00:00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Yurakucho! This is one of my favorite areas of Tokyo. There's so much colorful shopping to do in this region just next to Ginza.

00:00:10 John Daub: I have some good news. After many years, two and a half years, many media outlets in Japan are calling this an end to the quote-unquote isolation or self-isolation. Starting September 7th, guided tours are no longer necessary. Solo travelers can enter Japan, the first being Aussies. Australians received a wake-up call. They have a message from the media. I got this from news.com.au, a printout here. And it confirms everything. NHK ran with this just recently too. Japan has confirmed plans to boost its entry numbers and allow self-guided travel from September 7th. Wow. It's in black and white. I didn't type that. I printed it out. It's true.

00:01:04 John Daub: I told you that this is... You should read the comments. You can see all of the naysayers saying, "There's no way Japan opens to 2023." Alright, maybe not unfettered. Maybe not without caveats. But the writing has been on the wall for, I mean, two months. You can sort of just see it evolve after this seventh wave. Now the kids have gone to school. It's September 1st here in Tokyo. Although it might be August 31st where you are. Kids are back to school. Life is returning to normal. Summer travel is done. Japanese aren't traveling. You can see this area, typically very busy, is very calm right now. It's because kids are back to school. Yippee!

00:01:50 John Daub: Many people guess that the numbers might go down and then come back up again because kids are back to school. But I think that they were getting around together anyways. At least they're monitored. They're the ones on a guided tour called teaching. Sorry kids. But the good news is that on September 7th, you can book trips without guided tours. And I believe very strongly down in my core that you guys made a difference by commenting on that video by making noise. And that's huge.

00:02:25 John Daub: You rejected Japan's offerings and said this is lousy. And they came back with a counter offer. Now there are asterisk marks with this too. But Japan will never just open open. They kind of open in steps. So the next step is no more—say goodbye to the guided tours. Many of you called it North Korean tours. That's gone. September 7th, you can book trips with travel agencies and create your own tour. Now that might not be the answer. Now everyone goes, ah, there was a catch. Yeah, there was a catch. But it's no longer there's a chaperone. You could do whatever you want to do. But you have to book the tour.

00:03:13 John Daub: My feeling is that it's going to work more like choose your own adventure with a travel agent. I don't like travel agents. But considering the fact that you still are going to need a visa to come to Japan—it's not really like a visa visa. I think you could start to do an e-visa. I believe they're going to roll this out to the rest of the world. Canada and the United States have e-visa, meaning you don't have to take the passport and go into an embassy or consulate anymore. You could do everything online.

00:03:48 John Daub: There's a Shinkansen. You're going to be on this soon. No, then you think. Yeah. So there's every indication that this is just the first step. And it's just going to continuously get better and better. Now, Japan is going to have the vaccines for the Omicron variant coming out in October. They've already announced it along with this announcement came that announcement, meaning that the population here understands that it's here to stay. They're okay with this now. Shinkansen had it. He recovered and they're going to get a fourth vaccination in October.

00:04:33 John Daub: Now, the caveats are such where you need to book with the travel agent and you also need to be vaccinated three times. And that could be twice and boosted. Let's just say thrice. Okay. And I believe in October after Japan gets it, October, November, they're going to want to see four. So you got to have four shots since this pandemic started. Yeah. I think that that's allowing you to go right through. And it's really easy.

00:05:03 John Daub: My wife and I and son, we came back to Japan from the US. We thought it was going to be really hard and painful in the past. People about four months ago would have to wait at the airport for several hours to get tested and make sure they had and they were COVID free before they can enter Japan. You had to wait for PCR tests at the airport. We went right through when we arrived. We had a color coded app called MySOS. You're probably going to have to download this and install it. So you might want to go ahead and do that now. It made the process really easy. Color coded it. The only thing that was hard was they required us to get a PCR test 72 hours, which makes no sense. But they dropped that too. They raised the limit from 20,000 to 50,000, which makes not a lot of difference because there's just not a lot of flights coming yet.

