00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome! Welcome to Shinjuku in the heart of Tokyo. I'm outside where this amazing 3D digital cat has been popping up on social media. This is the space right in front of the Studio Alta building. Just to my left, this is the side of it. And I wanted to start here because you could see the curvature of this is what... Oh, there it is! All right, we're gonna get a chance to see it from different angles. From this angle, it's not too impressive. You have to get it from the right angle. It's talking to us. It's over. That's it?

00:00:49 John Daub: Come over here for a second. Not to worry. Actually, today is the launch of this Shinjuku Cross, I believe is the name of this building right here. It's a brand new building. This screen is digital signage. This is a place where they're selling advertisements. The stuff you saw on social media, the schedule for this was not very frequent. When I came here to check it out, there were foreigners there waiting with cameras for up to three hours for one of the rolls to go. And then they got their clips for Instagram. That is some serious dedication. But now, since it starts today and the schedule is on my Twitter, or a link in the description will tell you where it is. Let's get into the crowds here.

00:01:37 John Daub: I'm still going to social distance, but it's now every few minutes or every time it goes through an advertisement, you get a view of it. And yeah, you can see it is drawing a crowd. All of the social media has brought out people to check this out in person. It's different with your own eyes. But since you can't make it, I'm here for you. Hope the signal's good in glorious 720p, because this is a live stream. All right, here's the angle. I think we're going to get a pretty good view from this direction of it. Nice to see everybody here. Welcome! Click that like button. Don't do it for me, do it for the cat. We're going to see it in glorious 3D. I do like the effect, and it's because of the curvature of the screen.

00:02:33 John Daub: However, at night, I think it's even better. So, we might come back here in the evening, or at least I might, with a camera to film this for other episodes. Because I know I'm going to be using this as b-roll for a lot of stuff in the future. This might be one of the things that comes when you see the city of Tokyo, and you see all the sights. This might be one of the things that says, hey, this is Tokyo, like Tokyo Tower. And then there's the 3D cat. I don't know. Guess who's in the house? WRX Turbo. Welcome. Let me know if the signal's no good. If not, I will upload this later on as an 8K video. I have my Sony Alpha 1 with me.

00:03:22 John Daub: No cat, just copyrighted music. All right, we are here waiting in Shinjuku for the cat to appear live. You're here with me. We're gonna check it out. When the cat does pop up, we're gonna be one of the first people to see it. Because we're in the front of this group. I guess they know better than me where this cat is. I gotta keep your eyes peeled, okay? I like the fact that the tree is in the way. By the time you're able to visit Japan in 2065, that tree might be really too high. They're gonna have to chop it down. There it is. That's it. Apparently, there's rolls where he's playing and doing other things. But you can see the frequency has been increased a lot.

00:04:25 John Daub: Jennifer French is here. She has one word to say. Meow. Introvert to Taiko. Nice to see you. Long time no see. Haven't been able to catch you live in a long time. Hope you're well. Very well. I need to replay the streams from the past month. Good luck with that. There's a lot. It could also be the frequency too. I think I gotta get my Alpha 1 out and a better camera. And I'll see if I can upload an 8K version of this for your pleasure a little bit later on. But I didn't want to film this before because the frequency was so bad. I saw a lot of foreigners down here at the start with their cameras out waiting and waiting and waiting. But this is, I believe it's called Cross Shinjuku or Shinjuku Cross. I'm not sure what the name of this building is exactly. There's a link to the Twitter post that I just made with the schedule of this. And my jaw dropped because I'm waiting. It's like every couple of minutes the cat comes out here.

00:05:32 John Daub: Nosh Abroad just gave me some information about what you guys see here. I don't know what to do with that. And I couldn't even understand his technical jargon. So thanks for that, Nosh. It's a choice like Hayaku. Bring the cat. Bring the cat. Michael Sasada is in the house. Hi, John. Love when you're in Shinjuku. Weather looks pretty hot. It is. Grab a nice cold drink from a vending machine. You got it. And after this, I might take you around the area just to see if I can get a vending machine. I'll have to give you a look at Shinjuku. Now the cat. I'm going to show it one more time before I walk around.

00:06:08 John Daub: Let's see if I can move back here. I'm trying to social distance. This seems to be the popular place here. Aaron Duran's in the house too. Thank you, Aaron. Trevor Beck. I swear I don't know how my kitten got that big or got to Tokyo. But that cat looks like my kitten. Really? It's weird. There's lines on him. I guess it just could be the frequency. There it is. A little bit better if I just walk around. It's pretty crazy. All right. We got it. I'm going to take you around the area of this place. This is a street food episode. So don't worry. You'll see more cat.

