00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Shinjuku. This is a very famous area and beautiful location on a rainy day. Cloudy. Not exactly the best of days to be outside walking around the city, but I had to come here for work, which is why I'm wearing a suit. And I thought I would bring you with me. Shinjuku during the fourth wave. This is what it looks like. Fourth wave meaning, yeah, we're still in the middle of a pandemic and I am going home in a couple of minutes. But there it is. Flashing. This is a flashy area.

00:31 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? Long time no see. We're okay for a second right here. It's been really busy and I'm going to explain everything that's been happening over the last couple of weeks to you in another live stream. But for the moment, we're just going to relax and enjoy the beautiful location of Shinjuku. Now, this area of Shinjuku—does anybody know what it means? Shin means new and juku means yado (lodging). So it means new lodging. And this area of the city used to be where an entrance into the city of Tokyo had places to stay. So it was a little bit actually outside of the city center because the center would be the Imperial Palace where the emperor lived. So people would lodge here.

01:21 John Daub: Nowadays, Shinjuku is the place to go. Whoa. I love that Shinkansen concept. That's the E5 Tohoku Shinkansen. I want to ride that right now, but we are in a pandemic, flimsy mask on. And yeah, that's the south exit of Shinjuku Station. And from here on out, I'm going to take you a little bit around what's called Southern Terrace in the southern area of Shinjuku Station. Actually, Shinjuku is the busiest station in the world. Maybe not now because everyone's staying at home, but in typical years like 2019, it was pretty busy—millions of passengers. In fact, the labyrinth underneath the station, there must be like 100 exits. It's very possible that you would be lost down there for weeks. I know some people, they came out of Shinjuku Station looking like different people. All right. It's crazy.

02:16 John Daub: Now it's going to start raining, so I'm not sure exactly how long this live stream is going to be, but I will keep streaming until I cannot stream anymore. Danny's in here. Danny's in the house. Introverted Otaku. John, glad to see you live again. Hope you've been well. I am doing very well. And my buddy Shane's here. Welcome to Shinjuku. If you say it like that, it's just more fun. Now this is, this freaked me out when I saw this. I cannot believe how much the city has changed. I haven't been in Shinjuku, I have to be honest with you, in months. A long, long time. And just walking around here, it freaked me out to see how things look different. I don't know if it's just because there's less people here or what, but this used to be just a French bakery, and now it's combined with some egg place and just Luke's Lobster.

03:30 John Daub: They apparently have so many lobsters, they now export them to Japan. I think it's a Maine company, but that was usually a good bakery. They had all the bakery stuff here, and I would look through the window and really enjoy it. Now it's kind of weird. Right up there is the famous Docomo tower. Spike Zero Two Ones in the house. Woo! Surprisingly, Shinjuku Station wasn't too bad. But I got legitimately lost at Kyoto Station. That's possible too.

04:13 John Daub: All right. I'm starting to calm down a little bit. There's the Newoman. Dude was recipes for rice. Like I can cook rice, man, but it says like new woman. It just depends how you look at it, right? Is it new o-man or new onna (woman)? I don't know. It depends if you're a man or a woman, you just read it differently. I'm sure there's a professional who will decipher that. This is the Miyazaki store right here, so if you want some goodies from Miyazaki—goods and sweets and things like this—it seems to be closed or I don't know. See if that lady did not go in there. She just seemed she walked up the steps and made a mistake and then bailed. Miyazaki is a beautiful prefecture down in Kyushu.

04:54 John Daub: This Starbucks is one of the first Starbucks in Japan. All right, the first one was in Ginza. This might be the second one. When I first came here in 1998, this is one of the two or three Starbucks, and I remember drinking a coffee out back and then looking at the Docomo tower. That was one of my first views of the city of Tokyo 23 years ago. It's crazy. And this Starbucks is still here and so is the deck. It really hasn't changed. It's actually changed. I think it was more of a trailer. Now it's the actual building. This Newoman—which is the new south exit—is also quite unique, and Kanae and I have been in here to eat before in the past.

