00:00:03 John Daub: Greetings everybody! Welcome to Hamamatsucho! It's a beautiful day in Tokyo! A little bit windy, but we're going to have some fun! It's really windy today. So I wanted to take you to this neighborhood because one, it's not that far away from where I live, and two, it's such a beautiful day. I thought I would show you a place where you can see Tokyo Tower and it's connected with the seaside and some amazing parks and attractions. This is the Hamamatsucho neighborhood street view tour. It's not as exciting as it sounds in a live stream, but it's even better when you look at this!

00:00:48 John Daub: Ah! Some of you may remember the mannequin piss or the peeing boy of Hamamatsucho. This was put in the station decades ago and it still flows. He did shut off for a little bit. I like that shirt. Actually, we got the same shirt on. We're kind of rocking the same shirt. How cool is that? You cannot drink from the fountain. I know what some of you are thinking, alright, actually you probably could. He's been here for decades and he's practicing social distancing and staying safe with a mask. Good for him.

00:01:37 John Daub: So you can find this on the platform at Hamamatsucho Station and this is a great place to start our live stream and neighborhood tour on such a beautiful day. From this place you could stay here for a couple days. It's a beautiful day. I haven't been here in a while, so I wouldn't be able to do too much in this weather. Of minutes and you'll also see the shinkansen going by as well. It's not holy water. You'll see the shinkansen streaming by here on the way to Tokyo Station. It's pretty nice. The Yamanote Line goes by here all the time as well as the Keihin Tohoku Line. I think we're about to see more trains coming through right now. Here comes the Yamanote Line coming in and let's get moving. Time to get to the street. Very few people out and about. Oh here comes the shinkansen. It's always so cool to see the shinkansen going by. Thank you Edo. I will get something nice to drink on the way. There's a couple of vending machines. Over us is the monorail that'll take you from Shimbashi Station to Odaiba. Pretty cool. It's awesome already. We're off to a roaring start because the trains are roaring right next to us. Here comes the Keihin Tohoku Line.

00:03:06 John Daub: All right let's exit the station. This is actually a pretty long platform. Luckily on a Sunday afternoon there aren't a lot of people and this area is not famous for a lot of shopping and big attractions. There aren't any foreign tourists here so the result is that there's not a lot of foot traffic either. I like how the Yamanote Line is always innovating with these posters and rap trains and things like this. It's pretty cool. I don't know what that anime is but some of you might. Hamamatsucho is one of the stops on the Yamanote Line, one of the 27 or is it 28 now stops, one of the original and it's also on the Tokaidō Line but I don't believe it stops here. I think Shimbashi is the first stop. Dinner for French loving these trains. I know there's a vibe to the train. It's just the sounds very exciting. Now we got to exit all the way at the end. Hamamatsucho Station I would say is in the center of Hamamatsucho but also in the area you'll find Daimon. Daimon is the subway station and kind of the center. You'll see it's very easy access to get to Haneda Airport from the platform as well so you can get onto the monorail but we're not going to do that because we're not going to the airport although that would be really cool. When you walk on the platforms always stay on this side of the yellow line. Just a little bit of train etiquette. So what she's doing is not appropriate. I'm not going to tell her. They've added in these walls on the left side here that keep us safe too. All right here we go here's the exit going down. This is the old part of the station actually the station overall is pretty old. You can see the pipes and the neon fluorescent lights here kind of a throwback to the old Showa era. I like that. All right let's get outside.

00:06:01 John Daub: We're gonna make a left but before that I want to show you how do you get to the docks the ferries. Yeah we're out so welcome to the Hamamatsucho area very cool. Here's a map right outside here. It's a great place for me to orient you to this area of Tokyo. This is Minato Ward one of the 23 wards of the city of Tokyo. I live in Chuo Ward which is our neighbor. So we're now right here underneath the railway. If you go to the right you're going to get to this beautiful park and I've already showed you this Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Gardens (old Shiba detached palace gardens). There's a lot of cicada in there that will make a symphony of bug sounds inside of there in the summertime. If you were to go just about a 15 minute walk you get to one of the biggest and most beautiful parks in the entire city of Tokyo. This is Hama-rikyu Gardens (tidewater detached palace gardens) and guess what stops at Hama-rikyu Gardens. Water bus makes a stop right there and it's a really nice place great place to check out. I think there's an entrance over here but there's also an entrance on the other side. It is a massive park. It'll take you an hour or two to check it out. And if you were to go straight along Takeshiba Dori this way you get to the piers. Takeshiba is where the boats going to Ogasawara and the Tokyo islands the jet foils and all the speed boats to the islands out in the Pacific they depart from here. So it's a really good hub to remember Hamamatsucho. Which is the Oedo Line is right here. It is about a three to five minute walk between the subway station and here. You actually have to exit in the passageway you have to exit go above ground to get to the JR train and the monorail which departs from this building. So I think you got the orientation there. Let's go take a look at the street.

