00:00:00 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Welcome to another travel update. It is now January 11th, 2022. It is the next year. I can't believe that we're so far into this that travelers coming here to Japan are having so much difficulty. But over the last two years I've been giving these travel updates. I first started I believe at the end of January 2020 before this pandemic really started to take hold. I was commenting on how the mask situation was. The situation was shoppers here in Japan were just taking all the masks and there wasn't a lot of things. There was some concern about travel back then. And two years later it is now January 2022.

00:00:30 John Daub: We're in kind of a better situation. It's just I think everybody is pretty much exhausted from this. Today Prime Minister Kishida, who's the Prime Minister of Japan, he took over for the last, the outgoing Prime Ministers. We had a revolving door. It's not a thing to smile about. He outlined what he's going to be doing for this next spike that's happening here in Japan. Kind of the actions for the next month, month and a half. And it's not great news for travelers, especially for those that are still waiting to come into Japan.

00:01:30 John Daub: I do these travel updates when I have some news to report and we do have some now. I want to point out there's a link in the description here. I just printed out this. This is MOFA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan. MOFA is the authoritative place to get your data. Don't go to like, well you can go to news sites, but always if you're really seriously consider coming into Japan and you want to get the latest information, get it from the source, which is MOFA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The link is in the description. You can go and check that out. It has quite an extensive update from January 7th from this year so it was just a few days ago.

00:02:11 John Daub: Let me get to the bottom line here before I go over this. The entry ban for non-residents will continue until the end of February. So basically the policies that were put into place at the end of November through December which was really confusing and extended until after the Japanese holiday which ended just a couple of days ago, believe it or not, it's gonna be extended till the end of February. So when they don't know what to do they just kind of kick the can down the road and extend it. So if you are a wife or a husband of a Japanese national and you're trying to get your visa, those difficulties probably going to be continuing for you for another month or so. Now these policies could be rolled back at any time depending on the situation but based on the information that Prime Minister Kishida has—and I'm gonna explain what he probably has a little later in this to give you a better idea of when traveling will be starting up again—he's made this decision.

00:03:12 John Daub: He told reporters Tuesday morning which is this morning that the framework of the current border controls will be maintained until the end of February. That's the direct translation from Kyoto News which is also listed in the description as one of the sources of information. Kyoto News gives the Japanese news in English very well and they updated continuously throughout the day so it's a great place for general news but they also have one specifically on the pandemic and they've been covering the border control news very well over the last couple of years, I must say.

00:03:46 John Daub: The entry ban will continue so there's no really a change. What does this mean though? This is huge because we were all hoping that by March we would be able to see some tourism in here. This was our feeling before Omicron. Now that Omicron has hit Japan—and this I want to start off giving you sort of the information, give you my take on why Japan is so strict and why Japan does what it does and why this is not should not be surprising for people and why those that are affected can keep protesting and probably nothing is really going to make a difference but you should still keep protesting and pushing absolutely.

00:04:30 John Daub: Japan takes especially this prime minister will take the worst case scenario. They don't make compromises. They go to the worst case scenario. They want to eliminate all risk. This is like Japanese culture 101. So the worst case scenario is that everybody dies or something, I don't know, I don't know what is going through there. The prime minister doesn't elaborate but he says that he's taking the worst case scenario and going with this to keep people safe. And you know, Japan does have the oldest population in the world. There's a lot to lose with this pandemic and I'll give you my opinion at the end of this. This is fact, this comes from him. So he's taking the worst case scenario. And in this situation you have quarantines of 14 days which goes beyond what all the other developed countries are doing. All the other industrialized countries are doing. Japan has the worst or the strongest or the strictest. And this is no surprise, this has always been like throughout history, Japan has been like this. Zero risk. When there's no risk, there's no reward too. We all know this. So Japan doesn't get any tourism, they don't get any kind of the commerce goes down greatly, there's less flights in here. So there's a lot of disruption in the supply chain as well, so there's a lot of other issues that are going on as a direct result of this really strict policy.

00:06:21 John Daub: So when I was watching the news over the last couple of days and this is all very relevant to when Japan will be opening it up. I want you to not just give you this information to kind of give you an idea of where this is coming from and where Japan makes its decisions. A very—I was watching Ohitobi which I'm a guest on every now and then for foreign tourism. Not about this topic, this is much deeper than my expertise, but they have some of the best guests on that show explaining what's happening. And they had people in the government that were in charge of policy on the show and we're talking with them. And he said that they did not have enough data yet to make up any sort of decision on Omicron. And I was just scratching my head and says, you got to be kidding me. South Africa has a lot of data, the UK's got a ton of data and they've seemed to spiked and now they're kind of coming back down to normal. The U.S has a ton of data now because they've been going through this for well over a month. So basically Japan is not using any international data. So whatever's happening in your country is not relevant to what is happening here in Japan. Based on the information that the government is getting, they're using the information that they themselves see firsthand within Japan. They saw the spike happening, they saw what was happening abroad, they shut the borders down and now that it's here they're starting to make decisions based on that. So that makes me a little bit worried, um, but again, like I'm not so surprised as someone who lives here. I'm looking at your comments, I'm going through this for the first 10 minutes and then I'm going to look at some of your comments. This is a live stream and I think that the feedback I get from you is really valuable and you can see this live stream if you're watching in the playback, just activate the live streams.

00:08:13 John Daub: ANA has been great with delaying dates and refunds so I'm not worried since this has happened before. We were supposed to go back to the United States on December 10th, we canceled our flight 12 hours before. And ANA was fantastic with it, gave us a full refund. Had the call, boom, done. We could either reschedule or get the refund. We got a full refund 12 hours before the flight and they completely understood because if we had gone we would have caused a lot more problems for them on the return because we don't know if we could even return at all. They weren't confident, they didn't have enough information. They were great about it. And thanks for that comment.

00:08:54 John Daub: Prime Minister Kishida has activated the Japan Self-Defense Force once again to expedite the third booster shots for the elderly. One of the reasons for the very strict lockdown was so that Japan could delay the inevitable spike and get as many people boosted with the third booster shot. However, as somebody who watches the news a lot and watches the news both in English and in Japanese and on television and in newspapers, I have not seen—and I and I know a lot of elderly people—I have not seen or heard of anybody who has gotten that third booster shot. Basically there is 178 million booster shots available and very few of them have gone into people's arms except for the first responders which is great. But I'll give you my opinion at the end, I'm sort of doing it now, it's hard not to. But they have enough shots booster shots for the general public right now. So there's no reason not to take this, not to expedite this a month ago but they're doing it now which is... it's better now than never, right? So you got to take the optimistic point of view.

