Tokyo Stone Bridge made from Edo Castle | Tokiwa

that bridge that you see in the center of your screen is tokiwa bridge the stone's originally coming from edel castle the walls and the castle itself following its uh being dismantled during the meiji era and it's representative of modern tokyo when the name edo changed to tokyo this bridge is such a symbol of it i'm so glad that they just recently finished renovating it and today we're going to take a look at the bridge how you doing everybody welcome to mitsukoshima uh just a few minutes walk away from tokyo station mitsukoshima is on the hanzomun line that's the purple line with the big z through it you get here i don't know what we'll take a look at what exit that is but we're going to take a closer look at this bridge and it does have a lot of of symbolism for the city of tokyo and there's nobody here which is which is perfectly fine with me now they're building over there underneath this the the highway a new tokyo skyscraper which is going to end up being one of the tallest buildings in japan even at the tallest over 300 meters high which is what is that that's that's like over a thousand feet it's pretty it's a pretty pretty significant building we'll even take a look at that so let's get going join me for about 30 minutes as we walk around a it's bridge stuff historical beautiful day here in tokyo mitsukoshi mai the the closest exit is number b1 you can see if you want to get here and there's there are hotels in the area but this area is mostly known for that building behind the sign which is the bank of japan so there's a lot of money in the area boom it's like the fort knox of japan right there um we're right here this is actually tokiwa bridge this is a new tokuwa bridge you'll see that the kanji is different and there's a story there's a story with this too so the new tokiwa bridge you can see the middle kanji has this which looks like there's three dots in the middle of it that that kanji actually actually means dish like something that's made out of porcelain that can break or glass and that's not a good kanji to use for a bridge because it has that that kanji for dish in it the old one they thought about that and you can see this tokiwa this kanji meaning old here does not have the same dish kanji in the center it has stone so it was stronger so the the kanji or the japanese um lettering is so important to the meaning of of so many things we don't see it in rom in roman letters right they looked exactly the same but that center kanji is different uh just taking a quick look at the at the map here you can see this is the uh this river um became unfortunately the site of the highway so you have the expressway the inner circular route going over all of these historical bridges including nihombashi which is right here and that is a big shame there's a road marker right in the middle representing where all the roads from japan originate from nihombashi but it's covered by this really ugly highway there is a plan in place to put the highway underground so everything's going to be okay eventually which is um this highway was a product of the 1964 olympics japan just had to move really fast so they built that highway above ground they dried up rivers to to create it so in order to get to tokyo bridge we kind of have to go around a little bit but i thought it would be a good place to start from that bridge the the new tokyo bridge to show you the old one look at the parking meters here they work with sensors so they know that you're you're there or not indicating if you're still there and not paid sending an alarm allowing people to come and give you a ticket real fast pretty cool also this is called the nihonbashigawa or the nihombashi river it's smaller kind of an offshore shoot from the conda river which is the main transport hub for goods this that was pretty much it was easier to carry lots of goods by river than than carrying it on foot or pulling it by horse here it is right now you can see it does look significantly cleaner made from white stones which i guess gives it a more modern feel than the old lanterns right the old stone lanterns you'll see at some of the temples and shrines this is definitely made from different materials hey brontonia's in the house aloha now they've been renovating this uh for a while this had been under renovation because the the foundation of the bridge was was cracked from the 311 earthquake of 2011 the great tohoku earthquake great japan great japan east east japan earthquake there's so many different names for it so they had to renovate it and when they did they tried really hard to use the original materials that they used to build this back in i think 1870 something like that this is japan's first stone bridge which is pretty important because back then everything was made of wood so the fact that this is still here is is it's important to the identity of the city and in a second i'm going to explain a little bit more of why i think that this this might be the most important bridge to the city of tokyo there's the skyscraper that's just starting to go up look at that you're seeing it now at what is a seven floors and when you all come to visit it might be done that's going to be i think it's like the the flame tower or something torch tower it's going to be 380 380 meters high pretty darn high overlooking this