00:03 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo Station. Right there is a sign that says exactly where I am. And in the distance you can see the Shinkansen. If you look really closely, squint your eyes and look. There it is rolling into Tokyo Station, probably from Osaka. How you doing? Welcome to the state of emergency, the pandemic here in Japan. I haven't been online for about a week or so. I was taking a little bit of a break from YouTube, from live streaming. It feels good, and I think it's important for every creator to just take a step back and recharge a little bit, get enough sleep. Start to think about the plan going forward for 2021. This is going to be a big year. In fact, the next couple of months are going to be huge. And I needed that, as the Yamanote Line just leaves here.

01:00 John Daub: So I want to start off here by saying thank you. Thank you to everybody and those that supported on Patreon. I got this month's postcard out, and this is one of the next episodes coming out. Do you see this? Decorative sushi is a new episode that's coming out. So to Spencer, David, and Nina, I believe, that are supporting in Japan, this is coming to you. Domestic mail. Boom. I just sent out a couple hundred postcards to Patreon supporters from Tokyo Station. They're on the way, as well as the daimyo packages. I'm gonna walk around Tokyo Station and take you over to the other side where they have a countdown to the summer games. I'm kind of curious. I think we can make this green light here. So join me for the next 10-15 minutes, probably like 40, as I talk to you from Tokyo Station, first one back, got a free format.

02:08 John Daub: It's gotten really cold in Tokyo, and the weather in Tokyo is always kind of weird. It's like Washington DC in the sense of temperature. It's not cold like New York City. It doesn't really snow, just like Washington DC. When it does, it's very quick. It'll melt in a day, but it can get really cold. It just doesn't stay super cold for a long time. Hey Toby (crow), by the way. I just sent your other postcard that didn't come. It's on the way with the other one, so they might come at the same time. Where Toby lives, it is pretty cold. Oh, there it is. Okay, I can see the clock straight ahead. It's kind of neat. This is actually my neighborhood. I don't live too far away from Tokyo Station, like a 5-10 minute taxi ride from here because living here has a lot of advantages. I can just get on a Shinkansen really fast and get my way over to a filming job if I see a news story that I want to cover. I can jump on the Shinkansen and get there in a couple of hours. So it's really convenient to live in this part of Tokyo, not Shibuya, not Shinjuku, but near Tokyo Station.

03:24 John Daub: I love this place, and there's a lot of space. This might be one of the safer places in the city of Tokyo to be. Like a lot of these buildings here, that's the Marunouchi Building and the Shin-Marunouchi Building. Both of these are kind of markers for the Marunouchi side. And over there straight ahead is that clock, but over here on the right side, if you were ever looking for a stone to take a picture of, this one right here is a marker for Tokyo Station. Again, this side, Marunouchi, was the first, the oldest side of Tokyo Station, and this marker right here—I don't know if a lot of you can read Japanese characters, Chinese kanji, but this is Tōkyō Eki (Tokyo Station). So a lot of people will take pictures at this rock right here, and above it is the flag of Japan, which is kind of neat. But if you want to get a picture in English of Tokyo Station, probably want to go to the other side. They have signs in English. This is more traditional, so you get the sign in Japanese, but that rock is a lot older. And I'm gonna touch it. I'll touch it right here in this center here so you can come and touch the same spot across here with your fingers. Oh. So do the same thing there. Just don't tweet that. It's kind of creepy.

05:08 John Daub: Let's see what the countdown says here. I learned a lot about this clock last time. I mistook it. Raise your hand if you're excited about the Olympics taking place in 189 days. Raise your hand right now. All right, wake up and love did it. Thank you. I can't see you raise your hand. Click the like button. How about that? It even says there's 189 days, 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 6 seconds. I know a lot of you might not be as excited as me for the opening of the Olympics, but for me, this puts 2020 in the back burner. They should totally rename it to 2021, I think. But for me, it's a time of hope—2020 plus one, or 20-2021 Olympics. I think that'd be pretty cool. But I guess they made so much merchandise that they couldn't do it. On the other side is the Paralympic Games. I thought they should be a little bit clearer, but they actually are. I missed it the last time, but on the top here is the logo for the Paralympics. It's just a little bit different, using the same kind of artistic design, and then tells you the countdown for the Paralympics—221 days, so it's about a month after the Olympics. That's pretty cool.

