00:00:01 John Daub: Alright, we have our iced coffee right here. Awesome. Because I need it, it's time for some donuts. I just hit Mister Donut and we got some Satsuma-imo donuts. The collection from this time is autumn flavors. And in this episode I'm going to go over some of the very unique tastes of Japan in the autumn. It's amazing how it still feels like summer. I have shorts on. And yet autumn has started the moment September 1st rolls around. In fact, probably a couple of days before the end of August I started to see Halloween stuff. Can you believe that? So yeah, it's that time of year. It's kind of exciting. And I'm here in Monzen-Nakacho, which is where I usually come. The Mister Donut is down the street and I have a bag of the good stuff. This is going to be fun. I love these eating episodes. We're going to make it short and sweet. Very, very sweet.

00:01:06 John Daub: I have brought enough donuts home. I'm going to be taking a lot of these for Kanae Daub and for Leo to eat. But we have a good sampling including one right there. That's a brulee. A Satsuma-imo sweet potato brulee. Satsuma-imo (purple sweet potato) is a purple potato. So you see that reflected in the purple icing right there. Because of the purple Satsuma-imo and how important it is to the flavors of autumn in Japan. In the Halloween marketing, you'll see purple quite a bit. One of the reasons I believe is because of the Satsuma-imo. The purple exterior or the purple insides of that potato. It's actually, if you have an iPhone or maybe even on Android, if you type in potato for the emoji, you will get the Japanese Satsuma-imo, which is pretty cool. A lot of you might not know what the heck that purple potato is. That's what this is right here in this bag.

00:02:07 John Daub: I'm going to break this all down. We're going to start off with... I'm going to eat probably three donuts, most of three, and give you an experience like none other. First up, I'm in a new spot by the way because there's like a diesel engine signal changer and we get fumes when we're eating the donuts. Not this time. This time we have pure donuts. And over here, we get the fumes from the cars instead. Look at that purple. It says here, Satsuma-imo-do. Imo meaning potato. Here we go. Itadakimasu. Whoa! You didn't see that. But I just broke it. And it broke real easily. And you exposed what looks like a very heavy donut. There's a lot of meat in this. That's not your average Pon de Ring, which is these mochi-mochi type of donuts. This is a different kind of a beast. It's heavy. Wow! They put potato, mashed sweet potato inside of the donut. I thought it would just be the icing. Oh gosh, this is incredible.

00:04:03 John Daub: I love this season because the autumn tastes are just so different than summer. Summer is kind of boring, actually. You have watermelon stuff. It tastes a little bit chemical-y. You have melon taste, which is good. It's hard to get that to taste good enough, though. It's when you get to autumn and spring that the flavors in Japan, the seasonal flavors are so good. And potato, sweet potato is good. Potato is one of the best. The other one that's huge is chestnut or kuri (chestnut) or marron, which I guess they use the French in a lot of the marketing. That is so good as well. And that travels on in through the winter, too. The chestnuts and the sweet potato season is so good for confections. But I have to say that this one with the purple icing, it's going to be hard to beat that. All right, let's move on. Back into the bag.

00:05:07 John Daub: Now, I asked Mister Donut how long are they going to have these flavors for. I got one for Kanae, don't worry, and for Leo, too. We're next to this brulee, and this one is a very unique one. I'm getting my sugar high. I'm not eating the whole donut, too, by the way. You can take a few bites. Don't try to overdo it with sweets. And it's hard to beat. This is a donut called Pon de Ring. Take a quick look at the labeling here. You can see here it is a donut like a Pon de Ring. It's really heavy, but it's got like this glassy front on it, and that's the flame-torched, the blow-torched sugar on the top of it. So it's made like a sheet of glass, like stained glass sugar. Now you can really see it here. Check that out. Look at that. Whoa, I feel like I'm in a cathedral of sugar happiness. Looks like autumn leaves in there. Now this also has a really heavy potato. Probably they found a way to put the potato or potato flour into it and it's got a really good heaviness to it.