bridge probably taking the sunlight away from it which is sad here's the original looking stones for this bridge you can see it is much darker coming from the castle now the castle was was edo castle was burnt down in a fire and they never rebuilt it they thought about it during the meiji period but said look we really don't need a castle here in tokyo we are now past the age of shogun and now into the age of democracy so they didn't rebuild edo castle and said they used a lot of the things from nato castle to build other structures around the city of tokyo including tokyo bridge during the meiji era they were really reused a lot of the material which i wish they did with the olympic stadium instead of rebuilding it maybe maybe do what they did with tokyo bridge and make a new stadium from it but that's not what they did it still got apparently still got the original stones it was just repaired and cleaned up but not all of it is the original part of the bridge but what makes this bridge i can i can take my mouth what makes this bridge pretty significant is this the name for the city of tokyo changed um from edo to tokyo and that happened around the same time that they were constructing this bridge so at the time the architecture the the way of thinking so many things changed here in japan during the meiji era this bridge is a representative or a symbol of edo to tokyo so i think this is a pretty significant bridge and if you are in the area definitely got to make a little stop here check it out now that it's been repaired not a lot of people come here because not a lot of people know about it now we can walk over to that side that's where i took the thumbnail for the video and we're going to do that in a second not the cleanest river either another thing that they're trying to do is to clean up the canal ways kind of murky in there but compared to the go-go era of the 1970s and 80s where pollution was just hideous everybody had to wear masks just to um not take in toxic fumes from all the cars and and industry tokyo is much much much cleaner than it was uh 30 40 years ago for sure kawasaki which is just across the river from tokyo was it was like cleveland like the rivers were on fire from pollution and stuff all right let's let's go to the other side over here this episode was a suggestion by a patreon supporter and want to give a big shout out and thank you to that person whose name i forget again we do have some of the old walls from the edo era and the new walls from the rewa era made of aluminum which is representative but it's a really cool contrast here in the heart of tokyo it's about a 10-minute walk from tokyo station so it doesn't take very long you can come here get some pictures before you get on the shinkansen to go to osaka or hiroshima kyoto but don't forget that the city of tokyo itself has a lot of history you just have to find it you have to search for it a little bit more than in kyoto there's the old highway i say old now because it was constructed just before the 1964 olympics if you look closely at these above ground highways you will see the earthquake resistance some of the technology they put into the above ground highways to make it safe for the cars above including right there you can see the brace between the two joints there that um if it were to shake it gives it some give me gives it give i guess so so it doesn't ruin the the structure and the highways did a pretty good job of staying intact during the great uh tohoku earthquake 10 years ago you can see the contrast in some of the materials too here this looks like the original the older ones and the newer one but wherever they found cracks and uh problems with the bridge they replaced it and made it new again and but i do know the original stones are still part of this bridge so that that's good yes edo does rock because there were a lot of rocks in the edo period because things were made out of stone or ishii see underneath the highway here and there's the the newer it's funny though the newer tokyo bridge looks older now a few pigeons were spotted joy all right let's go down here and and look at another angle there are some history buffs that come and take a look people visiting from other parts of japan know about this bridge it is quite famous domestically but internationally people like tokyo but when that new building comes about in a few years it's going to be in the news and the name tokiwa is going to be everywhere japan's tallest building completed the tokuwa k for disaster rescue and relief on the nihombashi river pretty cool so i guess uh if there is a disaster this area will help out uh with that it's built it's been rebuilt and it's pretty darn strong a little platform here let's get closer to the river what was that a dollar bill i've been watching breaking bad looking at bundles of cash and that just looks like a bundle of 100 benjamins floating looks like walter white was here rob i'm not jumping in there it's nasty it's not worth it shout out to tony wrx turbo thanks guys cheering us on from across the pacific it is a pretty bridge and you do see these arcs i guess a lot of you have seen you've seen um uh the the other bridges from uh japan where they they're made of wood and they arc over the the rivers like this it does keep that that traditional even though it's made out of stone it keeps that traditional