00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody! Welcome to Tokyo. In this episode I'm taking you from Omotesando, this area, walking up towards Aoyama, past Gaiemmae, where the stadium is. It's going to be a pretty interesting walk. I love this area and wanted to start here because I just finished shooting at that shop right there for a main channel episode. I'm heading home and thought this would be a great time to share a little Christmas spirit, now that Halloween is done and Christmas has started. It's actually kind of nice. There's a feeling to this holiday, so I can feel that spirit just a little bit, although it is quite early.

00:00:46 John Daub: This area of Tokyo, Omotesando, is very trendy, and not a lot of tourists come to the back alleys, so I'm starting a little bit off the main. This is the main intersection we'll be hitting in about a minute, and you'll know exactly where I am. This street is kind of interesting. I believe some U.S. chains come and start their business down these alleys, and who knows about it? Everybody who lives here. Omotesando is between Shibuya and Aoyama. We're heading towards Shibuya because I've been spending too much time over there. We all know the signal's not too good because this is a live stream.

00:01:37 John Daub: I don't know a lot of these brands. I think Peter von Gomm does. Brunello Cucinelli. Sounds cool. I'm really thankful, though—the people at Yoku Moku were really nice. They've been making confections for a very long time and allowed me to film a critical scene for the episode. Look at that—like you look down the alleys and you'll find really fashionable shops. The architecture is usually quite interesting too, so we'll see some of that as we walk along. This is also where the headquarters of Netflix used to be. I don't know if it's still there. Got a chance to go in a few times over the years, which was kind of neat. They had all-you-can-drink Perrier, which is kind of neat—not that I'm a fan of it. Netflix does a lot of its drama filming in this area as well. It's just really scenic, and you kind of get that Tokyo feel with the buildings, especially in the alleys in the neighborhoods, which are quite quiet.

00:03:12 John Daub: Here's the entrance to Omotesando Station, and we can show you on the map here the route. This is the main street down Omotesando that leads to Harajuku—I think a lot of you know this one. This street will take you to Shibuya eventually if you keep going down Aoyama-dori. You also go past the university, and this way is the way we're going—this will take us to Aoyama Station, and that's our destination. Now you can see pretty well here—Aoyama Gakuin is beautiful this time of year. In fact, if you're in Tokyo, walk past the entrance and you'll see such amazing ginkgo trees. This yellow color that's only available for the eyes at this time of year—it is so beautiful. University campuses are some of the most beautiful places for autumn foliage.

00:04:13 John Daub: Alright, you all probably know where I am now. This is the main intersection here for Omotesando. There's the police box, and this avenue—folks, you can see it—the colors are just starting to change. It's still a little bit too early, but you can see the colors starting to change on the trees going down Omotesando's avenue. They call this the Champs-Élysées of Tokyo, of Asia, because there's a lot of cash on that street. It's still pretty. This is the road that will take you to Shibuya. I think that building in the middle of your screen is the United Nations University—I believe that's right. It's really close.

00:05:17 John Daub: Sando Bookshop—there's a lot of really old businesses, but I'm always curious to see if any have gone out of business because it just breaks my heart to see that. Look, you can see all the Christmas stuff starting to come up—just starting, the seeds are planted the day after Halloween. You can already see stuff. Check it out, the Christmas cards on the street here, and Japanese Christmas cards are the best, especially if they have a battery in them—it's got some major LEDs in them. Wow, I haven't done this walk in ages. I love the Omotesando walk. You can walk from Shibuya, Harajuku, cut across Omotesando, and then to Aoyama—it's a beautiful, interesting walk. There's been a lot of changes going on.

00:06:44 John Daub: This here—if I'm panning over to the left, you can see—they used to have this parking lot as a bar area. I think it was called 246 Commons, but I see they might not have that anymore. Interesting. I think the Netflix headquarters is down this street because I remember running here to an appointment—I was just on time but had to dash. Check this out—like right off the main street 246, look at this little teeny alley. Let's just walk down it a little bit. This is Tokyo—it's so quiet in here. And within this, this isn't just residential—there's a bunch of other shops, a lot of them really expensive name-brand shops. They don't want you to find it—they don't want the common people in there, which is why common people should go in there. Protest—use the bathroom. Excuse me, sir, I need to use your restroom—can I use your million-dollar restroom?

