There's nothing I can do about it. I tried using dead cats and wind guards. But there are other issues with that as well. You just can't—it's lose-lose no matter what you do with the smartphone. Salt kills germs. You think. Does it kill E. coli? Because that's what was in the water 20 times the normal level in 2017. But it is a really nice place to come and just hang out if you have a family and you want to do something. Sometimes kids don't like to walk around the city. They certainly do like to walk around here. And it is a pleasant place. It's clean enough to go in up to your knees. I wouldn't go swimming. But family is different.

00:06:02 John Daub: And to talk a little bit more on the subject, that's right. I'm not that far away from the Gundam statue on the other side of the shopping mall over here. Up there from the beach, you have a nice view of the Fuji TV dome, which you can see quite clear from across the bay. This direction. And you will see the Statue of Liberty. But I'm more interested in the lady over there. The one right in the center of your screen holding down the fort. We've ridden our bicycles here. It's not too far to get here. And her being a local of Tokyo, you would think that she grew up swimming in the bay, right?

00:06:46 John Daub: Did you ever swim here? Be honest.

00:06:53 Kanae Daub: Okay.

00:06:54 John Daub: So here we are. This is our Odaiba date. It is a nice day. We had some connection issues down there. So tell me. You've never swam here, right?

00:07:06 Kanae Daub: No.

00:07:06 John Daub: She's never swam here. Why? Because she was born in Tokyo. If you did swim here, that would explain a lot. It's not the sea. It's the bay. And I think it's just people didn't do it. Like, yeah, I think your father's generation knew: don't do it. But people that are coming here, they're doing it because it is a different situation than it was 20 years ago.

00:07:46 John Daub: Hey, Mr. Daub, I confess my love for Only in Japan Go again. Welcome. I would love to hear that. It's good to share these places with you. Thank you, Sean. Sean Boyd's in the house. He's making himself known. And Simon Zeng is here. I love Odaiba. Stay at the Hilton Odaiba. That's right. Yeah, that's just over here. Not that far. And you can get pretty good deals depending on the time of year. I think maybe not now with high season, but you can get pretty good deals with the Hilton here. The one at Tokyo Disneyland is a lot more expensive, I guess, because a little bit more popular. But this is a nice one. I've actually stayed with Kanae a couple of months ago. I had some points I had to use over at the InterContinental Hotel. Oh, I think it's just right across over there on the other side of the bridge. And that had really nice views. And you can get some periods where the Tokyo Bay InterContinental Hotel is really affordable. Yeah, because it's just a little bit older hotel, I think, and sort of far away from the city center.

00:08:49 John Daub: All right. I'm going to just walk around with you for a couple more minutes and then Kanae and I are going to continue on with our date.

00:09:02 John Daub: You want to go inside Odaiba? You want to see Gundam?

00:09:05 Kanae Daub: Yeah, Gundam.

00:09:06 John Daub: Is it Gundam? Sorry. You want to see Gundam? All right. You sure?

00:09:12 Kanae Daub: Maybe.

00:09:17 John Daub: All right. We'll be back. I'm just going to take her for a walk on the boardwalk. She's got to hold down the fort. It'll blow away. I'm going to turn the camera on. I want to just get an idea of what it's like out here. Now, these two dudes, they've been walking down the beach and one of them has a hat with an herb on it. I don't know. It's kind of creepy, dudes. I guess you see people like that at every beach. Gundam. That's right. It's not that far away. It's a different vibe. If you've been here in the fall or the spring or the winter, you've probably seen it. Maybe walked on the beach here, but you haven't experienced it in the summer. And here in the summer, we have a totally different vibe to the area. Very nice. It's summer. You know, it's hard not to. And my urge is to just take off my shirt and jump in. I have to be honest with you. That's my urge right now. But I know I'm going to come out with a third eye or something. And you're not allowed to swim. As you saw in the beginning, the sign literally says no swimming.

00:10:36 John Daub: And for those joining us. Hey, we know tacos is here. Small, but here's a humble donation. Thank you very much. Yeah, there are signs telling you that you cannot swim here. And I started the live stream kind of explaining that since the 1960s, all of Tokyo's beaches—and they used to have more—were closed just because of the pollution. And it was even bad up to 2003. According to an article that's linked with this video. It just says that like people would just not even get near the water. It was dirty. And I heard from Kanae's father, who's about 20 years older than me, some of the stories from the 1960s and 70s that in the summer, the heat from the sun just took over. And Tokyo summer heat would make the rivers smell so bad. It was like a putrid barf smell to the city of Tokyo because of the pollution that was going into the Sumida River. And it's completely changed. I mean, you don't get that same smell, which is a good sign, but it's still not completely clean enough to be able to swim in, which is a shame. But you can windsurf in it. And you got a lot of people here doing that right now.

