00:00:00 John Daub: Paniversary and every year expats that have been living in Japan. The longer you live here, the more important your japaniversary is. And in the middle of July, I hit my 24th year in Japan, which is pretty incredible. I still can't believe it. It seems like yesterday I arrived here. And then when I look at all the things that I've done, it seems like a really long time ago. But in this episode I just wanted to do a question and answer. This is only in Japan.

00:00:32 John Daub: Go. This is an all live streaming channel. I also have an edited channel called Only in Japan by John Dob that's only in YouTube.com Johan Daub if you want edited content, that's where you'll find it all. Excuse me. I'll be going to Hokkaido in about 18 hours to go on a motorcycle adventure, a Kickstarter with my friend Peter. And we're going to be going around Hokkaido for about 10 days with this crowdfunding campaign, which is totally awesome.

00:01:02 John Daub: I'm pretty stoked. But I'm super busy right now and I thought this would be a great time just to kind of take a step back and take some of your questions about Japan, about the channel, about anything. For the next 30 minutes or so, I'll try to put a chapter playlist so that you can hit each question and I'll do my very best to try to answer as many as we can. A quick question from Ram. What's the status of the insert tech firms in Japan?

00:01:33 John Daub: I have no idea. John hi from Malaysia. Want to ask, is Japan open for tourism now? Akita, that's a good question and I don't really have a good answer. Tourism for tourists. If your only purpose is to come here for tourism, the answer is actually no. I would say there's package tours that you can go to, but you need a visa. Every country needs a visa to enter Japan. Even the United States, even. Even the Netherlands, countries that had really strong partnerships with Japan that were visa free.

00:02:07 John Daub: You need a visa now. And I'm guessing that this will stop probably in the fall. But it's. It. I've been wrong before and it's just really hard to predict the future. I'm. I'm. I believe though that Japan is moving in the right direction with the steps to open up in the fall. And despite right now we're in probably the worst infection rate because this all has to do with the pandemic. Japan is not shutting down. It's not doing anything to move backwards.

00:02:38 John Daub: And that's a really important thing. So I think that that's a huge step forward towards moving to that next step, which is tourism. Right now, if you're have a business purpose to come to Japan, you can get a visa. If you have family in Japan, you can get a visa. And if you're on a package tour with a concierge, I guess, I don't know, a chaperone, you can get a visa, but those are a little bit expensive. So I would probably hold off until October.

00:03:09 John Daub: That seems like the earliest that will return. Let's look at another question here. I heard that there isn't any foreign tour groups yet. Lee Richard There's 252 tourists entered between June 10 and June 30, which is a ridiculous number. We thought it'd be a lot more, but I guess it was the foreign minister. Somebody in the government was quoted as saying, we're just in the early stages of this, so we believe that things will open up in July.

00:03:39 John Daub: And already I think there were 17,000 visa applications for July. I'm getting reports from people on the ground, like friends who live here, that they're seeing tour groups, a lot of them at Meiji Shrine, at Asakusa, at Shibuya Scramble. They see groups of tourists together with somebody with a flag. So not so many Westerners, but more people from Vietnam, more people from Asia. And I think there were some Westerners. I. But people send me stuff on Instagram and on Discord, and I get these messages and it gives me an idea of what's happening out there.

00:04:18 John Daub: So it is ramping up the tourism, but it's not a very successful thing because the tourist agencies were extremely confused on how to get these visas, how to do this. It just feels like thrown on them. And they didn't do a very good job the first few weeks, but I think that was to be expected. Question if you are moving to Japan again, as a young adult moving to Japan for the first time, what area of Tokyo would you move to and what city outside Tokyo would you move to?

00:04:51 John Daub: That's a tough question. My favorite place to live, I can answer. Generally, Tokyo is not my favorite place to live. I've lived in 16 or 17 different places now in Japan, I've moved a lot. I've been to every prefecture at least three times. And I would say that my favorite place is Hiroshima. Because of the weather, because of the people is really friendly because the city is very small and compact and it's easy to get around. Tokyo is quite large.

00:05:22 John Daub: There's Shibuya, Shinjuku, Asakusa, Ueno. All these places. And it takes you like 45 minutes to get everywhere. Hiroshima, everything is just so central. Everything you can find in that one area around the Hondori shopping street. And I was very lucky to live there for about a year and a half of my time here in Japan. And I loved every minute of it. I can walk around the entire city lives in a place called Yokogawa. Miyajima is an island that's really close.

00:05:54 John Daub: That's a great weekend trip. You can get on a ferry and go to Shikoku or some of the islands on the inlet sea. It has this beautiful sunshine. The Seto Uchi region of Japan, lemons, it's just. And it gets sheltered from the typhoons, so they're not so bad at Hiroshima. And also there's not as many earthquakes as there are in Tokyo. And Tohoku, Hiroshima doesn't really get that. So I kind of like this. Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Tottori area.

00:06:24 John Daub: I like this region very much. The Chugoku area of Japan. But for Tokyo, I don't know. You know, I lived in a place called Shinozaki and I lived in a place called Futako Tamagawa. And right now I'm living in central Tokyo in Chuo Ward, which is near Nihonbashi, near the river, near Tokyo Station. I think Futako Tamagawa, if you can afford it, is a great place. It's got a river, it's close to Shibuya. I think if you're a first timer, this area of Setagaya is pretty interesting.

00:06:57 John Daub: It's got a lot of clique restaurants. But it's expensive, you know, so there's trade offs to no matter where you. Where you live in Tokyo. It's a good question. Will you ever go to the Studio Ghibli Museum? As far as I know, it was closed because of COVID I went there once. I didn't really think it was that great. I think it was cool if you're a big fan of Ghibli. But I, I think that if you have a waiting list, it's a little bit expensive.

00:07:28 John Daub: I don't know. I. I would prefer to go to the park. I. You know Kashira Park? There's a zoo there. I kind of like walking around Kichijoji instead of going to the Ghibli Museum. I'm a fan of the Ghibli movies, but I didn't really think the museum was that great. Did you. Do you see yourself staying in Japan for so long and starting a film? No, this is for Lamborghini 07. You know, I came here year by year and I didn't know if I would stay.

00:08:01 John Daub: When I came in 98, I was teaching children English. I was actually really bad at that job. I was lazy. We had it's can. I was leaving for a job. Now Leo's asleep. I was lazy my first six months. I didn't know how to teach. I came in an emergency situation. The teacher was fired before me and they threw me into it. And I felt pretty unprepared. But I got a ribbing from the trainer who trains the teachers. And he was upset, but he also understood, so.

00:08:32 John Daub: And I understood too, because I wanted to do a better job. So he brought me back. The headquarters was Okayama. I was living in Okazaki, near Nagoya. And I became a really good teacher from being a bad one. I learned all the bad stuff first, and then I became a really good one because I could understand the mistakes I was making. And I stayed with that company for about seven years. So I'm not, you know, I'm not sure. I'm just a different person than I am now.

00:09:04 John Daub: Even forgot the question. I didn't see myself staying. I can tell you this. Lamborghini I left with that I left every year. But I did such a good job with that company. That was relevant when I said I did such a good job that I became friends with the. With the CEO of the company. Not the CEO, but the guy who was in charge of this, the children's division. And he told me that I could come back anytime I wanted. He said, look, John, I know you're gonna backpack.

00:09:36 John Daub: And I'm a backpacker. I was a backpacker. I blew all my money just traveling. I got a bonus for finishing the year. And I'd saved a lot. I think it was like I had like $7,000. And I backpacked around the world. And before I was going back to the US, I was in Australia. And I met a girl and fell in love. And she was Japanese. And I came back. We lived together. We broke up. I finished the year, took the bonus. And then I backpacked again. And in Germany, I met this.

00:10:08 John Daub: This small Japanese girl, couldn't speak any English. And I helped her get around. And I came back and we lived together. And then we broke up and I did it again. So, I mean, after the third time, I thought it was destiny. And I just said, I'm just gonna stay here. I hitchhiked, learned about the country, started learning Japanese, and I'm still here today. So I didn't think. I didn't think I would stay, but love brought me back. Love is strong.

