00:00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to a really beautiful, luxurious hotel in Tokyo. This is the Palace Hotel, and it is absolutely stunning. How you doing everybody? So I actually live by bicycle about 15 minutes away, and I came here by bicycle. I had to park my bicycle. I came around where the taxis come, and I rang my bell, and the bellhop guy came out, and I said, where's the bicycle parking lot? And he said I had to go around the other side. That was kind of funny. I don't think a lot of people come here by bicycle.

00:00:43 John Daub: But I did, and this is amazing. I'm going to give you a room tour. This is a twin room. Peter von Gomm and I are going to be sleeping here. I just wish there was a little bit more space between the beds. I don't know if he's a kicker or what. But get ready for this view, okay? Alright, before we go, I want to tell you something. Before we do that, here's the room. Check out the beds and the bathtub and everything.

00:01:07 John Daub: Peter said don't christen anything because he wanted to do that, but I got here first, so take that. Here's the bed situation. Again, I wish no man's land was a little bit wider, but I think we'll be okay. It's been forever for a lot of you who haven't stayed in hotels. This is the bathtub. And when I came in here, they showed me, there's a button here that allows me to close this. So this gives you some privacy, which I'm going to need. This bathroom is amazing.

00:01:59 John Daub: Again, I compare it to home, which is 15 minutes away. But I am very ecstatic. Bathrobes! Whoa! Bathtub. Two kinds of showers here. We have typical shower and we have rain shower. Those are the best. All right, if I walk up to it, will the seat open automatically? No, it's not one of the auto-opens. I'm not complaining. Wonderful. It works. Beautiful panel. Washlet. Love it. Is there a deodorizer? Whoa. There's no sound. Sometimes they make a sound and I can make a phone call if I fall in and I can't get up. The lid closes. An ultraviolet ray light shines into it, which kills all of the bad things. It kills bacteria, and I guess they have some deodorizer that goes along with it. Japanese toilets are state of the art.

00:03:00 John Daub: Are you ready for the view? Here's the minibar. I shall not be taking part. It's not necessary. And we're leaving very early in the morning. The reason why I'm here is because tomorrow morning at around six o'clock, Peter von Gomm and I are waking up and we have to go to Tokyo Station to board the shinkansen, JR East. JR East has given us a private shinkansen. This is crazy, right? So the Tohoku Shinkansen is going up north to Shin-Aomori departing at 7:28. We're going to be on there. I'm going to be live streaming on the platform for maybe about 20 minutes to bring you with me. And we're going to be sitting in the Gran Class, which is first class above first class. It's just a luxurious part of the shinkansen that is super expensive. We're going to get a chance to do a live stream in there as well. Again, 7:10 AM tomorrow is the start for that. Maybe around 9:30 after we pass Sendai, I'll take you into the Gran Class and we'll live stream with Peter von Gomm. Just the two of us. It's our own private car. It's very James Bond-ish. I think like Tanaka in You Only Live Twice had his own special private subway car. Well, we have our own shinkansen. Take that Tanaka.

00:04:40 John Daub: All right, check it out. Actually let me make a coffee, cause I'm a sophisticated person. I require sophisticated drinks. Oh, Italian coffee. Smells like coffee. Wait for it. Oh, I forgot to close it. Ah, do it again. Sorry. That happens. Faisal 007. Have you heard of Sakura Prince Hotel? I have. I've heard of the Prince Hotel. Wait, this does not look like the coffee. Did I put the capsule in wrong? Where did the capsule go? Nevermind. The coffee. I'm not smart enough for that. I'll just stick with tea. That's easy to make.

00:05:55 John Daub: Are you ready? Can we get a drum roll? First of all, a room with a balcony. How cool is that? There's two chairs. I could see myself bringing some brews up here, just watching the sunset. Cause I think we're going to have a good one today. Over there is the Imperial Palace. I love the way that this hotel sort of wraps around like this. So everybody gets a pretty cool view. I think if you're at the end of the hotel, you're not going to have a view of the Imperial Palace. Again, I'm looking into where the Emperor lives right now. If I was up on the 20th floor, I could probably look in with binoculars and maybe see somebody. But from where we're situated, we have a perfect view of Tokyo.

00:07:01 John Daub: The Aman Hotel is very nice too, but it's not quite as close as this to the Imperial Palace. I don't think you can get any closer. This hotel is 50 years old or so. I asked the concierge a little bit about the history. They renewed this hotel about eight years ago. So it's really, really new inside. You can see the rooms over there. They all have balconies with two chairs and a nice table. On a beautiful warm day like today, this is an awesome place to kind of hang out. And you can see this is the foreground to Tokyo. And Edo Castle used to be on the other side. That's where Tokyo would have had a castle, but it burned down before World War II. And now there's the last moat. And then where all of the trees are is where the Imperial Palace is nowadays. In fact, the top of that green building in there might be one of the main buildings, but I think on Google, you'll be able to find a map. Really nice. Over here on the other side, there's still some sakura over there. You can see just jutting up over the building there is our favorite Tokyo Tower. And at night, you're going to get a little bit of red as it glows on the night sky.

