00:03 John Daub: Welcome everybody to the city of Tokyo. That in front of us is the countdown to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games for 2020-2021. 14 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 45 seconds. And yeah, it feels kind of surreal here in the city of Tokyo. How you doing everybody? I thought I would run down some of the events that have been going on in the last 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours. So many things have happened. Right now the city of Tokyo is sort of in a chaotic mode and yeah, feels really weird.

00:52 John Daub: Over the next 15 minutes I'm going to explain to you a little bit about what's happening here, run down some of the news, and then I'm going to take you midway through to another area of Tokyo, maybe stop the live stream for 5 minutes, and take you to Yurakucho (有楽町) to give you an idea of what is happening. This is what it looks like over there. This is Tokyo Station, the Marunouchi side. Not a lot of people out. Now we would have loads of foreign tourists, visitors here. This would probably be packed with not just events but with people, tourists. And you can see here it's extremely quiet. The iconic Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. A lot of press and media have come here to this sign. It's super surreal. There's a photographer over there getting some pictures, different angles.

01:45 John Daub: As some of you might know, the state of emergency has been extended from, I believe, Sunday until August 22nd, which is quite a significant amount of time that covers the entire range of the Olympic Games. The city is going to be in a state of emergency. It's not a lockdown. And actually, a lot of the people that I talked to this morning about this, they have no idea what changes from the last state of emergency are in this one. What makes this different? I don't know. But I can tell you over the course of the next—I don't know how many minutes this is going to be—just the bizarreness of all of this.

02:41 John Daub: I love Japan. I love the city of Tokyo. I love the Olympic Games. I love watching them and seeing people compete. Michael Phelps winning all those gold medals as an American. I can't be any prouder. Our gymnastics team, our synchro swimming team. You know, the Olympics are fun. I just don't really feel comfortable with this game, these. So my criticism, if there's any, and I'm going to try to not have too much opinion in this, which is impossible. It's not a reflection on Japan, but here in Japan, we typically work together as one, and that's the strength of Japanese companies, the strength of the society. We all feel like one. And I haven't seen Japan so divided as it is right now, more against what's actually happening. The leaders are going ahead with it, although there's no choice. And the people being mostly completely against this in all shapes and forms right now.

03:43 John Daub: Once again, for those joining us, WXRWRX Turbo is in the house. First one, always love it. Tony P is here, our man in the land of 10,000 lakes. Prime Minister Suga made a comment on safety today. "I will give my utmost in achieving safety and security, including taking border control measures. I have repeatedly said it is the government's responsibility to realize a safe and secure games." And I believe he's doing everything he possibly can to make it safe. I just think that it's so big. The government is so big. This event is so huge that there's a lot of ineffectual things happen. And if you go to my Twitter, onlyinjapantv, I retweeted the Canadian organizer for the team to come to Japan, who has to deal with all the protocols for bringing in the athletes and the entourage from Canada to Japan and her tweet streams are fascinating to read about the bureaucracy and how ridiculous or just difficult or challenging it is for her to do her job. So take a look at my retweet on Twitter—twitter.com/onlyinjapantv—and check that out. Wow, because I was blown away by it. I really was.

05:35 John Daub: Here's some news about the people in different areas of this part of the world. South Korea reported 1,275 daily coronavirus infections on Thursday. So Korea is having a problem with a lot of infections, probably the Delta strain. Taiwan extended its coronavirus-induced restrictions for another two weeks, though with some relaxation. So this is the neighbors of Japan. It's all pretty bad here as we're surging in this area. And Europe and the United States are easing it because they started with the vaccines and everything a little bit earlier. We're just in different stages of this pandemic. So I think for a lot of people in the US, it's hard to understand here. We're about where the US was like in February or March. That's where we are in July. So Vietnam is in a lockdown as well through July 15th, according to ADNI Murakami. Thanks for that information.

