00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Akihabara everybody. This is New Year's Day and it is quite quiet on the streets. You'll still see some itasha (custom anime-wrapped cars), some otaku on the road here in Akihabara but for the most part it's pretty quiet. It's just you and me and the thousands of tourists that you're gonna see in about a second. But you know this being New Year's Day I thought I'd take you to the secret shrine of Akihabara. It's been a while. I was introduced to this shrine in 2009 by my friend Patrick Galbraith. Patrick was a guest on the show at Tokyo Eye back then and we got a chance to connect up with him and we did some shows with him on the main channel as well.

00:46 John Daub: This Sobu Line just passed by here. Let me show you Akihabara a little bit here on this side. Boy the colors of the buildings are just really wonderful and you can see the Sobu Line in the distance passing there. Patrick and I took you on a tour and actually this is gonna be on the channel in just a couple of days of Akihabara and he took me in this back alley. I'd been to Akihabara so many times but it wasn't until Patrick took me that I kind of understood. Akihabara has got a lot of secrets. A lot of things that a lot of tourists just don't know about.

01:26 John Daub: One of them was this alleyway which is actually a public road before that they made it. It had to be a meter wide between the buildings. These roads were grandfathered in and in this area they had a shrine for a very long time but one of the conditions to building was that you had to build around Hanabusa Inari Jinja (Hanabusa Inari Shrine). We're gonna go there for our New Year's prayer. It's a place where you pray for success, Hanabusa Inari Shrine, and it requires a little bit of success to find it in between all of the buildings in Akihabara. There seems to be some signal here. The view probably has changed. It's kind of a spooky place. This is my first visit in 2009 and now it's 2024. So let's get moving here.

02:15 John Daub: I'll also share with you. We, Kanae and I, on the 31st we had our toshikoshi soba (year-crossing buckwheat noodles). We had our soba noodles on the 31st with some tempura. This had no egg in the tempura because we have a little one who's allergic to it, not Leo. Then we had nabe (hot pot) for dinner after that. This is a really delicious nabe. If you haven't had family Japanese cuisine, oh my goodness, you're missing out on this. Leo, Grandpa Gigi's teaching him how to pour a beer. Skills you do not need yet. But hey, it's New Year's in Japan. Almost anything goes.

02:59 John Daub: And then this morning, Kanae was up early preparing the osechi-ryōri (New Year's boxed cuisine). She bought the store-bought this but it required a little bit of preparation. So trust me, it is a lot of work. But a lot of good stuff in here. This is what Japanese osechi-ryōri looks like. Normal Japanese don't even know what most of this stuff is. It comes with an explanation guide. But the traditional cuisine of Japan, this is what it is. It's not ramen like you would think. Leo is kind of chilling out on New Year's Day. And there's ozoni (mochi soup) which is the traditional soup. Kanae can make that. And inside we have big blocks of mochi in there. And the mochi is of course really good. The soup keeps it nice and stretchy. But will get hard if you don't keep it warm. That's the real mochi. Leo approves. Happy New Year.

04:04 John Daub: Very cool. So here we are. Are you ready for this? It's nice to see everybody. Yesterday was a pretty good one. We'll go over New Year's last night. I want to explain to you how crazy it was and my experience with that. But let's get moving. So all these people, thousands and thousands of people are walking by the street. A lot of them are walking past the entrance of the secret shrine. You can't for some reason go through the one near the Don Quijote over there. Have to go through from here and it's very easy to find because it's the one with all the vending machines here. There's a hidden retro vintage Street Fighter game in the alley for 100 yen which is pretty cool.

04:48 John Daub: We're gonna take a right but there's some dudes here smoking which is not so nice. This is it, it's in this alley. This is crazy and there's nobody here and this is New Year's. They've done a good job protecting it from people hitting their heads. Let's be respectful here. I'm gonna get out because we're gonna make a donation to this Hanabusa Inari Jinja. I got here a brand new because usually you get 5 yen but because there's so many of you watching right now I'm gonna go to the store and get 500 yen and we're gonna hope and pray for a really successful year for all of you around the world that are watching. I don't know if kami-sama (gods) works like that but I work like that. So apparently we're gonna do it quickly because I know that this is New Year's. The view has changed, they put up a building there so it's even darker than it was before.

