00:00:01 John Daub: Hello and welcome to Tokyo. This is Tsukiji Market. You see the line of people here looking for street food. This is one of the more vibrant markets in the city of Tokyo. And it's very accessible, meaning you can walk here in about 15 minutes from Ginza, which is the heart of Tokyo. Tokyo Station is not too far away as well. In this episode, we're going to go from Tsukiji Market all the way to Ginza. When I say all the way, it's going to be like 15 minutes. But the way that I do live streams, it's going to be like 15 minutes. It doesn't turn into an hour because anything can happen when we're live here.

00:00:31 John Daub: Tsukiji Market, I just walked through here. It is extraordinary how much it has changed just in the last three months. It's been quite a while since I was here. And every time I come I discover something new. It is also really cold today. My face is somewhat frozen. It's hard to talk. My eyes are watering a little bit because of the chill. There's wind coming here.

00:01:01 John Daub: Before starting the live stream, I got a chance to talk to a few people. They saw me setting up this live stream. And that was really cool always to see people come here to say hi. I do have some You Found Me cards and gave a couple away already. Let me show you the market from going down the center here because this is the direction that we're going to be walking. It is really packed. And this is late for Tsukiji. This is typically a morning market. There's the shrine at the end, which is very famous where fishermen would pray over there. That's still here despite the fact that the fish market has moved to Toyosu.

00:01:40 John Daub: It's a nice place to come and get some street food. It's just weird because Tsukiji Market, I see a lot of Wagyu on sticks. And for me, it's mind-blowing because this used to be a fish market. You smell more fish. Now you smell only beef grilling. That's pretty awesome. In this episode, we're going to walk here. Here's the map. This is our route for today. About 15 minutes. We're going to walk down to the center of Ginza to Wako Department Store. Basically, we're going to be taking a little bit of one left and right and then it's a straight shot. We'll be walking past Kabukiza (main Kabuki theater), which has changed quite a bit over the last 15 years. And when we get to Ginza, we'll have a completely different vibe than what it is here today.

00:02:36 John Daub: So I made a little bit of a map to give you an orientation of this region here. Here's Tokyo. You can see we're going to zoom down into the city and you'll see exactly where I am in relation to the city. The Tsukiji Market is near the Sumida River. You can see the market has been taken away. That big parking lot over there used to be where the fish market was. Now it's just an empty lot where they're going to be building a development. But that old section in the center of your screen is now what's called the Tsukiji Market. It's basically a bunch of alleys with restaurants. Entrepreneurs have come up to set up some restaurants in this amazing maze. So it's got this really good characteristic to it, like an old school market. But a lot of new businesses. And Ginza is in this direction. Just a few city blocks and then boom. Here you are.

00:03:23 John Daub: This is one of the intersections here. That's Kabukiza. We're going to make a small pit stop over there. That old building that you saw. Just above there. And then we're going to walk down this street. You can see there's some changes on the streets. And then here's Ginza Yonchome (Ginza 4-chome), which is one of the most expensive intersections in all of Japan, if not Asia. Ginza Yonchome is where Wako Department Store is. That one on the top of your screen with the bell that rings every hour. As well as Mitsukoshi Department Store. It's the Golden Mile of Tokyo. And there's a lot of money down this street. And some pretty good shopping. And that's a good explanation for this walk. So let's get started.

00:04:11 John Daub: As we're walking, I want to show you a little bit about Tsukiji Market. The signal strength over there is not good. But before this live stream, I was able to film some things, I'm going to insert to give you an idea. This market is really down to earth. And I like that. But they've also, if you are coming here to eat, you can get bowls of noodles to eat on the street.

00:04:40 John Daub: It's not just that main street, you find some really cool hot noodles boiling here. Check this out. Wow. It smells so good, like the sweet savory sauce that's boiling in. This is like the outskirts of Tsukiji Market. If you go into the center, you'll find even more. It's just amazing. A lot of this stuff is in English. The prices are also a little bit high. Well, it's not too bad actually. It's quite comparable now.

