00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Narita International Airport Terminal 1. I thought I would just take you on a walkthrough and see what it looks like in April 2022. There's not a lot of people here. The last time I was here, this place was virtually deserted. But there is a line over here. How you doing everybody? Just gonna hang out in this corner for a second before we take a walkthrough. This is where you would go to check in and go to the departures. I have about 20 minutes to spare before I've got to take a domestic flight here in Terminal 1.

00:30 John Daub: But I came over here just out of curiosity because I haven't left Japan in two and a half years or more since 2019, I think. So it's been a very long time. But these people are going somewhere. I just walked here. I saw PCR testing. Narita Airport is just not ready, I think, to receive all of the foreign inbound tourism yet. But there's only one way to find out. Let's go take a dive through here. Look at the shops for the next 15, 20 minutes or so.

01:26 John Daub: So this is one of the few ANA flights departing. Interesting. That one is a sign about going to China. Let's just take a quick look down the center here. It is so empty. One day travel will return and this will be full of people again. It's just so surreal to me. Let's go take a look at the board to see what flights aren't suspended. Wow. Look at that.

02:14 John Daub: Look at how interesting Japan is. Welcome me. I live here. It's different. All right. There are some flights that are leaving here on time. It's been a long time since I looked at one of these airline boards like this really big in an international terminal to the US and mostly ANA flights here. Now, a lot of flights are leaving from Haneda these days. So not a lot of people come to Narita. I'm off to Hokkaido where it's like three degrees Celsius. And I'm leaving at 20, 23 degrees Celsius Tokyo, which is kind of insane.

02:58 John Daub: But so they don't say canceled here. They just say the flights are on. That's kind of a good thing. Oh, they do say canceled. Sorry. There's a lot of canceled flights here. What are you going to do? It's just kind of sad. I wanted to go. Let's go to the shops and just see what it looked like. Are they even open? Can you even go shopping in Narita? Let's go take a look.

03:50 John Daub: They still have a post box here, so you could always send your postcards before departure. Just keep a note of that. It goes a little bit faster from Narita. Oh, shopping. Really? Again, it's just so surreal, isn't it? How many times did I come here with Kanae Daub going someplace really interesting. You know, so many. I've used these restrooms before, too. It's the last restroom before a long flight.

04:30 John Daub: The subway is closed here. Didn't know they had a subway. It looks super clean because it's super empty. Wasn't so empty. All the shops are closed. That's what I thought. It might be because it is still quite early. It's just a little bit past 7 a.m. That's probably why. All right, let's go upstairs.

05:26 John Daub: Joy, it is super eerie. What's on the top of this escalator? Zombies. This is like an abandoned airport. So let's go out. Let's go out to the observation deck. Oh, here it is. Take a look at some airplanes. There used to be a lot of airplanes. Still, there's I think it's going to be kind of empty here. All right. I don't see a lot of flights here.

06:51 John Daub: Hey, if you want me to do a walkthrough at New Chitose Airport in Sapporo, make sure you click the like button. If we can get to a thousand likes on that, you guys want me to do a little walkthrough through the Hokkaido Sapporo Airport, which is called New Chitose. There's not a lot of flights. It's pretty empty. There's one ANA flight here. These are international flights. I'm headed to Hokkaido. I'm flying in Narita, renting a car and flying to Chitose in Sapporo near Sapporo.

07:35 John Daub: Rending a car and then going up to melon and watermelon country and then swinging around and going to Nemuro and Kushiro on the very east where you can see Russia and the Kuril Islands, which are contested right now. We've been contested for like a century, really. Sakhalin with Russia. See the great Narita sign. This is what you guys see when you land here. Narita, it's all illuminated. That's how you know you're in Tokyo.

08:15 John Daub: I will get I'm so excited to get to Hokkaido and have a kaisen don. All right. Let's walk through some of the shops and get back. I got to go over to the domestic terminal now. I have to be on at the gate 20 minutes before. They do have a lot of gachapon (capsule toy vending machines) so you can empty your change here. You can even do purikura (photo sticker booths). Narita Airport purikura. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that.

09:02 John Daub: Hokkaido is going to be chilly. It's going to be sunny and like 80 degrees Fahrenheit, 24 degrees Celsius the next few days. And I'm going to zero where winter is still going on. All right. There's a food court here. Let's take a look. Basically, it's empty because it might be because it's just early. I do think it's open during the day, but just not right now. Wow. There's a Lawson's that's open. All right. Let's go down.

10:01 John Daub: I don't want to miss my flight. I'm flying an airline called Peach Airline. I haven't flown them before. So it was about $600 round trip on ANA or like $150 round trip with Peach. So I went with Peach, which is actually ANA's low cost carrier. So it's kind of like taking ANA, except they weigh your suitcases and everything. Really strict. Had to put if you want to get around the weight limits, put all your stuff in your pockets and make sure you bring a jacket. Then you can get underneath the weight limits that they have. They never weigh your jackets.

