00:00:07 John Daub: There he is. He's dressed up like a police officer today. At least that's what he looks like. Welcome to Hamamatsucho Station. This is the Anakin Piss statue. It's quite famous. It was installed here in the 1950s. There's a Yamanote line going by right there, and it's dressed up frequently in seasonal outfits.

00:00:40 John Daub: I would not drink the water, but I do come here every now and then to see how he's dressed. Oh, he's so cute. Look at that. Not that, the hat. Look at that hat. He was installed in the 1950s because they wanted to liven up the station. It seemed kind of drab post World War II. And well, this is the outfit for right now.

00:01:11 John Daub: He also has outfits for Halloween, for like a firefighter outfit. This is Hamamatsucho. Oh, don't look there. This is Hamamatsucho Station. Oh, look at this. They even cover his little teeny feet. Sorry, I shouldn't be zooming in too much. This is the start. At least I thought this would be a great place to start the adventure.

00:01:43 John Daub: We haven't done a walking adventure for a very long time. As the Tokaido Line streams by going towards Atami. I believe that was Atami. Anyways, it's just over in this direction — a 300 year samurai garden. It is really beautiful. Let me show you on the map really quickly. This is Kyushu Rikyu Gardens. And I've got my fingers crossed that the signal is going to hold out here.

00:02:20 John Daub: I really hope so. It's often missed — this garden — because it's in the shadow of Hamarikyu Gardens up there. You see them on the top. But Tokyo Tower is just like a 15 minute walk away from here. And this garden is so convenient because it's right off of the Yamanote Line. Look at it. And it seems small, but it's got every element of what a Japanese garden should have — including in the 21st century, the skyscrapers all around it. Which might scare me because I don't know how the signal is going to be in a live stream.

00:02:50 John Daub: But we're going to give it a try because we like to do things live here. There's even a little bridge that crosses over across the lake. Oh, there goes the Shinkansen. Hold on. Shinkansen is going by in both directions. That's so cool when that happens. And that's going towards Kyoto. So let's say goodbye to Anakin Piss from the 1950s and say hello to a Japanese garden from the 17th century — 18th century, 17th century — 300 years. About this should be exciting.

00:03:52 John Daub: There's a lot of changes that have happened here at this station. The construction going towards the monorail. It should be really close to finished. And there's the garden just over there. We're gonna exit. You know what? I just thought of something. My phone is my Suica card. So how do I get out if I'm live streaming? I wonder if this is going to mess up the phone. There's only one way to find out. I got to use my phone to get out.

00:04:59 John Daub: That happens in the afternoon this time of day. Not a lot of people out on the platform. Not a lot of people out. Everybody's at work. Including me, because that's not what I'm doing. Wow. The skyline is always evolving. It's always changing. You are too early. Am I? Here's the Keihin Tohoku Line coming by here. So you can get here on the Oedo Line to Daimon Station. You can get here on the Yamanote Line, the Keihin Tohoku Line. Or you can just walk here from Shimbashi. It's not that far. Everything is fairly walkable as a Yamanote line comes in.

00:05:30 John Daub: So this one will take you to the monorail up the steps. It's very easy to get from here to the monorail. Actually you just follow the airplane on the stairway. So if you are going to the monorail and you have a little bit of time — oh then maybe you hear me better. Might be a good idea. How'd the microphone get down there? Sorry. I hope you guys can hear me a little bit better now. Boy, the station's changed a lot.

00:06:34 John Daub: I don't know how to get out of here. Isn't there a first floor station? So this is the second floor, the south. All right, let's just — I thought there was one that led to the ground floor. There's the monorail. All right, we're gonna go in this direction then. I don't know what's happening. Am I lost because of all the construction that's been happening. This is the first time I've been here in a long — alright. This is a cool map. This should tell us where we are right now. Where are we right now? Doesn't say. I want to go here. So if I go through the north exit or the south exit, I should be able to get there.

