00:00:04 John Daub: Greetings everybody, welcome to Tokyo. This is April 17th, 2020. What do you guys think of my new mask here? This is a gift from my friend Mika. This is called Mika no Mask. Thank you so much Mika for this really lovely mask. This comes from Mika, Miyu, Haruka, and Hikari, my friends in Tottori Prefecture. Thank you so much. I love the pattern on it. Oh, it's upside down. Hold on. There you go. It's Mount Fuji. And they also sent Kanae this really pretty one. Look at this. So you can make your own mask everybody. They work pretty good. How's everybody doing? Welcome.

00:00:54 John Daub: So I want to give you an update. It's been about a week since the last travel update. What's happening here in Japan. Yesterday, Prime Minister Abe gave an announcement declaring a state of emergency, not just for the seven prefectures, but now all the country, especially for six other prefectures that have been showing an increase in this virus. It's such an awful thing right now. Japan is undergoing infections very quickly right now. Kind of about a month behind New York. Tokyo is so we're all pretty much crossing our fingers and staying home that it doesn't get to the same level as our friends over across the Pacific. Currently, Japan has 909 infections as of April 17th. That's today. 1563 people have recovered and left the hospital. Very good news. About half that are the people from the cruise ship from Japan a couple of months ago, which seems like an eternity ago, doesn't it? The Diamond Princess.

00:01:58 John Daub: So last night, just to reiterate, Prime Minister Abe declared a state of emergency nationwide. It's going to be in effect until May 6th. And that's pretty significant because that's when Golden Week would have ended between every year between April 29th and around May 5th, May 6th. The entire country pretty much goes on vacation. All of the office workers, all of the staff here in Tokyo will go back to their hometowns. Not everybody's from Tokyo. Kanae is not everybody is so they would go back taking the trains taking highways are packed. Shinkansen have lines going out the door waiting for the next one. The frequency is like every 10 minutes of Shinkansen is leaving. It's an amazing migration of people going back all over the country. And obviously, Prime Minister Abe and the government central government said that if we're going to be doing a nationwide shutdown or something like that, we're going to have to do it now. And they did yesterday. It just made sense.

00:02:58 John Daub: This was largely welcomed by all of the governors and everybody in the country thought that Prime Minister Abe looked really good and strong, very decisive in his actions. So it was a good moment last night to see that to feel like we are taking the right steps now. Just I mean, in hindsight, we wish it could have been a lot faster, but I'm glad it is now than later. Let's just keep it we always try to stay positive. So what can we expect for the next three weeks? Hopefully, more people will be staying off of public transportation. We have seen not a lot of people stopping jobs because there's no law in place to enforce people not to go to work. And you would think, you know, in any other country that this would be a reason not to go to work. But for a lot of people in Japan, they need to physically be like locked in the rooms in order not to get onto a subway to go to the office.

00:03:58 John Daub: There's been a decrease in rider commuting about 30 percent, but that is far from what's necessary to really make a dent in stopping the spread of this. Hopefully, after yesterday's speech this morning, we didn't see as many people out commuting and it is decreasing over time. So that's another reason why we have to keep it slow. Let's just keep it good. There's so much news to get to. I know that all of you most of you are watching are also in self-isolation or can't go out. I know that New York has been extended to May 15th the shutdown Japan made until May 6th and possibly extended even further. I know that London is shut down now for what seems like over a month. So we all have to keep a very positive mental attitude. It's not easy.

00:05:26 John Daub: I'm still seeing a lot of YouTubers going outside. I'm trying my best not to do that although this part of the hay fever is really bad in Tokyo. This part of my brain is like there's not a lot of people outside it's probably okay to go out there and do some live streams and then this part of the brain says that's not what is the responsible thing to do stay inside do your best to create inside of this bubble that you call a house. That's what I'm going to be doing and I really appreciate all of your support out there. On April 7th Prime Minister Abe shut down seven prefectures basically calling a state of emergency which doesn't really have a bite but it has a very strong bark to it. Yesterday we saw he reported that there were six prefectures that saw a very rapid increase uh in the cases. Hokkaido is going through a second wave right now. Ibaraki Prefecture which didn't have any infections for the longest time and now is really starting to spread up there. Ibaraki is just north of Tokyo. Ishikawa Prefecture where Kanazawa is Gifu Prefecture which is not that far from Aichi Prefecture which is where Nagoya is and Kyoto.

