00:00:00 John Daub: This is Shibuya. This is an area that I dread coming to. The signal is never good in a live stream, but you come here anyways. Is this the most popular place in all of Tokyo to visit for tourists, for everybody? Let's walk across this intersection, which is chaotic. It really is like pachinko, bumping into people, going in all sorts of directions, trying to social distance. It's summer. The umbrellas are out. How you doing, everybody? Yes, you can probably see me on the live Shibuya cameras. And for a lot of you, this was the place that you wanted me to come to visit. You wanted me to check out Shibuya, and I'm here for you. So thanks so much for the suggestions.

00:00:53 John Daub: It's been a while since I've been here myself, so I'm going to pan around, just give you a quick look. This is June 2021. There's Hikari-guchi. Nice blue sky here. And it's loud as ever. Buses. But there aren't that many people. Check it out. The Starbucks is still here. And Basketball Street, which I don't know why they call this, is still here. And we'll walk down there in a second. How you doing, everybody?

00:01:30 John Daub: So a lot of people have been asking me, where is the best spot to go in Tokyo? And I don't really know myself. It's always changing. The one thing that's amazing about the city of Tokyo is that every single six months, you can walk around the same neighborhoods, especially downtown. And they will completely change. You'll find different shops, different vibes. The colors will change. The signs will change in all of these advertisements here. And then you have, of course, the Four Seasons. So Shibuya is one of those places that's always in transition.

00:02:03 John Daub: And today, for the next 30 minutes or so, we're going to walk around Shibuya. And I want to hear from you. What is your favorite place in Tokyo? Where should I go next? And what makes this place special to you? I mean, for me, I don't particularly like Shibuya. I have to be honest with you. This is not a place I like to hang out. I don't like to come. Here I'm on the live camera. I don't know if you can see me. There's a bunch of live cameras here. Sushi Roll, the sushi shop, seems to have bought out Maruichi. They got sushi on the side of it. How cool is that? That is so Tokyo.

00:02:48 John Daub: All right. So this is the intersection. I'm going to take you now down Basketball Street. And we're going to walk around a little bit. And I'm going to tell you why I think this might be the number one place. And it starts right here with Hachiko. And I'm going to end this live stream going over to Hachiko over there. There's a statue, a memorial to the dog. I'll tell you a little bit about the story that you all already know. You don't need me to say more. And that mural from the 1970s, I believe, right in the center of your screen, that's also from Hachiko.

00:03:31 John Daub: Let's go take a look down Basketball Street and wrap around. Now, why is Shibuya such a popular place? I guess it's the vibe. There's something larger than life. It could be all of these advertisements looking down at you. Every single brand seems to have some kind of shop here. Every restaurant, every chain shop. All the colors here. And you're going to see as I turn the street that the banners on the left and the right down this narrow alley. It's just such a vibrant location. Usually have music blasting. There's a ton of energy. And you think of modern Tokyo, you think the Tokyo of the 21st century. You kind of think of Shibuya a little bit. This is not the cultural side, the historical cultural side, but the modern side. I think from the end of the Showa period. The go-go bubble era of the 1980s. That's what I get here in Shibuya. It is most vibrant at sunset and dark. But on a Friday afternoon, it's not too bad either.

00:04:45 John Daub: I'm also quite curious to see how the businesses have changed or evolved or what's still here? What's gone? We've seen as we walk around Akihabara. A lot of the businesses have changed. A lot of the businesses have disappeared because of the lack of tourists. But Shibuya is a place that's more of a center for Japanese youth than Akihabara, which was I guess you would call it an otaku center. But people can buy these things online. But people come here to hang out. So it looks like a lot of these shops, I don't know what they're shut for. So this place again, there's probably a dinner place. It's open at three p.m. So it's not shut because of that. But Shibuya is not geared too much to tourists, which is another reason that it has its own personality the way it's always been. I think Akihabara geared more towards tourism.

