00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome. This is John in Tokyo and I have some good news to report that a couple of days ago Prime Minister Kishida at a summit in London gave a speech, which I'm calling it the Believe in Kishida speech. And the Prime Minister stated quite openly, I have the transcript right here in English, that Japan will reopen in June. Asterisk, mark, asterisk, mark, asterisk, mark. Over the course of the last 36 hours, people have been asking me to do another Japan travel update. And a lot of you have been sending me messages saying that you're going to be booking your trips to Japan, which might be a little bit premature, but yet I don't blame you. I don't blame your enthusiasm because you should be pretty excited about this because I think it is exciting news at least. You know, there's movement and there's progress towards opening up Japan.

00:01:04 John Daub: Now, Kishida, Prime Minister Kishida, who I think is really a bold prime minister. Okay. I think he's done some really great things. And except in November, he was the one who closed down. Granted, I think he was new at the job at the time, but he closed down the border in November when the Omicron variant came in. And understandably, a lot of students and business travelers and people in general were upset because this took Japan back almost to a harsher situation than before. The pandemic had closed Japan the first time.

00:01:34 John Daub: Quarantine times were extended back to two weeks and more. And my wife and I had to cancel our trip to the United States not knowing if we could get back into Japan. More than that. We just didn't want to spend 14 days in a hotel for some government quarantine, which made no sense at the time. They were flying passengers coming in, Japanese citizens and residents who returned sometimes would have to fly to Fukuoka, which is like a 75 minute flight, to stay in a hotel there, because they didn't have enough hotels in Tokyo to quarantine everybody, which is why they have changed the quarantine rules that there's no quarantine at all if you test negative upon arrival at Tokyo's airports at the moment.

00:02:23 John Daub: So in this episode, for the next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to take some of your questions, but also talk about this reopening, what it means, what it might not mean, and if you should book your trip like right now, which, you know, maybe you want to. I know Laura, who is an Ecuadorian American, has been trying to get here to Japan for a very long time. And I think this is the year. I'm pretty sure we're there. So let me get over this year.

00:02:53 John Daub: I'll put a link in the description if you don't already. This is the Nikkei Asia, which is a wonderful publication. They have printed Kishida-san's speech about 36 hours ago in English here. And I also tweeted this on twitter.com OnlyJapanTV so you can get the link there if it's not here in YouTube. But he starts off in this speech which is mostly about business, it's not about tourism. But here's the thing over the last year and why is Japan opening up now?

00:03:24 John Daub: Over the last year a lot of foreign businesses have been closing up shop, moving to Korea, shutting down their businesses or downscaling their businesses here in Japan because they simply can't get workforce from abroad because of the travel ban. They can't get the people in, they can't get the resources in. There's not enough flights coming from abroad. So Japan Post has suspended mail still to so many countries. Australia and Canada and the United States don't have normal first class package mail, which is insane. Right? And it's all because of the travel ban. There's just not flights coming into Japan because it's not profitable unless people come in. And this has created havoc for a lot of international businesses that require packages and things to be sent here, including people.

00:04:32 John Daub: So because a lot of foreign businesses have started to downscale and their outlook on the future doesn't include Japan, Prime Minister Kishida went to London and had no choice but to make this speech. And I think it was a very bold speech. I highly recommend that you read it because it gives you great insight into the way Japan is thinking now and in the future. And you know, let me know in the comments if you buy what he's saying. If you do believe in Japan, if you do believe in Kishida, which he says here is, you know, and I quote, you know, believe in Kishida. I believe is it was the quote I'm looking at. It's 13 pages by the way. I should have highlighted it. But he literally says, "Believe in Kishida," meaning he's putting his neck out there on the line and saying we need you back. And that type of humility for me I kind of, I respect that he gave this kind of a speech. It's not common, I guess, for a Japanese leader to give such a speech like this that I've seen or heard in my 23 years being here. So I thought it was a pretty good speech to try to invest in Japan.

00:05:34 John Daub: And when you invest in Japan, you're investing in this prime minister and this government and his vision. He laid it out. It's on page four of the transcript. And I want to get into this before I start to break down what it all means. Let's just read what he said. Okay. He talks about his personal experiences, which is incredible. At the end of last year, Japan strengthened its border control measures in response to the global spread of the Omicron variant.

00:06:07 John Daub: This is his words: "It was an essential public health step to delay the variant's entry into the country. This allowed us to fortify our healthcare system and promote vaccinations. I hope it is not too boastful to say that Japan's response to COVID 19 has been one of the most successful in the world." And you can't argue with the numbers and the data and the stats on the amount of people who died, the infection numbers. Again, there's been criticism on Japan's testing. I know because I've been giving this update for the last since this started in January of 2020, I've been giving you travel updates even when you still traveled to Japan. And testing was one of the things that it was a sour point. You just couldn't get them. So we really don't know what the numbers are, but the numbers are pretty good for Japan. You've always seen them very low. And even if they were, you know, fudging the numbers or people weren't getting us tested as much, the numbers were still pretty good, even if you inflated that by 10 times.

