00:00:04 John Daub: That bridge you see in the center of your screen is Tokiwa Bridge. The stones originally came from Edo Castle—the walls and the castle itself—following its being dismantled during the Meiji era. And it's representative of modern Tokyo. When the name Edo changed to Tokyo, this bridge became such a symbol of it. I'm so glad they just recently finished renovating it. And today we're gonna take a look at the bridge.

00:00:34 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Welcome to Mitsukoshimae, just a few minutes walk away from Tokyo Station. Mitsukoshimae is on the Hanzomon Line—that's the purple line with the big Z through it. We're gonna take a closer look at this bridge and it does have a lot of symbolism for the city of Tokyo. And there's nobody here, which is perfectly fine with me. Now they're building underneath this highway a new Tokyo skyscraper, which is going to end up being one of the tallest buildings in Japan—if not the tallest—over 300 meters high. That's like over a thousand feet. It's a pretty significant building. We'll even take a look at that. So let's get going. Join me for about 30 minutes as we walk around a bridge. It's fun stuff. Historical. Beautiful day here in Tokyo. Mitsukoshimae—the closest exit is number B1. You can get here and there are hotels in the area. But this area is mostly known for that building behind this sign, which is the Bank of Japan. There's a lot of money in the area. Boom. It's like the Fort Knox of Japan right there.

00:01:51 John Daub: This is actually Tokiwa Bridge. This is the new Tokiwa Bridge. You'll see that the kanji is different and there's a story. The new Tokiwa Bridge—you can see the middle kanji has this which looks like there's three dots in there, a little bit of a hole in the middle of it. That kanji actually means sara (dish), like something that's made out of porcelain that can break, or glass. And that's not a good kanji to use for a bridge because it has that kanji for dish in it. The old one, they thought about that and you can see this tokiwa—this kanji meaning "old" here—does not have the same dish kanji in the center. It has stone (ishi). So it was stronger. The kanji or the Japanese language—the lettering is so important to the meaning of so many things. We don't see it in Roman letters, right? They look exactly the same. But that center kanji is different.

00:02:52 John Daub: Just taking a quick look at the map here, you can see this river became unfortunately the site of the highway. So you have the expressway, the inner circular route going over all of these historical bridges, including Nihonbashi, which is right here. And that is a big shame. There's a road marker right in the middle representing where all the roads from Japan originate from Nihonbashi. But it's covered by this really ugly highway. There is a plan in place to put the highway underground. So everything's going to be okay eventually. Which is—this highway was a product of the 1964 Olympics. Japan just had to move really fast. So they built that highway above ground. They dried up rivers to create it. So in order to get to Tokiwa Bridge, you kind of have to go around a little bit. But I thought it would be a good place to start from the new Tokiwa Bridge, to show you the old one.

00:03:49 John Daub: Look at the parking meters here. They work with sensors so they know that you're there or not, indicating if you're still there and not paid, sending an alarm, allowing people to come and give you a ticket real fast. Pretty cool. So this is called the Nihonbashi-gawa (Nihonbashi River). It's smaller, kind of an offshoot from the Kanda River, which is the main transport hub for goods. That was pretty much—it was easier to carry lots of goods by river than carrying it on foot or pulling it by horse. Here it is right now. You can see it does look significantly cleaner, made from white stones, which I guess gives it a more modern feel than the old lanterns, right? The old stone lanterns you'll see at some of the temples and shrines. This is definitely made from different materials. Hey, Brontania's in the house. Aloha.

00:04:55 John Daub: Now they've been renovating this for a while. This had been under renovation because the foundation of the bridge was cracked from the 3.11 earthquake of 2011, the Great Tohoku Earthquake, Great East Japan Earthquake. There's so many different names for it. So they had to renovate it. And when they did, they tried really hard to use the original materials that they used to build this back in, I think, 1870. Something like that. This is Japan's first stone bridge, which is pretty important because back then everything was made of wood. So the fact that this is still here is important to the identity of the city. And in a second, I'm going to explain a little bit more of why I think that this might be the most important bridge to the city of Tokyo.

