00:00:23 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Tokyo. We are on the Yamanote line, cruising into Tokyo's newest Yamanote train station, not counting the new Harajuku station. This one is what I've been looking forward to for a while. We're cruising in right now into a place that—these tracks are all new by the way, it didn't go this way just a few months ago—and now the trains are all cruising through Takanawa Gateway. It's so new I'm having trouble saying it. On the left is the Keihin-Tohoku line. Wow, it's so new! Shinagawa is not that far straight ahead. Fresh station, that's right.

00:01:28 John Daub: Takanawa Gateway. Welcome everybody. Whoa! Look at everything is so clean here! How you doing everybody? There's nobody around so I'm going to remove my mask a little bit and explain about this station here. This is Y26, Yamanote line, number 26 stop on what is now 29, used to be 28 stations. This station hasn't a lot of history, but I will tell you what history there is. Shinagawa is not that far away as the Yamanote line takes off for Shinagawa. This was under construction not too long ago and I was here about a year and a half ago watching it when they announced that the station's name was going to be Takanawa Gateway. A controversial decision and we're going to explore this station. It actually opened up March 14th, 2020 and they had media come in here for all of that, but because of the pandemic I didn't want to come and explore the station.

00:02:40 John Daub: Today I have some time to do that and this looks like a really good time because there's almost nobody here. Wow! It is so fresh and you can look at the tracks that we came on. The Keihin-Tohoku line actually goes through, do you see that? There's a little bridge. We'll walk to the end of the platform to take a quick look at it. That's pretty cool. Here's the official sign, brand spanking new. It's awesome. I'm a train geek. I just get fascinated. I don't know as much about them as some of you, but I get really excited.

00:03:18 John Daub: The escalator here isn't even open yet. Over on the other side you can see the Keihin-Tohoku line going the other direction with the Tokyo Olympic mascots on the side. As you can see, the trains are not very crowded. I came at an off-peak time. This is the Yamanote platform. That's the Keihin-Tohoku line platform. There's two islands, four tracks going through here. How do I get into the station? Oh, there it is over there. There's a little bridge, big bridge. Let's go up into the station. For the next 30 minutes or so, we're going to get a chance to look at Tokyo's newest station, the Takanawa Gateway Station.

00:04:05 John Daub: This station, they announced it in 2014. In 2017, they broke ground and started construction. It went up pretty quick. It was completed in 2019. The station was opened in March. Slightly delayed, I think perhaps because of the pandemic, but it's very rare that anything is delayed. In construction in Japan, everything's pretty efficient. Wow, it's so new. It's so clean. Look at that clock, glass clock. They don't have that in Ueno Station, one of the oldest. Look outside here from the platform after the train has just left. It's so clean.

00:04:52 John Daub: One of the names that they were going to call this was the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Station. It was kind of geeky, so that didn't work out. Takanawa Gateway Station was the 130th most popular pick. And I believe it was one of the executives or JR which named it this and he said that there was precedence since this area is the gateway to Edo traditionally. And you can see a marker and he's actually right. There's a marker not too far away that claims this as the gateway to Edo City. So the gateway in Takanawa Gateway stands for Gateway to the Old City of Edo. All right, let's go up the escalator.

00:05:31 John Daub: Here. There's still people marveling at how cool this station is. New escalator! I would touch it, but I'm not going to, I'm going to try not to touch anything. It's hard not to touch new stuff. Interpreter Otaku, woohoo, new station! Get something cold to drink. You got it, it's pretty hot. We're now leaving the platform of Takanawa Gateway Station. That's a mouthful. I wish they just named it Takanawa, it's shorter, I don't know. Shibaura was another name that this station could have been called. I think that was in the top three. Shibaura Station seems a little bit easier to say. A lot of people are just calling it Gateway.

00:06:27 John Daub: Wow! Look at the, I thought it was wood, but these are like wood, massive wood tiles. It's kind of neat. Information! Let's read this really quickly. Environment friendly measures at the Takanawa Gateway Station. Improving the thermal environment and reducing power consumption for lighting by introducing membrane roof. Oh, cool! I guess you can see that there. Do you see it up there? These are membrane roofs. I don't know what that means, but they look like they put planks of wood inside of the steel. That's an interesting little touch there. Shade for solar panels. By utilizing light transmission capability of the membrane roof, we can reduce power consumption by lighting during the daytime.

00:07:21 John Daub: All right, so there are some science behind all of this and they have other stuff. Solar panels on the top of the roof, that's pretty nice. This area doesn't have a lot of tall buildings around it. That's Shinagawa. So there's a lot more lighting and it's right near the seaside. You can see the waterways not too far from here. This is also a gateway to some of the venues, the harbor side of Tokyo. The bay side, I guess they call it. All right, let's move on.