00:07:17 John Daub: So we have now. Okay, it continues here. "We have now eased border control measures significantly, with the next easing taking place in June when Japan will introduce a smoother entry." All right, everybody, so we're back here. So again, just to reiterate, we have now eased border control measures significantly with the next easing taking place in June when Japan will introduce this— Kanae actually tried to call me. That's why the audio and the phone messed up here. I'm on Wi-Fi, so the cellular is not turned off for the apps. And she tried to call me. That messed it up. Sorry, Kanae, if you're watching, please don't call me right now. I'm rapping.

00:07:50 John Daub: So the next easing. So this is why I want you. So this is really good news. Whether you agree or you disagree, I think it was a great speech. I think it was a lot of really positive things. And of course I'm going to invest in Japan. My time is here. But what does it— but like if we talk about the easing of Japan, Japan's entry process, that doesn't actually mean that they're going to reopen. It's confusing, I think. So what's going to happen is this. If number one, if you have family here, if you live in Japan, you're a resident of Japan and you have family here in Japan, you can get a visa, a special exemption and come and visit.

00:08:53 John Daub: I've already talked to a bunch of travelers not from Japan that are visiting family here in Japan, meaning it could be a son or a daughter that's an English teacher that is a resident of Japan. As long as you're a mother, a father, first family, not a second cousin or a friend, a very close friend, you can't come. But if you're close family, you can come into Japan. As far as I know, the visa application is on MOFA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. If you call the consulate, we had somebody from Hawaii whose son is in Okinawa. If you call the consulate, they probably don't know. Best thing to do is to go fill out the application for visa entry and submit that to the embassy and then let them tell you yes or no. A lot of them really don't know what's going on. They just want paperwork. So give them the paperwork. Don't call the embassy and expect to get it. You know, expect to be confused because this is all changing very quickly.

00:09:56 John Daub: So he wants to— so Prime Minister Kishida here in this paragraph on the fourth page, right down here at the bottom, he wants to ease the border control measures with the next step taking place in June. That doesn't mean a full reentry. So before you book your trip to Japan for May or June or July, push the brakes here. That doesn't mean a full reopening. That just means right now, according to the Japan Times, which had a headline about 24 hours ago, what was your headline here?

00:10:29 John Daub: Japan to allow tourist groups as soon as the month— report says here it's on the top. I guess you have to be logged into your Japan Times account to get into this article. But they did some reporting and they said that right now it looks like package tourists. This is, I told you this about six months ago, package tourists and tourists that are coming here with a group tour can come into Japan probably as test groups as a part of an experiment to reopening Japan.

00:11:01 John Daub: So he's not lying when he says he's doing it in steps. So the next step is going from 10,000 to 20,000 people entering into Japan. Of the 20,000 will be packaged tourists. Now, that number seems low, 20,000. But I want you to put this in perspective here. Of the foreign tourists that came to Japan in 2019, there were 32 million. This is all in my head here. 32 million people. 80% of them came from China. And it's not clear if that includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, but China makes up 80% of the foreign tourism that's coming to Japan. So keep that in mind when you see a number bump from 10,000 to 20,000. That's actually a kind of significant amount of people for one day entry. When you consider that China is not one of them with their zero COVID policies, they're not opening up the border.

00:12:09 John Daub: So those 80% tourists coming into Japan from China are not going to be among the test group. That might make some people happy. That might not. If you live in Hong Kong, for example, I'm very happy if you're thinking of coming in in Japan. So keep that in mind. That's going to be the next step. I believe it'll happen this month. I think that some of these experimental tour groups will start in May, if they haven't already, because I've seen some tour buses going through here. It's weird because we know that Japan's not open, but yet we see some tourists. If you live here in Japan and you're going like, "What's up? How'd they get in here?" In fact, Kanye West was here in Japan, I think yesterday, and we're not really sure how he got in here. Was it a business visa? Does he have family here in Japan? But if you're Kanye, you can get into Japan. So it's very confusing, right? Maybe he's an experimental tourist here. So if you want, you can just go to his Instagram and see nice pictures of Omotesando in certain areas that we all want to go to, including me, which is just down the street.

00:13:23 John Daub: So in 2020, we had 32 million people come to Japan in 2019 and 250,000 people in 2021, which is ridiculously low. Think about that. 32 million to 250,000. Who are these 250,000 people? Probably mostly business people and a mixture of some people who could get visas from certain countries that had some connection with somebody else. That's usually how it works. Something related to business here in Japan or family connections. 250,000 is a lot of connections.

00:13:54 John Daub: 250,000 people. So Japan really needs to open up the border now. The situation in Japan we have still kind of a wave and we're just finishing up the Golden Week holiday. And if you look at our COVID numbers, I believe right now I could be wrong, Japan is higher with infection rates than in the United States. That people aren't testing like they— nor like a lot in the US anymore. But I believe Japan has a tougher situation than America right now.

00:14:24 John Daub: But of course it's going to only get better. I believe the country has gone through the booster shots which I said was one of the criteria. They had to finish their boosters, the third shots. 80% of the population is vaccinated with Moderna or Pfizer. So Japan has done everything that it can possibly do to prepare for this including the boosters. Including having procedures in place. They have vinyl coverings, plastic sheets in front of the stores so clerks feel safer.

