00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Ameyoko. This is a place I like to come to for shopping. How you doing everybody? And we are about three days away from making a trip to go back to the United States from Tokyo to JFK. In this episode I'm going to be explaining to you my planning for this trip, the nightmare that I've had to go through between now and the time that Omicron was first introduced to all of us around the end of November. It has really thrown a wrench into our travel plans and made it really difficult to understand what's going on. I hope that this update helps a lot of people, especially those that are also in the same situation, and also serve as sort of a reference in time historically on what was going on as a train. I love watching the trains go by here.

01:04 John Daub: Once Omicron was introduced to all of us around November 28th, so much uncertainty and so much confusion and so much concern. For some places panic hit. The markets went down, especially against the dollar and the Japanese yen. Now traditionally when times are tough or there's some sort of risk that makes investors nervous, they stop investing in riskier assets. They put their money in the US dollar and they put their money in the Japanese yen, and you see the yen just start to increase and the dollar decrease. That's sort of what happened. The dollar got weaker and the yen got stronger. But the markets really collapsed, which shows you the worry that's going on here.

01:54 John Daub: Now Japan's reaction to all of this was to shut down the borders completely for a solid month. Australia until December 15th. And I've noted this in a travel update. We have a trip on December 10th where we're trying to fly out of Japan into the United States. The United States is not too hard to get into. The only thing that we really had to change was making sure we got a test not 72 hours before departure but 24 hours before departure. And as long as we get a PCR test 24 hours before, we're fine. That's the only real challenge. And then we can be picked up by our family and be taken home. We're not going out to New York or doing any meetups or events. Very small family social situation where we've all been vaccinated twice. My family has been boosted already. So we're in a pretty safe situation. It's just getting to the United States that seems to be okay. Leaving at the end of December is where the real problems start.

03:06 John Daub: Because we don't know if I can return to Japan at all. Right now international travelers from the eight African countries where Omicron was first detected, Japanese citizens from these eight countries in Africa can return to Japan. But Japanese residents that are not Japanese citizens cannot return to Japan. So there's a travel ban, even if you have a visa and you're returning. Let's say you have an apartment here, lots of stuff, you're paying rent, you have a job to return to—you can't right now. But Japanese citizens can. So that makes me really worried thinking back to 2020 when all people that were outside of Japan were trapped outside for months. And I don't want that to happen, especially since we have a child. And my wife has to get back for work. I got to get back to work. It might be easier just to cancel because the risk is real.

04:14 John Daub: Right now the situation is returnees can return to Japan, but new visa holders—if you are waiting to get into Japan, you're a student or a relative of somebody living in Japan or coming in for the first time, an initial entry—you cannot do that right now. Not until January 1st I believe. It's one month completely everything is shut down. But apparently I can return right now. That's the thing. I just don't know. If we return, we have to spend 14 days of quarantine. Previously on November 28th, people who returned from the United States had to do a 10-day quarantine, meaning they went straight home to home quarantining. And after the 10-day period, if they took a test and were negative, they were released. So 10 days, sometimes 11 because the test results took a little bit of time. That's understandable. It's been extended to 14 days, including a three-day mandatory government hotel stay, which makes not a lot of sense to me.

05:23 John Daub: So recently I've been checking Twitter to see what is the current situation. I know Twitter is kind of a negative place, so it's not the most trustworthy place to get information. But I don't think people are going to lie about their situations, not even attaching documents and all sorts of paperwork to prove what's going on. Apparently somebody who just returned from San Francisco who had to do a mandatory three-day stay in a government hotel was told that the hotels were all full. So the government said that you can just go home and do your self-quarantining at your house. You don't have to do the hotel stay like everybody else. And that made me think like what the heck. So if the government hotels are all full, you can just go home and self-quarantine. Why can't everybody just do that? What is the purpose of the government hotels?