00:10:02 John Daub: Pfizer yesterday said that they'll have the Omicron version of the vaccine or the booster that has Omicron in it for protection by March. So Kishida-san also the government also announced that we're not going to be able to get the booster shots wait until at least March. And by then the spike is probably over and Pfizer already has the boosters for Omicron out. So I'm not sure. In Japan everything takes a great deal of time and you either have patience or you lose patience and we have no choice, we live here, so we're used to it. So we'll probably get the booster whenever they allow us. We got a form in the mail from our Ward where we live, one of the 23 wards of Tokyo, we live in Chuo Ward, saying that the booster shots were coming but we got that paper in November so you know we just don't know. It's handed over to the bureaucrats and they have to prepare for it and that takes like three months. So it's very bad long process.

00:11:17 John Daub: Japan is once again initiated a quasi state of emergency for Hiroshima, Yamaguchi and Okinawa. These three prefectures are significant because they are prefectures that have U.S. bases on them. Iwakuni which is in Yamaguchi is very close to Hiroshima. The service men and women who came back from the U.S. to the bases did not receive a PCR test or an antigen test upon arrival. So they had COVID and they didn't get the test until 72 hours after something. The news is kind of sketchy but they brought it in. And look, my opinion on this very quickly is that I think all the service men and women that I've seen here in the United in Japan have been wearing masks and I've been adhering to the protocol so I have not seen it personally. But with so many people on the base that there's more people infected on base than there were on mainland Japan. The Japanese media is sort of passively accusing the bases of doing it which is—we have a quasi state emergency as a result of the service men and women. But I know that the people that I've met do a very good job of being protected so I'm not sure.

00:12:34 John Daub: The last thing I have here the package situation. So I have a Patreon site where I send packages to supporters, we have quite a number of them, and that's been suspended. That was suspended in December and I'm going to try to bring that back in January. There's no information on packages. Small packets and EMS have been suspended from Japan to Canada and to Australia. Small packets to the United States have been suspended. EMS is still running but there's some delays now. So the packet situation is bad and it kind of also tells the story. There's not a lot of flights coming to Japan, therefore there's not a lot of mail that is going out. And with the holiday finish we kind of assume that the package situation will go back to the way it was. I'll put a link in the description but the post office has an international page in English that gives updates. So if I scroll up you can see the last update that they had was on January 6th. And then you can see here temporary suspension to small packets to Canada. So Canada already had EMS suspended, that's not a great thing but they update this three, four times a month and I'm very glad for that. Chan no news on the trunk, I'm guessing trunks are also banned from mail. Yes we have a viewer who watches from the inside of a trunk.

00:14:07 John Daub: Questions on where you guys are watching from. I just asked where you are, you know, living. So that's up to you to say where you're from, like where you're watching from. Yeah. And with that, I'll take some of your questions and go over what is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs policy now. I have that on the screen here so we can go over that together. It is raining today. Another reason why I'm inside and not outside. I turned it around here so you can see the page and I'll go over it with you. If you have any questions, I'm looking at the live stream chat at the same time as I'm reading.

00:14:49 John Daub: Sid P., hey John, have you seen Cobra Kai? Like totally off the topic, but yes, I watched the entire series and I was very upset at that guy taking over Cobra Kai. And that's all I'm going to say about it because I don't want to ruin it for everybody.

00:15:08 John Daub: So here we got, new entry for four nationals. Suspension of visa validity, which is right here. Reentry to Japan of four nationals with the status of residence. It's all laid out for you. So if you're wondering when Japan is going to open and what are the procedures right now, you only need to look at this website. Denial of permission to entry. And they give a list of the countries that are being denied permission to enter. North America, it's got Canada and America. It doesn't say Mexico, which is very interesting. Right? Right. It doesn't say Mexico on that. So if you're traveling from Mexico, maybe you can come in. Maybe you won't be denied. I'm not sure. It's weird. There's 159 countries and regions that within 14 days prior to the application of land and are denied entry to Japan pursuant of Article 5 paragraph blah blah blah. So we got that going on here.

00:16:00 John Daub: Photo Look Hawaii. Thanks John for all you do from Austin. The very tall 173 centimeter Austin who I saw three or four days ago was, I guess, half my size. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys when you come back to Japan, Austin, Cheryl and Luke. Denial of reentry from certain countries and regions among designated countries. You can see they have listed the dates as well. So everything is very well laid out on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And even if you're not interested in Japan, you're just watching this for entertainment purposes to see if I make a mistake, you can look at this because it's pretty interesting. They've listed all these countries. Reinforced quarantine measures for travelers who enter, reenter or return to Japan from designated countries. This lists and I've got a copy right here on my side here. This lists the designated date when it was enacted and the commencing of the quarantine measures and the countries. What what really concerns me about this here?

00:17:07 John Daub: What really concerns me about this is you can see here with the United States, they treat United States not as a country, but as states. Do you see that? States of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Texas, Delaware, New York, Nebraska, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Maryland, Louisiana, Washington, Washington D.C. are already designated regions and respond to the coronavirus, Omicron, blah blah blah. That's crazy. Look, the US is so connected. I don't know why they treat each state like a country and the same with the US. Let's say for example, for argument's sake, like this is why it doesn't make sense and why Japan has no idea about the US. So there's two airports in the New York area. All right. New Jersey is not listed as one that requires six days of hotel stay. It requires three days of hotel stay. There's a government mandated hotel you have to stay in if you come back as a resident, not as a tourist. You can't come here at all. If you are coming from New York, which is JFK, you have to stay in a government hotel for six days. Right now, you have no choice. You arrive, you stay for six days. If you are coming from Newark, which is about 30 minutes away in New Jersey, you have to stay at a government hotel for three days. They're basically the same people. These got cheaper tickets so they're apart from Newark. So it would make no sense for you to depart from JFK. You should depart from Newark because you're going to get three days less mandatory quarantine time. But that's how asinine this is the way that they take this. They're trying to be fair but there's no fair about it, just the whole country should have three days. If you want to compromise, do four days hotel, you know why do you come up with three or six days, I don't understand either. They don't explain that.

00:19:08 John Daub: Jeremy writes in here, I think the reason each state is treated differently due to state handling is different possibly. But the pandemic is not—it is borderless and Japan's approach has been not based on science. So again, why are foreign nationals—and now I can go into opinions—Michael Sasano always appreciates these travel updates, it's good to talk about it. So you get a better idea of where we're headed with this. Just like foreign, foreign residents, um, for example I have friends that are Japanese that have husbands and wives that are foreign that are still abroad waiting for their visas and they can't enter. Why their family? What makes them any different than a citizen? Or you know, if you already have a visa to come here to study, why can't you just quarantine like everybody else? You're probably going to be even stricter than some of the citizens that are coming back because one of them is followed the rules not at all, you know, and she infected this dude who went to Saitama Arena who infected you know 80 people. Who in fact, like there's all these stories out here. The measures don't work based on just nationality. It's based on you know, do you follow the policies when you come in here. Japan's done an extremely good job of finding ways to trace this. They have an app that you install. They do regular phone calls to make sure that you are on location and you're not breaking quarantine. So they have a good pretty good grasp on how to control the quarantine measures. People are breaking this all the time though. And it's hard for them to be really strict but they do have pretty good measures if people follow it. You can't just leave your phone in your hotel and go walk about because they will call you randomly and visually check through a video phone. And if you're not there they deport you which means you can't return to Japan for seven years. Getting deported is not does not mean a free flight back home by the way.

