00:00:03 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome! Welcome to Shibuya! In this episode I'm going to be taking you around, we're going to be looking up, and I'm going to be talking about how the landscape here has been changing over the last 15-20 years, and especially in the last three during the pandemic, a lot has changed in this area. I just finished with a radio show for NHK World, that'll be, I'm not sure when they're going to actually air that, but it's about living in Japan, and that's going to be a pretty cool show if you're interested in one day moving here. Finished recording that just about 30 minutes ago, so I figured I might as well take you around Shibuya, because I just happened to be here. This is also a good place to test out the maiden voyage of the iPhone 14 Pro, doing a live stream here, using the 4G, because the 5G is so blocked by all the buildings, it's really not reliable for uploading and using for mobile live streaming, so we're going to be using the 4G LTE, and let's see how it does!

00:01:03 John Daub: Welcome to Shibuya! Now over the course of the last three years, a lot of construction has been done, and you can see just above there, the highways, there's actually a walkway that's going to be connecting Shibuya Station—a lot of you might be hearing this for the first time—but from Shibuya to Dogenzaka (soil slope), so you can avoid the crowds, and maybe even Hachiko. It's a little bit of a different area than Hachiko entirely, which is something as a local, I try to avoid this area. I definitely try to stay away from Shibuya, so you probably won't see me here for a while. A lot of things have changed, and a lot of things have stayed the same in Shibuya. Before we go to Hachiko Scramble, and that bus is, that's Hachiko on that, I think is that a free bus, or a 100 yen bus? I think it's 100 yen. It'll take you around Shibuya Ward, which is one of the 23 wards of the city of Tokyo. Pretty cool.

00:01:55 John Daub: I've noticed a lot of foreign tourists here as well. This alley has not changed much over the years though, although the businesses keep switching up. We're going to go up the steps here, just take a quick look, see, and then walk back down. What I love about Shibuya, besides the crowds, which I don't love, but what I do love about it is that the streets have a lot of character. They wind, they don't go in a straight line, and it really helps to have been in this area and gotten lost a few times, because after you get lost two or three times, you don't get lost anymore. You just kind of get a lay of the land, and you start to make physical landmarks. You just remember them, and that makes it a lot easier for you to get around from one place to the other, just like any other city. But Shibuya in particular, because it's so windy and because tourism is back, I'm starting to see more vitalization here, more liveliness to Shibuya. And that's also a good thing, because it was just kind of depressing without any tourists at all. Now we have a lot.

00:03:06 John Daub: Again, you have a brick road here. No cars travel up and down this road. Another really big plus for Shibuya, there are areas where traffic does not come, this road being one of them. That's one of those boba tea places. Pass. Wow, that looks nice up here. Pizzeria. They got a couple of nice set menus here. They got 32 centimeter pizza—centimeters on an inch, just so you know. And because of the price, see, in my mind, when I see, this is spaghetti, it's 1,200 yen. When I see this 1,200 yen, I think $12. But for you coming from the United States, that's actually like $8, right? So you're getting a real good deal if you come to Japan. I know that the flights are pretty pricey.

00:04:12 John Daub: It's just weird. Like, every time I look up the, it's not just the billboards. It's the change of the commercials on the digital signage. But it's also the stores, that lobby there. I think about 10 years ago, I don't think it existed. I think it was something else, that being Yamada Denki (electronics retailer). But I think they call them lobbies here in Tokyo. When I think of Yamada Denki, I think of the countryside, actually. Like, Keio Denki, Yamada Denki. Inside the city, you'll see Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera. And outside, you see denki shops. But this is an area that's also very much in flux.

00:04:55 John Daub: Just if you look up, check out these lights here. These say Shibuya Scramble Square. And these are really like 1960s, 70s looking signage boards. And I like that. I hope they don't get rid of that. The sort of leaning font there. It's from a yesteryear, I guess you could say. But the one thing a lot of people don't do is they look up and you'll see a lot of different things. And this building, of course, is undergoing renovations or they've gone out of business. But I've seen a lot of that. But in its place is something even better.