00:08:12 John Daub: Wow 1909. Very famous for that right there that's Tokyo Tower and you can get an eyeful of it right now. I said eiffel because as you all know the Tokyo Tower is somewhat modeled after the Eiffel Tower. An eiffel I fold yet it no at night this is a beautiful place to go. The World Trade Center building I believe you can go up to an observation deck. I'm not sure think they used to have one but you get pretty good views of the entire city and from here from the port wow it's such a windy day from the port if you look towards the city it's such a beautiful sight at night with the lights twinkling urban setting. These two are walking against the wind. Hey Sunny's here here's towards Kanae's karaage luncheon. How did you know she was gonna eat karaage. Michael Sasada is in the house hi John so happy I caught you live. This looks like a great day for takoyaki taiyaki. Let's see what we can find. So we're going to follow these ladies a little bit and get to the intersection but there's a lot more. I'm going to show you if we hang a left after we get to this main intersection where there's a lot of really good nightlife but I found a Japan Post mailbox here. So this is a good time for me to pitch our Patreon postcard of the month the Tohoku Shinkansen. You can get one now on Patreon we have a lot left. I will send it to you right away from Tokyo Station which is so cool get the Tokyo Station postmark a little bit of something from Japan. For those that are already in the postcard club it's on the way I sent it yesterday two days ago.

00:10:15 John Daub: So this is the iPhone 12 Pro so you get a beautiful HDR. Let's let the car go by. This style of car is so popular you see that it looks like a SUV but it's not I don't know. Here's Daimon Station that I was telling you about. This is for the Oedo Line and the Asakusa Line which is Toei not Metro Toei subway line is run by the city of Tokyo right there. Metro is a private company they have more subway lines but it's good to know. Toei there's four main lines the Oedo Line is the circle line that'll go around the city just like the Yamanote Line. So you want to make sure you make a note of it. It's so peaceful when I'm not saying anything. All right how you doing. You know sometimes I'm looking what is this furusato. All right so sometimes you'll find these things that have meaning but sometimes it's hard to figure out what it is. I don't know what that is Baila do you know what that is. Postage rates increase but I know dang you know what I went to send the diplomoner boxes yesterday and it was instead of it was how much was it it was over ten dollars which is crazy for a little box. So they raised the rates from Japan to the United States only by about 30% which is a lot actually.

00:12:12 John Daub: So this intersection is the main intersection of Hamamatsucho. You can see we've walked about 220 meters. You don't actually have to say temple because the ji means the temple. So Zojoji Temple really but they wrote Zojoji Temple. That's 450 meters. We're gonna walk in that direction eventually. But here's the layout of the map in much wider detail. We started here underneath the tracks you remember? This is where the pier is. All of the ships that depart going to the Tokyo islands or the vast majority of them. The monorail which takes you to Haneda Airport will also stop close to the pier. Make a note that it takes seven to eight minutes to walk from here to here. So you can do it. You don't have to get on the monorail. It's actually easier to get a taxi if you're in this area instead of riding the subway at all but if you come into the Hamamatsucho Station from the airport you can wheel your bags to the pier. It's pretty easy. In fact if you're going to a boat that's the parting suit you're gonna see a lot of people wheeling their bags to the pier. It's kind of funny to see a caravan of suitcases. Everybody's going to the islands. I see PVG is in the house. Where are you PVG? Get on your bike and come out here. Beautiful day. We can go get a beer at our favorite place which is just right here just around the corner right? Which is where I'm taking you next. I want you to soak this up. We're gonna come back in this direction but first I'm gonna wrap around just a little bit of the back streets of Hamamatsucho to give you an idea of what it's like.

00:13:53 John Daub: Sunday is not the best day to go out boozing. In fact during a pandemic it's probably not a good day at all. So we're not gonna do that. What we're gonna do is just give you a taste because this area has loads of hotels lots of places where tourists stay. In fact my family stayed at a hotel when we were getting married not too far away from here for two nights because it was the only place that was available. But Hamamatsucho has some pretty good options here. Whoa I just picked a wind corridor. Back here for a couple of hundred meters you'll find loads of izakaya (Japanese pubs). This Ototo Brewery is brand new. I think it's been here for about a year or so. Enjoy over 10 types. It's a great place to get some of the best craft beer at Tokyo's premium craft beer bar in Hamamatsucho. Whoa Louisiana Cajun. We got some New Orleans viewers here I'm sure. I wonder how Japan does Cajun. Now I have the wind muffler the dead cat on the mic but I'm not sure how well it's gonna hold up here. Gonna cross the street. I always thought that this is quite an interesting building. We gotta get past this structure. Check this out. So this is an izakaya. I believe they do yakitori here. Look at the design on the left and right of it. It's pretty unique. I think that's katsuwa right there. Some good sashimi. Here's another pretty roaring izakaya. At night it looks so much cooler. This one is Chinese cuisine I believe. That looks like mapo tofu in the window. At night it really lights up.