07:17 John Daub: I don't really care about the commercialization of the Olympics. I just think it's an event with people. The athletes aren't getting paid, so look, I'm on the side of people. I don't want to get too much into the politics. I just try to see the good things—people smiling and having fun with it. This is again the iPhone 12 Pro, so it does look pretty good. I don't know if you can see it, but it's a little bit different. There's some separation, some bokeh—it's pronounced bokeh, not boca. Bokeh, Japanese word. Yeah. So actually let me go into the center here where there's no people. I know how these pandemics work—stay away from all people. That's the goal. Never mind two meters, just stay a hundred meters away. It's not so possible here.

08:21 John Daub: Yeah, I haven't been in contact with anybody really. I put the mail in the mailbox. We're good. So 2020 was such a challenging year for everybody. We know this. I don't have to go over it. Most of the live streams last year were kind of crazy. This year, I'm gonna be trying to travel more. I know that you're not gonna be able to travel, but the mission for 2021 is to take you more outside of the city of Tokyo and show you things that you've never seen before. And that's not gonna happen maybe until the spring, so you're gonna have to bear with me as I do indoor camping and other sorts of live streams to try to make up for not being able to take you on travel. So many trips, but the state of emergency that we're in right now is a really soft one. If you're really curious to know why it's not more powerful, I can explain that to you a little bit. But probably around February or March, I'll be traveling a little bit more, just a little bit and being really safe about it. And then in March and April, I'll be traveling a heck of a lot more. But the stories and the work has to go on. This is my job, and if I can't do it, then I'm not good at my job. Because I know there's a lot of other YouTubers that are out there, and it is a competitive thing. And just because there's a pandemic, you just have to be really careful about it and just go ahead with your daily life as best as you can. If you don't need to go out, then you shouldn't. That's kind of the thing.

09:55 John Daub: And right now, I don't really need to go out. And since this is probably the worst that it's gonna get for the pandemic in Japan, I'm really optimistic. I think that as you can see, and as I pan around here in the state of emergency, there's really not a lot of people. There's nobody around me for 10, 15, 20 meters. And as long as it keeps like this, and people stay home, the situation will just get better and we'll get this under control. And the vaccine will come, and then gradually things will be controlled. But it's gonna take a few more months, if that, and probably still be with us for another year. But look at the bright side—people are listening, people are staying home. Everybody said that it's gonna get worse before it gets better. And if you didn't believe them, you might be shocked. Everybody knows that it's gonna get worse before it gets better because the winter was coming. Australia had a really tough winter and came out of it doing better. But I've lost friends—I haven't lost anybody directly, but friends that I know have lost people. And I know that this is—if you're on the side that this is not that serious—just remember people have lost people as a result of this. This is something where a lot of people are losing their lives.

11:24 John Daub: So for the next couple of weeks, I am staying inside, except for yesterday, which I had to film. But I went to Ueno Station, which is really interesting. There was nobody there—maybe like a few people. I was filming about how they cleaned the stations—JR East access. And we waited on the platform of Ueno Station, JR Utsunomiya Line, to come in. And I was working with one of the staff members, a really good kid. And his job was to clean the train really quickly so it could return back to Utsunomiya. When the train came, there were only three people on the entire train that got off. I was shocked. And in the station, I don't think anybody got on the train, and it went back to Utsunomiya. I think it was maybe one person, the conductor. So as you can tell, just my own personal experience looking at the way Tokyo is reacting now, they're taking it very seriously. And I just have a feeling that infections are going to be going down.