00:10:38 John Daub: And when you're backpacking and you throw yourself out there into a situation that, like backpacking is kind of scary. And I was solo the whole time. When you don't. Not traveling with another friend, of course you're at risk of danger, but you're also at greater advantage of meeting people. And I have so many friends who live around the world from that experience. And I'm the guy in Japan, so a lot of them came to visit me, which is pretty cool.

00:11:10 John Daub: That's my life in a nutshell here. Anyways, how did you branch into making videos after teaching at 63 point? This is nice, you guys asking me about. About me instead of Japan. So in 2003, when I said I was going to decide to stay, I. I had a college friend of mine. He's a genius. He. He's so. My mother's from India and he's Indian. He. He lived in Bangalore. I think he studied like molecular genetics and something. And he ended up working for National Geographic making travel videos.

00:11:43 John Daub: Right? He bought the same camera that I. He bought a camera and I went to his house and in Bangalore and he showed me the camera because he just finished a video on like, the most dangerous snakes in Japan or something. And I was just like, fascinating. How did you get into this job, man? So he said, I just bought a camera. I contacted National Geographic and I started working with teams. I was like, whoa. So I bought the same camera and I came back to Japan and I hitchhiked all of Japan from the north to the south and tried to make my own documentary.

00:12:21 John Daub: And it was really hard because I didn't have the computer power to do it. WRX Turbos in the house. And Randolph. Thank you. I'll get to this question in a second. So with that camera, I started to learn how to edit in 2003. This was three years before YouTube even started. So I had mini DV cassettes I was learning on bootlegs. Video software that I bought in the streets of Bangkok. Premiere Pro 1.5, I think it was, and Adobe Photoshop. I was learning all this from scratch from reading books and.

00:12:55 John Daub: And taking tutorials in the books. And then I started a company to make educational videos called Weblish. Some of that content is still on iTunes if you search my name. Used to get it was so popular, if you search just John, you would get John Lennon, John Kennedy, John Dobb. And it was really kind of cool because it was like, whoa, look at that. You know, and you can do anything. If they put my name, like, at that same category on iTunes in 2007, right, that was a big deal.

00:13:28 John Daub: I was like, whoa. So it gave me a lot of confidence to be able to do anything. But I was making educational videos for Japanese to learn English comedy, English language videos, comedy, a kaiwa, using blue screens. And it was a lot of fun, but I made zero money off of it. And I lost $30,000 paying for bandwidth. So in 2011, after the earthquake, I changed and. And started to make videos teaching the world about Japan. Kind of the same thing, but just turned it around.

00:14:00 John Daub: And I took my experience working at NHK with location shoot teams kind of the same way my friend did with National Geographic. But I spun that into a YouTube series. And, you know, I was in debt. I needed some kind of financing, was working with. With somebody that I thought it was a partner. Didn't turn out that way. I didn't like the terms, I didn't like the direction, and I left and had to restart over. And that was a really hard process too.

00:14:31 John Daub: But everything is another step in your life, and each one is like a scar or a mark. And each mark on your face adds character and personality. And the older you get, the more you appreciate people that have battle wounds and have been through the, you know, like the trenches of war. If you have that experience, it actually works out in your favor and a good thing for you. Great questions. But crime in Japan, the best person to ask is PBG.

00:15:01 John Daub: He has a podcast. And congratulations to Peter. He's finally getting attention from Apple Podcasts. We changed the art on the channel. It's a cool picture. And. And Peter's watching right now. Peter wanted. He wanted to show, like, half his body. And I said, dude, just show your face and show character on it. And people will buy into that because your voice and your face. And he. We did in the. And I'm so happy because it's an amazing series on crime.

00:15:32 John Daub: Now, it's not about Japan, but you should check it out because he's my partner in crime. And we're going to be riding in Hokkaido in 18 hours. I can't believe it. What? You seem like subcontinent India. Yeah, my mom's from Mumbai, but I was born in the US my dad's American. I don't mind the personal questions. PD170 is a classic. I still have it in that closet, but I don't even know if it works. How do you get involved with NHK? That's a good question.

00:16:04 John Daub: So I was. I showed. I made that documentary on hitchhiking Japan, and I showed the content that I was making to teach English to, you know, Japanese. And it was quite popular in Japan. And my mom. My mom came and visited Japan in 2003, and she met a woman on the street in Shibuya. This is like fate and how life works. She met a woman in Shibuya Crossing and asked her to take a picture of her. And she did. It was a really nice English lady named Angela Jeffs.

00:16:35 John Daub: She was a writer for the Japan Times. And my mother and her got on to talking, and I think they had talk coffee or something. And Angela ended up interviewing me for an article in the Japan Times Weekender in 2004 about my story, which was an interesting story at the time. I didn't know what I was going to do and was thinking about going to Bangalore to work. I had an offer from America Online. I'm glad I didn't take the job. They just opened up a new center in the middle of Bangalore, and I was interviewing for jobs to train people to speak English.

00:17:13 John Daub: I'm glad it didn't work out, but it would have been an interesting ride. Anyways, I ended up coming back to Japan. So when I did, Angela was still here, and I told her about my adventures because she wanted to hear about it. And then she introduced me to Adam, who's also on Tokyo Eye. And I told Adam what I wanted to do, and he goes, I'm. You know, I work on this show called Tokyo. I. Do you want to do it? And I said, sure. So he got me one episode, and I did a good job, and they brought me back, and then I did a good job, and then they kept bringing me back, and that's how it worked.

00:17:53 John Daub: But it's all about getting your foot in the door. And I don't know how it all works out, but life for me has been like just. I just jump and I fall and I. Somehow things just come and you catch them. But the thing is, if you don't do anything, nothing happens. And if you just go out there and you just. I don't know, just do something. You'll find a door that opens up that takes you to where you want to go. But if you don't do anything and you're trying to map it out too much life is random.

00:18:27 John Daub: That's what I've found to be. And you just do something and something else happens, like we'll go to Hokkaido and I think something cool will happen on this trip that will open up another door. Maybe. I don't know. That's been the way I've experienced life living here in Japan and throughout my whole life. Actually, it's pretty interesting. Philosopher? No, I'm just a little bit older and grayer. How did you. Where can I find photography models for practicing photography?

00:19:00 John Daub: I don't know. I'm not a photographer. What is your favorite Shinkansen? Probably the Tohoku Shinkansen. I like the colors. One question writes in leo. I like the name. Will you cover areas that you have done in the past, like Harajuku? I think, you know, if I do cover places that I did in the past, it's going to be from a new angle. I see a lot of YouTubers will go on these, hit these topics straight on. But I like to find another way in to do it.

00:19:31 John Daub: And if I can find that and find a compelling story, then I'll invest time. Each episode I make takes a lot of time. So when you invest time to make one, you really want it to be a good story. So that's why I like to hit home runs instead of singles. I guess you could say it's really popular to produce as much content as you can. But I always thought if the content's not good, it doesn't really matter. Like, let's just make a bunch of stuff and see what sticks against the wall.

00:20:03 John Daub: I like to just put my love and time into it and create something that's just really, really delicious, that people want to eat instead of just creating a bunch of stuff that might get people to click but not watch to the end. Whereas when I make an edited video, the retention time to watching to the end is really high. So that's why the videos do quite well. People click and people watch to the end. And that's sort of how YouTube works and the algorithms recognize that and the channel can succeed.

00:20:38 John Daub: But you do have to have topics that people want to click on it, but when they do, do they keep watching? So I kind of, kind of like to focus on that. What do you expect the most from Hokkaido? I expect to have fun. I expect to learn about another. Learn about Hokkaido in a new way. See things that I haven't seen before and experience it in, like on a motorcycle, which I've never done, and in an RV, which I've never done. And the mode of transportation makes a big difference.

