00:00:04 John Daub: Greetings everybody, welcome to the city of Tokyo on the day of the closing ceremonies, August 8th, 2021. You can see this stadium right in front of us, and where we could originally go to the Olympic rings and take pictures in front of it, today it's closed. There's a security guard standing in front of it, and we can't go any further than right there, which is not a problem, I guess, because I've already taken a couple of pictures from there. But it just shows you that they're a little bit more prepared than during the opening ceremonies when people could go in there, and it got quite crowded. Again, the stadium is right there, and around 8pm Japan time, they're going to be starting the closing ceremonies. There are some Olympic events still going on, but it's just going to be held during a typhoon. I'm holding on to dear life to this umbrella. How you doing everybody?

00:00:57 John Daub: I'm in front of the Japan Olympic Museum, and I'm going to take you around here for just a little bit. I'm filming the closing scene for an episode about the 2020 Olympics. These last two weeks have been pretty interesting, eventful for me to see how the host city has survived the pandemic and these Olympics in the middle of a surge right now. There aren't a lot of people here on the street. International media goes through this section, and the general public can go just to right here. You can hear the cicadas chirping away despite the fact that there is a big rainstorm here. Now this is as far as I can go, and here's the entrance for the media. You can just see over there the red ring. You can see the Olympic rings right there.

00:02:09 John Daub: On August 1st, we had a big event. On August 8th, the Olympic rings disappeared. But the Olympic Museum should still be here, and you can go in there. That's one of the attractions to Japan, to the Olympics that people could still go to. This is the Olympic store that people could go into as well. I thought about taking you in there, but there's a small line, and I'm really trying my best to stay away from crowded places. The mascots, Miraitowa (Olympic mascot) and Someity (Paralympic mascot), hanging out right in front of the store. I know I'm live streaming during the women's basketball game, the gold medal game. I apologize for that, but this typhoon is not going to wait.

00:02:53 John Daub: I have a feeling that it's going to get worse before it gets better. We still don't know for sure if the typhoon is going to make a turn and come and impact us directly. Who knows? Typhoons don't exactly follow the courses that the meteorologists lay out for them. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you around here and see what we can see. Maybe take you to the other side of the stadium. Because also I'm scouting this out for the scenes for my final shot as well. Oh, the rain is starting to come down. Luckily there's not a lot of wind.

00:03:28 John Daub: There's a little bit of buzz around here. More people are coming. A lot of them have reservations to go to that Japan Olympic Museum. So I went to the Agora exhibition in Nihonbashi. This is one of the few things that you could go to that's still going on. Despite the fact that we are in a pandemic, things are still open. The state of emergency is not a lockdown. The politicians give you mixed messages. Don't go home for Obon (summer holiday/Buddhist festival), but it's okay to go out and have dinner. For example, it doesn't make any sense. But we still do our best to try to follow the rules and stay as safe as we possibly can.

00:04:18 John Daub: I have no idea where I'm going. Oh, look at this. There's a back door. There's the Olympic Stadium right in front of us. The Tokyo 2020 logo emblazoned on it. We're going to see if they're setting up. Maybe they've got trucks. What are they going to do with the fireworks? Can they launch them in the rain? Are they removing the things off of the track to prepare for celebrations or ceremonies? Just going to kind of find what's going on. Here's an officer here to block us from going into the courtyard where a lot of people were meeting for the closing ceremonies before. Oh, the wind is really picking up here. So this is as close as we can get to the stadium on this side.

00:05:32 John Daub: The typhoon wind is picking up a little bit now. But it's nothing that bad. Again, the typhoon's out in the Pacific. The coast of Chiba is getting hit pretty hard. But here in Tokyo, we're just getting a little bit of wind. A lot of people put their umbrellas down like this too. But my final statement's like, isn't it just ironic that the closing ceremonies are during a typhoon in the middle of a pandemic while Japan is surging? You can't make this stuff up. Peter von Gomm and I were here about three weeks ago walking around. We saw one of the torch runners. It's just different. You never see your city again like it is during the Olympics.

00:06:38 John Daub: What I told NBC. So I had an interview with Amanda from NBC6 in Miami the other day. And it broadcasted yesterday. So anybody in the Miami area watching NBC might have saw me on there. And it's on Twitter. I put on the Only in Japan Twitter feed. I retweeted it. So you can check that out. I'm a little bit more upbeat than a lot of other people. But you never see your city again like this. You have to really kind of soak it up. But for me, the biggest disappointment was that the closing ceremony is at 8 p.m. tonight Japan Standard Time, which is 7 a.m. New York, which is 4 a.m. California. You get the picture. Eight hours difference in London. So what is that? Noon in London, I believe.

