Japan Rail Passes Explained for 2021 | JR East

greetings and welcome to the top of the kitte building right in front of the marunouchi side of tokyo station on a beautiful day in the city of tokyo how you doing everybody in this live stream i'm going to be talking about the changes in the jr east rail passes for 2021 i'm also going to be telling you a really interesting story about that building behind us so you don't want to watch to the end as i explained to you this but um while i talk about the passes we're going to be walking around this really beautiful area which gives you almost a 365 degree view of the city of tokyo from this area which is fascinating and you also get an amazing view of the shinkansen right down here as they they pull into tokyo station going to destinations as far as uh kagoshima on one side and uh hokkaido on the other side but most of the changes with the passes are involving um jr east tohoku area pass and also the jres nagano nigata passes there's a lot of them so buckle in for the next 20 minutes or so as i go through as many of them as i can and oh here we go you already see a shin constant from this this is a much better viewpoint than being down at the base of uh maranuchi station in tokyo station you can see all the shinkansens from here so i think if i get over to that corner over there we're gonna have an amazing view so starting on april 1st 2021 as we see the tokaido shinkansen start to make its way uh towards uh going towards osaka and there's the yamanote line as well starting on april 1st 2021 there's going to be some some big changes to the rail passes especially in this region which is jr east jr east is the tokyo area and it goes up towards tohoku including parts of i believe nigata and nagano it's pretty exciting and there goes the rest of the shinkansen that's the yamagata shinkansen no no hold on oh gosh i don't sometimes i forget what shinkansen is it could be the hokurikushin content or the joads of shinkansen there's so many different kinds of shinkansen uh on april 1st the passages will change uh the the past that is most interesting to me is the jr east rail pass for the tohoku area tohoku includes aomori iwate akita miyagi fukushima and yamagata did i get that right all six of the prefectures up there it's an area that was really hit hard during the great tohoku earthquake of march march 11 2011. one which i had to live through and went up there to help volunteer some of the recovery uh soon after that we're gonna be not we're gonna be remembering the 10th anniversary of that event coming up and uh i'm going to be working with j.r east to promote some of this this new rail pass which is super exciting because for the first time foreign residents living here in japan not on a tourist visa have access to this pass now last year japan jre started a um a welcome rail pass which allowed for three consecutive three days of travel for 12 000 yen or about 120 that was the first time outside of the tokyo wide pass that i had access to a rail pass and of course the station jacqui keep which is a local train pass that allows you five days of consecutive travel on local trains only that even japanese can use but this pass really opened up to hoku to me and i was able to make a couple of only in japan episodes using it now with this pass it opens up uh it opens up travel for longer periods of time so this one pass that i'm gonna introduce you to first see here i got the information right here is the jr east tohoku pass and uh this pass on the top here 20 000 yen is the price for it it departs i mean you can pick up this ticket almost almost anywhere inside of tokyo station there's about three windows i believe you can do in the front near the japan rail cafe you can also get the ticket in japan on the marunouchi north entrance or exit and there's also across from there another um tour tour area um sales point where you can get that ticket as well those places close at 4 p.m so you might want to get that ticket pretty early but more importantly you can get those tickets online and there is a link in the description of this video where you can go and check out those tickets purchase them online and then you can pick them up even at wayno station there is a vending machine where you show your passport and pick it up now there are a couple of things that you have to remember with with these passes i like we can go over here and have a seat and again i want you to stay stay tuned because that station back there really really interesting story that thai's tokyo station with tohoku i was shocked when i first heard the story so you're going to want to stick around for the next i guess i'll get to it in about five or six minutes all right all right so we're not allowed to use this as a bench all right it's okay so now that i have two hands let's go over some of these this news on um april april 3rd i'm going to be doing a rail adventure this is the coolest thing in the world some of you might have seen a press release where uh on japan today which is a big news site for for news here in japan and english on april 3rd i will be departing from tokyo station to shin aomori on a ceremonial shinkansen that i will be riding with my friend peter and 100 people are invited to ride this train this is super cool and i don't think we've ever