05:45 John Daub: King Long, good to see familiar places. Vending machine fun on a rainy day. I will see if we can find one. And Kuni Dog, hello from the neighborhood. I live a few minutes away from here. I live more than a few minutes by bicycle. It would be an hour now. I came here because I was so happy to be able to meet with people from JR East—which is Japan Railways East. That's their headquarters. Look how tall that building is. That is a massive building. And this is an older building that's also part of the JR. I think that the JR logo's on it. This is where the JR comes from. Construction is, I guess where they're building the tracks and stuff, and this is where everything else is. That's massive.

06:29 John Daub: Right. So that was really cool to go in that building and talk with the people there, see what more we can do to kind of discover when is tourism coming back to Japan. I'm curious too. Nobody knows. October possibly? No. I sat right there. That's where I sat before Starbucks says that tiramisu Frappuccino which is really good. It's like drinking cake. Very sweet. Can I like that a lot.

07:12 John Daub: Is that the JR East West building? That's very confusing. It's live. This is a live stream. That was a real chat. I don't know. During the holiday season you'll—if you look back at some of the past live streams which you probably have—had to do because I haven't been live streaming. This is completely filled with Christmas lights from November until January. It is a lot of fun to be able to see the lights and the lights are really pretty and it's absolutely beautiful. And this walkway right here is what it looks like without Christmas lights. I don't think too many YouTubers have shown this without the Christmas lights, to be honest with you. It's really pretty. It's not too bad right now either. Greetings from New York writes in Eva. Best regards to Kanae and baby Leo.

08:08 John Daub: I'm hatless today because you can't wear a hat with a suit. It doesn't sit well. So what are you gonna do? If I don't wear a hat, it renders the animated opening on the new channel as useless. Are you okay? The Shake Shack is still here. This building on the left used to be a Krispy Kreme. It's changed owners several times. Now it's a Tim Ho Wan which is a dim sum restaurant, I think from Hong Kong. Kanae and I take away. Uh, sorry, Uber Eats. I had Uber Eats for the first time three days ago and then I liked it so much I ordered it again from Tim Ho Wan and the bill came out to 60 dollars. That was really pricey for that but they delivered it. So I don't know. That was really nice.

09:07 John Daub: This is a bridge overpass of the JR trains right here. Wow, the Frank's is still here. It's a cool little shop with interior stuff that makes your house look real spiffy. It's a great step up from Daiso. I think everything's a great up from Daiso. In fact I think there's a premium Daiso that's a great up from the Daiso. Daiso went premium. All right, no trains right now but this is a good train spotting location. Nothing right now. Oh here comes a train.

09:49 John Daub: All right. Let's come back here. Can you name that train line? Can you name it in one go? That's the Yamanote Line. It's hard if you don't see the stripes. Hello Start Crimson. Hi, saw you on NHK today. Oh really? Is that the Tokyo Virtual Tours episode? That was a good episode. They're all good episodes. What am I talking about?

10:25 John Daub: Now this building I remember coming here and now New York would be maybe my home city, I guess you would say. It's very close to where I grew up. Close to stuff like this. One major city. And I remember seeing. So this is Times Square in Japan. Interesting. Now this Takashimaya has been here for as long as I can remember. I guess it was built in the 1990s. But just a little bit of information to make your day even brighter. Do you see the windows up there in the center of your screen? Now that's also the restroom. And I remember going in there and going under the restroom where the Tower Records are, uh that floor, and going in to go PP and the window was that big from floor to ceiling and you could while you are in the restroom look out the window. I thought that was nice. Just to share that information with you.

