00:00:00 John Daub: Today I'm going to be taking you on a trip to Japan Post, my local post office. I visit them at least twice a month to send Only in Japan postcards to Patreon supporters every month. I'm taking you along on this day. I have about 100 postcards with me, and I like to visit my friends at the post office, which is about a 200-meter walk from my house.

00:00:30 John Daub: I've been going here for years. These ladies know me pretty well. I technically don't have permission to film inside, so I'm going to be real quiet. If I ask them, they're going to say no. But if I'm really nice about it, maybe they'll be okay.

00:00:44 John Daub: So how much is it? How much does a stamp cost? Postcard stamps cost 70 yen. This is for international postcards. And if you're really cruel and you want to save 10 yen, about 8 cents, you can send it surface mail, which is 60 yen for a postcard stamp. But international first class airmail is how you probably want to send it: 70 yen or about 65 cents for a stamp on a postcard to the United States. International letter from Japan to the United States costs $1.05, about 110 yen. I think to Europe, it's 130 yen. But everything costs about a dollar. It's not too bad.

00:01:15 John Daub: The one thing I like about the Japan Post office is that it's everywhere. You saw those in the thumbnail, you can see the red mailboxes, which are very symbolic of Japan Post. Those red post boxes go back at least 100 years. You see old ones from decades ago, and you see them in front of historical sites. So the post office is pretty important here in Japan. I also like the post office because the postmen ride on little scooters.

00:01:46 John Daub: Here's a Japan Post scooter scoot by. We're almost there. You can see the postmark here, which is actually a symbol. See it up ahead? That red mark? That's the symbol of the post office. When you see that, get your wallet out because it's time to buy some stamps. And that's what we're going to be doing. By the way, if you want a postcard, you can join Patreon and get one.

00:02:56 John Daub: This is the thumbnail for the Capsa Hotel. This one is last month's postcard. Somebody didn't get theirs, so I'm resending it. This is the Fukushima Ryokan dinner. This is this month's, which is Tsukiji Market. And Tsukiji Market is closing down in the fall, so I thought it would be a good time to send one. And this one I sent before: Aogashima. I shot it for my drone. I make my own postcards. I put a message on it and sign it, and I send it to people who support me on Patreon.

00:03:29 John Daub: Here's that mailbox I was telling you about, right there. The Japan Post Office. You can see here on the calendar, there are two: one is for letters, and the other one is for envelopes or parcels, small packages from prepaid envelopes. And they pick it up every day except even on Sunday. So in Japan, the post office is running every day.

00:03:56 John Daub: The hours are, I believe, 9:30 to 5pm, and they close the banking side at 4:30. You can send letters until 5. These are the local post office. There's a post office at Tokyo Station and Osaka Station that are open 24 hours, 7 days a week. And it's right on the other side of Tokyo Station on Marunouchi. I go there to send stuff when I'm in a panic and say, "I gotta get this out today! It's gonna be postmarked today!" I'm gonna go on Sunday to Tokyo Station and get that postmark just in time. And you can do it on Sunday, which is cool. Japan Post runs all the time. Very efficient and they're super fast. Things that I send from Japan to the United States get there in about 4 days. And often from the US, from New York back to Japan, takes 7 days. So it just takes a lot faster for the Japanese to get the parcels out of Japan. Which I thought was pretty cool.

00:04:59 John Daub: So I'm gonna go in here and send a little bit. The post office gave me the Par Avion stamp to stamp these cards. That's what I'm gonna be doing. You can see it. I do this myself to help them out. This is an old stamp, so I gotta do it extra hard. It'll take a while.

00:06:25 John Daub: At the Japanese post office they have ATMs, envelopes, boxes. Just about everything that you need. They have a massive stamp collection, and the stamps change every few months. Right now, oh they have the panda stamps. You wanna see the panda stamps? Pretty cool. This is a 62 yen.

00:07:59 John Daub: So I do this every month at the Japanese post office. AFLAC. That's pretty cool. I thought AFLAC was only in the United States, but it's not. It's everywhere. This is for Amanda, Jonas, Matthias in Germany, Steven, Brandon, Joanne. I feel like I'm Santa Claus, like sending off my list of those who've been naughty and those who've been nice. And today Steven has been nice. I'm New York. Like everybody. Almost everyone's in the United States. Oh here's one from Austria, Michael. Sacha, Ireland. This is Clifford. Jen, Matt, Lini, Leonie, Caroline in California. Here you go, it's coming your way. Matthew. Oh Mr. David, David Wright.

00:11:01 John Daub: I'm gonna be here for like another 10 minutes. This is really boring. So I'm gonna show you a little bit of the post office after I finish stamping this. Okay, I'll be back.

