00:00:09 John Daub: Wow. Welcome to a Japanese hotel room. This is the Toei Yuzawa Hotel, not too far away from Echigo-Yuzawa station. So I thought it would give you a tour of the room I'm gonna be staying in. Again, all the rooms have what is called a genkan (entryway). It's just kind of a step, so these slippers you can walk around the hotel with. Leave your shoes right there. If there's ever a step in any Japanese room, it means take off your shoes. Hotel rooms always have the escape plan right there on the back of the door.

00:00:48 John Daub: The bathroom's right here, but before we get into that, why don't we just go straight into the main room? I wish I could go wider than this, but this is the tatami room. Again, like you have a door. This is actually quite a very spacious room before the Japanese room. It's not a kitchenette or anything. There's a refrigerator there, but the tatami room—you see you got the paper sliding shoji doors (paper screen doors). These aren't paper; they're more like plywood or something, but the tatami is always so nice. And this is quite a large room for one person.

00:01:31 John Daub: I'm gonna show you the view out the window, which is incredible. There's like a whiteout going on right now, a lot of snow falling. In a Japanese room, you'll see this and the first thing you notice is, hey, where's the bed? Okay, and the bed is a futon. Actually, the staff will come in and put this table—they'll move this table to the side. Once I get settled, they'll move the table to the side and then put the futon right in the middle of the room. So that's kind of a really convenient service that they do in Japanese-style rooms. This means more work for the hotel staff, but it's kind of neat. That's why there's no bed here; that's where the table is. They'll put it out in the evening. However, after this live stream, I'm kind of tired and I'm probably gonna take an afternoon nap and edit some videos after that.

00:02:24 John Daub: Let me show you inside the closet. Boom, there you go. There's the Japanese futon here, here's the cushions—that's the futon that would go underneath it. They have some cushions there and then I think they put a sheet over it, and then this will be the cover like the comforter. It usually gets quite cold in the winter. You can set it up yourself if you want or they'll set it up for you later in the evening, or you could actually call the desk and ask them to set it up for you. The table is for two. There's always a complimentary snack in the middle—I've always had that in the middle. There's always hot water too, so you can make your own tea. And on the floor here next to the table is a set—usually you'll have like a towel in case you spill something or you want to wipe up something. And then down here you'll have the complimentary set to make tea. This one is not actually green tea or matcha; it's just like a powdered version. Each hotel is different, so that's kind of nice.

00:03:35 John Daub: I'll get that later and I love this too. Usually in Japanese rooms you'll have another room inside, like a little lounge room. You'll have a little lounge area that you could sit in. Here we have these shoji paper doors—you can see it's made from the paper, so be careful, don't touch it. I usually just only touch the wood here. There's actually a handle in them right here which helps you get it out. Just the view—hold on a second. Inside the closet, the one closet will have the futon in there and the other one will have everything else. So you'll notice in the bathroom when I take you there last, you won't have a toothbrush inside there. In Japanese hotels, usually they put them all together as a set. This is a towel for the bath; the bath is public. There's my toothbrush right there too, and then they give you a bath towel and a yukata (light cotton kimono). The yukata you can wear around the hotel as well.

00:04:40 John Daub: So I'll probably go to dinner in the yukata. If they don't have your size—which they almost never do—I need an XL or LL size; you can call the front desk and they'll bring it up to you. Usually they have small, medium, and large, not an LL. Here's a medium size. Yeah, they don't have my size and it's always embarrassing to walk around. Okay, here's the large size. I need the special large sometimes, and then here's a cover for the yukata to keep you warm, like a little bit of a jacket. I don't know if I'd call this a yukata—I guess so. I'm opening up the window. Oh, it's cold. Let it snow. Kabbalah knows—it's called the special large. It's really—we got large and then there's a special LL, you know, it's really funny. You see the snow is falling right now. About two minutes ago it was sunny. That's really what's unique about being in the mountains here. I guess this is sort of the fringe of the Japanese Alps. It's one moment it's so sunny and it stopped snowing, and then the next moment it's like a whiteout. Look at that. It's very pretty in the distance. I guess you can sort of see it. That's the Shinkansen line right there—that'll take you to Niigata. This is on the Joetsu Shinkansen line.