00:06:58 John Daub: One thing that the cat should be aware of is that if these pigeons ever unionize and gang up on the digital cat, the makers of that cat might have a problem. I could see these pigeons getting really upset because no one's paying any attention to them. There's a lot of them. Oh, my gosh. There's a lot of poo here, too. You guys are not innocent, are you? So there's a way to see the cat from different angles here. Now, the TV looks, the monitor looks fine from here, but it's when the digital cat plays. There seems to be some sort of lines. Hey, you back away. Back away. Social distance. Pigeons are in pigeon land. The tree is full of pigeons, too. You got to watch yourself. At least a little cheeky one. All right. This is the distance shot to Higashiguchi. So just check it out right here as I bet you the cat rolls right now.

00:08:11 John Daub: No, it's the next ad. It's funny. They got us watching ads. So somehow it's genius, right? The makers of this monitor got us to watch the ads in anticipation of something better. I don't know. I wish it was a skip ad. We can just click skip, get straight to the cat. But apparently the cat does different positions and the schedule is on my Twitter. So go check that out. If you're not following me on Twitter, I'm kind of new to it. Very smart business, right? And Christie writes that. I think a lot of people take what they see from Japan and they copy it in other countries. Or if not, it might go the other way, too. But Japan has a pretty good way of... I think this is it. It must be close. Until the cat comes, enjoy pigeon watch. How do they get on the other side of the fence? I don't think you're not supposed to be there, sir. Excuse me. There's a fence there for a reason. Keep you out. It's like a zoo. The pigeons are watching other pigeons inside the exhibit. It's weird.

00:09:31 John Daub: All right. Stay on target. I'm not here for them. I'm here for this. Welcome to the new member, DeMarco Fields, new traveler. I'm going to have to get a digital cat in the emoji as the phone is starting to overheat because it is pretty hot and humid in Tokyo. Summer. Actually broke, although we had some massive thunderstorm yesterday. Scared Leo. Hey, don't block the view. All right. After this Japanese J-pop singer artist album thing, it's commercial. I bet you the cat appears. There's a little digital sign right next to it, too, on the right side here. That's interesting. And then there's the AltaVision. Cinema Alta. This is Studio Alta.

00:10:24 John Daub: Okay, this is it. This has got to be it. There it is. So I don't know what the cat is saying exactly. It's sort of like mumbling. I think the Internet will go crazy with trying to figure out what it's saying. Any of you know what the cat's saying? Are you watching your imprisoned friends over there with one leg? Is that what you're doing? You guys are freaks. How dare you put your own kind behind bars? Wait, we do that, too. But we don't make a spectacle out of it.

00:11:15 John Daub: All right. Just keep moving. And they're up there, too. Seriously, this looks like a Hitchcock movie. So welcome to Shinjuku Station, everybody. This is Higashiguchi (east exit). And this is where you will find it. I had to get off of the Oedo Line and walk quite a ways to get here. Took me about 10 minutes from the other side of Shinjuku. But if you're taking the Toei Shinjuku Line, the best way to get here is maybe Shinjuku-sanchome. And you can walk here down the main street or take JR and the Yamanote Line. You'll be able to catch it pretty quick. Make sure you take Higashiguchi.

00:12:01 John Daub: We're even further away. So kind of roving around. But it's funny how all these people are waiting. Now, I think it's even better at night. I've seen some of the images of this billboard at night and they're watching me. Seriously, they should put security cameras in birds eyes. Birds can go anywhere. You're watching a live view of Shinjuku and I'm here for the cat. But that's Shinjuku. Shinjuku-sanchome in this direction and I'll take you around a little bit this area. But I'm here because... Look, see what I mean? Look! They're everywhere. The birds.

00:12:50 John Daub: You know what this digital cat would like? Yesterday's live stream which was Domino's fish and chips pizza. According to Kirk here, the New York Times says that it also talks, greets pedestrians with Nyan Konnichiwa. That is a blend of konnichiwa (hello) or hello and nyan which is Japanese for meow. Yeah. So nyan nyan means meow meow in Japanese. That's what the cat says. So if you go to a maid cafe, it's really cringy. They'll go, nyan nyan. And they're like human girls dressed up as cats saying meow meow to older guys. It's really creepy. So I don't typically say that. It's just bad memories. Maid cafes and stuff.