00:05:48 John Daub: Wendy's is in a collaboration with First Kitchen. When I came to Japan in the late 1990s, they were in collaboration with Daiei, the department store supermarket chain that didn't work out for them. And they came back under new partnerships. And that seems to be better for them. So I'm not sure why they call this Basketball Street, other than the fact that perhaps Japan wants to promote more basketball to the youth and it's working. Japan's got some pretty good basketball players that would surprise you. Height is not everything. And there's some tall people here, too.

00:06:43 John Daub: I used to work with a lot of advertising agencies. So much so that I would teach them English and go to their offices and teach them how to use business English. I got so many connections to the ad agencies here. I wonder if I could contact them and see if I could buy a little ad space, a little Patreon, I think. But I have to wait till you all can come back here to make it worthwhile to see it in person. That makes more sense. I've been down the street, too, in a live stream. And I showed you some of the businesses that used to be here. Again, this place is consistently changing. That shop right there used to be Jackie Chan's Ramen. I'm not joking. Jackie Chan had a ramen shop in Shibuya. This is like 15 plus years ago. And it's of course gone, but I loved it. The ramen was okay, but it had nothing to do with that. You could go in there and it felt like Jackie Chan was there. And now it's still like a noodle shop, but it's a totally different one. It's soup with noodles, which isn't that ramen? Noodle soup, I guess, wouldn't be ramen. It's a different kind of ramen shop. But this area has changed so much. Every six months there seems to be some sort of different shop here. Not my cup of tea. Or should I say cup of noodles?

00:08:06 John Daub: I do know that the Outback Steakhouse, which is straight ahead, is out of business. But we're going to turn, oh, there's a mega Don Quijote. We're going to turn this way and just kind of wander the streets. Basketball Street is one of the most vibrant places. Everybody gets a photograph there. Now I'm starting to smell Shibuya. One of the reasons why I don't like this place, it's also one of the dirtiest areas in Tokyo because it is a youth center and youth seem to like to spit and throw things all around and not keep it nice and clean. Again, another reason why Akihabara has been declining is because it is not just the maid capital. Maid cafes are now everywhere around Japan. You can find Maidreamin', which is like the McDonald's of maid cafes, in different cities around Japan, too. So to get that experience, you don't have to go to Akihabara anymore. You can come right to Shibuya.

00:09:18 John Daub: If you walk this way, this is how I used to run to get to the Tokyo Eye studio shoots on time. I would go up this street. There's a Tokyo Hands on the right side. And this will take you straight to NHK. I know that because I've done the run about 50 times for studio shoots for Tokyo Eye and other NHK shows. There's a kōban (police box). And this direction will take you down some pretty cool alleys. Not a lot of tourists will go to this side of the kōban here. It's pretty interesting. You'll be able to find quiet streets and more of the non-commercial vibe of Shibuya would be down that street. Some pretty cool ramen places, too.

00:10:04 John Daub: Up here is Niku Yokocho (Meat Alley). A lot of you might not know about it. There's the entrances right there. Just go in there and take a right. And then you can go up the stairs to the second floor. It is like a town inside of Shibuya filled with yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurants. There must be, I don't know, maybe like 20 yakiniku places inside of there. And if you're looking for grilled beef and a nice dinner and it's pretty loud and energetic inside of Niku Yokocho, check this place out. Prices are pretty reasonable. This is a place where you can get shoulder to shoulder with some locals as well as other tourists. Prices are fairly reasonable, but it's going to be hard to find a table to yourself. Sometimes you have to sneak in with another group, or you can try to call ahead and make reservations. They'll put a little reserve thing on a table for you. But for the most part, you're probably just going to go and go early is what I say, because people usually park their butts there and just drink for a couple of hours.