00:07:55 John Daub: Whoa, they got media here as well. All right, look at this. How cool is that? There's the Narita Express down there. It doesn't actually stop here. It goes on to Shinagawa. All right, let's keep walking. For those joining us, this is the Takanawa Gateway Station. Takanawa Station, Yamanote No. 26 on the 29 station loop line around the city of Tokyo. Everything is so new. Whoa, check that out. It's like a robot guy. Oh, that's the, let me get out of their way. We're going to come back to that. Whoa, that's like a robot assistant. All right, we're going to come back to that on the way back home. I don't want to mess up with the JR's location shoot there. But it's cool to know that they had some sort of robot assistant.

00:09:18 John Daub: The station relatively cool despite being hot outside. It is cool inside here. During the rainy season in June, it's not as hot as you would think it is. The rain kind of keeps things a little bit cooler. The humidity might be higher. Oh, check this out. This is a staffless shop. All the new technology is really cool inside of the new stations here. Check it out. I think I've seen this. I've seen this in some other countries where you just pick up what you want. Put it in your bag and you touch your card. Somebody just bought something in there. That's so cool.

00:10:02 John Daub: Let's go take a quick look. See, that's awesome. Look at this new tech. So you just pick it up. That dude's picking something up. And do you see up on the roof there? They have all of these sensors and scanners. There's cameras here and it records what you picked up and then tags you. And then when you check out, you just kind of touch your card and it knows what you picked up. That's so cool. Wow. That's awesome. There's no staff. The future is here, everybody.

00:11:13 John Daub: All right. Here's another. Here's another steps it down into the basement here, into the, onto the tracks. We're going to go outside and just look around pretty quickly. See here. Whoa. That's a side touch. Do you see the difference? That's a top touch, which is the way we usually do it. Now they've turned to side touch. I guess people can go through them quicker. Let's try a side touch. Whoa. The shape of them are different. So I guess it also adds more room when you come out of it. These little details make a huge difference. Check it out. Well, it does look like they are actually wider, but there's more space between these two. And the side swipe seems more natural. If you're holding your phone like this and your smartphone is your touch, you just kind of walk by it. It's easy to get it in there, but for people, it's still kind of new tech.

00:12:22 John Daub: All right, let's walk around the station a little bit. Take a quick look. See, this is so awesome. What? There's some sort of like food court here. Check that out. This looks weird. It's really, really accessible for people with wheelchairs. It looks like the station is much more in tune with people with disabilities. I see Japanese tacos, but nothing is open yet. It's still pretty new. Look at the green AstroTurf grass. I'd love to hang out right on that grass there. Here's the facade. Let me walk back a little bit and I'll look back at the new station. We'll move over to the other side.

00:13:19 John Daub: So this station Takanawa Gateway is between Shinagawa station this way on the other side, back there is Tamachi and it's not that far between the two, but because there's a lot of buildings, there's a lot of new, a lot of space that they want to start to use. Oh, that's pretty neat down there. Let's go take a look. This station is going to be an area of growth for Tokyo over the next 10 years, I think. So it makes sense to add a station. Whoa. It's a massive event area. Look at these tents. Looks like a circus. All right. We're going to go down and look. See here. They have some kind of pattern. This is so awesome. I don't know. I'm just so excited because it's, this seems just open, just new. The pandemic has kept everybody inside.

00:14:14 John Daub: On Friday, we can now travel between all of the prefectures, meaning I can leave Tokyo again. Just have to be very careful. Wear your mask. Don't touch anything. Keep a safe distance from people you don't know. I do that anyways. All right. It seems to be closed, but they've left it so that we can see on the inside through this gate. This is going to be really nice and bright when they open it. It's a shame that the Olympics isn't happening this year. It seems like Japan was ready. Tokyo was ready for it, right? This is a nice event area. Looking across the street now.

00:15:02 John Daub: Hey, Mayor Hogland. Thank you. That's awesome. And Daniel McLuckin. McLuckin is here. Hi, John. Everyone looks great from Australia. David Kimura, flowers and food for your wife. We love you, David. Thank you. I will not be coming home empty handed. All right. I want to take a look at the exterior now. Um, I'm thinking maybe I should turn this wide angle lens around so you get a wider view of it. The phone might jingle here. Give me a second. I'm going to move your eyes to the front. I've taped it down so it doesn't jiggle the mic. That makes it hard to move, but we're going to get a really nice jingle. I don't know what's the word. Jiggle, jingle. It's kind of a combination of both. Chelsea is a very fickle beast.

