00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings and welcome back to Tokyo for another live stream here. Travel update on what's been going on here in Japan over the last week or so. The last update I believe was closer to the middle of April. Now we're at the end of April, just going into May. This is April 29, 2020.

00:00:18 John Daub: Kanae and I have been self-isolating since about March 30th, so it's been over a month now. As you can see, I think the entire world's population needs a haircut. Many of you probably need to shave a little bit more too. I just did that so I'd be a little bit more presentable in this update. By the way, yesterday, if any of you missed it, I did a face pack to try to make my skin rejuvenate and look more my true age, which is 32.

00:00:48 John Daub: I do have some news for travel here in Japan. It's not the same as it was about two months ago. I've been doing this now since January, giving people updates because they were just worried about whether or not they should be coming to Japan. Most of you have canceled your trip, so it's not something that you need to worry about too much. But I want to keep giving you this kind of information at least once a week so when things do start to turn around, you have a better idea. And if you have been watching these, I think when you do decide to come to Japan, you're going to be able to get a better idea of what's going on. These updates will help determine whether or not this is safe for you or your family.

00:01:22 John Daub: So right now in Japan there are 13,500 and 76 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus. This comes from JNTO. This is the latest news. I think Tokyo went up by over a hundred today, so right now the numbers have been dipping. I'm gonna show you that right now. Kyoto News, KYODO is one place where they have an incredibly well set up website in English for all of you who are wondering.

00:01:56 John Daub: Here we go, I'm going to turn it around right now. Let me just—it's gonna start over in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right, you can see Hokkaido was in February after the snow festival and all that had the most cases, and then Aichi-ken (Aichi Prefecture), which is where Nagoya is, Osaka, and then Tokyo is the purple. And you can see it's just been going up here. This is where I live in Tokyo right now. Over time, you can see the purple line on the bottom showing that we're trying really hard to flatten the curve here in Tokyo.

00:02:32 John Daub: And I'm going to give you some updates on what life is like here for us. It's been pretty tough going in Tokyo, mainly because information—we're just not sure what's going on. Just to be honest with you, we have stimulus payments. We have masks sent to us from the government. I'll get into that a little bit later. I just want to go over some of the essential travel stuff.

00:03:01 John Daub: There are actually a few travelers that are still here in Japan. I've contacted them on the Discord server. I'm going to see if they're still here to try to find a way to get them on and explain their situation as a traveler stuck here in Tokyo. Attractions in Japan—now, I think before I go into that, I should just say that yesterday or a couple of days ago, the government of Japan pretty much banned all tourism here. So there were 87 new countries, I believe, that came into the fold. But essentially, according to Kyodo News, the news source that I like to go to—they have the best by far English website. On actual news, they said that in an interview with Prime Minister Abe, even foreign residents, permanent residents, if you had gone to the United States and you wanted to come back to Japan, you cannot right now. You will be banned entry. Even permanent residents of Japan will be banned entry here at this time. So I'm kind of glad that I did not go back.

00:04:14 John Daub: But at this time, I don't think that there's really much of travel going on. I think that there's a lot of travel going around anywhere because this is also Golden Week. And the news reports are that travel is down by 90 percent compared to last year. I put on our Discord server a picture from Haneda Airport showing the place is pretty much a ghost town. There's not a lot that you can do. Not a lot of flights, actually, domestically. Shinkansen travel, most of the platforms are empty. To get into the station, you need to go to the airport—you need to be temperature checked. And you are questioned by somebody as soon as you go into the ticket turnstile, as soon as you go into the station. This is to prevent people from infecting each other, of course. And I think other countries have the same procedure. Traveling domestically, unless it's in a car, is very, very hard right now.

00:05:05 John Daub: I have some video that I took off of the news that will show you a little bit more of what Haneda Airport looks like. Okay, check this out. This is Haneda Airport today. Do you see that? They have vinyl coverings in front of the ANA. It's pretty much a ghost town. And here's some information on the flights: 93% decrease on airlines, 95% for the Shinkansen. And the highways are pretty much empty. People are just not going anywhere right now. And during Golden Week, they expect to see even more. That's from Hiroobi. They expect to see even more people just cancel their trips.

00:06:00 John Daub: So who are those 5% of the people? Most of them are people that could not cancel. For whatever reason, the tourist agency that they booked through would not cancel it. And they just decided to go anyways. And they have tickets already, so they're being honored. But Okinawa recently put out a video where the islanders are scared to death. In Okinawa, they don't want any tourists whatsoever to come. And I can understand that because they're on an island. And their economy is based very much on tourism. But they do have schools and they do have everyday life there. So they put out a video. They're telling people don't come to Okinawa. Don't come to these islands. They want to protect their families. Please don't come. That's pretty powerful. And this is going on right now in the Japanese news.

