00:00:00 John Daub: Greetings and welcome to the top of the Kite building right in front of the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station on a beautiful day in the city of Tokyo. How you doing everybody? In this live stream I'm going to be talking about the changes in the JR East rail passes for 2021. I'm also going to be telling you a really interesting story about that building behind us. So you don't want to miss watching to the end as I explain it, but while I talk about the passes we're going to be walking around this really beautiful area which gives you almost a 360-degree view of the city of Tokyo from here, which is fascinating. You also get an amazing view of the Shinkansen right down here as they pull into Tokyo Station going to destinations as far as Kagoshima on one side and Hokkaido on the other side.

00:51:00 John Daub: Most of the changes with the passes are involving the JR East Tohoku area pass and also the JR East Nagano-Niigata passes. There's a lot of them so buckle in for the next 20 minutes or so as I go through as many of them as I can. Oh here we go, you already see a Shinkansen from this. This is a much better viewpoint than being down at the base of Marunouchi Station in Tokyo Station. You can see all the Shinkansen from here. So I think if I get over to that corner over there we're going to have an amazing view. Starting on April 1st, 2021, as we see the Tokaido Shinkansen start to make its way towards Osaka and there's the Yamanote line as well.

01:44:00 John Daub: Starting on April 1st, 2021, there's going to be some big changes to the rail passes especially in this region which is JR East. JR East is the Tokyo area and it goes up towards Tohoku including parts of Niigata and Nagano. It's pretty exciting and there goes the rest of the Shinkansen. That's the Yamagata Shinkansen? No, hold on. Oh gosh, sometimes I forget which Shinkansen that is. It could be the Hokuriku Shinkansen or the Joetsu Shinkansen. There's so many different kinds of Shinkansen. On April 1st the passes will change. The pass that is most interesting to me is the JR East rail pass for the Tohoku area. Tohoku includes Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Miyagi, Fukushima and Yamagata. All six of the prefectures up there. It's an area that was really hit hard during the Great Tohoku Earthquake of March 11th, 2011, one which I had to live through and went up there to help volunteer some of the recovery soon after that.

02:55:00 John Daub: We're going to be remembering the 10th anniversary of that event coming up and I'm going to be working with JR East to promote the JR East rail pass which is super exciting because for the first time foreign residents living here in Japan, not on a tourist visa, have access to this pass. Now last year JR East started a Welcome Rail Pass which allowed for three consecutive days of travel for 12,000 yen or about $120. That was the first time outside of the Tokyo Wide Pass that I had access to a rail pass. And of course the Seishun 18 Kippu (youth 18 ticket), which is a local train pass that allows you five days of consecutive travel on local trains only that even Japanese can use. But this pass really opened up Tohoku to me and I was able to make a couple of Only in Japan episodes using it. Now with this pass it opens up travel for longer periods of time.

03:56:00 John Daub: This one pass that I'm going to introduce you to first—see here I got the information right here—is the JR East Tohoku Pass and this pass on the top here, 20,000 yen, is the price for it. You can pick up this ticket almost anywhere inside of Tokyo Station. There's about three windows I believe you can do in the front near the Japan Rail Cafe. You can also get the ticket in Japan Post at the Marunouchi north entrance or exit and there's also across from there another tour area sales point where you can get that ticket. Those places close at 4 pm so you might want to get that ticket pretty early. But more importantly you can get those tickets online and there is a link in the description of this video where you can go and check out those tickets, purchase them online and then you can pick them up even at Ueno Station. There is a vending machine where you show your passport and pick it up. Now there are a couple of things that you have to remember with these passes.

