00:01 John Daub: Here we are back in Shibuya. The event is over. Halloween is finished. And we're in this episode going to be talking about the aftermath to the Shibuya Halloween madness.

00:15 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Welcome to Hachiko Scramble. Did they make the right call? Did they do the right thing by canceling Halloween? And was it really canceled? What actually happened that night? How did they control the crowds compared to last year and 2019, which is the last time that they had a huge amount of tourism coming here to Japan? We're going to be talking about that and a lot more.

00:41 John Daub: Is this mic on? Yes, it is. We alive.

00:47 John Daub: For the record, for the longest time, for the longest time, Hachiko was covered up because they didn't want the crowds. They didn't want the crowds to congregate around Hachiko drinking and boozing up because this area was very famous for it. And guess what? It's over. They released everything. They took it away yesterday. And now we are back to normal Shibuya mostly. Look at that. That's a nice selfie or a nice stick right there.

01:19 John Daub: The sign still remains at least for until today. There's no drinking in the streets. That's over. It ended on Halloween night at 5 in the morning this morning. So now we are back to normal Shibuya. All right. So last night, how many of you were watching Shibuya Halloween live streams? There were a ton of live streamers that were out here streaming about the event. And I was watching as well. A little bit, just a little bit, as well as the live camera.

01:52 John Daub: So that's awesome. They have around the entire Shibuya and number one the award for the most amazing people at the Halloween yesterday the Tokyo Police Department kudos to them they did an amazing job check this out just the crowd control let's put this in perspective this was 2022 hello this is 2022 look at the amount of people it is just absolutely uncontrollable the mob there's a police officer on a stage this is taking a picture from from the top looking down and all the heads this is Tokyo this is not Korea so this is absolutely dangerous there's no way to control a mob so this year they really needed to do a better job of it did it work I'm gonna know in the comments below if you what you thought but according to data from a unnamed cell phone company that hit users with the most dangerous and dangerous things in the world, the number of people that were killed in the event was about 20,000.

02:49 John Daub: Data for protection they said that 16% less people than in 2019 which is a significant amount when you consider 60% it was probably completely full in 2019 I remember it was really crazy so 60% allows some moving of the people through what are really narrow streets here in Shibuya which is where the problems could arise there were police on every single corner just check this out here let me show you let me start off here with showing you the intersections all right I just the police they've been doing this now for many years but they did such an amazing job yesterday being really polite making sure that everybody crosses street not being too too strict on on people here's the crossings all right you can see that they've set up where on the back side near the Yamanote line People could walk, they just closed that street completely so there was always a flow of traffic going through. There wasn't a build up of people at the station side of Shibuya. Amazing job, great thinking. You can see the barriers closing off Hachiko statue and that area so people had access to the station but not access to congregate or make a mob of people which was the biggest thing that they wanted to avoid this year. It looks very orderly. There's some Pokemon people walking by there. You see that going through the center of the screen. You have 45 seconds to cross and when the 45 seconds are over the police would, this is actually at midnight when it ended but the police had, let me show you the normal traffic flow here. It is incredible to see this here. This comes from the live camera yesterday. Look at all the people on the other side. You can see the blockage on the left and the right side with the bus. I just showed you before. There's officers with tape to make sure that the mob does not block up in the center and people cross the street on time. Their job essentially is to make sure there's safety. No incidences and crowds are continuously moving. The mayor's order said no public drinking on the streets so they didn't want to have anybody blocking traffic which is what could cause a real danger. And you can see the police taking the yellow tape and being very orderly and getting the people across. Nobody is running. There's a lot of people moving as they do across Hachiko Scramble, one of the busiest in the world. They have people going on the left side, going to the left and the right side going to the right. I like that. That is the way it should be. It's usually chaos crossing the street but they knew because of the mob if you have order in the direction and the flows of people it's going to go a lot smoother. Now once the light starts blinking 45 seconds in. Watch this. The police all of a sudden start to slowly walk it in and telling people please stop. There's an officer at the end of the line there telling people please to wait for the next light which is a minute and a half later. I wonder if they can change that. So again they were doing a really good job of it but I wonder if they could change the frequency of it. Let let traffic go for just a minute instead of a minute and a half and do more movements back and forth. But honestly each time. That's like hundreds and hundreds of times. That the police had to go back and forth doing this to make sure that there was safety and a good flow of traffic. That was here at the station and this was probably one of the biggest congested areas last night. I talked with a couple of other YouTubers that I know who did come out here yesterday and they said it was absolutely more subdued than last year. But not everybody was in agreement if they liked it but they said that because of the harder cancellation. They had a desire to really bring this down and there was less people here. The people that were really hardcore that wanted to do it they seemed to enjoy it even more because there were less people. So I think and this is my. This is my. I'm going to show you some more video from yesterday. There's actually a good clip here that's kind of funny. I think that they're going to continue to do the Shibuya Halloween. You have to be smart about it in light of what happened in Korea last year. People died. What we saw in Tokyo was very similar to what was going on in Korea without the panic mob. It could have happened. Basically it could have happened here in Japan and you cannot blame the mayor despite the fact that in some of the TV interviews people were blaming the mayor. But you cannot blame him for trying to take as many safety precautions and to make sure that this event continues. Did they continue in Seoul? No. There was no Halloween event in there because of in light of what happened last year. But they still continue to do something. They're still doing something. They're still doing something. I mean of course the mayor knew that they were going to have events here in Shibuya. I mean that would be ridiculous to think that people would not come. When you say to people no events in a place, do you think that people actually listen? No. That's like counter marketing. Actually the mayor is a genius. I thought that this was a brilliant plan. Not only did he promote it and get even more attention for this event. Look at the logo. As I said, I bet you some people. Forget the X here. Get this as like a tattoo or something. Because that's really creative. They said, oh hello.