06:39 John Daub: It's so tough here that the torch relay—they brought it into Tokyo, I believe yesterday, and it's off public roads, so they're doing the torch relay on private roads. That's—I mean, all everything points to, you know, it just doesn't feel like the Olympic Games. I know this is something that's extremely difficult for politicians to navigate. Governor Koike, I want to believe that she's doing everything in her power to make sure it's safe here. I don't think she has too much flexibility with whether or not the games can go on. Jill Biden, the president's wife, is supposed to be making a trip here to observe the Tokyo Olympic Games. The White House is saying that she has not decided whether or not they'll be coming. But since spectators have been banned from venues in the capital due to the outbreak, they're assessing the feasibility of the first lady attending. And I personally, I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think many world leaders are going to be coming.

08:10 John Daub: If the citizens of Tokyo have to go through some serious hardships over the next several weeks, how could we have people coming here and diplomats and stuff just making it harder for everyday life in the city of Tokyo? To me, this is a big problem. As I watch the guy who buys the one million dollar tuna bus roll by, that is awesome. Sushi Zanmai in the house right there. One of my favorite sushi places for quick lunch. As I just said, spectators have been banned from venues. They said ten thousand people would be able to go into the stadium for the opening ceremony. Now there's nobody. And it's just kind of—it's going to feel really weird. I'm going to be five kilometers away from the opening ceremony. I could ride my bicycle to the opening ceremony stadium and I can't go. It's just—it doesn't feel good. I was so excited. I can ride my bicycle to the opening ceremony of the Olympics. I live that close and I can't go. Oh, man.

09:13 John Daub: It's just weird, right? I was hoping even to be able to get into the Olympics and bring you one side of that opening ceremony. There's a—I've been working behind the scenes for two years to try to bring you a story on the opening ceremonies and it all just fell apart. I'm still trying because you never know. But it's not going to be good. According to Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the organizing committee, said that it's extremely regrettable that the games will be staged in a very limited manner in the face of the spread of—yada, yada, yada. "I'm very sorry for ticket holders and local residents who are looking forward to the games." A lot of them, the leaders, they feel very bad and there's nothing that they can do about it. Let's be honest. It's something that's completely out of their hands. But if you read the fixers, the people bringing in the Olympic athletes into Japan safely, the organizers are so unorganized and it's so un-Japanese. They don't know what's going on because they are not getting information from leaders, they're not communicating effectively to make strong decisions. So a lot of these mismanagements are happening right now. And that is scary. That is where I'm really worried as a citizen of Tokyo. And that's where I think a lot of people here in Tokyo are worried about it.

10:38 John Daub: And I'm going to hop on my bicycle and take you to Yurakucho in a couple of minutes. So Tokyo events will have no spectators. And I could even—that might even change, who knows. I'm still kind of trying to wrap my head around all of these changes that happen every week. A new announcement comes out. But Fukushima, let's see here. There are events in Fukushima, Miyagi, Shizuoka and other areas of Japan. Those venues will have up to 10,000 spectators because the situation in Tokyo is much different than the situation in those prefectures. So they will have spectators in the regions outside of the city of Tokyo. I don't know about the marathon in Sapporo. We'll have to wait and see on that. According to IOC President Bach, "We have shown this responsibility since the day of the postponement last year. And we will also show it today and we will support any measures which are necessary to have a safe and secure Olympic Paralympic Games for the Japanese people and all the participants." I don't know if it's going to be safe. Perhaps move it to October. I don't know.

12:04 John Daub: The biggest losers are the businesses here. Welcome to Tokyo Station. For those joining us, I'm going over some of the stuff that's been happening. This is Only in Japan Go. It's all live streaming. I like to bring newsworthy stuff. This is pretty newsworthy. The businesses are hurting. I watched TBS Hirunobi, which is my favorite afternoon morning news magazine program. And they go over a lot of the stuff that hit the newspaper, dissect it and explain it in a way that the public can understand here in Japan with graphs. It's a very, very good show because I've been on it ten times myself. That's maybe why I'm a little bit partial. But the businesses here are—the headline from Kyoto News was businesses' hopes shattered with fourth virus emergency for Tokyo. They announced a state of emergency. This is the fourth one after they just ended the third one. So you know, you have to be fluid in this kind of a situation. But the thing people are discussing is how much of it is the Olympics and how much has the Olympics—I don't know—taken away our personal freedoms and made it harder to live here as residents of Tokyo. This is why a lot of people want it to be canceled or suspended. And we're feeling it right now.