05:02:00 John Daub: We can go over here and have a seat and again I want you to stay tuned because that station back there has a really interesting story that ties Tokyo Station with Tohoku. I was shocked when I first heard this story so you're gonna want to stick around for that. I'll get to it in about five or six minutes. All right, so now that I have two hands let's go over some of this news. On April 3rd I'm gonna be doing a rail adventure—this is the coolest thing in the world. Some of you might have seen a press release on Japan Today, which is a big news site for news here in Japan in English. On April 3rd I will be departing from Tokyo Station to Shin-Aomori on a ceremonial Shinkansen that I will be riding with my friend Peter von Gomm and 100 people are invited to ride this train. This is super cool and I don't think we've ever done anything like this before. Check it out, so this is the banner for it and you can actually see this on the JR website. I'll put the link in the description too if you're interested.

06:27:00 John Daub: The purpose of this is to help promote the new pass but more importantly help promote Tohoku and tourism up there. You can see there I am in the corner—I'm a popular YouTuber, that's nice. Then 100 people can ride with me and join. Actually we've had a hundred people sign up but only 20 have paid so you actually have to pay in order to get this ticket. There's still some available despite the fact that we've gotten a hundred people quite interested. This trip is gonna start on April 3rd and it is a bargain—it's 15,000 yen. I was talking with the people from JR about this—this is so cool. You don't just get a pass, you're gonna get this Welcome Suica (IC card), which I've never seen before because I live in Japan—these are for tourists usually. It's a 28-day Suica pass so you can only use this for 28 days and expires but you get to keep the card and take it home. The reason why is because you don't have to pay the 500 yen deposit and a lot of tourists would pay the deposit and then depart for their airplane and not get that 500 yen back so they made this special.

07:56:00 John Daub: But if you join us on this trip you get one of these Welcome Suicas too because Suica is pretty cool. Next up you get this mask and this is the first time for me to see this mask. You get swag—Toro Toro Porco, you absolutely get swag. I'm kind of excited about this. You get a special JR mask that celebrates Tohoku—check this out, this is so festive. So you get one of these which you can wear proudly all around the entire country of Japan but more importantly Tohoku because that's where we're gonna be going on this trip. So you get this mask and you get a JR East rail pass for the Tohoku area as well which is super cool and it's a 5,000 yen savings on the price of the pass. Your pass will start on April 3rd so you have five days after it starts to explore Tohoku. We're hoping that the hundred people on this trip will be able to see this and I'm sure they'll be able to see this special Shinkansen train—this is our train. All right so it's just gonna be us on there.

09:07:00 John Daub: This special pass you're gonna be able to start your Tohoku adventure which means with this pass you can explore Tohoku on the Shinkansen as much as you want—mostly geared towards foreign residents of Japan. So if you're living here in Japan, there goes the Shinkansen right there, you get a chance to ride the Shinkansen for five days for 15,000 yen which is a discount on the price which is really nice. You can get a free pass for 20,000 yen which is really incredible. There's a lot of perks to doing this so I hope I see you all there. Part of the Visit Tohoku Find Japan and there's some information here—you get a 20,000 pass, a 1,000 yen Welcome Suica, it's part of the swag, you get five percent off goods at the JR Cafe items at the Japan Rail Cafe which is actually pretty cool. Grab a coffee and you get this mask—I've only this is the first time I've seen the mask in real life, it's pretty comfortable. And then on the third there's a ceremony on the platform which I'm gonna be live streaming to you which is gonna be really awesome. We only ask that you share some of the stuff on your trip which you're probably gonna do anyways on Instagram or something—it's pretty cool.

10:24:00 John Daub: So all of this information is in the link that I have below. I'm pretty excited about sharing with you that trip going up to Tohoku so Peter von Gomm and I will be live streaming on the platform and I'll see you guys in the next video—the platform on April 3rd, I hope you join us for that, it's gonna be pretty exciting. Some of the other changes with the passes so one of the biggest changes that I noticed when I got the rail pass a couple of days ago. I went up to—oh check it out, Dr. Yellow! This is so rare, this happens like—oh that's so rare, I'm blown away. That's the train that tech checks the integrity of the tracks—Dr. Yellow is what it's called and they don't have a schedule on that so you just see that by chance. Maybe that's the third or fourth time in my 23 years that I've seen that go by—that's kind of in itself big news.