00:05:38 John Daub: Was that Brand X I saw earlier? Welcome, Brand X. Aloha. This is the Purikura (photo sticker booth) place. I was just here not too long ago, so I wanted to have a different vibe to this live stream. Also, I'm going to be taking you to a different side of it. We're going to go down Dogenzaka and then hit the Shibuya crossing. And then I want to go behind there before we end this live stream towards Hachiko and a different area of Shibuya, because that is where most of the renovations have been going on. So this live stream is going to be pretty eventful because it's not only checking to see how much better this iPhone 14 Pro is, probably not much. I already gave the 12 Pro to Kanae. And this is probably the last iPhone that I ever buy, but it's done. I will take you and show you Tokyo through the prism of one of the newest smartphones.

00:06:43 John Daub: Yeah, the YouTube app is 720p. And with the signal between the buildings, it's kind of sketchy. It's probably better to have it at that quality because you're going to lose it. When a video falls apart at 720p and at 4K or 1080p, it looks so much worse. We have Minecraft at 720p. In HD, you have chaos. You have poltergeist. That's completely different. All right. There's the Tokyo Honten. Really awesome beer gardens on the roof. I don't know when they stop that. Maybe they never do, but I haven't been there for several summers now. But in the summer, it's really nice to sit up there and enjoy a couple of beers.

00:07:46 John Daub: You can actually cut through this building to get to where we're going next, which is Dogenzaka. Another thing that I think and there's the Mega Don Quixote on the right. One thing that you have to keep in mind when you're walking around Shibuya is that it's a very hilly place. It's easy to get out of breath going up and down the hills. I got to tell you what I was getting to NHK before. I actually got there early. Usually I'm a little bit short on time, so I will walk briskly and be out of breath when I'm going to the west entrance to NHK, but I don't see too many things have not changed around here. But now we're going to walk around here. This is Dogenzaka at the entrance here. No smoking. Sometimes it's good to look down.

00:08:46 John Daub: The signal isn't always great through here. Maybe the antennas on the iPhone 14 Pro are a little bit stronger, but I'm going to stop saying iPhone completely because I don't want to give them any undue media attention that they don't deserve. It's just a phone. This is the first Taco Bell in Japan. And I remember lining up here. Guess what? You don't have to line up anymore. They have Taco Bells in several locations now around the city. I guess it's some sort of Halloween thing, but you'll notice right off the bat that the prices are pretty extraordinary. Bad. There's no dollar menu. There's no cheap stuff, but they do have beer, which is a positive, right? They got that going for them. But no bean burrito either, which is a big no-no.

00:09:44 John Daub: That's interesting. A brewery is coming here. But the shapes of the building are the same. If we stick with this urban landscape theme, which is something I want to do with other parts of the city of Tokyo, a lot of them retain those old Showa era buildings and you don't see them if you just walk through the alley. You really do have to look up to see it. And what they do, they redo the signage, they redo the exterior of the shops. Not so much here, but the buildings stay the same. So in the end, when the sun goes down and you have the pink skies, you still get that feeling of the old Showa era. That's a great era. That's the era that has the romantic Japan feeling to it, not this new era, because everything is kind of sanitized and too clean. Showa era was good because everything was a little bit rough. There were characteristics to everything. Nowadays, it's all very much marketing and looking a certain way, which is not bad. But maybe I'm just from a different generation.

00:10:56 John Daub: If you look back, which is something that we forget to do, sometimes you can see this old brick building here has been here for ages. I think that's a beer hall. I don't know. It's always changing businesses. Shibuya Hill, though. Shibuya Hill, because I say that because it's a hill. This is what I'm talking about. It's famous for the love hotels. So I think that might be one of them right there. We're going to go up this street and then take a left and come back towards Hachiko Scramble. I told you we're going a different route than we've ever gone before, but up here and I will not admit to have come to this area before for in the evening.

00:11:48 John Daub: Hey, what's this? Well, I don't know what that is, but I'm guessing there might be some very unusual vending machines around here. I will tell you this. The city of Tokyo was encouraging people to stay in these love hotels because there weren't any other accommodations back in the boom. Twenty eighteen. Twenty nineteen. But now you don't have to. Like, I'm curious about the vending machines here. Any of them were nefarious. No, like that one hotel is called Hotel Paris. What happens in Paris stays in Paris, I guess. We're not actually going to go over there. We'll give people the privacy, but you can see what I'm talking about. These are the love hotels up on the hill.

