00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Kyoto. It's about 9, 9:30 p.m. here in November. Kind of chilly night but not cold enough to keep me away from walking around here at night and sharing with you the experience of Kyoto. I don't always love this city as much as maybe I should. It's a city of culture. It's a city of tourists and I have not seen a place with more tourists in a very long time just walking around here. It's crazy to see there are more foreign faces than there are Japanese faces but there's nothing wrong with that. It just makes it a very unique experience in that own way.

00:00:39 John Daub: However, the streets and the alleys around Gion where I'm going to be taking you today are very much Japan. It is something that's timeless here. You can see the river right here and this is a nice walk in the summertime. I don't know like right now but a lot of these restaurants do have balconies that go out to the river, the Kamo River. It's really nice to have a drink outside in the afternoon even at this time of day actually but this is Pontocho. You probably recognize this area here. There's a lot of restaurants that go not just on the first floor but the second floor.

00:01:29 John Daub: I've actually eaten inside here before with a client. I've been down the street quite a bit here. The alleys are really scenic here. When I came here 25 years ago compared to now, the alleys have really been renovated quite a bit. You can see they put in a lot of work, new wood, new exteriors. The insides have been redone. Maybe because these are really old machiya (traditional townhouses), these really old buildings that if you did have an earthquake, they probably wouldn't hold up too well. But I think a lot of them have structural work done on them for safety reasons and it does look different than it did 25 years ago. You be the judge if you haven't been here in a while.

00:02:17 John Daub: I'm going to take you down the street just a little bit. We're going to walk down towards the main streets in Gion. And you can see the streets here are kind of timeless. It does feel like you are going back in time. But they haven't changed much over time. At least it doesn't look like it. But I can see so many changes. Like you can see the wood here is all been cleaned or redone here. Maybe they do that quite a bit. But it does look not old, the wood. But the style looks old, let's just say.

00:03:03 John Daub: Within this alley, there are other alleys. And there are restaurants and businesses down these alleys too. Very narrow here. It's a cool place to explore if there is a signal. I guess we can kind of check it out a little bit. I'm going to go this way. Dude. I don't want to film anybody without their, just suddenly there's somebody with a camera in your face that's not really polite. Yeah, there's a customer coming out. But you know, most people here are tourists anyways. The signal, the signal is not this strong here. So I'm going to go back and we're going to explore a different alley, a different side that perhaps you might not know.

00:04:24 John Daub: Oh my goodness, the food does look good. I have heard every language except for Japanese on the streets. Actually, there is the Japanese in the beginning of the live stream. But I've heard Russian. I've heard Chinese. I've heard English. And I've heard Thai already. Most of these restaurants, if not all of them, are Japanese. Most of them have English menus. So you shouldn't have any problem because it is a place that is very much a tourist attraction. Only drinking is okay. As you can see, everything is in English and in Japanese. Wasabi, warabi mochi. That's kind of expensive for warabi mochi. Must be some kind, oh, it comes with Omi beef sukiyaki. And the best beef of Kyoto comes from Omi, which is in the neighboring prefecture, Shiga. Shiga prefecture's Omi beef is on par with Kobe beef.

00:05:40 John Daub: Oh, this place is closed. Oh wait, I had, I had a drink in there a long time ago? Oh no, no, that's, that place has been redone. Wow. Like these alleys that lead to where? Steak tapas. Tapas. That's Spanish. A lot of bars. I smell Japanese sake and dashi, fish soup stock. A little bit of meaty. And I smell hinoki wood, the Japanese cedar. And I smell some guy's cologne. Shabu-shabu. That's a little pricey. I would expect the food and the service to be good here. But I probably wouldn't be eating here. Oh, this is the restaurant that I went to. At least, I don't know if it's changed or not. You guys remember this? This is in 2016 I ate here. Yeah, I think it hasn't changed. It's pretty touristy, but. It's nice inside. They had the matcha beer, right?

00:07:11 John Daub: I want to leave this area because I don't think the signal is too good in Pontocho. So here we are on the street in Gion. A lot of tourists are going back to their hotels. You may recognize it or you might not because I really don't know how the signal is. So we're going to cross the street. I'm going to take you over to another area that I think is a little bit less touristy. Just got across the street. They got some live music going on across by the canal over there. But by local cuisine, I don't mean McDonald's because McDonald's Japan is quite good. It's filled with foreigners. Getting the Samurai Mac. You see the Samurai Mac right there.

