00:04 John Daub: There's a typhoon coming to Tokyo today. And it's a big one. A lot of people are calling this one "Jangmi" [?]. We in Japan don't name the typhoons. We don't call them anything except for numbers. This one is Typhoon Number 12. I like it better like that because once you give a typhoon a name and it becomes a killer, then whoever's name is related to that, they're also kind of banished from society. I remember my friend's name, Andrew, after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. So Typhoon Number 12 is coming through. It's supposed to be here in Tokyo tonight.

00:46 John Daub: Right now the winds have started to pick up. You can see behind me that the city of Tokyo looks fairly calm. There is some wind. It is getting stronger this morning. We had some strong rain, so there are bands of the typhoon coming through. But between the months of May and October, it's considered typhoon season, but we don't really start to see typhoons until about the middle of August to the end of September. That's the peak time where a lot of typhoons come in.

01:13 John Daub: Right now, I'm going to show you the satellite picture. This is what we have right now coming into Tokyo. You see that? This is hot off the presses. This is what's going to be hitting the city of Tokyo in about three hours, according to the forecast. So Tokyo is going to get a lot of rain and a lot of wind. Osaka is down here, so it's going to be going this way. And I'm not really happy that it's going this direction because this area of Tokyo got hit very, very hard with rain and flooding and lots of problems with water down here. They don't need any more. But it looks like that typhoon is going to be making its way over there.

01:56 John Daub: So what exactly is a typhoon and should you be worried about it? A lot of people saying to stay safe. I think that's definitely something that you have to put on the top of your list. Safety first. The Fuji Rock Festival, I'm not sure what's happening with that. But tonight was supposed to be the Sumida-gawa Hanabi Taikai (Sumida River Fireworks Festival), which is one of the biggest fireworks festivals in the country, but it's been suspended. And you would have seen this all over here tonight. And that was what I was going to bring you tonight. But because that's canceled, the big news is the typhoon, Typhoon Number 12.

02:28 John Daub: Right now it's out in the islands. So Aogashima and Nijima, which are some of the islands in Tokyo, are getting hit right now with the typhoon. I hope that they're doing well. Aogashima is a place that's close to my heart because I made an episode on it last summer. It's a beautiful island. But right now that's where the center of the typhoon is. This typhoon is supposed to come tonight. There's a lot of people that are missing flights. Every event in the city has been suspended until tomorrow. All the festivals in the city, and there are a lot of summer festivals that are supposed to take place today, are canceled and they've been moved until tomorrow.

03:16 John Daub: I want to tell you something. The typhoons, Japan is a big island if you compare it to the United States. So this thing is going to pass through the country within 24 hours. So I'm guessing that by tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon, it's going to be pretty clear. And the fireworks are scheduled to be on tomorrow night. So if you've come here and you're waiting for the Sumida-gawa fireworks festival, they're canceled tonight and they've been moved to tomorrow. They're going to see how the conditions are. But I'm pretty sure usually by the next day after the typhoon has moved through, we have some of the clearest skies.

04:06 John Daub: When typhoons go through the city of Tokyo, they go through pretty quickly. And the next day, the skies are extremely clear. We have absolutely beautiful views to Mount Fuji. It gets rid of all the humidity, all the stuff that was lingering that was decreasing visibility. And we have a beautiful day after the typhoon. So yeah, one day we're going to suffer, and the next day, it's going to be really nice. So I'm looking forward to tomorrow. But today, yeah, not so much because we got a typhoon rolling through.

04:34 John Daub: There are still people on the streets. You can see they're going about their daily lives. They're walking across the bridge. There's no problem right now. Everybody is watching the news reports. They're watching NHK World and NHK and some of the TV stations here that have satellite maps every couple of minutes to give the locals updates on where that typhoon is. And right now, we're not really having any big typhoon-influenced stuff, just some wind right now, which might be affecting the audio.

05:15 John Daub: I went into the U.S. Embassy's website, and I wanted to see some advice that you might want to have in case there's a typhoon going through. What does the U.S. Embassy say that we should do in the case of a typhoon? Here's a list for you guys. I downloaded this from the U.S. Embassy. It says, take precautions, secure or move indoors items such as toys, grills, bicycles, furniture, plants, anything movable on the balcony. This is huge. Every single year, the first couple of years that I lived in Japan, a typhoon would roll through and I was uninformed, and my laundry would end up on the roof of the building next door. It happened every year for the first few years, and then I learned better. You know, I learned to make sure I bring everything off of the balcony indoors if I can, especially if you know that it's going to be a strong one and it's coming through. Yeah, it's not easy to get a t-shirt off the roof of the building next door.

