00:00:00 John Daub: What do we got in this vending machine here? Coffee, coffee, coffee, green tea, melon cream soda from Calpis. Like a good Calpis melon soda. That looks interesting. I know I'm going to hate it, but why not try something new? Oh my gosh, this is going to be gross. What is this? Calpis. It is cold. Somehow they found a way to put the pleasure of ice cream in a melon soda. I like the ice cream and the cherry, but the melon soda, maybe not so much.

00:00:43 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the tourism situation in Japan in August and what's been going on over the last few weeks. Peter von Gomm and I just got back from a Hokkaido adventure motorcycling, and also we were RV camping. We're camping around the country, and you don't need to wear a mask if you're by yourself outside. As you can see, I can social distance everywhere. I'm going to try this drink as well. There's a lot to talk about over the last few weeks since the last update before I left to Hokkaido.

00:01:20 John Daub: I still have not seen many tour groups. Again, the reasoning behind this is that people just can't find them, and the people are not going to take them. One of the famous phrases that I heard from somebody, that everybody has been saying is, we don't want to be babysat. We want to travel. We want to go where we want to go, and I believe more and more, we're seeing that that's going to be a reality very soon. I'm going to explain why after I down this thing, either the drain or my stomach.

00:02:27 John Daub: All right, I'm conflicted. I will not be sending this to you. This is not past the test. One of our subscribers told me that one of the best drinks in Japan was a melon soda, which is the Fantas, Fantom, Phantom melon soda, and I'm trying to find something that might be better. This fails but it's a complex tasted drink. On one side there's like a sweetness and a creaminess that's odd because the rest of it is bubbly and then there's this like sweet sugarness that just punches you in the face. This is the melon cream soda face. You can see that picture says a thousand words, that probably says a lot more.

00:03:17 John Daub: All right, you know what, I'm sorry, I gotta dump this and let's color check. Oh my gosh, that's why, oh that's so nasty. It's not a waste, it's an experiment. You don't have to drink it all in an experiment. Recycle the can. It was totally worth it. I wonder if he's getting the melon soda.

00:03:48 John Daub: I want to take you through some of these alleys here. This is, I live in Chuo Ward, which is one of the 23 wards of Tokyo, and this is a place I come to very often because it's just awesome. They have some good bakeries and some nice restaurants in this area as well and again some of the coolest alleys with what we call nagaya (row houses) and you can see them really well through the alleys. These might not be around much longer so another reason. There's a shrine at the end of this which is pretty good.

00:04:22 John Daub: All right, let's get back to it. WRX Turbo is in the house, I see Michael Sasano is here, welcome home WeGo. Welcome home WeGo, right into the travel updates and Arthur's here, thank you Arthur. It's nice to have you joining us. There's no new news but I've been fairly accurate in kind of predicting the direction of this saying that Japan will open up in steps and sure enough that they did. It's just hard to determine when. Now I think it's going to be really soon guys.

00:05:10 John Daub: For two and a half years Japan has had one of the lowest infection rates of COVID in the world. You just didn't see it impacting a lot of people and then suddenly over the last month it's just skyrocketed and right now Japan is the worst in the world and I got lots of theories about that too. Maybe perhaps people's immune systems are not as strong, people aren't getting enough vitamin D because they're not going outside enough. But also the young people, here's some right here, the young people I'm talking to you, you're not wearing any masks and when you come into large groups of other teens and then you bring it home to your families and that's how the infections I believe are getting around. Most people in their teens and 20s are the ones getting it most and then infecting their families and then they take it to work and it spreads.

00:06:07 John Daub: But you know what, we're past that part where we get upset about things like this. We're just, I don't want to get in a monkeypox, that's a completely different issue. But my point is because we're seeing infections skyrocketing, it's no longer an issue anymore. Japan is no longer this island of safe haven from what is a pandemic and it never really was but politically it was. People are backing this thing as a national emergency and it's a real issue and the health of the people is reopening and you got to do what the will of the people is now.

