00:04 John Daub: Greetings and welcome to Tokyo Station. That in front of you is the Nihonbashi entrance or exit to Tokyo Station. It's kind of new. Not a lot of people know about it yet, except for the people that are here. How you doing, everybody? Welcome to Tokyo Station. I thought I would take you on a little bit of an adventure today. We're going to walk through this area of Tokyo Station, get a wraparound and go towards Nihonbashi, which is a very historical part of the city that I love to walk around. We've done this before. We've done Nihonbashi as well, but never from Tokyo Station walking to Nihonbashi. I want to show you how close it is. It's so close that they even have an entrance or exit to it.

01:09 John Daub: I'm going to take you over to the central exit as the Shinkansen goes by right there. I'm going to put on my mask as well. There's a JR highway bus that kind of comes here as well. All the buses are on the south side of Tokyo Station. This is more, I guess it would be like the northern side of it, but let's get going. For those that are coming here to meet friends, there is a lot of people. A Starbucks right above the Nihonbashi entrance. And when I've tried to meet friends here quite often, they can't find me because they've never been to this entrance before. It's up the stairs, by the way, to get to that coffee shop. Not a lot of people traveling at all. So the Shinkansens and the trains have been pretty light. I just met up with a friend who came here by subway and he told me that the subway was only like about 15% full.

01:51 John Daub: This Sagawa is also a place where you can deliver your bags to anywhere in Japan, which is so useful. If you're coming here on the express train and you're traveling to another area of Japan, you can just deliver your suitcase there and not have to carry it on the Shinkansen. And that makes it really convenient. This is the Sagawa on the Nihonbashi side. And there's also other baggage delivery services here within the Shinkansen Tokyo Station. That's super convenient. Loads of lockers on the left and right. And if you forgot to pack something at home, maybe you forgot some socks or you need some HeatTech, there's the Uniqlo. There's more than one inside of Tokyo Station where you can get socks and t-shirts and stuff like that that you might need on a business trip or just traveling around a new area. Forgot a jacket or something. You can pick it up pretty cheap at Uniqlo.

03:02 John Daub: I love the signs promoting the Shinkansen. Check this out. These are new. Don't stop Japan. And with a nose like that, you're not going to stop the Shinkansen. Looks like a lot of fun. That's the N700S debut poster. Pretty exciting. Inside of Tokyo Station, you don't have to even leave to eat lunch. It opens at 11 o'clock and you can see there's a gourmet street. This is upstairs on the second floor, including a place with craft beer and a butcher shop that serves platters like that. Of course, sashimi. And down in the basement, there are a ton of restaurants, including Ramen Alley, which is really interesting. You can get a taste of ramen all over the place. On the ground, you can see places for people to stand for social distancing. People are a little bit more careful these days and I'm trying my best to also social distance.

04:29 John Daub: Whoa! What is that? That looks really good. I guess they have like a machine or something that makes this. It's like a waffle or something. Cool. I'll be back. I'm focused on walking. Loads and loads of shops. A lot of them are hurting because there's just not a lot of high traffic here. Not a lot of people buying things. So, this Daimaru on the left side, it's got a lot of gifts that you can buy. They only have one entrance now to try to limit the amount of people going into the shop. Wow, they have some kind of peach set up here. Those look really good. I find a lot of the Daimaru packages for Patreon supporters. I send packages to supporters inside of this Daimaru sometimes, if I'm looking for something unique. But you can see the lady, she's giving people alcohol to rub onto their hands, including a little kid there. I don't know how much that helps, but every little bit, they're taking as many precautions as they can.

05:42 John Daub: And here's where you would run to get to the Shinkansen. You can buy your Shinkansen tickets inside of the windows, inside of this booth here. But the vending machines are more than adequate in English to buy your tickets. And, well, if you have a JR Rail Pass, you can get it validated on the other side of Tokyo Station, which is the Marunouchi side. This is the Yaesu side. And we're going to exit through this door and enter the great wide open.

06:16 John Daub: Hey, Yun Wang is here. Enjoy a drink and snack. Thanks for always taking us. Or if you're new, I have the image of a small Japanese restaurant. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're going to have to go through that restaurant. So, yeah, that's the restaurant. So, it's at the end of the bus station. And there's an entrance to the Daimaru. And there's a security guard. Now I've sent these to supporters as well. These are like Senbei crackers and they're so good and very colorful and have different kinds of flavors. Like you find these very, very cool regional tastes. These are all packs of crackers made from rice. Very tasty, filled with loads of flavoring.