00:13:03 John Daub: And the great thing about them, besides the love, but the rooms now is that you can rent them by the hour here. There's two hours and three hours. You can see the prices or you could stay. And I want to talk about staying here because that's a pretty cheap price. The rooms are pretty amazing inside. You got jacuzzis and TVs and stuff. So it's a lot better room than you would think. It's just you have to get over the fact that there was a lot of loving going on in here. Around here, there are also businesses other than love hotels. And I have actually done NHK episodes for Tokyo Eye on the street a couple of times. So it is famous for other things. But that's as far as we're going to go, because I don't want to get myself into trouble.

00:14:08 John Daub: If you look up now again, that's what I want to do. You see these telephone lines all over the place, which add a lot of character. There's still a lot of talk about trying to reduce that and getting them underground. In fact, there's even an association in Japan. I believe it's based in Osaka. Their sole purpose is to get wires underground. I'm serious. I'm considering talking with them and seeing how their mission is going. Here's one of these treasure chest Dream King Sama vending machines. One of the I made friends with the CEO of this company, and he really gave me a lot of information and even showed me what was inside, which is interesting. These are old converted book vending machines from the 1980s that have been given a new purpose. Instead of getting books, you now can get mystery gifts, and he does pretty good. It's a pretty good business. Just a little slice of happiness. You don't know what you're going to get.

00:15:20 John Daub: Is it normal to go to a love hotel with your girlfriend? Yeah. No, I'm going to stand up here and just give you the spiel. Maybe the signal is better if I stand at an elevation. I'm going to talk about love hotels for the next 45 seconds or so. So the purpose of the love hotels are many fold. One of them, it's not just a place for a romp. It's actually also for mothers and fathers who live with children. And if they don't want to, you know, there, they can do it there, which is better. And then they can go home because I don't think it should stop just because you have kids. But you don't want the kids in the room next door. Japanese homes are also, especially in Tokyo, much smaller than homes in the West. So you don't have a second floor. You don't have a basement. You don't have places to hide. So sometimes you just like to go here to get some privacy. Sometimes people, couples will go here just to play video games or do karaoke and just kind of get out of the house, especially if you live with your parents. Even as a 30 year old, you don't want to be, you know. So it's not just, you know, but also it's a place to hook up. So if you meet someone at the clubs and you say, hey, you know, you can go there or if you're doing some sort of an affair with the secretary or the CEO or whatever, you could go there. But for the most part, there's many reasons and they're not all dirty.

00:17:25 John Daub: OK, although look, every bed in a hotel probably has had something nasty done to it. So you can see the slope going all the way down towards Shibuya Station. Do you see that? So we are at elevation, which gives a really crazy cityscape picture. But if you go over to the other side of Route 246, you'll get some really interesting. This is towards Daikanyama and Ebisu. You'll get some pretty interesting urban landscape as well. Bagel Park Rinds right in here. Boom, boom time. That's up there, buddy. Up the hill. How the colors? How's this phone doing? Let me know. Do you like it? Better than the last ones? Is the signal any stronger?

00:18:08 John Daub: See, this is interesting. Now, this is a brand new restaurant that has opened up a really modern looking facade. But if you look up, it is the same building that's been around since the probably early Heisei or late Showa. You can definitely tell the era by the style of the building. The longer you stay here in Japan, the more it becomes obvious which are Showa and which are Heisei. I used to come to that. Dubliners all the time. Do you guys remember that? It's gone. And that's a heartbreaking thing because I used to sit there on the balcony. There'd be live music and you'd be able to rock to the sweet tunes of Irish pub music. But no more. I seriously hope that that place goes out of business, whatever it is now. And that Dubliners comes back. But I got a feeling that it is done.

00:19:12 John Daub: Our love hotel is only in Japan. I believe so. Again, like there's love hotels are a Japanese solution to Japanese problems. All right. So only way. So they're only in Japan. Although a motel could be anything, right? It's but these love hotels literally have unusual names that you never forget. Hotel California is a very popular one. But I've seen usually the love hotels have themes and if you are a tourist, it's interesting to go up there and just walk into the lobby. That's not a crime. You don't have to do love, though. It's encouraged. But you can see the pictures when you walk into the lobby of the rooms that are available. If somebody takes the rooms, the light goes off and it becomes dark because it's now, you know, it's occupied. But when it's unoccupied after a couple of hours, the light will come back on after it's been cleaned. And you can pick that room again. Each room has a theme. So the theme also will determine the price as well. So I remember one time that it might have been me or someone else. But I remember a themed room. They had an Alice in Wonderland and the bed was like a mushroom or something. It was at the Super Mario room. I'm not sure it wasn't me that was there. I thought that was interesting, but there was an upsell. So you had to pay an extra 2000 yen for that. That depends. That's when it comes in. What kind of a boyfriend are you? Are you the kind that will splurge on an Alice in Wonderland theme room or just go for the basics? Depending on how much you've had to drink might not matter. Consider that amongst yourselves here because you're in a different city than me, most likely.

