00:00:02 John Daub: Good morning everyone from Tokyo's public toilet. That's right. In front of you, you see the cleaning crew in their uniforms. They have special uniforms for this project—the Tokyo toilet cleaning uniforms. It's so cool. And I'm so proud to be a resident of the city of Tokyo. You can see these are the most transparent toilets maybe in the entire world because they're glass. This is so cool. There's more than one of them too.

00:00:36 John Daub: In this live stream, I'm going to take you around to these amazing toilets. Hold on a second guys. We just got a new gimbal as well. So they're in there and they're making sure that it's so clean. And when I get in there, I'm going to have to clean it up. I'm going to have the cleanest toilet. And it's amazing. How you doing everybody?

00:00:57 John Daub: So in this live stream, I want to talk to you about the Tokyo Toilet experiment. This is an ongoing experiment that's been going on for not too long. It just sort of started but there are 17 toilets that have been renovated or kind of scaled up to bring public attention to Tokyo's or Japanese clean toilets. Probably in all of the world, Japan has the cleanest toilets anywhere. In the United States, I would hold it in so I wouldn't have to go to a public toilet. Let's be honest here. Who else did this? Even at school, in elementary school or high school, you kind of didn't want to do number two at school. Number one, guys had a free ride. You just stand there.

00:01:42 John Daub: But anyways, for public toilets in Japan, they're really clean. And one of the reasons why is that people are thinking about the next person. So after you do your duty, you're already thinking about the next person and you make sure that the toilet is clean, even public toilets. And look at how much effort that they're putting into this. This is amazing right here. They don't just throw a bunch of bleach. They actually put a lot of effort into the work. Now this is across from Yoyogi Park which is over here. And if we keep on walking for another 100 meters or so, there is a second toilet created by Shigeru Ban who is a well-known architect. And I'm going to take you there. I'm going to take you inside of the toilet to use it in a second.

00:02:31 John Daub: This is my What's Inside bag. Big shout out to Dan and Lincoln for sending this to me. I appreciate that. And a beautiful water bottle. You can get this on their merch store. Let's go take a look at the other toilet since they're cleaning this one. Wow, they're really cleaning it. It's a little bit after 9 a.m. So let's walk around here. Give you the entire story. Oh, and she's in the next one. There are three of them. So while they're working on that one, we're going to go to the next one. They have kind of a different color to it.

00:03:23 John Daub: In the distance you can see Shinjuku. No toilets there. 17 toilets and they're just in the Shibuya area. And according to the website, they're all total toilets, which is really nice. All 17 of them have different patterns. But obviously, it's the see-through toilets that are making the biggest impact because of the cultural aspect of it. Meaning like you go into a restroom and everybody can see you. Things can happen. For example, what if you go in with a kid? The kid decides to unlock the toilet while mommy's in the bathroom and he's still on there. It actually happened. The Japanese Twitterverse has written stories about that.

00:04:26 John Daub: So we're now walking over to the next toilet. Now the two parks are adjacent to one another. There it is, across the two crosswalks. And if you haven't been to Tokyo in the summer, I promise you this: you will melt. And I'm melting right now. It is so hot. I used to come often to this area because of my work with NHK. NHK is just down the street from here. There's the entrance to Yoyogi Park. As we make our way over to toilet number two.

00:05:33 John Daub: Alright, here's the next park. Let us try to find some transparent toilets. This is going to be going on for a long time I believe. And these toilets, as you saw the staff have their own uniform, which is awesome. They take their toilets seriously in Japan. Alright, let's go inside. See what we can find.

00:06:13 John Daub: Right now we're hunting toilets. We just saw the first three but they were being cleaned by the staff. So we've gone walkabout to the next two. I think there's three of them. I'll put a link in the description if you're interested to come here. Some other YouTubers have already been here. They did a pretty good job. At night these toilets kind of look a little bit more scenic. There they are! You see them dead center in your screen. Only in Japan can you get excited about toilets? My buddy Joseph Tame who was in my first toilet episode ever, he called himself a toilet otaku. And I can feel that passion. Here we go.