00:07:38 John Daub: Here's the park, but the north is probably better. It's confusing. This is the monorail. So this is the monorail. I wanted to go out here. Looks like they changed it. So let's go to the north exit. This way. I don't understand. Oh, maybe we can see from the window. You can see the cherry blossoms are so close. Everybody's getting excited. From the station, you have teasers. That's it. That's — is that the garden over there? We're close. I can smell it. Gotta go to the north. All right, there we go. Back on the platform. I could have sworn it was the other way around.

00:08:42 John Daub: That's true. I think it's this way. The monorail is in the back of the station. The great thing is that when we do finally get out of here, you're gonna have an amazing view of Tokyo Tower — if everything works the way I hope. The next challenge is to see if I will actually be able to use my phone for Suica while streaming. This could be the great challenge here. Yeah, they've done a lot of construction at the Hamamatsucho Station, so everything does feel new.

00:09:17 John Daub: Well, even the advertisements all have manga on it. That's how you know you're in Japan now. This is the monorail, and the station looks like it's getting really close to being complete. You see the glass up there? It was in this like 1950s, 60s-looking building that was called the quote unquote World Trade Center. And nowadays it's starting to look a lot more like the 21st century, which is a good thing. So this is the monorail station in this direction here. It's still kind of a work in progress for a long time. All right, there's the globe for the World Trade Center building. And there it is in the distance. Do you see it? This is always the famous Tokyo Tower — about a 15 minute walk from here.

00:10:49 John Daub: But we're going in this direction where the signal could be better — can't be worse. 1909, this station. That's interesting. We know Harajuku Station was, I think 1912. So this station is older than that. This is one of the originals. The first station — the first terminus in Tokyo — was not Tokyo Station, it was actually Shimbashi. And the old station for Shimbashi has been renovated and is on display in Shiodome, which is not that far away from Shimbashi Station — just about a five minute walk. You can see the tracks, the original tracks from the 1870 original train station. The first train that came in the 1870s went from Shimbashi to Yokohama.

00:11:54 John Daub: Really pretty. All right, here we are. We're near the gardens. I don't know if any cherry blossoms are going to be blooming. We're going to find out. But because of the construction, the garden has really been freed up. Look at this. The signal should be back or at least a little bit stronger. Let's take a look here. Now it is cheap, cheap, cheap to go in here. It's just a dollar — 150 yen. And for seniors it's half price, or 70 yen more than half price. And you can get an annual pass for five for less than $5. So if you're going to be strolling around here often for like lunch and stuff, that's it.

00:13:01 John Daub: So let's go in here. I hope I have 150 yen. I do. I got 200 yen. But I'm already looking onto the side here, and we got a really pretty view. Now it's opened up. More light is getting in here. Okay, let's go take a look. I'm going to give you some of the history of the garden a little bit later. But I think inside, I'm hoping that the signal will be better.

00:13:37 John Daub: 1678 is the origin of the garden — 1678 by Tadatomo Okubo. Here's the ticket for it. Cobra Bebop. I hope you are seeing this signal. Okay, whenever you see — oh, makes you a little concerned. But we're gonna keep it going anyways because that's what we do. Interesting. Everybody's got a bench there eating their bentos. So I can see why people buy an annual pass to come here and eat their bentos. Wow. All right, I'm gonna give you the lay of the land here. Get some separation from the state.

00:14:41 John Daub: This is really nice. I just hope that the signal comes back because that'd be a shame. Wow, a lot of ducks in here. Oh, there's the bridge on the other side. So I'm gonna pan around here. You can take a look. There's a stone lantern over there that's sometimes covered in snow. They said. I think it's like the snow ladder. But the view is completely different because the buildings around have changed since the last time I was here, about four years ago. I think I was — I met Cheryl and Luke at Austin from Hawaii just outside the entrance here about five years ago. And now look at it. It's just different. This is towards the ocean. Towards the — sorry, Tokyo Bay. So that's why you wouldn't see anything there.