00:21:10 John Daub: Makes a big difference. I have no plans to come to India, but I probably will soon. Just it's not the best time to be traveling anywhere. John and Kanai thinking of moving out of Tokyo? Yes, we are. I can say that publicly. I think that we probably will, but not in the immediate future. But it's working on there. Is your wife jealous of Peter? No, she's not. We're all friends. My wife knows his wife and our wives probably talk to each other more than we talk to each other.

00:21:43 John Daub: How many camera lenses do you have? About 13 for micro 4/3, which is a different system and for Sony, so the different lens lenses for that. Let's see here. Is that Katayama? Yeah. Does your age concern you for when Leo gets older? That's a fair question. Not really. There's nothing I can do about that. So I don't think about it. I take it day by day and, you know, you plan for it. I'm trying to save more money. I'm trying to make things work so that it will work for a while instead of, you know, you have to adjust your life when you have a child.

00:22:21 John Daub: And I'm still kind of getting used to it because I'm a different kind of person than other people. I was a pretty free spirited, you know, bachelor for a very long time and when I got married, that changed my life. But I could, we could still travel and do stuff and now we have a son and then that requires a whole different level of focus and responsibility and it's a lot, lot harder. It's a lot harder. And I'm still kind of coming to grips with how to balance it.

00:22:53 John Daub: So I got to say to all the fathers out there that are really good fathers, it's really hard to balance everything out and be successful in everything you feel like. I feel like I have to make compromises that I don't want to do. But if it's for the good, you know, you have to put your family first. But your work also is essential, key to your family's success and finding a way to balance that. I'm still kind of, I'm still kind of working through that.

00:23:24 John Daub: It's a good question. I don't speak Hindi. I can, I can speak what my family says to me. I, they get, they feed me all the time. So I go bush boost, like enough, like, no more food. Because when you go to India and you have family, they keep feeding you. I don't know, like, do they want me to be fat and unhealthy? Like, what are these people doing? You don't eat rice at 10pm People. All right, you know, what's with the samosas at like, like midnight?

00:23:55 John Daub: You know, I can't figure out, you know, what's going on sometimes, but I. I wish I had learned a little bit of Hindi, but I. You know, when you grew up in the US in the 1980s, it didn't seem like there was any use for it. Maybe that's why I didn't learn it or was taught it. But, you know, maybe that's something Leo we could teach by taking him there and meeting his family in India would be pretty cool. I didn't meet my family in India until I was 23.

00:24:26 John Daub: I didn't even know I had a family in India really. Because my mom, when she moved to the. To India in the 70s and 80s, it was so expensive to fly back to India. You really didn't go home a lot. So, you know, and to take kids, it was so expensive. When my mom went, I remember dropping her off. I think she took a Pan Am flight from JFK. It seemed larger than life to see, like the new. That New York airport when we drove, I think it was just a kid, but I remember she left and I guess we were with our dad for three weeks.

00:25:01 John Daub: And that was really hard because I don't think he could handle us because I think I was it. One brother, two brothers at that time. But yeah, she came back a few weeks later and yeah, everything got back to normal. But back then, you know, you didn't go back. And I didn't get a chance to meet the family till after I'd finished college. And I was shocked how many family members I had there. It's like, wow. It's like a whole village turned out.

00:25:32 John Daub: When we came, lines of people were around us. It was crazy, like a scene from Indiana Jones or something, I don't know. But made me feel good. And I try to go there every couple of years now to say hi. What do you think? I'm missing some of these questions here. What's the festival? You guys picking up Flame Bunch? I'm not sure offhand. Will Japan help you achieve your professional goals? I think it already has. Your professional goals are decided by what you're doing as a profession.

00:26:05 John Daub: So I don't. I think I could do this job anywhere, but I live in Japan. That channel is called Only in Japan, so I guess it would. Is Shikoku region worth visiting? Robert writes in here. Absolutely. I think my advice to you is Your first time to Japan, do what everybody does and add one thing that nobody does. Go to Tokyo, go to Kyoto, go to Hiroshima, you see the Peace Museum, go to Himeji Castle, do all that. Take. Get it out of your system.

00:26:36 John Daub: Do one thing that nobody really does. Go to a countryside onsen or something just for one night, or plan to come back and try to go completely off the. Off the rails. Go to Shikoku, go to Kyushu, go to Hokkaido, go to these places that I'm showing you now. And then you're going to come back for the third time. I think you're going to keep finding stuff that's going to bring you back to Japan. And then you might end up being like me being here 24 years later.

00:27:07 John Daub: How would you describe your idea of a perfect day? How does this relate to Japan? A perfect day, Warm sunshine, spring afternoon, beach or mountain with friends, family, lots of laughing, barbecue. I don't know. I don't know. I agree with your attitude. Just jump into life and take. Let it take you where you want. But growing up with higher functioning autism and learning disabilities can make such challenging it absolutely still pushing forward through regardless.

00:27:39 John Daub: Nicholas, I think you have to. Whether you have disabilities, whether you have responsibilities, life still kind of works the same. And you have to find a way to do that. The hardest thing, gosh, is to. All right, I'll tell you, the hardest thing for me in my life has been to cut out cancerous people. And there's always people who kind of pull you down. Sometimes there can be people that are close to you. They're people that are, I guess, more or less distractions.

00:28:11 John Daub: Right. And you have to find a way to cut them out so that you can, you can focus on your goals. These people. It's the hardest thing that you might have to do in your life ever. But I found that I've been in a lot of like, poisonous relationships with people or know people that would just continuously be distractions to me. And I've had to cut them out. And it's been a. Like when you cut off the dead limbs of a tree. New, new things start to sprout and grow.

00:28:43 John Daub: And it's the hardest thing if you feel like you're lost in your life and I have as well. You just have to cut off some things that aren't working for you. People, habits, things, and new things start to grow. But you can't surround yourself with cancerous people that are distractions. I just found that to be something that I guess I have in common with A lot of the people that are doing really great things in their lives, they don't have a lot of distractions.

00:29:15 John Daub: Zamzam. Do you think it's bad idea to travel around Japan without much planning? No, I think that's great. I think it's more difficult if you don't speak Japanese. It'd be more difficult with planning if you didn't speak Japanese too. But I think it might be good to plan the first three or four days and then just the only caveat here is when you visit, if you visited a high season, it might be hard to find hotels. But I always found like you could probably, if you're off of the reservation, and I mean this like, like off of the tourist route, you can always find accommodations.

00:29:54 John Daub: But if you're going to try to go to Kyoto during the autumn season when the leaves change, it's going to be really hard to find a hotel unless you planned. So that's just something to think about. When I hitchhiked, I didn't plan anything. I had a tent and if I couldn't find accommodations, I slept in the tent. If it rained, it rained. You can find a bath in Japan anywhere there's a sento or an onsen bath. So you always clean. You don't have to worry about that.

00:30:26 John Daub: There's a restaurant everywhere in Japan. Convenience stores, vending machines. So you don't have to live your life planned out, mapped out. There's freedom to it, if that's what you're looking for. That's what I've always found. Is that Michael? See, Michael Sasano's here. Hi, John. So happy to catch your live stream. Missed you the last two, but thank goodness for the replay. Hey, looking forward to your bike stream adventure. Yeah, we'll be live streaming, probably from the airport.

00:31:00 John Daub: We're going to be too excited to. To hold that in. I can't believe we're like 18 hours away or something. Hey, John, do you think it's a bad idea to travel Japan without much. Okay, I answered that one. Is Kanai still teaching ballet? She is, she's. So Leo started to go to a place called. In Japan they have Hoikuan, which is like a daycare or nursery school, I guess. But because of this seventh wave and we don't want to get sick before the trip.

00:31:30 John Daub: I'm going to Hokkaido because we have a lot riding on it because we have backers and we have a whole project. Leo is home with us, so it's been really hard to do anything. But we think next week he'll have to go back because we just can't do anything. Kanai's made some concessions and stopped teaching for some classes. And I've made some concessions where she can teach and I have to stay home and I can't edit. It's been really a challenging couple of weeks.