00:05:52 John Daub: This shop's virtually empty. I wonder why. I think they might have run out of stuff. Look, this is totally new as well. What are they grilling here? Tuna steak? This is crazy. It just doesn't fit with my image of what Tsukiji is because I'm older. What are they doing here? I'm blown away. This is like a strawberry daifuku, which is a strawberry in mochi. This is now the strawberry season, so you're going to get a lot of that.

00:07:04 John Daub: Actually, Eric Berg and I, EricServe6, were thinking about if we have an office, this might be the perfect place for it. But the property prices are probably going up. They have some white strawberries being sold here. This is not the Tsukiji that I remember. The alleys are also extremely colorful. Check it out. Wow. You can smell the food wafting towards me, like grilling and stuff. It's got that old school vibe, which I hope you'll love. I love that they never get rid of... Now, there's a lot of talk about them getting rid of these old buildings, so they're probably trying to really take advantage of what they have here. But if they do have all these new buildings coming in, it's really going to kill that ambiance of Tsukiji Market that I completely love.

00:08:13 John Daub: This is my backyard. It's not very far away. My bicycle's parked over there. I like to come to this area maybe too often. All right. This is where the walk starts. We're going up Harumi Dori here. Again, in Tokyo, you can do a lot of walking and get around pretty easily on foot, and you see a ton if you do that. This intersection, this is how you know you're at Tsukiji Market, that big fish and the... Well, it used to be at Jonathan's. It was out here waiting for it to open up because it was a 24-hour restaurant. Now it looks like some sort of local izakaya (pub). But there's the hon maguro (bluefin tuna) right there, and that's how you know you're at Tsukiji Market walking down Harumi Dori (Harumi Avenue).

00:09:06 John Daub: All right. Let's go. Just to give you a vibe of what it's like in there, so I did a little walk-through and you could see the market. Didn't expect people to be here. I didn't expect so many people to be at Tsukiji Market. That was a bit of a surprise to me. It's like pachinko in here. Your ball's bouncing from left to right as you're bumping into people. It's all chaos inside of there. It's even worse around 10 to 11 in the morning I believe. There's a lot more people. Afternoon things usually slow down because it is a market.

00:10:09 John Daub: Tons and tons of food that I haven't seen before. Dessert food. Things that don't even match what the market's identity is which is a little bit unusual to me. But nonetheless it's a good thing because now you get to try all sorts of different things. You can go there and get your breakfast, lunch and dinner there now. All street food. Here's another shot looking down the street at Tsukiji Market. You can see how busy it is at 12 o'clock. Loads of people.

00:10:41 John Daub: And I want to show you some of the food here. In this clip I kind of jump into those canopies and take a look inside there. Look at that! There's like sushi, some grilled Wagyu beef with English on there. Kani inari (crab inari sushi). That's some inari sushi right there. And there's some Wagyu beef. It says order here, wait here. I love that! Like they're kind of organizing and they have signs saying don't walk and eat. Well how do you do that with street food? There's no place to really eat. It's just kind of all narrow in there.

00:11:25 John Daub: Look at this. They're grilling some Wagyu beef like chefs. And then over here they have the tamagoyaki (rolled omelet) which is so good in Japan. Very juicy. I had to walk out of here because it was a little bit crowded. You can see they have grilled crab legs. Do not throw crab remains here. And I guess some people already did. I couldn't understand that sign. Why did they put that on the top of the legs? But the identity of Tsukiji Market has changed.

00:12:00 John Daub: Look at this cafe! They have a cafe inside of the market but this one, this Yonemoto Coffee Lab has now a side booth. So there's several of these Yonemoto coffee shops inside there. And they just, like Tsukiji is supposed to be a rough old neighborhood and this looks so nice and new and vibrant. To me it's like I'm still kind of scratching my head in shock. How cool Tsukiji has become. It's like it's one of these places if you're in Tokyo you must go to Tsukiji Market. And you can see some of the prices listed here. Some things are a little bit pricier but you know. The thing is like if you, it's so cold outside and I'm shivering right now. I don't think you want to be eating on the street today. You have to make sure it's grilled. So these kaisendon (seafood rice bowls) which are cold seafood on rice. I don't think you're going to be eating a bowl of ice. You're going to want some of that grilled fish, grilled crab or something like that to warm you up. Hot cup of coffee or something.

