00:00:01 John Daub: Hello. Good day to you. In this live stream, I'm going to unbox this emergency kit that you see in front of you. The emergency kit is something that's very important here in Japan. It was 2011, on March 11th in the morning. I was here in Japan. Japan went through a really difficult natural disaster. We call it the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami. And a lot of people lost their lives.

00:00:33 John Daub: It made me think about what we can do to try to minimize it and some of the things that we need in our homes here in Japan if something like this does happen again. It's sort of a funny thing to me at first that we would need such things in our house. But to people here in Japan, it's very important to be well equipped and prepared for such things. Because if you grew up in a place where you were able to help or you were born here in Japan, you've gone through a lot of natural disasters and you know that they can just happen at any time. And it's very important to be prepared when it does.

00:01:02 John Daub: And so in this box, it was a gift from my wife's father who gave it to us. And we're going to look inside and see what's inside of here that might really help us in case of a natural disaster, whether it's an earthquake or something else. A typhoon maybe that really hits Japan pretty hard. I'm wearing a helmet and I have one here for my wife, Kanae. And if something does happen also, it's very good to have helmets and protective gear. And I also have a gas here. This is for camping, but I have this because it also makes hot water for tea. Not just when you climb a mountain. In case of emergencies, I also have a pot with a burner in here. So I've got a couple of these. These last for a while.

00:02:01 John Daub: I'm kind of curious too. I might have already kind of peeked in here, but I think it's really cool to see together what's in here. So I'm going to turn the camera around and we're going to open this thing up. Okay. Yeah, I'm kind of curious. This lens goes like this. A little bit behind the scenes. Yeah, once again, it's very, very serious. One of them that is quite typical in Japanese homes. So let's get to it. Open this up here.

00:03:27 John Daub: I do have music. Not be inappropriate. All right, mysterious music here. Interesting. This is the Karumi Kec 250RE. It's got model numbers. This is Japan. It always comes like this. Um, okay, this music is not good. All right, turn it off. All right, it's really weird music. Sorry. Um, so it tells you here the contents. This is directions on how to use it, so we might refer to this later on in the unboxing.

00:04:11 John Daub: All right, what's this here? This looks like an emergency backpack. Um, it has a blanket. Just it's a backpack to put everything in it. Okay, it's well made, maybe even fire resistant. I don't know. That's what that might mean here. Yeah, so you could put all the contents in there. Okay, excellent. Oh, okay, so this is these are water bags. Do you see he's holding the bag with his hand? There's even finger holes, five finger holes for him to hold it more easily.

00:04:36 John Daub: There's five-liter bags in here and you can use it for washing the laundry. You can do laundry in here. You can put food scraps in there. You can keep drinks cold. They're like coolers. So there's lots of different things. Five holes for holding it easy. So there's a lot of uses for this. These are five-liter bags. And on the back it shows here, in case of a disaster, the city or the local government will probably come around with water trucks if the water ever shuts off and you need these bags to go out to collect the water. So this is really good to have. Five liters—that's enough for a family of five, four for maybe a day of drinking, emergency drinking water.

00:05:38 John Daub: All right, excellent start here from the top. These look like they're medical supplies in case somebody were to get hurt. Bandages. Yeah, these are bandages. Interesting, there's some scissors. These really come in handy. Scissors. The scissors are packaged, I guess to keep it from getting water or rusted. Um, here's some band-aids, some tape, masks. Again, like all of these uses. I've seen a lot of zombie apocalypse TV shows and sometimes something that has a use for medical can be used maybe to save your life in other ways. So these are things that might have a use in different ways that we were thinking of it.

00:06:33 John Daub: The oh, we lost it. Here's a memo, emergency memo, and it came with a pen. So I want to keep these together. That's interesting that you would want to take a memo when the emergency happens. I guess if you want to leave a note behind, you could do that. That's nice that that's in there. Oh, okay, um, this is a portable battery and it has USB chargers. USB charger in here. That's kind of good to have. And they got lots of these converters. I'm a little bit worried about this looking at it first of all because like a lot of these converters here for cell phones that are no longer in use. Like they stop being used about five years ago. Everyone seems to have a USB-C. I don't think there's even USB-C on here. So this might be obsolete in about three or four years. So I think you might want to update this. Um, but it's nice that they do have a portable battery. It's USB portable battery, but might not have it in the future. So I'll have to put a USB-C portable battery.