12:39 John Daub: Hey, thanks so much for the support here. Let me go back and read here. King Wang is here—hey King, long time no see, but mainly because I haven't been on. Actually, I could go downstairs and see if that apple juice vending machine is still there. Air to the Ron, I was worried about you, even though I have been seeing your Instagram posts and tweets. Yes, I am on Twitter. There's been some debate since Cobra Kai season three is on and everyone is watching it. No, I don't know Ralph Macchio. I am not Ralph Macchio. I'm not related to Ralph Macchio. And yet in 1984 and onwards, I was teased quite a bit for looking somewhat like him. Now he is older than me, but 10 years ago, I looked like the younger version of him. So now I look like an older version because I have more white hair than black hair right now. But yeah, I'm okay. And Twitter—Twitter was going. A lot of my Twitter followers were discovering this. This is no secret—I look a little bit like the Karate Kid. What are you gonna do?

13:39 John Daub: My friend Ruth, who's been on this show, she goes, "Oh dude, I do think you look like the Karate Kid." And she said, "We all loved him. He was so hot." I said, "Really? I don't know. Okay, I'll take it as a compliment." She's just being nice, but maybe she does. I don't know. Hey, Erwin Roman, I saw that lens, the 35mm f/1.4 G Master. I do know that. I did cancel my FX6 order, which is a cinema camera that I thought would be really useful for this year because I know that there's another camera in the pipeline that I shouldn't tell anybody about that is shooting 8K 30p that's coming out probably really soon. I might have heard a little bit about that. And thank you, Dandy Carling, for following me on Twitter. I just saw that. It's weird. Oh, this is the first live stream of 2021. It's all good.

14:39 John Daub: David Lee, welcome back. The Hedge Monka, thank you. John Wakamatsu, hi from Hell LA, and my wife living in Setagaya, which is that way. Yeah. And Jesse Allen, welcome to being a new traveler. Got some new emoji coming on. Swift TX Miles, hope everyone is staying safe in Tokyo. They are—looks pretty good. Appreciate all that. Journey Trials and Joy, do you think there will be restrictions on international travel like quarantine for 14 days by summer or fall next year? Will the Olympics happen? So I've been on the record saying that they will happen, and it's only really—we don't know until March. And they said that the ex-Prime Minister Mori, who's on the Olympic committee, said the latest they could cancel. But with all the contracts and things going on, I do not think they're going to cancel. Just because to cancel, they would lose even more money. And look, the economy and what is left after this pandemic is very important to the country of Japan and the city of Tokyo. Forget NBC and everybody else. For Japan, even if there's not tourism coming in, the city has to honor those contracts. And you can't really take a complete loss on this. This is a very important fact that the money came in from the city of Tokyo, and the majority of the money came from tax dollars. So we have to somehow domestically enjoy these games with a limited amount of tourism, depending on if you have the vaccine or not. They're going to come up with a way to make this happen. It's not going to be the same—absolutely not the same as if this pandemic had not happened. You cannot ignore it, but it's going to happen.

17:16 John Daub: Bill Gates took a little bit of heat because sometimes we have too many conspiracy theories. Maybe we don't—I'm not sure. This is just my opinion—too many conspiracy theories on capitalism, and everybody's motive is just to make money. My motives to do Only in Japan Go came out of me being lonely and not having a way to connect with my viewers. And this is a way to do it better because I just love doing these live streams. I do not think the Gates Foundation is doing this. I think he's doing it more for a legacy thing. I don't know why, but he talked with Prime Minister Suga, and I only see the positives in this—to make sure that if we do hold the 2020 Games, people in developing countries get vaccinated. And this is the secret to making a successful 2020-2021 Games. Everybody has to be vaccinated. All the athletes in developing countries need to be vaccinated and be able to train so they are at a competitive level as the United States and other developed countries. I thought this is a great thing. And so many people were criticizing me on Twitter—when I say so many, I think just like two—that Bill Gates' foundation is gonna make money and all this. And I said, how could this be a bad thing? I don't think he's gonna be making money off of this. His foundation is a—maybe a little bit—but doing the right thing, you should get some money off of it. Come on. All I know is that he's doing a pretty good job of helping developing countries with water and finding ways to innovate the toilet and things like this.