00:07:31 John Daub: Certain areas where tourism would be taking place over Golden Week, where you've been really wanting to go, the locals are saying, please don't come. And Okinawa has had an explosion of cases over the last couple of days. I believe according to the news. I'll try to confirm this in the next update. But it's just because people are going there. I think it would make sense that you want to get out of Tokyo. Because I feel like that too. I want to get on an airplane and jump to Okinawa. But we just cannot do that. Because that's not good for them. They don't have the same hospitals and the infrastructure to handle that kind of sickness. And if you're bringing that from Tokyo, Osaka or wherever to an island, they can't. If it spreads on the island it's going to be very bad for them.

00:08:16 John Daub: Those that are here, JNTO has an incredibly well set up website on the closures. If you are thinking about coming into Japan, you might want to check out JNTO's site. Because they have all up to date information on who is banned—which is like everybody. Who can still come here. There are some cases, but in general according to Prime Minister Abe in an interview, any foreign national is pretty much banned at this moment. You'll be just turned away. They can't even take you as a COVID-19 refugee in the airport anymore because they're full. They're at capacity.

00:09:02 John Daub: But what was interesting for me living here, and if you're a foreign resident living right now in Tokyo or in Japan, some of the attractions and events and sporting events would be interesting to know what's the situation of that right now. So according to JNTO's coronavirus website, many of the attractions have changed from May 6th—and that's when the state of emergency right now in Tokyo was set to end, right after Golden Week holiday which is right now. But it looks very likely that this is going to be extended and a lot of the attractions are now changing the dates that they are going to be closed. For example, many of the attractions have changed from May 6th to TBA meaning to be announced. Hiroshima Castle, Hiroshima—which is a small prefectural capital down in the west of Japan. They're quite separated from Tokyo which is now the hotbed. They've changed all their openings currently to May 17th which is significant because it's 11 days after the state of emergency was set to end. So basically we think that the state of emergency will be extended. Just like everywhere else. Wherever you're watching this, you're probably in lockdown or stay at home mode right now as well.

00:10:23 John Daub: Some of the attractions have also moved to June. J League, the J Soccer Football League, it's set to open May 30th right now. Will that happen? No. The league I believe starts in February and goes on until December. It's a pretty long year the J League for football here. There's talk I'm hearing from friends that are really interested in this that they might just cancel the season. The Nippon Professional Baseball League or Japan's Major League Baseball still is at TBA. It's to be announced. We just don't know when baseball is going to be starting. I'm not sure about Major League Baseball in the United States but here in Japan this is the national pastime. Baseball is huge in Japan. It's like the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball in the United States all wrapped into one. That has been to be announced. It's supposed to start March 20th and it typically goes on to November 15th but we're not sure how this is going to play out.

00:11:57 John Daub: Events. The majority of events in Japan I kind of announced this last week but the Aomori Nebuta Festival was cancelled. This is in August. This is when the Olympics was supposed to be taking place so it makes sense that they would cancel. The Kanto Festival in Akita, all the major festivals have cancelled. One that I don't know about are the fireworks festivals, the hanabi taikai (fireworks displays). And tomorrow Kanae and I will be talking with some people who are decision makers within the Japan Fireworks Association. We're going to see if they have anything to say about whether or not the hanabi taikai will be going on in any form whatsoever this year. Summer is a time in Japan when fireworks are everywhere. It is such an amazing time. I cannot see that not happening although we did have most fireworks festivals cancelled in 2011 after the Great Tohoku Earthquake. So if history tells us anything, not just because of health reasons because of the mood of the country, probably hanabi taikai fireworks festivals will be cancelled all around Japan but it's not confirmed yet according to JNTO and some of the other sites.

00:13:17 John Daub: One interesting event. The Kyoto Gion Festival which takes place between July 1st and July 31st—almost cancelled. That's the current status of the Gion Festival. They don't want to cancel it. I can understand their hesitation not to want to cancel. Let's make that decision a little bit later on. But for the city of Kyoto the Gion Festival is huge. It brings in so much revenue. But it just seems like it's going to be impossible.