00:21:10 John Daub: This Uniqlo has been here for a while. Nowhere else can you see the massive changes in Shibuya than right about here in front of the Ichimarukyu building. That's where we are. The signal should start to fall apart here as well because there's just so many people in this area, there's not a lot to do about it. And a reason why I probably started here last, but we're going to go beyond Hachiko Scramble to the other side. Got these. I always wanted to do an only in Japan one. Maybe we'll have to do a Kickstarter and everybody can go. If you support the Kickstarter, you can go inside the truck and ride with me for a secret dance party. You can't see. You can't see anything. Or maybe we just make it all glass and you can ride inside and everybody can watch us dance. That would be a better promotion than the light board, right?

00:22:13 John Daub: I can't believe Krispy Kreme is here. Still here. I thought they would certainly be gone by now. They're still here. They've got Halloween donuts and this big camera survived as well the reckoning. They're there because tourists buy their goods because they all have hotels here. Most of them were from China. I don't think they're doing a very good business here, but we'll see if they stick around this area. Big Camera most famous from your actual. I don't know if they close the Ikebukuro location, but a lot of these shops really got hit hard with the lack of tourists from neighboring countries that would buy their electronics here. If you look, let's go a little wide here. You can see the street here. I hope this never changes, but you can see just this real good mix. A mix of buildings from the Showa and the Heisei era. Very interesting. I really hope that they preserve this and how the businesses just find a way to get signage. Right. It's very interesting. The billboards will continuously change as time goes through different colors, different styles, but the buildings remain the same. So when you look for landmarks, maybe look for buildings instead of signs, because in a year they're probably going to be gone.

00:23:39 John Daub: The number one thing I want to visit is still the President Resort Spa. Really, Jeff? I have to be honest with you, not when the episode was done filming. I was kind of happy that I had to go there again. Oh, that's that. It's part of it. It's part of it. Rainier loves that Japan. How you doing? All the best to Japan's tourism. Regards to Kanae and baby Leo and much love from us here in Tokyo to you and your mom. Hope you guys can come and visit. See you soon. There's Hachiko, which came up around. What was that, like 2011, 2012? I want to say it was being built around 2010, 2011. I think it was done before the earthquake and tsunami. But that building's been one of the first. And we're heading in that direction right now on this tour, looking at the urban landscape of Shibuya. Thanks, everybody. Hit that like button and encourage me to do more urban landscape episodes where I talk about examine some of the history of the buildings. The looks of them, which make this city super special. I really love the city of Tokyo, although it is waning pretty heavy on me. Being here for so long, it might be time for a change. But I still love the city. There's a lot of energy to it. Maybe not in particular. Not this section, though. I started off with I got a love hate relationship with Shibuya. It's like sweet and sour sauce or sweet and spicy or whatever. Night and day.

00:25:22 John Daub: All right. Now we're at a good angle. I can show it to you. Hopefully the signal still good. Thanks, Skip, for clicking that button. Hopefully the signal still good. But from here, this angle, you can see how it's really changed. Now, this building here, the Shibuya Stream, I believe it looks like it's just about done and the more you look up now, the more you can see how Shibuya skyline has changed is that old building with the TVs on Hachiko Scramble. This Showa era building. The rent is so high. I'm sure they're going to tear it down and build something different. But it's such a big part of Shibuya Hachiko Scramble. What's one of the elements of it, including the old facade of Shibuya station? And I don't know how long this is going to last. I can stand on top of this and give you a bird's eye view, which is another meter, half meter up. Hey, Hattori Coffee, move it. But you can see that the facade is some weird green marble looking thing. It looks like it's even been redone, but that goes back to the 1970s. I want to say. And you can see on the bottom of it the old Hachiko statue as a tribute. Every time they have some sort of commemorative memory of Hachiko every 10, 15, 25 years, they build something in his honor. Now it looks like it's going back to like 70 1970s.