00:06:56 John Daub: Those prefectures have seen some escalation over the last 10 days since the last state of emergency was called and the prime minister shouted out gave those six prefectures some notice just so people know that it's really starting to spike over there. The original seven were Tokyo Kanagawa Saitama Chiba Osaka Hyogo which is where Kobe is and Fukuoka. So there are 13 prefectures where we're starting to see a lot of movement. Iwate Prefecture is the only prefecture in Japan without a case but that is dependent on the testing now. This has been the greatest criticism of Japan and the government there's just not a lot of testing going on. Today in the news we saw some movement finally that people are starting to be able to get tested more freely. The policy was that if you didn't have a fever for four days and you did not know who you might have gotten it from and you can't identify it to a cluster that was already identified they would not test you.

00:07:54 John Daub: And I have friends that have had fevers for more than four days and cannot get tested anywhere. In fact if you call you have to play a game of phone tag getting on from one place to the next place to the next place and it's just so much of a headache that people who need to be tested or not so they don't know if they have it and they don't know if they can go back and release into their family but then the family gets it and then it's a whole really big nightmare. Just yesterday there was a hospital that reported that they had tested somebody negative and they found out that he was positive and they made a mistake and he went back in and infected his family. These things are the government is getting a handle on it. We just it just takes time. Government is not effective in handling. That's a big crow. In handling these kinds of situations, it requires momentum building and it takes a long time before that locomotive can start to move. Just wish we started to move it a little bit earlier but let's stay positive.

00:09:01 John Daub: I wanna get into what now. A lot of you have been asking. When can you maybe start to plan your trip to Japan? I'm getting more and more people asking. I wanna show you right now the situation in Japan. I get a lot of my information from NHK World and Kyoto News. So, I'm gonna show you in a second this really well done time lapse that they're doing on Kyoto News which is one of the big English news websites. They're mostly Japanese but they have an English website which is very well done. Check this out here. You can see how the infections have gone over the last this is gonna reset. It's a like an anti-infection. It's an animated GIF. You could see in March Hokkaido was the worst affected and you could see Aichi Nagoya up there coming in. Osaka was they were all above Tokyo and watch Tokyo just start to spike around the start right around here. Look at that. This is what we're talking about when we say that Tokyo might be another New York City. We're really worried about that here.

00:10:25 John Daub: It's a pretty cool graph. They're updating this every couple of days. So, there's two days behind. Our lifestyle here in Japan has been tough because we almost not go out every other day like we don't even go out for a walk. If we do go out for a walk, there's just too many people outside in Tokyo especially along the river. Kids are still playing on playgrounds. They starting to shut those down and putting tape around them saying please don't go to play in playgrounds. Families are still out walking but there's too many people having picnics. Too many people meeting people from other families. It's such a bad shutdown with a lot of unknown information that we're just afraid to go out because there's no one is socially distancing. Over the last week, we've seen supermarkets start to put vinyl sheets in front of the registers. We started to see spacing suggested spacing on the floors inside of supermarkets so people know to stand about a meter or two.

00:11:33 John Daub: Just earlier this week on Monday when we went to go to our weekly shopping run, I told the lady who was coming up close to me please to separate and let's do some spacing. She said, I don't know if you're sick and you don't know if I'm sick. So, let's do some spacing. She goes, ah, ah and then she did a part. People just don't have the mindset. This is Tokyo where it's rude to give spacing, alright? This is a city that's so jam packed. It's rude to give spacing because then you're in somebody's way and it takes some time to change people's mindsets in the city. But if we again, I wish we'd started this a little bit earlier and instead of saying please stay inside, they were also saying if you go outside, please socially distance or physically distance is probably a better way to say this. Tokyo is struggling with that and this is why I think we're starting to see cases increase.