00:14:57 John Daub: It's a different situation now than in 2020. Japan is ready as it's ever going to be for 2023. I don't think that if you're the Prime Minister and you're looking at your crystal ball the situation is going to be any different next year than it is this summer. And with Korea opening up, with other countries opening up and other businesses. And this is even bigger than the tourists. Although we love you, business is more vital to Japan. Japan's economic growth. Having foreign businesses coming here to hire the workers here. So unemployment is lower. Blah blah blah. If you don't have tourism or an open border you can't have that. You can't have people coming in freely. It's going to really hurt. Why anybody should invest in a country that doesn't allow people to come in. And Prime Minister Kishida recognizes this and he's doing a balancing act which is very hard of going with what the people feel here.

00:15:59 John Daub: The citizens. Japan is the oldest country in the world. The oldest population in the world. Average population. So there's a lot more to lose here. But there's also a lot of misunderstandings. People are still wearing masks and in parks by themselves eating lunch. It's kind of crazy. Like, they'll take their mask off, they take a bite and they put their mask on, but there's nobody around. There's a complete misunderstanding of how viruses work, apparently.

00:16:30 John Daub: But look, you can't fault people for being extra, extra cautious, I guess. And I think upon— we don't know how they're going to reopen Japan, but when they open up after this experiment, I don't know if they're going to have things like, will you sign a form saying that you understand if you get sick you have to go here? You should wear masks on public transportation in crowded places. The rules and laws in your country don't apply to the rules and the laws in this country.

00:17:03 John Daub: In fact, the rules and laws of science don't really apply to this country in some ways. But it's about keeping people safe and making people feel safe because you're the guest. And if people want to want you to wear masks on public transportation in Japan, you probably don't have to, but it would really freak people out if there's a bunch of people who aren't. Jennifer French writes in here. Do you think the tour groups will be indefinite or at some point?

00:17:35 John Daub: Of course, Jennifer, this is— that's a great question. This is just the next stage. So what I'm trying to say is here's the reopening of Japan is not just border open like in the United States would do. Japan does it with the least amount of risk possible. This is their— you know, mo. This is the way they always do it. How do you minimize risk? So there's a lot of uncertainty. So they're only going to open up little by little by little.

00:18:05 John Daub: They don't open the door like this. They open it like— and then when something happens, it just closes. Easy to close, slow to open. So May and June, I believe they're going to have experimental groups. I put this in parentheses because I don't even know what that means. Package tours to see if infection rates stay low and if they stay manageable, the hospitals don't get overrun, which I don't think they will because Japanese are taking precautions and wearing masks.

00:18:38 John Daub: And the infection rate domestically is not that bad because of that. If the rate stays low, then they'll open it up to the next step and then more people will be able to come in, which I think is really up to you. So, meaning those that come in on the experiment, are you wearing masks? Are you staying healthy? Are you trying your best not to get sick? Because there still is a pandemic and there's still a risk, even if you're boosted, to get sick and transfer this to somebody else.

00:19:11 John Daub: Japan's still, of course, worried about that because we're still in like higher numbers that we had all of last year. Right now, of course, it's the Omicron variant. It's different, but it still is pretty high. So it's going to require those first tourists are pioneers or experimental pioneers and how you interact. If you go out and get drunk and you get sick and then you give it to everybody, probably Japan will, you know, they very easy to close the doors again.

00:19:43 John Daub: So the one thing I learned of living here for 23 years is that you're going to be judged by society. So wear your mask. Try to be on good behavior. Try not to. And it's not perfect because I break, I break these social rules all the time. But for this, the pandemic, at least for the first few months, this is going to be under the microscope. So if that Jake Paul, or is it Paul Jake? Not Jake Paul, Logan Paul or Paul Logan— if that Logan Paul thing where he goes around being an idiot, going to the forest and making fun of people, probably that's going to have a really negative impact.

00:20:26 John Daub: If he were to return to Japan, I think he can't because he was deported. But I don't know if anyone knows him, please let me know because I'm curious to see what they told him. So that's pretty much it. The headlines tell the story, though. Timeout, which is a travel guide, writes in here, "It's happening. Japan to reopen border from June. The country's strict COVID 19 border rules will gradually be relaxed to align with other G7 nations."

00:20:56 John Daub: That's from Timeout. Japan Times writes in here, "Japan to allow tourist groups as soon as the month." Forbes writes in here, "Japan will reopen to travelers in June." See here. Nikkei Asia writes in here, "Time to end Japan's 93 isolation and allow foreign visitors." That was three weeks ago. But the headlines of a lot of them, the publications are pretty positive. But I have yet to see like the New York Times or Washington Post or Los Angeles— I haven't seen any headlines yet by searching Japan reopen articles on this yet.

00:21:31 John Daub: So I think there's still a big asterisk and we're still trying to ascertain what it means to what Kishida-san actually means. I believe in Kishida. Okay. I believe in Prime Minister Kishida. I believe in, you know, the Kono Taro, who is probably going to be the next Prime Minister too. But I think he's maybe a little bit. He's pretty strong too. But I'm pretty impressed with Kishida's speech.

