00:02:00 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo Bay. This is the Harumi area of Tokyo in Chuo Ward, the center of the city on an island. And that coming into view is the Olympic Village, or what was once the Olympic Village for the 2020 Olympic Games. It's basically abandoned right now. Nobody's living inside. It's off limits to go in the area. If you look at the apartments, zoom up a little closer, you can see they all look like they've been cleaned out and are getting ready to welcome people into what is the Harumi Flag redevelopment project for this area. How you doing everybody? I got my hand outside the window here at the Harumi International Ferry Terminal, which looks like it's abandoned too. It's a beautiful day across the harbor there across Tokyo Bay. You can see Tokyo Tower. And I think that's the monorail going by there that takes you to Haneda Airport.

01:36:00 John Daub: There's not a soul here. I've come here a few times in the past, and it feels like Tokyo—this whole place is mine. It feels like I'm taking you to the other side. Now this is where the Toyosu fish market moved from Tsukiji to this location across the way. And this is the only way for me to get a look into the Olympic Village by going across there and taking a long lens and looking over towards it. This is also one of my favorite places right there on the corner. If you ever come to Tokyo, you might find me hanging out there on that corner. That's such a beautiful corner. I get up into the supermarket at Toyosu, ride my bike about five to 10 minutes to get here and just hang out for about an hour watching all of the boats along Tokyo Bay. It's a beautiful sight.

02:41:00 John Daub: Hey, there's the Space Boat! Whoa, do you see it? It's making the crossing to Odaiba. Space Boat—awesome, wow, that's rare to see it from this side. Almost didn't see it because of the glare in my eyes. Now Space Boat crosses across the bay to Odaiba and passengers can go on the top of it. It's a really nice spot—pretty cool to go underneath the Rainbow Bridge. This island here is also man-made. This is Toyosu Gururi Park and there's a barbecue area on the corner where they saw some foreigners that didn't quarantine eating there right before the Olympics. Everybody was freaking out because they weren't wearing masks either. And then in the end all the policies changed and they got super strict. There were police officers all along here during the Olympics too—it was pretty crazy.

03:36:00 John Daub: You can go to the Olympics and there's a lot of people on the roof of the Toyosu fish market—see the greenery up there, really nice garden. You get some views from the point right there in the center. There's also a live camera now, I think, that points towards the Olympic Village. It's a nice climb, but one of my favorite runs is to run all around this island because I'm not allowed to go here—this is the Olympic Village. Wow, this is the first time seeing this park here. Do you see in the center of your screen there's a lot of greenery? I think this is where some of the athletes would be hanging out doing yoga and stuff. They had an Olympic symbol on this side—these trees weren't here the last time I came to this exact point. I haven't been able to come here for a long time. There's a crow right there—I'm always being watched. There's always one around.

04:29:00 Toby (crow): [crow sounds]

04:29:00 John Daub: All right, let's get down there. I want to show you a little bit more of this area. The thing is I'm not going to be able to walk too far into here because it's blocked off. I want to see if I can get access to some of the rooms from the Harumi Flag project and take you inside, learn a little bit more about that. But these are all going to become apartments and it does look pretty nice, doesn't it? Trees don't grow that fast—I think they were transplanted. Look at that—those corner rooms would be so sweet. There's some over there—look at those, the big windows on the corner. Oh man, I wonder which athletes had this view. If you're watching this, email me your picture of that view. All right, let's get down there. I'm not even sure I'm allowed up here—it's pretty surreal actually to be here.