00:15:42 John Daub: But let's keep walking around and maybe the signal will come in. A dollar is pretty good deal. And they use that money to help to maintain. This is kind of fun. I bet kids love this — the one stone to the next. There's an angry duck over there. Try to make sure you stay on the stone blocks. There we go. We still got a weak signal. What's going on? All right. Kind of gotten away from all the people. But you can already see this is a pretty chill area. Pretty chill. This is a beach. On the map they call this a beach. I'm not joking.

00:16:48 John Daub: All right, let's see. We can get a little bit of elevation. You can get up to the top of the mountain here. We'll get some elevation and see if the signal comes a little bit stronger from the highest point in the garden. We're going to go up there. This is Oyama. I like the way they spell it. It's okay. Wow. There's some cherry blossoms over there. We're gonna take a closer look. Wow. Okay. Wow. All right. We have some blossoms. That doesn't — that's not the somei Yoshino. But that's looking really nice over there.

00:17:52 John Daub: But from up here at the top of Oyama, I'm just gonna pan around and you can see the spire of Tokyo Tower is right there. When the construction's done, we might be able to get a little bit more of it. But that's all you see of Tokyo Tower. And here's a pan of the gardens here. Hi there, JK. Adventures in the house. That's so beautiful. Look at all the ducks down there. They're doing something. Gonna zoom in on those. Look at all the ducks, right? What are they up to? That's a lot of ducks for a Tokyo city park. I haven't seen that many in a long time in one area. It's not so common.

00:18:27 John Daub: Looks like we got a better signal up here at the top of Oyama. Maybe. So I can now talk to you a little bit about the history of this place. So this is the Kyushu Rikyu Gardens. This is one that's overlooked by a lot of people. There's a schedule on the information here that tells you what's blooming. It's March, April, so the plum blossoms might still be around. The Magnolia stellata, the cherry blossoms are just about coming in here. The narcissus might be around, but it's one of those cultural heritage gardens. And it's a dollar to come in here with the exchange rate, or 150 yen — 70 yen if you're over the age of 65. I think free for kids — and very close to the monorail. So it's worth the visit here.

00:19:38 John Daub: Let's look at the map real quickly. There's a Japanese archery range which is — requires an extra charge to go in there. We'll look at it. That from the mountain. There's the garden office, and yeah, there's the pebble beach. There's actually a little beach. I'm looking at it right now. Ukishima in the center. Nakajima, which you can walk across. There's a waterless waterfall. And right now I'm at the top of Oyama right there. So I've got a pretty good view looking up here.

00:20:13 John Daub: This is interesting because they have a bunch of information in English. You can check that out when you're here. But the highlights of this — it's one of Tokyo's oldest surviving Edo period gardens. Built in, I think it was 1673. It was a daimyo feudal lord residence. Daimyo is a samurai — samurai is more known than daimyo to most Westerners — but later became the Imperial household. And it opened to the public in 1924 as a gift from the Imperial household. So very cool. Those are some things that you should know about this area and you —

00:21:14 John Daub: And it's hard to find peace inside here because you got trains, a lot of trains going by. So it's not as quiet of a park as some of the other ones. Let me zoom in on the beach. This is a beach. That's a beach, right? This is a beach. They've put in every element of the world in here. Not only am I on the top of a mountain or a hill, kind of a little hill, you have a beach here, you have water, you've got a lot of ducks. And then in the middle you have some islands that you can walk across through and some cherry blossoms over in this direction. We're gonna go walk over in that direction. Hopefully the signal is there.

00:21:56 John Daub: I gotta upload this thing later, but yeah. This is an over 300 year old samurai garden. Thank you to the Imperial family for making this available to the public in 1924. So you can walk across right there from the mainland to the little island. I think it was called Ukishima, wasn't it? Ukishima Nakajima. I'm not sure. And then you can walk across from the island over to back to the mainland. It's really pretty. There's a bunch of people that are doing that right now. The waterless waterfall is right there.