00:13:57 John Daub: So I'm going to go from another angle and then you guys can see what it's like from the pedestrian's point of view. Nice social distance. All right. Let's go down from here. This time I'm going to go from a lower angle. Apparently this is the angle to see it from. If you do like this sign and like there is another cat over there. Oh, you just missed. Oh, there it is. So guess the other... That's a cat cafe. What? That's genius. Yeah. I guess people are going to want to go to the cat cafe after they see the digital cat. A digital dog would be cool. Mix it up. Digital YouTubers. I could... I want to be on that screen in large format looking down on Shinjuku. I would pay for that.

00:14:57 John Daub: And that's the thing, right? I think that this is the new thing. This could be... Forget just advertisements from corporations. I think individual people would like to propose to their wife, their fiancé, to their girlfriend off of the screen. Bring her at this time and then you can look down on her. Or a cat can do all the dirty work for you. If you call proposing dirty work. I don't know. Oh, there it is. Okay. That's it. I didn't hear nyan konnichiwa though.

00:15:51 John Daub: All right. Let's walk around this area a little bit and we'll be back. I'm going to bring you past the digital cat from right down below it. And then you get a chance to see. Basically, we've got the digital cat in every single angle imaginable. So take that, YouTube. That's what you get. Messing with the YouTuber. Live streaming YouTuber. It's a live streaming channel. That's why it's in 720p. And don't ask me why it's not in full HD or 4K yet. I've already asked YouTube why they can't make it HD. It's the app is throttling me. I have no control over this. There's 5G all over the place as well right in this area.

00:16:35 John Daub: So I'm going to take you over to where the Godzilla is and see another character of Shinjuku. And then after that, we're going to wrap up. Run and say goodbye to the cat again. Say hello and goodbye. Because how many times do you really want to see this cat? How interesting can I make a 30 minute live stream around Shinjuku's cat here? It is a beautiful day. Blue skies. State of emergency is out. State of emergency is here and you're not supposed to be really outside doing non-essential stuff. But everybody is. Nobody really understands the state of emergency. Since Tokyo Disneyland is open. It doesn't make any sense. Shopping malls are open. Everything is open. Japanese baseball games have fans in the stands. It's just confusing. So by default, people just go out. Although take precautions if you do. And just remember that we are still very much in a pandemic. If not, this is worse than anything in 2020.

00:17:55 John Daub: Let's go down the street here. That's Kabukicho over there. Oh, I wish you could go in for a go-go curry. But I'm kind of not going into small tight spaces. I-chan writes in the images are quite blurred. It might be the location that I'm in. So I'm going to see if I can record this with the 8K camera and then upload something tonight onto Only in Japan Go. So you get an idea and a better vision. I just think it's important for you to get to feel like you're here live. It's a difference when you watch it on a playback and when you're actually here in Shinjuku with me live right now. It feels different. And I want you to feel what it's like to be here. Check out the solar panel on the top of this plant pot. Pretty interesting. What does it do? I don't know. Maybe it lights up.

00:19:12 John Daub: Are we going to walk around the block here? Check out the Godzilla statue. The Asian nerd is in the house. We're going into those tight small tight spaces. Hong Kong is like that, isn't it? Hong Kong Island and Kowloon has a lot of tight spaces. And there's our friend Duvarde Ross. Thank you. Duvarde, I think I sent you a message on Patreon a couple of weeks ago. Oh, and while I'm walking towards the Godzilla right now, as we wrap around towards the digital cat one more time, I want to give a shout out to a lot of people here that just... We're following right on the side of Kabukicho. We had 10 new postcard club signups yesterday. How cool is that? So I'm going to go to the post office and send these. I think from Tokyo Station because they put the Olympic stamp on it. I think they do. But yeah, we got 10 new signups and a lot of people from Germany. I guess Germany really likes Pokemon. So put it up here. The stamps there. Everybody gets a Pikachu stamp. And I got as many as I possibly could. So supplies are holding on. If you want one, check it out on Patreon. And I'll put this from Tokyo Station and I believe they put an Olympic stamp on there too.

00:21:04 John Daub: All right, here's the... It's a good way to support the channel and get something cool out of it. They just launched these Pokemon Pikachu stamps three days ago. All right, there it is right there. So will the digital cat... My question to you right now, leave it in the comments. Will the digital cat replace this Godzilla over the building up there as the go-to site for Shinjuku Kabukicho area? What do you think? RDJ goes, um, no. That's pretty quick. Jari's like, I think not. 3D cat for the win. 3D digital Godzilla would be the way to go, I think. Maybe that's coming. I think they should put a hologram Godzilla right in the center of the intersection. Eat people. And maybe that'd be cool if the Godzilla could pick people up. Like just have these massive wind turbines underneath the street. Yeah. Gotta think what people want. Give the people what they want.