00:22:03 John Daub: And before you book your trip here, Laura, I'm talking specifically to her. Let's wait and see then. Thanks for the update, John. Thank you, Sakura. Let's see how May and June go before you book your trip. I know there's an instinct like August is going to be fine and you might be right. My personal feeling is that by the time that Bullet Train opens, everyone's going to be wanting to come to Japan and they're going to have to open up the gates.

00:22:35 John Daub: I don't know why. Whenever you get Brad Pitt on a Hollywood movie where Brad Pitt's going to be on the Shinkansen with swords and stuff, you know, it's like Kill Bill on a Shinkansen. I think I just started reading it. This is going to be a major Hollywood motion picture that's going to be released. I think it was like July 3rd or 4th. Okay. So when this book comes out, Bullet Train, and I think they couldn't say Shinkansen because it's like a copyright with JR or something.

00:23:06 John Daub: I'm not sure, a Bullet Train is going to be getting people interested in Japan again, I think. And it'd be pretty smart for Japan to take advantage of what Hollywood's doing and paying for the budget to promote this movie. More than that, I think that a lot of the business leaders want Japan to reopen now so that they can take advantage of the yen exchange rate. Right now it's 130 yen to the dollar. It's going to attract a lot of people because Japan is on sale.

00:23:38 John Daub: It's 25% cheaper than it was, I think, at the point in 2020 when they closed Japan. So there's like a 25% discount on everything and inflation's pretty low in Japan, so prices haven't really changed that much. Although— caveat. My flight. I just bought a ticket to go back to the United States for the first time in two and a half years, and the flight was more expensive by about $800 for premium economy seats, so. And the premium economy wasn't that much more than the economy. So it was like a no brainer but for 14 hour flight with a kid. So there's that too. Now flights are starting to go up.

00:24:12 John Daub: One of the headlines was that the stock for JAL, Japan Airlines, went up after Kishida-san's speech which was at Japan Times. JAL, which is Japan Airlines, JAL's return to profit as Japan moves to reopen borders. The net airline forecast for income went up as a result of Kishida-san's speech and the stock went up. Pretty cool.

00:24:43 John Daub: So a lot of businesses have been teetering. The JAL and— are just a few. Japan Rail has been suffering because they can't get the same numbers of people. Tourism really did make a difference to Japan Rail's. The ridership is down, especially to rural areas where tourists would go to like Hokkaido and Aomori to Hoku. Going down to Kyushu, tourists would take the Shinkansen on those long hauls. Most of them are empty. I saw, I rode on the Komoma during Golden Week and there were loads of seats available, which is odd.

00:25:19 John Daub: But that's the situation we're in right now. Japan needs its tourists to ride the Hikari Shinkansen down to Osaka and visit around. Japan Times also has a headline from three days ago. "The 22 trillion dollar yen question: When will Japan open to foreign tourists?" So like I don't know if Japan Times has been the best at getting pressuring Japan to reopen the country because I don't think it works. I don't think it works to be an activist in Japan very well.

00:25:51 John Daub: I don't know. I've seen it. It's different than the United States. I think that you have to be for something and you have to feel really strongly. And I'm sure that I wasn't— I could have been a lot stronger trying to push to get Japan to reopen, but after so many years here, it wouldn't really have made much of a difference and in fact it would have probably made me lose credibility here in Japan because you really aren't going to change anything because it's not a decision that's up to some foreigner who's living here in Japan.

00:26:29 John Daub: You have to kind of go along with the tide of things unless you have huge backing behind you. And there just wasn't a lot of that. And you know I— I saw that a lot of— well, there's a few people that were quite critical that some YouTube creators weren't pushing hard enough. But look, that's not our job. My show is not actually a tourist show that points out tourist attractions. I kind of point out to you stories from Japan. And in this livestream channel, I kind of take you on the trips which could be used for tourism or other things.

00:27:03 John Daub: So, you know, my forte is not tourism as much as it is to tell stories about Japan. That could help tourists quite a lot because it gives you a lot of background from a different point of view and perspective from just somebody going to tourist stuff. The one doing the tourist stuff, you know, probably people who are visiting here. People ask me, "Where's the best hotel to stay in in Tokyo?" I don't know. I live here. See what I mean? So it's not really— actually I got a couple of recommendations, but it's not exactly the— the please all like the video, the one that comes out for you. Thank you, Michael. I'm not sure what that means.

00:27:33 John Daub: So yeah, it's just really hard to be an activist on this in particular because I really didn't— I didn't think that there's nothing anything that I could do that helped except to give you updates if you're looking for an activist out of me. That's not really my style anyways. I kind of just tell the stories. And a lot of people, when people had trouble on Twitter, I tried to do my very best to point that out and to highlight it. There was a woman in India who couldn't come in to visit her husband who was working here for like a year as a doctor during the COVID time. And you know, you tweet that, you retweet it, you try your very best.

00:28:07 John Daub: But yeah, I feel really bad about a lot of the people who had to wait for a very long time. And when they started to reopen the country in March— more in February. March. It really made me happy to hear and the messages from you guys saying that you were able to get in, I really didn't play any part in that. And I wish maybe I had been a little bit stronger, but I know that not much could have been done as a result of it.

