00:00:05 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo Station. Look up in the sky. There is a typhoon rolling in and you can see it in the urban landscape of Tokyo as it slowly creeps its way over. Now we're facing towards the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives. Those clouds look like they're up to no good and they're moving really fast.

00:00:27 John Daub: How you doing everybody? I wanted to talk a little bit today about traveling to Japan. When is the best time to do it? I did this episode in May which I consider to be the number one month. Never mind the cherry blossoms with weather and traveling. May is amazing. But September and October are pretty close except for one thing that you have to keep in mind. What is happening right now. Typhoon season.

00:00:56 John Daub: And it happens every year and we always know the typhoons are gonna roll in. They're very much like hurricanes but not as powerful as the hurricanes. The Atlantic is much warmer. I like to go analog here. This is the average monthly formation, approach and landfall of typhoons. The months down at the bottom. You can see in the winter very few and even in December they have some typhoons forming but it looks like August and September have the most therefore the most hit landfall I guess. It could be possible during the Olympics next year but you see here October still pretty powerful and a lot of them make landfall like the one that's coming to Tokyo right now. We've had two or three already last year I think.

00:01:50 John Daub: Some of you might recall I did a live stream almost one year ago with Typhoon Hagibis. I was down in Kyushu in Fukuoka when this thing was approaching. I was with Satoshi and Shinichi from Tabi Eats and Peter von Gomm a friend of mine on a Discovery Channel Canada shoot called Mighty Trains which is supposed to be airing in a month. We took the Seven Stars, one of the most expensive trains in the world for the Discovery Channel last year. Kanae Daub went with me and as we were coming back a typhoon was starting to form and was beginning to hit. We had flown down from Tokyo to Fukuoka but all the flights were cancelled because of the incoming typhoon which did so much damage. Even the hotels were booked up because everybody had to cancel their flights. They were stuck there so Kanae Daub and I and I think Satoshi and Shinichi stayed in Fukuoka for another day and Peter von Gomm we jumped on the last possible shinkansen and we arrived in Tokyo with the high winds. It was really really crazy. Kanae Daub and I found a taxi made it back home and we bunkered in. I believe you can see the live stream where I was outside as well for one of them when it wasn't so powerful just to show the impact of the typhoons in Japan.

00:03:27 John Daub: Typhoon season is very very very powerful and it's not that bad. If you compare it to hurricanes there's no comparison. Those that have been in Florida and have lived through a really strong hurricane like Hurricane Andrew. I remember before I left to come to Japan. They're devastating and in wind speed and velocity and it's a completely different kind of story. In October the Pacific Ocean generally throughout the year is a lot cooler than the Atlantic oceans or the power of the storms aren't as powerful despite the fact that the Pacific being bigger. The good thing about it is that typhoons are not as powerful but never take them for granted because they can be extremely powerful too and do a lot of damage especially down in the Philippines and Taiwan and even sometimes they'll go into towards China to Hong Kong. Sometimes they miss Japan and go up the corridor up to Korea. A couple of them hit really hard this year into Korea as well and we've gotten hit a few times already. Japan had really bad rainfall a few months ago especially down in Kyushu so this typhoon is not welcome up there clouds and rain but we will make do.

00:04:39 John Daub: Tomorrow Kanae Daub and I are getting on a shinkansen and we're gonna be traveling on don't worry it's not here yet we're gonna be traveling on the shinkansen going to Akita so we're probably gonna do another livestream in the morning and then one in Omagari. I want to show you the town of Omagari which is Fireworks City Japan. This is one of the cultural hearts of fireworks and I've got to show you fireworks and take you around there the day after tomorrow on Saturday despite the typhoon coming in. Akita Prefecture and Japan is quite large. Akita Prefecture doesn't seem like it's going to be getting much impact from the typhoon so we're still going to go on with our fireworks live stream Festival. You can pen that you can marker that in stone on Saturday 6 to 8 p.m. Japan time. It's going to be a live stream for two hours bringing you fireworks. All the fireworks this year have been canceled the ones that were suspended and rescheduled. This one was not and we're really happy to be a part of it. Only in Japan raised sixty thousand dollars almost I think fifty nine thousand dollars from the international community to put on this amazing show so I'm really really stoked about this. 800 people came together and made this festival possible so unless there's what they told me Omagari again they're really tough up there unless the police cancel them and tell them it's off to it. I mean they're not they're not going to be the ones the guys uh lighting the fuse who are they're not going to be the ones that cancel this it'll be the authorities so I'm guessing the show will go on because I think the authorities want to see some fireworks too.

