00:00:09 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? It is now about three o'clock in the morning here, and as you can see, Akihabara Station is closed. I had a job in Ueno. I was filming inside of JR Ueno Station for a job, after hours when the staff is cleaning the station. I'm riding my bicycle back, so I thought I would share with you Akihabara in the middle of the night. Yeah, it's kind of like a zombie apocalypse. It's so quiet. The last train for JR station is between 1 and 1:30, and the staff make announcements that you cannot sleep inside of the station. They kick you out, and they close the doors.

00:00:53 John Daub: Now, for the next 15-20 minutes, I'm going to walk around this area, which is so famous. This is Denki Town or Denki exit. There's Radio Kaikan, and this is 3 a.m. There's virtually nobody here. There's a lot of people who are giving services. Again, the city never really sleeps, although it does sort of feel like it does right now. This is the Tsukumo building, which has been shut down because of the pandemic. They just didn't have enough people to fill those hamster tubes. So let's walk out to Chuo Dori.

00:01:35 John Daub: Shane, I'm live. So I just chimed in here. Are you live? Yeah, I'm live. It is really quiet. Hey, I see Gil's here. How you doing? Akihabara night. I don't know. I think a lot of tourists, if you were here, probably would be suffering from jet lag and be awake as well. And if you are, I highly recommend. I mean, it wouldn't be recommendable in any other city in the world to be walking around in the middle of the night like this, except for maybe Tokyo, right? Hey, Jason. Yes, I'm still awake. Just returning from a job. And the images here are of Akihabara at three in the morning, which is crazy, right? But I'm awake. I'm riding my bicycle. I'm going home. I might as well bring you something really unique.

00:03:06 John Daub: Hey, Edo's here. Get something nice from a vending machine. I'll try to get something warm from a vending machine. I'm freezing. So right now it's three in the morning for those joining us. That's the exit for Akihabara Station right there. It's so quiet here. And just for a moment, I'm going to walk with you. Now, this I thought was the weirdest view of them all. There's nobody here. This is the crossing to the Sega with the Chuo Line going above. I think that's the Chuo Line, right? Yeah. And there's not a soul. It's so quiet. There are a couple of people down there. That's the first people I've seen in a while.

00:04:01 John Daub: State of emergency pretty much doesn't have any bite to it. For people, there's no curfew. I got to do my job, which is filming. A lot of the trash trucks are out here. Again, essential services are still going on. But is this not the most bizarre view? I'm going to pan back around. That's where the vending machine is. The breaded pork cutlet vending machine. Just do a quick pan. That's it. That's the last car. Oh, there's one right there. It's another trash truck. The thing is that this light is not going to change. I stood here for like four minutes and the light doesn't change. I guess you just walk even though it's red. There's nothing to make the light change. So I'm just going to do that right now. Again, this is Chuo Dori. This is crazy. It's so empty.

00:05:47 John Daub: I don't remember a time where I've seen Akihabara this empty ever. It's almost surreal. I'm just going to walk down here, show you this street, and then I'm going to come back this way because it is kind of creepy. Yes, this would be social distancing. I don't know if this would be social distancing at its finest. It's a little bit too creepy to be fine of anything. What's with these here? What happened here? What is going on here? Is this some sort of game? These are all styrofoam cups that just fallen. Styrofoam trays that have fallen onto the street here.

00:06:50 John Daub: Toby is at work. Yes. The crows. They come at the crack of dawn and they just start ripping apart bags that are unprotected with nets. Oh, this is so creepy. This is where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is. And that's the mysterious vending machine where I bought Christmas presents for Simon and Martina and Peter von Gomm. Right there. Surprise Cat Tea Midnight Alley Challenge. Let's go. Oh, I don't want. I'm not going down any alleys. If I see a zombie, I'm running the other way. Where there's probably another zombie waiting for me.

00:07:46 John Daub: Crowbar Reed. Hey John, nice to catch you live. Have you ever returned the rubies? I did not take it. And it was a misunderstanding. Get a hot drink. Keep your pockets warm. It's the best advice. And Shane Lambie. Vending Machine Fund. We'll find something around here. Air to the RON. Very unique. You will be able to make a pandemic documentary Only in Japan style. If you did, this would be the images here. Edo. Thanks again there. Just looking through here. Ranjit's here. Enjoy a late night snack or morning. More like breakfast, Ranjit.