05:27:00 John Daub: In one of the most populated cities in the world, there is an area of the city that is abandoned—that would be the Olympic Village, which is crazy to think about. I can see that they have made—I believe they did sell the units. And this is one of the reasons that the Olympics were so complicated because the units were sold after the Olympics. Nobody had assumed that the Olympics would be canceled or suspended. I don't think they could have delayed it another year just because of the contracts and probably making payments or compensation to the people who had bought these units. Now I won't know until I talk with the people who are part of the Harumi Flag project, which is down on the other side of the island—like way over there. There's Toyosu shopping mall across two bridges. You see the Harumi Flag project office—that's the LaLaport shopping mall. There's a lot of people in that direction. That's the LaLaport shopping mall—Leo and I like to go here and relax. There's some nice restaurants—there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant in there that I haven't been to yet, but we might. We're kind of curious as fans of Forrest Gump.

07:03:00 John Daub: The Harumi Flag project office is on the other side of the island. I don't know if there are any ferries leaving from here either—this is the International Ferry Terminal. It's a really beautiful complex. I'm not sure exactly what the prices are. I have sent an email to the Harumi Flag project to see if we can get in there because heck, if anything we might be able to sell a few of those units, right? I have not been on this side for a very long time. The wind is quite strong—you can see there's some birdies really playing. I thought it was a nice sunny, clear day without any wind but I was wrong. Down we go towards the village and I'll take you around for the next 15 minutes or so. This is still Chuo Ward.

08:18:00 John Daub: Whoa! Never mind that! Check it out—awesome sighting. I can get a good shot from here. There's a plane taking off from Haneda Airport. There haven't been many of those. That's such a beautiful boat, isn't it? This one took off from LaLaport and I think maybe next week if there's time I'll take Leo on his first Space Boat ride because on the weekdays they're virtually empty. Check it out—there's almost nobody inside there, right? There's like two people. That should have been me. And it's making its way, I believe, to the pier on the other side at Hamamatsucho—Kiriku Park maybe? I'm sorry, I forget the name of the park there. And then it'll cut across to go to Odaiba or towards Asakusa as some of the people point out. There's Odaiba—there's the Fuji TV building on the other side. Again the Olympians had a lot of fun—it's one of the most beautiful locations to be at.

10:27:00 John Daub: Let's go down and take a closer look at these buildings. Now the Team China had the entire—almost well, I'd say half of the building, the first one at the end there. Because you could see the athletes that were in this block—they had flags draped down that you could see from the other side. So I got a lot of really good pictures that I added into a video on the main channel—my take of the 2020 Olympics anyways, the spectatorless Olympic Games that were in my neighborhood. Very nice looking apartments—they're gonna be sold as apartment units. In fact I think many of them have already been sold. And this complex here though is not quite popular. Again I do apologize for the wind. Let me see if I can go down here.

11:19:00 John Daub: Shout out to Brandania—thank you. Aloha and Katrina Johnson—thank you for being a member, a traveler for so long, 15 months. So this was all closed off as part of the Olympic Village—they're very strict about it as you can imagine. And I'm gonna take the places that were in the next five minutes—I'll be there, I'd say like two, three minutes. I'll put some chapter lists in here so you can skip through it a little bit easier, get past the wind noise. I did not think there was any wind today but I should have assumed on the bay side there would be some. The wind element is strong—it'll get better as I wrap around. I did talk to the security guard—we'll go this way. I talked to the security guard for a while and I asked him when is this place going to open up to residents of Chuo Ward. That's where I live—you know I pay taxes here. And he told me that they haven't decided that yet because they're still doing some construction. I think there's some restaurants that they're putting in here—they're making it into a very livable area.

13:01:00 John Daub: The only reason why you wouldn't want to live here is that it's just not really any public transportation. We live in this city—public transportation is so essential because driving and parking and everything is really pricey. It does look different—last time I was here it wasn't complete, meaning I think they had stuff on the windows and it just didn't look livable. Now it does. And I'm not going to take you too far—I'm going to make a right and go to the end of the block here. Wow, there's some people on the balcony—I wonder if they bought that. I'm guessing the prices are going to be pretty expensive now—an apartment in Tokyo, maybe two bedrooms, a 2LDK we would call them—two rooms, living, dining, and kitchen. Probably in Tokyo cost about half a million to 1.2 million dollars. And you'd probably mortgage that off over time, of course, 30 years or something. I get brochures in the mail promoting new apartment complexes and how much it would cost in order to move into one—they always start at around $500,000.

