00:08 John Daub: This is Sakura-dori. Sakura in Japanese means cherry blossom. So you would think this famous street in front of Tokyo Station would be filled with cherry blossoms. And there are a couple in front here, but you can see there's so much construction going on. They've removed many of the cherry blossoms here for the construction site. And you know, this is a very famous street that a lot of you have walked down. There was a Starbucks here. It was really dark and now it's so bright. In fact, I don't even recognize it. That's Daimaru right there in the front. And I'm thinking that a lot of you will not recognize it.

00:45 John Daub: Well, just so you know, there are actually cherry blossoms on Sakura-dori. It's just the other way going over towards, I think that's Mitsukoshi or Matsuzakaya. I'm not sure that department store. So there are cherry blossoms here. But my point is I don't think a lot of you are gonna recognize Tokyo when you do return. It's just so different. So I'm gonna walk down this street and just with my eyes totally shocked. Here. How you doing everybody?

01:12 John Daub: Like I think you've all seen the changes in Akihabara a couple of months ago. I told you that Sega game centers were being changed to GiGo and the sign event was changed about a week ago, just before April because April starts the new year in Japan. So a lot of things change, budgets start over. It's the fiscal year. That's sort of the big time April 1st in Japan. Tax season is over. The new tax season starts for businesses. Schools start again. So we've got that going on here and the cherry blossoms and it is right in the middle of it and that represents change. That means winter is over and summer is on the way.

01:55 John Daub: I've been walking around Shibuya. I've been walking around Shinjuku. I've been walking around Akihabara, Ueno. I've been now Tokyo Station. Shimbashi still kind of is the same but there's some changes going on there. This is all just old Showa-era buildings completely gone. This building in the back here, that's new. That wasn't here two years ago. That skyscraper. In fact a lot of these buildings over towards Nihonbashi weren't here either. So let's walk over to Tokyo Station and then come back up Sakura-dori because this is not the same Sakura-dori as it was last year or the year before that. It's just amazing at the speed in which Tokyo is changing. This is probably the last couple of days of the cherry blossoms as well. Crazy!

02:52 John Daub: Used to be a very narrow sidewalk with sakura trees. And now it's just empty. I guess if I put the camera up you can see into the construction zone. So there's some stuff going on in there. I bet it's going to be a big skyscraper with buildings and shops and things like that. How you doing? There's been so many changes. As I said April is the start of a new year in Japan.

03:26 John Daub: The show that I was on called Tokyo Eye. I've been on that show since 2008. Episode 101. I think we had like 600 or 700 episodes in the series. One of the longest running shows on NHK I think. It was an incredible run. That ended last week. And now there's going to be new shows on NHK. It starts a change. That's what I love about spring in Japan. It's not just January 1st. It's like April 1st. It's not an April Fool's thing.

03:57 John Daub: I do like this here. Look at this beautiful painting on the side of the construction wall. They even have koi down there, representing the sakura I guess of Sakura-dori, which is no longer here. How sad. I love trees. I think a lot of you know that trees are so important. We lost a couple of good ones. Right now in Yoyogi Park there's a lot of activists fighting to save some trees there because the mayor wants to make some kind of community center in the middle of Yoyogi Park, which makes no sense. Whereas I think residents would rather have the green space instead of more commercial areas. So we're going to see what happens with that.

04:53 John Daub: I came here for a reason. The end of the street. I'm going to turn around. I took a picture not that long ago, like two years ago this way. And I showed how the sakura were lighting the street. It's just beautiful. And now look at it. It's bare. I got my mouth open. I'm in shock. I've never seen the sky from here.

05:22 John Daub: Now I'm going to cross the street just for a second. I want to show you there's one holdout. This is going to be really funny. There's one holdout. And this is how Japanese—this is the biggest challenge on changes in an urban area like Japan. Where the property laws are very strict. And you just can't get stuff done sometimes. Do you see this building right here? It's a lone holdout. I call it the ticket king. I guess it's one of those discount ticket sellers. The entire block—this is, I'm in front of Tokyo Station right now. Again, this is the Yaesu exit.