done anything like this before check it out so this is the banner for it and you can actually see this on the japan rail website i'll put the link in the description too if you're interested you can check out that press release that came out about a week ago um we're going to be writing and the purpose of this is to help promote the new past but more importantly help promote tohoku and tourism up there and you can see there i am in the corner i'm gonna be oh i'm a i'm a popular youtuber that's nice there we go 100 people can can ride with me and join actually we've had 100 we've already had 100 people uh sign up but only 20 have paid so you actually have to pay in order to get this ticket so there's still some available to despite the fact that it that we've gotten a hundred people already quite interested but this this trip is going to start on on april 3rd and it is a bargain it's 15 000 yen and uh i was talking i was talking with with the people from japan rail about this this is so cool check this out so you don't just get oh here it is right here you don't just get um a pass you're gonna get you're gonna get this where is it i was in my pocket oh here it is you're gonna get this this welcome suica which i've never i've never seen this before because i live in japan these are for uh tourists usually it's a 28-day suica pass so it only you can only use this for 28 days and it expires but um you get the ki and then after it expires you get to keep the pass and take it home the reason why is because you don't have to pay the 500 yen deposit and a lot of tourists would pay the deposit and they had to depart for their airplane and not get that 500 yen back so they made this special but if you join us on this trip you get one of these welcome suicas too because sweet guy is pretty cool next up you get this mask and this is the first time for me to see this mask you do get swagged toward toro porko we you absolutely get swag i'm kind of excited about this you get a special japan rail mask that celebrates tohoku check this out this is so festive so you get one of these which you can we're proudly all around the entire country of japan but more importantly tohoku because that's where we're going to be going on this trip so you get this mask and you get a japan jr east uh rail pass for the tohoku area as well which is super cool and it's a 5 000 yen savings on the price of the past your pass will start on april 3rd so you have five days after it starts on april 3rd to explore tohoku and we're hoping that the 100 people on this special shinkansen train this is our train all right so it's just going to be us on there um this special pass you're going to be able to start your tohoku adventure which means with this pass you can explore tohoku on the shinkansen as much as you want mostly geared towards foreign residents of japan so if you're living here in japan there goes the shinkansen right there you get a chance to ride the shinkansen for five days for 20 000 yen or sorry for 15 000 yen which is a discount on the on the price which is really really incredible um there's a lot of perks to doing this so i hope i i hope i see you all there part of the visit to tohoku find japan and there's some information here you get a 20 000 pass a 1 000 yen welcome suica it's part of the swag you get a 5 off from goods at the uh cafe items at the japan rail cafe which is actually pretty cool grab a coffee and you get this mask i've only this is the first time i've seen the mask in real life it's pretty comfortable um yeah and then on the third there's a ceremony on the platform which i'm going to be live streaming to you which is going to be really awesome and we only ask that you share some of the stuff on your trip which you're probably going to do anyways on instagram or something it's pretty cool so all of this information is in the link that i have below i'm pretty excited about sharing with you that that trip um going up to tohoku so peter and i will be live streaming on the platform on april 3rd i hope you join us for that it's gonna be pretty exciting some of the other changes with the passes um so one of the biggest changes that i noticed when i got the the uh rail pass a couple of a couple of days ago i went up to uh oh check it out dr yellow this is so rare this happens like oh that's so rare i'm blown away that's a train that checks the integrity of the tracks dr yellow is what it's called and they don't have a schedule on that so you just see that by chance maybe that's the third or fourth time in my 23 years that i've seen that go by that's kind of in itself big news it's not the pokemon chicago who wrote that all right let's get back to business here so the real passes the the normal i'm gonna take some of your questions the normal japan rail pass is jr east uh and the jr all country rail pass nothing has changed this is a pass that will stay the way it was and if you have taken a jr rail pass for the entire country before that's going to be the same the real passes um that have had the biggest changes are the jr east uh rail pass for the tohoku era area the gr east uh rail pass for the nagano nigata area both those two passes i'll now allow foreign residents of japan to use utilize the shinkansen and this is a first and kind of big news you can get those passes at any of the