14:51:00 John Daub: This is one of the streets that was closed off that's open to the public now. If you look through here it does look really nice, doesn't it? Kind of dark—I think when the trees come in here or some shrubbery it'll be a lot nicer. I don't know what this complex was but I was looking at the map trying to figure out what all of the places were. This might have been one of the cafeterias or the gyms or public spaces but they were closed off. A lot of the public spaces were closed because of the pandemic—all of the testing. It's hard for me to wrap my head around what was used and what wasn't. How the Olympic athletes lived here—now that I'm walking along here, to me it's still not really clear how they did that. Must have been not a lot of fun. They removed the fences about a week after the Paralympics, I believe.

16:29:00 John Daub: Here we got a little bit of the history of the Olympic Games—a couple of signs here that you can still see: Transport Mall, Village Plaza. These weren't here before—multi... what's an NPC center? A main dining hall. OK, so this big flat building probably was the Olympic dining hall. And then if we get to the other side, what does that yellow sign say? Multifunction complex—interesting. So essentially this is the dining hall. I asked them if I could walk down here before and they said no. This street connects up with the bridge that cut across to some of the venues on the other side—you could take the bridge over to Odaiba Island. But right now I can hear some jackhammers, some banging, and it seems like a lot of this is still under construction and they're getting ready for people to move in. So I think this is the main dining hall—I wasn't sure if it was this one or that complex down at the end of the street. We'll walk a little bit further then wrap around on the other side.

17:56:00 John Daub: I honestly don't know how many of the Olympic athletes—since it was all cut in half—were all of these apartments used during the Olympics? Were some of them empty because only half of the people came? Were some of these meant to be for the international press? Would Lester Holt from NBC News be staying here instead of the Hilton on Odaiba Island? Not sure—I got more questions than answers really. But to be honest I don't think anybody except for me are asking these questions—this might just be me, which is fine. Before these buildings were here I remember coming to a couple of fireworks festivals—the Chuo-ku Hanabi Taikai, which was massive. I would say it was almost better than—they stopped doing it about six years ago though. It was even better than the Sumida fireworks because it went over Tokyo Bay. And I remember parking my bicycle—what would have been an old warehouse here—and walking to the front. You were so close to the fireworks right there that were fired on Tokyo Bay—it was amazing.

19:23:00 John Daub: I remember being in an apartment complex—I found the door open and climbed up the steps, probably not the legal thing to do, gray area. And was filming from there—and I got debris that was on my shirt that made my shirt start to smoke because it was still hot debris. I ruined a shirt but I got some film—but it was all standard definition, like 2003 or something. So I thought that this building would have at least be open—did it look like there was a Lawson's or something here? But even this building is still closed and I'm not quite sure what it would have been. It's a bigger building which I believe is where they bring the trash for incineration—that's what this big tower might be. I see a lot of trash trucks coming in and out of the large garage there. But the energy from the burning of it they harness to do things like heat pools or heat water. So nothing really goes to waste—Japan still burns its trash because there's no place really to put it. You're not going to dump it in the ocean—although they make manmade islands out of it. And this is probably a mountain of trash that we're standing on right now.

20:52:00 John Daub: I was trying to get a long lens to see what happened to these apartments and I didn't see anybody or any flags. I think these remained empty during the Olympic Games—not sure. So this is what the Olympic Village looks like—it's like two months after the Olympic athletes would have been walking around here, promenading with their gold medals, probably came out to this intersection and then shouted "Are you not entertained?" like from the movie Gladiator. And everybody would stand outside of their windows and look at that one Olympic athlete. Michael Phelps probably could have done it—it was here. They'd all look out and cheer from up on their balconies to that one Olympic athlete standing in the middle here. I don't think that happened because of the pandemic though—but it could have. Gosh, all the stories that could have happened that didn't.

