00:00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Shimokitazawa (neighborhood in Tokyo), or for those living in the area, Shimokita. We're going to take a look at some of these side streets here. The station is about two or three minutes in this direction. But first, I want to introduce you to my friend Mike, who's joining us on this stream. Mike, do you come to Shimokitazawa often?

00:00:20 Mike: It's been a while, but it's a really nice neighborhood for hanging out, getting some old clothing, and enjoying the vintage vibes.

00:00:30 John Daub: Is what you're wearing vintage?

00:00:32 Mike: It's getting there. I don't know, I buy new stuff.

00:00:35 John Daub: I think we passed about half a dozen vintage clothing spots. Let's walk in this direction a little bit. I know this is quite a famous site here. From this intersection, you have about six different side streets in that direction. As you can see, this little shrine. What would you call this one here? I guess a little shrine here in the corner. Yeah, I have some pictures standing in front of it from 20-some years ago when I first came to Japan. But it really adds to the atmosphere of Shimokitazawa. This intersection is quite famous. We're going to walk up the road going to the station here. If you have any questions, you can let us know. Mike, I know Mike for... It's been like a pretty long minute. Mike actually helped me film an episode that's coming up this year. I haven't edited it yet.

00:01:20 Mike: Okay, I was wondering what happened to that one.

00:01:22 John Daub: It's coming up soon. It's an earthquake episode. And he helped film one of the scenes from a different angle. And now we're going to go out and I'll buy him several beers if you like, and pay you back for that. But I've known him since, what, 2008 or something like that?

00:01:38 Mike: It's like 15 years. And a long-term resident here. You got into volunteering. We can talk a little bit about that.

00:01:45 John Daub: Okay. The reason why I wasn't volunteering at all was because of Mike going up there so many times. And I, of course, had an English teaching job. So my free time was decided by what I wanted to do. Right? Let's talk a little bit about Shimokitazawa. As we walk, left and right, you can see different kinds of restaurants. Here's an udon (thick wheat noodles) one. This is a chain. There are some changes. That's the one thing I noticed about Shimokitazawa. The places are often changing ownership. It's not always the same store, despite how popular it is. A lot of universities nearby. So it's very much sort of a hot spot for students. Which is why you have that focus on sort of changing fashion, retro vibes, and a lot of really affordable but really delicious food.

00:02:30 Mike: That's right. Retro vibes. That's exactly the feeling that I get because the buildings are lower. The property in Shimokitazawa is probably quite expensive. The rent here.

00:02:42 John Daub: Yeah. On Main Street, you can see it gets quite dark and somewhat residential. But I'm sure the rent is quite high. It makes me wonder why they just don't destroy it and build high rises like they're doing with the rest of Tokyo, which I hate. So there's a bit of controversy around the station area where they did some large construction. The old station was mostly torn down and replaced with this modernist architectural piece you could describe it as. And a lot of the local storefronts had to be torn down as part of that. The construction for that was sort of rushed to make way for the Olympics.

00:03:20 Mike: Ah, right. Kind of combined with Shibuya Station's reconstruction project. So I think there's been a lot of local resistance to prevent further upstaging of the community because that construction ended up removing a lot of the old shops and feeling around the station. And it's ended up with just sort of construction fences and TBD construction that may take 10 years.

00:03:45 John Daub: And 20 years. Who knows? Like Shibuya construction, I think, is not targeted to finish until 2037.

00:03:52 Mike: 2037. All of them. But seems like the majority of it around the Hachiko area is done. You have the Tokyo Honten up there where the Don Quixote is that is just starting its construction stage.

00:04:05 John Daub: Yeah, that'll be one of the 2037 phase 7 projects. There's a kebab place, a couple of restaurants back there, a mega Don Quixote in the distance. You see that up there, the sign? So there's a very eclectic group of shops, restaurants, cafes. You saw some trendy coffee shops back there. And I'm wafting up some doner kebab right now. And don't forget you're used at your PC random accessory shop.

00:04:30 Mike: Yeah, it's like a throwback from Akihabara here. You have some computer parts. It just doesn't fit. And that's what makes it pretty cool, I think. It doesn't fit, but it does fit in the eclectic jumbled vibe.

