00:00 John Daub: Hey everybody. Welcome to a beautiful sunny day in Tokyo. That right there is Omotesando. This is the station where you can catch the Ginza, the Hanzomon and the Chiyoda Line. Also in this direction, where we're gonna go, where we're gonna hit up the Harajuku JR station. We're gonna walk through here. See what has actually changed over the last... I haven't been here in a very long time.

00:33 John Daub: Kind of excited to see this part of the city. And eventually when we get from here, Omotesando, walking down Omotesando Avenue, which is the shonzu na kirei desu of Tokyo, we're going to see Harajuku, the big intersection at the end of the street, as well as these tree lines. This is where during Christmas time it's illuminated with Christmas lights. It's beautiful. When the leaves do come in on the trees, eventually it gets a lot darker.

01:03 John Daub: I do notice here on the streets, you see this. They do have trash cans. And these are like fortified trash cans. You have plastic bottles, petto botoru, cans. They eventually sort it out when they come to pick it up. So there's two of them. And then here for other garbage. This is stuff like plastics and bags.

01:35 John Daub: If you're not quite sure what should go in the answer here, I think you don't have to touch the handle. This is very interesting. You can just see this. Use your foot and we'll open up right there. And then it's gone. I guess there's some solar panels on the top. I'm not sure what they're doing with that, but very interesting. You don't see these on the streets in Tokyo very often.

02:06 John Daub: All right, let's get moving here. This street has a ton of designer shops. Anniverzaire, which is a famous place. You'll see couples getting married, coming out in white gowns every now and then, which is really beautiful. And then sometimes if you're walking at the right or the wrong time, you become a part of the wedding ceremony, which is very interesting. A lot of these buildings are new. Walking down the street, they've done a lot of renovations over the years. Basically, the property here is super expensive. So you want to make sure that you have the most beautiful building. And that's what this area is quite famous for.

03:12 John Daub: Across the street we're starting to see it now. I don't know, is that the flagship? It's like a very big one. It's an Apple store, which looks really nice. Of course, they try to blend it in with the neighborhood over there. When you walk down this street, it comes in waves, the people. When the red lights change at the end, you'll get like a horde of people coming towards you. And then it kind of levels off. You see that we've got a dead area here. And they'll be coming back when the next light changes.

03:46 John Daub: Let me just give you an idea of where we started here. This map. This is Omotesando intersection. We're gonna be walking down Omotesando Avenue past Omotesando Hills. This used to be the Dojunkai Aoyam Apartments back in the day. They tore that down at the beginning of the 2000s and became this here. So this street in the back, you'll find some other shops. And in the alleys here, very famous for satellite shops for fashion brands.

04:18 John Daub: You see, you've got Shibuya City and then Minato City. So these are two of the 23 cities wards that make up central Tokyo. And I don't know how, I guess it's about 5, 600 meters, this street. There's a crosswalk that you can get over and you get a really nice view. We'll go up there, take a look at it. And then at the end of the street, we have the intersection. This is where Meiji Jingumae, which is the Meiji Jingu, is the very famous shrine. It's huge. You got to go and see it if you're here in Tokyo. This is the train station, the Chiyoda Line. So you can walk — I don't think you can walk underground, but from here you can walk, I think now, underground all the way to Harajuku JR Station. And of course, this is Takeshadori, very famous. We're going to be taking a look here as well. Let's get moving.

05:25 John Daub: I'm going to cross the street here. We're doing picture in picture today. So you can see me. So I have to keep the camera up. They're selling a lot of stuff in there. There is a hidden Starbucks coffee shop down there, which 10 years ago used to be a thing. But my wife and I went in there once. We met a really rude person. So we kind of remember it based on who you meet. Kind of makes you remember where you go, right? If the service was bad, you kind of remember that for a long time. It wasn't the service. It was a kind of a rude customer. But there is this — there used to be a Starbucks. Yeah, there it is down there. It's hidden. But the great thing with this Harajuku Avenue, this Omotesando Avenue here — go in the back streets behind the main street and you're gonna see a ton of stuff.

06:31 John Daub: Because these businesses change. I don't think they last more than five years. The real estate is so expensive here that you basically have to do as much business as you can. If you start to lose business or the brand starts to fizzle, then basically you can't pay for your rent anymore. So you need something that's very, very trendy here to pay for the rent.