00:11:02 John Daub: Shibuya has a lot of little alleys here. This is one that I'm going to take you up next. I just want to show you around the corner. You always have to look up here. I always tell you to look down for the manhole covers, but in Shibuya, you look up. You never know. The signs are different. You find a banner of someone in the United States that is doing something. I've seen like what, right now in Ginza, there's a big banner of Spike Lee and I don't know why. I think he's doing something with watches or something. This is where the pretty good gōkon (group blind date) places that I could make no maker. And it's still in business on the third floor up there. It's mostly for women, but they have, you know, dudes can go in there. Not all the gōkon places allow men. But up on the third floor, you have one of some of the last really cool gōkon in this area. It's hard to find them. It's getting harder to find them. But if you look, you will find them.

00:12:19 John Daub: I'm using the external microphone. If you have any questions about that, I'd be glad. A couple of days ago, the battery was dead, so it didn't sound too good. So I hope the audio is coming in nice and clear. Now, there's a little bit of wind in the area. So I have a wind buffer on here to make sure the audio is nice and clear on the other side for you listening. I'm going to go around this alley. Walk up. And for those that don't know the Apple Store for foreign residents, this is the place where we would go to get our stuff repaired. This is, I think, the first Apple Store and I'd have to come quite a ways. I think Ginza had one too. Wow that looks pretty good. These models are incredible. There's curry on top of an omurice. It's a little expensive, like 20 bucks for that. Whoa the Parco building is done. Look up. That's a brand new building finished. It's been under construction for ages. So we'll walk by there and wrap around.

00:13:08 John Daub: Riley is a new traveler. Welcome. Thank you so much for signing up. I noticed a few days ago that the badges, the S badges, the generic YouTube badges turned red which means it's been a year. And I am working on, not very hard but I am working on trying to get to fix those up. But we've accomplished something great. We've moved on to a year of the memberships and I want to thank everybody for being a part of it. That means I have to refresh some of the emoji and keep it pretty vibrant. If you want to you can show me what your favorite emoji is.

00:14:03 John Daub: See, this is made for tourists. It's in English, which is a good thing. When I came here in 98, nothing was in English. It would do it just to make a statement. They'd put things in Roman letters. Like Sony is not in katakana. It's actually in S-O-N-Y. The wafū salad. Wafū means Japanese style, not waffle. And you'll find stairways in a lot of the pedestrian areas in Shibuya. I kind of like that. It makes it real. Gives it a lot of character when you have to walk up some steep steps to get to the next part of the city area. Whoa, the Parco's done. This was just a big wall for the longest time. Check it out. I hope the signal is coming in. It's kind of thin and strong. I wanted to bring you out here just to check this out for a little bit. Looks nice. There's a new escalator. There's some restaurants here. The seventh floor and the B floor. The Uniqlo that was here shut down, by the way. This is a big Uniqlo. I used to jump in here. I've purchased some stuff, like sweatshirts if it was cold and I was filming for a while.

00:15:39 John Daub: Let's go underneath the Parco building. This is kind of cool. Wow, this is all brand new. Nobody, if you're a tourist, you probably have not seen this yet because this is the first time that I'm walking through here. I guess they wanted to finish this right before the Olympics. What smells new? Somebody's like pumping out lemongrass into the air here, which is a much more pleasant smell than how Shibuya normally smells like. This new Parco building has given this area a completely different vibe.

00:16:41 John Daub: Ali, this is a lighter mask, so I can't smell things besides myself in this thing. It's made more for pollen, but when you're outside on a beautiful day like this, as long as I'm social distancing and trying my best to keep a distance. I have a second mask I wear on top of this when I'm on the subway. Thanks for caring. Cafe Marley. I think Bob Marley was spelled different. Again, like this is not one of my favorite areas, but it's just kind of cool just to be back in here. I have a Patreon and yeah, it's doing pretty well. Join the postcard club. In fact, a couple of new signups just yesterday. I forgot to bring the postcards with me. I would have put them in the mailbox here in Shibuya. Oh, the Denny's is still there. That's good. So this way I believe will take you to Tower Records, which is still a thing. Japanese love CDs. They love like holding it and I kind of do too.

