Speakers:

• SPEAKER_01: John Daub

00:00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody. Welcome to Ueno Station. Well, Ueno Station, right near Ameyoko, which is one of the most famous street markets in all of, dare I even say the world, certainly in Tokyo and, and definitely all over Japan, everybody knows Ameyoko. This is market that was the Japanese black market after World War II. Ame meaning America. Or it could ame meaning candy, which is the Japanese word for candy, because there are some candy shops in here. And I know that you all have seen me walk through here, I don't know, a couple dozen times maybe over the course of many years. Not just on this show, but on NHK and other shows. The main channel edited videos, other people's other YouTubers videos. We've been going down the street eating street food and I want to take you down here a little bit. But there's another district. How you doing, Dave? There's another district that I want to take you to, Nakacho Dori, which is Ueno Nichome. And we're going to do that by walking down Ameyoku. So you're going to get a chance to see Amioko a little bit. But we're going to take a right after about 100 meters. So join me, will you, for the next 30 minutes or so as we cruise through one of the most vibrant areas of Tokyo, Ueno. And its back alleys now. This part of Ueno connects Ueno Station JR Ueno Station with Okachimachi.

00:02:20 John Daub: Okachi Machi is such a—it's got such a rugged feeling to it. It seems like this place between Akihabara and Ueno, which it is that I don't know, kind of lost in time where a lot of the businesses are still run by families. And it's a little bit grungy, which gives it a lot of personality. Hotels in that area are super cheap. The restaurants are super cheap compared to the other areas of Tokyo. So I mean, it's one of these places that will be attracting tourists for a very long time until redevelopment takes place.

00:03:25 John Daub: It seems like the whole city is being redeveloped right now. Yesterday I was on NHK World's Tokyo Eye program on TV and we talked about the redevelopment of Shibuya. And I've been reporting there for over 10 years. They showed clips from 2011 when I was inside of a bar there. You can see—I guess this is a seafood place, kind of gives it away. A lot of these businesses here that I'm walking past have changed hands too. Some of them are still family run. Again I'm going to—I'm going to just walk back a little bit. You can see the businesses here. They look like they're family run businesses and they sell an assortment of all sorts of things. After World War II a lot of the GIs and stuff they would sell things like Zippos, watches, sunglasses, aviators, jackets and things like this. And you can still see that culture in some of the shops.

00:04:30 John Daub: That's Shima Ura-san and he's been selling chocolate. That's my friend Shima Ura-san and he's been selling chocolate there for like 30, 35 years which is pretty incredible. And every—I don't know. I didn't know he was walking. He was going to be working there today. Sometimes he's got other staff and maybe family members that are working in front of the shop. But he was there today, the master. Which is pretty cool.

00:05:36 John Daub: This is new. I love walking down Ameyoko because you can see a lot of the new stuff. This restaurant here on the corner, this is brand new. It's Tsukishima Monjayaki which is near where I live, near the neighborhood where I live. And that's weird that they would put that here. Monjayaki just doesn't seem like it fits now. This is the Thai kebab corner. It's pretty crazy. You just have all sorts of street food here and I'm sure I will do another street—Was that a Hoka? So one of those things you smoke? What? Okay. Nothing wrong with that. It's entertainment. I just—it's kind of amazing that how much that this area has evolved over the last 10 years.

00:06:42 John Daub: Because when I first reported here for NHK in 2008 that was my first full NHK World report. Was Okachimachi here. This place was so different. It was almost entirely like 95% family run businesses. And now we're seeing so many more chains and I mean I guess it's not such a bad thing. But I'm just going to show you here. We're not going to go down here but I'm going to show you what it looks like. Live view from the market. I see WRX Turbo is in the house and Nes G Love way. You know. First place I ever went to in Japan. I'm happy we can—You could take me there. Right now you can see the Kehin Tohoku line live going above Ueno market there.

00:07:44 John Daub: Bob Joe is here. Somebody wants me to get some takoyaki at my—One of my favorite stands. Bob Joe. I'm gonna put that towards some good street food there. So this market is super vibrant, but on the left and the rights of it, the tents might be the same, but the restaurants have changed hands. Here's a—what is that? I guess this is like another Tsukishima Monjayaki and it looks too clean. It's too nice. This was not here before. But a lot of the local businesses are suffering from the same problem it is. They've been in business for 20, 30, 40 years and the next generation of their family members don't want to take over.