00:32:02 John Daub: Water. Do you miss the freedom of the US? What do you mean by freedom? I think if you asked people, Americans who live in Japan might have more freedom. It feels that way because we don't have the same societal. We don't feel the societal rules that the Japanese feel. We just get the best of both worlds. We can't vote and stuff like that. But it does seem like, I don't know, it's. It's pretty convenient culture to live in here in Japan.

00:32:32 John Daub: But the longer you stay, the more you start to feel those societal rules. But I think you can find a way to cope with them and try to balance everything out. It just something that's taken me a lot of time. The more I get involved with my community, the more socially bound I feel to Japan. And that's hard. That's really hard. Wow, these are great questions. Hey, hey. AD A welcome new traveler. Thank you so much. Japan does smell pretty clean, except on trash day, which is today.

00:33:05 John Daub: We took out the trash, so we're all good. One time in a live stream, I heard the trash talk coming. I had to stop and run outside. I had to chase the trash truck down or else Kanai would kill me if I didn't take the trash out in time. But today we're okay. I enjoy seeing you hanging out with PBG. I like the fact that you guys know his name is PBG and not Peter Von Gom. I can't wait to see the trip videos. People call him PBG. Is. Is there a reason why Japan isn't completely open yet?

00:33:38 John Daub: Just communal fear? Like a lot of people have the same kind of questions, Gara. But I don't think that that's. That's the only reason why I think communal fear. There is a fear for the older people and there's a fear that any in Japan after World War II, just the way the pacifist constitution is. And maybe not so much these days. But Japan wanted to preserve every life. Like every life is pretty valuable. So they don't want any loss of life if they can do it.

00:34:10 John Daub: I think we're seeing like this maybe I don't know what China's zero COVID policy is, but in Japan, it's very Very similar. Like any loss of life is a big deal here. Just like personal possessions is a lot bigger deal here than it does in the United States. People won't steal your stuff if you leave it on a table, for example. Nobody walk away with it. Same with life. People really want to protect that here and I think they don't. They see it as a risk to the older people.

00:34:42 John Daub: And now it's more like shogunai can't be helped. So what I've seen over the last couple of weeks is that things are pretty bad here, but life isn't stopping anymore. Even the Japanese here, they're not getting tested. Like, there's a lot of things I could talk about this. Not all of it is, is positive here, but people have moved on now. A lot of people are wearing less masks despite the fact that the situation is worse. It's not the same as in the US.

00:35:13 John Daub: but it's, it's starting to get more normal. Just we gotta, we have a really tough, I think, month ahead of us before we get back to this there. It's a tough question. Japan has its own way to deal with stuff and people are never going to understand it because it's Japan. It's as simple as that. Japan has a Japanese solution for it, just like us, as a US solution. And one thing I can tell you is this. In the United States, I don't think I ever once learned about Japanese history.

00:35:46 John Daub: I took American history like every other year, which was kind of crazy. From like third grade until high school. It was like American history, American History, American History, American history. But we never really took world history. And if anybody ever studied Japanese history, you'd learn that Japan has like this very unique way of doing things that's just different. In fact, you would learn that almost every country has a unique way of doing things their own way.

00:36:19 John Daub: And I never really understood that until I started to travel and live outside. One of the biggest culture shock was going to Vietnam and went to the museum there. Like, wait, the Vietnamese don't call it the Vietnam War, they call it the American War. That was like, that was pretty big. I still called the Vietnam War, but it was just interesting to see, to see that there was another side to it that I'd never heard of. I was just never exposed to that.

00:36:50 John Daub: No teacher ever been to Vietnam. Now I guess it still travels a little bit more. But back in the 80s and 90s, like nobody really left to go to Vietnam as a tourist back then. And my teachers never explained that. A lot of them were Vietnam vets, teachers that I had. So, you know, I started to learn that it's just. It's just different and it's. It's important for people to travel and learn that there's a. There's a different side to everything.

00:37:20 John Daub: So Japan's got a different way to approach things than the US does. And it doesn't have to make sense. And you can get upset about it, but if you're getting upset about it, Japan's probably not the place to live and start a life because it will frustrate you. There's something called the six month blues. And I have not met an expat that didn't go through this first six months of living here with that magic of Japan kind of fades. And you have this six month blues where everything is.

00:37:54 John Daub: Really makes you frustrated because it's not going the way that you wanted it to go, right? It's not what you thought it was going to be. It's a lot of bureaucracy. It's a lot of stuff, a lot of pain. But you work through it. Thanks for the super chats, guys. Nicholas writes in here. Solo traveler is safer than most countries in Japan, right? Oh, yes, I believe Japan is a very free nation, regardless of sale. Solo traveling in Japan is fine.

00:38:24 John Daub: I've traveled. I hitchhiked with limited Japanese and was fine. In 2003, I hitchhiked. It was okay. Maybe it's different now. I don't know. KL writes in here. What would Japanese history be like if samurai class was never outlawed? I don't wanna. I don't know. That's free. I don't know it, but it is. It'd be just different. It would be like, you know, feudal. The Meiji restoration was pretty much needed. I think Yousef writes in here. Can you still get in with a tour guide?

00:38:57 John Daub: I think you can. You have to find it though. If you go with a Japanese citizen, can they register or count you as a guide? I think it has to be a certified guide, so they'd have to be JNTO certified. Japan National Tourism Organization has an exam, so you need to pass that test. So it can't just be anybody. Although who knows? I don't know even at this stage if that's possible. But maybe it's something that you have to ask the consulate and maybe you can get away with stuff.

00:39:29 John Daub: But usually it has to be a registered guide. Adrian, you're a Hokkaido ramen versus soup ramen. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't see it like that. Hokkaido ramen is What Hokkaido ramen. Asahikawa is Shio ramen. Sapporo is miso ramen. Like every, there's lots of different kinds of ramen in Hokkaido. So there's no one Hokkaido ramen. So I would say soup ramen, soup curry. They're both good. That's a tough one. Scott Tan, is, Is the Japanese government doing anything about the low birth rate that has continued for decades?

00:40:05 John Daub: I don't think so. When we had leo, we had some subsidies, so it was a little bit cheaper. But like the programs, you can tell, they're like, they seem interesting, but you know, they're not going to work. Like they, they give us vouchers for stuff to have a, for to buy for leo, like a thousand dollar voucher from the city of Tokyo. But it's like, you know, it's, you have to buy it within this group of companies that they have. And I don't know if we've actually used it yet.

00:40:37 John Daub: I think we got a microwave or something. I'm not sure they, they haven't made life easy enough to have kids because when you have kids, you have to, you have to get, you know, you have to put them through school, which is all these ridiculous costs. There's juku, you gotta take your kid to a second school to study what they didn't learn in school. Like, there's so many things that make no sense. So when you add up the cost of having a kid, it's probably twice as much than in the United States.

00:41:11 John Daub: So can you blame the Japanese for not wanting to have kids and instead kind of enjoy their life a little bit more? I think this is something that Japan, it's a societal issue. The cost of having kids for young people. When you look at it as a parent, you have one kid and you're like, that's it. I know so many people that have one kid and very few have, have more than two and they need to change that. My history teacher at Tracy High School taught us a decent amount on Japanese history.

00:41:45 John Daub: Good. Tracy is in central California. I, I think California has a little bit more Japanese culture and history as a state anyways than in the east coast where I grew up because we're so much closer to Europe. California might be closer to Asia, so you might get a little bit different. But that's really good to hear. I studied back in the 80s, so we had a different education back then. Ahmad writes in here. Is there anywhere I can, I can call to get exact details on traveling to Japan?

00:42:18 John Daub: I would check JNTO The Japan National Tourism Organization website, you can go on Twitter and there's organizations on there that have at marks that you can contact. There's other JTB Japan Tourism Bureau has an office in, in New York. I used to get my flights through them. So that would be a place to call JTBUSA.com I think it is. Those are just places to start, but then they'll point you in the right direction. I think his is another tourist company that has, I believe has an office in New York.