11:25 John Daub: Built in 1996. I came in '98. It was so brand new back then and now it's still kind of new, I guess. There's a garden up there that you can walk around. You see on the edge there. You get a nice view of Shinjuku from here. If you can take your camera you get a picture going down towards the station. It's a pretty nice view of the station and then you can walk around the rest of the way and you can see the skyline. I'm so excited. Ken Rutley, John glad to see you. Best to you. Can I, Rio from Halifax. Halifax, he's in Canada. Honey the cat took the car again. Thank you. Hey Brad, just two years in the house too. Hey it's nice to see a lot of people I haven't seen. It feels like I've been away for too long like two weeks or something and I'm so hyper. I don't even understand why because I had like an hour of sleep. I guess that's what I'm saying. I'm just live streaming again. It's weird. It happens.

12:20 John Daub: Oh I remember getting an elevator and go look. I could see through the elevators going up and I could see through that window like 20 years ago. That was a big novelty. Now every elevator in the city has windows. It's kind of cool. This is also where Tokyu Hands is. This is a big one. Now there's a bigger one or the head office head shop would be in Shibuya but this one was also really nice and convenient because it's right next to Shinjuku Station. Where the one in Shibuya you have to go to Shibuya and actually walk around the station quite a ways. Some good stuff in here. I haven't been in Tokyu Hands in years.

12:55 John Daub: And if you go this direction and just keep walking straight you get to Yoyogi Station and you can eventually get to Harajuku. So you can—this is a really great walk. Takes about 30 minutes. Just go straight you get to Harajuku and it's not too far away and you get to see a lot of nature and you go through Meiji Shrine. I should do that. Okay I'm gonna—I don't know if you're watching this but to go from Shinjuku all the way to Harajuku it's an amazing walk because you get to see so much of the city of Tokyo. It's maybe three times slower than taking the train when you have to go to the station, wait for the train, get off the train, get out. You can just walk it and it's maybe a little bit slower but you get to see a lot more.

13:47 John Daub: I should do that. My first Tokyo Eye for NHK night—um 2008, uh 13 years ago—was doing walking from Shinjuku to Shibuya. That was my first Tokyo Eye. The director asked me what do you want to do and I said I can show you something. Um, I'll walk from Shinjuku to Shibuya because I like to do that and that was my first one. It was pretty. That was a real geek too. It was not so crisp and cool like nowadays but a lot of you are watching right now and just seeing how quiet Shinjuku is and it's true.

14:29 John Daub: Um, I wanted to spend the first 15 minutes not to talk about the pandemic at all and it's hard to avoid it because you can see it's just really empty here on the Southern Terrace. The last time I did a stream here was several years ago, 2008. Oh um, Naomi Osaka is the spokesman for Louis Vuitton so you see her picture all over the walls of Tokyo right now. Osaka mania.

15:11 John Daub: I wondered if the city of Osaka was taking advantage of the fact that she's named after the city or maybe it's just a coincidence. I don't know. Brad, Dania's here. Aloha. And Jennifer French, great to see you John. Thanks for the live stream. Thank you for joining me on this little mini street view adventure. Gosh you know what I haven't been here for so long I forgot that I do like the energy in Shinjuku even though there aren't a lot of people here. Just to be surrounded by buildings that's so familiar to me it feels really really nice because we've been staying at home and trying to make it through this fourth wave, all the variants and the talk of the Olympics and what should we do and it's all so confusing. You cut through it. Just take it day by day, cook something delicious and there you go. And for the little baby it's just milk. It's so easy. What would you like to eat today Leo? Milk. It's easy. Surprise formula doesn't have to be a lot of flavors and stuff.

16:29 John Daub: All right so this is the Newoman or new onna (woman). I'm not sure how you say it and um there are some good shops and some pretty good restaurants in there too. Hey Z-chan is here. Chan Manasula. Are there any new flavors at Mister Donut? I don't know. I knew they had some pretty nifty looking mochi donuts the other day. They had Pokémon donuts. Oh look at him. He's shopping. He's really on the move. He's all alone because he's late for a train. He's walking with the people. That's kind of funny. One day humans and birds will live together and that day is today actually. I think they've always lived together.