10:54 John Daub: But I never thought it was fair to charge people by the weight. What if you're really thin? You weigh like 100 pounds. Should you have a little bit more weight limit? You know, just being fair. I'd have to pay more because I've put on some pounds over the last couple of years. Here's where the post office is. I have sent many things from this post office. It's closed and there's a Starbucks here. If you want to get a coffee that's open. They do have the cherry blossom. Oh, no, it's sold out. The sakura drinks. They do have one last sakura mug there.

11:50 John Daub: All right. Off we go. That was fast. Fascinating. I've changed money at that bank a couple of times, too. This is between the wings. Shall we go to the North Wing? Maybe we can go to the North Wing really quickly because I got a skedaddle to the domestic. The last time I came to Narita Airport was I drove Simon from Eat Your Kimchi back in June of last year of 2020. Oh, my gosh. Was it? I don't even remember. It was a long time ago. And I drove out here, spent a day in Narita. I think he was the only one on that flight.

12:49 John Daub: This is so empty. This one is spooky. There's nobody here. Holy mackerel. How you doing, everybody? Holy mackerel. This is so empty. This is dark, too, just because there's less lights. Oh, it's just not. It's not right. They should open up. All right. Off I go to the domestic departures.

14:04 John Daub: By the way, don't fly drones here. That should go without saying. That's amazing. People have to be reminded. Don't fly drones at an airport. I thought that Peach Airlines was Terminal 3. It's actually Terminal 1. So I had to walk from Terminal 3 to 2. Catch the shuttle bus. There's a free shuttle bus that takes you around to the other terminals of Narita. And it's not a bad place to stay.

14:37 John Daub: That's how to get to the domestic. I believe. Hold on a second. Yeah. That's where we started the live stream right here. Let's go down into the dungeon. The arrivals also super empty. There's nobody arriving. So there's also a place where you can get PCR tests before departure and on arrival. I think they do it for free. If you're coming into Japan.

15:30 John Daub: By the way, I put some new emoji in. Some of them are relevant to this trip to Hokkaido. So you guys want to take advantage of that. I'm moving towards unknown spaces. The domestic terminal. There's the ATMs. I have 2000 yen cash. That might be enough. There's international arrivals. Very quiet. And then I believe if you go down here. I can get to the domestic departures. I'm kind of freaking out. Luckily going through security in Japan is pretty easy.

16:41 John Daub: Domestic. Oh, there it is. First floor. Okay. Who wants to be on time? I always like to be right on time. You know, like right on time. I guess it's this way. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I took a bus here called TCAT, which is Tokyo City Airport Transport from Hakozaki, which is a massive interchange. So I think going and coming to Narita to Tokyo by bus is the best way. Unless you have a rail pass that you want to activate because the buses are pretty cheap. And they're pretty fast, too. Took me less than an hour to get here by bus.

18:01 John Daub: Then you can see the board. A couple of canceled and a lot of code sharing, meaning these Star Alliance flights and OneWorlds have just combined massively to reduce the flights and just stop in a couple more countries, apparently. Yeah, I guess if you have a lounge and I do have American Express for ANA, so maybe I can use the lounges. That might be a reason to come early. I didn't think of that. I'm going to go to the lounge. But I'm flying Peach Airline and they don't have a lounge. I'm pretty sure the lounge is your seat when you get on the flight. And I'm sweating so bad because it is like 20 something degrees here in Tokyo and it's going to be zero when I arrive. I think it's well, not zero, but pretty cold.

19:03 John Daub: Here's the Peach check in. The thing that's interesting with the Peach check in is that it is ANA, right? Do you see that? That's interesting. So it's basically just ANA, but cheaper. They weighed my bag. It's exactly 6.9 because they put all the batteries and stuff in my pocket. I'm here to beat the system. I have like five kilograms of batteries in my pocket. I can put it back in my bag now. You just have to beat the Jetstar is the worst, though. I don't think they'll let you fly. You have to leave stuff behind. Maybe I'll gladly pay an extra couple hundred yen, but I don't know. It's more fun to beat the system until they catch you.

20:20 John Daub: All right. This is security. So this is as far as we can go. All right, everybody. This is fun. Yeah. Let's see in the playback if it's all Peach Airline going this way. We get a thousand likes when I come back. I'm coming back here on the 14th and I got to fly out through Narita. I get there. I guess about 8 p.m. So I got about an hour to live stream there and show you a little bit about New Chitose Airport and see how Hokkaido's main airport is doing.

20:53 John Daub: And of course, today I got another live stream in Yubari, which is where melon country. I'm going to be meeting my nemesis who bit my head off one day. At least go to his house. I'm not sure he's going to be there, but I'm in touch with the Yubari city office and they know I'm coming. I got to meet with them. It's going to be fun day. So that's probably going to be around 2 p.m. 1 to 2 p.m. And I'll give you an update on Instagram and the Discord server as always. So Instagram stories and whatnot. Thanks everybody. Have a good day.

21:25 John Daub: And this is going to be a long one for me because after I get to Hokkaido where I got to drive all the way to the east side to Nemuro, which is like five hours of driving. So I'm not really looking forward to that, but I'm going to stop off at a lot of rest stops and get some coffee and stuff should be fine. Alright. Have a good day. See you. Bye bye. Bye.

22:08 John Daub: [inaudible]