07:29 John Daub: Benevails here for the Food and Drink Fund. I will be definitely getting a drink en route. Absolutely. Yesterday was pistachio milk, which is so cool. And Ron Barr, welcome. Thank you for that, Ron. All right, I'm on a new gimbal. It just doesn't seem to be doing a great job of balancing. So sorry about the shaking a little bit. Here's a shoeshine guy. He's been here for years underneath this umbrella. It's about 700 yen for a shoeshine. I don't know. I don't think my sandals are going to work. Sukiyabashi, which is where the sushi shop is, Jiro Sushi. That's about 1,200 meters away. And the Bank of Japan is on the left. The banks are all pretty much in Nihonbashi.

08:22 John Daub: And if you take a look at the map here, we started here at this entrance. This is the Nihonbashi entrance to Tokyo Station. We walked through here and I took you out of this exit. And now we're going to walk this way towards Nihonbashi. Which is just over there. It's not that far away. But in route, I want to show you some of the alleys as well. And some of the newness of this area. It's changing rapidly. Beautiful day today here in Tokyo. A lot of these skyscrapers that you see here in Tokyo Station in this area weren't here 10 years ago. It's all pretty much new.

09:17 John Daub: Across the street from the station, and this is I want to point out, if you don't have a JR Rail Pass, you can get at this orange shop. It's called the JR ticket office. And you can get tickets. And you probably will save about $15-20 on a ticket. For example, they have the prices listed here. Typically, it's about 11,300 yen. And they give you a discount to 10,600 yen. So they've discounted, what is that? Like 700 yen off of the price. So you save $7 for buying the ticket here. Which is a free bento pretty much. This is a ticket to Kyoto and you save here. And not that much about 400 yen. So it's just a little bit cheaper. So it just depends. That's a little bit cheaper about $7 to Osaka. So sometimes it works out.

10:23 John Daub: This one is, they have airline tickets in here too. These are local train tickets. I believe. No, that's a Shinkansen as well. So you can get the Shinkansen tickets from this vending machine. Or you can go inside. And usually you'll find people who have sold tickets that they don't want. And you can buy maybe if to have three days left on a five-day ticket. You can buy just those three days. If you have five days left, you can buy just those three days. So sometimes you find some pretty cool deals as well as like movie tickets. Sometimes they're half off there.

10:40 John Daub: All right. This is the street that is, I wanted to show you that they've almost finished it now. Do you see the, they have orange cones and construction on the side here. This street used to be lined with cherry blossoms and now it's called Sakura-dori. And this is kind of a sad story. Do you see there's a sign Sakura-dori. Sakura-dori was filled with sakura trees and the cherry blossoms were a little bit more narrow because of it, but it was, it had this wonderful canopy and now they've gotten rid of the trees and it's opened up a lot. I guess that's a good thing if you're shopping, but it takes away the beauty of this cherry, the cherry blossoms. You can see some of the cherry blossoms at the end of the street, but most of them have gone now as a result of the lack of cherry blossoms here. There used to be a Starbucks right there. And I know Starbucks just owns all of the prime real estate here. But that Starbucks right over there is out of business. And that's one of the first Starbucks that was here in Tokyo is gone now because they removed the cherry blossoms. And I guess it also removed the customers. It's just sad that Sakura Street doesn't have any more sakura on it, but I guess they did this for the Olympics. And I guess it just made sense. The trees, I don't know. It's Tokyo. I don't like seeing any trees and we need more of them. Not less.

12:11 John Daub: Carp here. Do you see this sign up above? Carp are an early warning system from the Edo period. Meaning if the carp are going crazy, that means they could sense an earthquake and they could get like maybe a 15 second preview before something big happened. So they use in Japan, the carp or koi here to represent, and I believe this to be true, emergencies. So if you see this funny looking guy, close in the event of a major earthquake. Okay. It means something to do with an earthquake, but it's funny to see it right next to Tokyo station. It could be, it looks like a catfish. Maybe it is. I know that a lot of the ponds have carp in it because of that. There'd be carp in the moat because of they could detect the earthquakes as well. Some of the parks too.