00:07:38 John Daub: The biggest disappointment is the bars are empty. There are no events. There's no taiko drums (Japanese drums) on the street or street food. There's no yatai (food stall) to sell okonomiyaki (savory pancake) or takoyaki (octopus balls). You can't really soak up that event feeling of what the Olympics are supposed to be like for the host city, which is the biggest disappointment of them all. All right. There's a stadium right there. Last week, this area was full of protesters. We're going to see how far we can actually go. I think it might be better for me to cross the street right here. You can see the rain coming down on the street right now.

00:09:03 John Daub: USA 75, Japan 56, third quarter. All right. I'm making a right now. We're going to go check out the Olympic Stadium. You can see the roads have been a disaster. It's been so hard for me to navigate around here. And again, Peter von Gomm and I were going to do a motorbike drive through here. But again, the typhoon is here as well as it's just too hard to drive here. So this is what car blocking our way. This is what it's like to live in Tokyo during the 2020 Olympics. Kind of wet right now. It's supposed to be the hottest day of the year is supposed to be next week, I think.

00:10:03 John Daub: So I'm going to be out and about and show you just how hot the surfaces get in Tokyo and why the first 13 days of the Olympics were killer for so many of the athletes. I remember some of the long distance runners running on the track over the last few days were just wiped out. Oh, this is that Hobbit house that Peter von Gomm and I were looking at a few weeks ago in a live stream. It's closed up, but I think they're still operating. You got to make a reservation in a completely different area. So it's kind of a hassle. You go in through that little knot in the grass right there. Oh, it is open. Some people up there. Well, they really did shut off the road in front of the Olympic Stadium.

00:11:06 John Daub: Last two weeks ago, this is where there were a ton of protesters. And I can understand why. They're probably not going to be there. But I told NBC in the interview that, look, once the Olympics started and Japan started to accumulate gold medals, there's a little bit of national pride that kicked in and more support for the Olympics because, well, you see it on TV. And now with the pandemic surging, not a lot of people are for it. But I do think that when the game started, people got a little bit more positive because Japan's gold medal count was going up. Now people are still protesting, of course. That doesn't mean that people aren't happy. National pride is part of the Olympics. It feels good to see your country compete and win.

00:12:28 John Daub: I've been cheering on all the athletes. I like it when Japan wins and the U.S. wins. I feel good. But I also like to see the competition when another country wins and puts in a really good performance. I'm inspired by that. It doesn't matter what country the competitors are from. Right now you're looking at a live shot of the Tokyo, the new national stadium in Tokyo. This is the intersection where the Olympics are held. They had a lot of protesters here a couple of weeks ago. Today it's filled. Instead of protesters, you have rain. Oh, sure, Luis. I did cheer for India, too. The field hockey was incredible. Very strong. If cricket were an Olympic sport, I think India would have even more gold medals, right?

00:13:40 John Daub: Let's cross the street on the next light here. Take you around and see what we can see. Which is not a lot. But I think this is maybe the best location for me to film. Because I couldn't do it over by the rings. For me to film the ending of my main channel episode that I'm editing right now. See, I come out here in the middle of a typhoon just for you guys. And for me because I have to finish this episode. People are waiting. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm seriously going to be somewhat sad because I'm not going to see the Tokyo 2020 banner all over the place. We had an extended one year thanks to the suspension of the Olympics last year. It's just going to be kind of weird to not see that anymore.

00:14:27 John Daub: But here's the thing. Tokyo is going to have another event sometime. And when they do, we'll have some festivities then. I'm sure we'll make up for it. I feel bad for the volunteers and the people who have to be outside during this typhoon to direct people like me who are just walking around. Can't stay inside all day. It's amazingly not crowded at this time. Yeah, this is probably the best place. I can put my tripod right there and film. Alright, that works pretty good. And I can film the stadium from this angle. It's a beautiful stadium.

00:15:12 John Daub: And I get another livestream coming this week that's going to be pretty interesting. From the designer of this stadium. He designed something else. And I want to thank our Patreon community for pointing out a unique architectural project not too far away from here. Wow, look at that! We got the whole stadium. And this is the best place to have the final statement, I think. Right here! Wow! There really is a lot of green. I don't think Peter von Gomm has any narrations set up for the closing ceremonies. But I do know that we all know that he played a part in the opening ceremonies. That was newsworthy.