11:32:00 John Daub: Let's get back to business here. The normal Japan Rail Passes—JR East and the JR all-country rail pass—nothing has changed. This is a pass that will stay the way it was and if you have taken a JR rail pass for the entire country before, that's going to be the same. The rail passes that have had the biggest changes are the JR East rail pass for the Tohoku area, the JR East rail pass for the Nagano-Niigata area. Both those two passes will now allow foreign residents of Japan to utilize the Shinkansen and this is a first and kind of big news. You can get those passes at any of the windows that are selling it for tourists, but especially in the north entrance of the Marunouchi side of the station. Second big change with the pass—there was the kind like the Japan Rail Pass where in order to exit the turnstiles to get out you had to show a station staff the pass. The new tickets are now magnetic, meaning they can go through the ticket gates so you don't have to wait for somebody to check your pass—you can go straight through.

12:46:00 John Daub: So this should make your transition from getting from the train and out into the station a lot faster because sometimes there can be quite a queue to get out of the station in front of that area. Let's turn around and look at the station while I go over some of this news. You can see some of these Shinkansen—I'm so blown away that we just saw Dr. Yellow, you have no idea how rare that is. Wow, I'm super stoked about that. Passes until now you had to show to the station master at the exit gates but now there are more ticket types so you just have to—you don't have to show anybody, you just exit which makes it super easy. And those are passes that are starting—they're not going to be sold until April 1st. I think the JR East Welcome Rail Pass is being sold right now and you have until the 26th to buy that one—that's also can be used at the ticket gates.

13:50:00 John Daub: There are a bunch of other passes here in the JR East side of things—JR East Pass Tokyo area, JR East Pass Nagano-Niigata area. JR Tokyo Wide Pass is changed—it's gone from a paper pass that you had to show to now a ticket you can use at the ticket gates to get out. The next, the Narita Express Tokyo round trip ticket also—I think you can't use the automatic gates for that one. It's a lot of information. There's always so many Shinkansen on the platforms—it's super cool. Frank the Tank's here drinking a 500ml Asahi—good man. On April 3rd by the way Peter von Gomm and I are going to be getting a bunch of ekiben (station bento). So that's going to be pretty exciting.

14:40:00 John Daub: Here are the prices of the passes—I think I wanted to go over this one more time. The JR East Rail Pass in Japan with tax it's 20,360 yen and for overseas visitors there's a little bit of a discount—I think has to do with the taxes. So you're not getting shafted here. But the new price is just an even 20,000 yen—you can see very easily on the graph here. This includes the Tohoku area and the Nagano-Niigata area pass is even a little bit cheaper. But keep in mind the Tohoku area is huge so you're going to get a lot more travel on this one. The Hokuriku Arch Pass has been simplified but this is not available to foreign residents of Japan, only tourists. Hokuriku by the way is Kanazawa if you're not sure—that'll arch over from Tokyo going towards the Sea of Japan.

16:01:00 John Daub: JR East to South Hokkaido Rail Pass—that price has been simplified and I'm going to talk about the third change in a second here. And the Tohoku South Hokkaido Rail Pass again the price has gone up but you get more for it. So they've realized that people are using the passes—they want longer extended periods. So it's now six day pass instead of a five day pass which is actually good news because Hokkaido you kind of need that extra day. Again the JR Rail Pass the typical one that includes the entire country—the price has not changed. The third big change—you ready for this? The JR East Pass for the Tohoku area used to have two kinds of them—there used to be five days within a two week period and then a five day consecutive. The pass is now consolidated into only five day consecutive so you can start that pass at any time. Once you go through the ticket gates it starts the pass and then you have five days to use the pass meaning you can't break it off. So actually it's a bargain in itself.