00:16:20 John Daub: All right. There's your eye is off. Chelsea, relax. You'll be back in a second. All right. Okay. I've got it here. Craig. Thank you. Bye. Bye. The gimbal Chelsea's back on again. Let's get a really wide view now of the station. Ah, Chelsea. Hold on a second. Maybe it's this one. I don't know which lens YouTube uses. Is everybody okay in there? You okay? Boom. All right. It was worth it. Sorry about that. Not grab hold of a chair and balance yourself. Totally. I'm really sorry about that. Made some people sick out there, but I want you to have the wide lens on the front here. I need you to absorb all of this in glorious super wide and the YouTube app stop giving us access to all of the cameras on there. It's all right. It happens. You don't need to see me super wide, but you need to see the station super wide.

00:17:41 John Daub: They're still doing a location shoot inside the station. I'm going to wait for that. Maybe in 10 minutes or so. We'll go back in and take a look at that robot assistant that's up on the second floor of Takanawa Gateway station. That's the Yamanote line making its way out towards Tamachi and Tokyo station, but it's a really beautiful station, isn't it? I'm moving back towards the corner here. There's a bridge that goes across. It's all brand new. Let's go back up and get another view from the escalator up. I love these animated emoji. Thanks. Thanks, Craig.

00:18:44 John Daub: We're not going up, obviously, and we'll be taking a right. Let me show you the sign to the outside of the station. It's always stuff that you'll see on the news. We're at Takanawa Gateway station. It's about three months after this station opened, but because of the pandemic, nobody has really come here. As you can see, nobody really knows what's here anyways. And this is a nice historical video of the opening. I'm going to try to get this one down to archive footage before people knew what the station was. We were here first. That's right. If you're on Only in Japan Go, you go with me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just going to pan around before you can see the food court on the left side. It's extremely clean because it's brand new.

00:19:42 John Daub: There's Tamachi in the distance going all the way to Hamamatsucho where you would catch the monorail to go towards. There's Tokyo Tower. Do you see Tokyo Tower right there in the center of your screen? It's a little blurry. This lens isn't the best lens in the world, but it does give you a wide view. And there's this sign right there, Takanawa Gateway station. And there's a cafe up on the second floor, third floor, I guess. They don't need any publicity in that chain. Hey, WRX Turbo's here. Welcome. Arigato (Thank you). Hey, David. All right. I like what I see with the outside here. Let's look at the tickets, where you would buy the tickets. See if anything has changed here and then I'm going to take you back into the station.

00:20:54 John Daub: So if you're joining us, we're at Takanawa Gateway station. Let me show you on the map here. It's all digital now. I'm taking off your eye. There you go. There's Takanawa station. It's right on the bottom here. Shinagawa is the closest station. And from Tokyo station, it's 160 yards. And it's a little bit further to the end, which is what I paid to get in here. The Chuo line cuts straight through the city. That's kind of a shortcut. If you need to get to Shinagawa fast and you're on this side, go to Tokyo station and catch the Chuo line over. There's an express. Inside information. You didn't know that, maybe. Probably you did.

00:21:46 John Daub: All right. So you can buy Shinkansen tickets here. That's kind of good to know. You can also get commuter passes here. And the tickets, people nowadays don't buy tickets. You just get a Suica. Or I have a Kitaca card. This one here from Sapporo. This works in Tokyo as well. I love the flying squirrel. That's why I got this one. And you can charge it in here just like you would with anything else. The ICOCA cards work in Tokyo, too. It's just a regional naming for the system here. It does look like a squirrel. And you can charge it here. Charge the cards. I do recommend if you do get an IC card. Please put the IC card in the tray. You can change the menu to English. You can put the IC card here and it'll charge. But if you're buying an IC card, I highly recommend that you register it with a phone number and your name. So if you lose it, I'd say 90% of the time it will be returned to you. So register your IC cards if you can.

00:23:04 John Daub: Look at the high tech. I don't even know what that machine does. We can go check it out here. All right. You ready to go in? Put the eye back on here. Chelsea! Let's do this. Side touch. I love the wood tile looking stuff here. Second floor, third floor. What's up there? Just a cafe. There's a 24-hour area that's open. Touch to Go is the name of that store. And high tech store, you can just buy something without paying. Shall we try this? That seems to be like another live stream where we go in there and we try that. It looks like JR staff is still filming over there. But that's a robot assistant. We're going to go check that out at the end of this. We'll walk by there.

