00:00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Omiya Station. Check it out. We are in Saitama. You can see the Shinkansen leaving up there. That's pretty cool. Omiya Station, the heart of Saitama. It's one of the big access points from Tokyo going to Tohoku and our destination for today.

00:00:25 John Daub: How you doing everybody? It is a getting warmer though still winter February morning here and I came here to film an event that was taking place in here with the station master and some of the staff from electronics company within an episode you'll see in the main channel really soon.

00:00:50 John Daub: Gotta be really quiet but I want to take you around Omiya Station here. Now this is where I am in Tokyo. Check out the map here. I'm going to come out and see it's only about 45 minutes, 50 minutes on the local train from Tokyo Station.

00:01:15 John Daub: From Ueno is the big portal from Tokyo that takes you up to Tohoku Saitama Station. Again Saitama is not Tohoku but it leads up that route so that the Tohoku Shinkansen I believe makes a stop here in Omiya as well as a lot of the other Shinkansen that are heading north and northeast.

00:01:40 John Daub: It's a pretty big station. It's pretty massive station. You can see the Omiya City itself around the station area is quite built up very much like a lot of the Japanese prefectural capitals and a lot of places around Japan.

00:02:05 John Daub: Feels like Omiya is always growing. When Tokyo grows Omiya grows it feels like because of its proximity and it's a lot more livable than a lot of places in Tokyo, my Saitama friends say anyways.

00:02:30 John Daub: I think that's a railway museum. Very famous place. I'm going to go check that out one of these days as well. I didn't know there's a parking lot on the top of the station which we can't see but thanks for Google Maps, Google Earth for allowing me to see that and you can see the proximity to Tokyo is not too far away. Exciting stuff.

00:02:55 John Daub: Alright let's walk around here. So this is the ekimae (station front) area and I think this is pretty good to see first.

00:03:20 John Daub: It's always very noticeable when you don't see Sega anymore. Instead you see GiGO. Sega, the game centers were handed over to this company which has actually been around for quite a long time. But GiGO is now, the red is now replaced with blue and it's funny to see that over there.

00:03:45 John Daub: Purikura (photo booths). Most of those game centers are not actually game centers because of consoles. They're mostly UFO catchers which are physical items and Purikura which are pictures.

00:04:10 John Daub: Those photo booths for the Purikura have really gotten a lot better since I came here 25 years ago of course. There's a Sushiro as well. Very famous kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi) chain. The taxis are down below.

00:04:35 John Daub: Now it's always funny that the walkways on the second floor are so much more convenient than walking ground level because you don't have to cross the street. Because there's so many pedestrians walking around, in particular most major Japanese stations, they'll have this kind of walkways above the station area.

00:05:00 John Daub: There's the big Omiya sign up on the roof of it. That's the Japanese kanji for Omiya and you can see the station sign. This goes back all the way to the 1950s I bet.

00:05:25 John Daub: That big, the line over the O means that it's an ōō, double O, which means a fig in Japanese. Omiya.

00:05:50 John Daub: Tokyo. Tokyo. The Disney store is here. So is McDonald's. I can smell it.

00:06:15 John Daub: I remember going to a city in Italy like in 1997 in Siena I think. Just a small town and you could smell McDonald's. They put it right near the train station. They kind of like, oh gosh, it's one of those things you can't escape. It was funny to see that in the little teeny town of Siena, McDonald's.

00:06:40 John Daub: Now here's the ground level. The walkway does look quite good. Quite retro, like it was put in in the 1980s. You can tell because of all the metal that they have in the railings and the design.

00:07:05 John Daub: This is what they thought the future was back in the past. The future looked like this. It's just kind of cool. This looks like bubble era stuff. Hey, it still works.

00:07:30 John Daub: Let's see what we can find around this station area here. There's already a Lions, which is the baseball team of Saitama Seibu Lions. It is getting chilly with the sun gone. Nothing interesting except for the wrapping of it. I guess they play in the Saitama Dome.

00:07:55 John Daub: Let's check that out. It's kind of funny. Did you see them? That dude is climbing the wall. We'll walk out here. Yeah, the Saitama Dome. I don't know. I think that's in Omiya, right? It's pretty big dome. A lot of conventions and things like that have taken part here.