00:08:33 John Daub: This is typically full of maids. But now, of course, because we're in the middle of the night, there's nobody here. Not a soul. Except for me. And you. You're here. And a lot of garbage trucks. These are all cold. No. Don't need a coffee. There's something really pretty about the streets at night, isn't there? Just something about Tokyo's streets. The way that the light kind of reflects off of the road. The blinking lights of Akihabara. There's a Super Potato. They're closed. Lot of trucks making deliveries at this time of night. There's a real calmness to this area, isn't there? At this time of night.

00:10:29 John Daub: Hey Nagi A. Hi John. When are you releasing episode 2 of Green Tea? Probably in May. It's going to be a few months. Got to wait for the tea to grow and the snow to melt. Hey Irvin. Walking around for that Sony A7. If I find one in the street, it's mine. Moby7944. Suazo, thank you. Hey you. Bob Joe. Even more vending machine funds. I think I'm going to have to stop at a vending machine to appease the audience. Let's look over here. We did find a unique vending machine over here. I don't want to make this too long because Kanae is going to get angry. He's like, why did you just come home right away? I said, look, I got to stop at Akihabara because it's 3 in the morning and there's nobody here. I'm wide awake.

00:11:32 John Daub: All right. This is a really weird vending machine here. This is where the vending machine ramen was seven years ago, but now they don't have that. Instead here they have mango cider, watermelon cider, durian. I drank that with Mike Chen in his episode. That was nasty. I'm not having that. And melon cider. And then they have hot oden, which is pretty nasty. But I'm not hungry. Oh, I saw I found corn soup. That sounds nice. I found mapo soup. There's like mapo tofu in a can. They only sell that at JR stations, though. The corn soup looks really good. I'm going to have to get that because it's going to warm me up. Tomato. Oh, there's the Demon Slayer coffee from before. All right. Let's get this here.

00:12:46 John Daub: This one says it's got from Daido. Daido is the good stuff, right? Oh, no, this one looks good. This one is the Bistro Boss. I like Tommy Lee Jones, so I'm going to support him. If Boss can make more money, they'll keep bringing Tommy Lee over. Tommy Lee is American. So I feel like I'm supporting Tommy Lee right now. Where's the 10 yen coin? Oh, here's one. Tommy Lee, this is for you, buddy. Come back to Japan. Oh, it's so warm. Oh, it's nice and warm. Oh, this is wonderful. That was so loud. The sound just echoing. Opening up a can in the streets of Akihabara where you can hear it. It's crazy. All right, kanpai, I guess in a way it's kanpai. Oh, this is so good. It's not too salty. But it's got that natural sweetness of corn. It's good.

00:14:31 John Daub: Oh, thank you, Jennifer French and everybody. This hits the spot. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, look, they got some strawberry milk here. That was good. It's like a meal. I got some corn in here. Hey, George. And go stazze. Hey, John. Big snowstorm approaching NYC. Oh, wow. I thought there'd be a snowstorm hitting this area, too. But we haven't had one in Tokyo. And when there's a snowstorm going around Japan, Tokyo was pretty warm. Wow, we just don't need any snow in New York City. I think New York's getting pounded with a bunch of stuff. The last thing they need is a bunch of slush all over the city. But if you got to stay inside anyways, I guess it's okay if it's snowing.

00:15:41 John Daub: Got to call my folks. You can see the Taito game centers. Hope the colors and the low light's okay with the iPhone 12 Pro I'm using right now. Like, he's writing his book. I'm gonna take a bike across the street on the red light. But the light never turns green. So, I'm panning around now. This is Chuo Dori. This is, uh, I'm gonna cross the street and show you that iconic view of Akihabara looking back down Chuo Dori. Hey, Ken Radley from Halifax. Long time no see. Hey, Ken. How you doing? I hope you're staying warmer than I am. It's a little bit chilly. But if you're in Halifax, probably not. You're probably cold up there.

