00:00:02 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Ikebukuro Station here in Tokyo. This is going to be an adventure where we're walking from right here at this intersection. There's a link in the description—they'll take you to Google Maps to tell you where I am and where we're starting. And then we're going to be heading down the street. Now for a lot of people coming to Tokyo for the first time, this is one of the neighborhoods that's high on the list of places to visit. And this should give you a pretty good overview of what you'll find here. We're going to be focusing on this side of the station, the Seibu side. I think this is Nishiguchi.

00:00:33 John Daub: And I am me. I'm John Daub. How you doing? Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I haven't been here for a couple of years. I think it was last year I might have come here once to talk about hotels and staying here. But this is a place I used to work at about 15 years ago on the other side teaching English. And it's a neighborhood that's very well known for having a lot of students because there are so many universities around this area. It's got a really cool vibe to it. It's younger. It's a little bit cheaper than Shinjuku and Shibuya, I think. And it's more laid back. It's also a portal that will take you up to Saitama. And you get a lot of people from there coming to visit this area.

00:01:03 John Daub: This is where I am. You can see just along the Yamanote Line from Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, and then eventually get to Ikebukuro. Those are the major stations on this side of the city. So let's go in here and take a look. Zooming in right now. The Imperial Palace is in the center. This is Toshima Ward, which is one of the 23 wards that make up the cities within Tokyo's metropolitan area. Tokyo's not actually a city like London is. Tokyo is a metropolitan area. It's like a state. It's a special city-state. So it's not really the same kind of a city. Within Tokyo are 23 cities. Toshima is one of them.

00:02:09 John Daub: There's the Seibu Department Store, which used to be the biggest department store in the world. It's massive in there. Easy to get lost, even underground. And you can see the Sunshine 60 building, which used to be Tokyo's tallest building, I believe. And that's where I am, that blue mark at that intersection. Between the station and the entertainment stuff. And we're going to be walking down this street. So let's do that. Let's do that right now. All right. Good introduction. Now, the signal is not so strong in this area. So I do apologize in advance. If it does, just bear with me. And if you're watching the playback, it might skip around a little bit.

00:02:43 John Daub: But you can see this intersection is a... You could go wrong here. If you take a left, don't worry. You'll get over. You'll see when we cross the street. There's lots of stores, department stores, shops over to the left as well. But we're going to go straight down this because this is a... Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know how it's changed. So I'm looking forward to experiencing this with you. I lost my voice shouting at the naked man festivities two days ago. I'm still recovering. My body is in pain a little bit. You can see if you walk straight, you'll get to... I believe it's a big camera. If it's still there, there's a big Don Quijote. Very colorful, don't you think? Thank you. UFO Bob is in the house moderating. Here's a blood drive going on. People trying to get you to donate, to help out.

00:03:48 John Daub: Interesting. So there's this Hello Kitty shop. I can't remember what was here and what wasn't. I think that Lotteria was here. Whenever I walk around, I'm struck by what has changed in the city of Tokyo. Everything is always changing. This is why it's worth revisiting a place. It's not just Hello Kitty stuff. It looks like it's Sanrio stuff. Shakey's Pizza. This is where kids go because it's cheap and it's pizza.

00:04:18 John Daub: Let's see what kind of deals they got at Shakey's Pizza. Oh my gosh. This is an institution. So it's a pizza buffet with french fries, pasta, and pizza for 2,100 yen, or that's $15. $14 maybe. Kids 4 to elementary are $12.50, and then junior high school kids are $19.50. That is dirt cheap. And a lunchtime buffet is $16.80? What? That's like $10 for all-you-can-eat pizza at Shakey's. Respect. Although it looks like they upgraded their pizza. That looks a lot better than the garbage that they had before.

00:05:06 John Daub: Also, when you do come to this area, don't forget to look up, because a lot of stuff will be on the 3rd, 4th, 5th floors sometimes. Things that you might be interested in, you don't find it right away. It's still entertaining. It's not quite as busy. I guess the kids are still in school. Dead object. has changed right off the bat here you go Sega world is gone and the more sophisticated GiGO which is the company that took over a lot of the game centers. There's another GiGO down the street we'll walk over there this one looks like it's more UFO catchers and gacha pon maybe we can even walk in a little bit.