00:18:01 John Daub: Whoa, check it out. This new elevator theaters and restaurants. It takes you from the outside straight up to the top so you don't have to go inside of the elevators. They're right outside. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah and if Tower Records has been out of business for a long time in the US, but it is strong here in Tokyo. A lot of artists are here. A lot of artists will go there to sign their new CDs and make appearances. So it's a pretty important place for the music industry in Japan. If you do come to Tokyo, it's kind of nostalgic just to jump into Tower Records for a little bit. All right, there's Maruichi. The Apple store is not there anymore. They moved the locations to Omotesando, I believe. So don't try to repair your iPhone there.

00:18:57 John Daub: All right, we're going to go this way. I think you've been down here. We're going to go down that street. We're going to wrap around and go back to where the Tokyu Honten department store is and the massive Don Quijote. I'm going to walk through there and bring you down the alley and then we're going to wrap around to the station and wrap this up. I think we got another 10 minutes or so. Probably 20 minutes. Oh, you can see inside that. You see the Uniqlo. That's gone. Wow, it's a beautiful day. So what do you think? Is Shibuya? That's the stairways that we just walked from. You can see Tokyo Station down there in the distance. That area. There's that platform that a lot of people have been taking Instagram photos of the city. Do you see that corner up there? You can stand there, look down onto the Hachiko crossing and get some pretty good shots. I might go there one day, but every other YouTuber has already covered that. I'll have to find something interesting or different about it.

00:20:25 John Daub: Welcome, everybody. We just passed a thousand people watching the live stream. Nice to see you. Click that like button if you want me to keep going and I'll see if we can get something to eat. I'd like to get some street food, but because of the pandemic, a lot of places are selling bentos outside. You just buy it and pick it up and carry away. But I haven't seen a lot of that here in Shibuya. If you wonder where I am, where Shibuya is, I put a map in the description of this video so you could take a look at it. Nothing interesting in that vending machine. I do like the day. I'll buy takeout and take it to the park. In fact, from here, you can take things up to Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is about a 10 minute walk this way towards NHK. And you can eat your bento there. It's really nice.

00:21:37 John Daub: So there was a lot of like really interesting test shops that are gone. Like a lot of Western chains will come to Tokyo and they pick Shibuya and they'll try out their business here to see if it takes. And in Japanese culture and a lot of them don't. Taco Bell was one of those in 1996. A Taco Bell. OK, it's gone now. There used to be some test shops over there. Taco Bell had a shop in Nagoya. Nagoya is like the Midwest of Japan. It's sort of like typical Japan. So Taco Bell put a test shop in Fujigaoka. People went to go to the Taco Bell, but they were confused because taco is octopus. So they were looking for takoyaki. So Taco Bell was out of Japan for a long time before they came back. I guess because of Japanese tourists had traveled quite a bit to the US and like Taco Bell. So they came back with an unusual menu that was three times the price of a normal Taco Bell.

00:22:39 John Daub: Game center still here. But you can see they've done what they do at a lot of game centers, move to UFO catchers onto the ground floor. That's where the Outback Steakhouse was. It's something else. Is anybody curious to find out what that building is straight ahead? But there's the mega Don Quijote at the backside of it. It got even bigger. If that's possible. I think that used to be a Sega game center. Don Quijote just bought them out because the game centers weren't doing good and put more stuff in there. Look at that ramen with karaoke. That should be illegal. No, that's nine hundred and eighty yen. I'm coming back here with [inaudible]. She'll kill me if I ate that. Oh, that's genius. Put karaoke inside of ramen. Why not get like the best everything in one bowl?

00:24:13 John Daub: No, the Outback Steakhouse is still here. Somebody told me they've gone. They left this location. Guess they didn't. Sometimes you just have to check with your own eyes. Have I ever eaten there once? A lot of expats that miss home jump in there for one of those onion fry things. They have one in Makuhari as well and is in Roppongi. At least, I think they used to have one, but I didn't think that they were still at this location. Interesting. That's a new Daiso. I don't remember the Daiso being here. Hundred yen shop in Shibuya. The closest one in the past was in Harajuku, but that's another reason to keep walking around this area. You're always going to find something interesting.

