00:02 John Daub: Welcome to the top of the Kite Building. This is Tokyo's best train viewing platform. As you see, the Shinkansen coming in right now. I was just the other day up at that building right behind there. You see the Tokyo Midtown Yaesu where the green trees are? I was there about a week ago. I'm in Tokyo Station. That's the Tokaido Shinkansen. I think that's the Keihin-Tohoku line coming in. That's coming from Kyoto.

00:46 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Just for a few minutes, I thought I'd bring you up to here to one of the better viewing places. You can just see the tip right there of the Tohoku Shinkansen. Look at that. Look at that Toki green. You know how many times I was on that corner there? Right where those two people are taking selfies with the Tohoku Shinkansen. Maybe that is the fastest Shinkansen. I think it is the fastest if it's still going over 350 kilometers per hour up there in the north of Tokyo.

01:23 John Daub: But you can see down here, Tokyo Station is pretty quiet. This is the white sail-like side of the Yaesu exit of Tokyo Station. This here is the Marunouchi side you can see. The old one from 1912 or so. I came here to get the stamps for the postcard club. If you guys haven't joined yet, that's this month's postcard from just about two weeks ago. I was here at Shirakawa-go. I'm going to be sending these out tomorrow. So if you want to get one, my homies, join the postcard club.

02:03 John Daub: Alright, as we see a pretty cool view of the Yamanote line going in both directions. Both directions at the same time. That's just super cool. And we see this is the Hokuriku Shinkansen I believe that just pulled into the station here. From the top you get this really cool sound of all the trains going by, the electric trains. It sounds like an electric train set.

02:39 John Daub: But if you look down, you can see the Hato bus coming. Oh, here comes the Shinkansen. Just caught it. You can see the Hato bus loading up, taking tourists around the city. I have yet to take a Hato bus in the last 20 years. I think the last time I did it was when I first came to Japan. They've been here forever. But if you look down underneath the tracks, and there's a lot of tracks here cutting through central Tokyo. You can see the offices to the Hato bus, those yellow places. You'd want to come to the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station and you can get on one of these no-top buses. You could actually get the Tomy car, which is like a matchbox car. Leo has that one right there. And it's kind of cool. It's one of his favorites. It's hard to miss. Yellow bus that goes around the city. If you sit on the top, you get a nice view. Maybe not in the rainy weather, but certainly on sunny days it's really nice.

03:46 John Daub: Let's see if we can see. I'm always looking out for Dr. Yellow, but I think it goes around 10 o'clock in the morning here. And then comes back to Tokyo around this time. It goes back and forth between Tokyo and Osaka. Usually on Mondays or Tuesdays, from what I've been told. Oh! Here we got a train here coming in. That is the Narita Express. Train geeks will know right away.

04:34 John Daub: It's not the Narita Express? What is that then? I always thought it was the Narita Express. Sometimes I'm wrong. If it's not, what is it? I always thought it was shaped like that. I've even ridden... That's the Joban Line Limited Express. Thank you WB Travels. Good call. It's been ages. I have not ridden the Narita Express in about 25 years since I first came to Japan. I just take the buses or the local trains. It does have that bulbous front to it. That's what I thought. But you can clearly see the NEX on the Narita Express, and we did not see that. So, thank you for correcting the record here. It's important to get it right.

05:33 John Daub: But I love it! You can get the entire train from up here. Here comes the train! It's not going very fast when it's coming into Tokyo. Decelerating. It's kind of cool to pan like this and catch it. An action shot. And you can see, it's that long. It takes forever to decelerate. But because there's 16 pretty long cars, it'll get there. In this direction is the Tokaido Shinkansen, the one you see right there, the white one with the blue streak down the side. That's going back to Osaka and Kyoto. So, this is the terminus. This is the end of the line.

06:29 John Daub: And if you're thinking of getting Shinkansen tickets, you don't really need a reserved seat for this, because this is the origin. You're always going to be able to get a seat from here. It's at Shinagawa that you're probably going to want to get a reserved seat to make sure that you have something. But you can go juseki (non-reserved). I think its cars are 1-2-3, maybe 1-2-3-4-5, depending on the Hikari or the Nozomi. The Nozomi, I don't think you can ride that if you have the JR Rail Pass, which is why, you know, if you do the math, sometimes you don't need it. And riding the Nozomi is a little bit faster. So, there's some power in that.

07:06 John Daub: I'm waiting for the Tohoku Shinkansen to take off, but we wouldn't really know, because it goes the other way. You see the construction over there on the other side. There's just a lot of it. And let me show you from ground level. This is what it looks like coming into the entrance. You got to come in up to this building. From the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station, which is the old brick facade, which they renovated about seven or eight years ago now. And there's another really nice view of the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station on the fifth floor of the Maru Building.

