00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to the front of Tokyo Station, or in other words, Yaesu-guchi. Yaesu is one of the places in Tokyo that is undergoing a lot of construction. These three or four buildings here are holdouts on a construction project that has a massive—I think it's Bulgari Hotel—some luxury shops inside of this one. Over here is a building that was just completed at the beginning of the year. And yeah, these are all going to be gone. So we're starting to see the end of the old Showa era right here in front of Tokyo Station.

00:39 John Daub: This is a used ticket shop, you see this? And yeah, there's not a lot of people who know about this across the street. But if you want to support them, I guess it's also like a pawn shop. You can get pawned items. The other buildings have been all removed and then this one seems like they've sold out. This is historical. This old building back from the early 60s, I believe. The Okubo building. And it had a lot of these loan sharks. I don't know if they're loan sharks. You can get loans at extremely high rates, taken out of your salary if you need the money. These are the kind of companies that do it. Reikyu, Promise, Acom. And I wouldn't do it, but a lot of people, if you're strapped for cash, they go here. But it looks like that building's going to come down.

01:31 John Daub: And here are the cranes for the new buildings over there. So it's kind of exciting and also sad to see it go. And then this one here, this looks like a building from the, I don't know, like mid-70s, early maybe early 80s. It looks like they're going to be taking it down. Some of the buildings, looks like the floors are now vacant and they have some scaffolding there maybe used to take it down. And then there's this weird looking building on the other end I'm going to show you. And then we're going to go over here to end the stream. Some Kawazu sakura (early-blooming cherry blossoms) blooming over there. We're going to go take a look at that real close up. It's amazing because you're starting to feel spring despite the fact that it's a little chilly today.

02:14 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Wow. So I came here because I had to get some things for Patreon supporters which I was able to do. Or Daimyo supporters. Thank you everybody. Yeah, you know, I think this is really big news. Every time I come here it changes just a little bit. And over there they have the flame tower. Be Japan's largest skyscraper over there. They keep one-upping them. Just at the end of last year, they opened up the Azabudai Hills near Roppongi, and that is considered, I guess, Toranomon, Roppongi area, that's considered the tallest building in Japan right now until this one's finished in about three or four years' time. And who knows, there might be something that I missed somewhere along the way.

02:59 John Daub: Okay, I'm going to walk over to that Kawazu sakura. I think it's really nice. But you also get a chance to look at Tokyo Station in the afternoon here on a weekday as people just finished their lunch about an hour ago, and now they're going back to work, or some people are coming back from vacation. This is the Yaesu side compared to the Marunouchi side. Let me show you the Marunouchi side right now.

03:37 John Daub: In this video I took while we're en route. So this is where I am in Tokyo, and that's Tokyo Station on the left side. You can see the Shinkansen platforms, and that construction site is the one that I just showed you. It's pretty massive. And this side has gotten really big really fast. There's the construction site there on the left side, and that used to be where a lot of old Showa era, like 1950s, 60s buildings, a lot of drinking establishments, old school places, had a lot of characters. You can see the old school buildings, old school characteristics, 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s buildings in there, completely wiped out that block and some of the surrounding areas. And this is the new building, the Hibiya, sort of the Yaesu Midtown, and there's some really nice restaurants in here as well, in the basement. It's kind of neat to stop in there. In fact, the Yaesu Chikagai (underground shopping area), which is the basement area of Tokyo Station on this side, is a place I go to a lot. They've got a Bubby's which is a New York food chain, like a little bistro, but the place was really nice.

04:47 John Daub: And you saw the Marunouchi side on the other side. That's already quite built up. But we have here, what is it? Is that a kawazu? Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong. Mayako Kobai. Mayako Kobai. I'm reading it through the screen so I can zoom in a little bit. It is a sakura tree, but it's not a, wow, it's not a, it's a different variety. So this is what, it's a Mayako sakura [?]. I never heard of it. And you can see it's in full bloom, which is really nice. It looks like something between an ume (plum) blossom and a sakura tree. But this one blooms a little bit early, at the end of February. That's just stunning.

