speakers: {"SPEAKER_00": "John Daub", "SPEAKER_01": "Peter von Gomm"}

00:00:00 John Daub: Hello. Welcome to Akihabara. We are about to go on an amazing adventure crossing the entire city center of Tokyo. So it's going to take about 90 minutes to walk the entire length of Akihabara to Shinjuku. It's a pretty exciting trip. Joining me on this adventure is a man down there at the bottom of the escalator. We're starting right here from the station. There's a map, a link in the description, so you can see exactly the course that we're taking. Tokyo is not really as big as a lot of you think it might be. It's pretty manageable. There he is. I see him right there on the right side. Are you ready for this, sir?

00:00:58 Peter von Gomm: Oh, hey, that would be nice to seeing you here.

00:01:04 John Daub: Do you hang out at the bottom of escalators often?

00:01:06 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, yeah, you know, I just make sure people are holding the handrail and stuff.

00:01:11 John Daub: Excellent. Well, let's get out of the station. But first, I wanted to buy you a drink. This is pretty cool. This is a digital vending machine that they have here in Tokyo. When you see it. Drinkable curry. Yeah, this is what I wanted to get you. So you have your choice, buddy. Drinkable curry or Ippudo ramen broth.

00:01:31 Peter von Gomm: I think I'll go with the ramen broth.

00:01:33 John Daub: All right, you got it.

00:01:34 Peter von Gomm: Thank you. Have you had either of these?

00:01:40 John Daub: Of course I have.

00:01:43 Peter von Gomm: Would you hear the music? That was kind of cool. It's like a boat, Like a bowling pants.

00:01:47 John Daub: Oh, yeah, I heard that. All right, let's get out of the station. We have a long walk to do, as you can see.

00:01:54 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:01:55 John Daub: You ever done this walk before?

00:01:58 Peter von Gomm: I prefer taxis, John.

00:02:00 John Daub: I figured. All right, so we're going to be exiting Akihabara from the Denki Town or the Electric Town exit. A lot of you know this because you might have been in Akihabara before. This is the popular one because straight ahead in front of us, we see Sega and a guy's head.

00:02:32 Peter von Gomm: So it's a beautiful day today.

00:02:35 John Daub: Thank goodness for that.

00:02:36 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, it's chilly, but we'll be in the sun most of the walk, so we really need to work off all those cookies, the pudding, the cake, the chicken, everything that we ate. Goodbye. Akihabara. In 90 minutes or less, we will be at Shinjuku. At least one of us.

00:02:57 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, I'm not sure I'll make it the whole way just because I've got some other things I gotta take care of. I'll be going to Hiroshima.

00:03:06 John Daub: Oh, right. Yeah.

00:03:08 Peter von Gomm: In a couple days.

00:03:11 John Daub: You do that every year to visit the family.

00:03:15 Peter von Gomm: That's right. It's a beautiful area, Fukuyama.

00:03:18 John Daub: Have you been to Fukuyama? I have. They're very famous for their fugu. Are they?

00:03:24 Peter von Gomm: I didn't know that. It's a. It's a castle town for those who are interested in Hiroshima. Fukuyama is a really nice area between Okayama and Hiroshima on the Shinkansen. Lots of cool little island villages. And have you been to Onomichi?

00:03:50 John Daub: Onomichi? Yes. That's really cool.

00:03:52 Peter von Gomm: Really cool spot.

00:03:55 John Daub: All right. There's Maid Dreaming, a maid cafe. There's another Sega World number one building. And you can see some maids if you look real carefully. Maybe if you squeeze wind, you'll see them through the bright sun. Goodbye. Akihabara. Path towards. Path towards Shinjuku oh, chicken. Did you see that 711 truck?

00:04:19 Peter von Gomm: Can I open my bra?

00:04:22 John Daub: No.

00:04:23 Peter von Gomm: Hi. She's waving. How rude of you not to say hello.

00:04:28 John Daub: I think she'll get over it.

00:04:29 Peter von Gomm: I can't open it yet.

00:04:31 John Daub: Yeah, the intersection here. So we. I want to get away from the people so we can remove our masks a little bit.

00:04:37 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:04:38 John Daub: Good idea.

00:04:40 Peter von Gomm: So this is the Ippudo tonkatsu ramen soup. And.

00:04:46 John Daub: Yeah, they say Tonkatsu or tonkotsu.

00:04:50 Peter von Gomm: Sorry, Tonkotsu. Did I say tonkatsu?

00:04:53 John Daub: You did it. That would be delicious, though. I would go in on that.

00:04:58 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:05:00 John Daub: I saw Bradshaw Studios in the house. Welcome. Cream brulee donuts for the journey. I wish Irvin, but it's on the other side of the station and we have a very.

00:05:08 Peter von Gomm: Hello, Irvin.

00:05:09 John Daub: Very strict timeline here.

00:05:11 Peter von Gomm: How are you guys doing?

00:05:12 John Daub: Behind you, you can see the curries and the vending machine there. But the Ippudo tonkotsu broth drink is only available inside the JR stations. The Akihabara vending machines. Yeah, you can go ahead and give that a try.

00:05:27 Peter von Gomm: Do you shake it?

00:05:28 John Daub: I. I don't know. I. I guess if you. If you want to shake it like a Polaroid picture, shake it like a can of ramen. Let us know if you have any audio problems. If you have any questions, I'll be looking at the live chat. This is a live stream, by the way, so if you're asking why this. The quality is really not that great. Ask YouTube. Don't ask me because I don't have control over that. Danny's here. Hi, John and Peter. Have a nice day. See, the champ is here in Tokyo. Paul360. Welcome.

00:06:06 Peter von Gomm: This is one of my favorite parts of Akihabara downtown.

00:06:08 John Daub: Shall we cross the street? Let's cross the street then.

00:06:10 Peter von Gomm: Okay. Follow that back down there under the tracks, there's a great craft beer brewery. Have you been to that one?

00:06:18 John Daub: Yes, I have. That's the Hachino.

00:06:20 Peter von Gomm: Yep.

00:06:22 John Daub: These 20 inch bicycle tire sized wheel bikes are quite popular in the city. Those are the everyday mamachari we call them. And the most popular bike in Japan one Speeders.

00:06:43 Peter von Gomm: All right, I'm opening it.

00:06:45 John Daub: All right, let it rip.

00:06:46 Peter von Gomm: By the way, the one of the beers you brought over the other day, I don't know if you're trying to play a joke on me and shook it up because when I opened it,

00:06:56 John Daub: I did not shake them up. The Sam Adams.

00:06:58 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. I opened one last night and that thing went off like Old Faithful all over the kitchen. I tried to put my. You never put your thumb over a beer.

00:07:08 John Daub: That's expensive.

00:07:08 Peter von Gomm: Exploding.

00:07:09 John Daub: How did it taste?

00:07:10 Peter von Gomm: What was left of it tasted pretty good. But I lost half of it on the floor and the counter and it shot into the living room that was supposed to be opened on New Year. Sorry. All right.

00:07:21 Peter von Gomm: You should have warned me. All right, here it is, the ramen broth.

00:07:26 John Daub: All right. Bon appetit, sir. This is your power up, at least halfway.

00:07:35 Peter von Gomm: It's not bad.

00:07:36 John Daub: Really?

00:07:37 Peter von Gomm: That's not bad.

00:07:38 John Daub: Salty.

00:07:38 Peter von Gomm: It is very salty. But it's like. It kind of, you know, like the chicken noodle soup that would warm you up on a cold day. Yeah, it's nice.

00:07:49 John Daub: I like that they put those hot drink diversifying the kind of drinks in the vending machine.

00:07:55 Peter von Gomm: It's not as rich as you would get from the broth from a bowl of ramen.

00:08:00 John Daub: Right.

00:08:01 Peter von Gomm: It's a little bit toned down.

00:08:03 John Daub: Well, normally wouldn't drink that ramen broth more than a couple of sips, but I think the size of can, this small can is perfect.

00:08:11 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, it's nice.

00:08:12 John Daub: One of these days I gotta get a. Get. Get some ramen noodles and then put that in there and see if it makes an Ippudo ramen. This. I just want to stop here for like 10 seconds here. This is the maruse sandwich vending machine. I've been here several times and you can get a sandwich on the go from this vending machine here. And now they've added in oden, which is cans of stewed Japanese stuff. Like get so many different kinds of things in there. Okay.

00:08:42 Peter von Gomm: They got the ton. This is actually the tonkatsu, not the tonkotsu.

00:08:45 John Daub: Yeah, this would be tonkatsu sandwich, double pork cutlet sandwiches.

00:08:49 Peter von Gomm: And how was it? Was it warm?

00:08:51 John Daub: No, they're not warm. They're pretty good. But they come in. They're cold sandwiches, but they come with a little wet napkin and.

00:08:58 Peter von Gomm: Wow. Mouth is watering.

00:08:59 John Daub: Tasty. Is your mouth watering? Are you hungry?

00:09:02 Peter von Gomm: I am a little bit.

00:09:08 John Daub: You're hungry a little bit.

00:09:12 Peter von Gomm: Not necessarily for a vending machine sandwich,

00:09:15 John Daub: mind you, I've done this walk about five or six times already.

00:09:21 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

00:09:21 John Daub: On average, it takes me less than an hour and a half. And this is. I guess this. This is the episode I want to show you how. How small Tokyo's center really is. It's. I think Manhattan is so much bigger than Tokyo. Well,

00:09:41 Peter von Gomm: yeah, most people are. Are accustomed to being on the subway and you're kind of like a mole underground. You go under and you pop your head out and you have no idea what's going on in between.

00:09:52 John Daub: Right.

00:09:54 Peter von Gomm: But being out on the roads, it's. It is.

00:09:57 John Daub: It.

00:09:57 Peter von Gomm: It is a lot smaller than you think.

00:10:01 John Daub: All right, we're going to be taking a right here. And this is going to take us all the way to Jimbocho, which is the almost halfway point through Jimbocho. Kudanshita.

00:10:17 Peter von Gomm: Kudanshita, Right. Keep on going until Ichigaya. Then we walk across the bridge to the other side and then start walking from Ichigaya to Shinjuku, past Yotsuya.

00:10:28 Peter von Gomm: I might even stick around to Iidabashi.

00:10:32 John Daub: You should. This will be filled with lots of ads as a result of Tokyo being like a commercial paradise for all sorts of stuff. I do have a map here I want to show you while we wait at the traffic lights here. It's too late. Oh, is it too late already? Anyways, there's a link in the description. You can click that link and you can follow along and see exactly where we are on this route. Because I'm following this route because I've walked it so many times.

00:11:07 Peter von Gomm: And what is the name of this road right here?

00:11:11 John Daub: I think this is Yasukuni Dori. Now.