18:22 John Daub: So hey, you know, I do think the Olympics are gonna take place, and I think that it's gonna have to do with the vaccine—not in America, but in developing countries. And that's going to tell the tale of the 2020-2021 Olympics. Will countries in Africa, will countries in Asia who are going to be competing, get that vaccine and will they be able to train? That's the story right now. Japan will not have the vaccine until the end of February. And for the life of me, I can't quite understand why, except that maybe they're prioritizing Japan Inc. I don't know. Maybe they want Japanese companies to be competitive. But Japan just doesn't have a way to make vaccines like they do in the West or like in China because they stopped doing that about 10-15 years ago, I believe. So I'm not sure if that's the case. I don't know how Japan Inc. can get money on it, but I do not think that's the reason. I just think that they are Japan being Japan, and they're always a little bit scared or want to make sure that there's no risk—not just 5%, but 0%. That's sort of the Japanese way. So I kind of look at it in a positive way. Yeah, all right, let's go for a little walkabout here. Sorry to answer that question a long roundabout way. I'm going to go ahead and go to the next question.

19:48 John Daub: Toro Toro Porco, thanks for the live stream. You're very welcome. Thanks back, thank you for coming back. Camshaft got the vaccine yesterday. Journey Trials and Joy, yeah, I hope that you guys do it soon. Would love to travel Japan one day. Maybe can get it pushed back to 2022? I don't think so. I don't think that they're going to push back the Olympics to 2022. I don't see the advantages. There's too many contracts. There are things that are locked in because of it. Because the Olympics are such a big event, there's just too much on the line. And in my opinion, yeah, do 2022, but I know that's impossible because of the contracts and stuff like this. And the athletes are going to be a year older, so I want these athletes to be able to compete now while they're this age. And they might not be able to train the same, but that's the challenge of being in a pandemic, you know.

20:52 John Daub: Straight ahead, and this really long walkway is between Marunouchi and the Imperial Palace—that's where the Emperor lives, like those trees in the distance there. A lot of wedding pictures will be taken right here. In fact, my sister's wedding picture, I took the wedding pictures right there with Tokyo Station in the background. It's really beautiful. You got the Japanese flag flying here, so it's a pretty good shot. This is the central business district, I would call it. You can see a lot of international financial institutions. Citibank, before they went bust in Japan, had a big skyscraper over there. A lot of other financial institutions. Japan's tallest building—the what is it called? The Torch Tower. I forget the fire tower or something. It's going to be right there, and it's going to be the highest building by far in Japan. It's like 400 meters or something. It's not quite as high as the Sky Tree, but for buildings in Japan in an earthquake zone, it's gonna be massively huge. And that's coming. We'll start to see the building of it, I guess, in a couple of years. I think maybe they will see the foundation. I do see some cranes in the distance. I don't know if that could be it. Do you see right there the Tokyo Torch?

22:56 John Daub: It is very, very empty here, and I'm staying pretty far away from people just because it is a pandemic. And I'm gonna do more live streams from inside the house in 2021. I do like how the iPhone 12 Pro is handling the flicker. I've noticed that I almost never get flickers anymore because the 12 Pro is handling it, doing a really good job. Do you see that? You can see it's this bus is going to Tokyo Tower. So it was a good upgrade to get the 12 Pro. But I don't have a 5G plan from Docomo yet, so we're going to switch that over this month and see if we can get some 5G live streams. I don't think it's going to make a big difference because Only in Japan Go live streams are through the YouTube app, which is sort of prehistoric feeling. It hasn't really changed much in the interface in like five years. I still have to wait three seconds to take a thumbnail picture, which is ridiculous because YouTube says to use really good thumbnails for your videos. And yet how do you do that with a three-second selfie shot? It's just ridiculous that they don't change that or allow me to upload my own right away. Why do I have to go through their little timer process? I've already told them. They know.

24:36 John Daub: From up there, you can go up here and you have an amazing shot looking back at Tokyo Station. There's nobody up there. I think we can make this. The flashy light means run, run. That's one of those fuel cell buses. Imagine if Keanu Reeves had this bus for Speed. Sandra Bullock—they should totally do Speed 3, you know? Keanu Reeves should do this for the Tokyo fuel cell bus. I get the music in my head, but yet I don't remember how it goes. I can remember the Speed music, but I don't remember exactly how it went, so I can't make a mock-up of it. It's just a very bus. You know, bus drifting would be pretty cool. This is always a marker of people social distancing—how is Apple doing it? And they do it like this, so you have to have an appointment.