00:21:16 John Daub: Just somebody had written that, should I cancel and move my trip in early April or wait it out? Elijah writes in here, I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time. Elijah, all right, if I'm looking at my crystal ball which is it's not even a crystal ball, it's like made of plastic, you know, whatever. The I would say if your trip is March 1st, I would have serious reservations about whether or not I'm going to be able to come here based on what I just saw from Kishida-san extending the extension ban, the extending the travel ban for until the end of February. I would have serious reservations. I would probably reschedule before other flights get full or I don't know about the availability of how many flights you have out the US should be fine but some countries don't have as many flights to Japan. April, all right, 95 chance travel does not return on March 1st, I'm just saying there's a five percent chance. This is my opinion. April 1st, I'd say it's about 75 not gonna happen. April 1st. May 1st, I'd say it's like 50/50 and it could go either way because I don't think they have a choice. I think once the boosters, if the Pfizer has the Omicron booster, we don't see another spike, I think travel will return in May and it'll ramp up in the summer. I think they don't have a choice.

00:22:48 John Daub: When I heard that the space boat my beloved space boat was going to go out of business and they couldn't get enough people and they're seriously struggling, the space boat, I lost it, I'm very sad. Benjamin writes in here, here's to hoping that June be the year for tourism in 2022. Many thanks for all that you do in keeping us informed about Japan. Thank you Benjamin. I do this because you asked me to do it and I want you to come here. I'm a, I love I love you guys, I love people who come to Japan, I love doing meetups, I love being able to see people going around to attractions and smiling. I don't mind the crowds, I'm not somebody who curses having so much tourism here in Japan because I remember when Japan had no tourism. Nobody would visit me in Japan when I first moved here. Like, you live in Japan? I wouldn't, like, we should move to Italy or something. It's like no way, why wouldn't people come to visit me in Japan? Now they are. So I'm somebody who embraces that because I came here in 1998 when nobody wanted to really come to Japan because this is weird country. It's still a weird country which is great. I think but I want to see you back here, you know.

00:23:58 John Daub: Michael Sasano, I can't wait, I would love to see you when you come here too. Betty C at least you guys are not confined to hotel for three weeks like returning home to Japan and then coming back to Japan and then coming—residents in Hong Kong. Hong Kong I think is even more densely populated, I think three weeks is is an extreme and I don't know if that's still the policy, it probably might, it might very well be. But I heard that Hong Kong had changed it but they might have brought it back. Three weeks is is extreme. That just might I can't understand it. The CDC has people going back to work after five days if they take a test and it's clear so like 10 days. But 14 days is even more extreme based on science.

00:24:45 John Daub: Big Link is fine, can you one day break down how transition from a citizen of the U.S. to a citizen of Japan? No one has really touched this subject as a credible resource. There is a couple of people that I know that renounced their citizenship and became a citizen of Japan that are westerners and they're very happy with their decision. I'm not somebody who's entertaining that, I'm very—I'm proud of my citizenship, I'm proud to be a U.S. citizen, I'm very proud to be a people of Indian origin to have a citizens of overseas citizen of India card, I'm very happy and proud of that. I'm proud of my background just like I think all of you should be proud of your backgrounds and where your family has come from. America is a big melting pot, Japan is not a big melting pot. So you know, even I worry about this when our son has to go to school, him being half Japanese, half American, if he's going to get teased or not. You know there's a lot of things, Japan is a different country with different values, it's not quite the same. Kaid and Eric I saw that and congratulations to them, they got permanent residency which is very different than citizenship. Citizenship means that you have a right to vote, they can't take that away from you. Permanent residency can be taken away from you, they can't, I haven't heard of anybody, I've heard rumors of somebody who might have but I haven't, I don't have any friends that have gotten their permanent residency taken away from them. Permanent residency is a status in Japan where you are like a citizen like a green card in a way. You have to renew it but it's not it's not the same as citizenship is completely different. That's a good thing to have, I'm guessing that's it's it must be a little bit easier to get it because there's not a lot of people applying for it and they still have all quotas.

00:26:48 John Daub: All right now, I touched on this in the beginning, why is Japan the way it is. I know that there's a lot of movements out there, a lot of petitions to sign. 12,000 I think strong signed a petition to get Japan to ease the entry into Japan. Japan for hundreds and hundreds of years has been a really hard place to get into. It's gone up and down in waves depending on the situation. Good, the borders open pretty much to everybody, everybody can get a visa to come in here and you know you can tourism and they're happy to take your money just like every other tourist destination. But when the times are bad, Japan goes to the extreme. And as Prime Minister Kishida said, they go to the worst case scenario. It's always the situation at first and then they ease up to it. This was evident and I've given this in the past when some jack in the box flew his drone onto the roof of the prime minister's building and he crash landed it on the prime minister's building. Japan banned drones. They took the worst case scenario like they had a drone attack. So all drones—no. And then they evaluated it and they made a decision. And it takes forever. When they slap down a policy, it's draconian. I know it stinks. And they ease it back slowly. But if one person, one bad person breaks it again, they slap it back on. That's how that's the most frustrating thing. And I think that foreigners don't get it.

00:28:23 John Daub: This is why as a foreign resident of Japan, I am double—I've got twice as much concern about the way I look and about the way people see me. I mean there's a part of me that doesn't care. And there's a part of me that deeply cares. Whereas when I go to a store, I make sure I have a mask. I make sure I use the alcohol pump or I fake use it because I know someone is watching. And if you give a bad impression to your neighbors or the people around you, they think about this as foreigners and they just use what they see from you to all the other foreign residents. So one bad foreign resident has an impact on all foreign residents within Japan. It doesn't even matter where you're from. So I'm very mindful of that because this is a community. All the other YouTubers that live in Japan that make content are part of a community. Not all of us hang out all the time. But we also have need to be very mindful of the image that we project to the locals around we live. And that is something I'm very mindful of. That's why when I try to do the main channel episodes, I try to get permits. I try to call ahead. I try to do everything the right way so I don't ruin it for everybody else. And that's and by everybody else, I mean you too. For those that want to come here.

