00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Kyobashi. Down there on the other side of that bridge is Ginza. You can see on a Sunday there really isn't any traffic because the street is closed in Ginza on the weekends. Which makes this a perfect place to stay, enjoy Tokyo. There's a lot of hotels here. There's a lot of restaurants. There's a lot of history. There's a lot of stuff. And what makes this neighborhood really perfect is its location. Let me show you on the map here. So there's Tokyo Station. That's where you would catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) and Kyobashi.

00:00:33 John Daub: And what makes this neighborhood perfect is that red borderline area right now. It's just basically a stone's throw away from Tokyo Station. It's between Ginza right there and Nihonbashi (Japan Bridge). And then you have the islands and all the other stuff. Odaiba is not that far away. And you can get on the Yamanote line. It's about a 5-10 minute walk to Tokyo Station. So this really makes this neighborhood so perfect for so many people. But it gets lost behind the named brands of Ginza and Nihonbashi and Tokyo Station. And then even if you go a little bit further, you'll see a lot of shops. A little bit further towards the Sumida River, you have neighborhoods like Shintomicho, which you might never have heard of, or Hachobori. These two neighborhoods have, I think they have like six APA hotels or something. There's a ton of Dormy Inns. There's a ton of really mid to budget range hotels in this area. So staying on this side of the city, I think is really good. Now in comparison to the rest of the city of Tokyo, you can see Kyobashi right down here, just next to the Imperial Palace.

00:01:32 John Daub: So you'd expect hotels to be quite expensive, but they're fairly reasonable for the location of where you are. That box is all of Kyobashi, that one block here. It has its own subway station, which I'm going to show you that was in the thumbnail. You can see Tokyo Station right there. We're going to go around the block and then inside of the alleys here, just on the Ginza. So you get an idea of what's here. There's a bunch of museums as well. A new building going up on the right side. You see there's a big opening there. We'll walk around the block and you're going to get it. But by the end of this, you're going to be a little bit more familiar with the city. Kyobashi Master. So looking forward to taking you around the heart of, I guess, the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station, more or less.

00:02:04 John Daub: The great thing about it right now is that the autumn colors are out and you can see the trees are just starting to turn here. There's a chill in the air. It's about 58 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, about 16 degrees Celsius. The thing is, you come out of the station, again, you don't need to take the subway at all really for this area you can walk it. Here's the Kyobashi exit, the main one that comes through the Bridgestone building. This skyscraper is Bridgestone, which is a Japanese company to make tires and bicycles and a bunch of other stuff. Kyobashi is connected, I believe with the Ginza Line. Yeah, there it is right there, the Ginza Line. And you can catch all the other lines in Ginza Station which is a five to six minute walk from here. So everything is so much closer than you think. You don't have to get down underground in order to get around the city of Tokyo.

00:03:10 John Daub: So let's go explore here, buckle in for a good 20 minutes or so as we walk around the heart of Kyobashi. Front Danny is in the house, aloha. I just walked in here so I had to wait for my receiver for the microphone to charge, so I walked into this Montbell for about 10 minutes and they had some really unique stuff. Montbell, Japanese company, it's kind of like the North Face of Japan. So the cool thing about it is they have like these Japanese style coats. You can get all of the rainwear if you're trying to climb Mount Fuji or something. In the summer I usually get all my stuff here because I can fit it. How you doing? That was kind of scary, you walking right behind me here. And then I found this in here which is kind of like a Japanese style parka. You can see there's no zipper or anything, it ties around there, but they have like a really Japanese aesthetic of the clothing that they make. They also have western sizes so you'll see they have long and short which is really interesting for the pants. So you might be able to find stuff in there that you can't find, let's say, Uniqlo.

00:04:22 John Daub: How you doing? You're coming for the walk around or did you for five or six years? Okay, I'm running the postcards. Oh wow, Trouble Helix. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been here for two months, wow, doing the long vacation. Um, then the family is coming tomorrow. Okay. So today was my last chance to try to track you down. Well, you found it. I happened to be right over in Shiodome. Okay. And your notification popped up. Lucky. And I started late. So it took like five minutes. Yeah. It helps to start late.