00:42:52 John Daub: I, to be honest, I don't even know. I tried searching for the tours. I know how complicated it is because I can't find them. Smaller tourist companies also are, are a little bit risky. I always would have fear that they might be taking the money. I don't know. They're not reputable. But you can try contacting them and if anything they might might point you in the right direction. The challenge though is that you have to get a visa and it's that tour company that will take your passport to get that visa.

00:43:27 John Daub: That's the key to all of it. Without that you can't go. So you have to trust somebody to do that process for you. Sandrock writes in here, has American residency increased? Is it easier for Americans to move there? I think so. You know, that's a good question. That wasn't the right way. That's a good question. But you know, there's lots of things have changed a little bit for Americans that move here. There's more, I don't know. It's just harder than it was back in 1998.

00:43:59 John Daub: I think for some countries under the age of 30, the work holiday visa is a really good deal. I think Canadians have it, the Dutch have it. There might be a few other nationalities, Maybe the Germans have it, I'm not sure. The Australians probably. That's a great way to come to Japan and set up. If you do, if you do, if you do visit Japan and you like it, you think you want to move here. Everybody, almost everybody comes here as an English teacher.

00:44:30 John Daub: You do a year as an English teacher. And when you take a job in Japan, let me just give you this advice, Even if it's a job that you didn't really want to do, you just wanted to travel here, do it better than anybody else can do it. And this will open up doors and set you up for life in Japan. If you just do it a half ass job, no one is ever gonna want to help you because it's so easy to see that you're a loser. I say this because when you, when you watch the way that the Japanese work here, they're just so competent and so good at what they do.

00:45:08 John Daub: They try to be the best at it. When I filmed in Ueno station, the team that cleans the station, they clean the toilets, they clean the trains, they clean the floors, they take out the trash, they do the recycling. And they try to do it the best that they can do it. They try to be. Do it better than anyone else can do it. They try to do it so that they're proud of the. Of how when people see the station, it looks clean. They feel proud that nobody complains that the station's dirty.

00:45:41 John Daub: They even get compliments from people. So I like, like when you take that approach to your job, it's not about the money. There's, there's, there's a lot of happiness in your life. If you're proud of the job that you do, it doesn't even matter what you do. We have a trash man here that we've been talking to a little bit more because Leo likes trucks and he waves at everybody. So he's been waving at the trash man. And the trash man, he's not always just in front of our house.

00:46:14 John Daub: We see him all around our neighborhood. And Leo sees the blue truck and is always waving. The trash man knows Leo and waves too. And we can tell, like, he's always smiling. He always, he always likes a job. I'm just using this as a. As an example, but he's trying to do the job as efficiently as he possibly can. And he takes a lot of pride in it. And I have a lot of respect for him for doing that. And those are the people that will be really successful in anything do.

00:46:46 John Daub: And the Japanese look at the details, they see this type of stuff and that will help determine whether or not you can have a life. It's hard to explain, but in Japan, the sun is always. The sun is always watching you. Someone is always watching you. I guess you don't really understand this if you're coming as a tourist, but the longer you, you, you're here, you do the right thing because someone is always watching you. You feel like that anyways.

00:47:17 John Daub: And someone will complain. There's always people. Japan is a country of anonymous complainers. And you feel that, you say you do a good job because you know somebody's watching you too. And, and you care about it. I don't know. Like, I wear the masks, not. I don't want to wear a mask, you know, after two weeks in the US it's like, this is great not having to wear a mask. But I wear a mask here because I know that it makes people feel uncomfortable if I don't wear a mask.

00:47:49 John Daub: And I can feel that. And I do it because it's not a big deal to me. Not because I want to, but because it's just easier. I know that makes a lot of sense. Are you guys planning to have another baby soon? Lily? I don't know. Ask my wife. Great to see you live again. Been watching you since I caught you visiting my home in Oita. Oh, wow, that was a while ago. Yeah, Monkey park up there. Yeah, we'll be back. I'll be down the Kyushu again. Probably in the fall.

00:48:21 John Daub: No, definitely in the fall. I have a. A schedule to film a couple of episodes in Kagoshima. Have you ever done a video video from Nagano with the snow monkeys? Yes. Check my main channel. Only in Japan. There's a video where I went there a few months ago, I think. I think it was a pretty good video too. Do you think Japan will be open tourists in April? Yes. From Guam? Yes. Do you ever look back and think you could have come, you could have cover an area differently?

00:48:53 John Daub: No, no, no. I think I've always taken the best approach for the time. You work with what you have. In the beginning, when I. When I did YouTube videos, you didn't have a lot to work with, so you did the best that you could. But now I try to find a story that's compelling. I don't think I've found. I don't think I've ever made a mistake with the way I covered it with an angle. I tried to find an original angle and it's worked out pretty good.

00:49:23 John Daub: I. I don't have any regrets with anything that I've done. Oddly, even the ones that weren't popular videos, I watched them and they're very watchable even today on the old channel. So I don't watch that channel anymore. But do you collaborate with Filipino Japanese? One of my friends was a very famous Filipino Japanese here. I used to teach her English, believe it or not. About 12 years ago, she was a singer, Checo Kawabe. I haven't gotten in touch with her for like it's been like eight or nine years.

00:49:58 John Daub: But she was a singer for quite a long time and was teaching her a little bit English. She was Filipino Japanese, absolutely beautiful, so talented, so friendly, so nice, everybody. She was a DJ, a singer, and I think Sakura Kiss was one of her songs back in the day. But I taught a lot of really famous people English that might shock you, but she was, her English is really good. And she was the first Filipino Japanese that I'd met who's half.

00:50:28 John Daub: But I guess she'd be, she kind of seems more Japanese than Filipino, but you can tell she's a little bit mixed, just like I am half. Can you live stream from Otaru? Probably. Probably. We're gonna live stream a lot from Hokkaido. So it's not just gonna be the Kickstarter documentary. We'll be, we'll be bringing you with us in live streams maybe once or twice a day on this channel. So it's not an exclusive thing. But we do hope that you back the Kickstarter because that's how this project, that's how we're able to do this trip because it's, it is quite an undertaking.

00:51:07 John Daub: The bags that we made are pretty cool. The echo bags, you're gonna like them. We just got the design in and I guess we're gonna order it before Peter goes to the US. Hey, Ahmad's here again. When traveling to Japan, can you literally not go anywhere without a tour guide? I don't know because I haven't talked with anybody who's been on one of these tours. But my feeling is that you can't, you can't just go anywhere. I don't know. But I, I, I'm looking forward to talking with people that might be able to do this.

00:51:43 John Daub: Maybe when we go up to Hokkaido, we'll see tour group. I'm not sure, but it seems like you have to be with the chaperone and they're taking precautions and they're studying these group tours to see what are the patterns of the, of foreign tourists and if we do open up Japan, what issues will arise. Now I don't think that this is much about Much Ado about anything because they're going to have to open the borders anyways. They're just trying to find a way to do it and be prepared for it.

00:52:16 John Daub: And the reality is that Japan can't prepare for this. You just do it. But they're trying to do it safely. They're trying to find ways to reduce risk. And that means it takes time. That's just the Japanese way of doing things. Everything takes more time. And that's the most frustrating thing that you'll learn when you move to Japan. And after six months, you have the six month blues because the bureaucratic process to get stuff done and, and the way things work is not aligned to the way you.

00:52:50 John Daub: You work. And it's frustrating, but I'm over it because I live here. Still here AC is on like 29 degrees, so it's still, it's still pretty warm in here, but it's not humid. So the air conditioner turns on and off. We. We keep it at 29 or 28, which is really hot, but it, it's cooler than 38 or whatever it is outside. Good night. Hail. Do you check out any rock band concerts now? I have have not been to any concerts. Although baby metal is pretty darn good.