06:35 John Daub: For all of you guys on New Year's here so there you go. Let's get out of here. It is a very religious place, a deep place of worship and a lot of people. This is not a joke okay this is a religious place so if you do come here please keep in mind that this is a shrine. Some of the things that they did they cleaned it up a lot so when they rebuilt the building here they also renovated the area. You can see there's this little black box here that's the symbol of success and business. The little box here is where you would give your donation. We got 500 yen and I prayed for all of you for big success this year and that's the secret shrine.

08:02 John Daub: I hope you guys can come here and find it and offer up a little prayer, maybe pray for our community as well. A lot of people out there some of them are watching from hospitals. These air conditioners are a lot newer. There's a light here, but you can no longer walk through this alley. I don't know why. You can see the pedestrians on the other side. So there you go. If you have any questions or you have trouble finding it, you can ask our Discord server. We have a Discord server with almost 20,000 people there. Some people are living here, and they'll help you find it out. Let's get out of here. I'll show you around Akihabara.

08:42 John Daub: There was somebody who left their trash there, and I'd moved it over to here where it was visible, and thankfully somebody threw it away in the five minutes. I thought this was a trash can, but you've got to carry your trash out with you, so apparently somebody left a big bag of Starbucks trash. It's kind of upset me. Kanai's father lives in this area, believe it or not. No, he's not an otaku. All right, so it's behind the Carl's Jr. burger. It's kind of basically behind this Carl's Jr. Last night was so crazy. Oh, it's even marked on the map. Hanabusa Inari Jinja. It's marked on the map like in the middle of the intersection there. That's crazy. Pretty close to the Akihabara UDX, so it's worth stopping by here. Give them some money. Give them like 100 or 500 yen or more. So it's a really cool and unique place, and I want to support our hidden shrine.

10:23 John Daub: It's kind of special to me, and I think it's special to a lot of you guys because it's one of the first live streams that I did after the hitchhiking in 2017. All right, we're going to walk over. You can see the Sobu Line passing up there. Last night was wild. So I was freezing cold. I went to Asakusa for good reason because a lot of people were going to Shibuya. It's the wrong message. They don't want you there. And as a resident here for so long, I want to help out the city as much as I can. So instead of chastising people who decide to go there, I want to show you why you'd want to go somewhere else. But last night was so much fun. I got a chance to meet a bunch of people that were visiting Japan.

11:15 John Daub: I made a little clip here. The couple of minutes before New Year's. I think this was like 30 seconds before 2025 hit, and there was not a lot of people on the street when I started the live stream. And then all of a sudden, people are just stuck wherever they are. When you have one or two minutes, you're stuck. And then you have 30 minutes to go, you're not moving anywhere. And here's people getting excited. You can feel the buzz in the air. If you haven't seen this, I cut it up so it's a lot shorter to see the moment hit. And then boom, there you are. We're in 2025. Everybody's going crazy. I'm going Happy New Year. I said, like SkyTree is wishing us Happy New Year. That was so cool. Somebody even said the CBS Evening News in the United States played clips of this, which is also kind of cool.

12:04 John Daub: I've had when TV runs my stuff, it comes back. That I broke my own copyright. Even though it's my stuff, another network plays it, and then they copyright strike me back. I was like, I've had that happen before with Seoul Broadcasting in Korea. They uploaded my content and put it private. The algorithm gave me a copyright strike, but we worked it out real fast. See, TV sometimes, the big legacy media, they got something going on over there.