00:28:45 John Daub: I will take now some of your questions about this. Keep in mind, don't book your trip right now for June. Just don't do it because we don't know. There's asterisks all over the place. You can just put asterisks. I can just put asterisks all over the thumbnail here. Well, at least I managed to save a good amount of cash in two years. Yes. So for a lot of you that haven't been able to travel, you've been saving your money. You can upgrade a little bit, stay a little bit longer. What I've noticed in travel plans, people are planning their trips to Japan longer than what they normally would have stayed if they were going to stay for 10 days.

00:29:46 John Daub: Now people are staying for a month because they saved up for it and they know that they can work remotely as well. Let's see here. Rainy season in June anyways. That's a good point. Except if you go to Hokkaido when it's really beautiful and sunny, which is where I'm going in two weeks, it's going to be really nice weather. Roro2K writes in here. Wait for the details, folks. Yes. Before you buy your ticket, please wait for the details.

00:30:17 John Daub: Hey Mr. Das, where is the Asahi Super Dry? That is my question. Actually I am sick. One of the reasons why I am indoors is it was raining like tropical showers. It'll rain for 20 minutes, go away and rain again. And two, I'm sick. Kanae and Leo have been recovering from a cough fever and now I have a kind of a sore throat. So I'm going to stay in today. Don't have a fever or anything but I'm going to get some rest and that's probably why I don't have an Asahi Super Dry. But I'll take an IOU on it.

00:30:48 John Daub: Susan writes in here. Love your channel, John. Missed my annual trips to Japan. I know especially trusted Shizuoka Fuji Fujinomiya area. You know what? A lot of people who were coming to Japan annually, a lot of them had wrote me they were coming to Japan every year since like for 20 years. There were people that had made their annual trip to Japan for a very long time. And 2020 and 2021 were two years that broke that trend.

00:31:19 John Daub: And it's really hard. Yeah. When you have such a good streak end like this. So I believe 2022 is the year that the streaks all start at zero again. So hopefully we can get some people to come back here by this summer. Question, can John start a tour company? That's not a bad idea actually. There's one website who keeps on hounding me to try to get me to join them and do trips where they do all the planning and I just guide people around. But I— you know what, do you have the time to do this? It's not about the money. It has to be fun and if it's not fun and I'm trying to get the channel, main channel back up, lots of location shoots. I don't see where I got the time to do that, although it could be a lot of fun.

00:31:52 John Daub: And this summer I'm still planning some time. I don't know if it's going to be in, you know, July, August, September to rent one of the yakatabune boats along the Sumida River and get some sort of party with viewers that are coming to Japan. That nothing would make me happier to get 30 or 40 people that are visiting Japan onto one of those yakata-bune and have a nice meeting, have some food, some drinks and cruise up and down the Sumida River, you know. We'll see if that can happen. We'll see if this is the year we can do that.

00:32:24 John Daub: What are the value— Where's the value add in that we like your live streams because it features John being John. Right. Something happened there. Yeah, there's a spammer in here. I think we just banned them. I was about to start annual trips to Japan. My aging ferrets. I'm not laughing. I'm just like— I was just really sad. And it's funny because everybody was trying to get into Japan in 2020 when it hit just suddenly like this.

00:32:55 John Daub: You know, my parents and my family, I haven't seen them in the United States and since 2019— 2019, 2020, 2021, 22, like three years about. So it's going to be really interesting. Really happy to see everybody again, but really interesting to be landing on U.S. soil again because it's weird. Did PM Kishida specifically mention anything? I'm not sure. He didn't specify anything yet. He just made a speech. But in the speech he pretty much owned that speech. I think the rest of the comment came in here. Did PM specifically state anything about tourism, Moses?

00:33:59 John Daub: Moses, the speech that Prime Minister Kishida gave was mostly on business. I'll put a link in the description. This is the transcript in English from the Nikkei Asia, which is a wonderful publication. Nothing specific, but he wrote in the speech, "Believe in Kishida." I mean, that's a really— to me, this makes it the Believe in Kishida speech. It's in quotes and yeah, I think he signed it. So we have to take him on his words. I don't know what the— I believe before he went to London he had this gift in his bag because it's in the speech. So I believe that they are going to reopen in June.

00:34:30 John Daub: I don't think it's going to be what you think it is, but we don't know. I think it's going to be packaged tourists or tourism and then maybe by the end of June, solo travelers. But I don't know if everybody is going to be able to come in and that's why I want you to hold off before you start to book hotels and stuff that's non-refundable. Just wait until we get the details. Right now still kind of the Golden Week holiday until the 8th of May. So I'm guessing next week I might do another travel update to discuss what the Japanese TV, what the media is discussing and what news the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the politicians have said and the leaders have said.

00:35:04 John Daub: And you can also follow ANA and JAL, the airlines and his, the travel agencies, JTB, they're going to have all of the up to date information and that's where I get my sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from the government, from the Prime Minister's mouth himself. You don't get a source more reputable than the Prime Minister. What he says usually will take place. Travis, it is time to open up. I'm 100% in agreement with you. It's just the TV's on. I just kind of leave it on in the background sometimes. The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial is on back there. It's just like it's weird that they're actually showing this on TV.