00:29:46 John Daub: I blame Logan Paul. All right. That's a pretty good example. And I think that this is a really good chat, not just based on the travel update, but trying again to understand this entry ban and why it is so draconian. When Logan Paul—he did that with the Pokemon thing and he was really rude to people and he had this utter disregard and disrespect for Japanese people and culture. And maybe he was just doing it for the camera. I don't know what kind of a person he is face to face. A lot of people, a lot of YouTubers are different when you meet them. But it had a really bad impact on us as YouTubers in Japan. I had a hard time getting access to certain places that I wanted to film. There was an okonomiyaki restaurant that I wanted to film for for an episode I was doing for the old channel. And I asked them, can I just film a little bit about how Okonomiyaki might be different in Japan and how you coming from Osaka, Hiroshima has established successfully a really good Okonomiyaki restaurant and have you changed the recipe. He said no. He said he won't even consider having any YouTubers because you are all just a bunch of hateful people. And he grouped us into what had happened with Logan. And Pauline it was in the news here in Japan and it left for a very long time a very negative opinion of YouTubers. And in fact, the Japanese YouTubers who do this silly, stupid stuff all the time, it makes it harder to get access. It still is like YouTube in Japan is like YouTube was like seven years ago in the United States. It's getting a lot better now. It's more professional, but still they do stupid stuff and the production quality isn't that good. And the image of it is like selfie stick and blah blah blah, sort of what I do with Only in Japan Go actually. But I also make very documentary like content almost. There's people YouTubers out there that are making extremely high quality content that that's fact checked and brings you access to a world that is really unique. They take a lot of time and put a lot of effort into the work that they do, completely different than what you see from other YouTube. YouTube is a very diverse platform of content that you can choose what you want to watch. I love it. I really do. But Logan Paul did a number on us. It's easier to understand if you have a broader understanding of Japanese history where people used to live in villages. Outsiders equal troubled rights and chat. A lot of it is based on Japanese history because it just you go with what you know. And in Japan history is something you know gets passed down from generation to generation.

00:32:39 John Daub: Iken writes in here, hi John. There's a Nippon Grand national dog show in Japan this year. Oh, you know what? When I used to live in Edogawa, they would have a dog show out there and I was trying to make an episode of it, but again, the corona pandemic hit at the worst possible time. Do you think there's something to consider covering? Absolutely. The dogs here in Japan are on another level cute. They have a different style to the way that they treat dogs here in Japan. I guess the kawaii culture really soaks into it. So that's certainly a topic that we consider. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

00:33:17 John Daub: You do not want to know about my iPhone situation. We're working on it. Basically I'm not a fan of Apple. I'm not a fan of Apple Japan. I separate them. I will be making it up. When I come to a resolution and I'm still working with Japan Post on this, Japan Post has been on and off easy and hard to work with. We found somebody who's really trying hard to try to find some sort of resolution to this. So I'm going to let it play out before I start to say bad stuff about somebody. I'm not going to do that either. I'm going to just talk about the facts. But for me, my experience is Apple is a very different company than Apple Japan. Apple makes the products and has a lot of connection to the brand. Apple Japan just sells them. So I'm not sure if they really care about the end user based on my experience. I should have—you know, they should glitter bomb these the iPhones that they send out. I don't want to get into it. This is not the place and the time to do that. 150,000 yen. It was like down the toilet. They took my money and didn't give me my phone.

00:34:30 John Daub: Going back to the entry policies here. Look, I'm trying my best to stay on target. You know, if I was Luke Skywalker trying to get to Death Star, I would right now—I have landed and be having coffee at the Death Star cafe talking to Darth Vader while he comes out and lightsabers me. And I go like, oh, I'm going to get some coffee. Like into a puff of smoke into that little gown that they wear. The Jedi's. All right. Look, Jedi's stay in target and I'm not a Jedi. Not even a Padawan.

00:35:02 John Daub: This information here on the website is going to be—I want you to keep checking this out if you're thinking about coming to Japan. Bookmark this. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan website. And you're going to be able to get the most up to date information. Check on it once every few days. Here you have your designated date of commencing of quarantine measures and the countries and regions. And they have it listed. They also list how long you'll have to stay in a government hotel. And when this changes, this will be one of the first places you get the information. And it's from the source. Print this out before you leave. So if they change the information, you have a copy of it in English. All right. It's all listed in English. It lists the suspension of the visas, the multi-entry visas, which visas have been suspended. It seems like Europe, mostly Eastern European countries. I'm not sure Kazakhstan—why is Kazakhstan listed as Europe? Kazakhstan is Asia. I'm not sure. Isn't Tajikistan Asia? I'm just saying, you know, Georgia's Asia too. It's weird how they got some questions there.

00:36:44 John Daub: I see Kevin Riley, Kuma's Kitchen's in the house. I should get you on the phone Kevin. I'd like to hear your take on this. Kevin's one of the people that I subscribe to. All right. Bottom line. If you're thinking of coming to Japan in March. Yeah. I think it's very small percent that the borders will be open because I think it'll open up to visa holders first before tourists. So it looks like this is going to continue the status quo until the end of February for those joining us. So visa entry to Japan has been extended. The entry ban has been extended by Prime Minister Kishida until the end of February. This is a done deal. It has been announced. It's on the website right now. It's on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. No policy, no change in the policy, which is upsetting to me because it's not based on science. It's just based on fear of the worst case scenario.

00:37:41 John Daub: Will Japanese be scared of visiting US for a while? I'm warned about Toronto probably. One of the reasons why we canceled the trip to the United States was there was no certainty whatsoever that I would be able to return to Japan as a non-citizen. It doesn't matter what your visa status is. They can take it away from you. Even if you're PR, adjudant, permanent resident, it doesn't matter. If you're not a citizen, they can take that. They can close the border to you. In fact, they closed the border to citizens for about two or three days when they enacted the—they wanted to close the border to everybody but the citizens complained and they had to backtrack and they reopened the border. This was around December 1st or 2nd. They reopened the border to citizens. Can you imagine? They closed the border to citizens too. And now they've initiated the plan that they have, which is certain countries based on the country that you're at, you have to quarantine at a designated hotel for a certain amount of time.

00:38:47 John Daub: My friend Greg Lam, who has a channel called Life Where I'm From, recently did a quarantining at a hotel. His hotel was really nearby where I'm living, where Kanae and I live right now. And I want to see if I can get him on the show to talk about that experience. I'm sure he has a lot to say because there was nothing for him to do in the hotel. I called him a couple of times just to see what he was doing. And he just seemed to be like sitting in front of the computer, like looking at his watch, counting down three days. Poor guy. As soon as he got out of quarantine, he had to do another 10 or 11 days at home. Home quarantine. But as soon as that was finished, he's like roaring to go and he's all over the country right now. He's filming one area to film an episode in a top secret theme that we don't share publicly. I don't tell you I'm going to film anymore. But it'd be interesting to get him on the show in a live stream, maybe at the end of this week to talk about his experience having to go through this. And I believe he's going to do this again. He has to do this again next year, depending on whether or not they change the quarantine policies because they extended until February.