00:05:53 John Daub: Let me read you some of the comments here. It is exciting. These steps are coming faster. They're coming faster. So a lot of you said I gave up hope. They're all coming faster. So just never give up hope. And this coming from somebody who we started a 1.4 million subscriber channel. I'm never going to give up hope.

00:06:20 John Daub: "We have been waiting a long time for this announcement. And this is great news for us as specialists whose business is 80% self-guided, tailored travel inside Japan." This is what Japan co-founder Simon King said in a statement Wednesday. So this is going to help a lot of Australian tour operators. So the money stays in Oz, I guess. The independent Japan travel specialist was the first Australian tour operator to have customers back in Japan on its small group tours in July. So I had no idea that Inside Japan is a big deal in Australia for tours to Japan. Demand and sales for travel to Japan has increased to levels comparable to 2019, according to Mr. King. I don't know if I believe that. The fact that the restrictions are eased in time for Japan's peak autumn departures is such a relief for us as all of our partners on the ground that rely on business. To be in Japan at the time of the koyo (autumn leaves), leaf season with temple gardens and mountainsides lit up with red autumn leaves will be special. Japan has not lost its magic and we can't wait to show people again.

00:07:27 John Daub: And we're getting all these chiming in here. That's awesome. All over the news. A new deal is coming and it's coming faster. So when you hear these stuff, it wasn't that long ago where I said that Japan had increased its—you know, drop the PCR tests and a lot of things have changed. So it's all positive news.

00:07:57 John Daub: In regards to the e-visas that you can apply online. But you still have to go to the embassy to pay for the visa fees. I believe that if it's such a new system that they're going to change that and you're going to be able to do it online with credit cards. It's a brand new system for Canada and the US. It's just being tested now. I bet you they roll it out. I don't think the visas are going to go away. I think you're going to have to get an e-visa. But I don't know about the payment. I'm guessing that that's not going to stay the case. Probably it changes September 7th, to be honest with you. There's no reason why they should. This is the Reiwa era. No more paperwork. Digital digital.

00:08:48 John Daub: Let's walk around this area. I could take some of your questions here. And they're coming in hot and heavy. Castor 2641 writes in here. Hi, John. With regards to e-visas. What happens if you change your mind once you're in Japan and you want to go somewhere else? Who knows? I guess there's no chaperones. So you could do whatever you want to do. It's all freewheeling. Once you're in, you're in. The thing is, if you can find a way to cancel your accommodations and say, I want to go here or the weather changed. I mean, discuss that with the travel agent. I think it's time where things can be a little bit flexible.

00:09:36 John Daub: But I'm going to be honest with you. If you're traveling with a family, you're probably going to want to make your reservation. You're probably going to want to decide where you want to go before. So it doesn't really make a big difference if you have a travel agent. Here goes the Shinkansen. Do this for you. It might even create less of a headache by getting it all out of the way. You have to kind of look at the positives here. I think also there's a possibility that things are going to be cheap anyways, especially for North Americans. I'm not sure about the Australian dollar, but right now the yen is at an all-time low. I mean, high. I don't know which way it goes, but it's about 140 yen to the dollar right now, which I haven't seen levels like this since 1998. Japan's on sale.

00:10:22 John Daub: All right. So all of you complaining, oh, it's expensive. Probably the flight's going to be whether you take a solo tour or you go through a travel agent. OK, it's going to be expensive anyways. But the fact is that Japan is like 40 percent on sale right now. All right. This is because of the exchange rate. You're making out pretty good. So, mean, the excuses are kind of melting away here. Now the guided tours are gone. I say if you can find a good deal, look at most people. There's a select few people that have specific things that they want to do. But the majority of people are going to come to Tokyo. They're going to go to Osaka. They're going to go to Kyoto. They're going to go to Hiroshima. They're going to do the usual tourist route. There is nothing stopping you from just booking your hotel with a travel agent and just getting the thing. Just getting here now because there's very few tourists still. Why not take advantage of it? It's crazy to say I'm going to wait for the conditions are absolutely 100 percent perfect.