00:22:20 John Daub: All right, bye Godzilla. All right, this is the street that... I like this street because it's quite wide. And the fruit shop where I got the square watermelon last time for my friends Dan and Lincoln for What's Inside Channel. We bought the square watermelon at this shop, but it's closed down right now. I think it's one of the victims of the pandemic or they might just be temporarily closed. They've been there for decades selling fancy luxury fruits. All right, there's the monitor right there with the digital cat. We're coming from the rear. So that looks so good. Lunchtime. Tempura udon.

00:23:03 John Daub: All right, so we're going to see the digital cat from this angle, which is the base of the new building that just opened up here. Cross Shinjuku Kabukicho. I believe is what it's called. They're the ones running the advertisements here. There's the cat from the back. It's not quite as interesting from this angle. So it's not so interesting from that angle. So for those joining us, I'm going to take you now for one last look. We've been doing this for almost 30 minutes looking at a digital sign. Oh my gosh. Here's the shop that sells luxury fruits that's closed down for right now. I believe they might open, but it's closed down for the pandemic. Whatever they're going to be doing with this building is still closed, so it doesn't look like it's happening right now. This is the front floor of this building. And now I'm looking straight up at that, at the cat sign. You can see it's the curved shape of it. It's pretty neat.

00:24:33 John Daub: We can't cross the street, but from this angle, you can see all the people that are attracted to come to see the cat. It's quite a lot of people here. A few days ago, there were even more. Okay. I didn't see the cat at all. They were just waiting and waiting and the cat never showed. The cat came once every several hours, actually. And I remember talking to some dude here that was just waiting there for hours. He goes, not yet. You've been there for two hours waiting. But now with the official launch, which is today, the schedule is on my Twitter and you can see it several times an hour now from, I think it's like 7am to 8pm or something like that.

00:25:21 John Daub: So we're going to see it now from street level. Now they said that apparently this cat says... we will see if that's the case, if that's true or not. Warren von Toronto's here. Canada and EU are planning boycotting the Beijing 2022 for human rights. As political, I'm not too sure about that. But if you say so. Ginagoya John, tagging isn't common in Japan. What's going on with that fruit store gate? Okay. Oh, there's the cat from street level. We got a green light now. That's it. So I don't know. I didn't hear nyan konnichiwa and I was right underneath it. So we've dispelled that myth.

00:26:25 John Daub: So what other myths are there? I'm going to take you to the best location and this will be the last time I promise. I told myself 30 minutes and I'm done, but it's really cool to absorb the Shinjuku vibe here. It's just a shame that a lot of you have not seen it. But the people who were planning to come here can't make it. All right. Let's get into the thick of things. Everyone's got their Instas, their smartphones out for their Instagrams. I don't know what people are tagging it as, are they tagging it as a digital cat? 3D cat, Tokyo, digital 3D cat, Shinjuku cat, cat that pigeon eats. Can't eat. I don't know. Or digital neko (cat), 3D neko, are they using the Japanese? Neko. I'm not sure.

00:27:21 John Daub: So this is the last time I'm going to show you. Definitely click that like button. Come on. I think this is pretty weak. 400 likes. We should be definitely near 1,000 because who's crazy enough to come out here to show you the digital cat? You know I love you. Come on. I found the best angle right here. Nyan banwa. What? JLN 229. That was pretty funny. Imanos, I'm doing good. Thanks for asking. Doing pretty good. It was a tough month, June and the start of July was really tough for the family, but things are getting better little by little and I'm able to get out more and do some stuff. This is my lunchtime, my break, so I can... Oh, there it is. It doesn't look like most people cared. They just kind of went about their day. I think most Shinjuku-ites are used to it by now. Yeah. Cross Shinjuku Vision is what it's called and thanks to that, Johnny in Cleveland.

00:29:07 John Daub: It's a brilliant way to get us to watch advertisements. Let's be honest here. I think that they did a good job with this. All right, the last angle will be from right here as the Tokyo police have an advertisement on it. I do apologize. Just the frequency of it, in Tokyo. There's a Kanto flicker, we call it here, which is in the Tokyo area. They use 50 hertz, which you have to have a shutter speed of 100 exactly and we don't have that on the iPhone. They call this a pro phone, but I have zero control over the shutter speed. I don't understand. Apple. It's Apple's fault. It's really my fault. I bet there's a way to do it. I just don't know. It's 1:37 according to that clock right now in Tokyo. This is the launch of the Shinjuku Cross Vision. Today, the cat is making its debut for real and it's coming up every few minutes. So watching it live is sort of cool. I will take this in 8K and see if I can upload this to the Only in Japan channel tonight. Yeah, and you can see it in glorious 8K.

