00:00:00 John Daub: It is cold here at Kyoto Station. January 15th, 2024. There's the entrance to the JR Station behind me here. In this episode, I want to take you around the station front. When there aren't that many tourists, this is a time that's peaceful. And the time I highly recommend if you're coming to visit Kyoto, that you start your day at 7 a.m. every day. Skip the breakfast, eat it later, bring it with you, get a bento box or something at the convenience store. Because this is the time where attractions, some of them are 24 hours a day, are almost empty. And there's a peacefulness to it. Kyoto Station will not be, well, unless you come even earlier, will not be this empty. You can actually see the ground. This is a whole empty space here. And this is really amazing.

00:00:53 John Daub: So I want to show you the bus options over here, as well as taking a taxi. Some of the underground options. There's a lot of stuff here underground at Kyoto Station, a lot of restaurants. If you're looking for restrooms, they would be underground here, as well as some of the speedways. There's a new guidance system to get you from the entrance to Shinkansen. Let's start here looking at the historical sign of Kyoto Station. What actually did Kyoto Station look like eons ago? Well, Kyoto as a city looked like this. It was based on what looks like the grid pattern, which is pretty incredible. Consider this is an ancient city. Most ancient cities in Europe were chaos. And you have the imperial palace, the garden. Here you have, this looks like it's more like Meiji Restoration when the trains started coming in the early 20th century. But if you look at it, the ancient capital layout hasn't really changed too much. It's really amazing. There's some information here. All you really need to know is that it's a pretty cool sign. And that's Kyoto Station.

00:02:06 John Daub: Oh, by the way, Kyoto Tower is up there. It's kind of retro. I don't know, do I recommend it? I think if it's under a thousand yen, I would recommend it. Because there are some nice views from the top there. But really, Kyoto is a low city, so you can see quite far. You don't have high-rise buildings here. Is it worth it? I don't know. Why don't you leave a comment in the comment section. Tell me about your experience going up there and seeing Kyoto from up there. I mean, you can certainly see Kyoto Tower from Kiyomizudera in Higashiyama all the way on the east side. Let's go into the escalators here. I want to show you the buses, so stay tuned for that in about five minutes. But let's go take a look inside the station.

00:02:49 John Daub: You can see this was built around the Nagano Olympics 1996-7-8. A little bit before that, they planned it out. It's really stunning inside here. And these escalators allow you to travel all the way to the top. And we're going to kind of do that a little bit right now. At least I'll show you part of the experience of walking on the escalators. Manners in Japan have changed with escalator use. You shouldn't be walking on the left or right side anymore. You're supposed to stand. Easier said than done because Japan's a place where manners sometimes don't change so quickly. You can see my breath. It is about zero, one degree Celsius here. I have a very heavy jacket on to keep warm. All right, look at this up here. They play this like Disney-esque music in the background. It feels like the future anyways, doesn't it? This is the 1998 future of Japan. This is what the future looked like in 1998. I'm not joking. This is when it was finished. I think 97 before the Nagano Olympics. There's a Mister Donut in there. Check that out. Packed Northwest right in here. That is stunning. It is, isn't it? This is such a beautiful ride up to the top. It symbolizes going up a mountain.

00:04:26 John Daub: As some of the businesses here are starting to open. I'm going to just go up this escalator and we're going to come back down. I have to start my day too. I'm not here for riding the escalator or doing a live stream. I'm actually here filming an episode. Kanae and Leo, my wife and son, are at the hotel resting. I've come out here to get breakfast because this is the place where things are open maybe a little bit earlier. Can we sneak a peek? All right, check this out. So you can continue to go up to the top. There's some windows where you could see the view, the station area. It's nice up there. And then we have—I'm just going to show you if we can see. It's hard to see right now that they got construction work. But normally after they fix these 1998 fashion items designs, you can go into the window and look down on the station, which is nice.