00:17:01 John Daub: You know what? I think it's gonna change. Boom. Oh, hey, check it out. They took away all the gachapon that Peter von Gomm and I were investigating just the other day. They're all gone. They gotta, they gotta put in a lot of gachapon. There's a couple of hundred that were out here. I'm now looking back from Bic Camera down Chuo Dori. This is the iconic view of these buildings here. And if you look, you got, um, especially this is a 16-9 aspect ratio. The picture, screen, picture, screen size. Um, when the Chuo Line, which of course is not gonna be going, you see on the left side, is moving across the train. And you have the view of this, the red Sega building, that yellow one over there, the orange ticket, discount ticket shop. It's kind of a neat little view. And with the billboards of anime manga characters, it's so Akihabara, right? And maybe you have an itasha. An itasha (anime-wrapped car) is a pretty cool sight.

00:18:08 John Daub: This takes you down to Yodobashi Camera. Hey, Image Alley, chocolate cake is my go-to 3 a.m. snack. Oh geez, that's really, wow. I'm now I'm craving chocolate cake. Look what you've done. There are convenience stores open, but I'm not gonna, I'm on a diet. Serious one. Um, if you look down here, you know what would be really creepy? To go to the secret shrine at 3 a.m. That would be scary as... To go down that alley at 3 a.m. No, that's not gonna happen. That's not gonna happen. That would be creepy AF. There's the Don Quixote, that yellow sign, the yellow sign behind the yellow sign.

00:19:02 John Daub: Hey, Miss Antiflo. Hi from Saskatchewan. My husband and I love watching your adventures. Keep up the good work. Say hi to Kanae. She is too adorable and she's asleep. She's so asleep. And she's gonna kill me when she sees this in the morning. Why didn't you come home? It's 4 o'clock. How'd you get in at 4? And I'll be making breakfast tomorrow, let's just say, if I ever wake up. Champagne sumo. Hello, good sir. Maybe this stream can be inspiration for a samurai or zombie video game. That would be pretty cool. All right, where's my bike? I'd like to see that. These are some pretty good video game ideas. Anything with zombies, I'm sold. In... not in real life. Of course. Here's my bike.

00:20:18 John Daub: Hey, Manuel Picado. Hi, John. Greetings from Costa Rica. Awesome. New to the channel and enjoying it a lot. Katayama's here. Stay up and make breakfast. Or make breakfast and go to bed and leave it with a note saying, good morning. Have some waffles. How do I make that without making any noise, though? It's gonna be a hard one. Kanae's not waking up till 10 a.m. So I'll probably just wake up at 10 a.m. I'll wake up with a few hours of sleep. I'll be fine. I've got a lot of editing to do tomorrow. I actually had to ride my bicycle to Ueno Station and the job didn't start until 1 a.m. And I'm filming them cleaning the station. They do a deep clean every day in the middle of the night when they close the stations. And it's a fascinating, fascinating look inside of the life of a JR station. And Ueno Station just has a lot of history to it. They have a range of different kinds of toilets as well, which I got to see. I got to film tonight.

00:21:19 John Daub: And on my way back, I thought I would just bring you a little bit and show you Akihabara at 3 a.m. And it's just so unique. And typically in Japan, the sun will start rising at around 4, 4:45 in the summer, 4:30. In fact, you'll start to see glimmers of light around 4:15. And we're getting closer to that. But in the winter right now, it's not gonna get bright until around 5:30, 6 o'clock. Basically, we just have a lot of garbage trucks. One day at 3 a.m. I will be back. And when I do, I'm gonna go down that alley. But I'm not going down there because that's just scary. That's way too scary. Oh, see what they got here before I get back on the bike and ride away.

00:22:06 John Daub: Oh, there's an Itoen vending machine. I was searching all through Shizuoka to find one of these because I wanted to get it for the green tea. And now I find an Itoen green tea vending machine. And how do they swing the deal with Pocari Sweat? It's made by Otsuka Seiyaku, I think. Itoen is pretty good. I didn't know Itoen had a deal with Tully's too. Tully's Coffee. Nothing unusual. I did find mapo dofu soup in a can that's being sold at the JR stations. I thought that was pretty interesting. True story. Oh, Japan. I love Japan. Taste is indeed. It's good. Well, they had tomato soup broth too. I like that. Drinks don't have to be just sweet. They can be salty a little bit. Tomato soup, corn soup. Some of the good go-to's.