00:06:21 John Daub: But it's a pretty nice view. It was even better when you could see; I took a couple of photos—I'll put them on Instagram. I'm kind of upset that the snow is actually falling because you could see all the way to the mountains and now I can't see much of anything. Is it rude to bring your own yukata? That's a great question. Actually, it's not rude. I think it's just not something that people do. I've never seen anybody do that. So I think if you were to ask somebody Japanese, "Is it rude?" they probably wouldn't understand the question. And you can see there's the Shinkansen going by—the Toki Shinkansen, Joetsu, that's a double-decker Shinkansen. I don't think it's rude. I think it's just not something that people ask about. So if you do bring your own yukata, I don't think you're gonna be a little bit weird because everybody looks the same—they have the hotel yukata. One reason why you wouldn't want to do that is because the yukata that you wear is associated with your hotel, so it lets the staff know that you're actually staying here. So if you do walk around the hotel in a different yukata, they might think you're in the wrong hotel, if that makes any sense.

00:07:36 John Daub: So no spiders—spiders can't survive this. Okay, somebody knows that I'm scared of—look at the Christmas tree. I bet you this is somebody's Christmas tree a hundred years ago, and it just kept growing. That's a big Christmas tree. Very nice. Champagne sumo. Have you been to any of the haunted hotels in Yuzawa? They actually—there's not a lot of people staying here. Let me just show you the view one more time. Oh, we got upflow. The snow is coming from above, from lower levels up. It's like an updraft. It's pretty cool. I think in a couple of minutes the weather might change again.

00:08:40 John Daub: Alright, let's sit down and now I want to answer some of these questions because they're quite good ones, and I'm gonna try the snack that's on the table. The good thing about being finally in the room is that I can take off my mask because this is sort of a tour and I have not met any of the other people on this tour. My eyes are from the pollen in Tokyo—my eyes have been really droopy over the last few weeks because of the pollen. Everybody's wearing a mask and they're being very good about it too. The staff said to some people, "When you talk, please put on your mask," and everybody was following the protocols, which is very good. But in the hotel room, of course, you're by yourself so you don't have to have your mask on.

00:09:38 John Daub: The snack on the table here is interesting. It's not what I would think—I thought it would be like a manju or something like a Japanese traditional snack. This is a Royal Waffle Cookie. What? So weird. "Experiencing deliciousness made me a slave to taste." I think the use of "slave" is kind of a weird thing to put with a cookie. But you have to—if it was perfect, there would be something completely wrong with that. Has to be a little bit weird. All right, let's give it a try. I still have to show you the bathroom. Is it a waffle or a cookie? It's a waffle cookie. Wow, that does look really good. You know what would go good with this? Strawberries. I have a whole thing of strawberries in there. It smells like coconut.

00:10:47 John Daub: Spike021 writes in here: warm up with the beer later if you can get one. I'm going to try to get one. Tonight, I'm going to do another Q&A. If you're an Insider or a Traveler on the Only in Japan Go channel here, or a Patreon supporter too, you'll have access to a special live stream. So I'm going to do a live stream tonight in a yukata for our members here because I really appreciate you guys coming along with me. Let's give this Royal Waffle Cookie a try. It's pretty good. I think they use coconut oil a little bit. No, it's a cookie. It's not a waffle. Or is it? Very confusing. If there were two people staying here, they would have two cookies. And if you stay here for another day, they'll clean the room a little bit and then they'll put a new one—most likely you'll get like a refill. The reason why is because they want you to like these cookies or the snack that they have. It's made by the hotel and you can go down and buy it down in the lobby. So they give it to you in your room as a service to try. And when you check out, I'd say like half of the people—no, a good number of the people end up buying some of the snacks because it's what they remember from the hotel. It's kind of neat, right? It's smart. So I might get one of these to take back home.

00:12:32 John Daub: Today was a really interesting day. I think those of you that are following me on Instagram have been following this trip too, so it fills in the blanks between the YouTube live streams and this trip. A lot of it is on Instagram stories, and some of it I'm starting to put on YouTube stories. So I came here this morning—I left at 7:48 a.m. and got here to Yuzawa at 9:08, I think. So it was about an hour and a half train ride to get here. The interesting thing was that there's like, between Tokyo and Niigata, there is a mountain, okay? And there's a tunnel, like around Maebashi, which is the capital of Gunma Prefecture. It's about an hour away from Tokyo, maybe like 40, 50 minutes. So you get to Maebashi, no snow, kind of warm. And then you go through a tunnel and you get on the other side of the tunnel—completely like a different world. It's like Mikuni. Mikuni is a ski resort in Niigata. It's like going through a different world. Literally on the other side of the tunnel, on the other side of the railroad tracks, snow paradise. It's amazing, the change from tunnel to tunnel on the other side of the mountain range, sunny weather, total winter. It was bizarre. It really is from Gunma to Niigata, like going into another world.