00:05:21 John Daub: The other side of the station is where the Shinkansen is. It's on the backside of Kyoto Station. And there are, you know, the backside of Kyoto Station. It's fascinating because I'd say like 15 years ago, there wasn't much here. It didn't exactly have a reputation of anything at all. It was a kind of like a meeting point or a get out of Kyoto quick point. And if you were going to a place like Fushimi Inari Taisha, which is known for the 10,000 red torii gates, this is maybe the direction you would go. Fushimi Inari is over in that direction there. But now you can see. It's really beautiful. It's built up with so many new hotels. I'm just going to pan here to give you an idea. If you've got one of your hotels here, you might just see it booked for cherry blossoms or something like that. Most of this is all brand new and within the last 10 years or so. And that's really cool because Kyoto's areas, Gion, is just super crowded.

00:06:44 John Daub: So many angles to this station. So many different. Hey, Heather's here. How you doing? Good morning, Heather. Let's put the live chat in here as we go down to the bottom for just a little bit. Let me bring up a map of Kyoto Station. The area so you get an idea. So I think most of you already know that Kyoto is not in Tokyo. Not in Tokyo. It's near Tokyo. It's about—I don't know—45 minutes on the Nozomi Shinkansen to get here. It's 15 minutes on the Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka. I would say 30 minutes from the city of Osaka central area. Kyoto Station—quite large there. It's pretty big station again. The Shinkansen side of it and the inside of it has been renovated about 30 years ago. But most of it sits the same as it did a long time ago. It's a good point getting in and out. It's become extraordinarily crowded over the years. This is the side that's most famous here with the buses you can see on the top and the taxi stand and some parking on the bottom there and crosswalk that gets you to Kyoto Tower and eventually to your hotels.

00:08:18 John Daub: They're starting to clean up the station getting ready for the morning. Let's go back down and I want to show you the buses. If you have any questions you can try to leave in the comments here, but anytime you can grab me on Patreon. Shout out to our postcard club members. The postcards are going out a couple of days. The design this month is the snow vending machine of Niigata. It's quite a find. Those will go out on Friday. The slow descent into the station area. I actually in the last 10 minutes it's picked up quite a bit the foot traffic here. So the signal might be going in and out believe it or not. A lot of people are engaged with their phones right now. That's one of the reasons but very peaceful melody in the background like the long futuristic themes music you hear like around Space Mountain at Disney World, right.

00:10:05 John Daub: All right here we go out. We don't see too many tourists. What we see are morning commuters and despite the fact that Kyoto's got a lot of tourists from international areas, there are also a lot of Japanese that live here too and the Japanese commute in particular this time and they go back around 5, 5, 6 p.m. If they stay to drink maybe 7 or 8 or 9 or later and a lot of people commute from Osaka. A lot of people commute from Otsu which is in Shiga Prefecture just up north. Beautiful place here but if you're a tourist you look—I'm looking around here. There's not a lot of tourists around. That's surprising and my suggestion to you: one thousand percent wake up early. Start your day early. Take advantage of your jet lag if you're coming from the east coast and do what you want to do. Do what you got to do. All right I'm just showing you there's increased foot traffic. It comes in waves as the trains come in as the traffic signal changes on the other side as well.

00:11:13 John Daub: When I got here the bus there was no line or no people. Now I'm looking there's already buses here. Here's the situation with the sightseeing limited express bus. All right there's a QR code. You can take a screenshot of this and see the information as well. There you go you can pause it. You can buy the tickets from the vending machine right here. This is these search routes with Kyoto plus the subway pass. So you get the subway pass and the bus pass. This is really convenient to have. I don't know a lot about Kyoto's transportation. I usually just walk but pretty much right outside of the station area you have a vending machine for these dual tickets. The subway is not extensive. It doesn't really take you to too many places. If you're going to like a place like Kiyomizudera for example you probably want to take the bus or walk which is about a 35-40 minute walk from here. It's not too bad. Here's some QR codes if you want to screenshot that you can take a look at that later.