13:26 John Daub: Before I get into that, then the businesses, I could tell you really quickly about the vaccine rollout here. It was very bad in the beginning. In February, it started with medical workers. It started to ramp up. But I think we're starting to understand why Japan's rollout was so bad in the beginning. They didn't have supply. They hadn't locked down enough. And we're starting to see shortages where people are getting phone calls to cancel their first vaccination shots, according to The Japan Times. On July 3rd, Hyogo Prefecture, the city of Kobe, has said that it will cancel vaccination appointments for people receiving the first shot starting next Monday and suspend applications for people below 60 years of age. Crazy. The city, home to 1.5 million people, said the decision to cancel appointments for people receiving first shots came as supplies from the government over the two weeks from next Monday looked to be less than half of what is requested. Supplies for the two weeks from July 19th, meanwhile, would be only 160,000 shots or roughly one fifth of the requests. Kobe said it sent a request to Kono, who's in charge of the vaccination program for the government, but has not received a response for several days. It looks bad.

14:41 John Daub: I got one shot at Ikebukuro in Toshima ward. They said that they felt very, very bad and apologized profusely. They couldn't give me my second shot. So I had to search a place that gave out a second shot. Now, I don't know how much of this is caused because of the Olympics. There's just chaos as a result of all the planning for the games. I don't know how much resources are going to that and how many to helping the public with the vaccination program. I'm not going to be critical. I'm just saying that this—I guess I am. But the city is quite concerned about it. And I guess this is going to be the vibe that happens two weeks from now. I'm not sure what's going to look like.

15:20 John Daub: Trevor Beck writes in if the Olympics does still go on as it is and it looks like it will, then it will start on my birthday. Hey, also grab a cold drink on me. It looks hot out there. It's not as hot, but I rode my bicycle here real fast and I'm sweating a little bit. The second shot that I have is a little bit delayed, but I did find a place to get it. This is the central post office for Tokyo, the international post office. This is this month's postcard. This is Tsuruga Castle in Fukushima. And this is all of our supporters from Germany. This is the German going to Deutschland. So I'm putting these into the international mail. Your postcards are off from here. And I sent in all the other ones inside. I handed it to the nice manager who always greets me when I go in there. I'm like one of the best customers.

16:15 John Daub: So if you want a postcard—is this like a shameless plug here? If you want a postcard from Germany greetings from Germany, you're going to get—check this out this month. Stamps are so cool. These are the Pokemon stamps. I'm serious. Japan has Pokemon stamps right now. I put these on the postcard. So you're going to get one of these ten stamps. All of them are pretty. All of them are awesome. There's one with Pikachu in an onsen. How cool is that? Pikachu is just like worn out there. That looks like a little Totoro scene. Maybe Pikachu at the beach, Pikachu having a campfire. Great Aussie-looking scene right there. So if you want to get one of these, you will get a Pokemon stamp if you join the Only in Japan postcard club. Just saying seriously, this stamp on this could be your card. I'll just put your address right there. That could be your stamp. So join the postcard. Shameless plug.

17:14 John Daub: The Japan Post has gotten a lot more creative with their stamps. And there's an Olympic stamp I'll put in next month as well to commemorate these unusual times we live in for in terms of news. That's about it. I want to talk more about what's happening with the news over in Yurakucho. I thought that I would take you to another area of Tokyo. Now I got to turn off the live stream to ride my bike over there. But I think it'll have a lot of value for you as a viewer to get an idea about the city by looking at one of the busier areas. This is right now live views from Tokyo Station. Two weeks before the Olympics is not a lot of people out again. It is like one p.m., 2 p.m. here in Tokyo.

18:00 John Daub: We are going to have vaccination passports again. Vaccination passports are coming this month and ten nations are going to recognize Japan's vaccination passports, including Italy, France and Greece. And perhaps the United States. But until we see the spread of the Delta variant subside, it will be difficult to allow a mutual exemption of quarantine. The passports are meant for exemption of quarantine. But even the Japanese government says as long as Delta is out there, it's going to be hard for these passports to have any kind of validity for getting through without quarantine, even with both Pfizer shots, for example. The WHO does not endorse making vaccine passports mandatory for travelers because equal access to COVID-19 vaccines are not ensured yet. So they don't have passports. So WHO can't get done. And that's probably the right call. I'm going to tell you the news about local businesses here. And this is something that my heart goes out to all of the local businesses.