22:09:00 John Daub: See I want to ride my bike and just go straight to that playground but Leo's going to have to wait a few more months. Are there any questions before I walk back to my bicycle and call this really super interesting episode? The bus stops are all in place so there is some public transportation but buses are not really cool—you know they're kind of hard to navigate. But there are sure a lot of them coming from here. The next travel update will be in November—the elections just took place. I believe there's some voting going on and when that's all settled I believe Japan's going to start to make some definitive announcements. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to make an announcement for something that's going to change. So I know there might be some other channels or people giving you some news but right now there's just nothing. There's more people vaccinated twice here in Japan than there are in the United States that have had both shots—fully vaccinated. The numbers are way down—I think Tokyo was close to single digits for infections. So we're doing a lot better here. People are still wearing masks everywhere, which is a Japan thing in the fall and winter anyways.

23:40:00 John Daub: But if you're asking me about when travel will start again it seems it's not going to be until next spring. So if you have a plane ticket for March or April there's a good chance—but right now it's still closed. We had 17,000 visitors come in in September and they might not have been visitors—they might have just been residents like me returning to Japan. I don't know what the fire truck is here—I guess they're coming around to do simulations in case there's a fire or get used to the area. Japan is one of the safest countries and one of the best places for rescues—they do so much training and they're always finding ways to get better at it basically because we have so many natural disasters: landslides, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis. Anything can happen at any time here in Tokyo and we are ready for those. This emergency services here in Japan probably the best in the world—they're ready for anything.

25:03:00 John Daub: Chen is in the trunk here—are those buildings privately built or government funded? If they're government funded perhaps they are disaster accommodations—you know they could be. I'm not sure what they're being used for and neither are the security guards—I talked to more than one of them and they all said the same. So hard to see empty streets—can we see the area once people move in? I will be back here again. I'm trying to get in touch with the Harumi Flag Project and see if I can get into some of the apartment buildings. Maybe someone will be nice enough—they're not going to be able to show me and tell us how much these apartment complexes are. But for today being a nice day I thought it would be nice to scout this area out and see what the situation is like on the ground right now before I start making some requests. And now I have a pretty good idea of what we're in for—it's just still like an abandoned town.

25:48:00 John Daub: The only reason why I wouldn't buy an apartment here is again it's so far removed from anything. There's no public—well I wouldn't say no—but the public transportation is bus only, no subway. So if you're taking a bus it'll take you to Tokyo Station and then you have to change to public transportation or train. But that bus coming from here to Tokyo Station it takes like 40 minutes or so. And then you get on public transportation—so it's another 20 minutes to get to Shinjuku. So it's a good solid hour whereas if you had a Metro connection you'd be there in 35 minutes or so. I don't know if anybody would want to live here unless you had a car or this is a really convenient place to get onto the highway. But these apartment complexes—what makes them unique? All these buildings here are different—there's something unique about each one of these structures. They're not all uniform—they're all kind of in their own way different and special.

27:14:00 John Daub: I've seen a lot of these apartment complex areas in Hong Kong, in China, in Taiwan—a lot in Asia. And I'm sure you know that I've spent a lot of time in Asia over the last 15, 20 years. The other thing I think I might want to have a house instead of an apartment too—this does look like a really beautiful apartment. And they have a nice view of the bay. This is some of those trees that were transplanted in here. So what do you think? Is this a place that you'd want to live? Is this a possibility for your living quarters? You're kind of close to Odaiba but how are you going to get there? You have to go all the way around—by bicycle it's still about 30, 40 minutes. You're not allowed to take a rowboat—I tried once. That's a whole other story. My buddy Robin and I—he has an inflatable kayak. So we tried to kayak onto the Sumida River and a police boat came and scolded us. And then we went back in the canal and then they banned kayaks—we saw a sign a year later. It might've been because of us—I'm not sure. It's a fun wild lesson—there's no sign saying don't do it and so we did it.