00:08:20 John Daub: Palace Hotel Omiya wow this does look like the future look how clean it is it is so clean beautiful blue sky but it is getting pretty chilly here just gonna walk i'm gonna walk over to this square in front of the palace hotel which is a park that's right sdf youtube writes it here live in one punch land very much so kind of trying to stay warm so you gotta keep moving.

00:08:45 John Daub: You don't hear those chirping very much in the city of Tokyo they don't in the countryside in the rural areas they still play the music but do you know that song they don't play that here but i still hear on the countryside but i don't hear it in tokyo and they do that so they allow people that are hearing impaired to be able to know when to cross the street the songs signify east and north south east and west so they know which side is crossing when they play a certain tune i thought that was interesting history but i don't hear them that often anymore.

00:09:10 John Daub: The Sogo department store i think went bankrupt ages ago so a lot of them are still around but the buildings don't look like they're being taken care of very well department stores not really big anymore thanks to amazon and rakuten and some of the other online sellers.

00:09:35 John Daub: All right look at this saitama has rental bicycles in omiya this is different than the docomo ones in tokyo 15 minutes for 70 yen 12 hours city i bet you you don't have to go too far to get out into the outskirts and check it out. I guess this is for accessibility.

00:10:00 John Daub: This is great. So you could either walk up the steps or you could take the ramp if you have a bicycle or a wheelchair. And because it wraps around, the grade is not too bad. That's good.

00:10:25 John Daub: I noticed that there's a lot of accessibility changes that happened in the city around the station here, which is good. I'm seeing a lot more elevators, a lot more ramps like this, so people can get up and down more easily. I think that's a great thing. We didn't see it in Japan for the longest time.

00:10:50 John Daub: So you can see mountains over there. The only mountain we see from Tokyo is Fujiyama, sometimes on a clear day from certain angles. Yeah, I like it from above than down below. It's a lot better up here.

00:11:15 John Daub: I think there's a bunch of people who have lived in Saitama that are watching. I love taking a look at some of these stations, coming back and revisiting them, because things change so fast. And they become something of an archive of how Japan looked 10, 15, 20 years ago.

00:11:40 John Daub: There's the Shinkansen leaving. Did you see that? Is that the Hokuriku Shinkansen? That's the E2, I think. How you doing, Jason, that artist? John is trying to stay warm.

00:12:05 John Daub: Look at that. They put the nettings on the wall. Is that for the snow or for the birds? The nets on the trees here. Osaka is good for accessibility, too. I think when the expo was announced about five years ago, they really started to ramp up, so to speak, the accessibility challenges that they'd had previously. And that's a great thing.

00:12:30 John Daub: The Olympics and the Paralympics brought in a lot of really positive changes in that respect to Tokyo, the city. And the stations that never had elevators or ramps, they now have it. And it makes it a lot more accessible, for sure.

00:12:55 John Daub: Because if you're coming to visit Japan in a wheelchair, it's actually a pretty good time now. Because even five years ago, it was a lot more challenging. There's still some challenges, of course. But in those cases, it's a good idea to use Google Maps.

00:13:20 John Daub: There's this telephone number for every train station. And you can give them ahead a call, and they'll be there to welcome you. It's great. It's kind of like VIP service, I always say. And they'll be able to help you get on and off the train if you were to need it, especially if you were a solo traveler.

00:13:45 John Daub: And I've met a lot of people in wheelchairs that came here as solo travelers. You can do it. But you need a little bit of patience, I think. And if you can't speak Japanese, you really need a little bit of patience. But it can be done.

00:14:10 John Daub: In some of the alleys around the stations, there's nightlife down there. You'll find a lot of the nightlife in the alleyways. I think it seems like it'd be more on the other side, but I'm not too sure about it. Sam Gardner's here. Thank you, Sam. We're trying to stay warm up here.

00:14:35 John Daub: Saitama Bus is there. I don't think Omiya has a subway. The buses are the only way to get around. Reds is here. John, I love these walk-in streams. I'm glad that you're watching.

00:15:00 John Daub: Where are you guys watching from? Let me know. I always love to see. That's an easy one for you. If you've ever commented in a live stream before, just write in where you're from. It's kind of neat to see. We have people watching from all over the world, which is cool.

