00:00:00 John Daub: Irvin's here, first one here. Welcome. I'm now broadcasting live from Ariake Station, right in front of the BMX event. They seem to have finished up, and the medal went to the Aussies for gold, I believe. Up here in the station is supposed to be the best view, but they blocked it off. Thankfully, I'm almost six feet tall and I think I can get over this a little bit. Check out the venue for the BMX right here. Completely empty, but there's also nobody racing. Ah, the Urban Sports Park. This is the BMX, one of the parks here.

00:00:53 John Daub: I believe it was the Urban Sports Park that I was supposed to go to. You have to be this high to see down in there. Well, I missed the medal round, but actually, it's been really hard to do venues because all the roads are blocked to get here. There's only two bridges, I believe, that can get from the city into the Olympic Village. Oh, this mask is pretty big. I'm double masked right now. The bridge from the Olympic Village is all blocked off. That's where I originally went, so I had to double back over towards Toyosu to come over to this side. This is the first BMX complex, I believe. So we kind of missed it.

00:01:46 John Daub: All right, let's go down and up again. I want to show you around this area anyways, and I think I can show you the ladies' tennis and the gymnastics areas as well in this live stream. But I'm going to tell you this right now: it feels like I'm swimming in my own sweat. It is so humid. There's a little bit of wind, which is very nice, but just the heat from the sun on the surfaces is intense right now. I don't know how the athletes do it. All right, let's go back up the escalator one more time. This is the entrance to the Yurikamome (New Urban Transit Yurikamome line) line. On this escalator, you get a pretty good view into it.

00:02:43 John Daub: This is what you have to do in order to see the venues. There are no spectators allowed, and I'm sure people are going up and down the escalator just to get a view of the BMX events. But apparently right here, it's done, which is a shame. It's a beautiful day. You can see the Rainbow Bridge there, and if you look in the distance, that's where the skateboarding events were held, I believe. Sorry, I believe in that event hall over here is where the skateboarding is, and there's the urban park right next to it. All right, let's go down and we can check it out. But first, I want to take you to the other side here. From up here, it's a pretty good chance to see the venues.

00:04:00 John Daub: It's not even listed on the map, but the gymnastics is right here as well. It's the Ariake Arena. I'm not sure what they're using that for, but let's take a look at the gymnastics hall. I believe the gymnastics events are nearly complete as well. James, thank you so much for keeping us in the know. You should be able to see right now. Now, this island here is manmade. It's been around for a while, so there are some residents across from the gymnastics arena. Check it out. We might never see the arenas with such a view as the Japan Self-Defense Force makes its way in here for security, I guess.

00:05:05 John Daub: All right, I apologize for the bad quality here. Let's see what we can see. Walk around Ariake Station. Well, they have umbrella rentals here. That means you have to bring the umbrella back. It's 280 yen. You can use two of them. That's interesting. Umbrella rental. How many people bring the umbrella back? What if you lose the umbrella on the way back? Yeah, it was pretty cool this morning, and then in the last hour it started blasting heat. The beginning of August is always the hottest. And there's another Self-Defense Force truck with some people inside. I wonder where they're going.

00:06:33 John Daub: From this bridge on the top, I believe we can also look into the venue. Daifuku (rice cake) and beer, a combination of deliciousness. Thank you, Bagot, and I appreciate the beer in the failed super chat from the livestream before this one. Oh man, there is literally nothing really going on around the venues. However, with that said, I'm going to put this super chat to some good use. On the other side of the BMX venue, there is a place where they are serving food: some hot dogs and some barbecue. I haven't seen this before. I guess despite this state of emergency, businesses are allowed to operate. But here's the thing: a lot of these people, are we supposed to be out? It's so confusing, the information.

00:07:34 John Daub: I found last night, as I'm walking out of the top of the bridge here, I went to the Olympic cauldron. This is where the flame is being burned. It's shown off actually over there, about 400 meters away, I believe. So crowded around it. A lot of people weren't social distancing, and I luckily had a very good zoom lens and could get some 8K footage of the cauldron for later. But this weekend has been pretty bad, and considering the numbers of infections coming out of Tokyo, it is really worrying. Which is why I have a double mask. I don't know if it's going to make much of a difference, but there are a lot of people at the events. Just try to keep your distance and let those solar rays keep you safe.