13:06 John Daub: Show vlogs. Welcome as a member. Awesome. And Carrie Mars here. Konnichiwa from Texas. My husband is from Tokyo and we love your channel. Thank you. Lone star state. I feel bad for this shop. And I don't know if I should feel bad, but they opened up an electronic shop and it was basically to take advantage of the Chinese tourists that came here, spending a ton of money before they went to Narita airport at the bus terminal, which is just right over there. I'm going to take you near there. The tourists would stop inside of this electronic store and just come out with bags and bags. Either they would have their own buses to take them to the airport or they take the, the bus, which is right over there, the bus stop. But now because of the coronavirus, a lot, the fifth, a lot of these floors are closed. And of course they put it in English. You can see beauty design stage, lifestyle, PC and networking because of the tourism. They don't have that. And they don't have the tourism now. And they have here, the Tokyo's designated symbol that this is a shop got the coronavirus. They're complying with the orders.

14:23 John Daub: Hello. Whoa. You startled me. How you doing?

14:30 Swedish Student: Hey, I just walked by and saw you filming.

14:30 John Daub: Oh, okay. Very cool. I don't think I actually have any. You found me cars because I'm discouraging finding me. Do you live here in Japan?

14:36 Swedish Student: I'm just on a change. I'm going back in a week.

14:43 John Daub: Oh, wow. That sucks. Huh? Yeah. Where we from?

14:49 Swedish Student: From Sweden.

14:49 John Daub: Okay. That's a better situation than here, right?

14:53 Swedish Student: I don't really know. I don't think so.

14:55 John Daub: Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, we'll see. It's pretty nice here. What were you doing here in exchange for...

15:01 Swedish Student: University.

15:01 John Daub: For university?

15:02 Swedish Student: Yeah.

15:03 John Daub: They're kicking you out?

15:05 Swedish Student: No, I'm just... I had one year. Now I'm done.

15:09 John Daub: Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's sad. Well, thanks so much for finding me.

15:13 Swedish Student: Yeah.

15:15 John Daub: Somebody said, are you PewDiePie? No, I'm not PewDiePie. That's not PewDiePie. Although I think he has a house here in Japan here.

15:21 Swedish Student: Yeah, yeah, he does.

15:22 John Daub: Yeah. Very cool. What are you up to today?

15:24 Swedish Student: I'm going to go meet a friend.

15:26 John Daub: Okay. Yeah, I'm going this way too towards Nihonbashi. I'm taking everybody there. Showing some of the alleys. All right. See you later. Nice to meet you.

15:34 John Daub: That was nice. So that was PewDiePie. No, I went to PewDiePie. I was startled because I didn't expect anybody to find me. That's nice though. I like it when people come say hi. It's been a long time since that's happened. This is the bus stop here for the Tokyo shuttle, they call it. This is the Keisei. And from this point with this yellow sign, you can get a bus to Narita airport for 1000 yen. And it's just as fast as Narita Express, if not faster. And I don't know why, but it's closed. As you can see here, the office is closed. I just don't think that they have the tourists to manage the price that they're giving. Yeah. So yeah, it looks like they have moved operations to back to this area. That's sad.

16:35 John Daub: So back to the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station, which is just over there. So you have to go back to that canopy. And there's a highway bus buses over there. It's interesting for me to take a look and see how the system has changed over without the tourists here. And so many have gone out of business or stopped. Hey, Irvonne's here. The Takara-kuji fund. Irvonne's funny. Thanks for that, brother. Let's see if we can get a drink here. What do they got? All right. So this is a Coca-Cola machine. I guess they haven't been here for a while. It's rare to see recyclables overflowing. Must have been a party last night. I've never seen this before. Oh, no, I've seen this. These are some tea, advanced, some kind of scientific grained tea. I love the grapefruit juice. It's really good.

17:44 John Daub: As you can see for Americans are always scratching their head. At least I did when I came here. The Coca-Cola for the same price for just 25 cents more, you can get double the amount of Coca-Cola. But the smaller ones are more popular in Japan because they're just too sweet. Japanese don't like such a sweet taste. They just want a little bit of it. So they're willing to save 25 cents on something they're not going to drink anyways. It's just a different culture. In America, it's like, what? No way I'm upgrading. Look at all that more I can get for so little. I sometimes just get this. They call it the Tansan. And I thought it was like Mr. Tan. And they're making a joke because I have a tan being from, you know, half Indian. But this is Tansan-sui. Tansan means sparkling water. So they've added in carbonation. So I often just get Tansan-sui, which tastes really good and it's refreshing without having the sugar.