00:26:51 John Daub: That truck is saying, hey, Daddy. Please be careful. The truck saying I'm turning left. Please be careful. Please take note. I love how trucks speak to you here. Hattori Coffee. Google's headquarters moved from Roppongi Hills to here. And the Internet speed there was blazing when I went in there like five years ago when they first moved in there. I got a chance to go into YouTube's offices for a meeting and I remember using the Internet. I'm like, what? My jaw dropped. There was like gigabit one gigabyte download speeds like holy crap. That was revolutionary. Five, six years ago in Tokyo, Korea is so much further in advance with Internet. I think we still have quite a bit of cranes over there. And it looks like they're redoing the Tokyo department store in the station here, which is a welcome sign that that building goes back all the way to the Showa era. As well, if you look at the old historical photos of Shibuya Station, it is pretty interesting that this small little station turned into this, which is so crazy. And now the lights going down, you start to see here's Q Front with YouTube shorts is promoting up there. What did you see that YouTube shorts is really do. They're really doing their best to promote that. I've even done a couple of them on my new main channel. I don't know if you've even seen it. They didn't get a lot of traction. I'm debating if I want to keep doing here or not. So the zoom quality is a lot better on this camera. I'm noticing I can zoom in better and that's a positive.

00:29:01 John Daub: All right, let's cross the street here. We're going to go to the back side, the other side of Shibuya Station and see how the landscape has changed again behind me. You can see that old Showa era building with the Eikaiwa (English conversation school) English language school. That's still in there. There's Amity. It was an Eon. I don't think they're ever going to give up that location. That's part of their identity. You give that up. You're giving up like advertising space. It's less about actually having a building that makes money and more about the advertising because it's kind of both. Not only do you get high traffic, but you do get advertising on those boards. And the buildings around Hachiko Scramble have not changed much. I'm guessing the signal quality might not be very good here. So I apologize. It'll get a little bit better after we go underneath the rail line. Fingers crossed. Wow.

00:30:14 John Daub: Okay, they've really done a lot of work on the bus station at the back of Shibuya Terminal. Now, a lot of you who come here as a tourist will never ever ride a bus. And that's sort of a sad thing because Tokyo's buses all have free Wi-Fi, which is pretty powerful. Okay, hold on a second here. This alley. I also wanted to show you. Just to give you a quick peek. This is Nonbei Yokocho (drunkard's alley). And Nonbei Yokocho is just a really historic alley. And I'm glad that they preserved this. Look at that. Oh, this is nice. After just about 15 steps from that street, it got a lot quieter. Nonbei Yokocho goes back to the Showa era. Again, the sign is very retro and that's on purpose. These are small little teeny shacks where they were family owned. Family owned and just like really good food. Look at this. This is right off of Hachiko. And I'm probably going to do an episode on this just because I want to preserve the history. Now, the other side of it has been completely renovated. Enoki is the one place. I haven't been here in like 10, 15 years. A Kinoko. That's it. Enoki. Enoki is the one that I went into the last time I was here. And the Mama-san or the owner was so friendly. I think she speaks a little bit of English, but don't be afraid to just get out of your comfort zone and try an alley, try something like this. It's a pretty neat experience. And you can see here some the toilets are outside. There's nothing inside the shops, but they're pretty clean and well maintained.

00:32:23 John Daub: I say they. I'm glad that they preserve this because right on the other side is Miyashita Park or Miyashita Shopping Center. I'm not going to go up there because we've been up there like half a dozen times already last time was with Peter von Gomm and we ate some McDonald's or something up there. But this is the Miyashita Park. This has been a completely redone. That's very Googlelicious. This has all been redone. It just now from this area, it feels like a different Shibuya. There are no more Showa era buildings. I think you're going to see the modern Shibuya on this side, whereas in the Heisei era, it seemed like the other side was becoming modernized. This area was not because this was this area of Shibuya. It was really, really impossible to build on it. Shibuya is in a valley. It's underground, actually. I think it's below sea level here. So there was a challenge engineeringly to build it structurally. To build anything on this spot. So when you see these here, it is an extraordinary thing to see these skyscrapers here. Because when I got here to Japan, this was just like a pit. There was like all the water from the city of Tokyo seemed to flow into the valley of Shibuya. And now you have I guess the property was cheap and unmanageable. So they found a way to engineer it and get these buildings up. And now you see some amazing buildings. It looks like Shibuya Station is going to be going up now. But this side of the station, especially behind the Shibuya Scramble Square, I guess they call it Triple S, I think behind it might be the Shibuya Stream. It's very modern and it looks like a completely different city than the Shibuya or Tokyo that I remember from 15, 20 years ago. And you probably remember from just a few years ago. This used to be a Sparrows Pizza. Now it's Italian lingerie. That's hilarious. I think this is literally Sparrows. The mall pizza tried to open up in Japan. I don't think they did very well. They stuck with the Italian theme, though.