00:13:56 John Daub: Brian Hirose writes in here—these are the kinds of broadcasts I like, informative. Brian, this is all information. Very little opinion. Which I'll probably do in 10 minutes from now when I run out of stuff to say. John Kim writes in here my wife and kids are in Tokyo, better than New Jersey. I have family in New Jersey and it's a tough time. That whole New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area is very difficult. My neighbor stuck her head out the window because I'm speaking in a foreign tongue on my balcony. It's interesting. It's neat though because I live in an area where the neighbors are just across the street. You can see and hear what the people are doing across the street. But there's a lot of smiles and hellos and greetings. And we're getting to know our neighbors just because we're trapped on the balcony. And Kanae and I have been eating out here because the weather is pretty nice. That's really cool. Because I think everybody in my neighborhood is lacking some sort of normal human contact. Which is probably the most important thing. I think the same in your area. But in Tokyo, we're so packed in here. We're used to being around people. Maybe not speaking. But now that we're not, maybe we treasure it a little bit more. And it's nice to see people peeking their heads out and smiling at me on my balcony. I'm becoming something of a known commodity, a known part of this community as the dude on the balcony.

00:15:34 John Daub: So I'm going to keep up to date with the events. Like, if there are more cancellations or I think new events will be starting. Here's one. It's a sophisticated event. This is wine. It's water. One of my favorite events that I went to last summer was the Kodo Taiko Drumming Festival. It's called the Earth Celebration. They're selling tickets, but they're going to make an online event now. And this is going to be a trend. I think that Nebuta maybe should have done the same thing. But I know that it requires dancers and requires a lot of people. Festivals in Japan require a lot of people. Festivals that are live performances like Kodo. And if you're not sure what Kodo is, I'll put a link here so then you can just click and check it out. But it's an amazing taiko drum group that I thought was going to be playing at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. They're very, very famous. They're extremely practiced. The group is like a family. They all live together. They're all quarantined or self-isolating together. So for them to have a performance just makes a lot of sense because, again, they're like a family so they can perform together.

00:17:20 John Daub: What has been debated here in Japan over the last week? Now I'm getting into a couple of things now. That's the information. Pachinko parlors were open. And there's no law. We have a state of emergency in Tokyo. This is very important. In Japan, and the prime minister has designated certain prefectures. There were seven and then it was expanded to 13 and that's going to probably expand even more. But in the chihō (countryside/regional areas), they don't have the same kind of difficulties. They're just trying to keep the numbers down. So a lot of them have schools that I believe some of them were open. And they just have a different way to approach this. So what's happening in Tokyo is not happening out in the countryside. Obviously, populations are down and they just don't want people going. But because of that, a lot of Tokyoites will get in their cars and from Osaka as well. And they would drive out to the countryside to the pachinko parlors out there. But there were also pachinko parlors in Tokyo that were open too. And this is a place where these people are probably high at risk. Heavy smokers don't take care of their health. Not everybody, don't get me wrong.

00:18:45 John Daub: The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has clarified Governor Koike's statement that all pachinko parlors in Tokyo have complied with requests to suspend businesses as of Tuesday. This was something in our Discord server we were discussing. As of Tuesday morning, which was yesterday, they are closed. So that's good news. After at least four were still open. And that's why they closed it. And it was getting—basically the news in Japan just shamed them. And it was all about these pachinko places that were still open and how could they still be open. It was a shock on Monday. And the governor rightfully, who's been a star in all of this, Governor Koike, has rightfully said, and I'll hopefully put more pressure on, and I guess by law there's no penalties, but you can be shamed. And that can be even more harsher than the penalties. Once again, more than the money is the reputation. The most valuable thing that you have in Japan as a business is your reputation. You lose your reputation, you lose your business. Therefore you lose your money. And being shamed is more powerful than being fined. Both are pretty powerful though. But the government just doesn't have the power to fine or penalize people. Despite a state of emergency, if I were to go out without a mask, nothing would happen, but people would stare at me. And that's pretty harsh, actually. The longer you stay here, the more you feel the heat of people staring at you from behind. Even from behind, I can feel it.

00:20:30 John Daub: Another thing that's been in our Discord server and been discussed is the Olympics for 2020. That's been moved now to 2021. It's been a one-year delay, exactly on the same dates. In the news recently, the head of the Japan Medical Association said, I think yesterday, it would be difficult to hold the postponed Olympics and Paralympics next summer without a vaccine. I think this is very, very premature. This is a little bit of my opinion. This is 15 months out. We're only maybe since February 1st, which puts us less than three months of dealing with this in the West and here in Japan on a serious level. I think it's very premature to start to think about post-Olympics struggles 15 months from now.

00:21:34 John Daub: What can change? The drugs that are associated with helping people out. I'm going to take a look at some of your questions as well. Jeff Roberts, watch out for Toby (crow). Yeah, I know. I've seen Toby (crow) flying in slow motion, going back and forth, just staking it out and just finding out when it's safe to attack. Nagoya John writes in here, just saying hello from Canada. Thank you. Christian writes in here, looks like the face mask worked. You're glowing. I think it was this one, the matcha face pack was very, very good for the soft skin.