18:48 John Daub: This is Coca-Cola's tea for the time being right now, I guess. There's a lot of people selling that one. And everybody loves the Royal Milk tea. Ah, but it's cold. These Royal Milk teas are cold. All right, I'm just going to get some sparkling water. This says it's super strong sparkling water. That means it's super strong carbonation. I'm in for that. I'm up for anything here. Let's get this. It's only 130 yen. That's a bargain. We'll see if we can find something else in route. What is that Demi Tasse? It's very fancy. No, it's sold out. What? Stinks. All right, I was kind of looking forward to that. This machine has seen some action. Sold out and overflowing. Amami. Go to a Famima. It's Famima. Very nice. Green tea is refreshing, but I would really love to have that sparkling water. Something about the bubbles. I learned that I don't really like Coca-Cola that much. I kind of just wanted the bubbles. Didn't need the sugar.

20:54 John Daub: The Cafe Excelsior. Me likey rare cheese cake. Very nice. Thank you. All right, down this alley here and some of the alleys, I'm going to take you down some of them. You're going to find some izakaya (Japanese pubs) and older shops here. One of my favorite shops, which I shouldn't be introducing to you at all. Was it the next alley over? There's an old shop that serves sake in barrels. Cedar barrels, Japanese cedar, and it's so delicious. I shouldn't tell you about it because it's a secret restaurant, but that's down that alley.

21:43 John Daub: And then there's this building and I really wanted to show you this. Those of you that have walked this way before and know exactly where I'm going. You're going to be shocked to see this building here. That's straight in front of you. This used to be a building that had a lot of plants and trees in it and it was maybe 12 stories high. Well, over the last few months. They knocked that down. Well, it started last year and they put this thing up so fast. Over there is the Bank of Japan and the coin museum. I'd love to go to the coin museum, but they turned down my request for filming. Kind of stinks.

22:34 John Daub: So I want to take you out here and we're going to take the long way to get the Nihonbashi. Tony P's in the house. How you doing? And Madhata. It's going pretty good. It's kind of hot. And the last John in welcome to the travelers. You have access to the new Hanabi emoji. Did anybody find the new Hanabi emoji? All right. Yesterday I took you to this Kayabacho-dori and we've just kind of connected it. Do you see Sotobori-dori the outside of the old Edo Castle moat Sotobori-dori and this is the route that will take you to Nihonbashi. I could go the other way to that street right here behind me will take you to Marunouchi back there and this way here will take you back to Kayabacho which is where I was yesterday. So I'm kind of connecting the dots now with these live streams basically by the end of this week. Probably will have connected most of the central area of Tokyo not including the other side which is Shibuya Shinjuku Harajuku. That's the one side of Tokyo. I heard that a lot of tourists like to go to I'm showing you a different side. This is the more of a historical side a lot more merchants were here markets were here. Nihonbashi Market was the big fish market before the 1923 earthquake Kanto earthquake hit and then the fish market moved to Tsukiji. That's just over there.

24:23 John Daub: I see people found that Hanabi emoji to celebrate the fireworks celebrations going on here. So we started here at the Nihonbashi entrance. We walked through Tokyo Station exited by Daimaru and we walked along Yaesu. There's Sakura-dori which no longer has sakura trees and we're walking here. Our final goal is just over here right there. So we're almost there. Let's keep going. Not very far to get the Nihonbashi gonna have to take a detour for this gimbal. Just is not as smooth as the other one. It's a nice day. The humidity is sort of gone down. It usually happens around August 25th. The humidity starts to die down and then on the next week September 1st humidity is gone or it's really really low compared to the beginning of August every year. It's like that. It's kind of like clockwork. It's amazing how the seasons just change on cue in Japan. Of course, there's typhoons every now and then that roll in off of the Pacific Ocean. There's some big that make it a little bit harder but that season doesn't come for well actually we're in the typhoon season right now. We have one coming this way.

