00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings! Welcome to Tokyo. This is Shimbashi. I'm back at the scene of the crime. Just a couple of days ago I released a main channel episode taking you to the snack bars, some of the izakaya (Japanese pubs) drinking holes of this area. It's interesting—during the daytime it feels totally different, a different vibe. But we're gonna take a look and see if we can find some more snack bars, talk about maybe some of the questions that you have about that episode. Right there is the New Shimbashi Building, which is slated to be demolished sometime between now and the next eight years. There's a lot of stuff that's gonna change in this area, but you can see here it does look old and run down—and it is. That's the beauty of it. That's what makes this so amazing.

00:00:43 John Daub: We're gonna walk along the Yamanote Line tracks, come back through the nishiguchi (west exit) side of Shimbashi and have some fun. The weather is absolutely beautiful right now—we got blue skies, temperature 25 degrees Celsius, in the 70s if you need Fahrenheit. We're gonna have a lot of fun on this walk through of Shimbashi. This is a great place to stay if you're thinking of a place to stay in Tokyo, because the eats are cheap and they're everywhere and you don't need reservations. It's very easy to get a place to eat here. This is definitely preferred over a place like Shibuya for sure as a place to stay, and just the ambiance of it—because all these alleys and the buildings are quite old.

00:01:30 John Daub: This area was bombed quite heavily in '44, '45, so a lot of it was rebuilt right after that. But you have these weird angles to the buildings that are probably gonna be redone when they fix everything here. You got an alley here and then the tracks of the Yamanote Line to the left. It's quite interesting at nighttime too because it comes to life—the izakayas, the places to eat. And you're gonna see here the prices are so darn cheap: highballs (whiskey sodas) and nama (draft) beer for 280 yen. That's $1.50 for a jockey of beer, about 350 ml—like a 12 oz can for $1.50 at this place. And a lemon sour for 50 yen. How do they make that price work? But if they can get you in the door, they make some money—it's still pretty cheap but usually you'll order a lot.

00:02:29 John Daub: This is a chain actually, an izakaya but just to give you an idea what's on the menu—it's a lot of stuff. This one in particular is seafood barbecue. English menus available. Izakaya have massive menus and they're colorful—you can eat various things. You can also get set courses typically but just eat various things, order a bunch of stuff and see what you like. That's the beauty of it. You can get a little bit of sashimi, some yakiniku (grilled meat), some steaks, even stuff for kids like french fries and pizza. I wouldn't recommend this stuff because it's not quite as good. The shirako (cod milt/fish sperm)—it's quite good though. The menus are typically tapas style—you push the button and the waiters bring it out. You don't have to tip them either, which is part of the beauty of it.

00:03:36 John Daub: This place seems like it's quite new—Chikara, which means energy in Japanese. You also see nightclubs like this, girls bars—but I typically think that you should stay away from them because they're probably run by seedy people. I cannot guarantee your safety inside there. I just know that even in Tokyo you can get ripped off here. This one here is a yakitori (grilled chicken skewers) place, I believe. A lot of these that are underneath the Yamanote Line—they've been here for a very long time. But I've noticed over the last 10 years chains have been coming in. I believe that one of these two was a location for a cabaret bar that was here since the 1950s—and that's gone away, which is kind of a shame.

00:04:37 John Daub: There's actually a capsule hotel here, which I did not expect—I didn't see it during the day. So I bet there's a ton of foreigners who stay here because it's all in English. You can stay for 5 hours or 10 hours—that's pretty crazy, and then you get kicked out. So if you just want to crash here, it's actually not a bad idea—3pm to 12 o'clock is gonna be a lot more expensive, but apparently they have a hot spring here. If you're a single traveler, especially a dude, that might be pretty good. They also have up to 27-hour stays available. Capsule hotels are made for that—it's just a place to crash. We're going to be going down this area and really investigating it over the next 20-30 minutes or so.

00:05:43 John Daub: I really wish they make the new buildings feel like a movie set, like the old Showa era—they're kind of doing that. I noticed in Osaka Umeda they had this old Edo-period village type of place, and even the Japanese like that. But I think the Showa era is going to get some love. That's another thing that I love—the sound of the trains going by. That's also a very iconic part of this area of Shimbashi. And that Shiodome neighborhood that you see right there—that's all brand new. Let me show you the map of exactly where we are, break this all down for you so you get a better idea.

