00:01 John Daub: This is such a beautiful afternoon. Today's a holiday here in Japan, so I thought I would take you around the Shinagawa Riverside, the seaside. And it's another area of Tokyo. Now, in Tokyo, I was always surprised that you didn't find a lot of outdoor restaurants, waterside that were on the waterfront. When you take a look at satellite views of Tokyo, you see that there's water all over the place because it's Tokyo. This is an island country, right? It's a city on the water. But Japanese don't typically eat on the waterfront, maybe because there's a lot more bugs or there were a lot of factories on the waterside. So it's not something that was very popular, but these days, at least since the last 20 years or so, waterfront restaurants have opened up and it's such a nice place.

00:52 John Daub: This one is on Tennozu Isle. You can see there, Tennozu Isle. This is a stop on the Rinkai Line. It's only 10, 15 minutes away from Shinagawa Station. It's a lovely place. Look at that bridge. A lot of people will come here for their weddings or reception parties like we did. Kanae and I, we had our reception here. It's such a beautiful part of the city. There's the Rainbow Bridge right there with Odaiba. So it's a little bit further from that. But if you're coming into Shinagawa, it's a really lovely area. If you are staying in Shinagawa, this is a nice place to walk and you're going to see all that in this episode.

01:30 John Daub: Now, I don't have my wireless microphone. I left the receiver part in my pocket. I just hope I didn't put it in the washing machine. I don't think I did. But welcome to the waterfront area. Check it out. Here's the bridge. We're going to cross over there in about five minutes. But before we do that, thank you, UFO Bob, for the audio update. We actually had our reception party like seven years ago in here, which is an awesome location.

02:04 John Daub: And T.Y. Harbor has been a restaurant that's been in business since 1997. The year before I came, this place opened. And yes, you read that right. It's a brewery restaurant, which means that they brew their own beer in there. I don't really drink alcohol that much, but I admit I actually had a small sized beer in here. Whenever I come here, we always get a picture on the bridge. And Leo and Kanae have already gone home with some pumpkin pie cheesecake that we bought from inside the bakery. They have a great bakery in here as well. And I'm going to have a piece when I get back home. But I just want to show you just a snippet from our lunch. They get really good burgers in there. They make the big bread and everything in house. And Leo had mac and cheese. And I had a chicken burger. It was pretty good eating. I got to admit, we left there pretty full. I didn't overeat. I gave most of my fries to Leo. I didn't even finish that beer. Beer just got really sweet to me. It's not palatable to me like it was 10, 15 years ago.

03:23 John Daub: But it's nice because you can sit on the waterfront. Now, it's a little bit windy today and cooling off, especially at night. So they have a plastic cover. But there's also a lot of water bugs that come in there. So that's another reason why you might not get there. But she said she approved on that chicken burger. It did look good. And Leo. He had his mac and cheese and he says he absolutely approves of it. And he says you have to come here all the time. We've been going there for a long time. And I got the yuzu citrus burger with some yuzu jam on there. It's quite good.

03:56 John Daub: So before we walk across the bridge and go to Shinagawa Station, I thought I would just kind of give you an overview of this area. So if you do walk here, especially on the weekends, they do have a water bus today that's leaving that goes to Odaiba. For me, that was surprising. I didn't know that they had this, but it's just for today. You see the flags there say it's a special event. So it's just for three days and you can see it's twice a day leaving from Tennozu Isle to Odaiba. And it looks like they have a radio crew. So there's some music on board and it's really cheap. It's only 1600 yen, which is about $10 for this. That's kind of a neat idea that they're doing just for this holiday season.

05:04 John Daub: I'm glad to hear you. Beautiful Bob told us it wasn't too bad, but it's not perfect. I apologize. I don't have the mic with me today. I also sprained my ankle, so I'm going to be limping a little bit. I wish the gimbal takes out. Wow, this has not changed much. But the bakery is right here and the beer tanks are inside. There's a bunch of street food on the side here, including Blue Seal ice cream and some food from Taiwan. It's an interesting mix. The Blue Seal ice cream. Blue Seal is very famous. Okinawa salt cookies are so good as well.