00:04:54 Guest: So I'm going to be walking around this way, but I just wanted to show everybody here before we do that. On this side, if you go underneath that bridge, you've got Ginza, which shuts down at noon on weekends, which gives you this really nice experience to walk around on a day like this. It's certainly a pleasure.

00:05:10 John Daub: Well, guess what? I might have a card. I'm like really at the bottom of the barrel here. No worries. Yeah. I just sent the postcards a few days ago. Okay. Yeah. Like when I said bottom of the barrel, I meant it. This one has a personality. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. You've been at a postcard clip for a while. I think maybe three years. Yeah. We have a pandemic. We have like a cabinet next to the fridge. That's a fully wooden cabinet. So my girlfriend tapes every single one. Wow. So we have like a wall of your, oh, that's so cool. Here's the one that's coming. If she's watching, I got this one here. She's actually in Kyoto. She's in Denver getting ready to get on a plane. Wow. From here. Get ready for the jet lag.

00:06:07 Guest: Yeah. I'm going to walk on the other side. I don't know if the signals here.

00:06:16 John Daub: Two things of interest on my shoulder is the Police Metropolitan Museum. And they've got a helicopter, police cars, and a lot of safety features, safety information in case there's like an earthquake or something. They kind of show you what the police does. It's a little rinky-dink building nowadays because of all the skyscrapers around it. But this is in Kyobashi, just on the corner here. And this company, I didn't know this was a Japanese company for a long time. It's called Brother. 'Cause that you wouldn't associate that with a Japanese company, but this started from the two brothers bringing over like the first typewriter from San Francisco back in the early Meiji era. And then they took it apart and then made their own typewriters. This company, two brothers, and they called it Brother. Apparently now they make all sorts of stuff. I don't buy them anymore because the stuff didn't work too well when I had it, but you'll find all sorts of history in Kyobashi. When you walk around like these markers, I don't even know what a lot of it is, but in this area, much of it was destroyed in World War II during the firebombing of March 9th and 10th. I think this is where the old Kabuki theater was. I might've done a live stream here during the pandemic, but there was an old Kabuki theater that was here.

00:07:39 John Daub: How's the trip been?

00:07:43 Guest: Honestly, not being in Tokyo was great. This is my third straight week in the city and I've been trying to find things to do out. I got invited to go to this guy's rice farm in Shimotsuma. It was like two hours north on the train. And he just hung out with me all day, total stranger and showed me around his farm and took me to lunch. I was like this is why you come here you know. But just being here, how many times can I go to Akihabara and walk around but you get stuck in that trap of I gotta go here I gotta go here but I hate to say it but it does lose a little bit of its charm especially now because so many tourists are there. It was different maybe seven eight years ago. First time I came was 2018. Okay and in an area like this I would see like one white guy a day right. Today it's like 25% of the population here is foreign tourists. It's so crowded.

00:09:03 John Daub: I'm starting to feel like that too. I just want to point out in the alleys of Kyobashi you're going to find like ramen shops, gyoza shops and you can smell it too usually popular places where people line up. It's not a lot of tourists know about it but there's so many businesses and headquarters here for Japanese corporations. They still got to go out and eat lunch so there's a lot of local stuff hidden in here that tourists don't know because they don't get off of the main streets. They'll get into the alleys too much but the hotels are usually out on the main street. That's a great thing about Dominican food, awesome because oh that smells so good. What is that? That's a good thing about the hotel is that you can get a lot of food.

00:09:44 Guest: Oh it's so good. I did leave out to west. I went to Nagoya, Hiroshima, Okayama, Kochi [?], Matsue, Hiroshima. I'm not, Hiroshima, Fukuoka then I took a boat to Tsushima. Then I took a plane to Nagasaki then to Kumamoto, Miyazaki. Oh wow, Kagoshima and then flew back to Tokyo. My first time driving a car here it's terrifying other side of the road. Yeah once you get over it. I can't, I can't in Kyushu. Yes just in Kyushu from Kumamoto to Miyazaki to Kagoshima I drove. First time and it's just a little stressful you just can't quite wrap your head around it. Driving on the other side of the road is challenging. It took me about, so my panic was about the first 15 minutes of the trip to Kagoshima and then for the first day I kind of was making small mistakes like almost got into an accident making a left turn into the wrong lane stuff like that.