07:01 John Daub: There's another trash can. Interesting. Everybody is wandering on the alley here, the main street here. But the alleys here, you see, are so quiet. They tore down this building here. This used to be the Niigata satellite store for Niigata Prefecture. And they sold a lot of Japanese sake. That's interesting. So this also used to be a Way Burger and a Moss Burger cafe. And that's gone out of business now. I guess they're tearing it down. Above the lint, there was an American burger chain. I don't know why, but they asked me to go to their — I guess because I'm an influencer — they asked me to go to the event announcing that they were entering the Japanese market. And me and my friend Peter went to that. It was very interesting. They were targeting... [trails off]

08:04 John Daub: And here's a restroom here. Public restroom in Tokyo. This is one of the old remnants of the apartment complex from the 1920s that was put into here. I've done an episode on this in the past, but it's kind of neat to walk in here. You can go inside a little bit. There's some stores, but this is part of the history. This is what the street looked like back then. And now it's, of course, more modern. I like that they preserved it. They kept it feeling like it did back in the 1930s, I guess. You see the ivy growing on the side of it to make it look a little bit more Western. But a lot of artists lived here. Now, I don't think artists could really afford to live here unless you are a really, really — you have a lot of rich benefactors. And that would be the only way you could live across the street from Louis Vuitton. Did I pronounce that right?

09:06 John Daub: All right, this. This is Omotesando Hills on the right side. I've been in there maybe eight or nine times. Not a lot over the last 20 some years. It's just — there's not a lot. There's no stores that would really interest me in any way whatsoever. I go in there maybe to use the restroom. They don't even have — I don't even think they have any food in there. If they do, they do a really poor job of marketing it. Most of the food stuff that would be affordable would be outside the alleys, the cafes. They're really good. There's a lot of donuts. I don't know why they have donuts in, but there's a ton of donut shops in the really oshare trendy donuts. Oshare means, I guess, stylish or trendy.

09:40 John Daub: Here's the entrance to Omotesando Hills. And this goes downhill. You see, it's a slope. They have a Hokkaido Food Fair going on on the side here. These are kind of like benches, you see. These are smoking areas here, dedicated smoking areas. So if you want to smoke, make sure you're in a smoking area. Or you can be fined. These are kind of like seats here, right? Kind of like a weird bench area. The reason why you can't leave drinks on there, because you can't leave trash or drinks on them. It's a pretty creative design, so it keeps the city clean. But I think because of all the tourists that come here, they had to add in the trash cans because the locals then would complain.

10:41 John Daub: On the right side, and they apparently don't have it now — is there used to be water that flowed underneath here? I guess they do that at certain times or maybe just during the rainy season now. But when they opened it up, they had flowing water going down there. And you can hear this in the background, this subtle trickle of water, which is kind of relaxing. But you can't really hear it with all the traffic here. It's more in the morning time, you hear it a lot better. But now there's nothing.

11:47 John Daub: Remowa, that's a suitcase company. The best of the best is usually represented here. So if you have an office, you know, in Omotesando, if you're a startup business and you have an office here, people will assume that you have a lot of money or you're quite successful or you have a really good backing. That's probably why you want to have an office in Omotesando, if you live here in Tokyo. But I gotta be honest with you, it's really not worth it. And people these days, in the digital era, since the pandemic ended, having an office in a really prestigious place does not make you seem more successful. It's all now about the data and the sales, etc.

12:51 John Daub: Right on the left side of the road here. Basically, I think there's a police box here. You should — there's no way you can really ride your bicycle on this road anyways. Let me see. From the bottom here, if you look up, you get that really cool view of all those people walking. Sometimes you see them in the movies, shots from New York. You'll get that here at Omotesando.

13:22 John Daub: So when I have to do location scouting for foreign media that comes here, I used to do that a lot before YouTube. I would pick out spots for them to film at. A lot of them are already well known, but one of them that I would tell the DPs and all the other producers that come here, the showrunners, is that, you know, this is a really cool spot. If you look back up — hold on a second. Let's wait until we get to the end of the street. You look back up and you get this really amazing view.

13:52 John Daub: There's another trash can. Wow, there's a lot of them. Very clean here, isn't it? So a couple of things I wanted to show. This is one of the alleys here. So walking down here, you would see a lot of the satellite shops. It gets a lot more relaxed. Maybe we'll get to take a look through here. But I wanted to take you up the steps. Gonna look down the road here. The worst is when people have their smartphones and they're watching their smartphones and walking up the steps or up the escalators and they're so slow and it's dangerous. Don't do that. Put your phone away if you want to look at it. Best thing is to go to the side and do it or just wait until you're on the train. But I've noticed that walking and traffic patterns in Tokyo have gotten slower over the last five or six years because of that.