00:05:52 John Daub: Wow this is really it's a baby star ramen dried ramen it's kind of fun just the way that they've made a presentation of everything it's kind of fun Wow look you got cup noodles as well that's kind of fun there's smaller ones oh look they got like these little dry mochi I should try to get you one and look there's like a Hina Matsuri (Girls' Day dolls festival) was yesterday kind of related to that that's so cool interesting a lot of game centers just want to cross here.

00:07:10 John Daub: Adoras again on the first floor usually upstairs will have arcade games so if you don't see what you're looking for on the first floor they've moved a lot of those arcade games up to the second and the third floors although this GiGO looks weird it looks like there's some sort of restaurant up there right people are eating on this on the second floor of the GiGO so if you're curious wander in there take a look oh this is an institution as well Round One I was this here before I can't remember I never went into here but that they've got karaoke they've got like batting cages bowling alleys all sorts of amusement the blacklight bowling is always fun I guess it's a with the blue one is right there and they have video games as well.

00:08:09 John Daub: It's the kind of place where you want you come with a bunch of friends and if your college kids that's what you do you hang out with with your friends and this is one of those streets that is just it as I said it's an institution it's been around forever. I actually came here to this area because I did the final scene, the final, final scene, oh my gosh this has been a marathon, of the John Manjiro story. I think it's at the Zoshigaya Cemetery which is near here and that's John Nakahama, John Manjiro's final resting spot right there. The kanji for Nakahama is different than in the village. I see that he became a samurai and was buried in this cemetery. I think during World War II there was a, it was sort of destroyed and then put back together. A lot of famous people in here and this is the final scene, I guess his resting place seemed to be the place to end it. It's historical, you know, it's a lot of history here.

00:09:10 John Daub: And I walked from here, you can see the Sunshine 60 building in the distance and here we are in the center of entertainment. This of course did not exist when Manjiro was alive. He died at the... Was it the end of the 19th century? That's a big Uniqlo. It's a big Matsumoto Kiyoshi. Of course you can get your eye drops and masks and tissues and all sorts of cosmetics in there as well. Namco, that's another game center. Wow! Nitori which is a home furnishing store which is always interesting to walk in there. I get my bedding for my futon in there. Or futon as Americans say it. Buton is the Japanese way. So I get my stuff in there, tables and you know it's a little bit cheaper than Ikea.

00:10:10 John Daub: Is it American? Like if I don't say it the American way half the people are like, what? Oh there's some people in cosplay there. Or is that how they normally dress? I'm always kind of curious. But this is a... What is this here? Hold on. This looks like a competitor to Matsumoto Kiyoshi, kind of another drug store. And there's another GiGO. I guess this used to be Sega. Crane games on the first, second and the cafe on the fourth, second and third floor and then a cafe up above.

00:10:47 John Daub: I don't know how the business has evolved but the game centers, the arcade games, the console games have really put them out of business because you can do this stuff at home. And the pandemic, whatever, if there was a final nail in the coffin, it was the pandemic that really did in the game centers here. Because you guys weren't coming. A lot of foreign tourists just weren't coming to Ikebukuro. This is a massive Nitori. They seem to have taken over the Sunshine City entrance. I think those used to be Tokyu Hands or something. Tokyu Hands. You remember that? I think it's gone. It just became a Nitori, which is... You know, I do like going in there and just looking around. You find some Japanese tatami pillows and things like this that you might want to take back as gifts. Can you bring tatami home? I think so.

00:11:37 John Daub: But GiGO really owns this town. TGI Fridays. What? Like, I don't know if I'm ever going to go back in there. I had maybe the worst meal that I had in Japan about a year and a half ago at a TGI Fridays. Everything was just stale. The meat, the buns, the bathrooms weren't clean. This is a Tokyo Disneyland. I think Fridays in general, the chain has had some trouble, which makes me sad. But I think tourists will stop in there. Those that are tired of sushi and onigiri and stuff. They're like, hey, I just want a burger. It's kind of a neat stop in. There's a Hard Rock Cafe.