00:04:42 John Daub: Yeah. Here's a used hippie, the 420 Shimokitazawa shop. Whoa. The Uber Eats guys just plowed into somebody there. Yeah. I like that, the different styles. And make sure the architecture makes for some great street photography in the area. The station is just right there. You saw the train going by in the distance. Right there. Let me show you exactly where we are. This is Shimokitazawa. And it's not that far away from Shibuya. You take the Inokashira Line to get here. I think it's like three or four minutes. It's really close. You can walk it in 35, depending on how fast you walk. This is Setagaya Ward. This is maybe one of the most expensive wards of the 23 in Tokyo. But it's also one of the most popular because of all those restaurants, all the entertainment. Shimokitazawa in particular, full of entertainment. Music, comedy, the arts. And that makes this a really special place in Tokyo. And you see it in the streets. It is almost art itself. We can walk back down towards the venue. We've come here... Oh, look at that. I thought I was smelling... That doesn't smell like a doner kebab. Okay, it's Burger King. The sweet smell of french fries. You have some izakayas (Japanese pubs) on this... What is that? Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers)? Yakisoba (fried noodles). I love the fact that it's open. You can see inside, the vibe. People sitting there, enjoying their beer, their food. And this is just a taste of it. We're going to go... Mike and I are going to go to...

00:06:20 Mike: Can we tell them where we're going? Where are we going? So, we're going to a place called Good Heavens, which is a British pub in the area. But they tend to focus on having visiting comedians.

00:06:35 John Daub: So... Oh, who's the comedian tonight?

00:06:38 Mike: Tonight is Yuriko Kotani, who's been a Japanese comedian who's lived in the UK for 10 plus years. And she's quite popular these days for a comedy routine that looks at sort of British life from a Japanese perspective. Don't want to give away any of her good bits, but if you look up Yuriko Kotani on YouTube, she's got some great humor. And that's specifically why I thought John would appreciate the show.

00:07:00 John Daub: I'm going to enjoy it. The show. This, I just want to point this out, the Tori Kizoku is maybe the cheapest izakaya in Japan. And it's a chain, and they have iPads where you can order the food by visually looking at it. So if you're visiting Japan for the first time and you're afraid to go deep in the Japanese cuisine, this might be a good entry point, don't you think? Everything on the menu used to be 299 yen. If you look here, it's now 328 yen. Inflation.

00:07:35 Mike: So 10% inflation. And you're going to get a lot of food. Here, 10% inflation.

00:07:42 John Daub: Yeah, we're feeling it. Little bit. It's going to get the economy, it seems to be starting to turn the corner. But the nice thing about the recent drop in the value of the yen and the inflation of prices is that you don't feel that huge jump in taxes that much. When you went from 3% tax to 5% tax and then 10% tax or 8% if you're takeout of food. But if you eat in, it's 10%. And restaurants love calculating that distance.

00:08:10 Mike: Yeah. Well, you know what? 299 yen was so darn cheap for what you were getting. And now 328 yen. It's still pretty good value. I would probably still go there for 400 yen. Technically, with the fall of the yen, 328 yen in 2024 is cheaper than 299 yen in 2022.

00:08:30 John Daub: I mean, look at it like that. If you're going technical, yeah, it is cheaper. Anchor, we passed this one a few minutes ago. It's been here for a very long time. It's a used clothing store.

00:08:42 Mike: It has been here for a long time, hasn't it? I feel like it has. A lot of names seem to have changed for stores around here. I don't know if it was called Anchor, but it's been a used clothing store for a very long time. And if you're into vintage clothes, this is the place to go. That neon sign has definitely been there for a long, long time. The West Coast?

00:09:10 John Daub: The West Coast. Oh, yeah. We got some West Coasters if you're still awake. What are you doing awake? The Hawaiians have an excuse. It's not that late. So we're walking over towards Good Heavens. So I wanted to talk a little bit with Mike here because just a few days ago we had the earthquake at, I guess the media is calling it the Noto earthquake right now from Noto Hanto (Noto Peninsula), which is the place, Wajima City up on the north, a place that I went with Kanae about three years ago with a rent-a-car. We have an episode that I haven't edited yet where we go to a tempura place, which I don't think is there anymore. But that's the one thing we've been really concerned about. But with somebody who has a great deal of volunteering, you were with Kumamoto when the earthquake happened. I don't know. When was that?

00:10:00 Mike: That was about eight years ago, nine years ago. I was still living in Tohoku when that happened, I think. 2015, I think, 2016.