00:16:13 John Daub: It's just so surreal that in eight hours from now, it's over! It's gone. It's done! And we have to welcome the Paralympians in a couple of weeks. And on that front, because things are surging, we're expecting that there'll be no spectators for the Paralympics either. I think Japan needs to focus on the vaccinations, right? I have had both of the shots and it's been now a little bit over two weeks since that shot, so I'm fully vaccinated. But I really do hope people in Japan can get those shots as soon as possible. Because yesterday they had the first report of the Lambda variant inside of Japan. And they say that that might be... Well, you can go and research that.

00:17:27 John Daub: Oh, they got the music going! Do you hear it? I'll put the mic out there. It has like a classical musical theme to it. So they're doing the rehearsals for the closing ceremonies now. Maybe we'll hear Peter von Gomm if he does do it and he was keeping it a secret. The secret's over, Peter. It sounded like organ music. Almost like a requiem. I'll move over here a little bit closer and then maybe I'll put my umbrella away so you don't hear the pitter-patter of the rain on top of the umbrella. Do you hear the organ music? Is that some dude jamming or is that the actual music for the Olympics? You heard it here, folks. First... I'm putting my umbrella down. Really? That sounded like Mozart.

00:20:18 John Daub: Is that the national anthem for France? They're having different reports here. I guess they're teasing France 2024. Yeah. The next Olympics is in Paris so maybe that's the music for that. That could very well be what we're hearing right now with the rehearsals. I hear some drum beats and the sound of rain is making Michael sleepy. So, again, we're as close as we can possibly get to the stadium right now and we can hear the music coming out of it. We have some people saying it's a song from France. And it could be teasing the 2024 Olympics. And maybe it's a preview of what we're going to be seeing tonight.

00:21:35 John Daub: Personally, I have mixed feelings about the end of the 2020 Olympics. 2021 Olympics. It's just confusing. Because I'm going to miss the potential of having a lot of fun. For me, I just feel like this is going to... People are going to come back and we're going to have some fun. And it's not over. But it is. To me, it's surreal. And this whole experience has been surreal for me. Jose, we were absolutely robbed of the fun. That was the part that I wanted the most. The fun. With you. With everybody coming to visit and hanging out. Having drinks outside in the park and listening to the Olympics. Having people from all around the world also cheering on for their country and being inside of a bar.

00:22:47 John Daub: Meeting new people that are coming to Japan for the first time. And hearing their opinions. Again, hearing taiko on the street. Having street performers. Festivals. Street food. Just a vibe in the city because it's summer. The days are longer. Sun sets around 7:45 in Japan. Comes up at 4 a.m. 24 hours of partying. Didn't happen. And that is the disappointing thing for me about these Olympic Games. It could have been amazing. And yet, over the last two weeks, I did what I could to try to have some fun with it. And that's all I could do. And here I am in front of the stadium. I'm in the middle of where the world's going to be watching the closing ceremonies in eight hours. And it feels pretty cool to be in some sort of a power spot.

00:23:44 John Daub: Because not often do you get a chance to have an Olympic city, the city that you live in, be an Olympic city. It's always supposed to be a unique experience. So in 2032, I'll have to go down to Carrie's place in Brisbane and then celebrate what we missed in Tokyo in 2021. Or if you live in Paris, you have a place for a guy living in Japan to crash on the floor for two weeks. I'll come and live up what I missed in 2020 in France. That'd be pretty sweet. Or LA in 2028, Carlos. You got it, buddy. But I was going to be inside the stadium for the opening ceremonies. And I got cut because of the pandemic. And that stinks.

00:24:42 John Daub: Better luck next time. You paint a vivid image of your idea of what it could have been. I think that's what... I've been lucky enough to travel around the world many, many times. Been to about 70, 75 countries over my backpacking career. And I've been to Barcelona. I've been to Atlanta. I've been to Munich. I haven't been to Helsinki. I've been to a lot of the Olympic cities. Beijing. I was in Beijing the day that 2001, July 3rd, I think it was. When they announced that Beijing would be getting the Olympics. And the next day, they started construction on the next day. That was pretty crazy for the 2008 Olympics.