19:39 John Daub: I'm going to hop on my bicycle. I'm going to take you over to another area of the city. It's only five minute bicycle ride. And I'm going to show you one of the venues as well, because the International Forum in Yurakucho is one of the Olympic venues and shut down. So I want to show you what that looks like. But they've shut down the event here and you can see the International Forum has gates all around it, which is bizarre. Is that to keep people in or keep people out or both? Almost looks like a prison. That's live from here in Tokyo. So that's the weightlifting event. And I'm going to wrap around here and take you again. You can see Tokyo 2020 wrappers, posters, flags all over the place. And you won't be able to really enjoy any of it. And I was really looking forward to bringing you live streams. And still am all over the city looking at events, any kind of musical tours or musical performances or live events, taiko or juggling. Unfortunately, there's a Yurakucho's new entrance for the Olympics. It's all cleaned up now, but I don't know what's happening. A lot of the sponsors just pulled out because organizers weren't giving enough information or any information about what's going on, so they just decided to cancel on their own. So a lot of the performances were just canceled, self-canceled without information because there was no information. Just a kind of frustrating situation.

21:17 John Daub: This is Yurakucho. This is right near Ginza between Tokyo Station and Shimbashi. Yurakucho is a fun area. And you get to see the Shinkansen cruise by right above us. And you'll get a chance to see that in about two minutes. I also wanted to come here to show you—talk to you about local businesses and you're going to see a lot of them along the rail tracks here as we walk around this area. They're the ones that are taking a huge bite out of the pie. Not only are there no foreign tourists coming, which was a huge exciting point for them two years ago—a lot of them prepared for that, started buying supplies needed to cater to tens of thousands of visitors coming to their shops. Now, to make matters worse, we're in a fourth state of emergency, meaning not even domestic tourism is going to be here in the city of Tokyo. So small businesses are getting nailed, especially restaurants. Restaurants in Japan make most of their money from alcohol sales. In fact, most restaurants around the world make most of their money from drinks. I think a Coca-Cola at McDonald's probably costs about five cents to make one fountain cola and they charge you a dollar. So the markups are huge.

22:43 John Daub: Two weeks before the Olympics and we don't—I don't see any non-Japanese faces, although that doesn't mean too much, but I don't see any Western tourists that are there, none of non-Japanese origin or it's hard to tell. Usually they would look like me, which is short pants. And this is—you could pick me out like within 30 milliseconds. You could say, yeah, he's from America. I don't see that here. You can pick me up pretty fast from a crowd in Japan, maybe not in New York, but here in Tokyo. This is Yurakucho in central Tokyo. Just over there is the International Forum. You can tell it has the glass right in the center of your screen right now. That's where the weightlifting events are taking place, I believe. And right next to the camera, that looks like a prison around it, either to keep people in or to keep people out again. We can't tell for sure.

23:56 John Daub: But according to Kyoto News today and yesterday, just small businesses are livid right now, super upset because customers have slowly started to return after the previous state of emergency was lifted on June 20th. That's just like a month ago. The state of emergency was lifted and four or five weeks later it's back on again. But an izakaya owner in the Shinbashi area, Ushijima, have made this comment: "If we can't serve alcohol, we can't do business," he said. "Why does the government keep lifting its failure to control the virus onto restaurants?" Again, in izakaya pub in the Shinbashi district, an owner said this: "It will be difficult to gain public understanding of the Tokyo Olympics and the Paralympics are the only events allowed to go ahead while other large-scale events are canceled due to the declaration." And Yonemura-san, a professor of civil and medical law—this is from the Kyoto News—wrote in here. He's very critical about the pandemic and he's repeating the same thing over and over again. So like people are lost. They don't know what's going on.