08:26 John Daub: Oh yeah, sure. Can we follow your vlog, John? I'm actually live now if you don't mind. Oh yeah, it's okay.

08:39 John Daub: There you go. There's a longer arm over there. Yeah. One more. One more.

08:46 John Daub: All right. Right in front of the sign. You're welcome. Bye bye. Thank you. Oh here I have a card for you. Thank you. Here you go. Thank you. You're welcome. Bye bye. Okay, but you found me a card. I'm in a very easy to find place today. So please come and interrupt if you want a card. I got a few of them here.

09:11 John Daub: I forget where I was here. So let's go back. All right. The mayor is an extremely smart person because he was able to play both sides. To the residents of here in Shibuya, he did a great job of decreasing the amount of people in the streets, making it safer. There was less trash on the streets comparatively. It was just a better organized event than last year and years past. It's a win. They still had Halloween. It's a win. So everybody sort of won except for people that really wanted to have trouble. And in that case it didn't. I showed you in the last live stream here just a few days ago that they tipped over a car in 2018 or 2019. They flipped a car. That's not something that happens here in Japan and that's a huge red flag and typically they would have shut the event down the next year. I think it is a really big balancing act for the city and they need to follow in the footsteps of something like New York City for the dropping of the ball on New Year's Eve or something like this. They need to come up with a way to make the Shibuya streets, which are public. One of the party goers yesterday made a really interesting comment on the TV news. He says, the mayor does not own the streets. It's a public place. It's for the people. And he's right. So the mayor has to come up with an answer for this. Now the biggest problem I think that the mayor faces is I think they got the crowd control ready so they can do this event even bigger next year and say it's back on. Oh my gosh, it's going to be crazy. But I think what they can do is to cancel the public drinking. Japan is one of the most amazing countries in the sense that you have a freedom to drink. You can drink alcohol on the street. And a lot of foreigners, in particular Westerners that don't have this kind of law, United States, where you're not allowed to drink in public spaces, take advantage of it too much. And the biggest issue is congregating in front of the convenience stores. It's a disaster. It's so messy after because there are too many people in front of the family mart, the 7-Elevens, buying beer and drinking and leaving a big mess. And that is probably more than the actual crowds of people. The people are just too busy. And that's the thing that makes locals mad. The trash. Nobody brings trash bags with them. Nobody carries it out. Maybe the city could do a better job of taking the trash. But then where do you put the trash when you have mobs of people? And it's a hazard and it's a risk for danger for, you know what I'm talking about. People could put things in the trash cans that cause a lot of danger to happen. I think that they need to check bags to allow people to go into the space. But that would cause a clogging effect. The bottleneck for people. You know, it's going to be something that they discuss for the next 364 days. The next 300 days as they gear up for this. And I'm really interested to see how the city solves this. You can see, wow, they have some city people in these green vests that are walking around. That looks like Tokyo, which is the department store, the train line. This morning they had people also going around cleaning. And the construction crews are working really hard, as they always do, to get things back on. So this sign is here probably gone tomorrow. Let me show you some of the stuff. Again, we're talking today, if you're joining us, about the impact of yesterday, the Halloween event. This is funny. I was the only one watching. You see how many viewers? One watching. That's me. I was watching Ginza's crossing. Nobody was focused on Ginza or any other region in Tokyo. It was all about Shibuya. One person watching. And then if you watch the other ones, the crossings, it was thousands of people watching the crossings in Shibuya.