windows that uh are selling it for uh but especially in the north entrance of the modern uc side of the station second big change with the pass there was the kind like the japan rail pass where in order to exit the turnstiles to get out you had to show a station staff the pass the new tickets are more are now magnetic meaning they can go through the the ticket gates so you don't have to to wait for somebody to check your pass you can go straight through so this should make your transition from getting from the train and out into the station a lot faster because sometimes there could be quite a queue to get out of the station um in front of that area let's turn around and look at the station while i go over some of this news you don't need to see the masked man you can see some of these shinkansen i'm still blown away that we just saw dr yellow you do you have you have no idea how rare that is wow i'm super stoked about that so here's the information on that it passes until now you had to show to the station master at the exit gates but now there are more ticket types so you just have to show you don't have to show anybody you just exit which makes it super easy and those are passes that are starting they're not going to be sold until um april 1st i think the jr uh jr east welcome rail pass is being sold right now and you have until the 26th to buy that one that's also can be uh used at the at the ticket gates there are a bunch of other passes here in the jr east side of things jr east uh jr east pass toku area jr east past nagano nigata area there tokyo wide pass is changed it's gone from a paper pass that you had to show to now a ticket you can use at the the ticket gates to get out the the next the narita express tokyo round trip ticket also um i think you can you can uh oh you can't use the automatic gates for that one it's a lot of information wow there's always so many shinkansen on the platforms it's super cool frank the tanks here drinking a 500 milliliter asahi good man on april 3rd by the way peter and i are going to be getting a bunch of ekiben so that's going to be pretty exciting oh i got the price list as trains battle who's going to be first oh the yamanote line is losing to the kehinta hook line check it out this is such an exciting point for a trained otaku like myself here the price of the passes i think i wanted to go over this one more time i'm very analog with these live streams the jr east rail pass in japan with tax it's uh 20 360 yen and for overseas visitors there's a little bit of a discount i think it just has to do with the taxes so you're not getting um not getting shafted here uh but the the new price that was the previous price but the new price is just an even 20 000 yen um you can see very easily on the graph here um this this includes the tohoku area and the nagano nigata area and the nagano nigata area pass is even a little bit cheaper but keep in mind the toku tohoku area is huge so you're going to get a lot more um travel on this one the hokuriku arch pass has been simplified but uh this is not available to foreign foreign residents of japan only tourists so this is this is available this hokuriku by the way is kanazawa if you're not sure that that'll that will arch over from tokyo uh going towards the sea of japan uh jr east to south hokkaido rail pass that price has been simplified and i'm going to talk about the third change in a second here and the tohoku south hokkaido rail pass again the price has gone up but you get more for it so they they've realized um that people are using the passes they want longer extended uh periods so it's now six day pass instead of a a five-day pass which is actually good news because hokkaido you kind of need that extra extra day so those are the prices for it again the jr rail pass the typical one um that includes the entire country the price has not changed the third big change you ready for this the third big change is um the jr so the jr east pass for the toku area used to have two kinds of them there used to be a five days within a two week period and then a five day consecutive the past is now consolidated into only five day consecutive so you can start that pass i believe at any time once you go through the tickets it starts the pass i believe and then uh you have five days to use the pass meaning you you can't break it off so actually it's a bargain in itself one trip on the shinkansen from tokyo station to shin aomori which is up in the north the furthest point i believe you can go on this pass with the shinkansen yes shin aomori and where we're going to be going on april 3rd that's 14 000 yen so a one-way trip just to shin aomori costs almost the entire price of the pass and then you have four more extra days to go and explore wherever you want to go so that's the advantages to using this pass you have five days to use it so it's endless the possibilities you don't have to use just the shinkansen you also have access to all the other trains in fact i think it was four months ago i took a luxury train which is amazing you got to see this live stream from akita to aomori on the other side of japan right on the sea of japan side and that trip took us through some of the most scenic places i tried to live stream the entire trip but the signal kind of cut off in the countryside you might