06:02 John Daub: This building here is brand new. These buildings might not be around much longer. There are a couple of holdouts on the block. This building right here which has a bunch of like loan shark shops, aifuru. And then this one ticket shop here in Goku Orange. It's just holding out. They won't sell. So you have this really old rickety building in front of what's going to be an amazing commercial area. And you have to give them credit. Some people don't want to sell, don't want to change. And I guess they didn't. It's just weird. When you do come to Tokyo remember this building. See if it's still here. Maybe they're holding out for more cash.

06:47 John Daub: By the way, because there are no people, no visitors. A lot of the buses have changed to Narita. There used to be a Keisei bus here for a thousand yen. That's gone. The bus frequencies to Narita are infrequent now and the prices have gone up, like everything else. So we're starting to see little changes of inflation. Maybe as a result of the war. Maybe just supply chains. Maybe the result of the pandemic and no tourism. That industry is really teetering for a long time. But there is hope. And I'm going to be doing a travel update, maybe tonight or tomorrow morning, in the next 24 hours. Talking about some of the things that are happening, some of the developments that have taken place. I get a lot of information from people contacting me about this.

07:39 John Daub: One was really interesting. I think it was Roy in Hawaii sent me a news article from the local media there that Japanese tourism industry people were there talking about Japan opening up this summer and learning about what they had to do in order to make that happen with the people in Hawaii. And then start Japanese who want to visit Hawaii. Because I certainly would love to go to Hawaii. These are like little teeny clues that give you information on when things will open. Just follow the airlines. That's what I always say.

08:15 John Daub: I love this shop too because you can always get discounted tickets. It's not that much. So if you're taking the Shinkansen to Kyoto, a regular price ticket would be 13,800. Jūseki (reserved seat) is 13,320. So you can get a reserved seat for a discount. It's a little cheaper. It's not a really big discount. This one is to Toyohashi. I used to live in Toyohashi. It's about 600 yen cheaper if you get the ticket here. To Yokohama it's about 600 yen cheaper. Sorry that's Matsumoto. Hamamatsu. My kanji is getting rough. That's Hamamatsu. So it's about 600 yen cheaper to Hamamatsu. You can get some discounts. And even get it from the vending machine here if you want to save a little bit of money. The tickets are good. They just buy it in bulk and get really good discounts.

09:20 John Daub: JAL and ANA are going to be optimistic because optimism can change perceptions more than negativity. My feeling—and I've been wrong because the pandemic is so fluid that it's always changing things—if Australia can open things up, I think that Japan is not going to be that far behind. But there were signs that Japan is learning to live with the pandemic. They're going to have to do what all the other countries do or get left behind. So it seems like summer is going to be open. But I bet you there's going to be stipulations, like you need to be in a package tour so they can hold the operators accountable for the tourists should developments change where people have to leave the country because of the pandemic or something. There's also the war going on. That's going to cause a lot of problems with flights that have to go over Russia, which has really ruined the postage. Parcels coming from Tokyo leaving Tokyo are suspended right now to Europe. So there seems to be a hitch in all of the things. But it seems like there is some optimism.

10:46 John Daub: I wasn't really getting much of that optimism before from these big agencies. So I think it's going to be something that we have to keep an eye on. Because I would hope that we don't miss another summer. Because I just know so many people that are hurting. You can see the cherry blossoms have really fallen off of the tree onto the ground. Tis the end, sort of. There are some blossoms left on there.

11:20 John Daub: So what I want to do is ask you—I'm back to the corner where I started here. In the comments here, leave me some questions that you might have for a travel update I'm going to be doing in the next 24 hours. I'm going to be reading the comments to this video. Give me some questions here. Also you can ask me on Twitter, @OnlyInJapanTV. Ask me on Twitter some questions and I'm going to check that out and add that into the travel update tomorrow. Because I know a lot of you have been waiting for a long time. Students are starting to get in, from 3,500 to 5,000 to now I think almost 10,000. So I think when you start ramping things up like that you can kind of see glimmers, clues that give an overall picture of possible changes that are in the wind. Like these buildings here.

12:14 John Daub: One thing has certainly changed and that is the city of Tokyo. Like I'm standing on the corner here, I'm just in shock still of what used to be and what is no longer here. The Yaesu side of Tokyo Station was a really vibrant place for salarymen dudes to go out, drink with their coworkers. And these are all businesses and restaurants and it's gone now. So I don't know what's going to be in its place. Probably another one of these really either an office building or a high-priced shopping mall. But in the next year you're going to see it here. So by the time a lot of you come here there'll be a building where Sakura-dori sakura trees used to be.