00:14:09 John Daub: Now, if you get back to the Sea of Japan side, which is not that far away from Yuzawa, you start to get flat out again and it's not as cold because we are at elevation. Pretty interesting, right? Now, this Yuzawa is actually known as a ski resort. There's a TV here. Let's look at the book. It's a non-smoking room. There is free Wi-Fi—I'm actually live streaming off of their Wi-Fi. Check-in, check-out by 10 a.m. Yeah, and there's an open bath. Look at that: second floor public bath and open-air bath, midnight to 5 a.m.—it's closed. Oh, 10 p.m. to 12:30—it's closed. It's a little confusing. There's a sauna, whoa, from 3 to 10. So this is nice. Again, this is famous as a ski resort, so people when they come back from skiing want to really relax. You know, they want to soak in a hot bath.

00:15:16 John Daub: The fridge doesn't have anything in there, but usually people who come here will bring their own beer and drinks and stuff. But there is a vending machine for drinks and you can get some of the... Is there any glasses? People will come with glasses. I think this is more set for families where you can go out and drink inside the room. Here's the bathroom. It's a little bit older of a hotel room, but that's nothing against it. And there's usually a shower in these rooms, despite the fact that I'd say 95% of the people don't ever use this. Okay, you have it, but 95% of the people probably use the public bath because it's nicer, it's cleaner, it's better. I mean, this is clean, but it's just the public bath is more used. So it's a lot more, I don't know, better. That's the only word I can think of. But I've taken a bath in here if I was just tired and I didn't want to leave the room—that's when you would use the bath here. But for the most part, people do not use the bath if there's an onsen.

00:16:27 John Daub: The toilet slippers, because the floor is sometimes dirty. And right now I don't have slippers, so you can leave your normal slippers on the outside, use your toilet slippers on the inside. Do not wear the toilet slippers out into the room—leave your toilet slippers in the toilet. Just telling you because I've made that mistake before. And I like these older toilets because they have the sink on the top of it like this, so you can wash your hands there. It's a good use of water, right? Reuse that water—that's the same water that's going into the tank.

00:17:07 John Daub: All right, let's take a look at the view here. Maybe it's cleared up a little bit. Not really. Really? I thought it was going to be a little bit better than this. Neta knocks writes in here: I've never seen a sink on a toilet before. I didn't before I came to Japan too, but it is a pretty good idea. It makes you wonder why they didn't do that before. I was thinking I don't actually have access to go and film at the bath here. This isn't the purpose why I'm here, and this is just kind of a bonus live stream. But all of this is a stream down there—do you see that? I found where that sound was coming from through the snow. You can see a stream going by, and the reason why that's not frozen solid is because it's probably onsen water, hot spring water, so it never really freezes. It's got a slight smell of sulfur in the air—slight, it's not as bad here. And you got this—every onsen town has a different mineral content.

00:18:20 John Daub: Temperature of the room is room temperature—it's pretty normal, like maybe 20, 25 degrees inside, 24. Hey, Adam Allen's here. What animes have you watched or watch any animes? Not too many. All I know is that my friends make anime—D'Art Stagio. And they made the animated opening for my new channel. They did a really good job with it. They can do Ghibli-looking stuff and they can do—I think they were actually working on a One Piece and Dragon Ball Z anime, which is amazing, right? I think they're doing something for Netflix as well. They got so many projects going on. I don't watch too much anime, but I did learn Japanese from anime. Sazae-san was one of the best anime that I watched where I could learn Japanese, everyday Japanese culture. Sazae-san is a pretty good one. It's not, you know, as popular as like One Piece and Dragon Ball Z, which are actually from manga. But there's some good anime. Demon Slayer is really good—Kanae has me watching that.

00:19:32 John Daub: It's about 4:30 p.m. right now. The one thing that you do have to consider when you do stay in a Japanese room—this is something that I forgot—bring your own coffee if you like coffee in the morning. They usually do not have it. They're a little bit more now, so you want to get—they have this drip coffee thing. So you do have a hot water maker—there's a hot water maker in every room in Japan. But if you bring—go to the supermarket, get some of those drip coffee filters and then you'll have hot coffee in the morning and it makes your room smell really nice. Sometimes they have a convenience store nearby, but quite often they don't. And in those kinds of situations, you're like no coffee for a few days—suck on the green tea, which is fine because I'm trying to switch to green tea anyway. Any questions? Any questions before I end this live stream? I think this is kind of neat to get a look inside of the room.