00:06:19 John Daub: I'm here also to take some of your questions about traveling in October. Um if you do have anything don't be afraid to chat um send me a message here on the live stream and I'm looking at it right now. Um I don't really have an address to send goods to but uh gifts too but we'll see what we can do. We don't give out our home address of course but uh we'll see if we can find a place. We don't have post office boxes in Japan either but I really appreciate the thought and that's super kind of you and we'll find a way to do it. I know um Katayama also wants to send a Christmas gift he figures if he sends it now it'll arrive on time and that's so so kind of him.

00:07:03 John Daub: Um October November for traveling um all right so hold up on your question for a second I'm gonna get back to it um right now let me answer this one. As you get to November it starts to get cooler and of course you can't wear shorts because I'm wearing shorts until November I'm a weird one like that I just sort of I'm on a bicycle too so I you know it's cooler in November and if you like that it's good. The other thing about November travel is that the days are shorter you want to keep that in consideration um the sun comes up later it's still quite early because Japan in the summer comes up at like 4:30 in the morning so but the sun will come up a little bit later and it the sun sets a lot earlier so you have to consider the shorter days when you travel in the winter you're going to have to like nightlife a little more I guess um and it is colder and it depends where you're going. If you're going up to Tohoku we were told tomorrow to bring down jackets it's October but we're going to be in an area that's a flat land um in the middle of Akita so we have to bring down jackets to stay warm in this area in October. So if you're going up to Tohoku in November it's going to be considerably colder and it starts to snow up in Hokkaido of course but down in Hiroshima it's quite fair as well as Kyushu so I think October November doesn't matter. The great thing about November is that you hit koyo which is the changing of the leaves and that behind me is the clock counting down the Tokyo Olympic Games by the way. October the leaves don't change except up in uh maybe the north of Tohoku and Hokkaido but down here in Tokyo as you can see the leaves have not changed yet they're still uh quite green and soaking up some of the sun when it is sunny right now but Autumn leaves and the temples and shrines.

00:09:07 John Daub: I hope that that helps. Let's see here the Tokyo Marathon Chris would be better off held in October November actually um I've ran the Tokyo Marathon I think seven times I was in the first Tokyo Marathon um for the general public in 2007 nobody was running there wasn't even a lottery uh I was scared to death that my first race that was in February and was so cold it's an awful time because of um um I'm not sure why I think it was 2009 they ran it in March and it was still pretty cold and I believe there was a ice storm we ran the marathon between the ice storm and I had ice in my eyebrows and I was still running the 42.195 kilometers uh best time was three hours and 12 minutes but it's a great race uh it was the old course was mostly downhill for the first 10 kilometers as well.

00:10:10 John Daub: Can you still travel to Japan now Randall it's in here unfortunately not um if you're thinking of traveling to Japan uh business travelers a little bit have access to come here from Singapore in certain countries but they have to take a journal the actually the criteria for business travel is set up by the government you can see it on the website maybe I'll put a link in the description here if you're interested this might be a precursor or kind of the the start of the rules for initial travel it's quite harsh and involves also installing a tracing app and making sure that you only go outside of your hotel for business purposes and to keep a diary of your temperature so that you have to take your so there's a lot of things I don't know if it actually uh makes a difference but it's extremely strict for you to um uh to come here as a business traveler under the special circumstances for Singapore for example I had a friend who did that um for 14 days he was he could go to business meetings and things like this but he had to keep track of his temperature and everything and after 14 days he was free for the next 14 days on his Visa because they're only 30 days to travel around the country a little bit but for the first 14 days it was quite strict but he did a lot of um work inside of his hotel room and then was cleared and now he's he's traveling around the country just like a tourist and he's like this is pretty unique because there's nobody at these sites except for other Japanese tourists and it's kind of like having the place to yourself. He can go through that the that it required a PCR test before he departed and another PCR test when he arrived in Japan so he had to get tested twice before the between the the flight flight so and I don't think he can travel onwards and when he goes back into Singapore he has to do another 14 days quarantine so just part of the part of the way that travel is today so if you came to Japan the quarantine procedures are still there.