00:23:06 John Daub: I think right there. I'm pan around. And you can feel — even though there's no water, you can feel like there's a waterfall there, apparently. Yeah. If it wasn't for the map, I would think it's just a big pond. I think this is like one of the things — you have to do a little bit of research when you travel around Tokyo to historically places, because once you know the history, it's so much more interesting than just walking around.

00:23:52 John Daub: It just seems like a lake or a pond. But if you know this is a feudal lord's garden from 1678, and you can see the buds for this cherry blossom tree just starting to come in there. You see that? There might — actually there's look at there it is. There's actually some somei Yoshino cherry blossom trees. Buds that are open here because it's a little bit warmer than in other places. So they've warmed up probably from the glass of the skyscrapers all around. That's interesting. So we're close. There's another variety of the cherry blossoms just over here. That's not somei Yoshino, but it does look absolutely beautiful.

00:24:53 John Daub: Look at that. Wow. There's another cherry blossom tree back here. This is not somei Yoshino, but it's much further into the blooming process. This is going to be beautiful this weekend. In fact, the cherry blossoms will start this weekend, which is just incredible. I can't believe we're actually here. I can't believe we're here at cherry blossom season. This is going to be really fun. I'm going to take it at as many spots as possible in live streams.

00:25:28 John Daub: I know for the community, many of you really would love to come here to Tokyo and experience the cherry blossoms. The reality is that Tokyo is not the best place to see the cherry blossoms. The best place is out in the countryside, in the mountains, in the forests, in the local neighborhoods, in those parks where you can feel it — you have more of a connection to nature here. I mean, I hear the cars, the highways, the monorail going by. I hear a lot of noise. That makes this garden kind of interesting. Some more hills over there.

00:26:58 John Daub: All right, this is the waterless waterfall, I believe. Oh, we gotta go around. If you're watching, you can write in where you're watching from, because right now you are all in Tokyo, but you're watching from different areas of the world, which is just totally amazing. There are lots of Japanese gardens around the world as well. But this — there's something special about this one. That little teeny stone bridge — like they've micronized the Japanese experience in this small garden. Someone's about to walk across it. 3, 2, 1. Gotta pay the troll. Gotta pay the troll. The gate, the toll.

00:27:29 John Daub: I guess that's what you do when you come in for a dollar. I do see some koi in here. There's usually a bunch of turtles in the water, so try to spot the turtles. Supposed to be a waterless waterfall. Looks like Stonehenge minus a couple of rocks. It's nice to walk around, walk around this, the Stonehenge. Looking for the turtles. Well, there's a duck. Duck out of water. I know their language. I'm really communicating. This is from watching 1960s Batman — the Penguin. Meredith Burgess playing the Penguin. You could pick up some of the language from him. He obviously was a good actor. Was a great actor.

00:28:35 John Daub: And I didn't know he played Rocky. And he also was in Star Wars, right, wasn't he? No, that was somebody else, Meredith. Very, very talented actor. He was in a lot of movies, but he was also the Penguin. He was in Rocky as — as Mick, and he was also the trainer. And he was also in the 1960s Batman as the Penguin, which is awesome. It's so hard, though.

00:29:06 John Daub: Yeah, don't walk off the trail, because if hundreds of people are — what? That's really beautiful. If hundreds of people are walking off the trail, it just creates a mess. It wears down the grass and the areas. The announcements are in several languages. English, Chinese, I think in Thai. Was it interesting?

00:29:37 John Daub: You can see the buds are starting to come on all of the trees in this. Somei Yoshino tree right here, I believe is going to be cherry blossoming in about 96 hours. Yeah, look at this one. All right, this is the one we saw from up there. Oh, yeah, this one is about to just bust out. These blossoms are about to bust out. You can see the buds are there — very, very close to busting out.