00:08:36 John Daub: If I was the store clerk, I'd be saying number one or number two—it totally depends if you're going to buy something. It's okay, but if you're not, then number one. It's because I got the mind of a 12-year-old. Yeah, hold it. What's with this pose here? What is she trying to do? Like my hips are small—it's a weird pose. Is it still here? They might have moved—it looks like they moved. I'm not sure. Was it in the Porsche building? I can't remember. Netflix is a pretty big operation—I sure they moved. There's some tourists—I've seen so many over the last couple weeks. It's amazing.

00:09:50 John Daub: The other day I was at my food truck—there's a couple really good food trucks, and there's a lot of food trucks here in Tokyo. A foreigner was trying to buy something at a chicken truck—he couldn't speak any Japanese, was trying to use Google Translate, and I just stepped in and helped him out. He ordered a full chicken, which is so good. There's Roppongi Hills, I believe—Mori Tower. And he was really excited, really thankful. Then when I got in to order my chicken—because I had helped out and I'm a regular customer—he gave me free soup and extra volume to my chicken, like extra cuts. I was pretty happy about that. Tokyo Midtown—so Netflix has moved locations, but they used to be here in Aoyama, and it was really convenient. I wonder how much the rent is at this apartment building—that can't be cheap. You can walk to Harajuku in three minutes from this building.

00:11:32 John Daub: A little tip for anybody who comes to Japan and travels into the countryside—not exclusive to there—if you always compliment the chef, especially if it's a family-run business or a little old lady, call her obaachan (grandmother/older lady) and say you're so beautiful, they will always give you free food. I've never had it not be the case—just a little bit extra. Of course you're going to pay for the food, but you might get a bonus. It makes people feel good too, so even if you don't get anything, it works most of the time. It's nice to throw out some compliments—they know it might be osagei (flattery/polite excuse) just flattery, but it works, makes people feel pretty good. What is special about this walk is not just walking down the main street, but going down the alleys and side streets here.

00:12:34 John Daub: I first did this walk 24 years ago—it's always changing. That building's new—they used to have this bell tower; it's a shopping mall, and I think they tore it down and put something in its place. So we're going to be walking past that in about 10 or 20 minutes. Actually I do have to get home—Peter von Gomm's picking me up so we can take the Kickstarter reward bags to the post office. I think he's bringing his car. Peter, are you here? Peter. Oh, the McDonald's is still there in that Olympic supermarket. The only thing with the packages is if you're in the United States and Canada, don't expect them tomorrow—they come in by sea mail. That's the only—it's sea mail or EMS; there's no middle ground. But Europe and most of Europe, UK is also sea mail—I'm really sorry, it'll get there. But yeah, UK has closed small packet, Germany too, which is weird. Holland, Denmark, like all the other countries have it available. Australia, you'll probably get your packages in a couple weeks—that's going airmail. Singapore, Thailand, all airmail. And there's the US—so it could be reliable. I don't think they're going to be opening up packages anyways until after Christmas—it just gets too busy during the holidays.

00:14:50 John Daub: Yes, they did—this used to be a little old 1980s shopping mall; now it's a new high-rise office building, and it looks nice. I've been waiting for this to finish. This location behind me, the front used to be a Haagen-Dazs—this used to be a lot of different restaurants. There's always a location in a neighborhood in Tokyo that changes businesses every year—it's an unlucky location; this is one of them. So I don't think that location is very popular in terms of business success—maybe the rent's too high. There's a little French cafe. And this street will take you to Roppongi if you go down in this direction—it's a nice walk with a lot of lower buildings, really stylish.