00:08:49 John Daub: They—so they just end up selling out to businesses that have a better business plan that fit the 2020 instead of 1975. And I think over the next 10 years, it's going to change even more. Some of the business owners are hanging on and I'm going to be talking with Shima Ura-san afterwards to see if he'll do a main channel episode to help me kind of—I don't capture the history of this area because I want to do it now. And I have to say thank you to my Patreon supporters. Because of the support there. I can do some really big passion projects like this. It's going to take me maybe a week hanging out with a lot of the shop owners that have been here for decades. I want to hang out with them and get their idea of how this street is changing and where it's going.

00:09:28 John Daub: Ameyoko is a place that's always in flux now and I want to preserve what was gone and what is coming. Even these signs are kind of new. This one looks retro. The one that I showed you in the front is definitely changed to try to get more of a 2020 vibe. All right, I'm gonna go back now and we're gonna take—Go take you down to another entertainment district that I think most of you have never been to this area.

00:10:07 John Daub: The panda is represented because of the zoo's proximity to Ameyoko. You've got some pandas in Ueno. Okay, let's take this alley here to the left. Hey, Carsto's here. Hi, John. I really enjoy these live streams. Best wishes from Canada and Michael Sasano. Loving this Wayno live stream. Takoyaki sounds good. Find something refreshment to cool that down.

00:10:40 John Daub: Yeah, you know it, Michael. I always burn my mouth on that takoyaki. So we're going down one alley here, and you can see the pachinko machines live kind of peep in there. Oh, there's some gambling going on in there. I once went into pachinko place about, I don't know, 18 years ago because I had to use a restroom. And I came out smelling so bad of smoke. I never—That's not true. I've maybe gone in there maybe two, three times. Once, out of curiosity, I'm like, okay, I'll just go in there. I came out again smelling like smoke. Just—I never understood pachinko. But people that love it are obsessed with it and they play it and they—a lot of families lives have been ruined.

00:11:43 John Daub: This is—Wow. They still have TGI Fridays here. So if you were to walk up this street for another 15 minutes, you would get to Akihabara. You could walk this direction down Chiyo Avenue, or you could take Okachimachi and follow the Yamanote line all the way to there. But you don't have to take the subway. Sometimes you get—Whoa. Like, I've never seen anybody in Japan dress in this kind of fashion. It's interesting. Gosh. All right, there's Nakacho Dori right there across the street by all sorts of things. My eyes—My eyes. Wow. She's like, I don't know, half a foot taller. Wow. Super bright day. And I think when I cross the street and get there, I can take off my mask a little bit because there's no crowds on the other side.

00:12:49 John Daub: Nakacho Dori has some long history, and there is a website with a neighborhood association. There's Nakacho—I don't think a lot of people walk down here, and it doesn't really come to life until after 6pm. Hey, Janine and Carl. Greetings from Australia. Love the Ueno area. Can't wait to be allowed back in Japan. There's some talk that this could happen in April, but the elections—Kanai said she was voting today. So the elections are being held today, I guess. And after the elections settle down, I think we're going to start hearing a lot more about tourism because it's become sort of an issue.

00:13:53 John Daub: Kyoto, I heard, might be filing for bankruptcy because they simply cannot—they have too many businesses that are done. No taxes are coming in. I think Kyoto had more or less started to rely on tax dollars from tourists in many ways. And now there's what I think September had 17,000 people coming from international areas, which is way down. So Kyoto filing for bankruptcy—we'll—I don't know. It's something I saw on the Internet, but we'll try to decipher that.

00:14:25 John Daub: So this is Naka Chome, so the second neighborhood of Ueno. And I don't know, I think I've only been down the street like twice in my life. The closest station is Ueno Hirokoji, which is, I believe, on the Ginza line. That station was founded in 1930. This street was part of a commercial street that started in 1628, I believe so now it's kind of smutty. I think that there's some hostess clubs here. I can already see why I didn't visit this for like—I think you know when you're going to—Third time now, right, Sinjati? Yeah, I saw some grilling beef.