00:15:25 John Daub: Look at that waffle. These things are often quite significant. And I don't know what the artwork is. They become meeting places. And this one looks like a waffle on a stick.

00:15:50 John Daub: Wow, Indiana, Germany, New York City. Chan, of course, in the trunk. Here comes another E2 Shinkansen up there. Carlos is riding in here. Koji riding. Omiya is like a second home to me. It's a really nice station.

00:16:15 John Daub: Let's go inside. Just take a quick look, see inside the station from the main entrance. It goes east-west. And I'll take you from one side to the other. We'll just do a walk-through.

00:16:40 John Daub: The station map is here. The JR East Railway Omiya General Rolling Stock Center. Okay. So that's what that building was. I wonder where the, I guess the Rail Museum is over here as well.

00:17:05 John Daub: Space Theater. Awesome! Space Theater. This is the Sonic Center Citizens Hall. And there's a junior high school up here. And down there, there's not too much. Takashimaya on the other side, which is the department store.

00:17:30 John Daub: They always have these blood drives too, which is good. Nice to see that they're, I have a, I think it was like one of Kanae's uncles, gives blood and he has a card. He's a gold member of the blood giving group. They have card-carrying members. That's kind of cool. Like we get some privileges for doing a good thing. That's always nice. Reward people for doing good stuff.

00:17:55 John Daub: So there's the entrances to the JR. The North Gate and the South Gate on the other side. I like this. This information guide that goes around the wheel there. That's kind of neat. I haven't seen that before.

00:18:20 John Daub: Mada abunai to kanjita. It's kind of like public service announcements there. Doraemon. Oh, there's the Marunouchi no Midori no Maro. So they're trying to get, trying to do everything by machines so people don't go into these as much. These machines here. You can do a lot of stuff.

00:18:45 John Daub: I think you've seen online. If you ever have to do the call button, if you do it, they'll open up this window and a guy's head will pop out, which is so cool. But if you ever, you can't speak, there's a button for the Japan Rail Pass here.

00:19:10 John Daub: So you can do it in English and it'll let you know all the information that you need to do. You can reserve tickets, trains for the Nozomi and everything can be done here. So if you have a JR Rail Pass, no problem.

00:19:35 John Daub: To get to Tokyo from here is pretty cheap. In 2025, Tokyo Station, Akihabara is 490 yen. Tokyo Station is 580 yen. You could walk that from Kanda and save 90 yen and you'd be officially a cheapskate like me. I've done that before. It's like, I could just walk in, it's 10 minutes, save 90 yen.

00:20:00 John Daub: I don't think it makes you cheapskate. It makes you economical and an active person. It's good stuff. I love it.

00:20:25 John Daub: Oh look, they do have these stamp rallies in the station. It said that you were here in Saitama. I got nothing to stamp but you can see. Oh there's a train, a Shinkansen on there. That's pretty cool. And there's some ink here so you can stamp a piece of paper or a brochure. I don't want to waste it but it'll look like that. Which is an awful mess.

00:20:50 John Daub: They've got a lot. I'll show you a QR code for this. But they have some online stuff. They're always doing these campaigns and Omiya is promoting itself as the railway town. So guess because they have the railway museum here. There's a lot of stuff going on inside of Omiya and Omiya station in regards to the trains.

00:21:15 John Daub: Oh hey, they've got a Beams over there. There's always a shopping mall. Beck's Coffee is a JR branded cafe. You can get bowls inside the station. You can get bowls of curry, udon and soba from the vending machines here.

00:21:40 John Daub: Oh look it's in English as well. Wow. You can do anything in English here. That's as far as the English goes. I don't know. I would recommend the tempura. Oh Chikuwa is always good. 590 yen. They have little pictures of what they look like here. Oh that croquette looks good.

00:22:05 John Daub: You can get the... If you have a cat, you can get these little rabbit hats for your cat. They're 400 yen. Oh they're sold out. Oh that's so cute. I don't have a cat but I could get it for Peter. That's not as cute. That's funny.

00:22:30 John Daub: Here's the big... This is one of the meeting spots. You see it looks like a... I don't know what is this called? Hold on a second. Mame no ki. So it's the mame no ki (bean tree). The tree of beans. I don't know. It looks like a DNA structure or something like that. A lot of people will meet around this. It's a big meeting spot here.