06:32 John Daub: There's Cobra Bebop in the house. Thank you, Cobra Bebop. There's events in here and there's a bunch of other restaurants. There's a couple of them on the other side there. And then there's one, I guess, has like a Caribbean theme. So if you do walk along the waterfront here, you're going to find a bunch of restaurants. And I like this. You can come here. This is great on a date or something and just stroll around, enjoy an afternoon, especially if it's nice. And it is nice. It's just a little bit more wind than I expected. But when you're on the seaside, there is much more wind.

07:20 John Daub: All right, let's walk towards Shinagawa Station and hopefully maybe we can just sneak in here and take a look. This is the exit. There's exit to the bakery there. I did turn my ankle. I hope it's better for next week when I'll be hiking. So they're promoting new mobility options around the city. Tokyo looking more and more like the future. I guess if you want to know more, you can screenshot that QR code. So you can see Tennozu Isle is not so big, but this is the T.Y. Harbor. There's a BC Hall on the side here. You can walk on this boardwalk. And there's a really nice restaurant there that Peter von Gomm and I ate. What Cafe? There's a hotel Toyoko Inn here. There's a lot of restaurants inside of here as well as on the other side. This is the ANA Holiday Inn is here. That's new. I didn't know about that. And there's a bunch of other places. The subway station is here. The Rinkai Line is really the closest one. There it is right there.

09:18 John Daub: But let's walk across the bridge here. So you can walk all the way to the other side and walk around the restaurant. I believe you can. Thank you, Mr. Sir Shroom. Thank you for that. All right, let's walk across the bridge here. It says about 1.5 kilometers. I don't think it's that far, but we're going to find out. The wind should go away as soon as we get a little bit closer. That's our walk there. It's pretty. I hear some music. Yeah, you can walk over on the other side and there are more restaurants on the other side. You'll see in the evening a lot of cruise ships going through here in the evening. Sorry, the wind. We see WRX. Shinagawa Station this way. In a long time, I usually come by Tennozu Isle Station on the Rinkai Line. I'm going to have to get some ice on that in the evening.

11:44 John Daub: It's really nice. This is a safe area. I've never heard of any kind of crime or something. Usually down by the waterfront. It's a little dicey in some cities, but not so for Tokyo. The Shinagawa waterside is just fine. Maybe not back in the 1970s. I don't know. This seems like a place where some crime would happen, I guess, but not here. I've never heard of any kind of crime happening in Shinagawa by the waterfront here. That doesn't mean it hasn't taken place. Maybe they're just really good at it. But in general, Tokyo does not have a lot of crime.

12:24 John Daub: Typhoon 23 causing some fun. Maybe could be somewhat influenced by that. But oh, wow. There's some kind of music event going on over there. Let me see if I can pull that up. There you go. I hear some music on the other side. Sounds good. Echoing across the water. I turned my ankle when I was saying bye to Leo and Kanae going to the station. Kanae was not too happy that she didn't want to walk to Shinagawa Station. I'm like, I'm just going to do a quick glass chain. I'll meet you back home. I'll probably get home about ten minutes after they do. But we like to go the other way. That's cool. Look at this. Is that like a music note or headphones? Get some nice urban art here. Probably not an area that's been shown a lot on YouTube because it doesn't seem like there's a lot here, but everybody who's been living in Japan for, I don't know, or living in Tokyo for ten years or more knows about T.Y. Harbor.

14:00 John Daub: They don't have a chain of restaurants, but they open up the group that is responsible. This restaurant opens up other restaurants. One of them is in Harajuku. It's a meat place that has one of the best pulled pork sandwiches and barbecues in that area. For sure. No skateboarding. I'm talking to you, Ramsey. Silent. No skateboarding. See how the wind just completely dies down as soon as you get away from the open area on the waterfront. The entire area of Shinagawa is pretty much on the waterfront, though. I mean, it's a waterfront city. It's one of the 52 stations of the great Tokaido Highway from here to Kyoto. Shinagawa being, I think it was like the first station from Nihonbashi. Oh, I see. Look at that. So these must be the mobility bikes. They're charging the mobility bikes. That might be able to get me back to the station so I don't have to limp. They got golf carts. I'm walking back to the station. Yeah, look, I'm hardcore, though. I don't like shortcuts. Just walk it off.