12:48 John Daub: So look, I have a map here. It's not easy to find the secret shrine. I tried my best. I recorded this Google map here so you can take a look. Akihabara in itself is a huge tourist attraction. It's not that far from Ueno. Akihabara Station is on the Yamanote Line. And it's literally right there. In the, see this block here? I didn't know there was a garden in that tall building. It's like right there in that space. That's how crazy this shrine is. It's in that space between these old buildings. And I get a feeling they're going to start knocking down these buildings. And yeah, the shrine's going to stay there. It's been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. They're not going to move it. So you got to build around it.

13:40 John Daub: By the way, Yoda Jedi, thanks for you took up the moderator duties for one night. I appreciate that very much. All right, let's walk past the Don Quijote building. I'm surprised that all these people that are out almost all of them. Everybody's a tourist. Everybody is a tourist on the street right now. There's no local residents here. This is crazy. It feels like New York to me. It feels like I'm walking around New York. It's awesome in a way. It's like I'm in a foreign country, but this is, I live here and I blend in very well.

16:30 John Daub: All right, that is the first shogatsu (New Year's) music that I've heard in this area. We are gonna kick some butt this year. I am primed and ready to go. I took a big project with the city of Tokyo and I took a big, more than one actually. We've got a podcast with a vodcast with Matt Alt. That's gonna be really cool. I'm releasing like in a couple of weeks as well. I've been editing a lot of stuff that you just have not been able to see because it's going through a screening process. But oh my goodness, this is gonna be a massive year. I'm so stoked. Gotta be honest, 2024 was a really hard year. So whenever New Year's comes, I get really optimistic. You can just feel the positivity in the air, right? Mainly because we're looking at Akihabara, all those colors over there.

18:01 John Daub: I wanna welcome our friends on the east coast of the United States to 2025. You're late to the game, but we're glad that you're here. Welcome to another year. Lots of luck and success and happiness and good health. That's the most important of all. If you're not healthy, none of it really means anything. I'm on a mission here. So you're going on a little bit of a trip with me through Akihabara for scouting for possibly what tomorrow's live stream is going to be. If I find it, I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna save it.

19:20 John Daub: I know this is going to be one of the best years ever. I say that every year, but I feel it though. I really do. I think 2025, there's a lot of positivity. Start the new year. Because look at the weather. It's actually relatively warm right now. That is a very good sign, isn't it? Saying goodbye to the Taito Game Center. See the big Space Invader character from the Atari era. At home, a maid cafe still there. We are well past the prime.

20:16 John Daub: Patrick in that 2009 tour also showed me. He said that this was like the men's alley because of all the maid cafes and stuff. And he said that Akihabara, after World War II from Manseibashi, the black market ran all the way from Manseibashi, which was the gate to the old Edo, all the way up to Ueno, which is Okachimachi and Ameyoko Market. But this whole street was filled with black market stuff, which is why you have those really weird computer parts stores. They're like a throwback to that culture. There's still a few of them left there. But the history of Akihabara is so fascinating. I remember walking around here with my friend Scotty from a channel called Strange Parts. Shout out to him. He's a great guy. And we were talking for a very long time about the history of Akihabara and maybe putting something together.

21:32 John Daub: These stores like this, they're all throwbacks from the old after World War II. You can kind of tell because they put everything out on the sidewalk and they have these price lists. But if you look at the 2009 Tokyo Eye episode, you will see it really hasn't changed that much. It's pretty amazing. I'm kind of glad that they're still around. This culture is very deep. You find all sorts of stuff that nobody wants anymore at really cheap prices. But they're making way because the buildings have to be torn down for better earthquake-proof structures. We're seeing it all over the city. And when that happens, the rent's just too high to be selling knickknacks.

23:00 John Daub: Sometimes the best vending machines are in the alley that you take for granted. You have to find these places out. And it's dudes like me on the internet that will tell you when we find it. This is a pretty nifty vending machine though. They have the oshiruko (red bean porridge drink) here, so like the red bean drink. And they have a couple of anime drinks. Studio Ghibli [?]. It's some sort of bootleg Coke. This is a kind of a creepy machine. Lifeguard is like this weird drink I've never seen outside of Japan. We're well past the prime of the maid cafes. So that way they charge 2000 yen for 60 minutes. The maid cafe boom is definitely over, but we do still see them around. A lot of it is for tourists, but there are some ones that none of the tourists know about where there's some really strong local fans.