00:08:28 John Daub: I'm just going to walk on this side. But if you keep walking this direction, you're going to find some really interesting alleys, walkways along the canal here. See the waterway here. It's so nice. And I think the signal. It's a little bit laggy. It should be okay right now. Amanda writes in on Patreon. I finally made a live stream. Welcome. Here along the canal. It's really nice. It's kind of chilly. You could see the autumn leaves are starting to fall off. The color is still there, though. Tomorrow, it's going to be really nice. I'm waking up early. Probably do a couple of live streams around some of the temples and shrines. Maybe get an image for a postcard. Either this year or next year.

00:09:24 John Daub: But we are going to go this way. And I'm going to see what we see. Because actually my hotel is in this direction. Closer to Kiyomizudera than to Gion. I'm staying at the Mimaru. I'm kind of happy about it. Because I'll be working with them on an episode. And I came here to scout. I'm not actually here to film too much. But I'm writing a script for an episode that we're going to film. Kanae and Leo are going to come with me on a trip to Kyoto for a special episode. And I'm really looking forward to it. But I came here because I really wanted to plan it out. I met with the people from the hotel. I learned a little bit about their history. The background. Toured some of the rooms. My room is gorgeous.

00:10:06 John Daub: You want to see that? Maybe I can bring that up. I was surprised. I want to show you my room. Because I can show you that one. I don't want to show you the other one. This place is very good for families. I can't believe I'm staying here. It's way too much space. But I got a feeling that Leo is really going to love having his own bunk bed. You think he's going to be on the top, right? Probably. Just enough danger. Hey, Sharon is here. Have a nice warm drink on me. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much for that.

00:10:53 John Daub: I love the lighting here. The great thing about the canal here. You'll get some really nice pictures. There's some cute bridges that go over. A lot of people have been stopping to take the pictures. But the restaurants go right up to the canal. So you'll have seating out here. In Tokyo, you don't see too many places like this. Restaurants on water that take advantage of the outdoors. Most restaurants are indoors. Unless they're like the Showa level. Stool at a beer case table where you're eating really cheap food. Eating outside is a cheap thing.

00:11:42 John Daub: A lot of interesting restaurants. Like a lot of them are really, really stylish. But not all of them. If you look across along the canal, you see the facades of some restaurants. Looks like they're closed. Look at this. Here's a cafe. It looks more like it's European. A lot of these places do look like European. They look like they're European influenced. They don't quite fit in with the style of Kyoto. But I think that's more what Japanese might want perhaps. Or tourists from Europe. Or tourists like me that just want to go to Europe but are in Japan. Carrie writes in here, cozy. Exactly. It does feel cozy here.

00:12:36 John Daub: But you can see in this area, there really aren't a lot of tourists, are there? Like it's a really cozy, comfortable area. But you just don't see a lot of tourists walking the street like you would at Pontocho. Which is where I was and the signal was not so great. Not because it was narrow. Just because there were a lot more people in a very fine area. And despite having less people, there are still a lot of restaurants, bars, cafes. You can see there's two people sitting up on the second floor there. There's another restaurant next to that. That looks like it's got large windows that's open for business. There's a bar on the corner there. This looks like the stereotypical scene from, I don't know, like a movie.

00:13:37 John Daub: So we're going to cross over here. We can take a look at one of the bridges. Very, very cozy. That's the word of the day, Carrie. We got some vending machines across the street as well. Very quiet. Except for that motor running somewhere. Sounds like a generator. Book nook things. Yeah, it does. It looks like, you know, I guess in the alleyways kind of remind me of Jimbocho in Tokyo a little bit. There's a bunch of alleys there. This is Kyoto, not Tokyo. Kind of reminds me the back of Jimbocho. There's a lot of cafes back there in the alleys. But a lot cleaner and quieter because this isn't Tokyo. This is Kyoto.

00:14:58 John Daub: Let me see if I can show you the street where I am right now. Just to mark it down. So we're right here actually at the bottom of that triangle on Kiyamachidori. So let's walk down Kiyamachidori just a little bit more. I want to give you a different feel than what Pontocho where we started the livestream. That's really more touristy, although it is quite scenic. This one is not really an alley, but it's cozier. Well, there are alleys that branch off this road, right? Off of Kiyamachidori. So let's go down Kiyamachidori just a bit more.

00:15:46 John Daub: And this is actually if you're thinking about staying in Kyoto, I would stay away from the center of Gion and maybe work my way a little bit closer towards Kiyomizudera, the Gojo area. Where the Mimaru Hotel is actually quite nice because what is that across the way? Is that a crepe? That looks like a crepe vending machine. Do you see that over there? What is that? That doesn't look like a drinking machine. It looks like a vending machine. It looks like something in particular. Oh, it's just a drink vending machine. Thank goodness for the zoom lens.