00:24:59 John Daub: Whoa! That dude's doing something over there with a robot. Check it out. That looks like some sort of assistant maybe for the Olympics for international people that speaks in English to help them out. How cool is that? Wally. Could be. All right, guys. Let's go inside here and try a Touch to Go. I'm curious now. Whoa. I'm trying this out here. What should I get? Whoa, you can buy beer. Oh, that's awesome. They have Takanawa Gateway beer. What? That's so awesome. Oh, look at that. Ichigo Melon Pan. Camera. I took it, everybody. I took it. Camera. Let's see how this, how do I pick for this? I did it. I didn't talk to any humans. And the voice was creepy, like a child creepy voice like Pepper. Not a big fan of the Pepper voice. All right, here's the receipt. It's a ryoshusho (official business receipt) for 216 yen. There you go. Very cool. Thank you for using Touch and Go. All right, I'll be taking this thing home.

00:27:51 John Daub: Now let's find out a little bit about all of these machines in here before John's got to go back and start editing video. What is this? This is a security robot. Oh, that's great. It checks images, analyzes images, and then communicates abnormalities to the security system. For example, fire.

00:29:01 John Daub: I walk around the park every day. I saw it over there. I have a walking area over there, so I'm standing here today. Great! When will you use it? This month, I will use it here. Next month, a new robot will come in. If that robot is there, we will be standing here. Great! Until last month, I was moving around the park. I was moving around the park. I was taking pictures with everyone. Do you have a name? I don't have a name yet. I will give you a name. Takanawa-chan. Thank you very much.

00:29:59 John Daub: Last month, I was using [inaudible] around the stations. These are tapes. These are for showing promotional videos. This authority has a monitor in front of the door. I want to take a look at it very well. How cool is that! I know you have a lot staff over there. There are Discovery buses moving around. Promotional video so I don't want to get involved too much but it's really neat to see um okay now is a chance to go and we're good let's go take a quick look at this robot made by Hitachi whoa it's in English hello hello what's your name I want to go to Tokyo Station I want to go to Tokyo Station I want to eat ramen oh maybe it's not working too good all right I'll come back when you're feeling better it's new it's a Chelsea robot it's all right we'll let her go but it's kind of neat though to see this kind of technology token in in America we see robots destroying the world all right in Japan robots help the world right Terminator Skynet gone wild destroying everything coming down and wrecking people's lives here robots are helpers this is going to be the what uh the older generation uses in order to survive robot parts Japan's probably going to be the first the country to adapt to that and it's pretty neat to see that they're already taking that technology pretty seriously.

00:33:02 John Daub: Let's go down the way a different way that we came in and get back onto the train this has been a pretty cool experience because uh okay you know what we can go up to the third floor how do we do that how do we go up to the third floor there's a coin locker this looks pretty high-tech coin lockers how do we get on here how do we get up to the third floor let's say John wanted a coffee what does John do the elevator goes to the second floor maybe we have to exit how do I get up there all right I'm gonna ask the staff member hold on a second oh in order to get to the third floor you have to exit I'm not gonna exit again that's interesting from the third floor you get a really nice view of the station so in order to get up to that to the cafe you can exit but when you you don't need a ticket to come into this uh station then you can just look into the station from there without a ticket but in order to get into the second floor here you need a ticket interesting okay that's good to know the Keihin-Tohoku line is separated from the Yamanote line. That's also good to know. So the two platforms are not next to each other. They've kind of done it differently here.

00:34:55 John Daub: All right, let's go back down to the platform. Oh, there's that Touch to Go shop. Hey, I didn't see that stuff. What is it? Candy? No, I wanted the candy. Oh, digital versus analog. Well, sort of. This is the old style of vending machines and this is the new style. Um, there's a camera here. I guess it's supposed to detect your face. There's a camera somewhere that detects your face and it'll make suggestions. Hold on. I took my mask off. All right, suggest to me. Suggest. This is my face. Maybe this isn't that kind of a machine. Some of the machines have cameras. The cameras detect if you're a man or a woman and will suggest drinks based on your sex and your face type. I don't know. That's a new technology. What is that? Let's try this. What do you think, guys? We're going to go touchless. Hokkaido vanilla milk ice cream drink. What? Is that a ninja? That's a ninja. Dude, that's pretty. Look, it's a ninja with the cows. Cow ninja. There's a vending machine next to the barn. How cool is that? Do you think they made this for tourists? So this is matcha vanilla milk with ninjas. Hold on. I need, I have to wash my hands. Okay. We have alcohol wipes here. Let's open this up here. Oh mama. It's 50% milk. Why would they not make it a hundred percent milk? Let me get into the opening here. What? First of all, it's not a hundred percent milk. Why would, what's the other 50%? Very critical of my drinks. 123 calories, 4.3 grams of protein. 100% ninja. Oh, you can see the color in there. 50% nonsense. 50% milk, 50% nonsense.

