00:01 John Daub: Hello and welcome to Tokyo! How you doing everybody? I wanted to bring you today to a very special place that I've been coming to for a very long time. It's a hideout, I guess you would say. One day, about 15 years ago, I was walking around in the backside of Tokyo Station, which is right there. It's the Marunouchi exit of Tokyo Station. And it started to downpour, rain really heavy. And I needed a place to go. I came here to my hideout.

00:35 John Daub: And ever since then, every time I'm nearby, I'll come and sit at this gate right here. Do you see this? This is the Wurakumon (和楽門，Wuraku Tower Gate). Or, I guess the Wurakumon Tower Gate from the old Edo Castle. This dates back all the way to the Edo period and has survived. And it's here. And I like to hang out in here. Check it out. There's like a little table. There's a place to chillax on the walls here.

01:05 John Daub: And every now and then you'll find people relaxing in here. And it's a great place if you're trapped in the rain. Because it's got kind of a roof onto it. And that's the one thing about living in an old city like Tokyo. All around here you'll find these little teeny pieces of history. Sometimes you can even sit in the history and watch a good rainstorm come by. I think if lightning and thunder were to come through here because it is the rainy season, this would be a great place to see it.

01:39 John Daub: So this is kind of the view. I remember sitting up here and just watching the rain fall, waiting for it to stop so I can get back on my bicycle. This is one of the moats of the Imperial Palace, called Kōkyo (皇居) in Japanese. Kōkyo has a lot of these little nooks and crannies to it. You have to walk around it to really find it. This is Route 1, Ichirōsan (一号線). And if you were to follow this road all the way, this way, you would go to Kyoto eventually. This is part of the old Tōkaidō (東海道) that went past the Imperial Palace. So there's lots of little pieces of history right here. There's another one on the other side, part of the Wurakumon.

02:25 John Daub: And right now you can see they're actually taking wedding pictures in there. So maybe we'll walk by there and take a quick look in there. But this is a place that I used to hang out a lot. On the weekends there's not too many people here. But I don't know. I guess if you know about it, you'll come and visit it. And I think that's kind of cool. This is not too far away from here is what is the remnants of Edo-jō (江戸城，Edo Castle). That's just maybe a little bit further. And there's maybe a 15 minute walk over there. You can hang out and look at the base of the ruins of it, which is really cool. That was destroyed before the, I'd say it was in the 19th century. And it was never rebuilt.

03:13 John Daub: But I do have some pretty neat stories to share with you. Thank you so much for joining the memberships. Tomorrow, or next week, we'll be going to MPO Florence and explaining a little bit about the charity that I'm giving all of the membership money from June to. We raised about $1,000, which is really cool to give to MPO Florence. So thanks everybody for joining the memberships. Here I want to show you some of the pictures. This is where we are right now. Thank you, Cobra Bebop. Cobra Bebop's in the house. Here's a picture of Wurakumon Gate or the remains of it. And you can walk around to the bridge. I'm going to take you around this area. And then from right here, there's an amazing view. An amazing view of Tokyo Station and looking over to the Imperial Palace. So I'm going to take you around this area. That's what it looks like with a satellite view. To really get into it. And you can find it on Google Maps. I'll put a picture in the description.

04:20 John Daub: So one of the stories I want to tell you goes all the way back to the year 1701. Does anybody know the story of the 47 samurai, the 47 rōnin (四十七士)? I might get some of the names wrong. My history is a little bit blurry. I'm looking for the pictures here of Edo Castle. So Edo Castle, this whole area was quite big. And there's so many areas to it that we don't have today. A lot of it burned down during the Meiji Restoration. We didn't need the shogunate anymore. We didn't need daimyō (大名) and bakufu (幕府) and all these things. This type of royalty. So that all kind of went away.