17:22 John Daub: All right so I'm gonna go down here and walk down on street level and take you around. Give you an idea. This is also where the buses used to depart. The night buses from Shinjuku would depart from this side, the south side. Hey Chris Ranza is here from Australia. Gotta fight it out. If we do see a Mister Donut though we will be able to take a look at the menu and get an idea but it is a rainy day. It's not an ideal day to be out and about but it's a nice day because it's still nice and cool. So all of these places still have the protocol. There's a place for you to check your temperature before you go in there and then wash your hands with alcohol. So it seems to be what everybody is doing. But those people totally skipped the temperature checker.

18:34 John Daub: Hey, I guess in one day, how many times do you check your temperature? I don't know. I guess if you've done it once or twice already, you know you're safe. Self-check. I had to check my temperature before the meeting today. I'm 36.3 degrees Celsius, so I was safe. What happens if you get a fever? If you had a fever, you're really hot, do alarms go off? I don't know. I haven't had it. But that's a Japanese shoe brand that Phil Knight from Nike fought against to build his brand. It's a good book, that Shoe Dog. Onitsuka Tiger takes it on the chin.

19:16 John Daub: Oh, can I not eat a burger here like seven years ago? It's still here. That's good. Hey, Rach is here for baby stuff. Hope you are all well. Lots of love from New Jersey. Exit 7A on the turnpike. That's where you would get off where I used to live. You'd have to drive on down Route 70, I think, or something. I can't remember. It was so long ago. Route 130.

19:52 John Daub: Hey, I sent my Daimyo supporters on Patreon a Matchbox car or a Tomica of the post office van. Pretty cool. I think it's a Daihatsu. So this side, this is street level, and this has changed a little bit. It's gotten a lot cleaner. It was under construction for quite a while, so it looks like they finally finished it, and it does look nice here. I'm going to take you here to the fringe of Shinjuku Sanchome. Here's the sign to give you some indications of the direction that we're in. You can go to the Shinjuku Gyoen (national garden), which is really nice. I think they've raised the price of it to 500 yen or something to get in.

20:55 John Daub: I saw that being discussed, but there was an article in the newspaper about the guy at the gate who couldn't speak English at all. So if you didn't buy a ticket and you talked to him, he would let you in for free to avoid confrontations. And he let in so many people that they lost, like, hundreds of thousands of yen. You would get flustered when foreigners came, so he just let them in for free. That's so sad.

21:21 John Daub: Wow, this is new. What is that? The alley? All right. I gotta take a quick look. See here. This is new. This wasn't here before. This is a Shinjuku lunch place. Oh, the alley is just that coffee shop looking place. Interesting. All right. Let's just take a quick look. See here. I've never been here. This is all brand new. Wow. It's so clean. Just to be like a lot of like there'd be a lot of homeless in this area. But now I guess you could get something for lunch at this restaurant. Everything's 800 yen. Looks pretty good. Karaage. Yes, please sign me up.

22:42 John Daub: Hey, Chicago Africans here. John, buy more ducks. If you're going to race them, you want to do it on a rainy day, but you might not get them back. They'll end up going down the gutter. So this is—I remember walking down the street when I first came to Japan, too. It's so colorful from the game centers. But we're losing a lot of these game centers so that feel of the bright, flashy, blinky lights is kind of going away a little bit. But this street has changed a lot since the pandemic started. One, it's not crowded at all. Two, this is where I saw the taiko drum game was always in the front here. Now because of the lack of people and interest, they moved the games off of the first floor, which is so sad. It's all UFO catchers. There used to be like arcade games, Dance Dance Revolution and stuff here. It's all gone. They moved it up to the second floor.

24:03 John Daub: Kuwaku writes in here. Brad, study Bradshaw Studio. Wait, what? Kevin Riley would love this. Look at this. It's a guinea pig thing. Can you—what do you get? That's some kind of toy. I guess you're right. I know if it drops in there and if it falls through there, you win something. It's hard to understand the UFO catchers. UFO catchers are like gambling. Oh, hey, Nosh got the Yamaha. Look, this is like a nightmare come true. They're the same ducks. I know I'm not gonna put money in there and get more. I don't want to add to their population. If anything, I'll get duck control. Get some cats in there. I'm sure the ducks won't like that. They should toss in one cat. Eat the ducks. It's crazy.