00:08:39 John Daub: There goes a Yurikamome line up there. Where are these people walking to? No one's going this way, really. It's everyone going the other way. Alright, there seems to be some announcements going on over there in that park. I guess that's the urban park over there, so we can't really see into that. Oh yeah! That's where the BMX was going on. Must have been over there. Let the people be free! Right in Han Solo. Two officers protecting the venue right there. Alright, on the bridge you can see there's a lot of people watching into the venue a little bit. Oh my gosh, it is so hot.

00:09:42 John Daub: There's an officer right in the middle of the line to make sure that people stay on the right side and the left side for bicycles. That's interesting. So crowd control has been a big thing. I guess the BMX is held in there. I missed it. There are some people in there; they are making announcements, and you can see the Olympic rings down there inside of the urban park. I forgot that this is where it's being held. Last time I was here, it did not look like this. There were weeds all over it. I believe the other side is where the skateboarding is being held. But if you look down here, this is supposed to be a venue for people coming to enjoy the Olympics as spectators, and now there's nobody here.

00:10:56 John Daub: Matt Hayashi is right in here: this is for a cold one. You better believe I'm going to be taking one down real soon. I'm melting. But you can see here all of these tents in space just absolutely wasted because of the pandemic. And hopefully during the Paralympics we can open this up even a little bit. I would love to sort of feel what the 2020 Olympics is like. There were sick runs right in Kando [?]. I bet. And I can hear the national anthem. I can hear some music. Do you hear it? Okay, let's go on this a little bit further here.

00:11:47 John Daub: Oh look, there's a really unusual person here with a Mount Fuji hat. I guess some Japanese spectators are doing their best to try to enjoy the Olympics from up here. A little bit of wind up here. Apologize, don't have the wind mic set up with the wind buffers. Didn't expect to be on the top of a bridge. But you never know when the job will take you. We're now looking down into where the events are taking place here, and I hear some music being played. It could be the medals are being given out right now. But they started at 11:20 and I think that the event was done pretty quick. Okay, we see some people up there climbing the walls a little bit.

00:12:49 John Daub: So this is essentially what the experience is like if you're trying to get glimpses of the events. And the gold went to Australia. Congratulations for that. If you're trying to see some of the events, I've been trying to share that experience. What is it actually like? It's not that easy, and what you do see is bad. I think it's better to watch it on TV. But on TV, you don't get the feeling that you're the host city. And I've been living in Tokyo for most of my time here in Japan. It's just kind of a disappointment. But coming to the event just a little bit, and maybe if I saw one jump, just one jump, I would feel the Olympic spirit. And if someone's watching me over there, just jump for us once. Just do it right now. Jump right now. Do it. That'd be so cool.

00:13:48 John Daub: All right, off we go in this direction. I'm not going to jump; I was talking about the BMXers. If you see over there, that is the gymnastics arena, and that's got a lot of people. It's got a pretty unique architecture. So let's go walk over there and check it out. So we could see all we could see in the BMX arena. Now it's time to turn our attention to the gymnastics arena, which looks really cool. I rode, when I rode my bicycle past here last year, it wasn't completed yet. But now, like a birthday cake, they put all the writing on it. So we're going to jump on over there just to take a quick look-see, after we go and get a cold one. Because I definitely need that right now. I'm also mindful that the phone might overheat, so I'm going to try to stay in the shade, although there is none right now.

00:15:21 John Daub: It is a pretty nice gymnastics building, and all of the venues have a story behind it. And yet, because of the pandemic, we can't get access to tell any of these stories. So I got to just shotgun it. But you go, you stay away from people and see what you can see and then move on. A lot of photographers and people taking pictures from new angles, trying to see it from different directions. And for the rest of the day, I'm going to ride back and then edit and watch the Olympics on TV. But how could you not on a nice sunny day like today go out? I think I'm not the only one. There are loads of people here, a lot less than what you would expect were the Olympics to be held with spectators.

00:16:21 John Daub: I apologize for the wind noise. We're going over this to the area. They're serving food and drinks straight ahead. And I've got a little bit of super chats from you guys. I'm going to put that to good use and get something from these vendors and maybe help support them. I don't think they're going to be making much money. So let's try to support some of these local businesses here that have invested a lot to make sure that they're doing well. And make sure that they can serve all of the spectators who are not here. So we're going to go do that right now. Cameron Varley, cold one, greetings from Mississauga, Canada. Awesome. That sounds cold.