00:39:03 John Daub: All right. Let's see how these trains are going to work. Oh, the train's arrived. I was very curious about this on the other side. All right. There's the Keihin-Tohoku line coming here. What train actually goes on this track here? Is that the Shinkansen? Right now we're at Takanawa Gateway station. This is why 26 on the 29 stop Yamanote line. And we've been exploring the station for those that are joining us. This is a live stream probably gone about 45 minutes, but I'm very curious to see how they've set up the station. What is actually around here? Is it worth coming? Yes. And so far I'm impressed. It's extremely clean. They've made it into a new technological wonder, I guess. There's solar panels up here on the top. Do you see that? So they're harvesting the sun for power and wind, touchless, staffless, robots injected paradise. And I'm waiting to see what train goes over that bridge.

00:40:22 John Daub: And for those of you who had, oh, there's a Shinkansen. Shinkansen. And for those of you that couldn't make it to Japan and had to cancel your trip, this is the sights and sounds that you would be seeing. I feel really bad for those who had to cancel. And we're looking so forward to coming here, especially if what I do here on YouTube is one of the reasons why. But as I promised, I will keep bringing you on this. And I saw we had a couple of new members come in here. Thank you so much for becoming a traveler. Welcome. Much appreciated for that and welcome to the community. I'm gonna put a new poll up for the travelers today to ask you about content that I'm thinking about filming in Kanazawa. What do you think would be really good? I'll be in Kanazawa on Thursday. So I am traveling around the country again. And this poll will help determine what I actually make when I'm over there.

00:41:29 John Daub: All right, go over the bridge. Yes! This is what I was waiting for. Do it! Bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge. So awesome. Man, it's so cool. I love the train network, the way they all snake throughout the city. It's very cool. That was the Keihin-Tohoku line going up to Omiya. But the Keihin-Tohoku line will snake around the east side of the city. It doesn't go all the way around, but if you get in on Shinagawa, you can ride that up to Omiya. And then you can ride up to Tokyo Station and maybe beyond. So there you have it. This is pretty cool to see inside of the Takanawa Station there. I love the paneling on the floor. It looks very natural. I love the solar panels that are above us. That's so cool. Look up and you can catch the technology in use. And then the Yamanote line always stops here. So it might even be worth, if you're in Tokyo, just taking a stop and a look-see at one of the newest high-tech stations in Tokyo. I think it's kind of a good experience. For me, it was worth an hour of my time. And I shall be back. Maybe with Kanae to go get some more melon pan. But I'm going to buy her something from Tokyo Station when I get back there. I parked my bike at Tokyo Station.

00:43:20 John Daub: All right, everybody. Any questions? We have one and a half minutes left in this livestream. Any questions here? Also, you can write in where you're watching from. I always appreciate knowing where you are. Callie Trujillo is here. Welcome. It's nice to see you. And welcome to all of our new members. It's awesome. You have access to, what is your favorite emoji? You can also show me an emoji talk. Robots can smell fear. Everybody knows that. They're programmed with AI, which is artificial intelligence for those who don't talk lingo. My haircut is okay. I'm going to get this repaired. Probably tomorrow. But I did a pretty good job from the back. It's nice and cool now. I think I lost a kilogram of hair six months down the drain. Jim's really attracted to the Toby emoji. Darth Toby is in there too. Just don't turn to the dark side, Jim. We need you as a positive force of good. For good.

00:44:52 John Daub: Not one question. People just talking. Does onigiri count as a dumpling? No. What kind of question is that? Anything with the station? Is that a PETA mask you have on? It is. It's very breathable in the summer. I also have a silk mask. I use this silk mask that I bought in Yokohama, which is also very breathable. When it's hot outside, it's not very good to be wearing a mask. You can overheat. All right, guys. Thanks so much. I'm going to Kanazawa next. Tonight or tomorrow. I'm releasing an announcement for a new channel. So I'm looking forward to that. Just prime up everybody. Thanks to the 1200 people who are here watching. That announcement should be released tonight or tomorrow morning. And on Thursday, I will be heading to Kanazawa and I get to ride on the Shinkansen again. That's going to be pretty cool. New channel is absolutely inbound. It is official. So that's going to become an announcement. And for those who know the link. Go check it out on the Discord. We have some stuff in there. And the announcement will say just about everything that you need to know. But in general, I'm back, baby. I'm back. I'm back on a new channel. See everybody. Have a good day. Good night, wherever you are in the world. Much love from Tokyo's Takanawa Gateway Station. One day you'll be here too. Stay safe.