00:11:31 John Daub: If I had that thinking, I wouldn't have backpacked or traveled anywhere at any time. I'm going to wait until this war is over. I'm going to wait until, you know, the prices get. You can't do that with travel. You got to go when you go. If you have a holiday and you have the chance. The time to travel might be now. Usually it's filled with foreign shoppers. Well, there's nobody here. It could be you.

00:12:24 John Daub: And things get better. I kind of assume that they will. Because I could see that if things go well with this, the next step is probably going to be two weeks away. They're going to announce more countries. And if everything goes well, then they announce no more tourism, no more travel agencies. But you can see like it makes a lot of sense for Japan just to open a little bit slowly, because one of the reasons why I think the travel agencies are necessary is because there just aren't a lot of hotels. A lot of them had closed down because of the pandemic, because nobody has been here for two and a half years. So if Japan just opened the doors and a flood came in, there'd be no place to stay. You'd have to camp. There's not even enough manga cafes and karaoke bars for you to sleep at. It would be crazy. So they have to roll this out to get hotels, investments, infrastructure for tourists back up to where it was at levels in 2019.

00:14:27 John Daub: Now, I kind of wish I was a travel agent. I'd be selling you tours of Tohoku left and right. Man, that's the best place to be right now. Autumn is so beautiful up there. Yeah. You know, there's no way to predict when exactly things will go back the same way as it was in 2019. But I'm guessing it's not going to go back to the way things were in 2019. I think you're going to have to get an e-visa. I believe that process is going to get a lot easier. But if we compare where we were just two months ago, it's a lot better. On paper, it's like my Ohio State Buckeyes. Can they go to the national championship? Every single analyst is good. Yes, they're going to play Alabama in the national championship. But it's all on paper. We don't know that for sure. Let's let this play out. Let's see what happens on September 7th. I'll be in Hokkaido with Peter von Gomm, but we're going to be at the airport on the 9th, September 9th or 10th. So I will look at the airport and see what exactly is the situation. Are all of these Aussies coming in carrying flags, you know, kangaroo backpacks? I don't know what's going to happen, but could be something pretty special. And I hope it's more than just the Aussies. I hope this Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, neighboring countries will be able to go in.

00:16:21 John Daub: This is the end of summer. September 1st marks the end of summer travel and the weather is still humid because of the rain. Last night was really cool. And you can tell just September 1st, the weather breaks. It looks like a typhoon is coming in. The weather was raining pretty hard this morning and now it's not. So this is probably the last few days of the warm summer weather. And then it gets so nice. You can still wear shorts, but it's cool. You don't sweat through. It's comfortable. Finally.

00:17:00 John Daub: Let's take some questions here before we end. What do you guys think of the New Deal? Is it a game changer? Maybe not for you, but think about it not just in your prism. This is a game changer for Japan. Do you see now the steps of opening up coming faster and do you feel more optimism? Are you just as negative as you were before? What do you think? What say you?

00:17:25 John Daub: What company do you recommend? I'm Maury Moira. I don't recommend any. I don't know. I live here. Any examples of where we can book tours? I don't know Inside Japan is some Australian company. Maybe that's one of many. JTB USA is one of the big ones in Japan that you got offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. I used to get my tickets. Yeah, JTB was okay.

00:19:18 John Daub: You all don't know Japan if you say it's a small step. You don't know Japan at all. What if they waited until October? You got to see this as a positive thing. John, can you do another video about the how to reserve Shinkansen tickets? I think I did that years ago. Yeah, it hasn't really changed though. Yeah, JTB USA is kind of a mess. Just call them up. I don't know. I was able to get cheap tickets from JTB up to 2010. Yeah, I don't know how it's changed. Again, I live here. If you're asking me what agencies to get, look in the comments of this video. If you're living in the United States, if you're living in Canada, if you're living in Europe, if you've gone through an agency before, can you write the name down in the comments? And even if you are an agency watching, give people a heads up how do we get this information.