00:23:17 John Daub: That's Akihabara Station. Just loop around here. We'll look at the other side. That building straight ahead is where I don't know how much longer that white building in front of you is going to be around because it was made like after World War Two. Just put up there because they wanted to just to sell shops and that early Showa-era building is still there. But I'm not sure for how long. It's prime real estate and I'm sure they're going to build a high-rise something there. Look at all these shops that are closed. Total absence of homeless and people in this area. No one is sleeping out on the streets and that's a good sign. People got a home or they're being taken care of on a cold night. That right there is the entrance to the other side of the entrance of Akihabara Station.

00:24:34 John Daub: Oh, I found a McDonald's. Hey, Joe Kenney. It's here from Wisconsin. I booked to come to Japan in the first week of May. Hopefully I'll be vaccinated by then in travel restrictions are lifted. That would be great. May is an awesome time. That is my favorite month to travel around Japan. Tech D. Ak from Switzerland. Thanks for all the insights you're bringing my wife and myself are missing Japan a lot and can't wait to get back to Japan. I'm going to travel to Japan again, but again, I don't think it's going to be too long. But right now is a really tough time. The numbers are really going down in Japan. I don't know why. There's just lots of conspiracy theories on that, but we're still in a state of emergency and I believe it's been extended even longer because of the UK variant. But I don't want to talk too much about that. You can read the news yourself right now for the next couple of minutes. Just enjoy Akihabara and I'm going to start walking back to my bicycle and ride my bike home because I want to go home now.

00:25:58 John Daub: Writes in Shane. I don't know what that's referring to. It's uh I guess it's around 3:30 now. If I could eat any food in Japan what would it be? Probably right now I don't know I would like an Egg McMuffin but if it had to be one Japanese food probably katsudon maybe? Katsudon is so good. Oyakodon. Oh I don't know. Well what would be good? Hiroshima okonomiyaki. Just really good sushi maybe? Yeah Japanese beef bowl. Gyudon. Speaking of Japanese food, what we got here? Everything but Japanese food. This looks so Western. That's the karaoke full block of toast with cream. Curry rice is always a good go-to, but I don't know. I don't think it's easy to beat. It's going to be hard to beat really good sushi, okay? It's hard to beat really good sushi. Curry was pretty good.

00:27:36 John Daub: Deep fried sushi. That wouldn't be sushi anymore. You can get tempura sushi, by the way. Whoa, that truck is trucking. Did you see that? That guy's going like 100 kilometers an hour. Whoa, he's really in a hurry to pick up trash. All right, thanks for joining me. This is not as creepy when you're here joining me on a live stream in Akihabara. I really do appreciate it. I do have a Discord server. We are talking 24 hours a day. We could use some Nitro boosts because we're down to 30, and our moderators say always promote our wonderful Discord server. I'm on Twitter now, so you can tweet me if you want to. Just tweet me. Only in Japan. If you tweet me, I'll tweet you back.

00:28:46 John Daub: There's another dump truck, or garbage truck. Man, they love to drive around. If I was in a zombie apocalypse, a dump truck is the way to go. Those things are impenetrable. I guess that's why in the zombie apocalypse, there were a lot of dump trucks just around because they were doing their job. That's why you can pick them up, and they're so high off of the ground so you can just run over the zombies with them. Very powerful, but they do take a lot of fuel. They do take a lot of fuel, garbage trucks. Probably hurrying to get to sleep. That's probably what I'm going to be doing in a second. All right, everybody. We didn't see a crime of passion or any kind of dangerous situation, but it is nice to walk the streets of Akihabara, and it's good to be back live streaming regularly. I got a lot of episodes coming. I got to get to work, but for the next week I'll just be editing at home and bringing you some stories live streaming around the area, maybe in the middle of the night because it is pretty cool.

00:31:16 John Daub: All right, everybody. Good night or good morning, I guess. And I, oh, can I have breakfast? See ya. Fungus USMC, are we all witnessing a crime on live stream? Possibly. And Ramsey Silent, hey, long time no see. Pick something up for breakfast. For someone who will remain unnamed, I was never here. I was going to make waffles, buddy, but I might just go pick up something from the bakery instead. That's actually a good idea. I don't think the bakery is going to be open yet, but thanks for that. And Mickey D, thanks for joining us as a traveler. And Ghost Williams, a new traveler. Got to put in some middle of the night Akihabara emojis. Don't know what to put in there. Just, I don't know. If I hide behind this pole with this creepy sticker, possibly we'll see another crime.