00:12:04 John Daub: But on a positive note, Odaiba is a place where you come for dates. And I've been here several times where you can hold hands and walk the boardwalk either here or up there on a shopping mall called Decks that's really nice. And they got a lot of restaurants, some of them on the decks. And you can sit there in the sun while the sun sets, drinking a cocktail or sipping iced tea or lemonade. I like the lemonade up there. Hey, guys, sorry, the signal's going in and out. Whoa, that guy's cruising fast. Look at that. Oh, you missed it. He caught a gust right there and was flying. Some of these guys are pretty good. I wouldn't know. I'm not much into windsurfing.

00:13:17 John Daub: So getting back to the story, that's sort of an amazing place for dating. If you do come here, you're with your wife or you're with your husband, you want to come out here for a date. This is the place you come in Tokyo because you have the sunset, you have the Decks, you have the water. It's a romantic place. I think it's just a known date place. It's up there in the top three, maybe top three.

00:14:14 John Daub: I'm going to go get a drink here from the vending machine. And the good thing is I found Sprite. I'm not going to get it, but they have it, which is pretty cool. Hello. Check it out. I see this is the Tokyo Coca-Cola. That's half the size for double the price. You're paying for the bottle. All right. I'm going to get one of these little 500 ml bottles of Coca-Cola. These are 130 yen. And you see the big size is 500 milliliters or half a liter is just... But people will buy the smaller ones because they don't want all that Coca-Cola. It's too sweet. That's why the little bottles sell well. I'm going to get just this. To be honest with you, when Gretchen writes in or some of the people write in to get Monster stuff like this, I don't normally drink that. I usually just drink tansansui (carbonated water). Tansan means carbonation and sui means water. Yeah. It's my big can of Asahi Dry. Canadians are everywhere. Oh, I like this brand. Wilkinson's is a good brand too. Oh, we do have some more melon soda here. We drank that at the last livestream. Matcha—if you ever see it, just try it because it tastes like they just melted 500 Pez into carbonated water. It's literally the sweetest drink I've ever had in my life.

00:16:38 John Daub: Well, Kanae and I are gonna share this one because I'm gonna go get her a coffee. How about this mikan jelly (mandarin orange jelly)? Shall we try this? I've never seen mikan jelly before. Alright, let's just try it. Oh, this is weird. It says here 130 yen and then the price on the machine is 160. Summer prices, I guess. Daniel, I like the coffee drinks too, but those coffees apparently have a lot of chemicals in them, I heard. So just don't drink too much of them. Here's a 500 yen coin. It's like 5 bucks. Alright, let's try this. Oh, crazy. Oh, it said thank you in English. Don't forget your change. Come again, it said. That was pretty cool. Did you hear that? And they also have ice cream. It's summer. Alright, let's get this to Kanae.

00:18:15 John Daub: I'm also looking for this baseball. Oh, you can get beer here. That's what the line is for. Let's take a quick look at these prices here. So if you want to get an iced coffee, it's 3 dollars here. Corn soup is 3 dollars and 50 cents. Whiskey soda, 600 yen or 6 dollars. Ginger ale with beer, 5 dollars. So it's pretty reasonably priced. Alright, there's Kanae near that moai. Let's go check it out. 5 bucks is okay for beachside. A lot of people do bring these pop-up tents. Do you see them? They're in these cylinder-looking containers. And they pop out. I was thinking of getting that at Ikea the other day for Kanae. She doesn't like the sun.

00:19:28 John Daub: Kanai, I'm here. Oh, yeah. The connection's not so good. Sorry about that everybody. I got this. She got that. This is going to be an easy one. Cheers.

00:20:02 Kanae Daub: Cheers.

00:20:04 John Daub: Can you open it? Or you can balance it with this one. This has no taste at all. This is just carbonated water. It's jelly. It's jelly? I'll trade. It's jelly but softer. Soft jelly? Okay. Let's try it. It's for drink. Oh, that's weird. It's softer, right? Yeah, there's like gelatin in it. Some kind of soft... Well, it's that. Hey Remco, thank you. See, Remco wants more drinks. Oh, no. That's not bad, but kind of sweet.

00:21:00 Kanae Daub: I know.

00:21:05 John Daub: Those are rides that we came to Odaiba with. It's cool. You know, if you rent a bicycle, you can ride around the city. You can even cross the Rainbow Bridge. The signal's going in and out. And then on certain days, I think it's from October, the hours get shortened. Oh, those people are having a fun time.