00:11:21 John Daub: 5,732 yen. Oh, that's good. I only have 6,000 yen. That's good. Yes. Thank you. 6,000 yen. Oh, there you go. Thank you. 268 yen. Good. That's good. That's all I have. Thank you for coming. Okay.

00:12:07 John Daub: Now, I'll be able to jump out in here. Please excuse me. Yes, sir? What's this? These are [inaudible] figures and it just like the cutouts to what they are of the portraits of the model [inaudible]. Oh, I see. I'll design all. It's a doll. Oh, that's all? Yes, that's all. It has a glowing eye. It's a character from an anime. It's cute, isn't it? It's 1,800 yen. Thank you very much.

00:12:59 John Daub: So there you go. That's the post office experience. I wanted to film, but... Oh, they're closing actually right now. I was the last customer. Check it out. They just closed. That was nice of them. They kept it open just for me. I like to think of myself as being special, I guess. I'm a pretty good customer. I bring in about a hundred postcards every month. And I like to hand stamp them because that stamp is so old. They said that stamp has been there before they made this post office. They said it's over 30 years old. That's pretty crazy. They're literally locked down the post office now.

00:13:55 John Daub: If you're getting a postcard... In Japan, sending postcards to your friends on the other side of the world is not normal. Postcards are not popular in Japan. That means when you're in Tokyo and you're looking for a postcard to send, often you can't find them. Tourist shops don't carry them because Japanese tourists don't send postcards. It's not like... People buy boxes of gifts. They buy cookies. They buy cakes. They buy things like this to bring. They don't bring t-shirts. They don't bring postcards. These are stuff, I guess, Westerners like me like. When I first came to Japan, I couldn't find postcards at all. When you could, it was one postcard for a dollar, like 100 yen, which is ridiculously expensive. It just doesn't have the culture of sending these postcards. That's why I make my own.

00:14:52 John Daub: I did buy something else at the post office. Here's the receipt. The post office had this Totoro puzzle. It's pretty cool. You can write the address on the... You write a message on the back of the puzzle. Then you break up the puzzle and you put it in the envelope. When they receive it, they have to put together the Totoro puzzle in order to read the message. I thought that was pretty cool. You can get stuff like this at the post office. This is Ghibli goods, not at the Ghibli store. It's at the post office. It's pretty nice.

00:15:42 John Daub: Post offices... It's one of my favorite places to go. It's part of my routine. It's also because of the people. I think it's like that in any local neighborhood post office. The people there are really nice. When I go in there, they get happy. I have letters that I send abroad. This is a local post office. They don't see a lot of international mail. Most of the mail goes inside Japan. When they see an address from the Philippines, from Singapore, or from Ireland and from Australia and really far away places like Brazil, they get pretty happy. It's cool for me to see their faces light up when I walk in there.

00:16:36 John Daub: I'm going to walk back home. I'm going to try to do another live stream tonight. I was in Abashiri last week. A lot of people were commenting when I was going to do another live stream. Here I am. I'm still alive. This morning I was with Shingo. I did the 360 Yakitori Shinjuku, Yakitori Alley video with him. He joined me to film an episode at a game center in Tokyo. One of the episodes I'm going to put on in the next couple of weeks will be a game center. This is one of the most requested episodes as well. I have another video for the main channel coming tomorrow on Abashiri. It's the prison that I went to. It's going to be an episode about the prison, in particular the food. It's going to be pretty interesting. I'm editing it right now.

00:17:35 John Daub: Oh, you know, I also like these Japanese parking lots. Do you see these things sticking out? You back into these and you pay at the vending machine. You can see this car has the thing going up. I think they do this in other places around the world, but this started in Japan a long time ago. This is kind of expensive: 24 hours for 900 yen, $5.50 for a day. And I'm not in the center of the city, but you also notice another thing. In Japan, people back in. Nobody goes in front first. Everybody backs in. Literally, nobody goes front first. In the US, everybody goes front first. It's insane.

00:18:35 John Daub: To me, everything in Japan is backwards compared to the United States. The grammar, Japanese grammar, is all backwards. The way people talk, they'll say, "ball, it is." And in the US, we say, "it is a ball." It goes "ball, it is," backwards. The way that they drive is on the other side of the road. Americans go in front first. Americans drive on the right side, and Japanese drive on the left side. So it's the opposite side. I have to completely switch. And that's a really cool feeling because you have to get used to everything being so different. And I'm still, even 20 years after moving here, sort of adjusting to life here in Japan.

00:19:37 John Daub: You know, I'm going to go around towards the station. But just wanted in this episode to take you to the post office. That's all. I've been editing the videos pretty hardcore. And I haven't gone anywhere or done anything. And I thought that it might be interesting to do that because that's the only interesting thing I did today besides filming and editing.