16:17 John Daub: Saiya's like, maybe you should stop walking. Just walk it off. I do have my driver's license with me. I'm a gold Japanese driver's license. They have green for beginners. There's a line over there. There's a green on it. So I guess it's the first two years. You get a green for beginner and then you have a blue one, which is a normal driver. And then you get a gold one if you don't have an accident or a citation. I have a gold driver's license. I've yet to get into trouble. I'm not taking a buggy. This is walking to Shinagawa Station. On the other side here, this is a good vantage point of the city. Do you see that? You'd probably need to have, like, an ATV. You see something over there. Someone said knock on wood. Can't find any around here. Tokyo Tower is in that direction. So we're on the south side of Tokyo.

17:38 John Daub: The thing with the Rinkai line is it's underground from Shinkiba. So you can get from Tokyo Disneyland, change at Shinkiba, get on the Rinkai line. So this is actually a convenient area to live, to get to Chiba because of that Rinkai line, which kind of goes underground in that direction. Nice. I like this area. It's very quiet and you don't feel the bustle of Tokyo. It's very laid back out here. It's also really convenient as an area for running because you see you can run along here. There's no traffic lights or anything like that. Usually can keep going at intersections. Just run underneath the bridge.

18:39 John Daub: TJ writes in here. I hurt my ankle on my 2022 trip to Japan. Kept walking on it after the fact. Actually, I think I probably broke my ankle. Well, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at me. I've done it before. This is a minor one. I think when I get home, I'll probably get it on ice. But yeah, you're probably right. Better to stay off it. Basically, today I'm done with going. I was going to go to the gym. That ain't happening now. It's going to go for a run. That ain't happening either. Probably for the rest of the week.

20:03 John Daub: I like that hat. Not a bad hat. Bad John. Well, if you read the comments from the last live stream, I am bad to the core. Every time I just mentioned Japanese politics, people start to inject American politics into it. And I really don't understand why. I'm going to make this light again. I'm going to beat that. Oh, look at this truck. That's a Wagyu truck. It's a two story Wagyu truck. Usually you see that it smells like a Wagyu truck. It's just been washed. Look at that. That means they've just delivered the Wagyu. Or that could be pork, too. I'm not sure. Pork or Wagyu. They actually have a tomy car, a truck, and there's a little teeny black haired Wagyu cattle in the back of this truck going to the processing plant slaughterhouse. It's funny they got the car for kids. 700 yen. I think it was something like that. The little Wagyu also can come out the back. I'm not joking about that.

21:49 John Daub: Once we cross over to the other side, you can see this. The Shinagawa station is coming into view. You can also walk very closely to the Shinagawa Gateway Station. Takanawa Gateway Station, which is not that far away. I think it might be pork. I think that's for Takanawa Gateway Station is close by. Yeah, this is the Shokuniku Ichiba South Gate. Oh, probably in the morning they bring them in and then process the meat here. Yeah, inside there. I'm not going to zoom in there. I didn't know they processed meat here in Shinagawa. You know, it's fresh then. It seems to make a lot more sense to process it at the origin and then bring the meat out here. But I don't smell anything.

23:27 John Daub: I'm just looking at the ambulance. There's a kid over there. I'm not going to zoom in on it, but I think he got hurt and somebody called the ambulance. It doesn't look like it's serious. Yeah, they're not rushing him, but it looks like he's gotten hurt. Kids get free ambulance. We had to call an ambulance once for Leo for having a ridiculously high fever. It was really high. We were scared. What do you do? The best thing to do is take precautions. Whoa, nice car. Tokyo Drift. Fast car. So the ambulance, I told the story before. It went about 100 meters. And then he said, we don't have a place to take your son. I was crying, too. So we only took him about a day. They treated him with some services, and then they let us out and we walked back home.