00:11:13 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:14 John Daub: Yasukuni Dori, you're the one who drives the city all the time. You're the one who drives the city all the time, right?

00:11:26 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, almost every day. Now watch this. Look up here. See this guy? Zoom in on him if you can. These guys, they never wear eye protection and they never have hearing earplugs in.

00:11:43 John Daub: I know he does. He's not wearing any eye protection.

00:11:45 Peter von Gomm: Never.

00:11:46 John Daub: That's crazy. Totally crazy.

00:11:59 Peter von Gomm: Their hearing must be absolutely.

00:12:01 John Daub: Yeah, you probably can't hear anything at all. I like walking at this time of year because what you see are huge lines.

00:12:08 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:12:08 John Daub: And the reason why is because they're hungry. Yes. That's one reason it is lunchtime. Another reason is a lot of the shops that are selling goods for New Year's. They might have huge lines to get them.

00:12:22 Peter von Gomm: Look at this. This is like a. This is a restaurant. Matsuya.

00:12:25 John Daub: Yeah. This is a really old restaurant. The building hasn't changed since I believe the Meiji era. It looks like really old, old style building sandwiched between some really higher newer buildings. Looks like they were built in the 80s.

00:12:40 Peter von Gomm: I wonder what sort of fair they have.

00:12:43 John Daub: I don't know. It looks like a. A. Looks like a shokudo. Not sure. I. I might have eaten there in the past. It's just a stone throw away from Akihabara. This is Ogawamachi area of Tokyo. I saw that. Brandania. Thank you. We will pick up something on the way. Probably around Jimbocho. Maybe get a. Another hot drink and a snack. Something to. To grab for the road ahead. I'm already kind of winded. I think it's just because we're out of shape. Or am I speaking for myself?

00:13:23 Peter von Gomm: You're speaking for yourself. Well, you have that heavy camera bag. That thing is laden with loads of high tech equipment. Look at this old Mercedes. That's one of my.

00:13:34 John Daub: That's a classic old one. Yeah. Did you see that?

00:13:39 Peter von Gomm: That's an early 60s, I believe.

00:13:42 John Daub: You can see a lot of really interesting collectible cars. People get them out on nice sunny days during the holiday. They drive it through. Drive it through. There's Ogawamachi and Awajicho station. So you can change here for the modern Toei Ochi line or you can just keep walking like we're doing right now. Now the rule is the three Cs. Avoid crowded, congested, confined areas and keep a social distance. When you're outside. You really don't need to have a mask on. But in Japan they're extra, extra cautious. I see some of you might have concerns.

00:14:32 Peter von Gomm: My feet are cold.

00:14:33 John Daub: Actually my toes feel frozen. Yeah,

00:14:42 Peter von Gomm: Well, I've polished it off.

00:14:44 John Daub: If you can see the. Turn it, turn the other side. You can see what the bowl of ramen would look like there. There you go. Ippudo's got some good stuff.

00:14:51 Peter von Gomm: That was nice.

00:14:52 John Daub: Yeah. I'm not a big fan of the chains but every now and then I will jump in there to get a bowl of ramen.

00:15:00 Peter von Gomm: 32 calories.

00:15:02 John Daub: 32 calories? No, that's 320 kilocalories.

00:15:05 Peter von Gomm: 320.

00:15:06 John Daub: Okay. So you just drank the equivalent to half this trip, probably of calories you would burn.

00:15:11 Peter von Gomm: So if it said 320k cows, it would. That's not 3200 calories. I don't know, Kcals. It's 32 calories, basically. It's not 30, not 320.

00:15:22 John Daub: That's so confusing.

00:15:23 Peter von Gomm: It's not 320. It's got about 150 grams of protein.

00:15:30 John Daub: Yeah. So that's Soto Bori Dori cutting across here. That will take you towards the end. Imperial Palace. If you go to the left, we're just gonna keep going straight.

00:15:43 Peter von Gomm: Straight as an arrow.

00:15:46 John Daub: Speaking of arrows, I've been watching that show Game of Thrones. I can't stop watching it. I couldn't get through the first episode. For three years ago, I tried to watch it, and I couldn't get through the first episode. So I went back to it and said, I can fight through this because everyone talks about it. And then I did, and now I can't stop.

00:16:06 Peter von Gomm: Can't stop it. It's got what, like, eight seasons?

00:16:10 John Daub: Eight seasons. I'm in season seven, and I started watching two weeks ago.

00:16:14 Peter von Gomm: Holy moly.

00:16:15 John Daub: I know. I'm watching Leo and can I go to bed? Have in the background when I'm editing.

00:16:25 Peter von Gomm: Mm,

00:16:27 John Daub: yeah.

00:16:29 Peter von Gomm: You're not. The coffee that's got. They have some good coffee. You can buy beans there. Many different varieties of beans.

00:16:34 John Daub: This is Coffee Row, I guess you could say. There's Yanaka Coffee, which is a. A local coffee brand. There's Tully's Coffee and then a Starbucks right in the distance. There's loads of cafes. We're gonna go. Go past. Maybe we'll stop in one of them and get.

00:16:46 Peter von Gomm: Yes, please.

00:16:47 John Daub: Some caffeination. Yes, please.

00:16:51 Peter von Gomm: Coffee in there, too.

00:16:53 John Daub: What?

00:16:54 Peter von Gomm: Right there? It said coffee above the cashier.

00:17:00 John Daub: Right there.

00:17:01 Peter von Gomm: Oh.

00:17:01 John Daub: Oh, my gosh. So the pharmacy also has coffee. These people love to have coffee. There's the hot water for the coffee. I didn't know that the pharmacies are competing with the ven. The convenience stores now, I've never seen that before.

00:17:15 Peter von Gomm: You can actually get a pretty good cup of coffee at convenience stores here.

00:17:21 John Daub: Do you remember. Do you remember when. When we first came to Japan, you couldn't find coffee anywhere except the canned coffee, Right? And now it's everywhere. Yeah, it's. It's crazy. The coffee revolution has begun. This place is one of my favorite tsukeman places. Have you had this before? Tsujita.

00:17:40 Peter von Gomm: That looks really good.

00:17:42 John Daub: Yeah. Let me just show you the. The show you the vending machine here. I always get the tsukemen which is the. The noodles and the broth are separated. But the ramen is pretty good too. It's about $11 for that. And you can customize it. You can get larger size noodles for just another dollar.

00:18:01 Peter von Gomm: Show them the eggs.

00:18:02 John Daub: I did show them the ajitama.

00:18:04 Peter von Gomm: Oh man, that was delicious.

00:18:06 John Daub: They. Oh, they're. They're going to open up a new shop in Akihabara. Oh my God. Gosh. That's what I'm like. That's better than the, the Tetsu that we went to a couple years ago.

00:18:23 Peter von Gomm: Road Ladies Triathlon shop. Those. Some funky bikes. Look, those mothers.

00:18:34 John Daub: They are pretty weird. Some more places at lunchtime there is a line out the door, but it moves really quickly. One thing that I got to tell you is that when you do eat at a place like this, it's not a place where you sit your butt down and you stay there all afternoon. You want to get in there, eat and get out. And then you go to the Starbucks if you want to keep talking. These businesses keep the prices low because of the turnover. They move so quickly, the customers in and out. That's how they make their money. They keep the, the prices low to keep the customers lining up outside.

00:19:07 Peter von Gomm: It's kind of like In N Out Burger, right?

00:19:10 John Daub: I don't. I don't know. I've never eaten at In N Out Burger. I'm an east coast guy. All right, so this is the limit of Ogawamachi. And you could also cross the Awajicho and Shino Ochanomizu. That Ippudo steak has been booming over the last couple of years.

00:19:37 Peter von Gomm: Chains are everywhere.

00:19:38 John Daub: I don't think that the quality of the, of the steak there is. Is really. Yeah.

00:19:43 Peter von Gomm: But they don't know better. Well, actually I can't say that for sure. They. The wagyu. They don't do they have wagyu there?

00:19:48 John Daub: They have a quality sometimes I think they have.

00:19:51 Peter von Gomm: So they've got a, a menu that's quite varying from inexpensive to more top of the line cuts. Yeah, but it's still not.

00:20:00 John Daub: It's meat, right? It's meat with the sauce on there. I saw Rainier is here. Rainier, Rainier, thanks so much. We'll put that to good use and get, get PVG some caffeine. So there's the Yasukuni Dori and Hongo Dori. We're right now at that intersection you can follow along on the map that was in the link in the description of this video. There's a Ferrari. Whoa. Yes, please. One day. This is the path that we're taking. And this cuts across one side of the Yamanote line to the other.

00:20:33 Peter von Gomm: We're heading right up through here. Right? Oh, no, you got.

00:20:36 John Daub: You can see the blue line cutting across here. We're. We're.

00:20:40 Peter von Gomm: Where?

00:20:40 John Daub: Where are we right now? We're getting very close. We're right here, about 10%, 15% of the journey. We're getting close to Meiji University, which will be on the right side. It's a skyscraper. And then we'll go past Kitanomaru park and Yasukuni Shrine and cut across from there. And then Shinjuku is right there. It's going to be pretty good. When I get to the goal, I think. I know you could make it if you chose to.

00:21:07 Peter von Gomm: If I chose to? Well, at the moment I'm choosing.

00:21:11 John Daub: We all have options. We also have not to. So from this area, we are now starting into the Jimbocho section of the city of Tokyo. Very famous for books, publishing, lots of Japan's outdoor sports. Outdoor sports as well. Right. A lot of Japan's biggest publishers are in this area, including Shueisha, where I used to work about 10 years ago.

00:21:41 Peter von Gomm: You work for Shueisha?

00:21:42 John Daub: I did. English editorial advisor.

00:21:44 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

00:21:45 John Daub: Yeah. Sounds pretty cool.

00:21:47 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. That opened doors for you.

00:21:51 John Daub: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. It's an old traditional company. I can tell you the story how I. How I got the job. I was modeling for Gaba Eikaiwa, which is an English school here, and I

00:22:04 Peter von Gomm: didn't know how to tie old house.

00:22:08 John Daub: I know you see this? I hope that they don't tear it down, but I got a feeling that they are. That whole alley in the back there, very famous for having some of Tokyo's first western cafes.

00:22:19 Peter von Gomm: Oh, wow.

00:22:20 John Daub: Yeah. The very first wiener coffee. Wiener, meaning Viennese coffee, is back there too, where they put whipped cream on top of a. Oh, those are good.

00:22:28 Peter von Gomm: They are very good.

00:22:29 John Daub: They are very good.

00:22:29 Peter von Gomm: Cold winter's day, kind of like today. Yeah.

00:22:32 John Daub: They still whip. They still whip the whipped cream like they did 100 years ago.

00:22:37 Peter von Gomm: Really? Yeah. With an electric mixer?

00:22:41 John Daub: No, I think they use it by the hand. Whip. But this part of the town, again, very old publishing, traditional.