00:17:21 John Daub: Yeah, you know, showing the Olympics on TV—this is not the spirit of the Olympics. I'm not going to complain about it. It is what it is. But from my personal opinion, I feel like there's no spirit behind these games when locals are watching it on TV and we're quite happy about the medal count, which is what's getting people outside. Reports are that in Yoyogi Park, there are loads of young people celebrating with their friends on blue sheets, drinking wine and beer and watching on their smartphones. And that's kind of worrying. But the reality is that for so long, people have been inside seeing that the games are taking place. If they feel like they're taking precautions in there, they're wearing masks as much as they can, they feel like they can also go out. And that's what's happening. Same with me. But I'm not meeting anybody else except for PVG [Peter von Gomm]. And we're both being pretty careful, PCR testing for other jobs quite often. And we've both had our second vaccination, waiting a little bit for the full immunity before we really start to travel.

00:18:36 John Daub: But look at this dog pooping sign. Guilty as charged, caught in the act. There he is again. I walked by here about a year ago and we wondered if these places would be open at all. This one is selling barbecues. OK, I didn't know what these trailers were for last time I walked around here. But now you see they're actually being used and there are some street food trucks here, which is really cool. Let's go check it out. Oh my gosh, I'm literally melting in about 30 minutes. I'm going to be just like a wet patch on the grass here. AstroTour. All right, so we got some kakigori (shaved ice) being sold. Whoa, wagyu! Dudes! Steak and chips. It smells pretty good, but nothing's grilling, so that's kind of disappointing.

00:20:00 John Daub: Let's see what's over here on this side. Tacos. Whoa, that's interesting. Coconut pie, coconut pineapple. So these are some of the alcoholic drinks. Can they serve alcohol? I don't know if they can actually serve. So tacos... How do you say taco in Japanese? Taco rice is really good. It's just like Mexican stuff on rice. It's a little bit weird. I am melting. Let's see what's over on this side here. So it looks like you can get a drink here. Whoa, that trailer's a restroom. Very cool.

00:21:13 John Daub: All right, before I buy anything, I always do a quick walk around. Here's another barbecue place here: VIP barbecue. How cool is that? You can rent a tent. So I guess you have to pay for the privilege of sitting underneath one of these. You rent them. That's interesting. So you get a number and then you have to rent one of these tents. And look, they've got cold Corona in an ice bucket. That is pretty crazy. All right, what do they got over here? Some more tents to sit and drink. It feels like a restaurant. I think there's a dance club going on here. Wow, they got craft beer on tap. Oh, it's German beer. This is a children's reading room. Interesting. I guess you can go upstairs too. On the roof of the trailer, there are more tables. Well, there's more street food upstairs.

00:22:36 John Daub: How do I get up there? Hey, Hoegaarden. Isn't that a Belgian beer? How do you get upstairs? I want to do that. Oh, I'm melting. All right, let's go upstairs and see what we can see. Danny's in the house. If they have poutine, don't buy it. Remember last time. Yeah, no more poutine, Danny. There's a barbecue course with alcohol: 7,700 yen, which is about $70. And a kodomo (children's) set for 1,650. Hot dog is original hot dog for 500 yen. That looks good. And then they have a bar, and then they have like a waffle dessert. This is called the Smoky Terrace. All right, let's go have a quick look-see at the Smoky Terrace. Seems to be doing a Hoegaarden beer here.

00:24:00 John Daub: How you doing? I'm doing good. So welcome to the Smoky Terrace. All right, so what we got here. The original hot dog looks pretty. Oh, they got a Hawaiian hot dog up here, and then they have a margarita hot dog. So I guess I'll do that, huh? There's happy hour going on here too. Is the hot dog gonna cut it? I guess so. This is Olympic food. So over here they also have pulled pork sandwich. Yes, please. Really? All right, let's get that too.

00:25:14 John Daub: Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. Pulled pork sandwich, original. And beer. What do you have? Beer: Midori [?], zero carb, and Stella. Stella. Okay. Beer can't be had here, so go downstairs. On the terrace and the table downstairs. Oh, gotcha. Okay, great. Wow, I'm so hot. Four [?], it's enough. Yes, sir. You want some barbecue? Yeah. Oh—look at the current there. The beef's half, and the pork's half. Oh, I'm okay. Wow, if you look here at the menu, they have a French salad hot dog. I've never seen anything like that before.