26:28 John Daub: All right. If you were to make a right here you would get to Ginza taking left you get to Marunouchi. So I think it's pretty easy to see mentally if you've been to Tokyo where we are. Nihonbashi is a very convenient place. If you're thinking to stay here it's between Shibuya and Marunouchi. This is interesting. And you know. There are all 47 prefectures almost all 47 are represented in satellite shops. I love the Kochi satellite shop in Ginza which is not too far away from here. But this one is Nagasaki and going inside of here you can kind of see a little bit of Nagasaki in there. Here's Huis Ten Bosch which is a they've recreated like Holland into this amusement park. And it looks like I think that's the tower in. Oh what is that town? I'm starting to forget my Dutch geography. That's pretty special. And you can buy things from there.

27:34 John Daub: Okay we can walk through here for a second. It doesn't say no video. Oh cool. They have like Nagasaki masks. That's really cool. That's that bird that gets away viruses. And Nagasaki is very famous for Castella cakes. So this is. This one has gold in it. Very cool. Castella is this kind of a cake here. Some comes from Europe and they have some. These look like really good tea cups. I like that pattern. How you doing? Lots of confections from there. Oh look they're eating Nagasaki food in this little cafe bar here. How cool is that. All right. Let's get out of here. We got to keep moving. Very nice. Arigato Nagasaki. Thank you for a little tour.

28:52 John Daub: Over there is the Coredo building which is a very unique shape to it. It's hard to miss it. That's also a symbol that hey you are in Nihonbashi. You're no longer in the Tokyo Station area. You're in the Nihonbashi neighborhood. And here's Welcia which is the Duane Reade of Tokyo. No relation. Oh Kayabacho. We were there yesterday. 460 meters. That's so close to where we were. We have connected the dots. We're 580s. Welcome to the insider. Awesome. Rock on. Tony P. Smash the like button. And Tess Chonan. Welcome. It's great to see our family here.

29:57 John Daub: Across the street I introduced you to the Nagasaki shop. That's Shiga. It says Koko Shiga meaning here is Shiga Prefecture. And they have a lot of things from the Lake Biwa area which makes you feel all good and happy inside. There's the old Takashimaya. Very historical building that you can see. Looks like Macy's on 34th Street, New York. Sort of, not really, but kind of. And the new Takashimaya next to it with the Pokemon Cafe behind it. So, Kanae and I went there about two years ago. No, it was like a year and a half ago. You definitely should check out that video because we had an amazing meal at the Pokemon Cafe. Pikachu came out and said hi to us. Kanae wasn't even there. She like left. Whoa, what is that bus? It's a restaurant bus.

31:03 John Daub: As we walk around the city. Bradshaw Studios here. Always good to see your friends, Bradshaw Studio. This is kind of new as well. I'd say about three and a half years ago, the Coffee Bean made its way to Tokyo. I guess a lot of these foreign chains started to come because of the Olympics. You all want to get in on that. When the Olympics come, you want to have a Coffee Bean. You want to have your chain here. So you can get a Coffee Bean and tea. You can get a tea leaf coffee from here. But I think Kanae and I went in here once. He was like, yeah, it's all right. And then we left.

31:49 John Daub: Right in front of us happens to be Nihonbashi. Oh, look at these fans. I'm a fan of fans. The Sensu. These are different than the Uchiwa, which are the fans that I'm giving away for the fireworks project, which is nearing $40,000. Thank you. This is going to be such a massive fireworks festival we're having only in Japan. Hanabi Matsuri is on. So is lunch. Whoa. Look at that. Look at that dry curry. Do you see what they did there? They just they put it in the middle of a rice like a volcano. Look at that. Smart food should be fun. Like in Japan. I always thought that people love playing with food. That's how they came up with these awesome ideas.

32:49 John Daub: If you were to go straight on the street behind me, it takes you straight to Ginza. Again, like you can pretty much walk everywhere in Tokyo. It's extremely close. And I think I think it was about two or three live streams ago. I told you that if you take a look at the Tokyo Cheapo dot com guide to and there's another Kinko's coffee shop. This is a different one. If you take a look at the Tokyo Cheapo guide, you'll find that you don't need to get on the subway for a lot of hours. You can just walk. And if you calculate it using the guide of how long it is to walk between the stations, you realize that it's probably just as fast to walk as it is to ride the subway or just take a taxi and fill in the gap and save the time. Sometimes the taxis will taxi started now for dollars instead of seven dollars. So if you have two or three people, it's more economical to take a taxi than to ride the subway. Sometimes subway companies figured that out.