00:12:26 John Daub: When can you come back to travel? I think I'm getting a lot of messages. I get hundreds every day on every single social media platform. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, of course, Patreon, Discord. A lot of people have trips coming up in June. I would say that May is not gonna be possible to come here to Japan because it's most of the attractions have changed their closing dates until around May 17th and this includes Tokyo Disneyland. It has no plans to open at all right now. They haven't made the determination and they won't make any announcements until they're pretty sure now and I think that's the responsible thing to do. So if you do come to Japan and you do still come in June, there's really not a lot to do except for maybe hiking and staying in the countryside. You don't wanna come to Tokyo at all but you can't even come to Japan anyways because according to JNTO the national Japanese National Tourist Organization and I highly recommend you go to their website. I'll put a link in the description after this live stream.

00:13:38 John Daub: Nearly everyone is banned from entry right now like you just if you did come somehow you managed to get on the plane. You would not be allowed in and Japanese that are returning to Japan now they have to go through a 14 day quarantine and they're not sending people to hotels any time. Which was sort of like really a nice way to do it. Please on your own go carefully. Don't take public. They just told you but they didn't enforce it. Now they have cardboard box compartments in Narita Airport's luggage terminal where you pick up your luggage, your checked in luggage. They've turned that into almost like a refugee center for returnees to quarantine for two weeks. They look pretty comfortable actually. It looks like something from Muji that you could say has some sort of style to it. I don't know just like this mask that we have but it's a really nice mask. Look at this. Mika no Mask. I'm really happy about this. Thank you so much Mika. You can make these at home with material that you have. Just have a double ply one that is more absorbent on the inside. You can wash these that's so great.

00:15:08 John Daub: Hopefully that people who are stranded at Narita Airport have a good story to tell afterwards because if you do, I wanna talk to you. I could do we could do an interview with you here. I'd love to hear about your experience. As you can tell Kanae and I are trying to stay really positive. It's hard of course being in self isolation but again like mentally, you have to really stay positive out there. We know how tough it is for everybody. It's not just you out there. That's another reason why I do these live streams. You're not the only one out there who is stuck at home. We are too and although no one has there's no police officer with a ticket waiting to write us one. If we do go outside, we just choose to do that because this is the responsible thing to do. It's a societal decision and it's not about us getting it. It's about us getting it and clogging up the medical system and we just don't wanna get it too but we don't wanna do it for society.

00:16:01 John Daub: Right now, the hospitals are in a tough situation. More about that in a minute. Once again, the attractions are closed until May 17th. It looks like it could be extended further and this is also when before you start making plans for the 2021 Olympics, we're not really 100% sure that things won't be changed again and I wanna point that out. Another viewer had said that this is something that we should consider. The dates have been moved one year exactly against my recommendation was to hold an April Olympics, which would have been the best ever. This would have been a tremendous as President Trump would say this would have been tremendous for the entire world to have a spring Olympics. But then again, I could see why they would wanna delay it even further because we're just not sure but that doesn't mean that the Summer Olympics are still going to be held on that date. There's possibilities. It could be moved over depending on a lot of things. So we will see.

00:17:13 John Daub: It's just so many people who had to cancel their trips and the updates that I did from I started doing these updates January 30th when the first person was infected in Japan and we could see this wave coming. I started to do updates in Ikebukuro. I went and gave an update. I also went to Shimbashi and gave an update and I was the only one out there that was really wearing a mask. I was very worried about this for a long long time and now we're at this point, a lot of people had to cancel and be thankful that you did cancel because right now, Japanese tourism is down to the lowest point. It's been in a decade 93% reduction. So, I don't even know where those 7% are probably stranded tourists. But 93% reduction in tourism in the month of April and from March to April in the last month, 93%. There's not a lot for you to do here. June is gonna be pushing it.