17:17:00 John Daub: One trip on the Shinkansen from Tokyo Station to Shin-Aomori which is up in the north, the furthest point I believe you can go on this pass with the Shinkansen—yes Shin-Aomori. And where are we going to be going on April 3rd? That's 14,000 yen so a one way trip just to Shin-Aomori costs almost the entire price of the pass and then you have four more extra days to go and explore wherever you want to go. So that's the advantages to using this pass—you have five days to use it so it's endless the possibilities. You don't have to use just the Shinkansen—you also have access to all the other trains. In fact four months ago I took a luxury train which is amazing—you got to see this live stream. From Akita to Aomori on the other side of Japan right on the Sea of Japan side and that trip took us through some of the most scenic places. I tried to live stream the entire trip but the signal kind of cut off in the countryside—you might want to check out that live stream if you're a big train otaku like myself.

18:19:00 John Daub: Now I want to show you the map and we will discuss this on the Discord server—I'm sure people are going to be talking about this. This is a map of Tohoku the six prefectures—this is where the JR East Pass of the Tohoku area is. Again Tokyo is right here—that's the main hub. It does connect with Narita so the local trains in Chiba are all available. Chiba doesn't have any Shinkansen trains but from Narita you can get into Tokyo and then jump on a train and start to go north. Places that are included in the JR East Tohoku area pass are Omiya which is Saitama, Fukushima, Sendai and Tokyo, Sendai, Morioka right up there and Shin-Aomori. And you can at Morioka go cut across to Akita by Shinkansen and you can also get to Yamagata. At Fukushima the train splits off and goes towards Yamagata. You can get to Yonezawa, get some beef there—some of the best beef in Japan, wagyu. You can also go towards Echigo-Yuzawa which is an incredible place—I was just there last week or two weeks ago. Really good skiing in that area, nice onsen (hot springs).

19:47:00 John Daub: So I asked on Twitter if there were any questions and I got a few—I'm kind of new to Twitter so there aren't too many. Let's see what they have as the Narita Express pulls into Tokyo Station right there. What a beautiful day to be out here on the roof of the Kite building. Thanks for supplying these questions on hashtag AskOIJ. So if you have any questions on Twitter go ahead. Otter aka Meringlot writes in—can you do a quick table of comparison in the video of the old rail passes? So I think I showed you the table a little bit but for the JR East Rail Passes the three changes—that's a good question. The three main changes are the price, the fact that it's gone from a paper ticket that you have to show the station staff to a magnetic ticket that can go through without having to show the station master which makes it easier. The days have consolidated into a five-day consecutive pass and foreign residents living here in Japan can use this pass because we want everybody to get up to Tohoku and enjoy themselves, have a lot of fun, especially on April 3rd with me and Peter von Gomm.

21:30:00 John Daub: Next K writes in—is this pass gives you unlimited rides in a given days? So what this pass allows you to do is to ride the Shinkansen in Tohoku as much as you want for five consecutive days for 20,000 yen. Again one trip from Tokyo to Shin-Aomori is about 14,000 yen so if you ride to Shin-Aomori and back eight times that would be 14,000 times eight—you do the math. It does not include the green car or the gran class—just to point it out you have to ride with everybody else but you can get seat reservations in advance. One of the great things that JR East has done is they've made it possible for you with a rail pass to make seat reservations at the vending machines. So if you want to get a seat reservation you don't have to go and wait for a staff member at a window—you can just go to the vending machines and make it. If you need help you can ask staff to help you out. I've had to do that the first time but once you learn how to make the seat reservations the menu system is in English to make it really easy—and I think Chinese, maybe Thai and Korean as well.

