00:06 John Daub: This is Snow-Kyo, better known as Tokyo in the snow. I'm actually better known as Snow-Kyo. I'll show you this—this is such an iconic scene right now. You would think Godzilla would heat up the city a little bit more, especially in this area, but no. This is the one time you'll see Godzilla covered in snow. It's coming down really hard too. Wow, it's so cold. It's not American Midwest cold or Upstate New York cold, but it is Canada cold. It's like Tokyo cold. It's really cold.

01:15 John Daub: But you don't really see sights like this very often in Tokyo. It's maybe once a year that we get it. As you can see, it doesn't really stick. The snow just kind of hits the ground—maybe it's a lot of heat underground. But it almost always melts within the first 24 hours. Yeah, everybody loves Snow-Kyo. It's really awesome. This city always looks so beautiful in the snow, doesn't it? There's a lot of tourists here, many of them taking pictures and taking shelter. I don't know why you'd wear an umbrella—you always get stuck in the eye with them. I think you just wear a hood and try to make your way around.

02:18 John Daub: But Tokyo's not a city that's used to the snow because, again, as you see, it doesn't really stick that much. It just kind of melts away and then goes into the rain gutters here. But it is pretty. Actually, Kanae and Leo are here—they've gone out to get some coffee. We came into Shinjuku about 30 minutes ago. We've been walking around for a while. And you can see here the streets. This is Shinjuku Sanchome, which is not too far away—just a couple of minutes. That's a subway station for the Toei Shinjuku Line. There's a Uniqlo on the left side.

03:09 John Daub: Shinjuku is just really covered in snow on this side of the city. It's really pretty, but it's cold. And this is wet snow, too. There's Yodobashi Camera, which is an electronics store. You definitely need gloves. Oh, this is the cat sign. It's funny—in English, they have no graffiti, right? We're going to see the cat in a second. This is Leo's first time seeing this cat. It was just mesmerizing to him, so he stood there for a good two minutes just watching the cat do his thing. Here, they've got a couple of new rooms, a couple of new things, which are interesting to see.

03:58 John Daub: Here's Leo with the cat. He's very impressed. From here, with the snow coming down, it's even maybe more interesting. It's always hard to get the exposure right on the cat TV. So, Leo and Kanae—we're all very cold. He finally found the Godzilla, and this is his first time seeing it. So it was quite a funny moment—he goes, "Look, there's Godzilla," which is true.

04:42 John Daub: So the signal's kind of going in and out a little bit here. But I thought I would just take you around—this is going to be a very short livestream, like about 10 minutes or so. This place is notorious in Tokyo in the snow. Maybe the snow will make it look even more beautiful and less dangerous. I don't think it's that dangerous. Hey, Ponkotsu Ben is here! Ben, hey! I hope you got your package—I sent it a couple days ago. The Don Quixote got a lot of people here. Thank you for that, Ben—that's so nice of you.

05:24 John Daub: I can say I met you when I was in Nagasaki, in a way, right? I like the neon sign. I think it's mostly LEDs and stuff like that, but it does look really nice. It's got that vibe. This area used to be mostly neon lights—now they got rid of the neon lights, so it doesn't have that same kind of vibe as it did before. Michael Sassano! You won't see this in Hawaii that often, although I heard it does snow up in the mountains in Hawaii. It's nice to see you here, brother.

06:15 John Daub: So this street's famous for having a lot of people wheeling suitcases and touts from foreign countries come and hit you in the head. I think this is where that guy got hit in the head a couple months ago—they said he was "live streaming," and some tout hit him in the head. Well, I think you're allowed to film—there's people filming all over the place, really. Snow doesn't stick in a lot of spots, but it does in this tree that looks like a Christmas tree, though. Satrio! Hey, Satrio—congratulations to the Lawson's Convenience Store winner of a free trip to Japan. When are you going to be here? Get in touch—let me know, because I want to cover this. You made a really good video. He won a contest to come from Indonesia to Japan. If I could find it, I would share it on my Instagram for everybody to see. That's really cool.

07:51 John Daub: Boy, wiping the screen of snow takes me back to the last time I was in Sapporo for the snow festival. I haven't been there in a long time. With Matsumi, who's also such a wonderful person and a part of our community here—she came and we got to hang out in Sapporo. That seems like an eternity ago—that was like five years ago. There's a lot of live streams from that that are hilarious. All right, the snow is kind of dissipating a little bit here. Those fangs don't look so dangerous in the snow.