00:18:16 John Daub: I know that there's a push to reopen the economy and none of these countries can stay closed for a very long time despite the health risks. We just have to get through this first wave and flatten the curve but economies also cannot manage not opening. Right now, I have a box right here. You see that right there. This is Sascha. This is your box here from Ireland was returned to me. I had a package from Australia returned to me which couldn't go up because Australia had closed the borders. That can't continue for too long because if commerce ends, then the economies will start to decline. So, I figured that this is a first wave thing and maybe the end of June might be the absolute earliest but I believe quarantine will still be in effect. That means if you do decide to come to Japan, it better be a long term plan like for three months or more because if you do come in, you're gonna have to spend the first two weeks doing nothing and then probably when you go back home another two weeks doing nothing. So, if you can work remotely, this is ideal. You could even work for two weeks inside of Narita Airport.

00:19:45 John Daub: Personally, if you ask me, I'm telling people the earliest that I would return and start to travel would be autumn international travel would be autumn and I'm not talking about October either. I'm talking like November and that's when the normal flu season starts to spread too. So, the responsible thing would be to start looking at 2021 as a date for you to return to Japan or to come to Japan for your vacation or if you have an open ticket that you can change 2021 seems like it's gonna be the year 2021 is gonna be the 2020 that we all hoped it would be because I had massive plans for 2020. I can't even go outside to make the show anymore. I have to be here and come up with ideas within the box. We're all kind of struggling here. The decision to close down the country nationwide came just because of the Golden Week holiday because people had to travel and I think this is the right call and I'm very much welcome.

00:20:56 John Daub: I'm gonna go and turn to your questions now and also mention some of the stuff that I also have in these notes I kind of been take notes throughout the week and I watch the TV news Hitoobi is a show that I've appeared on as a guest for I don't know it's about 10 or 12 times I've gone into the studio or been interviewed for that show about inbound tourism and I'm really proud to be part of that crew over there and right now they're actually the guests aren't even coming into the TV studio anymore after some TV personalities came down with coronavirus they're staying inside their houses and the TV cameras are bringing in monitors they're like 8K monitors just it looks like they're actually in the studio like in a box it's pretty amazing the technology Japan has but I will take your questions right now we'll start with the people who I do appreciate you guys tuning in to watch this it's a beautiful sunny day that I can't go outside and enjoy here in Tokyo.

00:21:50 John Daub: John welcome matz is here Tony P nice to see you Jeff B hi Johnny can I keep up the excellent work and content Michael Sasano more okane for a side beer fun I should go get one but it's slightly too early. Richard writes in here keep yourself safe thank you Richard and pink hoshi I have two tickets to Japan in September I can't get a refund a pink hoshi I would recommend that you just wait if you can't go in September and that's kind of on the fringe for me I think there's gonna be a second wave I just this is my feeling okay there's gonna be it's gonna go down then everyone's gonna go down the trunk there's gonna be one you will see the decline and the economy will start up and there's gonna be a second wave that won't be as big as the first way there almost always is and that's gonna probably be in the summer and September's might be a little bit early but if international travel is banned cancelled and flights are cancelled then you can't come anyways so they're going to have to refund your money.

00:22:55 John Daub: I told people in March who were quite worried and wanted to cancel just wait and naturally they're gonna have to refund your money because they're gonna have to cancel the flights and sure enough that they did i think everybody who had this anxiety about not being able to get money refunded for hotels and whatnot were eventually refunded because the government had shut down or airlines had self shut themselves down and when that happens they have no choice but they have to refund your money because there's no they can't provide the services. So i think just wait pink and i believe when summer comes around you'll probably be able to get refunds. I also see a lot of really good travel deals coming in the fall. Tony P looks like i will start planning my trip for next spring it's probably safest i wish i had flying out there this sunday i know tony i know stay safe john and kanai i know it'd be great to see so many of you.