00:08:32 John Daub: Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world, but when you come here and this view, it does not look like it. It's a lot of green, isn't it? Tokyo is, believe it or not, a pretty green city. I love the colors. Wow, there's one of the parts of the Imperial Palace right there. Now, if you got your running shoes, you can run around the Imperial Palace. See, there's a path right here. You can come here or you can go on the outside of it, and you can run along this path. I think that's a little bit longer. In total, to go around the Imperial Palace, it's five kilometers or about 3.1 miles. So this is over here, the green in this part is Hibiya Park.

00:09:49 John Daub: Faisal 007 writes in here, the Japanese hotels I've been to in Tokyo, the service and the amount of respect and care, even they had someone to speak Arabic with us. Wow! When I checked into the hotel, they had somebody come with me. Of course, this is standard for all luxury hotels. I live here in Japan. Most people won't take off their shoes when they come into the room, especially Westerners. I took off my shoes right there, okay? And when I came in, he also took off his shoes right there. I don't think it's normal to do that. I just do it because it's cleaner. I feel uncomfortable with my shoes on and carpet. But he took his shoes off too. And it was like, he has one of these shoes that are hard to take off. Really nice shiny black shoes. And I thought that was really funny. But he took it in stride. And the staff here is really good. I've had some good conversations. Because of COVID, the pandemic, the hotels in Tokyo really don't have a lot of people. But I guess foreign residents that are living here, we can take advantage of some nice deals, but also take advantage of empty hotels. Because I think it's about, I didn't see many people, but check-in is at 3 o'clock.

00:11:04 John Daub: There's a telephone, tea set. There's a coffee maker, which I don't know how to use. Still kind of, that does not look like the coffee. I got water. That's good. It's good water. Wow. There's a little humidifier here. Check that out. So I guess you put that water into the humidifier. That's pretty nice. Alarm clock. I'm going to need that tomorrow. This is my taking a bath door. That's good. Peter von Gomm can't see me in there. Awesome. Nice big screen TV. Any questions? What are you doing in a hotel? Tomorrow, I'm going to be riding the Shinkansen. And we're staying here because it's about a 10 minute walk to Tokyo Station. This direction. So there's the Marunouchi building. And right in front of that, I think between the buildings, you can see a little patch of white. That's the roof of Tokyo Station over there. So right now I'm on the 12th floor, I think. It is pretty beautiful.

00:12:20 John Daub: Again, this is not in my budget. So I wouldn't normally stay here. Because why would I? I live just down the street. Oh, this is nice. The red building. I don't know. That's just an office building. So some of these buildings here, most of them are just office buildings. There are a few embassies in the area. But for the most part, this is a very like a financial district. A lot of international banks, a lot of lawyers, a lot of prestigious companies want to be like back in the Edo period, you want to have an office very close to the Imperial Palace, right? You want to be, oh, my office is across the street from the Emperor, right? So a lot of these, these are probably the rents are very high. The view's nice. You got a lot of sun coming in here. It's quite an amazing location.

00:13:17 John Daub: Why no cherry blossoms in Tokyo? Because they've already bloomed. The cherry blossom season started 12 days early. The first day was on the 14th and most of the blossoms are gone. There's some varieties that are still blooming, but for the most part, it is over. Yeah, I don't know how much it is per night, but I have a feeling all you have to do is to Google Palace Hotel Tokyo, and you'll probably get a price. That's a little bit pricey because you don't get a balcony with a nice view like this for peanuts and service as well. Yeah, one night there can give me a lot of nights at a capsule hotel. That's true. But all right, once you've stayed in a capsule hotel, this is way better. And the fact that it's a business expense and I'm not paying for it. So that's cool. Neither is Peter von Gomm by the way, just for a night. We're leaving here at 6 in the morning. We missed the breakfast, which is a shame, but I think that one day Kanae Daub is going to be really jealous of this view one day. We'll be back here. I don't know one day when we win the lottery or something. We'll be back here and we're going to enjoy a really great place. There's a lot of places that might be. I have a better view, but again like I don't know too many that have such an amazing open view like this. Okay, unless you're on the balcony, not too many that I know have a view like this.