um arc to the bridges from from ancient japan which i kind of like but during the meiji restoration this is when they opened up to the west and a lot of influence from outside japan came in thus the architecture changed quite a bit a lot more stone buildings more cement more architecture tokyo station you can see is shaped more like amsterdam central station and amsterdam rather than um what would be a more traditional japanese style and japan adapted a lot of the stronger um stronger architecture including down in hiroshima the a-bomb dome which was um i guess built uh be after some german architecture pretty neat all right let's go to the other bridge across and walk around the park i'm glad that they finished it because for the longest time it was under construction there's a statue over there of a famous guy who i don't know what he did all right let's go across to the other side the bridges along the nihombashi river are kind of not that nice you see down there just made out of steel anything just slapped across the river so the roads can get over there hey lisa oh is in the house battling through purple gloves the asian nerd good to catch you good to see you john glad i can join another of your live streams welcome i was doing a lot i did a live stream yesterday taking a look at asakusa asakusa down there at taitoku walking around a very famous area that just has maybe a tenth of the foot traffic it would at this time of year this is the time where the sanja matsuri or the sanja festival will probably be going on and yet there's no festival because of this third wave let's follow this around yeah it's probably going to be delayed until later on oh there's my bicycle oh that was that was pretty cool shortcut that's actually a daimyo package i have to send to tokyo station this this this daimyo package is going out to uh to maryland to rob and hiroko in maryland that's i'm sending it right after so i think it's going to be okay nobody take that package it's heading towards maryland in a minute and i'm sending this postcard as soon as i see a mailbox this is going out to you rob and hiroko we'll do it during a live stream if we can find a mailbox and if you want one of these too check out patreon i will send these out until the end of the month and every month we have a new one it's a pretty cool design of of uh the fast-handed mochi makers of nara anybody know the name of this place nakatanido mr nakatani has been making mochi there for decades adopted the style of fast making mochi from his his village in wakayama not in nara and brought that over to nada which is full of tourists he sells a lot hey suzette s is in the house just wanted to say hi how you doing suzette okay there you can see here it says here uh this is where the bicycles can uh you can walk this way to the tokyo up tokiwahashi but this tokiwa is the wrong kanji for the old version of tokyo because it has the kanji of dish in there and you don't want this kanji uh this wah this ki tokiwa sorry tokiwa bridge you don't want this kanji because it represents dish or something that could break that's why i can tell now which kanji is right or wrong and the more you learn about kanji the cooler it gets this is this is where the shinkansen goes by this track not the white tokaido shinkansen but the green tokiwa green tohoku it's funny that the name of the green for the for the shinkansen is tokyo green i don't know if that represents the tokiwa bridge that that'd be pretty interesting to find out the color of the green of this gushing consonant is tokiwa green another connection to this bridge maybe all right let's walk around we get a better view if i can see the tohoku shinkansen go by i will swing up to the platform there but they only leave about three times an hour so it's hard to catch them compared to the tokaido shinkansen which goes quite often quite frequently [Music] that was a little parking lot for bikes here let's see what's the damage so if you wanted to park your bike pretty close whoa description for foreigners so they didn't want to put it in english here so they you can buzz this qr code if you want you can screenshot it and look at it yourself if you want but they have it in english down here so it's it's 10 hours you can it's two hours for free that's a pretty good deal and then if you stay for 10 hours you have to pay 100 yen and then 100 yen for five hours after that so that seems like a pretty good deal for bicycles that's pretty much the standard price it's free for bicycle riders um for two hours so that's a pretty good deal but that's standard through the city of tokyo now if you have a smaller motorcycle you can park it here and that's good for peter to know but i think his might be bigger than 50cc all right from this bridge we get a nice view of the tokyo bridge going by you're hearing the yamanote line cruising by every couple of minutes above there well the mosquitoes are out just get chomped on okay here's the next bridge here etowah hashi this bridge not quite as nice as that one over there oh there it is tokyo agreed that's pulling in from shin aomori well good timing boom there it is oh there's the kita shinkansen in red i forget what the name of that red is but it's representative of a another area that was good timing part of me wants to just jump on a shinkansen right now can't do it state of emergency all