24:38 John Daub: All right, let's go up here on this bridge. Maybe. I think there's an elevator. Basically, we're here. But what is interesting and one reason I wanted to take you here, I think it's still in business. First of all, this is the wholesale meat market of Tokyo. I didn't know that, actually. That's odd. But they also have the Nikon Camera Museum, which is, I think, highly recommended. It's kind of neat to see the old cameras. And the elevator. It's kind of neat to see the evolution of digital cameras. They know what I'm doing. I'm live streaming and they were smiling and I was being respectful. So I didn't film them going by and stuff until after they went by. Obviously, starting to loosen up a little bit. Yeah, they're unloading the meat from the countryside coming in. They actually raised Tokyo has its own Wagyu brands. There are a couple of Tokyo Wagyu brands out in the Tamagawa area.

26:16 John Daub: They're not as popular as the biggest, closest, most popular Wagyu brand to Tokyo is not Kobe beef. Stop looking for Kobe beef in Tokyo. You want to go for Hitachi-gyu, which is really good. Or Yonezawa-gyu. Those are the two that are closest. Omi-gyu and Matsusaka-gyu are probably pretty close. But Kobe is much further away. You do have to go. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. You want to get what's local. So I would Kobe beef is not any better. And in fact, Japanese would say Matsusaka beef is better than Kobe beef. It's certainly priced higher. And Kobe beef, I believe I'm not saying that it's bad. Kobe beef is really good. But I can't really taste much of a difference between Kobe beef and Hitachi-gyu, which is just an hour, hour or two north of Tokyo. It's pretty darn good. And Matsusaka beef is pretty darn good. In fact, in Mie Prefecture, that's where those images from 30 years ago or 40 years ago of the beers drinking the Keitan beer. You remember that? That's Matsusaka-gyu.

27:41 John Daub: Beef is so tender there. We're talking about meat because right over there is the meat processing plant. But I have to be perfectly honest with you. It doesn't make a lot of sense to go searching out Kobe beef and eating it. Unless you just really want to try that one particular brand. But there are over, if you can believe it, 250 Wagyu beef brands in Japan. There are 250 Wagyu beef brands in Japan. You want to know how I know? Because I have a book on all of the trademarks of the 250 brands, and it's growing every single year. So many prefectures have multiple brands. So Kobe beef is just one of many. And the reason why Kobe beef is so popular is because they're the first one to advertise abroad and quite strongly. So now Kobe beef is not synonymous to just plain old Wagyu. But Wagyu beef is just a variety that has 250 brands that includes Kobe beef. So I recommend you try whatever is local and not buy into the brands.

28:54 John Daub: Let's see if the Nikon Museum is still here. Nikon. I say Nikon. What do you guys say? Nikon. I think Nikon. It might not even be here, actually. I don't know. It was here. I went in there a couple of years ago and I said, can I film? Wink, wink, wink, like happy, big smile. And they said no. I was trying to be cute. Can I film, please? Please. I'm a good person. No. But I love history. And they had so much amazing camera history. I don't know if it's still here, though. Look at this futuristic looking escalator. That's one of the construction companies, Obayashi. They're the ones making a space elevator concept. It could happen. Now, it's so unique, right? This area, because it does look look at that elevator. That's really nice escalator. I guess this is their headquarters. If you're going to be a construction company, you're going to want to have something like this. This makes me jealous because I always wanted to live in a hamster tube like world.

30:33 John Daub: There's a YKK AP showroom. They make zippers, but they also make houses. The prefab houses. A lot of them are YKK. And they're quite nice over there. I don't know if it's still there, but I've stayed one time at the Strings Intercontinental Hotel. Really nice five star hotel. I don't know if it's still there, but if it is, I recommend that, too. But you're going to pay for it. But I was on a job, so I didn't. But if you did, you'd have a nice hotel. I don't see the Nikon Museum. They just have shops and restaurants here and clinics. I don't see the Nikon Museum. Do you think they got rid of it? Museum is near Nishi-Oi Station. So it moved. I know it was here because when I stayed at that Intercontinental, I came and I saw the museum maybe about seven years ago. I think six or seven years ago. It would make sense that they would move it here. Let's be completely honest. A lot of tourists are not here. You'll see a ton of tourists at Shibuya and Shinjuku right now. Or Asakusa. There's like nobody here in Shinagawa. So it makes a little bit of sense to move the museum to someplace. But Oi Machi Line is a little bit odd. This would be better.