00:35:05 John Daub: Bobby Hawk writes in here, where will be the best place to go to see like traditional houses during the Samurai time? What an awesome question. Thanks for asking that. All right. I'll talk about that as we cross the street. So Kanazawa is one of the really interesting places to go for that. I think they've done a really great job of preserving the streets, especially Higashi Chaya (East Teahouse District). It really does look like back in the Edo period. So does areas of Kyoto. But in Tokyo, you're not going to find that because it was bombed awfully in World War Two. And we lost almost everything. Many people say that the bombing I wasn't here, so I could just go by what history says. But the bombings, the fire bombings of March 10th, 1945, were worse than what happened in Hiroshima. Hundred thousand, two hundred thousand. I don't know how many thousands of people died. The fires were what did it because the buildings during the Edo period and Taisho era were made of wood and they weren't coated or protected. There were some because of the great Kanto earthquake in the 1920s. They started to copper plate some of the buildings. And you can see that copper alloys to. That was loud copper alloys. And that was more fire prevention. If there's an earthquake, it's not the earthquake that destroys the house. It's the fire there.

00:36:40 John Daub: You see right there one of the biggest changes to Shibuya Station. That's the Ginza line coming in and it's stopping the yellow subway line right there. It's an above ground train, but it's a subway. The reason why is because Shibuya is below ground. It used to go into Tokyo Department Store. Do you remember that building is gone? Tokyo Department Store would start right there. And it was a really old building and it was not made for the traffic of 2020. It was made for like 1960 60s. But I'm glad that they've redone it. And inside it looks like the guts of a whale inside there. It's a pretty neat station that opened up about three years ago. I hope the signals OK, but what you see here is that this whole area has been opened up. And now I'm looking back at Hachiko Scramble from the other side and it just looks more modern, more spacious, more comfortable, more. I don't know, like you more stress free because the buildings are right up on the street here. It really has opened things up and given Shibuya a different vibe than just five years ago. This is a different view. Five years ago, there were walls here and construction. I think maybe some of you probably can remember that. But now as the sun sets, you have a more scenic view of the scramble. There's a Yamanote going by. And every every 90 seconds you'll see a group of people crossing the street as you do right now that Shibuya the only thing in the way is this are the traffic lights. And they've gotten thin as well. You'll notice that, too, if you somebody who observes looking up, they've come up with these much better LEDs that work. They do better in typhoons as well. We used to lose traffic lights in really strong typhoons. Not anymore. They really don't. They really do well in high winds, and we haven't seen any problems. But the older traffic lights were not the safest. They're even thinner out in the countryside. Some of the newer ones are I think these are newer, like older new tech taxi. It's got like this mint green. It's got a little bit of a yellow color to it.

00:39:27 John Daub: Hey, Danielle, dang, thanks for joining me. I'm glad you could catch it. I don't actually have any. You found me cards because I wasn't expecting to do a live stream. But just was walking back to Tokyo with the light, the sun going down. I thought this is such a really neat time to be able to catch the colors and a good chance to check out to see if the new smartphone, 14 Pro, whatever it's called, does a good job in low light. So you tell me the proof will be in the playback. I'm still using the Osmo Mobile 4S because it's more robust. I like it better than the new style. And if it still works, you don't need to upgrade. The only reason I had to get a new phone was because I wanted a new phone. And she said, well, you get the new phone because I'm happy with the 12 Pro. I said, okay, you need it to do your streaming. And I said, well, I don't think there's going to be. It's going to be a massive upgrade, but we'll see.

00:40:45 John Daub: Getting to know the bus system is kind of I think if you're adventurous and you have a day riding the bus is kind of fun. Not only do you get this really neat street view of the city as you roll by in the bus, those windows are pretty big. But again, they have free Wi-Fi on every one of these buses so you can take advantage of that. But for me, the only buses that I've taken from Shibuya, there's two routes. One of them, I think is the one over there. There's one you can either walk it, which is about thirty five minutes, or you could take the bus, which is about 15 minutes and about one hundred and two hundred yen. I think it is. I don't know. We just use our Suica. You can get on the Yamanote line, but I kind of like riding the bus to get to Shinjuku because it will take you down past the tower through Harajuku and you get to really get a chance to see Tokyo in a different way. But the Loft shop is still, of course, it is. Say before this, it was all like really old buildings that really had no more value anymore. This whole side of Shibuya, in fact, had very little, very little to it for tourists. So you didn't have an issue with that.