00:15:30 John Daub: Oh, look at that. It's still closed, so maybe the manager's tested out some new beef or something. I believe this is about 3, 400 meters long. And we'll loop back around to Ameyoko. But I—I want you to consider—After 6pm this area is way more vibrant. The places come alive. This place is serving, I guess, like oden and other sorts of—I guess this looks like Chinese food actually out onto the street. So you can just eat right here standing, grab a bite to eat. A lot of people finish work, grab a bite to eat, then go home. That's why a lot of these really small micro apartments don't even have kitchens, because you can do things like this in Japan. You can get a bowl of noodles or something right on the street.

00:16:37 John Daub: When you cross the street, totally different. Again, these signs, all Yamato Plaza seems to have some real go go going. Wasn't that the Flintstones dog? Dino? Or is it Dino? Gosh, I don't know. It's so, so long ago. So it's lunchtime. There's going to be some people that do come here for lunch and get something to eat. But the alleys are pretty nice. Check it out. Here's another street. They're very scenic, old. Lots of character to them. The light posts going up. You see the telephone lines crossing the street there. That's so Tokyo.

00:17:48 John Daub: Most of this was redone after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Every hundred years or so, an earthquake comes and devastates Japan and everything collapses and they rebuild it, and then it becomes a new area again. The big periods where that happened were 1923 and then 1945, March 10th, the fire bombings. After that, the whole city—Most of the city, especially around Nihonbashi, had to be rebuilt again. And it made—it really made Japan also a modern place and helped with the economic boom. Across the street here you can see there's Ueno park and there's the pond.

00:18:56 John Daub: If you're looking for an affordable, really local place, you want to get away from Shibuya, Shinjuku. I would say Asakusa is the first place I would consider because at night the restaurants there are really nice. It's really amazing to walk around there early in the morning, like 5, 6 when you have jet lag. It's a lot better than walking around Shibuya. Let's go down this alley here. It's a lot better than walking around Shibuya at 5 or 6 in the morning. It's just—At least with Asakusa you have a lot of the history and temples and shrines and. And then the Ueno area. I like Shitamachi for staying. And there are some ryokans, traditional Japanese inns that you can stay in.

00:19:29 John Daub: And then there's this place which is a love hotel. I can tell this is the love hotel because the prices are decided by a rest, a stay. A rest is usually two to three hours and a stay would be overnight. And not a lot of people stay overnight. Actually most people are going in there for two, three hour bursts. But when I was backpacking, didn't have a lot of money as an English teacher, I would stay at love hotels if I was traveling with anybody. It depended on who you were traveling with, I guess you could say. But they were very affordable and you'd get a jacuzzi.

00:20:34 John Daub: Hey. And certain amenities. But really it was just a cheap place to stay because you had options that were love hotels outside in the countryside. They're like—like 40, $50 a night. Wow. I'm digging these alleys here. Yeah, I stayed in when I was doing the Seishun 18 Kippu, which is the local train tickets that you can get three times a year. Five days of unlimited travel for like a hundred dollars on Junior. But it's local trains and I would take that and I could travel around all around Japan for like a hundred dollars. And I would stay if I was going with my girlfriend at the time would stay in love hotels and, you know, just a place to camp or we would camp in a tent. I had pretty understanding—I dated pretty understanding people back then. I don't know. I wouldn't date me if I was. Hey, honey, I'm gonna—Let's go take a trip. I'm gonna pop up the tent here in the local park. Hey, it's part of life. Living life as an adventure.

00:22:11 John Daub: This place is open for lunch. Brazilian churrascos. Me, like—Kind of absorb the vibe here. I'm gonna swing back to the Ameyoko market. But I—I want you to consider—After 6pm this area is way more vibrant. The places come alive. This place is serving, I guess, like oden and other sorts of—I guess this looks like Chinese food actually out onto the street. So you can just eat right here standing, grab a bite to eat. A lot of people finish work, grab a bite to eat, then go home. That's why a lot of these really small micro apartments don't even have kitchens, because you can do things like this in Japan. You can get a bowl of noodles or something right on the street.

00:23:19 John Daub: Whoa. Tobacco Cafe. What? Okay, I guess I'm gonna have to—Guess I'm not allowed to go in there. There's a counterculture to all of the non smoking rules and policies coming up around Japan. And I guess that's healthy because it's healthy to have that culture, because when people are pushed in a certain direction, there's always a counter push. And smokers gotta smoke. Well, they don't have to smoke, but you know what I mean. All right, let's cross this street. We got a blue light here, we go across the street. You hear that chirping? So that tells people with visual impairments which direction is green and which direction is red. And if it's east, west, north and south, and I'm not sure which one it is by the chirping, but they know out in the countryside you'll hear music, some jingles.