23:19:00 John Daub: Champ writes in—are you going live tonight? Yes. And what is it like living in Japan? Champ that is a deep question—I don't think I can answer this. I've answered this question in four years of live streams, thousands of hours of content. It's kind of sad—I spend most of my time live streaming at least almost an hour a day sharing with you life in Japan as the Tohoku Shinkansen pulls in right there. Now Tohoku Shinkansen is interesting because it goes the other direction—this is the start of it just like the Tokaido Shinkansen. But the Tohoku Shinkansen also makes a stop at Ueno Station and the Tokaido Shinkansen makes a stop at Shinagawa Station. So you can catch these at one other station inside of Tokyo which is also a good point. If your hotel is in Asakusa or Ueno or up in the shitamachi (old town) area you don't have to catch it at Tokyo Station—you can get over to Ueno Station and catch it there.

24:35:00 John Daub: We're going to walk around now a little bit while I take some more of your questions. Mekanen Earl writes in—thanks, long time haven't seen a live, happy to be here. Glad that you're here too. Toro Toro Porco you must have a special commemorative ekiben for the Shinkansen—thank you for bringing that up. Actually there is a Shinkansen ekiben—I'm going to be sharing that with you on the train. I'm going to be making an Only in Japan edited video out of this experience eating different ekiben from the Tohoku regions. So there is one special ekiben on this commemorative trip on that. I don't know if I want to share this information with you because this is part of the April 3rd live stream where I'm going to share more information about the pass. But JR every year seems to have a very special ekiben and this is the one from the area that's judged as being the one that they're going to sell for the year. On April 3rd I'll show you this ekiben which is a reason to subscribe to the channel—it's pretty exciting.

25:45:00 John Daub: All right let's walk around now and I want to share with you a story about the roof of Tokyo Station on the Marunouchi side—I'm so excited about this. This trip coming up on April 3rd—Peter von Gomm's pretty excited too. We might be riding in the gran class as well—just check it out. Do you see the roof here? This is the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station and Tokyo Station is very strongly connected with Tohoku the area up north of Tokyo here. The roof tiles here were made in Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture in Tohoku—the black tiles that you see on the top of the roof. And in 2011 during the tsunami they were renovating the station here—those tiles were washed away. After the tsunami they were scattered all over Ishinomaki the area where they were producing it. And after the tsunami the water had receded and gone back out and they were cleaning up the area. The staff worked so hard up there in Ishinomaki to collect up the tiles and get them together so they can complete the job.

28:06:00 John Daub: So the roof of Tokyo Station is very much connected with what happened on March 11th, 2011. So when you come to Tokyo Station look up at the roof here on this side and just give a little bit of appreciation knowing that all these tiles came from Ishinomaki which is a beautiful area of Miyagi Prefecture. And people worked really hard to make sure that they finished the job despite being in such a terrible situation—they were still thinking about their jobs, their families, their lives. And how important it was for them to get those tiles and finish the job. And here it is—the top of the roof of Marunouchi is completed. And when I look at it it is kind of moving to see those tiles and to celebrate the hard work of the people in Ishinomaki—that makes me really happy to see. I didn't know about this until just a few weeks ago when they told me—they said John-san do you know about the roof of Tokyo Station? And I said no I don't—well guess what, those tiles come from Ishinomaki. Very interesting.

29:15:00 John Daub: Plus Vader's in the house. There isn't a new tower going up somewhere near there isn't it? Yes—over there in about five years or so from now you're going to see a big new tower which is Japan's tallest tower, 350 meters high, half the size of the Tokyo Skytree. It'll be towering these skyscrapers that are already here—that I think it's called the Torch Tower. That's going to be going up starting construction pretty soon and you'll see this towering over Tokyo Station. But just keep in mind Ishinomaki—and that's the point. That's a very famous place on the coast of Tohoku that was very much affected by the tsunami. And that's a place where I was also volunteering.