00:30:08 John Daub: Let's keep walking around. Fingers crossed that the signal gets a little bit stronger, and then I'll probably have to upload this if it's stopping in midstream. No one wants to watch a dead stream. Luckily I record a local copy on my phone to upload for later in case there are issues. It's nice. I really love — it's been warm. For the last couple of weeks there's been some cold days, but it's been hovering around 12 to 15 degrees Celsius, which is like upper 50s, lower 60s in the sun. Been very nice in Tokyo. A big contrast to what's happening in parts of the US where it's like snowing and wintry, but oh, it's been really nice.

00:31:21 John Daub: And it's a chance to go outside. So the road is closed right here. So we're on the back part looking back. But one of the things that's very interesting about this garden is that it is surrounded by man-made buildings, roads. There's highways, there's a highway with cars going by right there. You can hear them. There's above ground and underground. Check this out. I love these. Japan has small everything for getting around these really small areas. These are mini excavators. Look at this. They look like toys.

00:32:23 John Daub: I think this road is closed. I so could — it kind of hard to figure out because they didn't have it gated up over there. I thought it was like this road. Let's go take a look. So this is kind of a canal. They've just miniaturized everything — kind of a little canal that goes around here, and you can go onto the island and sit and have a lunch or something. But you can absolutely bring in food to eat inside of here. Just carry out the trash. That you bring in here and get thrown away on the train platforms.

00:33:29 John Daub: Wow, there's a koi. There we go. That's a big one. Carp. Oh, here it is. The road is closed. The path right there. The other one's okay. Thought I was breaking the road rule. Taibashi — the Thai bridge. This is so picturesque. Oh, this would be a great place to have on a spring afternoon or summer afternoon — have a drink, coffee, or eat a lunch, and you have this view that's so wonderful. On the other side is Oyama, the hill that I was standing at where we actually had a signal.

00:34:35 John Daub: And I have yet to see a turtle, but some ducks are now starting to enter the pond. Let's walk across here from this side. I get a better view of the bridge that goes across. Looks like it's been renovated. It's a wood bridge there, and we have some ducks hanging out on the banks right there. Across this wooden bridge. This could be challenging. Looks like something from Indiana Jones. The penitent man shall pass. You have to pay the fish. They're the trolls. They're the trolls right there.

00:35:11 John Daub: So you can get a better view of the wildlife inside the park. There he goes. That duck's gonna go in for a dive, look. No, he's kind of chilling, but we have some duckage here, and there is some koi, some carp. But yeah, these little bridges here — if you aren't careful, you could go in. But they're wide enough for two people. Just when there's congestion, let one man — one man or woman pass first. And let be orderly. It's not a mosh pit.

00:35:43 John Daub: So we have a choice here. We can go to the right or to the left. I'm gonna go to the right. But you're getting the vibe here. All around is our skyscrapers, cars, trucks. And one of the reasons the signal is not good in here is because there are a lot of cars with cell phones just sucking in all of the bandwidth for uploading and downloading. So I guess it just depends on the traffic light somewhere, but it is a really pretty, pretty garden nonetheless. And it is an escape from the rest of the city of Tokyo to come in here.

00:36:49 John Daub: This reminds me a little bit of the garden in next to Kōrakuen, next to Tokyo Dome. That garden looks very similar to this in a way. It's different in a way as well, but it's similar because it is surrounded by buildings now. I can hear the Shinkansen going by right there. That sound of gravel. I love it — the different textures, the things with the strolling Japanese gardens. It's about the sounds, the textures, the colors, the landscape. So as you're strolling, you get different feelings, and it really inspires or wakens up the mind.

00:37:20 John Daub: What do you think this is? Duck? Oh, there's some — there's some koi right there. Look at that. It's a big one. And you can see there's a ton of ducks. Literally, this would be a Hitchcock movie called The Ducks. I've seen ducks attack before. They're not — they're kind of scary creatures, aren't they? I don't know. Crows are pretty scary too, but ducks — imagine like a million ducks coming out. I think they poo more. That's even a scarier thought. Think about the smell.