00:26:29 John Daub: So they said I can't because they're not allowed to drink beer up here. I gotta eat it downstairs because there's no beer allowed upstairs. There's a lot of silly rules here. I guess they're not silly, I just don't understand why. But Japan is a land of rules, so you have to follow them. So that's what I'm gonna do. The great thing is that I don't have a tripod, so I'm gonna have to one-hand this thing. This is gonna be fun. It could be because of COVID, I don't know. But does it make a difference if you're drinking on the second floor or the first floor? Not sure. It's just interesting that the little rules exist and we don't fully understand.

00:27:26 John Daub: Souvenir for your newborn. Thank you. I will definitely do that because I'm heading toward the Olympic store. I went yesterday to the Olympic store to try to buy a t-shirt for Kanae and get maybe a baby outfit. But get this: the Olympic store in Marunouchi was so crowded after the live stream. I saw it for like one second and I just turned around and went the other way and I posted a video on Instagram. You can see it was crazy crowded up there. I don't know why they allow that. It just seems like it was really not a good idea. It should have been one in, one out or something like that. But they were making a lot of sales and to be honest, I don't think they've been selling a lot of Olympic products just because there's nobody here to buy them.

00:28:24 John Daub: Right now, I'm waiting for a pulled pork sandwich and a cold beer and we're going to have to drink that downstairs. So when that comes, I'm sure they're going to call me. But this is an Olympic place that is just set up like a pop-up place for the Olympics. But because it was cancelled, this was left unattended for a year, which is crazy. And when I came here, it looked like a ghost town and now there is some life to it. But since they cancelled the Olympics last year, a lot of these places didn't know what to do. They had to renew the rent and maybe the city gave them a break. It's hard to know for sure what has happened. They actually barbecued the sandwich that I ordered on demand. Though I should have gotten this: it says happy hour mini barbecue. When is happy hour though? Maybe happy hour's like right now.

00:29:29 John Daub: How am I going to hold the hot dog and the drink? It's going to be pretty crazy. Let's see what we can do here. They actually even have Uber Eats delivery from the Olympic venue. This is pretty interesting. I could order this and have it delivered from Smoky Terrace. I still don't know why people play copyrighted music. It ruins live streamers. Ayy! Okay. Arigato gozaimasu. All right, downstairs we go because they're not allowed to drink beers up here. There is a table with our name on it downstairs. All right, I got to go real careful. Oh, dangerous. Oh, this is dangerous. Oh, I almost tripped there. I just made that up. Add drama. Didn't really trip. Actually pretty easy.

00:30:40 John Daub: I can go sit at this lonely table right here, but that looks pretty boring. So I'm going to sit right here because it looks like there's some shade here. Oh, this is nice. Hot dog down. Pulled pork sandwich down. Oh my gosh, I'm melting. Oh, that table is wobbly. I don't want to lose the beer. Careful, careful. All right. I don't have a tripod, but I might be able to just lean this up here. There you go. Oh my gosh. Are you okay? Are you okay? Sorry about that. The tables are spaced apart, so you won't get affected by other people nearby.

00:32:07 John Daub: I think I can do this here. Okay, this works. Ah, nice. All right, for everybody who just bought a super chat for this, I appreciate it. Compay Stella from Belgium. That's how they serve a Belgian beer. You have no idea how good that tastes. I've been out here walking around, rode my bicycle about 30-35 minutes in this heat to find a place to park my bicycle and get across to the venue. I got to the venue; the medals were over. It was held at the other arena, which is the Urban Sports Park, kind of next to it. But I missed that out without having spectators allowed and closing off the streets as they have and putting a bubble around the village. The city of Tokyo is just a disaster area. You can't get around the same way. They have special lanes for Olympic vehicles only, creating more chaos with a lot of the people who are driving around including taxis. They don't understand the rules 100%.