00:12:25 John Daub: That's when I first came to Japan. I came to Japan in 1998, 26 years ago about now. If you got sick of Japanese food, you didn't have a lot of options. You could make spaghetti. I learned how to make pizza with yeast and flour and hand kneading it. I would make my own pizza, have pizza parties. That was a skill I made sure I learned before I left for Japan because it was like $50 for pizza and it really wasn't very good because the yen was, it got pretty strong for a while. Like 5,000 yen for pizza. What? So the other option we had was McDonald's. And then you had Hard Rock Cafe for the dining experience in Nagoya and that was it.

00:13:11 John Daub: So this is that hot sauce that a lot of people like, right? What is it called? Sriracha. That's interesting. 700 yen from a vending machine. I guess if you have some street food and you need it, you're like, wait. It's not spicy. Oh look, dude, let's get some spicy sauce. Seems to be the way to go. This one is dashi. What? So you can get some soup in there. Now tourists have been known to buy this and try to drink it. So please don't. It's for cooking, which is weird that they put it there, but there you go.

00:13:46 John Daub: I smell something caramelly. It smells like Tokyo Disneyland. Smells like that sweet caramel popcorn. Give you an idea of what the streets of Ikebukuro smells like. That's a lot better than Shinjuku and Shibuya where I smell like trash and human pee sometimes. Those are the least, oh that's where the popcorn I think has come from. I don't think that they're the cleanest places in Tokyo, which is why when you ask me where to stay, I never recommend Shinjuku or Shibuya unless you're young and you're looking for like a capsule hotel or you're literally going there just to drink and to be entertained. I don't recommend it as a tourist. I don't.

00:14:30 John Daub: And look, that's why when people ask me, where do you recommend? I will often, I'm hesitant to give any recommendations on where to stay. This is a good place. The reason why is because everybody's different. Everybody has different purposes. I don't know who you are. I don't know what your budget is. Look if you're going to ask me, I would say stay in, you know, Asakusabashi or Asakusa. You could stay in the more traditional areas up in the, a little bit cheaper. Ryogoku. Ryogoku is not a bad place if you're looking for a budget because it's within striking distance of everything off of the Oedo Line.

00:15:08 John Daub: I see, hey, Michael Sasano is in the house. Aloha John. Love you. Kibukuro. Seeing it now makes me wish I was there walking around with you. I know. Come on. Get on a flight. The Bradshaw Studios here. It's great to see you. And I see Jared. Aloha, Jared. We got, we got our Hawaiian family in the house here. We'll be in Japan in two weeks. What? Niigata look fun. We'll be in Yuzawa soon. Wow. Well, I'll probably still be snowing there, Jared. Well, thank you. The festival was good. For Jared, I'm going to pull up a picture here. There's more maids. I think they're getting off of work, don't you? I think they're finishing with work and that that's their get up.

00:16:01 John Daub: But I got to be honest with you. It's not really something I understand well. I have a mother. I had a son who went to college. He got a specialty in PE, she got a Master's degree in PE. I want to have a family that's more, you know, they got robots in their house. They've got robots at the Jonathan's. It's kind of neat. Leo wants to go there. Even though the food is, they get robots in there that come to serve you. So, the revolution has started. A lot of people are losing jobs that weren't being filled anyway because nobody wanted to be hired in these jobs, filling them with robots that can do a pretty good job.

00:16:36 John Daub: This is kind of new. Yeah, Ikebukuro, this is interesting here. Ikebukuro is getting a reputation as being one of the new Akihabara. There's a lot of, or at least I think there's one really big figures store or hobby store that it just makes it, I think it's more navigable, more fun than Akihabara. But I can understand why Akihabara is attractive. It's got a brand, you know, it's really strong. Ikebukuro's brand is not, it's not really as established. When you think of otaku, manga, anime, video games, it's Akihabara. But over the last, over the pandemic, without the tourists coming here, I don't think that Akihabara really did well. But people live in this area. Not a lot of people live in Akihabara, but people live in this area. So it's a big hub. So seems to have done pretty good.