00:22:53 Peter von Gomm: Nice big leaf.

00:22:57 John Daub: Look at that.

00:22:57 Peter von Gomm: Isn't that a beautiful leaf?

00:22:59 John Daub: Yeah. What is that? One of the ginkgo trees, I think. I don't know. I'm not quite sure.

00:23:04 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, that's. It's A different species of ginkgo, maybe. That bark is really interesting.

00:23:10 John Daub: It is.

00:23:11 Peter von Gomm: Should we turn it over? Yeah, turn over that leaf.

00:23:15 John Daub: Is that because it's a new year and you want to turn over it? Okay, just keep moving.

00:23:24 Peter von Gomm: Put anything past you, John?

00:23:27 John Daub: Sharp as attack. Turn over a new leaf. Sharp as attack. What else you have in your utility belt, Robin?

00:23:39 Peter von Gomm: Holy Jimbocho, Batman.

00:23:49 John Daub: Megan reminds us that is not a ginkgo leaf. Yes, I know. It's on a ginkgo leaf. I don't know what it is. Perhaps in the chat they'll give us a little.

00:23:59 Peter von Gomm: It was a big, broad leaf.

00:24:01 John Daub: Yeah, broadleaf.

00:24:04 Peter von Gomm: There's another one.

00:24:05 John Daub: Don't ask me why we're limited to 720p. I've already complained to YouTube over three years now.

00:24:12 Peter von Gomm: Is this on 5G or 4G?

00:24:13 John Daub: It's on 4G. 4G, because 5G is so unreliable and the app is not programmed to switch between the. It's. It's all about the YouTube app. It has nothing to do with the iPhone, just the. The. I don't think YouTube wants us live streaming. I think they want uploads. Maybe they don't. They don't feel like they need to compete against Twitch or something. I'm not sure.

00:24:31 Peter von Gomm: Well, they haven't seen John Dobbs livestream.

00:24:33 John Daub: They have not. No, actually, they have. I'm. I'm pretty sure they have. I won't tell you any more than that. Here's another lineup. This is Tsujita. That's another branch of the shop. That's another branch of the shop we were just at. Oh, yeah, they're really popular in this area. Another thing that's famous in the Jimbocho area is the curry rice. And I think you're gonna start to smell it a little bit. Not here, but after the next intersection,

00:25:05 Peter von Gomm: if you see a can depository unit.

00:25:10 John Daub: All right. You want to recycle that thing?

00:25:12 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Because my right hand is freezing holding

00:25:15 John Daub: Ilganja for good karma. You got it. This is a Victoria sports store. This is branch one of two. And I usually bought my.

00:25:26 Peter von Gomm: Check this out. Yasukuni, which will be passing by, has illumination. Oh, wow. Did not that until January 16th. So obviously we won't be able to tell what it looks like because it's not dark out.

00:25:39 John Daub: Well, if you close your eyes and use your imagination, maybe you'll be able to see those lights. Bright sunny day, look straight into the sun. I've eaten across the street at that udon restaurant few times. Marugoto Menya.

00:26:04 Peter von Gomm: There's actually a good standing sushi restaurant along here as well.

00:26:09 John Daub: There's a recycling can here. Where? On the other side. Behind it. No.

00:26:17 Peter von Gomm: Oh yeah.

00:26:18 John Daub: Sometimes. Sometimes things are not as they seem. Peter. You have to look behind the machines. Haha. Good call. Spike021's in the house. Been super busy lately and haven't been able to catch the streams. Merry Christmas, guys. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

00:26:38 Peter von Gomm: Ring the bell, John. Ring the bell.

00:26:41 John Daub: Can you do that?

00:26:42 Peter von Gomm: I don't know. There's a light under it.

00:26:52 John Daub: Yeah, I don't know if you're really supposed to ring the bell. This used to be Victoria's. Now it's Zebbio. And they have running shoes. There's a guy who works in there. He always helps me with the new running shoes and gives me information. Old guy. I think he's ran in the most marathons I've ever met. Anyone who's ever run. I think he's been in 100 marathons or something around the world. He always helps me with my shoes. So.

00:27:20 Peter von Gomm: Also, this area is famous for not only like snowboarding goods, skiing goods, lots of guitar shops.

00:27:28 John Daub: Yeah, I know.

00:27:30 Peter von Gomm: Ochanomizu.

00:27:31 John Daub: This will take us to the university. There's Meiji University right there. Hey, so I see that Raymond Centeno.

00:27:39 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:27:40 John Daub: Look at Meiji University's Skyscraper University. All in the whole campus in one building. It feels like.

00:27:46 Peter von Gomm: Do you know what they call this? You know what this shape is called, John?

00:27:50 John Daub: This is a Gibson Starship. I don't know.

00:27:52 Peter von Gomm: No. Well, this is a vintage one too.

00:27:55 John Daub: What is it called?

00:27:56 Peter von Gomm: A Flying V. Flying V. Look at the shape.

00:28:00 John Daub: I see that.

00:28:01 Peter von Gomm: And makes me want to pick it

00:28:04 John Daub: up and kick over some speakers.

00:28:09 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, I have two of these. I've got two Les Paul's.

00:28:15 John Daub: Oh yeah, you have one in your house?

00:28:17 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, I got two.

00:28:17 John Daub: Why don't you display them or something?

00:28:19 Peter von Gomm: It is in my studio.

00:28:20 John Daub: Yeah, your house is already like a museum with those paintings that you have in there.

00:28:27 Peter von Gomm: But one of my Les Paul's, I actually had Les Paul. So I met when I was working at the Smithsonian. I. There was an American Hero's Night and at the American History Museum. And Les Paul was there and I brought my guitar. Wow. And he signed the back of it.

00:28:45 John Daub: That is very cool.

00:28:46 Peter von Gomm: Very cool. Les Paul was a genius. For those who know are in the know about guitars and recording equipment. He was a genius.

00:28:56 John Daub: I don't think I've ever met a genius. Certified genius.

00:29:00 Peter von Gomm: You're standing next to one right now. Oh, certified.

00:29:04 John Daub: Yeah. Is there a mirror nearby? Is that what you're talking about? No, we're just kidding. I do love walking on.

00:29:15 Peter von Gomm: I want to get one of these.

00:29:17 John Daub: Dude, you have. Those are like a couple million dollars. You mean. Why don't you just do a little GTA?

00:29:23 Peter von Gomm: Well, because that's a lot more fun. Imagine picking up a date in one of those.

00:29:31 John Daub: Window. That'd be pretty cool.

00:29:36 Peter von Gomm: It'd be like a memory that would last a lifetime.

00:29:38 John Daub: She would never forget you.

00:29:39 Peter von Gomm: No.

00:29:40 John Daub: Yeah. Forget serenading. Come in a tower. One of those crane trucks. All right. Since we're near the university campus, you're going to see loads of really cheap eats too. A lot of these cheap eats in the Jimbocho area around Meiji University are in the alleyways. So if you are staying around here, it's worth exploring. Especially after 6pm when some of these izakayas open up with cheap beers. 180 yen for a jockey of beer. Jockey is like a jokey joki. Yeah. So small. Chujoki, medium size.

00:30:17 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. The alleys around here are fantastic. Well, anywhere in Tokyo the alleys are in Japan. And in the cities that the alley restaurants you find and stuff there's always just fantastic stuff. It's kind of a cool painting above that first floor over there.

00:30:33 John Daub: All right. Yeah, Very interesting. This is starts the bookshop row when we turn turn the corner again leaving behind Ogawamachi there and then turning the corner slightly making a curve. You can see in the map the link in the description here. And we'll be passing through Jimbocho in about two minutes to moving on towards Kudanshita. Did you try the McDonald's beef stew pie yet?

00:31:02 Peter von Gomm: No. Is it any good?

00:31:03 John Daub: Yeah, it's not bad. There it is right there on the poster. I did an episode on that a week ago. Just out of curiosity. It's pretty good. It doesn't beat the adult cream pies we had.

00:31:17 Peter von Gomm: Did you have a pint of Guinness with it?

00:31:20 John Daub: No. That would have been a good idea. But I ate it at like 11am or something. Sure. I try not to touch booze until 5pm or after. All right. You can take a quick look. This is like what the alleys of Jimbocho look like here. And they take you to all sorts of restaurants and pubs. A lot of them will change hands just because it is very competitive and it makes a lot of sense just to just renew, start a new business. Because new places get crowded because everyone wants to try it. You probably make all the renovation costs in the first 48 hours. You know, get all that money back. And.

00:32:04 Peter von Gomm: Oh, Meron pawn shop.

00:32:06 John Daub: You see, this is a chain. If it wasn't a chain. Do you want one? I will happily buy you one. You want one? Really? Okay, fine. All right, fine. Right here. Really? Uncle John, can you pay by sweet pika?

00:32:23 Peter von Gomm: Sure.

00:32:24 John Daub: Here.

00:32:26 Peter von Gomm: Okay. We got apple pie, we got custard pie, raspberry pie, chocolate caramel. This is the original melon pond.

00:32:36 John Daub: Here we go.

00:32:37 Peter von Gomm: Normal flavored, which is down below here.

00:32:39 John Daub: Middle.

00:32:40 Peter von Gomm: This is melon meadow and cream pie.

00:32:42 John Daub: Here you go. Thank you. Melon cream sounds good.

00:32:48 Peter von Gomm: Try that. Metal cream.

00:32:49 John Daub: Yeah.

00:32:49 Peter von Gomm: Okay.

00:32:58 John Daub: You should ask for the yakitate one.

00:33:00 Peter von Gomm: Which one?

00:33:00 John Daub: The one that's out of the oven, if they have any.

00:33:05 Peter von Gomm: And a raspberry PI, please. Raspberry pie? Yes.

00:33:12 John Daub: I should have asked for the yakitate. Melonpan is only good when it's fresh out of the oven.

00:33:15 Peter von Gomm: out of the oven.

00:33:16 John Daub: Exactly.

00:33:17 Peter von Gomm: What do you say?

00:33:18 John Daub: Yaki Yakit. Yakit. It's like right out of the oven. All right, technically, I just saw you stick your whole head in there.

00:33:35 Peter von Gomm: No, just my nose.

00:33:38 John Daub: You stuck your whole head in there. I just went under the flag of Italy. A lot of international cuisine here too. In the Jimbocho area, it is a little bit more international. Might be because of the universities or the publishing. I don't know what it is, but there's some extremely good chuka ri Chinese food, some really good Italian places. And the curry in the city of Tokyo, probably best here than anywhere else. And if you breathe in deeply, you can smell the curry.

00:34:09 Peter von Gomm: All that smell is melon. Fun.