00:07:37 John Daub: You know like in Japan they don't dunk their donut and coffee. In fact I don't see a lot of people who do that anymore. I guess since Dunkin Donuts changed their name to just Dunkin or something, people don't dunk their donuts as much I think. Maybe it was a marketing thing. I still do in the winter but there's this when you dunk the donuts you get this heaviness to it and when you bite it this explosion of hot coffee in with the donut. Oh it's so good but these are so heavy you really it's a very pleasing richness. Now this is good. I'm gonna save it. This is going back in the bag. All right next up, this one probably made me stop in my tracks when I saw it because you could see the goodness on the outside not on the inside. This is also another sweet potato donut. I got four of six so I'll leave two more to your imagination. Satsuma-imo-do. They said it just started and probably to the winter. Hey this bus is encroaching. How dare you. Ah the fumes a little bit won't do some harm. I just gotta move away from this bus stop I think.

00:09:28 John Daub: All right absolutely heavier. The volume on this one is certainly heavier than a normal donut. This is a no-step bus too. You can walk right off onto the asphalt. Oh man that's beautiful. Oh wow they put some sesame seeds in there for impact. Cannot complain yet and that sweet potato is it's like a sweet potato pie smothered on all around the top of a Pon de Ring which is a cake Pon de Ring so it doesn't have the same mochiness to it but trust me it's got a very good bite a very good body to it. Ah yeah like a sweet potato pie but in Japan there's this confection it's basically like a red bean white bean paste. It's very heavy and naturally sweet. This is this kind of sweet potato you'll taste a lot in Japanese confections. It's a really heavy sweet potato. You'll see this on top of a custard pudding sometimes and sesame seed adds a little burned taste to it slight bitterness with that pleasing sweetness. Ah yeah I approve. Nice.

00:11:10 John Daub: All right we got one more here. This is fun. Make sure no one take my coffee. All right last one my bag's getting a little messy here. Shuffle it back in here. This one is like a wet donut. They have a plastic shield on it I guess to keep everything intact. I'm gonna eat this one last because I think it's one of the messiest ones but it might have kuromitsu (black honey) which is black honey and that's another taste that you'll taste. It's not free coffee. This isn't like some homeless guy left the coffee. I started the live stream by getting this one. There's people just tuning in now like hey you just found a free coffee. Not quite although I would be happy to have a free coffee. It's a hundred yen inside that FamilyMart right there or as Peter von Gomm says manly fart. I don't want to go down that after having basically traveled together closely in close proximity for a solid 10 days.

00:12:38 John Daub: All right this is not as heavy as the other one but it's certainly stickier and messier. You can see the black honey kuromitsu. So some of the flavors in Japan very popular is the kuromitsu black honey as well as kinako (roasted soybean powder). It's so good, and they put that, it's sweet, and it's slightly bitter, and it dances on your palate. Put a little bit of kuromitsu black honey on there, and oh God, you get something really good there. Mmm. Oh God. I'm going to put this one away. Not my favorite. It's good. It's not great. I think we see this in a lot of confections. You have the sesame seeds, the black sesame seeds, with the sweet kuromitsu. It's not as sweet as you think. Kuromitsu is, it depends. Sometimes it's quite sweet. It tastes more like a cake donut with gel on top that's not so sweet. So it's subdued. I can't complain, but if you're looking for sweetness and a punch in the face with flavor, which is good.

00:14:22 John Daub: The winner, it's not even close, actually. The creme brulee might be close. The winner is this one. I'll have a little bit more. It's this one with the purple icing because I'm American, and this is the kind of sweetness that we have on birthday cakes. It's just, for me, comfort food, can I say? And there's sweet potato inside combined with the cake. I have to tell you, this is out of sight. I just love the purple, though. I guess it's a chemical purple, but yeah, Okinawa and Kagoshima are where Satsuma-imo will come from. In fact, Satsuma is a region in Kagoshima Prefecture, and that's I believe where the name Satsuma-imo comes from. And the name Satsuma is very closely associated with Kyushu, in particular, Kagoshima. And the Satsuma-imo are also used in, I believe, the distilling of shochu (Japanese distilled spirit), which is a Japanese alcohol. Sake is brewed. It's got a process closer to beer making. Shochu is a distilled potato. It's a potato alcohol. You can use rice, I believe, but it's most commonly with sweet potatoes. It's so good. It's not even close.