00:05:46 John Daub: There's the skyscraper that's just starting to go up. Look at that. You're seeing it now at, what is it, seven floors? And when you all come to visit, it might be done. That's going to be—I think it's like the Torch Tower. It's going to be 390 meters high, pretty darn high. Overlooking this bridge, probably taking the sunlight away from it, which is sad. Here's the original looking stones for this bridge. You can see it is much darker coming from the castle. Now the castle was—Edo Castle was burnt down in a fire and they never rebuilt it. They thought about it during the Meiji period, but said, look, we really don't need a castle here in Tokyo. We are now past the age of shogun and now into the age of democracy. So they didn't rebuild Edo Castle. Instead, they used a lot of the things from Edo Castle to build other structures around the city of Tokyo, including Tokiwa Bridge during the Meiji era. They really reused a lot of the material, which I wish they did with the Olympic Stadium instead of rebuilding it. Maybe do what they did with Tokiwa Bridge and make a new stadium. But that's not what they did.

00:07:14 John Daub: What makes this bridge pretty significant is the name for the city of Tokyo changed from Edo to Tokyo. And that happened around the same time that they were constructing this bridge. So at the time, the architecture, the way of thinking, so many things changed here in Japan during the Meiji era. This bridge is a representative or a symbol of Edo to Tokyo. So I think this is a pretty significant bridge. And if you are in the area, definitely gotta make a little stop here. Check it out. Now that it's been repaired, not a lot of people come here because not a lot of people know about it. Now we can walk over to that side. That's where I took the thumbnail for the video. And we're going to do that in a second. Not the cleanest river either. Another thing that they're trying to do is to clean up the canal ways. Kind of murky in there. But compared to the go-go era of the 1970s and 80s where pollution was just hideous—everybody had to wear masks just to not take toxic fumes from all the cars and industry—Tokyo is much, much, much cleaner than it was 30, 40 years ago for sure. Kawasaki, which is just across the river from Tokyo, was like Cleveland. It was like the rivers were on fire from pollution and stuff.

00:08:41 John Daub: All right, let's go to the other side over here. This episode was a suggestion by a Patreon supporter and want to give a big shout out and thank you to that person whose name I forget. Again, we do have some of the old walls from the Edo era and the new walls from the Reiwa era made of aluminum, which is representative. But it's a really cool contrast here in the heart of Tokyo. It's about a 10 minute walk from Tokyo Station. It doesn't take very long. You can come here, get some pictures before you get on the Shinkansen to go to Osaka or Hiroshima or Kyoto. But don't forget that the city of Tokyo itself has a lot of history. You just have to find it. You have to search for it a little bit more than in Kyoto.

00:09:36 John Daub: There's the old highway. I say old now because it was constructed just before the 1964 Olympics. If you look closely at these above ground highways, you will see the earthquake resistance. Some of the technology they put into the above ground highways to make it safe for the cars above, including right there—you can see the brace between the two joints there that if it were to shake, it gives it some give, I guess so it doesn't ruin the structure. And the highways did a pretty good job of staying intact during the Great Tohoku earthquake 10 years ago. You can see the contrast in some of the materials too. Here, this looks like the original, the older ones and the newer one. But wherever they found the old ones, they found cracks and problems with the bridge. They replaced it and made it new again. But I do know the original stones are still part of this bridge. So that's good. Yes, Edo does rock. There were a lot of rocks in the Edo period. Things were made out of stone or ishi. See underneath the highway here, there's the newer. It's funny though, the newer Tokiwa Bridge looks older now. A few pigeons were spotted. All right. Let's go down here and look at another angle. There are some history buffs that come and take a look. People visiting from other parts of Japan know about this bridge. It is quite famous domestically. But internationally, people like Tokyo. But when that new building comes about in a few years, it's going to be in the news and the name Tokiwa is going to be everywhere. Japan's tallest building completed.