00:35:44 John Daub: You should do a surprise Tokyo tour for one day every three or four months. That would be interesting. I'm not against doing something like this. We're going to see what happens. But I think if I do a tour or something like this, it's going to be through Patreon, through our community. And you know, I think that's where it all starts. There's lots of apps and this for me, it's all about the community we have right here, that that's watching. And if I have news and if I do anything like this, it's going to be on Patreon and on our Discord server where our community's hanging out.

00:36:16 John Daub: That's ridiculous. Court fight, Depp versus Amber Heard. Yeah, I know. I give everybody the benefit of the doubt and at the end make a judgment. Okay. I can't even figure it out sometimes in the background. I don't know. This is where I'm editing my stuff here. So another reason why I get a little bit more before I end this. And I'm looking at your questions here. Can you give us info on the Expo 2025 Osaka? I will do that when I go down to Osaka to see Kevin.

00:36:49 John Daub: I believe we're going to do with Kevin a Osaka Expo update just to see what's going on. We're still three years away from that, but there's not been a lot of news. And I think Kevin, who's down there, he's pretty excited about that. John Doe writes in here, group tourists are awful. I want to discover Japan by myself. Speaking Japanese, not with a group. All right, group tours. I don't like them either, but sometimes the group tours dissolve quickly, and then you're on your own.

00:37:21 John Daub: It just depends what kind of group tour. When I was in China in 2000, 22 years ago, I had to take group tours to go to Tibet. It wasn't a group tour at all. I just had to pay a little bit extra for this tour, which is like a bribe. And the tour company took it, I guess, responsibility for me. But I had to get a group tour to go to Tibet, and there was no group tour. It was like the group tour was a plane ticket from some agency. And I got— we— this is 22 years ago, and we got to go and see Tibet for a week.

00:37:53 John Daub: I say we. We made— we'd made like 12 or 13 friends from all over the world were traveling in the same direction. I was solo traveler, and our group ended up being like 12 or 13 people. And we all said, let's go to Tibet together. I think it was more like seven people because we all fit in one SUV as we drove across Tibet. So that— I don't know. It depends on the tour group. You don't have to pick one where everybody is over 65 years old. You can pick one where everyone is under 30 years old. There's different kinds of tours for different kinds of people. So if you want to come right away, probably that's your best way in. Take advantage of the summer. The June is the rainy season, as JKO Adventure says, so you might want to wait until July or even September or October when things are a little bit more settled.

00:39:24 John Daub: But there's still the risk that if this experiment doesn't work out that they close the door again, too. I don't think they will. I don't think they will. So good questions. No one should sign up for a monitor tour. That would be pretty harsh. I guess that would make them step up to the next stage. But I have a feeling that people will sign up for it.

00:39:58 John Daub: Tokyo Paul live. Thank you. It's good to see you too here. I'm always happy. I'm happy to see a lot of the same people coming to watch the livestreams. And I'm really appreciative you guys are still there watching. It was nice to see Mr. Doss again here. I haven't seen him in a while. Masks and hand sanitizers would be mandatory. The hand sanitizers are everywhere. Japan has been prepared for this since SARS in like 2002. I had never seen a hand alcohol hand pump in front of an office building until 2002 when SARS was coming around the first time. And every office building had alcohol pumps to clean your hands.

00:40:31 John Daub: And they never really went away. They were still always kind of there. I guess they brought them back out in 2020 more so to the forefront. But then they enhanced it with the temperature checkers. Almost every shopping mall, almost every store has some sort of way to confirm your temperature before you enter. And if you have a fever over— you might want to write this down because you need to know it in Celsius— 37.5 degrees Celsius. If you have a fever above 37.5 degrees Celsius, they consider that a fever here and you won't be allowed in or you might want to go to the doctor.

00:41:11 John Daub: But if you have 35.7 degrees temperature and it picks it up on the machine, you won't be allowed entry in the stores. And I think that might even be the case for flights. I'm surprised they're not taking people's temperatures for flights, to be honest with you. If somebody has a fever and they don't want to wear a mask, that's pretty— that's pretty crappy person. First of all, that means you don't care about getting other people sick.

00:41:41 John Daub: But in Japan we take temperatures and there's hand sanitizers and everybody indoors is wearing a mask. And just you don't really question about it. There might be one person out of every hundred, maybe that's not— doesn't want to wear a mask. But that 1%, it's very rare and you know, you don't see it on public transportation. I wear my mask inside of shops. I wear my mask everywhere indoors. Especially in Tokyo. I wear my mask. This is Japan public transportation.

00:42:13 John Daub: If you're outside, I don't want to wear the mask because it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you can social distance, what's the purpose of the mask? But Japanese wear it. So you might want to consider making the people around you feel comfortable. It's up to you though.

00:42:45 John Daub: Roro2k folks, I recommend learning a bit of Japanese and exploring the back streets. I discovered many hole in the wall mom and pop shops with amazing food. Learning the language opens doors for sure. Learning just a little bit makes people smile and opens new opportunities where they'll start suggesting stuff to you or want to be your friend and feel comfortable with you. I also recommend maybe bringing business cards too. You can get them printed pretty quickly. Bring some business cards, especially if you're a YouTuber or if you're planning on making friends and hand them out with your email address and stuff. Because in Japan, the business culture is—

00:43:16 John Daub: I mean, it goes— the business card is more than just for business. It goes with friends. And it's kind of nice to exchange this with other travelers you meet. Instead of writing stuff down, you just have that business card or just card. You can call— you don't have to call a business card at all.