06:16 John Daub: Now that the government hotels are filled, I saw another post on Twitter saying that people who come to Tokyo and there's not enough space for them to quarantine will be sent on the government's dime—meaning the government will pay for you to travel to Chubu Centrair Airport (Chūbu Centrair Kūkō), which is in Nagoya. And you will have to stay at a government hotel in Nagoya. You live in Tokyo, in Nagoya do three days or six days depending on your nationality and where you're coming from. And the government will fly you back from that hotel back to Tokyo. And then you can find your own accommodations. Does that make any sense at all? So you arrive from a 14-hour flight into Tokyo. Next the government says sorry we don't have any government accommodations for our mandatory three-day quarantining. So we're flying you to Nagoya on a free flight to stay in a government hotel where you're locked in there for 72 hours or six days. And we're going to fly you back where you can get a taxi to return to your home for the rest of your home quarantine. That really makes me really worried.

07:24 John Daub: So now on top of all this other uncertainty, there's the uncertainty of whether or not I'll be able to do this mandatory government quarantining near the airport. I might have to do another trip, which puts us at more risk of getting what we're trying to avoid. So what do you think? I really want to hear from you. Let me know your thoughts. You can leave a comment below. Now of course I'm going to make the final call. We still have ANA—which we say in Japanese, All Nippon Airways (ANA)—has given us a free cancellation. So if this is too much for us, we can just cancel. They'll send us our money back, no problem whatsoever. And right now I'm 50-50. I don't know what to do.

08:09 John Daub: We're both fully vaccinated. Our son is not. He's eight or nine months old, almost nine months. He hasn't been vaccinated. But the flight is not close to being full. I'm just worried about the airport at JFK, if we're going to be able to get out and how careful we can be to distance. And I don't think internationally there's going to be a lot of people at the airport. I think it's pretty much get your bags and get out of there. Anyways, I think it's not going to be as bad as I think. But we really do have to think about Leo. I also have to think about when I can go back to see my family in the United States. Because I'm going to be ramping up production of Only in Japan starting in January. This is like a done deal. I'm hiring people. I don't know when there's another chance for me to go back home to the United States. This is pretty much it for a long time.

09:18 John Daub: So there's a lot of things on my mind, a lot of things causing a great deal of stress. We booked this ticket months ago. So I hate to have to give this up. But again, we are thinking about our son. So that is a consideration. Why this is so stressful—because he is not vaccinated. But we are sitting in premium economy, which is separated from everybody else. There's not a lot of people in there. And even the economy flights, there's a lot of seats that are available. So it's like maybe 30% full, if that. And I'm sure that they're going to be getting some cancellations too. My family will understand. But they're also getting older. And gosh, if I give up a chance and something were to happen, that's also on my mind too. I don't mind doing the 14-day quarantining either. So that's also a conundrum. But just where will you do that? There's so much uncertainty right now.

10:15 John Daub: To make matters worse and to exacerbate all of this, it seems like the double standard between Japanese citizens and internationals. I call internationals people who are living here in Japan that are expats or English teachers and people from all over the world are here. Right now the U.S. Tokyo Embassy put out a warning that Japanese police are randomly searching non-Japanese at a record level. There's literally the embassy—the U.S. Embassy put out a flash warning saying that people are being racially profiled in Tokyo. It's from the U.S. Embassy, so it's a pretty reputable source. It's the government of the United States. Wrote this for people that are in Tokyo to be careful of the police. It's like what? So I mean, if they stop me, I have all my documents. I could show that. I'm sure they're going to let me go. But apparently it's more than that.

11:23 John Daub: It just makes me think that ever since Prime Minister Kishida got into power, things have been going a little bit not great. And for this travel ban, the vast majority of Japanese are behind him on this. And I can see why. Everybody's concerned with Omicron. It is really scary when there's something that you don't understand out there. Japan's approach is to go to an extreme. They don't want any risk, and they just completely will shut down. The Western countries are like we'll shut down for a short time and then we'll wait and see and make a decision based on that. Japan doesn't do that. They shut down and they don't take any risks. And that is predictable. But what's unpredictable is how it's changing.