00:20:35 John Daub: Combini run would be nice. I don't think I'm going to do a midnight snack run because I think this place is shut down by 6 p.m.—I think they're closed pretty early. There's not a lot of people traveling right now. Good morning from Germany. Kettle—you can call it a kettle. I mean, does it look like a kettle to me? You know, just it's a hot water maker, I guess. I don't know—a kettle has to be made of metal. Kettle deserves the title of kettle. One thing I do want to share with you—it is like a blizzard out there. Maybe you get a kettle in some rooms.

00:21:19 John Daub: I've been talking with a lot of local people and some of the questions that I ask them—the one question I ask them, well, the first one is how you doing? Because this is a place that does rely on tourism, and they say that they're doing well but you can see in their eyes that things are really tough. And then I asked them: do you want foreign tourists to actually come here? Do you—if you could start tourism now despite the risks—do you want tourists to come here? That's what I asked people point-blank, five, six people—six people that I asked, business owners—they all said yes. The hotel said yes: "We don't care, we want people. We'll take precautions." Like I took a rapid COVID test and came up negative. Says we will test—you know, people are testing more rapidly now. People's temperatures are going up and people are going down—there's temperature checks, there's lots of precautions, everyone's wearing a mask, there are partitions now. They just can't make a living and a lot of the hotels and a lot of the businesses are really worried that they might not make it through this winter and spring if they don't get some sort of uptick right now. Osaka and a couple other prefectures are lobbying the national government to lift the state of emergency so domestic travel can start again because so many businesses are hurting. I could see in the eyes of the business owners that I was talking to—they were so appreciative of the people that came here, the other foreigners that are here—actually live here in Niigata. They are like in the JET program, ALTs, just locals that are living here. And I was invited in from Tokyo after I had to take a PCR test—the result came back negative, of course—and I was able to get on the train this morning and make the trip out here on an invitation.

00:23:33 John Daub: I do look tired because the pollen is so bad in Tokyo—I can't sleep that much, despite the fact that we have an air purifier. This is actually really refreshing to me to be away from the city of Tokyo and have some no-pollen-in-the-air air, so maybe I'll get a good night's sleep. It's not because I left Kanae for a day—it's because there's no pollen in the air. How dare you? Somebody must have said that. Love from India, my man. Thank you, Alan. Much love to you and everybody in India because that's where my family on my mom's side is from. Mr. Das. Mr. Das. Okay, you know what? I'm going to get... I owe Mr. Das a beer. I don't know where the vending machine is—I'm going to get one tonight, okay, Mr. Das? I don't know if you're on a Samurai member on Patreon or something, but I'll have the beer tonight, okay? I'll be doing something tonight. I will get one in your honor in Yuzawa, Mr. Das. I'm not driving the Shinkansen. Get coffee—I don't want coffee; I actually want to take a nap. There's no room service. There's no room service—is there? Hold on, is there room service?

00:24:59 John Daub: Hey, WRX Turbo's here. Nice to see you. Mr. Das didn't even have to say beer—he just says, "Are you driving?" We know what he means. Actually, Mr. Das, my mom knows who you are because I always talk... I always mention you. My mom says, "How is Mr. Das?" I'm not joking. I said, "Did Mr. Das come in? Why do you know his name, mom?" Weird. Okay, well guess what? There's not room service, but there's stuff. Wow, this is... What kind of dango is this? Sasa dango? Sasa dango. Oh, I love these—these are so good. This is not green tea; they're green—that green mochi, it's green from mugwort. So it's very healthy. You can get a bag of it on sale. Hey, it's down in the lobby. And you can get some salmon—that looks pretty good. Niigata has really good fish. This is the mountain, but they still have it here. I do have a coffee, actually—it's in my pocket. I was given this when I got in the car to keep me warm—a hot can of coffee, but it's not warm anymore. So here's what's—video on demand, room service, hotel service directory, checkout, room key, overseas calls—nothing. No menu. No, there's no menu. Dinner time's at 6:30.