13:02 John Daub: All right. Japan Times ran an article. This is not actually from a Japan Times writer. This comes from Bloomberg, I believe. Shibuya wants to cancel Halloween. That's a mistake. I don't think that that's – I think that the writer is not – I really don't know who the author is. But I don't think that that's what really happened here. I don't think they really wanted to cancel Halloween. I think that in light of what happened – and this is – like I don't often agree with the Japan Times actually. I see a lot of – it leans in one particular direction and a lot of the writing is not great. But then again, I'm not a perfect person either so I can't criticize. However, I don't think – you know, I'm always going to make mistakes so you can't – you really – I shouldn't be criticizing. But I read this article by Geroid Rady. I'm not sure if he really understood what was happening here. Just what was written. So in Japan, there's usually the public face and then there's the private face. What's actually happened behind the scenes and then what is this showing the public? Everybody has like masks here in Japan. I feel like they needed to put on the mask that they were against crowds and Halloween and all of this stuff. But privately, they all knew that the – you know, they want this Shibuya to become similar to the other cities around the world. To be a hotspot for tourism. In order to do that, you need to have events like this. Which has been a huge sensation for in particular young people. Puts Tokyo on the map and as they grow older, they're going to be coming back to Japan as a result, I think. Because it's just a wonderful place. But he writes about this event. He can't even get the dates right. Around 2011, you see on the top there? He doesn't even know the dates that it – like did he call anybody? Did he do any research? I'm just saying. Like, no, actually they've been having Halloween in Tokyo for a very long time. It was usually indoors at Roppongi at events that people paid for to get in. And then you would see people having costumes. I'm serious. This is the way that Halloween – and you can go ahead and read this article. I agree with some of it, but I disagree with quite a bit of it. They were doing Halloween events in Tokyo a very long time ago. You'd have to buy tickets and go into places, bars and clubs at Roppongi. And that's where it was all being held. And then afterwards, around 2011 or 2012 or 2001, the streets of Roppongi were quite – crowded with people in costume. And it was kind of neat to walk around Roppongi at those times. And I don't know if Shibuya adopted it or somebody came up with the idea, but it seems it was not 2011. On that year, every public event was canceled, all right? So we can say it was at least 2012. And even then, I think that it didn't even start, the Shibuya Halloween, until 2014 when tourism started to ring in. So, you know, this is obvious. If you've lived in Tokyo throughout the years. So the soonest that this Halloween event could have really started was 2014. Because before then, they didn't have a lot of tourism, and Japanese weren't really – I mean, Roppongi was still the go-to place. That all changed when Roppongi started – the mayor started to clean up Roppongi, take away a lot of the touts that were grabbing people, and Roppongi closed down a lot of bars. And it changed. It's a little – it's a lot cleaner than it was 2014. It's a lot cleaner than it was 20 years ago. It's a lot cleaner than it was 10 years ago. So I can say that because of that, a lot of it moved away from Roppongi to here, Shibuya, and it brought the mess with it. So Roppongi residents are quite happy that Shibuya is getting more attention, I think. They don't need it anymore. Their reputation has been pretty nasty for a long time, at least for that kind of thing.

16:54 John Daub: So I've talked about the history many times before. Michael Cezanne is in the house. Aloha, brother. It's nice to see you here. Make people pay for events when they get more restrained crowds. Bruce is absolutely right. That's the other thing I wanted to talk about. As Shibuya considers some of the things that they need to do for 2024, I think they're going to hold the event. I don't know. It's like 20% chance that they cancel it in Carter and an 80% chance that they assess it and say that it was a big success. And then they're going to hold it. I think that's the only way that they can hold this event in a manner. But you really need... Oh, check this out. Look at the Godzilla. The movie is opening. Oh, that is so awesome. The movie is opening, I think, next week.

17:46 John Daub: Anything can happen in a live stream. And you see so many interesting things going around Shibuya. That was pretty darn cool. They're going to come back around. That's their job, to go where the people are. Oh, bye bye Godzilla. That was cool. Check this out. The cleaner. I love this. They got Halloween bags, so they went around cleaning. Come on, Hardaway. Move out of the way.

18:19 John Daub: Shout out to the volunteers for cleaning up. These are great people who kept Shibuya clean. So much respect for them. These are just the final group that's here right now. Wow. Not a lot of people. There's a lot of trash in those bags, but there is some. So, good job, guys.