24:37 Simon: Hello. Hi. I'm Simon.

24:39 John Daub: Oh, hi. You want to say hello to everybody or?

24:46 Simon: Happy new year. [24:50]: Amarunouchi [?].

25:02 John Daub: Where are you from? Where were you last night? Oh, really good. You stayed warm, basically. That's the way to go. You want to take a photo? One, two, three. By the way, I have some gift for you. Do you know what this is? It's called Yadong. It's for you to smell. You can just keep it in your purse. Most people keep it in their purse, and then when they're tired or they want some refreshment, they just smell it. It gives them a little bit of a lift, uplifting. So like hangover, you can smell it, and then you wake up. Relief.

26:00 Simon: Yeah.

26:02 John Daub: Now, I got to smell this now. It's really popular in Thailand. It's like Thai herbs, many like herbs. It's a relaxing, but also like stimulating at the same time. Peaceful. I don't think I have this in Japan, so I always carry this. Nothing like this. So I just give it to people who I know and some of my friends. How long does it last? How long does the smell last?

26:35 Simon: I regularly use, maybe three months.

26:37 John Daub: Awesome. How do you say Happy New Year in Thai?

26:54 Simon: Sawadee Pee Mai.

26:57 John Daub: Sawadee Pee Mai. Pee Mai is New Year. Sawadee Pee Mai, everybody in Thailand. And how long are you here for again?

27:16 Simon: Quite long, 13 days, so I'm going to Phuket tomorrow.

27:19 John Daub: Oh, great. I hope it's warmer there. I really like Phuket. It's got a really cool vibe. Less tourists. Your name?

27:34 Simon: My name is Rin Top, P-O-P Top.

27:38 John Daub: Oh, that's hard to forget. And I'll always remember Mr. Top. Well, it was really nice to meet you, Top. Thanks for coming to say hi. So maybe I'll see you around. You live in Bangkok?

27:56 Simon: Yeah. I live in Bangkok.

27:57 John Daub: Well, maybe we'll see you there. We're planning to go there. We'll try to do a meet up and catch up. Thanks, Top. See you later. Thanks for the gift. Happy New Year.

28:11 John Daub: That's real nice. Oh, that smells so good, what he gave me. I made something similar to that in Zen Tsuji [?], but nothing that had such an amazing. There's like 30 different smells, all the pleasant stuff put into one. What a gift that is. That's the one scent that maybe we take for granted, smell. A lot of these places down this alley were. This looks like one of these places where tourists stay and you can also work. Looks like there's like capsules or something up there. The co-working. A lot of these places are starting to come up where you don't need to get an office anymore. You could just work in one of these work share places. And you can use their secretary who will also take your mail and stuff. So you also have an address. I was thinking about doing that in 2025.

29:26 John Daub: This street, I took Scotty Strange Parts and they had these like weekend garage sales. Where they were cleaning out all of the garages up here from computer parts. And we found like old Polaroid cameras and things like that from the 1980s. It was really cool. Scotty, I'd never seen him light up like that before until I took them to the retro vending machine place. Akihabara has a really good mix of vending machines from different companies, which is why I'm here. They got the corn soup. They turned on the hot here. Make sure you get the hot one. This is the sumidai [?], cold one. When I came to Japan, I couldn't find these in Tokyo. Only in Ibaraki. But now they've come down to Tokyo. And for some reason, Tokyo is the only place where you really can find Dr. Pepper. That's a little interesting tidbit that a lot of people don't know about.

31:12 John Daub: There's a Daido and a Coke machine. Daido's got some interesting stuff down here, too. They have here crab nabe soup. Mitsuiimo [?]. I guess this is honey sweet potato. Burle [?]. Milk latte based with sugar and eggs. It's a honey sweet potato drink. That looks really good. And this is another like a nabe soup. The crab one looks pretty interesting. Akihabara has got some of the best vending machine options in all of Japan. But again, the back alleys are where. I think that this parking garage, this new building, I think it was where that garage sale used to be held. And now a lot of these old buildings, the old history of Akihabara is going the way of the dodo bird. There's a famous curry rice place that's going out of business as well. Sora News 24, I believe, broke the story yesterday.