06:34 John Daub: The U.S. Embassy says we should set the freezer to the coldest temperature to minimize spoilage if the power is cut. Now, typhoons in Tokyo and in Japan are not as strong as hurricanes. The Atlantic is a warmer body of water, a smaller body of water, so you get more intense storms. The Pacific does have pretty big storms, but typhoons are never really as big as hurricanes. Like, the hurricanes that I went through when I was in the United States on the East Coast were a lot bigger, a lot stronger than what we get through Tokyo. But with that said, these are still storms, and they're still dangerous, and stuff still does happen, and people still get killed. So you definitely have to take precautions.

07:52 John Daub: Watch for leaks around windows and doors. If the wind is strong enough, water may be blown into your home, even if the windows are closed. Have towels, rags, mops handy. This is what you're going to see all over the city of Tokyo. A lot of supermarkets or stores or cafes that have windows that go down to the floor, they're going to barricade the bottom of it with sandbags or towels. And you see this all over, and the towels are strapped down. They're weighted down towels. But most people have sandbags with towels, and they put the towels down and the sandbags over it to make sure that no water gets in underneath the cracks. Because the wind is so strong, it can push water underneath doors and start to ruin some of this stuff.

08:58 John Daub: Now, typically, people don't board up windows and stuff like this. But in the higher elevated buildings, and one of the reasons why I came out here is this is the Tsukuda area, and some of these buildings go up to like 50 floors or so. The wind's going to be intense up there. But I think these buildings were built with that in mind. I don't see anybody boarding up windows. That's one of the reasons why I came out here, just to see. If the storm becomes severe, move into the hallway or area where there is the least exposure to external glass windows. By the time it gets to Tokyo, the winds are not as crazy as, I mean, this isn't Florida. This isn't Okinawa. The storms are not as intense by the time they get to Tokyo.

10:04 John Daub: When you're sitting at the Starbucks in Shibuya, you're looking out the window and you see people cross the street with umbrellas. Like, why are they doing that? And the umbrellas are blowing over and they're suffering just trying to cross the street. And you're sitting there with your cup of coffee laughing. Probably not the best thing to do. It's kind of cruel. But this is stuff that we do in the city. Alright, the U.S. Embassy still has some other stuff that you should keep in mind. If there's a storm coming, windows should be cracked a few inches. This will compensate for the difference in indoor and outdoor air pressure.

10:45 John Daub: Remember typhoons have eyes, areas in the center where the weather appears calm. If the eye passes over your area, it may appear that the storm is finished. But the winds will pick up again. So if the eye goes over Tokyo, we're going to have a quiet period. Wow, look at the clouds. They're starting to move real fast. You see that one up there, right in the middle of the screen? Typhoons have eyes. Just remember if it gets calm, there's a part two. I've seen some of these part twos. They're worse than part one.

11:26 John Daub: After the storm is over, check for broken glass, fallen trees, downed power lines. This is also something that happened in typhoons in the past, where power lines have fallen and people have gotten hurt. I'm talking like 20 years ago. I don't remember this happening recently, but out in the countryside, there's always lines that have gone down that have caused problems. Look for other hazards, near bus stops, outdoor trash areas, etc. Now, we put our trash out this morning, and the trash man has not come to pick it up. So I don't know if the trash guys are on vacation, but the city of Tokyo is going to have a lot of flying trash unless the trash guys pick it up. Or we, the residents, put it in. I'm not even talking about Japan. I have a feeling that my wife's going to ask me to bring the trash back in if they don't pick it up by a certain time, which could stink, literally.

12:12 John Daub: Japan is a country that's used to having all sorts of natural disasters. And what makes this place so safe is that we are so prepared. Just like when earthquakes happen, we get a magnitude 5 or magnitude 6, and we just shrug it off because we're so used to these happening so often. People are well prepared. People learn about this in school. I learned about this from experience, the school of hard knocks. I've been in hundreds of earthquakes over the last 20 years. And hundreds of typhoons all over the country. I used to live in Hiroshima, where the storms were a little bit more intense down there. And Hiroshima's got lots of little islands as well. And that's an area that was deeply affected by the flooding a few weeks ago. So they're still clearing up out there. So I'm very, very worried about them. Keep your eyes out for Hiroshima and the Okayama area down in Japan.