00:21:40 John Daub: I just noticed something. Do you see it? Spaceboat's in the house. She's coming in. So that means we're going to have to extend this livestream by a couple of minutes just so we can welcome the spaceboat on this end of the bay for once. Typically, if you're an Instagram follower, you'll see me uploading screenshots of a spaceboat on Instagram stories. Alright, goodnight, Moteku. I'm coming back. Kitekimasu. Alright, here she comes, everybody. Let's see if we can get in prime position on the end of the thing. She's coming in fast! Spaceboat's coming in hot! You see her? That might be the Hotaluna. They have names. There are three spaceboats.

00:23:15 John Daub: Alright, we made it. That's a good angle. Awesome. Alright, I hope that fixes the screen. Just in time. So this is the spaceboat. I believe the Hotaluna or the Esmeralda. There's a couple of names in there. None of them are named Neptune or Pluto—those are already taken. Oh, you can't see? How's it now? It should be up again. I had to close the app several times. It's weird! I don't know what's going on. I think the YouTube app hasn't adjusted to the iOS update from a couple of days ago. YouTube's gotta issue an update.

00:24:37 John Daub: Alright, let's get up close and personal with our friend Spaceboat. We're gonna see exactly what kind of people ride her. My images are all like international models and athletes. I once rode the spaceboat. It was a pleasure. Spaceboat guy. Alright, here we are. Check it out. Spaceboat is now parked. Oh, this is the Himiko. Alright, the Himiko is nice but Himiko looks coolest maybe. But the problem with the Himiko is that you can't go outside. Usually there's a deck on these boats, the suijo bus (water bus). This one doesn't have a deck. So there's no possibility of going outside. You're stuck inside the spaceboat. But the spaceboat I believe you can go from Odaiba to Nihonbashi is 1600 yen. It's about $15. But I believe it's about $20 to go to Asakusa. I think they raised the prices. It just depends.

00:26:02 John Daub: Oh, this is this ship. That's not the spaceboat. Alright, let me take a look at the other side. I don't see it. I believe it's about $20. And you can get the tickets in here. But I would say these days with tourism on the rise so high right now in Tokyo, you probably want to get there at least an hour in advance. Or you can get the tickets online. You can reserve in advance. I think they give you a 50 yen discount. Like 50 cents off the ticket. I guess it's something. But it's still yeah, you can still probably get on board. I've never seen it at capacity. I like it. This is the Ferrari boats. Look at the way that the door opens. You know those doors with the lotus from the 1980s or the doors that swung up like this? That's awesome. Only in Tokyo do you find spaceboats. Honestly, I've never seen this on the Hudson. It's a DeLorean door, right?

00:27:30 John Daub: There's nothing like a little spaceboat action to make your day a little brighter. River hop off the suijo bus. I guess River Bus. And get off right here. And go into the shopping mall. And that's where we're going to go now. I'm going to take Kanae in there. This is the kind of people that ride the bus. Mostly a mix of leisure people, as you can call them. The leisureites just enjoying themselves. No one commutes here to go to work by the boat. I don't think anyone will. There's no boat commuters take the Himiko. I've never seen anyone in a suit and tie take the spaceboat to work. But maybe I should try it. Hey Michael. Shout out to Alex. Hope to see you guys in Japan sometime. Oh, there you are. Shout out to Alex. Thanks for that.

00:28:38 John Daub: Alright, I'm going to walk back now. That was pretty cool. So we got some spaceboat action. Another boat came in. If you want to settle for less than spaceboat and you just want to ride the waves, ride the bay, then you can get another boat. And they're usually like $5 cheaper. But if you come all this way, like halfway around the world, you got to ride a spaceboat. There's just no question about it. You want to get on that Hotaluna. Hotaluna is a nice one. The Esmeralda is pretty good. And that's the Himiko, which doesn't have a topside. So you can't go outside.

00:29:08 John Daub: So, thanks everybody for joining me and Kanae on our date day. She gave me permission to do about a 30 minute live stream. That's what I did. I don't want to break the rules. But I just wanted to share with you just a little bit of Odaiba and the beach here. And talk about if this place is safe for swimming. And according to that sign right there, it is not. Swimming is illegal here. And they do allow you to swim in here from July 31st for the month of August. And you have to sign a waiver form. That's what the deal was last year, according to the Japan Times. And the article is linked in the description if you're interested in that. This will be where the triathlon event is held. The swimming section will be held right there in front of you.

00:30:03 John Daub: So if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If you like these kind of videos, definitely hit the like button. Totally appreciate it. And thanks to everybody who bought us drinks. That is going to be Kanae and I our lunch money to go up there and enjoy a lunch up on the decks ahead on a really nice sunny day here in the city of Tokyo. And by the way, we have a Discord server if you're interested in joining us. The chat is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just no vacation for the Discord server. We've got a group of really great moderators in there that are helping in keeping it as friendly as possible. So do join us in the Discord server. We've got a very lively community of friendly people. Alright Kanae, say goodbye to everybody. We're going up to get some coffee and lunch. See you everybody!