00:05 John Daub: Hello everybody. Welcome to Tokyo. That's the Shinkansen cruising in a wet city today. How you doing? In this episode I'm going to be talking about gift giving. What do Japanese give as gifts in Japan and when exactly?

00:27 John Daub: We're getting to the time at the end of the year where the gift giving season is starting, but it's not really the same as what you might think it is actually. It's not for Christmas so much as it is for the two gift giving seasons. They're called ochugen (summer gifts) and oseibo (winter gifts), and we're getting into the winter gift season. And this is just something, a gift that you would give to a friend or somebody who's been really helpful to you throughout the year. It could be a lot of things. Typically in Japan, when you think of gift giving, it's not the same because like we think of Christmas and we think of birthdays. And of course we do this in the West, and the influence of the Western gift giving season, the Christmas gift giving season is quite strong here in Japan, but it's not the same by any means. In fact, when I came to Japan it was quite confusing.

01:15 John Daub: I just finished up some shopping and one of the things that I bought was food items. I guess you could call them omiyage (souvenirs/gifts). This is Yurakucho in central Tokyo. This is a great place to come because there are a lot of prefectural satellite shops that sell food items from local regions. And that's always kind of neat to do when you're traveling. But if you can't, you can always sneak over to the satellite shops and get some goodies.

01:43 John Daub: So for Japanese though, the omiyage is such a big tradition. When you're buying gifts, you'll go to the airport, you'll go to the train stations, you'll go all over the city and the towns when you get out to the countryside and you'll see locally made goods. And by that I mean almost exclusively food. Food is a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful gift to give in Japan because for me in particular, I can tell you I don't have a lot of space in my apartment and I don't want a lot of things that I probably will end up putting in a box somewhere like key chains and t-shirts and trinkets, which are really nice to receive. But what do you do with them ultimately? So food is great because you can eat it, you enjoy it, and then you can toss it and the memories last a lifetime with food. Sometimes if they have memorable tins or something like this, there's a shinkansen going by up here. It's always cool to see it go fly by Yurakucho on the way to Kyoto right now.

02:56 John Daub: So what do Japanese buy as gifts? Actually, it's funny because again, you'll go into the supermarkets and you'll see mostly food items in really beautiful boxes, things that they need for every day. I remember going to the supermarket and I saw like this premium laundry detergent from a maker. I think it was like Attack [?] or something that I'd never seen before. I guess it was more powerful or just was in a more beautiful box. And that was a gift that people like to give during ochugen and oseibo, the summer and winter gift-giving seasons. Cans of soup, cans of beer presented in a really special box.

03:37 John Daub: Another fun idea that Japanese use for gift-giving is group gifts. Buy a bunch of smaller packs of something and give one to everybody. That's the same and it's kind of a fun thing to do without buying one. Or you could buy one big box and everybody shares it. That's more for offices. But for somebody that you really care about, you know, a gift is always personal. And that's the same, I guess, in the West as it is in Japan.

04:03 John Daub: I can talk about my own personal experience. I get things for my wife that she really wants that I take notes of during the year. I think I know what she wants. I'm going to be wrong. But because she's Japanese, it comes from the heart. It's always really good. Gift cards and cash can also be good gifts in Japan. Cash is not, when you think of a gift, is not... Would you like to receive cash? Maybe. But in Japan, it is a thing. And for weddings, for New Year's, I mean, Kanae and I have to prepare envelopes of cash for all of her cousins to give to them. And I guess because they're young, they don't have jobs. So it's nice to get like wads of cash at New Year's that you'll probably conserve through the year. Hopefully it makes it to summer.

04:57 John Daub: Do not want Japanese cash from my mother-in-law now. No. No yen, please. Yeah, you know, I think dollars would be better just because of the exchange rate. But in Japan, the value of a yen in Japan has not changed from day to day. And although inflation is kind of high right now, I guess, it's not as high as global standards. We're getting some funny comments here. Lordo writes in here, I always like to receive cash. It's a safe bet. Who would say no to that? But, you know, you want to personalize it so you can always write a message with your cash gift. But it is a little weird. But that's Japanese culture. It's not supposed to be exactly the same as the West, right? Everything is just a little bit more unique here.

05:50 John Daub: Now, this is where I shop quite a bit. This is the Hokkaido store. And inside there, you don't have to actually go to Hokkaido to get gifts from Hokkaido. In my bag right now, I got a bunch of stuff.