00:06:31 John Daub: Shimbashi means "new bridge"—this is where the first train station in Japan was, I think 1870, somewhere around then, 19th century. The Yamanote Line coming in in the 20th century, I believe in the 1900s. But the train from Shimbashi to Yokohama was the first train line, I believe. That's Shimbashi Station—there, that SL Square means steam locomotive square. There's a steam train on that plaza, which is kind of cool because this was the first train station. But it's those low buildings here that are the most noteworthy—the Showa-era bars. It's still got that feeling there, set to be redeveloped in the next seven or eight years. But we're starting down here, and then you can see Sakurada Park, which we'll walk by—it's a place people will get a drink from a convenience store and sip outside.

00:07:26 John Daub: Do you see this interesting thing? Around the block there are some 12-story buildings, but inside they're all like two- or three-story buildings—it's quite unique. So after you get inside this walled kingdom of snack bars and clubs, that's all changing inside of there as well—that's all set to be demolished. I think that's one reason why they're not really doing a lot with it.

00:07:58 John Daub: And we're back—this is all because of the main channel episode. If you haven't seen it yet, this is about an 18-minute edited video showing you the experiences inside a snack bar, which are these hangouts—like the social media of Japan where people would hang out and get to know each other before 2008. They have been on the decline, and I made an episode to try to bring them back, help people understand because it's intimidating to go in there if you don't know Japanese. But there are guided tours where the tour guide speaks English, and you can get access to it—I think that really helps to preserve it. So I liked what they were doing and wanted to support them. And this is with Matt Ault, who is an author and authoritative figure on Japanese culture—as much as perhaps I am in some respects. But he's a written author with a lot of books on it, and he's a really good friend of ours.

00:08:54 John Daub: Look at this little statue here—this is so Showa feeling. And then here's the other side of the alley. I like the way that they put trees—they try to add a little bit of nature in here. It's now spring, so it's starting to bloom, the green leaves are coming out, which is great. And of course here's the booze trucks re-stocking for tonight's show. It's Sunday night—wait, Monday night—but a lot of this area is very famous on the weeknights because the salarymen, the guys in business suits making salaries, will typically go out on the weekdays here. The weekends it's pretty vibrant, but more and more foreign tourists are—it's a friendly place for foreign tourists. Just the color of the signs, everyone has something out on the street—makes this a place to come and just kind of check out all the food. It absolutely has a different vibe during the daytime than it does at night, but you can see a lot more during the day. So it makes a lot of sense if you're staying here to scout this all out.

00:09:59 John Daub: Look at this—it has all these dumplings here. Look at all the different kinds: lamb and coriander, tomato—so they have veggie options—celery, scallops, wow, oyster, lemon gyoza. Really? That's interesting. And that's up these steps here—sometimes the best places are not on the street level. Here's another izakaya with a pretty good looking menu—actually this place is open I think for lunch. Tanuki—I think that means raccoon dog, right? That's a very vibrant izakaya here.

00:10:52 John Daub: And I want to show you maybe one of the cheapest izakayas in this area that I've been to numerous times—I think I just passed it though. When I came here at night the other day, this is so lit up—people spilling outside the streets for this one here. I love that, being able to drink and eat on the streets in a little bench. And I'm going to take you to one of those alleys now—the Shimbashi Yokocho (alley). Actually it is open for lunch—there's some people eating in there. It has kind of like a Thailand vibe to it though, doesn't it? This place, that one right there, has always had a line—it says motsuyaki (offal grill). There's always people lined up even right now. Kamiya—I don't know why, I haven't been here before, but it might be something you want to scout out.

00:12:07 John Daub: Tanuki and raccoons are different—wild tanuki only exist in Japan. Alright, we're going to go down the yokocho. But at night, again, this has a completely different vibe to it—you'll find all sorts of stuff. Staminaya—stamina means, well, stamina, to power you up. A lot of the salarymen here, they're working pretty hard—they need stamina to get through their jobs. So that's something that these older... and again, the clientele is usually a little bit older. It's famous for oyaji (middle-aged guys), which are these, I don't know, I guess my age—50- to 60-year-old guys who are living that old Showa-era feeling. Stamina usually means garlic—lots of garlic.