00:07:47 John Daub: The kit apparently I think the kit was about 10-man yen or about a hundred dollars. And this company seems to make the kits, so they do a pretty good job. Again, like um, let me just turn the camera. If you look at the link in the description, you'll be able to see that kits have various prices. And depending on the needs of the family and giving you peace of mind, you can get kits of all different price ranges, including food. There's some emergency foods that are in there. I don't think this one includes food. Maybe maybe it does. We're going to find out. But you can get the best way to get a good kit.

00:08:26 John Daub: Okay, so this is this is shelf life's life. Um, oh wow, okay, so these—this is interesting here. This is like a portable toilet. So you can use these bags in case there's trouble. You can use it to create a toilet over a bucket or something. That's really handy. It tells you how to use it. Okay, so if we get in trouble um for a very long time, we're gonna need that. There's no plumbing or the plumbing goes out. Survival sheet. I think this is to keep you warm in case it's the winter. Maybe you want to—you can use this to keep your body temperature up. I think that's usually what that means, survival sheets. Wet tissues. I guess in case you can't take a shower for a few days, you could use these or to sterilize. They have sterilization, so it'll keep you clean. Okay, and there's a raincoat for bad weather, a whistle, batteries—long life batteries. Oh wow, check it out. And there's a pocket knife with a bottle opener and some tools, can opener. That's very useful.

00:09:46 John Daub: Okay, that's really useful. Let me take a look at this pocket knife. The whistle is also very useful. Okay, it's got a screwdriver on here, a bottle opener for wine. I don't know why you'd need this, but you could always—the thing is you always come up with different uses in an emergency situation. You don't know what's going to happen. So these tools—this would be opening for wine, but it could be used for many different types of things depending on the situation that you find yourself in and you can improvise using some of these tools. Okay, these are things to open things. Should they come up and nail file. Again, you don't know why you would need this, but you can always improvise using some of these tools. This is just a typical knife, pocket knife. I'm curious because, oh, this is not Victoria Knox. Can opener. It's pretty sharp. Sharp enough.

00:10:54 John Daub: Okay, this is scissors and a saw. These are all really useful. There's a couple other things in here. It's like, it's hard to—okay, maybe this one. Oh, that's a different saw. That's for metal, maybe. And another can opener. Wow, this is going to be really useful. I have another one, pocket knife, but this is one. It's always good to have a backup. That's awesome that they put that in there. Okay, so gloves. Why would you need these? I think in case you would need this, maybe. This rope. You don't know what you would need the rope for. I guess you could do it for tying.

00:11:37 John Daub: Instantly, to my mind, I started thinking about zombie apocalypse, if you have to tie up bad people or you take someone prisoner. I'm joking around, but you really don't know what you would need this stuff for, honestly. And don't carry the knife walking around the street just in case of an emergency, okay? So you really don't know what you would need these things for. Now, this would be really good if you had to climb down the rope for an emergency situation from another floor. It could be an emergency ladder, as Accolade1901 writes in. It would be very useful. This is also good for picking up debris. If something is contaminated, you might want to use these gloves. I remember going up to Tohoku after the earthquake, and we had a lot of soil contamination, chemicals, and we all wore gloves. Now, these might not be the perfect gloves for that situation, but it's nice that they're included in here.

00:12:33 John Daub: Okay, let's see what else is in here. So we got a couple of masks, one for me and my wife. In case there's fumes or debris or dust, you're going to want to wear this mask to smoke, for example. So that these could come in useful. They're not going to prove—it won't get 100%, but it'll prevent some other problems. A towel—like you don't know what this could be useful for. It could be just to not just dry you off, but you could wet it and put it over your face in case of a fire, things like this. That's very useful.

00:13:10 John Daub: Okay, there's some other stuff in here. An LED portable light. Okay, I can see that we would have this. There's directions in there. Okay, it even comes with the batteries. That's good. These are long life batteries, I'm hoping, but there's three of them. It takes three AAA batteries. Oh, wow. This is a light. It's not just a light. It's also a radio. This is very useful. And in case we lose the TV and smartphones and everything, no matter what, we're going to have a radio. And I guess there's a speaker. Maybe the speaker is internal, but this is pretty cool where you have a radio built into the flashlight. So it's a light radio. Yeah, very useful. Three batteries. So in case the batteries die, these will be easy to find, these AAA batteries. I like that.

00:14:00 John Daub: This is a blue sheet. Again, you don't know what you would use this for, but you could put your things in it and drag it or cover something up. Or if you have to go outside and sleep, maybe in a shelter, you might want to have this to put down on the ground as well. So there's lots of reasons why you would want to have a blue sheet. And this is not the cheap kind. This one is actually a very thick, well-made blue sheet. You could use it as even a makeshift blanket.