05:03 John Daub: But the most famous incident I think depicted in a ukiyo-e (浮世絵，woodblock print) picture is the 1701 47 rōnin story where, I'm going to call him Kira, is one of the court appointed people who was tutoring Asano who was, I guess, a samurai level. And he was really corrupt. And for his tutorial services to Asano, he wanted money. He did not want to pay. So one day when he was insulted by Kira, he drew his short sword and tried to kill him. He failed and thus had to commit seppuku, which left 47 samurai as rōnin. So there were 47 of them that no longer had a master.

06:08 John Daub: Those 47 samurai, or rōnin, plotted for a year to get their revenge. And oh, did they get it. They took care of, they took him out. They took out Kira. Yoshinaka, I believe is his name. Yoshihisa maybe is the more historical one. They took him out. And then all 47 of them, after they had gotten their revenge, and this is dedication-wise, and loyalty to your master, who is even no longer there, they, all 47 of them, had to commit seppuku for taking out this one guy who was corrupt as heck. And it's depicted in a ukiyo-e picture which I cannot find on my smartphone. Oh, smartphone, why? I also wanted to show you some pictures of the old Edo castle. But that's another story for you. I'm going to have to look at it for another time.

07:32 John Daub: When you know these kinds of stories, you can kind of feel the history. That's Osaka Castle, which was destroyed by Godzilla. Sadly, we cannot give Godzilla credit for destroying Edo Castle. A fire took care of that. What a shame. Alright, let's walk around a little bit. So, if you do find yourself in the middle of the city, in a snowstorm, hang out in the Wurakumon secret hideout. John has been here. It's pretty cool. Check it out. There's an actual table in there. And it's a scenic spot.

08:27 John Daub: If you look back over here, through there, I didn't actually go over all of this. There's a bridge that you can see through the guard's quarters here. And it's a pretty beautiful view of the moat. And it was after the great Kantō Daishinsai (関東大震災，Great Kanto Earthquake) in 1923. They did a lot of reconstructions. So, I think much of this might have been rebuilt on this side. But it's still gorgeous. And every now and then, you'll be able to see swans coming through the moat, floating over towards here. There are some koi. That's not the Loch Ness Monster in here. You'll find some really beautiful koi in the Imperial Moat as well.

09:07 John Daub: And this is kind of a rare day because it's not raining. And we've had some amazing downpours and thunderstorms, which has caused havoc. Especially down in Kyushu and in the mountains. These are ginkgo trees that drop these stink berries onto the streets. So, this doesn't smell the greatest in the fall. And there are some sakura trees around here. Let's walk over that bridge if we can. And I want to take you over to the and show you a little bit of the area here. Again, the traffic stop lists this as Wurakamon or Wurakagate. There's Tokyo Station. So now you can find your way here. It's pretty much a straight shot. Not a lot of YouTubers are going to bring you to these kinds of places. Oh, they still got the wedding. We're going to wrap around and if they're still there, I'll take you past the beautiful bride who's getting her picture taken in Wurakumon's tower.

10:16 John Daub: But this would be considered central, central Tokyo. This is as center as you can possibly get. We're going to walk over this bridge if we can. This is also a not very visited area of the city. Although there are some hotels including this one, which is beautiful. Do you see it up there? Can't be cheap to be staying right next to the Imperial Palace with a view in. So the emperor is not pleased. Has to close the blinds. The closest station here is of course Tokyo Station, but I think it's Nijūbashimae (二重橋前). Nijūbashimae, which is Otemachi. And there's an entrance to the subway that they're redoing. You can see there's a lot of construction. There's one entrance here. The two that were right next to the gate are closed.

11:25 John Daub: So let's go over the bridge here. Right away you can see that we're entering into the National Garden and there are rules. No skateboarding dudes. And do not try to swim. They made this one. Some English dude said it was hot and he went swimming in the moat. And helicopters came to make sure that he got out. Look, there's a pigeon chilling out. That's how few tourists there are here. You could never do that. And by the way, no running either. And you can't carry a yellow stick. What's he carrying the yellow stick? That looks like me. Luckily my gimbal's gray. So we're all good.