00:23:53 John Daub: I wanted to have a rent a riverboat and do a meet up with everybody on the riverboat but that's also one of the cluster points where you can't go out and of course we had to cancel that. That's a shame because i wanted to throw business we're definitely going to do this next spring though definitely if we can because i want to throw some work and throw some business to the riverboat people because they've lost a lot of business over the last two months and it's just going to get worse i don't know if a lot of them are going to stay in business because a year's a long time to wait but spring looks good tony. Chris we'll have our own olympics chris dickerson writes in here we love all the things that you do all the mods yes so do i thank you mods a remco s you shot enough to edit into episodes yes i did shoot a lot when i was in hokkaido and whatnot it's going to be going on a new channel so more on that next week.

00:24:54 John Daub: A sweet high tower thank you so much i love these animated emojis you gotta fight it out and rose rose trin writes in from singapore for you thank you i'm gonna get myself a coffee with that. By get myself a coffee with that i'm gonna get myself a coffee with a coffee i'll probably just go make it however i did get in this box and in this box over here i did get a package we can do a package unboxing i got something from amazon and we're getting a lot of deliveries we bring the boxes outside here we let it sit for a day if we can and then we wash down the boxes and open it because you just can't be safe enough i know it's like it seems like an overkill over too much but what we learned was that creating habits and taking it a little bit further than normal is what will keep you safe for now.

00:25:49 John Daub: Your hair looks good today i bought a set of clippers panasonic clippers and i every day i look at it and go is this is today the day to shave this down and the answer is i'm not sure i cannot comb it it doesn't stay combed it just turns into a frizzy mess so i might live stream a razor haircut. Kanae is itching to go kanai you want to do it don't you if she wants to do it i don't want her to do it but she's got that razor fever because this is like a grassy knoll that you can just shave down she's so excited about that it might give us something to look forward to if anything so we might stream the stream the thing but all right the live streams just for fyi after the live stream it's gonna take about 12 hours before you can see it due to a bug in YouTube so I really apologize for that in advance.

00:26:49 John Daub: Let's go back to your questions here about traveling to Japan get away from my hair let's see what do you have here shoot me anything thing sanitizers great story great story about alcohol and hand sanitizers thanks for bringing that up guys so all of the we have a lack of alcohol available anywhere there's nothing to be able to sanitize the house your hands it's sort of all run out so Suntory and a lot of sake makers in Japan is filled with hundreds maybe thousands of sake makers all across Japan are starting to move away from making Japanese sake and moving into high alcohol products for sanitation. This is a great story that I really love. A sake brewery in Kochi Prefecture down in Shikoku started to make high alcohol sake, 77% alcohol to ferment this and they had 10,000 orders in the first day. Many of them coming from hospitals and institutions that just need alcohol.

00:28:04 John Daub: So, you can see them ramping up production and on it writing 77 because it's 77% alcohol. The biggest problem that Japan has with making its own alcohol is that alcohol is made high alcohol stuff is made from glucose or very very it requires a lot of sugar to make high alcohol and Japan doesn't have that. Usually, it's imported from Brazil's sugar cane or American high fructose corn syrup corn stock from the United States. Japan doesn't have that domestically. So, we need to get that sugar sweetener in order to grow. So, we need to create enough alcohol. There's just not enough domestically since there's a worldwide desire for glucose. In fact, if you have money invested in alcohol making companies, not in gasoline, okay? Cuz I bet you the gas prices are gonna go down and alcohol ethanol alcohol and other alcohols to make disinfectant are gonna be skyrocketing. Just like Fujifilm Toyama Chemicals, Avigan stock. That's the one to pick.

00:29:22 John Daub: But it's nice to see that Japanese sake makers are starting to step up and everyone is getting to work to try to find ways to get through this and alcohol is something we're all gonna need for the family. The family outside Japan collab with Mike Chen Jason writes in Mike's doing okay. I think he has a bunker somewhere. We talked about it. He's a good friend, a very good guy and I know he's gonna be just fine. He's got himself. I'm always here. Probably he'll be back in 2021 but we were gonna do this in February before he left to go back to the US and I'm sure we'll be working together again with a lot of other YouTubers that are gonna come to collaborate in 2021 probably. I'm gonna be here though. We're not meeting anybody. That's another thing. I'm not meeting up with other people now.