right soak it up that is tokywa bridge right there how you doing well from egypt awesome they know a thing or two about architecture made out of stone i went to egypt in 2001 october one month after um 9 11 there were zero tourists there me and some dude from norway who was pretty tough my tour package through egypt was 90 off it's a good deal but you can see how this highway above is just such an eyesore right it takes away from the light down here in the canal and also just takes away from the beauty of the bridge and nihombashi which in itself is a massively beautiful bridge it's a massive bridge much bigger than tokuwa bridge about 400 300 meters up the nihombashi river hey charlie how you doing nice to see so many people here i'm back to live streaming took a take some time off to help a family member having health issues that's a pretty sweet car what is that it's a beamer whoa i could see sean connery and aki in there speeding through off we go that's right if you do like these historical episodes taking a look at the history of tokyo that's surviving around here or anywhere in japan for that matter give me a thumbs up and encourage me to do more of these historical walks because i i like to do it it's also a way to preserve the history and give you some insight into tourist attractions probably not covered by other people because it's just not as i don't know look at that lone pic picnic table what that's pretty depressing all alone all right says please use this yeah please use this freely i guess uh you can drink alcohol there maybe i don't know there's a smoking area here as well but there's a sign that says no smoking so i don't know what's what's going on i guess you can't smoke on the outside oh there it is there's haizara haizada is the word for ashtray and there's that kanji i was telling you for tokuwa haizada zara meaning ashtray made it meaning a dish that can break so you don't want that kanji in bridge but the new tokyo is there pretty funny it's also funny there's a no smoking sign next to a smoking area it's limited to just 15 people but there's nobody here to count i don't know how they check that it's kind of a depressing little park here across from tokyo bridge you have a lot of money loads of international banks and international companies have headquarters in the nihonbashi area that right there is uh the bank of japan and we're going to get a quick quick look at this another reason why they had this expensive stone bridge right here was because it connected the money with the government i guess i don't just made that up i'm just i'm just kind of taking a leap of faith with that but this is the bank of japan and on the other side of the river chiodaku this is chuoku other side of the and that's where the government of japan is in shioku daku so it does link the two the two wards are connected with tokyo bridge money and power it's not too much of a leap to make that assumption and we're back again i'm trying to think of the year i'm guessing 1870 a little bit after the meiji restoration but this bridge originally was here in 1603 but made out of wood so tokyo bridge has been here for a while but it became a stone bridge in in 1870 i want to say i want to say also the year that ohio state was ohio state university was founded it's easy to remember that for me as a buckeye but this bridge um a product of meiji restoration symbolic of the city of tokyo because that's that's uh when the architecture changed and the city name changed from ado to tokyo so that's pretty significant down there these look like they are from the 1800s these um lock system i guess i don't know what it is but it looks like they're using the originals original iron and everything made from back in the 19th century that's pretty cool 1911 writes in allen could be it could have been renovated in 1911 but the original stone bridge was was before that according to japan times we're going to turn our attention to the bank of japan here and i'm going to take you across the street and show you a little bit of how the architecture has changed before we end the live stream i've taken you down this this um roadway before there's i've done a few nihonbashi live streams so i want to check that out to connect this one with that one but the bank of japan a pretty impressive building back when it was built maybe 1911 i'm not quite sure i didn't research that but certainly after the meiji era has a more of a western architecture to it made of stone which a bank should be but the bank of japan and the currency museum is across the street i went into the currency museum i believe it's free to go in there they had a lot of cool stuff i even asked if i could film inside of there but they said no they turned me down so i couldn't film about japanese currency i thought that would be a pretty cool episode currency history they used to use rice as money they would call it a koku ichikoku like a like a bushel of rice and that's how wealth was uh determined by how much rice you had nowadays they use cash silver was also more prevalent in japan than gold so silver was more was used more money back in the day right europe used salt so before there was before gold and silver there was salt and rice you would use the things that were quite important you'll find these markers all over the city too do you see these made of stone so this says