00:16:04 John Daub: Walk down the street just a little bit. I'm going to wrap around and bring you back to that intersection but just a taste of this area. I'm not going to take you there but one of the places where Peter von Gomm and I like to hang out every now and then is Devil's Craft. They make their own craft beer and Chicago style pizza. It's not quite as good as Chicago but they do a pretty good effort. I like this just in the window here. Really nice presentation with Mount Fuji and origami. Nice. Slice of Tokyo. Not a lot of stuff open at this time of day. It's a nice izakaya right here serving generous portions of sushi. So back here and then all in this area are lots of drinking and eating places. Places that you go after work because there's a lot of people here that are working. It really lights up around 6 p.m. Look at those blue skies. Yesterday I was complaining about the Olympics and today I'm celebrating Hamamatsucho. Just one day can make a huge difference right? Look at I love the exteriors on some of these izakaya. This is a Yamaguchi cuisine which is a place I guess Yamaguchi is down near Hiroshima. It says Yamaguchi. It's interesting. That's also a popular name. They're building something here.

00:18:19 John Daub: All right we're going to turn right here. As you can see this area the roads get a little bit narrower and you see a little bit more of look at that little teeny bulldozer. That little teeny bulldozer. That's so cool. Check it out. Look how cute it is. You don't see that a lot. Made just for the Tokyo streets I believe. Yeah I got shorts on and my sleeves rolled up. This is pretty nice day. All right this road here if you go straight will take you eventually to Shinagawa. There's not a lot of stuff here. Just some buildings not many residential neighborhoods. It looks pretty much that's Tokyo right there. The thin buildings about 10 stories high made in the middle Showa period. So what we're going to do is to go back to the intersection. Not so inspiring. Like this part of Hamamatsucho is not so inspiring. You do have to be careful where you park the bicycles. The city has been putting these maps so you can get a look on the map here. They'll tell you where to park your bike. Actually I parked my bike right there and there's an old guy in there. He said you better be back in two hours or you have to pay. And I said that's fine by me. What is it like a hundred yen? He goes yes. Okay I'll be back in two hours. It's free for two hours. He was so strict. It's like you must be back in two hours. And I said all right don't worry. Obviously Peso knows that this live stream could go well over two hours.

00:20:32 John Daub: I'm going to show you the street signs because I love showing street signs in live streams. Really puts things in perspective and makes things official. Boom. You got here Shiba Koen to the left. Go straight on this Route 15 Nihonbashi and Ginza. Ginza is about two two and a half kilometers away. So it would take you from here about 30 minutes to walk to Ginza. It's not too far. But if you were to get onto the Asakusa Line it'll take you to Higashi Ginza and about two or three stops I believe. And then Takeshiba up here is that way that way. Oh I was going like this and she was waving at me. It's awesome. People are pretty friendly. If you they can't even see me smiling. I'm like I got I got double masking. All right what do we got here? Check this out. Nevermind the vending machine but look at the angle on it. They like put this at a weird angle so it would fit. So it would fit perfectly in here with making the least amount of impact. That's pretty amazing. What? Some kind of game. You put your QR code here. I don't think they do this anymore. Pushing random buttons. I don't know what this does. It does something. Oh you're right. You need a QR code with your from your quote unquote QR code. Okay which is last generation. So that vending machine is probably from the Heisei period most likely from 10 years ago. All right we're back to the main intersection. This is an exciting intersection. Great colorful. And then you're gonna get another eyeful of Tokyo Tower. I'll check out that motorbike. Wow I've had a couple of drinks here before. This is like an expat thing. I think it's on the HUB network but to be honest I haven't been to this HUB pub in about three years I think.

00:23:36 John Daub: Oh I see takoyaki. I see takoyaki. Do you see it? Takoyaki cha-cha-cha. James Boardman's in the house. What are those yellow lines on the sidewalk for? It's a good question. And David Kimura's in the house just dropping by for a few minutes. Hope Kanae and the baby are doing well. The baby is asleep right now so I have a break to go for a bike ride get some sun and maybe some takoyaki. The yellow things on the street you can see it right here too. This is tactile pavement all right? You shouldn't actually walk on it but if you see the way it's set up it's for the blind. And they know if they walk on the lines when they get here they can tell by the tactile touch on their shoes their feet where to stop and listen to the traffic lights. Now all of the traffic lights in the city of Tokyo they have speakers. Do you see that? The speakers will chirp or give a signal to the blind to let them know that it's safe to cross the street. And I believe that the signals are different if you cross. You hear now? So if you cross this way it goes din-din din-din. And if you cross the way that we were just at it chirps like a birdie. Pretty cool right? When it stops chirping that means run probably.