00:20:04 John Daub: So I'm just going to walk around the station area here and give you a look around before I cut off the live stream. Oh, I love this place. You want to see? Alright, I'm going to take you across the street. This place smells so good but I hardly ever go in there. Ah, it smells like curry. This is curry udon. So they found a way to take curry and fuse it with udon. It's like in a curry soup. Ah, it's so good. This is so close to my house. I'm spoiled rotten. They make a good curry udon. And when you have places like this, why would you ever go to McDonald's? I don't know. Why does anybody?

00:21:15 John Daub: They do have a pretty weird burger going on right now. Looks like a rhinoceros but it's got some sort of egg in there. It's a chicken tartar sauce. Chicken tartar. Not too bad. McDonald's used to close at 10pm and now it's open 24 hours. I guess if it's the only thing open you gotta eat McDonald's, right? There's a really good yakiniku restaurant upstairs that I go to sometimes as well. Underneath is a drugstore. But literally the reason why I live in this area is because the rent is a little bit lower. It's a little bit further outside of the center of the city. There's four supermarkets around my house. There's three convenience stores within about 100 meters of my house: 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and a Lawson's. It's crazy, right? There's a Yoshinoya. There's two bakeries. There's a Don Quixote. There used to be a Mister Donut but it went out of business. There's a coffee shop. There's a bunch of izakayas. There's a bookstore. I mean, this is pretty cool to live here in central Tokyo. And even in Japan, whenever you live around a station you're gonna find that you have a lot of cool stuff.

00:22:46 John Daub: Now this here, this is not a real Don Quixote. It's like a mini Don Quixote. But still pretty good. Before it was a Don Quixote, it was a pachinko shop. Now it's a Don Quixote. Better that way. And my station has a 100 yen shop. I'm pretty happy here, but it's time to move. I'm gonna be moving to another area of Tokyo in the next couple of months. I might do a house tour just to say goodbye. That's the one thing everybody's asked me to do. Do a house tour. And I haven't done it because I don't do that, but if I was going to, it would be now.

00:23:46 John Daub: So thanks anyways for joining me on this live stream. I really didn't plan it to take you in there and show you how I send the postcards. If you want a postcard, then I guess I can plug it. It's the Patreon, patreon.com/onlyinjapan. I'll put a link in the description. Actually the postcards are almost sold out. We've almost hit the maximum capacity of what I can do per month. So if you want one, it's gonna be sent at that post office or right here at this box. This is where I've sent a lot of letters as well. This is the one in front of the station.

00:24:29 John Daub: Alright. Have a great day. Great night everybody. I will be back. I have some questions and answers to do. Peter's in the house. Thank you Peter. You are the streaming man. Scary. The streaming man. Considering there's a Slender Man movie, I guess streaming man would be another possible scary genre we can do. I will be sad to say goodbye to this area, to say goodbye to this part of Tokyo because I've enjoyed living here for the last 13 years. But it's time to go. Find new things, new horizons, new everything.

00:25:14 John Daub: Oh and one more thing I wanted to tell you. Since Peter is on, check out his channel. He just released a video. One on prisons. It's probably the story of the century. He has an amazing scoop. Peter von Gomm is the channel, PVG. Definitely check out because oh my word. Not enough people are. I think it should be getting like 10, 20, 30 thousand views. Absolutely. Oh you're working on it. Okay. So Peter just chatted. He's working on it right now. But his channel is getting pretty good. And he's taking stories from you, from the community. And he reads them aloud. The good stories. And has an artist animate it to add a little bit of spice to it. And he's starting to experiment with different angles as well to make it more interactive. And I'm pretty impressed with the way Peter, if you're watching, I'm pretty impressed with your channel. It's really starting to grow. It's coming along. You my friend might actually become a real live YouTuber. Although he already is on this channel. I think if there was no Peter, no Jennifer and Kevin, it would be just me. It's much better.

00:26:24 John Daub: I gotta go. I will live stream a little bit later on tonight. I have some other stuff that I want to introduce to you. I'm gonna keep that top secret. I also have the new video coming on the main channel that I mentioned already. It's on the Abashiri prison food. And it's a big scoop. Because I got to film inside of the prison. They don't allow filming very often. And I asked very nicely. And Abashiri prison said okay. And I was able to film there for an entire day. I even got my drone up there to fly over the prison. So I'm looking forward to uploading this and showing that to you in the next 24, 36 hours. Let's just say. You never know. It's a long edit. So see you everybody. Have a good day. Good night wherever you are in the world. Enjoy the scene of my neighbors. Toodaloo.