00:11:43 John Daub: The Torch Tower for disaster rescue and relief on the Nihonbashi River. Pretty cool. So I guess if there is a disaster, this area will help out with that. It's been rebuilt and it's pretty darn strong. A little platform here. Let's get closer to the river. What was that, a dollar bill? I've been watching Breaking Bad, looking at bundles of cash. And that just looks like a bundle of 100 Benjamins floating. Looks like Walter White was here. Rob, I'm not jumping in this. It's nasty. It's not worth it. Shout out to Tony. WRX Turbo. Thanks guys. Cheering us on from across the Pacific. It is a pretty bridge and you do see these arcs. I guess a lot of you have seen the other bridges from Japan where they're made of wood and they arc over the rivers like this. It does keep that traditional—even though it's made out of stone—it keeps that traditional arc to the bridges from ancient Japan, which I kind of like.

00:13:15 John Daub: But during the Meiji Restoration, this is when they opened up to the West and a lot of influence from outside Japan came in. Thus, the architecture changed quite a bit. A lot more stone buildings, more cement, more architecture. Tokyo Station, you can see, is shaped more like Central Station in Amsterdam rather than what would be a more traditional Japanese style. And Japan adapted a lot of the stronger architecture, including down in Hiroshima, the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was—I guess built after some German architecture. Pretty neat. Alright, let's go to the other bridge across and walk around the park. I'm glad that they finished it because for the longest time it was under construction. There's a statue over there of a famous guy who I don't know what he did. Alrighty, let's go across to the other side.

00:14:29 John Daub: The bridges along the Nihonbashi River are kind of not that nice. You see down there, made out of steel. Anything just slapped across the river so the roads can get over there. Hey, Lisa Oo's in the house, battling through. Purple gloves. The Asian nerd. Good to catch you. Good to see you, John. Glad I can join another of your live streams. Welcome. I was doing a live—I did a live stream yesterday taking a look at Asakusa. Down there at Taito-ku. Walking around a very famous area that just has maybe a tenth of the foot traffic it would at this time of year. This is the time where the Sanja Matsuri (Sanja Festival) would probably be going on. And yet, there's no festival because of this third wave. Let's follow this around. Yeah, it's probably going to be delayed until later on. Oh, there's my bicycle! Oh, that was pretty cool. Shortcut. That's actually a daimyo package I have to send to Tokyo Station. This daimyo package is going out to Maryland, to Rob and Hiroko in Maryland. I'm sending it right after. I think it's going to be okay. Nobody take that package. It's heading towards Maryland in a minute. And I'm sending this postcard. As soon as I see a mailbox, this is going out to you, Rob and Hiroko. We'll do it during a live stream if we can find a mailbox. And if you want one of these too, check out Patreon. I will send these out until the end of the month, and every month we have a new one. It's a pretty cool design of the fast-handed mochi makers of Nara.

00:16:42 John Daub: Anybody know the name of this place? Nakatani-do. Mr. Nakatani has been making mochi there for decades. Adopted the style of fast-making mochi from his village in Wakayama, not in Nara, and brought that over to Nara, which is full of tourists. He sells a lot. Hey Suzette S is in the house. Just wanted to say hi. How you doing, Suzette? Okay, there you can see here, it says here—this is where the bicycles can—you can walk this way to the Tokiwa Hashi. But this Tokiwa is the wrong kanji for the old version of Tokiwa because it has the kanji of sara (dish) in there. And you don't want this kanji—this wa—this ki, Tokiwa Bridge. You don't want this kanji because it represents dish or something that could break. That's why I can tell now which kanji is right or wrong. And the more you learn about kanji, the cooler it gets. This is where the Shinkansen goes by this track. Not the white Tokaido Shinkansen, but the green Tokiwa green. It's funny that the name of the green for the Shinkansen is Tokiwa green. I don't know if that represents the Tokiwa Bridge. That'd be pretty interesting to find out. The color of the green of this Tohoku Shinkansen is Tokiwa green. Another connection to this bridge, maybe.