00:22:42 John Daub: Back to the live chat. I appreciate the support, guys. If you do like these live updates, click the thumbs up button because I give these based on how you feel about these. So the like button is an indication that you want more of this. So if we don't get like a thousand likes by next week, I probably will end this section. The drugs that have been approved. This is kind of a new thing. There's a lot of important information here. We all know that Avigan is the drug made by Fujifilm, Toyama Chemical. Fujifilm has been in the supplement and chemical business for a long time. There's a lot of Japanese companies that have gotten into supplements because Japan has an aging population. There's more people over the age of 70 than there are under 30. Don't quote me on that. Just a feeling. The market for supplements is huge. So a lot of companies got into that and they sell supplements usually on TV with a toll free number that you can call in and order because older people can't use the internet. So when you hear Fujifilm, a camera company making a drug, you can see why they would jump into that because of the aging population here in Japan.

00:24:02 John Daub: Now Avigan is an anti-flu drug that was on the market back in the 1990s. And I remember hearing about it when I first came to Japan over 23 years ago. It was in the news before and it just didn't work. But it does have properties that help with viral infections in general. But the side effects were harsh. I believe if you were an expecting mother or you were trying to conceive, there was worry about that, you wouldn't be able to take this drug because one of the side effects is that it's not good for mothers. So that's the downside to a lot of these drugs that have been in experimental stages. So you want to be careful wanting to be in the test group. Japan has made the test group earlier this month. So they should have some data. And what's been in the news is they headline Japan to offer anti-flu Avigan to 38 countries as early as this week. Meaning this week. So Avigan will be hitting 38 countries and expanding to I think 78 countries according to the United Nations. The article is in Kyodo News. We'll put a link in the description. Highly recommend you go there if you want to stay up to date on a daily basis. NHK World News and JNTO for closures. And TBS Hirubi in the morning are the news sources that I check out every day on the weekdays and sometimes on the weekends.

00:25:35 John Daub: Prime Minister Abe yesterday said that the Japanese government is going to approve remdesivir soon as a treatment for coronavirus patients. That will be the country's first such decision amid the pandemic. So this will probably—the drug remdesivir will probably be on the market here in Japan before Avigan as a treatment. I believe that this is in Kyodo News you can check out the article but I believe it has been more tested than Avigan and both of them will be used based on what's available case. But my thinking is that, and this is the reason why we're staying at home and not going out—if you get sick now there's really nothing that anybody can do in the health medical industry. This is why we're so thankful for them being on the front lines and if you are on the front lines, thank you so much. And out of respect that Kanae and I have, that's why we're staying at home. That's why we don't go out. And why for the last month, which I call the lost month of April, has been an interesting month. That's out of respect for the people on the front line because we don't want to add to your work at all. And this is why you're also staying at home.

00:27:27 John Daub: But in the next few months it looks like we will have things to help treat. Which means that the time that people spend on ICUs, the time people spend in urgent care with doctors is going to be reduced. That's the hope. Even if it's reduced by four days, that's a significant number of ICUs that will open up. Respirators and such. The idea is to be able to handle the people coming in. And if caught early these drugs seem to be able to—they said that Avigan according to one test, this comes from TBS, it reduces the symptoms and suffering from 11 days to four days. So in four days it helps the body fight off the virus. Meaning that it probably boosts the immune system and helps to create antibodies. I'm not sure exactly how these drugs work. I highly recommend that you check it out. But I don't think a lot of people know how these drugs work for this coronavirus. So you're going to want to check these out. But Japan is at the forefront of bringing these drugs to you. And it's interesting to stay in touch with the news here.

00:28:44 John Daub: If you are an expat in Japan and I know that we do have a lot of people living here in Tokyo that are watching, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has been on top of this. And I have some pretty exciting news. I'm going to be doing a live stream on something. I'm going to tell you tomorrow. Because I'm going to be doing a live stream with Satoshi and Shinichi from Tabi Eats, another YouTube channel. I've known those guys through YouTube for a few years now. Maybe three or four years now. We've been talking back and forth for quite a while. It's going to be fun to join them tomorrow on a live stream here at 12 o'clock, 12:10 noon. Around noon time, Japan time.