00:43:47 John Daub: Do you think we need to apply for a new COVID era visa? I don't know what your visa situation is like. Everybody's different. Every country is different. Every nationality might have a different procedure. Some countries might not be able to come into Japan at all when it reopens. In fact, I was looking at the policy changes and they're changing so quickly. This might be obsolete next week, this episode, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, apparently if you're coming from the United States, you don't need to quarantine anymore, which made no sense. I don't understand. If you test negative and you have a vaccine from two from Pfizer or Moderna or AstraZeneca might be one of them.

00:44:23 John Daub: But if you've taken Sinovac, if you've taken Sputnik, the Russian one, if you've taken some of these other vaccines that aren't recognized by anyone in Japan, entering into Japan is going to be complicated. This goes for Joy. One of our moderators in the Philippines doesn't have a Pfizer Moderna shot. And not a lot of countries, some countries didn't have access to that. So what the procedure seems to be. And again, this could be obsolete information in a week or two.

00:44:55 John Daub: Check the MOFA website. So you just have to quarantine for a couple of days. Okay. You just— I believe they might even put you up in the hotel. I don't know. It's something you have to check. But if people coming in had to quarantine at government hotels, the government paid for those hotels. And trust me, you don't want to be quarantined in a hotel. It doesn't matter if they're paying for it. You don't want to be there. It's a waste of three days of your time.

00:45:27 John Daub: But if you don't have the right vaccine at the start, I believe it might be an issue. But I think in a couple of months, it's not going to be an issue at all. My gut says that if you've been vaccinated, maybe you want to get that booster as a Pfizer, if you can get that booster as a Moderna. But in the end, a vaccine or anything you put in your body is your choice. But for travel, for Japan, you might want to get one of the Pfizer or the Moderna or one of them recognized from Japan as the booster.

00:46:01 John Daub: And I believe that's going to have a big impact in speeding things up. I don't think it has— it's a copyright issue at all. I don't think it's too small. And it's blurred. I think it's blurred. It's blurred now. Three Modernas for me. Debbie went all in on Moderna. I had— I'm all in on Pfizer. I had no choice, really. They had Pfizer here. Face wrinkles. Glenn. I don't— I don't care about the wrinkles. Human 40. I'm in my 40s. It's normal. It's like what people say. You look older. It's like because I am older.

00:46:31 John Daub: Tokyo Paul live partying up over there. Nature has a strong and resilient humanity is still a long time to go. So I'm watching, I'm reading some of the comments here. Was your mask wearing indoors at my local target in Los Angeles is 50/50. Masks only work though. AstraZeneca is okay. From what I've read. AstraZeneca has been approved by Japan because when I went to go get my booster, there was a line for three shots.

00:47:05 John Daub: One of them Pfizer, other one Moderna. Last one AstraZeneca. Who was waiting in the AstraZeneca line? Nobody. There wasn't one person. Everybody was in— most people in the Pfizer line, more people in the Moderna line than there were before. So do you have to be vaccinated? Crusty? I'm going to say yes because Japan is a country that likes to reduce risk. There's enough people in the world that are vaccinated where I don't think they— I don't think they want non vaccinated people here.

00:47:38 John Daub: The reason why is that if you get sick, you're probably going to require medical assistance in one way or another. You're going to have to go to the hospital to get medication or something or you're just going to be sicker for a long time and infect more people as a result of not getting the vaccine. It's your choice. I'm not saying that this is what you have to do, but I'm saying that if you want to come into Japan or if you want to travel, being vaccinated makes it a heck of a lot easier.

00:48:12 John Daub: And it's going to be like this for a while longer. But if we have herd immunity where the majority of people are vaccinated, this thing probably goes away on its own over the course of some time. But if you're unvaccinated, most likely you're going to need to be quarantined probably for three days and then have a test that's negative, then they'll let you go. But when you travel, the chance of getting sick is well, is really much higher.

00:48:44 John Daub: So you probably want to get vaccinated if you're going to do any traveling. I say probably because it's again, once again up to you. I have friends that can't get vaccinated because the side effects would harm their health because they're not in good health. And I have friends that don't want to get vaccinated just because they don't want to put in their bodies and that's their choice. But with your choices come the consequences.

00:49:15 John Daub: So yeah. How is diabetes care in Japan? I don't know, but I better start taking care of myself so I don't find out. Diabetes, I think is not as high as in other countries, but yeah, it is here. My sister did get sick only four weeks after her fourth shot. Wearing a mask. Exactly. I think, of course, you know, if you get the vaccinated, it's a lot— it's not as bad as if you get if you don't get vaccinated. From everything that I've heard, I can't say I've experienced it.

00:49:47 John Daub: Although my friends who did get it, they recovered fairly quickly. I'm sorry to hear about your about your sister. Laurie. What now is the plan for hotels, businesses, attractions to get ready for tourism in June? Layton writes in. Thank you. Great question. All right, now I can shift a little bit away from some of these questions here.