want to check out that live stream if you're a big train attacker like myself um wow there's so many places now i want to show you the map and we will discuss this on the discord server i'm sure people are going to be talking about this this is a map of tohoku the six prefectures this is where the jr east pass of the tohoku area is is where it opens up again tokyo is right here that's the the main hub and it does connect with i guess you can you can use it in narita so the local trains in chiba are all available chiba doesn't have any shinkansen trains but from narita you can get into tokyo and then jump on a train and start to go north places that are included on the jr east tohoku area pass are omiya which is saitama fukushima sendai morioka right up there and shin aomori and you can at morioka go cut across to akita by shinkansen and you can also get to yamagata you see here at fukukushima the train splits off and goes towards yamagata i believe you can get to yonezawa get some beef there some of the best beef in japan wagyu you can also go towards uh ichiko uzawa which is an incredible place i was just there last week or was it two weeks ago really good skiing in that area a nice onsen so this is the map you can see this on the on the jr east website as well the link is in the description information there so i asked on twitter if there were any questions and i got a few i'm kind of new to twitter so there aren't too many so let's see what they have as the narita express pulls in to tokyo station right there oh what a beautiful day to be out here on the roof of the key dip building okay here we go so thanks for supplying these uh questions on hashtag ask oij so if you have any questions on twitter go ahead here birth of an official tagging is that satria i hope you're doing well santrio uh got uh kovid i believe and and has been recovering so we're all hoping you're doing better my friend otter aka merang lat writes in here can you do a quick table of comparison in the video of the old rail passes so i think i showed you the table a little bit but for the japan rail east jr east real passes um um the three changes this is a good question the three the three main changes are the price the fact that it's gone from a paper ticket that you have to show the station staff to a magnetic electrical magnetic ticket that can go through there without having to show the station master which makes it easier to go from one to the other the the days have consolidated into a five-day consecutive pass and foreign residents living here in japan can use this pass because we want everybody to get up to tohoku and enjoy themselves have a lot of fun especially on april 3rd with me and peter it's gonna be fun good question next uh same sorry k writes in here is this pass gives you unlimited rides in a given days so what this pass allows you to do is to ride the shinkansen in tohoku as much as you want for five consecutive days for twenty thousand yen again one trip from tokyo to shin amori is about 14 000 yen so if you had a ride to shin aomori and back eight times that would be 14 000 times eight so you just do the math it does not include the green car or the grand class just to point it out you have to ride with with everybody else and you can but you can get seat reservations in advance one of the great things that jr east has done and i think japan rail uh in total is they've made it a possible for you with the rail pass to make seat reservations at the uh vending machines so if you want to get a seat reservation you don't have to go and wait for a staff member at a window you can just go to the vending machines and make it if you need help you can ask staff to help you out i've had to do that the first time but once you learn how to make the seed reservations again the menu system is in english to make it really easy and i think chinese maybe thai and korean as well so there's other regional languages that make this a lot easier so you don't have to stumble with it that's been something that's been super helpful to be able to do everything at a vending machine so i can catch a shin constant maybe 10 minutes before it departs and get to the platform and get to my seat pretty smoothly i would recommend you give yourself more time i'm sort of used to this i think i think all of you know that all right check out this one here champ writes in here are you going live tonight yes and what is it like living in japan champ that is a deep deep question i don't think i can answer this in i've answered this question in four years of live streams thousands of hours of contents it's kind of sad i spend most of my time live streaming uh at least an hour almost an hour a day uh sharing with you life in japan as the tohoku and shinkansen pulls in right there now tohoku shinkansen is interesting because um it goes the other direction this is the start of it just like the tohoku shinkansen um uh the tokaido shinkansen but the tohoku shinkansen also makes a stop at waeno station and the tokaido shinkansen makes a stop at shinagawa station so you can catch these at one other station inside of tokyo which is also a good point if your hotel is in asakusa or waeno or up up in the stamachi area you don't have to catch it at tokyo station you can uh get over to ueno station and catch it there yeah hafi