06:08 John Daub: This is the Prism app on iOS. I cannot actually flip it. So everything is reversed when you're looking at the selfie cam. I do apologize. It's a known bug. I can't toggle it on iOS, but you can on Android. So I apologize to those that this might be driving crazy, but everything is flipped and reversed here. So it'll eventually fix it, make its way out. But this app using HEVC, I can use a fraction of the bandwidth for 1080p livestreams, which the YouTube app could not do. So there's a trade-off here. So sorry about that, guys. I think, though, the picture is more important sometimes than just the flipping. Yeah, Yurakucho Station.

07:00 John Daub: Chan, I feel weird giving cash, but I would prefer receiving cash. Not much storage room in the trunk. Yeah, and thank you for the cash. Yeah, I don't know if it's a good solution. It is a solution. So we'll see. You know, the Prism app is getting better as well, and the YouTube app is eventually going to get there too. I don't want to talk about resolution in a stream about gift-giving, but YouTube, I think, is eyeing the AV1 codec, which allows for 4K with the same bandwidth as we have right now. So, yeah, 4K livestreaming is on the horizon. You just have to give it a little bit of time, but for now, this app is probably pretty good, and sometimes the watermark isn't concealed. I know all about the bugs on Prism, so you don't have to tell me each time. I do appreciate it, though. Yeah, Yurakucho is kind of nice here. This camera is so wide, you will see the nub of the gimbal sometimes when I turn. Alright, let's walk over towards Bic Camera here. We'll discuss this.

08:08 John Daub: I really like hearing from you guys about what kind of gifts have you been giving to Japanese in Japan. I know some of you that are watching have lived in Japan, have worked in Japan, and each situation is going to be, of course, different, but now that it is Christmas, I got to start thinking about gifts, and it's on my mind, and I think it's on a lot of other people's minds.

08:36 John Daub: Gift wrapping is also quite important, and how you give the gift is also very important, and these are things I'm going to be talking about again in another episode for the main channel. I'm editing it right now, and it's, you know, it's so deep. Where do you give the gift? What do you say when you give a gift? How do you wrap a gift? There are certain ways to wrap gifts in Japan, and certain things, like just traditions that are so associated to it, and Japan is such a culture full of paper that it's important to wrap gifts in Japan, and it's important even sometimes the kind of paper you have. And more than that, what was shocking was how people open the presents, too. And there's a lot of things that are just different in Japan than they are in the West, and that's, you know, it's an interesting thing.

09:20 John Daub: So, the final thing, I think, is that it doesn't really matter what the gift is. A gift is a gift. Yesterday, we met somebody who was, oh, and a shout out to the two guys from San Francisco who said hi to me in front of the Hokkaido store. One of them was wearing a San Francisco Giants hat. That was pretty cool to see. Welcome to Japan, guys. I hope you get your JR pass. I told him where to go at Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station, which is a, what, 12-minute walk from here. Yeah, you know, gift giving is a personal thing, I think, and it doesn't have to be a ritual or tradition. You don't have to do things the way that everybody else does it.

09:56 John Daub: Just yesterday, I was talking to somebody who was visiting Japan and said they started to tip Japanese in Japan for services, and the Japanese are starting to accept the tips. And that's because inflation is going up, and wages are not going up, and I think some companies are recognizing that foreign tourists want to tip, and that's becoming a supplementary income, but it's not going to be something that is ever expected here in Japan because the Japanese are probably not tipping. Although Uber Eats does have a box to add extra tips at the end, which is good if the service is fast or if the weather's bad. It's nice to give a little bit of extra to them because I know that they're not making as much as they probably should be.

10:43 John Daub: Japan isn't always going to be evolving as a country, so I don't think the culture of tipping is ever going to be a mainstream thing here, but if you want to tip in Japan, I would recommend that you don't do it. But if you do want to do it, I know that, especially for younger people, they're probably going to say thank you and be very appreciative. The tipping is not an expected thing. Hold on a second. We're at the famous Bic Camera. A lot of you might see an eyeful over here.