00:12:16 John Daub: Let's just see we can keep this to travel in the fall here it is very cold in February look Japan has four seasons and there's special aspects to each one of those seasons autumn has a really great cuisine autumn's got amazing mushrooms so many different varieties of them different kinds of nabe soups things like this the the hot sake starts to appear in the winter season and then the winter season starts to appear in the fall season and then you get to I'm not a big fan of it but it'll start to appear things will start to appear on the menus um the beer gets stronger by two percent Asahi and Kirin beer have released their fall Sapporo as well their fall brews which is like uh seven or eight percent alcohol I don't know why they do that I don't think it's a German thing but winter also has its own foods so each season I think food is a reason to travel each season is really really um unique so it's good to come to Japan for all four seasons if you ever get the chance.

00:13:11 John Daub: What about a new camera I've ordered the a7S III but in Japan they don't come they're not it's not released until tomorrow and I'm not gonna be here I'm gonna be in Akita Prefecture so I can't collect my new camera for this project so I bought a Panasonic S5 Lumix uh and I'll be using that to film the documentary and then when I come back I'll switch to the Sony but I'll try to use the Lumix a little bit because the the menu system and the Lumix is really good except for the autofocus. And I don't really use autofocus that often. I kind of manual focus with my smartphone and I'm cool with that. But the Panasonic has always been a really good system for me.

00:13:59 John Daub: Fitz, thanks so much for bringing this up. Actually, Japan Rail, and I'm working with Japan Rail for the next three months to introduce a new pass. It's the JR Welcome Pass. And it's like a JR Welcome East Pass. I guess there's a couple of names for it, but we'll just call it the Welcome Pass. Foreign residents. This is actually big information. News flash, news flash. Foreign residents living here in Japan. We've always been, I don't know, put down by the fact that we cannot have a JR Rail Pass. We're not from here. We're not citizens. We can't vote. But we also couldn't get that Japan Rail Pass. Which is a ridiculously good deal. However, because tourism is down to like 1,000 people a month coming, down from like 10 million or something. It's a ridiculous number each month. I think it was like 2 million a month or something. We're down to like 1,000. Japan Rail has decided to give foreign residents, and this is an amazing thing, a pass. So for 12,000 yen, or about $110, you can get three days of unlimited travel on the Shinkansen, but only up into Tohoku. To Tohoku. That means Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Yamagata, Niigata, Miyagi, and Fukushima. And I think Tochigi as well. And Gunma maybe. And Ibaraki. So this whole area up in the east, which is like we say like northeast, but we say east of Japan. That is all fair game for the Shinkansen Pass. So I can ride this train. The Shinkansen. For like a super I could go back and forth to Aomori, which is like almost 40,000 yen, three times. And that's 100 so that's a savings of 90% or something like that. I'm not quick with math. So it's a really good deal. I think there's a press release about two days ago from Japan Today, which is a news outlet that posts information about Japan. And you can check out the pass there. I'll put a link in the description as well for that.

00:16:11 John Daub: Do you know Doko demo doa no, I don't know that one. A lot of these tickets, I don't have access to. The Seishun 18 Kippu (Seishun 18 Kippu, youth 18 ticket) is a local train ticket that I adore. And it means that you can't ride the Shinkansen, but sometimes going slow is really good for seeing stuff. So it took me 88 hours to get from Tokyo to Hakodate. 88 hours. And it was really an amazing experience. Wait, did it? No, no. No, 88 hours round trip. So 44 hours to get up there. And I bought some omiyage. I didn't have much time and I rode the train back. And I read like two or three books and really had a good time of it. Sometimes going slow is better. The Seishun 18 Kippu is five days unlimited local train travel from midnight to midnight. You can use two people on it. They just stamp it twice for one day. So if you're coming with your wife, you can use one pass for two days and then you have an extra day. So get two passes, just stamp it twice and you can show them and get in and out. Okay. So you can buy people. That's one day of travel for all five. Just five stamps on one Seishun 18 Kippu. I don't know if that makes sense, but you can travel the whole country with local trains. And these are these tickets come out three times a year, I believe.