00:13:02 John Daub: Lot of foreigners. Lot of foreign visitors. Very, very, the only Japanese I saw were not that many. Even the people working at some of the shops were foreigners. I was walking down Harumi Dori. And we're coming up to the front. First kind of stop here. This bridge which has a statue that we're going to kind of take a quick look at.

00:13:36 John Daub: So we walked about 500 meters away from Tsukiji Market. At lunch time around these office buildings there are food trucks. So if you didn't get your fill of food at Tsukiji Market you're going to have some of Tokyo's most interesting food trucks. And they change daily. So they're not always the same food trucks. Here we have taco rice, which is an Okinawan specialty it looks like. This one looks like coffee, craft beer and sandwiches. Interesting mix. This one yakiniku (grilled meat) and bibimbap, which is a Korean dish. Oh wow, that all looks really good. And the prices are cheaper than at Tsukiji Market. Again, locals would be eating at these food trucks. Tourists at the Tsukiji Market. There's nothing wrong with that.

00:14:46 John Daub: There's some more bowls, Bowl Deli here. And these food trucks look really stylish. Very stylish food stands. If you go in the back, you'll see a lot of food. On the other side, there's a Starbucks right over there if you need a coffee. And then on the other side of this building right here, there's a whole range of food trucks. I think there's about 10 of them. I've done a live stream back there as well. There's an app that I used to find the food trucks. And I found them back in the pandemic. People weren't going to restaurants so much. So the restaurants came to us in the neighborhoods via food truck. And that culture has kind of grown over the last couple of years. I like this welcome to Tsukiji sign. So basically from here on, we're now into Ginza.

00:15:46 John Daub: Alright, let's make a little quick pit stop here. We're going to overlook the highway system. And I have a little short story to talk to you about with this. Of course I do. I used to meet with friends that worked at ADK, which is one of the big marketing companies. They've moved their headquarters from out of that building. But there's a quick story here of the legendary ADK. Chidori was abandoned along with her five offspring and was about to be put down. After having been given another chance to live, she became a therapy dog at various medical institutions throughout Japan. She encouraged and supported elderly and disabled people with her gifted charm. She greatly contributed to the social wellness of the power of therapy dogs. And was influential in the redrafting of the Japanese law for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Nothing but love to you, Chidori. And this statue is here. And it's a shout out to the dogs, therapy dogs. Chidori is part of the lore of this area, which is kind of cool.

00:17:07 John Daub: And I'm going to walk a little bit more. It doesn't seem like there's anything more to see here. But there is. So beyond this platform lies Tokyo's highway. And you see that? This highway was built in 1963, right before the Tokyo Olympics. And they had to do it really quickly. And you can see the highway sort of underground. Well, that's because this used to be a river. And they dried up the river to make the highway. This was the quickest way to get the highway done. They needed to really improve the infrastructure in Tokyo before the Olympics, after World War II. The easiest way to do it was to dry up the river. And so this highway, which I've driven many, many times, meanders like this. Just like a river would. It's pretty interesting.

00:18:28 John Daub: There's even some places where there used to be trees or tributaries. And you'd have to go off of the one lane, would go the other way, and then come back around and meet up with the two-lane highway. It's really interesting to see the highways. In particular, if you are in the taller buildings, you'll see the two-lane highway. And the buildings looking down onto it. Certainly unique. Alright, we can make this traffic light because I'm freezing. My hands are cold despite having gloves on. We're now in Higashi Ginza. And we're going to make another pit stop in about a minute from now.