00:06:53 John Daub: My prediction, my crystal ball is October, we will see the next step, maybe September but October we'll see the next step because Japan will be rolling out the next Omicron vaccines. We've vaccinated, we've done everything we can to open up the gates. I think that's going to happen in October because why wouldn't it? Right now there are hotels that have been waiting since June when Prime Minister Kishida announced it and they're empty. Even during the holiday, they're going to be busy probably during the Obon holiday, which is next week. But when we were going around Hokkaido, there weren't a lot of places that were full and I didn't see a lot of tourists, although we were going off the beaten path. In Otaru, we had rooms that were available in the hotel we were staying at and that's an amazing location, a very popular hotel, mostly empty I believe. Sapporo, the hotel we were staying at, central Sapporo, mostly empty. They're just waiting for the foreign tourists to return and I'm going to guess it's going to be in the fall.

00:08:12 John Daub: I explained in the last update why probably Japan is holding off on opening up and the biggest reason is just because in Japan there was something in the news about, there are people at work being asked to not speak when at work. It's not to get other people sick in the area or in the cafeteria. This is a very Japanese thing and I know that the Westerners won't understand this but you have to respect the way that Japan wants to do things because here it's always like a community thing, especially when you're in your group or your team, a circle. Everybody does the same thing and we do whatever we can to protect one another even if it doesn't make a lot of sense. If it can reduce the risk by one percent, it seems like it's worth taking despite the inconvenience.

00:09:17 John Daub: They're asking workers at some companies, not all, not to speak when eating and this is one of the things where they believe that a lot of the transmissions are coming from. I don't think you can really stop it. Just get sick and get over it already, right? But the inconvenience to the group of people to save one or two lives is something that is just at the core so Japanese and the same with tourism, to inconvenience all of you so that we could keep Japanese people possibly uninfected, that's just something that people that aren't in the tourism industry are willing to do for the sake of keeping a few people safe.

00:10:07 John Daub: I don't agree with it. You probably don't agree with it. You probably don't even understand it but it comes the longer you live here, the more you can kind of understand the mentality and you just learn to accept it and that's the way it is. So I'm guessing though there's a point now where people in Japan are just fed up with the pandemic, they're fed up with the rules and regulations but they follow them because they're being told this but now it's becoming unpopular. Like oh I'm gonna stay home from meeting my grandparents because they might get sick. Now everybody's been vaccinated, the boosters are out there, everyone's getting a fourth vaccine booster, there's nothing more you can do so people are just going to be going home during Obon to see their parents. It's not like 2020 anymore which is another reason why this thing is exploding because people are moving on with their lives, people are taking off their masks and this thing is getting out there because it's so hot you could possibly get heat exhaustion which is killing more people than this pandemic right now in Japan.

00:11:06 John Daub: The mask policy is something that is very sensitive. With Japan public transportation, crowded areas, indoor locations you might not want to wear your mask but come on this is just something that is part of Japan and probably you should be wearing a mask if you visit Japan. I think there's some feelings that westerners might not understand this and it kind of disturbs the harmony of the community here and I can agree because I don't want to wear a mask after going to the United States and walking through a Walmart where nobody had a mask on except for this one person who was considered to be weird. After two weeks of that I was like well you know it's kind of nice not to have to wear a mask but when we wear the mask here we're thinking about the people around us and if foreign tourism comes in especially from the United States where there's such an anti-mask culture that we see on the news, in a community setting you don't have to wear a mask everywhere but on trains in crowded places at a concert at a soccer stadium people that aren't wearing masks are the weird ones here. You're not doing your part to keep the people around you safe despite your own desire for personal freedom. There's a community freedom of not having to worry about getting sick.

00:12:46 John Daub: But now with Japan exploding in infections you can kind of understand yeah maybe this isn't working because people aren't following the rules because they're just tired of it and I think that that's what it comes to. Listen to the sounds of summer. That's about as much as I can preach about. I know that it is super frustrating for so many of you not to be able to make it but I'm going to say revenge travel is a real thing. After 10 days in Hokkaido where the temperature was 12 degrees Celsius or like 55 degrees Fahrenheit in the evenings this is murder for me. Oh my gosh this is so hot.