00:17:32 John Daub: But the identity of Ikebukuro to non-Japanese is not as strong as Akihabara. The Toshima Civic Center, so I'm sure they have performances and concerts. You know, this is also a place of art. The Metropolitan Hall on the other side, Kanae has danced there. I think it's called the Dollhouse Stage. I can't remember. There's a Toho Cinema over there to see movies. That's interesting. I haven't done that in years. There's another hall. So a lot of art performances are held here. Okay, yeah, this is the place. So maybe because you're seeing like maids here, perhaps this anime culture is really translating well to Ikebukuro. Check it out. Animate. I remember walking past this shop and some people were telling me about it. This is sort of the new, new thing.

00:18:36 John Daub: Ikebukuro's, I mean, I don't know. I didn't have the... The feeling that Ikebukuro was like an anime, like one of those otaku towns, right? But it kind of is. I guess this is a place where you can buy figures and hobby stuff. And here's some gachapon that's not really interesting to me. I don't know a lot about it. I'm not a huge manga or anime fan, but they have got a lot of stuff in here. Studio Ghibli stuff. Wow. They're adding so many new things. The Studio Ghibli seems to be expanding a great deal right now. Right? There's a park in Nagoya, amusement park. It looks really interesting. That's one of the places I have to take Leo and Kanae one of these days.

00:19:41 John Daub: Let's go... Trying to see... Trying to recall which direction. Let's go this way. There's karaoke above here. This is just in the space where I showed you on that Google Earth map. Super interesting area. The best time to come to Ikebukuro. Again, we saw that the Shakey's had that $10 all-you-can-eat lunch and pasta deal. Great for families. But I think if you're coming here for dinner, this is a good place to go out drinking, get some beers, have entertainment. But's more authentic than Shibuya. It just feels like the people are more authentic. There's more locals here. So feels authentic. There you go. Yeah. Shibuya's kind of like... Everybody's there. It's just... It's too big and it's really touristy. Ikebukuro is never really touristy. I never felt like it was a touristy place. It's a livable place.

00:20:53 John Daub: They do have their... What do you call them? The sakura fraps. It's got like a bazillion calories. I think all of it is sugar. But looks good. I do like these like... I like these. The streets have these little parks where you can sit down and these are kind of... You see these bars here? They're kind of leaning seats so you can lean up against them, eat a bento or something, take out, have a crepe, which is a pocket pizza?

00:21:31 Passerby: Wow. That looks... Oh. You want to eat? Yeah. I'm hungry. We didn't eat anything. Yeah. It's a new place. Yeah. When did they open? April. April? Last year? Yes. That's great, you can order food here. I think it's better to eat here. I agree. I'm not hungry. Where do you live? Overseas. See you later. I'm hungry so I'll tell you. What? I'm hungry. Oh you're hungry? That's good. That's awesome. Thank you. I'll see you later. In Ikebukuro. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye.

00:25:24 John Daub: Oh there's a... Oh I know the president of this company. The Treasure Box vending machines. He reconditioned book vending machines from the 1980s. Painted them up, and then he put all of these objects in there. Mystery boxes. There's 16 different boxes. He refills them all the time. And every time I go by, he comes. Cheese. He comes in a station wagon refilling them. He's like, John-san. And I go, hey. I kind of forgot his name. I have his business card. It's been about five years since I saw him. No, no. No, just right before the pandemic. Yeah, it seems like four years ago. Wow. This job, you get to meet so many interesting people.