00:22:55 John Daub: Here's a central south gate for the station and up above there is a pretty neat place. That Starbucks is kind of neat. It's a nice property. It looks down on the station you can see so you get a pretty good view. Bird's eye view of all the people. You could do a time lapse from up there or something. That's kind of neat.

00:23:20 John Daub: And on the other side is a north entrance so it takes you to the same platforms. The platform is up above so that's why I believe it's up above. Yeah. Or is it down below? I can't recall.

00:23:45 John Daub: For the record, this should help you out navigating Omiya Station. Just take a screenshot if you need it. Here's the entrance to the Starbucks on the right side there. Escalator up.

00:24:10 John Daub: All right. Let's go take a look and see what's on the other side of the station. Everyone's going this way. For me. Just look out the window. This looks so different. This is a different world.

00:24:35 John Daub: The other side is not as built up as the other side. This side has a lot more character. This is a Takashimaya department store. As you can see the weather is blue skies but quite chilly.

00:25:00 John Daub: There's a member of the JEA, the cleaning staff. They do such a great job. If you haven't seen the video that I made on it, cleaning Ueno Station from morning to night. It's amazing how they keep the Japanese stations so clean in Tokyo.

00:25:25 John Daub: All right. Let's go down. I saw like a shotengai (covered shopping arcade) guy down there. It's a Mos Burger. This is the East exit North. Literally East exit North side. And it's certainly a different vibe on this side. I kind of like this side better.

00:25:50 John Daub: Of this right here. Check this out. It's a phone bank. I love this. You're not going to see this too many places anymore. Across the street from this station. Japan still has their phone banks. That's awesome. NTT rocking it.

00:26:15 John Daub: In order to use these you could use coins or card. I always used these cards before but I don't think 10 yen buys you a lot of time here. Phone booths were really nasty because they put all these ads for girls. They'd cover their eyes. Like this. And put pictures with the phone number. So for a good time call this number. I never did it. Of course not.

00:26:40 John Daub: All right. Let's go take a quick look see down this shotengai. Suzuran Dori. All right. Quick look see at Suzuran. I haven't been here for a very long time. It's a covered shotengai.

00:27:05 John Daub: A lot of restaurants in here. Look at that over here. It's kind of closed off but there's a shrine. Kind of ruins. Got a picture. I'll fix that up. It's got like an old retro vibe to it with the covered streets. These are called shotengai. For the shopping arcade this is where people would go. It was covered from the hot sun and also from the rain. But now they feel really retro.

00:27:30 John Daub: Savage Gamer 88. Thank you for being a traveler for six months. Much appreciated. All right. So there you go. There's a Gindaco takoyaki place. There's a local restaurant called Ootoya. That chain is really popular. Ootoya right there. And Marugame Seimen which is the udon shop.

00:27:55 John Daub: They're always loading up some pretty good udon. They sometimes have really funny campaigns. They had these mochi mochi. They had these doughnuts. Do you see that? Made from udon doughnuts which is just basically dough. And they had. I think they had. Oh, here's a doughnut. Donuts, chocolate flavored donuts made from the dough that they would make the udon from. That's kind of cool.

00:28:20 John Daub: Marugame is in Kagawa prefecture down in Shikoku Island. Kagawa prefecture is the smallest prefecture in Japan. Ootoya, that's right, Ootoya. Like Omiya.

00:28:45 John Daub: So this is looking back at Omiya Station. Internet cafe. Wow. And there's the old facade of the Takashimaya department store. Ramen places are open for breakfast. It's before 10 a.m. and they're doing a pretty good business.

00:29:10 John Daub: The internet cafes, I think they're just kind of nasty places now. They're usually places where you can go in and if you miss your last train, you can get some sleep in there, rent out a booth. Mambo is a company. I filmed inside of one of these in Shibuya. Oh yeah. Like 14 years ago.

00:29:35 John Daub: And the cost is pretty reasonable. Check it out. You can get six hours for 2,400 yen or nine hour pack for just 400 yen more. So you can get a pretty good sleep. And even if it's in the afternoon, you get jet lag, you want to take a three hour nap, you can come in here and read manga for three hours. All the way up to 24 hours for 5,000 yen. That's a little bit much. But if you do it at night, it's eight hours. Four pack, it's a little bit cheaper. For weekday nights. So they have some deals.