00:13:15 John Daub: Always look up as well—you'll sometimes find something quite interesting. Nazuna—looks like a robber trying to get out of that window there. I think you'll find snack bars going up to the second floor—Nazuna looks like a pet cafe, but you'll find a lot of snack bars typically on the second floor, not on the first, as well as bars. You can go up here—this one is the kanji for izakaya. There's an izakaya in the basement here, and you'll see there's some bars or snack bars.

00:14:05 John Daub: I think this is the street where I went to Aru—I can't remember where. And the thing is a lot of these snack bars are closing, so it's hard—a place that might be open now might be gone. And that's another reason why there was a sense of urgency—there's a sense of urgency to do a lot of these episodes I'm doing right now because we're starting to see a lot of things lost because of the construction and the renovations and the changing up of everything.

00:14:50 John Daub: This is the new izakaya that was put in here—I love this, you can see the Yamanote Line going by there. At night it's just so much more vibrant. I love this intersection right here that we passed by—this is where they're restocking the booze. This is really vibrant at night. You'll know where the popular places are by looking at the lines, but if you see something that looks interesting, you just kind of walk in there—that's how I figure stuff out. I live actually not that far away from here—you just kind of walk into different places with friends. If you did come here as a traveler, I find that there's a lot of Japanese who like to practice their English on you, so you'll be popular. And then they'll still have a nijikai (second party), so you can follow them and go out to these nijikai.

00:16:07 John Daub: We're going to walk down the alley here—we're sort of still in this area, Karasumori Street—we're south of that. Yakiton—looks like a pork place here. And this one looks very Thai—this one was buzzing when I was here a couple of nights ago doing the insert shots for the episode. Nomihodai (all-you-can-drink), tabehodai (all-you-can-eat) type of place—one lemon sour 50 yen, mega size 100 yen—what? Highball 180 yen. Yeah, this place I've been to many times—it's on the second floor or is it the third? I forget, but it was really good, and they have like this unlimited sauce with a big garlic clove in there—basically a lot of stamina. On this side here is the park, and the snack bar that was there before, I think I came out of here—one of these. Somebody asked me where is Terasu—I think it's right here. Yeah, Terasu is up the stairs here.

00:18:18 John Daub: See, it says snack—Casablanca. Yeah, here—I think it might be up one more. Oh, here it is—that's where we filmed, Terasu right there. Hard to find—that's third floor, that's quite hidden. That's what makes it a gem. And she said that in the interview, people were lined up going outside the door to get in there in the 1980s during the bubble era—that's crazy. And now they're having trouble finding anybody to go in there, and I think her daughter is trying to take over—she was in the video you saw on the side there, but it's going to be really hard. So to the commenter who asked where exactly it was, that's where it is.

00:20:12 John Daub: Here's a vending machine corner—that's the mystery vending machine. Smoking is illegal on the streets, but I found that there's a smoking tent here—if you get caught smoking, you're going to have to pay a fine, which would be bad. There's a kaiten sushi (conveyor belt sushi) shop there—you can see the sushi going by, that looks pretty good, smells really good, you can smell it out on the street. Yoshinoya has got some really good stuff going on here—there's an oyakodon (chicken/egg rice bowl) and a karaage (fried chicken) oyakodon, which is really what I would probably get. You'll find in these buildings there's a lot of bars, but I don't know if there's actually snack bars—oh, here's a snack on the fifth floor, Rabun. That's a snack—so usually they have regular customers who go in there. Nomihodai, all-you-can-drink, ¥4,000 for 60 minutes—I don't know anything about this place, but if you go in there before midnight, it might be quite interesting. If you want to get wasted, you can get wasted—¥4,000 yen, you can drink it all in an hour.

00:21:52 John Daub: One of the reasons I'm doing this in 720p is because the signal is not good around this area. So we're going to walk up towards the entrance—actually I better cross the street here. There's the New Shimbashi Building there. Shohei Ohtani is everywhere—you cannot escape him. He's always there, smiling, eating, posing with something in his mouth now—he's promoting their onigiri (rice balls). Now they have a lot of cheese goods. Alright, so you don't have to go too far to get to Karasumori Shrine—take a right here, and you can see a kind of torii gate. But this used to be old buildings—they're all gone.