15:00 John Daub: All right, here we go. From up here, you do get a pretty neat bird's eye view from the crosswalk. You will find people with smartphones taking pictures here. All right, that's our goal right there. That is Harajuku intersection there. One of them. Nice sunny day. Warm. There's Kittyland over there. The bottom left of your screen here. There used to be a Shaky's Pizza, which is out of business, which is a shame. You could — all you could eat pizza for lunch.

16:02 John Daub: I'm going to cross the street here because this is a Ralph Lauren. Nice. The other way of the street. You can see Omotesando quite well here. Omotesando Hills. But Omotesando, basically all this area on the left and the right of it going into the back, very famous for artists. I'm taking you this way so you get a look at Cat Street. Take a quick look. I think that this is also — if you're going to be going to Omotesando, you're probably going to want to go to Cat Street.

16:33 John Daub: Let's see. I haven't seen any restaurants here yet. There we go. Cat Street. I think almost every other time I come here, there is a basket of cats here. There's some owner who has a cart and they have about 30 kittens or whatever. Was it cats or dogs? Cats. Because Cat Street. I don't know. It's like the official mascot of the Cat streets. Maybe, but they're not here today.

17:04 John Daub: Well, maybe you'll see them if you walk down the street here. Let's go take a look. This is also a really convenient street because if you just keep going straight, you get dumped right into Shibuya about 2, 300 meters, which is like, I don't know, four minutes away from Shibuya Station. So you really don't need to take the Yamanote one stop to get to Shibuya. You can walk it from one station to the next in about 15 minutes. But this is such an amazing walk because you'll see a bunch of — I think there's a takoyaki stand. There's a steak place that Kanai and I have been to. Matt Alt and Patrick Galbraith, two of my buddies, last time I went there was with them and we had some really good — well, there's like a sake shop here. Japanese sake. You can taste it. Hey, I can smell it too. Cool. And if I could smell it, that means the pollen's not too bad today because it just rained.

18:38 John Daub: See, the alleys in the back here are really nice. This is where the Akanko Japanese school uniform company has an office here. And I filmed once wearing a gakuran. If you want to see that, there's an episode on this channel with that. But slightly embarrassing but very informational. The Matcha Tokyo, again, all of these businesses on Cat Street. The rent is super high because it's like a — the cars can come here, but it's more or less a pedestrian street. There's a lot of foot traffic that goes between here and Harajuku. So there's a coffee shop right there between the... see? Interesting. Yeah.

19:09 John Daub: Here's the takoyaki shop. A lot of people sitting around eating it, trying not to make a mess. See? Let's see if the prices are reasonable for an Omotesando. Yeah. Shiso & negi mayonnaise is 700 yen. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Just the — the spicy one, it says very spicy. That's tempting. Candy they know. They know this is a lot of younger people are here. So I never understood that though. If young people are here, none of them can really afford most of the stuff on these streets. I guess it's about branding. I don't know if you get a lot of people to buy this stuff, but it's good to have a store here. So this is the flavor of Cat Street. There's an Adidas, Oakley, Burton — I guess that's a ski shop. A couple of cafes and restaurants down in that direction.

20:13 John Daub: But let's go down the alley here. It's a beautiful day so we can get lost a little bit. See if we get found on the other side. This is kind of neat here. Do you see? Just want to take a step back. You don't see too many of these in this area anymore. This is a yaoya, or vegetable stand. Family run. Been here for a very long time. Most of these people have sold their businesses because the rent is really high or they can't find a successor. However, if you can, there are a lot of residential areas in this part of Harajuku. So people come here and actually buy their fruits and vegetables. And many of them have established relationships with the restaurants for a very long time. If you are in this area, you have to stop here and see my friends. It's very curious.

21:21 John Daub: Do you see? I didn't think I would — I kind of forgot that it was here. You can actually rent school uniforms and start walking around. That would confuse people. But there you go. There's a sailor fuku. Any of you would wear that. I don't think you have to be a certain age. You just wear it. But this is the Kanko Harajuku select shop. And it's very interesting. That's where I put on my gakuran. That's really cool. You can see here — I know those girls. They were in my video. Those girls were in my video. Did you guys see that one? Very cool. Yeah. If you didn't see my Japanese school uniforms explained episode, it's very, very informative. I went really deep into that one.

22:22 John Daub: These streets do not go straight, so it looks like you're wrapping around, but maybe you're not. It's very easy to get lost back here. So wandering around, make sure you don't have an appointment to get to. Look who it is. It's our friend and everyone's friend if you're in the Los Angeles area. But Yankees fans might not like him, although he's very hard to dislike. The world champion and three-time MVP winner, Shohei Ohtani representing — I used to see more Yankees hats when I got here 25 years ago. And I see more Dodgers hats now.