00:16:37 John Daub: But everybody says that Kyoto is crowded. It is in certain areas and at certain times. But if you do go to Ginkakuji, Kiyomizudera, Fushimi Inari, Arashiyama, you're going to have really crowded areas. It's really crowded. It's not comfortable. I was talking with the staff at the hotel. Really nice. They live here in Kyoto. They were students. And they were telling me, I said, if I go first thing in the morning, is it going to be crowded? And they said, yeah, because the tourists know that that's the best time to go. So it's actually the opposite now. So the places that used to be crowded later on in the morning, they're now crowded first thing in the morning because everyone's trying to get Instagram photos. That's a little piece of information from Kyoto local.

00:17:29 John Daub: Because I'm not scoping out the tourist attractions so much. But tomorrow I will. So hopefully I'll take you, signal allowing, on a live stream out to some of the tourist attractions of Kyoto so you get an idea of what it's like in fall. Because I heard that I actually have a light for this gimbal. I just didn't bring it today. So the street lights will have to be, the ambient lights have to be good enough. But the autumn foliage is very nice right now. So hopefully we can get some glimpse of that tomorrow. In a couple of live streams as I film some B-roll for the main channel episode.

00:18:07 John Daub: I love these restaurants with the big windows. Get kind of a glimpse in there. Tokyo doesn't like that because they really do like the privacy. Tokyo will lean on the side of privacy. Because Tokyo is just too crowded. Kyoto is supposed to be a little bit more relaxed. But there's just a lot of tourists here. What is this? There's like a bunch of, there's a line. It looks like a club or something. It's a bar. I'm going to cross the street here. Looks like cherry blossoms, doesn't it? It really does look like cherry blossoms. Your eyes are not deceiving you. It's a white light, really bright on red leaves. Gives it a cherry blossom look to it. Across the street there's a bunch of people lining up for some kind of bar. It's got thumping music in there. So, not my cup of tea.

00:19:19 John Daub: I haven't gone out to a bar for a long time. But speaking of bars, there's one right there off of the canal. It's so scenic. Look at this. It's about 10 p.m. right now. So, let's cross the bridge here. We'll go in and walk down this canal for a bit. Very, oh wow, okay. So, these are some alleys here. They just turned off the lights here. But these are definitely Kyoto alleys. Totally quiet. A lot of the businesses are shutting down. That's why it's quiet. Christian writes in here. Yeah, it's exactly 9:50 p.m. This is residential-like. Just quiet.

00:20:12 John Daub: I'm not, the microphone is not too far away. So, I sound louder than I really am. But when you are in residential neighborhoods, like, this seems residential now. You want to really be quiet and respectful. Yeah, this looks residential. That place is called Kyoto Beef Place Julia. It looks like somebody from abroad bought it out and turned it into a restaurant. Here's some of the facades of what look like machiya. Sound does travel much further at night. But the signal is much stronger because there just really isn't a lot of people out here. But yeah, definitely after 10 p.m. you basically want to go like almost to absolute quiet in Kyoto. You don't want to disturb people. But I'm not that far off the main road. Which is quite loud actually. The tires going by on the road parallel to this one. It just seems a little bit quieter.

00:21:53 John Daub: It is a beautiful, beautiful part of the city here. This is on the way to Gojo, which is the station where Kiyomizudera. You would get off on the public transportation to Kiyomizudera. There's an alley there. There's the main road, which is quite loud actually. So, we're going to go back onto Kiyamachi Dori. And the canal, which is really quiet right now. I've noticed that the bicycle riders here are pretty crazy. They just cross all over the place without looking. So, three people almost get hit. I guess locals are just used to it. Walk across the street. There's a crosswalk here. And you can see there's a lot of places are closing up. This one looks really new with the windows. Looks like a sushi shop inside there. Kyoto bikers are absolutely nuts. I'm not joking. They really are.

00:23:21 John Daub: Alright, it is getting a little bit chilly. I'm going to call it a night right now. I just wanted to give you kind of a little bit of a look into some of the alleys around here. You can see the autumn foliage. It's not really great at night. But it has turned here and it's already starting to fall off. Probably you'd want to come about two, three, maybe four days ago. It's probably peak. But it just depends. Maybe further in the city or in other areas the trees are doing a little bit better. And the colors are really spectacular. Tomorrow I might try to make my way to Kiyomizudera. I might try to get up to maybe Heian Jingu. There's a couple of other ones. I'll definitely hit Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka to see how that's doing in the morning perhaps. We'll see how it goes. But I'll probably visit five or six locations. I'm scouting them out. I'll be driving a car here in January. Which is going to be crazy. Maybe just an episode on just driving around Kyoto might be quite interesting. Because everybody takes public transportation. What's it like to rent a car and forget the bus?