26:23 John Daub: JR Hodes writes in here: "John, you should go up to the outer viewing platform in the mall." Uh, you are walking towards the one a little left to your left. I've been up there like a dozen times, and right now I'm just trying to stay away from people. But I'm pretty sure I'll be up there again. I'm trying not to go inside anywhere—wife's orders. But that's the Marunouchi Building, and that's a pretty good platform. In fact, I did the 360 video on the old channel a long time ago. I filmed from up there, and there's some trees up there on the seventh floor, I believe. Yeah. I do have a couple of live streams I'm going to tell you. Okay, tomorrow, I have to do a seminar for JNTO, Japan National Tourism Organization, around three o'clock. But tomorrow night or tomorrow morning or sometime, I'm gonna be doing a live stream. And I got a Lego bonsai tree, so I'm gonna put together this Lego bonsai tree in a live stream with Kanae Daub, maybe, and see how long it takes us to make a bonsai tree out of Legos. And it's pretty weird. And you know what? The Lego bonsai tree inside of it, you can replace the green bonsai leaves with sakura leaves made out of Legos. And I think it's gonna be pretty cool to do this. I'm really interested to see because I wanted a bonsai tree, and I bought one with my friend Dean Newcomb at Mount Fuji a month ago, last in December. And I wanted to get another bonsai tree, but I saw this Lego one. I thought this would be perfect for a live stream. So we're gonna try to put the Lego bonsai tree together and see if it looks like a real bonsai tree. I don't know, but I get an idea that Lego is going to do a pretty good job with this. I'm trying to think outside the box. So I bought some Legos—grown man playing with Legos. And you'll be surprised, there's a lot of us out there. Lego freaks. I don't know what you call them—Legonians? Lego people? I guess you call them Danish. I don't know. I think it's a Denmark thing.

29:02 John Daub: All right, if you have any questions, leave them below. Joy, I don't know what you call them—Legonians, I guess. We're gonna call them that. Dr. Hodes, it's the one you are next to now. Oh, I guess you can go up here. This is the post office building—Keep Day, it's what it's called. I guess you can go up here, but I'm not today. I'm gonna let the pandemic fizzle out a little bit. Hey, Eric, how you doing? The Hedge Monka writes in here: "Can you explore island with no people during lockdown?" No, I can't get there. And if there's no people, how do I get there? I have to go outside to get there. What island? Can you tell me an island? There's a Setagaya Park here in Tokyo that's actually pretty cool. How did I miss that? I've been to a lot of parks in Tokyo. I haven't been to the Setagaya one. Do you think there will be restrictions on international travel like quarantine for 14 days by summer? I don't think so. I think that the vaccine is going and testing. But I don't want to talk too much about this because we're all kind of tired of hearing about the pandemic and all this stuff. I'll say this: rapid testing and the vaccine and better weather probably are going to be some of the keys to international travel. Rapid testing and the vaccine because even if you do have the vaccine, people are getting sick twice. So we don't know how potent it is yet. And even Indonesia, which is starting to get the Sinovac, the Chinese vaccine, which only has an effectiveness of, what, 75%? Indonesia has the highest rate, I believe, in Asia but outside of India. And they need that vaccine, so they're taking the one from China.

31:31 John Daub: And I do think that these vaccines and how they get out to developing countries—and in my mind, I always see Indonesia as a developed country because it's so beautiful. This vaccine has to get out to everybody. It doesn't matter if it's made by the Sputnik one from Russia or the one from China or Moderna. People have to get vaccinated in order for the Olympics, international travel to come back, and for me to travel back home to the United States so I can hang out with family again. It's gonna really depend on this. Which Olympic sport is my favorite? I don't know—skateboarding right now because that's going to be in the 2020 Olympics. Skateboarding. Michael Harold, a drink—get a drink after the run. You got it, Eric.