25:23 John Daub: The issue with the lockdown is most of the economy doesn't lock down. Not health care, not energy, food supply, major retail, all public safety occupations. They never enter lockdown. Young people age 20 and 30—I understand a state of emergency. You know, I'm taking extra careful because I know that the Delta variant is quite dangerous despite having been vaccinated with one shot. I don't want to get it, but people in the 20s and the 30s don't understand this and they're the ones who are getting the sickest at this point right now. And I have to understand the frustration because the messaging of this, it's not something that sticks in their head anymore after 18 months of this. I don't think that many 20 or 30 year olds are listening. I was out with Eric Berg, another YouTuber, and we were walking around Ikebukuro. We had masks on. But I mean, when we weren't eating, we put them on. But I was shocked at how many people were out there drinking like it was 2019. And again, it's kind of worrying because I think, yes, you could say that the state of emergency does not work. But here's the thing. It does work. Whenever they've called the state of emergency the last three times, the numbers declined rapidly. People listen. It doesn't have to be a full lockdown, but people do listen when you are in a state of emergency. You know why? Because in Japan, the rules, even if they don't make any sense, are paramount. Everybody follows it, even though it makes no sense. Rules are rules in Japan.

27:47 John Daub: Japan has not had too bad of a problem because the majority of people do wear masks. The majority of people do look out for each other. And again, as I started this one, Japan, one—everybody is a lot more together in this and it has made a big difference. But there's a lot of fatigue and people in their teens, twenties and thirties are not following the letter of the law to the T. There's no mask mandate in Japan. You can go around, not wear one. But again, social pressure is so strong such that people do wear their masks. If everybody has it, it works pretty well. All right, let's go underneath the railroad tracks here. I'll show you a big camera and walk around to the venue. Local businesses are getting slammed. And I think we're going to see even more closures over the next few months just because I think a lot of the businesses are hanging on, trying to make something out of the Olympics, trying to get some domestic boom out of it. I believe this is still the third quarter, so it's not going to happen. They're going to take a loss again. And the government hasn't really explained how it's going to make up the loss to these local businesses again. Any business that defies the order is going to be in a tougher situation—the government's going to crack down on them.

29:50 John Daub: A lot of these local businesses are right here, right along the Yamanote line underneath Japan Rail Line. Tons of izakaya, which are Japanese pubs (居酒屋), restaurants, shops. You can see not a lot of people. These are new. They revamped or renovated. A lot of the businesses along here made it more stable because of the Olympics. A lot of renovations to the cities took place. Really nice investment in infrastructure. Again, you can see that the venue has been closed here. The streets are closed off. We can walk by, take a quick look. Yeah, this is one of the venues closed off until September 30th. This road is closed and you can see the areas. Basically, the entire venue is closed off. All the streets around it are closed.

30:49 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? We're live in the city of Tokyo going over the city and some of the things that have changed over the last 12 hours as Japan has said, no spectators and all politicians are under fire, like really hard. I wouldn't want to be a politician in today's Japan. Nobody has really stepped up and given clear leadership. It's like the last person holding this—it's like musical chairs. The last person standing is going to get in deep doo-doo. There were elections just last week that took place and some changes in the local government. But for the most part, my feeling—let's get out of the Olympics. There's a big cloud around the city of Tokyo and it's called the Tokyo Olympics. And I just want to get this thing done and out of the way. Go back to normal life again. Here, the street around one of the venues is closed off. Last person at the party pays the band. That's a—that band is pretty expensive bill. So there's the International Forum that's been blocked off. Live view from Tokyo and the rain starting to come down a little bit.

32:22 John Daub: Except for the weightlifting athletes to go through here and get their temperatures checked. I'm not sure if they're going to be able to get their temperatures checked or something. I got a lot of questions. And over the next three weeks, four weeks during the Olympic competition, I'll be trying to decode this. What's happening here on the ground? And I'll bring you on this channel, Only in Japan Go, with me around to some of the venues. If I can even ride my bike close to them and try to get a vibe or feeling of what's happening here behind the scenes, maybe that's not being shown on television or maybe that is, but maybe even expand on some of that. That's something I have a hope for doing because I can't obviously get into any of the venues and things are closed.

33:35 John Daub: I'm going to take some questions before we end this. I hope that this kind of gives you an idea of what Tokyo is like right now, two weeks before the Olympics, taking to a venue in the countdown, show you the major station and a major venue here. Any questions for me? I'm happy to answer them in the next couple of minutes here. You can also write in where you're watching from. I like to see as the ticker goes by here real fast. However, the schools doing in Japan, I'm not too sure, but the schools are still going on right now.