34:16 John Daub: Here's a little bit of the history of the Nihonbashi. Again, this is the first time I'm showing you this. This is sort of I'm going to touch it. People tell me not to touch stuff. But this is the old Nihonbashi, this beautiful, big wooden bridge from the Edo period that's represented in a lot of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. And now we have this and it's got this really ugly highway above it. And I'm a big proponent for knocking that down. And putting this somewhere else. I believe Japan's bridge should be celebrated. Nihonbashi. I have to touch stuff. I'm sorry. Here's the Nihonbashi Tourism Organization. There's some nice cruises that you can do from here. So if your hotel is here in Nihonbashi, take a cruise. You can just sit in that restaurant and watch some of the boats go by. But I got to be honest with you. This river is not a really beautiful river. I mean, it's this canal. It's okay.

35:20 John Daub: Harish HP, looking at your videos, I've fallen in love with Japan all over again and again. Thank you. That makes me really happy, Harish. Thank you. Jeff Roberts, do you feel that Tokyo losing its character, looking like every other large city in the world? That's a really good question. I don't know. That's really hard. I think every city, a city's job is to sort of evolve, I feel. You can't just keep it the way it is. You have to... A city is a place of commerce. You have to be competitive. That means you always have to renew the infrastructure. So I can understand, especially in this area, why they built this highway along the canals. It was just the easiest way to do it because the city owned the canals, the property there. And it wasn't that deep, the Kanda River, that they couldn't put this in here. So they did that. But took away from what... You used to be able to see Mount Fuji from here. But all the tall buildings and all the progress has taken that away. I think it's inevitable. But there's always going to be little pieces of the history, like this bridge where you remember old Japan. I don't know. There's some old buildings that are starting to get knocked down that we're losing. But there's always something, some kind of reminder of where we came from. And I do hope that some of the cities, and Tokyo especially, remembers to protect some of the places. There's been a big movement to keep Harajuku Station, the old building, and preserve that. So in order to make it up to code, they have to knock it down and rebuild it. In order to preserve it, they have to knock it down and rebuild it. So there are architects and there are structural engineers and photographers and people that are designing, are taking it pencil to paper and making the blueprints all over again, so that they can recreate it using modern technology.

37:22 John Daub: In the center, you'll see the Route 1 Nihonbashi. That's the Route 1 seal. This is very significant, that thing in the middle of the street. I can't actually walk out there. It's dangerous. But this signifies the start of all the roads going in all the different directions around Japan. The Nakasendo, the road that goes inside of the middle of Japan. The Tokaido that goes from here down to Kyoto. If you just go straight, down Route 1, you will get to Kyoto. This is the start of that highway. That's why Nihonbashi, Nihon meaning Japan, Bashi meaning bridge. This is the bridge of Japan and all roads started from this particular place. That's what makes this so significant. Whenever I come here, I can feel that energy. I believe there are seven roads that traveled all around this area of Japan from the city of Edo. Route 17 is a pretty neat route. I guess if you go this way, you can follow that all the way to the Sea of Japan through Niigata. That's Route 17. I rode my bicycle in 2005 up there. It's pretty interesting. That's the original marker that's in the middle of the road there. It's very significant. I know you're not supposed to touch stuff. I have alcohol there. It's so hot. I'm sure Coronavirus will just burn off of that thing.

38:55 John Daub: This connects up with all the other livestreams I've done. If you're a reader, you'll see the marker of the book Shogun. If you take a right, I believe it's this one, here and walk about 100 meters, you'll see the marker of where John Blackthorne's house was. His character was not John Blackthorne. I think it was John Adams. William Adams. William Adams' house. Actually, there's a marker standing to represent William Adams' house. Shogun. Shogun is the name of the book by Clavell, the author. My mind is fried. It's so hot out here. One of the best miniseries on TV in the 1980s, starring, I think it was Richard Chamberlain. But the book was incredible. And you learned about how they used rice as currency and about the lifestyle of the Edo period and how William Adams in the 1600s worked with Ieyasu Tokugawa, a foreigner, becoming the first samurai and the harshness of Japan back then. Wow. It's an amazing book.