00:27:08 John Daub: Okay, I got something I can show you. Somebody saw Deadpool. Pan down. This is the layout of the hotel—it's pretty nice. Oh, here it is. So this is a guide on how to enjoy the onsen. All right. Number one: take off your clothes in the changing room. Number two: bring only the small towel into the bathing area—so leave your big towel behind. Number three: wash your body before entering the bath. Please sit on the stool while showering your body. Number four: relax and enjoy bathing. Do not put towel in the bath. Long hair should be tied up and avoid soaking in the water. Dry off your body as much as possible with a small towel before returning to the changing room. That's true—after you get to the bath, you want to dry off a little bit before you go to the changing room after you've been soaking. And then number six: dry yourself thoroughly in the changing room and put your clothes on. I love the infograph of naked people running around—that's so funny. Do not run. No running. That dude's got a smile on his face. That's kind of funny. He's like, yeah, I'm going to run. I think he's going too fast—he's going to smash into the wall. Why would he run right to the wall at that speed? They should have put him back like at least a step behind—he can't stop himself. He's going to crack. There's no way he stops himself before he hits the wall.

00:29:22 John Daub: Carrie's laughing. Carrie, am I wrong? He's going full speed into the wall. Why would he do that? Or he's going full speed into his friend who's sunning himself—that's so wrong. I don't know—they should have had him running into the bath or something, not towards the wall. What is the thing? Do not enter the dressing room with your wet body—that's this picture here. This is one that some people do quite a bit—they'll take a shower standing in the onsen bath. And they're usually first-timers; they don't want to sit. But you have to sit when you take a shower, and the idea is you're kind of close to the next person, so you don't want to splash them—you just have to be careful. So that's why you don't do it. If there's nobody there, then you can do it. And know that X is not covering up something—that means don't do it. Moreover, no swimming—I know it's tempting, but don't start doing laps in there. Don't take photos—that seems like a no-brainer, but I've seen people do that, including myself. But I get permission—if you do want to take photos, you can ask management. But before they clean, sometimes they'll give you permission. But I usually call in advance and get permission from the owner, and then they'll let me film at certain times. They'll ask me, "Please come back at midnight," and then I'll film that. Do not wash clothes—this is referring, I think, to some nationalities. I don't know anybody from the U.S. that would come in here and do laundry in the bath. Do not put your towel in the bath. That's also—do not wash clothes. My aunt might do it, actually.

00:30:36 John Daub: So that's kind of neat information. No room service. No, you don't do laundry at all. You usually will bring a change of clothes with you. However, sometimes in the shower room they have a rope that you can extend, and then you can dry stuff on there like towels and things. You can wash stuff in your shower if you want to. I've washed socks before or a t-shirt before if I forgot to bring a change of clothes. But you know, you don't really do your laundry when you come out for a weekend trip.

00:31:13 John Daub: Yeah, so like the last thing I just had to say, and I mentioned it before, was that the businesses here in Yuzawa and all around Japan—and I've been traveling during this state of emergency on invitations after taking PCR tests—and they all say that they want tourism to continue. I think if you're not in the tourist industry, you probably don't want to do that. But people are hurting pretty badly, and I'm actually really happy that I did make this trip and I can kind of shine a light on it. The Yukimuro topic, which is what I was invited here to cover with the Japanese media—the reason why they're promoting it now is because they want to get a head start on it. It's winter now. They know that international tourism is not going to be here, but the word "Yukimuro" (snow room) is not something that a lot of people know about. I think it's really smart of them to get a head start on it. I just wanted to come simply because I was fascinated by this. Yukimuro changes—they say it changes the taste of the food. The problem was they didn't have any food that was not in the Yukimuro, so it was not—it was different. I put some pictures of the food on Instagram stories if you want to check that out.

00:32:35 John Daub: Can you moro? I don't even know what that means—and I probably said a bad word. I don't know. Yeah, there's a media scrum—I got interviewed for like three papers. All right, so I'm going to be in the newspaper and they took my picture while I was cutting strawberries. So I cut strawberries like this—I'd cut it and just for the photo. I don't think they're going to use that picture. So I'd be like focusing and you can just feel the photographer behind you. So cut it, take the strawberry. I'm one of the people who can't take a natural photo—like it always comes out with a stupid smile or something. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Mr. Dob? Where you from, my mother? They always tell people that—to be smart aleck from the United States, from United States. Gman threefold—thank you. I do need a cup of coffee—I could use a hot drink actually. I think I'm gonna take a—first nap time. I didn't sleep very well at all last night. First couple of up tours—I went on, interviewed by the media. It was fun. Japanese are very curious about what you're doing here—where are you from? And a lot of the interview questions were like that. But because I could speak a little bit of Japanese, some of the questions more in-depth: what did you think of the food, and you know, what do you like about Yuzawa? What do you like about me? You got that. This is like maybe my 30th time to be in Yuzawa because I just come here a lot for onsen or for other video shoots or just a quick—Echigo-Yuzawa Station has an onsen bath inside of it and has really good sake in this area. Very good—excellent rice, excellent water. I did a Japanese sake episode for NHK here in Yuzawa as well. It's a lot of breweries here in Yuzawa.