writes in here beautiful mask thank you wow what a beautiful day isn't it we're gonna walk around now a little bit take some more of your questions mccann and earl writes in here thanks long time haven't seen alive happy to be here glad that you're here too wow it's nice frank the tank is here toward toro porco you must have a special commemorative ekiben for the shinkansen thank you for bringing that up actually hey actually there is a keyband and i'm going to be sharing that with you on the train i'm going to be making a uh an only in japan edited video out of this experience eating different ekiben from the tohoku regions so there is one special egg event on this uh commemorative trip on that i i don't know if i want to share this information with you because this is part of the april 3rd live stream where i'm going to share more information about the past but japan rail every year seems to have a very special ecke band and this is the the one from the area that's judged as being the one that they're going to sell for the year i don't know too much about it but on april 3rd i'll show you this ekiben which is a reason to subscribe to the channel it's pretty exciting all right let's walk around now and i want to share with you a story about the roof of tokyo station on the modern uchi side i'm so excited about this this trip coming up on april 3rd peter's pretty excited too we might be writing in the grand class as well just check it out do you see the roof here this is the modern uchi side of tokyo station and tokyo station is very very strongly connected with tohoku the area up uh north of toho of tokyo here chicago africans in the house john get yourself a beer and kanai a drink at the end of this livestream you got it you got it and raymond centeno with the new pass do you have to use the midori no maruguchi to make seat reservations or you can do it online raymond you could do it at the vending machines i don't think you can do them online yet but you can do them at the vending machines so it's very easy to to grab your seat reservations just uh enter in the information pick a seat that you want to sit at it prints it out for you and they're free if you have a pass that's a good question so you see the the tiles on the top of the roof of the modern uchi building again this was built back in the early 19th century i think it was like 1912. it was a famous backdrop of babe ruth when he came to visit japan um in 1934. he was in a convertible car with thousands and thousands of people out here with his big baby smile and celebrating as he was driving towards the imperial palace the roof tiles here were made in ishinomaki in miyagi prefecture in tohoku the black tiles that you see on the top of the roof and in 2011 during the tsunami the route they were they were renovating the station here those tiles were washed away by the tsunami they were scattered all over ishishinomaki the area where they were producing it and after the tsunami the water had had resided and gone back out and they were cleaning up the area the staff worked so hard up there in ishinomaki to collect up the tiles and get them together so they can complete the job this is so the roof of tokyo station is very much connected with what happened on march 11 2011. so when you come to tokyo station look up at the roof here on this side and just give a little bit of appreciation knowing that all these tiles came from ishiromaki which is a beautiful area of miyagi prefecture and people worked really hard to make sure that they finished the job despite being in such a terrible situation they were still thinking about their jobs they're thinking about their families they're thinking about their lives and wow how important it was for them to get those tiles and finish the job and here it is and now the top of the roof of modern uc is completed and when i look at it it is kind of moving to see the see those tiles and to celebrate the hard work of the people in ishinomaki that makes me really happy to see i didn't know about this until just a few weeks ago when they told me i said they said jonson do you know about the roof of tokyo station and i said no i don't i said well guess what it comes from those tiles come from ishinomaki it's very interesting plus vader's in the house there isn't a new tower going up somewhere near there isn't is there yes over there in about five years or so from now you're going to see a big um a big new tower which is japan's tallest tower 350 meters high uh half the size of the tokyo skytree it'll be towering these skyscrapers that are already here uh that i think it's called the flame tower or something like that that's going to be going up uh starting construction pretty soon and you'll see this uh towering over tokyo station but just just keep keep in mind ishi no maki and that's the that's the point um that's a very famous uh place on the coast of tohoku that was very much affected by the tsunami and that's a place where i was also volunteering torch tower thank you jonathan chong it's called torch tower thank you for that do you have any questions before we end this live stream as a questions i'm going to walk around and show you some of the platform here uh wayne i did not give peter back his his helmet because he didn't answer my three riddles on the comment section of the