00:40:05 John Daub: We're also deciding whether or not we want to go back or we can go back to the US in March for a visit to family members that we haven't seen for a very long time. We canceled in December and we're considering that. But it's really based on not what the US is doing, but it's really based on how Japan is handling this. Because if we can't come back to Japan or we have to stay in a hotel room. We have to stay in a hotel room for 14 days with a child. That's not possible for our mental health. Just saying that I can see myself not being very happy for a long time. And I'm good with that. I was on the Trans-Siberian Railroad for seven days without getting off back in 2001. That was pretty hard. But I could at least move to the restaurant car and drink vodka with Russian nationals. One of which said he was ex-KGB. Which is pretty cool. I'm not sure what the actual story is, it's 2001. So I can do it. I can do the time. But my wife and kid can't. So I don't want them to go through that. Hopefully the policies change.

00:41:14 John Daub: If you're watching Dr. Campbell or some of the other people who are data driven, science driven YouTubers about this, this it looks like it just goes up, the spike goes up and the spike goes down. Hospitalizations are very low and this should go over pretty quickly. But the more Japan tries to control it, I think the longer it's going to be around. But if it saves lives, then I can see it being something that they need to consider. Right. You can't just let it run rampant. But I don't know what other choice that they have. We're vaccinated twice. We've done everything that we can. 80% of the population has received both vaccination shots in Japan, the highest in the developed countries in the world. Japan is ready for this. I think it's not going to have a big impact for hospitalizations and deaths, but we just don't know. And the uncertainty and the fact that Japan is not using international data to make its decisions, they're using the data that they have within Japan to make the decisions leads me to believe that this is going to continue until May.

00:42:14 John Daub: So if you have flights that coming in April, I don't say cancel yet. I say hold on to it and just keep in touch with your airline and make sure that they do have a cancellation policy that allows you to cancel up to a certain amount of time and get it in writing if you can so that the policy doesn't change. If you're with a flight—if you're with a US carrier, I wouldn't trust them. But if you're with ANA, I don't know, just my experience. But if you're with ANA or JAL, their policies have been very, very good because they know that all the problems are on the Japan side with travel and entry and they're experiencing a lot of hardships too, not being able to stay in the black. They're in the red. They're taking massive hits because they can't have any, very few passengers on their planes. They can't even—you know, they're not able to fly. They can't even sell anything. Even the airports are fairly empty compared to what it should be. And they can't sell their stuff, which makes extra income there too. So it's been a really tough time for the airlines. I don't know. The current state of travel in Japan is weird.

00:43:24 John Daub: Right now, it's getting harder to get a PCR test. There's lines now. It's not like anything you see in the US. But antigen tests, antigen tests, which are take-it-home kits, are harder to find at pharmacies right now. I ordered five of them on Amazon so I could take when I'm traveling. I'm going to Hakone tomorrow. So I'll be taking antigen tests before I film. So if you see me without a mask or something, please do keep in mind I take my temperature daily. I'm doing protocol necessary for filming with clients that are very, very strong, I think.

00:44:08 John Daub: But tomorrow I'll be in Hakone and you'll get a chance to see the Tokaido Highway, which is very cool. I'm glad that I got invited to do this. I'm going to take you to a hotel in Hakone and take you to the old Tokaido Highway and show you some of the attractions around Hakone. So that's tomorrow and the 13th. So the next—the day after tomorrow will be the Hakone. Tomorrow will be the hotel and the day after tomorrow I'll take you out to some of the locations around Hakone, which is where Mount Fuji is off of the lake. Some of the best views, some of the best onsen in Japan, the Tokyo area at least. It's going to be pretty fun. 48 hours. So I'm taking all the measures necessary because of the Omicron.

00:44:51 John Daub: I might personally have an opinion that this is much ado about nothing. It's like catching the cold. We've been vaccinated twice. We stay healthy. I take vitamin D. My wife doesn't like it. She does as well. So we're okay. I mean, I feel like—but I don't—I don't publicly—for my work, I take all the precautions because I know other people are not okay and I'm worried about them. And that's why I wear the mask. And I don't want to wear the mask, but I wear the mask because I know that it will protect other people and make them feel more comfortable and it doesn't cost me anything. So I don't agree with it, but I go along with it because—

00:45:28 John Daub: I saw a guy in the park by himself, nobody around him and he has his mask on. For me, I would take the mask off. And if you're not in a confined space, indoors, I don't see how wearing the mask is helpful for your respiratory system. Get some fresh air, dude. Maybe it's the pollen. I doubt it. We don't have such bad pollen, but not right now. It's coming. But—people in Japan just love to wear the masks and they do that and they keep the masks on because they don't want to be socially looked down upon. Right. You get this this hot you get this feeling that someone's watching you in Japan. Kuma's Kitchen, I see people wearing masks on mountain trails. Right. Doesn't make any sense at all. Right. But people do it, I guess, because they don't want to be criticized or they don't want a confrontation. And they just wear it anyways. And they feel more comfortable with it on than they feel with it off being seen in public without a mask when they should be wearing one. And they're not sure when and where they should be wearing the mask. So they just keep it on. I think there's some people who wear the mask on inside their house and they live alone. I think just people forget to take them off when they sleep. I don't know. I think.

00:46:57 John Daub: As you know, I have a very strong sense of imagination, but I don't—I wear a mask in confined spaces where I'm a risk of giving people COVID if I were to have it or if I'm around people that I have it, I wear a mask. Why wear two masks? Why not? I can wear 10 masks, but my ears are not as big enough to take the load. I'd nail it to my face, glue it on there. But in Japan, you wear it because of the social pressures too. It's a real thing.

00:47:28 John Daub: If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments below. I really appreciate it. If you have some stories to share, if you just came back to Japan, leave a comment below. It's an asset for everybody who is watching the comments. I do read them and they do help a lot. I do these updates because you ask for them. I want to pitch because we have people watching, the Postcard Club is is still is still OK. I have these really cool stamps from Demon Slayer this month. Check it out. So all these stamps went out to the postcard. So if you ordered the postcard, you're going to get a stamp. You get one of these Demon Slayer stamps on your postcard. And it is this month's postcard is right here. It's pretty cool. It's all the fireworks from our Nagano fireworks festival, including they put a smiley face. Check that out. So you get that. It's pretty colorful. I even exploded the logo for Only in Japan. Take that. So you get this if you join the Patreon postcard club. Thank you. Shameless pitch. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not ashamed by that. You know, I'm happy. I'm happy to promote postcard club and Kuma's Kitchen's postcard club. I'm happy you're here to Kevin. The chomp says I'm excited for this stamp. I don't know. I don't know if I which stamp I gave you. I think I gave you I think I gave you one. I think I gave you this one here. One of these two. I'm not sure because when I'm putting on the addresses, I know I know every I know a lot of people. And I'm like—I'm trying not to give people specific stamps, but I like Vern. Vern likes this. So I'll put on a stamp for Vern if I know people. Right. This is we have a community. You know, we have we have a lot of friends here.