08:50 John Daub: It's a short one here. I'm actually here to support a friend of mine. If you're in Japan right now, you might want to come out here. He's going to be here for a day—I don't know if you guys remember Taiye-san from Nemuro. Nemuro is the easternmost spot of Japan in Hokkaido. There's a Nemuro festival in Shinjuku Station—I guess it used to be where the Odakyu building was. I'm coming here to support his festival and just to go see my friend. It's a chance for him to get a free trip to come to Tokyo. I get a chance to go see my friend from Nemuro. He sent us some mega-sized octopus from the Pacific Ocean a couple of weeks ago—it's from Nemuro. They get some big stuff in the city there.

09:42 John Daub: If you are in Shinjuku, Kanae and I will be there in about 10 minutes for a couple of minutes, then we'll be off again. This postcard is going out tomorrow—this is of the largest strawberries in Japan. They're pretty big. That's with the creator of the strawberry, Okuda-san, who is such a lovely guy. I'm going back to see him in less than a couple of weeks, when he says the biggest ones will be ready to be shown on video. I thought these were pretty big too. This is this month's postcard—if you sign up to the Patreon, I will send it to you tomorrow.

10:39 John Daub: I did eat several of those big strawberries. The big ones don't taste too much different than the small ones, I have to be honest. Other than saying you ate a $300 strawberry, there's not a lot of benefits to eating the bigger ones—other than it's easy when you think about it. This isn't a great area for live streaming. That's all I have for you—I wanted just to share with you the Shinjuku area just for a little bit.

11:25 John Daub: Kanae, Leo and I had a stomach virus for two days—that's why I wasn't doing any live streaming. It was really bad. We got it from Leo, who probably got it from his school. We're better now—Kanae is still kind of a little shaky, but we're doing okay. I'll be back tomorrow with another live stream. Maybe it snows again—it's kind of a cold spell in the city right now. John, I want to thank you for representing Japan—I'm proud of you. Well, thank you, VK Travelog—I appreciate that very much.

11:57 John Daub: Heath Ranyan—I was in Tokyo last weekend and now it's snowing. You missed it. Nice to see you here, Heath—you missed it. You can't predict snow in Tokyo—you really can't predict it. It just hits. Yesterday, a lot of people thought that it wouldn't even snow—it wouldn't even hit. And it did this morning. There was a little bit of snow on the ground when we woke up, like Christmas.

12:26 John Daub: So today is my birthday. I woke up and Kanae and Leo had set up some balloons for me, and I thought that was really nice. And then they opened the window and there was snow outside—I thought that was really cool. Yeah, I was born—there was a snowstorm in 1974 when I was born, apparently. So this seems to make a lot of sense to have it snow like this, right? It makes a lot of sense that the world looks like this on my birthday. Shouldn't it look like this? Really beautiful in glorious 720p? Sorry, this signal—trust me, it's better than if it was HD size because of the signal around here. This is too many people. It's really beautiful, though—this is a side of Tokyo that is rare to see.

13:24 John Daub: Well, thank you, guys. If Tokyo got a foot of snow, happy birthday—that is a wonderful present. Thank you. VK Travelog, thank you. Erica Goldberg, thank you—that's so kind of you guys. We got such a wonderful community here. Walter Walters, thank you. Good bowl of ramen—I'm going to need it. We're going to need it to stay warm today. A bowl of ramen hits the spot. I might get that tomorrow, though, because I think after the stomach virus, maybe eat some yogurt or something.

14:02 John Daub: Jared's here—hey, aloha. Mahalo for that. My bartender friend is now there in Otsuka—he went to Yuzawa. He's going to Yuzawa for the day trip—that's a beautiful day trip. Aloha—have a beautiful birthday. Well, thank you, Jared. I'm looking forward to seeing you and your family when you come back to Japan, hopefully soon. But just be prepared because it's snowing today. Thanks, guys. There's a guy on his bicycle—you can't stop Tokyoites from going and doing their thing.

14:29 John Daub: All right, guys—that's all I got for you. I'm going to go find Kanae and Leo. Have a good day. I'll see you again tomorrow. Maybe there's some snow, but probably it's all melted away because that's the way it rolls here. See you, guys.