18:44 John Daub: Hit the like button. Let's give them a reward here, which would come to me. But we need to feature people that are keeping our city clean. I love it. Toko Texas writes in here for John to take his family to Godzilla. Minus one this weekend. It might be hard for Leo. I think, though, he would love it, though. It's a hard one. Thank you for that. I think I will. I think I will. I'm taking you tomorrow to Yamanashi tomorrow. I'm going to go to the Yamanashi Hotel in Fuji to go and see... I'm staying at a ryokan that I've covered before. The 52nd CEO of the world's oldest hotel invited us back to come and stay for a little bit. So, we're going to stay a night there, and I get to see my friend who runs the hotel. So, that'll be fun. But we'll try to go and see the... Try and go see that. All right. As we wait for Godzilla to come by here... Wow. That's a big... Hello. I'm here. Hello. Hi. Hi. It's really nice to meet you. What's your name? My name is Saeed. Oh, well, there you go. Here's a card for you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. I'm really honored to see you. Can I just take a selfie, please? Oh, yeah. Sure. Sure. I'm actually streaming live. Do you want to say hi to everybody? Hi. Today is my lucky day. I got to see this guy. That's too nice. I'm really happy to see you. I just... Yeah. I just want to take a selfie with you. No. I'm just kidding. Oh, my God. This is... It's really fun. It's really fun. Well, thank you. Even before the old days when you first started YouTube. Oh, the... Back when you... I knew your story when you talked about it. You started with Sony, then YouTube. Oh, right. Yeah, with Honda back then. Yeah. Yeah. Did you come here for Halloween yesterday? No. It's hectic. That's why I didn't come. That's interesting. Yeah. I come to Japan mainly for railway photography. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Basically, in Japanese, you know the phrase, torii techo? Yeah. Yeah. It's the people who like to take photos of the train. So, where are you from? I'm from UAE. Oh, right. So, do you know the YouTuber from the Arab world that I often... I sometimes work with, Joe Hatab? No, actually... No, you don't know Joe. Joe... He's from UAE and doesn't know who you are, my friend. That's funny. Oh, that's crazy. And he lives in Dubai. He's based in Dubai, I believe. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm actually taking him to go see the world's fastest train. We're trying to get a media permit to film inside of there. Yeah. Oh, I see. Good luck. So, that'll be fun. That's like inside access, but that's pretty cool. What's your favorite train to photograph here? Honestly, I would say Tohoku. The Tohoku Shinkansen. Yeah. Tohoku Shinkansen is my favorite. Akita Shinkansen is my favorite. I like that one. And one of the rarest, the Dr. Yellow. Yes. Dr. Yellow is my favorite. I'm trying to get into that one, too. That's hard to find. You have to... Somebody has scientifically come up with a schedule for them, though. Yeah. On the Japanese sites. Have you seen it? Yeah. Actually, you can see some people, they get the schedule. Somehow they get the schedule. They've guessed based on the past sightings from Instagram. It's pretty cool. Yeah, exactly. And also, mostly every two months, they do Kodama service. Ah, yeah. Every two months. Like February, I think. February, April. Yeah. And June, August. These are the even months, they do Kodama service. Right. Which is stopped in every station. Right. Because usually it's no zoning. You get a chance to see it at the stations. Yeah. And you get to see Dr. Yellow at most of the stations between Hakata to Tofuk. Awesome. Well, I'm so happy to see you. Thanks for... I'm sorry I took too much of your time. No, no. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming, brother. Yeah. It was a pleasure meeting you. Yeah. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Take care. Have a good day. Yeah. Bye-bye.

22:34 John Daub: Well, that was cool. These are the friends. I didn't want to take too much of his time. So, they go back to it. Yeah. I love it. So, did it work here? You know, you look at the logo here, it was genius. So, again, 80% chance that they do this next year. And I thought that it went pretty smoothly. So, I have a couple of videos that I... I... I captured just showing you the police attention on the streets here. You can see that they were instead of perched up, they were on ground level. And they would sort of whistle and tell people to kind of move along. And this was actually an accident that appeared yesterday. I don't want to cover that one. So, there's a... Police were positioned in different parts of... But you can see that the police present. People still came in costumes. But you can see that they... They were really spread out. And that created like a hesitancy to congregate. In particular, in front of the convenience stores. Now, I do know that some of the YouTubers that were going through the streets yesterday, they also... You can see the costumes there. There were some congregations, some mobs, some loitering is the word that we used to call it, in front of the convenience stores. And there was some drinking where people bought the drinks in a different place. I'm not even sure if you can get it. But... It was a lot less than before. And if we can keep the public drinking down, and you can keep the costumes of people who want to just see the costumes up, and if they have a checkpoint where they could get enubriated, drunk people out, and just let in people, and make sure there's no alcohol going into Basketball Street, I think it would be really fun to have an event in the streets of Tokyo at a parade. Have people be in a parade and come through here. Do stuff like this. And I think that they're going to come up with ideas to make this more tourist friendly. The streets of Shibuya are narrow, are not in a grid pattern, they meander all over the place, and there's a lot of potential problems. So, you know, you have to give a little leeway to the mayor. But, in the end, I thought he was a genius. So, thanks for the videos, John. I've been watching your videos since I was in middle school. Currently in Japan for the second time. Oh, wow! And heading back to the States in a few days. Well, good Shibuya, I'll be here for the next 15 minutes or so. Not for very long.

25:08 John Daub: So, yeah, there you go. I'm really happy to see that this came from NHK. They had barriered up Hachiko, and I'm about to show you the Hachiko statue right now to pay tribute. I think this might have been an overkill. I'm not sure. I'm kind of interested to hear what do you think. Did they do too much to cover up this? Did they have the right to do this? Did they have the right amount of protection? Or not? What do you guys think here?