00:49:31 John Daub: There you go. If you do, if these travel updates are helpful, you're just like listening to me live rapping here. Click that like button because it does help. You'll get the next travel update a lot quicker. You'll get the notification here. My travel domestically is going to be really impacted by this new strain because already on the 17th of January, I'm going to be going to Yonezawa. Do you guys know where that is? Yonezawa is dark. Dark writes in here. Demon Slayer dangerous or Yabai. Very much so. It's everywhere though. For those of you that can't come to Japan, everywhere you go right now in Japan is Demon Slayer. Everywhere. Convenience stores, supermarkets, the post office, everywhere you go. There's a collaboration with this anime. It's so big. And if you can't come to Japan, you're not experiencing the full blast of Demon Slayer. All right. Check it out right here.

00:50:32 John Daub: I'm going to this region here on the 17th to the 20th. Twenty first. Again, we're here in Tokyo or Tokyo. There's two syllables in Japanese. Tokyo. So. I'm going to this region here. This is Fukushima City. And this is Yonezawa. Yonezawa is in Yamagata Prefecture. Yonezawa is very famous for—I was here just just about six months ago. It's very famous for its Wagyu beef. And I'm going here to make a beef episode. And they're giving me access to where I believe the slaughterhouse. But I don't think I'm going to actually go into there. I'm not going to record it. They're giving me access to where they grade the beef. So I'm going to go in there and I'm going to make an extremely detailed episode about Wagyu from Yonezawa. They're giving me access to everything that I could never get anywhere else. And I wish Kevin Riley was with me too because he did the last Wagyu episode about Omigyu. And that's nearing two million views there. I'm also going to be going on the 19th. And I believe Kanae is coming with me. He's going to take the Shinkansen up. To Ginzan Onsen. And you're coming with me on the Only in Japan livestream too.

00:51:50 John Daub: Ginzan Onsen is huge right now. Everybody is putting on the—Here it is right here. Everybody is putting Ginzan Onsen pictures on Instagram if you're following Japan. Isn't it taking me there? Ginzan-so. Okay, it should be right here. Oh, there it is. Right in the center of the screen. Ginzan Onsen is one of the most picturesque looking places in Japan. Especially at winter. So I'm going to be there next week. Right here. And I'll try to bring you live and share a little bit of that experience with you. But this is the second time I'm staying at a ryokan here. And I'm going to film that ryokan as well as another ryokan. So I have two ryokan in this episode that I'm making on Ginzan Onsen. So it's very detailed information about staying here. And the reason why it's become so big. So I've got some people who live there that want to come. And they'll give me interviews and explain what it's been like to go through this tourism boom at Ginzan Onsen. And if you have never been there, booking Ginzan Onsen, six months in advance. It's really hard to get a room at Ginzan Onsen. Very hard.

00:53:07 John Daub: All right, I'll take questions for the next five minutes. I wanted to go for an hour for this live stream to give you updates here. Just pushing back to see if I missed anything. Please ask them about tattoos. That policy. First of all, sento in Tokyo, 99% of the sento are tattoo friendly in Tokyo. Those are public baths. The onsen outside of Tokyo, slowly they're starting to be more accepting of tattoos. So we'll see when tourism returns. If they are because they want more tourists to come. All of the ryokan are doing bad. All the onsens are doing not that great. So they might be more accepting of tattoos just on an economical point of view. We will see.

00:53:54 John Daub: As a foreigner, I managed to get into Japan a couple of months from now. Does the government pay the quarantine hotel? That's a good question. The government does pay for your hotel. So if you come to Japan from right now as a resident or citizen, you are required to stay in a government facility. They require it. Therefore, they pay for it. These hotels are pretty decent hotels. If you are—I'm going by where Greg stayed. He stayed in a pretty decent hotel. Some people are put in like four star hotels. It just depends. The problem was that at the beginning of this, when a lot of people were coming back for the holidays, they didn't have hotels in the city of Tokyo near the destination. So some flights would come into Narita and they didn't have accommodations for you. So they would put you on a domestic flight. I can't understand. On a domestic flight to Nagoya or Fukuoka, which is like 70 minutes away by flight, like seven hours on the Shinkansen. Okay. You stay in your hotel there for six days and then you come back to Tokyo on another flight, a special flight. And the government's paying for all of this. So you don't have to pay for the government stay. I don't know if this changes for tourists. This is the policy for residents and for citizens right now. I don't know if this policy is going to continue. But you don't pay for it. And you don't pay for the transportation to the hotel. But you have to pay for your transportation to your home for home quarantine. And that has to be a taxi or car. It can't be public transportation. They have special taxis that are all like plastic in. So you don't get people sick.

00:55:47 John Daub: Sayar writes in here, that's ridiculous. I look, I look, I'm so used to this being the ridiculous side of Japan. I stopped. There was a moment where everybody gets this. If when you first move to Japan, you get what's called the six month blues. Everybody gets these six month blues as you move here as an expat. After six months, the newness of Japan wears off and you become somewhat disappointed in what you see. It's actually different than your image of it. You see that this is a country of rules and they follow the rules, even though they don't make sense. You learn this and either you one accept it and you just accept it. So you become a happier person. Or two, you try to fight it and you go against the current and say this stinks. And you try to fight the rules and you never win. And the end you leave. You're pretty angry. And I remember an English teacher that I was mentoring for the company I worked for in Hamamatsu, which is just north of Nagoya. And I would go to visit her at the time every couple of weeks. And she was extremely negative on everything. She'd walk around without makeup and sweatpants, which is weird for a girl in Japan. I don't wear makeup. I can't understand that. But women have a little bit tougher in Japan than men, I think, in that sense, if you're very casual. So she said that people don't treat her right. And she said, maybe you want to dress up a little bit better. Maybe wear a little makeup. I don't know. Do what you want to do. But people, gaiken, your outer appearance in Japan is pretty important. And she couldn't get a hold on it. So she ended up leaving after a year. And she was very upset with everything though. Not just that. But the little things with the society here. It's a country of rules.