00:20:15 John Daub: The thing is though that this has changed too quickly for the agencies. They don't know what to do. They say oh we're opening up September 7th. A lot of the agencies had no idea. So now they're scrambling to get prepared for the demand. But travel agencies that specialize in Japan probably have the upper hand because they can speak the language. They probably have liaisons working at the consulate or embassies. And yeah, things just move a little bit faster. So you might want to pick an agency that is—it doesn't have to be a Japanese agency. You might want to also consider US travel agents, calling them up. I don't know, maybe even the online agents like Expedia or Travelocity might be having deals that are pretty close to what you want and you could just cancel your hotel and travel. I don't know, you can talk with them. But that's the idea of communication back and forth to figure out the answers. As long as you follow the rules you're not breaking anything. So if the rules don't specify certain things like you can't cancel and book another hotel somewhere else then you're not breaking any rules.

00:21:29 John Daub: Do you think next summer there will be solo travel without the need for travel agencies? Yeah, but I think that the visas are here to stay. I think you're gonna have to get an e-visa before coming to Japan for a while. It's just my feeling. I don't think they're gonna have like the visa on arrival thing anymore. I think it's gonna take a little bit more time. But it's just a matter of doing it online this e-visa thing. As long as you don't have to pay for it at the embassy and they can find a way to take credit cards, I think they're just working that out. It's still a test program for Canada and the United States. It's going to be a lot easier and simpler.

00:22:14 John Daub: Everything changed because of this pandemic and businesses took advantage of it. They took advantage of us. I'll be honest with you, it stinks to send packages to the US because I used to be able to just print out a label and there was a green little customs form. I slapped that on a package, take it to the post office, we're done pretty quickly. Now I have to advanced register every single package. It takes ages. When I go to the post office it takes them one hour to fill in all the paperwork and then give me the receipts for the packages I sent. I sent an EMS package to Keith uh yesterday and it took them five minutes for the one form to fill in the date, confirm everything and stamp it, put the paper into this plastic envelope and seal it up and invoice. It's a pain in the neck actually. This digital thing has more paperwork required than the non-digital stuff. That's so Japanese it's crazy.

00:23:18 John Daub: Konotaro just wrote on his Twitter that they're axing some of the ridiculous paperwork every day. So he's trying to get—he's a digital czar I guess you could say right now. He's trying very hard to get everybody in the Reiwa period to end the need for hanko (seals), the need for the slow process. That's still Japan. It's a paper place. And ascendant EMS package requires three, six sheets of paper to Europe, three sheets of paper to the United States, three sheets to Australia. There's more paper involved with the digital than there would be for the non-digital. Does that make any sense?

00:24:00 John Daub: So Japan is a country of dualities. Okay, people of foreign Buddhist die born Shinto die Buddhist. It doesn't make a lot of sense but it does here. So if you try with your Western brains to try to rationalize the situation in Japan you're going to fail because you don't grasp that this is such a different country and that's what makes it attractive. You're either attracted by the fact that Japan is not like your home country but you want it to be. I never understood that the foreigners who complain about the processes here. They come here because it's a special place. It's different. It's safe compared to you know dangerous places. People think about the community instead of themselves. It's like all these benefits but then they want it to work just like their home country. So I never understood that. I don't want to say hypocrisy but I can't understand how people complain about that.

00:25:04 John Daub: Help me out here. I have sent many massive international EMS boxes using advanced stuff shipped to the US and it only takes me 10 minutes in Yokohama. 10 minutes still used to take me 30 seconds. I print out the documents on my printer on A4 pieces of paper, fold it and put them in plastic envelopes. If you compare that to printing out a label and just slapping on it's totally different. It still takes five times more time than it took before.