11:32 John Daub: Yeah, so when it comes to Christmas gifts, Christmas is not something that's normal in Japan. Not normal in the sense like in the West. Christmas presents under the tree, I don't know too many Japanese who do that, although it is becoming more of a thing. It's not the usual. And it's weird, because we're going to have a ton of presents under the tree, and thank you, Katayama, for sending a gift to Leo. I appreciate that. We're going to put that underneath the tree, buddy. I think he's going to like that one, too. Thanks for that. And it's weird. I guess it's like if you celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, I was always a little bit jealous of my friends that had parents that were both Jewish and Christian, because they could get double the presents. I don't know if it was actually true, but I was always a little bit jealous. So perhaps Leo will get the best of both worlds. He'll have a Japanese New Year's cash infusion, and then he'll get gifts from underneath the Christmas tree from me. So that's just, I guess, the way it works.

12:37 John Daub: Do workers get comparable living wages as opposed to the U.S.? Wages here are more reasonable. I would say monthly salaries, people get paid by the month in Japan. The salaries are more modest. But there's two bonus-giving seasons in the summer and in the winter where they make up a great portion of people's salaries, so to speak. They're almost expected. But during the 2008 financial crisis, people didn't get their bonuses, so there were some hard-hit people. And I think that some corporations have still done that, although I think the bonuses might be better this year because for most countries that are making dollars outside, they're making huge profits. So the bonuses that friends get, hopefully, is better. But CEO wages here are a fraction of what they are in the United States. I could just take you to Carlos Ghosn of Nissan, and he should have been paid 100 times more than what he was getting from Nissan for doing the work he was doing. And I'm not going to say which side I'm on, Carlos, but I think it's very sensitive. The CEO wages here are really down to earth. In the U.S., it's hard to see the value in that, but it's there. Bonuses could sometimes be 20% or so of expected income of the year, something like that. I got bonuses when I was teaching English as well. I got bonuses when I pay myself a bonus from my own company. So, I mean, like, it's, you could pay, there's ways around it, and it's included in taxes and stuff like that. I really don't know that much about it. That's what an accountant is for.

14:27 John Daub: Certainly something that people will take advantage of for travel plans and things like this. If you don't get your bonus, you can't spend your money. You have to save it more. Japan is a country that saves way more than people in the West. They save for a rainy day. They save for all days, okay? People don't buy things that they don't need. And the concept of motainai (waste not) is really strong here in Japan. If you don't need it, you don't take it, you don't buy it. And it's hard to understand. It's hard to get people to buy and stuff. So that's why you see a lot of trends to get people to spend their money. Like with drinks, Pepsi will have cucumber cola. Maybe people will be just a little bit more curious to buy it. And it'll add a little spike to the sales. There's reasons for that. There's reasons why products are trendy to get people to spend some money just to try it. But in general, people don't spend as much money as they do freely for items. That's not for everybody. It's very hard to generalize, right?

15:34 John Daub: But in Japan, maybe it might be slightly a little bit easier because the culture is very... For non-Japanese living here, it's only 1% or 1.5% of the population here is non-Japanese. That does make a very interesting and more predictable pattern. So marketing here is more reflected in those patterns. And you can see it if you watch television and stuff. But more and more, Western holidays are becoming more of a staple for gift giving. And that's a good thing for me because I'm Western. So I can take advantage of it.

16:25 John Daub: I'll put this out here since we're talking about that. I love it too. I like how in Japan, it seems everybody has the same kind of laugh too. Did you ever notice that? Nobody wants to stick out with having a weird laugh. So everybody laughs kind of the same way. So I kind of laugh at those laughs because they're funny. Like, wait, you laugh like all your other friends. You should laugh like shaggy from Scooby Doo. Shaggy isn't evil that we know of. You're only seeing the parts where they're being detectives and looking for the bad guys, right? Well, what about the other 362 days out of the year, right? Just saying. What do we really know about those people? What do we really know about shaggy?

17:12 John Daub: Alright, I gotta head home. This is really interesting. I know the ochugen and oseibo are really big gift-giving years. You know, if you have a... It depends on the relationship you have with the person. If it's like a teacher, I always give a gift. If it's somebody who's helping you, a teacher or somebody who... You always give a gift to say thank you. You can give, you know, cash. You can give cards. You can give all sorts of things. I like to think that it comes from the heart, you know? I like to write a nice little card in there if I can. But it's just a little something, you know, to say thank you. That you appreciate them. And people remember that. People really do care when they receive something. I mean, I do. I have a lot of viewers that will come here and bring me things. Just yesterday, Saya brought some baby clothes for Leo and I was so happy. Leo got a chance to... He loves them too. One of them might be too big, Saya, but he's gonna grow into them. It's really nice. And I love the Reese's peanut butter cups you added into the bag. I might have eaten two of them already. I've gotta really nibble at those day by day because that's like a gold item here.