00:16:16 John Daub: Oh yeah. The brulee was second, but very close third was the other one with the sweet potato paste on the top around it. Brulee, second, sweet potato paste, third, and fourth was the kuromitsu one, which is... It's ok. Wow! That was awesome. So is all the traffic here. Believe it or not, corn syrup is... I don't see high fructose corn syrup on it, but I don't know what the laws are where they could just call it sugar, and they don't have to call it corn syrup. This is one of those hydrogen fuel cell buses. Look how nice and clean that is. Wow! Hydrogen. Isn't that what the Hindenburg was made of? Yeah, no exhaust for this one, though. It smells nice. Look how clean it is. I wonder how this would do rolling through New York City for a week. What would the Tokyo bus look like after a week in New York City? Just saying.

00:18:31 John Daub: Yeah. And one of my favorite places to come and hang out because it's got like an old-town feel to Monzen-Nakacho, and it's not that far away from where we live. Kind of cool to hang out here. Looks like the future. It is. Public transportation in Japan is the one thing that is in the future. When it comes to everything else with the society in Japan, a little bit in the past. And you see that with the travel entry ban that's still kind of going on. I'm going to be putting a poll here. I'm going to do my very best to try and push the government to open up Japan faster. The article that Alex Kerr wrote for the Nikkei Asia, if you Google Alex Kerr Nikkei, you'll get an article where he wrote this amazing... I'll put a link in the description later. And it's starting to get shared a lot more, which I'm happy for him. He's an amazing writer. He lays out exactly why he thinks... And it's not just xenophobia. There's a lot of other things in play, but there's a good part of it that is. So a lot of you might want to read that and get some insight beyond just what YouTubers are saying. How about someone who's been in Japan for 50 years and knows what they're talking about?

00:20:12 John Daub: Yeah, there are people that I go to for information that are well connected with local governments. Alex is one of those people. And we spend, in the fall, a good few days together. We drove together in a car. I was driving and he was the passenger. And we just laughed and talked for ages. Old stories and how the country's changed. Food that we love. All sorts of things. Bureaucratic procedures. I love that stuff. So talking about the nitty-gritty details with Alex Kerr is amazing. So I'm kind of excited to get a chance to see him again. He's got a house called Chiiori (traditional farmhouse) in Tokushima, right near Kochi, on the border there. It's like going back in time. He renovated a 300-year-old house. So it's worth checking out the internet for Chiiori project that he did. In the middle of nowhere are these amazingly beautiful Japanese homes from the samurai era that you can stay in. And this is the best way to see... You probably put this one on your itinerary. Stay there for two, three days. It's a little pricey, but when you see what these places look like, it's worth it. I believe the meals are included probably from all local vegetables. It's all locally sourced stuff, I'm sure of it.

00:21:52 John Daub: But the article he wrote, it opens up your eyes. A lot of it validates what I was saying, but it opened my eyes to a couple of angles that I hadn't thought about, including the xenophobia and sort of what the polls say and the political. We all know it's a political decision, but what do the polls say about these political decisions? Because we have polls in the United States and then we have polls in Japan, and the polls in Japan are dominated by about 30% of this population that are retirees on pension and savings that don't get paid. They don't care about foreign tourists. That's the 30% that votes in every election. And the politicians know that. So what we have here is a result of the fact that the Japanese young people don't vote in the elections, and we have laws that are tailored to the 1950s. But it will change. It has to. Because time marches on. So I hadn't really thought that deeply about how the decisions are made in Japan, but when Alex breaks it down and says 30% of the population is retired on pension and doesn't give a darn about you coming, that says a lot.

00:23:08 John Daub: Japan has so much money in savings. If the old people, the senior citizens, used 1% of their savings just to buy stuff, it would drive the economy like there would be a massive boost. That's how much is just saved in banks there is. And this is another reason why I was told, I could be wrong here, that the interest rates have to stay at almost zero. They're trying to discourage people from saving the money. To use it to invest. To use it to start a business. Use it to do something with your money. But in Japan they just put it in the bank. Which is great, and then the banks have to do something with it. And I don't think that the banks are very efficient with anything. So not here. And to get a loan from a bank, it's like such a painful process here. And they're like loan sharks. The rates are so bad. I don't get it. So the rates that you get on savings accounts at the post office is 0.1%. Or 0.01%. It's ridiculous. It's like, why would you put your money in a savings account?