00:14:51 John Daub: Hit the like button. If you'd like me to do more hotel views more hotel live streams like this and I'll consider doing it because I might be because of work having to stay in some more really nice hotels. But it's just nice to have your own balcony. I wonder what the sunset's going to be like in a few hours. Probably really nice. Personally when it comes to places to stay in Tokyo, I don't like Shinjuku. It's just too busy for me. It's where all the business people are. I prefer places like Asakusa because that's where the cultural heart is and at night when you walk around you have a more cultural feel. More in a cultural region than in Shinjuku. So do you guys more of a modern place? That's just me. Everybody's different. There's no ideal place when people ask me where the best place to stay in Tokyo is I don't answer because everybody's different. Some people might like Akihabara again. Somebody might like a capsule hotel. Somebody might like Ikebukuro like Singapore Dan.

00:16:05 John Daub: I would rather stay in Japan for a month at $50 a night than a week at $400. So would I but it all comes down to if you're staying for only a few days and you really want to enjoy it in the room, then this is a place the Aman Hotel is really close to here as well. I've seen the Aman Hotel the rooms. They're beautiful as well. I've seen the Peninsula Hotel which is down there. The Peninsula Hotel has stunning views. I think that's it right there. That's also kind of a new hotel. So there's a lot of beautiful places. But you know, I told you you could be happy with the capsule hotel by all means you can stay there. There's some good guesthouses some Airbnbs in the city. Every one of these gives you a different and a unique experience staying here for a couple of nights. Maybe I don't know if you want to see the Imperial Palace and walk around and you're leaving to Tokyo Station in the morning. This is ideal. You know, this is ideal a lot of good shopping here and treat yourself to something special.

00:17:13 John Daub: They have a bath and a pool and he told me that if I need to room service to push this button, but I'm not sure if I'm going to order any room service. Everything is digital and in English too that's another thing. That's really nice. If you don't have any Japanese skills, you can be assured you're going to be taken care of because they have wine glasses upside down. That's the way you do it. And the key when you touch the door for the to come in it makes a very like CTU 24 Jack Bauer kind of a sound which I thought was a nice touch. I don't know why more hotels don't do that use like boop boop like boop like it needs some sort of like a CTU sound because that's the future. I don't like Akihabara for staying actually, but that's me. I prefer like a nice place. Akihabara is a place to visit staying at night. It's not that great. I don't really like it.

00:18:26 John Daub: The utmost priority at Palace Hotel Tokyo will always be to ensure your comfort and satisfaction. If you wish to participate in our efforts to minimize our impact on the environment. See they're always doing nice stuff. Wow. I'll leave it here for him. He's probably watching. Thanks everybody. They probably do have massages. I'm sure that they have everything they have a gym. They have a pool. They have a restaurant. They have a something on the roof probably. I'm going to go back home and pack and I got to come back here this evening. Peter's coming around 6 p.m. I think he's doing something with what's it called Clubhouse where he talks from 7 to 8. If you have any questions leave in the comments below. I hope you like this room tour. It is a if you're thinking of staying here. It is a beautiful room. I think it's nice. The hotel was renovated about eight years ago. But for me, I haven't seen anything quite as nice as this view from Tokyo with two chairs. If you have the money and you have the chance. I think this is a really nice place to stay. It's not sponsored but just really happy and there are some cherry blossoms right there.

00:20:06 John Daub: So I'm going to enjoy the room. I hope you enjoy your day tomorrow at 7:10 around. I will see you on the platform of the shinkansen. We're going to have about four or five live streams for the next 48 hours. It's going to be a lot of traveling. I'm bringing you with me on an amazing trip tomorrow. I'm doing this live stream to introduce to you 7:10 around 9:30 and then again at 12 o'clock in Aomori. I'm going to bring you to a place called a factory right next to Aomori Station where they have Aomori gifts and a lot of food Aomori food. I'm going to be spending the night in Hakodate. So we might do a live stream in the evening and the next day. I'm going to take you back to Aomori City and we might do a live stream at a fish market where you can make your own kaisendon, which is going to be really cool. And I might do another live stream somewhere around Aomori City or stop off on the way because I have the brand new Japan Rail JR East Tohoku area pass which gives me five days of unlimited travel on the shinkansen. They're giving it to me. Thank you JR East. It's awesome. I'm really happy for this experience. I'll see you and again, it's if you're a foreign resident, all you need is a foreign passport. You don't actually need to be a tourist. They've changed it. I've got my American passport. I still have to show and prove that I am who I am. I'm not Japanese. It's a special deal for us foreign residents and nothing can be cooler. Click that like button. Show me some support and I will see you tomorrow. I don't think I'm going to be live streaming tonight, but you never know secret live streams for insiders and travelers later Gator.