00:24:34 John Daub: All right, we're heading back to Okachimachi. See if I can get it—Get some takoyaki with you together to celebrate my teeth cleaning. I had to come back here last week. I came to the dentist. I had to come back here to go to the dentist. And I'm gonna see if I can get some—Some new flavored KitKats for our Daimyo supporters.

00:25:09 John Daub: Oh, hey, while I got you here, we got three days left for the Only in Japan Kickstarter fireworks project that I also did last year, I'm doing it this year. We have raised 5.2 million yen now and that's almost $50,000. It's like $49,000, I think. So—we already have a awesome festival planned in Nagano on November 3rd next week. So Kanai and I are going to be driving there, staying the night and I'm going to be setting up a live stream and 8K camera and putting a camera near the cannons and everything like that to get some awesome shots of the fireworks because we got access since it's our festival and you got three days more to back. We have some pretty cool stuff.

00:26:12 John Daub: This is—I wanted to show you the postcard. It just came in yesterday. This is the postcard for the event poster. It says Hanabi Matsuri 2021. Only in Japan's second annual. And if you look, there's some rubber duckies in the onsen with the—These are the Jigokudani snow monkeys in Nagano. And then if you look right in the middle, there's Kanai, me and little Leo. And all the people watching would represent you with us watching above Matsumoto Castle and Hakuba, I guess the Japanese Alps. And then the fireworks that we launch up. And I've been doing this—This is my second year. The fireworks events are mostly canceled this year.

00:27:25 John Daub: Oh, and I also have—You also have three days to get this postcard which is of Asakusa representing where Eric and I had our street food binge. I sent this off to all of our backers. So Postcard club on Patreon. Also this—this postcard is available. And I think I put up the 2020 postcards too. If you did—if you missed a 2020 event postcard, you can get that for as an add on. Yeah, artist Dakota, he lives—he lives over there in Gifu. He's been doing these event posters for us. It's the second year. He's so talented. Great style. He kind of encompasses like a modern take on traditional Japan. I love that.

00:28:30 John Daub: All right, this is where I usually come to get to get some of the KitKats for the daimios. They usually have a pretty good—Pretty good selection. Here's this one. Candy shop here and then there's another one right here. Okay, let's go take a look. See what they got. Oh, they got the milk tea. All right, get that one. All right. If they got the milk—if they got the milk tea, I might do that. Oh, these are Demon Slayer potato chips. Okay. I'm always looking for new goodies. Those—Those milk tea Kit Kats are on my radar. Oh, they got them here too.

00:29:32 John Daub: So this—There's a Kit Kat corner here. And I'm always looking at the at the latest flavors right now. Strawberry is here. Cheesecake, chocolate, orange, and a couple other flavors here. Let's see if I could snag it. The Halloween candy is almost sold out, so they have a small Halloween Japanese Halloween candy stand. It's not really anything special. It's kind of the same stuff, just with Halloween stuff on it.

00:30:03 John Daub: All right, let's get in line here. The stretchy cheese place is out of business. Gotta get some mayonnaise on there. Okay, I'll go hold my hand. Okay. I should wait a little bit. I should probably wait a little bit. Okay. I'm gonna—See if I can get the tripod here for a second. Oh, I can smell the takoyaki. I'm so hungry now. So this is takoyaki. They do them really big here. It's 200 yen for four of these, which is a steal. You gotta get this when you come to to Okachimachi. Cobra bebop, too. I think it's too soon. I opened it up. There's—There's the octopus inside. You can see right there.

00:31:06 John Daub: Jennifer French also pleading with me to wait. I think it's good. I think it's good. Look at the steam. That's not that bad. I think I've waited long enough. It is so hot, though. Let's open it up and we can get some of the steam out here. Yeah, Jeremy, thanks for that, buddy. I'm gonna get something cooler—I'll get something cool to drink after this. Oh, look at the—Look at the katsuobushi dancing from the heat. No paint, they say. No pain, no gain. Who says that? It's—like—I was so good. So I want to give a shout out to this—to this business owner here.