05:40 John Daub: Man, you're starting to feel Tokyo's spring just because of the Kawazu variety of cherry blossoms in this one. Wow, the pink is really striking along the dark bark of the cherry blossoms. This one. And look at that. Is that the branch is pink? Yeah, the branch is kind of pink. That's so cool. And with the blue skies here, look at the contrast on that. That's stunning. There's just so much beauty in the city sometimes. Yeah, you don't have to go far to look for it here in Tokyo. You can see the new and the old branches, the colors of them giving away. We'll zoom in on these. It's a little digital zoom, but it gives you a little bit more intimate feel of them dancing here in the wind and right off of Tokyo Station. It is very much like a postcard view. I would agree with you there. Very nice. Ellen is in love. I see that. I see the comments coming in. Thanks, guys. One simple tree. Stop for a couple of minutes and appreciate nature. And it is certainly awesome, at least to me. Okay. And that's right here, right in front of Tokyo Station.

07:11 John Daub: There's people taking pictures, too. There's a lot of people taking pictures. I'm taking pictures of it. Yeah, there you go. I'm in front of Tokyo Station. It's not very far. There's the entrance. I'm quite often here. Again, there's the Hitachino Brewery where you can get a beer before you leave up there on the second floor. There's some snacks. And there's the JR Rail Cafe in there. I also came here because I got something. Here, I want to show it to you. It's kind of neat. Boom. This is a JR Pass. I just got a JR East Pass right there for the Niigata area because on Saturday, I'm going to the Naked Man Festival in Urasa, and I'm also going tomorrow to Shimoda in Shizuoka, and this pass allows me to do that.

08:05 John Daub: I'll be going to Shimoda to film something on the black ship, Commodore Perry's reopening of Japan. Shimoda is a very important city for that, where they signed the treaty, and I need one more scene for a video I'm going to upload ASAP. It's good for five days. I'm going to be there for a while. It's 27,000 yen. At the exchange rate, it's about the same for Americans as it was three or four years ago, but if you're not a tourist, you can get this as well. If you're a Japanese resident, you can get this pass that allows you to go to Niigata and all the way down to Shimoda for five days for 27,000 yen. That is a steal, and I think I can go to Nagano as well. So, this ended up being cheaper than buying the tickets piece by piece. I was able to get a pass, and you notice that the passes just come as a paper ticket. Like this, not in a folding pass with a bunch of paper. So, you can just put it through the turnstiles, and you don't have to go and check at the window every time you go in, but if for some reason it doesn't work, then you have to show the pass, and it's okay. Sometimes the magnetic part gets disturbed.

09:11 John Daub: What do you guys think? You happy for my pass? Making you famous. I don't think they care. Oh, here's one. We got a live one here. You can see the... It's really windy, so I can imagine why they don't want to go up in the sky. They'll hang out here. Super windy today. Just be careful when you get out there. There's stuff flying around.

09:50 John Daub: All right, everybody, that's all I got. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to Shimoda. As I said, I'm taking a train around 8 a.m., but I'm hoping I can bring you on this train. It is a special train that takes you to the south of Shimoda. I think it's kind of a unique one, and I'll either live stream from the train with an ekiben (station bento), or I'll live stream as I'm getting on the train, and you can see a little bit of Tokyo through the window there, but I want to share the experience with you, and if I have some time, I'll try to live stream from Shimoda, which is a really interesting part of... I think that's still Shizuoka, right? Or is that Kanagawa? I think it might be Kanagawa. Yeah. It's kind of a neat part of Kanagawa down there on the peninsula. It has a really long history, and I'm kind of excited about it, because I haven't... I can't remember if I've been there or not. I think I've been there once. And Kawazu, where the Kawazu sakura is, the town of Kawazu is right next to Shimoda, so if I have some time, I might stop there really quickly before I come back to Tokyo, because Wednesday I have a shoot in Shinjuku for the main channel as well. There's a lot of stuff going on.

10:53 John Daub: Michael Susano's here! Change is always good. Yeah, this is the building that is also holding out. It's quite a unique-looking building. You can see here it's got, like, these contours to it. This is some kind of university, I thought. But it looks like they've sold out. There's still some lights on inside there. But if this building goes the way of change, that's kind of sad, because it's kind of a neat-looking building. You can see there's still some lights in there and curtains and stuff, so people are working. But for how long? I don't know. By 2025, this area is going to be completely different, and you will have been here with me, seeing it as it changes. Matane (see you later). See you tomorrow! There's my ride. See you tomorrow!