25:26 John Daub: You know what? I think I'm just going to walk to Shinjuku Sanchome. I'll catch the train from there now. I got to get on the Toei Shinjuku Line. You want to come with me? Are you in for the trip? I'm going to walk now to the Toei Shinjuku Line. So let's go to Sanchome. Welcome to Shinjuku. For those joining us, don't forget to click that like button if you want me to do more livestream neighborhood walking street view tours. Because if you like it and we get a thousand likes, I always do more of them. It's sort of the threshold.

26:11 John Daub: Whoa. This anime is so popular. That's creepy. There's a lot of clones. Demon Slayer. Oh, there it is. The taiko game. Guess it got moved to a different area. You have to alcohol your hands before you play. Makes sense. All right. So as you can see, hey Katayama, how many hundreds of ducks did you end up with? There's so many. I couldn't count them. It's like trying to count hair. You can't count hair. That's why it's singular. You don't say there are hairs. You just say there is hair. And hair is uncountable. Duck. I have duck.

27:23 John Daub: As you can see, I'm panning around a little bit. So it's so quiet in Shinjuku. This is lunch. This is the lunch rush right now. There's not a lot of people. We're walking through what is the fringe of Shinjuku Sanchome. And it's very, very quiet. Nobody getting lunch here. That's kind of unique. I wonder what it's like at night. Come here on a Friday night, probably deserted. Or Sunday night at 2 a.m. Probably really scary.

28:11 John Daub: Window shopping. I love the pizzas where they put an egg on there called Bismarcks. It's like breakfast on a pizza. We have breakfast burritos. You'd think we'd have breakfast pizza, right? Nobody's come up with that yet. This Uniqlo is massive. This is the back entrance to it. We'll walk around the front. But a lot of the businesses here really relied on tourism. And I don't know. Again, this is one of the areas where it could have changed a lot. And tourism was a driver of the size of this Uniqlo here. A lot of tourists from China would buy clothes made here. And I don't understand why completely. Because all the clothes were made in China. It's like you're buying them here and then bringing them back to China. Why buy it at all in Japan where it's probably more expensive? I don't know.

29:35 John Daub: When tourism starts again, I'll make a new series. Ask a tourist from—like, ask a tourist from China. What do you buy here? I'm kind of curious what everybody buys. Oh, the Kinokuniya is still there. That's good. I was talking about how books are still really popular in Japan. Digital books aren't as popular as in the U.S. Let me pan around here so you get a good look at the street.

30:13 John Daub: Hey, Johnny Seawalker. Thanks for taking us around. You're very welcome. It's worth getting wet for. Michael Sassano. Hi, John. So happy you're back on live streams after being away for a while. Missed seeing you. Here's food, drink, or gachapon for the ducks. And Ido Whitford. Get Kanai something nice. You got it. I will use that money to pick up something nice for Kanae for lunch. How about that? See if I can find a nice takeaway.

30:49 John Daub: So we're walking the streets now. Streets of Shinjuku Sanchome, which is on the Toei Shinjuku Line. And I think it's on the Marunouchi Line too. The two subway lines. It's about five minutes away from the JR Shinjuku Station. That's a lot of LCD screens. Scotty H. So happy to hang out with y'all. Welcome, Scotty. You are in Shinjuku, buddy. Observing the wildlife. It's a Shinjuku bird. Shinjuku birds are tough birds. Look at it. They don't fly. They fly away when people walk at them. He's tough. Don't mess with that one. He thinks he's a person too.