00:17:27 John Daub: I wish I was taking grand class. I have got to pay full price, Irvan. In order to afford the Sony a7S and the lenses, I had, I'm going to have to take normal class for a long time and eat probably like really like curry rice and stuff. I got payoffs of lenses. Cookie Ninja. What is the average price of a decent hotel in Tokyo? It depends what decent is the Intercontinental, which is an IHG chain. I think that's about it depends on when you do about one hundred and fifty dollars a night right now at Tokyo Bay. But if you're looking at the strings in Shinagawa, I think it's about 250 a night. I don't like to stay at the Apple Hotel in Tokyo. It's mostly tourists stay there and the rooms are super small, but those will probably run you about ten thousand yen. So for price per cost performance, it's better to maybe upgrade to like a four star hotel than to stick with a two star hotel. Class performance wise, the demand for hotels are so high. I always think that if you can upgrade or spend a little bit more in the cities, you might as well just because the location is a lot nicer. I always liked the Gate Hotel in Asakusa because it was really conveniently located, but they raised the price a little bit and it got so popular with tourists that it was really hard to get. But if you can get a room, shouldn't even have brought up the name of that. Now everyone's going to want to stay there, right?

00:18:52 John Daub: Saturday, read, grab yourself a set. Thank you so much. That's really kind of you and Marty. Actually, curry rice sounds pretty good for lunch. I came out one reason I came here is right over there. And I want to talk about the typhoon and travel right over there is the International Post Office, and that's where I send all of the postcards. And I already sent the postcards, but I have two postcards and I'm going to give a shout out to the members. But I have two postcards that I did not send. Here's this month's postcard that's me in an onsen i'm seriously red i'm seriously red uh it's so hot this is a uh a wild onsen river and it comes out hot water mixed in with some cold waterfalls and the water temperature was just perfect and we um i was there with with um greg uh lamb from life where i'm from and we soaked in here and that's this month's postcard wild onsens so i'm going to be sending out these two postcards to to two members that uh um are part of the postcard club on patreon and i still have about 20 left um for this month mount fuji postcard mount fuji stamps on the back hold on do i can i show one i gotta hold the there's the mount fuji stamp for this month which is so cool don't want to show the uh don't want to show the address.

00:20:12 John Daub: Typhoons in Japan are not as powerful as hurricanes but they are significant and they do have a lot of power and they do cause airlines flights to ground they also cause um shinkansen sometimes to stop shinkansens will go through some of the the tropical depressions and if it does come here weaker in october they're not usually as strong but the shinkansen will stop and that could ruin plans that means you can't get to a hotel or you have to extend a hotel stay it does happen um the thing when you travel to japan and and irvin thank you irvin when you travel to japan and and irvin i don't know if i can i don't know if i can actually we already bought the seats but i'm gonna i'm gonna use this for the the trip back can i had to buy i don't think anyone's around so can i had to buy her tickets in advance so she already has her seats but i'm gonna put this to some good use i think we're gonna upgrade our bentos and i'm gonna try to give her first class trip now thank you irvin i i'm still like i still in my brains looking at irvan but irvin thanks for that awesome and i'm gonna go to the next one and resolve welcome to the travelers that's awesome all right let's get back to some more questions.