00:12:19 John Daub: All right now let's take a look at the bus map here. So this is Kyoto Station one of the hubs. The buses will take you around to Higashiyama. This is where Kiyomizudera is. This is where Nanzenji Temple is. This is where we're having dinner tonight. It's going to be pretty cool. That's going to be a main channel episode. If you're going up to the Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion that would be up here. Ginkakuji, silver. So there are buses that connect at the 205. I remember I'd take the 205 from Kyoto Station. Can you still take the 205? Maybe you have to switch. But the buses are really confusing. I highly recommend that you map this out. Your bus situation or you come to Kyoto Station. Get this limited sightseeing bus that takes you up the Higashiyama from Gion, Kiyomizudera and Ginkakuji. You can walk to Gion from Kyoto Station in about 45 minutes. So just put that in perspective. There's a subway that'll take you pretty close to there as well. Brandania is in the house. Hey Brandania, good morning. Mahalo.

00:13:27 John Daub: This is interesting. I didn't see this. And look how large it is. It's hard to miss it. A lot of tourists are bringing oversized bags here. Oversized bag would be something like anything over 24 inches. Like large sized bags. And worldwide if you're taking economy class airlines, these 30 inch bags that used to be okay. I think it was like 32 kilograms you could bring on. Unless you're doing premium economy or business class, you can't do that anymore. So you have to bring medium sized suitcases. Just because a large suitcase, it's hard to pack under that. You have to bring it under the 23 kilogram limit. I'm not joking. I've tried it. I always come really close. And that large 30 inch suitcase that I had and I would travel with 10 years ago is almost obsolete now. Because I can never get it under 23 kilograms. They've changed the rules. Was it 20? Yeah, it's like 50 pounds or something. 23 kilograms. Sorry, 23 kilograms. Used to be 32 kilograms. They just swapped the numbers around. But a lot of people still bring these really large suitcases.

00:14:32 John Daub: The best thing to do, I'm making a main channel episode on this. But to send your suitcase to your hotel. If you've got a large suitcase, a lot of the hotel services, especially chains, now have services where you can send it to the next hotel. Especially if you stay within the chain. Sometimes for free. Or a really reduced rate. You can have it sent same day. Which is really cool. Or if you do bring it. You can have it sent to the next hotel. But the luggage is just a pain in the neck. People sometimes put it in front of their knees here. Like in front there. But the thing is if you're riding in the aisle. You can't get out. It locks people in. It's just really uncomfortable. And I don't like to see that. You've been warned. If you're riding the Shinkansen, you've got to get a reservation for oversized luggage. And there are tourists that try to get these large luggages on the bus. You can't do that anymore. They'll stop you. You can't get in the locker. Or to check it in. Or to take a taxi.

00:15:34 John Daub: I'm going to be honest with you. If you've got a lot of luggage. You take a taxi. I know it's going to be more expensive. Take a taxi. It's going to be more expensive. But it'll be more convenient. And that's convenient not just for you. But for everybody. So I'm just going to say that. Michael Cisano, brother, it's nice to see you. I'm glad that you're back again. We're going to hit a lot of people in the east coast of the US. Because, well, they're awake for once. I don't usually stream this early. But jet lag makes us do crazy things. Alright, foot traffic has doubled in the last 15 minutes. So again, if you get here at 7am. There's a difference between 7am and 7:20am, for example. It's really different. Kyoto Station. Beautiful place. It's a nice place to be.

00:16:25 John Daub: Down in the basement there, there are stairways that'll take you to dining options. So if you are waiting for a bus, or you're just kind of waiting for somebody, you do have food options. I might even get something for Kanae and Leo to bring it back to the hotel. Are there any questions having to do with Kyoto and Kyoto Station travel? If you don't hit this as a live stream, you're watching this in the playback, you can leave a comment below. Or join our Discord community. A lot of people there are helping other people. Ooh, look at the melon pan. They're getting a couple of croissants. Michael, you know where your... Hey, Mohammed's here. You guys know where your Super Chat's going now. Really hungry. There are tons of lockers inside there, but if you can't find one, don't fret. You might find them out here too. The thing is, they're not big enough for really large luggage. That's why I think bringing wheeled luggage or bringing large luggage is kind of a dumb thing to do, unless you're really staying for a long time.