00:34:11 John Daub: Yeah, that's. That's sort of gonna. That's gonna be overpowering if it's right in your hand. But you want the change back 20 yen. All right. All coins must be accounted for by the crown. Well, did you know that the one in Shiodome went out of business?

00:34:28 Peter von Gomm: Taco Bell.

00:34:29 John Daub: Yeah. There was a Taco Bell by the gym Ghibli clock at Shiodome that went out of business.

00:34:34 Peter von Gomm: I didn't know that.

00:34:35 John Daub: They have an unch. There's an unch bell. You see that?

00:34:42 Peter von Gomm: What do you mean by that?

00:34:43 John Daub: A taco, a Coke and a potato. French fries for 500 yen.

00:34:49 Peter von Gomm: Oh, okay. So you see,

00:34:55 John Daub: Just so you know, chi means poo in Japanese. That's one of the first words I learned.

00:35:04 Peter von Gomm: All right, hold on.

00:35:05 John Daub: They want to see the menu. Here you go. They don't have any bean burritos. Everything is really pricey at this Taco Bell in Japan. Everything is like three or four dollars.

00:35:20 Peter von Gomm: When this Taco Bell first opened in Shibuya. I went there, and it was quite a crap.

00:35:24 John Daub: It was not good.

00:35:25 Peter von Gomm: It did not taste good.

00:35:26 John Daub: It did not taste good.

00:35:28 Peter von Gomm: But this raspberry pie does.

00:35:31 John Daub: Is it good?

00:35:33 Peter von Gomm: By the way, is Jason in the house?

00:35:35 John Daub: Jason Bourne? Yeah, Jason from Canada. He might be here.

00:35:46 Peter von Gomm: Jason knows what that means. Jason, Take a bite of your cream pie.

00:35:58 John Daub: I. I will as soon as we cross this intersection. It's a little bit excited. Yeah, we got a long walk.

00:36:07 Peter von Gomm: Why don't you show them my raspberry PI?

00:36:10 John Daub: Oh, wow.

00:36:15 Peter von Gomm: It's not too shabby.

00:36:16 John Daub: There you go. You happy? You. You happy now? I showed everybody your raspberry PI. You proud of yourself? Peter, we're, like, halfway done. You want to leave here?

00:36:30 Peter von Gomm: Well, I'll keep going a little bit.

00:36:32 John Daub: Isn't it really nice weather? So you need to get some vitamin D. Yeah, I think we can make this light. Hurry. We can make this light. This light takes forever. Peter. Peter. There's Tokyo Dome. You see the roller coaster there?

00:36:55 Peter von Gomm: Run with a raspberry PI in your hand.

00:37:00 John Daub: There's Haksan Dori, and Yasukuni. That's where we are. You can. You can follow along in the map. That's in the LinkedIn. Get from here. All right. I'll take a. Take a bite out of this cream. Metal pond.

00:37:12 Peter von Gomm: Let me hold the stick.

00:37:15 John Daub: That's all right. Wow, this doesn't look very inspiring. Yeah, it feels kind of stale. Hold. Let me take off this mask. You don't really need to wear a mask outside, but it's nice that everybody else is so. All right.

00:37:40 Peter von Gomm: How is it? It doesn't. It's not. It's not, like, creamy, though.

00:37:42 John Daub: It's melon cream.

00:37:44 Peter von Gomm: Really interesting.

00:37:46 John Daub: It's orange melon cream. All right, I'm gonna put this away because I think I'm gonna eat this with a coffee. It will stop off on the way to get.

00:38:00 Peter von Gomm: Oh, can I. Let me tell you about my latest podcast.

00:38:10 John Daub: Well, nice.

00:38:13 Peter von Gomm: Homicide, Inc. It's not a children's podcast, John.

00:38:18 John Daub: Well, didn't you read the Night Before Christmas on there?

00:38:20 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Well, not on the podcast. That was on the channel. The YouTube channel.

00:38:24 John Daub: Oh, this is the Shinsekai Chinese restaurant. This is so good. It's not a lot of people know about it, but they have the most authentic Chinese food, which is weird because they're probably made by a lot of people from China and all the Chinese restaurants, but it tastes like it does on the mainland, and it's very pricey, and they do have shark fin soup, which is probably not.

00:38:48 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, that's not very, not very good to do.

00:38:50 John Daub: Yeah. Said it's pretty authentic. Shueisha. The. The company would take me there after work. The director.

00:39:00 Peter von Gomm: Oh really?

00:39:01 John Daub: Yeah, he'd pay cuz he has a. A company allowance that he would have to use or lose. So we would use it.

00:39:09 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. There's loads of. Of really good authentic Chinese restaurants. And they're usually pretty affordable.

00:39:15 John Daub: They are, yeah. You should put your arms out, look up and yell and take a bite of your food. Not. Maybe not next to Yasukuni Shrine, I think maybe, which is just up the hill here.

00:39:33 Peter von Gomm: You see the gate? The Torii gate? Oh yeah. Just.

00:39:37 John Daub: I could see the. See the top of. Top of the Torii. Do you see that in the center? It's a massive Torii. That represents the. Well, it's a shrine first of all. And that. It's Yasukuni.

00:39:54 Peter von Gomm: So you're familiar with the Om Shinrikyo, right?

00:40:02 John Daub: Yeah. There's another curry place right here. I'm just loving the smells that come from the kitchens. Restaurant boys. Ham. Whoa. Hamburg and curry. This is. I think this place has been around for a very long time. This is hamburg and curry. And it does look like it's from the 1950s, doesn't it? Like it?

00:40:25 Peter von Gomm: Look at their menu on the.

00:40:27 John Daub: On the window there in black and white. Oh, right there.

00:40:30 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, it's a bit.

00:40:30 John Daub: Okay, I'll show that really quickly. Yeah, there's a hamburg and curry. Interesting. It's pretty reasonable. Nine. About $9. Peter,

00:40:51 Peter von Gomm: I know you love those.

00:40:53 John Daub: Oh yeah. Ichigo daifuku. Oh yeah. This is also, I believe, where they have one of the best curry restaurants in the next alley over on this direction. You just have to. You have to know where to go. And that comes with living here for like 20 years. It's so good. S and B Curry, which is one of the big curry manufacturers at the supermarket for prepackaged curry boil bags. They worked with that restaurant to produce a curry bag promoting it. Oh, do you think we can make this light, Peter? We can make this light. This is another long one.

00:41:47 Peter von Gomm: Knock yourself out, John. I'm on me time now.

00:41:56 John Daub: We're good, Peter. Look at him walking. Oh, I'm cool as a cucumber. No, dude, it's dangerous. What are you doing?

00:42:12 Peter von Gomm: I'll catch up. I'll catch up.

00:42:20 John Daub: You'll never catch up. You will not catch up. Really? We're not gonna run. He says go ahead and he'll catch up. Yeah, right. He has no idea that I walk twice as speed as normal people. Who wrote that? Habitato rates and ditchium. I could have ditched my friend. You can probably still hear him too. His mic is connected to the same receiver. Anyways, EVG meant ketchup. Meaning he's gonna go get some ketchup. All right, this part is not too interesting right here. But as we get underneath that. That bridge, that's one of the highways, the Shuto, I believe it is. You can see that on the map there. He's not gonna catch up because there's so many traffic lights. He's gonna miss them all. I believe there's another Indian curry place right on the corner after this light maybe. Oh, that's right. Another reason why there's a lot of curry hurry in Jimbocho is because the Indian embassy is over there on the left side. We're gonna go right past the Indian embassy in about three or four minutes. Anyone who's wondering, what is the parking like in Tokyo? There you go. It's a five. Wow, that's pretty cheap. All night. It's for. It's $5 if you park here all night from 8:00pm to 8:00am and if you park during the daytime, 8:00am to 8:00pm it's $20 on the weekdays and then $40 on the weekends. It's pretty pricey. It's pretty. Peter's not gonna catch up. Your buddy's mic is intermittently kicking in. I told him to stay. Why didn't he run? I think that melon pond is weighing him down. Ray writes in here ready to get back on a plane and walk Tokyo. Been listening to Peter's Homicide, Inc. Great, thank you. I'm sure my friend really appreciates the subscribers. It's also on Apple iTunes if you want to listen to as a podcast.

00:45:10 Peter von Gomm: Johnny, can you hear me?

00:45:12 John Daub: Looks kind of creepy.

00:45:20 Peter von Gomm: That would have been cute.

00:45:21 John Daub: I feel like a deer in headlights. Like you're Michael Myers coming towards me on Halloween and I have no choice but to wait here. Michael Myers doesn't walk like that. He just walks briskly with a knife. Have you not walked this the Starbucks

00:45:35 Peter von Gomm: you were talking about?

00:45:35 John Daub: Yeah. Have you not seen the Halloween movies? Yeah, well, you should know about Michael Myers.

00:45:43 Peter von Gomm: I've seen one. Wayne's World.

00:45:46 John Daub: That's a different Michael Myers. All right. One of the reasons why we do have to go a little bit faster is I only had 70% battery life and I have a feeling.

00:45:54 Peter von Gomm: What's it left at now?

00:45:55 John Daub: I don't know. Because the YouTube app doesn't show me. I'd have to cut the live stream. You know, it doesn't. You know, YouTube is got billions and billions of dollars. It doesn't cost a lot of money to redesign the app to make it high definition, user friendly, better encoding, so you could take, you know, 8 megabytes per second and make a decent HD signal. I think 10 or 10 to 15 would be better. So it looks like there's a bit

00:46:23 Peter von Gomm: of a line here at the Starbucks.

00:46:26 John Daub: What's that?

00:46:26 Peter von Gomm: There's a bit of a line.

00:46:28 John Daub: There's another one up, up ahead.

00:46:30 Peter von Gomm: Okay, well, I'm taking off to the right here very shortly.

00:46:34 John Daub: Oh, okay. You're gonna depart at Kudanshita.

00:46:37 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, up here at the next intersection probably.

00:46:41 John Daub: That's the basic Starbucks. Has a Hojicha caramel going on right now. Hojicha is a burnt green tea. Kind of been roasted. That's a better word than burnt.

00:46:54 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, roasted.

00:46:59 John Daub: I like this. The McDonald's on the go. Just a window. This is a samurai burger.

00:47:07 Peter von Gomm: Samurai Mac.

00:47:09 John Daub: I'm not a big fan of McDonald's, but I do like the way that they innovate here in Japan. Yeah. Taris is an Indian restaurant. Only you can eat naan. It's usually what, seven, eight dollars? And you can have seven, eight pieces of naan if you want. I've never left there with on an empty stomach.

00:47:29 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

00:47:32 John Daub: Indo Shokudo. Indoteshoku. There's Meijirodori. And we're still on Yasukuni Dori going towards Yasukuni Shrine. It's a good walk.

00:47:51 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, Nice. I think I'm gonna peel out to the right here after we cross the street.