video yesterday in fact if somebody else answers to riddles i guess i'm gonna be giving them peter's helmet i told him he kind of i think he's pretty busy today plush vader is a new insider thank you plush i appreciate the support any questions on the jr east rail passes i'm happy to answer them while i'm walking around i do have the new postcard for this month if you can't make it to japan you can go on patreon and get a postcard club this is the one for this month beautiful scene from matsue castle just got them in today sending them out this weekend nice cherry blossom stamp on there too on the back uh any rumors when japan will open for tourists not quite sure yet but i'm hopeful it'll be soon maybe october i really don't know um i know um qantas qantas airlines said something about flights returning in october still a discount to buy them before you arrive um i'm not sure lee about that right now the only discount that we have is for this campaign on april 3rd the uh commemorative train that's going up to tohoku if you are living in japan and you have some time definitely join us it's going to be so much fun only a hundred people on the train so um are they gonna be able to uh be safe because it's quite a large train could residents get other versions of the pass what do you mean by that so so let me take off this one because my nose keeps popping out so the um for foreign residents there are the tokyo wide pass which is still available that gives you a very limited range around here but you can ride the shinkansen to hko uzawa which is quite far would it also uh karuizawa in nagano was also included in the tokyo white pass that's ten thousand ten thousand yen or so for this one a little bit more than a hundred dollars for three days of consecutive travel in this area it also includes utsunomiya and niko which is also a good pass that's open to foreign residents also open to foreign residents is the jr east pass for the tohoku area and the jre east pass for the nagano nigata area those two passes are new this year um and then there's the seishun jihachi keep which is the five day consecutive local train pass which i love if you want adventure that's that's one of my favorite passes that's only 120 for five days of consecutive travel on local trains you can't use the shinkansen but that's open to foreign residents and i've been using that pass for 23 years it's it's one of my favorites what else you got it's a good question so i'm panning around here disneyland is open but you ha you have to get a ticket by lottery so it's hard to get in there right now i've tried i have tried the name of this building is kite k-i-t-t-e which is stamp in japanese this is the headquarters to japan post in tokyo and this is the site of where the international post office has been for quite a long time just outside of uh just outside of the maranuchi side of tokyo station that building there is tokyo station modeled what many believed to be modeled after uh central station in amsterdam so it has a very european look to it on this side and the other side you see the canopy there that's the ice side of tokyo station again the japan rail cafe is on that side it's a new place that i might be live streaming in there at the end of april to talk about the commemorative trip with peter um sometime in april so it's kind of cool that they've opened that up to uh to me to be able to live stream and bring you some episodes from inside the cafe any recommendations when first time in japan alvin writes in here tohoku can i say tohoku uh first time in japan i'll tell you this okay a lot of people typically do the same trip when they come to japan they they fly into either kansai osaka or they fly into tokyo then they do tokyo kyoto like nara himeji hiroshima maybe and then they fly out i'm gonna tell you try to do something different kyoto is beautiful but kanazawa i thought was even more more personable like more it felt a lot closer and kanazawa also has the history of geisha also has a history of of ocha green tea it has a lot of the same traditions as kyoto just it's different and i thought it was a lot more a lot cheaper and a lot less crowded than than kyoto but on that topic if you go up to places like tohoku especially if you're a repeater and you've already been to japan places like um uh like up in aomori up in omaha which has some of the best maguro in the country if you go to akita ogahanto the peninsula has a really unique culture of uh of of cuisine where they take hot rocks and they use that to boil uh miso soup which is pretty amazing as well as the um ogre the demon culture up there is pretty strong there's you know there's such a strong culture up in tohoku i'm gonna say maybe look at spending some time in the countryside and staying at a japanese traditional inn called ryokan that experience at ryokan is the one you're gonna remember the most because you're gonna feel the most like you're in japan with the service the food the rooms the tatami rooms and the culture of bathing if you're okay with that did illuminate gaming did tokyo osaka and hiroshima for my three days need to hit kyoto and want to get more into the countryside next time see here any last questions got a little bit of time do you get from kanazawa to hakone and vice versa from kanazawa i don't know that's kind