00:38:24 John Daub: Oh, they're the turtles. Do you see them? I had to zoom in to see them. Let's see if I can go zoom in anymore. Yeah, there you go. Right in the middle on that rock. It's beautiful. All right, let's move along. The reflections in the water are pretty unique too. Tokyo Tower is in that direction. And it's interesting because now you're starting to see — and I think they did this purposely — it looks like an old Edo building. Like it could be from generations in the past. But if you pan up from the pond here, the new part of the station looks it blends in a lot more like an old Edo era building with the wood on the front of it. A little Kyoto-esque. That's intentional to make this garden, because the view from the garden looks not that great, but in this direction it looks kind of nice.

00:39:26 John Daub: I don't know if they're ninja turtles, but they could be, because there are — there's Donatello. There's four of them. Cobra Bebop. You're right. There are four of them. There's Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and what's the fourth one? I forget. But we do have four ninja turtles right there of various sizes, and they are in a half shell. This is Nakajima. I talked about this a little bit before.

00:40:26 John Daub: And the arrangement of stones on this island represents Mount Horai, a sacred mountain in Chinese mythology that is said to be the land where the immortals live, where there is no death or old age. I like that. So these rocks are laid out like the island of the gods, where there is no death or old age. I very much appreciate the hard work to do to do just that. That's really great. See, when you know the story about the stuff, it really does make it more symbolic, more interesting. More — hey, I want to hang out on this island.

00:41:28 John Daub: Oh, look, there's more ninja turtles. There's five of them. I don't know what — do they even talk? Do they have vocal cords? Don't know how to react, how to communicate? They look ancient. Are you immortal? Maybe. Let's keep walking. Look at these ducks if you can — if the signal's good enough. Look at the ducks. They have a brown head. Does anybody know this variety of ducks? Duck. It's cute. How you doing? And we're now going over the arched bridge here. It's a very small stone arched bridge, but it's very appreciated.

00:42:05 John Daub: That was cool. Shinkansen going by. All right, so there's — that's a pretty good overview of this park. I hope you enjoyed — enjoyed it. Just a couple of notes here. The Postcard Club is, of course, a photo of me running the Tokyo Marathon right there. These are going to be going out tomorrow. I think tomorrow or Friday, which is a holiday here. But I put an arrow. You can actually see me in this shot, which is cool. That's my net time — 3:31. It's pretty good. This will be going out to everybody. Yeah, tomorrow. So you sign up to the Postcard Club on Patreon.

00:43:07 John Daub: I appreciate it. It was a really good run right here. You can see I was holding my camera. I had two cameras — one of them on my chest and the other one was in my hand. A 360 camera should be a pretty good episode, I think. Looking forward to that. Probably released sometime in April and I kind of redid the thumbnail. It's a lot more spectacular now. But if you haven't already seen — I took my family up to Akita, the land of fireworks, to stay in an old samurai house in Kako. No date to walk Akita dog. But the main focus was on Omagari, which is the most incredible fireworks festival.

00:44:28 John Daub: It's the most prestigious fireworks festival in Japan, where they launched 100 number 10 one-foot fireworks shells in consecutive fashion. It was just incredible. And that — I believe is what you see right there. It was just unbelievable. Check out that episode on the main channel. And there's three new episodes coming this month. So very excited about that. If you have any questions, I appreciate it. You can leave in the comments below and I will take you in another place, hopefully with a better signal tomorrow as we explore. Spring is here. Really nice warm weather. I've noticed that they've started to add everything in English too. This is the Seiko no Sutsumi — West Lake embankment. So it's great that they've added in English on all the signs and I'm appreciative of the ducks. Take care guys. See you in another live stream real soon.