12:15 John Daub: Initially the Prime Minister said that even Japanese nationals were not allowed to book flights. And I got a notification from ANA airline telling me that I could cancel without charge, which was pretty nice. But also that changes to the ticket or you wouldn't be allowed to book any other flights. So if you haven't booked a flight yet, you won't be able to book a flight back to Japan. Whatever's booked is locked in there, and no more new bookings for Japanese citizens and for foreign residents—everybody, total travel ban. And then the Prime Minister walked that back a couple of days later and says no, Japanese citizens should have the right to come back home. But only Japanese citizens. So it's just so confusing. So if he walks that back, what's going to happen is in 10 days when we learn more about Omicron and we learn that it's not as serious or maybe it's just like the cold, do they walk back that month and the quarantine process is rolled back to 10 days the original way that it was before? Or do they make it worse and they don't let anybody enter into the country? So there's just so much uncertainty. And that uncertainty leads me to believe that perhaps I should cancel. But then there's another part of me that says maybe this is the best time to travel because who knows what it's going to look like in January or February or March or next year. We just don't know. Right now I have a ticket. The flight's not even close to being full. That's the conundrum that I find myself in, in December 2021 in the age of Omicron. What do you do?

14:07 John Daub: Jotty writes in, there's a lot of question marks, very little answers. Best be safe and stay. Please do let me know your opinions. I might not follow it, and I'm not going to let all these opinions sway which direction I go with this. I'm going to really deeply consider everything. But it certainly helps to have a thousand heads instead of one. But be considerate because I really am struggling with this very very hard. And I want to do what's best for my family on both sides of the Pacific. Again, I don't know when I can travel back to the United States. 2022 is going to be extremely busy. It's already booked up until like April. So I'm not even sure. If I'm in your situation, I might stay. Ryan, exactly. Because who knows, in 48 hours, maybe we know some more information. Initial reports are that the severity of this is not that high. But we just don't have enough data points to know for sure. It's just starting now. So my gut says this is maybe a better time to go because less people will be traveling now as a result of it, and maybe even safer as a result. It's just being blocked from reentering to Japan and the uncertainty of the immigration process coming back here from MOFA. This comes from MOFA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Makes it very hard to gauge if I can even come back.

15:55 John Daub: Now, my son's healthy. He had a fever recently that broke. We're a little bit worried about him. So that might be the deciding factor right there. But we're going to see. I hate being held hostage in those situations. I will fight my way out. Chan writes in here, I think the question you need to answer is, where would you like to be stuck, the U.S. or Japan? That's actually a pretty good question. I'll have to ask myself that seriously over the next couple of hours. Michael Sassano, hey John, probably best to keep safe and not chance taking Leo out of Japan. I'm sure your parents will totally understand. I think they will, but they're not as young as they used to be. And a part of me says that maybe this is the best chance, and the flight is not even close to being full. As somebody who studied economics in college, economics is not just about money. It's also about time and opportunity and weighing risks. It was one of the best things that I studied. Gosh, a lot of these things are I'm putting right now into practice. And what is the economics of time, not just of the money, but of the time. And that's what I'm struggling with right now.

17:19 John Daub: Stay home. Your son is more important. Thanks. I really do appreciate the feedback. I personally wish I was stuck in Japan, not in the U.S. For a lot of you, it seems like a pretty easy decision. It's not as easy for somebody who's in the middle of it. But I just want to say whatever we decide to do, it'll be a decision that we make as a family. And the feedback here really does help put things in perspective because when you're up against the fire and your back is up against the wall and you're running out of time to make a decision, sometimes you need to go to YouTube and ask a thousand people figure it out. But this is all the reality that travelers have to make this decision right now. The flight is on December 10th and yeah, everything is set. So even if I got stuck and I couldn't make it home, Leo has Japanese citizenship so he'll be just fine and I would be the one that's stuck. And I don't mind too much about me, but I really do need to get back to making content and getting out back onto the road and all that. So gosh, just so many pressure points right now.