22:56 John Daub: All right. This little side street here, where the tourists are. Let's just take a really quick look. See, I don't know what makes this ramen shop so special, but it does have a vending machine. And I've never seen locals eat here, but the menu looks really good. Hold on. You go... yeah. 2,000 yen for a bowl of ramen? Forget it. That's 2,000 yen for a bowl of ramen. Those are foreigner prices. Those are foreigner prices. No way. There's no way I would ever pay that.

23:56 John Daub: That looks good. This is a gyoza shop here. Wow, that ramen is more down to earth. 1,300 yen. This one with some gyoza. I don't know. That place must be famous or something. Walk around a bit. I don't know. That's 2,000 yen for ramen. That's — I'm not being cheap. I'm just not going to encourage that kind of pricing where they put like Wagyu on it. That's a stupid idea. If you add the name Wagyu in front of something, I should just call this channel Wagyu Wagyu in Japan. I don't know. It just all of a sudden it becomes more expensive. Something going on here. It's — J'en ai marre. So it sounds like when I got spanked for doing something bad, which is kind of often. Teenage years. What is the age limit on spanking? First of all, parents don't do that anymore. And it was actually not very often that I got spanked. But when I did, I earned it. I really did. I heard my spankings.

25:40 John Daub: All right. This has been here forever. I want to say just a shout out to the Fridays. I go in there maybe once every two years. But the last time I went there, it was awful, awful, awful. That was in Chiba, though. Not at this location. It was near Tokyo Disneyland. They had one. It was the worst Friday's experience I've ever had. Bathrooms hadn't been cleaned. The food looked like they'd gotten it out of the deep freezer. So I haven't been back in about six years, but I used to go like once a year just to make sure that they were still around because it just — it's nice to have that around, you know, when you're an expat, you've been living here for a while, it's nice to have it around, but not if they have food like that. I'm sure it's better now because they got more customers, but yeah, that was Fridays.

26:11 John Daub: Ooh, redemption. Just the problem is my wife, Kanai, she doesn't want to go and eat there anymore. It was so bad. And you know what? The restaurant was mostly empty. And they put us in the worst possible seat, like in the corner in the back in a dark part of the restaurant. I couldn't understand it. We didn't complain or anything. Maybe we should have, but is it on us? Onitsuka Tiger. Wow, that's very cool. When your shoes should be protruded like jewelry.

26:44 John Daub: All right, this is the building that's under construction. What used to be a Jonathan's back in the day. And now we are at Harajuku. You can tell it's a lot more people. It feels a lot more crowded. That's the new Tokyo Plaza. It's a beautiful store, isn't it? Look at that shopping mall. A lot of stores inside there. Looks like a park. I love the trees coming out of it. And then across the street you have the other Tokyo store. This has been opened up for a lot longer. Doesn't have quite the look to it, but there is a secret Starbucks up on the roof. But I give them too much free advertising for somebody who doesn't want to — doesn't really go there anymore because it's a place where you could sit down and there's doesn't feel like that all the time in Tokyo.

27:47 John Daub: This was very famous coming down the escalators. But they've covered it up with blue, so it doesn't have that same glass look to it. I wonder what's going on. Some kind of campaign. There's very famous escalators in Tokyo. I'm surprised that that Aussie burrito place is still there. I stopped going there, though. I prefer Frijoles. Fresher ingredients at the Frijoles. And it's a local business. Frijoles is Japan owned. Both of them are pretty good though. I mean, it's a burrito, I'd say. You know what, 10 years ago you really didn't have much choice. It was — this came in, I guess what was it about maybe 15 years ago? 10 years ago, something like that. First Taco Bell came in then this place. But Frijoles is the original. They had a shop in Azabu-Juban. All the expats knew, all the foreigners, all the Americans that lived in Tokyo knew where Frijoles was.

29:31 John Daub: All right, this way will take you to Shibuya as well. In this direction, underground is the Futakoshin Line. Futakoshin? Yeah. I've taken that three times in all my years. Because you have the Yamanote Line which competes going between Ikebakuro and Shibuya and everything in between. I really don't have any business to go there. So I remember when they were building it though, this whole street was under construction for what was like 10 years. It feels like yesterday. That used to be the American Eagle underground. But it looks like they've moved that location. I think they're only online now. There's a Kura Sushi conveyor belt sushi shop inside there. That's kind of new. We're walking down here. I'm going to show you a little bit of the Harajuku's Takeshita Street.