00:19:00 John Daub: Higashi Ginza is on the Asakusa and Hibiya lines. And if you're coming on the Asakusa line, you can still walk to Ginza. So you don't have to go on the Hibiya line. What I'm saying is if you got off at this station, it's very easy to walk either to Ginza in about 300 meters this direction. Or to Tsukiji, which is about 300 meters in this direction. You don't have to do train changes in order to get to the exact station. Walk a little bit. You can usually...it's a lot faster as well. And you get to see the stuff that's above land. Pretty interesting.

00:20:04 John Daub: The next stop we're doing is right in this direction. You see it here. This is Kabukiza, which is the big Kabuki theater here in Tokyo. The facade of it looks old and traditional. But it's been completely redone after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. A lot of the buildings in Tokyo had some damage to it. Structural weaknesses. And this is one of those buildings. So they had to reconstruct the Kabukiza. And when they did it, they didn't just go with the facade. The whole inside had a well-needed renovation. And then in the back of it they put in a skyscraper! And you don't really see it from street level. But if you take a look at the map of it. It's quite extraordinary. You can see the old building right there. That's Kabukiza. The old structure of it. And if we go 3D here. You can see the skyscraper jutting out of the back of it. Which is pretty cool.

00:21:19 John Daub: It's 36 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill. My nose is basically not working. It's not even attached to my face anymore. It's just like chill. From the top it looks like there's a park. But you see the old facade of the Kabukiza down there. And that skyscraper hump on its back. Which is pretty cool. A lot of offices in there. And we're not that far away from our final destination as well. Just a shout out to the Patreon supporters here. Thank you guys for your backing on my Patreon. This is this month's postcard. It's Japanese toys. You can see Godzilla. A little bit of Ultraman. The Nintendo Game Boy. Some Transformers. Nintendo's first toy, which is the Ultra Hand. The Tamagotchi. And some other figures down here. This is the postcard I'm sending out to everybody. I just put them in the mail yesterday. But please support the channel on Patreon. And I will send you this as well. As a way of saying thank you.

00:23:11 John Daub: This is the crossing of Showa Dori and Harumi Dori. Showa Dori if you were to walk in this direction for 40 minutes would take you to Akihabara. And eventually Ueno. There's a small little restaurant. You see right here. This is Nile-san's restaurant. I've met him a few times. I haven't heard from him in a very long time though. I hope he's doing okay. The restaurant's closed. Which is a shame. I don't know if it's just because it's closed on Tuesdays. But might be some of the best Indian food. And Nile-san's father opened up the restaurant. I guess in the 1930s. And it was one of the first Indian restaurants in Japan. I've had lunch in here many many times. It's so good. His chicken is the best. He's got like this curry rice chicken. Oh my gosh. If you're craving something other than Japanese food. You've got to stop in and say hi.

00:25:05 John Daub: Oh hello. Hi. Just following you on YouTube. Oh really? Yeah sure. But we're live. Is that okay? Say hi to everybody. I'm watching you sing. Oh really? Wow. And it really helped me a lot because I have anxiety. So when I watched it it made me feel so much better because the media over in my country it was like so crazy. Oh yeah they're really over hyping that. Yes we're a big fan. Can we take a photo? Sure. Thank you so much. Where are you guys from? Malaysia. Oh awesome. Here I could give you one of the You Found Me cards. Do you need help? Yeah my hands are frozen. I'm like I'm in a deep freeze. Yeah just walking through my backyard today. Oh you live around here? Yeah in that direction over there. Not too far away. So you're live today. Yeah. I'm walking from Tsukiji Market to Ginza. It's so chilly isn't it? Yes I've been watching you for years. Wow. Awesome. So we've gotten old together then. Alright. Well thanks for saying hi. Stay warm. That's awesome.

00:26:50 John Daub: So we're still in Higashi Ginza's space. We're going to be entering into the Ginza sphere which is right now. I've been doing YouTube for so darn long. It's nice to, people have been watching for like a decade. Made me stop for a second and go what? That's awesome. Oh and there's a Buddhist temple not too far away from Tsukiji Market that's worth taking a look. See it's made out of stone. So it's a stone temple. I've never seen a stone temple. I was like wow. It's pretty cool. So basically let's go over this here. We passed Kyobashi post office here. Tsukiji Market is right here off of the map now. The temple is right here. This is the Honganji Temple. And we've walked down in this direction. We stopped here to see the dog statue and you can see the highway here. We walked and here's Kabuki Theater. And now we're going to be crossing through this which is a neat new area. And then our final destination is right here. So let's get to it.