00:24:29 John Daub: And when you put all of this together, the background that a lot of you don't see, you get what we have today with the policies in this entry ban. It's driven by politicians that are xenophobic. Politicians that have constituents that are more than 30% retirees. And that's a lot of towns. One of the reasons why I'm encouraging people, and I have an episode called Leave Tokyo, Save Japan. And this episode features Alex Kerr. It's in my main channel, Only in Japan, John Daub. In this episode, I talk about how more and more people are leaving Tokyo and why that's so important is what Alex writes in his article. The decisions that are made that guide Japan as a country are made by politicians in localities that are driven by like 50, 60, 70% retirees that don't really care about progressing Japan to the future. Sure, we have the Shinkansen. Sure, we have so much wonderful technology and it looks like the future. The flip side is that newspaper circulations are the highest in the world in Japan. People still use flip phones. Fax machines? I'm asked to use a fax machine all the time. It's very hard to get to that next step in Japan.

00:25:50 John Daub: So it's not driven by just xenophobia. It's driven by people who just don't need it. They don't need it. They don't want it. And as a result... The last thing I'm going to say because I do have to get going and the fumes are killing me. Not every bus is hydrogen. Japan from 2015 to about 2019, the four years, there was this boom in tourism that tired out a lot of the people. Yeah, Japanese love to go to Hawaii and they love to be tourists abroad. But it's different when everyone starts to come to your house. It's a lot to take in for a lot of people, especially in Kyoto. Places where, you know, I don't really like Kyoto. I'm kind of on the record saying that. I don't hate it, but it's not one of my top five places. I just think that the people don't appreciate the tourists because there's two types of Kyoto. There's the Kyoto with the history of privacy and quiet and solitude, which is the beautiful Kyoto that I think a lot of you have seen and understand. Then there's the reality that between 2015 and 2019, where you would see a geisha going to her job and be swamped with paparazzi-like tourists asking to pose with her like it was Disneyland, messing up Kyoto. So they had no-photograph zones for the geisha where they could just do their jobs. And it became sort of a feeling of an unfriendly place for tourism.

00:27:22 John Daub: There's an over exhaustion in a lot of places, especially the cities for tourists. I felt that too. I mean, I love it, but some places were just too much where there's lines to get into an attraction for two hours. You know, so there's a split decision here. We kind of like, there's a great amount of people who like the way it is right now. And we're living inside the moment. I'm half on that side too because I like going to a place and not having a line. But I miss everybody's smiles. I miss the bustle. I miss having an excitement. You know, I miss people saying hi to me on the street. It does happen sometimes. So I want you to understand that. Japan is, and I am half. Leo's half. I'm more than half. I'm like quarter in terms of my, who I am. But so the point is though that there's another point of view beyond what yours is on Japan trying to open. And I'm working on it. I'm working on it very hard. We have students in Japan. We have business visas that are a lot easier. Just tourism is the final frontier. And it's budging. But it's not in the direction that we want it. It's still package tour, which is garbage.

00:28:58 John Daub: You know, Prime Minister Kishida might be old enough to like package tours. And I think it's something where adventurous people don't want to take it. Or Japanese that can't speak English like package tours. So they can't understand that Westerners don't want to be on the same thing that the Japanese want to be. Everything in Japan is the opposite. I told you this is a country where people back into the parking lots at supermarkets. They load up their cars. Nothing makes sense. The Japanese language is also in reverse. So that the way they think about this, perhaps tourists like, oh that's omegyu (top-grade beef), baby. Oh, look at that wagyu beef on the back of a truck, a bus. Ah, those fumes smell like yakisoba. Yaki-niku. Ah, breathe it in. Haiki gas. Bye wagyu bus. Wow. Lunch. Dinner.