00:33:56 John Daub: All right, now I do apologize for the wind noise. I don't know how to avoid this. You okay? Looks like you've had more to drink than I have. Just be careful. Okay, you're very delicate. This is a pulled pork sandwich. I haven't had one of these in a long time. Let's alcohol up; didn't really touch anything, but you never know. This is as close as we're going to get to Olympic street food. This is the closest we're going to get. I don't think we're going to get another place like this out in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful blue sky day. Let's open this up here. They barbecued it up there on the grill for us.

00:34:57 John Daub: That doesn't look like a pulled pork sandwich. Not that I'm complaining. Looks like a hot dog. Really? It's just a hot dog. I'm not going to complain because I mean, I didn't really care that much. I appreciate—I said pulled pork original. I ordered that. I ordered a pulled pork original. There are different kinds of pulled pork. Ah, just like a slight sliver cut in there and the mustard got in there. All right, let's just eat it. Frank's right. Hot dog is like pulled pork. It's all the same. I'm pretty easy to satisfy. I don't complain about stuff too much. Pretty big dog. I don't think that this is the same as pulled pork. There's something about that savory slow-cooked pork in a bun. I don't know. Doesn't sound like bratwurst either. It's a good hot dog, but maybe better than Costco barely. It's very close to a Costco dog, but it's a meaty dog. I can't complain about that.

00:37:32 John Daub: Bottom line is for just a little bit right now, I'm on AstroTurf around black trailers next to an Olympic venue with almost nobody here; feels a little bit like the Olympics. Now, none of my friends are here. PVG just got his second shot and he's kind of recovering right now. So PVG, if you're watching, come by, brother, for getting that second shot and thank you, Bagot, for buying the beer here and everybody else. I'm going to take you after I finish this dog over to the gymnastics building. Take a quick look at that. What's unique about the gymnastics building is the roofing around it. It's very much similar to the Olympic Stadium in the sense that they've used wood, which is very expensive in Japan. You don't find a lot of buildings in Japan made of wood, and when you do the wood is usually imported. You don't find Japanese wood in Tokyo. We have a really bad pollen problem.

00:38:44 John Daub: Yeah, I did find some good eats, tasty. This is grilled by business owners. That's kind of a better deal for me. But after World War II Tokyo was completely obliterated through fire bombings and they had to rebuild. So the government didn't really plan it. They just knew that they needed wood, so they started to plant trees all in the west side of Tokyo and those trees finally matured like in the 1980s-1990s and started spewing massive amounts of pollen into the city creating the worst hay fever zone in the country. Now all of that was supposed to be used to build houses, but they can't do it because it's too expensive to get to that wood now and the lumber industry—they don't even have the supplies anymore to do it because it's so expensive and there's no demand for it. They come up with different materials; technology changed and importing the wood from Myanmar or Thailand or from Vietnam or other places through a boat is so much cheaper than to use Japanese wood. So Japanese wood is a specialty. You'll see it rarely being used but it's quite expensive.

00:41:15 John Daub: And I believe they're using it when they do the hot dog. Why do they do the hot dog by just spraying? It looks good, but it's a disaster to eat. Messy. I can't eat anymore. Could the mustard [be] burning my little razor cuts from paper? It's not good unless it's messy. When you go into the west side of Tokyo, you're going to see a lot of trees, which is beautiful. But [they're] not the right trees. There were the trees used to build things with and they're the ones that give the most amount of pollen. It's awful, but Japanese lumber is available and you will see it on the Olympic Stadium, which is [made from] wood from all 47 prefectures of Japan. And the wood is also I believe used in the design for some of the venues and it's a very Japanese thing. A lot of the temples and shrines are made of wood. So traditionally buildings were made with wood, but Japan also had a lot of fires, lightning strikes that spilled oil and burned entire cities down over the course of Japan's history. Of course, they found different materials after great fires in the 20th century used more stone, different materials to construct the buildings. And nowadays more plastics are incorporated into construction of buildings because they're more earthquake resistant.

00:42:30 John Daub: So when we go into the Gymnastics Stadium about one minute from now because I'm just about done with Stella, I want you to think about that when you see Japanese wood in a bathtub or something. It is quite special in the 21st century to see it at all. I'm [gonna] find a girlfriend in Japan. Really would [wood] they want to be with me, writes Bagot. I'm not sure, Bagot. I think you're going to run into some problems, maybe with communication, but I don't see why not. Just be really kind and be a gentleman and smile a lot. Yeah, bring lots of gifts. That shot, man. Just be kind, treat people the way you want to be treated. You got it, Bagot. You'll be real popular here. Go out, rent [a] convertible. Maybe a Mustang, top-down. Drive-thru Roppongi like hip-hop and dance while you drive. Keep your eyes on the road 2 and 10 o'clock.