12:05 John Daub: Watakura Fountain and rest stop. So we're gonna go this way. 160 meters to go. There's where we just were, my secret hideout and lair. Where I can plan and plot. Just like the 47 rōnin. Which took place in the Pine Corridor. I forget what it's called. Which no longer exists because Edo Castle no longer exists. But this bridge is pretty nice. Watakura Fountain. There you go. Thunderbeard's here. You have the best live streams. Can't wait until they come back to Japan. Such an amazing country. Gubber Bebop writes in here, from what I've read, neither Asano nor Kira were really great guys. But I guess it's the principle of the story. That's right. Samurai have principles.

13:12 John Daub: WRX Turbo. Go get something from Viron. How did you know that was there? That's just over there. The Viron. Good call. I was there with my friend Simon the other day. Actually, it's more like a couple of months ago. Here are the good guys compared to the crow. The pigeons. They really like to relax here at the Imperial Palace. I guess if you're gonna be a pigeon, the Imperial Palace is a pretty good place. How you doing? Do you mind if I interview you? No interviews. People are very shy.

13:41 John Daub: They've built pigeon homes inside of the moat. Called ishigaki (石垣，stone walls). And you can see here the different construction of the moats. As you walk around and you see, you're gonna see different kind of styles and construction based on the years and the times that they've done it. And the materials too. It's kind of interesting to go around Japan. The castle construction. It's all really different. When I was in Kanazawa, you could see the different kind of rocks. They use a different kind of rocks and construction. There's a lot of people that are interested in ishigaki. The stone walls. And there's a museum as well. You gotta be really hardcore into it.

14:17 John Daub: Alright, we're gonna say goodbye to my hideout right there. We're gonna come back around. And check it out. Let's go in and take a look at the garden. Pretty, pretty nice. Yeah, just relaxing. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to do a livestream for a couple of days. But because I'm working, I'm polishing the first episode for the new channel. Like, just little teeny irritating things that are required to fix the episode. Because it's the first one. It's gotta be good. So that's coming. I think I'll be able to drop it tonight. Which is morning, Sunday morning in the US. A lot of places. I'll give our insiders a preview look at it as well. As our Patreon supporters. Thank you.

15:16 John Daub: I came to this area not just to show you this. But it's right next to the International Post Office. And I'm dropping off some postcards to some supporters here. So Michelle in Scotland. Tomi in Finland. Bobby in Illinois. Saki in Charlotte. Scott in Maine. Sean in Texas. And Rutger in Holland. And Zev in California. And Utani T in California. These are all going out. This is Kanazawa. They have Kanazawa stamps on the back. And there's a little secret in this postcard that you might pick up if you've been watching Only in Japan Go for the last couple of weeks. I put a little Easter egg in there.

16:11 John Daub: Check it out here. I'm going to pan around and show you what a beautiful area this is. And you can't even see this cafe from the other side. Look at the tables here to just relax. You can hear the fountains. Big windows if there's a typhoon or something. And this is a really nice place to walk around. Going from Tokyo Station to the old Edo Castle ruins in this direction towards the garden. It's a beautiful walk. Or a bicycle ride if you want to rent one of the bicycles. But do you see what they've done here? They've kind of made little moats and bridges. Which make it pretty cool. Look at that. It's kind of like a 20th century version of the 18th century Japan.

17:19 John Daub: Hey Daniel! Daniel McLachlan. Thank you. From Australia. Yeah, because of the pandemic, a lot of you had to cancel your tickets. And you had to go on trips to Japan. I'm doing the best that I can to take you around to different areas now. Despite the second wave that we're in right now, people are still traveling. And we have no restrictions to go around. Kanae and I will be renting a car more. I've got some trips going to Osaka, Kyoto, Shiga Prefecture, Wakayama Prefecture. A lot of stuff happening over the next month. It's pretty crazy the schedule for filming. I'm pretty excited about this. To get back into the swing of things. After being inside for so long.

