00:00:23 John Daub: Welcome to my room in the APA Hotel. I come here when I can't find a place anywhere else. But it's a good old APA Hotel, a hotel chain that's just about everywhere in Japan. You can find one in front of stations from Fukuoka, Hiroshima to the other side of Japan, Toyama. I've stayed in APA Hotels all over the country.

00:00:50 John Daub: I have mixed feelings about it. Let me just show you why. If I turn the camera around, it's because it's small. This is a typical Japanese business hotel. It's a hotel you come just to do business and crash. Right here, you've got a mirror. You put your room key here, this activates the power. In the corner you have slippers. The black ones on the left, you would wear outside in the hotel. The white ones you could wear inside.

00:01:21 John Daub: I always take my shoes off at the door. There's some security and a laundry bag. Oh no, this is in case there's a fire. You put this over your head to give you oxygen so you can get out of the hotel without breathing in a bunch of smoke. That's pretty neat. There's also a do not disturb sign and all this stuff that's typical of hotels. But what's not typical? And I like it. I don't mind the size of the hotel.

00:01:51 John Daub: I just think it's kind of funny and something that I want to show you. This is the APA Hotel that I'm staying in. This is my final night here. I'm actually going to be checking out. So this is a room that I renewed for two nights. I like how the housekeeper didn't change all the sheets. I don't need fresh sheets every day. She just made up the bed and you can see the sheets are wrinkled, but that's okay with me. On the bed is my yukata.

00:02:32 John Daub: I'm going to put that right here on the desk. APA always gives you a bottle of water. This is the brand that I like, Suntory water. This one comes from Mount Fuji, I think. And there is the CEO. The APA Hotel shacho, and I'm not sure why she needs to put her face on the bottle, but I guess it makes it that much cooler. Thank you for the bottle of complimentary water. Box of tissues.

00:03:07 John Daub: If the room smells funky, there is a spray. It has a very unique APA Hotel smell to it. Citrus, potpourri citrusy kind of a smell. There's lots of literature on here. Maps of where all the other APA Hotels are. They're very chain oriented. They want you to stay on the chain at the other APA Hotels. They also have the APA Card, which I actually have because I've been at a lot of APA Hotels, just because they're everywhere.

00:03:38 John Daub: You've got a TV. It's a pretty nice size TV. I got to admit it's bigger than the room in many senses. You could probably use a smaller TV, but I think it's about a 37-inch TV, which is not bad. A flat screen. One thing with this hotel is you do have access to the back. So if you bring your own like PlayStation or Nintendo, you could probably put it in there. The bed is soft, it's enough. The window does not open all the way. There is a lock mechanism right here which allows it only to open up part of the way.

00:04:19 John Daub: Here's the view of Osaka across the street in Higobashi. Boom, it's closed, it's locked. You can see it's gotten a lot quieter as a result. In the bed all of the controls are here. This is something a lot of people don't know about Japanese hotel rooms. It's all the lights are controlled from right here. You have this dial here will change the light to what you like. It's the bed light. There's also an alarm that I never use. Everybody uses their smartphones nowadays.

00:04:56 John Daub: This is the name of the lady who cleans the room. I'm very happy she did a good job. I like that you don't leave tips in Japan. You don't have to tip but you can say thank you to the staff whenever you see them and say good morning in the morning. I always do that and it's kind of fun to get to talk with them. Sometimes they're hesitant because they want to get to work, but if you have a couple of seconds, it's nice to talk and get to know the people who work at the hotel because they might tell you a thing or two.

00:05:32 John Daub: Like at this hotel, Raj says to do a backflip. You know, Raj, I don't know. If something breaks in this room, Raj, I'm probably going to have to pay for it, but maybe I'll see what I can do. Literally, this is the wall right here, and I can touch the mirror here. It's really, really not a big room. So unless you want me to split my head, I might not be doing a backflip.

00:06:05 John Daub: There is a refrigerator, and this is a working hotel room. It's got amenities to it. There's a coffee cup and a place with a tea bag, and there's a hot water boiler as well as a refrigerator in here. You can put your own stuff in there from the 7-Eleven across the street. You can stock it yourself if you want. I'm going to make this a very short live stream because I don't have a lot of battery power left in here.

00:06:26 John Daub: On the second floor of this APA Hotel, there is a Japanese bath. This is kind of a big deal, and it's closed. The business hours are 3 p.m. to 2 a.m., which is from check-in. Check-in's at 3 p.m. always at APA Hotel, and then again in the morning. It closes for four hours while they clean it. This is a pretty neat attraction to this hotel at Higobashi. Not all of them have it, but APA Hotel also has laundry facilities. I've noticed some of the floors have laundry machines.

00:06:55 John Daub: When I was hitchhiking, I could come to the APA Hotel. One of the things that I liked about it was that I could clean all of my clothes here with coin laundry, not a laundry service. The price varies depending on your location and the deals that you get. I paid about 5,000 yen for this room. You can see it's not a massively big room. You can see from one side to the other. It's about 5,000 to 6,000 yen. With tax, I think it comes out to 5,800 yen. I got breakfast, believe it or not.

00:07:31 John Daub: The breakfast was decent. It was not bad at all. It was enough to fill me up. I was happy. It had rice, fish, eggs, scrambled eggs, coffee, freshly brewed coffee. Up on the 30th floor, that's the Vietnamese restaurant. That's where the breakfast is. Amazing view of the city. I think for the money, APA Hotel is a real bargain.

00:08:00 John Daub: I love this area, Higobashi, because it's one stop from Osaka Station. This line also goes to Namba. It also is very convenient to get from place to place without having a lot of hassles of transferring. Higobashi Eki, it's a newer APA Hotel. I'm happy that it's here. I'm thankful for the APA Hotel chain, even though maybe I don't agree with the politics all the time. Because the CEO apparently is quite political. I don't really care about that. It's a hotel, and I stay here.