00:53:21 John Daub: I stopped going to concerts after Def Leppard in 1990. That's not true. I went to Ohio State University and I went to the several of. I went to the Pink Floyd stadium tour, the Billy Joel Elton John stadium tour. I went to everyone because it was in our stadium, not because I like them or whatever it was. There's a stadium tour. I think the Rolling Stones came to Ohio Stadium as well. Those are the last rock concerts I went to. And then the only one in Japan was in Eric Clapton concert with somebody else at the Budokan about 10 years ago.

00:53:58 John Daub: And I saw Chris Peppler, who's the host of Tokyo Eyes manager there, and I thought that was one of the best concerts I'd ever been to because I have only been to so few. Although the stadium tours are pretty cool, but there are parties before them and I don't remember that much. I just remember I have a ticket. Babymetal should play stadiums. JD what is your shoe size? Randolph, that is really creepy. Did you have difficulty finding bikes?

00:54:29 John Daub: Okay, are you asking because. All right, so my shoe size is 28 to 29 centimeters. And it's really hard to find in Japan. Japanese shoe sizes for men typically stop at 27.5 centimeters or like nine and a half. Nine or nine and a half. If you're above that, bring your shoes from your country to Japan. Just bring an extra pair if you're living here, trust me. Have you done any videos about music seen in Japan? Not yet. What's the weirdest thing you've ever covered on a main channel episode from Disabled gamer?

00:55:04 John Daub: JH. You know, a lot of the things that I covered that I thought were weird were not that weird when you understood them, which is why I covered it. But the Kanamara Matsuri or the. The Phallus Festival in, in near Yokohama, in Kawasaki, that was bizarre. But when I interviewed the priest and no one had ever done that before, she'd done like maybe two interviews over 10 years. The Foreign media never interviewed her about why they do this festival.

00:55:34 John Daub: They just showed the fallacies. But when I interviewed her about it, it made a lot of sense, all right. Which is like, amazing. And that episode was maybe the weirdest one because it looked weird, but it wasn't. Then every naked man festival where dudes run naked outside with a thong is weird, all right, but it's awesome weird because they do that. It's. You can watch all you want, but being in a group of dudes with thongs, there's like this feeling of community.

00:56:06 John Daub: And you're one of them. You are a strange dude running in a thong. I was. I've done maybe four or five of them. And it's a good feeling. There's like this feeling of brotherhood that, you know, I guess like a fraternity or something do you have at those festivals. Everybody's slapping everybody on the back. We're all drinking, we're all laughing. Doesn't matter if you're a stranger, you're there at the moment. And I love that about Japan too.

00:56:37 John Daub: It's just like at these festivals, if you put yourself out there and if you are living in Japan, it's kind of frustrating. Get involved in your community, take part in the festivals, learn, just go. And you'll find people are really friendly at these times in everyday life. Maybe not so much, but at the festivals there's like this feeling of really warm brotherhood. I love it. So I probably will do another naked man festival, but those are always pretty weird.

00:57:08 John Daub: Have you been to any Japanese stand up comedian shows? I'm dying to go to the Pirates of the Pirates of Tokyo Bay. Have a comedy. And they're a bilingual group and they're pretty funny. I've got a lot of friends in the, in that group too, so I'd love to see Pirates of Tokyo Bay, but I've never seen any rakugo or any kind of Japanese comedians. There's a different sense. You know, as an American, I think we had slapstick. I grew up with the Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, you know, we had a different sense of humor than the Japanese.

00:57:46 John Daub: But I think, I don't know, I don't get into it the same way with my wife. Peter and I, we talked about this too. Our. Our wives have much different taste in entertainment than we do. It's just true. It's cool, but totally different. Totally different. Kerry, thanks for reminding everybody to hit the like button. Thank you. How are the bees in the summer? That's a. That's Funny that you brought that up because I'm actually editing. Do I have it here?

00:58:17 John Daub: I'm actually editing the Yubari melon video. And I'm gonna have to stop this really soon because I want to finish this video before I go to Hokkaido tomorrow. Gosh, if I don't finish it, it's going to be really bad. Bees were a very important part of the melon process or the cantaloupe process, because they have to pollinate the flowers in order to make the melons. So I'm editing with. Bees are fine here. I haven't had any issues with it.

00:58:47 John Daub: I've never been stung by a bee in Japan, so. And I've been out there. Mosquitoes can be an issue. So probably, you know, it's. The thing is, if you are traveling, just wear pants sometimes if you're hiking, even if it's really hot. Because I think that there's a lot of mosquitoes and nasty bugs out there. And, you know, somebody asked me about if they needed a Japanese encephalitis shot because it has Japanese in it. And the answer is, I don't think so, because I don't think the Japanese have Japanese encephalitis vaccination shots.

00:59:23 John Daub: But it doesn't hurt to get it. So you can get a Japanese encephalitis shot. If you're going off the beaten track, maybe it's cool, but for the most part, I would say there you go. I would say no, because if you're traveling in the cities and stuff, there's no problems. We had dengue fever once, and they. They tap that down in Yoyogi Park. Wiped out. I haven't seen deng fever for a long time. Probably those festivals like the Cambodian or the.

00:59:54 John Daub: The Thai festival that they have, they probably brought something and one of the mosquitoes got out. I don't know. Why are cantaloupes so expensive? $2 at my local Safeway, $40 in Japan. That's the episode that's coming. But I'll tell you this. They grow the cantaloupes. They started when it's cold outside. And I found this strawberries in the United States. And I'll use strawberries as an example. You grow them in the summer, whereas in Japan, they grow them in the winter.

01:00:27 John Daub: And they do it in vinyl greenhouses where they can control the temperature. And the sugar content of fruit is much higher. You don't need to add any, like, sugar or anything to it. The flavor is just so much more explosive in Japanese fruits. I've never had a bad peach. I've never had. I can't think of a time I had a bad melon or cantaloupe here or a bad strawberry. I actually get blueberries at the Nagano store in Ginza. I've never had like a sour blueberry.

01:00:58 John Daub: It's just like. I don't know how they do it, but they. I think I do. It's through temperature control. And the strawberries in the winter are grown in colder weather so they grow slower. And the sugar content is so much more intense. It's so much higher and when. And they also look better because they grow slower. And when you. The thing is, when things grow slower, you can't produce as many of them. So the price is going to be naturally higher.

01:01:29 John Daub: But there's also another side to this. If the flavor is so darn good, people will pay a lot more for it. Because in your life there's two things I think that are the most important things to do with your money besides save it. Use your money for new experiences and use your money for food. That basically is a new experience. I like to use my money for food. Really good food. I don't eat like a king, but every now and then I would like to spend $40 for melon because that flavor is just so much.

01:02:03 John Daub: It's such a beautiful thing when you come. When you have like blueberries that taste like those nagging of blueberries. Are they better than normal blueberries? Yeah. I think for me it's worth spending some of my disposable income to enjoy that sometimes. So food here in Japan is definitely part of the culture. So, Dennis, thanks for pledging 5,000 yen, the motorcycle Kickstarter. Appreciate that. Just got the notification. Quality over quantity.

01:02:34 John Daub: I think you can balance it out. Sometimes you need quality. Sometimes you have to pay for a 25 burger. Out of curiosity to make up your own mind if it was better or not. You don't have to. Just like my dad. My father is a very. He's kind of a frugal person and he doesn't like to, I don't know, try new things to. There's people out there that are like that, you know. I think it's worth it to try new things because then it keeps you young and keeps life exciting.

01:03:05 John Daub: Is it a rip off? Sometimes. But I have never had a bad fruit. I'll pay an extra dollar for or $2 for a peach that explodes sweetness in your mouth like they do here because it's so much pleasure, you know, it's hard to describe. Either you do it or you don't. And if you. And if you're. We have a limited amount of times in our life, most of us won't be around at age 90. Let's say I'm being generous. But in that. In that small amount of time that you do have, you should probably try some really good food and splurge a little bit in your life.