00:25:49 John Daub: I like this area. Let's see what's going on in the Hokkaido store. Yeah, you know UPS and Yamato and everything else they're just too expensive unless you have a special deal and you're sending massive volumes. Japan Post still has really good options. So it's gonna have to be the system for a while. A lot of people move to DHL because they were the only one still delivering but it requires a lot of volume to do that. It's just their way. It doesn't really help everyone let alone Japan. But it's been that way for a thousand years. It's not going to change.

00:26:39 John Daub: You're seeing it the wrong way. It's not going to change this is the way it is. It doesn't change because you want it to but I think you can expedite change and that's good. Things are moving faster than it normally does in Japan. This is why I'm pretty positive. I'm not upset. Expecting your home country standards to apply to Japan is the epitome of arrogance. That's in some words what I'm trying to say but I'm trying you have to be polite about it. If you don't travel a lot you won't see it but every country is so different. Every rule is different. You go to Singapore I don't know if they ended it but you couldn't chew gum. Now that that was ridiculous but what are you gonna do? That's kind of cool too. Yep. You're either the kind of person that sees the positives or the negatives and I try to be one that sees more the positives because then my life is a lot more richer as a result of it and people want to hang out with positive people.

00:27:43 John Daub: Do you want to stick positive here? I can't know it's not perfect. It's not perfect. It's not going to be because following this pandemic inflation is up, people are not working the same amount, it's things are harder. It's gonna be like this for a little bit while longer but when we start to see cracks moving in the right direction you have to encourage that. You have to live in that hope and you know that it's gonna be moving faster than it has been for the last two and a half years. If you don't see that as a positive thing then...

00:28:39 John Daub: There's a very strong section of Japanese that are in the same feeling. They're mostly the younger people. This is a generational thing. It very much is. There's safety. Paperwork is slower. Sometimes the process is too fast for Japan. Paperwork slows it down and it offers safety because it's harder to make a mistake when you're moving at a nice, even pace. When you change the system, mistakes happen. So there's risks involved. So in a jet buddy's mindset, you can kind of see why certain things might be—to changes might be detrimental to. But it's a misplaced, don't get me wrong, it's very misplaced thinking because in the Reiwa era, things are supposed to be digital. Things are supposed to be moving quickly. Japan is dependent on imports for just about everything. It needs to have communication with the outside world. It cannot fulfill its economy with only things in Japan. It needs you. It needs business between the United States and Japan. It needs American businessmen coming here to Japan to work with Japan to get things done. It needs that. In order to do it, it needs to open up fully. It's moving in that direction, not at the speed that Americans are used to. I don't particularly like it. I'm just here to tell you that that's the way it is. You don't have to like it, but it's always been like that.

00:30:21 John Daub: Chicago Africans here. Do you think next summer there will be solo travel without the need for travel agencies? I think I answered that before. Sorry. Hey Jamie Constable, thank you. KT Lovett from Hong Kong. Our friends in Hong Kong certainly going to be here soon enough. Serious Joker, John, can I book my tour with you where we break into Edo Castle together and try to drink sake in the Royal Chambers? That's not too far away from here. I wish we could break into it, but it's only a ruin right now, so that would be pretty easy. But you could sit on top of what was the Edo Castle and drink sake there. Just bring your own sake. That's the great thing with the rules in Japan with alcohol. Unless somebody abuses that, you can drink a beer from a vending machine and enjoy the freedom of beer. People are pretty responsible, mostly.

00:31:34 John Daub: Magic Fanta. I haven't seen it anywhere. So will there be special hotels that we have to stay at? I don't think so. I think you can pick the hotels you want to stay at. I believe that era is done. This is what makes us pretty special. We don't know for sure, but everybody believes—there's every indication that Japan will... This is the crack that breaks the camel's back. You know, this is this, I think it was, wasn't it the straw that broke it? All I know is that it's now cracked. The system is now broken in half and this is huge. You don't see it because maybe it's not what you want, but it's pretty amazing. And how quick it came.