34:11 John Daub: Brisbane is highly favored for the 2032 Olympics because nobody else wants them. GH and I believe Norway ordered my tickets for November, but they can be changed if things don't improve. Come and say hi when things return. Maybe in November. Maybe not. I want to have some more meet ups and give away some of those You Found Me cards, which would be really cool. What are you going to have for dinner? I don't know yet. Maybe we're going to have oyakodon (親子丼, chicken and egg rice bowl). I like the chicken and egg dish. Is there a possibility of a secret speakeasy? If there is, I will try to find it. How is the family? Doing better. I'll try to elaborate more on what's going on later on. But right now, we're not at a point tonight to talk publicly about this and but better than in June.

35:29 John Daub: Do you remember how the 2002 World Cup was like? I do. I was living in Toyohashi, which had a huge Brazilian population. It was the most fun I ever had in Japan. 2002 was an amazing year. Oh, man, there were viewing parties everywhere. I tried to get tickets, but I couldn't. I gave up on it. Didn't matter wherever you went in the country, there were viewing places. And Japan's national team did such a great job. I still have collectible 500 yen 2002 World Cup coins like collectible coins. The biggest worry for the 2002 World Cup between Korea and Japan were the hooligans. Japan was worried about visitors from the United Kingdom in particular. Japanese authorities hate confrontations and hooligans are usually drunk and will confront everybody, including their own mother. So they had hooligan training—how to deal with hooligans. I think people from Scotland Yard came down and gave Japanese authorities tutorials on how to deal with hooligans. So the word was in the Japanese media all the time: hooligan, hooligan, hooligans. And in the end, hooligans couldn't afford the ticket to come to Japan. So it was all right. Most hooligans stayed away. They could not afford to come here.

37:25 John Daub: Not too many questions. Give me a thumbs up if you like these updates. I appreciate it. I'll try to do another one a week out next week. There's the Shinkansen going by up there. I'll be doing live streams this weekend. I'll be doing live streams as often as I possibly can, because there's a vibe that's missing in the city and that I want to try to understand why. I want to try to understand why there's no vibe in the city for the Olympics. Why there's no excitement here. It's just kind of weird right now. And I don't comprehend. There's a Shinkansen going by above us. And I need to try to see where I can feel the Olympics before the Olympics here. I don't feel it yet. It's like a ghost, like that reflection in the window. Did the Shinkansen really go by? Because I'm watching it passively on a window. That's how the Olympics is going to be. I'll be watching it on TV passively. Sadly, probably NBC. It's weird.

38:48 John Daub: I don't have anything else to add about this, but I will bring you to other venues. I'll be searching for events. I'll do everything that I possibly can. I've gotten one of the vaccine shots. I'm trying to get my second shot before the Olympics starts. If I can be safe and bring you these stories and I will do my very best to bring you here with me, because, as you know, not even foreign tourists can come here and neither can domestic tourists either. It's just like closed down to everybody except for the residents of Tokyo and we can't even go to the venues. So, yeah, I'll do what I can over the course of the Olympics to share with you those stories that aren't happening. What kind of live streams am I going to have? Subscribe to find out. There are a couple of main channel episodes coming.

39:47 John Daub: Yeah, I have about eight of them that just did narration and subtitling, meaning I got to get a subtitler to translate the interviews that I did. But in June, I just had no energy taking care of the family to work on that. So I put my priority on mental health for myself, too, as well as dealing with depression here within the family. Well, I'll get back to you. I'll get back to that in this month. And yeah, there'll be two episodes a month. June was really, really challenging month. And wish I was able to do more. I can't even finish some of the episodes that I started to film because I can't travel as easily as I did in the past. The good news is that I do have an A1 and I'll be uploading in 4K, which is good.

40:58 John Daub: All right, everybody, have a good day. Have a good night wherever you are in the world. I appreciate you hanging out with me for 45 minutes and talking about these weird times that we have in Tokyo. I'm in Yurakucho. I showed you Tokyo Station earlier. You could check that out by going back over the replay. But the games are going on as planned. They'll be here today and gone tomorrow. So life will return back to normal sooner than we know it. Have a good day, everybody. See you tomorrow.