00:44:06 John Daub: You know, I say that because Peter and I—you know, I never had a car in college, but I always wanted to get off. Okay, so I always wanted to get a car in college and drive down High Street in Columbus with the top down and the music loud and have everyone like going, "Look at those two dudes in the car having fun." Always wanted to be that guy. But I couldn't afford no convertible. Couldn't be that guy. But maybe now I could a little bit. So maybe Peter and I we should drive down Roppongi with the top down. You know what? There's not a lot of convertibles here in Japan. It's really hard to find one. John is our sensei. Got that right. You listen to what I say and success will come to you in leaps and bounds. Look at me, my success. Hi, beautiful woman. Total fluke, got lucky.

00:45:23 John Daub: You guys could ride his motorcycle. Yeah, you know what, on the back of a scooter—it's not quite the same as a convertible where we can say like Beverly Hills 90210 where Steve drives his convertible Porsche or Dylan on the side and he says hop in Kelly and then Kelly hops in the back. You can't do that with a scooter. If you do four people on a scooter, it looks like something out of Vietnam, which is kind of cool. But that's not the look I'm looking for. I mean, Beverly Hills is overrated could be but you know, Brandon Walsh [from] the first six seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 [was] kind of a hero of mine, you know, he did the right thing, very virtuous and then he went bad, start cheating on his girlfriend and stuff and there's even lost episodes on Amazon Prime. So I couldn't even see the end of [some] season 7. I'll tell you this, Steve is [the] best part of season 7, 8, 9 and 10. Leave some for the AstroTurf.

00:46:32 John Daub: All right, let's throw this away at the invisible trash cans as we put on our masks. This is cracking me up, Frank. Yeah, you know what, Beverly Hills 90210 you can tell that the writing was bad after season four, but you love the characters. So there's snot in my mask. That's you. If it's my snot, it shouldn't matter so much. All right, you know what, this trash [has] just [got] trash cans around here. All right, let's get on the move. This is good. We finally got some street food, long time coming. Last time I had street food is with Eric Surf 6 and if you haven't already seen the collaboration between me and Eric Surf 6, it's pretty interesting as the Yurikamome line [passes]. Snot. Is there something wrong with that word? Like I've been out of the US for a while. I don't know what's politically correct.

00:47:49 John Daub: How do I throw this away? There's a gomi bucket [?]. All right over here. It's not bad. I sometimes use the wrong words out of context. This is a trash can. Don't know what this is. Is it the gomi bucket? Wow, check it out. They're charging a dollar to hang out with pools [?]. No, look. That's it. I got a lot of ducks in there. Can I—how old do you have to be? There's no actual age there. There's no age limit. None say my day. I'm going to guess that's not made for me. That's just embarrassing. All right, let's go over to the other venue and check that out. I appreciate [you]; I'm so glad that you guys are with me here walking around. Yeah, you much love from Hawaii. Shah Rock. She—she, I get that right? Let's cross over here and hope that this iPhone does not overheat. That beer really kind of hit me.

00:49:47 John Daub: I'll look over there. Let's cross the street because there's a bunch of cops. Dan, dan, dan, dan. Let the boys be boys. Well, it's a lot of coppers. What did I do? Would somebody do something? Let's get behind them. I'm kind of intimidated. Looks like a mosh pit. They aren't social distancing either. But you think they should social distance a little bit? One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two. I'm going to take it right here. Here is the gymnastics stadium and I'm going to take you to the tennis courts too. I want to do so. I'm having fun out here. I might be melting but it could be the Stella. Oh, that's like it. So I'm going to take you to the tennis courts tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. So you're going to want to subscribe to the Only in Japan Go channel as I take you to some of the Olympic venues and give you the experience that you can't have because you're not here.