00:25:28 John Daub: I can't believe we've just passed. Bob Joe writes in here I can't believe it's already been a month since Rio R-I-O was born. Awesome live stream as always. Yeah we named him Rio which means the center of wisdom. I think it's a good name. Oh you know what? Probably should have crossed the street. All right we can do that on the way back. Give us something to look forward to. All right I'm walking this direction because I want to take you to... Hey Peter is this place any good? It's coffee. Hey Peter von Gomm and Isolde have really good coffee. I don't know if you're still watching. PVG is a coffee aficionado. Whoa gas lamp. One of these things our son Rio has a lot of. And it's not the lamp. Check this out. I love the little teeny history that they'll put on the streets here. So this is this intersection in the year 1874 which is Meiji 7. Whoa. And this street actually is quite a famous street. It had gas lamps on it. And I don't think that they have them anymore. They have these retro 1980 looking lamps. PVG says nothing special. Don't forget to check out PVG's channel The Serial Talker. It's a podcast. It's about crime. And for PVG crime does pay. There's a reason to subscribe.

00:27:17 John Daub: This is McDonald's. What do they got at McDonald's? Whoa they got the Samurai Mac. Is this any good? Who's that guy? It says it's regular. And a new regular. What's the difference? Oh they put a piece of bacon in there. Whoa. Samurai burger. Does putting samurai in front of stuff make it cool? Sure does. All right. As you move closer down this road and another reason why I like Hamamatsucho is it's not that far from here to walk to Tokyo Tower. In fact you can walk from here all the way to Roppongi because in the center of your screen ladies and gentlemen is Roppongi Hills. That's the center of Roppongi which is not that far away from here. It's about a 30 minute walk from here I would say depending on if you skip or hop. Might be a little bit longer. Make sure you look left and right before you cross the street. Another beautiful picture of Zojoji. We've been here many times. In fact that sort of looks like... That's not the kanji for Kanae's name is it? No. It's really pretty in the snow but it doesn't quite look like that. It's not like that anymore. This right here I believe is Daimon. And the subway station is named after this gate. The gate which is the entrance to Zojoji. Very cool. But right in front of the gate just to the left there is a izakaya that I've been to before which is pretty good. This izakaya is called Masuya. Yeah Masuya. That's the kanji ya meaning like house home. Wow look at the HDR. It looks beautiful on this. Let's take a look at the menu and then we're going to walk back around. This pretty much ends the Hamamatsucho neighborhood. There are some restaurants here. It looks like a Spanish-Thai restaurant. What? That's kind of weird. There's a ramen shop over here. Some vending machines. It's just a nice place to stay if you're at a hotel. But more than that it's a great hub. Well you can stay here. You jump on the Yamanote Line. You can jump on the Asakusa Line. It takes you to Asakusa. You can get here very quickly to Shibuya on the Yamanote Line. It's so convenient to stay center. And it's quiet.

00:30:24 John Daub: Oh look at that. They got bentos here. Oh look at that katsudon. Oh man. Nothing beats a katsudon except maybe that one to the right in the center. Whoa look at the sauce on that with that ajitama (marinated egg). It's so good. Tatami man. Oh. The bentos look pretty good too. But they're actually made to order which is even better. They put pictures in there. So I'll be back after pandemic. All right. Quick quiz Hachat. What is the height of Tokyo Tower? Now the height has been shortened over the last 10 years because during the Great Tohoku earthquake 3-11 2011 the top of Tokyo Tower bent because it was going back swaying left and right so much. The top of it bent and I believe as a result of it it lost some height to it when they had to replace it. So it's 333 meters but I think it lost some height actually. It used to be taller than the Eiffel Tower by a meter and I think now the Eiffel Tower is taller again. But just a little bit of modern history. That's how strong the Great Tohoku earthquake was. It was just scary.

00:31:59 John Daub: All right. We're going to walk back and see what's going on in the takoyaki place. Next up I want to show you before we go that way one of the last things on this tour Hamamatsucho Station is about 400 meters this way now. Got to wait for the red light. While we're waiting for the light I guess I can show you Daimon the big gate. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to ride your bicycle underneath this thing. Yeah. I think there's some video games where you can of course you can drive underneath this thing. I don't know if you've ever played Asphalt 8. I think this might be the gate that you drive under. I'm not sure. There's a big torii gate in it for the Tokyo course. Cross right here. You drive over the Rainbow Bridge in that Asphalt 8. It's a free game on iOS. This is one of the most beautiful toilets in Japan too. Check this out. This is a public restroom. I'll be back here to film this for an episode I'm making. See this roof? This is actually a toilet. This is one of the baddest toilets around. It's in Hamamatsucho. And if you can't hold it we got you covered in style. That's right. I just circumnavigated the public toilet. Nothing looks more suspicious than man holding camera circling toilet. And you're with me so that makes you just as bad. Now I'm holding a camera into the toilet. This is pretty bad. I'll be quick here. Carrie I know it's not the best position to be in. I can smell it even with double mask on. But it's pretty clean. Japan's public toilets as you can see it is actually a toilet you know. Women are red. Men are blue. It's kind of Showa looking. I think there's a benjo maybe which is a squatter. But it does look like a crypt doesn't it? But it is a pretty cool public toilet. And you can only find that here in Hamamatsucho. They got some pretty cool toilets around Japan. This is the Nishikawa Showa. This is a pretty neat one. Over here right next to the Edo toilet you have some brass. I don't think it's brass but some pretty cool art some plaques here. Makes you really feel like Japan when you see things on the street. I love this. They put these pieces of the history to mark what Tokyo was like during the Edo period.