edo as well the old city name here probably here for 100 years and then you have the the bank of japan right there i guess you can go inside i'd love to have a tour of the bank of japan wonder if it's anything like like fort knox the only time i saw inside of fort knox was when james bond and goldfinger were fighting it out inside there but i've been looking at all the locations that sean connery went to during filming uh you only live twice back in 1963 sorry 1965 he was here right after the olympics cyber you're watching a live stream live that's why it's 720p don't blame me it's up to youtube the signal is actually pretty strong i think i could get an hd signal it's well over 25 megabytes per second which is more than enough for high definition but youtube throttles it at 720p blame the platform i've already told them nobody listens to me let's go to the corner here if you keep going straight you get in you get to nihombashi and from there there are loads of restaurants and stores what is the big hotel there the four seasons no um the not the peninsula there's another really nice hotel as you can see they're quite expensive it's a beautiful oh there's a mailbox now i can send this postcard to rob and hiroko and here's the front of the bank of japan the mandarin yeah right the mandarin oriental very nice hotel i've had had a dinner there a few times somebody else paid that's a true story but the architecture very i don't know looks like roman something that it could be in washington dc right something that came out of a western country certainly doesn't look japanese and they didn't add anything really of japanese in this design of the bank of japan did they right all right robin hiroko it is off from the bank of japan to maryland thank you so much for the support oh here's a map so we came from tokyowa bridge uh along the nihumbashi river which is a small river off of the conda river the main river going around the city of tokyo here's the bank of japan the currency museum i was i was just talking about and then on this street you have the ginza line going through it and loads and loads of department stores this is the the money center and in fact before tsukiji market was in tsukiji now in toyosu the fish market was right here in the city of tokyo before the great kanto earthquake of i believe 1923 after that they moved to tsukiji and then you have the have all the money moving in after that during the reconstruction because this area was new back in the 1920s all reconstructed hey tor toro poco's here sorry to hear about the illness the family please use this two words uh prayer for health thank you very much i hope all is well with your family i'm glad i didn't miss your second live stream if there's anything we can do to help uh let us know thank you michael hassan of the love that we have from our community and everybody and everybody after the patreon live stream last night i really really appreciate it um it's a hard time and it's easy to feel alone in these kind of difficult situations but we have a family of people here that support the series and i totally appreciate it and that's what the word support means supporter and support so i appreciate the love from everybody around the world beautiful day isn't it i'm going to take you back to the tokyo bridge and uh i got to get back to editing an episode i hope to get up tonight saying thank you to all the viewers who've been supporting the new channel for a year we have 110 000 subscribers 111 now i think great it's a new channel it's growing every day and i i'm going to be putting two episodes a month starting in june on the channel and then i'm going to work into trying to get it up to once a week so it's just about working really hard now and building the channel up as much as possible but i have a million ideas for episodes as you all know i've been living here for 23 years there's no way that i'm gonna be giving in a fight to the end i'm like bruce lee be like water move with it that's right like rocky like a piece of steel apollo creed pounding on rocky over and over again but rocky just keeps getting up you can't get keep rocky down he just gets up you could pound him in many ways i thought adrian looks like kanai too she has the glasses kind of shy i was watching uh rocky it was in the background um when i was editing video last night rocky won and i was in tears at the end when you see rocky is not the sharpest blade in the in the knife rack but he has a big heart you could just see the way uh he interacts with with people he's tough as tough as metal but he's he's got a pretty good heart on him the way he tells his manager uh to piss off and then he runs outside to to apologize you know made out of steel but it's kind of soft on the inside too all right we're gonna cross over to the old to the new tokyo bridge and my bicycle it's a pretty cool day tomorrow i have um maybe some midnight camping and a midnight snack run something at midnight coming up and i'm planning to go to shibuya to do some live streaming over there to get a look and see how that area is doing so you're going to want to subscribe if you haven't already to the only japan go channel shibuya is uh everybody loves to go to shibuya i don't know why i try to avoid it boom tokyo bridge that's it it is newly renovated this is where we started the live stream it's a symbol of the