00:01 John Daub: Please help us to the destination. When you leave Kyoto, you will stop at Shin-Osaka. Thank you for your ride. Please come to Kyoto. The exit is on the left. Minna, Sōsūmimya Kyoto Station. Nagawagonza S-side road.

01:58 John Daub: The next few days in Shiga Prefecture, the neighboring prefecture. I'm going to be meeting some people who will come pick me up in about 15 minutes at the gate. I'm going to take you through Kyoto Station. But let's take a moment and appreciate the Shinkansen that I came on. We're now at Kyoto Station and she, I'm guessing it's a she, with the windshield wipers on, is going to be making her way to Shin-Osaka, which takes about 15 minutes. About 35 minutes on the normal train. Got some bugs on the way here. It's always so cool to see the Shinkansen in action. It's just such a beautiful engineering work of art. She's about to take off. Here she goes. Whoa, she's picking up speed fast! 16 cars. It seemed to take forever, but when that 16th car went by, it flew! Awesome!

03:57 John Daub: Jeff Kennedy, konnichiwa! How you doing everybody? Welcome to Kyoto. As I said, I'm here to film for the next few days. I'm going to bring you here with me. It's nice to get out of the city of Tokyo. As you can see, there's virtually nobody riding for good reason because we are in a pandemic. Kyoto Station is fairly deserted, which is kind of creepy, isn't it? The Shinkansen, I think the car, a lot of people got off at Nagoya. When I say a lot, there was about a dozen. And this is usually full, this platform of tourists visiting Japan or businessmen on trips here. And there's nobody, not even on the other side. That's pretty scary.

04:51 John Daub: It's not a beard, it's a double mask. And I don't think that there was anybody infected on the train because there were so few people on the train. For those of you that have cancelled their trips, I'm here for you. And yeah, you are at Kyoto Station. I did get an ekiben (station bento). It was a new ekiben for the Shinkansen, a Shinkansen Fujisan ekiben. And I'll post some pictures on Instagram. Inside, it actually looks like Mount Fuji inside of the box, the food. The presentation is incredible.

05:29 John Daub: The Tokaido Shinkansen is 16 train cars long. And it's a pretty long train, so the platforms are pretty long too. Typically departing 1 every 10 minutes. Sometimes every 5 minutes. You can see the schedule above. Just depends. Every 5 to 10 minutes. Sometimes 15, depending. Sometimes 15, depending. There's the board up there. Alright, let's make our way out.

06:03 John Daub: There's a notice here on safety in the Shinkansen. Do not ride like this. Ride more like this. Keep distances between other people and spaces. Space it out and keep your mask on. So that's how I've been riding. And now that I'm in Kyoto Station, it's very easy to social distance when there's nobody here. Alright.

06:45 John Daub: Welcome, Sean808. Afternoon, John. Grab something cool to drink. Also ask Prime Minister opening travel to and from Hawaii. I will tell him and ask him when I see him one day. Thank you. Alright. And Gullis is an insider. Welcome. I'm going to buy some gifts here from Kyoto. I'm going to put my mask back on in case I decide to rob the place.

07:26 John Daub: Kyoto is very much like Kanazawa in many ways. Green tea, matcha tea is very, very important to the culture here. And you see that in the gifts. This would be awesome for the daimyo. Check this out. Let's see if I can get some packages here. Do you like this? No, no, no. I'm going to buy some things. These are made from Japanese negi (green onions). That looks good. That looks really good.

08:01 John Daub: So, I'm going out the central exit, which is the other way. Okay. I hope this finds you all doing pretty well here. Kenji Masui for your eki-ben. Arigato. I actually got a really good eki-ben. I will post the pictures, I promise, on Instagram in the next hour or so. It looks, it was so good. This Tokaido Shinkansen eki-ben. Alright, good. Here's the central exit. Kyoto Station is a little bit easier to get around than Osaka Station. It's not quite as big. So you can see all the Shinkansen trains are running on time and on schedule. Here's my ticket. From Tokyo to Kyoto, juseki (reserved seat), meaning free ticket. Let's go out.

09:30 John Daub: Oh, there's Kintetsu on the other side. So let's go this way. This is the new, this is the older part of the station. This is the Kyoto Station. And I'm going to go up into the newer part. So welcome to Kyoto, everybody. That's the third time I said that. I'm just so excited. Not a lot of people traveling for good reason. I'm actually on the job, so. Michael Sasano. I know what you want, some donuts. Jesse's here, livestream recordings. Get me through remote work. Thanks for all you do. Thank you, Laura Cooks. Thank you, welcome to Kyoto.