00:34:25 John Daub: Why are you staying in Japan though? It is prone calamities. I'm not staying here—I live here. I've been living here for 23 years. This is my home. Crack the window—sound of creek will help you sleep. That is good. And then crack of the window will freeze me to death because it's like minus 5 degrees—put that out there, but I will crack the window. Maybe I'll just close the paper doors—I could do something I do. I can't change the exposure. There you go. Everybody good questions. John's going to take a nap here. Tomorrow morning—again tonight I'll have a Q&A for our Insiders and Travelers and Patreon supporters, and here in the room and you caught up. I'll talk a little bit about the bath, and tomorrow morning I'm going to have a breakfast and then we're going to do some snow hiking or snow walking and then we go to a mushroom farm. I think they use the Yukimuro again, but it's a traditional one tomorrow. So today you saw what looked like a trailer—tomorrow we're going to see a traditional Yukimuro where they put like—I guess mushrooms inside of there. I'm not quite sure—I'm curious about this one. So that's also going to be tomorrow and then they take me to the station and I go back to Tokyo where I finish off a Kickstarter fireworks project. Pretty exciting. I'm just really grateful that work is still continuing and I'm still able to travel here in Japan around Japan and bring you stories. It's so important for you to—if you're at home—to travel a little bit in Japan. The situation is not nearly as bad as in the rest of the world. We have a state of emergency, but it's not a lockdown and still allows me to travel. If I'm invited, it becomes essential work.

00:36:34 John Daub: No notification on this video because it was the third one of the day and the notifications go down. So it's important for you—if you subscribe, make sure you click the bell and click "all" because if you have "sometimes" you won't get notifications on a streaming day like which is what today was. If you also are a Patreon supporter, you can get notifications through that or Discord as well, which is free: discord.gg/onlyinjapango. If I were to visit Japan this summer, do you think restrictions will have eased by then? I don't know. Click the darn bell writes an Allen Burr. I don't know, Paul—thanks for clicking the bell and for being on Patreon. Thanks. I don't know when travel is going to start—this is the question that I've been asking people all the time. It seems like they're going to do something maybe before the Olympics. Okay, they're going to do something at the end of spring or summer—package tours might start where tour companies are responsible for everybody getting PCR tested and being here safely, being tested upon arrival, maybe a three-day quarantine or something just so you don't go out to the public. It's going to extend your trip, but there're going to be hoops to jump through. It's not going to be the same kind of travel as 2019. It's going to be these hoops to jump through so you don't bring in something into the country because that would be very bad for politicians, and I think it's just smart. So you're going to have to do like three days hotel, but I think if it's a tour company they're going to make sure that you have an experience in your hotel room—maybe special delivery food or something. I think that they're going to be doing that end of spring and summer, in the fall that'll expand. I think after the Olympics and then next year will be a bigger year. I think we're still going to have to wear masks. It's hard to foresee this, but six months is an eternity in a pandemic—so much can change. I wonder if you show proof of vaccination—probably maybe there might be a requirement for the airlines to let you on the plane. There's lots of things are going to be changing over the next couple of months, but I'll tell you this: tourism has to start for Japan—even the domestic one because the economy is really hurting. A lot of good people are losing their businesses. Yesterday the livestream in Shinjuku I showed you a game center which is going out of business and just these things are heartbreaking to see. And you know, my heart goes out to a lot of the people that were reliant on us foreign tourism to make a living and they were doing quite well before this happened. And I hope they can just hang in there a little bit longer.

00:39:23 John Daub: Thanks so much for watching. You know, support your local businesses, support your creators, and I appreciate it. You didn't actually have—pretty good support here. One last look outside the window for those who are joining us. I think I just heard lightning thunder. Do they have snow lightning? I think I heard—her lightning—wouldn't that be just so cool, see a bolt of lightning? I don't know if I can get back to Tokyo—it thundersnow. That sounds like an AC/DC song: thundersnow. Yeah, yeah, yeah—under snow. Guys got—Schwitzle your shirt on. All right, there you go. I hope that you had fun and you enjoyed this live stream. Thanks so much for joining me—it's not so lonely when we're here together. They just turned the lights on—the sun's going down, it's gonna be dark pretty soon. Stay warm, stay safe everybody. I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow or tonight if you're a Patreon supporter and an Insider. Later, gator. There's Shinkansen tracks.