30:12:00 John Daub: Do you have any questions before we end this live stream? As a question I'm going to walk around and show you some of the platform here. Wayne I did not give Peter von Gomm back his helmet because he didn't answer my three riddles on the comment section of the video yesterday. In fact if somebody else answers the riddles I guess I'm going to be giving them Peter von Gomm's helmet. I told him—he kind of... I think he's pretty busy today. Plush Vader is a new insider—thank you Plush, I appreciate the support. Any questions on the JR East rail passes? I'm happy to answer them while I'm walking around. I do have the new postcard for this month—if you can't make it to Japan you can go on Patreon and get a postcard club. This is the one for this month—beautiful scene from Matsue Castle. Just got them in today, sending them out this weekend. Nice cherry blossom stamp on there too on the back.

31:13:00 John Daub: Any rumors when Japan will open for tourists? Not quite sure yet but I'm hopeful it'll be soon—maybe October, I really don't know. I know Qantas Airlines said something about flights returning in October. Still a discount to buy them before you arrive? I'm not sure Lee about that. Right now the only discount that we have is for this campaign on April 3rd—the commemorative train that's going up to Tohoku. If you are living in Japan and you have some time definitely join us—it's going to be so much fun. Only 100 people on the train so I think you're going to be able to be safe because it's quite a large train. Could residents get other versions of the pass? What do you mean by that? So for foreign residents there are the Tokyo Wide Pass which is still available—that gives you a very limited range around here but you can ride the Shinkansen to Echigo-Yuzawa which is quite far. Karuizawa in Nagano is also included in the Tokyo Wide Pass—that's 10,000 yen or so for three days of consecutive travel in this area.

32:43:00 John Daub: Also open to foreign residents is the JR East Pass for the Tohoku area and the JR East Pass for the Nagano-Niigata area—those two passes are new this year. And then there's the Seishun 18 Kippu which is the five-day consecutive local train pass which I love—it's an adventure, that's one of my favorite passes. That's only $120 for five days of consecutive travel on local trains—you can't use the Shinkansen but that's open to foreign residents and I've been using that pass for 23 years—it's one of my favorites. The name of this building is Kite—K-I-T-T-E which is kitte (stamp) in Japanese. This is the headquarters to Japan Post in Tokyo and this is the site of where the International Post Office has been for quite a long time just outside of the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. That building there is Tokyo Station modeled what many believe to be modeled after Central Station in Amsterdam—so it has a very European look to it on this side. And the other side you see the canopy there? That's the Yaesu side—it's the same canopy as the one on the right side of Tokyo Station. Again the Japan Rail Cafe is on that side.

34:32:00 John Daub: Any recommendations when first time in Japan? Alvin writes in here Tohoku? First time in Japan? I'll tell you this—a lot of people typically do the same trip when they come to Japan. They fly into either Kansai-Osaka or they fly into Tokyo then they do Tokyo, Kyoto like Nara, Himeji, Hiroshima maybe and then fly out. I'm going to tell you try to do something different. Kyoto is beautiful but Kanazawa I thought was even more personable, it felt a lot closer. And Kanazawa also is beautiful—it also has the history of geisha, also has a history of ocha (green tea). It has a lot of the same traditions as Kyoto just it's different and I thought it was a lot cheaper and a lot less crowded than Kyoto. But on that topic if you go up to places like Tohoku especially if you're a repeater and you've already been to Japan places like up in Aomori up in Oma which has some of the best maguro (tuna) in the country. You can see that the Oga Hanto (Oga Peninsula) has a really unique culture of cuisine where they take hot rocks and they use that to boil miso soup which is pretty amazing. As well as the demon culture up there is pretty strong—such a strong culture up in Tohoku.

36:05:00 John Daub: I'm going to say maybe look at spending some time in the countryside staying at a Japanese traditional inn called a ryokan. That experience at a ryokan is the one you're going to remember the most because you're going to feel the most like you're in Japan with the service the food the rooms the tatami rooms and the culture of bathing if you're okay with that. Did Illuminate Gaming do Tokyo Osaka and Hiroshima for my three days need to hit Kyoto and want to get more into the countryside next time? See here any last questions? Got a little bit of time. Do you get from Kanazawa to Hakone and vice versa? From Kanazawa? I don't know that's kind of far—I guess you can take a train, take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo and then take another train from Tokyo or Shinjuku to Hakone. When do you think Japan will open up to tourists? I don't know but again Qantas Airlines from Australia is planning to open up the route from Australia to Tokyo in October according to Qantas—they're going to a press release. Other than that it really is dependent on the situation.