00:31:38 John Daub: So this is where the stretch cheese used to be. It's changed to another Korean place. This is—this popular Korean food. And this—Some of this stuff looks so good. But nobody's really going here yet. I guess the pandemic has—And—and it's unknown—Hasn't made it—Hasn't been helpful. But I think when tourism returns, people are going to come back here and go and find this place and go, hey, I'll have some—Oh, that looks good for the daimyo boxes.

00:32:39 John Daub: Pikachu here. There's some weird stuff here. This is why I always come here to find some of the—the weird stuff. This is called home piece. Very interesting. I think I'm gonna get this. The Milk Royal Milk Tea KitKats for the Damien supporters. This is the Demon Slayer candy area. Yeah. Bob Joe, the chicken is amazing. All right. There's one more alley I want to take you down. Back to the other side. So we've walked all the way from the Ueno side to now the Okachi Machi side. So technically this isn't Ueno anymore. This is Okachimachi. I've been to this ramen place a couple of times. Just because it's off of Ameyoko and it's—

00:33:45 John Daub: Oh, it's changed. It's—It's kind of a different one. This looks good. Whoa. I like it. That—That must be duck. Whenever the color looks like that, it's duck or something. Duck is—you—a very unique flavor for—Oh, it's pork back fat Ramen here will cost you 820 yen for the—Oh to about $11 for that with the set. You get a lot of food with that. Well, I guess it's just the machine is nice. There's no actual Pikachu drink in here. Just the machine has Pikachu or it's a bootleg Pikachu. I'm not really sure. I've seen a couple of bootleg Pikachus lately. Like it's Pikachu, but it's not really—It's hard to tell if it's—Wow. This is like panipuri in India. Have you ever had those? It's like potato soup in—It's like soup in the potato or something. Wow. All right. You know what? I might come back here. I want to do an episode on Oden. Hamburg is a thing here. Not a hamburger, but a Hamburg.

00:34:50 John Daub: Hey. Here to the Ron is here. Hey, you got—Hey. Oh, wow. You're—The Ron's having some sashimi. Lucky you don't burn your mouth on that. All right, there's Okachimachi Junior Okachimachi station here. I want to take you back to the the alleys here and see how how the shops are doing on the other side. I did an episode featuring the Capsule Hotel, which is just for men only. Whoa. Look at that chashu steak. Whoa. That's asahikawa ramen. Hey, Jeff Kennedy's here, my friend from Philly. Boy, it'll be nice to see Jeff in in Japan one of these days. So wait for the the light to change so we can cross the street. Hey, how you doing, mask man?

00:35:53 John Daub: I got in trouble with Kanai and my mom yesterday. Do I dare even say why? So Leo doesn't sleep in his baby bed anymore. He sleeps on the floor on a futon with us. But he rolls around a lot. But he likes to sleep on the crack between his futon and our futon. So we called him crack boy because he's always sleeping on the crack. And then my mom got angry because she misunderstood and said that that's a bad thing to call him. I said no, but he sleeps on the crack. Crack boy. But that's Kraken, of course, is something else. So just miscommunication. So I got in trouble because when my mom told Kanai, Kanai got angry and—Yeah. Hello. Hi. A2 on right? I can see your mom's point. I see your—Way to view.

00:36:59 John Daub: This is it. Men only capsule hotel and sauna is still here. I'm glad to see that the prices are pretty reasonable. Let's see if it's still the same. Yeah. Reception's open at 4am and you can hang out here for three hours for 1200 yen. They got Internet, they got baths, they have lounge chairs. That's a pretty reasonable price. And you can stay for 12 hours from 4am to 9pm during the day for 3,000 yen or in the middle of the night for—you have to check out by 10.

00:37:30 John Daub: Interesting. I didn't know it was joke. It was a joke, Calvin. I thought—I wasn't thinking about, you know, crack being a drug because it's—I never take it. And you know, we don't have a crack here anymore. It's been like 25 years since I saw New Jack City. You know, you don't have a—You know. The only crack problem here is Leo sleeping on the crack between the beds. I got in trouble. It was deep trouble too. Now can I—She's—She told me like three, four times already that I teach—Why I teach her only the bad words. How's she gonna learn English if I only teach her the bad words? I don't—I don't know. I—I had been away for a while.