00:16:03 John Daub: There was an apple pie company from the US that opened up a shop here in Omotesando—I remember walking by like what? I went in, bought a full apple pie, gorged on it, and then the next time maybe I just couldn't find it. I thought it got out of business—they just pop-up shops, maybe I don't know. I did a Famous Amos shop too—cookies were so good, and then they're gone. Things don't seem to last forever. For the longest time this had a Coca-Cola sign at the end of the street—now it's GMO like some internet site. But it used to have this massive Coca-Cola sign you could see for like a kilometer down the road. Now it's kind of changed—it's just sad. I love the neon lights they had up there, but Japan has been losing its neon DNA, I guess you can say. It's a shame.

00:17:19 John Daub: My priority—I've gotten over it, and this is a good thing to have. You can see the Kit Kats there—there's a bunch of new flavors coming, I heard. I want to meet everybody who comes to visit, but I'll be honest—I got to edit videos and get stuff done, so it's really hard. I have to prioritize. Do the meetups take a lot of time? In 2023 I'm thinking of hiring another assistant to help with this kind of stuff. If I can do that, then I will do a meetup once a month. But I want to go out to everybody who sends messages like can I buy you a coffee, can I take you out to dinner? I want to say yes, but I would never be eating with my family if I did that, and I feel bad—I can't pick and choose people either. So I just do it when I have a chance, and it's hard to find the time for that.

00:18:24 John Daub: That Wendy's First Kitchen is still there—this is an interesting story. Luke's Lobster is around here too, I think. But Wendy's and First Kitchen are now working together. Wendy's was under the Daiei brand, which is a department store, for a while—they weren't very good partners, so Wendy's left the Japanese market. Then they came back with a different arrangement with a different company—I think they're doing a lot better. Got the strawberry velvet brownie coffee going on there—I'm totally going to go in and get that now. Oh man, Peter von Gomm's going to kill me if I don't get back. I'll tell you what—I'll see if Peter's up for it, and we'll do a live stream when Peter's over my house as we're finishing up the packages. We shall do that. The skyscrapers here—the skyline has changed a little bit in the Aoyama area. We're in Gaiemmae.

00:19:31 John Daub: The reason why I like to do these walking tours—look at that, these will change color too. Beautiful. The city is pretty quiet in this area, and it doesn't take long before you can go from one station to another just by walking it. Sometimes walking is way better than taking the subway—you can get a lot of ground covered in a very short amount of time if you've got long legs. So we basically walked from here off the map all the way up, and we're now here making the turn. This is Gaiemmae, and you can see that this is the Gaiemmae station. I believe right here is the Olympic Stadium. When I came here for the Olympics opening ceremony, I parked my bike here off the street—somewhat illegally—and this entire road was filled with parked buses for the athletes. It was pretty crazy—nobody was out, the roads were empty. I don't think there was a state of emergency for the Olympics, but because of COVID people weren't going out.

00:21:11 John Daub: I don't know why people are still so upset about the situation with the Olympics—it's all in the past now; Paris is next. But for me it was a bizarre way that they ran the Olympics—it wasn't good, like the athletes bubble. I wasn't very happy with it, just like all of you. But I think it was such a missed opportunity because I feel like the Olympics was here but it wasn't here. Japan should get another shot at it if they ever want it—they have all this infrastructure built, and I don't think they really used it. But when I'm walking around this area right now, I remember the day of the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics. One of the big movie companies is down there—Toho, I believe. If we were to go left here, we would see the ginkgo trees—the Gaiemmae Ginkgo Avenue is so beautiful, and it leads to the Parliament building, the Diet. Then you can go to the cemetery over here—Aoyama Cemetery is also a place with beautiful leaves. If you do go there, you got to take pictures—just be respectful because remember it is still a cemetery.

00:24:00 John Daub: Alright, we're getting a full view of the ginkgo trees—let's give a progress report: how are they turning? Look at that anime-wrapped bus—it's a Naruto wrapped bus. I've never seen something so—wow, and there's a police bus going by. I've never seen a bus like that—that is a city bus. That's pretty cool. Alright, we got to high tail it—there's something happening this weekend, but there was a lot of police presence around Tokyo Station yesterday when I was riding my bicycle around. The thing with living in any capital city is that traffic patterns get a little weird because of events—political, sporting, conferences, VIPs visiting—everything kind of just changes. This is the famous site, and it's just about 30% changed. These ginkgo trees are the most beautiful in the entire world. On the left side there's a Shake Shack burger place—you can enjoy your burger right over there; that is a treat.