00:23:17 John Daub: You can see there's not a lot of space between this fence here and the side of the building—so a lot of small bars, if I remember correctly, they've been torn down. And you can see there's these snacks are now like gone—a lot of them sold out. I filmed an NHK episode 15 years ago, and one of these had like all of these eight-track cassettes and you could do karaoke in there—I think they just sold out. But they're basically just shacks—you see that? And that's what this place is famous for—however, there's only four of them left, and there's a couple of shacks over here. Some of them have been turned into really stylish restaurants. A lot of the old timers that frequent these places—and this one has been all renovated, this is totally new. This looks like a really nice bar actually—look at the bottles in there.

00:24:29 John Daub: What hasn't moved is this toilet here—there's a public toilet, yeah it's still there. So this is very Showa era—you can go do some pee-pee over there, this is for the ladies, wash your hands right there. That has not changed—that's very Showa, the outdoor alley pee place. This one is very famous but it's quite short—again, as I told you, there's like a wall around it with these higher buildings here. But if you look in the middle here, there's a ton of these two-story buildings here with some izakaya—there's a couple of snacks I believe that are still alive but not a lot. It's certainly just a fraction of what it was 15 years ago—this was so much different. A lot of them now brand new signs and more stylish food because that's what younger people want—they're trying to get younger people in here but it was made differently 15 years ago. But some of that still remains which is really part of the attraction.

00:25:41 John Daub: You can see wow, that looks so nice inside there—really clean and stylish. So you can see there's a big difference between the way things used to be, like the closet-sized snack clubs versus what you just saw—that is so much more inviting and that's what younger, more modern, this-age rewa (young) people want. Something like that—real clean, nice wood, thought in the lighting and stuff. Back in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s—you just slap in whatever you can, put a shack there and serve food and you have a place. You can't do that anymore—it's quite competitive. So you've got a lot of highball places, cheap drinks—Shimbashi very famous. Cheap drinks get people in the door—they eat a lot here, so they drink a lot and eat a lot but they don't mark up the drinks very much. They want to get you in the door, make their money off of volume and turnover. Typically salarymen they don't stay very long—they'll go to a nijikai. So the turnover rate is pretty high—that's why they have to serve the drinks real cheap.

00:27:22 John Daub: Has anyone stayed here before? I'm sure we've got a lot of people that have stayed here before. If you'd like to learn more about this, do check out the main channel episode—make sure you hit the like button on that and leave me a comment, ask a question. Somebody leaves a comment every time and goes "just commenting for the algorithm"—just ask me a question, I love that. There's a good chance if you ask a question that I'll respond—that's the best way to do it. But it's a pretty good episode, I think it gives you an idea of the food, the experience that you'll get inside of a snack. It is very typical Japanese culture—this is how they used to... a lot of marriages, a lot of hookups came from this, you know, snack bars because they were all friends, you got to know each other. So friends would recommend friends after you get to know someone to somebody to get married—"boy, you guys got the same personality," etc. But with social media, people don't do that as much.

00:28:22 John Daub: That menu looks really colorful and good—wow, hamayaki (grilled shellfish) restaurant. There's a ramen place across the street—you can see just the style of even the ramen restaurants has changed a lot. The way that the younger people want to eat stuff, it's really changed a lot over the years—for the better or for the worse. I think you can't be resistant to change—you have to find a way to evolve.

00:29:07 John Daub: So the last place that I went to, the entrance to that is around here—was it this one? Maybe not—it was hard to find. The mama-san there was really nice—she was a dancer, gorgeous, the photo from when she was young. And she seemed really open—she said there's a lot of people that were coming that were younger. Not this one—this one looks like, quote unquote, entertainment. I think it was on the corner—we went past it. The third place was just over there—it's down in the basement, super nice.

00:30:36 John Daub: I just love the facade of the New Shimbashi Building—it's just so cool, nobody makes a building like that anymore. You can see Shiodome, those large skyscrapers on the other side—that's the east side of Shimbashi. The first train station for Shimbashi actually over there near Shiodome, and they've recreated that first train station as well. Matsuya has been really doing a good job competing with Yoshinoya—their newest meal, the cheeseburger dome—what? That's a cheeseburger with an egg on a bowl of rice. Would you try that? I'd try it—looks good, smells good, must be good. It's got cheese, love it; meat, love it; rice, love it; sauce, egg—all good stuff.