00:50:25 John Daub: The Prime Minister had to— they had to make this announcement with at least two months in advance because from what I was hearing from business owners, they needed advance notice to prepare for tourism. The writing was on the wall that Japan was going to be opening up. I know a lot of you didn't believe it. You didn't believe me. I was optimistic. The situation can still change, but they want a two months heads up so they can get the infrastructure ready. I think that's why they're— this experiment is not just because Japan is scared to open the doors and let people in. It's because the country's not ready for tourists. The country is not ready for domestic tourism in many ways since you left.

00:50:59 John Daub: I'm talking about those that left and did that want to come back to Japan. A lot of businesses have gone out of business. We've lost a lot of businesses, a lot of hotels, a lot of tourism infrastructure. Hey, WXR Turbo WRX Turbo is in the house. How you doing? And I'll get to this other super chat here. Thank you for this. It's a different Japan actually. I walk around and I'm kind of heartbroken and I've done a lot of livestreams looking at some of the Tokyo neighborhoods and not seeing the same Tokyo that we had in 2019.

00:51:34 John Daub: Japan needs to get ready. And if the government makes a really dedicated announcement and effort to reopen because I don't think they have done anything like what we just saw with Prime Minister Kishida in London. This is a huge deal. Now they can start to get ready companies. Who's going to invest in tourism infrastructure when there's no tourists and the country is indefinitely closed. So now that they're saying they're going to open, I'm starting to see some signs of life, some sprouts on the trees, but it's still not a tree with leaves.

00:52:13 John Daub: Think about that metaphor for a second. Shay Rock Shishi writes in here. Hi. My Hawaii food business is going to be in Jolly Play magazine. Awesome summer fall issue. Flights in Japan to Hawaii. Hope to see you all soon. Kanae and I want to be on one of those flights really soon. We got to see our friends, our family community in Hawaii. See photo Luke Hawaii. See how Austin, Cheryl and everybody else to see Bradania. A lot of our— we have so many great friends and—

00:52:45 John Daub: And viewers family community members there in Hawaii. I'm really happy to hear about your success there. That's going to be cool. I gotta fly down to check it out. Aloha. That feels good to just say. Japan will start with group tours from tourist agents first. But what— want to travel and stay easy. Thank you for that. Yeah. The Japan will open up in stages. This is just— they. And they made this known when they closed, when they reopened.

00:53:15 John Daub: They're going to do it in slowly, in stages. Yeah, I think I might have missed another question here while the chat was going by there. I apologize. I'm trying to get out— trying to get as many as I can. And Douglas Irvin, thank you. You're welcome for— thank you for watching the update. And Brett Taylor, thank you for the coffee. I— you know, I gotta— now that Kanae's gone, I gotta go really quickly to the store. So I'm going to end this livestream in about eight minutes. A good hour's—

00:53:48 John Daub: Should be. Should be good. I gotta get Kanae her Mother's Day gift. This is the first— no, we didn't— I didn't really do anything last year which was not good because of the pandemic and we were just really— because Leah was just born. We were really just busy. But this year I gotta go get a big bouquet of flowers while she's gone. So I hope she's not watching this. So that's my next step. So this livestream super chat's going to be put towards that but mostly from me because it should come from me, not from you.

00:54:22 John Daub: Wait, hold on a second. Is it Kanae? All right, we're live again. Sorry, there might been no picture. Hopefully the pictures are back now, if not at the end of the livestream. I'm not pranking. All right, he's back. There's a YouTube issue. If you touch the screen— wait, zooming again. What can you— same problem. All right, let me try again. Hold on. The zoom glitch is back. How about now? Is it better? Is this still zooming? Is this in my nose?

00:54:53 John Daub: The nose. Nose. What? David committed to help with the cost of the flowers and to fix this problem still. Alright, hold on. Okay, hold on. I'll be just— wait. I restarted the phone. Does this make a difference? This is the nuclear plan here. Again. Is it still zoomed? It zoomed again. What? So it's not the camera. It's the same thing. Oh my gosh. Really? Hold on a second. Is that Tortoro? Tortoro Porco. Thank you for the optimistic news. All right, hold on.

00:55:24 John Daub: If I— if I go back, is this better? Do I look better from a distance? Can you still— move back? It's on my nose. Wait, how about now? If I talk to you from a distance? No. I can see your soul. What? All right, you know what? I can't do this anymore, all right? Listen to the sound of my voice here. The Japan Tourism Authority has hacked this stream. All right? I don't know what's going on with this. Hold on. I got one other thing I could try.

00:55:55 John Daub: Hold on. Did that fix it? No. Maybe. No. Maybe we're looking inside your pores. Nope. No. Zoom. Nose is black. I swear. I use soap. All right, everybody, we just gotta call it because it's just bizarre. If you want to— I'll be on Instagram. Instagram Live right now. I'll see you on Instagram Live, all right? Instagram Live. All right. See? See there? Sorry, guys. Moderators put in the Instagram Live link there and we'll be— we're all good.

00:56:26 John Daub: All right? I'm just going into your life. I'll be there in one— one minute.