00:29:37 John Daub: But I want to show you this. This is a new thing from the Tokyo government that just opened up. If you are here as a foreign resident right now everything is in Japanese and it's really hard. So if you have simple Japanese skills, English or any of these languages here you can call that toll free number and they will help you with support. And I know that there's other YouTubers here that can't speak Japanese or don't have a beautiful wife like I do. So if you have any questions this is what you want to call. Call this number and somebody will help you between those working hours. Just weekdays. I'm extremely impressed with Governor Koike and the way that she's trying to manage this in a very proactive way. And I think mayors and governors are pretty much like New York as a state. So the mayor of Tokyo is actually the governor of Tokyo. And I often say mayor because I want you to think that Tokyo City is the biggest problem. But technically it's Governor Koike. And Tokyo-to (Tokyo Metropolis) is suffering the most. It's the people in the local areas not the federal government but local governments that have the most responsibility to deal with this.

00:31:31 John Daub: You can't complain about the federal governments and the national governments response because so far in Japan—I'm not going to give my opinion on it. Maybe my face will give it away. But we had something with the government before they announced the stimulus package they announced that they were going to send out two masks. It's dubbed in social media Abe no mask. It's kind of a play on words with Abenomics. Abe no mask. It's a mask that came from Prime Minister Abe. I think it's a good thing. I think the heart was in the right place. Three, four weeks ago we were scared because we could not get any masks anywhere. Paper masks were sold out and people who were buying it were hoarding them. There were lines for them and people were sick waiting in line for masks. So what the government did was they said we're going to send out two masks per family which in itself doesn't make sense. Masks cost something like half a billion dollars or something. It was a very significant amount to send two masks to every family.

00:33:16 John Daub: What it came down to was that two cotton, these two fabric masks that are probably perfect size for me because I have a child's face but for most adults who have a normal face it comes to like here, okay? It just covers your nose and clips this tip of your tongue. And the two masks with delivery and manufacturing and contracts and middlemen cost about $8.50 for two masks to send to the population. On the upside, if this prevents 2% of the population from getting it, then that's a savings to the government, I think. I don't know if it's going to be close to the total but it's a savings to the government and it saves lives which is priceless, I think. So on the whole, I don't see it as being a bad thing but we have not received the masks. What's a bad thing is that the oversight from the government, and this is the problem with all federal governments, almost always, they were contaminated and tainted and there's been a recall on those masks so we have not received our masks. They started going out last week we haven't received our masks because there was human hair in it or they were stained or they had mold in it and these are produced internationally.

00:34:09 John Daub: Again, I'm taking a positive stance on it. This just happens when you're trying to produce something so quickly and get it out to people and it comes from a place of great care from the federal government from the government here in Japan to care for the people. I think it was a good thing and it was something that was worried by all the people but since that time, this is how slow it is, a lot of people have just made their own masks. We've had masks sent to us by friends that we have around Japan as well as we're trying to make our own as well and these masks are actually better than the ones that they're making at a fraction of the cost. So we probably would have been better off just to get four strings and four cloths and we could have made it ourselves. Families could have put them together without the manufacturing. That would have been a fun thing to do since families are essentially trapped at home with nothing to do. But in the end, we'll probably get these masks anyways because they've been paid for and it'll be something that marks this time in history and something we talk about years and years down the road.

00:35:15 John Daub: We also do have a stimulus package that's coming in May but it's slower and I'm not as critical on this because Japan has a Japanese solution to everything. This is something that I've learned with 23 years that a lot of expats take about a decade before you figure it out. A lot of my friends are upset the ones that are new to Japan. It takes you about 10 years before you figure it out. There's a Japanese way to do things and complaining about the fact that they do things in a Japanese way is counterproductive because they're not going to stop doing it because you're complaining. The best thing to do is to try within the system to see it in a positive way. Criticizing the government is really—criticizing anybody publicly in Japan is frowned upon highly. I think that's the biggest problem. I know in the Discord server we can get a little bit critical. I think that's good to discuss these things to find answers to questions that we have. In Japan, criticizing the government or criticizing people publicly is something that's frowned upon. That's something that I try to do very lightly. It's not a good thing to do. I believe strongly that all governments do their best to try to care for the people except for maybe a couple of them that we all know about. They do their best and their best is not always the best.

00:37:16 John Daub: What we can do in our local area is to care for our community. Care for our neighbors. Just yesterday we were sunning ourselves two days ago and the neighbor came out and we had a conversation with them and they told us some news about stuff that we didn't know about our neighborhood and we told some stuff that we saw on the news and that was kind of a good way to get back and forth by shouting across the street. That's, I think, been more helpful than anything we get on the news. The expectations that we have from governments is always going to be way too slow. So it's up to us to give information to one another the best that we can from reputable sources based on science.