18:15 John Daub: It's not that it's over. But we do have to get back to work and life. However, the reason why we had this lockdown for so long in Japan. I can speak about this. Is because they were setting up for something. For getting back to work. So now stores have vinyl sheets in front of the registers. There's alcohol pumps. Procedures. Standards now. To help reduce infections and things like this. Whether it works or not, I don't know. But we can't stay in forever. We do have to get back to work. Including me too. It's beautiful. Let's just absorb this for a second. If it's hot where you're at, absorb this.

19:30 John Daub: Alright, now you're starting to see more of the Imperial Palace. And the main moat. It's pretty confusing. That's why I'm still kind of on my smartphone while I'm walking around. Looking for the picture of Edo Castle. I know I put it on here. I'll keep looking. I'm going through the pictures right now. So if you were to cross the street and then go this way. You'll get to the entrance to the garden. Which you can walk around. And the ruins. It's beautiful during ume (梅，plum) season in February. The ume blossoms are blooming. Some bicycle riders go through here right now. I'm going to take you around this region. In the distance you can see Hibiya Park.

20:36 John Daub: Look at the open space of the Imperial Palace. It's pretty incredible. I'm going to cross the street here. So sorry. We still got a green light. Blue in Japanese. This is the open space of the Imperial Palace. If you were to go straight it just wraps around. You can go around. When I was driving around looking for the expressway. I drove around and there's one near Kitanomaru Park. Not too far from Kudanshita (九段下). Back in the 19th century you would have been able to see in the early 19th century. Edo Castle. Which was quite large. Right in this direction. Powering over. It would have been the biggest structure in the area by far. And now it's no longer there. But the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives is just that way. Maybe about 300-400 meters this way. With the moat around it.

22:11 John Daub: It is pretty nice isn't it? Straight ahead. You get one of the best views of Tokyo Station. And if you have a zoom lens it's kind of neat to take the picture here. Stand all the way on the end and zoom in. And you have the backdrop of Tokyo Station. Now you have a shot of that lady. It's a pretty neat shot of Tokyo's Marunouchi Station. Built in 1912 I think. This is a great place to run as well. You'll see a lot of runners. Mostly on the other side. And you can do a circuit around the Imperial Palace. If you're coming here to stay you get a hotel not too far away. Get your running shoes on. You can run around. It's a 5 kilometer loop. So you do 2 loops you can do 10k. Literally I think it's 5 kilometers. My friend Joseph who runs the Tokyo Marunouchi Station. He did a marathon with costumes and live streams. He told me 5k almost exactly. One loop.

24:07 John Daub: It is so green right now. Because we've had so much rain in Japan. I believe that's tsubame (燕，swallows) or sparrows right there. Look at them. They're like hanging out the 3 of them. Straight ahead is Hibiya Park. About 250-300 meters. And they'll hold a lot of events in there. But because of the pandemic. Most of them have been cancelled. Just the vibe is quiet. And that's to be expected. Right? No shot of Tokyo Tower. That's a shame. It is kind of hazy. And we're starting to get the sakura. The chirping. Which is such a sound of summer. Probably in a week. These parks get so loud. And no pandemic is going to stop them. Walking around the parks in Japan. It's so loud with the cicada. It's a symbol of Tokyo. Of Japan. So loud.

25:28 John Daub: That's a lot of rules. Kōkyo means Imperial Palace. National Garden is a park for everyone. That's for you too. You're included. However. There is a list of 15 rules not to do. Picking or damaging flowers, trees, or plants. Hunting, fishing, killing, or injuring animals. Releasing or abandoning animals. Damaging or attempting to move buildings or structures. Trespassing. Driving or parking vehicles. Discarding or abandoning trash. Urinating or defecating. Lighting bonfires. Bringing onto the premises hazardous materials. Swimming or bathing in ponds. Playing ball games. Posting or installing advertisements. Soliciting donations. And other actions likely to annoy or inconvenience other users of the park. Sale or distribution. No convening meetings. No photography in a professional capacity. Reselling. Releasing birds into the pond. And boating or sailing. Violators will be scolded.