18:46 John Daub: Consulting a bunch of strangers—mind you, a great deal of you are not strangers to me, so it's not like I'm asking what you do. When you have trouble with your marriage, you go to a stranger to figure out what you should do with that. When you have trouble with any kind of mediation, you go to a stranger. So yeah, it sort of does make sense to get people's opinions. Would want our son to go with us. That's part of the magic. And also it's Christmas time and I think it would be just a lot of fun. Personally, we all would like to get out, but I'm sure all of you would like to get out and travel. It's not as easy, is it? She's not sure either. We're all kind of just weighing the data and waiting as long as we possibly can to try to get as much information as we possibly can, because this is so fluid. Again, I could turn it any direction right now, but we seem to be running out of time.

20:00 John Daub: EJ writes in, go visit your family again. I'm very much 50-50 on this right now. Half of me is one foot in and one foot out, and I just cannot understand the situation here in Japan. Tokyo is in a great situation right now. We have daily about 20 people who are getting sick from Delta or Omicron. It just came in with a third person, a child got it. If only children could have been vaccinated, right? Like toddlers could have been vaccinated. This is hard. It's much easier for us to go the other way than for having the family come towards us. And anyways, they can't. It's much easier for Japanese to travel to the United States than it is for anybody else to travel into Japan right now. My family could not come to visit us in Japan. They're not foreign residents, they're not reentering Japan. And right now there's tens of thousands, if not 100,000 students and people with visas that are hoping to work in Japan, waiting for months and months and years to get in. I don't think my family is even close to a priority as to those people that have been waiting for such a long amount of time. I'm just not sure. And just makes it really really hard.

21:42 John Daub: Thank you. Get a drink and think it over. I think that's probably a good idea, but I'm going to give it 24 hours and then Wednesday morning, we're going to make a decision to either cancel or just go full on. We do have to get a PCR test 24 hours before departure, so we probably have to take a taxi to the airport and do it there. So we get the proper documentation. If you get at the airport, you're assured to have the right documentation, because they at the airport and they know exactly what you need. Difficult to get a proper PCR test in the U.S. that is acceptable to Japan. That's another problem. But I just read on Twitter somebody had gotten a PCR test and JAL wouldn't accept it too. So that created a lot of headaches. We've got all the proper paperwork, I've already printed out copies of that. So we know exactly what we need to do. It's just about keeping up to date with the MOFA website to make sure that if those forms do change on the stop of a dime, you can make that pivot and get the right form. So there's no issue at the airport because we all want smooth sailing through the procedures, right?

23:03 John Daub: I'm thinking meet your parents, don't want to keep putting that off. We've been putting this off for two years. And now that our son was born, we couldn't go when he was young. He was just too young. But now he's old enough where he has a tolerance to things. I would not be able to live with myself if he got sick. But at the same time, I think that the risk is not as great as we all perceive it to be. Traveling on an airplane is actually quite safe, only if you're in close proximity to people. But there's nobody sitting around us on the plane. The plane is safe, the plane is virtually empty. I think it's 30% full, mostly in economy. And we've upgraded to premium economy, which is sort of locked away by a curtain. That's really a big deal. We've been waiting for my eight month daughter to meet her grandparents since she was born. And we've been trapped in Japan for two years. Go if you can. Since Samuel, I do understand not wanting to go, but if you think that this may be the last time you'll be able to see certain family members, in my opinion, I would go see the family members just in case. There's no documented case of being on an airplane.

24:37 John Daub: Sounds like your mind is set. Just get on the flight and go have a virtual family. I guess it's good. Only third Omicron case in Japan. I think they upgraded the air filter on airplanes too. Our parents are not getting younger. So that's an important factor to take in. Six feet doesn't cut it. No, I'm going to go like with ten feet. Then cattle class travel. I wish—this is cattle class in Japan? We do live pretty well. Go see your aging parents. Don't even say that word, I got in trouble. I believe you will be safe since you are not getting into large crowds. I'll be avoiding it and just staying with family the whole time. Japan will be one of the last countries to fully reopen. I'm sure of that. Kids are not in danger with the virus. But you just never know. And that uncertainty makes it really hard, doesn't it? We're all aging. That's true. My wife is in a wheelchair. We take every opportunity to travel and see friends and family. We just don't know when you will be able to do this again or if something happens and we miss seeing somebody.