00:13:45 John Daub: Hey Street Shadows here, hey John thanks for these updates. My wife and I are looking return to Japan tourism in January 2023 for a 30th, do you think it's safe to assume yes? I would say January is going to be just fine. There's not much more that Japan can do. You cannot stay closed if they're waiting for an Omicron sensitive vaccine that's coming in October, right, they announced it in the Japan Times. If they're waiting for COVID rates to decrease it's never been worse than right now. I don't think that Japan is a protected place anymore and I think that we're seeing that in the numbers. Japan is kind of embarrassed to be right now for infections. It's a fact. Even John Campbell is showing the graphs and it's like Japan's like this.

00:14:52 John Daub: People are over it I'm pretty sure and they just want to feel safe so they're wearing masks even outdoors like right now what I'm doing is probably weird but the government says when you're by yourself there's no one around you can talk and you don't have to wear a mask and I was just tested so I'm fine. I've been following you for many years since I'm looking at all these comments before this new channel thank you. What are the reasons for me and my, you are the reason me and my wife are thinking about making a move to Japan to raise our children. Love you man. Well thank you and thank you Street Chatter for becoming an insider.

00:15:33 John Daub: That's a whole other episode. The only issue I would have with raising kids here is the schooling is radically different. They don't teach your kids to think critically but there are so many advantages to the other side of it and I've talked with Peter von Gomm about it because his son goes to Japanese school. There's a lot of things that you have to do. Speaking English is not a strong suit in the Japanese schools but you know if you can afford international school that's an issue, that's something that's a possibility. It's like thirty thousand dollars a year I believe. Do take more Kickstarters to afford Leo's school or something. But yeah I'll talk about that in another update maybe with another father because that's an interesting topic here.

00:16:18 John Daub: My prediction is October we'll see the next step and it could even be sooner but by October with the vaccine for Omicron rolling out it works. I don't even think it matters anymore people have just moved on. We didn't cancel our trip to Okaito [?] because of it, we're just taking our precautions and we're traveling and I think a lot of travelers are going to do the same thing. Question do you need to be vaccinated to come to Japan? Answer, I think if you're not vaccinated there's a very high chance that you'll have to quarantine for like three days until you can show a negative test. There's a high likelihood that by October you won't, this won't be a government program but you'll have to pay for it. There's a high chance that this might not be the case as well. Unvaccinated travelers have more hoops to jump through when you come to Japan meaning you have to be tested on arrival. I'm guessing that the quarantine thing is going to be history as well by 2023 if not by October I don't know.

00:17:32 John Daub: There's the mask mandate which has never been a mandate in Japan. A lot of tourists don't like the masks but you're still expected to wear them which is you should be polite about it. When you walk into a restaurant and you're a stranger all right you're not wearing a mask and you refuse to wear a mask because it's my right as a customer, maybe it's your right but it's also the restaurant's right to refuse to so there's another side to it. If you didn't give a damn about wearing a mask anywhere you're probably at high risk to catch this because you're an irresponsible person in the eyes of people here. I understand that if I'm going on a train I always wear a mask. On the airplane I was wearing a mask. I was even wearing glasses. I'm trying to do what I can to protect my family. Yeah we're gonna get sick but there's not much you can do about it and Japanese are starting to think in too as we see everybody's friends getting sick.

00:18:30 John Daub: Kanae Daub's friends, I think half of them have gotten sick. Kanae Daub's students are sick. She's worried that she might be sick. She's like didn't wanna kiss me upon return and I said well you know what, if you have it it doesn't matter, just kiss me because if you have it I'm gonna get it anyways right? If I'm not gonna not kiss Leo, I do cowlicks too. What mother doesn't, father doesn't do cowlicks to ruin their child's mental capacity by going who what? Other parents do that? I'm just kidding.

00:19:13 John Daub: Peter von Gomm's, I think Peter von Gomm's at the, I didn't do no cowlicks on Peter von Gomm. He's on an airplane I think or getting ready to go to it. I used to have this neighbor who would chase down little kids and she would cowlick them and I think if we had the pandemic that would be wrong but I think it was wrong even then in the 1980s. She'd chase us down a cowlick and we would run. When she came out of the door kids would run. That's when you want PE in your life.

00:20:14 John Daub: Akkas writes in here, how safe is it to walk in the middle of the night where you are? What is this city anyway? This is Tokyo. This area is called Tsukishima, Tsukuda. It's an island in Tokyo, about five minutes to Tokyo Station by taxi. It's like one of the nicest places to live and it's also such a weird neighborhood because it's so close to Ginza and to Tokyo Station. And you'd be 100% safe walking out here at night. There's so many police boxes and I've never heard of an attack here in Chuo Ward actually.