00:32:44 John Daub: I was expecting this again. I've been expecting—there are two weeks ahead of me where I think where my predictions of how things are working. The likelihood of individual tourism by November, if with it, if you can book your trip with the tourist agency, 100%, you've got to book your trip somewhere. It's not going to be the travel that maybe you want, but it is 100% going to be available by November for a lot of countries. And then I think that the next step, I can't, I don't know when that's going to be coming maybe next spring. I don't know, but Japan is open from September 7th and we know that the Aussies got the notification. I think it's going to roll out to more nationalities. I think there'll be second and third waves to people who can get this. I think the e-visa system will probably start up in September for Australia and a lot of other countries. The process is going to get easier and easier and easier. They're going to lift the number of people who could come in here from 20,000 to 50,000 to no limit. And then things are going to go back to normal, but it's going to come in increments because that's the way to go. Japan does it. You go up, you go up a ladder, you got to go steps. You go up a step. The fall doesn't hurt as much unless you topple the whole ladder. But if you just opened it up, it would be total chaos. There's not enough hotels. There's not enough infrastructure to handle all the tourists that want to come to Japan. It's just not possible. There'd be a lot of discontent and everybody was complaining why Japan opened up and when they weren't ready yet. I know how this works.

00:34:25 John Daub: Mr. Clayton writes in here, any idea what I can do during a nine hour layover in Narita? Well, right now you can't do much anything. If you're watching, what a burger. Right now, you can't do much when you transfer because unless you have a visa and unless you've got the documents on the MySOS and you've booked to enter Japan for your layover, you can't do anything. However, when you had a layover, you couldn't go into Japan at all. Now, if you can talk with an agent, again, I don't know if it's going to be that expensive. It's worth it. It's worth a shot. We'll get the feedback on September 7th. Maybe you can talk with the travel agency. I'm going to do a layover in nine hours. I would love to go into the city. And is that possible? Can you make that happen? I think it's possible now than it was yesterday. Thus optimism.

00:35:51 John Daub: So many times I get really excited and then I'm let down and people say, why do you get so excited? Even though you know, there's a chance where you'll be let down. I don't think I could be shut down nine times. I'll still be pretty positive because there's always going to be hope that there's another time where things work out the way that I want to. You have to be that kind of a person. I don't want to be friends with people who are always super negative and saying, oh, it didn't work for me the first three times. I give up. You never give up. That's it. I don't know any successful people that just give up. You can retool, you can reevaluate, you can reassess, but you don't give up. You keep taking steps forward. Japan's taking steps forward. This is a pretty big step, whether you could see it or not. I'm pretty positive about it. And I think a lot of you should be because it starting to reduce the uncertainty that you won't have options to come here anymore.

00:37:22 John Daub: Negative people come. Why is it that only negative people comment on the last video that I put up on the melon auction? I would say like a good third of them are pretty negative. Like, oh, it's just a scam. I said, did you even watch the video? You just look at the title and make a judgment. You have to watch the video. It's a positive story. The melon auction, somebody paid almost $50,000 for a melon and they said, oh, that's not fair that one farmer gets all this money. And I said, they don't. All that money is divided with the other farmers through the co-op because the co-op is their company. Everybody wins nobody loses. Nobody wins big but that's the way the co-op works. In good times they take care of you and they do a good job of it. In bad times they take care of you too. They find a way to market the brand and do all these things. They do a good job of it. I thought it was a very positive episode but people were a few people so go on to that episode post some positive stuff now.