00:38:38 John Daub: This is new. A Nadai Fujisoba. And they have some really good looking plastic dishes here. Wow. Oh, it's got ochre on—Steven's here. Welcome. Joy. Yes. Gap boy is correct. Okay, so we move from crack boy to Gap boy. But he doesn't shop at Gap. I gotta buy him some Gap stuff. Then Peter got him a Gap Yoda shirt, which is a Gap Yoda—Sweatshirt, which is super cool. It says on the back. So cute. I am—This is my favorite shot of Ameyoko Market. The sign. And if you can sneak up—I think they blocked it off. But you used to be able to take a photo from up here or one of the other shops. You get this really nice shot looking down the street here. And this alley—I don't—I guess you call it a road. I don't think it's—It's an alley. But it will take you all the way to Ueno Station.

00:39:43 John Daub: It's about—It seems like, I don't know, 700 meters or so. But, you know—There you go. That's all I kind of wanted to show you today. We'll cross the street here on a red light. This is Ueno Okachimachi Station right above me. So you can, you know, if you're staying in Akihabara or even Asakusa, you can walk here in 20 minutes. Asakusa or Asakusa, as some people cringe when I pronounce it the phonetical way. There's the phonetical way and the way some locals say it. I say it the way that Tokyo Metro says it. Asakusa. The next station is Asakusa Vault. It's not Asksa. Asksa is not how—no one says it like that. Asakusa.

00:40:45 John Daub: I can say it both ways. I pronounce it Asakusa because it's the phonetical way that people understand because they're non Japanese speakers. So that's the way you do it. People pronounce Tokyo wrong. The people who get upset that I pronounce Asakusa wrong are the same people who don't know how to pronounce Tokyo. Tokyo is two syllables. Tokyo. All right, then—You hear NBC tonight in Tokyo. You know, it's just—That's—it doesn't bother me. So—No, it's not—It's not Tokyo. It's to kyo the two syllables. To hyphen—Kyo. K Y O. That's the way—That's the way we roll here in Tokyo.

00:41:57 John Daub: You know who corrected me? Megumi-san. On—I used to—Honestly, I used to—I—Well, the tourism is not here, but I'm a guest on a show called Hirobi, which is a really popular news program to talk about tourism. My Japanese is really not up to par to be on a show like that. But I understand everything that they're saying. And we go over script and I guess I'm a little bit more lively than some of the other people that they bring on there maybe. But after one of the shows, he said he's Johnson—Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo. And then he walked away. I was like—Making my son's pretty angry. And then there's—There's a—one of the other regular people on the show, super nice guy named Damon. He has make—He's always come into the studio. He always has his makeup on before he comes in. Nobody has ever seen him without the makeup. Even Megumi-san, who works with him all the time, has never seen him without his makeup.

00:43:03 John Daub: And super nice guy. And he goes—He was—he kept on saying it so I would pronounce it correctly. So now I have a phobia about it because Damon schooled me on how to say Tokyo. But I still say Tokyo if I'm speaking English because that's how everybody says it. You know what I mean? It's okay—That's—the people understand. Don't go against the grain. Not gonna make it my life's mission to correct everybody who says Asakusa the non local way. Because then I'll have to correct you on the thousand other words that you miscorrectly pronounce.

00:44:07 John Daub: All right, everybody. There you go. The alleys of Ueno are super vibrant. And you know what? I'm gonna take you—Take you down here. Click that like button. Show me that you are interested in these walking tours and I will do some more. I came here and I actually brought my Sony A1 to do an 8K live stream. I think I'm gonna—I'm gonna do that like tomorrow because I forgot my microphone. I want the audio to be really good. I got a gogo curry here. This place has the champion curry. Do you see that? It's even bigger than this. It's 2500 yen. And oh, there is—Oh, that's a Grand Slam curry. They have like a 2 kilogram curry. That's 2,500 yen. I always wanted to try that. My buddy Patrick Galbraith was in on it too. But we never—we never got—Found the time to do it.

00:45:18 John Daub: So it's—It's these—these alleys here that are super vibrant and they still have a culture of eating outside. Whoa, Halloween is here. Hey, there's Joe Biden. Boy, Trump was the big mask last year. American president always makes a good mask—It's very pop—the popular ones. Yeah, the—the alleys here on this side are also very good with street food. And—And more than that, restaurants are stands that you can sit outside and eat, get something and get a couple of friends.