00:07:20 John Daub: I'm going to go inside this toilet. This says men's. Men's, ladies. I like the yellow one here. And this one is for multi-access. So there's a little bit more space in here. So if you have a wheelchair or you're disabled, that's really cool. There's the architect here. It was created by Shigeru Ban. Each one of the architects are different. They're transparent and they go opaque when they're locked. Interesting. Ostomate. I didn't know that was what it was called. And then there's a baby chair. Ostomate is a place for one of these bags here. Let's go into the men's room because we are men. 3, 2, 1.

00:08:17 John Daub: We're now in... This is so clean! This smells so clean! Look at that! All these buttons here. Oh, the toilet's self-cleaning! It's like warming up for me. Alright, let's see. We're going to test the opaqueness here. Awesome! Is this wrong? Am I breaking the law? What is this? I'm trapped here in a toilet. This is awesome! How could you not just play with this?

00:09:13 John Daub: You don't have to touch anything except for this one. Like, auto-touch. Alright, I'm going to try it now from the outside. I'm somebody who says we have to do this from several angles. It's for science, right? So let's do this for science here. I'm going to go in here and report like I'm a CNN reporter. Welcome to Shibuya's toilets. This is a transparent toilet by Shigeru Ban created in July of 2020 put here to inspire the public on Japan's amazing toilets.

00:10:52 John Daub: Did you see that? I was not pooping. Alright, let's take a quick look-see here just for one last... There's several rolls of toilet paper so they're good to go for 24 hours I think with that amount. You can flush or light flush which is very good for the ecology, the world. It's very eco-friendly. They have a dryer! They have a butt dryer! No! That's awesome! There's a wand clean. And you can increase the pressure and position of the spray. This is awesome!

00:12:04 John Daub: I want to say that this is extremely clean and this goes back to Japanese culture, the omotenashi (hospitality) culture. It's beautiful. It's very clean! Thank you very much! So I told her that her toilets are extremely clean. She thanked me for the nice compliment. So we're going to go back now to the original toilets and see if their opaqueness is any different. And I get a feeling it's pretty much the same. But it doesn't matter. It's just cool.

00:12:49 John Daub: Japanese parks are places of community, family community. And says here, if you do come here at night, please be quiet. Let's be quiet at night. So adhere to the laws. Adhere to the policies of society. Everything's going to be okay. I wouldn't do it in Tokyo, but I have been known to pitch a tent here in Japanese parks when I'm hitchhiking. The Tokyo Toilet project website, which I'll put a link in the description, will explain so much to you. But there's something cool about Japanese toilets. And Japanese summer.

00:13:39 John Daub: Alright folks, we're going right now back to the first toilet. These are public here. So you can just wash and it doesn't have the nozzle here. So you need to have that there to use it. Now you see him. Now you don't. Awesome! They don't have these kind of toilets down under, do they? Here's a map really quickly of Yoyogi Park. And these parks are across the street of it. We're across the street from Yoyogi Park. I'll show you the entrance. We're walking by it right now.

00:15:01 John Daub: Once again for those joining us, there are 17 of them. 17. And it's a project part of Shibuya Ward. Shibuya is one of 23 wards in Tokyo. And I rode my bicycle, which took an hour to come out here. So I'm going to really, really enjoy my toilet time. There's the back entrance to Yoyogi Park. Not a lot of you who have visited Japan have come this way because it's opposite to the Harajuku entrance. And I recommend if you do come during the cherry blossoms that you go one station on the Chiyoda Line, the green one. The Chiyoda Line Metro. Go one station past Yoyogi to Yoyogi-Uehara. Or the Yoyogi Park one. And then walk in through the back entrance. It's a lot less people this way. And so much easier to get in and out. But you kind of miss out on Harajuku, which is for me not a bad thing because I'm not a big fan of Harajuku. I like the history.

00:16:17 John Daub: Kind of avoid Shibuya and Harajuku. Okay. I get so excited for toilets. I don't know why. It's morning time here, so it's not as hot. But the humidity is still well above 65%. And you have to drink a lot of fluids, which is what I'm going to be doing. Not from the restroom, mind you. Okay, we're going to go. We're going to take the jungle route here. Boy, they did a great job of cleaning these. There's the multi-purpose restroom. Which we can go in. Let's go take a look, see.