00:25:15 John Daub: All right, we're going to wrap around and head back to the station now. You see, what do they have here? Pasta? Some of these places have pasta, but the pasta has been Japanified, so it's not like spaghetti anymore. It's like Japanese spaghetti. I always thought that would make a pretty interesting topic to talk about. All right, here's the Tokyu Honten. Honten means the main shop. And up on the roof, there's a beer garden. I loved to go to that beer garden about 10 years ago. I would go there with a lot of my friends. There's the garden. There's some green up there. The top of the department store has turned into beer gardens in Tokyo, and actually all around Japan. And it is incredible up there. Watch the sunset with a friend and just drink a beer and relax. But because of the pandemic, it's been ages since I've been up there.

00:26:24 John Daub: Viron has a shop in Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station, outside, but they also have very authentic French pastries, I've been told. It's a good location right across from the Tokyu Honten. Now the Don Quijote, for a lot of you that haven't been here for five years or more, used to be that building that's now covered, being renovated into something else. But it's been moved to a mega, mega super Don Quijote, which isn't doing too well, I heard, because it depended on tourism. And that street, don't ask me how I know, I don't. If you take a left there, you will go to Love Hotel Hill, where you'll see lots of love hotels and people sneaking around. All right, back to the station we go.

00:27:20 John Daub: Whoa, they tore down that building there. It's the first time I'm seeing that. I hope that's not where Peter von Gomm's favorite restaurant is. He used to jump in there for some kind of, I forget what it was, Middle Eastern food. It was really good, too. He took me there. Is that the place there? It's like a little hole in the wall right there. That could be it right there. Really friendly owner. I think it was Turkish food. It's really good. But this building is gone. I can't even remember what it was. Hey, Zambot 3 is in the house. John, buy some gelato on me. You got it if I could find it. I was hoping I'd be able to find some kind of street food or something here. Wow, that's a Ferrari. All right, here's the mega Don Quijote, and it is massive. It goes up. Nagoya has a really big one. Like, a lot of the major cities have really big ones. Shinjuku has one in the Kabukicho area, but this one is so big, you will spend half a day in here. But you can see it's geared towards tourism because it even has Thai on the floor plan.

00:29:25 John Daub: This is the way to go. This is the way to Tokyo Station, and we're going to go down Dogenzaka. Gosh, I haven't said that word in about six years, maybe. Dogenzaka is like an alley area, the hill. And there are a lot of yakiniku shops down here, but this is also where the first Taco Bell opened up, and it's still here. Interesting. Very colorful alley. And, yeah, you know, if you do decide to eat out in Tokyo, you're going to want to come a little bit earlier than usual. Because it does get packed pretty quickly. Oh, here's a micro-brew place. That's new. A lot of pizza and Western food. Hope the signal's holding out because we are deep in an alley. A lot of these buildings are old here, too, but I hope they never get rid of them.

00:30:29 John Daub: Oh, this is where I had a yakiniku event. I used to have these yakiniku events on the 29th of every month. And I remember going up that spiral staircase and trying to come down after one too many. And I remember seeing that they have another entrance on the other side of this road that goes up. I didn't have to go down the spiral staircase. Oh, I can smell the Mos Burger. And you can hear the crows. Shibuya in the morning. I don't know if any of you have done the all-nighters. If you're still here at 5 a.m. and you walk the streets, there are a lot of crows nibbling at the bags of garbage on the curbside. This will eventually take you to Sangenjaya, if you go up this road here. We just went through Dogenzaka. Zaka meaning like incline, like a steep place.