40:22 John Daub: So there you have it. That's pretty much all I wanted to show you today. It's kind of a neat little area to walk around. And I think if you give it some time, you can have a pretty good afternoon wandering the alleys of Nihonbashi as well. Behind here, the Takashimaya is the Pokemon Cafe. You'll find a lot of hidden little restaurants with history going all the way back to the Taisho era or the Meiji era. This is where a lot of the businesses started. Many of them started the businesses here and then moved to different locations as well. But on a beautiful day like this, I cannot not take you down somewhere in the city.

41:16 John Daub: Oh, I just finished that green tea. That was so good. Any questions? Yeah, I'd love another pistachio milk. Where are the animal cafes where you can play with animals? They're in all the tourist areas. Kichijoji, Asakusa has a few. You're not going to find any here. This is more a central business district.

42:20 John Daub: I was going to send this in the Daimaru packages to Patreon supporters. You can get little matchbox cars of the police cars. They're not too expensive and they're pretty light to send. I want to do a ride along. I bet you nothing happens. There's not a lot of crime. A ride along would be boring. They just kind of drive around making jokes. I don't know what they do in there. What do you do in a country with very little violent crime? Don't tease me, bro. That doesn't happen here. Oh, the mango sandwich. As Tess writes in here. Thanks, Tess Chonan. So the mango sandwich was really good. We weighed it. It was about 350 grams total for that mango sandwich. Yeah, basically we ate like three slices of the bread and just ate the mango. We didn't really need the sandwich. So we started scratching our heads and said we could have just bought a mango for half the price. So skip the sandwich, just eat the mango. I don't know. It was really good though. She gave me half her mango sandwich, which basically was half a mango.

43:52 John Daub: Just sent a postcard to a member in Florida before I started the live stream. So that's on the way. I believe Jim was his name and also another patron supporter from Indonesia. So appreciative of the support, guys. The postcard club has grown so much and that means a lot to me because that's the main support for the series. All right, let's go down this alley because alleys are awesome. I got to go back this way anyways because I got to pick up the bicycle. Technically, the live stream has ended. This is bonus time. And for insiders, I will have one more secret stream. It's secret so I can't tell everybody, but for insiders, I have secret streams. Like they're really not promoted at all. It's a secret. I love the alleys. You always discover these new places. That's like a hamburg shop. Motsuyaki. Very cool. Here's another shop. Secret. Sakaba. Got some good stuff here. That's a nice looking karaage set.

45:44 John Daub: Hey, Keith Tan, welcome. Traveler. Oh, there's a postman. All right, the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station, which is pretty much the walk that we did, we kind of skirted around it, is filled with izakayas and restaurants. And if you are staying in this area, in Kayabacho yesterday, where I took you the live stream there, you're going to find down this street so many izakayas open late. Do you see it? Just on the left and the right, lots of colored signs. Bars, karaoke places, every place that you should probably be avoiding because it's pandemic. You can find that here. Just have to point that out.

46:39 John Daub: All right, here's the shop that I don't want to introduce you to. All right, so all of you, forget what I'm about to show you, okay? Don't write this down and don't remember this. This is Tsujita, which is a ramen place that's very popular. And there's already four people lining there. But, all right, this is the shop that I don't want you to know about. All right, just forget about it. Don't come here ever. Just forget that I just showed you the shop. It's called Fukube. It's a very old shop. We've done this on Tokyo Eye before, on NHK World. And he serves extremely traditional food. And he serves, it's one of the only places in Tokyo where they still serve sake in cedar barrels. And you can see one right out there. The taste of it is incredible. It takes the taste of the cedar barrels all the way to your glass. I love it. It's Junbi-chu, so they're preparing for the meal. You typically would need a reservation, but if you get here early when they first open, sitting at the counter is awesome. But just forget that I introduced this place to you because I don't want you to come here. All right, just, I want to be transparent. Don't come here because it's a secret. I shouldn't, I don't even know why I'm introducing it to you now. Don't come to Fukube because I don't want it to get crowded and popular. Like this place, the ramen place next door. Go to the ramen place, eat your ramen, get out, but don't come to Fukube because it's secret. All right? It's so good. Don't go there.

