00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Shibuya Station. That right there is the Hachiko Family Relief art display that is now behind walls where they're going to be removing the art after almost 35 years being a meeting spot, an important place for a lot of residents, tourists alike. It's sad to see. This is all you can see right now. You got just the top part of the relief. I almost said statue. It's actually an art relief.

00:00:33 John Daub: We're going to talk a little bit about this sad state of the renovations happening here at Shibuya Station for us right now. What is going to be eventually a beautiful place. I went across the street and you can see here it's just a mess, Shibuya Station. And it's really sad. I guess they really had nothing out there. I think they discussed this for a very long time. That's why the news when it happened was quite abrupt about a week ago.

00:01:04 John Daub: You can see the station area just under a lot of construction. There's not a lot that they can do. I guess you can't destroy it. What they're going to have to do is find a way to remove it and put it in a museum because for 35 years almost this has been a part of people's everyday lives. And when it opened up in 1990, this is sort of a big deal. A lot of kids remember this is the meeting spot. I came here in 1998. One of the first places that I came in Tokyo was of course Shibuya because it does attract a lot of international visitors because it's sensory overload.

00:01:45 John Daub: I think the Lonely Planet or the guidebooks at the time had Hachiko Scramble Shibuya on the cover. I mean this is like we're talking like 1995 really way back there. Lonely Planet and that's how we got around here with the Lonely Planet and it really talked about this area because of how bright and vibrant and crazy it looks. It just got so many colors and a lot of it hasn't really changed over the last 25-35 years but it's going to.

00:02:18 John Daub: This used to be the Tokai Bank. That was my bank way back in the day back in 1998 when I first came here. I was Tokai Bank so now it's Q Front. It came in around the same time at the turn of the millennium in 2000. I guess if you saw Lost in Translation with Bill Murray that movie you saw the dinosaur walking across there. That was when it was brand new. They just newly renovated it recently. They have a second sign up there now so double the ad revenue. But this is like part of that old retro Shibuya that they're kind of losing right now.

00:02:55 John Daub: The department store, Tokyo department store, this was the Honten (main store) but it's now being redone. The basement is still open and over there is this Hachiko statue of course. Right over there you see it. Usually there's a line of tourists to take a picture there so you can't just do that. This used to be like a police box or something I think back in 1998. When I came here I'm having trouble kind of remembering it.

00:03:36 John Daub: I'm looking at this video. If you go on YouTube you can find a lot of old videos from like this one's from 1990 from Lyle. I believe he still lives here. And you can see the images from 1990 just not long after this opened. It was pretty vibrant back then. You can see it's just brand new. You get a glimpse of the Hachiko Family Relief. We're going to talk a little bit about the statue and the artist behind it. You can see how life has changed so much in those 35 years with the style. Look at the haircuts. The suits. This is the end of the bubble era. They were taking tickets manually. The hairstyles and everything. It's pretty retro. People were pretty plain back then. And this is Shibuya Station which is under some great changes right now.

00:04:42 John Daub: Go and subscribe. There are a lot of retro videos, videos from the past there. I found some production notes on this art installation. This opened up on March 29th, 1990. It's a relief. That's the type of artwork it is. It's 4 meters by 15 meters, 4 meters high, 15 meters long of Hachiko.

00:05:13 John Daub: It's really interesting because the artist of it... Here's some notes here of the production work from 1990. The theme of the work is what if Hachiko had a family? Hachiko was a lonely dog in life. But in fact he had a child named Kumako. Hachiko had a child really. And this is based on the artist's wish to depict Hachiko who was lonely in life as happy being surrounded by a large family. A rainbow appears in space with the sun, moon and twinkling stars with Hachiko at the center. Around him are 20 Akita dogs, large and small, playing together reminiscent of a large Hachiko family that later grew up. Based on the original painting that artist Akita Hara spent nearly a year drawing, the mural is made of more than 1,200 ceramic panels with bold relief. You're seeing that live right now.

00:06:10 John Daub: Shout out to Daniel. Do you feel that Shibuya is losing its touch? A little bit. It's losing what it used to be and reinventing itself to what it can be, perhaps. That's one way to look at it. But you can see all those tiles that were put together, slapped up there in the bubble era of Japan. We're starting to see that, I guess they're going to have to take it all down. Maybe they take it down and then put it back up in a museum. This is how they have to do it, tile by tile. But it really does need to be in a museum and it should be preserved as part of the history. Because so many people have spent their lives in Japan meeting up in front of it. Kids that were kids, now adults. They're the lawmakers now. So I'm sure that there's a lot of love for this artwork. It's called Hachiko Family Relief.