25:39 John Daub: So, what do you guys think here? So, I'm really curious to hear your feedback on this. Because I think the most important thing is your voice needs to be heard in this as well. If we're going to have this event going on, we need to hear from you. This is really smart, too. I didn't know that the information center has had a line of people. Hello. Hello. Line of people so everybody can get a nice clear shot of Hachiko. That's really good. I like that.

26:10 John Daub: I like that. It used to be just a congregation of people. So, I think the order really makes it that you get a better photo out of it. You just have to wait around a little bit for that. And the day after the event, you can see it's returned back to normal. And that's the way it should be. They removed all of the signs. They had banners all around saying no Halloween and things like this. This is a sakura tree, which is beautiful. It's beautiful in the end of March blooming here. So, it changes how this looks. And you can see the leaves have already fallen off of it. So, I want to say this year, for those that are coming here for autumn, and this is maybe the best time, the leaves are gone in some of the places already.

27:02 John Daub: And, oh, there goes God's. We missed it. So, there goes God's. Oh, hello. Hi. Oh, okay. Here you go. Here's a couple of cards. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I watch the channel. I'm from Canada. Okay, good. Were you here for Halloween? No, no. We're just here for general traveling. Oh, okay. Cool. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thanks for stopping. Are you only in Japan? I am only in Japan. I didn't want to interrupt you. Oh, no, no. It's okay. Here you go. Thank you. Yeah. I came for Halloween. Oh, you did come for Halloween. Yeah. I feel like it's worse. Because I don't know if you were here. It was like so... I was watching from the live streaming cameras around. Yeah. It was so heavily crowd controlled that... So there was one way here. Right. And Hachiko Gate was closed off to coming in. Sorry, coming out. Closed off over there too? So that was separated to one going this way, one coming this way. Oh, right. If you had to come this way, you had to either go here or loop around. Oh, you couldn't go in that... So you had to go with a flow of... Yeah. Or go through the subway streets. That's kind of hardcore. I stayed further... I stayed in Shibuya. Okay. But I couldn't come out the Hachiko Gate because they were not letting people in. Wow. So it was a roundabout to get anywhere you wanted to go. Yeah. So I came out the back of the station, walked around over there, and then went back to my accommodation. That took about 20 minutes? Yeah. It was a detour. Yeah. It was really annoying if you lived here. Really annoying if you lived here. Was it safer? Yeah. Was it successful? Do you think it was better for Shibuya? That's going to be debated quite a lot. I think... So I was here years ago. I know where Shibuya is normally, and it's certainly... The crowd control is so hard that in this area, there was actually less people here. Okay. Yeah. It looked like it then before. I think they said 16, 20% less people. Yeah. But the streets around here was a lot worse. They just diverted the problem elsewhere. That is interesting. So I didn't hear that before. That's really interesting. So the backside... Oh, yeah... near Hikariye... Yeah... was really crowded. Right. So they just went somewhere else, but around it. People were still here. They just got diverted to other places around Shibuya. Interesting. So they got a lot of work to do for next year. But this is a lot cleaner than it was in 2022, and it seems like it was... They still had something, and the residents seem to be happy with the protective measures, so it seems like everybody win. And I think that they reassessed this and come up with a better plan next year. Yeah. But they can't cancel it. It's going to happen. People are going to come either way. Exactly. Foreigners like me are going to come and go for a walk. What did you dress up as? Nothing, actually. I was just here to observe. Okay. Didn't really have time to put anything together, but... Yeah, it was cool. It was an experience. An experience. I love it. Well, thanks for stopping in to say hi. Yeah. Thanks, mate. Yeah. Awesome.

30:01 John Daub: Oh, hey. Hi. Hi. You found me. Okay. Yeah. I'm here. Hi. My name's Von. Here you go. My name's Von. Von? Von. The Von chick. No way. Von is here. Hey, everybody. Hello. Oh, my gosh. You're bringing it in. Oh, wow. It's been years. Where's Peter? Peter's the one who gave you that nickname. I'm sorry about that. I really apologize. I was on my way to here anyway, so I saw your last stream. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. How long are you here for? Until next Saturday, so about another week.