00:37:55 John Daub: I'm going to take some of your questions now for the next 10 minutes or so. Click the thumbs up button. Let's see if we can get to 750 likes just because I do base these updates on your feedback. Bandanas, scarves, socks can be used as masks. Two cans on a string, maybe not. I've seen people being really inventive with Coca-Cola bottles to make face masks. Do know that it can go through your eyes, so shields are pretty good. Somebody that we all know I won't mention his name BG sent me a joke and it was, I think it was said in earnest though. He said he was asking for a friend and he said look if somebody breaks wind and you can still smell it—this is kind of a serious question—how safe are we really? These things get through two shields I think we're all wearing undergarments and trousers but we can still smell that odor even though we're wearing masks it still penetrates us so the question was how safe are we really? Do these masks really help? And the answer is it's about the droplets.

00:39:40 John Daub: Nagoya John, I've been critical in the past how to make amends. I think that it's good that we do things in the way that we know how to do things. In Japan they do things in the way that they know how to do things and not being critical is one of them. That means kūki o yomeru (reading the air), KY we say in Japanese. You have to be able to read the air because people aren't going to tell you, you should know from observing around you so you don't have to say it. You can express how you feel through body language. It took me about 10 years to learn body language in Japan to express myself. I would praise somebody and use negative body language. People get the point.

00:40:39 John Daub: OCD Stig who's always very vocal and has an interesting comment. We've moved on. Sorry, moderator is doing well. I'm looking right now at the comments guys. I'm sorry if I missed some of the questions earlier. How are you today? That's to Nosh. Nosh is more popular right now with questions here. Every livestream needs to have a fart joke. The F word is not a bad word if it's fart. Mr. Das writes in here I hope this ends. We get the Asahi Midnight Snack Run. I'm working on that and the Snack Run will involve some midnight camping as well. So we're going to have a—there's a box that I have in my refrigerator where food just magically appears. Mr. Das, including you know, it appears just magically and we're going to have that happening this week. I think I can fit it in this week. Probably May 1st because we've got a pretty busy schedule. Midnight Snack Run is coming.

00:41:51 John Daub: The only in Japan gaming—I'm not actively promoting it so much right now. I did start a Twitch channel that I'm going to be using as a podcast type of format for now and then evolve creatively what that Twitch can do. And YouTube is the number one platform. I'm never going to be leaving YouTube. I love YouTube, I'm loyal to YouTube. I'm so loyal I'm going to try Twitch because I think it's good for me to see what other people are doing so I can give better feedback on mobile live streaming. I think that mobile live streaming will evolve over the next couple of years and not being on other platforms is ridiculous because I'm loyal to one. So I'm loyal to the viewers first and foremost. That's why I ask for likes so I can see what you like. It's as easy as that. I ask for likes to see what you like so I know what you like and I can make content based on that, right?

00:43:06 John Daub: How was your day today? These are questions for all of you. See, look the live chat has its own thing. Have you seen Tiger King? I started watching Tiger King and then I just couldn't watch it anymore. It was, I don't know. I started watching the Michael Jordan thing. Why they make it so hard to get tested for COVID-19 in Japan, Zach. That's a very legitimate question. I kind of went over this in the last update but according to last week's the data was off of Hiroobi that 7,500 people are being tested every day in Japan. 7,500 and in the United States 150,000 are tested every day. This is data from last week. It blew my mind.

00:44:07 John Daub: The problem is that—it's really hard for me to comment on this because I don't know. All I know is that I did call JNTO and I asked them about this and they just said to stay home. The criteria and I believe it's still in effect—they don't have drive-through testing. Anyone who wants to be tested cannot be tested in Japan. It's very selective testing and so far the selective testing has gone along the lines with the mortality rate which is a morbid way to look at this but the mortality rate compared with the rate of infections is very much on line with what we've seen from other countries. Instead of testing everybody which wastes a lot of tests and gets a false negative or there's a lot of false negatives by the way or you get a negative test and then the next day you start to create some sort of response that can be tested. So it's hard to determine when to test. I think the best way is if you want to be tested just test anyways. Right now I think we're at that point. We don't have that in Japan. You have to have a fever for four days and even if you have a fever for four days that doesn't mean you're going to be tested. You have to have an examination from a doctor that says that you need to be tested before you can be tested but then it might be too late.

00:45:35 John Daub: The reason why this doesn't work is because Avigan and some of these other drugs are very effective if you're already at a stage where you've got a fever and you're very very sick. More data needs to be done on this but if you're receiving these antiviral drugs before the virus is starting to take effect but you've been diagnosed there's a higher chance that you're going to be okay from it. The testing has been something that's been very challenging in Japan. All I can say is that again there's a Japanese solution for Japan. I'll tell you the news is not happy about this and the news is all over this. They're all over this and if there's going to be changes happening it'll be from the Japanese media watching celebrities die and watching people that they know die and that's when things are pushed. Just a few days ago we lost a celebrity. She's an actress and a newscaster and she passed away from the coronavirus. She was in her 60s and looked like she was in pretty good shape and she died from it. And this is when you see things like this it really hits hard. Shimon Ken passed away from COVID-19 about a week and a half ago which shocked Kanae and I when we saw this news. So I think it's been in the last 10 days like wow and it hit hard and now the media is pushing because they're losing people that are in the media to this and I believe testing will get better.