00:21:30 John Daub: Traveling with someone with a lot of allergies what's the best way to navigate places to eat as a non-japanese speaker wow um traveling with allergies is never really easy uh you're going to have to i think most of them chain shops have menus that that um include this now they have english menus which was something that was rare about five years ago but um i'm gonna say it will do you a lot of good on this very long airplane ride stop watching the movies and playing games and maybe even i think sleeping and instead the best thing to do would be to um study the allergies the kanji for them and do your homework whenever you travel you are no longer in your in your home country all right so traveling is always important for you to learn certain phrases from the country and then you can learn some of the kanji and also for you to um protect yourself so if you have allergies then you have to you have to study the kanji and then use google translate to get the pronunciation and ask about this every time or make a sheet list up the allergies on a piece of paper and bring that with you and make sure that these don't have it in there and if you're not sure and you want to check yeah I think we're safe right over here if you want to check you can ask at your hotel if the manager who maybe speaks a little english can check out that sheet for you to make sure that a restaurant owner would be able to understand it and he might actually alter it a little bit so it's a little bit more understandable um people are very friendly about it and in Japan we do have allergies as well food allergies especially soba buckwheat noodles a lot of people are allergic to that so they can't eat soba because of the buckwheat and they have allergic outbreaks from it but if you are traveling to another country you cannot expect everybody to be speaking english um but if you did that would be super super boring can you imagine you know I I don't know I I'm glad when I came here in 98 people did not speak as much english it just seemed more adventurous to have a dictionary and not know what everyone was saying and try to use my mind and figure out ways to get around until I learned the language that's what an adventure is supposed to be like and uh yeah you should be taking your time and go a little bit slower right it's just to relax.

00:23:58 John Daub: How much hours move to Japan zero I think I knew konnichiwa I feel like zero seriously I came here to work and my I was never gonna stay here my idea was to work here for one year save up enough money so I could backpack and travel Asia and I've stayed yeah I think a lot of you know the story I don't want to bore you with it but zero I started from scratch. Do not make more work for us uh-oh moderators are getting there um look at the live stream trying to get some questions here the wind is starting to pick up and the rain is coming down a little bit harder um see here let's get maybe one more question I can get in what weird sheer apartment here is your chance ask away ask away that's the Japanese where the kitchen yeah knowing a little bit of Japanese is really important I don't see any questions so I just see some problem people um three day unlimited ride ticket the doko demo doa ticket West Japan yeah I don't have access to that I live in East Japan um so I wouldn't even know Japan rail is always coming up with new passes and stuff and I don't even know why they don't have to do that uh euro rail has a pass but they don't seem they don't actually it's not even cheap anymore and it's it's such a pain in the neck European rail used to be such an amazing thing but since everybody flies I I was really disappointed with your rail I'll be honest can I and I did it about three four years ago I didn't know that I was ago we were not happy with your rail and the culture of rail has changed in Europe and it just wasn't the same especially with night trains which is a shame but in Japan we still have a very strong rail culture and they still offer these passes and with the shinkansen and the population starting to decrease we need to find more ways to increase the ridership or all this new money that we're using for technology like the Chuo shinkansen or the maglev that gets you to Nagoya in like an hour it's pointless because how do you pay for all of this the investment doesn't make any sense so it's all based from tourism now.

00:26:16 John Daub: Yeah when can we see your fireworks show on YouTube it's going to be the live fireworks show is October 10th from 6 to 8 p.m. and I believe the only in Japan section of it is gonna be at the start of that like in the first first 30 or 45 minutes I believe I won't know until I get there and I don't know it the rain has caused if the rain is going to cause any problems and i've been wanting to release a schedule for this for a long time but i can't do that because because of the weather so um as soon as i get to omagari i'm going to be releasing an updated schedule but when i get home tonight i'm going to try to release kind of a general schedule but the problem with doing that is that people will put their hopes into me hitting that schedule and i just might not be able to because of the weather um we will see akita is a lot different weather than down here in tokyo japan is a lot bigger than people realize all right it's like uh when an earthquake hits in kumamoto people say are you okay i heard japan had an earthquake i said well we live all the way up in tokyo that's quite a ways in order to drive there i think it would take like like 15 or 16 hours to drive there it's like going from new york to chicago so um if something happens in new york it probably didn't happen in chicago so just keep that in mind like japan is actually quite a large country it's just long right.