00:10:52 John Daub: Right. I'm taking you guys here for a quick just a one small reason this is still Kyobashi. If you want to do pull-ups for some reason in this park there's a pull-up bar. I think Peter von Gomm and I did some pull-ups in a competition and I beat him because he said that a pull-up and a chin-up are different and if he'd known he could do pull-ups and not chin-ups or something. I don't know he had all these excuses. But this place right here in the corner is a really good craft beer pub it's called I Brew. You could if the seating's full inside you I think you could stand outside on the counter and just drink a couple um if you're into that. Right on the border. Oh Joni yes okay yeah yes all right.

00:11:41 John Daub: Now I'm trying to remember because like she's gonna be so happy that you called her out. Yeah how you doing Joni. I because I could put putting that in the mail for so many years. I'm not going to be able to put it in the mail for so many years when you said that the Helix podcast. Yes yes that kind of fell apart. How's your podcast been doing?

00:11:54 Guest: It's yeah it's so hard you know. I got the green screen and the studio and all of that but I can't get the streaming software to work smoothly enough yet. It is so hard though. It might be easier for you like with guests just because you know so many more people but that was the challenge for me oh to get people on there right. An hour and a half then you'd have people that would make a date with you and then they'd cancel or they'd make a date and blow you off. It was cool getting to talk to just a lot of people it's kind of cool.

00:12:33 John Daub: Have you noticed wait a whole thing I have WRX Turbo. I did the wrong lens here. WRX Turbo is in the house. I saw Michael Sasano I kind of just missed your chat though there and Super Mr. Crazy Man. Does your friend like Godzilla has been doing with all the tattoos he's wearing all the tattoos he's wearing has he faced issues with beaches or something?

00:13:08 Guest: The weirdest thing like I knew what to expect with onsen (hot springs) of course everybody knows but hotel pools same rule. So if you go to a hotel and they have a nice pool they're not gonna let you use it. Wow. I booked a hotel specifically with the rooftop pool so I could get that nice view and be in the pool can't use it but even if there's nobody in there. Yeah they kind of laughed when they like they try to be nice about it they're not mean to you they understand I think that it's like a silly rule but that's the rule and they don't really budge on it. The thing I didn't know I can't go to the gym here. What? I don't have these problems because I don't have any tattoos but I had heard online like a little bit. Okay you're gonna have some trouble but you're covered up or I mean how like I mean turtleneck natural gloves do you really want to work out like that? No but I went to Gold's, the biggest gym on the planet right Gold's says no man sorry are you kidding me? They're in there Western owned right. So I found the gym very expensive every time I want to go and you know I've been going every other day for two months. Not even the hotel gyms. You'll be fine as a someone nobody's gonna go so no one's gonna complain really and the second thing is you say the gyms are kind of open at certain times I don't want to be that guy that with everything else is going on right the guy that you don't like to talk about oh yeah J.S. Ramsey we're calling him right like I just don't want to do anything that makes me that guy or even close to it.

00:15:11 John Daub: I don't think you're even close to it. I think you maybe people are worrying a little bit too much. I think you do it until people tell you not to do it. If there's no sign I think that's how you have to go. But I knew I was going to be there every day for a couple of months. We're now in the generation now where the older generation is kind of leaving us naturally because they're old and the newer generation is a lot more flexible and a lot of them are getting tattoos too. So it's not, I've noticed a lot like again since the first time I visited a lot more tattoos on people even older people. Yeah older people they're not on their face or their hands but it's like oh wow like people will when they see me they'll like lift up they'll be like hey they'll like show it to me and I'm like oh cool like you have one. So yeah no negative stuff no one like saying oh you look like a bad person you can't come in here just the annoyance of not being able to just go but it's Asia you know they have rules so they stick to the rules.

00:16:09 John Daub: Oh hello I saw you on the street. Oh yeah you did oh my goodness.

00:16:17 Guest 2: Nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you Jonathan two Johns all right.

00:16:20 John Daub: I might have given out the last card five minutes. I just wanted to say hi thank you for everything you're doing. Oh you're welcome. I have this is the bottom of the barrel didn't look really good did it the you found me card oh really it's got character that might literally be the last one until I order some more but where are you from? Uh Austin Texas oh very good yeah very good how long have you been in Japan now since the last Saturday. Since the last Saturday so we yeah yeah like so actually well stayed up for 24 hours before I came just did that work actually you did yeah I wasn't stay up for 24 hours before you get on the flight just fight it out and then you'll be yeah have a higher chance of getting and stay away from the booze on the plane which is hard because it's like all you can drink I usually have one glass of wine you used to have a lot more because it was they just kept bringing it to me it doesn't work like that though does it yeah um yeah very cool I'm just going around the Kyobashi where are you staying?