00:47:57 John Daub: This place is crowded during the cherry blossoms like crazy. Right. You can see it's just lined up on the other side. Do you know what that building is right there?

00:48:06 Peter von Gomm: Back behind is Budokan.

00:48:07 John Daub: That's the Showa era museum. Oh, interesting. It's kind of neat to see that period between the 19, I guess late 20s to 1980. 80. 1989. The Showa period. I was born in Showa. 64 or 60 49. Sorry. And I believe that building there was where the war crimes a trial was done by the US

00:48:33 Peter von Gomm: My dad, if that's where they were having the, the court hearings, my dad was in there.

00:48:40 John Daub: Really?

00:48:41 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:48:41 John Daub: I believe that's the building hearing. Yeah. Inside that building. And they're. I believe they, they've been trying to reconstruct it and I think they put a building inside the building. You see that skyscraper?

00:48:54 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, yeah.

00:48:56 John Daub: Before that building was built. It's a brand new building. This is a beer garden on the roof. Wow. I loved it, the way. The connection to history and beer. All right, buddy, if. If you got a cruise here, there's a Starbucks right there.

00:49:11 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. I'm gonna walk up this street and down to. To

00:49:17 John Daub: Iidabashi, so I bid you farewell.

00:49:19 Peter von Gomm: So long.

00:49:20 John Daub: Thank you. You can see. Yeah. You can see this guy on Homicide, Inc. The Homicide Inc.

00:49:26 Peter von Gomm: Homicide Inc. Is the podcast. You can't see me. You can hear me.

00:49:31 John Daub: What's the story? Latest story is the latest one is about gas attacks. The.

00:49:39 Peter von Gomm: Sorry, it's. Yeah, the.

00:49:42 John Daub: The.

00:49:43 Peter von Gomm: The death cult that. Yeah. Terrible people, but it's a crazy story. In 1995, the. The sarin. The infamous sarin gas.

00:49:54 John Daub: Yeah. Aum.

00:49:55 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. So yeah. Please have a look at the Homicide Inc. Podcast. It's a weekly podcast and we're almost at one year started last January. Wow. So we're at episode 47 now. And yeah, if you like true crime, be sure and check it out.

00:50:15 John Daub: Good. Good to listen through the new year holiday.

00:50:18 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, for sure.

00:50:19 John Daub: Listen to crime read by a professional voice artist. The voice of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The ANA videos, several Nintendo games and what else? And a lot of other things you'll discover walking around the city of Tokyo, including Tokyo Tower. I see that. All right, thanks for joining us and bringing my camera back. See you later. Yeah, you're welcome.

00:50:42 Peter von Gomm: You're welcome.

00:50:43 John Daub: If you want to get a coffee, put it on my tab. Yeah.

00:50:48 Peter von Gomm: Only in Japan tab.