00:14:38 John Daub: Oh, wow. Okay. So there is some food here. These are, whoa, I've seen these in the store. These are long life biscuits. So yeah, Bourbon is the company that makes some of my favorite cookies, but these have shelf life till 2023. All right. I got to make a mental note to renew this. So for the next four years of my life, I'm going to be thinking about the expiration date of these cookies. Oyatsu, it says here. So these are just biscuits that have some vitamins and carbohydrates to get you through a tough situation. They'll fill you up.

00:15:17 John Daub: This is here. What do we got? We got a couple other things. All right. Here's the last thing. I think there's two more things in there. This is just water. But the thing with this water is that it has a shelf life of seven years. Look at that. That's pretty important because you don't know how long this is going to be sitting in our closet. It says 2026 on there. Wow. So this water is good for seven years in this plastic bottle. And you just never know if an earthquake happens five years down the road, I will drink this if it's necessary. It's good to have it. You always need water. And at the end of this, stay tuned. I'm going to just talk a little bit about what it was like after the earthquake.

00:16:00 John Daub: This is, I believe this is fire. Yeah. This is a book of matches, a matchbox. And okay. Yeah. I think it's like an alcohol light. So you can use it to boil water or just a candle. I'm pretty sure that you can use this for more than just a candle. I don't know. I guess it's just a candle. I'm not sure. We got, we have the candles, but it's good to have an extra one. This one has, but most importantly, it comes with matches just in case. Right. I don't, neither of us smoke, so we don't have lighters. So it's good to have this. So this is really good. So that's about it. Yeah. Back down. Yeah. That's about it. That's inside of the case here.

00:17:04 John Daub: So I'm pretty impressed with this. Actually, this company is called Kakuri from Niigata Prefecture. I kind of went in there and I looked at some of their offerings and I don't know if we're going to get, we might get some more things, but my wife is very serious about this and she believes that we need to have this in the house. And I'm not one to argue because I went through the earthquake that happened in 2011, which is eight years ago today. And I still remember it like it was—there are events in your life that you will experience that just are time markers in your life. And that is one of the big ones. That day changed everything for me. That day is one of the reasons why this channel exists actually, because it was that after that day and the aftermath of it.

00:18:00 John Daub: A lot of my foreign friends left. All right. I'll be like 95% of my foreign friends left Japan because the situation was so bad. And I just didn't, I couldn't leave. I don't know why. It's when the times get really hard in a place that you stick around. And I did go down to Osaka because the shaking was so bad. The aftershocks. I don't want to talk too much about the earthquake. Um, that day was hard. That day was awful. Yeah. I think the whole country, um, you want to be prepared.

00:18:43 John Daub: I can't get the images out of my head because I remember my TV, the TV that I have here had toppled over. Um, after the, at the first aftershock, um, I left and ran outside and I came back in and the TV had toppled over off of the stand. Um, it was a 37-inch TV. Um, it wasn't broken or damaged. Thankfully I lost a lot of stuff in that earthquake, but I turned on the TV and then we were watching. The whole country was watching the aftermath of what was happening around the country. And I remember I can't get the images out of my head. There were helicopters flying in Miyagi Prefecture, in Fukushima Prefecture, in the north in Iwate Prefecture. And we were just watching as after the earthquake, all of the things that were happening in Chiba Prefecture, when there were fires across the Edo River and other places in Chiba, um, where gas natural gas refineries and other refineries had exploded.

00:19:47 John Daub: We were all watching this and just we could not believe that the country was—what was happening at that time. And I was just shaken because I thought I was going to die in that earthquake. After the first one hit, you don't know what to do. There's—you don't know what to do. It's like a deer in the headlights moment where you just cannot believe the force that's happening all around you and you don't know what to do. My first reaction is like you just don't know. Some people will run and some people just stop. And I just stopped and I was looking around and I'm trying to think what should I do. But I think having emergency kits like this and being prepared—I wasn't really prepared. And I think as a foreigner coming here to Japan, we don't really talk about this.

00:20:20 John Daub: So this day for me is a time to remember the people who we lost on that day but also um to reset and to just remember uh that we need to be prepared. You know, I think it's a pretty important day that we can stop and just remember that having an emergency kit like this—it's not just for you but it's also for other people, the people in your community. It will rely on everybody else having these bags. I think we get extra bags. It's something we can give to other people that might not have them. Um, yeah, but uh yeah that's—I just want to show you the emergency kit. It's an emotional day, um March 11th here in Japan. Uh so hope this was informational and educational.

00:21:15 John Daub: Uh there's a link in the description if you're interested in survival kits and you live here in Japan. Um after 2011 the governments all around Japan really started to put together better plans so that everybody could—if there was a problem um have an emergency escape plan. In case there's a problem, where would you go? Um what's the closest place to your neighborhood? We get these yellow books which in another live stream I think I will introduce to you. Um yeah that's about it. Uh do you have any questions? This is a live stream.