00:46:25 John Daub: In the distance we have the Tokyo Skytree, so we're not too far away from Asakusa. You can just walk here in 20 minutes or so. It's a pretty interesting walk. You'll see a lot of things on the way. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Thanks so much for clicking that like button. I see we're just coming close to 400—You don't ask for them. People don't click the like button too often. But I don't want to ask too much. You know, you just kind of—you suggest—I suggest that you click the like—That's—That's pretty needy too.

00:46:55 John Daub: Whoa. Coffee, beer, snacks. That's new. Oh, that's changed a lot. So they've really cleaned up this corner. What? So this is a imported clothes store that sells beer, coffee, and snacks on the corner. And they've cleaned it up. And this used to have chairs that went all the way out, right? But they've cleaned it up. It seems too clean. But I guess, like I would sit there and have a beer, but—Wow, that's so bizarre. How much Okachimachi changing. Okay, I better make that episode. Thanks Patreon supporters. I better make that episode before this place changes even more.

00:47:57 John Daub: Cobra Bebop. I feel bad asking now because now you are doing 8k, which is awesome, but I love to watch it in HDR. Yeah, HDR is a little bit harder to edit. I don't have the power in my computer and it just takes a lot of time. But I ordered one of the new M1 Max Pro chips from Apple, so maybe that'll be able to cut through and I'll be able to do HDR. It's just hard because you have to to film it in—in log and then you have to do post production. Whereas I think that the colors look pretty vibrant right out of the—Right out of the Sony A1 using Cinetone or some of the other color profiles are really vibrant. But I think eventually I will get to HDR. I know like the iPhone does it automatically, which would be ideal, but it still requires like some editing. And I want to focus the editing on the stories that I tell on the main channel. I'm already editing one right now for a release, I believe right after the weekend. So trying to get the production schedule—I'm ramping that up because that channel needs a lot more love. And with travel back, it's time to get back to the edited stories a lot more, start fighting it out on that front.

00:49:10 John Daub: Oh, that looks so good. Yamanote line cruising by overhead. All right everybody, thanks again. Leave me a question below if you have anything that you want to add and I will be here for you. I'm going to be going next week to Nagano. So you have 72 hours to back the fireworks project. The link is in this description right after the map of the area I just showed you. Nakacho Dori Ueno Nichome. Please support it. My goal is to get 1,000 supporters to back this Kickstarter. I think we—I think we can get a little bit closer. We're at 400 and something—450 maybe. I think we can at least get the 500. I want to get more people involved. So on November 3rd when all of us here—I could take you in the alley here. So on November 3rd when all of us are together, I want you to feel like you're a part of it. Like—and we can still add fireworks all the way up to November 1st to the order to make even more—

00:51:25 John Daub: More explode into the sky. So anytime you buy anything or just support with a dollar, you're supporting one of the fireworks that we're going to be watching on November 3rd. And if you buy the documentary, you're going to be able to see it in 4K which is even better. You know, it's a support to get the fireworks industry a little bit of a boost. I'm going to be featured in Nagano's newspapers and all of the—the regional stuff. I think it's really cool that our community has—Has brought some happiness into an area that was devastated by the—The—There's some people coming—Hold on. Area that was devastated by Typhoon Hagibis when it was like stationary over the Chikuma river. It flooded and really displaced a lot of people and they—They've been almost forgotten because of the pandemic and the lack of tourism. So the economy is even worse there.

00:52:29 John Daub: But I thought that our community—This is a great place because our community could bring and shine a light and just give some—Some nice happiness to people there. And it's working because the local media is coming there. They want to tell a really positive story. So I've been able to give that to people that this YouTuber with a global community was able to come in here and fire up some fireworks from a local manufacturer in Nagano and help to support him because he hasn't had a lot of work. He has an entire storeroom full of fireworks setting—He doesn't know what to do with. And I'm just glad that we could buy that—Buy him out and then launch them now. So we did a really good thing, I think. So if you want to be a part of it, you can go into the Kickstarter. Even if you give a dollar, you're part of it.

00:53:30 John Daub: I'll find a way to put your name in the credits. Even if you give a dollar. Love a thousand names. That's my goal. But right now, we have 450. I think we can get there. I think we can get there. I'm always optimistic. All right, everybody, take—Take care, and I'll see you—Another live stream, maybe tonight. I think it's time for a midnight snack run. What do you think?