13:31 John Daub: Do you have any questions about typhoons? I'm gonna ask everybody. And if you are visiting in Tokyo right now, and you're noticing that the atmosphere around the city has changed, that's normal. Everybody knows it's coming. And get some groceries. You might not want to go out to eat tonight, for example. Some places still might be open, but a lot of places are gonna be closing early tonight, knowing that the typhoon is on the way. You can see a seagull is having a hard time flying because of the swirling winds around here.

14:07 John Daub: What is traditional typhoon food? Cup ramen? Whatever you can find in the cupboard. People, you know, like I was saying, 50 years ago or after World War II, Japan didn't have such great supply chains. The whole world didn't have great transport from the factory to the grocery stores. So it took some time for the supply chain to kick in. Nowadays, the supply chain is so good that maybe 24 hours after a typhoon, even after the earthquake in 2011, the supply chain was severely broken here in Japan, where things in supermarkets were bare. There weren't any eggs. There wasn't any milk. There wasn't any bottled water. The supermarkets actually ran out of food on March 12th and 13th, 2011.

15:17 John Daub: Typhoons is a different kind of a beast. Typhoon is very strong winds, and it's out of here the next day. And the city is so well prepared and so used to this kind of stuff that the typhoon's here for 12 hours and then it's gone. They move pretty quickly through. Very rarely will it just sit here when it hits landfall. We've had that a couple of times where the typhoon will stay for an extra 24 hours and cause havoc and just bring a lot of rain. The thing with the typhoons is the wind. It's strong wind, but it's nothing like what you would get in a hurricane. I'd say it's about half of the speed of hurricanes, but it's still enough to really cause a lot of destruction.

16:02 John Daub: What is a typhoon? A typhoon is a hurricane that starts in the Pacific, if you're watching from the United States. Everything that starts in the Pacific is called a typhoon. Everything in the Atlantic Ocean is a hurricane. Everything in the Indian Ocean is a cyclone. So cyclones typically will start in the Indian Ocean. They might hit India, but they go towards Indonesia. They go towards Australia. And then from the Pacific Ocean, typhoons will start down by Tahiti, and they'll come through the Philippines and then move up towards Hong Kong, Japan, and then eventually Korea. Japan gets hit a lot because it's right in the path.

17:20 John Daub: Japan is such in so many ways, Japan is just in the worst position, whether it's right on the fault lines of the Pacific Rim for volcanoes and earthquakes, but it's also right in the highway of typhoons when they make their way north. And very often they'll come like this. And even if they do cut across Japan, they very often will just rake the east coast of Japan, and then they'll go off towards Alaska. So one way or another, Japan is like a magnet for these things. And when it doesn't hit Japan, it goes towards Hong Kong or Vietnam, but very rarely does it do that. More often than not, it will come up towards Japan. This is Typhoon Number 12, and we've only had maybe one other one that had an impact this year, but it was just some wind and rain. It wasn't really a big deal here in Tokyo.

17:47 John Daub: Tokyo, Okinawa, and southwest Japan like Kyushu gets hit a lot more than Tokyo with typhoons, but we get our share. By the time it gets here, it's not quite as strong. These are great questions, everybody. If you have any questions about typhoons, let me know right now. I'll be here for a couple of minutes to try to answer them, especially if you're staying here in Japan. All the boats, by the way, Space Boat, all the boats have been canceled. This is a patrol boat, and it's a police boat that's patrolling the Sumida River right now just to make sure that there's nobody having fun out here for the wrong reasons.

18:21 John Daub: Yeah, this would be a perfect day for Godzilla to make his appearance from the Pacific Ocean. Godzilla would look really ominous if you look at the clouds right now, and they are moving super fast. Check it out. So what have I done to prepare for this? Nothing. I brought the laundry in, and I didn't turn the refrigerator up or anything like this, but I did go to the supermarket and got some bottled water just in case, and we have some canned food for the next couple of days, but we always have that.

19:09 John Daub: Imagine an earthquake plus typhoon plus nighttime. The earthquakes, that would be a perfect storm in many ways, or a volcano eruption. Imagine Mount Fuji erupting with earthquakes and a typhoon hitting at the same time while a tsunami comes in. That would be pretty bad. I'm gonna walk around, show you another area of the city. If I walk this way, you can see Toyosu, which is another area of the city that's on the waterfront. You can see that coming around the corner right now. You can also see the clouds up above just really trucking towards the seaside.