00:07:16 John Daub: You can see that the station is really undergoing a lot of renovations. Even from the Google Earth renditions right now. We see so much work going on here. A lot of cranes, construction. It's completely transformed from what it was in 2015. It seems like a lot of construction started at that time. Most of it has to do with the JR station right there. And you can see there's the relief which will no longer be on the Google Earth soon. The Tokyo department store is just a pit right now, sort of working its way up. And a lot of new buildings. High-rises coming up over the last few years. Now Google's headquarters are in there. Apparently the Wi-Fi is really good in there. I've been there a couple of times. It was really good.

00:08:15 John Daub: You can see it's really just a big construction site. So as a result of that, they are changing a lot of things here. And things that have to go. This is actually like some sort of see-through design. But it looked like a marble front to Shibuya station. But now we see through it because they've completely removed the wall. But it has to keep the sign, right? There's a lot of changes going on. I'm going to take you over to the relief. Get one more look at it. So we can say goodbye live together one last time here at Hachiko Scramble.

00:09:01 John Daub: A lot of people are coming. The signal is bound to get worse and worse as the day gets by. If you ever want to live stream here, you got to do it before 11. I'm not joking. This is on a selfie stick. We're going to try to get above it all. But it's one last look behind the wall there. You can see Shibuya, not the cleanest place in the world, which is why you either love it or hate it.

00:10:07 John Daub: And for me, I'm kind of for tacos at Guzman. That's right. I'm going to be headed next. I prefer Frijoles. That's a local brand. But if you're in Shibuya, that's sort of a go-to place, I guess. Hachiko Gate has been, go to the left side. This is one last look here. So there's a lot, kind of sad to see that.

00:11:18 John Daub: We're going to take a quick look at the Hachiko Gate. I'm going to take a quick look at the Hachiko statue, which has been here since the 1930s. There's a brother statue. It's the same Hachiko, but it's in Odate up in Akita (prefecture). And it's, I think, the same maker. It came out the same year, or maybe a one-year difference. But this statue is not the only one. But it's the most famous one just because of its location. And you get to be in the video if you're standing in front of him. You can see there's a line of tourists that wait for the picture. In just a couple of months, these cherry blossom trees are going to make it even more beautiful. They've lit it up with LEDs. So I wonder if they take that down for the sakura that open up around March 25th.

00:12:47 John Daub: Now, I used to work for this chain up here. This building, I don't know how much longer this one's going to be there. This one looks like a throwback from the 1980s. But I used to work for Eon right there when I didn't get into the JET program because I totally botched the interview at Washington DC Embassy. At least I got an interview back then. But yeah, I ended up getting a teaching job there, teaching children. It only took five weeks after I interviewed with them. And they said, how would you like to teach kids? And I said, I'm basically a kid myself. Why not? And in five weeks, I was in Japan training in the middle of summer. It was an amazingly fast trip. Usually with the JET program, you got to wait like six months and stuff. Amity Eon put me in there in five weeks.

00:14:01 John Daub: If you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below. I don't want to drag this out, but over the course of its history, 35 years, this has been such an important part. And we've lost already a ton of stuff in the Shibuya area. So it's not really like a surprise anymore. But it does because if you look at Lyle's video here, you can just feel like the history and how it's all being lost. In a way, this was my history because I came here just eight years after he took this video. And this relief art has been a meeting point. Shibuya Station was a much different... It was still a very crowded place, but it's gotten even more crowded because of all the tourists here, because Japanese population is decreasing, but visitors to Shibuya is increasing. So they're really renovating the station, try to put investment in. This started well before they announced the Tokyo Olympics back in 2015, 2016.

00:15:48 John Daub: It's a little chilly today. Got to go get myself a burrito. I can't go home empty-handed. It is beautiful. I mean, I like that rainbow. I like the tiles. It was real. When I got here in 98, I looked, boy, this looks like it came from the 70s. No, it didn't. It came from the bubble era 90s. There was probably an artist who was inspirational from the 70s. It does look like a real throwback, but it's only 35 years old, right? But Tokyo is a city that's always going to be moving. It just doesn't stop. And this is the one thing that I love about Tokyo. It's always reinventing itself, I'd say, every five years. If you came to Japan every five years, you would find a very different city.

00:17:06 John Daub: Why are they removing it? It's just because of the renovations. You can see they're already, not renovations, like complete change. I showed you a couple of years ago. And see, there's buildings going up over there. This building went up. I remember when this was just a hole in the ground. And there's another building here, black in the sun. This is going to be up by the end of this year. You're probably going to see massive progress. And this area is going to be really dark, actually. But because of that, they simply cannot keep it. So, I guess they tried to find a way to keep the wall. But they just can't do it with the heavy construction that's going on on the other side of this. The entrance to Hachiko, you can't even get on the train from here anymore. It's closed down right there. So, you have to go around to get into the station. That's just temporary.