32:33 John Daub: A TCV vending machines shop. Trading cards. Should we just go take a quick look, see? I don't know what this means, but it looks like death. I guess you have to know. I don't even know what it is, but I have a pretty good idea that this is copyrighted music. So I'm going to get out of here. It's not worth the hassle. Trust me on that one. Here's a Georgia coffee vending machine. What? It says Georgia coffee, 1970. How come it says 1975 here? It was actually 1974, wasn't it? I think they made a mistake on their own logo. And I don't even see any Georgia coffee. I'm pretty sure Georgia was 1974. Anybody else want to correct me here?

34:02 John Daub: I can say with pretty good confidence that these orange vending machines are worth it. My brother from another mother, David, a.k.a. DVD, he was hooked on these, I believe. They're really good. And you can get a straw from here. The oranges, I'm guessing they're from China. But still tastes really good. The fukubukuro (lucky bags) are out. Ooh, anime goods. I'm sure they're going to sell out. Appa Hotel. Probably the best location. They have the ramen soup. Oh my god, do you see that? It's 500 yen, and it's sold out. This must be really good. For 500 yen in a 100 yen vending machine. Everything usually costs 100 yen. But this corner is. There's something that's 500 yen in a 100 yen vending machine. And it's advertised. That's got to be really good. Maybe that's the ramen in a can that's back. I've got to come back for it. It's sold out right now.

36:14 John Daub: I was going to stop by my friend Gachapon Kaikan, but he's closed today. I don't know how much longer he's going to be able to stay in business, to be honest with you. I know a lot of tourists are coming here. Oh my goodness. That would have broken my heart if they had closed Gachapon Kaikan. So it's the New Year's holiday. So they're closed on New Year's Day. And then they'll open up tomorrow from 11 to 6. And then they're back on business from 11 to 8 on the 3rd. I don't want to see him go under. He's one of the local gachapon people. He's been here for ages competing against. Now gachapon are just on the street.

37:33 John Daub: I highly recommend that you don't cross the street when it's not a green light for you to walk. It is dangerous. Cars do come up, and I've seen accidents happen.

37:53 Chase & Adam: Oh, hello. We are live. Is that okay?

37:57 John Daub: Yeah, that's fine. We can switch you down. Oh, so you're. Walking in a big circle. We got the tracker right here. I'm Chase from the postcard group. All right. Well, thank you, Chase. I'm Adam. We're not going to bother you with pictures?

38:17 Chase & Adam: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

38:18 John Daub: Let's do it. Thank you so much. Do you have a car? When are you coming back? I probably won't come because of shogatsu (New Year's). I ordered it a couple of weeks ago, and it won't come until January 12th. How long have you been here?

38:45 Chase & Adam: We've been here since the 16th. 23rd for me. Nara. We were at Todaiji Temple.

38:51 John Daub: How was it? A lot of people? 108 bells? Did you count them all?

38:58 Chase & Adam: No, we were inside the temple when it happened, and it took an hour and a half to get out. Yeah, there are big bells actually up on the hill there, so it's not as close as some are, so it's a little harder to hear it, but yeah. We were here last year for New Year's as well. Near the one-hundred-caliber tower [?]. You think it's better to have New Year's outside of Tokyo?

39:20 Chase & Adam: I would say it's a little more authentic.

39:22 John Daub: Right, authentic for sure. It's kind of touristy to go to Shibuya. Well, thanks for coming. Thanks for tracking me down here. We'll get a shot so you're in the history books here. Maybe I'll see you around. Take care. Thanks, Chase.