00:38:29 John Daub: I went back to Okado [?] two times for this. I spent a lot of money um thank you Patreon to go and film this and I think it's a pretty good inside look at the way Japanese farming makes the best vegetables in the world. And how a vegetable or a fruit we have chefs that charge hundreds of dollars for their cuisine. I combined pear what a farmer has done with the way that they've cultivated some of these really amazing vegetables to find ways to up the flavor 20 times. When you eat it you're blown away. There are certain foods in this world you have it it changes your life. Anybody who's ever eaten a bowl of ramen—now that's only like sometimes you know 10 15 but anyone who's had an amazing bowl of ramen first of all had to wait in line probably for a long time to get it and second it's so darn good it changes you. A good food changes you.

00:39:27 John Daub: I don't think in the US the majority of people have eaten very well. When you can't compare a three dollar cantaloupe to a 40 dollar cantaloupe you can't do it because it's so different and when you can taste it but if you're afraid to spend a little bit of money and it is it's not that much because you can spend meal that's what a dinner would be you won't be blown away by it and everyone is good you will never have a bad melon. I wasn't a cantaloupe fan until I went up to Ubatake [?] and I started eating this. I'm a huge fan.

00:39:59 John Daub: There's a fine line between negativity and positivity. I think you know it when you hear it. I don't think there's a fine line though? I think you know it. I know positive people and I know negative people. It's very easy. Negative people don't smile that much, but that doesn't mean they're negative though. You have to open their mouth. So maybe you... I don't know. I know a lot of people that don't say anything at all. It's hard to gauge whether they're positive or negative people. You go with what you have in front of you. Never judge somebody by the way that they look. Judge them by the actions and what they say, how they speak.

00:40:47 John Daub: Some YouTubers are like cult leaders. If you disagree with their views, you're negative. I love people that... I don't want to be a cult leader. They usually don't live very long, but they seem to have some fun. I love people that... No, I like... I embrace criticism because there's sometimes an ounce of truth in it. Sometimes. You have to read between the lines here. Yeah, the world is too much... I think everybody recognizes that if you don't believe 100% in what I'm saying, then I'm your enemy. And I don't get the sense that that's the sort of thing that's happening here in Japan. I think it's still kind of the way it used to be when you're on the fringe. And then everything in the middle is still up for debate. Debate is awesome. I love it.

00:41:43 John Daub: Will Gaijin be the only ones being watched by mask patrol? I don't know. There's no more mask patrol. Nobody cares. You don't have to wear a mask outside. Nobody... If someone asks you, then you just wear it. But nobody judges you or asks you. You don't get dirty looks anymore. I'm seeing about 20% of Japanese don't wear masks outside anymore. It's increasingly the case that they don't wear masks outside. I'm seeing every day. There's a guy here filling the... He's working pretty hard. He's not wearing a mask. He's filling all the bottles at the vending machine. There's people walking around here. You wear a mask because you just feel comfortable. I'll be honest with you. I wore a mask when I was in that crowded area because I felt guilty a little bit. I think I want to make people feel comfortable, so I wear the mask and it doesn't bother me that much. That's why everybody else is doing it. And nobody gives you dirty looks anymore. You don't get a fine. There's no mask mandate. It's all good.

00:42:40 John Daub: Greetings from Singapore. I'll see you all soon from Singapore. I like your channel, John. You do a lot of good stuff. I love Japan very much. My wife is Japanese also, but my views towards this backward thing differs from yours. Yeah, everybody has different thoughts. I'm not going to stop being somebody's friend because they disagree with me. In fact, I want to be your friend then because I think it's exciting to have people with different points of view because I learn stuff. Sometimes it's not the stuff that's useful. But if everybody agreed, it'd be the most boring conference. The world would get so boring.

00:43:22 John Daub: David writes in here, I appreciate all your updates. John's baby steps in the right direction. That's the way you look at it, David. Thank you. I have a coffee and my thanks for the positivity. And when some of us lose sight of it, Dylan, thank you. Don't lose sight. Don't lose hope. If this isn't exactly what you wanted, it will change.