00:50:49 John Daub: Only in Japan tab. Right. All right, see you, Peter. PVG. All right, it's just us now. This mic is getting off here. I'm gonna actually turn off this mic, so I gotta plug it in to charge the camera, the smartphone. All right, Mike, Peter's mic is now off. All right, we're gonna walk this direction. I'm gonna show you Yasukuni shrine once again. If you're not in an area where it's. It's crowded with people, you don't have to wear a mask. It just doesn't make. Make a lot of sense. In the city of Tokyo, you'll see things like this where they show the new and the old and what it looked like in the Meiji period, the Edo period, and what it looked like, what it looks like these days. It's pretty interesting. This is a lighthouse. Pretty weird because we're in the center of Tokyo. This would be the Imperial palace way back in the day. We gotta go right past there. Tokyo is an ancient City before it was called Tokyo it was called Edo. Dan133 Peter was here. It is a pretty long walk. I know he's got to get back to his family. But for me I do need to get a little bit of exercise now. It makes a lot more sense to walk from Shinjuku to Akihabara. But I left my camera at Peter's house so I had to walk. So he had to meet me at Akihabara because he lives closer to Akihabara than Shinjuku. But when I'm running the Tokyo Marathon, which I've done five or six times, it's all downhill from Shinjuku where we start to the goal to Ginza. So walking it the other way there's a kind of a steep incline. There's a lighthouse on the left side that we just saw about a minute ago. That's right. Do smash that like button lightly. Don't break your smartphone. This is something I wanted to do. Show you how. How small Tokyo is. Trying to set a good example. Don't cross on red lights. Kids are watching you make that decision. So. Breaking their hearts by breaking the law. All right. Look at this massive Torii Gate. This is the entrance to Yasukuni Shrine. Oh man. Used to be a great place during. Used to be a great place during the cherry blossoms. I believe this is. These are sakura tree here. But over the last couple of years. Over the last couple of years they've really. Even before the pandemic they've really tapered down on the celebrations there. It is still a shrine. I think they've closed the drinking places because it was getting a little bit out of hand. Maybe they'll bring it back next year. I'm not sure. My feeling says this year cherry blossom festivals will still be on. But considering that Japan is a country where we try not to have any risk whatsoever. You'll never get to 0% risk. But they try their best. It's going to be. Some places are going to suspend their cherry blossom festivals. Some places are still going to keep them going. I don't know. There is the. It is a steep incline here. The Embassy of India straight ahead in your picture behind the Japanese flag there. I'm going in there to get my residence card for India. People of Indian origin. Or I guess they call them OCI cards. Overseas citizens of India. They got that in there. The ambassador at the time watched only in Japan, by the way. Pretty cool. All right. And that's Kitanomaru park and the Budokan I think if we walk a little bit here, you'll see the Budokan. I watched Eric Clapton play in there about eight or nine years ago inside the Budokan. Clapton was playing in there. It was awesome. That's also where they hold the judo events for the Olympics. 64 and last this year. You're not legally allowed to brew beer at home, so you get in trouble for that. I saw the question, but I don't think you can buy the ingredients. It's really hard to do that. They don't have home brewing kits. But my buddy Andrew has been brewing beer the right way. I had him on a live stream about two years ago and we'll try to have him back. He knows everything about the craft beer business here in Tokyo, in Japan as well, travels around and also works at a craft beer place that serves his own beer. It's pretty cool. Yes. My mother is from India. She speaks Marathi, Karnataka, which is the language of Bangalore and Hindi, English, I think some other dialect. There's a lot of languages in India. Look, I don't know why it's illegal to brew beer in, in Tokyo, but or in Japan. I, I just think that the big brewers Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo don't like the competition and they have. The lobbying here in Japan is very, very strong. I don't really know why. The licenses to make sake as well, very strict. I was talking to a guy in Tottori prefecture. He makes. He. He doesn't want to pay for the license to make Japanese sake. So he makes a. It's like a fizzy j sake. Before it becomes Japanese sake, they stop the process. So it's fizzy and he doesn't have to pay taxes or the taxes are very low on that. You can tell it's not sake, it's doboroku. I never get it right. I can't picture the kanji in my head. There's a hole in the cap of it so it lets some of the air out because it's a living breathing sake. Well, it's not sake because they technically don't pay the taxes on it. But the taxes here are awful because of the taxes on beer. Beer makers came up with happoshu, which is a different beer, not made with the things that they tax. I think it was like barley or hops. They used like chickpeas or something. So by using chickpeas or something else to make the beer, the taste was very, very close. But they could avoid the taxes. So the beer prices went down. To like 100 yen a can. Then they taxed it, and then they went to like 120 in a can. So, you know, you can't. It's really hard to get around some. Some of the ancient tax laws. And I don't know, Japan is a country that will always have really strict laws and have their own way of doing things. You don't have to agree with it. It's just the way things are. All right. Yasukuni shrine's on the right side. They're doing some construction work on the wall. But typically this white wall would be a really ancient wall. You can't see right now. And the signal might not be so strong because we are between a lot of buildings on the top of a hill. I. We are about over halfway there, I believe. I'm gonna check out the map in a second. The second half of this, I'm going to have to put the. Take out the wireless microphone and put in the battery charger, because Battery is at 10%. Right. But big thank you to Peter von Gomm for joining us for half of the walk, and thank you for joining me for the entire walk. I'll point out some interesting things as you walk along. The British Embassy is around here as well. I think it was down there. It's right near the Indian Embassy. Here's the entrance to the Yasukuni shrine part. And during the cherry blossom season, it is absolutely beautiful in this part. Now, they do have them at the other entrance, but this area of Yasukuni is very beautiful. So there's more than one entrance to get into there. The wall looks like this on the right side. This looks like it's been finished with the renovations. There's Yasukuni right there. We're gonna walk all the way to here, and then I get across the bridge when we get to Ichigaya. So we're gonna be crossing the river and then walking this direction. And then we're just. We're in the home stretch towards Shinjuku. By home stretch, I mean, like, we still got a long way to go now that we lost dead weight. Peter, I could walk a little bit more seriously and faster, briskly, which I think we're going to have to start to do, because we do have to get there. We have 30 minutes to go. How close do we get in that? 90 minutes. According to Google Maps, it takes you an hour and a half. But we did stop, and we missed a couple of key traffic lights. The good thing is we're at the Top of the hill now. So. The flags that you see, the Japanese flags, you don't typically see that flying. It's because of the Japanese New Year, which the season starts on the 28th or 27th. Shogatsu is what we call it, and it usually is a week. People start to wind down right now and businesses are closed. A lot of them are. And it's a holiday period where we can relax a little bit. Shogatsu is. I don't personally like to be here during the Shogatsu time. I like to be abroad. Just. It's so quiet. My first three years here, I got out of Japan for the shogatsu. I spent the first one on the streets in Bangkok for New Year's. That was a lot of fun. 1998 to 1999. And then the next year, where was I? Oh, gosh, I don't remember. I think it was in New York on Times Square. You have to do that once in your life. Oh, that's pretty. Look, I like these photo studios will show some of the pictures of the people, but you have a nice traditional poses with kimono. We'll have to do that with Leo sometime next year. Oh, and if you do get a postcard from the Postcard Club, I will send it out to you. It's a family photo of Leo's first 100 days. All right, I'm jettisoning the wireless mic right now. And we're going on to the phone mic, so there might be some wind noise. Three, two, one. Okay. I hope the audio is okay. No problem. Rights in space junk. Thank you, Dutch Universe. My ears. Homicide podcast writes in here way noisier. I don't think we're gonna make it, Peter. The what? The battery that I have is at 0%. All I can do now is to go as fast. Oh, no. What I can do is this. The gimbal has a charger. Okay, I'm gonna. Oh, no. But it's a USB C. Oh, darn it. I need to get a USB C to USB B converter. I don't think we're gonna. I don't know if we're gonna be able to make it to Shinjuku. Darn it. Shinjuku's got a lot of electronic stores, so I would be able to find that converter. But I don't know. Maybe we'll stop at a vending machine in a convenience store to see if they got it. Anyways, I might have to change this live stream title to We Only got halfway. That's awful. I Don't think we're at 70%. The slog between Ichigaya to Shinjuku is quite far. We're not going downhill, which is a good thing. But the battery is at like 1%. I. I didn't ask Peter to charge the phone. I thought. Wait a minute, hold on. I might have been smart realizing that I had. Wait, I might have had. I might have another charger. Oh, wait a second, hold on. I do. I do. I got another charger. So I could. I could put this into the. Oh no. This is USB C as well. You gotta be joking. Really? This is USB C as well. I thought this is a USB old style. You've got to be kidding me. Hey, can somebody check online and see if the DJI Osmo 4 mobile can be charged using the USB C out? There's a USB A out? I don't know. If it can, then we're saved. If not, then we're up the creek. One of the reasons the wireless mic audio quality might not be as good is because it's dumping two microphones into one receiver. So the audio is going to be slightly lower. So we have to speak up twice as loud. That's a Probably a no writes in here, Crompton. Really? You know, why do they have that port there? That's for charging. It's only for charging in and not charging out. So you can't use the USBC port to charge your phone, but you can use the USB A port to do it. And I've got two USB C to Lightning ports. You know, it's just wonderful. All right. I'll tell you this. Whatever's left in the portable battery is charging. Okay. So I'll just keep on streaming until I can't stream anymore. So if it goes dead, that's the end of the stream. You know what, hold on. I think. Are we gonna do a really quick run in here in a fat family Martin. USB. All right. They have some something here. Oh my gosh. That was. That was $17 for a simple wire. I'm not someone who likes to give up, so gonna have to eat it. Holy smokes. This is $17. You can get these at the 100 yen shop. There's never one around when you want it, right? I guess you got to pay for the salaries of the people working there. They are hard working people at the. At the convenience stores. So I just don't think that they're. They're gonna see any of that money. Wish I had a tip jar. All right, we're in Business. It is highway robbery. But. I did make some super chats here, and we want to use. It does come with a very nifty Velcro strap, but I needed this. This USB A out. So there you go. And we go. I really hope it charges. Is it worth it? No. Well, if. If it keeps this live stream going, it's worth it. If it doesn't, it doesn't. That's. I want to go all the way to Shinjuku with this live stream. Okay, it's plugged in. I cannot say for sure whether or not it's charging. I'm guessing maybe it is. So I want to show you this point here. While the light is green or light is red, we're right over Ichigaya Station. You see that there? So you can see the trains going through here. They're going towards Shinjuku. On a second. I always carry an extra wire, but not everything is USBC. We're like, in this really big transition period between USBC and USB A, right? Just one second. Now the wire is free. All right. We have some freedom there. Cool. I'm sweating, too, from this walk. All right, here we go. In one. One second. That's Ichigaya Station right there. That's a JR station on the. On the Chuo Line that cuts across from Akihabara to Shinjuku. Instead of taking the Yamanote Line, sometimes it's more convenient to take the Chuo line. If you're at Tokyo Station or Akihabara, you want to get the Shinjuku really fast, jump on the Chuo Express line. It stops at Ichigaya and Akihabara, I think. And then that's it. You get the Shinjuku in 12 minutes or less. Faster than a taxi, that's for sure. It's a beautiful day on the other side. You see, there's some people waiting on the platform there for the train to go by. It's an old station they haven't quite yet made. Made the renovations to it. But I bet you in the next couple of years, you're gonna see the renovations start to take place. At Ichigaya Station on the other side, you can do some urban fishing. YouTubers already covered that pretty well. But if you're. If you want to follow me along the map. There's a map linked into the description of this video. And we're walking all the way to Shinjuku, kind of like halfway there. So we are right there where the crossing over the river is. So we're gonna cross over to the side, because there's another intersection that's very difficult. This would be the home stretch. Sort of. Not quite the home stretch, but it's just a matter of walking straight and then a left and a right. But we're gonna go right past this building. The Ministry of Defense. I like how they don't. Instead of using Department of Defense. I like how they use ministry for everything. The Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry of Justice. Sounds very religious. Like, get some people there. A lifetime workers appointed for life. Wasn't that a band in the 1980s ministry? I can't remember. Oh, check it out. Here's a shrine. A lot of people are going up there to either take a shortcut. Sometimes the shrines offer shortcuts to go from one place to another. I can't get off of the target too much. Now we gotta make our way to Shinjuku. Ministry was a cool band. I had a lot of. A lot of my friends were into the heavy metal music back in the 1980s. I didn't judge. I was somebody in. Back in high school. Somebody back in high school that I kind of went in between all the groups. We had the freaks. They were the people who dressed differently. Like heavy metal band people. They're called freaks. Then there were the jocks. The people that were, you know, into the sports. They were the geeks. There were the nerds. Everything was segmented into groups. I kind of crossed through all of that. I was into everything. We didn't have the goths. It's like a 19. Back in the 1980s and 90s, it was mostly freaks and jocks. Oh, and then. And then the skaters. I had a lot of friends in the skateboarders. I never. I never picked up a skateboarder. I never skateboarded. But when we were at school, it was really nice to have to hang out with the skateboarding people. They had these long hairs. It was shaved on one side, and they swooped it over so it was long on the other side. It was weird, but in a cool way. Skaters. All right, so we're going to be walking past the Ministry of Defense in a second. Now, when you run a Tokyo marathon, I believe this is still the course again. It's all downhill, so I'm walking uphill. Very, very light gradient. Not too steep, but it's a. You certainly appreciate it when you're doing the Tokyo marathon. The first 10k of the Tokyo marathon is downhill. I would have been in the misfits group then. I didn't fit in any group. I mean, I did sports, but I wasn't really good at it. Not like the, you know, varsity. I got varsity letters in my senior year. But not like really talented sports people. They kind of like on the fence, right? Sort of a little bit. Little bit everything. But that's the best way to do it. You could learn about all. All the different kinds of people. And I left high school knowing about ministry and the group even went to. I went to some Def Leppard concerts, learned about them because I had friends that were interested in them. Went to the one concert after the drummer lost his hand. That was amazing to see him drum with one hand. That's absolutely awesome concert. That was the. Was. That was Hysteria. Yeah. Def Leppard. Hysteria, Yeah. Metallica Black album. That was when I was in high school. Some of the best music came out between 88 and 92 when I was in high school. The Pearl Jam, the Nirvana, that started as well. Van Helen was always big. All right, here's the Ministry of Defense. A lot of coppers there. So that. That building up there on the top is there. I'm just gonna walk past here, but Shinjuku is about another. Another 10, 15 minutes. We should be in. In the Shinjuku. I don't know, Spear. So if I pan up, you can see the Ministry of Defense right there. It's pretty cool. They have their own, like, cell phone tower. Okay, let's keep walking. Let's bring back memory of the Tokyo marathon. This road is so wide and it's so quiet on the side of the city. Do you see the difference between where we started in Akihabara, walking through Jimbocho, down Yasukuni Shrine. Hey, I wonder if PVG if that truck would be appropriate for. He said he always wanted to drive in one of those. Pick up a date, one of these crane trucks. The Homicide Inc. Podcast. 610,000 yen for the new walking shoes, cables, piping hot ramen dessert. Homicide Inc. Podcast. Enjoy the holidays. Everyone writes in PVG. 610 yen. I can count the zeros. PVG. It's very much appreciated. Definitely do check out his podcast. It is really well done. It's really well done. Hi. Yeah, I love it. Fresh air, exhaust fumes. How's the signal, everybody? Tokyo Paul. 360. Happy New Year. You know, I. I, Kanai and I, we went and did a live stream at Asakusa on the. On 2020 right before the pandemic broke. And it is so weird to be out because we're in a massively crowded space. Go back and look at the archives of the only in Japan go channel to 2020, January 1st. It's a really awesome view of the New Year's on how the world changed. And a lot. Loads of tourists were there too, and a lot of people who knew what would I do with only in Japan. So a lot of people came and said hi during the live stream. But when I look, I go back and look at that podcast, the sorry. The episode. It's just so different compared to the way the world is today. And even now, two years later, people are asking me to wear a mask when there's like nobody around. It's weird. D Real select says happy with the resolution. Thank you. So for those joining us, we are walking from Akihabara to Shinjuku, getting close to our goal. We're just passing the Ministry of Defense. They have their own cell phone tower, so if the rest of the world goes dark, they can still communicate with the outside. It's pretty cool. He has hailed a cab. I wish I could do that, but I'm sticking to it. It's 7.1km to walk from Akihabara to Shinjuku. It's not really that far. There it is. This is the first half. We walk from Akihabara past the Imperial palace to Ichigaya. We cross the bridge past the Ministry of Defense and the second half takes us to Shinjuku. We are now passing through Yotsuya. And then once I get through this intersection here, Akebonobashi, we're pretty much in this, the sphere of Shinjuku. And we start to see the high rise buildings coming into view probably in about five minutes from now. I got my fingers crossed that this battery charger is working. Roughly four miles. Right. Thank you for the. The conversion. This is still Yasukuni Dori. Let's see if we can hit a vending machine on the. On the way now. Or if I see some. Some delicious street food, we'll stop as well. Google Maps puts this walk at 1 hour and 30 minutes. I thought maybe we could do better, but I had dead weight walking with me for half of it. It's all right. I'm just kidding. We walk pretty quickly. Jennifer. It is. It's a little chilly out here, actually. Oh, we gotta make this. Oh my gosh. I was not not gonna make that light. It's a. Yeah, it's. It's kind of. It's kind of chilly. Chillier because I don't know in Tokyo there's like a. There's a nip in the air, meaning it's not that cold. But it's this. It's deceptive. There's like. Maybe it's because we're on the sea. I'm not sure.