37:37:00 John Daub: Even the Olympics yesterday or the day before they were saying that it's possible that they won't have any international tourists coming into Japan for the Olympic Games. A lot of it is dependent on this but one thing that we do know is that we strongly believe by 2022 tourism will start to happen and there's a good chance in the fall it will as well—maybe by October. It's just hard to predict—after the Olympics maybe the Paralympics which I'm more excited about than the Olympics itself. The Paralympics will have tourism—I'm just not sure, we got to wait for those announcements. When are you going to Hokkaido again? Wow I wanted to go to Hokkaido this year but we're actually in a state of emergency right now—the city of Tokyo has an extension for two weeks. So I could go but I'm not sure—I'd only go if I'm invited to go up there. I'm not going anyplace on vacations or anything but if I'm invited to go and film then I will go up there to film like I have in Kita and in Yuzawa just recently—for business it has to be for business.

39:06:00 John Daub: One last question on the Japan Rail Pass and I really appreciate it. When will your special Shinkansen be ready? So I mean if you check on the internet you'll see the press release for it—I put I tweeted about it too. Here's the banner for it—Visit Tohoku Find Japan. Join YouTuber me to a special train as we go up to Shin-Aomori and I'm going to be filming some live streams up in Aomori. And basically this opens up domestic travel once again—I'm pretty excited about this. Again of course it's all contingent on the situation but right now it's scheduled as planned and I'm super excited about this. If you have questions you can definitely ping me right here in the comments section on Discord. Nasha Broad always tells me make sure you talk about the Discord server. What a beautiful view of the station—I feel really lucky to be here right now on such a beautiful day and getting kind of a suntan. We'll have a section that talks about trains on Discord.

40:20:00 John Daub: The roof is open to everybody so you can sit here take pictures of the trains coming in—I'm still in shock that we saw Dr. Yellow. So if you want to see that in the playback watch from the beginning. In fact if you're in Nagoya Dr. Yellow incoming in about an hour—it's very cool. Alright looks like that's about it. So if you do have some questions I will 100% love to answer them on this trip and on the new passes. But in general I'm so excited about these new passes because as a foreign resident in Japan we really didn't have any options. But now because tourism is really at a standstill because nobody can come in here it makes me happy that JR East opened up passes so we can travel to Tohoku and areas that definitely need the tourism. I've gotten a chance to travel to Tohoku and to other regions over the course of this pandemic to make the show and people are so welcoming and want tourists to come back. This is the thing—the misconception I know that we're in a really bad situation but everybody that I talk to says they want you to come back to Japan everybody and they can't wait for you to make the trip to get on an airplane and come to visit them.

42:15:00 John Daub: All of the small businesses the ryokan owners the traditional Japanese inns all the restaurants they're gearing up—English menus, lots more tours—it's getting easier to travel Japan than it was 20 years ago when I first came. And when you do come they do have I love the countermeasures that Japan Rail is taking—everybody is wearing masks there's social distancing going on so I felt pretty safe and the air is recycling all the time inside the Shinkansen. I felt really safe riding the trains here in Japan especially since people have been pretty responsible only traveling for essential travel or for business and the trains aren't nearly as crowded as they used to be. I'm so proud that people here are still managing still doing their jobs really hard especially on the Shinkansen—passenger travel is down greatly compared to a year ago today but all of them I was just in Ueno Station filming and cleaning the station—they still are doing their jobs 120 percent. Despite the fact that there's not a lot of people on the platforms riding the trains you can see it's just kind of empty compared to what it would look like a year ago.