00:31:40 John Daub: The hub is there. I heard that the, did the Dubliners go out of business? They did. I had heard a rumor about it. There was a pub here. Is it? Or is it gone? Everybody would hang out here. I hope that's not gone. They're just taking a break. That would be huge if they were gone. A lot of good and strange memories up there. They have live Irish music too, which is pretty sweet. This is the Mark City. Again, like this isn't my neighborhood. I rarely come here. A lot of shopping malls. You'll be surprised with what you find down here. A lot of ramen shops. I don't go down this direction very often. There's a Yamaya booze shop. I used to get bottles of wine to take home. Take to house parties. You can't come empty handed. This is a pretty big Uniqlo. It's connected with the underground, so you don't have to actually go outside to get into this one. Underneath us right now is a labyrinth of Shibuya Station, which is pretty incredible, pretty deep. There's a movie cinema right here, a Toho cinema with a Krispy Kreme in there. So a lot of things have not changed.

00:33:18 John Daub: All right, we're heading out of Shibuya Station to the Hachiko statue. I haven't heard too many comments from people saying why they like this spot, but I figure in the comments after the live stream, leave me some of your experiences here. Why do you think Shibuya deserves to be number one? And you know, for the longest time, it was the top spot. Shibuya Hachiko was the number one tourist attraction in Tokyo. And I was asked to go on a news program and explain to them why. And I did by saying it's in every guidebook. I read every single guidebook, the cover of one of the guidebooks once, and it's just got so much energy there. Everybody wants to cross Hachiko Crossing, but the crossing itself has a story, and that makes it pretty unique.

00:34:09 John Daub: Behind me is the Maruichi-Q building. Can you feel the texture? What YouTuber is going to show you the street? But in Shibuya, the street is pretty cool. It's got a lot of cracks and characteristics. A lot of feet have crossed this path here. And the Red Bull place is saying, do you have enough energy? The commercial center of Japan. That's what Shibuya is. This is in your face. Shibuya is... Hachiko is like the Times Square of Tokyo, I would say. So in that sense, yeah, if you're a first-timer to New York City, you're going to have to go to Times Square. It is pretty cool.

00:35:28 John Daub: Hey, PCGamer41. Hi, John. Have you ever tried a kebab there? I was wondering if they taste good in Japan. They're not that bad, but they do not taste the same as in Turkey or the Middle East. I've had some. And even if I'm talking about like kebabs, things off of large racks of meat, the gyros, they are, of course, best in Greece. But like they're not bad, but they're better in the U.S. Get what you can take. And sometimes I do miss having a good gyro or a kebab. You can find it. Okachimachi has some nice shops of people that will chase you down and make sure you don't get caught. You don't leave empty-handed. Good businessmen. Falafel I haven't seen too much of. Wow, it's so quiet here. Isn't it? A wagyu kebab would definitely be good. Check out the pavement of Hachiko. A lot of feet have crossed here. And cars.

00:37:12 John Daub: Back to the station. The red light, the green light is green for 45 seconds. And then it's red for 90 seconds as the cars pass. Make sure you pass in your 45 seconds because these cars, they do come real fast. Roaring by. Once it turns red, the cars start coming. You've been warned. There's always something bizarre going on here. Inexplicable. Don't even try to explain. It's okay. And last but not least, we have to say hello to Hachiko. It's been a while. For those of you that haven't been to Japan in a while, this is one of the locations. You come here. Good dog.

00:38:17 John Daub: There you have it. It's going to be blurry here because we're in a really bad position that's really crowded. This is new. This used to be like a subway train that had some of the history. Now it's a place for Docomo. 5G has rolled out. So you're going to find that all over the place here. If you have any questions, leave me a comment below. I got to get back. She's like, get back here. It's all right. Explain to me what makes Shibuya so great because I want to hear from you what makes this place so incredible. And I'll be back with another live stream tomorrow. Try to get to another area. This is a statue. The mural on the side of Shibuya Station of Hachiko. See everybody. No street food. I was looking for gelato. But there's ice cream. Hey, the Rodriguez family you're watching. And I'm about to leave. I'm glad that you're here. Definitely watch the playback as John is going into the station into the dungeon of Shibuya to catch his train home. Thanks so much for watching. Oh, it's nice and cool down here. I'll be back in another live stream tomorrow. Taking you to another area of Tokyo. State of emergency ends next week. Woohoo!