01:26:21 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

01:26:21 John Daub: Check out that vending machine corner. Must be some good stuff over there across the street. Oh, there's no crosswalk here. All right. There's going to be another one. I'm sure of it. Yeah, it's usually gets down to. Most days are about between 7 and 11 degrees Celsius. So between like 40, 42 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. So it doesn't really get to freezing very often. Maybe after midnight. In Tokyo, the weather is kind of cool. But for the most part Tokyo is very much like Washington D.C. the weather there, Sendai would be like Boston. So it gets quite chilly up there. Hokkaido is like Alaska. It's like Canada. It gets really chilly up there. Gets up to minus 30. All right, we're one stop away from Shinjuku now. That's the Toei Shinjuku line. Ake Bonobashi is the name of the station. There's not a lot of people who get off here. It's like the lowlands before we get to Shinjuku. But if you're going towards Yotsuya, there's a lot of stuff that you can see there. So yeah, here's the Yotsuya sanchome. So you can cut across here and you go through Araki. There's Araki Park. I've been here before. I spent the night there once. Is a really nice neighborhood. So it might be worth staying in this area instead of Shinjuku. Stay in this area. Arakicho, I think that's what it's called. Yeah. That place is so cool because it's a. It's got that small town feel. But you're 15 minute walking distance to Shinjuku. All right, we'll cross the street. Yeah. Hey, jennifer french. Happy new year. We're about three days away. I'm not sure what we're gonna do for the new year. I guess with the family, the cafe. Dexter Morgan over. Sorry about the wind. It's a little bit of a breeze here. I'm guessing that when we get to Shinjuku, the. The tall buildings are going to knock it down significantly. But there is a light breeze. Like they have a quiz. Who's. Who are those. Anime characters? Cool. Tokyo might be windy because it's. It is a city on the sea. So it's sort of the Pacific Ocean. Might be whispering whiskey through here a little bit. But I had to take out the wireless mic to charge the phone to continue the journey. Don't worry though. If you're. If you're watching this in playback, there are. I'm going to add in chapter menus so you can. Mr. Das is here. I know what to do with that. Look over there. This is one of those old Showa era streets and not a lot of people know. Akebonobashi Dori has another unique like Time Stand still road. Lots of old shops, loads of grannies, family run businesses. And it's right next to Shinjuku. So we're about. I don't know, like I think you're going to start to see already straight ahead you see the buildings are starting to get a little bit higher. And that is the Shinjuku spear. I saw a Tomy car like a matchbox car with these highway cars, the yellow highway cars with the sirens on the top of it. Pretty cool. All these weird cars that are only in Japan. That is one of them. You won't find another highway car looking like that. Ever since Leo came into the world, I have been looking at all the toys that Japan has to offer. And it looks like I'm going to be doing a special episode on Japanese toys really soon. I'm sure some of you out there watching might be collectors. Do you have any toys that I should have my eyes on? Plahrail Play Rail was one that I've been looking at. Where you can build a train set out of these plastic tracks. Been really popular with kids ages 3 and up. If you look over to the right, there's an Eons supermarket. Eon has these little mini markets in the city and these alleys here. Do you see how the road goes straight to Shinjuku? But you'll find these like old roads, old ancient roads. They don't go in a grid pattern, but they'll wind in the wrong direction. So when you go in central Tokyo, make sure that you take the right road. If you. If you take the wrong light, left turn and you go full left. For example, you could be going in the completely wrong direction for a very long way. It's easy to get lost in Tokyo too. Motorcycles, a toy ages 16 and up. Yeah, right. In Japan I think it's. It's 20 and up. I don't think you can get a motorcycle license till you're 20. You know, if I do find a beer vending machine, I might. Mr. Das take part. It is now afternoon. All right, we're walking on a faster pace. This is the home stretch now. Okay, we got this. We got this. It's only 7km. I wanted to do this walk as well. Well, not this one, but this one. I'm about to tell you to wake up in the morning at like 5am and just walk as far as I can walk in 24 hours and see how far I can get. I always wanted to do that. Has anyone ever done that? Done this before? Get up because I say 24 hours. Because if I walk through the night at 5am the train start to run, run back the other way. So I'll be able to catch the train. Just walk for 24 hours. How far can you go? All right. Yes. Some of you might. Might fall asleep. Some of you might, you know, not be able to do the whole thing. But I mean, how far could you get? Kind of a challenge. If you have Google Maps going, you could probably track the exact distance. But there are apps and there are the walking walk o meters that will measure the steps that you take. I always wondered if I walked. I'm sure I can walk past Yokohama from Tokyo. Maybe even get down to. I don't know, Fujisawa. 24 hours is a long time. I ran. I ran the Tokyo Marathon. My best time was three hours and 12 minutes for 42 kilometers. So that's three hours at a running pace. And if I walk a third of the pace that I ran, I'm pretty sure I could notch off 100k in a day. Might be a really generous amount. But you just have to keep going. This way. We're also going to be close to the Shinjuku Joan National Park. We'll be walking pretty close to there. All right, so we're 96 minutes in. I didn't get the Shinjuku in 90 minutes or less. Got kind of close. This is Shinjuku Ward, though. So technically I've succeeded. Technically. But success is not about technicalities. Well, you know, success is success, right? I guess I'll take it. Tokyo Marathon. When I started it. And we get another hill here. I did Tokyo Marathon in 2007, the first open to the general public. Tokyo Marathon. And there was a Ferrari that just went by. Nobody knew about it really, that the Tokyo Marathon was happening in 2007. They didn't promote it openly so well, and nobody knew it was public. So I entered and I got in. It was very easy to get into the Tokyo Marathon. Nowadays, in order to run in the Tokyo Marathon, you're in a lottery. And I believe it's 7 or 8% of the people who enter actually get a chance to run the Tokyo Marathon. So I haven't been able to get in over the last 10 years, but I got in the first five years somehow. So from 2007 to 2012, I got into the Tokyo Marathon and we was able to run one year. I think I got injured. Yeah, I had to pull out because I injured hamstring. I was really upset because I'd been training so hard. I wanted to beat my time and I couldn't do it that year. Getting winded. What do I love most about Japan? Writes in lazy. I don't know. That's such a big. There's no one. One thing. There's a lot of stuff that I don't like too, by the way. And there's a lot of things that I do love and I guess, you know, the safety and the convenience, the food, the culture of good food, the culture of. All right, I guess it's a give and take. It's a give and take because there's this desire to strive to be perfect. You have cuisine that is by far, I think like some of the best in the world, Japanese cuisine. We don't say that about American cuisine. So much American cuisine is just. It's just cuisine. It's food. You eat it, it's good. But here it's great. But that, that culture is also very stressful to strive to be perfect at everything you do all the time. But it also. But you know, if you're, if you're living here, you have to try to fit into the society, which is a lot harder living here than it is coming here as a tourist. But you can take advantage of both worlds. You could be. Have your. Keep your Western culture and you can stay true to yourself. It's who you are. You don't have to become Japanese. And I, I'm somebody who doesn't. I'm very happy to be American living here in Japan, just like I have friends that are Japanese living in the United States. And they don't, they don't particularly want to be Japanese. They're proud of being. Or they don't want to be American. They're proud of being who they are. I think that what, that's what makes up the United States. Everybody is. Comes from a place of immigrants. But we're a melting pot. Japan is not a melting pot. Japan is a. It's. I don't know, it's Its own country, its own culture. That's not their culture. I don't see jeeps that often here. Wow.

01:40:36 Peter von Gomm: All right.