32:25 John Daub: Hanamaru in Kite, I wonder how they're doing. Many of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles have permanently closed. I can't take a quick look. I am here on the other side. There's a list of the restaurants. I always try to end the live streams on time, but these are really good questions. All right, let's walk through to the other side. Oh, we know there's a map right there. Okay, peso, don't remind me. I know I'm trying my best here. I got a lot to say. It's been a long time. I've been off for a week. It's a lot of time passed. Where's the restaurant? There's nothing there. I mean, there's kids inside, but trying not to go inside. All right, let's do this. Do you see it here? See if they're still in business. I'm looking—Marunouchi Cafe, the cafe. I don't see it. There's the Okinawa restaurant. That's still in business. That's interesting. Marunouchi reading style—Miyazaki ryori cuisine from Miyazaki. Oh, jidori—looks so good. Yes, please. I think it might be gone or it's just changed hands unless you see it here. Yeah, Raymond Centeno saw it. Okay, I don't think anything has gone out of business, but maybe some new restaurants have opened since then. Some new places have opened up.

34:53 John Daub: Nightbot is on. Mr. Miser, old miser talking politics—Nightbot will get you. That's kind of creepy. Yeah, we do have some Only in Japan emoji. I'd like to see if YouTube will let me add some stickers, but I know that they're trying to find new ways to add to the experience of live streaming. And on one side, YouTube's done a really good job. On the other side, YouTube app is so ancient with mobile live streaming. I think 2021 and 5G will help change them. I don't know. Fingers crossed because I like to cross it three times. It's painful. I do think that for YouTube for mobile live streaming to get to the next level, YouTube has to really fix this app and make it cooler because it's so bad compared to other apps. And if my phone has the Pro 6 gigs of RAM and has a processor this powerful like the M1 chip and stuff, these phones are capable of doing so much more. And it's up to YouTube to utilize this platform because I want you to have more value out of these live streams. I want the quality to be better. I want it to be more interactive. In order for that to happen, YouTube has to make this platform stronger or add those tools that are capable to make it cool. Right? I don't know. That's just my point of view. I'm using the iPhone 12 Pro. I didn't get the Max because I did not see any difference in quality because of the bigger phone. It just doesn't work on gimbals better, and it doesn't fit in my pocket. So why get it? Why get it? I love these taxis though. I got a Tomica of this as well as a postal truck, and I started collecting little Tomica of Japanese cars. It's pretty cool.

37:00 John Daub: I could do a live stream of this, but I don't know if I can do it in a live stream on a flip phone. I still use my flip phone sometimes for videos because I want that Betamax quality of the video. And gives you like this really raw, grainy feel to it. If you use a flip phone camera, it's like not even 720p, but it's widescreen. I don't know what it was—576p or something—but gives you a really grainy video. And you'd stretch that out into an HD timeline, which has a kind of unique use. You can use filters and stuff, but it's always better to use like the original. So I have an old LG phone from 2009, and I have the first video phone in Japan by Docomo from 2001, I think. That has a pretty unique look to it that you can't get. And it takes SD cards, so it's kind of neat. Flip phones are still useful because in general in Japan, people still use flip phones.

38:19 John Daub: Hey, there go Good 95. A yes, that's true. I'm alive. The sun's going down, and I got a lot to edit. I got a new episode coming. I've been saying that for a while, but it has to be perfect. A lot of the packages arriving in Germany, by the way, from the Kickstarter—fireworks project. So that's good news. The Japan Fireworks Association sent those by sea mail in November, and they're just starting to arrive in Germany and Australia. They've arrived, and I believe they'll make it to the US next week. Just, it could be longer. I'm not sure, but I do know that they are arriving, which is good news.

39:03 John Daub: All right, everybody's getting on his bike here. Peso time—39 minutes. It's not bad. All right, everybody, have a good day, have a good night. WRX Turbo, I see you're in the house. Thanks so much. I'll be back maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I'm gonna do some indoor camping, but I do have a Lego bonsai tree. It'll be a lot of fun. Stay safe, everybody. Have fun as much as you can at home. See you on Discord.