00:30:00 John Daub: Excuse me. Yeah, you know, I once missed my train and I remember I asked the police officer what I should do. That's what you do if you're ever in any trouble. Walked into a koban (police box) and he said, go to a manga cafe. So he told me, okay. So he pointed one on the map and that's what I did until the first train. This is years ago.

00:30:25 John Daub: See, this is the game centers have turned into this. Do you see this? They're just kind of like a UFO catchers and these kinds of things in this like hot pink color. It really does draw you big windows so you can see inside there. But a lot of these game centers, they would have had video games down the first floor, but not anymore. It's interesting. Now it's all open windows.

00:30:50 John Daub: Yeah. And a lot of UFO catchers, which I don't know. I just have never played them. I never really play them like really see them. Hey, I want to try a UFO catcher. I just don't do that. They're not quite open yet. Things don't open until like 11 which is weird.

00:31:15 John Daub: Oh, look at the old Omiya station sign. I love that they don't really change it. It looks like it's been changed. They're cleaned up a little bit, but they keep it without the lights. Very retro. I love it.

00:31:40 John Daub: This is the backside of Omiya station, which is a big station, but it's so retro looking on this side, right? Is the word vintage maybe? It certainly looks like old Japan here. I can cross. Oh, gotta be careful.

00:32:05 John Daub: McDonald's has these self checkout booths now. See inside of there. It makes it easier because it could change the menu to English. And then you don't have a lot less problems with communication, but they're doing really good job. McDonald's Japan with their campaigns.

00:32:30 John Daub: This is the New York barbecue, beef and cheese. That was pretty good. Look at the bun. This is the new juicy chicken. Look at that sauce coming out there. McDonald's you're doing a good job. The lemon tartar, tartar shrimp. Wow. And you know, they make ebikatsu so good. Good job. McDonald's bring in some New York.

00:32:55 John Daub: I don't know. Everybody who comes here says that McDonald's in Japan is just so much better than in the United States. It's believable. No, I can't see the ramen in the can. Always looking for it. They're in the drink vending machines, not the Coca-Cola ones.

00:33:20 John Daub: So, all right, this looks like more of the entertainment area. Wow. Look at all those signs. It's very bright, vibrant down there. Nothing. Peach, white peach. Poca. That's maybe one of the not quite as popular as the Georgia for coffee.

00:33:45 John Daub: All right, let's go back into the station. It's kind of chilly. Here's, look at this bike. So this is, look at this, the nifty light that they have. It's lit up. Looks retro and modern at the same time. It's kind of cool.

00:34:10 John Daub: So I've seen this, the mailbox here. That's a, there's red mailboxes. The staple of Japan. I was reading on, was it NHK? That a lot of these stations out in the countryside, they have these white boxes and people would put their adult material in there, like as trash can instead of the normal trash cans so kids don't get their hands on it apparently.

00:34:35 John Daub: And they're getting rid of those boxes around Japan. So only a few stations have them. So I'm always on the lookout for those. I didn't even know about it until last year. It was just something that was held over from the 1980s or something. I guess people had a lot of that kind of material back then. Maybe less now. But there you go.

00:35:00 John Daub: Omiya Station. Yeah, like it's very, you'd have to know about it in order to take advantage of it of course, but they'd have these white boxes where you put it inside of there.

00:35:25 John Daub: Eat real tonkotsu ramen in Tokyo. But this is Saitama. And the name of their place is Tokyo. So eat it in Tokyo. You don't need to come to Saitama. Spicy miso tonkotsu. Wow. That looks really good. Nice scene from Omiya Station.

00:35:50 John Daub: All right, let's go back up into the station. Nice and warm up there. Again, I'm really loving the digital menus here. Oh, it's gone. I guess the menu was not there very long. Oh, it's gone again. Digital signage.

00:36:15 John Daub: So I hope you guys are enjoying the Omiya Station street view. If you liked it, make sure you hit the like button. Don't forget to check out my latest video. You're going to like this one. It is not a re-upload. This is a brand new episode