00:17:34 John Daub: Oh, no, no. These are locked. I guess you need to call. The glass [goes] opaque when the door is locked. Be sure to lock the door. And again, these are also made by Shigeru Ban. A very well-known architect. All the architects who designed the toilets for this project are well-known.

00:18:05 John Daub: Give him his private time. We don't want to bother anybody. It's a public toilet. I wanted to go in there. This is part of my experiment. Alright, just going to stay here. Okay, he got out there. I don't know. I think we should give it some time to air out. You don't want to go right in. And that guy parked his car there so he could go there. That's pretty cool. I want to air it out. You don't want to go right in, right? You want to give it some time after... He was in there for a while. Alright, let's just give it a minute.

00:19:08 John Daub: Full color is occupied. How cool. Alright, let's do this. We're going to go inside the purple here. Alright, it doesn't smell. He must have done a number one. Alright, this one's purple here. You can see it's kind of opaque. There's a flicker that's the Kanto flicker. The frequency of the voltage is different here. I'm going to close the door. And then we're going to watch as the world disappears. Count it down. Here we go. Click the like button if you like opaque toilets. Three, two, one. Oh, that's so awesome!

00:20:08 John Daub: I could do this all day. How do they do that? It's not a ninja toilet. I had ninja beer yesterday. It was so bad. The cleaning staff was taking pictures. That dude's going to use it. Nah, he's not going to use it. So there you have it.

00:20:56 John Daub: I wanted to come out here and just see this with my own eyes. And I can't believe it. I'm going to go into the side with the ostomate symbol. The sink is different. I found out because I was in Japan last September and was wondering what the sink is for. Okay, I guess I can take you a little bit closer in there. And see. It's become kind of a tourist attraction here. They're taking pictures. I'm telling you, a toilet is a tourist attraction. This is so cool.

00:22:01 John Daub: He went open. Look at that. It's closed. That's awesome. That's really cool. Oh, this is a slide door. That's why. It's a slide door. Yeah, you're right. The sink is very different. This looks like a sink. It's shaped more like a toilet. But that's just my reaction. My first reaction. It's pretty interesting. The flush button for the toilet, there's two of them. And the panel is pretty much the same. There's a wand cleaner. It auto cleans. You see that? It auto cleans when you come in here.

00:23:27 John Daub: Let's close this and see if it works. This one has a different locking mechanism. There we go. Say goodbye to that slide. One more time. How you doing? Not too well, I see. It's just us now. We have privacy. No one can see us in here. I can do anything that I want. Oh, no, I can't. I'm public now. That's so cool. I like the sliding door. Let's get out of here. Let's leave the door open a little bit. Put some air in there. That's awesome. I can hang out here all day and just meet the people who want to use it. It's really beautiful. There's a place for the babies there. So Papa can take his kids in there. One day that could be me.

00:24:29 John Daub: Anything else you want me to do? I'm here for you. So if there's something you want me to do, just let me know. It's for the people with colostomy bags. Okay. Interesting. My doctor friend told me what that sink was. It's a good way to empty it out and then flush it and keeps everything very clean and it's very convenient. Thanks for sharing that information. I just didn't know. The ladies get the pink one. I can't go in there because I'm live and everybody would know that I went in there. Although I wouldn't go in there because these toilets are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Do you see that? That's right.

00:25:29 John Daub: By the way, I'm using a new gimbal. This is the Smooth Q2. It's doing an okay job. I missed my DJI gimbal. Please don't use as toilet. Okay, right. Don't use that special sink for a toilet. Thanks for sharing. The different colored glass is cool. She told me don't touch anything. I touched everything. It's sort of a problem. I have alcohol wipes. I gotta wipe my phone. Remind me to wipe my phone.