00:32:25 John Daub: Alright, last but not least—you've seen the restaurants, I would recommend going in the New Shimbashi Building and checking out. You don't have to get a massage, but to see the people offering massages on the third floor always cracks me up, and there's still some retro game centers in there. This is the park, and at night you'll find people might be sipping on cans of beer and stuff in here. Also, you'll see bon odori (folk dance festivals) taking place in this park, the local area. There's a smoking area over there if you need to get some tobacco. And what is this? Looks like a library—there's a poster, we turn library books. But in the center of the city in a place with a lot of rundown buildings, you would think it'd be dirty and smutty, filled with graffiti—in most cities it probably would be, but not in Tokyo. It is an amazing society—the places that you think would just be nasty and dirty, they probably are inside, but outside here super clean.

00:33:47 John Daub: Did we hit our goal? I'm not sure—I could use a drink. I gotta get back at 2:30, so I'm gonna have to end this in a second—oh no, we didn't hit our goal. Darn. Whoa! Deep fried gyoza—that looked crunchy and juicy. And I love renkon (lotus root)—you could do a lot of stuff with that. Alright, there you go—if you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below. I think that this is fun to walk around and just kinda check out what they got available here. On the other side, Shiodome very popular—Shiodome is a very popular place on the other side of the station for hotels to stay in. I think you're gonna get a pretty good deal if you stay in this area—we walked past the capsule hotel, which actually looked pretty good. But on the other side there, there's more like the three-star hotels—a lot of people doing business with Dentsu, with the big agencies that are in Shiodome, they'll be staying here as well. But you get a really good deal—it's on the Oedo Line, which goes around to Shinjuku, and you also have the Yamanote Line right here. So in many ways Shiodome is an ideal location—I think cost performance is really good. You get the Ghibli clock over there—the Miyazaki... the Ghibli company made some weird clock on the other side there, which is totally awesome. So there's a lot of attractions in this area—there's also a bus on the other side that takes you directly to Shibuya. So you can either take the Yamanote Line or take the bus through Roppongi to get there—and that's also a lot of fun.

00:35:51 John Daub: I've taken that bus quite a bit—there used to be a video game in the late 1990s that I would drive, a bus video game, the Toei bus, the Tokyo city bus. And I played it every single weekend for six months, and I found the only way to win the game is to go through traffic lights and hit people. So one day I'm like, alright, I can never win this game—I'm just going to fly through the traffic lights, and I ended up making it to Shibuya from Shimbashi. So I learned that bus drivers have a really hard job—how they don't hit anybody, I don't know.

00:36:27 John Daub: Alright everybody, there you go—take care, thanks for watching. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If you haven't already, go check out the main channel episode on the main channel—this is all live streaming, I really appreciate it. And by the way, I do have some postcards still left—we're about ten Postcard Club members short of our goal. But I have here two new Postcard Club members—actually Oscar, you're not new, I'm glad that you were new on the... if Oscar is here. Oscar is not new, but your postcard is going in the mailbox right here. And I sent the other ones a couple of days ago, so they should be arriving next week. Thanks for the support, guys—we're about ten short. I was going to take the postcards directly to Osaka and deliver them with an Expo stamp—it's going to be pretty cool. So we need ten more Postcard Club members because I got to get on the Shinkansen and come back—that's like 300 bucks or something to make that work. We need some more members—so thanks guys for that. And Oscar and Daniel in the UK, I have your postcard right here. Actually, you're now charged on Patreon the day that you enter, so I send the postcard... so if you join up on the 30th, I send the postcards at the end of the month every month, so it gets there the following month. That's the way Patreon likes it, I guess—so it's always best to sign up before the 10th, but if you don't, it's okay, you're always going to get the postcard right away as soon as I get your notification.

00:38:11 John Daub: That's an oily massage—open up a gas station with all that oil, my goodness me. Alright, everybody—take care. I'll see you in another episode tomorrow as I take you to another area of Tokyo—actually, I'll be talking about something quite interesting, something that Japan has in common with Hawaii tomorrow. See you.