00:18:39 John Daub: Alright, let's walk around. We'll get a better view. If I can see the Tohoku Shinkansen go by, I will swing up to the platform there. But they only leave about three times an hour, so it's hard to catch them compared to the Tokaido Shinkansen, which goes quite often, quite frequently. There's a little parking lot for bikes here. Let's see what's the damage. So if you wanted to park your bike pretty close, whoa! Description for foreigners. So they didn't want to put it in English here. So you can buzz this QR code if you want. You can screenshot it and look at it yourself if you want. But they have it in English down here. So it's ten hours. It's two hours for free. That's a pretty good deal. And then if you stay for ten hours, you have to pay 100 yen, and then 100 yen for five hours after that. So that seems like a pretty good deal for bicycles. That's pretty much the standard price. It's free for bicycle riders for two hours. So that's a pretty good deal. But that's standard through the city of Tokyo. Now if you have a smaller motorcycle, you can park it here. And that's good for Peter to know. But I think his might be bigger than 50cc.

00:20:11 John Daub: All right, from this bridge, we get a nice view of the Tokiwa Bridge going by. You're hearing the Yamanote Line cruising by every couple of minutes above there. Whoa, the mosquitoes are out. Just got chomped on. And then there's the next bridge here. Edobashi. This bridge is not quite as nice as that one over there. Oh, there it is! Tokiwa Creed! Shinkansen! That's pulling in from Shin-Aomori. Wow, good timing. Boom, there it is. Oh, there's the Akita Shinkansen in red. I forget what the name of that red is, but it's representative of another area. That was good timing. Part of me wants to just jump on a Shinkansen right now. Can't do it. State of emergency. All right. Soak it up. That is Tokiwa Bridge right there. How you doing? Whoa, from Egypt! Awesome! They know a thing or two about architecture made out of stone. I went to Egypt in 2001. October, one month after 9/11. There were zero tourists there. Me and some dude from Norway who was pretty tough. My tour package through Egypt was 90% off. It's a good deal.

00:22:15 John Daub: But you can see how this highway above is just such an eyesore, right? It takes away from the light down here in the canal and also just takes away from the beauty of the bridge and Nihonbashi, which in itself is a massively beautiful bridge. It's a massive bridge. Much bigger than Tokiwa Bridge. About 300 meters up the Nihonbashi River. Hey, Charlie. How you doing? Nice to see so many people here. I'm back to live streaming. Took some time off to help a family member having health issues. Car, what is that? It's a Beamer. Whoa. I can see Sean Connery and Aki in there speeding through. Off we go. That's right. If you do like these historical episodes, taking a look at the history of Tokyo that's surviving around here or anywhere in Japan for that matter, give me a thumbs up and encourage me to do more of these historical walks because I like to do it. It's also a way to preserve the history. And give you some insight into tourist attractions probably not covered by other people because it's just not as... I don't know. Look at that lone picnic table. That's pretty depressing. All alone. It says, please use this freely. I guess you can drink alcohol there maybe. I don't know. There's a smoking area here as well. But there's a sign that says no smoking. So I don't know what's going on. I guess you can't smoke on the outside. Oh, there it is. There's haizara. Haizara is the word for ashtray. And there's that kanji I was telling you for Tokiwa. Haizara—sara meaning ashtray meaning a dish that can break. So you don't want that kanji in bridge. But the new Tokiwa is there. Pretty funny. It's also funny. There's a no smoking sign next to a smoking area. And it's limited to just 15 people. But there's nobody here to count. I don't know how they check that. It's kind of a depressing little park here.

00:25:09 John Daub: Across from Tokiwa Bridge, you have a lot of money. Loads of international banks and international companies have headquarters in the Nihonbashi area. That right there is the Bank of Japan. And we're going to get a quick look at this. Another reason why they had this expensive stone bridge right here was because it connected the money with the government. I guess I don't... Just made that up. I'm just kind of taking a leap of faith with that. But this is the Bank of Japan. And on the other side of the river, Chuo-ku. This is Chuo-ku. The other side of the river is Chiyoda-ku. And that's where the government of Japan is in Chiyoda-ku. So it does link the two. The two wards are connected with Tokiwa Bridge. Money and power. It's not too much of a leap to make that assumption.

