00:01 John Daub: I'm out here on Tokyo Bay. Tokyo has a brand new attraction coming at the end of next year. It's been announced—the mayor was talking about it, press releases have gone out, some videos featuring it. Over there on the other side is Odaiba. You can see the Fuji TV building in the distance, and that's going to be the location of this new attraction. There's a lot of debate on whether taxpayer money should be going into this. The city of Tokyo has been putting out like every year some sort of mega new tourist attraction, and it's going to be right on the other side of the bridge over there.

00:36 John Daub: I wanted to start here because I love this place. This is Tokyo Bay—you get a view of the entire city from this point. There's also like nobody here, loads of seats to eat a bento and really chillax while you watch ships go by. So let me show you exactly what this tourist attraction is. This was in the news online—I saw it on Japan website yesterday. They're just talking about the news that's hitting the Japanese news in English for everybody. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has announced plans to construct a 150-meter high, 250-meter wide fountain in Odaiba Seaside Park, making it the world's largest. Inspired by the Sōma Yoshino (cherry blossom variety that's also the city's official flower).

01:25 John Daub: 250 meters is like 820 feet or something. Governor Koike stated on Friday, "To further enhance the vibrancy of the area, we will build the Odaiba Fountain." It will be accompanied by music and lights, making it one of the largest of its kind in the world. Tokyo has previously invested 160 million yen on a monument at Harumi Pier and 700 million yen on projection mapping on the walls of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building—both of which sparked debate over the use of public funds. Regarding the new fountain project, public opinion is divided. A man in his 50s commented, "If spending money brings in more foreign tourists, it's a good thing." By contrast, a woman in her 30s said it's gone too far. But you get the point—there's a lot of debate on whether tax money should be going into this kind of stuff.

02:19 John Daub: Look, I think it's great that Tokyo is doing these kinds of things. The world's biggest projection mapping was this summer, and I think you guys can see it right here—it was pretty massive. For those of you who were wondering, if you were here to see the Godzilla one, this is it. It was pretty incredible. I mean, to see the Tokyo government building, which is built in this brutalist design of the 1980s that's really popular—I like this building. I'm not sure if anybody really cares about projection mapping. Let me know in the comments what you think about this. It was quite expensive, and they do it every few days or so for tourists—I'm not sure how much it costs to operate, but it's the world's biggest, which is quite an accomplishment in itself.

03:06 John Daub: But perhaps instead of putting these tourist attractions where the tourists already are—like in Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Asakusa—how about putting them in places where tourists have to travel a little bit out of the way? Like maybe, I don't know, Yōgo-ku [?] or a little bit further out into the other areas of Tokyo. Spread it out a little bit, and then I can see possibly the cost effectiveness for tourism dollars. Anyways, that doesn't cover you because that's my money going at it.

03:32 John Daub: This is what the attraction looks like—this comes from the Tokyo Metropolitan website. The government posted sample videos of what this fountain would be like. You can see the Rainbow Bridge in the distance there. The Sōma Yoshino cherry blossom flower is that pattern—it's basically like dancing lights. I think it's pretty cool. They could have fireworks, but I'm going to play this a couple of times—it's only 30 seconds long. They could have fireworks every night like Tokyo Disneyland does. But look, I think that one of the things that Koike really wants to champion is trying to have less impact on the environment, which I think all cities should be doing anyways. So this is kind of a cool thing where, yeah, it does take energy to make this, but once it's built, I think it kind of is not that expensive to run perhaps. And it allows artists to get a little creative because I'm sure there's going to be a lot of choreography—maybe some patterns they could do, maybe change up the design a little bit.

04:34 John Daub: Look at that—that looks like a space shuttle launching into space right there. Very cool. It's going to be very, very high—did they say 150 meters into the sky? Again, that's like 500 feet into the air for the Americans. That's pretty high. You're going to see that burst of light that you saw at the end probably on the other side of the city. That's not as high as Tokyo Tower, but it's much higher than Rainbow Bridge, I think, and you can see that from far away.

05:12 John Daub: Here's where we are on the bay—so the blue marks where I am across from Odaiba. I didn't want to go all the way out there—the signal's not that good over there at Odaiba anyways. Odaiba is a man-made island. On the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, you can see there's the Gundam statue, the Tokyo Joypolis. And it's this area right here that is where they're going to be building it, pretty much near the beach there. So I can see the tourists getting some drinks, lining up an hour before, and then seeing this light show and really bringing the economy of Odaiba back. I've noticed that Odaiba is not as crowded as it used to be—I think feels like it's getting a little bit old. And I can understand why they would put the fountain in the Odaiba area—it does inject another reason to go out, besides the Gundam statue and the beach there. You can't really go swimming on the beach.

06:04 John Daub: And this is where I am, at the end of Toyosu's Garuri Park, near the Toyosu fish market right there where the tuna auction is held nowadays. Look at that—nobody here. This is like my secret spot where Leo and I will come out and do dude stuff, like look at boats, eat food, and laugh at people running by. Nevertheless, I want to hear what you guys think of these tourist attractions. What ideas would you have? Because a lot of these ideas probably should come from the tourists that would be coming to visit Tokyo, right? I think if you have an idea that might work on a large scale, they should build it. Because if they're coming up with world's largest water fountain, and I don't even know where the other water fountains are that are quite as large—probably Dubai, which makes a lot of sense because they're building the biggest of everything. Tokyo is impressive in its own right, and they just continue to innovate.

07:21 John Daub: But this time of year, September, maybe one of my favorite times—the humidity is way down. There's just a lot of solar heat. You need to have glasses on, you probably should wear a hat. But you don't have to take off your shirt because it's just too darn hot in August—you have to take off your shirt or wear a tank top or mesh or something because you're sweating so profusely. Besides getting heat exhaustion, you're probably going to get rashes and stuff because you're constantly wet, and that's not good with the sun hitting it—you get fungus and things like that.

08:13 John Daub: September, you don't have that problem as much. I have this thing called tinea versicolor where you get this white stuff just because I have darker skin, and you get a little bit of that—you have to rub some kind of ointment on it for a couple of weeks to get it away. But you can get that as well because it's hard to wipe the sweat away—fungus. There's a lot of fungal issues in Japan, I'll tell you that. At the onsen, if you're going around barefoot, somebody's got a fungal problem, you're going to spread it. So make sure you dry and wash your feet at the onsen, in particular when it's really crowded.

09:05 John Daub: All right, for real, guys—take care. I'll see you in another livestream in a couple of hours, tomorrow. Matane. Got to ride back. Thanks, guys, for the super chat—it's going to stop off, get some chow.