00:20:55 John Daub: What is the bathing culture in Japan? I made videos on that. Told by Abe, mask plus high heat plus humidity plus virus plus not immune people minus tourists still out and so much more than just the hot breaks. It doesn't take a scientist to say that young people are gathering in large groups because of the summer vacation and they're not wearing masks and the teenagers are probably hooking up, doing their thing, going to the riverfront, riversides down by the river, doing your thing, taking off the masks, drinking their non-alcohol in that can type of stuff and sharing their doobies or whatever they do. They're getting more than just the hot breaks, just what they think they're gonna get, they're getting COVID and then they're giving it to mom and dad who let them go down by the river to do all this stuff. Bottom line, stay away from the river and you'll be safe.

00:22:09 John Daub: When I was a kid in high school I wasn't in the popular group so I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, that came in college. When you get away from this you know in the popularity contest, you go to a new school from an out of state new school you can be popular, it's a whole new start over. Although in Ohio State we had the Olentangy but we call it the Olengrunge. So I don't think kids are doing anything down by the river except the crew team which rowed. You'll end up living in a van down by the river.

00:23:01 John Daub: New attractions in Tokyo like art exhibits or museums, there is a bunch of stuff. I was at the Tokyo Skytree a few weeks ago to film the window cleaning for an episode on the main channel which is pretty freaking awesome. I was outside like over 600 meters I guess, pretty freaking high, looking down with just a cable watching them clean the windows. How awesome is that? I was working with the PR manager there and he told me that he didn't really encounter any tourists yet and then he was in a CNN article, Amisan just last week that said that he saw his first tourist group on like July 27th or something. Japan opened up on June 10th and the Skytree saw their first foreign tourist group visit at the end of July. So that's sort of weird right? I'm guessing in August we're gonna see more tour groups this month. I'm gonna be going around a little bit and looking for them. I think I'm gonna do an active tourist search at Asakusa, go talk to them and ask them from a distance maybe.

00:24:46 John Daub: Do it live. I'm gonna go to like a tourist spot in Tokyo and look for them. There were reports of tourist groups at Meiji Shrine, reports of tourist groups in Asakusa, reports of tourist groups at Skytree. So we're starting to see more tourism but nobody that I talked to wants to take the package tourism. Hold the presses. So I got news from somebody who's emailed me on Instagram that if you take a tour group and the tour group finishes and you happen to want to stay you will be able to stay longer, you can change your visa to longer because by that time you would have been quarantined and you would be virus free. It's a rumor. It makes sense though. You can change your visa or whatever to extend it upon arrival. Now this is a common thing in Japan. Once you get here it's easier to stay here but getting in is hard. But once you're here staying here is easy so you can extend your visa possibly or maybe the tour group just gives up on you. I don't know but you could change your flight and maybe not go back. A loophole possibly.

00:26:16 John Daub: This is all new information that came to me just the day before yesterday and my jaw dropped. Knowing Japan and the way things work here extending your visa is easy but getting the visa to come in is hard and extending has always been easier. Isn't 90 days the max? I don't know what it is now, I'll be honest with you, I'm not a tourist. These policies are changing so quickly but I heard from a bird on the internets that some people were able to depending on the tourist or the tour group to stay longer and extend their visa and then travel more freely. Just saying, something to ask about if you decide to take a tour.

00:27:24 John Daub: By the way before I end this live stream we got four days left on the Kickstarter, 605 people backed I believe, 4.45 million yen. Peter von Gomm and I are just over the moon. If you want to back the documentary and the postcard that's still available right now we'd really appreciate it. The Solo Pack, the Tenugui and the Echo Bags are ordering it in four days as soon as the Kickstarter campaign ends and then in September we start to send this stuff out as soon as Peter von Gomm gets back and the stuff comes in. The documentary we believe it'll be done by the end of September, sometime in October. Peter's going to help me out with that and from what we filmed it was a significant amount of things that you did not see on the live stream.