00:18:01 John Daub: Let's cross the intersection. We'll take a look at it from another side here. This is where the signal starts to get weak as we go to the other side. Thanks guys for the super chats. I appreciate it. Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day or in Japan. Do you guys know what holiday February 2nd is? It's the day that my son gets to pelt me with beans and chase me around the house as I dress up as a demon. It's always the foreign husband that does it, apparently. Peter von Gomm's the same way. You get 45 seconds across. Then you gotta wait 90 seconds for the light. And these cars come fast after that light changes, so you gotta be on the move.

00:19:13 John Daub: Setsubun (bean-throwing festival). Right, we eat a big maki roll at the supermarket. Or you can make them yourself. Supermarkets all have them half price if you go there at 7pm. There's too many that are going by per hour. There's some media that is counting them. Maybe we're gonna see some changes in 2025. Yeah, I'll be donning the demon mask tomorrow.

00:20:10 John Daub: It's kinda neat to see it from different angles. I heard a rumor that they were gonna change this... They were gonna get rid of the Basketball Street name to this... To Center Gai (pedestrian street). I think Basketball Street... I guess they're trying to grow the sport in Japan. But I heard there's a rumor they're getting rid of calling this Basketball Street. And that happened like about 15 years ago, I think. Ichimarukyu (1-9). Another staple. Again, this building is very, like, retro in style. Bubble era. Lot of history in there. It looks it too when you go inside. When I came here 27 years ago, it looked brand new. It felt brand new. And now feels its age. You walk through those low ceiling places inside of there, it just feels like...

00:21:39 John Daub: They moved the platform. A lot of changes have happened. I love that monitor at the Shibuya Scramble up there. They got some interesting videos that are produced. There's too many per hour going through here. So they might limit the amount of companies. Because it's just growing to a ridiculous level. Back in the day, they said 15,000 to 25,000 would cross every hour. I'm not a big fan of the carts. But I've never ridden them. So I should not get too hard. And I should say that. But as somebody who's driven in Tokyo, I'm not attracted to doing it with a go-cart. Maybe it's more fun. But it's already stressful for me.

00:22:54 John Daub: I think we've said our goodbyes. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Do you ever try to cut across going against traffic? It's really hard. It's like the weave. The weave going in between people. It's also artistic. When you do that. There's Tower Records over there.

00:23:34 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks for watching. I'm glad that we could at least have one last stream. I don't know when they're gonna be taking it down. Apparently real soon. But we got a chance to check it out together one last time. Shibuya, you know, I got a love-hate relationship with this place. I think it's too crowded. That sensory overload is worn off. But still, I got memories here, man. I got a lot of memories here.

00:24:04 John Daub: In 2005, before YouTube even existed, I had a PD-174. It was a 70s Sony camera with mini DV cassettes. I was doing things pretty high quality back then, even then, to try to teach people English. And I used to live in Futako-Tamagawa, which was about 10 to 14 minutes, depending if you get the express train on the Den-en-toshi Line. I would stand in the middle of the square there. Not a lot of tourists back then. Hardly any. Mostly English teachers. And I would interview Japanese, asking them in English, and trying to teach them English. And we didn't have Internet. This is what I did before I did YouTube. So I would make these video CDs, not even DVDs, video CDs of the videos. And I think I had about 25 customers that I would send them to. Once a month, I would make a compilation. It was like a subscription service I was trying to do. But once Steve Jobs held up that iPod video, it was like, okay, this is done. I better just change to video, digital video. And that's what I did. And here I am today.

00:25:28 John Daub: It was NHK reporting in 1998. Started YouTube right after the great Tohoku earthquake when everybody was leaving Japan and tried to do my part to get people to come back. So I got some history. I took a video from that location about 30 minutes ago just to get a view. Apparently, you're not supposed to be filming from the window. But I did. No one yelled at me. No one even acknowledged me. But I wanted to just get a historical look back on the history of Japan. I wanted to get a look of the view from up there.

00:26:27 John Daub: All right, everybody, I got to get going. I'm hungry. But if you have any questions, if you also want to share some memories, leave in the comments below because this becomes kind of a record of like a historical archive of this area. Just like Lyle's videos from the 1990s, this is going to be kind of like that. And I hope that this video that Lyle put up there lives on. I'm really appreciative of it. Go and subscribe. He's got some pretty good retro stuff there from the olden days. But these live streams are also going to be part of that record too. And I'm proud to do it.

00:27:05 John Daub: The longer I stay here, the more I kind of feel the changes. And I know that a lot of you have been visiting Japan for many years. A lot of you have been multiple times here. And you also feel that as well. You want to see the changes happen. You want to say goodbye. And you want to say hello to the new things that come, which inevitably in Tokyo every five years does. This place, again, it reinvents itself. That's the great thing about Tokyo. And in about two years, Shibuya is going to look completely different. So soak it up, everybody. This view is going to be completely different. Just like when the Hikarie building on the far left side there came up in 2011. I was like, what is that building? The skyline has just been changing and changing and changing. And this is going to be something of a view in ten years. You're like, what? I remember. I was there with John live. See you.