00:34:52 John Daub: Is it getting hot in Tokyo? Yeah. Basically I'm going to have a mask tan. Yeah. And as PVG points out if you do go to the top here up there you will experience like an experience like no other. Never mind PVG's Serial Talker podcast. You will have him in your ear up there because he is the voice of Tokyo Tower which for those three people that always put a dislike when PVG is on probably you're not going to go up there and take the tour. But for the rest of you like 99.9% I guarantee you you're going to love it up there. And then we did it. And Peter von Gomm and I were up there for the opening party. Remember that? We were up there for the opening party. Yeah. And I was live streaming and then they made me take it down. So you can't show it. PVG and I we were walking around and making trouble. So that's probably a good thing that we had to take it down. But for like the 2000 people that saw it it was a moment in history. The grand opening. You know the top of Tokyo Tower was super retro. It was like the 1950s image of what space was like. It had like the space music from the 50s. It was very nostalgic for those in their 50s. And then the 70s. But for everybody else who's like what is this? Like we've already been to the moon people. They pretty much made the top deck before we went to the moon. So now that we went to the moon and we know that man can go there it's not so cool to have a retro music and stuff. But they changed it. Now it's more into the 21st century.

00:37:34 John Daub: Thank you Tasty. Hit that like button. John audio right in here. Did you ever live stream third app for that Tokyo Explorer? You used it. I have not. I have not. You could but I always think that you lose this. There's so many nice things with the app natively. I always believe that Tokyo will come around and YouTube will come around and add in 1080p. But there is some. Here's Daimon right here. So maybe Daimon does not exist. Check it out. Some history for you. Daimon. Zojoji Temple's entrance gate is always painted red. This gate is named Daimon. There was a bridge in front of the gate and a sign for the gebafuda saying riding horses is not allowed. That was like the place used to be there during the Edo period. So Daimon was famous for the sign gebafuda. Gebafuda meaning riding horses is not allowed. So it was basically a big sign saying don't bring your horses here. And you can see the samurai complying and not bringing their horses. That's very nice of them. No horses. Leave them at the gate. Daimon means big gate. Yeah that's what it means. Tig Rahoff writes in here have you ever done the Keystone Cops in Japan? I have not. There's a lot of stuff I haven't done which is pretty cool because there's a lot of stuff to do. There's always Japan is always innovating. Always something new is coming up. Like this. Free Wi-Fi. What? Like they. I remember when I 20 years ago I had to steal Wi-Fi from banks. I know banks didn't protect their Wi-Fi and I would just sit outside of banks and use their Wi-Fi. That was 20 I'm serious. That was 20 years ago. Hold on a second. 2003. Wow. So if you're going to smoke here there's a social distance sign for smoking area. It's interesting.

00:39:19 John Daub: History. It's funny right? I'm stealing the Wi-Fi from banks. It's pretty fast too. What's the password? Sometimes it was password or 12345678. Shiba Shinmei. I love looking at what Tokyo used to be. It's funny. The whole city was just a big drawing. It's like that mode that picture mode that nobody ever uses cartoon or drawing. People used to live in that mode back 150 years ago. For kids under the age of 12. That means basically they didn't have cameras back then. So it's a joke. Don't ask your father. Is it true? They didn't. Everybody saw things in anime back 150 years ago. It's not true. Somebody's kid's going to say that. The whole city was a big big woodblock print drawing. I'll take this one here. That's pretty cool. Celebrating a sumo wrestler. Oh that's right. We had a request by somebody. Peter are you still here? There was a request for us to go to the premium Moss Burger and get some burgers there. That might be a pretty good idea but you could see Moss Burger doesn't have too many interesting things on the menu right now. The premium Moss that we saw on a live stream about two to about a month and a half ago. We're going around the Tokyo Gate the Olympic Stadium. This is a highly recommended itinerary Ray. It's highly recommended because PVG is the voice of Tokyo Tower. So if you walk from Hamamatsucho all the way to the top of Tokyo Tower you end. You get a happy ending from PVG.