20:24 John Daub: Another thing that you should definitely do is to stay away from the shore. Don't go to the beach. Stay away from the river. Don't go where I am. Don't do what I'm doing. Don't walk along a river maybe. I live in this area, so I'll be okay, but don't try to be a hero. When you have typhoons, the wind is very strong, and also, water will come up above and over, and the tides also are a lot stronger. So if you do get into the water, you do fall in, that might be it for you. Don't go swimming. Don't be a surfer like in Chiba. When typhoons come in, people go out surfing. I'm serious. In Japan, I've seen it. I remember I used to live down in Yumesu [?], down in Shizuoka area, and was out down at the beach, and I remember taking the train back and then seeing people out there surfing with a typhoon incoming.

21:39 John Daub: And once again, here comes a runner coming through here. This is pretty interesting. It's gonna be hard to run because the other direction is gonna be pretty windy going back. Looks like the Sumida Riverbank is becoming a regular location. I don't live too far away from here. I live in Chūō-ku (central ward of Tokyo), so I do love it here. This is the riverside. This is where the Sumida-gawa splits between the island of Tsukishima. Right now, I'm on an island.

22:31 John Daub: What's the best airline to take to Japan from the States? None right now. I think Narita is canceling flights because the typhoon is incoming in that direction. Can you fish here? Maybe not now. You can try casting, but the hook might come back and hit you in the face. Is the Skytree or Tokyo Tower open tonight? I don't know. That's a really good question. I would assume that it might be open for half of the day because I don't want to lose all that money, but I'm pretty sure tonight that there's not gonna be anybody around.

23:17 John Daub: We really don't know what the impact of this typhoon's gonna be, but a lot of people are saying that it's gonna be pretty strong. So the best thing to do would be going to the websites, and everyone has updates. The Space Boat, which is one of my favorite boats that comes through here, had an update saying that all service was suspended today and they won't have any boats today until tomorrow. And that's why right now you see on the river, there's no boats at all on the river. There was just one police boat. So that's just a testament of how people are preparing for this. Even though the winds are not too bad, there are no boats. So I would say that Skytree might be open. It might close early. And there really isn't that much to see. Right now, there's a Skytree right there. I bet you in about an hour, the clouds are gonna get a lot lower and you're gonna see nothing.

24:17 John Daub: Can you stream during the typhoon? I could, inside. So I went to school at Ohio State University and one of the people that I took classes with and somebody I lived in the same dorm with is a storm chaser for the Weather Channel named Mike Bettis. If you're in the US and you watch the Weather Channel, Mike Bettis and I knew each other in college. And now he's one of the dudes on the Weather Channel who goes and chases hurricanes and tornadoes and stuff. So it's pretty funny. Now I'm out here talking about typhoons.

25:05 John Daub: So we got a lot of birds coming in here. We got kids outside. Families know. And actually the sun, I just saw some rays of sun coming out. So it's not as bad as you think, but it's not as good either. There's people outside because everybody knows when the typhoon's gonna be making landfall. Everybody is preparing for it as well. They are trying to play like sports up here. It's pretty funny because everything that they throw just goes back in their face. This is a fun area of the city.

25:57 John Daub: John, do you have an earthquake preparedness bag at home? No. I don't have one of those bags, but I do have a camera bag that I put my cameras in real fast if I want to go out and film something. You know, I might not live very long if something bad happens, but I will be able to capture it real quickly and upload it to you guys. I don't have a preparedness bag. And the thing is, a lot of people who have them, the stuff expires and they keep replacing it. People were buying that after the 2011 earthquake, the Great Tōhoku Earthquake.

27:01 John Daub: Do Tokyo get floods after typhoon? Tokyo, you know, there's a really interesting thing about the city is that they have the biggest water reservoir for flood water in the world. And it's up along the Edo River in Saitama. NHK World has featured it like a dozen times. Oh, there's an ambulance. I don't know if this has anything to do with the typhoon, but it makes the livestream more fun. This is live, everybody. The ambulance is taking somebody to the hospital and we're hoping for speedy recovery and they get there quickly. But over the bridge, it's not moving as fast because of the winds. We do have some high winds coming in.

28:01 John Daub: All right, I'm gonna end the livestream here on the bridge. Clickbait title. Why? Because I'm in the right now, I have a typhoon coming in, and I'm telling you about how to be prepared. Come on, now. So we will have a typhoon. It's coming in a couple of hours. It's actually... The wind is picking up really fast. The winds are really getting higher. All right, I think it's time to go. I'm gonna keep you posted. Stay safe wherever you guys are. If you're visiting Japan and Tokyo right now, please take care of yourself. The weather has completely changed. The winds are picking up.