30:42 John Daub: Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, you got to catch up with me after this stream. Get a coffee or something. It's just nice to see you. It's been years. That Von chick has been... Everybody knows that Von chick here, right? Von chick is here. That's awesome. How is the trip? It's been years since you were here, right? I came here yesterday. I'm flying. I'm flying. It was chaotic. Chaotic, yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, the police was so organized and everything. Yeah, the police are so organized. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I came with my two other friends. So I didn't get lost or anything. So I'm really lucky for them to come here around. Are you staying here? No. I need to take care of myself. OK. Yeah. All right, great. So you didn't dress up as anything. No. Neither did I. Leo was a firefighter, though. Leo was a firefighter. That was cool. Well, I'm so happy to see you. I wish I had more time. I actually have to go back and finish editing a video. But I'm glad that you could come. Are you here alone? Yeah, I'm here. My friend's nice. Ah, OK. Well, good. Let's catch up. Catch up another time later. Hopefully. Hopefully. I know. There's a lot of other people that are here. Like, can I catch you? Can I see you? Tomorrow we're going out to the countryside. Oh, my god. I was watching this frame. Yeah, the world's oldest hotel. We made friends with the owner. So he's bringing us. He said we can come back and stay. So that was really nice. It's usually booked out, too. I should take a photo. Yeah, let's get a photo. Well, we always have the live stream now when we're together in the photo. Yeah.

32:38 John Daub: You're welcome. Hopefully, I'll be in Japan. It depends on the plans. I'll be here all next week, I think. I gotta go to, well, I gotta go to Kagoshima on the 10th or 11th. But I'll be in Tokyo streaming for the whole week. I'll be going to Osaka or Japan. Ah, OK. It's not like one or two nights. OK. Yeah. All right. Well, I'll probably, hopefully catch you next week. Yeah. That's great. Wow. Yeah, Bon Chick. Hi, everyone. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Bon. I'm gonna finish, I gotta finish this live stream up. Hello. Thank you, everyone. Yeah, thanks, Bon Chick. Thank you, Bon. Here you go. You're our ambassador. That's right. Oh, here you go. I got it. Yeah. Thank you very much. Where are you guys from? U.S. U.S., OK. Were you here for Halloween? Yeah, we did. Avoided it? Yeah, because we saw your message. It's really crazy. If you went one day, you're gonna get a lot of money. I mean, you had to go in that one direction. You had to go in that one direction. It was really good feedback from somebody who said it was crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. Are you gonna get a tattoo? I don't think so. Maybe one of those ones from the Cracker Jacks where you could take it off, maybe, but I don't know. Cool. We don't bother you. Oh, no. Thanks for coming to say hi. Yeah. See you guys.

33:57 John Daub: Hey. Hello. I'm on interview again. Yes. Welcome. We met in San Gonzaco there two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Is that real? Yeah. Hi. How you doing? I'm good. Hiya. Were you here for the Halloween? No, I avoided it last night. See what I'm saying? Yeah. It was a good plan to not come here. I stayed in, as Akis said. How's your trip been? Good. Husband's still in the hotel room, resting the leg. He's joining later on this evening. Okay. Oh, very good. Very good. What was the best thing you've seen so far? How long is your trip again? We're two weeks in now, one week left. Yeah. So. I think Kyoto is just, that's been it so far. So Kyoto's the best. Yeah. Yeah. I tell people don't go to Kyoto, but you have to go to Kyoto. You have to. Just know that it is. It wasn't as crowded as I thought it was going to be actually. San Gonzaco, very crowded. Aiton around there, very crowded, but we stayed on the outskirts. And it was lovely. Smart. Absolutely lovely. In the Imperial Gardens, not that crowded. Right. And we went first thing in the morning. And we went first thing in the morning. So Aiton, that's like a big park. Brilliant. Did you research? Oh, I've been researching. We did your research. We're 10 years at this stage. Yeah. It was just three years ago. Right before the pandemic. Oh man. Pandemic. So now we have our trip. Did you have to cancel your trip because, I mean, did you have things booked or? We had our wedding booked. Oh no. For that May. Oh yeah. That got cancelled. May 2020. Yeah. Then we had it done for that November. That got cancelled. And then we had our wedding. We were only allowed six people back and out. Writing on the wall. It's going to be closed for a long time. Yeah. It took us four dates. So it was only last May we got married. Flight was okay? They kept changing the dates until? They were good about it. They gave a full refund and said, oh, just wait. Different price though. No, it weren't too bad. Really? Okay. That's really good. Maybe like a mixture 150 and all. That was it. It's not bad. Not bad. British Airways and JAL. Good. Cannot fault them. Right. Cannot fault them. Very good. Well, it's nice to see you again. Thanks very much. You're welcome. Enjoy the rest of your stream. Bye bye. Bye.

36:13 John Daub: It's cool because if I keep doing live streams in places where people can find me, people come back and visit and that's kind of fun to see people again and then hear about their trip. Over there, there is some Halloween costumes going on. Not that many, but you can see people are still walking around keeping it clean, which is really important. You can see there's this. The station staff is going around and they have the jerseys on to make sure that you know that they're keeping it clean. They have Halloween bags. It looks like they're trick or treating, but actually they're just cleaning up.