00:25:26 John Daub: So I've been in the shadow of the Olympics for a very long time. And hearing the stories. I was in Sydney just before the Olympics started. I was living on Bondi Beach in 1999 and 2000. I welcomed in the Millennium in Sydney in front of the bridge on the harbor. It was a pretty awesome celebration. And I could feel what it was like to be in Olympic City by living in Sydney in 1999 and 2000. There was a massive buzz. It was awesome. And I thought I would have that here. And it never turned out that way.

00:26:10 John Daub: Carrie is already officially welcoming me to Brisbane 2032. I'll be the ripe old age of senior citizen then. Awesome. I think we did the best that we could do with what we had to work with. They finished the music inside of the stadium. So I'm walking back to the place where I'm going to film. Wow, Nostra Broad worked on the 2000 Olympic website. Whoa! That was the age of Flash GIFs and all these other really interesting things. The web was so much different 21 years ago. I'm sure you have some pretty interesting stories from that to talk about sometime. Here, this is the street right besides the Olympic Stadium.

00:27:10 John Daub: Thanks for joining me. If you're tuning in between here and the women's basketball gold medal round, write in the score. Let me know what's happening because I got to be out here to film the final scene for the Only in Japan main channel episode I'm editing right now. Wow. It's pretty crazy that Japan beat the US in baseball too for the gold medal. That's been a source of national pride since it happened. There's a buzz in Japan on TV about that one. You can see the security is doing a pretty good job. Security has been incredible. There was an incident in Setagaya a few days ago despite all of the security. I don't think anybody died from that. Talking about there was a guy with a knife. Other than that, I don't think there's been any really bad incidents except for the pandemic that's been roaring around us here.

00:28:54 John Daub: The typhoon isn't going to make landfall. It's kind of shimmying up the coast. It's now hitting Chiba's coast a little bit. Tokyo looks like it's going to dump a lot of rain today. It's going to impact the city. It's going to impact the closing ceremony. But I don't think it's going to cancel it. We don't expect to have some super high winds here. And we just don't know what's going to be happening in eight hours from now. The typhoon doesn't exactly listen to the meteorologists as I said earlier. It might just come inland and who knows. All those trees might be flying in a circle around the sky in front. Just like the drones were a couple of weeks ago.

00:29:45 John Daub: Amy Benio writes in here, you paint a vivid image of what it could have been. Thank you, Amy. It's been 30 minutes. I hope this kind of gives you an idea of what we're looking at tonight. It's wet. It's not cold. There goes an Olympic bus. We'll see you, Someity. It took me ages to learn your name, mascot, Someity and Miraitowa. Now that I've learned your name, I have to learn how to forget it. The U.S. wins 99-75. Congratulations to the Americans who won the gold medal. Bye-bye, Someity. You had your day.

00:30:50 John Daub: Andrew, 70-plus countries. I would love to know where else you've been. Happy to finally be here for a live stream. Congrats on your son. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. The biggest backpacking trip was 2003 where I got an around the world ticket and flew to places including New Zealand, Papeete, Tahiti, Easter Island and Santiago. That cross-Pacific flight on Lan Chile was pretty awesome. Spent 10 days on Easter Island, about 10 days in Tahiti among four of the islands. And I'll never forget that trip. Backpacked around South America and Central America. Kind of scary sometimes. Some really good experiences. In 1999 and 2000, I backpacked through Asia, through western China, Nepal, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia. It was a pretty amazing trip.

00:32:01 John Daub: I am soaked through. I deserve it for being out here. New Zealand was pretty awesome. I didn't go to the southern island. I went as far south as Taupo and Rotorua, I believe, where you could smell bubbling mud. It smelled really nice. Just go to the park and you can see stuff bubbling. Pretty nasty. In a good way. So barring anything else, this is most likely the final Olympic livestream. Although I have something, a couple of livestreams coming up next week, which I'll touch on in a little bit. But these games have been controversial. Not a lot of other YouTubers have been doing Olympic content because it is so controversial. For me, it's not a political issue.

00:33:04 John Daub: As I said in the NBC interview, I was on NBC6 Miami with Amanda. I'm going to be sad to see her go because she's been staying in Tokyo out of quarantine and now allowed to go around the city. I got a chance to meet her a couple of times. In the interview, I had more of an upbeat image of the Olympics than most people, which is natural for me. But you can see that interview on, it doesn't matter where you are. I retweeted it on Twitter. Only Japan TV is my Twitter handle. You can see that there. I think it's pretty interesting to be able to connect Japan with the US and be represented on TV back home. A couple of people in the Miami area wrote to me and said that they saw me on TV and that made me feel really good.