of far i guess you can take a train take the shinkansen back to tokyo and then take another train from tokyo or shinjuku to kanazawa what bid are you shooting at what do you mean thanks john i'll add these to my bucket list great thanks thanks alvin good question when do you think japan will open up to tourists i don't know but again qantas airlines from australia is planning to open up the route from australia to tokyo in october according to a press release other than that it really is dependent on the situation even the olympics yesterday or the day before they were saying that it's possible that they won't have any international tourists coming into japan for the olympic games as the tokaido shikatsu takes off in the distance there it's a good question i i really don't know a lot of it is dependent on this but one thing that we do know is that we we strongly believe by 2022 tourism will will start up again and there's a good chance in the fall it will as well i don't know maybe by october it's it's just hard to predict after the olympics maybe the paralympics which i'm more excited about than the olympics itself the paralympics will have uh tourism i'm just not sure we gotta wait for those announcements when are you going to hokkaido again wow i wanted to go to hokkaido this year but we're actually in a state of emergency right now the city of tokyo had it has an extension for two weeks so i could go but i'd only go if i'm invited to go up there i'm not going any place on vacations or anything but if i'm invited to go and and film then i will go up there to film like i have in quita and um in uzawa just recently for business right has to be for business in 2022 strong zero sales will spike together with tourists coming in that's a possibility that's a possibility all right one last question on the japan real past and i really appreciate it when will your special shinkansen be ready so i mean if you check on the internet you'll see the press release for it i put it i i tweeted about it too here's the banner for it visit tohoku find japan join youtuber me on a special train as we go up to shin aomori and i'm gonna be filming some live streams up in aomori um and basically this opens up domestic travel once again i'm pretty excited about this again of course it's all contingent on the situation but right now it's scheduled as planned and i'm super excited about this if you have questions you can definitely ping me right here in the comment section on discord i believe i have a discord link here nosh abroad always tells me make sure you talk about the discord server what a beautiful view of the station i feel really lucky to be here right now on such a beautiful day getting kind of a here it is right here uh we'll have a section we have a section that talks about trains on discord it's almond nosh this is not weathered well over the years it's i've had this for a year there you go if you go here you can also ask questions about the japan rail passes the roof is open to everybody so you can sit here take pictures of the trains coming in i'm still in shock that we saw dr yellow so if you want to see that in the playback watch from the beginning in fact if you're in nagoya dr yellow incoming in about an hour it's very cool all right looks like that's about it so if you do have some questions i will 100 love to answer them on this trip and on the new passes but in general i'm so excited about um about these new passes because as a foreign resident in japan we really didn't have any options but now because tourism is really at a standstill because nobody can come in here it's really makes me happy that jr east is opened up passes so we can travel to tohoku and areas that definitely need the tourism i have to be honest with you i i've gotten a chance to travel to um tohoku and to other regions over the over the course of this pandemic to make the show and people are so welcoming and want tourists to come back this is the thing the misconception i know that we're in a really bad situation but everybody that i talk to says they want you to come back to japan everybody and they can't wait for you to make the trip to get on an airplane and come to visit them all of the small businesses the yokan owners the traditional japanese inns all the restaurants they're gearing up english menus um lots more tours it's getting easier to travel japan than it did than it was 20 years ago when i first came and when you do come they do have i love the counter measures that japan rail is taking i have a brochure on them um everybody is wearing masks there's social distancing going on so i felt pretty safe and the air is recycling all the time inside the shinkansen i felt really safe riding the trains here in japan especially since people have been pretty responsible only traveling for essential travel or for business and the trains aren't nearly as crowded as they used to be exec digital welcome a new traveler i'm going to have to add a shinkansen icon or emoji to our our group isn't looks like the narita express is heading towards the airport to pick up i don't know workers working over there the increase in numbers i'm so proud that people here are still managing still doing their jobs really really hard especially on the shinkansen passenger travel down is down greatly compared to a year ago