32:29 John Daub: I got some Nikon binoculars. Nice. Thank you, Doug. Check this out. They have like these urban places, tables to use for the public, including these covered ones that looks like it has a place where you can plug in your smartphone. Those are solar panels on the top. That's pretty cool. And there's a big picnic table over there. It's pretty cool. There's a Starbucks over there. They're not going out of business in Japan. At least not yet. I heard that Starbucks is closing a ton of shops in the States. I can understand why. It's just so much more expensive in America than it is here for a cup of coffee.

33:42 John Daub: My recommendation. You don't have to go to Starbucks. Just go to the Lawson's there. There's a Lawson's inside there. You can get like a $0.80 small cup of coffee for $0.80. I don't know how Starbucks stays in business, except that it's a nice place to sit. But I almost prefer the speed of just getting because I don't buy the fancy stuff at the Starbucks. I just get a coffee. 7-Eleven and Family Mart, they make a pretty good coffee. When I got here, they did not sell coffee at convenience stores in Japan. You had to buy it in a can, and they would have these hot cans of coffee, like just heated like a roller hot dog. So if you wanted a cup of coffee, you had to go to McDonald's. This is before Starbucks was even around before Blue Bottle. Blue Bottle is in a bunch of places. They opened up a brand new one, which is beautiful in Toyosu near the LaLaport, right on Tokyo Bay. It's one of the most beautiful coffee shops in all of Japan, I think. Perfectly put right in Toyosu Park. But if you're just getting a cup of coffee, you can't go wrong with just going to 7-Eleven.

35:03 John Daub: You see the trees are starting to change color a little bit in here. A little bit of yellow going on. When I came here in 1998, the only place to get a cup of coffee on the go really was McDonald's. And it was not great coffee, but it was black and had caffeine and it worked. And that was it. 27 years ago when I came here, the McDonald's didn't have breakfast. They sold, but they were open in the morning. They sold burgers, at least at the one in Okayama that I was at when I was training. I don't think Okazaki had a McDonald's. I don't think they did. But the McDonald's I went to in Okayama, they were serving burgers at 8 in the morning. But you could get a coffee. They didn't have like Egg McMuffins and stuff everywhere in Japan until maybe a few years after that. Like in the early 2000s. Because nobody really ate Western breakfast, you know. And a bowl of gyudon.

36:28 John Daub: See, Canon has stuff here. And there's a lot of warehouses. I think you might be right. It's gone. Hold on a second. There's a red one here. Nikon. There's an Outback Steakhouse. What? I don't see the Nikon Museum, guys. That's odd. Someone already told me they'd moved it. I didn't trust them. The only thing this area has changed so much. The only thing that's still kind of show a feeling is right here. And I don't even know if that's still like this. There's like a little area where people go and drink and eat. All of this is brand new. And I think a lot of it just wasted space, like for conventions and stuff. But I'll go take you over there. Oh, there it is. Okay. So the Strings is still there. It's a really nice hotel. I think it's about $100 more a night than the other Intercontinental hotels. I'm an ambassador to the Intercontinental. It's like you pay a little bit of money and you get an ambassador membership thing which upgrades you. But if you go more than once to the Intercontinental, it pays off for itself because you get like a free night or something. You get a free weekend night. And you get upgraded to like the Holiday Inn and all the other things in the chain. I guess. I don't know. But I buy it with points that I've accumulated over the years. I don't use the points. So I just buy the upgrades. Seems to work.

38:48 John Daub: All right. So there you go. We're pretty much back at Shinagawa Station. This is the only area on this side where I guess if you're staying in Shinagawa, you might want to go drinking or hang out here. But we've come back. The point of this live stream more or less is to just show you how walkable, even with a limp, Tokyo is and a lot of things you really don't need to take transportation. You don't need to grab a taxi all the time unless it's raining. You don't really need to take the subway to the exact destination. You can get close and walk it. And Tokyo is a very walkable place. Since they put these above ground walkways all over the place, it's made getting around Shinagawa really easy. That over there is the Shinkansen terminal, I believe, right? That's where the Shinkansen comes through.