00:29:47 John Daub: So there you go, that breaks it down for you. I think Japan is open if you like the offerings. And Japan is closed if you don't. Unguided individual package tour is still a package tour. And only in Japan, livestream is still a livestream. Sorry for the people who say it's one hour long. It's a livestream. People just getting the notifications now. Alright everybody, thanks so much for listening and bearing with me on this rant. I'm going to keep busting this up and I'll put a poll on Only in Japan Go about this topic. To kind of get more of an understanding on how you feel about the current offerings. Because I'm going to be talking with people that help to shape the decisions of those that don't see what we see. Because they need consultants to help them understand what you feel. What you see. And I'm one of the people that have my fingers in the dough. And I'm kneading. I'm trying to make something here. So I need your help. So check out a poll tomorrow on Only in Japan Go community page. It's going to be public and I appreciate if you guys can respond to it after a couple of days. I'll do another livestream talking about this and try to bang the drum for y'all.

00:31:13 John Daub: And if we can get... Alex Kerr says spring. Spring 2023. If we can get it faster, we're going to do it. It just maybe has to do with understanding. Right? Japanese traveling abroad bringing the same stuff back that you would. It doesn't really matter. There's no science based with it. It's not science based. This doughnut is delicious. It's science based. That's a brulee doughnut. Science based in sugar. Second place. I also think that this Omicron BA.5 vaccine that they're going to release in a few weeks is going to be a game changer in terms of the way people think. And then once they open the door... That's the thing. I don't want them to open the door and then close it again. So if they open it too quickly and we force them too quickly to open the door or just too much pressure and they do it, they could pull back and the pullback is worse. It doesn't matter if you think it hurts their economy or if you think it hurts them. They don't care. They don't see it. That's why. And when somebody doesn't see it, you can't argue with them.

00:32:56 John Daub: This is why Democrats and Republicans don't get along. You have to accept the differences. You just have to find ways to work with what you have in common. And there's ways that we can put this. Not to say, you are an idiot. It's not based in science. Why would you not open it? Instead of saying that, you have to find ways that you can show them how this will have a big benefit for their communities in the countryside if they open up to foreign businesses and allow Americans to come here and start breweries in the countryside. Let them in. We can have some new craft beer or something. Right? Japan is a country of rules and laws and there's social norms. And the tourism boom happened so quickly in Japan over the course of four or five years. It was a lot for Japan to take in. So these two years of contraction might be good over the long haul because now there's a greater percent, a growing percentage of people that are just waiting for you to come back. And it's growing every day and we're getting closer to that.

00:34:27 John Daub: But again, just understand what Prime Minister Kishida, who's not against you, he's on your side, I believe. Or else he would have... He wouldn't have opened up as early as he did. I honestly believe the Prime Minister is in a bind. He's a forward thinking person. He's from Hiroshima, a place that has a growing tourism there. Miyajima is one of the number one sites in Japan for a very long time. So Prime Minister Kishida knows about tourism. So he's in a tough position. But he's doing it in steps and he's trying to walk the line to open up so we never have to close it again. And whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you've got to give some applause to Rahm Emanuel, the American ambassador, because I know he's doing a lot behind the scenes to open it up, especially to business travelers. The U.S. Embassy is on your side as well here because I know that they're talking the best that they can in a diplomatic and polite way to do it the right way. And I respect that too. It's a good thing. We didn't have an ambassador in Japan for a long time and it's nice to have one, somebody here who can talk and push things through.

00:35:53 John Daub: So as an expat, I really don't care about Republican, Democrat. I just care about does it help Americans living in Japan. I don't care. Politics, it's not worth it. I'll leave that to you guys. Take care, everybody. Fingers crossed Japan opens up. I'll see you tomorrow. We're getting on a Shinkansen to go up to Hokkaido. I'll bring you a live stream from the Shinkansen with Peter von Gomm. And we'll eat our bento somewhere along the way. How about that? We'll buy a bento and we're going to live stream it. The only problem is that it's going to be at an awful time for most of you. Probably like 6:30 p.m. But we will do a live stream eating an ekiben (station bento). 6:30 p.m. about. We'll do an ekiben live stream from somewhere in Tochigi. But we'll show you out the window at 350 kilometers an hour. Whatever speed they go up there. It should be a lot of fun. All right. See you, everybody. Hokkaido inbound. Donuts. Hey, Kanae, if you're watching, donuts inbound. We have a police escort.