00:26:17 John Daub: I just haven't felt autumn because I've been home in this city—I want to go there; it's beautiful. For those wondering about the main channel edited content, there's an episode coming really soon—I've already put the thumbnail artwork in our Discord server so you can see what that looks like. It's a green tea factory episode where I go in there from the farm all the way to the factory to a cup of tea—I follow it, and it was an extremely hard one to edit. But I'm waiting until I've built up a little bit of a library so I can get them out more regularly—once you start, I don't want to do one every two months; I got to get them out like once every two weeks. So I apologize for the delay on that because of the Kickstarter stuff—I was pretty wiped out this weekend. This road has changed a lot—it's a new building here. Rakuten's headquarters are down in Futako-Tamagawa, but apparently they've got an office here too. Rakuten's like the Amazon of Japan—I thought they were going to make their own content like Amazon movies because I had friends who are directors and NHK producers, and some were hired by Rakuten to make content, but I never heard anything more about it.

00:28:15 John Daub: Wow, another building going under—look at this; there is so much construction in Tokyo. Has anyone seen the fire mascot? Isn't that the Tokyo fire mascot? You know, look at this truck driver—he's got plushies in his window; this is awesome. If I had a truck I would do the same darn thing—why is Japan so cute? Oh man, if I had a truck I'd be doing the same kind of shenanigans. This used to be a Starbucks, I think—it's gone, which is probably not a bad thing. There's a brand new building going up here. I wanted to show you this before we cut off—this is the direction that you would go to the Aoyama Cemetery. I know it's a cemetery but it's also an attraction of the city of Tokyo—it's a place where you can see, especially in the spring—here comes a hoikuen (nursery school), which is where Leo goes to—they're like babies in a basket, which is so cute. We'll give them their privacy here—oh it's so cute; they waved at me. It's a baby wagon—they put all the kids to keep them together; not all of them want to walk all the time.

00:30:15 John Daub: This is the Honda Welcome Center—I like to just come here; you can see kei cars (small cars) usually on display, all sorts of new technology, definitely motorcycles if you go in. But this is also where you can see the ASIMO show, and ASIMO again is gone the way of the wind—he's gone. I don't know what's next for Honda, but it would be pretty cool to work with them and find out. The stage used to be over there, and they do have a cafe which you can hang out inside the Honda place—get a coffee; it's pretty good coffee. They have seats outside here, and you can watch the police cars going by and all the other expensive cars too that go through here that aren't Honda. Yeah, it's kind of sad that ASIMO's show went because that was three times a day—that was a reason to go to the Welcome building, and now there's not much reason to do that. This will take you to the Olympic Stadium direction as well. Yeah, there's something going on in the city—look at the police vans, police transporter vans; they're buses—they're kind of cool.

00:31:49 John Daub: So there you have it—I do these walks so that you can get an idea of what the city of Tokyo is like. The stations are pretty close together, and if you just walk it you're going to discover a lot of things along the way that pay off for you because it's just super interesting to see that. I'm getting on the Hanzomon Line now, so if you have any questions leave them down in the comments below. I'll see today if Peter von Gomm wouldn't mind joining me for a live stream, a little Q&A. There's the cafe. Here's the Aoyama Cemetery—it's really green; there's a lot of really good trees there, and if you're a tree lover you're going to love that place. This road will also take you to Roppongi, which is not that far away—you can get to Roppongi Midtown walking in about 10 minutes from here; I'm serious. Alright everybody, have a good day, have a good night. I'll see you in the next live stream, which could be today. November's here, the weather's changing—it's so refreshing; I love it. A lot of visitors are now here in Japan, and when I go to Kagawa Prefecture the day after tomorrow we'll get a chance to see another area of Japan because you're coming with me—Only in Japan Go. You are traveling with me when I go to these locations, and that's kind of fun. It's going to be nice to get out of Tokyo for a couple days. So see you then.