00:10:10 John Daub: Yeah, it's been a while. And then I know Mike from Tohoku. Let me just show you. I found this video. This is old video of me from 2011. And Mike is in it as well. This is a trip. I guess this was in July. And I found, I had a friend who was working for Aussie Beef. And he sponsored a bunch of steaks. And we ran them up to barbecue it for residents here. You can see I'm much, much, much younger. Barbecuing mega steaks from Aussie Beef. And then the residents would come. And never, they didn't actually stay. They would take loads of the food and bring it back to their homes where their extended family was. So while we're talking about disaster relief, one of the important things that's happening right now in Noto Peninsula as we speak is hot meal service. So much of sort of soup kitchens where volunteer orgs, government agencies, and other partners will set up hot meals for the people displaced in emergency shelters. And so this event in Ishinomaki had a focus of that.

00:11:00 Mike: There you are right there. Where we wanted to prepare hot meals for the locals. Right. Because when you're displaced, quite often the food distributed is sort of cold bentos (boxed meals). Cold onigiri (rice balls). You know, cold meals. And so just a little bit of a hot meal, especially in the cold weather, does warm your hearts. Well, it warms your bellies.

00:11:25 John Daub: This is you taking out some of the tsunami damage in one of the houses. This is Ishinomaki.

00:11:30 Mike: Yes. So that's another big difference between the Tohoku quake tsunami situation and Noto situation is that much of the volunteer work required for Tohoku is what was called gutting houses. Because of the tsunami water had seeped into houses, there was a huge risk of it rotting the foundation of the house. Once the woodwork of the house rotted from exposure to sort of tsunami mud and mist, and the mildew and other elements, that would actually require a house to be torn down. And so this work was quite critical to clear out the floorboards, remove, as you can see, the mud there has dried on the surface, but it would still actually be wet and have a thick consistency underneath. And if that's not cleared out, it would rot the foundation of the house, which would require the whole thing to be torn down. It was a lot of work going into this. And of course, there were also chemicals and other substances that came in from the tsunami. From torn, from blown down factories.

00:12:40 John Daub: Yeah. Was one of the things I was concerned with. But you don't think about that when you're, you got the resident right there with you. This is the scene of Ishinomaki from the hill. A lot of people evacuated up to here. Yeah. So this is the... Four months after? Coast of Ishinomaki where the central hospital used to be. And all of this has now been sort of flattened with the... You're not able to rebuild residential structures on this land. This is the Mangattan Central Island in Ishinomaki where, based upon the work of Ishinomori Shotaro, who created Cyborg 009 and many other creative works. But that museum is back up and running.

00:13:25 Mike: Okay. And definitely worth a visit if you go to Ishinomaki. Yeah. I've been there a couple of times since then to try to cover... In fact, a couple of live streams with residents. It was about two years ago. They have manhole covers, the Pokemon manhole covers up there as well.

00:13:45 John Daub: Exactly. Yeah. So there's a lot... It's a much changed town since the time that we were there. I remember driving in there and we had like boats and trees, cars in fields. But the first time... The thing that makes Tohoku quite different than this one is that tsunami, I think.

00:14:05 Mike: Yeah. So that tsunami was sort of the main devastation. And that was the devastating factor for the Tohoku quake. Right. Like when I first visited Tohoku, ended up going up about four days after the tsunami. And when I took Route 45 into Higashi-Matsushima, you ended up seeing like microwaves and televisions in the river. And you're like, wow, this is pretty big. You drive a little further and you see cars flipped over and other larger items. And then heading into central Higashi-Matsushima, yeah, entire roofs of houses smashed into a bridge and things just got much more difficult after that.

00:14:45 John Daub: It did. In fact, I think the first time you went up there, you really couldn't go very far because of debris and things like that, right?

00:14:52 Mike: Yeah. So we had to really change our route as we were heading up. Second Harvest involved with the operation in Noto Peninsula, I would assume so.

00:15:00 John Daub: Yes. Second Harvest, I forgot what day, I think the fifth they were heading up.

00:15:05 Mike: Okay. But yeah, Second Harvest is instrumental in serving hot meals and delivering up food and aid and supplies. Now, a lot of people have asked me where is the best place to donate. And I'm always going to Second Harvest because they're usually the first people. And it's a Japan-based organization, very good at what they do. And they have an internet site where you can donate directly to them. And I know that they're doing it. They're going to be putting that to really good use, whether it's running the food, I guess, from Tokyo over there and going where... I know that the roads are quite hard, but they always find a way to get that food in there. And again, the hot meals is very appreciated because it is still winter here. People don't have power up there. The situation is quite bad. 30,000 houses lost power.