00:41:32 John Daub: I'm coming down this way because there's a line at the takoyaki. How'd that happen? Whoa I thought there was somebody underneath that yellow tarp that creeped me out. Are you okay? It looks like somebody could be underneath it like Santa Claus or something. I wanted to see this 100 yen. It says special price 100 yen. I could see this down the street. So what do we have here? These are a lot of no name products. A product. Does that sound good? I don't know. The Nippon Green Tea. Have a nice tea. I kind of like that. Pretty cool. Have a nice tea everyone. It's a play on have a nice day. Only in Japan. Rich milky tea. This is the Asahi rip off of the Royal Milk Tea. That's why it's 100 yen. Should I get some picnic water? I'm kind of in the mood for it. It is a kind of a picnic day right? I'm going to go get some water. It's 100 yen for it though. I want to have a nice tea though. I'm having a nice day. I think we should have a nice tea to go with it. Have a nice tea. On the back of the 100 yen coins you have a cherry blossom. I don't know if you ever knew that. It's kind of cool. Have a nice tea. Support your local businesses. Now that geisha is mine. You get two. Two for one. One two. Now let's go tea. You can see it's got good tea. It's got a nice pretty color to it. It'd be nice if they had tea pieces floating in it you know like they look like your mom made it. Homemade tea usually has little pieces of tea floating in it right? That's how you know it's fresh and made by an amateur.

00:44:32 John Daub: Hey Cobra Beebups in the house. Any news on the construction of the Toranomon-Azabudai project of the Torch Tower? Not quite sure yet. But I've seen them kind of prepping this up. Looks like they're prepping the site for the start of the construction of the Torch Tower. And oh dear here's some money for tea. Has been put to good use. Have a tea day. Let's do the takoyaki. So this is some pretty premium takoyaki looking stuff. What is in the center of it? It looks like there's kurogoma black sesame negi chili oil. So it's rayu spicy oil black sesame negi. That looks pretty premium to me. What is that? I've never seen negi miso ginger. This is takoyaki? Served on a newspaper. And it's no longer black and white. It's sepia. So it's been aged. Check it out. 30 minutes or less dude. Oh it's free. They still do that? Sometimes the takeout is not the same though. Let's see what they got here. Oh it's a big one. A takeout is not the same. Oh they have a new negi mayo which is negi and mayonnaise. This is takoyaki with tempura sauce. That looks interesting. With tempura sauce. What? But the best is always the mentaiko the spicy pollock roe and the Japanese ground yam. Oh that's going to be neba neba very mushy. The restaurants are closed because there is a kiyō and they always have to close. They open up at 6. And it's Sunday so there's not a lot of people here. They also have cheese mentaiko and teriyaki teritama which is egg and teriyaki sauce. And what is that? Taco just regular takoyaki which is yeah it's too boring. All right. It looks like we're going to have to go with this negi mushy potato one because this is new. Kanae's going to kill me but I'm eating without her but she's asleep so it's okay.

00:47:02 John Daub: All right. Let's see if I've got the cash to cover it. John needs to go to an ATM Peter. I think I got it. I think I got it. 650 so 40. 540 so 650. With the tax of 8%. I think I have it. That would be pretty embarrassing if I didn't have enough. Oh 5 600 and 660. So that seems like that should cover it. Yeah Betty that's helpful Betty but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get I don't think that helps me though right now because I can't translate that into cash right away. All right. Let's order this here. Yeah I don't think they accept super chats here. Did you hear the crows? I hear the crows behind me. It's pretty cool. I guess I could eat it right here. There's a table right here. Can I just eat it here? Let me think here. I know there's a lot of parks. I can eat it right there. The noise pollution. I see you you stinking crow. You try to bring that out down here. I see him. He's really going to town with that sign. You can't hide from me. I have crow vision stinking crow. You're not getting one of these takoyakis. Beat it. Like he's hanging out with the go-go dancers. At girl's dining bar. He's saying come in for some go-go. Seven floor. Best promotional tool. All right I'm putting on the tripod because you're going to get a mouthful. This is on Tasty. Thank you Tasty Chronicles always. And I got to get something for Kanae on the way back as well.

00:51:16 John Daub: It's like Peter interrupting me all the time. He's calling. I can actually bring you up eye level. Oh he's on my side of the street now. All right. I alcoholed my hands. You saw it. I'm safe. Whoa. Whoa. This is a pretty amazing looking takoyaki thing. Thanks to the food fund Betty C. Much appreciated. Check this out. You ready? You're going to get. Here we go. Hold on a second. Itadakimasu. I always say that when I break the chopsticks. Check it out. All right. Here we go. Pan down. Pan down. Don't touch this crow. You can smell it if I open it. Look at that. Look at the tororo which is like a mountain potato. You see that? That's takoyaki right there. Look at it. Oh I can smell it now. The sauce is just hitting my nose. Slightly sweet slightly salty. Look at that negi the green leeks the onions in there and that tororo which is just like neba neba slime on there like a mountain potato but it's got a lot of texture to it right? I say that because it's a slimy. It's a slimy texture but that's texture. Wow and there's some seaweed on top some nori. If I pan down you can get the whole eyeful in here. Nice. Click the like button if you want a bite. I will send it to you via my happiness somehow. I'm serious. Click the like button. Come on. Do it. You're here. We're hanging out. You don't like that? I mean come on. It's just a like. It doesn't do anything except make people happy. It makes you happy too. If you like something it makes you... Positive reinforcement.