00:26:23 John Daub: You know what? For Jared, let me see if Jared, I can pull up a couple of photos I have from the festival. I added some of these to Instagram. So you can see it was really snowing pretty hard a couple of days ago. You can see this is me praying in water. That's me on the closest to the camera. The water was, I think it was one degree Celsius. It was basically freezing. It's as cold as it can be without turning to ice. But yeah, I was not, you know, feeling wonderful. This was after I got pretty serious. A lot of people in there. We were just going around this local train saying Samuel Samuel. And I don't know. It's kind of therapeutic. It was really calming thing to do. I just kept just saying the chanting the same thing. And we were all walking around in a circle. This is me after I got out of the bath. You can see I'm somewhat in pain. I think I was screaming. I don't think I've been this cold since the last time I did a naked man festival.

00:27:38 John Daub: But you know. When you come to Japan, you have to do stuff. Doesn't have to be that. And by the way, I asked, are you going to have women doing this? And he said, yeah, in the future, we intend to have women coming to do this. They have a brown outfit that I've seen the other ones where they have brown outfits because the numbers are declining in these traditional festivals. Here's the Mister Donut. I've been here a couple of times with Jennifer. I remember in the past they had their Sakura doughnuts right now, too. They're so good. You can see them up there. You know what they're doing? That the campaign that they have is really unique. They've got four different Sakura doughnuts, one like zero percent, 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent and 100 percent or something like that. Or is it 20? It's they started 25 percent Sakura to fully bloomed and then to the petals falling off and they look kind of like that with the fully bloomed one. So that's kind of a neat way to do it this year.

00:28:43 John Daub: There's so many different cherry blossom foods. Oh, and anybody who's a patron supporter, the demo package this month will be cherry blossom Sakura theme. So I'll be sending you lots of confections that have that Sakura and a little bit of matcha sometimes because this is the season for the matcha desserts in them. And yeah, I'll be sending them out probably about 10 days from now. So please join and you'll get a postcard as well. Help us support the channel. Hey, the JVlog is here. Thank you. Welcome.

00:29:26 John Daub: Weird question. Never found anyone who could answer. Worried about. I just went. Your question went away. Hold on a second. Worried about running or losing my shoes. I wear size 17 to 19. Holy smokes. Yeah. Japan does it in centimeters, not size. Like, do you know shops with really large shoes? All right. The sumo wrestlers have usually feet around the same size. So, Ryogoku. There's a shop. It's a shop called Lions Door. And not only do they have like large shoes, but they have large underwear, large T-shirts. You may want to check there. Shinjuku has a big and tall shop. And I believe that there was one. There used to be one in Aoyama. But if you just search Tokyo big and tall, you'll find a bunch of shops. I forget the name of. Also, there's Amazon.co.jp. They pretty much have everything. You can try to search on there and have it sent to your hotel. That's another thing. I can get just about anything on Amazon now. So if you send it, send it to your hotel, you'll be fine. Usually in Japan, if you're in Tokyo, it sometimes will come the same day. If you order in the morning, it'll be there in the evening.

00:30:45 John Daub: All right. Here's the here's the other Main Street. And we're going to wrap around from here. I'm curious to see what has changed as we I finish this up at Ikebukuro Station. What an adventure. Kirin City. That's like a beer garden with beer food. They have some decent lunches, but not a lot of people eat the lunches there. Yeah, it's very interesting. The menu always changes to there's a ramen place over there. Ikebukuro Shoten. That's a jewelry shop. And a lady has just bought the jewelry and the store clerk was standing with the door open in a very polite position until she turned the corner. I noticed this and then she bowed after the client turned the corner. And then she went back into the shop. So she was waiting outside for about 30 seconds.

00:32:07 John Daub: This looks like is this a Hakata ramen. A lot of ramen places. There's a good old Fuji Soba, which is 24 hours a day. You can get some good soul food of Japan. Soba, katsudon, curry rice sets for 580 yen. I think it was. So it doesn't look like it's changed too much. There's the Parco in the distance and we're going to be walking towards that area. There's a Yamada Denki and the big camera. So that those are still there. Let's cross the street and we'll walk along there back here. And on the other side, there's an entertainment district on the other side of the tracks. I'll show you where you can go to get there real quickly. It's more vibrant at night. A lot of yakiniku places here. Ikebukuro that side is very famous for the yakiniku restaurants. There must be about I don't know like 20 or 30 of them on that other side. I never counted. I went to a couple of them after work with other English teachers back in the day. We didn't make that much money to go and spend for yakiniku. I mean yakiniku can be a little pricey. English teachers are somewhat frugal. We were more there to save money.