13:02 John Daub: I can't answer questions on visas. I don't know because I don't have a visa. I think that's something that varies on country to country. And I think that's something that you have to work out with the embassy yourself. And if you're coming here on a work visa you have to work that out with the company that is hiring you, is working with you to get the work visa here. But if you have a visa for a certain job or COE (Certificate of Eligibility), you have to keep on checking up on that and renewing that. And if it means being reissued by your employer, you're going to have to do that. This is something I'll answer in the next travel update. I know a lot of you have questions about this. But I really can't say. It depends on where you're from. It depends on so many things about your employer, what when your visa was set to expire. And some of the changes—it's just things are changing so quickly. The rules keep changing. Like the quarantine was 14 days and then it was cut to like seven and then cut to like three. And depending on where you're from it's like now zero. It's still always an evolution.

14:08 John Daub: Michael Sassano writes in here just in case you walk by McDonald's and feel like getting another suck it up high. Here I think gone. This is just like it used to be a Starbucks there and that's gone too. But I will—I use that to get some pie from Bubby's, which is a New York restaurant down there. They've got really good pie. And I think they have a good cherry pie I'll get for dessert tonight. Thank you Michael. Always really appreciate it.

14:42 John Daub: I can also time out spammers. I'll have a Q&A. But if you can in the comments below after the video is finished leave me some questions. Or on Twitter you can just add the @ mark OnlyInJapanTV or hashtag OnlyInJapanTV and I will get to that question. What do they got in the vending machines here. See, it's not really any changes. Do you see any changes? Maybe some of you see the changes but I don't see the changes. Emerald Mountain's been there forever. That matcha cafe latte is pretty good. There's not a lot of changes going on here.

15:31 John Daub: All right everybody, thank you so much. Why still masks outside, right? And Tiffany, two reasons. One pollen is really bad in Japan. So people have hay fever. It's really really bad in Tokyo because after World War Two they planted a bunch of cedar trees that they probably shouldn't have done for lumber to rebuild. But they found that chopping down those trees was so expensive it just didn't make a lot of sense. It was cheaper to import it from places like Thailand. So most of the wood used today is imported from abroad because it's just too expensive to start up the industry again. So that's one reason why people wear masks still.

16:10 John Daub: And the other one is because it's polite to do that. We still have a pandemic. The numbers are still pretty high. So even walking down the street I noticed in places where people congregate at intersections here they get quite close. And so everybody just wears the mask. Japan's a country where people just wear masks. It's just a different culture. They wore masks before the pandemic. They're going to wear masks after the pandemic. And that is a fact. And I'm on board with it because you know it's polite and people feel comfortable. And I wear mine which doesn't do much. This is really light. But you know masks have a purpose. It keeps all my stuff with me. I don't get it on other people. But when there's nobody around and I'm distant I just pull it down. Masks do very little to protect you but it protects other people from you if you were to be sick. And I don't think I am but you never know.

17:14 John Daub: Social responsibility. You know that's another reason why I think Japan might not be opening. Japanese have a social responsibility to the people around them. They think about the people around them. Where we see in the news here what's happening in other countries in the West where people just hate masks so much they don't care. They just rip it off. And there's so much misinformation about the use of masks and all this other stuff. We're kind of afraid of bringing in people and should things go bad there's going to be people who just say—you know have a misunderstanding about it. It doesn't even matter what your misunderstandings are. When you're in Japan you should do as the people do around you because they're doing it too to protect each other. And even though you might not think it does any good, it makes people feel comfortable. And you should be thinking about the other people when you come to a different country. Just being polite.

18:18 John Daub: Look at that car. That's awesome. That is like it has been to a wedding. I'll do the update in the next 24 hours. Either tonight if I have some time—I'm editing a video that's going a little long in the tooth—or tomorrow morning. But once I get some good questions and get some data from see what's really happening from the sources I'm going to do another travel update. Because I think it's important. You know do it once a month. All right. There you go everybody. I hope you enjoyed this. Travel update coming next. And I have an 8K sakura video to upload with a couple of sights. I think it's going to be a lot better than the pixelated stuff I've been showing you. Now I gotta get home and give Leo a bath. Part of being a good dad. I'm going to need one too. It's cold out here. Have a good day. Have a good night everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye from Tokyo Station.