00:33:56 John Daub: With the mascots, it's interesting. They're not supposed to make a gender for the mascots. They're not supposed to be able to tell what gender they are. But Tokyo kind of bucked the trend. And they made the Paralympic mascot look like something a girl would want and the Olympic mascot something that a boy would want. And it's just kind of unusual. But it's all good. I did buy a lot of Miraitowa stuff. And I do have some Someity things. But I'm a guy, so I like the blue one. If it was red, I would have bought it. But pink is a little... You know.

00:35:02 John Daub: Hey, thanks, Tori Bees, for following me on Twitter. Just got the notification. Yeah, go over to Amanda's tweet there and give her some support, too. She worked pretty hard through the Olympics trying to find stories. So I'm often just trapped in her hotel. Reporting for NBC News there. That's the cafe that Peter von Gomm and I tried to get into. Louis26David, I saw you just got the notification. Thanks for following me on Twitter, too. Oh, look, they vinyled in the cafe. You have to make an appointment to go and eat in that cafe right before the graphics X gear. Cool. These are the Rode Wireless Mic 2s. The wind buffer, because there is some wind going on here.

00:35:52 John Daub: So that's the deal. When you watch the closing ceremonies tonight at 8 p.m. Japan time, 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 4 a.m. California time, noon in London, you can understand what it was like because you were here with me at lunchtime. It's miserable. But that's the Olympics for 2020. This is summing it up perfectly. Typhoon really puts a damper on the entire Olympics. We suffer through the heat and then we end with a torrential downpour as the rain gets stronger and stronger. This is crazy.

00:36:33 John Daub: And today I wanted to get and jump into a taxi and take Leo out to Nihonbashi and get a picture with him and the rain. And we're going to get a picture of the rings before the rings go away. I still might do that later on this afternoon. But he's what, five months old? I think you should have a picture that he was here during the Olympics in 2020. I'd love to bring him right here in front of the stadium and to get a picture, but I don't know. The rings go away and all these signs go away. Once the Olympics are done, I believe Tokyo has to give up the rings. We passed it up to Paris and good luck Paris you're gonna have to suffer through looking at these five rings for the next three years okay we had to suffer for like seven years or something. Well the Paris had the Olympics um in 1900 121 years ago so they're not newbies I think he's waving a stick.

00:37:39 John Daub: August R.F. thank you for following me on Twitter awesome I'm close to 10,000 followers there cop gets into a van it's news all right I'm gonna go I gotta set up my tripod can eyes cut eyes maybe gonna make something for warm for me for lunch so I can I can warm up when I get home and start to edit again Jedi in training indeed if you have any comments about this leave them in the questions I like to hear from you what did you think of the Olympic Games you could be honest but try to keep it unpolitical for me it was just about the Olympic athletes competing in the end once the game started I can't see any of the politics behind it.

00:38:26 John Daub: I would like to see the clips of the things that I missed because Japanese TV focuses on ping pong too much and badminton in some of the sports that I like to watch a little bit of but I don't want to watch for an entire day or week but I can't see the clips of a lot of the track events because they weren't very popular on Japanese TV because we didn't have strong athletes in them which is a shame NBC has those clips and and I guess it's behind a paywall. I'll be back in another live stream maybe a midnight snack run I do non-olympic stuff as well. I want to see what does the Olympic cleanup look like how do they do the Olympic cleanup are you curious about that I'd like to see I'd like to see what they're going to do here what does the stadium look like in a week how do they change it over for the Paralympics.

00:39:24 John Daub: Paralympics start preparing the moment the Olympics end they're coming just a few weeks Tokyo Skytree is going to have the Paralympics logo do you even know what the Paralympics logo looks like during the Paralympics I do intend to do live streams for that because it just doesn't get the same enough credit that it deserves for the competitiveness and the spirit of the games I think in many ways the Paralympics have more spirit behind them than the Olympic games which seems a lot more competitive than the Paralympics but I think it's political the Paralympics is not as political because I don't know should we make them political no way never it's about the competition the athletes and the people who are living their dreams right in front of the screen the Olympics and the Paralympics I just love the competition and especially in sports that aren't recognized except at the Olympics it's really cool.

00:40:19 John Daub: Have a great day everybody I'll see you soon thanks so much for following me the last two weeks as I tried my best to take you around the city during the Olympic time and it all ends oh they got the music playing again it all ends with a typhoon epic I can't make this stuff up the history of the Olympics right here bye everybody.