00:26:10 John Daub: And we're back again. I'm trying to think of the year. I'm guessing 1870. A little bit after the Meiji Restoration. But this bridge originally was here in 1603 but made out of wood. So Tokiwa Bridge has been here for a while. But it became a stone bridge in 1870, I want to say. Also the year that Ohio State University was founded. It's easy to remember that for me as a Buckeye. But this bridge, a product of Meiji Restoration. Symbolic of the city of Tokyo because that's when the architecture changed. And the city name changed from Edo to Tokyo. So that's pretty significant. Down there, these look like they are from the 1800s. These lock system, I guess. I don't know what it is. But it looks like they're using the original iron and everything made from back in the 19th century. That's pretty cool. 1911 Wrights and Allen. It could have been renovated in 1911. But the original stone bridge was before that. According to Japan Times. We're going to turn our attention to the Bank of Japan here. And I'm going to take you across the street and show you a little bit of how the architecture has changed before we end the live stream. I've taken you down this roadway before. I've done a few Nihonbashi live streams. So you might want to check that out to connect this one with that one.

00:27:54 John Daub: But the Bank of Japan. A pretty impressive building back when it was built. Maybe 1911. I'm not quite sure. I didn't research that. But certainly after the Meiji era. It has more of a western architecture to it. Made of stone, which a bank should be. But the Bank of Japan. And the Currency Museum is across the street. I went into the Currency Museum. I believe it's free to go in there. They had a lot of cool stuff. I even asked if I could film inside of there. But they said no. They turned me down. So I couldn't film about Japanese currency. I thought that would be a pretty cool episode. Currency history. They used to use rice as money. They would call it a koku. Ichi-koku, ni-koku. Like a bushel of rice. And that's how wealth was determined. By how much rice you had. Nowadays they use cash. Silver was also more prevalent in Japan than gold. So silver was used more in money back in the day. Right, Europe used salt. So before gold and silver there was salt and rice. You would use the things that were quite important. You'll find these markers all over the city too. See these? Made of stone. So this says Edo as well. The old city name. Here, probably here for a hundred years. And then you have the Bank of Japan right there.

00:29:48 John Daub: I guess you can go inside. I'd love to have a tour of the Bank of Japan. I wonder if it's anything like Fort Knox. The only time I saw inside of Fort Knox was when James Bond and Goldfinger were fighting it out inside there. But I've been looking at all of the locations that Sean Connery went to during filming You Only Live Twice back in 1965. Right after the Olympics. Cyber, you're watching a live stream. Live. That's why it's 720p. Don't blame me. It's up to YouTube. The signal is actually pretty strong. I think I could get an HD signal. It's well over 25 megabits per second. Which is more than enough for high definition. But YouTube throttles it at 720p. Blame the platform. I've already told them. Nobody listens to me. Let's go to the corner here. If you keep going straight, you get to Nihonbashi. And from there, there are loads of restaurants and stores. What is the big hotel there? The Four Seasons? No. Not the Peninsula. There's another really nice hotel. As you can see, they're quite expensive. It's a beautiful... Oh, there's a mailbox! Now I can send this postcard to Rob and Hiroko. And here's the front of the Bank of Japan. The Mandarin... Yeah, right. The Mandarin Oriental. Very nice hotel. I've had dinner there a few times. Somebody else paid. That's a true story. But the architecture is very... I don't know. Looks like Roman. Something that... It could be in Washington DC, right? Something that came out of a western country. Certainly doesn't look Japanese. And they didn't add anything really Japanese in this design of the Bank of Japan, did they? Neoclassical, right.