39:48 John Daub: Chase is in the postcard club. It's so cool to meet people, put a face to the card that I send out, that's awesome. Now, every time I sign it and put his address on the card, I'm going to be able to see Chase's face now. That's pretty cool. We're ending where we started, basically. On the other side of Chuo Avenue, again, you could see all the fukubukuro, the lucky bags. This is where we started here at the secret shrine, Hanabusa Inari Jinja, which is right there. I think you'll be able to find it as well. Just keep it clean, okay? If you see some trash, pick it up and pay it forward.

41:00 John Daub: Let's make January 12th as You Found Me card day. In this back alley towards the UDX Akihabara building, which you can see right here, this massive complex, there's some really interesting places. This ramen shop had a really long line, and there's another place over there with a line as well. So there's very popular restaurants right here. This is a miso ramen. Ooh, that looks good. That's a big pork chashu steak. Tonkotsu ramen. Bankara ramen. That is a really thick chashu steak. Looks like it's been char-grilled. So you get that char-grilled taste to it.

42:21 John Daub: And then over here, this place is really popular. What's everyone lining up about? I should make a series on what are people lining up for, because that's how sometimes you find some popular things here. Looks like a boba tea place. Fresh tea and juice, like a boba tea place. Bubble tea? Not my thing. I'm not into tapioca. These bubble teas will make you something. I don't want to go into it, because I know there's a lot of people who drink it. Just drink less, maybe. This is, you have to look for places that aren't quite as popular. Well, I found one. Interesting. It's so popular, the Coke truck is here refilling it all the time.

43:32 John Daub: There used to be a supermarket in the UDX as well. There's a Tully's Coffee and a couple of other places. I think a supermarket might be over there. So, yeah, it's kind of a neat little area underneath this building here. But I would recommend getting off of this. This is such a tourist place. Whatever, it looks like really good ramen, but seems really geared towards tourists. One of the things that I discovered when I was going back at the NHK tour that I did with Kevin Cooney and Patrick Galbraith in 2009 was that this culture really hasn't changed that much over the years. Everybody was super polite, despite the fact that there's so many competitors. Nobody got angry at us. There's this omotenashi (hospitality), that Japanese hospitality, from every single rank of store, from the big department store chains all the way down to the little guy. Everybody was so polite and helpful. They try to do whatever they can to give you the best possible service that still exists in Japan, despite the tourist boom and sometimes being taken advantage of a little bit here.

45:37 John Daub: Having to deal with Japanese customer service, it's just so darn good and you don't have to tip because there's a pride in your job when you do a really good job with it. No matter what you're doing, if you're the best at what you do, there's a pride and a happiness to that. And sometimes we get lost on that because we're all looking on what we deserve and what we get. Trust me, you get what you do, you deserve. If you leave the job and they didn't recognize your value to them, then you should leave. Start and then become their competitor, become the worst nightmare. That's the way to go.

46:13 John Daub: Japanese, because it is a phonetical language, A-I-U-A-O, there's a lot of similarities to other languages out there as well. I thought there was some similarities between Spanish and Japanese. Anyways, thanks so much yesterday for watching, joining me at midnight. A lot of you that are watching now, and this is going to be an amazing year. Make sure you subscribe. I'm going to be taking you to the farthest reaches of Japan. I did the least amount of travel in 2024 than I have. But I often go like from Hokkaido down to Okinawa all the time. And last year was like a really weak year for travel. So this year I talked to my wife and I said, I got to be out of here. I got to go out and get, show everybody every single corner of this country again. And we're going to do that. So let's get this year warmed up. 2025 is going to be really awesome.

47:44 John Daub: Get back to the main channel and watch that grow. Hit a million. Do that on Instagram as well. All right, everybody. Happy New Year. California is next. I'll bring you tomorrow another live stream. I'm not sure exactly where we're going to go. And I will definitely be trying to hit up Asakusa Shrine and Sensoji Temple and possibly hit the street food there because it looks so darn good. We can do a little bit of a food run. What do you think? Until then, have a good New Year. Get some rest if you're in the US. And I'll see you tomorrow from the backside of Akihabara. Matane (see you later).