00:42:16 John Daub: One thing I keep forgetting to do is I want to deliver. I want to deliver the postcards here. So for people that supported with the Kickstarter project, those that the signal bad signal is it sorry, William, I'm going to send these from Shibuya. So you're going to get a Shibuya postmark, I think. But there's about, I don't know, twelve people that send in their Kickstarter surveys late and you're getting your postcard sent. Now, there's also forty eight surveys that have not been completed. If you haven't, you have to fill that out before the end of October, because that's probably sending out those packages to you. Where's the mailbox? Shibuya's post office is straight ahead there about 100 meters.

00:43:19 John Daub: Hey, but by just a quick poll here, do people do you understand meters? Do you can you think in meters or do you need everything translated in feet and yards and inches? I just wanted like when I say 100 meters, do you kind of get that? It's almost it's a little bit less than 100 yards, which is a football field. You kind of get that right. Looks like we could deal with the metric system. I think you get a pretty good idea. It's just so much easier. Ten centimeters, 100 centimeters, one meter, 1000 meters, one kilometer. It's so easy. Why do we use what do we use the imperial method and why are people stick up for it? It's so dumb. There's people that are so proud to have it. I guess if we were ever to get in a war and you took over, you'd never be able to figure out any of the equipment because of this complicated imperial system. I always thought that when we had the Revolutionary War, we would cut with the UK for everything. Instead, we kept the imperial system, which I can't understand it. The reason why I guess there is history behind it. U.S. actually voted on it. The U.S. actually voted on this back in the 19th century, I believe. And they were going to lose tens of millions of dollars because of the conversion that was made to switch to the metric system. So they decided not to do it because the lobbyists for was like nails and screws and the shipping industry didn't want to change it. So we were stuck with it in the U.S.. It's fine. That's why it's fun to go home and try to think in miles per hour again. I think even in the UK, they're kind of more acquainted with both systems than in the U.S. How many feet are in a mile? Does anybody know? It's like really hard. It's 100 centimeters in a meter and 1000 meters in a kilometer. You can figure out how many centimeters in a kilometer pretty fast.

00:46:32 John Daub: All right, here's Shibuya Post Office. Let me put these in there. So this is going out to Gio in Singapore, Arnie in Netherlands, a replacement. Matt in Glendale, Adelina in Washington, Chris in Austin, Kenny in Walnut Creek, Chase in Georgia. Candy in Ontario, Craig in Carlsbad and Patricia in Stony Brook, New York and Edward in Hacienda Heights and Andrew. Andrew, did you not get your Andrew in Pennsylvania? Andrew, you didn't get it in time. Look at the bear. We added that in last minute because we saw bears. I love sending postcards and going to certain places to do it for the postmark. To me, that's part of the fun. Unique stamp, unique postmark, unique postcard. There's a lot of elements to it. That's more than just a piece of cardboard to me. It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool that they still do it in ten years. They're like, what postcards? What? Just like telephones on the street. Public telephones. What? Who uses that? What? We do.

00:48:58 John Daub: I'm overwhelmed with the amount of people that are here in Japan. The first wave. I don't know how the signal is, but hope it's good. What is this Osaka? It's funny to see the Osaka character here from Shinsekai. I guess there's a kushikatsu (deep-fried skewer) place. Yeah, Kushikatsu. There you go. Third burger. They weren't too bad. I think they're a little pricey, though. I can't remember. I had them when they first opened. They had a shop in a multi Sando. Guess you got to get three of them. I forgot what I was saying. Oh, I love postcards. And I don't know. I hope we never give up the physical mail, despite the fact that over the last three years it's gotten worse, they still make it there. And if you never get one, if it doesn't come to you, I just send you a new one. If you send me a message, not after a year, though. So come on, if it doesn't come within two months, then probably got lost. And I send them. It happens.

00:50:28 John Daub: All right, everybody, I got to get home. Thanks. Thanks for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this. I'll see you again tomorrow for another live stream. Different area of the city of Tokyo. Bye, everybody.