00:32:02 John Daub: Alright, Rob and Hiroko. It is off from the Bank of Japan to Maryland. Thank you so much for the support. Oh, here's a map. So we came from Tokiwa Bridge along the Nihonbashi River, which is a small river off of the Kanda River, the main river going around the city of Tokyo. Here's the Bank of Japan, the Currency Museum I was just talking about. And then on this street, you have the Ginza Line going through it. And loads and loads of department stores. This is the money center. And in fact, before Tsukiji Market was in Tsukiji, now in Toyosu, the fish market was right here in the city of Tokyo before the Great Kanto Earthquake of, I believe, 1923. After that, they moved it to Tsukiji. And then you have all the money moving in after that during the reconstruction. Because this area was new back in the 1920s. All reconstructed. Hey, Toru Toropoko's here. Sorry to hear about the illness. The family, please use this to words. Prayer for health. Thank you very much. I hope all is well with your family. I'm glad I didn't miss your second livestream. If there's anything we can do to help, let us know. Thank you, Michael Sasano. The love that we have from our community and everybody. And everybody after the Patreon livestream last night. I really, really appreciate it. It's a hard time and it's easy to feel alone in these kind of difficult situations. But we have a family of people. People here that support the series. And I totally appreciate it. And that's what the word support means. Supporter and support. I appreciate the love from everybody around the world.

00:33:51 John Daub: Beautiful day, isn't it? I'm going to take you back to the Tokiwa Bridge. And I got to get back to editing an episode I hope to get up tonight. Saying thank you to all the viewers who've been supporting the new channel for a year. We have 110,000 subscribers. 111 now, I think. Right? It's a new channel. It's growing every day. And I'm going to be putting two episodes a month starting in June on the channel. And then I'm going to work into trying to get it up to once a week. So it's just about working really hard now and building the channel up as much as possible. But I have a million ideas for episodes as you all know. I've been living here for 23 years. There's no way that I'm going to be giving in. Fight to the end. I'm like Bruce Lee. Be like water. Move with it. That's right. Like Rocky. Like a piece of steel. Apollo Creed pounding on Rocky over and over again. But Rocky just keeps getting up. You can't keep Rocky down. He just gets up. You could pound him. In many ways I thought Adrienne looks like Kanae too. She has the glasses. Kind of shy. I was watching Rocky. It was in the background when I was editing video last night. Rocky won. And I'm just in tears at the end when you see. Rocky is not the sharpest blade in the knife rack. But he has a big heart. You could just see the way he interacts with people. He's tough as metal. But he's got a pretty good heart on him. The way he tells his manager to piss off. And then he runs outside to apologize. You know. Made out of steel. But kind of soft on the inside too.

00:35:55 John Daub: Alright we're going to cross over to the new Tokiwa Bridge. And my bicycle. It's a pretty cool day. Tomorrow I have maybe some midnight camping. And a midnight snack run. Something at midnight coming up. And I'm planning to go to Shibuya. To do some live streaming over there. To get a look and see how that area is doing. So you're going to want to subscribe if you haven't already. To the Only in Japan Go channel. Shibuya is—everybody loves to go to Shibuya. I don't know why. I try to avoid it. Boom. Tokiwa Bridge. That's it. It is newly renovated. This is where we started the live stream. It's a symbol of the city of Tokyo. Built in an era when the name Edo changed to the name that we know today. Tokyo. Two syllables. Not three by the way. Alright. To-kyo. To-kyo. Not Tok-ee-oh. To-kyo. I was corrected. I used to do a TV show as a guest. Called Hirube. Which is a news program. And when I was going over the script with the moderator, Megumi-san. He told me. He corrected me on this. I said yeah. In Tokyo. He goes, John-san. To-kyo. Not Tok-ee-oh. To-kyo. To-kyo. Two syllables. I said, ah. To-kyo. So I call it To-kyo. And now you can see the Shinkansen cruising by right now. That's also the Tohoku Shinkansen. That's an E3 I believe.