00:27:48 John Daub: All right this is the mailbox for tokyo station and these are going out special um you know let's do it inside because of the rain hey kt lovett's here and michael sasano is it sure that a foreigner wanting to get a job in japan is not easy to do even if you have years of experience uh michael so i'm inside of the kit building so michael um japan is like a lot of the uh countries around the world the same with the united states japanese are have the priority to get these jobs unless you have something to offer no country is going to just bring people in even if you're qualified because you become a drain on the services and if they still have a lot of japanese candidates then there's no reason to hire you or give you a visa for that all right japan is has a shrinking population but the jobs are actually increasing the unemployment rate is actually increasing online capacity right now so quite low so it doesn't make a lot of sense to just give visas to somebody because the united states doesn't do that either and neither do a lot of other countries um it's very hard to get a work visa uh just because you have a you're qualified in a job you need to be qualified in something that japan really really needs like nursing um i.t so a lot of people from india are coming here for i.t jobs things like this that's really important and japan is no exception united states is the same way english teaching is something that japanese can't do and that's an opportunity for you to get a visa here. So these two postcards which are um a symbol of the hundreds that i sent out like before i started this live stream goes out to michael so michael in in whiteland indiana and brandon in nashville tennessee so this is this is your postcard and i'm going to put this in the mailbox for you guys brandon in nashville and michael and in indiana it's kind of the heartland of america so this is going into the international post box.

00:29:57 John Daub: John who is taking a dip is going to be going for a ride on an airplane look at the the male mascots have masks on too both of them i like that the little things are important you have to show uh that we all need to stay safe and and keep the masks on so that's kind of cute that is abino mask size that's funny all right let's get outside here the rain is coming down a lot harder now um that's a you see up there that's the viewpoint that i love to go to if you are in this area if you stand right there you can see the rain coming down a lot stronger you get an amazing view of tokyo station from up there i think it might be closed um but i don't see anybody uh admiring the view right now and i like to i come here so much to send the postcards and packages and stuff because they postmark it i like to come here because when they do the stamp on the postcard it says tokyo this is central tokyo post office uh the little details are important just like parking in an illegal spot that's my bike right there i should not be parking there.

00:31:53 John Daub: All right i got one last question about traveling in october october is a great october is actually a fantastic time to be traveling in japan the weather is cooler that summer heat humidity is gone september is probably my top pick around september 10th onwards it's still warm enough to wear shorts but the um i don't know every now and then you'll get a typhoon and that makes travel a little bit harder but like anything in japan at any time an earthquake can hit okay at any time at any time an earthquake can hit at any time the typhoons give you a little bit of notice stuff happens in japan it just does it and uh we kind of roll with it we're used to things just suddenly happening and people uh all come together we help and then we move on um it's a really unifying thing when when a natural disaster hits um the country does come together and this typhoon it looks like it's going to be coming in and then just skirting up because there's a high pressure system in a hokkaido so if these high pressure system because everything comes this if everything comes this way the typhoons are coming against it so high pressure systems can often help it not making landfall where it comes in it sees japan goes nope nope nope and it goes right back out to the pacific. The the thumbnail to this episode right now is on the tv news and they still make by hand the graphics for the weathermen they don't use the green screens all the time they still use handmade signs and in today's graphic they use cotton balls for the clouds on a TV show where millions of viewers watch it's a national TV show they use cotton balls for clouds I thought that was really funny and that's the thumbnail for this this live stream I was laughing can I was like oh it's normal I was like that's not normal that's like like elementary school diorama type of crafts but they do may do a very good job with it they do an excellent job with it yeah old-school.

00:34:04 John Daub: Nagoya John's here nice to see you and Jeff Ang gets on this neck on I'm actually gonna be going around on bicycle to the other side of the station and pick up can I some lunch we're having a late lunch because we were putting the stamps on the postcards all all morning before get them out before the fireworks festival we leave for that tomorrow morning much appreciated Nagoya John but tonight I think you didn't say this a mocha dish but this is it I didn't get to say my suit they must so she told me that if I if I stand inside here I won't get wet but I'm not wearing a mask right now that's nice of her she said only sans please stand over here so I could stand in the doorway over here and I don't have to wear a mask that was nice yeah people are looking out for each other I like that like a community what else you get what else you guys got is there no more questions we haven't seen you eat a meal in a while um I think you'll see it like a bunch of people I know that's what I like about it a lot of a lot of eating up in akita is really hard to eat here because tokyo is such a crowded place um there's partitions between all of the little tables and when you're eating in a crowded place you don't want to talk because that spreads droplets all over the place so you you take up your mask and you eat to yourself you just eat and silently so you shouldn't be talking when you're eating and that's the thing that i think um we're more mindful of here in tokyo because it's so crowded up in akita i think there's more opportunities to do to do that so uh i'm sure we're gonna eat an eki ben on the train tomorrow morning we're leaving at eight around eight a.m so for our moderators just a little bit of heads up 8 a.m jst which is i think seven or six uh p.m uh new york so we're doing that john will be staying in the train station hotel no spiders i remember that live stream yeah.