00:30:00 John Daub: I think other families in Japan are meeting up with other families and having picnics and stuff. I think that's something that we should not be doing and I know the government says no groups of 10 or less don't even meet anybody outside of your family household because one person has it. You spread it to your whole family household. So despite the desire to do this, I think a month is not a long time for you to wait to meet your buddies and go drinking and if anything go you can order we can order alcohol on Amazon. I don't know a lot of the countries can't do that, but you can do a FaceTime call. You can go out and have a drink with your buddies then and then do picture and picture and watch a movie together or something. Try to come up with creative ways not to meet other people's families or other people just because it increases the risk.

00:30:52 John Daub: The Japanese government says you should try to reduce the encounters you have with people down to 80. Reduce it by 80% and that'll help the country a lot. I say reduce it by 100% just don't meet anybody. If you gotta go out to the supermarket, do it and come home. If you're going to a delivery, if you can, we're doing our best to try to maintain that distancing. A Skype party is great. A Zoom party, which is another platform that we've all been learning about is really great. FaceTime. There's a bunch of other platforms that you can use to hang out Google Hangout, but just I think if you get in a habit and you realize how important that this is to just stay inside and not meet up with your buddies or your friends, you're gonna be able to do that. I know if you're meeting up with another mother so your kids can play together. I know you wanna do that but in Japan, they're doing that and the infection rates are skyrocketing. So, let's just keep it in perspective. You know what I mean? We can wait a month.

00:32:01 John Daub: What foods do you miss the most that you can't get delivered? And we're gonna cut down on the pizza too, because Kanae said we're we never eat pizza. Sushi is the biggest thing that we miss because but we can get that delivered and we're gonna try next week to get sushi delivery. But we miss sushi. We miss going out and having a normal life going out on date night. Our three-year anniversary is coming on April twenty-first. I can't take Kanae out. So, we're we I asked our Discord. I asked our Patreon community what some ideas that they had and one of them was to maybe get flowers delivered but I'm gonna go out. There's a couple of butcher shops here and if they're still open, I wanna support the local butchers and get a really nice piece of wagyu like a really expensive cut of wagyu, maybe a tenderloin or something and we have a yakiniku gas stove that I showed you and I'm gonna create this balcony that I have into with Christmas lights and see if we can have a nice night of it. I think that'd be pretty cool.

00:33:23 John Daub: I might live stream that just to bring you in here because if anything, at least our Patreon supporters because it's meant the world to us that you guys are still supporting us despite the fact that we can't go outside and make the content that you want but that I want to. I'm with you. There but we can make this if I if you have to stay in, I have to stay in and then we're gonna do it like this but I can get I can go out to the supermarket or to the store to the butcher stores and get the ingredients to make it a nice dinner. We have an Instant Pot sent to us by Katayama for our wedding gift and we're gonna be using that next week looking at restaurant recipes for that. We've been afraid to use it because it has three prongs and Japan has two prongs and the US ones have three prongs. So we're gonna try to get a converter and or cut that off, but we're really excited about using that a little bit more.

00:34:20 John Daub: A couple of questions here. I want to address the questions that you have with traveling to Japan. Instant Pot sounds like a social network. It does in a way. It does in a way and we're gonna try to make some Instant Pot recipes if we can. Joker Man has a grocery store been busy lately? Joker Man, I actually put pictures on Instagram stories about four days ago, the last time I went to the supermarket. You can see that there are times when they're not busy like right now in the middle of the afternoon. In the morning, all the older people go there and then it's so crowded with people who move really slowly. You gotta go to the supermarket and you gotta go around them and then after they go home, there's kind of a period where it's very quiet and then around 4, 35 o'clock, people go out to shop.