00:21:53 John Daub: Uh Green Apple, I already opened the box. I already opened the box. You're gonna have to watch it in the replay. Sorry. Um uh Dindu writes in: I'm currently dating a Japanese exchange student at the university. If I go to Japan with her, will Shinzo Abe be cross with me? I don't think so. I don't think he really cares about you coming to Japan. The point of this live stream is if you do come to Japan, just keep in mind that this country has a lot of earthquakes. It has a lot of um like natural disasters can happen at any time. If you live on an island, there could be a volcanic explosion like in some of the islands, Miyakejima um like 10-15 years ago when I first came to Japan. There were evacuees from an island in Tokyo and had to live on the mainland and the poisonous gases. A lot some people lost their lives. Just happened. Um you just have to be as prepared as possible.

00:22:50 John Daub: And when these happen you have to just react because that day on 2011 I did not react well. Um and now we discuss this type of stuff and we react. We learn to react better in case of this. Um was it then—should you pack the emergency kit in a big backpack? Yes. Muhammad, thank you very much for asking that. The reason why I'm doing this live stream also today is because this kit came a couple of weeks ago and I said that I wanted to do a live stream on this day to kind of introduce people to what's inside these emergency kits. So after I've just introduced it to you, I'm going to be packing it in this bag.

00:23:36 John Daub: Um in the bag that it came with and we're going to put this in a place where we can just grab it and run. I'm thank you so much for asking that. That's true. When you get the box you've ordered, you want to pack it all away so then just—you can just grab the bag and you're ready for situations that might come up. Um should you prepare more preserved food? I think it's a good idea. If the website that I shared with you is just one of many companies but they have food with a shelf life of up to six years. Some of the food looks pretty good. In fact I might order some of it and just do a live stream cooking it. But it's very important to have some food that has a shelf life of more than a few years because when you pack it you sort of forget about it.

00:24:21 John Daub: Um actually should put it all in the bag in a bigger bag with more things too. That's Tokyo Drew. Thank you. Yeah you know you can never be over prepared but don't try to pack everything. You know I can't take—I'm gonna have to leave my computer behind if something happens. I'm gonna have to leave a lot of things behind. You take um things that are important for your survival. Uh these are things that you learn um when you have a Japanese family or if you can't learn anything normal children uh you probably got some help here in Japan. These are things that people learn. Um get deep uh dried foods. Yeah that have a life of 20 years. You can get um this comes from Matsumi. Get freeze-dried foods that have a shelf life of 20 years. Very good advice. You can never be over prepared for something like this.

00:25:04 John Daub: I'll be honest with you. After the aftermath of the 2011 earthquakes for about five or six days after the earthquakes, shame is broken. All right guys, the supermarkets had run out of bottled water. The supermarkets had run out of milk, cheese. Uh there was no meat coming in. Um what else was off of the shelves? Bread gone. No bread um for days which was worrying. It took days before Tokyo was start of coming back and it took like a couple of weeks before we had all of the shelves back to the way it was before because the supply chain was cut after the earthquake. And you have to have supplies that would last you at least a couple of days. Minimum two or three days. Maximum you should be ready for something like two weeks because after that earthquake it was and pretty much everything was gone.

00:26:00 John Daub: Tokyo Drew rates in: weeks before things stocked. Yeah weeks before things stopped again. That's right. Some things um the government did a really good job of trying to get the necessities back up but there were things that were off of the shelves for weeks as you say. Um bottled water was at a premium. You couldn't find bottled water. The water out of the tap was fine but people wanted to be prepared because the aftershocks were happening every five minutes after the earthquake. And when that happens people get really worried. I was seasick. I was getting sick from my apartment going back and forth all the time. So that's—I went down to Osaka for a couple of days. Um visited a friend of mine who was—stayed with a friend and then I came back up um a couple days later.

00:26:45 John Daub: And then my friend Mike and a bunch of other friends—and I know Dean is one of the people that went up to Tohoku to help with the recovery after things settled down there like a month later. Um then Tohoku really suffered and there are a lot of people trying to help out and bring food up. My friend Dean that was in some of the shows was one of the people. He was so um and there's a lot of people who really stayed here in the hospital and helped out. Dean was one of them and my friend Mike. Um I hope to introduce you to him one day. His heart is just so big. He was up there um spending his own money buying as much food as he can and then putting it in the trucks and driving it up there to help people. I remember those days really vividly and uh um yeah it was really tough for the people up there. It still is actually.