26:01 John Daub: That's the thing. It's not about being scared. It's an economics decision. Gosh, the opportunity is right now. Life is short. Family's precious. You should go see your family so you have peace of mind because you might not see them again for a while. Japan is in a pretty good situation. As I said, we have about 20 or less COVID infections per day right now, which is really good compared to the rest of the world. But with this new variant and the uncertainty, if this trip was in January or if this variant had come a month earlier, it'd be a lot easier. We'd have a lot more information. But because there's not a lot of information and it doesn't look like we're going to have that information by the 10th, it's almost like gambling. It's almost like rolling the dice. Japan is going to change the rules or it is worse than we thought right now. My feeling is that we always assume the worst and it can't be as bad as what it is. But I can't go on a feeling. I want hard facts because it's more than me that's involved.

27:20 John Daub: I'm pretty sure by next week, most of the states of the U.S. will have it. I'm flying into JFK. All right, folks, that's the situation that we're in. It is concerning. But I think I explained in a travel update just a week ago that Japan has the oldest population in the world and it's a country that doesn't like to take any risks at all. In fact, this is both a pro of Japan economically and a big con economically, because manufacturers that don't take risks, companies that don't take any risks, don't reap the rewards in a world that changes so fast. Japan is often right now behind the curve. It's the Reiwa period. The fourth year of Reiwa is going to be starting and we have to move on from the Showa era, which was the old way of doing things. But because Japan's population is so top heavy, meaning the older population is the majority compared to the younger people—which in Indonesia and India is the opposite—the decision mindset is still set back in the Showa era, which was 40 years ago. So this is also a big problem, but it also can be an asset to look at Japan. We're pretty relatively safe here. Everybody's wearing a mask. And despite the fact that we only have 20, 80% of the country is fully vaccinated. So we're in a pretty good situation here in Tokyo. But we're still wearing masks. Just different.

29:11 John Daub: All right, everybody, leave me your comments below. I know that this is sort of a weird live stream but there's a lot of stuff going on in my mind and I'm not sure when I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do a live stream for the next couple of days as I just put all my time into coming up with an answer and preparing for a trip that I might not take—going and getting vaccine certification and getting everything, making reservations for the hotel, canceling them, making them again. There's just a lot of stuff going on. This is Okachimachi near Ueno. I just came from Ameyoko market and was walking around to show you a little bit more. Yeah, I'm sure I'll be fine in the end. Whatever decision we make is not a wrong decision; it's just a tough decision because there's no winners or losers. We all kind of get screwed by this. Just in an uncertain time you make the best decisions you can with the information that you have. And there are some things that I will not miss or I don't catch. It's good to talk with all of you. And again once again these episodes are a marker in time on how we were feeling and what was going through our minds in the age of Omicron—which sounds like a Decepticon from Transformers, one of Megatron's posse. Can't get the booster till six months in and Japan just started—they moved it from eight months to six months so the earliest I can get the booster's probably February.

30:49 John Daub: Thanks everybody, thanks for listening and hearing all the real concerns that we have. I'm going to be staying up to date on Twitter because right now at this very moment there are about four or five people that I'm following on Twitter that are coming back to Japan right now and seeing their experience, hearing about it, sharing the photos. This kind of interaction that we have is the best way for us to have up-to-date information. And I'll be sharing once again on Twitter if you follow me there, retweeting and forwarding some of the information I'm getting live from people that are coming into Japan as it happens. And that's really cool about this age that we live in—we can share information freely and quickly so that we can make informed decisions. Because I'm running out of time. Take care everybody.