00:35:23 John Daub: In Tokyo, we always live kind of close to a supermarket where we don't need a big refrigerator but you know we bought one because we need a big refrigerator. I was thinking of maybe doing a live stream in the supermarket but to be honest with you, I don't think that we should publicize going out. I think that we should publicize staying in and even out of curiosity or for content. I know that we all, all the YouTubers need to make content. Kanai and I had this decision. We just had, I think it's kind of for us, it's not responsible to be going outside and making like I wanted to rent a car and do this too but we said that look the rented cars are being used for people at the airport that can't take public transportation to go to the hospital. They're using rented cars and basically we just don't want to promote traveling around anywhere. Again, all non-essential travel means don't make YouTube videos outside too. That's just kind of the decision that we came up with and I completely support that.

00:36:31 John Daub: Of course I wanted to but Kanae is the smarter one of the two of us. Logan Jen smiles. NZ has been in New Zealand has been locked down for four weeks but we had eight new cases. I'm hoping to go in September. New Zealand is a place that I guess I think they're being really smart. The mail is shut down. Everything is shut down. They're not allowing anything into the country in New Zealand and we're seeing the results. Not a lot of cases although there are new cases, but it's an island just like Japan but unlike Japan, New Zealand shut down fast and I think that's a really good thing. Miss Unlikely Gamer writes in here, just got the hitchhiking Blu-ray. It's a Blu-ray, not a DVD. It looks really good on the big screen TVs. I sent them out to Patreon supporters. I'm really glad that they started to arrive.

00:37:37 John Daub: I stopped because they're not arriving quickly enough so maybe I'll release the remaining ones to the general public sometime at the end of the year. I hope that the mail is working better. Elliot L, your biggest fan. Thank you, Elliot. Can't wait to be a patron. Thank you so much. It does make a difference. I do want to announce and this isn't the official announcement yet. Patreon is the main place where you could support us if you choose to do that but we have the ability because I can't send packages and I'm quite uncertain about that and a lot of people can't support on Patreon for one reason or another. We're going to be starting the sponsor button within this channel here. That means I'm going to unleash some emoji. Some new Only in Japan emoji next week. I'm going to price this so it doesn't cannibalize. That means I'm going to be supporting on Patreon as a samurai supporter over there. You're still going to have the same perks that somebody who's supporting on YouTube.

00:39:15 John Daub: So I don't want it to be a reason where you have to pick one of the other. I want to make it so that you're going to be happy wherever you support. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to add more to give less to one side. I'll make another video to explain it but the thing is I got something that I want to unbox with you guys. I don't know what this is but I just got it from Amazon and we wipe down the box. Oh I know what this is. I've been looking to order a Nintendo Switch but we don't have they're not available for sale in Japan unless you pay double the price. So those of you who are playing Animal Crossing without me how dare you. Okay let's open this up here. What could it be once again I have to order of mail order is this what i think it is oh this is one of the two things i had to order cafe so whoever bought me whoever gave me a super chat for a cup of coffee i just ordered this it cost a little bit more than going to costco but then to rent a car would have cost a lot more too.

00:40:28 John Daub: So i'm gonna be perfectly caffeinated and ready to go for the next couple of weeks thanks to the espresso yeah they make costco makes some pretty good coffee beans i also have another package that's coming today and one for the anniversary that i ordered to in advance because i got a plan an idea what to do with due for that. Just to reiterate japan expanded the state of emergency to all the entire country because golden week holiday is coming up and we want to make sure this does not spread any further prime minister abe look extremely decisive yesterday. I'm somebody who is always going to be supporter of the person in power because we want them to do a good job and yeah it's hard because you're like why didn't you do it earlier and now it's here so we're very very happy that we seem to be going in a better direction there's more testing they've created little huts that they can do each hut can do 50 tests but they're going to be doing a lot of testing every day it's better than what they were doing before so we're going to see numbers rise in japan but we're going to see more people tested and that's really important i think for families and for everybody else out there.