00:47:40 John Daub: But again Japan has a Japanese way to do it. I don't agree with it. I live with it and you work and you do your best with the system that you're in and you can criticize it but it doesn't help. What helps is giving people the space to do their jobs and not adding to making it more difficult. This is just what I've learned from living here. Do you think you might do more bonsai videos? Yes, bonsai. I will definitely be doing more bonsai videos. When we started testing more in Washington State we had a lot more than we thought we did have. The tests are 60% correct. So do we really know? This is the point of testing in general and this might be why Japan is not doing a lot of tests and maybe why Sweden is just going the opposite route. The tests are not completely accurate and you don't know when to test and that's why I think if there's any rationale it could be that they test you when they know that they'll be able to have a more solid reading. But once again I think there was a hospital in Nerima-ku that tested somebody and they said that he wasn't positive and he was and he went back out and infected his family so we're seeing more stories like that.

00:49:20 John Daub: The thing with this news and why I make these special streams and I don't add this into every live stream even though this is the elephant in every single room and why we're all inside is because it's such a topic that we just don't know the information. Talking about it does lead to conversations but I hope that we all base our answers on science and fact and we think about other people before we think about ourselves because this is what adults do. Remember the Titanic? Women and children first? Ando1135 keep fingers crossed. Getting tested on May 1st. Been sick for a week. I hope you're okay. I'm glad that you're going to be getting tested though. Knowing is very very important to finding a way to address this and then also to stay away from people. If you don't have it then you can be around people again more quickly. I hope you're okay Ando. Let me know after May. You don't have to super chat. I appreciate it. Just let me know by message or something if you're okay. I don't want anybody in our community here to come down with this and suffer.

00:50:20 John Daub: How do I make my Animal Crossing island more Japanese? Oh! Okay I just got really excited not because I know the answer but because Kanae and I—we cannot get a Nintendo Switch. We have a Nintendo Retro Famicom but we don't have a Nintendo Switch but we ordered one. We applied for one on Bic Camera which is a lottery. There's a lottery on Bic Camera. I can't even play Animal Crossing even if I wanted to. But if I did I would have Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera and some of the other ones. Animal Crossing costs $63. That's kind of high. Is it good? Really good? I don't know if it's worth it.

00:52:11 John Daub: Kanae and I are staying inside. Basically, I know that there's a lot of other YouTubers that are going out but we just—we made that decision at the end of March that it's just not worth it right now. We don't need anything outside. So just because we wouldn't get fined or penalized we're going to the supermarket and other YouTube creators are doing that. They're going out and making content. We just choose that this is probably not. Let's wait until the lockdown ends on May 6th and then see. But just to respect the government, respect their decisions for the society and then after the 6th I might have to go out and make some content. This is part of my job. Exercise—I bought some dumbbells.

00:53:16 John Daub: Are hospitals overwhelmed? Robert Ireland writes in—they are. They're overwhelmed and actually, I think it was Apa Hotel. There's several Apa Hotels that have been turned into coronavirus places for treatment. So people can self isolate if you have it in the Apa Hotel and it's run by the city of Tokyo. There's several hotels just because there's no tourists so they're using the hotels as isolation for people that are sick. There's not enough breathing devices. It's the same problem everywhere. Japan is lucky because people are not going to the hospital when they have just small symptoms even though they might be positive. They're self isolating at home. The tragic thing is that last week a man who was told to go home because they didn't have space for him died because he couldn't find treatment. There's stories like this all over the world. It's not specific to Japan. I want everybody to understand that. We're all—Japan is going through the same shortages and problems that everybody else is despite having a really good medical healthcare system. It's overwhelmed just like everywhere else and doctors are having a tough time.

00:54:36 John Daub: Kanae's friends and husband are in charge of a hospital in Ibaraki Prefecture and the staff has come down with coronavirus a lot and they've been taken out of circulation. They're away from the hospital until they recover and then they go right back in and the staff shortages are real. People are getting sick from it and they can't go in and help and treat patients and the ones that are there that are left behind are overwhelmed and that's the biggest problem. To make sure that we have masks and coverings for them is something that if you're hoarding N95 masks give them to your local hospital right now. They need it more than you. They really do and if they get sick they can't treat people. That's the problem I think Japan is having.