28:56:00 John Daub: It says here the Harumi Green Road Park—that's closed. I think the Olympic athletes were hanging out here and it looks pretty nice—I saw some people doing yoga. They shared in their Instagram feeds what they were doing here. We just couldn't see in there and I was really jealous. But one day it'll open up and it'd be really cool if they had trailers and food trucks and stuff and they had that festival feeling. I could see that—I'd want to come back here and hang out. But for now just the only transportation that comes here are buses and there's only one or two people. I guess they're doing practice runs for public transportation? Here comes another bus that's going towards Tokyo Station. Hey there's Takasago—that's the butchers that I go to. I'll have to tell the owner I saw them on a bus. There's the International Ferry Pier and you can see the cars going across the Rainbow Bridge live right here. I haven't seen any ferries the whole time—I've gone around this area a few sides, mostly on the other side. I didn't see any ferries coming but I couldn't zoom in enough to see if those ferries perhaps were like Tinkerbell—very small. But you think at night they're bright enough to be seen.

31:08:00 John Daub: From your location according to Chan the closest train station is two kilometers so not too bad—two kilometers in the city of Tokyo is like equivalent to 100 miles, all right? Because you can't walk there—you could walk there. Kachidoki is probably the closest—the Oedo line. Gosh I would love to live in the corner here—have my office, a live camera where you could see Tokyo at any time from the window. It's pretty cool—in fact people could come here and wave to me. I'd say hey how you doing? Throw rocks at my window—make sure they're like little pebbles, don't try to get a brick or something. Nobody has moved in—I could take off my mask here. Nobody's moved in I don't think so.

31:33:00 Toby (crow): [crow notices and follows]

32:05:00 John Daub: He's a crow and now he's following me—he knows what we're doing. Here this is supposed to be his area. I've heard that they do attack from different locations—they'll attack when your back is turned.

33:18:00 John Daub: I do have one thing I'm going to show you live—this is Sophia. Thank you for signing up—this is Sophia in the United Kingdom. I'm going to be putting your postcard in the mailbox from here. I hope that a postman comes though—I would think that he would. So thank you Sophia in the United Kingdom—this is being sent from the Olympic Village.

35:08:00 John Daub: I love this little glass fountain which nobody I guess nobody really can appreciate because they don't know about it—except for them. Holy moly that was funky over there too—they know about this place. This is probably their bathtub—nasty. If you come here I'll give you 100 yen if you drink this water.

36:41:00 John Daub: All right everybody—that's it. I'll end on that note—this is why nobody comes here. It's off limits to humans perhaps. But I'm the only one here—my bicycle. Time to get on, get out of here before they wake up and notice that I'm not one of them. They're the Olympic Village—I think John is the bird whisperer. Ryan if I am I got to do a much better job of whispering. So if you have any questions of the Olympic Village let me know because I'm going to try to get the people—the owners, the landlords—to give me some advice. And if you do have some questions please write them down in the description below. I really want to try to get inside and see what the differences are with the units here and what's going to become of it—what are their plans for this? What do they envision in 2023, 2024 for the residents who move in here? I'm pretty excited because I don't live that far away—I live in the same ward. Tokyo has 23 wards—this is one of them that I live in. So leave me the comments and I will put that in—make sure I use those in the episode if they can give me access which would be awesome because this park looks rocking. Thanks Joy for sharing the Kickstarter—again 72 hours left to back the project. A postcard is just 15 bucks and you'll be contributing quite a bit to the project. And I really do appreciate it. See you everybody—bye from Tokyo. A beautiful day—time for me to ride back which is not that far. I better do it soon though because I think they're starting to figure out that I'm not one of them. This could be bad—this could be a movie. And they already make one—Birds.