00:30:30 John Daub: I'll try to stick here for 10 minutes. So if you're watching it on a 4K TV, it should look pretty good. Which begs the question, what's the big deal anyway? It's just a cat on a digital screen. For most of the people here, they're just crossing a street. It's just a select few Instagrammers and people who YouTube for a living that are here. Nobody's really waiting. They just go about their daily lives. Excuse me, everybody. Do you understand that there's a digital cat that pops up on the screen? I don't know. Whoa. I think it blew a fuse. What? It went dark. Breaking news. The cat vision went dark. Nap time, I guess. Cat nap. Our cat nap is supposed to be really short, right? Oh, come on, kitty. Really? I'm hoping this is just a dead spot for space that they couldn't sell yet. Only Japan needs an ad right there. Do they get started a Kickstarter? People would give for an ad on there. I don't know. I want the cat to go, oh, we're in Japan. And then have, maybe Peter von Gomm can send them a WAV file or something.

00:31:54 John Daub: So that's the vision here. The thing with Shinjuku is that there's no, Ginza's so much cooler with the cars going by here. You don't see a lot of cool cars in Shinjuku. At least not right now. I mean, I think you can Ferrari, Lambo, watch all day, all night in Ginza. And Shibuya as well, going across Hachiko. But this area of Shinjuku is not too exciting. Seriously? You're going to do this now? I was just about to end the live stream and then go to the 8K camera for later upload. This is crazy. Maybe because we don't have 750 likes yet. That's why. It's your fault. Until Kitty Cat comes out, I can show you other area TVs, which is not quite as the same. That one has a cat. I'm not sure if you can see it on it. Just not right now. And there's a cat cafe right across from it.

00:32:58 John Daub: The good news, folks, is that the 3D cat vision is back now. So let's just give it a minute. Looks like it was just a dead space for unsold advertisements. Takataka misses Shinjuku. So the cat, it does feel like he's looking down on all of the pedestrians crossing the street here. That's pretty cool. But I don't know. It's been 30 minutes. And after two cycles, I'm ready to move on. But I'm here for you guys. So click that like button any moment now. For those joining us, almost 1300 people will see the cat, Tokyo's new 3D cat up here on the screen in glorious 720p, which is the most I can do with a YouTube live stream. If you want to ask questions, I might... There it is. It said, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nu, nu, nu, nyan, nyan. That was... That's it.

00:34:17 John Daub: So I don't know. Is that worth coming to Tokyo for? Is that one of those five seconds enough for you to come here to see? You could also leave me a question. I'm here to see officer tell us the new laws of Japan and dial 110, which is the 911 of Japan if you want to get the cops. 9110. Oh, they changed. They added a new number. Meh. Nostra Broad goes, meh. Yeah. No biggie. So there you have it. I hope that this was fun for you. I don't know. I think you saw right now Irving Irvine cat went to Map Camera. That could be possible. Just some good deals there. And let's see. Let's get out of the crowds here really quickly. Yeah. It's, I'm looking up at it now. It's pretty interesting. I don't know if this is like more than two or three cycles. Get your picture for Instagram and move along.

00:35:13 John Daub: But I know from seeing some of the other images that they do have the cat in different positions. There's one where he's kind of just playing along the bottom of it and just kind of purring up at the roof or something. So I don't know what's going to... Someone just came here. I don't know what it's going to be like in an hour, but I'm not going to stay here for you for an hour. However, I will try to come back on another day at night because I do think it's different at night. And this area, Shinjuku, is pretty cool at night as well. And I've been trying to find a time that works out that's not raining. For me and Sam, who's the Tokyo Sam channel, he knows this area pretty good too because he's been living in Japan for, what, I think 13 years now. And it would be pretty cool to enlist his help to go around this area because I definitely can't do it alone. You need a wingman. I don't know if it's a red light district. I just think it's just some really shady stuff happening in Shinjuku. Kabukicho.

00:36:26 John Daub: And if you... I guess you get one more time. And if you see the Naked Director on Netflix, across Shinjuku Vision. You see the Naked Director on Netflix. That series is really interesting if you're over the age of 18, please. And if you're interested in Shinjuku and the history of the Shinjuku, you can see so much of it in that series. It's really well done. A buddy of mine is the executive producer. They call him the hit maker. It's very cool. All right, everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night wherever you are in the world. I hope that this fills your cat needs for the day. If not, play with your own cat or go to your neighbor's house and bring some cat food with you. See everybody from Shinjuku. Higashiguchi. Right outside near Studio Alta. Thanks for watching, everybody. See you tomorrow. Or tonight. I'll try to upload something in 8K just for you. Don't forget to subscribe.