27:14 John Daub: Okay. Let's get out of here. I don't know if I've done anything wrong. I feel guilty now. Here's Otemachi. Here's the gate. And let me see here. Where's Tokyo Station? Here's Kudanshita Station. So we would be right here. Is the guards chamber. The tower that I'm at. The gate. Wurakumon (和楽門). So we were. I was right here. We walked around here. But look how big the entire Imperial Palace is. So if you look on Google Maps or Google Earth, it's massive. The amount of space in central Tokyo. And it's such a little paradise to walk around because it's quiet compared to the rest of the city. Although a lot of you like to go to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Omotesando. You know, that's Shibuya area. I kind of prefer over on this side. It's just so quiet, scenic and historical.

28:26 John Daub: There's the side of the moat here. Okay. So it looks like the wedding pictures. The bride must have taken a break, but they're still taking pictures. Doing a little bit of construction. And I did see a swan hanging out around here. But this is my secret hideout. One of the gates. One of the entrances is open to Nijūbashimae. So you could technically come straight out. Oh, no, they're taking pictures of the bride. Oh, that's awesome. I don't want to be in the background. So this is where you can come out. This is exit six of Nijūbashimae. You can come straight out of here. Or you can just walk from Tokyo Station through here and come to my secret hangout. I like to hang out in that one across the street. That's my bicycle. So I broke rule number six right there. I'm so sorry. I'll take a zero on that.

29:48 John Daub: Wow, that's nice. It's Sunday. So a lot of the businesses are closed. It's really quiet around here. Now they used to have music instead of the chirping. Do you hear the chirping? Japan has speakers on the walking on the crosswalks. And the reason why they do that is so people that are blind can walk across the street. For the disabled, for the blind, Tokyo is a really, really well laid out city. They know where to stop based on the taxis. So they can walk across the street. And they can see the tactile surface here. So when you're walking on it, you can feel it. And then your stick going across here would pick these up and know to stop. You would hear the sound of the chirping bird. And you know by chirping it's east-west. And this coo-coo, coo-coo is north-south. And then you just follow this line, tactile surface all the way to the other side. It's pretty neat.

31:01 John Daub: Choo-choo is I think east-west. And coo-coo, coo-coo is north-south. I could be wrong. This has become the standard in Japan. Which is I much prefer the sound of the songs. Does anybody know the songs? It's like of course you don't because I can't hear you chirping. But the one song, going in one direction, would play this song. And then if you went to the other side, it would have a more traditional song. That was a little bit not as, I don't know, dancey. But you'll still hear those. And I think there's a couple hundred traffic lights in Japan that still have those songs. And they're starting to be cut out because they want to have a standard. That stinks, right? Like I love the music. Why wouldn't you do music that's so Japanese? And yet they're tuning it out for these bird chirps.

32:35 John Daub: You know what? If I meet that government official who's changing the rules like this, keep Japan fun. You know, if I was running for prime minister, that would be my slogan. Make Japan fun again. It just seems to work. It's like my friend Kevin Reilly. Make cooking fun again. That's his channel slogan. And he cooks some really delicious food. Kevin Reilly. Kuma's Kitchen is the channel on YouTube. Very talented guy. And the king of Osaka. A good friend of mine. Hopefully I can see him in a couple of weeks down there in Kansai. We go down to Wakayama.

33:23 John Daub: All right. Quick quiz. Hot shot. What is that? Does anybody know? That statue. You got five seconds. Four, three, two, one. I believe that that's Ebisu (恵比寿). I could be wrong. Ebisu is the dude holding the fish that's on the beer cans. Walking around the Imperial Palace is really relaxing. Great place to walk or sit on a bench and relax before a cinema. I don't know if that's Toby's perch. Look at that. There are tourist buses going by. Check it out. Where are these tourists from? I'm kind of curious. We have a Tokyo Tower sighting. Do you see in the distance? Tokyo Tower. Local tourists, most likely. There are still domestic tourists. And the ones that I did meet in Kanazawa last week were from all over Japan. So, people who are staying in Japan are still traveling and getting around.