00:57:43 John Daub: So I'm taking your questions here. Somebody asked me about the Apple thing. But the situation with Apple Japan is very much—Apple Japan and Apple, this wouldn't have happened in the U.S., what happened to me. Like, I fell through the cracks. So I purchased an iPhone 13 Pro and it never arrived. It was maybe stolen. Maybe they never even put it in the box. I don't know. But after two months of talking to Apple Japan, this is—I want you to hear this because it helps you to understand about how Japan is different. Even though Apple is a U.S. company, Apple Japan is not. It's a Japanese company. It's Kabushiki Gaisha Apple Japan. They just sell the iPhones with the brand. The English-speaking representative called me. And she started to read the fine print and the rules to me. When that happened, I knew that it was over. She's doing like legal talk to me. And she said, look, Apple Japan does not take any responsibility for you not receiving your iPhone. Because we wrote it in our policy. This is what the policy is. And I said, can you send me an email of it? But no. The rules say that she, in her position, cannot contact me by email. So she's not doing anything to help me. She's just going by the rules. This is Japan. Sometimes those rules help you. Those societal rules keep us safe because everyone's wearing a mask. I mean, there's good things with it. Sometimes the societal rules, these rules, especially within corporations, they make you want to just go—and I want to explode. And I kind of did. I probably lost my composure when Apple said that they were not at fault because of a rule.

00:59:27 John Daub: Now, I'm going to get in touch with Apple USA. This is all part of trying to understand why the entry policy is the same way. There's no difference between the way that they approached it with this and the immigration policy. Look, it's in our rules. That's what is written here. We made this based on the information we have. They said that, you know, this was safe. So they went here. And even though I fell through the cracks and something happened with my order, it's like a very, very like one in one million chance that this happened. I'm the one who lost this lottery. And I'm never going to see this iPhone. And there's a 90% chance I don't see any money either from Apple or the post office. There's no insurance on it. Apple picked a U-Pack that we're not sure—the post office doesn't even know if the package was insured. Because Apple picked a cheap—Apple Japan, I should say this—picked a cheap method to send it. But they're not accountable of it because of their rules, which is not the law. So we're going to have—I'll make an episode on this later on. But the way that they think and approached me was from a rule point of view. And that absolved them because they're hiding behind a rule. And for me, it doesn't absolve them because this is your money that I bought this iPhone with. So I'm going to fight for it. I'm a fighter. I'm going to go against the grain a little bit.

01:00:51 John Daub: Lame. Absolutely. Look, Apple Japan is not—nothing against Apple. They make good stuff. It's Apple Japan. If I see them, I will be, you know, somewhat harsh. I'll probably just—you know what will happen? I'll probably smile and say something nice and then be passive aggressive. That's probably what I would do. I would sweep the leg. The digital leg. Chargebacks are not possible. The chomp. I learned American Express Japan is also different. So there's—chargebacks, no. Theft is not one of them. And listen to this, all right? I was going to do this in the episode here, but listen to this. I'm not upset. I'm very calm. Listen to the sound of my voice. I can't use AppleCare to claim that it was stolen because I never received the phone. Therefore, I could never activate it to utilize the AppleCare plan. And Apple confirmed that I can't use AppleCare because the phone—I never activated the phone. But how can I activate the phone if I never received it? And if I never received the phone, it's an admission that they did not finish their order and they didn't finish the process of getting this to the customer. Doesn't that make sense? So for me, it doesn't make sense to me. How can I take a $1,500 hit on this? It's based on the rules.

01:02:29 John Daub: Now, I'm not going to lie. I can get a lawyer. This is the thing, right? It's a $1,500 phone. If I get a lawyer and everything, not only do I waste time fighting this, I waste money and I just get frustrated. I'm not going to let it go either. I'm still working on ways to get around this. And if it has to be through social media, so be it. But I'm not going to give up on something that I think is wrong because I have personal beliefs just like all of you do. And I believe if somebody gives you bad service and you pay for it, you're going to get a $1,500, a $500, and they don't care about that enough to make sure that you receive it. That says a lot of—that does not say much, that doesn't say anything nice about your company. So Apple Japan, I didn't receive your package. I've been working with you for over two months. That doesn't speak highly of your customer service or that you care about your customers. It's just as much as that. But the hit behind the rules, which is what Japan is based on. So it can work for you and it can work against you. And at this point it's working against me. She even said that they had a meeting of all the department heads and the department heads decided this. Like I, you know, if I wouldn't go through this, it's not worth it. I didn't steal the phone, I wasn't even here. It was in Nagano and you all know that because I was live streaming. Apple, hotels, banks, ward offices in Japan, they're all the same. If your situation doesn't fit in the limited cases they prescribe, you're out of luck.

01:04:08 John Daub: Chant the one the one thing that I will never do is go completely negative or never get upset, never lose your control, never get angry, never, never rant. I let—I let—I ranted to when she read me the rules. I think it went on like a 10 minute tirade of anger. No swear words but I was like, how could you let your customer go through this for two months? I have my money, I don't have anything. You can't have AppleCare, you have no insurance. I went through this with her. I wouldn't have done it if she didn't speak English because she was a bilingual representative. If it was in Japanese, I probably wouldn't have said anything. But anger in Japan is an emotion that's lost. Once you go angry, you've lost. Doesn't matter because there's nothing that they can do for you anymore because you're lost, you're, you're, you're in another world. The best way to get anything is to make people feel guilty. And if you can make them feel guilty, then they'll try to do more for you. But if you make them—if you—if your anger, nothing good will ever come to you in Japan. You have to go the other way. If you're very respectful and you are patient, people realize this. They know that you're doing your best, they feel for your situation more, they empathize. And they will do their best in return. And if they don't, then it's just a really bad company. But if they—but nine times out of ten they're doing the best right now.

01:05:32 John Daub: Japan Post is—they're still working with them. They didn't give up on this. So they're doing their best to try to come to a resolution and I'm staying composed even though I'm very upset. Not really, sort of, but I am and I'm not publicly—I'm not upset because I said so. But we will come to a resolution one way or another and—hey John, glad to be here when you are live. Welcome. I'm about to leave the live stream, I gotta get back to work. I'm working, I've already finished one episode for the main channel that's being previewed by a division of Japan Rail. It's a train episode so that's going to be coming pretty soon. It depends on them, they're confirming the information because they don't want to be wrong. And I'm also working on a video from Oita Prefecture that is almost finished. And so there's a lot of content rolling out on the main channel so I just want you guys to know that too.