01:03:43 John Daub: Make it special. You don't have to do it for everything. Just do a little bit of homework and make it count. $300 for a sushi dinner sounds exorbitant, but if you freaking do it, you'll probably be thanking me. All right. I'd say 80% of the people will say thank you, and 20% won't see the value in it because not everybody's the same as me. Just a fact. Let's see here. How come you never do sponsored deals on your channels? I don't. I don't see the value.

01:04:14 John Daub: I don't know. Thank you, gustavo, for pledging 5,000 yen for the documentary and the postcard. Thank you, Gustavo, for Kickstarter. I. I don't. I know that I could probably make each one of those is like. Like between 3 to $5,000 for those shout outs on main channel episodes. Okay. So if you do like a audible or you're probably making between 3 to $5,000. So I just decide that if you're gonna make an episode and it means something to you, I mean, yeah, you should go for the money.

01:04:47 John Daub: I think there's nothing wrong with that. I think I have friends that are YouTubers that put in sponsored deals because it makes sense. You know, you don't make that much money unless a video makes like, I don't know, like a million views or something. You don't really make so much money off of a video when you comparatively think about the time you spent in. Took me two weeks and I traveled to East Hokkaido to make the Melody Road episode on the main channel.

01:05:19 John Daub: 43,000 views is about, I don't know, $110 for two weeks of work. All right, that's not a lot of money. So it makes sense to put in a sponsored video. Like 30 second roll in there to make 5,000 bucks. Heck yeah. But the downside of it, I always think of things in the long term, which could be a weak point of mine. Like in 10 years, this company might not even be there. And it's trapped in this video that I want to be relevant in 10 years or 20 years.

01:05:50 John Daub: I want people to still be watching my content. So I take a long term step and say I don't really want to do that for the money. I'd rather make the content because that's where I want the story to be clean and I feel like it would dirty the content. Maybe if there was a sponsor that, that I think was a win win maybe, but I don't know. I don't know I'm doing good enough. What does Kanai think about America? She loves it. I met Can I in America.

01:06:20 John Daub: She likes, she loves the people. They're different people are more talkative and friendly and open. She loves the food, she loves the junk food. She loves the pizza, the burgers, the pancakes stuff we can get here. But it just seems like it's better because it's in America. I don't know, it's bigger. You know, it's in cities like New York. She loves New York because it's just, it's just so exciting, so much energy just being in the city.

01:06:50 John Daub: So we want to try to go on the west coast. Do you drive a Suzuki or a toy? I don't drive either. You often show McDonald's. While a majority of Japanese don't go there, that's not true. Majority of Japanese probably do go there, but they don't tell you. I'd say that there's a line out the door every lunchtime. Maybe it's the same company, same people, but young people. I'd say every young person goes to McDonald's in Japan. I don't think that there's someone that's health conscious that says, I'm not going to McDonald's in Tokyo.

01:07:27 John Daub: Every young person I think has been to McDonald's like one time a week. You see these very thin girls in McDonald's. They eat it, but they don't eat a lot. They'll eat. They don't drink Coca Cola at McDonald's. Very few people do. They drink tea like mugicha or uroncha or green tea. And then they'll have one burger, which is smaller in Japan. And then they have, you know, small french fries or something, which isn't a lot of calories. So I mean, they're not eating Big Macs.

01:07:59 John Daub: They're not eating super sized stuff here. It's just a different thing. So McDonald's is not that unhealthy in that sense, you know, volume in Japan. But people do eat here and I don't eat. I, I may show McDonald's because it's interesting. The only time I ever eat McDonald's is when I do, only in Japan. I. I'll be honest with you. I don't eat it for pleasure. I. Because it's. I'm curious, okay. Because it's interesting for this, which is why they do that.

01:08:31 John Daub: Why they have like grape flavored milkshakes and, you know, rice burgers and things like this. They want you to be curious about it. So I. We cook a lot, so we try to eat a lot healthier. We don't eat McDonald's very often. I mean, at my age, I have really have to consider trying to eat better, but nothing wrong with it. What are your thoughts on buying an akiya? Why not show me one? I gotta find one that I like. I don't know. Shake. His pizza is great.

01:09:02 John Daub: Shaky's is all right. I wouldn't. That's not in my top 10, though. There's a lot of good places. Tips for studying Japanese. What I did was I learned. I got flashcards and I made katakana flashcards. And in. And in 36 hours I could read signs on the subway. I could read menus at restaurants. In 36 hours I could order. Yeah, I could understand menus a little bit. And things started to make sense. So I got excited. After learning katakana, I started hiragana and I started to learn a little bit of kanji.

01:09:37 John Daub: And then I started to like moriyagara, like kind of picked up steam. There's some momentum. I got excited about it. So I started first with katakana. Because katakana is used for things like pizza. Pizza, kohi coffee, biru beer. Once you can start to read that, it's pretty cool. And then you get more into it. So my tip would be to start with something that you know, English in Japanese, which katakana. And then once it's like you start going bidoo and you start.

01:10:08 John Daub: The first time I remember seeing coffee, I said, kohi, kohi coffee. I was like, this epiphany. And that was the first time I. I understood something in Japanese that I had studied. I'm like, whoa. And then all it takes is a spark and then you can start an inferno. Language. You can't watch that 2003 hitchhiking video because I used copyright music. I didn't know. Learning Japanese now is easier, I think so. It's easier because there's so many more assets.

01:10:40 John Daub: You can just watch YouTube. We didn't have that when I came here in 98. We had books. Probably it's going to be about finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend. For most people, everyday life and then finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend because not a lot of people will speak English. And you should learn a little bit of Japanese to communicate if you're on a boyfriend or girlfriend. So that's a big motivating factor. Yeah. Will you ever have another under the fridge?

01:11:11 John Daub: Hamster? Probably. We'll see. Probably. Leo, get. I'm afraid if we did get one now, Leah would just, like, squish it. Not understand. But maybe in a year. All right, one or two more questions. This is crazy. I can take them all. I don't mind. Have you ever thought about producing a media like TikTok? I thought about it. I'm. I'm. Look, I'm. I gotta focus on the main channel episodes and just getting that out. So, you know, once I get that under handle, maybe I'll go back to Twitch.

01:11:45 John Daub: Twitch should be next and then maybe TikTok, but probably you're gonna see some YouTube shorts coming soon and they'll be coming in like once a week, I think. So we'll get those out. What law should people know about Japan? I don't know if you're a good person. That's never been an issue. I. I don't. I don't think there's any laws that you probably don't know. Like, there's social norms like, don't put your chopsticks in the rice. Don't wear your shoes in the house.

01:12:17 John Daub: Don't, you know, do some things. But you can do that by observing other people. So if you're an observant person, you'll never have a problem in any country. You just can observe what people are doing around you and you just kind of fall in love, fall in step with everybody else. If you ever get lost, just follow the crowd. They're probably heading to the station. I was walking in Yokohama last week or two weeks ago. I couldn't use my Google map, so I just said, everyone's going in that direction.

01:12:51 John Daub: I followed them. Was in the station. I made it. You know, just observing. Don't eat on the subways unless you're really hungry. They actually have food vending machines on the platform quite often. So, you know, eat it, eat it, but be discreet. Don't. The thing with eating on public transportation is you probably shouldn't do it. But if you do, don't eat McDonald's. Don't eat anything that smells. Don't eat anything that's hot or messy.

01:13:21 John Daub: Eat stuff that you know is. I think they were selling apple, sliced apples, at a Vending machine in Tokyo station and you could eat those on the subway and it didn't offend anybody. What do you eat in a day? I skip breakfast. We do intermittent fasting. I eat around 12. Usually oatmeal with almonds. Thank you for the almond slices. Katayama A little bit of honey. No snack dinner. Kanai makes something really good. Sometimes we'll will order out a Thai food or something.