32:05 John Daub: Hey, Chen. Do you like natto? I tried really hard to like it. I've tried it all the different ways. But I can't do it. I love durian though. That is so funny. Simon writes in here. Tokumine. Hope you bought your umbrella. I did not. I rarely use umbrellas. This is mist. Although a bunch of scaredy cats have their umbrellas. I'm the only one without one. Bob Joe Vending Machine Funds. Thank you. I don't see any vending machines though. Let's pan this way. Nothing. It's kind of not much there. Ron Barr. Thank you for the stream. We missed you. Ah, Ron. I missed you all too.

32:53 John Daub: I'm waiting for the light to turn green. It's like if I'm not streaming, there's something missing in my soul. Wow. That's one of those cars from Grand Theft Auto, right? Is that a Century? Wow. Like, I want to say that I've driven that car, but was in a video game. Toyota Centuries are the Rolls Royces of Japanese cars. Some of them are more expensive.

33:39 John Daub: Um, so we've done it. Boom. There you go. Shinjuku Sanchome in the rain without an umbrella. You don't, if I don't have an umbrella, you don't have an umbrella. That's how we suffered together. It makes it more memorable. Jespo, Rihal, welcome. Contribution to the diaper budget. Or buy some snacks. George Lopez, Mayonnaise Emergency Fund. Uh, you've really taken care of me, all of you. Thank you so much. The baby funds have been used. We have diapers. And actually, he outgrew the diapers, so we had to buy bigger diapers. Leo's growing so big. So big.

34:25 John Daub: All right. So let me take you down to the end of the street, and then we're going to call it a day, because I've got to get back. I've got to go get some lunch. Just to give you a point of reference, Shinjuku Station is 300 meters that way, and the park is 470 meters that way, which puts you right here. Station, park. Toei Line, the Toei Oedo Line is here, and then from Shinjuku Sanchome, you can either catch the Shinjuku subway line. Here or here. That's Shinjuku Station. That's Shinjuku Sanchome Station. It's not that far to walk it. It's a nice walk. But when it's raining, I don't know, you might not want to walk it.

35:16 John Daub: This Isetan has a really cool depachika (basement food hall). Depachika is a basement department store that has a lot of food, and this Isetan is famous for its fruits. It has some really crazy priced fruits from around Japan, like melons for, I don't know, like a thousand dollars or something. Okay, so I see they turned the first floor into an Apple store. That's new. I didn't know about that. Did not know. Wow. I always compare to what I'm seeing now to 1998 when I first came here. It's so different. And yet it's so the same. The streets are the same, but this Isetan is the same, but just it's cleaner than 1998. I guess it has something to do with the Olympics. Although, you know, who knows. With this Super Chat, you can buy a grape. I could buy one grape, one with a seed so I can plant it and eat more later, 20 years.

36:26 John Daub: So let me pan around, give you a view of the fourth wave. It's pretty depressing, really. Akasaka Kona, welcome a new traveler. Naomi Hasegawa Furukawa. Baby Fund Aloha. Elvis Cameron. Hai-chan, glad you're back. Can you greet my grandson? Happy birthday to Zeron, two years old, and hello to Kanae and Leo. Happy birthday from Shinjuku. There you go.

37:10 John Daub: Meiji Dori. Oh, the big city. Interesting. Oh, that's—is that duck restaurant still here? Oh yeah, it's still there. Cafe 8. Cafe 8 had like really cheap Chinese Peking ducks. One of the directors for NHK would always take us there because he liked duck. He would say, do you want to go ducking? And we would go eat duck here. It's been a long time since I've seen him though. This street has changed a lot too. Wow. And this takes you to Kabukicho and Shinjuku Gyoenmae down this direction.

38:03 John Daub: I hope you liked it. It's nice to be out and about in Shinjuku a little bit. Show you the streets here. Hit that like button if you want to see more Street View episodes and I'll try to do some more live streams and get back into the swing of things. But I'll do another live stream kind of explaining about what's been going on for the last couple of weeks because I missed you too. So that's all I got from rainy Shinjuku. Have a good day, a good night wherever you are in the world. Hope to see more of you soon. Leave me a comment. And if you're a Kickstarter backer at the fireworks project, get ready. Video released tonight. That is all.