30:04 John Daub: There's the burrito. It's like you can almost smell it. It's all — the thing with this burrito place is they don't make it like Chipotle. So it takes forever. Whereas Frijoles has a line when you get there, they make the burrito right in front of you. So you get it so much faster. And I think the price is cheaper and the portions are bigger. You can tell I am not Japanese. Just — yeah, talk about burritos all day.

30:34 John Daub: Are Uggs still trendy? Still trendy? The Ugg boots — it was like 20 years ago, wasn't it? No, 15 years ago. The Ugg boots were the thing. Everybody wanted an Ugg boot. All the ladies, they looked ugly, but they're very comfortable. This is new. The Fenders guitar store. They've torn down a lot of these old buildings and you can see they put up new ones. These weren't really here too long ago. The — the Galaxy Store is kind of new. But we're talking in all this within the last like five, six years. There's going to be more change. There are going to be more changes. This looks like definitely a '90s bubble-era building. Some of these other ones probably come down. Everything that's 50 years or older probably gonna start to come down soon.

31:38 John Daub: There's a New Balance was... wow, that's really pretty in there. New Balance is representing in Japan more. You see that? So they do have a shop here, but I've actually come for a particular reason. This is where ASICS has their flagship store. And before I run the marathon in two weeks. Oh my goodness. I thought I would just go take a look and see maybe I could get a new pair of running shorts or something. We'll see what I find in there.

32:10 John Daub: See, there's a building that used to be here that's gone. This is the front of Takeshita Dori. And it's changed so much because Santa Monica and ACDC Rags were in kind of a battle for a piece of property that was right here. And for decades they wouldn't sell. AC DC Rags — I did a video on it. I might bring that out of the archives again. But in the end, Santa Monica Crepes, I believe, bought them out or something. They had the — just the pressure was too much. But that kind of took the identity. That's when this place jumped the shark. I'm going to take you down here. Here's the ASICS flagship store. Flagship store. So I'm going to go in here.

33:10 John Daub: Wow. You can see those Japan jackets in there. Whoa. Wow. All right, let me just take you down here for a little bit. And that should end our very cool walk. A little update on what Harajuku looks like in 2026 of February. There you go. Loteria went out of business. This is big news. And they didn't just shut down the shops. Another group within Loteria bought it out and changed it from Loteria to Zeteria. And you know what? It's not a bad thing because the food looks so much better. Check it out. And the system looks like it's changed too. It's a little bit easier. You're using touchscreen menus which can change the language to order. So that's all really good.

34:21 John Daub: Oh wow. The entrance to the Harajuku shop is through here. That's interesting. I thought the flagship store was in Ginza, but they do have another one there, just not quite as big as this one. Thank you very much. Where are you visiting from? Seattle. From Seattle. Oh, very cool. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I just say thank you. We watch all the time. Well, thank you. Bye. From Seattle, they said that's cool. They recognize my voice. I do a lot of talking. It's true, true. All right. A lot of the Korean street food on here has just proliferated to another level here.

35:23 John Daub: It basically looks the same. But do you see, like there's this ruggedness to Harajuku, which is the Takesta Street, which is really gives it its identity. But if I pan here, you start to see these — the buildings are just too new and it's starting to look more like a theme park. And that's what I don't like about Takeshita Street and why I rarely come here nowadays. It just looks more and more like a street theme park and less like this — the 1960s, the history of it, where satellite fashion and youth fashion started off right here. You get less and less of that.

35:57 John Daub: My friends — even at ACDC Rags, I believe, ended up putting a shop up here, right? Or at least in one of the stores here. How did you — they have another... oh, the next intersection, they have a shop up there. But this used to be the Sankyu Mato and that's gone now too. Sankyu Mato, everything was 390 yen. San kyu. Do you get it? Thank you. San Q3. San Q9. Thank you very much. 39. You know, all the kids, they're doing that thing with the number six and the number seven, right? They should start doing the next trend is the number three and the number nine. Thank you.

36:28 John Daub: Thank you. I hope I didn't start something right here. Thank you very much. That's 3, 9 in Japanese. I'm here to help. Don't show your kids this episode. All right, guys, take care. That's all I got for you. This is an upload. I appreciate it. This month's postcards are on the way if you want one. They're of the Himebijin, the biggest strawberry variety in Japan. I'm going back there this week to go see Okuda San, the owner, the founder of it, and got a bunch of releases coming. But if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If you are coming to Japan and you'd like to contact me about some travel advice, join me on the Patreon. I usually give my Patreon some extra support by personally answering their questions to help them to plan their trips, which is great.

37:34 John Daub: We got a bunch of people coming in March, of course, with the cherry blossom. So thanks for joining me on this walking adventure down Harajuku. I hope this was informational and fun for you. See you again in the next one, matane.