00:37:41 John Daub: So don't get it wrong. Get it right. Not To-kyo. To-kyo. Two syllables. Not three. K-Y-O is Kyo. Like Kyoto. Right? Boom. Why not Asakusa? Yeah. You know what? I don't know. Okay. My buddy Josh does all the announcements for the Tokyo Metro. They say Asakusa. So all these people that are like—look who said Asakusa—they can go, you know. It's pronounced two ways. Okay. So don't worry about it. If you say Tokyo, I'm not going to ban you. Okay. Maybe the moderators will. I've got a kind heart like Rocky. John Kimura is in the house. Thank you John. Nice to see you here. But seriously. Rocky man. If you watch the movie for the 25th time. You will see that he's—look at the way he interacts with people. And it is such an amazing thing to see. The guy is not—not so smart. He's not so smart. But he's just got this soft core. But the outside of him is made of metal. Man. It's like plate steel. All right. You can't bust through it. So I feel like that quite a bit. I take a lot of criticism. I take a lot of name calling and whatever. But that never impacts me. You know why? Because I was born during the Rocky era. Man. I remember as a kid watching Rocky 4. And getting into a fight. And I won that fight too. Because I got some little Rocky in me. That's why. Kanae looks like Adrian. And I go into battle. I come out. Knock me down man. I'm getting back up. I don't even know what this has to do with Tokiwa Bridge. It is just what it is. It is what it is. You're darn right man. I grew up near Philadelphia. Got a little of that Philly spirit. East Coast man. Fighters. For no reason too. Just fight. That's the way it was. Don't push me Rob. WRX is in here. Oh there goes the Tohoku Shinkansen. I didn't—I timed this so perfectly. There's the Akita part of it. And then boom. Connected to that Tokiwa green. A good symbol of—that's a new symbol of Tokyo. The Tohoku Shinkansen leaving. Want to get back on that Shinkansen soon. Get back up to Shin-Aomori. Do you have some ramen? Ah it's beautiful. Beautiful train.

00:40:18 John Daub: Thug life. How do we get—no. It's not a thug life. Okay. Rocky was a good guy. He wasn't a thug. Take that back. Tough. Tough means thug life. I don't think so. Tough means soft core. Made of steel. You know what I mean? Gary Chan's in the house. I look forward to the day that you can be more interactive with other people than just doing solo walking streams. I hope so too. It was nice to do. It was nice to—just saw the Yamanote. It was nice to hang out with Eric Surf Six the other day and some other YouTubers maybe. But it is really hard for me to go into restaurants or to go places and take you to the—oh wow. Double trouble. Look at this. Take you to the places that I used to take you in the live streams. But I think we're going to get back to normal. Just Japan needs a little bit more time. They're doing a better job with the vaccine rollout. Just takes time. That looks like the local Tohoku Shinkansen that came in—no Akita to attach to it. Yeah. Maybe you'll have another live Shinkansen one. The state of emergency is expected to end on the 30th–31st of May. I don't know if they're going to extend it. They may. But if they extend it, that means that there's a good chance tourism won't start in October, meaning the state of emergency is very symbolic to when people feel like they're okay to have foreign visitors coming to Japan. So keep your eye on this big news coming this week. I might do another—I might do another travel update because the state of emergency is very significant to the Olympics as well. If you continue with the state of emergency, what does that do with the Olympics? Does it have an impact on it? Because there's still kind of gray area there. So we'll figure it out. Yeah, I am. I am planning to meet with Eric in June. So we're going to do another live stream or another episode. Maybe I'll be on one of his shows. It'd be pretty cool. The channel is ancient, just like Tokiwa Bridge. Got to respect that.

00:42:26 John Daub: All right, everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night wherever you are. Thanks for hanging out with me for about 45 minutes. I'll be back in another live stream maybe tonight or tomorrow morning or tomorrow night. But I'm going to try to be more consistent. And thanks so much for everybody for being patient. If you do want to go over to the Discord server, I'll probably be back in about 45 minutes for a fireside chat. If you're still awake on the West Coast or in Europe, you can ping me in there and maybe I'll go in there for about 20 minutes and take some of your questions. Discord is free. Anybody can use it. Just download the app. It's discord.gg slash Only in Japan. And you can hang out with the community. This is where we go after the live streams. See you, everybody. Bye.