00:53:36 John Daub: Trevor Beck this stream wasn't brought to you by Moss Burger. It was brought to you by... Okay. Let's diversify the signage. Good call Trevor. It was sponsored by Toby (crow) who is over there by the way. He senses the dark side. All right. I wanted to show you first off what slime is like. Why would you put that on top of your slime? It's not like takoyaki. It's because it's good. There's nothing like slime. There's natto. There's tororo. There's okra. Japan is the country of slimy foods. I'm telling you. It's really good. The longer you stay here the more you start to fall in love with the stuff. All right. It's got some mentaiko spicy fish eggs on there. Let's see if I can just hold up one of the balls. It's got a little bit of a... It's got a lot of good color to it doesn't it? There's some red in there from the sauce. The tororo is really sticking well to it. The negi's on there. It's going to be pretty good. Glenn knows what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen but I do it anyways. It's not that bad. Peter von Gomm said what about me? You talking about you being slimy? Is that what you meant? There's tororo okra natto and PBG. Is that what you meant? There's six of them here. I'll save two for Kanae but actually I know she's not going to want leftover cold takoyaki. The one in Tsukiji you can buy four instead of six. I find that more to my liking. Takoyaki is quite high in calories. It's quite high. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. I cut away. Oh man. Feel the burn. They said if you can't feel it it's not doing anything for you. I believe that.

00:56:37 John Daub: I've also noticed on the street here this is just something interesting. You'll find a lot of these fire extinguishers on the street. That's pretty interesting isn't it? Fire is one of the things that destroyed Tokyo the most over the years. And then on top of it they put a map of the area which is so useful. I never knew that. And they also have the address too. Oh no that's the phone number for the fire department. Speaking of fire there's one in my mouth. So they did put that in the right place. But it's going to take an awfully large super chat for me to spray a fire extinguisher in my mouth. And no I'm not going to do it. That's not a promise to do it so don't do it. All right. What do I think of this takoyaki? Food review. I've had a couple of them right now. Actually I don't like it that much. Sad to say it's not really that good. The reason why is it's too mushy on the bottom. It doesn't have... They've added so much stuff to it. It's lost that crunchiness that is also defined. It's supposed to be crunchy on the outside mushy on the inside. But the thing with this is it's too mushy on the outside and it's mushy on the inside. It's mushy on top because it's got tororo on it. I said Totoro on it. So it's just a big mush ball. Mmm. I will give them this. That was quite a generous piece of octopus inside of there. But I want to admit something to you. I have not really eaten takoyaki since watching the movie on Netflix about an octopus a man who has a romance with an octopus under the water. It was hard for me to go back to takoyaki but my mind has now... That was like a few months ago so my mind has now put that in the past and I can eat octopus again. It's amazing how a couple of months makes all the difference. Get back to all the bad habits that we had before. Shane it's true. I'm serious. It's called like the octopus lover. Does anybody else know what I'm talking about? After this you'll have a problem eating octopus. It was a good movie. A lot of the people found the PBG emoji in there. The octopus teacher yeah. It wasn't what you think it is I think for most of the people here. Yeah. It was a good movie.

00:59:42 John Daub: All right. I've done a little bit of surgery. Check it out. This is a generous piece of octopus tentacle. Check it out. I'm serious. I was disappointed with the mush but look what we got. That is a very generous piece of tentacle inside of the ball. The taxi driver drove right through my shot there. It's pretty nice. Oh my God. I put on Instagram yesterday. Brian from Virginia gave me a shout out. And I wanted to say thank you to all of you because I asked you in there. I said Brian sent me a video. I think he's like 10 years old from Virginia. He goes hey John I love watching Only in Japan Go. And he sent it to me via Instagram. So I put that up as a post. And I said hey Brian now the world's going to say hello to you. And I think we had like 150 or 200 comments from people all around the world from India from South America. I think somebody from Antarctica wrote a comment in there. Every single corner of the world and every single corner of the United States. I think all 50 states represented pretty well. That was nice. Thank you. I think it was on Facebook as well.

01:01:28 John Daub: All right. I'm dedicating this last takoyaki to Rio. Rio you're too young to eat. You can only drink breast milk. So I'm saving this for you in my stomach. Like a good parent that is a bird or a crow crows will eat the takoyaki and regurgitate it to their babies. So when you're old enough I'll bring this back to life to you buddy. That's true. Birds feed their young by regurgitating. And to be honest this tororo looked like regurgitation. That's good. So my son's name is Rio. But in English I guess it's Leo. But in Japanese the translation for Leo is Reo. But Reo is not Leo because Rio is closer to Leo than Reo. It's very confusing. We don't have to get an American birth certificate for him until he's 18. So it's not a pressing issue right now. He's going to get a birth certificate. So if you do it in Roman letters the Japanese for his name it's R-I-O not R-E-O. It's R-I-O. But the closest thing in English to Rio would be Leo right? I'm trying to explain this. But Japanese translate Leo as in Reo R-E-O which is weird because phonetically and Japanese is a phonetic language. It makes no sense. So it's not Leonardo DiCaprio. It's Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo. So it's not Leonardo. It's Leonardo. I don't understand. It has something to do with Speedwagon. Who wrote that? It's takoyaki sauce. It's good.