36:55 John Daub: Let me see if I can ask them how dirty it was. Somebody has a Halloween costume over there and you can see the TV news is here also reporting on it. These are people with suitcases. Of course, this is a big place for tourism. So people are here with suitcases. Used to be just backpacks or briefcases. You didn't really see tourists here. When I first came to Japan, I mean, you saw a little bit of tourists, but Japan was not a place that a lot of people would come to visit. It was just too expensive and too weird for Americans. So none of my friends wanted to come until 2014 and then it got real crazy with tourism and that's a good thing. That's a really good thing. Let me see if we can ask somebody. Ask the staff here. How was it?

37:58 John Daub: Was the case dirty? The case? The case? Was it dirty? It was okay this year.

38:10 John Daub: Thank you. Thank you.

38:14 John Daub: It was dirty. It was dirty. So that's my Japanese when I'm on the spot. I'm like in English speaking mode. Was it dirty? You know, I'm not a Japanese. That's a new word. So she said that this year was good. It wasn't so bad and she thanked me. So that was good. Kitanai is dirty. Kirei is clean. I get tongue tied sometimes.

38:56 John Daub: All right, everybody. So it looks like this year was a success in a way. Maybe not for everybody but for a good number of people. And it looks like I would say 80% chance that this is held next year. But please, before you come and go over the top, listen to what the mayor is saying because they could really cut back on this. But since there were no negative events, and this is why I think that this is good. This is why I think that they might hold it again. There were no real troubles that were reported. There was a couple of accidents. There was minor stuff, I think. But nothing related to the mobs. And that was a really good thing. So I think they're going to assess that and see what they can do. But the last thing that anybody wants is for what happened last year in Seoul. And that's always going to be on people's minds as they plan for 2024. So fingers crossed that they find a way to do it in a safe and, let's just say, profitable way for the locals. And I'd like to see that big success for the city residents and for the people visiting. It has to go both ways. You can't tell people not to come anymore. I just think it's a bad approach to tell people don't come. But again, in light of last year, you can understand. Here they've got, this is really good out on the streets. They have the separating of the trash here, which I think is really great. They have muenai gomi, muerugomi, pet bottles, glass. This keeps it really clean. So they do have public trash cans in the city.

40:42 John Daub: Actually, I've never seen that before. That's actually really good. What do you guys think?

40:52 John Daub: So they're actually, the people are bringing in the trash, the volunteers.

41:12 John Daub: Arigato gozaimashita. Give them some thanks. This is what it's all about. You know, at the end of an event, you see, oh my god, there's the Godzilla again!

41:45 John Daub: So that's what it's all about, you know. I think for people, for community coming together, they can make a positive out of it where people are, you know, for Japanese residents here that are volunteers, I'd love to volunteer as well. And to clean up, because this is my city too. And I bet you there's a lot of people that are visiting Japan would love to be a part of something positive and good. A community project, I think, where the foreign tourists could stay and clean up. Those that didn't want to participate in Halloween. And you feel, you know, I've been in a lot of community events. I don't often publicize them, but I've done a lot of stuff for local communities and things like this. It's about, whenever you do an event, even if it's, you know, like, it feels like work. It feels like work. It's a lot of fun to work with other people and to do something with a group. And at the end of it, you feel like you accomplished something really great. So shout out to all the volunteers. If you, you know, if you want some help, let me know. I'll be here next year. I don't mind waking up at 6 a.m. Not really. I guess I would do it. I once stayed here for 24 hours and filmed what was going on there. I'm going to stay live for another five minutes or so, because I know that Godzilla is going to be back. And I want to see if I can get a good shot of it. So let's cross the Hachiko Scramble. And, yeah, you guys can experience what it's like. I like that they closed this street down for us. I like that they've done a lot of planning for the buses to go around. They've really done a lot of urban planning, a lot of thought in how to reduce the traffic for cars going by. And the safety of Hachiko Scramble as there's way more people than there were 100 years ago. You know, this wasn't built for the amount of people and the tourists and all the, all the, just all the people. It wasn't built for that. And over the last, the population might be decreasing, but the tourists are absolutely increasing. More so. And it wasn't built for that. Harajuku Station was, was torn down, the old one. And a new one was built because it wasn't made to handle the same crowds as back in 1912. It was really tight in there. And it could have been a danger, especially if there was an earthquake or if there was a mob. All right, let's cross the street and just wiggle around. And I'm going to be on the corner. And then we can take a look and see if some interesting Godzilla things are going on. Let's see if any Godzilla trucks come here. It's such a beautiful day. I don't actually mind. I don't actually mind just hanging out a little bit longer with you guys. There's Ichimaru Kyū or the 109 Building. I believe they tore it down and then reconstructed it. The building itself, it, it's had no real value. There's no way to transport it. So, it is what it is. You're 45 seconds across, 90 seconds for the traffic. So let's wait now for the traffic as Godzilla might be coming back. So I'm going to be here with you. How are you doing? So yeah, for me yesterday, the most impressive thing was just to see how the police really did a great job on this very spot of making the traffic, controlling the traffic. And we had a really great, somebody who participated yesterday tell us what had actually happened in the city. The downtown central area around this spot was clear. But the areas around, well, like clear, but it was orderly. But the areas around were quite crowded. And that's something I think that the city is going to look into as well. It extends well beyond just the central streets of Hot School Scramble, as you see the police. Now yesterday, with crowd control, this went on until midnight, or midnight of yesterday, I believe, or a little bit over.