00:28:30 John Daub: The documentary is going to be phenomenal, like one and a half hours to two and a half hours long. We were filming everything. We have the onsen baths up in the most remote parts of Hokkaido. We have Ainu Museum where they let us film which is something unique, they let us film as media, canoeing, food, Ainu food, a ritual dance. We're going to explain that the best that we can in this episode. We motorcycled for five days, we took an RV for four and a half, five and a half and four and a half and we have an amazing adventure.

00:29:07 John Daub: I want to do this once a year because I think it's different than what we do on YouTube. I already asked my YouTube advisor if maybe instead of Kickstarter maybe YouTube can start to have these long creators who want to do movie-like content to be able to do this and then create a way for people to like buy it or download it or rent it on YouTube because every YouTuber that does something like this there's great costs. My friend Greg took two years to make a documentary. I would want him to get a decent amount of money from that. I have so much respect for Greg Lam as a creator, just the love that he has for this country and the content he makes it's inspiring to me as a content creator.

00:30:27 John Daub: A YouTube video these type of topics don't do well, YouTube doesn't suggest them so they're not going to make as much money, full-length movies like this. So it gets lost in the content and Greg's video is now released for free on YouTube. You guys might want to check that out, Becoming Japanese. I backed that on his Indiegogo, I was so proud to back that when he put it out there. Always back your friends. He put it out on YouTube for free and I probably won't be doing that with the Kickstarter video for a while but I can understand, you want to make something out of it after putting in so much work. A huge amount of respect for what he does. Go check that out on Life Where I'm From, Greg's channel. Leave a comment if you do and show some love for somebody who put in so much effort and so much work into that.

00:31:36 John Daub: I'm glad I could take Peter von Gomm on this. Peter von Gomm didn't charge me for doing the Only in Japan and he never charged me for doing narration for the show. Although I buy him lunch and dinner and I do give him some cash sometimes when people give him some money. Peter von Gomm I got to give you the gas money for the Motovlog Super Chat. By the way YouTube does take a pretty hefty portion of your money. This is why I always say you should back on Patreon because I see Patreon as support and YouTube membership and Super Chats as a gift, just a fun spontaneous thing and Patreon is a way to support creators. They take much much less and that's pretty cool. Peter von Gomm is a friend, yes of course he is, for 14 years he's been my friend, half the time we've been in Japan. We both had more hair when we met.

00:32:44 John Daub: Do you need a tourist visa if you are American? Right now you need a tourist visa but what I was saying is if you come in through a package tour you can work out a deal to extend the visa to stay longer on your own. That might be a way to get the benefit of having not a lot of tourists having empty attractions right now but it's expensive though to do that. Package deals are kind of not bad because it does support tourism offices that have been suffering for ages. Everybody wants to save money including myself but I also want to support businesses that are, I don't want them to go out of business. I have mixed feelings on this whole package tour thing but the caveat is if you can extend and stay and then travel on your own and it's your first time in Japan maybe you want to do it.

00:34:11 John Daub: But if you're going to revenge travel I don't think that people are turned off enough not to travel to Japan. Like I'm going to travel to South Korea because I'm pissed off at Japan not opening up and once Japan opens up those people are going to come to Japan. It's just too good here okay? It's like the revenge travel for COVID where you're saving up your money, that's happening. Japan's missing the revenge travel so I hope that Japan opens up and when they do the revenge people are going to come. No one is going to say oh I am so angry, you're going to come here anyway. If you're watching this channel you're also just like me, love Japan very much, you're going to be here.

00:35:03 John Daub: You're watching a travel update you're probably going to be here. You're also missing summer and we have all these bugs in the trees here called semi (cicadas) in Japanese. Hear them? They're so loud. Gosh I can't wait to see COVID paid for my motorbike. I finally saved my money. As an American citizen I didn't get any of the COVID benefits or packages. I'll just take the money from Japan.

00:36:22 John Daub: I'm going to keep doing these updates at least once a month and if anything breaks I'll be back here with some good news. But I think it's really important to keep talking about this to give you a feeling of what's happening here so you can feel it out. I know that a lot of you want to come to Japan and I completely understand the uncertainty for Japanese who like to book things six months in advance. Either we're going to see this in September, I think this month is not going to happen, Japan's just finding a way to get through this new wave here. So after that happens I believe they'll open up, you will hear the next step.