07:53 John Daub: And this is the Kite Building, which is the International Post Office. And I'm up here on the corner. That's where the deck is up there on the sixth floor. And this is where we are in the city of Tokyo. Boom! Tokyo Station. There's a load of buildings around here, but what makes this special is that the Kite Building is right on the corner. Look at that. So you're going to get this awesome platform view. This, ladies and gentlemen, I would say is the best viewing platform of trains in Tokyo. And if you have a better one, let me know. I want to go check it out. I'm a train spotting guy. I kind of like to learn about the trains, be corrected. That's the best way to get to know them.

08:42 John Daub: I'm sure when I retire, that's probably going to be my hobby, riding trains and stuff. And this is the best view for it. It's so cool. But look at the construction. That building there, and this is going to be historical livestream. That's going to be a massive Bulgari Hotel. Oh, no, no, that's up there. You see it? I didn't even notice it. Because I've done so much research on this. It's actually already done. It's on this building, the Yaesu Midtown. I didn't see signs for it when I went up there. But this is going to be a hotel as well inside of there and some stores on the ground level.

09:31 John Daub: They've done a massive construction job on the Yaesu side. And you can see over here, tons of construction over in Ginza as well. Those cranes over there are going to be watching Tokyo skyline get taller and taller. Another reason to come up here every time you come to visit Tokyo, because every time you come back in two or three years, the skyline is going to change. And in this direction, the Tokyo Torch Tower, which is going to be, I think they've already broken ground and they're going to start to build it up. It's across from one of the Torch Towers that's finished.

10:05 John Daub: I think the signal gets really bad all of a sudden over in this direction. So I'm just going to try to take you just a little bit over and then hopefully the signal can get a little bit better. I don't know why the signal gets bad on this side. But I wanted to bring you here just so you can see if the signal is any good. Sorry, I've got to come all the way to this corner. This is the only place where the signal is any good. Hopefully it can upload later on.

10:37 John Daub: And then from this side, you can start to see the modern Yaesu side of Tokyo Station walking over towards Yurakucho in this direction. Lots of tall buildings, you can't really see much of anything. Another really cool viewing platform. They used to have at Yurakucho Station, there used to be a pasta place where you could sit outside and get like ¥1000 pasta, but it's gone under. And I'm sure another restaurant is going to take it over. It's a beautiful spot. Probably more expensive than ¥1000 lunch set. You could sit up there watching the Shinkansen going by. They're coming right at you from that point of view.

11:12 John Daub: But the platform of Yurakucho Station between the Yamanote and the Keihin-Tohoku line, the trains will come at you and it gives you like this rush. There's two trains. They're like competing against one another on the left and the right. It looks like you're getting surrounded by trains coming at high speed. And that's kind of a cool live stream trying to catch it. And I think it took me about 35 minutes to do that. As you can see from the corner here, the Yamanote. And this is what I'm talking about. These two trains are going in the same direction. And then at Yurakucho, which is about 300 meters from here, the trains are going at high speed. And you're standing in between them. That's pretty cool.

12:02 John Daub: Sorry, the live stream is going in and out. I'll see if the signal is bad. I might reupload this in HD or 4K. I'm keeping a copy on my phone. If you do look from here and you look past, you can see all the way down to Ueno maybe. Sorry, the screen is frozen a little bit. The app. I've been having some trouble with this app for streaming over the last couple of days. You can see down here that it looks like they're doing some construction as well. But it's kind of cool to see how the city is always evolving.

13:05 John Daub: And these spots, Tokyo Station, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Ueno, Shinagawa, they've all had their moments of reconstruction and rejuvenation. And every time you come to Tokyo, every time I walk around, I try to stop and just take a look around because it does, it is, here comes another Shinkansen. That's how frequent they are, by the way. That's why you don't really need a reserved ticket. They leave every 10 minutes, 5-10 minutes, depending on the time. They're always kind of, the city is always in evolution. It's living. And that's really exciting, especially for those that are repeat visitors to Tokyo. Peso will tell you in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

13:59 John Daub: Michael, thank you so much for becoming a traveler. I appreciate the support here, guys, for joining and doing these live videos. I'm going to be doing live streams almost every day now. I'm taking you tomorrow, by the way, to Mount Fuji. It should be looking pretty clear in the morning as the Shinkansen's taking off. There's another Shinkansen taking off right there. So I'll be back tomorrow from Mount Fuji. I'll be live streaming from Mount Fuji for part of an episode that I've been producing for the last few weeks here.

14:34 John Daub: There's a photo spot that everybody seems to be going to, and I want to check it out. People said there's some lollipops. I don't know if there's any lollipop lawlessness going on over there. The best way to figure it out is to take a trip out there and go and see it. I'm going to buy a Shinkansen ticket and go out there for the day, come back in the afternoon, and see if there's a story there. But, you know, I don't trust the media. I think that if there's lawlessness going on, I want to be there to document it. Of course I'm not going to contribute because as everyone's taking pictures of Mount Fuji and whatnot, I'll be taking pictures of the people taking pictures. And that's it. Don't forget to hit subscribe. See you.