today but all of them i was just in wayno station uh filming how they clean the station they still are doing their jobs 120 and despite the fact that there's not a lot of people on the platforms riding the trains you can see it's just kind of empty compared to what it would look like a year a year ago so i'm happy for that and i'm so thankful to be able to work with uh j.r east and i see ruth jarman in here and german international which is a a wonderful company that's connecting connecting the world with japan so proud to be a part of that all there goes the shinkansen i believe that's the yamagata shinkansen taking off there yamagata shinkansen is a little bit slower because the tracks aren't are uh adjusted for them up there it's not quite shinkansen tracks just kind of go a little bit slower there which is perfect sometimes the shinkansen's too fast i'm just i'm actually just waiting for the shinkansen to take off before ending the live stream you see the yamanote line april 3rd mark your calendars join me on a platform celebration it's going to be super awesome i have never been on a on a platform celebration on tokyo station so we have permission to film which in itself is an amazing thing join me in peter as we head up north and if you're living here in japan there's i believe there's 80 people who 80 spots still available we have 100 people who who are interested but only 80 people have have uh bought or only 20 people have bought the tickets so you can get that on on the site on the link that's included in this video description nagoya john is a big fan of chad i remember you're a big fan of ruth jarman and ruth we hope to get ruthie back on the show she brings a certain amount of energy the cheerleader everywhere she goes energy levels goes up like five thousand percent it's it's pretty amazing if you put both of us in a live stream it's basically just blow up the internet all right everybody i'm on the top of the kite building in tokyo this is the post office building you can get up to the sixth floor beautiful place to watch the trains go by if you have any questions leave them in the comments below and thank you so much for everybody for watching this live stream and supporting tohoku this past the reason of this past is is one that's so dear to my heart uh i'm just again say thank you to j.r east for allowing foreign residents to be able to travel in the shinkansen and see more of tohoku because my hope is somebody who lived in fukushima i lived in iwaki 20 years ago and have friends there and know how how much they're struggling i hope that you add tohoku on your list of places to visit when you do come to japan it doesn't have to be now or because of the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy that happened up there but just for the people up there they are super excited to see you and when they see foreign visitors they know that you traveled a long way to get there and that you've chosen to go to aomori to iwate to akita to yamagata to fukushima to miyagi they know that so they're very appreciative of it and i know that you're going to have a great experience up there and i'm going to show you over the next few months what that spirit of tohoku looks like and with the and with the help of japan rail wow it just it just makes that experience so cooler you know why because it involves the shinkansen the shinkan that's you're supposed to take off it involves the shin content i guess it's not quite on schedule i know it's going to take off i'm just just wait for it god said as another yamagata shinkansen comes in or is that the hokurikushinkansen yeah the one that goes to kanazawa i can tell from the colors kanazawa is famous for the gold color so you see the streak of gold that represents that culture shinkansen it just doesn't leave on the mark here i think if everybody clicks the like button and we get to 600 likes i got a feeling it's going to leave by that let's see which which works first can we get the 600 likes or will the shinkansen depart it's up to you community i'm i'm staying with you until that shinkansen leaves 497. it's going up fast now it's up to you 517. numbers are increasing what's it going to be the community of the shinkansen which is faster 540 oh it's going up faster 556. we're close can you beat the shinkansen community 572. oh now do you understand what's going on shinkansen 584 16 away shinkansen you're supposed to depart 593. the only in japan community defeats the shinkansen in a battle i'm impressed i'm impressed with all of you that still didn't make the shinkansen go faster though three two one go three two one you ever play that game no just waiting here standing here oh there we go [Applause] this is because you click the like button look what you've done you've caused that shinkansen to depart how cool is that thanks community i'll see you next time in another live stream probably tomorrow because i'm so excited because i'm live in japan and that's what we do see you on another adventure everybody thanks for the questions

Channel: ONLY in JAPAN * GO

Views: 26,652

Keywords: Only in Japan, Japan, John Daub, Japanese, Tokyo, JR Rail Pass, shinkansen, station, Pass, Where, Vending machine, Tohoku, JR East

Id: sILkZOYIFAY

Length: 50min 5sec (3005 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021