00:51:26 John Daub: Wow. And I'm going to do a temperature check. Now the surface temperatures around the city of Tokyo are insane. And I just got an infrared gun to check the temperatures. I'm going to do that with you tomorrow or the next day, just depends. I want to pick the hottest day possible to really shock you. All right, here we go. We're coming up on—are people still able to access Tokyo Big Sight now? What do you mean Tokyo Big Sight? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Big Sight [?]. Oh the Ferris wheel. I think you can get on the Ferris wheel. I'm not sure what is going on. Looks like something's going on. There's a lot of coppers over there. I'm going to stay on my best behavior, which is every day. To grow off has some advice for me. We're all good. That was my first [beer] since getting the second shot.

00:52:48 John Daub: Now this venue is so beautiful. Look at the roof. This is what I'm talking about, made of wood. I'm sure somewhat inspired. From—just look like media people going in there. So a lot of these venues were inspired by the Olympic Stadium. This one, the roof made of wood and I love that. I'm going to have to cross the street in order to really show this to you because I don't want to walk along the wall here. Let's hide in the shade here. Do you see that again? Kengo Kuma is the designer of the Olympic Stadium and he's designed some pretty amazing things around the city of Tokyo as well as Japan. A lot of it uses wood, but originally Kengo Kuma did not use wood at all. He was inspired by buildings in Kochi Prefecture and hey, that is sort of gymnastics going on right there. They should totally have those fights like that in the pool. What do you call them? Forget water polo, get like fighting pool fighting.

00:54:32 John Daub: But Kengo Kuma used more cement, his designs and rock, and eventually he abandoned that because he felt a connection to the wood that he saw most notably in Yuzuhara in Kochi Prefecture. The Kabuki theater there inspired him quite a bit and that changed the way he started to design. And I was there in Yuzuhara about two years ago and I filmed on Only in Japan Go the library which is made of—you guessed it—wood, just pieces of wood jutting out from the roof. It's insane. That's awesome; makes you want to go in there to read a book which is also made from trees, paper. Pretty cool. Yeah, the architecture in Tokyo after World War II was just get the buildings up, really boring Showa era, not inspiring. 1970s came, the end of 60s, I guess starting around the time of the 1964 Olympics architecture made a rebound and you started to see some pretty funky buildings and then back in the 70s and 80s it kind of went away.

00:55:36 John Daub: You didn't see that again; people had so much money. The economy was booming. They just needed to get the buildings up. It wasn't until about the 2000s where new design started to come up in Japan and now there's almost a renaissance for architecture. A lot of it using traditional Japanese methods, designs using modern materials and it's pretty neat to see. You're going to see buildings getting taller and taller in the city of Tokyo using new kinds of carbons and materials that can withstand earthquakes a lot better and I'm going to be covering that more on Only in Japan Go in the next couple of years because I'm starting to see that a lot of dream projects. Well, Olympians—I saw some people in that van, bus, truck. I saw somebody I knew; they look like Reese from the Irish team. Oh, there's more Olympians. Look like that. Media people. It's pretty cool. Melting. I got to get out of here.

00:57:00 John Daub: That's pretty cool. I want to make a sign that says subscribe to Only in Japan. Just hold it up and see if any Olympians put me on their Instagram. They did do it. I only live—I think they do it. Maybe we get Tom Daley to recognize us right now. He's the biggest YouTuber in the world, Olympian from the UK showing us the inside with some humor. I like it. Yeah, I'm starting a new channel. I could use some love; need to get out there, make a sign and hold it outside there for the buses in front of the Olympic Village. I live like a less than 10-minute bicycle ride. Oh Tom Daley went home. Gosh, my stinks. But I'm sure there's a lot of Olympians that are still here. Okay, Track and Field and stuff, but I wonder if—I it's like 10 minutes or less for me to ride my bicycle to the Olympic Village; wonder if I make a sign and hold it up, people will recognize [and] put me on there.

00:58:16 John Daub: Tom Daley is still in Tokyo. My friend's name is Tom Daley from elementary school. He was at my wedding. It's pretty cool. I think it's a hotel. A lot of new residences here, but there's really not a lot of public transportation. The buses are kind of not convenient and Ariake Station and the monorail here, Yurikamome line coming in—not that convenient, pretty pricey for public transportation. But it feels like you're on a beach out here. It's so hot. All that beer is kicking my butt. So it's in a battle with a hot dog right now. Guess there's gymnastics coming tonight. So the media is starting to make their way in for the gymnastics competitions and probably in a couple of hours the athletes will start making their way here. But I rode my bike around Toyosu Island to get to this venue to get here.