00:43:46 John Daub: This is a live stream, so it's going to be about 45 minutes long. Sorry, guys. People are like, why are you just too long? I said, well, you can turn it off. You don't have to watch until the end. Usually in a live stream, if there's an information stream, the first 10 minutes, it's done. I just keep on because a lot of you get the notification late and I'm happy when you join me. Fingers crossed for next March. I think so. And even if not, all you got to do is book your ticket with an agency. My gut says that this step came pretty fast and the other steps will come faster. If you don't want to come here on this package, don't. And it sends a signal that Japan needs to do one more thing. But I got a feeling a lot of people are going to start to come now because they got rid of the one thing that was irritating. But it's still not perfect. Travel to the US is not perfect either. TSA is a disaster. It's I go through the Japanese airport. I'm through security in five minutes. It's good or less in the US. It's so painful. All right. It's so crowded. It's chaos in Japan. It's so orderly coming in now. It kind of always was something that there's advantages disadvantages. So you can't say that one system better than another. Everyone has disadvantages and advantages to their systems. Japan's not going to ever be the perfect system that you wanted and maybe it was. But there were disadvantages too.

00:45:21 John Daub: TSA is, you know Kate, my experience is though, for the most part, they're really good people, they're just doing their jobs and they have a job to do. But some of them, a lot of them are really good at what they do and they can sometimes make you pop a smile as well. I don't have any complaints. It is what it is, but I don't really complain about TSA because that's just the system. You're not going to change it by complaining.

00:46:01 John Daub: Apple didn't give me my iPhone. It's been one year. I haven't received my iPhone 13 Pro, you know, $1500 phone. I never will. I want to complain, I want to get angry with them, but that's not going to change anything. They said that they did everything that they needed to do and they didn't. And I'm still waiting for the police. It took them four months to give me the IMEI number in order for the police to do their job to track to see if it's been stolen or not. But if I had AppleCare, I'd have been able to get a new phone and that's the right of everybody who buys an iPhone, but I couldn't even get that. So I lost $1500. I'm really upset. Do I complain about it? It's different. I got screwed. But you're not getting screwed.

00:47:44 John Daub: Or just buy an Android phone. If one person watches this and buys an Android, I'd be happy. That balances the scales. I'm not going to be that person. But it's going to end up being, to me, I lost $1500 but in the end it'll end up being a funny story. I bet you something breaks my way with this. As long as I stay positive, anything's possible. Once you go negative, you turn to the dark side, your fortune has been written, so to speak.

00:48:29 John Daub: Joy's like, Samsung for the win. Japan is not a Samsung country, unfortunately. I think it could be a Japan-Korea thing. Alright, I think we've kind of beat this one down. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If you have any questions about this, you can leave a comment below. If you have any tour agencies to recommend that you've taken before, leave that information down below. No links or anything, just put the name. And if there's one that's really useful, I'll pin it to the top because I really want to help as many people as can with this livestream.

00:49:00 John Daub: Peter von Gomm and I are going to Hokkaido in less than a week now, which is crazy. So we'll be back on motorcycles. We've already reserved them. We've got hotels reserved. Kanae Daub's coming with me the next day. She's flying in. So we're going to have a tour. We're going to have a lot of fun in a week from now. I've got a bunch of episodes to start to work on and edit, which is what I'm going to go back home right now to do. Main channel is back on there. Please do go check out that melon episode. I really appreciate it. Leave me a positive comment. Encourage me because it's harder having to restart over. I take the good with the bad. It's all good. Nothing's bad. Life is good. It's not raining. Oh, and shout out to, really quickly. I'm going to be back in a couple weeks. I got a letter that was written to Jeffrey in Philadelphia and Zaki in Vancouver, Washington. These postcards are on the way. Thanks for signing up at the last minute. And for a lost postcard, Ian, this is yours right here. This is April's. It's on the way, buddy. Postcard this month. I believe it's going to be Skytree from a very cool angle. You're going to want this postcard. See you, everybody. Boy I'm hungry. Dylan, thanks again for being on the show for the coffee. I'm gonna go get something for Kanae and take it home. I appreciate that guys.