10:23 John Daub: So I'm going to take you through the main lobby. Up to the sign of Kyoto. And then I gotta go and meet some people and head to Shiga. So this is going to be a shorter than usual livestream. But that's okay. Wait, how many central exits are there? Oh, here it is. The Karasuma exit. That's where I was going to meet them. Got a lot of bags. When I do location shoots, I bring a lot of equipment. I'm not the average YouTuber.

11:17 John Daub: You can see there's this layout for Kyoto. Zero. Zero foreign tourists. This is so crazy. I've never, well, I don't think I've ever been here without any foreign tourists. Zero. It's as though there's some sort of mistake. Alright, let's go to the central exit here. Mr. Donuts, right there! Oh, I wish I had some time. I know we got, I might have to make that. Oh look at that, they put these partitions between so people don't get sick. That's smart. That's very smart. Alright, I love Kyoto Station.

12:20 John Daub: Look up. Always look up when you're here. Oh, it's beautiful. The design for the 1998 Olympics when Nagano Winter Olympics was here, they had finished Kyoto as sort of a centerpiece of the renovations for the Olympics back then. And it's always been this really beautiful structure that's larger than life. Kyoto Station. The ceiling's going up, it seems like 50 meters or something. You can really feel the beauty of Japan. It makes a very strong impression when you arrive into Japan taking the Shinkansen into Kyoto. Let's get down on the escalator. There's Kyoto Tower. And away we go.

13:32 John Daub: Jake is here. Lusik, how you doing Jake? Thomas T. Are there bees in Japan? There are! And they make pretty good honey too.

14:08 John Daub: I'm here! Kyoto Station. Turn the camera around. How many memories do I have here standing in this very spot? It's pretty crazy. Standing right here, looking back at the station. A lot of memories. I'm sure you do too if you've been to Japan. I did double up the mask today. Just be safer than, just be a little bit careful. These pollen masks are good for pollen but they're not good for much else. They're good for keeping your steam to yourself so you don't infect other people. You give a little bit of extra protection. I don't know if it works, doubling up. I'd triple up if that were to help.

14:58 John Daub: Alright, so that's about it. I don't have too many more things to say. I got a pretty busy day today. I believe we're getting picked up by car or something. And I'll be making my way back to Otsu in Shiga. I spending the night in the countryside. I've only come here to take the Shinkansen because it doesn't stop so much in the countryside. It stops pretty much only at the major stations or stations that are massive hubs where you can take local trains back. So I'm going back to Otsu which is in Shiga Prefecture. And get this, okay? I'm so excited. I'm always excited. But I'm more excited because tonight I'm meeting Kanta Inoue who I made the episode One Year in a Bucket Raw Sushi. You remember this one? He makes funazushi (fermented crucian carp sushi) and I'm going to be having dinner with him and some of the people that I met when I was making that episode. So it's like maybe two years since I've seen Kanta. He was 24 so I think he's 26 now. I'm really excited about that. I wonder if we're going to have funazushi for dinner. Maybe not. Funazushi is maybe the stinkiest, one of the stinkiest foods in Japan but it can be quite good if it's prepared well. So maybe I'll live stream that dinner. But I expect you to see some parts of the countryside in the next few days. That's what this live streaming channel is for. And yeah.

16:30 John Daub: That's what makes me so excited. Marty's here! Maybe it's a chopper. Where's the chopper? Mike loves this station. Roy Lance. I agree with Mike here. Irvonne is buying me some stinky dinners. I'm really looking forward to stinky dinners. I can meet my friends and have a stinky dinner. It's a perfect dinner to me. I'm cool with that. This is a nice little sign that they put on the side of the station here. I haven't seen this before. Check that out. Oh and of course Shane has to top up the three amigos. Look at that. Kyoto.

17:16 John Daub: Kyoto is a very ancient city. And you can see this in this wonderful illustration on the side of the station. But the city, this ancient imperial city, is surrounded by hills. And it's on these hills that you see a lot of really beautiful temples. Including that big die that they use in the festival. They put that on fire. And I think some of you might have seen the pictures of the illustrations of that. Oh gosh. I forgot the name of... Kiyomizudera (Kiyomizu Temple). There you go. I can read the kanji there. Kiyomizudera is over there. And there's the Fushimi Inari with the 10,000 gates. I love this illustration. It's on the side of Kyoto Station. Look at this. This is new. Cool. Cool.

18:15 John Daub: Alright. You three amigos, save your money. We got some better stuff to show you than this. Save your money. Alright guys. I'm gonna take off. And I will see you in another livestream really soon. And I'll try to livestream at different times to make it convenient for everybody around the world. I know that it's really cool when you can catch a livestream. And I hope that you can. Here we are. Oh, we're livestreaming. We made it. Wow. That's wonderful. That's VIP welcome. Thank you. Wait a minute. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much for watching. And see you from Kyoto Station off to Shiga Prefecture.