00:28:13 John Daub: I like it that we bump into a map in route. This particular bridge and yeah we're on a bridge which believe it or not has been renovated in the last five years. But what they did was they made it wider which is definitely needed. And they put on some new buildings here. You can see the architecture. It's a nice little building. It certainly is unique for that one. And they put in some of these like benches. Places that you could sit and eat a bento (boxed meal) which is something I really wanted. There's not a lot of places to sit in Ginza that's not the weekend. But there's some seats here that you can get something from the Depachika (department store basement food hall). And you got tons of food in the basement. You grab some food there and eat it out here. Maybe not today because it's freezing. But on another day.

00:29:39 John Daub: Temperature. I would say it's well below zero with the wind chill. I think it was 34 degrees when I left Fahrenheit. About one or two degrees Celsius. But the wind is super strong today and that's what's really a killer. A little side note here. From this point. Do you see this? You could literally go underground and not come up. You could go to Tokyo Station completely underground if you wanted to. So on a rainy day you could get here without having to go outside. There's taxi all over the place here so it's quite convenient to get around by taxi in this part of the city. You don't need to take the subway. You can walk anywhere and everywhere from Tokyo Station to Ginza. Very easy to walk around this part. And then as you see Tsukiji market is just a little hop over. We're already in Ginza. This is Ginza Yonchome.

00:30:40 John Daub: Now you can see that this is going to be news to some people. But this building which had the Seiko on the top of it. This round Doutor coffee shop. It's now being taken down. And I guess they're going to. It was just an iconic round shape on this intersection. I don't know what they're going to do with it yet. I haven't seen the plans. But if you look at the mural of it. It looks like they're doing something similar. But it was definitely an iconic building on this intersection. And it's sad to see it go. But I think it just had to go. The neon sign on the top of it is no longer there. But I'm sure that they're going to fix that up really fast. The Nissan building. Because the Sony building is under construction at the next intersection. Sony has moved a shop or its resources here. And you can see it's on the third floor. So you can go up there and try some of the new camera and some of the new gear.

00:32:18 John Daub: But this is one of the great department stores in Tokyo. Maybe one of the nicest toilets up on the tenth floor. I do admit that I might have gone in there for a visit. They're like gold toilets up there. But the clock here reads 1:26. I'm going to go up there. So it took us a good 30 minutes to get here as I predicted. It strikes on the hour. It's an iconic bell. It makes this neighborhood so cool when you hear some of the old school bells and the sounds from another era. It's cold. I can't feel my nose. But this is also the best time to be outside and walk around too. You have to get some blood going. Get some exercise. Walk around. And I could get some lunch as well.

00:33:26 John Daub: The Apple store is gone from over there. It's moved over to the other side. So let's just move on from there. I'm going to cross the street. Take you down to the final intersection we're going to call it. But Ginza is a really neat place. I think if you're visiting Tokyo definitely one of the stops that needs to be on your itinerary. But I was kind of surprised though when I was at Tsukiji Market you know and I saw that they have street food everywhere but then there's the signs like please don't walk with your food right. Don't eat your food. Like but how do you do that if you're at a street food market? Is anybody else like confused with that? I couldn't quite figure out what they're trying to tell us there with that sign. So maybe somebody watching can help decipher this.

00:34:25 John Daub: I just got waved to by some people who obviously have seen the show. How you doing? It's fun walking through this city and having everybody come to say hi. It's like family is here. So I appreciate it. I appreciate the warmth especially on a cold day like today. Now everybody knows the story of Sukiyabashi Jiro. This is at the next intersection. Tsujita... Sukiyabashi Jiro. I don't know if he's actually working at the restaurant anymore. His son has more or less taken over from reviews of viewers who have gone there. Paid the $300. I think it might be more now to go down there and have lunch or dinner. But seemed the movie, the documentary on Netflix really did not help him. He was already pretty busy as a restaurant owner with locals here. But when the tourists started to come in, they just didn't have the same culture and I think he might have lost his patience.