48:18 John Daub: Put that out there. It's a gyoza restaurant. They got enough business. The place is packed all the time. That's another reason why I don't want you to go there. And the other reason I don't want you to go there is because a lot of tourists bring their suitcases. There's no room for your suitcases. It creates trouble. And, yeah. Don't go there. I don't want them to have business. They don't need me to promote them. There's some restaurants, they don't need the business. That's one of them. It just creates more chaos. Anyways, you can't come anyway, so it's okay. It's true. They've been in operation so long in this very busy area of Tokyo and everybody local knows about them. Like that keg of beer in there, I see you. So they don't need your business. And I'm also happy that I'm not half joking. I mean, you don't introduce a place. Like, nobody has sense of humor. There's like five people right now watching that have zero sense of humor that are going, wait, he's saying don't go. He's not taking everything literal. Everything is literal. You can tell people not to do it. Usually they do it. That's how it works. Right? Am I wrong? John's so mean. That's right. I'm mean.

49:54 John Daub: Hey, fan from the Philippines. Hey, Isa. I've been getting a lot of messages from the Philippines. It's awesome. It's like Philippines is our neighbors. It's our neighbors down from the south. So the typhoons start down in the Philippines and then they come up here to say hello. The typhoon coming through. All right. So this is pretty much where I ended. I parked my bike on the other side in a, you have to pay sometimes now. I think it's free for about an hour. Yeah, you get one hour of parking for free and then you got to start paying 100 yen. Machines could sense me and was saying hi. Hey, Rick Hennings here. Thanks, Rick. And Todd News is a traveler. Welcome. We just we just got another spot for an emoji. So we have 26 emoji, which is amazing. So I'm going to add another one in there. Got to think if you have some ideas, let me know. There's always space for another Kanae emoji. Some fireworks emoji, something, something from Japan. Maybe I'll take a poll in the travelers. I'll be adding some more photos into the travelers level as well. But share for the insider stuff. It's shared with our Patreon supporters. So if you're a postcard club, you're going to get some of the same stuff as an insider member here.

51:38 John Daub: All right, folks, that's that's about it. There's a Sarah Betts up there. I believe they make pound cake or something. They make pretty good pancakes too. Hey, Leon Nelson, Chua from Philippines. Awesome. See our neighbors from the south. Do you do karaoke? Yeah, sometimes. Not lately. That's where they had this like barbecue zone before they started the construction. They had this as like a park with barbecues. And then once that finished, they started the construction. And look how fast they started construction in February. And look how fast that building went up. That's crazy. You see it right in the center of your screen. Amazing progress. They're so good at building here in Japan. So fast. Like these buildings up here are all pretty much new. Every year it grows so much, the city. And I do worry about losing its identity. But city, city finds a way. It finds a way to balance itself out.

52:50 John Daub: Again, like I guess the last word I have on this is that all the cities in the world, they're kind of a microcosm of the entire country, right? And it's a reason for you when you do come to visit Japan not to spend all of your time in the city of Tokyo. But get out to the countryside where there is that history, where they don't knock things down for progress. They preserve their culture a lot more. Tokyo is like the economic heartbeat and the political center of Japan. But really it's the countryside where you start to feel what Japan really is. Tokyo is not Japan. Tokyo is Tokyo. It's a part of Japan. But if you really want to get deep into Japan's, into feeling like it, stay at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, for a couple of nights anywhere in the countryside. Anywhere. Takayama. Central Kyoto is great. But get out of the city, you know what I mean? Get out and stay in Hachiman-yama, Omihachiman, which is where I was last month in Shiga Prefecture. Or stay in the countryside of Chiba or up in Fukushima in Bandai, in the Bandai area, the Aizuwakamatsu area of Fukushima. It's so old. It has a history going back that's preserved before the Edo period. So those are the kind of things that I would like to do. I look for, when I'm trying to absorb Japanese culture, not so much finding that here in the city of Tokyo. It's a great city. I love the energy here in Tokyo, but it is not, it does not define what Japan is. And in that sense, I probably am always going to be okay with the progress that we see here in the city. But I know that the countryside will always retain the charm that makes you fall in love with this country over and over and over again. That's what you look for. But I live in Tokyo. Nothing wrong with that. Hope you enjoyed it. Hi from Yokohama, Japan, Suika 98. That's another beautiful city that has so much charm, Yokohama. Have a good day. Have a good night, everybody. I'll be back in the live stream again tomorrow. Bye from Tokyo Station, Nihonbashi.