45:53 John Daub: We'll see. Go ahead. Godzilla keeps going around and around. But I'm waiting for that. As well as some of you that are coming to find me, because I don't think there's going to be too many more opportunities this week as we leave for the countryside tomorrow morning. Well, you guys are watching not only Japan Go. Your subscribed will come. While we're waiting, if you haven't already, go and check out this Samurai Racing episode. Trust me. It is an amazing episode. It's starting to get more views, because I changed the title to Samurai. I don't know why I didn't do that. Titling a YouTube episode is always really hard. But this was, it's going to thrill you. And it's a hardcore Japanese culture, because it's been going on since, this is, it was its 700th anniversary. It's been going on since the year 1323. And the fact that they know that is, it's really cool. And we're waiting for Godzilla. Oh, there he is. There's the Godzilla truck. This is thrilling. You can see the people that are taking pictures as some of the volunteers walk by with trash that they found.

47:28 John Daub: Arigato gozaimashita. Thank you, volunteers. Which way will Godzilla go? Will it go straight past us, creating a stir with our audience watching? Or will it take a right or left? Is that guy on a scooter? Can he do that? I guess he can do that.

47:49 John Daub: That's the Godzilla truck. We're just waiting for it to come by here. Last day to get postcards for that Samurai Racing. If you're a Patreon supporter, until November 1, it's still 31st abroad, you can get this month's postcard, which is the Samurai Racing, a really good shot of a battle royale with the ancient clan flags on top horses. I think it's one of the better postcards. All right, here it comes. It's going straight past us. Oh, this is awesome. Go slower.

48:35 John Daub: Wow. That's all I wanted. Let's go back. That's all I wanted. I just wanted a nice close up of that. These live streams are just in 1080p, but I could always recycle this material in the future. You see some pretty amazing trucks go by here. That in itself could be an episode, because there's people watching, and there's also truck watching here. And that is such a cool thing. All right, the final shout out, everybody. Again. These are the volunteers that are keeping our streets clean. And if you know anything about this channel, I focus on a lot of the positivity. I might talk about some of the tough stuff going on, like just recently about bad streamers, bad visitors that were causing a lot of trouble, especially for me as somebody who works here. It's giving the bad name, but it looks like they finished their job, the volunteers. They're going back to their normal job, which is working at the railway. I think this is Tokyo. Maybe with some of the other. Tokyo is one of the train stations. You can see the station attendants have their uniforms on. And here are the volunteers. And they actually have a recycling thing, where they bring the trash in these trick or treat bags. They bring the trash in these trick or treat bags, and then they recycle it. And that is so awesome to see. Look at that. They're spending their lunch time doing this, because this is their neighborhood, too. Tokyo. It is a massive department store. They own the train line. They own the department stores. They own all the property here. So for their company, this is quite important to have that image of Shibuya being a clean and nice place. And.

50:31 John Daub: Yeah, you hear that in the background, sugar. Sugar cube. I know.

50:41 John Daub: All right. That ends the chapter. Was Halloween a success? I would say so. 16% less people at its peak compared to 2019. 2022. 2022 was kind of a mess. It looked like this. It was really too many people. And if you look at it, in 2022, it really was a dangerous situation. This year, they made it a lot orderly. They thought about it. And I think that they're going to regroup and then consider whether or not they want to do this for 2024. And if they do, I bet you it's going to be a big success. But you can't cancel an event that's making Tokyo world famous for a certain day, the buildup to it. But in light of what happened last year, let's give them a pass and not be hard on them. Let's see what happens in 2024. Fingers crossed. Keep the bad actors out of here. And the people who really want to enjoy it, they should have bag checks with no alcohol. Don't let inebriated people inside to be disruptive. Don't sell any alcohol. But show off those costumes because that's why I would go. I'd bring Leo then. It could make it a family event until 630 because that's when Leo has bath time and me and Leo take a bath together. I don't want to miss that. I'm going to miss that.

51:55 John Daub: All right, bye guys. Have a good day. No more Halloween. No more worrying about this until another year. And enjoy the last remaining hours wherever you are in the world if you have Halloween going on. Bye bye. Matane.

52:11 John Daub: Shout out to Rainer. Thank you. I see that Rainer. Bye Leo. Halloween candies. And what did you think? What did you and Kenai dress up with? We didn't.

52:22 John Daub: Hi Rainer. Hi mom. Bye bye.