00:33:58 John Daub: Alright, there's the station. We're not going that way. Let's walk down the alleys. Or is it? It's kind of an adult area. There's a grilled meat barbecue burger place. More ramen. Ramen lunch with gyoza. Oh man. That looks pretty good. The weather's nice today. It's not going to be for the rest of the week though. So that's another reason to get out and do something like this today.

00:34:54 John Daub: So you can see here. Haneage. Age meaning like deep fried stuff. There's a pachinko parlor of course. We're kind of in a seedier area near the rail tracks. At night. You know it's. Japan is pretty safe. You don't have anything to worry about. There's a love hotel. And you can see. Day use. Right. So you can rent a room for like $17 for an hour. I think I would need at least 90 minutes. Or if you come in after 7 p.m. Wow. That's really cheap. You could stay here for 6,000 yen or about $40. What? And if you check in after. If you check in two hours later, it's even cheaper. It's 4,400 yen. Oh my gosh.

00:36:00 John Daub: All right. That was odd. I didn't want to record. There's somebody coming out. So I turned the camera away. But she looked like a high school kid. Well, a little creepy. People are entitled to privacy. But I saw that. I was like, hey, I'm just going to give it to myself. It's not my business. She looked a little too young. It's always smart. Don't leave together. Somebody older just left. It's not my business. I don't know. This is a little surprising. I hope that wasn't his teacher. That's kind of just slightly creepy.

00:37:05 John Daub: All right, right here behind the station. There's an underground passageway that will take you to the other side. And these buildings over here, you can see there's a Don Quijote hotel right there. This is there's a lot of entertainment restaurants back here on this other side. If you can't find what you're looking for on this side, that's more of a traditional entertainment kind of a place. That's a big Don Quijote whole day. You see that? And here's the Itoen truck. I'm trying to find that as a Tomica car for Leo. Tomica car like matchbox cars. This is also very Ikebukuro. Do you see this? I believe this is where they burn the garbage for Toshima Ward. So it looks like a big smokestack. You could. It's also something kind of like a landmark. So when you always look up in the sky, you can see that. That's something if I get really lost, I just look up at that and I know I go towards that, you can get to the station.

00:38:14 John Daub: I that Ringo apple pie shop used to be here. Well, that looks like a pair of original Jordans. I remember back in the 80s. A lot of kids had that at the school. I went to and some kids would use a marker and paint there. Oh, no. Here's the place to go under. I think I'm a little lost myself. Yeah, a lot of kids would take markers and then make their own Jordans with Converse and stuff. I remember that was way over talking like mid 1980s or something. Yeah, this is the way V Road. I think it's called. It'll take you under the tracks to the other side. That going through the maze of station. I had a Ringo apple pie place is still here for those that are interested.

00:39:24 John Daub: Japanese people look a lot younger than you think she's wearing a high school uniform and wasn't cosplay. You can tell usually because I just made an episode on Japanese school uniforms. That was definitely a real uniform. Oh, yeah, it's a lot of I was she wearing that because of the Hina Matsuri. No, because the girls at age three they had they celebrate the Hina Matsuri going to the shrine. I believe I don't know too much about it. But this class cake place looks really good right next to the Ringo apple pie shop. There's a Calbee in the basement there. Wow. You give a Kudo is the place for sugar. All there's so much junk food and sweets in the basement here under the station. It's pretty crazy.

00:40:13 John Daub: The one place that I do used to go to before the pandemic a lot was that beer garden on the top of the Seibu Department Store. I don't even know if they still do that, but probably this year. I'm might make a couple of stops in there. Although I rarely drink alcohol these days. I did have some a couple days ago after the festival, but you have no choice because the old-timers are putting it in front of you. You have no choice. And they're not. Even participating. This place Truffe is is a bakery. It's so popular. If you do you kind of curious about it. They make really good bread. I stopped eating bread why I've got an awful diet. It's just not fun anymore.