00:15:55 Mike: 30,000 houses. Yeah. A lot of relocation, people in gymnasiums right now. They're going to need some food. So Second Harvest is a great charity. And again, you need a Yahoo Japan account in order to donate to the Yahoo Japan donation site, but that is a legitimate one. And other than that, I just wait. I talked to Kanazawa's tourism association and the prefecture, and they told me just to hold off a little bit right now. They still have first responders going in there. And if you want to donate, please keep it in your mind. And then go to the official website of the prefecture, which is the state of Ishikawa, and they'll have local charities that you can donate to. But people have really big hearts, but it's very easy for the information not to be somewhat questionable in these early stages here. And Second Harvest you can visit at 2hj.org. They do have options to switch to English to see the details of the organization.

00:16:55 John Daub: Thanks, Mike. We wanted to share that with you. And again, we're going to be going up here to enjoy a comedy show in a little bit, right over Chicago, which is a used clothing store. You were saying a little bit about the history of this area.

00:17:15 Mike: Should we even mention it? Being close to sort of Shibuya and the Keio Line and the Odakyu Line, there's quick access to a lot of universities in the area. So this area has really started up as sort of a focus as a student town, which is why you have a lot of low-cost eateries, trendy fashion shops. Part of that is also you have a lot of local food. So you have a little bit of the rebel culture of youth and an idea of like adopting fashions that their parents kind of rejected to reclaim those fashions as their own. So for vintage vibes and retro fashion, this is definitely one of the hottest places.

00:17:55 John Daub: You're pretty good at this, Mike. Were you once an NHK Tokyo Eye World reporter?

00:18:00 Mike: That was... Well, yes, he was.

00:18:02 John Daub: Was it me who introduced you to one of the directors? You did two episodes, I believe.

00:18:05 Mike: So I did my NHK episode thinking, okay, this is NHK. This is aimed at a domestic audience. I remember it. And I did my presentation as though I was a Sesame Street host. And talked very slowly. Hello, everyone. This is a camera. This is the shutter button. Can you say shutter? Oh, God. So yeah, that was that. You won't find this on... Actually, I think it is. There is one on YouTube.

00:18:35 John Daub: Oh, yes. One of his is on YouTube. No need to search for it. Please do. Link in the description, perhaps. Maybe not. But, sorry, before we change from the topic of volunteering, as one of the big things in the 2011 earthquake is that at that time, Japan did not have much of a volunteering culture and did not have much of a donation culture.

00:19:00 Mike: Right. So the government is very proactive in sort of welfare and taking care of people. And so there wasn't much an idea of individuals donating because, for the most part, a lot of struggling people are taken care of by sort of welfare programs and the government. And just the scale of the Tohoku disaster blew beyond any government ability to sort of fill in those gaps. And that really drove sort of a grassroots movement to explore the idea of more people sort of donating and more people volunteering time. Whereas this time, a lot of grassroots orgs have kind of jumped up readily with volunteers. For example, Peace Boat in the 2011 earthquake did not have an organized volunteer program, but a lot of former Peace Boat travelers who had volunteered abroad with the organization took their experience from volunteering abroad and ended up creating like little subgroups to volunteer in Tohoku. And that has now solidified in Peace Boat Volunteer, pbv.org, I believe. Peace Boat Volunteers.

00:20:00 John Daub: Mike is a guy who knows this stuff. And there's also Foreign Volunteers Japan, which is an aggregator of information for volunteering. It's a place that I go into. They had some other charities to donate to. And there's a long-term red tape. There's a lot of residents of Japan that are in there. And if you have questions, it's one that you can ask in there as well. A lot of good people still in the group.

00:20:25 Mike: It's no longer an organization. Yeah, so... Because I have a t-shirt that says Foreign Volunteers Japan. I would wear... Yeah, so in the aftermath of the Tohoku disaster, we had the discussion of paying $2,000 to $3,000 to register as a charitable organization or route any of the money that we had raised or had available. And we were able to get all of that money directly into other organizations or into our own deliveries. And that was kind of the decision we made at the time. So right now, we're more of an information aggregator for sharing resources and shining the light on different grassroots organizations that are active in the area.