00:35:57 John Daub: What do the tourists know? Some people just have never had sushi before. They just know that this is a famous place. That's why not everybody wants media. So I'm somebody who tries to get permission to film when I go into restaurants and whatnot. I want to get the story. There's a lot of restaurants that are already extremely famous. They don't want you to film them because they don't want any more popularity. I remember I filmed the capsule hotel in Shinjuku back in the day. After that, the video went viral. After that, his capsule hotel was booming with tourists. It changed from the salarymen to the tourists of the day who came with big luggage. So he had to change his business plan a little bit. He was thankful but he wasn't as thankful. He was already pretty busy. So not everybody wants the attention that social media brings.

00:37:02 John Daub: Was Steve Jobs' favorite Japanese restaurant? I don't know about that. I think that between you and me, I think there's a lot of high-end sushi places in Tokyo. The attraction was that he was in his 90s and he's been doing it, the longevity of it. It's really good sushi. But there's other places too. So even if you're not a sushi lover, you can still go to a sushi restaurant. Just because you saw it in a Netflix drama doesn't make it the best. But it is good. All right, this is Tsukiji Bridge. That's the old Sony building which is now under construction. They made it a park for a while and now it's time for them to make the building. You can see how fast the clouds are going. This is the Tokyo Plaza which is a new shopping mall. Amazing views from this corner. Maybe you can see some of the tourists looking down on us. But you can lean in and look at everybody crossing the intersection from that point which is really cool. And this is quite a popular intersection, quite a busy intersection.

00:38:15 John Daub: Looks like Lotteria has really upped its game. The ultimate cheeseburger beyond the normal cheeseburger with really amazing melted cheese there. Now I'm getting hungry for a burger. How dare you put that there? It smells like a burger too. All right. I hope this was an interesting live stream for everybody. I'm going to have my friend Matt Ault on as a podcast this weekend. We'll see what his schedule is like. So we want to talk about toys and that experience. But I also want to point out that just a few days ago I was in Yokohama. I got a chance to see the Gundam statue there.

00:39:14 John Daub: But also I want you to check this out because this market is not as crowded and they give tours that are only 5,000 yen. And that's really impressive because you eat that when you go. They have all this free food from all of the vendors giving you food. And you get to see the maguro (tuna) cutting show which in itself is quite amazing. They have a maguro auction which is what people used to line up for hours to see in Tokyo. You could do it in Yokohama. They also had this freezer that was minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I walked into the freezer. It felt like it was a lot colder than I feel now. It's freaking cold! But it's 5,000 yen for the two hour tour. It's like a steal because the three Americans that were on the tour with me... You can actually see this. Where's like every single place that we stopped on this tour. They bring out like maguro or food. And it's like not normal maguro. They're so hospitable. They're giving you the otoro (fatty tuna), like the expensive maguro. And the guy's like this. I gotta raise the price of this tour because this is crazy. The three Americans that I saw there, I'm pretty sure they left the market completely full with some of the best and freshest seafood in the country. So check out those two live streams. They were just two days ago I was in Yokohama doing that. And it was a pretty cool experience. I was pretty surprised with it. And I did go to the Gundam. And by the way, this Gundam show is slated to end the end of March. So there's only about two and a half months left to go and see this thing. It's pretty incredible. It's massive. And it moves. And again, I don't know if it's because the rent was really high. But they're getting ready to get rid of this attraction in Yokohama. So maybe if you're in town, you're going to want to go see this before they get rid of that.

00:41:23 John Daub: That's all I got. All right. Thanks, everybody. I'll see you in another live stream. Probably tomorrow as I go back to get some food and go home and edit a video and warm up a little bit because it's freezing. Matane (see you later). It's like we moved from old Japan to new Japan. Look at this. It's pretty crazy. It's just like 30 minutes.