01:06:43 John Daub: That one of the things that I'm mostly doing is just going to be on the main channel and I'm also going to be doing a lot of content for you guys and that's for the people watching on the main channel so make sure you check that out. The main channel is at the very end of the video but also to my friends at ProCliffe. There's a website really a lot of work going on and so I'm excited that we will get them to come back and I want to end on that note. You guys have been nice. The borders close. Japan is taking the worst case scenario. The prime minister is up front saying this. Okay. So when he says this, he means it. This is—I'm a key sheet. Prime Minister Kishida is not doing a bad job. He's very transparent in the reasoning and what's behind it. He said openly, which is not a popular decision for all of you, the worst Japan is taking the worst case scenario. And he's the first prime minister that I know of that has said this publicly. So a lot of credit to him for just being open and saying, this is the route that they're going. Even though I don't agree with it, you have to give them a lot of credit for that. So now you understand where Japan is coming from. They're taking the worst case scenario with this. They've extended it to the end of February and then we'll see. But if the situation changes and the spike comes up and down, just like we think it—well, we think internationals think, but Japanese don't know—then it could be rolled back earlier.

01:08:16 John Daub: But if you have tickets for March 1st, I'd say there's a 95% chance that my opinion that you won't be able to enter if you don't have a visa or you're listed in the ministry of foreign affairs as not being able to enter. 95% chance that your trip won't be able to happen. And I'd say it's like 80, 75% for April 1st and then 50, 50 for May 1st. Cause I think that visa holders will be allowed back in. I'm just rehashing right now, but because of the announcement that this has been extended to the end of February, that has thrown off projections for when tourism can return. And my plastic crystal ball says that. It all adds up. See you with the iPhone 13 Max for soon. I don't know. We just got—we just got a contribution from Zamzam for an Android fund. And that's that one inch Sony Xperia Pro phone looks pretty promising too. So it's like—Hey, I am very happy with Apple products actually. All right. I, this is the iPhone. So this is the iPhone 12 I have in here. This is the case for it. This is the iPhone 13. I upgrade every year. That's a nice picture of my wife there. I upgrade the phones every year so I can get the best antenna and reception for all of you to get these live streams. So I got the iPhone 13 a little bit later cause I wasn't sure I needed it and it never arrived. So, you know, I get no problem with Apple. I just have problem with Apple Japan and the way that's conducts its service. And it's not taking accountability for awful policies cause it's in the rules. They're not going to change the rules for one person. They'll change their rules for many. So fight it. The Xperia Pro one go Sony. Well, I I'm really happy with Sony too. This is the Alpha One camera and it takes amazing 8K and you're going to see that in all the main channel videos because you can hop in without loss of quality, which is like having two cameras. It's awesome.

01:10:15 John Daub: Victor Rosa, it all adds up. Thanks again Victor for that. We'll see. I don't think I'm going to get to the iPhone 13 anymore. I'm just going to wait for the 14 or get that X the Xperia Pro or the new Samsung that comes out. They're going to apparently announce it soon. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. But I can't get a refund either. I don't know. The only thing that we have is possible insurance on the U-Pack. It's stolen to the police and we made a police report. So it's official. So if it's official that it's been stolen, there has to be some kind of insurance on it, right? I don't know. Credit card has—American Express in Japan only insures $100. We already checked American Express USA and Japan are different despite the fact that it's a gold card. It doesn't matter. The apartment complex we rent and apparently there's no insurance for this. There's insurance for earthquakes. There's insurance for typhoons. There's insurance for this, but not for the box. That's not physically our house. I don't know, but there's no apparently no insurance for that. So I fell through the crack. I got to take a $1,500 hit on this iPhone, but I'm going to fight it. I'm going to fight it and see what happens. And I don't agree with Apple's policies. I'm going to fight this.

01:11:34 John Daub: Joy, you've heard this like a hundred times. I'm just harping on. So I guess I won't be planning to get working visa soon either. Raymond, it looks bad. If you are a student or right now there was a post on Kyoto News, which is a link in the description here, Kyoto News reported that the eikawa industry, the and the JET program is really hurting from this policy too because they can't get enough replacement teachers. It's easy to leave Japan. It's almost impossible to enter, but they can't get replacement teachers to teach for these programs that are vital for education, vital for students learning English, vital for so many things. And I consider English teachers to be vital as one of them. We drink a lot of beer here and we're very important to the Asahi kidding and Sapporo business as well as the convenience stores. Foreign residents, especially English teachers buy a lot of convenient bentos. It's true. But I used, I was a pretty darn good teacher too. I don't mind if I don't mind saying so myself.

01:12:48 John Daub: All this talk, I hope it gives you kind of an idea of where Japan is coming from. Oldest population in the world, handling it as though it is the worst case scenario. This is Japan. This is not the west. They have a completely different thinking on this. Then we do. Do they go by science? Cash asterisk mark? Yes. They go by the science in Japan. They don't go by international science. They go by the science in Japan. One government official was quoted as saying in 2020 that he doesn't take—I'm being—I'm being serious. I, I, I'm gonna see if I can find this article, but he was quoted in as saying that the international data that Pfizer did, the reason they didn't use the Pfizer international data and they delayed the vaccines was because they had to do internal tests because American diet and Japanese—Japanese food, what Japanese eat is different than what Americans eat. And Americans have a different health—are a different healthiness than Japanese. So Japanese are healthier. And he said this publicly on either it was on TV or it's in a news article that's been translated. But that freaked me out. Like Japanese are different biologically than foreigners. So they have to do internal tests. I think that this is also part of why Japan doesn't jump on the data from international news. They believe that Japanese are different and therefore they do tests on Japanese to be 100% certain. And I'm not saying that this is wrong or not. This is their policy. It's just a fact, it's quoted in there. It's true.

01:14:37 John Daub: All support local is a chaos too. That's that's true. As as an English teacher, I supported my local is a chaos around. Did they try Japanese—Americans on this? I don't know, but Japanese Americans eat a lot of pizza too. My Japanese American friends were pretty much ate the same as me as an Indian American. I didn't eat as much curry rice as Indians. So I can, I can say as someone who's half myself, my diet was mostly pizza and hamburgers. I say mostly the—which is 651%, right? So that means 49% vegetables. Okay. Just don't be so hard on me. California rolls. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for watching and hanging in for the last many, many minutes of this talking. I try to keep these live streams longer because you don't get the notifications and it's just fun. Leave any questions in the comments below. I'll see you tomorrow from Hakone. I'll live stream from the hotel. I'm not sure when I get there, it'll either be like 3 PM or it'll be in the evening. It depends if Kanae and Leo come with me. Can I and Leo go, we'll have a 3 PM live stream or around then. If Kanae doesn't go, then I'm going to do an evening live stream. So I'll let you know in the in on Patreon and on Discord. All right, everybody take care. I hope this was not so such bad news for you. Japan is, Japan is affected by MSG, which affects thinking timer T. I'm not sure about the science on that, but who knows? MSG is very tasty actually. And I probably eat a lot of it here. Not sure, but I'm I'm pretty healthy. So I'm okay. Bye everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night.