00:42:10 John Daub: Also i'm going to be doing another video i don't believe it's going to be live because these live videos don't go online fast enough takes 12 hours before they can mix the chat with the video and put that on to youtube so this live chat is preserved 12 hours later it takes. If you want to see the playbacks, you have to go into the Tokyo Stay Home Adventures playlist on Only in Japan Go. You can see it right away. Abe no Mask is coming today. The government gave us two masks per family. And that's coming today. Yesterday they sent it out. It's hitting Setagaya and Minato Ward. There's 23 wards in Tokyo. We're in Chuo Ward, which is the central area near Nihonbashi. And that should be coming today. I'm going to be checking the mailbox. If we get the government mask, I'll probably be making a video about it with Kanae and putting that online as maybe a picture-in-picture or something fun.

00:42:52 John Daub: Because I want to see how it compares with the Mika no Mask that I got from my friend Mika in Tottori Prefecture. Thank you, Mika. And see if the government, which spent a ridiculous amount of money to send these out to everybody, just two per family, how this stands up to the masks that we can make ourselves. I think it's going to be a pretty fun episode. This is the time of the livestream where you guys can write and where you're watching from. It's always nice to see because we have an amazing global audience. Happy anniversary, guys. Thank you. I'm looking forward to the 21st now. We have these little markers over the next month where we make things to look forward to. Like, we're going to eat delivery sushi on this day. So it gives us little things to look forward to. I think that's a way to have little goals within your household to make the time go by faster, but also to sort of appreciate when these special days do come.

00:44:05 John Daub: Just like camping day. Like, I don't get the tent out every day. But when I get the tent out, it's a lot of fun. And you can watch the movie from the tent. You just open it up and it feels like a drive-in movie theater. A lot of people who have never even been to drive in movie theater. But if you do go to a drive-in movie theater or you have been in one, it kind of feels like that to sit back in your tent. And you open up the side and you look through there and you can see the movie on the screen in front of you. It feels like a drive-in movie theater. If you want to make it even feel even more, get a Bluetooth speaker, hook it up to your TV and put that in there. It's, then it feels like that little drive-in movie theater box that you'd have to put on your window with the really bad audio that would come in as you look outside to the movie. It feels like it's pretty cool.

00:44:54 John Daub: So we're gonna do, maybe I'll do a drive-in movie theater simulation with you guys over the next couple of weeks because it seems like we're gonna be doing inside video live streaming for the next three weeks like this. Chicago, Milford, Ohio. Look at this. Brisbane, Australia, Pennsylvania, Mars, Puerto Rico, Boston, Colorado. It's great to see everybody's watching from all over the world. Chillin' in Florida, Brazil, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, Twin Cities, Chuo-ku, our neighbor, Karachi, Ventura, Toronto. Osaka, Brazilian living there, San Francisco, Dominican Republic. Look at this. This is wonderful. This is what YouTube does, brings us all together like this so we can share some time together in these dark times. We have a little bit of brightness, which is called Only in Japan Go.

00:45:57 John Daub: And I'll have an announcement next week as well on the state of the channel too. Thanks guys so much for supporting. Another update next week on the direction of Japan. Again, just to reiterate, I think June might be too early to come to Japan. But I think after summer, it might be okay and you'll see some travel deals. But just be aware that it's on the fringe. This is from my feeling. The earliest would be November, but you have the other influenza season. So I think it's safe to start planning for next spring. Next spring being like March or April or May, a year from now is probably the best bet. But adventure seekers and people without families and those who aren't at high risk probably can start to think about maybe autumn. But just keep in mind that the quarantine measures might be in effect until 2021. Thanks guys so much for the support. I will see you in a live stream tomorrow. We're going to try to keep this up every day. Got to come up with something new and become creative. If you have any questions, leave a comment below. Hit the like button and encourage me. I really appreciate it. This also makes sure that you get the notifications on the live stream so you don't miss us because it's so much more fun when it's live. Stay safe, everybody. Thank you, Eric Swanson. I saw that come in. Thank you.