01:04:09 John Daub: So just to wrap this up I got to get back home help out Kanae with the baby. Raymond Centeno fresh takoyaki for Rio. I will bring you fresh takoyaki for Kanae. And then okay. All right Raymond I don't want to disappoint you. So I'm going to give the takoyaki to Kanae who then will deliver it through milk to Rio. So I hope you're okay with that process. That's not exactly what you explained to me but I'm hoping that that gets to you that makes you happy. Perfect. Raymond writes perfect. Okay so eventually we will deliver that takoyaki to Rio via milk. Tig Rahoff writes in here so glad to see you're happy. Here's to see you can continue showing us your world. Thank you so much. You know I'm going to be taking with this fourth wave here in Tokyo right now it's really hard to travel anywhere. I came here by bicycle. I'm trying to take precautions because I got a lot more to lose if I were to get sick than if I was single. And it's I know a lot of people a lot of you might think some of these live streams have been boring over the pandemic and I do apologize. It's I'm trying my best to keep the show going but I know that we're very close. I think just over the hump of this last fourth wave and then things will start to get better. But I'm still traveling and next week I'm going to take you up to Tohoku for some live streams. I'm actually going to get a five-day pass and when Kanae's okay and we have her father over or her sister we have some people to help out I will make the trip up to Tohoku and get some drone shots for an episode I'm making on the Shinkansen and try to get that out to you. But I'm going to take you with me so you get a chance to travel around Japan. I know it's really hard for all of you. The situation in Japan is tough right now. I don't want to talk about it too much but on a Sunday afternoon there's like almost nobody outside in this area. I like it. If you look at the live cameras from Shibuya you might be disturbed what you see. That's a handsome looking dog over there. Do you see him? It's a good looking dog.

01:06:29 John Daub: So yeah you'll be good. Tonight or tomorrow I'll be doing a Patreon Q&A again for everybody. I should be chatting out there. I have a Twitch livestream coming in the next couple of days too. I promise Nosh it's going to happen. And I will do a midnight camping episode because I can't go outside. I can't do real camping so much. So I'm going to do another midnight camping episode. But for Mr. Das who's watching maybe in playback I do have a... I have a special Asahi for you. It's nice. Ham writes in here John pampers for Uncle Ham from Uncle Ham. Uncle Ham you just bought a lot of pampers brother. Ah that's nice of you. We quickly went through a ton of diapers and now he's gotten... He's 3.6 kilograms or 3.7. He's the size of a turkey. It's probably I shouldn't compare him to a turkey. But it's quite stunning how he's at that size. It's pretty amazing actually. The diaper size changed too. So we have to use the bigger diapers. Thank you. That's going to our larger diaper fund. Ray would not turkey. He's not a turkey okay? It's just... All right when he's like this and his legs are up it looks like a turkey a little bit. I have to be honest with you. A little bit like a turkey. Who said bring him to Israel? Is that because he looks like a turkey? I don't... I came at a weird time. Hi from the UK. I guess this is the part of the livestream you can chime in and if you have never left a comment before you're too shy to you can just write an easy one of where you're watching from. I always say that. That's cool. You're watching from... Obviously we have some people from Israel which is awesome and people from Thailand and Singapore. Our Singaporean friends are just finished up with lunch. So it's nice to see everybody from all over the world.

01:08:25 John Daub: I'll be back again maybe tonight. I got to keep the livestreams going. I'm working hard on the Kickstarter fireworks video finishing that up. Then I have another episode on... I can't tell you on the main channel. I can't release... I can't give hints anymore because people try to one-up me. You have to stay... I used to... When I was on the old channel I used to put like a 10-second preview of the next video and a few times other YouTubers came and did that topic before I could finish the edit. I had to edit it and upload it. So I decided not to do that anymore. Keep my ideas top secret. Some of the other YouTubers... Sometimes Paolo won't tell me what he's working on. But I might tell him what I'm working on but it's totally not. I misguide him. But we have fun like that though. What are you working on? Oh you know a little bit of this. What are you working on? Oh this. You know I'm working on a big episode on bicycles. Yeah. We're all friends here. So take care everybody. Stay safe. I know it's evening time Saturday night in the US. Stay cool over there on the West Coast. And I'll see you tonight or tomorrow. And another Q&A coming real soon. Bye-bye from Hamamatsucho and Tokyo Tower. P.S. Thanks again to my friend Peter von Gomm for all that you do for the channel. Plug for him. Serial Talker. Not like the breakfast cereal. Like the killer serial okay? Just so you know crime pays. That should be your motto. I can't see Tokyo Tower. I can't really see it. That's too bad for you. Alright have a good day everybody. See you in the next livestream real soon. I appreciate all the support everybody. See you.