35:16 John Daub: And welcome to my hideout, by the way. We're ending where we started. Yeah, that makes sense. Last week I was in Kanazawa and it was pretty cool to be able to travel around again. I know that the numbers aren't too good, but tomorrow I'll be giving another travel update. So, you're going to want to stay tuned. Tomorrow around 11 a.m., I think, I'm going to give you a travel update just to let you know. There's so many things that have been happening here in Japan. So, that's a Sunday night, Monday morning travel update for you. Tomorrow there's going to be an update talking about traveling to Japan and, you know, the cases, how the city's been coping here in Tokyo, what it's like to travel on the Shinkansen. I've been traveling on the Shinkansen for the last two weeks now and going to give you some feedback on what it's actually like now. It's different than it was before. There's different security measures, precautions, things like this. I'm going to give you the rundown tomorrow morning, which is about 20 hours away from now. So, that should be pretty interesting to talk to you and get some of your feedback on this.

36:56 John Daub: Larry Rivera. I miss Japan! See you in Kanazawa when I visit again! Absolutely. I hope that that's sooner than later. Maybe by next year. Hey Anjoum! Hey John. Did you know there is an Only in Japan sub-Reddit? Yes! We do have a subreddit and a Reddit page, and there's another owner of that, and we've been in contact. And that'd be pretty cool to build that up as well. The Discord server has been sort of our headquarters for the last year now. And we have some really good people moderating over there. It's kind of fun to talk about the shows after the live stream. A lot of people will go in there into the general chat. It's free. It's discord.gg slash only in Japan. That's your invitation. We're getting close to 10,000 people there, which is pretty cool because this was also a place where when people were traveling in Japan, other travelers could help other travelers. So you knew the conditions at certain areas when you were on the road here.

38:34 John Daub: But, once again, this is my hangout. I'll put a link in the description. If you come to Tokyo, you're in this area, you can bring a bento, enjoy this table here. Why not, right? Take some pictures. If you're over on the other side, there's some people that are taking wedding pictures. So there's some scenic scenes here. As you can see. With the moat in the background, it is really nice, I think, to be hanging around this part. I'm going to the post office to send off these 10 postcards to the people. If you do want to join the postcard club, do it now because I only have about 20 left. And they went pretty quick this month. This is from Kanazawa. I can show you the image. It's pretty cool. I make them every month. And they're usually pictures from when I travel. This is Higashi Chaya (東茶屋街). The old tea houses of Kanazawa. And I have here a Kanazawa stamp. So I always pick a stamp that has some sort of regional meaning to it. Oh, there's Kanazawa Castle. This is Shawn. Here's yours, Shawn. You get Kanazawa Castle on yours.

39:52 John Daub: That's going into the International Post Office here in Tokyo. It gets there a couple days faster if I send it from here. They're on Patreon. Patreon.com slash only in Japan. I send them out once a month to supporters all around the world. We have pretty good support there. So I want to say thank you, everybody. Tonight, the new episode drops on the main channel, I believe. Strongly believe. Anyways, the episode's done. I'm just polishing it. And have a good day. Have a good night, everybody. I'll do one last pan around as you can kind of get an idea of why I love to come to the Secret Hangout. And don't hang out too much here because if I do come here and you're hanging out, I might kick you out. Because I have dibs. Or at least keep me an open seat. How about that? Yeah. Bring another drink and keep an open seat for me. And I'll be very appreciative and come out and hang out with you here in my secret lair.

40:49 John Daub: Look at that beautiful stone seat. Bring some cushions. I guess you could even sleep here. But, yeah, no sleeping is one of the rules. So you'll probably get kicked out. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day. Watch out for the fish. Big one. That is a big one.