00:37:07 John Daub: I've actually because I didn't eat out a lot I've saved up a little bit more too but we've been actually ordering food and started to eat out before this pandemic hit so I think everybody was saving. That's the deal right? Everybody was saving a little bit of money for travel for when they could travel and they're saving it to travel nicely so luxury tours and hotels are, people that are traveling are traveling well right now because they just want to after being shut in and Japan's missing that.

00:37:48 John Daub: By the way just before I leave here I love this area. Guam has opened up to Japanese tourists again I think without a quarantine and they are expecting more Japanese tourists to come and I hope it's reciprocal because we would have I miss our Guam friends. I'd like to see more Guamanians come to visit Japan because they're our neighbors and Kanae Daub and I are dying to go to Guam. If you live in Guam let me know because I want to do a Guam meetup, I want to meet everybody. Kanae Daub's been to Guam with her family three four times and she tells me how beautiful it is and I haven't been to Guam, it's my own country. So I want to do an episode in Guam.

00:38:54 John Daub: If you're planning in October then you probably have a greater chance of it not being an issue but we haven't heard from the government on the next step and until we do it's always going to be some uncertainty. Your best bet is to book a tour, talk with the tour guide or the tour company and ask if you can extend your visa and travel because you will have been traveling for an extended amount of time and of course you're COVID free so it makes sense.

00:39:16 John Daub: By the way I lost my gimbal and I just bought a new one and this one is great. The last one which I lost named Kathy is stuck in Nemuro somewhere at the easternmost point. This came in 14 hours after I ordered it from Amazon here, incredible.

00:40:25 John Daub: David Yoshimoto you're right, I'm Japanese. In April I purchased my plane tickets from LAX to Tokyo for November. I'm just praying that Japan lets me in by then. David I can't imagine them not because again they have the Omicron variant vaccine rolling out probably the first month to medical professionals and then to the rest of the people by November so this thing's going to be over. From what we see with this blast of infections here in Japan being number last I can see they're just going to open it up and I don't see people wanting to keep outsiders out as much as they did about six months ago or a year ago when this started.

00:41:21 John Daub: Australia opened up, packages are inbound to our Australians. Canada is still closed I don't know why but Jason and all our Canadians, Catherine all of our Canadians who are waiting for packages and stuff I'm on the ball and we're going to get this out to you as soon as possible somehow. The Post office Japan Post is a great indication of how travelling will return and since Guam is adding more flights from Japan this is a really good sign showing you that travelling is returning to Japan. There's some normalcy coming so if there are more flights now between Japan and Australia and Guam that means there are going to be more flights between Canada and Japan and the United States and other countries and this is such a good thing. It's happening, you see it but you don't see it in the action yet so keep up hope because I want to see some smiling faces here and I want to do some meetups and I want to give all of you a hug and not a cowlick, it was a joke alright?

00:42:43 John Daub: Blue Army writes in here hi bro I'm going there in October as a group tour. Hey I will try to go back next year April, what do you think about April next year opening up? Yeah definitely Blue Army, this has to end. There's no way this continues with everybody having access to vaccines, Japanese all having had it sick. The stigma of being a COVID survivor is gone now because everybody knows somebody like five or six people that have had it by now. It's all over, it's a wash now and I think tourism will open up. I don't know if they'll have a quota or what but I can't see it not opening up.

00:43:23 John Daub: I got so many stories to tell you too from Hokkaido. Safe travels to Peter von Gomm. Thanks so much everybody for watching the live streams. I'll be editing a lot, I try to do as many of these as I can live streams. I'm going to be turning to editing now, I travel next Saturday to Shikoku to film more main channel episodes. I need to get one or two episodes out really fast because this trip was so busy, it was so exhausting, I just couldn't do anything at the end of the day, I just fell, we backed up footage and fell asleep. I got so much content to edit, I better get to it.

00:44:15 John Daub: Have a good day everybody. See you in the next live stream or main channel episode. Next one is the melon auction. Why does your body's melons cost $46,000? What exactly do they taste like? I kind of figured it out in the live stream earlier but I went into great detail in the main channel episode. It's pretty fascinating. See you everybody. Support the Kickstarter, four days left.