00:36:17 John Daub: What how's the postal system doing uh twit the last thing i'll leave you guys with uh because i gotta go it wasn't raining when i rode out here it's weird um a lot of a lot of people outside of japan have ordered uh postals uh boxes and because the demand is so high japan post is not sending packages to australia or the united states but some countries still have it going on airmail um germany has never stopped because of dhl and they have such good logistics there with packaging uh packages the us is different uh but us packages and australian packages apparently can go airmail to japan but not the other way you can get federal express but it costs so much money uh for me to do the dimeule packages for patreon it doesn't i would end up losing money by sending packages which is which is crazy so i have to send everything by by ship by surface mail they've been arriving it takes seven to nine weeks to arrive so about two months to get from tokyo to the destination in the united states and australia so the packages are arriving um and you can send a little bit more weight as well so i'm packing the boxes up a little bit heavier than i would normally i think uh airmail is still going on and apparently these postcards that they just sent are taking um a week to get to the united states so they didn't get to the united states the post is going to be in japan for about six to ten days which is amazing so airmail is back but it's very limited you can send only to the united states letters and postcards uh and i believe the mail situation is always changing every two weeks japan post gives an update and i'm always hoping that the next update will reopen airmail to australia because marty needs his postcards marty i got all of i get like six months of postcards in my apartment by my uh my genkan and by the door there we have multiple postcards so we could unlock all the postcards super fast waiting for you waiting to make its trip to you the other side my last package from Osaka to Toronto Canada was two weeks uh Jonathan Canada's airmail is still going so Canada is fine um United States is only ship and Australia as well still so I'm waiting I always wait until the middle of the month before I send the packages hoping that airmail will restart so I haven't sent the dime meal packages yet for patreon supporters but I will do that probably around the 15th hoping that some update comes that opens up airmail but the packages start to come once a month because they're two months behind so it all it all evens out in the end because once once airmail starts in one month you probably get two packages right so it all kind of balances out in the end but uh the mail situation is hard in the front where I sent the mail uh there's a uh a letter which tells you which countries are accepting mail and which countries are not so that before you put it in the post box you can check to make sure that country is accepting your mail or it can be sent there that's important uh Brenda's here how's your knee actually thanks for asking about that let me gross everybody out here um it's doing better it's still swollen but it's it it needs a little bit more time but it's it's a lot better than it was before sorry for grossing grossing anybody out here it was not it looked so bad three weeks ago when it happened it was so bad yeah I fell in an onsen not the and it was the same day that I took that picture that I just sent on the postcard club background story um I didn't fall in that onsen but I ripped up my butt pretty bad on the rocks in there because it's not it's a raw onsen like a wild onsen so I ripped up my bottom Greg as well we had like it was tough but inside the onsen when we got down to the mainland where the that stream goes down in the picture all the way down to the town um and the onsens there are sometimes slippery underneath there and I'm trying to film and I just slipped and I I tried to save the camera but I came hard down on my knee and uh I think I killed some blood vessels and stuff and that caused some swelling and I don't know it's gonna be a while before I get back to 100 but I'm doing okay.

00:40:45 John Daub: We're doing good now you know the story behind the knee if you want to discuss it you can go on the discord server Jim just shared the link and talk about it uh autumn camping is really good all right folks I gotta go the rain's coming down harder and uh Kanae's hungry but this is the scene from Tokyo Station on a really rainy day with the typhoon coming inbound uh hopefully if you are in Japan a resident here you're okay but starting on the 16th of October you will have access to a rail train which is amazing that's the Narita Express with like nobody on it it's pretty empty yeah stay safe everybody uh wear your masks uh stay positive despite the election and everything else going on in the world we're doing okay I expect Japan travel to come back in 2021 right look try to look at the bright side things that we can control folks out of our control do the best that we can have a good day everybody haha she got them baby.