00:08:30 John Daub: Let me show you the restroom, the bathroom, the shower. You have the air conditioner up here. It's all controlled on the control panel here. Now it's on, it's at 24 degrees, and it will turn on automatically. And the last thing is the bathroom. Again, I've been in this room for two days. They redid the toilet paper. Just like a normal hotel. That's my original toothbrush. I don't throw the toothbrush away. I actually will take this toothbrush home because the APA Hotels have really good toothbrushes. And there's a razor that I used this morning. It's not a bad razor. And they have the shampoo, conditioner, and body soap. And the shower is okay.

00:09:11 John Daub: But you know what? They have a Japanese-style bath on the second floor. I usually will go down there. When you say APA Hotel, you know what you're getting. The thing that I don't like about the APA Hotel, and I want to be perfectly clear, this is not a paid promotion. But when I usually come in, they have so much advertising on here. And then on the bed, there's a lot of little leaflets they put on here to advertise stuff. So the price is affordable, and the drawback is the web page with lots of ads on it. It's somewhat annoying. And I take all of the ads, and I put them in the corner so I don't have to see them anymore. Probably not what the APA Hotel wants to hear. But simply, it's too much ads.

00:10:17 John Daub: But again, for 5,000 yen, this is a bargain. And I have to be really thankful that APA Hotel does exist. Because they are disruptive in the Japanese hotel market. So much so that Toyoko Inn is another one that I kind of like. I'm a proud member of APA Japan. And the reason why I have it is because when I check in, it's so painless. Boom, room, done.

00:11:00 John Daub: I've kind of given them a plug to say everything is pretty good. They have laundry facilities and all that. Now, the one thing that is really tough is that they have, when you reserve, a lot of smoking rooms. Smoking rooms still exist in Japan, and they stink. And often when all the other rooms are booked, the last rooms are always the smoking rooms. I don't know why they even have them. But the stink in one, if you have to stay in one, is so bad, maybe it's not even worth getting a smoking room. Just stay somewhere else. But APA Hotel usually has too many floors that are smoking. And the result is that when it's a busy season, those are the only ones that will be available.

00:11:40 John Daub: Here's the view. You can see the intersection down there. And if you see between the two buildings, that's the canal. That's one of the canals. I've had rooms with better views at the APA Hotel. It's probably better to stay on the other side. But I have to be honest with you. I really don't care. I came here to crash. It's got a desk. You know, I can pull this out. And it makes kind of a desk. And there's a chair right there. I put my computer here and I can work despite the small size. It's actually quite ingenious. There's a stand. That's where I put my camera bag. And that's about it. I mean, I travel light when I'm here. They do have Wi-Fi, of course. Free Wi-Fi.

00:12:37 John Daub: I'm gonna tell you something. The Wi-Fi was really, really slow at one of the APA Hotels. I'm not gonna tell you which one. And I asked them, what is the deal? It's taking forever. And the staff told me that we have a lot of tourists from China visiting. And he said that a lot of them will download pornography onto their hard disks because they can't download it in China. So they bring it back to them by downloading it in Japan. So there's a lot of people downloading a lot of heavy movie files to take home with them. And that's why the Wi-Fi was really slow. I was pretty shocked at that. And yeah, you know what? I didn't use the Wi-Fi so much. I just used my 4G because I have a massive bandwidth plan.

00:13:48 John Daub: The sun is going down. I think that's it. I'm not gonna be doing any more live streams. I am working very hard to make sure that you guys get a new episode on the Only in Japan main channel. It's very hard to be on location and to work on my laptop to get the episodes up to you. But I'm gonna do my best. And there should be an episode tomorrow or the day after tomorrow by the latest because it's been way too long. I know I like getting out the edited videos to you. So just be a little bit more patient. I do these to fill in these Only in Japan Go streams. This is a Japanese business hotel and the APA Hotel is just as good as all the other ones, if not better. But I do like the Toyoko Inn as well.

00:14:26 John Daub: But their card expired after a year and I had to pay for it so I wasn't very happy about it. Breakfast is from 7 to 9 AM and it's not bad. It comes complimentary or I think it's 1,000 yen. But you can swing a deal. This website I go to is called Jalan.net, J-A-L-A-N.net. And I usually get a deal through the Japanese site. Or you can go through Booking.com, one of the other ones. But Jalan.net is the one I use here in Japan because they have the most listings for hotels in Japan, especially budget ones. And for me, 5,000 yen is a great deal because I have an actual hotel room. The other places are like hostels and I cannot focus at First Cabin or places like this. I want a proper room despite its size is probably not that much bigger. And the bed is awesome, by the way.

00:15:17 John Daub: So thanks everybody. I am going to leave Osaka and I want to thank Kevin Riley. Once again, his channel is Kuma's Kitchen. Definitely check out his channel. Check it out because he's a good friend of mine and I really want to support his channel and make sure that he has success because, man, that guy is really talented just like Peter von Gomm and Jennifer, my other friends that are often on the show. So wherever you are in the world, I want to thank you. Thank you for supporting the channel and I will see you again in another live stream. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after tomorrow but I'm going to focus on working on the main channel stuff for a little bit, okay? So thank you very much. See you guys.

00:15:52 John Daub: I'm going to turn it around so you can take a look at this amazing bed. I mean, it's not that bad, is it? It's okay. It's pretty comfortable. DutchmanGoesJapan, thank you very much. I think I will do a meetup now. It's a great idea. It is comfy. It's not bad at all. See you, everybody.