00:17:20 Guest 2: Uh right now I'm staying in Asakusa okay actually stayed at the Ryogoku APA hotel oh that tower was just there a couple days ago exactly and I just missed it we were in Kyoto we actually left that I think that day or how is it inside very nice it's nice very nice they have a Lawson in there they have a sento (public bath) they have it there all the amenities that you want they have a restaurant we were on the 17th floor so we could see over a middle school I think wow we saw the kids actually going to school and doing their practice.

00:18:00 John Daub: I thought like about when you leave the center of the area you get more slice of life you know everyday Tokyo life yeah we weren't going to stay like in Shinjuku or Kabukicho it was like a less like the place to be and something like that but then after we saw like it's going to be really packed we said okay let's go outside yeah so stayed over there it was very nice it was because we stayed in Kyoto we stayed in Osaka but I think that that one was like the best because we stayed in the center in Osaka we stayed in Dotonbori and it was loud yeah. I think now the tourism's starting to mature a little bit we're getting I mean France still has 100 million tourists okay France is on the next level we're we've got 30 million so a third less than a third of France and we're complaining about over tourism and we're not even quite at that level yet imagine now that the industry is turning tourists got to remember if you're going you're not going to get a good night's sleep or you're not going to get it doesn't feel like you're really anywhere but a city.

00:19:00 John Daub: I want to show you just on the other side here that wind sail is Tokyo Station right there so Kyobashi again we're on the corner of it as well but this is the end of that this neighborhood but again you can walk over there you forget the subway now you're on the Yamanote line the Sobu line you're on all the train lines it'll take you around Tokyo the heart of it right there um so another reason why Kyobashi might be the place and you can see the building coming up here I'm not sure what that is but we'll find out oh hello I'm trying to find you like a words ball that's happening right all right I think I don't know I might not have any cards left at all now okay it's just good to meet you finally it's nice to meet you yeah that's it actually nice to meet you you get a handshake I gotta take off yeah I've been watching you since I was in high school holy well how old are you now but don't you remember 31 high school.

00:19:31 Guest 3: I remember your first video was Only in Japan um you were doing the vending machines that's the third one that went viral got like a yeah it was like 180 third video I uploaded it went up to like 180,000 views in three years like oh my gosh what am I gonna do that's a lot of viewers and then boom it reached new audience.

00:20:07 John Daub: Well here I'll take a little digital photo here we got that my friends actually I think he's watching we actually said goodbye today because he's leaving soon I'm staying another three days here so he's probably watching I got home Gabriel hey Gabriel how you guys doing anyways so again pleasure to meet you pleasure to meet you too thank you yeah no problem since high school wow hello how long have you been watching three four years at this point okay that's pretty good pandemic is usually we got a lot of people coming online my dad he was the one that kind of put me on the bank he used to come here all the time when he was when he's younger in his old job you know the airport you fly over to Canada a lot so the poker is where's home for you uh California California oh very good very good how what airline did you come on uh ANA and I'm asking that because some people are coming now with the Zipair airline the really budget airlines so I was wondering like how is that compared between the two but ANA is so nice though it's real nice I couldn't quite sleep with a crying baby but that's okay I think because I couldn't sleep that's like luck of the draw right especially the front where the uh compartment is you got the the um baby uh uh cribs on the I forget what the word is uh attached to the wall there'd you meet uh San Francisco San Francisco how much was that on ANA yeah I think was like 1200 pounds see even like the Zipair from LA was pricing at like 900 wow so I went Air Canada it was a thousand from Denver how was it Air Canada's kind of great yeah don't eat bring your own food but you only have to deal with it for 12 hours and right a couple hundred bucks especially when I'm paying it for four people you know when the joining in the two kids it's like yeah you gotta that's like a thousand dollars and he's put it over four people so depends how long your trip is too because if you don't get good sleep and it ruins like two or three days of your trip because you can't find your rhythm with Air Canada and transfers I don't know it was uneventful but wasn't pleasant you know Air Canada wasn't pleasant hey Canadian Jason help out here Jason are you watching someone tell Trudeau do better or you're out he'd actually probably be out in about what 12 11 months from now yeah well it was good to meet you you want to get a photo yeah we could do that yeah you planned this trip basically wow with all this watching all your students all right oh we could do a better background than that let's do a Tokyo Station the construction's on oh I gotta get the sun oh oh you gotta get the sun down too it's like weird weird lighting and now it's just a weird photo my pleasure yeah have a good one thank you.