00:24:30 John Daub: Oh, there's one thing I can show you guys in the livestream here. You know what? I can show it to you tomorrow. But maybe I'll show this to you tomorrow as well. I found... Like, Kyoto has a problem with buses, right? I found this. So, they're promoting this sightseeing limited bus. And takes you to all the sites without getting on the local buses. And it's separating the tourists from the locals. So, I'm surprised what took them so long. I was talking about this like five... Like before the pandemic. But now they've gone ahead and done it. They had something similar to this before. But now they're doing a really good job of promoting it a little bit more. So, the locals are taking the local buses until 5 o'clock. 9:30 to 5 p.m. And that's when the locals usually use it. People that are senior citizens that rely on those public buses.

00:25:41 John Daub: It took Kyoto quite a long time to sort of figure out its transportation problems because they don't have a good subway. Well, they have a good subway but it's limited. They also have the Keihan line but that doesn't go everywhere. You gotta use these. They're two legs to get around Kyoto. Rent a bicycle or you can also get taxis. It's not that expensive going from place to place. But it can add up pretty quick. But the bus is the way to go. And the bus... The traffic is awful going around Kyoto. Unless you have your own wheels. You can listen to music and stuff. Pull into convenience stores and restaurants and stuff. Because it's much different a little bit outside of the city center. There's restaurants with parking lots. So that makes it a lot easier. You can drive over to Uji and some of the other places if you do have a car.

00:26:30 John Daub: But I do think if you are coming to Kyoto... The traffic situation and the train situation... It's less than ideal compared to Tokyo. It just is... It's a lot more crowded in certain areas. But, like, tonight... It's not so crowded in certain areas too. You just gotta know where to look. It's pretty crowded. A little bit crowded over near Pontocho. But it's not so crowded here down Kiyamachidori. And it's really beautiful on this side as well.

00:27:01 John Daub: Alright guys. There you go. If you have any questions about Kyoto, you can leave them down in the comments. I'm sure people will be scouting it out. And if you have more questions, you can go to our Discord server. We're talking about it. Oh, by the way. The Only in Japan store... Has the fireworks set. I'll be releasing a fireworks video soon. We've set up a premium super fireworks bundle. It has the number 5... Like, the fireworks shell in it. As well as some of the stuff from the past campaigns. So that's on the store.onlyinjapan.tv. I thought I'd push that a little bit. As well as the Blu-ray discs from the hitchhiking trip.

00:27:43 John Daub: Peter's here. Hey Peter. Greetings from Vienna. I especially like these old-fashioned designs of these little streets and shops. I know, right? It always reminds me a little bit of like... It's got kind of a European feel of it. It's this kind of refinement, sophistication, I guess you would say. Some of the old alleys. If you're walking around Vienna. Or you're walking around Prague or something like this. You get sometimes that kind of a vibe from Kyoto done in a Japanese style. But I gotta be honest. The more that they modernize some of these buildings. The more it starts to look European to me. With the bigger windows. And the older style. The cobblestone streets. It's quite nice. Thank you, Peter.

00:28:26 John Daub: But it's nice to be in Kyoto. Even if it's for a day. I go back tomorrow around 5pm. Loaded with gifts for Leo and Kanae. She asked me to bring some yatsuhashi. The triangle mochi for her. That's all she wanted. But maybe I'll come up with something better. Or more. Alright guys. That's all I got. I'm gonna get some sleep. And stay warm. I just finished a main channel episode. An edit. It's working with the trails of the Shinetsu region. And it's gonna be a really really beautiful episode. With autumn foliage. You're gonna love it. Probably be released like next week. I'm guessing now. But I'm letting them look at it. Make sure it's all factually correct. Before I release the episode. But that should be coming real soon. So we'll have two main channel episodes in November. And maybe three in December. I'm thinking. I'm almost done with two episodes. And I started to edit another one. So it's been pretty busy. I'm looking forward to getting back to main channel stuff.

00:29:31 John Daub: Alright guys. Mata ne. Oyasuminasai. That doesn't sound so cool. Oyasuminasai. You can't play up saying goodnight. Oyasuminasai. It's goodnight. Peace out. No that's not me Michael. Peace out. That sounds good when you say it. How about this one? Mata ne. It seems to work. Alright bye guys.