01:13:53 John Daub: But usually can I just make stuff? It's so good. I try to make pizza and American stuff every now and then. But it's like I give up because it's just so damn good. If I can find some time, and I probably will, I probably learn to cook. Go back to cooking school or something because there's a lot of pleasure. If you don't know how to cook. There's a lot of pleasure in cooking because you can just put everything away outside world and just focus on one thing.

01:14:25 John Daub: That's what's so great about cooking. You don't worry about the stuff that's happening outside of this one thing where you're slicing and dicing and cooking and oil and you know, sauteing and it's really relaxing cooking. It's not that relaxing if you suck at it. If you can, you know, it's. You can just focus on that. I'm not going to shave my head for a while. I'm not sure about the Japanese economy either. I can talk about that for like an hour.

01:14:56 John Daub: We've been wanting to come to Australia for a long time. Intermittent fasting is kind of hard. But I. I finish eating at 7 and I wake up at, you know, at 8. I can go four hours without eating. I'm not that hungry in the morning anyways. Especially in the summer. Volcano eruption has been. Sakurajima erupts like every few years. It's not that big of a deal. They evacuated the town. It is a big deal, but it's not that big of a deal. The Kagoshima prefecture, they're used to this.

01:15:29 John Daub: This is the. If you go on YouTube, you'll see a major eruption every two or three years. They have manhole covers in Kagoshima city. They don't have any patterns on it because the manhole covers need to get replaced more often than anywhere else in Japan because of the soot that comes from the volcano. And them cleaning it off of the streets requires a lot of scraping. So when I asked the Kagoshima city officials, why don't you have really pretty manhole covers, maybe with a volcano?

01:16:02 John Daub: And they said it's just a waste of money because they. They go through manual covers so much more than other places. It doesn't make a lot of sense to invest in that. The city of Kagoshima is very well prepared for volcanic eruptions. Now, if it was a major eruption, that's a different thing, but. Well, you know, I think it's because it's on the news a lot and the Internet is a lot more vocal. People are asking about it and they should, but that the village there has been evacuated before.

01:16:36 John Daub: When I was there, they were just coming back from an evacuation. They closed down a lot of businesses. It wasn't the best time. But that island, Sakurajima is pretty cool. Been there many times. Thanks for the Trader Joe snack. You're very welcome. I'm glad that you got that. Any insights on the current Russian Ukraine? No, I'm gonna stay out of that. I don't like watching it on the news, but I hope Ukraine, the people there can find peace and fight for it because it's not worth, you know, I wouldn't give up.

01:17:11 John Daub: Freedom is, you know, Braveheart. You fight for that. It's worth everything. As a New Hampshireites say, live free or die. And then there's a lot of outlets because there's no tax. I was just there. The yen will probably stay pretty high for a while. That's my. My thought, but I don't know how much longer. Japan doesn't want to do want to intervene and raise the interest rates. I got some ideas on why, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about it.

01:17:42 John Daub: I think that Japan's monetary policy will continue as the status quo and the Japanese dollar will be a lot stronger than the yen for a while longer. I keep my teeth white by brushing them and then getting a suntan. And then all you see are my eyes and my teeth. In the summer, brush your teeth three times a day. Hi from New Zealand. Hope we get the travel to Japan soon. I hope so too. I hope so too. Gosh, I'd love to get to New Zealand again as well.

01:18:13 John Daub: Haven't been there in a while. All right, guys, thanks so much for watching. This is a long one, but I appreciate it. It's kind of nice to say. Hey, sigh is here. I just sent the box too. Box on the way. I'm glad that we can connect up again. This is kind of celebrating my Japaniversary 24 years in Japan and next year will be 25 years. And I'm planning to do a very special main channel episode Edited video on this, looking back and see if I.

01:18:43 John Daub: Seeing if I can find some of my old students. I was teaching a girl that was. She was 1 years old or just turned 1 when I came here in 1998. And I'm searching for her because now she's going to be 25 years old and I have pictures of her when I'm holding her when she's one. I've been in Japan that freaking long that I have students that were just born and now they got, like, families that are the same age as mine. So her kid is probably the same age as Leo's kid because I heard a rumor that she had had a kid.

01:19:18 John Daub: She's 25, and I had a kid and I'm like, double her age. That's freaky that my kid will be playing with a girl that I was carrying like this and teaching her English 24 years ago. But that is life. Life does not go in a pattern. I had a friend who worked at Google. I think he was one of the designers for Chrome. I don't know. He was, I don't know, kind of a very weird guy. But he told me that there was, you know, when I started dating Kanai, he told me that it was wrong because he had this equation, I'm only.

01:19:53 John Daub: I'm only what, 12 years older? It's not a big deal when you're, you know, as old as we are now. But he had this equation. He said that you can only date girls that fit in this math equation or else it's creepy. Like, what are you talking about? It's like life doesn't follow any kind of a pattern. It is the most random thing in the world. Did you ever see Jurassic Park? It's random. It's chaos. All right? And if you try to. Try to put it in a box and you try to control life, nothing ever happens.

01:20:27 John Daub: It's when you break out and you just fall and you just do something, something happens. Do something good and then, you know, you won't get arrested. But if you don't do anything, nothing happens. You try to put yourself in a box and, you know, date girls. Only in this equation. Like, what kind of a freak show are you? I don't think he lives here anymore. He started bodybuilding and trying to get big to get girls or something. I don't know what happened to him.

01:20:59 John Daub: Him. But, yeah, that. That didn't make me happy when he told me that, you know, I was too old. So don't tell me that Dominion stink. Stinks, because I was gonna just. I was gonna see if I can watch it on the Internet, can buy it on the Apple TV or something. That's just life here. And I guess once a year I have that. The pleasure of talking about it in the look back on your japaniversary. Thanks, everybody for taking the time to watch. I gotta get back to editing this video and then.

01:21:33 John Daub: And then packing for the trip to Hokkaido, if you haven't already. We're trying to get the 500 backers, so even if you give a dollar, that would be pretty cool. We're gonna bring as many of you with our Hokkaido trip. Of course, we're still going to be live streaming, but the support for the Kickstarter is much appreciated. And we're. We're gonna be announcing a stretch goal probably tomorrow at the airport, which is cool. We'll have two goals, maybe three.

01:22:04 John Daub: But my biggest goal is 500 backers. And right now I think we have 350. So we're 150 short with two weeks to go on this Kickstarter. So that's plenty of time to get 150 more backers. And I really do appreciate the support. It's going to be an adventure. And all these things I talked about, I will prove it to you out there on the road. This is life. This is the way that we all should be living our life. Just get on a motorcycle, get on a bicycle, leave your door and just walk for 24 hours and see how far you go.

01:22:39 John Daub: Like, just do something crazy like this. And you meet people on the way and new things open up to you. And that's how you find your path in life. Because you don't know what you want until you experience it. And there's a lot of things that I didn't think I would ever experience if I hadn't come to Japan and if I hadn't done what I'm doing. Imagine if I'd taken that job in Bangalore, if I had never come to Japan, or if I had never worked at the international dormitory and made friends from Spain, from Korea, from all these other countries around the world and visited them in a backpacking trip.

01:23:20 John Daub: There's no way I would be here. There's no way I would be married to Kanai. There's no way I'd have a son named Leo. There's no way I'd be making a show called Only in Japan. Life is all about just trying something and seeing where it takes you. And then on the way, a door will open and you walk through it or you don't. But you have to have that choice. And you only get it if you do it. And we're doing it on the Kickstarter, so back it and then get more.

01:23:52 John Daub: All right, guys. Only in Columbus. Definitely. Go Bugs. Only in Bangalore with John Dob. Alternate universe. Imagine if this was only in India. There's a lot of content, actually. You know, I always thought about that. That'd be pretty cool. All right, everybody, have a good day, have a good night. I'll see you tomorrow. Probably at the airport with Peter as we pack. And I try my very best to get this Melon video out. I wanted to be perfect, but I'm running out of time.

01:24:24 John Daub: So take care and thank you. Look at my screensaver. I just feel like I gotta show you something different. Bye, everybody.