00:55:29 John Daub: Garrett writes in here saw Cold Stone Creamery on your menu yesterday. I know! I saw that! That's a chain that we ordered from the Unagi episode yesterday. I was like, you gotta go watch us eating unagi (grilled eel) for lunch. We had delivery unagi. But wait, this morning they rang our bell at 10:30 in the morning and somebody came and picked up the dishes. We put it outside. I put it on Instagram stories what it looked like, we put all the dishes away. We put it outside our door. They rang the bell, we let them in the apartment. We didn't see them, he picked up and we watched from the balcony as he drove away in a motorbike picking up all the orders from yesterday. They washed them, recycled them and put them back into the next order. We love that unagi so much that we're thinking about ordering again if we don't get sick in 14 days. Then we know that it was good or we just got lucky.

00:56:38 John Daub: Tomorrow guys, tomorrow we are going to be doing an interview with my friends Shinichi and Satoshi who are also self isolating and I want to talk about how they're doing. We're just going to keep it simple. I want to talk about their love for food and vending machines and things that also I have in common with them. And we're going to be talking about Japan. I think this is going to be great because you have me who is, I don't know if I'm a Japanophile but I love this country very much and have been living here for 23 years and I just know a lot about this place and travel and I know a lot about the Japanese that are doing so much content on delicious food. I guarantee you it's going to be an amazing conversation between the three of us and maybe Kanae will join and you're not going to want to miss this. This is something that you would want to subscribe to. Make sure you subscribe and I'll set this livestream up so you can join in about an hour before we start. It's going to start at 12:10 p.m. tomorrow so less than 24 hours from now. So if you subscribe to the channel and you're a Patreon supporter or you're on Discord you'll get a notification.

00:58:03 John Daub: Who here is not subscribed? Robert, actually 65% of the people who watch the videos are not subscribed. So there's a lot of people who just aren't subscribed. If you want to get the notifications subscribing is a good place and you might not know that you're not subscribed too. So if you're not getting the notifications and you are subscribed what I'm hearing is unsubscribe and subscribe again and make sure the notification bell is put to always and you'll get the notifications. Starting in May 6th after the emergency shutdown if it allows I will be able to go outside and bring more content to you but for the next week and a half I'm going to be inside making content like this.

00:58:49 John Daub: It's been an interesting month. I mean when you have somebody doing facepack—don't look at the picture on Instagram. Don't even go there. I took a picture, it's pretty embarrassing. We had fun. She was laughing for a solid 15 minutes after the facepack livestream and how ridiculous it was. That in itself was worth it. Never mind that maybe some people unsubscribed for the channel. The reason why I'm saying subscribe is because we had some people unsubscribe because of it, it was just so ridiculous. Look, crazy times require crazy solutions to entertain yourself and our viewer base. She was laughing for 15 minutes, priceless. And you can go back, please go back and watch that again if you do it. I don't think a lot of people saw it or they were turned off by it but it was so fun and it was funny to watch the playback together this morning of comparing this is matcha green tea facepack to sake, Japanese sake facepack. This smells like sake and I put it 50-50 on my face and just the ridiculousness of it was so worth it even though this is not something—I'm a beauty YouTuber but it goes beyond that line. It's ridiculous and it's Japanese. This is only in Japan. You cannot get this outside of Japan. Seriously, this is only sold at Matsumoto Kiyoshi. We went to Matsumoto Kiyoshi. We have like we're going in and out within a minute so I had like this supermarket dash where I had to just go in and say, what can I get? I just said, oh! Facepack!

01:01:09 John Daub: Thanks so much everybody. I appreciate you. The support on Patreon has been overwhelming by the way. The packages and postcards are taking a lot longer to get to you. We've had more signups over the last 30 and 45 days to support the channel than ever before. I just want to say thank you to everybody who's been supporting on Patreon. All of us—it's now the end of the month and we're thinking about what do we do? Can we get the postcards out to everybody? I'm holding on to postcards to Australia. It doesn't matter, and to other countries where the post is not working. It doesn't matter. As soon as the post starts, you're going to get 3 or 4 postcards and I do appreciate it. For those who are sticking to it I just want to say thank you so much because it means the world to us and this community does too. We'll try to do more to try to bring you more things within our Patreon community to give you value, like extra content and things like this. When this is all said and done I'm going to try to make something just to say thank you for the support.

01:02:18 John Daub: I hope everything goes well for you and your family. I'll be back next week with another update on how things are going in Japan. Stay safe. Give me a thumbs up if you like this. Make your own masks everybody. Go out and make sure you wear a mask if you go out and think about everybody else around you and how it affects them. Thank you. Have a good day.