00:17:36 John Daub: Besides, if your luggage... Soft bags are much better than the hard case ones. If you're staying in a hotel, usually you can pay to leave your bag behind for an extended period of time. That's kind of a good idea. So your big hard shell suitcase becomes your, like, headquarters, so to speak. See, Satrio is here. Peso, of course. Nice to see ya. UFO Bob, Ario. A lot of people. Matsumi's here! I can't wait to see you. Are you coming for the snow festival? I don't think I'm gonna go. I'm not sure if I'm gonna go up there, but it's always a possibility. It's just so overrun with tourists. There's other snow festivals around. Maybe I'll take you to one of those this year. Live streaming. Personally, I bring as much freight capacity for all the shopping. You can also buy suitcases here.

00:18:44 John Daub: I'm gonna tell you something, okay? I did some research on this. I was searching. I gotta get a new suitcase. Because I got a 30 inch bag that's just too heavy. So I was looking at suitcases and even ChatGPT says this. Like, suitcases in Japan are better quality than in the United States. And I researched it and you get way more bang for your buck for buying a premium suitcase in Japan. There's a company called Ace, A-C-E. Some of you might know that. They have a luxury brand called Proteca [?]. These things are like Samsonite on steroids. They're really, really good. And the design is very Japanese, meaning they've thought of everything. They have the quietest spinner wheels in all of the world, apparently. According to my limited search here. I think I'm gonna buy one of those Ace suitcases. They're about 30,000 yen or 200 dollars for a medium size. Which is a 24 inch, which will keep me under the 23 kilogram weight limit. I don't bring a lot of stuff. And they're on sale. If you get them on Amazon, they're right outside of the store. You can have it delivered to your hotel from Amazon.co.jp or something. Go check it out at the—they've got a bunch of stores around the city areas.

00:20:02 John Daub: There's one where the front—you know like clamshell? They just have a zipper that goes around the front of it and then the whole deep part of it becomes your thing. So you don't have to take up all that space every time you open the suitcase. It just opens up the top flap. I might get one of those. It's called Bonanza [?] or something. It looks pretty cool. So maybe you pack light here, buy your suitcase and then pack everything and bring it back that way. Pack light. Get your stuff at the Uniqlo or one of the other clothing stores. I don't know. It's hard for big and tall but you know what I mean. Then bring a duffle bag. You know? I traveled with duffle bags and backpacks for most of my life so the hard case suitcase is a new thing. Peso's giving some suggestions here. I'm sure this might be a topic on our Discord server as well. By the way, we do have some t-shirts coming on the store.

00:21:04 John Daub: I don't have anything more to tell you other than it's going to be a cold one today. Warming up to about 50 degrees later on in the day but it's zero now. I can see my breath. About one degree. A little bit more sun and then we're going back to Tokyo tomorrow. Should be a good day. WRX is in the house. I love to say that. Not only am I back but you are back my friend. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. We had a great trip in the US. I might talk about that later but we came back about a week ago. Jet lag's getting a little bit better here. Flying into Tokyo is always pretty interesting. Guys, take care. I gotta get ready for the shoot. I gotta rent a car. We're gonna go to another part of Kyoto by car and film a movie. I'm gonna film a main channel episode. But until then I will see you in the next live stream probably tomorrow. Maybe tonight as I take another area of this place before we call it and I head back to Tokyo. But doing this... Look at the reflection of Kyoto Tower. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. But this gives us an opportunity to talk a little bit about Kyoto and if you have questions in the comments the community will help and answer you. As I will be on Discord and Patreon. Guys, take care. See ya. Matane. Be warm.