00:26:13 John Daub: We moved our Tokyo trip five times. Now going in May. Yes! I'm glad to hear that you're gonna be making it. May is a great time. Just after the cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are still going on in other areas of the country. I think that these toilets will still be here when tourism starts. The station is Yoyogi-Koen. Yoyogi-Koen is a station. You can literally come right out of the subway and be at the toilet. Only in Japan would a toilet also be a tourist attraction.

00:27:11 John Daub: And let me just say this. It's not just exclusive to Tokyo. Japanese toilets all over the country are extremely clean. And part of this project is to let people know of the omotenashi. Say that word together with me. Omotenashi. It means Japanese hospitality. But it's more than that. There's a little bit more to omotenashi than Japanese hospitality. It's the little things. Thinking about the next person and making sure it's clean. Right? That might go beyond omotenashi. So when somebody does drop a deuce, they actually will try to leave the toilet cleaner than it was when they came here. And that's a really interesting part of Japanese culture that I love. And I've adapted to. And when I use things or go on a picnic I try to wipe it down and leave it cleaner than I found it. And if I can do that, I feel pretty happy about the rest of my day.

00:28:14 John Daub: When you're drinking sake with a buddy, you want to make sure that his glass is always full. So you're always not just thinking about yourself, you're thinking about your buddy and making sure that he's having a good time too. That's Japanese culture. That's an aspect of it that I've 100% fully adapted. And look at that. I love it. We're going to climb this mini hill and look at our toilets from an elevated angle. Okay, here we are. We're now at elevation. We're three meters above sea level. Oh, that dude's going to use it. Is he going to use it for real? Oh, it's opaque. Opaque means non-transparent. So they're opaque now. You cannot see him. Like magic.

00:29:23 John Daub: I'm going to leave the toilets because it is sort of creepy for dudes. It's somewhat creepy to be hanging around toilets for 30 minutes. I don't want to be that guy. I'm going to pass. He's really in there. I'm just kind of curious for how long. What if I had to go? I could use the yellow one. I don't think he fell in. They're not that wide. And Japanese toilets, when I compare them to American ones, American toilets are quite high off the ground. Japanese toilets are a little bit lower. So it's more of a natural position. I do prefer the squatters actually. It's a more natural way to release yourself.

00:30:49 John Daub: Shigeru Ban, I want to say thank you to Shigeru Ban for the amazing architecture on this. There's 17 toilets part of the Tokyo Toilet project. It's a way to show off public toilet behavior and Japanese omotenashi. And I believe that this project was slated for the Olympics as a way to show one of these unique projects that pop up and show the people during the Olympics that Japan has some pretty darn clean toilets and it's a safe place and if you do want to drop a deuce, you can do it in Japan at public toilets. In fact, we encourage it. Just make sure that you flush and clean up after yourself. I can only say this on this particular live stream.

00:31:47 John Daub: Epic. So there you have it everybody. I hope that this was an enlightening episode and you learned something about Japanese toilets that when you do come to Japan, make sure that you clean the toilet after yourself. Make sure that it's cleaner than the person that you found if you can do that. And make sure that you have a good time in there. You can have nice stuff in your country if you take care of it. And in Japan, we take care of our stuff. So it's nice.

00:32:40 John Daub: Would this work in your country? I want to leave you with this parting question. Would this project work in your country? Would it? Could you have this in New York City? I want you to realize this is Tokyo. This is the center of Tokyo. Would this work in New York City? Megan writes in, absolutely not. Graffiti? No way. Nope. Not in America. Absolutely no. In San Francisco, yes. Really? Not in the Philippines. Not in the USA. Only in Japan. Only in Japan. Well said.

00:33:18 John Daub: I'm going to go over now to the new park that's over by Shibuya Station. So get ready for another live stream. In about 30 minutes. I'll try to set this up. I want to take you around this area a little bit and show you because I don't have any plans to come back to Shibuya for a while. I don't get out here that often. So I might as well show you some of the neat attractions here. Thank you Opaque Toilets or See Through and Opaque Toilets for the wonderful time and everybody for the support. That's why I'm out here. I'll see you in about 30 minutes as I make my way to Shibuya Station from here. I'll leave you the last 20 seconds looking at my bicycle. Make my way to Shibuya. That dude's getting in! Do it!