01:40:36 John Daub: We're very close. Very close to the end here. Pick up the pace. A lot of apartments here. You don't see that in Shinjuku off of the. Off of the main road. A lot of them are office buildings. Here you'll see people who do live right here off of the main street in the city. Yes, Kunitori. The great thing about walking Tokyo instead of taking the train, the subway underground. You see everything. You see every convenience store, every cafe, every restaurant, every car that goes by here. If you're looking down, you can see the manhole covers. You can see the people, the way they dress, the faces, the way they live, their culture, the way they ride their bicycles. Legally, you're supposed to do what he's doing, although he's kind of reckless. You're not supposed to ride on the sidewalks here. Like, you could see that culture if you walk. And Tokyo is not such a massive city like Manhattan. You can walk across Manhattan too. Takes a lot longer. I think Manhattan is what, seven, eight miles? I can't remember. I know it's quite a long island, but you can walk the sideways pretty quickly. But the long way of Manhattan, it takes time. A long, long time, I think. All right, we're getting. We're getting there. I think we passed Yotsuya Station and we're moving our way closer. There's a Starbucks on the corner, and that's my indication on the map to take a left. But that's. That cafe might not be there. It anymore. Sometimes he. I've done this walk. I. I told you when we started, like five, six, seven times. I can't remember. It's quite a long walk, but sometimes the monuments or landmarks that I know where to turn aren't there anymore. Don't see anything interesting. What? There's always some kind of weird drink. Hold on a second. This is a new one. That's a Corn Portage. Okay, I've had that before. See if we can find a vending machine bank. Joy. I've never. I've never seen that weird name before in a drink. Yoshinoya has really cleaned up. It's like renovated. It's. It imaged for the 2020 decade. There's a g. Sukiyaki. I guess it's a Suki Sukiyaki. Don. That looks really good. All right, let's try to get out of the wind. Look at this. Lawson store has produce in the Front of it. I like that. It makes it feel like a local neighborhood market. But it's a convenience store. All right. I think we're in the final 1200 meters of this walk. There's a link in the description to the map if you want to follow along. Shinjuku Sanchome. I believe we are entering Shinjuku Sancho Mei. And then. And then it's only about five minutes to Shinjuku station from there. We sure saw a lot. Well, they have pet diapers. Oh no. These are like dio sheets. I don't never owned a dog in Japan, so I'm not sure what they were. I'm always looking at the prices of diapers. Leo goes through them. I only got two kinds of diapers now. They have the pants type and the tape type. The tape has the two tapes on the. On the. The front that you can open up. The pants type are like, you know, like pants. But you have to rip them off after he's done. Done his, you know, number one or number two. Tape and pants. Not pet. But all those. Those I don't know. Were they pet diapers? I don't really know. Never owned a pet here. I've never seen a pet wear diapers, so I'm guessing they might have just been wipes or something. Use cloth diapers. You will save a fortune. I bet. It's better for the environment too. Maybe. But the amount of times that he goes through diapers too is. Is crazy right now. We can make this light. There you go. Shinjuku Nicho May pants style does not sound familiar fun to me. Here we are. We're talking about diapers. It's a wonderful world. Speaking of wonderful worlds. Gyoza. It smells nice. This is the post lunch crowd now. So we are in the Shinjuku Sancho me area. I'm gonna be making a left I believe at this intersection. I think if we go straight, we go past Kabukicho. And if you want to see more on Kabukicho and Golden Gai, I have a live stream for you. We went there about three weeks ago with Tokyo Sam Tky. Oh Sam who knows the area very well. A lot of great insight from Sam and very good guy. Hope to catch up with them over the holiday too. I'll give him a call. Nichome is known for its diversity. LGBT area for sure. So this is the intersection that'll take you over towards Shinjuku Gyoan. Let me show you where we are in the map. We're very close to the End we're here at this intersection. This is Shinjuku Gyo in a beautiful park. Especially during the cherry blossom seasons or any time of the year, you have to pay to get in here. It's not free, by the way. It's like 200 or 300 yen. And Shinjuku Sancho Me Station is right here. We just got to go right here. That's it. Boom. Junior. So we'll probably be there in about three, four minutes. But let's see if we can get something to eat since the phone is still going. So am I. We're close to five. We're close to 600 likes. Thank you for that. That's fuel for the live stream. So welcome to Shinjuku. It's pretty cool. I kind of, you know, I kind of like Shinjuku area better than the. Than Shibuya. There's more to it, I think. There's just more. There's a different dimension to Shinjuku than there is. It's like an adult town, I guess. Shibuya is more of a kid town. All right, here we go. The final 700 meters or so. Has anyone ever stayed the night in Shinjuku? What area of the city of Tokyo do you like to stay? Stay. When you. When you. When you visit the city, leave a comment here and let us know because it's interesting to hear. It's interesting. Statue. Yeah. We just got off of Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni Dori. And now we're heading the final 550 meters to Shinjuku Station. And this is Shinjuku Gochome. So pretty close to here. This is still Yasukuni Dori. Yeah. But I'm about to take a left here. I'm about to take a left. Shinjuku Sanshome, which is where we are, is very famous for the department stores, the shopping. Isetan is a massive old department store that just takes up so much of the Shinjuku Sanchome and the neighborhoods in Tokyo are separated by chome or towns. And each town within an area is numbered. This is Shinjuku 3 or Shinjuku san. Chome san is 3 in Japanese. There's also Shinjuku Gochome, Shinjuku Nichome, Ichome, which is Town one. I believe Shibuya is. Is. And all the other places are separated like that. My. The place. The area that I live in. I think we live in Nichome. So each town has a number. All right. I'm making a left here to go straight into the. Because on the left side. Sorry, the right side, you can see Isetan. You see that massive department store in the basement? That's where you. You find some of the really expensive fruits. The most luxurious department store in Tokyo. Maybe. I don't know. That's a pretty bold statement because Ginza has some pretty luxurious department stores too. Waco. I believe on the top floor of Waco they have a toilet made of gold. I remember walking up there 20 years ago. What is that car right there? Does anybody know? He's got one of those Batman bicycles too. What is that car? Is that a Ferrari? That's a Ferrari. Whoa. I wonder what. What these. These Ferrari owners do for a job here. I have walked from Shinjuku to Shibuya many times on as live streams. It's one of my favorite walks. You can go through Harajuku or you can go through Meiji Shrine. There's a pathway from Yoyogi to Shibuya through Meiji Shrine. It's dark, it's very mystical, and there's no signal in there. So don't try to live stream it. Yeah, I'm a magnet for Ferraris. I just never get to be in one. I just get to see them. They drive by me. All right, so a lot of you know where I am. I've been here before. This is Shinjuku Dori and we're gonna make a right on Shinjuku Dori and make our way towards station. Now here we go. Let's see if we can cross the street here. Follow that man. There you go. That's our goal almost. So we just have a little bit more ways to go. About 300 meters from here. Now. I used to live in a place called Shinozaki and I would take the Toi Shinjuku line every single day. There's the. The entrance to Isetan. Very, very nice department store. I only go in there in the summertime to cool down because they also have very nice air conditioning. This is the Apple store. I still got a big beef with Apple. I ordered an iPhone 13 Pro to do these live streams in October. It still hasn't arrived. It was probably stolen from my apartment. Because Apple did not require a signature for a fifteen hundred dollar item. They just put it in a locker that wasn't locked. So when I got back from Nagano, there was nothing in the locker. And they won't send me a new iPhone. They say that they've delivered it so my insurance won't cover it. American Express won't cover it. So I'M stuck with nothing. But in Apple's defense, they are still giving me a call once a week to update me on what I don't know. But the customer service experience from Apple has been absolutely awful. Same with Japan Post. It's been awful because they don't want to admit that they had mail stolen. So don't buy your phones from the Apple store, buy them from Amazon because Amazon's experience is way better than buying directly from Apple because I would never have thought that they would require that they wouldn't require a signature for $1,500 iPhone. That's really, really one of the most stolen items in the world. I already told Apple that that phone is for a channel with 275,000 people who purchased the. That's what the phone is for. So you're taking away from their experience. I don't think that really made a difference. I don't think they care. If they did, they would have just send me a new phone right away. That's what I would have done. It's an issue between them and the post office. The post office blames Apple because Apple didn't tell them that it was an iPhone. So the post office doesn't actually know that it's a fifteen hundred dollar item inside of there. So they just put it in the locker. In the end, I'm the one who suffers. And you too. Oh hey, there's my mask. It's on sale. So you would be getting better signal, better low light quality, all this other stuff. If, if Apple had delivered that iPhone two months ago, which is how long I've been waiting, now maybe look at the right thing. Who knows? If it was Apple USA, I bet you I would have gotten the phone. But Apple Japan has procedures, quote unquote. They follow the rules that they have. Never mind the customer experience. And if you're watching from Cupertino, get in touch with me, maybe you can help me out. I think somebody, some old guy who doesn't know what's going on needs to get a kick in the rear. Sometimes people need that, a reminder of the customer experience. Even in Japan, when you're, when they're face to face to you, it's different than when they're talking to you on the telephone. It's always been like that though. I'm not too angry. All right, so straight ahead we have the 3D cat and a lot of people. So my mask is on because we're in a crowded space. We can make that light. This is Shinjuku station. Everybody Mr. Das, we ate super chats are expensive on iPhone. Wait. Yeah, that's true. Maybe if you're watching on a Google phone, it's better. There's a 3D cat. He looks different on the iPhone. I don't know why. I guess the HDR rendering does something weird with the TV screen. But this was really popular about six months ago when they put this in. It was the first, like, massive 3D cat. Now it's cat all the time, all day, And the TV screen wraps around so you still see a lot of people. Yeah, the HDR rendering does an awful job with. With this. It looks a lot more realistic. He's looking down at the people crossing the street. Oh, he's saying what? Leo's first word was nae nae. Nae. Nae nae. Interesting. All right, guess what? Johnny can go home. This is Shinjuku Station, and it has been truly an epic adventure. Whether you believe that or not. Not. That's up to you. But for me, I feel a little bit lighter. I got a chance to use. I got a chance to use my legs and burn off some of those pies and cookies that I ate and take you on a little bit of a trip here. There's Shinjuku's east gate. And a lot of you might know exactly where I am. I'm gonna walk over to the. To the south side now because I gotta jump on the Oedo line. So. Extended live stream. Let's see if we can get to 750 likes by the end of this. That's my. My personal. That would make this a huge success. Tigray's in here. Easiest walk I've ever had. I got. I love these shoes that I have. These keen. I forget what they're called. They're pretty good walking shoes. I think Megan knows some of the stores around here. I think that was a lush. Yeah, right there. Boom. The Keen Austin shoes. That's right. UFO Bob. Bingo. Oh, she's wearing. That's. I got Kanai. That same jacket from Uniqlo. Somebody left a message. Somebody left a message that I bought Kanai a vacuum for Christmas. And I. I want. Tell me what you think about the message. Okay. So they said that I shouldn't have given Kanai a vacuum for Christmas. I should have given her a gift that was romantic. But personally, I don't think jewelry, chocolates, lingerie are romantic. I think romance is not an item. Romance is something that you might say or a moment you might share together, or it's not an object. And Anyways, I don't think that the person who left a comment has ever used a Dyson vacuum Cyclone that thinks really picks. It's like, so much fun to vacuum the house. I find myself just picking it up and vacuuming, even though we just did it because it's fun. So I think it's more about toys. But personally, Christmas time tech is always good. I'm not a big believer in diamonds and jewelry wearing bling and all this other stuff. I think it's a Japanese thing. You don't see a lot of Japanese wearing diamonds and jewelry either. They don't want to look like they're rich and stylish, although they might use. And this is. This is a really bad generalization, but it kind of holds true. You will see expensive handbags, usually by younger people. But the average person, they don't want to look, you know, all blinged out. All right, let me go up here, and then I will end the live stream. What a nice walk. I feel great. I'm glad that we did this. If you have any questions, please do leave a comment. I do read them. I like to look and see what you guys are writing. Looks like somebody's singing down here. So for Japanese, Christmas is not. Christmas is not a significant holiday, but there is a little bit of spirit. So that's why you don't really. Wow. That's why you don't really get a lot of spirit in Christmas time in Japan. Because the time of their holiday here, our holiday, I should say, because I live here, is shogatsu, which starts now. So you see more of a festive mood, I guess, now than you do during the Christmas time. Yeah, that's right. New Year's is big, but it's a family thing. So if you're a tourist and you're here for shogatsu during the new year, it's not really the same kind of an experience unless you get invited to a Japanese family's house, which is kind of cool that you can eat ozone and some of the traditional foods that they have. But sometimes the hotels will prepare that for you. And that's always really special because New Year's is. Is one of the most cultural times of the year to. That's right. I will have soba on the 31st. We will have ozoni ozoniana the January 1st. Oh, I'm so winded. Gotta get back into shape. That's one of my New Year's resolutions. Go back to the gym. I've not been going to the gym for two years. Now because of the pandemic, I usually use the, the playgrounds, use the monkey bars for pull ups and, and push ups and I keep in shape that way but I wouldn't say I'm in shape dad shape dad bod. Kanai does make really good ozoni. She just went to the supermarket to get all of the the stuff. There's local markets too that are very famous for certain parts of the shogatsu meal. Some of the lines for them are massive. Here's Shinjuku Sanchome Live everybody. You have made it. Congratulations. Shinjuku Live. So it took two hours but typically if you walk without stopping It'll take you 90 minutes to get here. And what you see in between there is pretty cool. You can stop at some of the smaller neighborhoods you can take explore the alleys on the way. And these are places a lot of tourists don't actually see because a lot of them just stay on the Yamanote line. They don't actually walk. I saw more of Tokyo in these two hours than some people see on the entire trip. You did because you joined me for most of it and I thank you. Fomp writes in here. Encouragement to exercise. Yes. Do the 24 hour challenge. Leave your house at 5am and just keep walking. See how long you can go. I appreciate that very much guys. Thank you so much. I'll be back. Do a couple more live streams before the end of the new year. I wanted to see if Kanai wanted to talk about the year two that we just had. Take a look back on 2021. For me this is a year I can't wait to end. It was the most challenging year that I've ever had in my life and I've had some challenging years over the last several years. Actually this one might have been the worst. But we came out of it. We're still here. And that gives me a lot of hope going into 2022. If I could get, get through this year and all the challenges that were put in front of me and still, you know, do my best with the channel and get back into the production, then anything is possible. Even at the ripe old age of what I am right now, which you don't really want to know in the YouTube age. I'm, I'm pretty, pretty old for YouTubers but never let that slow me down. In fact, I probably got more energy than some of those, those other YouTubers. Fungus U.S. marine Corps. Get rid of the quarantine 15. Absolutely. You will not get to zero percent. The prime minister thinks he can get to zero. You can't do it. Anything after six days is a waste of time. You know that. I know that. Hopefully they know that you proved still so young. Thank you, Yuzukaga. Yuzukaga. Thank you. Jati. Thank you for being here too. Adne Raymond, Tokyo Paul I really appreciate you guys joining me on this. Let's. Let's hope 2022 is a great year and we have a couple days to go see everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. Thank you and goodbye from Shinjuku.