00:59:12 John Daub: And if you look from across the street, you'll see a lot of people. Across the river, you get some really interesting views into the Olympic Village from across the river. And if you wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning when the sun is just coming up, you can get views of the Olympians outside on a green grass area in front of the Olympic Village stretching and kind of exercising and enjoying the outside. I've seen some Instagram pictures of that and you can kind of see it. But the bridge connecting from the venues to the Olympic Village is blocked off to bicycle travel. So I have to go around from the bridge to be able to get a beautiful view into the courtyard, but can't do it. I've been scouting out every single location to try to get as many good live streams as I can. But everything changed between all they're coming back to coppers. The walking in like Army mode. Better get out of here. All right, lights [are] going to turn; slightly intimidating.

01:00:32 John Daub: I haven't seen the rowing and I don't even know is this surfing still going on because I'd love to hang out with Eric Surf 6 Pack and check it out. He would know what's happening with the surfing, [do] a play-by-play or wave-by-wave. This is the BMX event right here. You're seeing it live. There's nobody there because the events are done and I'm melting and I'm about to go home. Surfing is over. Really? You know what? I don't like that information. It's [needs] more surfing. All right, and here's where I had my lunch. Now you got to pick something. Then up for—can I and take it back? Now that dog is still here. Sit, boo boo. Sit. My sick softball is done to Carlos. You just told me I don't know. Everything's done too fast. They should pace it out.

01:01:52 John Daub: Well, I'm still going to take you to a few more venues over the course of the Olympics. We have one more week. The first week is in the can. Second week is on the way. Here's the entrance to the pop-up park: Urban Sports Park Ariake. I'll be back here. I think I'll probably come back here in a few days with Peter or something. Skateboarding isn't over yet. That's promising. This is the time where my city is supposed to be so alive. What is this? What is that? Sky Duck? Is that one of those amphibious boats? Bus boats. I saw that in Singapore. They had these things like buses that turned into boats. It's pretty cool.

01:02:52 John Daub: Thank you, Porsche, keeping me cool. Need to pay attention. John by—can I something good? You got it. She—she wants some plant-based bento that on the way home. I can stop there near Toyosu. They got a good plant-based bento thing. I'm going to get that. Thank you so much. Take Rahal. Speaking of cars, I can ride down Roppongi like [to] get one of these. Wonder how much [it will] show. Well, there's a white version of the black taxi. I wonder how much they [would] charge me if I decided to yell "Porsche is rules" or something outside the window. Maybe get [it] for free. All right. Here's my vice: bicycle is my A1, filming a little bit behind the scenes. Oh my gosh, I'm melting here. Please root for Taiwan in badminton finals. Go D. Go die. All right, go go Taiwan.

01:04:03 John Daub: I'm kind of [with] Taiwan; [they're] pretty strong in these Olympic Games. So I'm with Taiwan; [they're] Japan's friends. So I'm going to root for Taiwan unless they're playing against America or Japan. Taiwan's up there and I can't wait to go to Taiwan myself. I haven't been there in a long time. One of my friends is a celebrity in Taiwan. I used to work with her at NHK and she became this big celebrity. She speaks fluent Chinese. She's Russian. She's on all the covers of magazines and stuff; it's bizarre and [I] want to see if I can maybe get her story. It's interesting. I got her first NHK job and she's just exploded on the scene in Taiwan. Really happy for Annie—Annie and Anna. I called her but I guess it's Annie in Chinese or something. Good. I'm really happy for her.

01:05:02 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks so much for watching. I'm going to go and get home and get some lunch here. But if you have some questions, you can leave them down in the comments below and I'll take you to Akihabara tomorrow. I want to see what Akihabara is like during the Olympics. So stay tuned tomorrow morning Akihabara. I'm going to be joined with NBC, one of the affiliates there. I'm going to meet up with her, Amanda, and see what's been going on and maybe get her insight on what it was like to come into Japan as media because I think that it was really hard to get into the country. I heard that some people had to wait up to nine hours for tests and everything. So we'll get the story maybe from Amanda directly if she's [willing to] be on Only in Japan Go with me. I'd love to talk to her, get her insight. She's been staying at the Hilton across from there. We've been there over there in that direction a couple of times. So stay healthy everybody. Stay safe. I'll see you in the next live stream.