44:01:00 John Daub: So I'm happy for that and I'm so thankful to be able to work with JR East and I see Ruth Jarman in here and German International which is a wonderful company that's connecting the world with Japan—so proud to be a part of that. All there goes the Shinkansen I believe that's the Yamagata Shinkansen taking off there—Yamagata Shinkansen is a little bit slower because the tracks aren't adjusted for them up there—it's not quite Shinkansen tracks, they just kind of go a little bit slower there which is perfect sometimes the Shinkansen's too fast. I'm actually just waiting for the Shinkansen to take off before ending the live stream—see the Yamanote line. April 3rd mark your calendars—join me on a platform celebration it's going to be super awesome. I have never been on a platform celebration on Tokyo Station so we have permission to film which in itself is an amazing thing. Join me and Peter von Gomm so you head up north and if you're living here in Japan there's I believe 80 spots still available—we have 100 people who are interested but only 20 people have bought the tickets so you can get that on the site on the link that's included in this video description.

45:49:00 John Daub: John is a big fan—ah I remember you you're a big fan of Ruth Jarman and Ruth we hope to get Ruthie back on the show—she brings a certain amount of energy the cheerleader everywhere she goes energy levels goes up like 5000—it's pretty amazing. If you put both of us in a live stream it's basically just blow up the internet. All right everybody I'm on the top of the Kite building in Tokyo—this is the post office building you can get up to the sixth floor beautiful place to watch the trains. If you have any questions leave them in the comments below and thank you so much for everybody for watching this live stream and supporting Tohoku. This pass is one that's so dear to my heart—I'm just again say thank you to JR East for allowing foreign residents to be able to travel in the Shinkansen and see more of Tohoku. Because my hope is somebody who lived in Fukushima—I lived in Iwaki 20 years ago and have friends there and know how much they're struggling—I hope that you add Tohoku on your list of places to visit when you do come to Japan.

46:49:00 John Daub: It doesn't have to be now or because of the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy that happened up there but just for the people up there they are super excited to see you and when they see foreign visitors they know that you traveled a long way to get there and that you've chosen to go to Aomori to Iwate to Akita to Yamagata to Fukushima to Miyagi—they know that so they're very appreciative of it. And I know that you're going to have a great experience up there and I'm going to show you over the next few months what that spirit of Tohoku looks like and with the help of JR wow it just makes that experience so much cooler. You know why? Because it involves the Shinkansen—that's your cue Shinkansen you're supposed to take off. It involves the Shinkansen—I guess it's not quite on schedule. I know it's going to take off—let's just wait for it the Shinkansen as another Yamagata Shinkansen comes in or is that the Hokuriku Shinkansen yeah the one that goes to Kanazawa—I can tell from the colors. Kanazawa is famous for the gold color so you see the streak of gold that represents that culture Shinkansen.

48:00:00 John Daub: It's just plus doesn't leave on the mark here—I think if everybody clicks the like button and we get to 600 likes I got a feeling it's going to leave by that. Let's see which goes first—can we get the 600 likes or will the Shinkansen depart? It's up to you community—I'm staying with you until that Shinkansen leaves. 497 it's going up fast now it's up to 517 numbers are increasing—what's it going to be the community or the Shinkansen which is faster? 540 oh it's going up faster—556 we're close can you beat the Shinkansen community? 572 oh no Shinkansen do you understand what's going on Shinkansen? 584 16 away Shinkansen you're supposed to depart—593 the Only in Japan Community defeats the Shinkansen in a battle—I'm impressed with all of you. That still didn't make the Shinkansen go faster though—three two one go. Three two one go—you ever play that game? No just waiting here standing here—oh there you go heading the wrong way to Kyoto. This is because you click the like button—look what you've done you've caused that Shinkansen to depart. How cool is that thanks community—I'll see you next time in another live stream probably tomorrow because I'm live in Japan and that's what we do. See you on another adventure everybody thanks for the questions.