00:40:54 John Daub: We often meet in front of the hand statue here. And this is a GiGO East entrance and then boom. That's it. We're back at this. Well, not sort of back but I'm at the station. So GiGO station very busy. One of the big hubs. Of Tokyo and certainly a place that's worthy of your time. If you've never been to here definitely you're going to want to put it on to your itinerary. Spend an afternoon walking around the smoking area in the center. Wow. Tokyo has done a pretty good job of banning smoking and some of the wards. Chiyoda Ward is where I live Central City. No smoking allowed walking around the streets. There's some smoking areas but Ginza has banned it. So. Get a 3000 yen fine I believe if they catch you.

00:41:58 John Daub: All right. This is the part where you write in. Where are you from? Where are you watching from? I'm always happy to take your questions. I didn't. I didn't catch more than a few of them. Was walking home from the community the other day. Someone was grilling steak on the balcony. That's a big no-no. But at the same time I do it too. Sometimes I take a fan and I blow it out so they can't really find me. But if you if they see you sometimes you're not allowed to have open. Fires. It depends on where you live as well. I never understood that. I like a good barbecue. I guess because the smoke gets into your neighbor's houses and stuff they don't want that. People live quite close. I've tried the pies before. They're good. Trust me on that. Seeing me with dripping sauce down my face. It's not the greatest of looks here.

00:42:54 John Daub: John you missed my joke. Well, if you say that you have to copy-paste it again. Things can get lost in here. What was the joke? Watching from Los Angeles. Hey, okay. Home of Shohei Ohtani who got married recently. Just a little side note. Everybody loves Shohei Ohtani. Most humble guy. But he does not know United States at all. He thinks he can hide his marriage and not talk about his wife. The best thing to do is to talk about it. Answer all the questions of the media. Get it out of the way. And then people will leave you alone. The more he drags us out the more the media is just going to get all over him. It's not a joke. That's not the Japanese media, alright? He doesn't have the same rights as he has in Japan. Just like when you come to Japan you don't have the same rights as you do in the United States. The media is going to get all over this. Shohei Ohtani said he got married a few days ago. The guy is almost a billionaire. Ohtani-san, please introduce us to your wife. To us. Please introduce us to your wife. Really. And get it out of the way. It's just going to be... It's going to be something that's going to... Trust me. I know the way the US works too. And it's pretty crazy. Just let it out. Transparency.

00:44:21 John Daub: I like this area. I like it better than Shibuya, Shinjuku and Harajuku. It's chill. It's got everything else that you need. It's got more authenticity because I think people live around here. People... locals are here. And you feel that. And I think that that makes it... should be one of the top places on your itinerary. Do we have a plan to do a livestream with Peter? We do. Actually, he's not that far away from me. He's at the old lady Harajuku at Sugamo, I believe, today. But I got to get back and edit. And I was here for the cemetery. We just didn't meet up today. But I told Peter von Gomm we got to do something because it's been too long. And he said, okay. So maybe later this week, although the weather's not good. But for those that are waiting for Peter, no, we didn't have a falling out. He's just been extremely busy as have I, traveling around. We just have not been able... We did have lunch together. But we don't like... when we meet, hang out, we don't want to livestream all the time together. I went out and we had a pizza. He bought me pizza for my birthday. And we had a couple of beers. There's nothing going on there. It's okay. He's doing well. He's a good guy. Check out his channel, Peter von Gomm in Japan. He's an Only in Japan title call for the main channel. I've known him for decades, seems like. So thanks for your concern, everybody.

00:45:41 John Daub: I was looking through a phone booth. It's now extinct. All right, everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. I'll see you in another livestream, probably tomorrow as I take you in another area of Tokyo and then I'll see if I can get out to the countryside. We do intend to take Leo to Tokyo Disneyland for his birthday, so maybe I'll see some of you in the park in a couple of weeks. But until then, have a good day. Have a good night. And I'll see you in the next livestream. Matane. Wow, big bus.