city of tokyo built in an era when the name edo changed to the name that we know today tokyo two syllables not three by the way all right tokyo i used to do a tv show as a guest called hirobi which is a news program and when i was going over the script it's a live news program in japan um when i was going over the script with the the moderator um megumi-san he he told he corrected me on this i said yeah in tokyo he goes so i call it tokyo and now you can see the shinkansen cruising by right now that's also the tohoku shinkansen that's an e3 i believe so don't get it wrong get it right not tokyo tokyo two syllables not three kyo is kyo like kyoto right boom why not asakusa yeah you know what i don't know okay my buddy josh does all the announcements for the tokyo metro they say asakusa so all these people that are like oh saksa they can go you know it's pronounced two ways okay don't worry about it if you say tokyo i'm not going to ban you okay maybe the moderator as well i've got a kind heart like rocky john kimon is in the house thank you john nice to see you here but seriously rocky man if you watch the movie for the 20th fifth time you will see that he's look at the way he interacts with people and it is it is such an amazing thing to see the guy's not the not so smart he's not so smart but he's just got this soft core but the outside of him is made of metal man it's like plate steel all right you can't bust through it so i feel like that quite a bit i take a lot of criticism i take a lot of name calling and whatever but that never impacts me you know why because i was born during the rocky era man i remember as a kid watching rocky iv and getting into a fight and i won that fight too because i got some little rocky in me that's why kanae looks like adrian and i go into battle i come out knock me down man i'm getting back up i don't even know what this has to do with tokyo bridge this is this is it it's just what it is is what it is you darn right man i grew up near philadelphia get a little that philly spirit east coast man fighters for no reason to just fight the way it was don't push me rob wright's in here oh there goes the tokushi godzilla i didn't i timed this so perfectly there's the akita part of it and then boom connected to that tokiwa green a good symbol of that's a new symbol of tokyo the tohoku shinkansen leaving want to get back on that shinkansen soon get back up to shin what do you have some ramen ah it's beautiful beautiful train thug life how do we get no no it's not a thug life okay rocky was a good guy he wasn't a thug take that back [Laughter] tough tough means thug life i don't think so tough means soft core made of steel you know what i mean gary chan's in the house i look forward to the day that you can be more interactive um with other people than just doing solo walking streams i i hope so too it was nice to do it was nice to just saw the yamanote it was nice to hang out with ericsurf6 the other day and and some other youtubers maybe but it's it is really hard for me to go into restaurants or to go places and take you to the oh wow double trouble look at this take you to the places that i used to take you in the live streams but i think we're going to get back to normal just japan needs a little bit more time um they're doing a better job with the vaccine roll out just takes time that looks like the the local tohoku shinkansen that came in no akita to attach to it yeah maybe we'll have another live shinkansen one the state of emergency is expected to end on the 30th 31st of may i don't know if they're going to extend it they may but if they extend it that means that there's a good chance tourism won't start in october meaning the state of emergency is very symbolic to when people feel like they're okay to have foreign visitors coming to japan so keep your eye on this big news coming this week i might do another travel update because the state of emergency is very significant to the olympics as well if you continue with the state of emergency what does that do with the olympics does it have an impact on it because there's still kind of gray area there so we'll figure it out yeah i am i am planning to meet with eric um in june so we're gonna do another live stream or another episode uh maybe i'll be on in one of his his shows would be pretty cool that channel is ancient just like tokyo bridge gotta respect that all right everybody have a good day have a good night wherever you are thanks for hanging out with me for about 45 minutes um i'll be back in another live stream uh maybe to uh tonight or tomorrow morning or tomorrow night but i'm gonna try to be more consistent and and thanks so much for everybody for being patient um if you do want us to go over to the discord server i'll probably be back in in about 45 minutes for a fireside chat if you're still awake on the west coast or in europe you can ping me in there and maybe i'll go in there for about 20 minutes and take some of your questions discord is free anybody can use it just download the app it's a discord.ggslash only in japan and you can hang out with the community this is where we go after the live streams see ya everybody

Channel: ONLY in JAPAN * GO

Views: 17,628

Keywords: Only in Japan, Japan, John Daub, Japanese, Tokyo

Id: L8e0IAWZOnU

Length: 43min 9sec (2589 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021