00:27:35 John Daub: We shouldn't forget all the construction. That's one of my biggest worries. I don't want to rant too much on this but one of my biggest worries about having the 2020 Olympics was that we can't forget the people up in Tohoku that have not fully rebuilt or have not fully returned to their lives. And there's still people up there living in temporary housing. Just I think the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal had an article about this where they're still waiting. This is eight years ago and they're still waiting. A lot of it might be because of the construction of the 2020 Olympics. I really hope that that's not the reason but we cannot forget that there's still people that are not fully um back to their lives.

00:28:15 John Daub: This live stream has gotten beyond the emergency um kit but uh yeah I'm trying—I'm going to answer your questions here. I live in San Jose. We had Loma Prieta earthquake. Preparedness is necessary in California too. Yeah I remember watching the World Series in San Francisco back in like the 1989s and then seeing the broadcast cut off. Scared me a lot. And I don't think even the nation knew how strong. It takes every generation there's a big one but the nation really didn't know how strong these quakes could be until it happens. And then we saw the aftermath in San Francisco um during the broadcast of the World Series. I was just a kid but it was uh it's—you can't really be prepared for an earthquake of that magnitude but you can prepare as much as you can.

00:29:20 John Daub: Um and that's yeah October 1989. I remember that. That day that's one of those markers where uh you want the new World Series and the city has the old one but that one doesn't really matter. You know you can't. So I've been watching the World Series in San Francisco and television went off because of the earthquake. Earthquake resistance—Japanese architecture is really amazing. The newer buildings are. The city has been tearing down older buildings and the construction—there's a lot of construction because of that. A lot of the older buildings that were built after World War II are still around but they're not up to standard and the city is starting to tear those down and putting up new ones. So we see a lot of that construction.

00:29:54 John Daub: Thank you uh Kahi thank you uh Khalid thank you very much uh hello from the Netherlands. Uh any other questions? I'm gonna end this live stream right now. Pack a water purifier. Yeah these are some great advice. It's good to have maybe some capsules some chlorine capsules or water purifiers. Again you don't know what the aftermath is uh when you go through a big quake. Um is radiation a big deal in Japan? No I think that it's—it's the problem is limited to a very small area and they've actually started to open up the areas around it. Um it's mostly I believe it's—it's mostly leakage problem we're talking about um the Daiichi plant. I don't even like to say that it's Fukushima because 99% of the prefecture is fine. Um but there is an area around it that is still um not in a good condition. And I don't—I don't judge or joke about it. We don't have um any problems in Tokyo as a result of it right now. Um the food supply is fine. Everything is fine. There's nothing to worry about.

00:30:51 John Daub: Um if there was um a problem here in Tokyo you would—we would hear about it because there's lots of people always checking for radiation and things like this. So are you happy now? Not really but I will be maybe tomorrow morning when I wake up. I'm—this the day is pretty traumatic. I think if you live through today you're reminded of it and if you think too hard because I went up to some of the places in Tohoku a month after. Um I don't want to share this stuff. Um I don't know you know what there was a—there was a man. Um maybe I'll share this another time. I don't know. He—me and my friend Mike were walking back from um a cafe. This is a month. We were taking mud out of homes because a lot of homes had mud in it and we didn't know if the mud was contaminated. So we were in gloves and everything because there were chemical plants that had chemicals that spilled into the water. And when the water um cleared a lot of the homes had mud in them.

00:32:01 John Daub: So a ton of volunteers went up just to clear the flooring, just to clear the mud out of the first floor of the houses so people could sort of try to dry stuff out. And we're walking through the town. Um I believe it was Ishinomaki. Guess I can't remember the town but I do remember um walking up the street and there was a man and he was trying to get his refrigerator into his house. So we helped him in and he told us his story. And uh I think he just wanted to talk to somebody that hadn't been there during the time because everyone was very traumatized. I mean of course of what happened. And he told us the story and I'm not going to tell you what the story is but it—like when we left Mike and I were just completely—we couldn't speak for a long long time. People—I'm hearing the loss of the people. Um yeah.

00:32:52 John Daub: So the best thing we do is be prepared. Be prepared right. The best thing you can do is be prepared. It's an emotional day so that's it. Okay guys so this is the emergency kit. Um it costs about a hundred dollars and now that after you've opened the kit box we're gonna put it into a bag and be prepared and have everything uh ready in case an accident does happen. So I hope that's helpful for you. Thanks everybody. I hope that's useful for you. Leave a comment below if you have any questions. I will try—I will try to answer them uh the best that I can. Um good night and see you in another live stream soon. Goodbye and good night from Japan.