00:23:23 Guest: Are you still amazed by how many people you like how how far your reach goes?

00:23:30 John Daub: It is especially since I restarted the channel at 2020 and I don't have the same kind of numbers I was really discouraged when that happened right it's really hard to overcome something like that but the fact that people still remember watch me know me on the streets right I kind of did in a live stream just a couple of weeks ago I kind of got gotten a little bit more than this even the editing and the video quality wasn't good it didn't look good I could watch things I could tell you one thing though like it was fun to do watch Major League Baseball highlights or something instead of with my time.

00:24:05 Guest: We used to laugh about it because for a while there every time he went live we heard about the iPhone. That's the iPhone 13!

00:24:12 John Daub: Yeah well it's a contractual thing that I did a long time ago and it is my fault but the contracts changed from the first one that I signed to the last one. I needed some kind of financial backing but I really wasn't clear on it. They never gave me an advanced copy of the contract to preview. There's just like a lot of gray or black things that they had done over years and I was too trusting. You gotta remember my history. I was doing you know YouTube you put a video on there and YouTube pays for the bandwidth, but iTunes you got to pay off of your server. So I was about thirty thousand dollars to try and make some money off of it because partner program wasn't paying that much it was like beer money at that time you didn't do it for the money I just wanted to cover the cost but the stuff I was signing was not very good I owned the trademark and that saved my skin you had to get lawyers and everything had to sit down my stomach was in my you know like that feeling when you feel like you're gonna lose everything yeah and like your baby I put so much time and effort into all this to grow the channel and then all of a sudden it's not mine nothing is mine like what yeah and now okay you know what you keep the channel and this is where it happened like okay I tried to compromise you keep the channel I'm just gonna start over and then the moment I made that decision which is so hard everything got better because the pain in my stomach went away the stress went away my hair started to grow back I was like I started to look a little younger again slightly which is hard to reverse because I think I aged a lot in those two that year well you had a kid too yeah and then well that came out a year later but when I just restarted the channel I'm trying to get my foothold and then Leo came which is a blessing but still like you don't kind of hit it one time right then the pandemic hit you can't get anything you can't go anywhere how do you make content when you can't leave the house right your camping videos in your living room were great that was a lot of fun sometimes you just got to get a little creative.

00:26:32 John Daub: All right everybody so that's pretty much it here for Chuo Ward for um Kyobashi I'm starting to forget where I am but again this is part of Chuo Ward which is my backyard this is kind of my neighborhood here and uh you know we're right here but this is this the Kyobashi area pretty much dominated by this building which is the Bridgestone building and the entrance here but not that far from Nihonbashi not that far from Ginza and it really is you know you can make this part of your town a part of town your home if you decide to uh stay here so if you have any questions leave in the comments below if not I will see you in another episode maybe tomorrow we got a couple of uh guests that might be doing live streams uh been contacting me with some nice stuff to talk about a legal mindset who's been talking about Ramsey's situation he's another YouTuber I think he's in Korea right now some of the viewers have been typing to him it'd be more it'd be really interesting to get legal mindset's uh point of view with regards to Ramsey I'm not even gonna call him by his name anymore his uh his YouTube name or whatever uh like what happened in the Japan side of it and did Japan let him off of the hook too easily and by doing so did that set up a precedence for other travel how should Korea really handle this how are they really going to handle it could he possibly come back to Japan and the nuisance streaming thing I think because Korea and Japan are so connected and sort of similar in the way that the legal system is set up so it'd be interesting to talk with him so maybe we'll uh see what get a dialogue with legal mindset he's a fascinating guy and knows so much about this topic all right everybody have a good day bye journey bye Joni mata ne (see you later).