00:21:10 John Daub: Well, thank you for sharing all that information. And Jared, thank you as well. A lot of the Super Chats that are coming in are going to be donated to the, I guess, Yahoo Japan. That's probably the best site. They had, last time I checked, 700,000 donations. And Kanae has a Yahoo Japan account, and we're going to be, of course, contributing to that, as well as Second Harvest, which is one for me. It's just some... Like, we donated a lot of money with the community events that we did. I had a yakiniku (grilled meat) group, about a couple hundred people, and we raised a lot of money. Well, I wish it was more, but we raised some money for that, at least to pay for the gas to get up there or something like that. And bring some food to some people. So I appreciate everybody for supporting. And if you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments below. Again, like Mike has been here for a very long time volunteering. I know where I can point you in the right direction as well, based just on experience and being here so long for... And if you live here in Japan for as long as we have, you go through a lot of disasters. It's just part of living here. 1,500 earthquakes a year in Tokyo. And then also for the Yahoo Japan, we have a lot of people that are here. So if you go to the donations page, it's not necessarily that you're donating to Yahoo, but Yahoo has a platform hosting many different NGOs and organizations on that page. And when you visit it, you can check the profiles of Crash Japan, Japan Platform, Peace Boat, dozens of different organizations. And when you click on that, you can actually open the homepage of the organization. A lot of the groups do have Japanese people. Their English pages. English sometimes is auto-translated, but most of the orgs will have English pages available if you click to their website for more information. The websites often have news updates from their most recent activities. So showing some of the... Right now it's mostly site surveys at this point. So most of the orgs, if you click on their homepage, they'll have sort of an initial site assessment where they've sent some people. And of course, their vests. Surveying the sites. And that is very important at this point because you don't want just people rushing up north. Actually, there was news yesterday that the highways that are still accessible are heavily congested because of locals just heading up in the means of helping out, but without being organized, without having a specific destination, those people can end up causing more trouble because of using the site. So they're setting up local resources. If you do go to... Like, if you check on Twitter for updates on the local situation, similar to even Tokyo after 311 is that convenience stores, department stores, supermarkets are sold out of most essentials. So bottled water, a lot of non-perishables.

00:24:00 Mike: Yeah. A lot of all ready to eat meals. Saran wrap. Yeah. Toilet paper, tissue paper, wet naps are completely sold out. This reminds me of the 2011 earthquake with panic buying and just people stocking up and the supply chain's being broken in that region.

00:24:25 John Daub: So I'm very thankful to know Mike and organizations that can help out. So please give... I know that Yahoo Japan is kind of hard for foreigners to get. You need a Yahoo Japan account in order to do it. But Second Harvest, if you want to donate to them, I believe you can just donate directly through their website.

00:24:45 Mike: Exactly. And also, if you're able to access the Yahoo donations website, check through the profiles of the different organizations. They're all vetted. Open up their homepage directly and they'll have their own donation information for the organization directly. I think the page may be in Japanese only, unfortunately.

00:25:05 John Daub: That's the thing, yeah. But when you pop open the individual organizations, they'll often have English options for their own site.

00:25:12 Mike: Exactly. The organizations themselves have English options, but the Yahoo Japan page is very much Japanese, which is a weak point of it. But again, the good thing about the Yahoo Japan is all those are vetted. And I think giving money to the wrong people is one thing that you don't want to do. And a lot of people don't even know where Wajima is right now. And then for the Foreign Volunteers Japan Facebook group, as sort of an aggregator, I'm taking a lot of the information from Yahoo Japan. And coming up with sort of like an English explanation of the organization, what they do, links to their current activity reports and donation links.

00:25:55 John Daub: Okay. A little delayed on that, but working on getting that updated as soon as possible. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for the work that you do. And for everybody out there that has been asking about this, this is just a response to so many people that have been asking me. And yeah, I'll do my best to try to help you out with that. 82 May, thank you. So I think this is all going into the donations. Not into tonight's dinner, sorry Mike, although it's on me.

00:26:30 Mike: No, no, no, send it where it's needed. Send it right maybe tonight to our stomachs, but we'll be making a pretty big donation to the Yahoo site.

00:26:40 John Daub: Thanks everybody. I just wanted to show you around this hipster, jazz hipster entertainment zone. If you are in Tokyo, this is a pretty cool place just to walk around and maybe grab a dinner. Or a fedora hat.

00:26:55 Mike: Or a fedora hat, as we show you that.

00:26:58 John Daub: But we'll be back again and I'm sure we'll see Mike again this year. So thanks everybody. We'll see you in another episode. Thank you, Jared. I saw that as well. Thank you, Jared. Bye-bye.