40:02 John Daub: Looks like something's going on here. There's a street performer. There's one last thing I want to show you. I don't know if we're going to get the signal for it, but we might as well give it a try. Right. Tokyo is such a walkable city. Even when you twist your ankle. That's why we had somebody rode in. They kept walking on it until they broke it. Geez. This is it. This is the end. And I fell on this. I rolled my ankle on these things for the water. Just always kind of look where you're going and be careful of that. So inside of here, there's some bars and eateries, but I don't think that this is going to be here forever. I get the feeling like they're going to be tearing down the Showa era stuff and making more shopping centers or whatever they do. But there's a lot of karaoke and drinking places inside of there. Street performer. I'm going to walk you through the station, and I just want to show you what 15 years ago everyone said that Shinagawa was the future because of this walkway.

41:49 John Daub: Oh, no. This Dean & DeLuca. Dean & DeLuca. I don't know what Dean & DeLuca. I used to go in here. They always had green Thai green curry pot, like a curry pot. But it was Thai green curry pot. Now it's closed down. That's interesting because I go. You have to read it. You have to renew your visa back in the day. You have to go from here. So I always come back for lunch here after renewing the visa. All right. This walkway used to be something really special, like 10, 15 years ago. It's got like that walkway that looks like something out of Minority Report. So it is quite a unique thing. And my recommendation, I'm just going to take you a little bit more inside of here because it is like a tunnel, right? If you look at it, it looks like an airport, right? There's a Blue Bottle coffee right up there. You see the people. And if you come here early in the morning, I'm not sure what time it opens, but you can get a table and sit there and watch the morning Tokyo's morning rush hour. And if it's November to March, everyone's got their black jackets on and everyone looks the same. And the morning commute of everybody walking this way is really cool.

43:40 John Daub: This is a suggestion. If you're here, you want some entertainment. Look at the Ultraman up there. Whoa. I forgot it goes that high. What is this? They're doing something with Ultraman. That'd be cool. They made an Ultraman Shinkansen train. But I would recommend getting your Shinkansen not from here, but from Tokyo Station if you have non-reserved tickets, because by the time the non-reserves stop in Shinagawa, most of the non-reserve is full. So in Shinagawa, make sure you get your Shinkansen. You get a reserved ticket if you're getting on the Tokaido Shinkansen. This is the place where you can watch all of the commuters coming in here. Any questions? Because this would effectively end the tour. And I'm very grateful for you for hanging on in there for 45 minutes. Wow. My wife has a pumpkin cheesecake for me back at home.

44:42 John Daub: This is before I sprained my ankle. This is me. Now I'll be fine. I'll see you guys tomorrow in another live stream. If you got some ideas of areas you'd like to see, I want to do a walking tour for a long time. Let me know. Maybe tomorrow I won't be walking. I might be home, but I'll get out there. I will try to loosen it up, give it 72 hours to heal up, and I'm sure I'll be okay. Ready for some hiking in the mountains of Niigata next week. Actually, I'll be taking you to Niigata. I'm going to take you to Niigata and Nagano. We'll do some live streams there as well. Out into the countryside of Japan. Get some food live stream for sure. And that's worth, I think, subscribing to. And Takanawa Gateway, please. I was just there about two weeks ago. And one more note here. I took a picture for the postcard club and the postcards just came in. I'm looking at it right now. Trying to find it here. These are going out tomorrow. So if you'd like me to send a postcard, please sign up to the postcard club.

46:06 John Daub: I have this photo. This is adorable. So I had to get a health check, and they were doing an echo scan of my heart. And Leo was concerned. So he came along and he's wearing his doctor tag. That was really cute. I can't find it. I'll put it up. I'll show it to you tomorrow. But yeah, the postcards will be going out tomorrow. It's from the fireworks festival that we were just at on October 4th. Oh, my God. And there's a picture of the Akita Inu that we walked. And Akita dog that we walked when we were there just a few days ago. So it's a pretty recent postcard. All right, guys, take care. I'm going to walk home through this futuristic view of Shinagawa. Matane. Dr. Leo was in the house. Trust me, you don't want Dr. Leo waking you up at 07 a.m. with his extractor tools. He tried to take out an eye one morning. I opened my eyes and I had a four year old with a plastic extractor tool, like from the game Operation coming right at me. Scariest wake up call I've ever had. Horror. We are in that time of year Halloween. Anyways, Matane.