18:33 John Daub: Hey, did you see the dancing penguin? Bring it back! Yeah. So I've got a shop for gifts here. When it comes to omiyage, what was the other word for it? I forget now. It's like... I don't use it that much. But there's omiyage, which is actually when you travel, you have to bring things back from your travel for people at your office and people at home, your family. And then there's the gifts that you take. I forget the name of it. The gifts that you take when you're going to a location. I do this almost all the time as a YouTuber. It's kind of... It's not even expected, but it's a little something I do when I have a location and I've requested permission or access to film and they say yes, I will bring a gift from Tokyo to them just to say thank you whenever I can because they remember that. And also, if I ever make a mistake, it makes it easier to go back and say, oh, can I re-film that? You know, things like this.

19:36 John Daub: When I went up to do the... I took my friend Joe Hatab, who's a YouTuber from... Top YouTuber from the Arab world. He's amazing. You have to check out his channel. It's really good. He's speaking in Arabic, but... The quality will blow you away. His travel vlog... His travel channel. We drove together to the vending machine restaurant. The guy who owns it in Gunma Prefecture. It was like an hour drive from here. And I stopped up at the service area and I picked up a gift, a box of mini cakes. And I took that in and Joe said, what are you buying that for? He says, I'm not... He's not hungry. I'm not hungry. We just eat. I said, it's not for us. I'm going to hand this to the vending machine owner as a thank you for letting us film. And yeah, I think that kind of... I think even Joe put that in his vlog that I did that. It's just something I think that's just in our... And I'm not Japanese, but it's just something that I think people... You just do. I didn't even think about it might be weird to do that. But to bring... To come without a gift is kind of... It's not rude, but just seems like it would be better if you did. So I do it. And I don't know where it comes from, but I brought the gift.

21:02 John Daub: I think Joe might be coming back to Japan soon just because we got a lot of his fans here too sometimes. But yeah, it could be a hospitality thing. I don't know. I think it's just... It feels... After 25 years here, half my life, it just feels like the right thing to do. I don't question it. I just do now. It's almost like instinct. The way you wrap it, the way you get clean notes if you do give cash, you don't want folds in it. Or sometimes you want folds in it. It depends on the situation. There's a lot of cultural things that nobody would ever expect you to know. But if you did know them, you would impress the heck out of people. Right? Gratitude is huge. I mean, if you go to somebody's house who's having a party, you can bring a bottle of sake or wine. Those are nice gifts. You can bring them. You can bring a dessert. You can bring from the Hokkaido store some things here. I can show you what I got. You want to see? I'll show you my bag here. Hey, Joe Michael. Nice to see you here, buddy. I'll show you what I got from the Hokkaido store.

22:17 John Daub: So, I got... Look at the way that they're packaged. They come in boxes and there's individual packages inside the box. So, you could give this as a gift or you could take these out and give the little bags of Tokibi (Hokkaido corn snacks), which is a... Oh, these are so good. You have no idea. Of Hokkaido corn snacks. Oh my gosh. They're awesome. This is probably... This is for my family. I'm sending this back to the US. I think they should make it. You never know. Things expire. These are amazing. These are the... Royce chocolate is in itself amazing, but they put them on these luxury potato chips. Oh my gosh. These will be your best friend and you'll be addicted to them. In fact, if you're a... If you're in love with somebody, you'll forget about them and only fall in love with these chips. You'll savor them. Sorry, can I? It's competition now. It's a box of Baumkuchen (layered castella cake), which is like a roll cake here. I forget what flavor is this. Wood flavor? No. I think it's like maple or something. These are great little gifts. Look at the box. Inside of these are individually wrapped cakes. So, they don't spoil. It's weird how they do stuff like that. And... Oh, I got some Hokkaido milk. This is just for me. I think it was a whole milk, so it's got a lot of milk fat in it. So it's me and Leo like.

23:53 John Daub: So, there you go. I got some reports that the Kickstarter gifts just started arriving. I saw in Denmark it arrived over there. It took a month. So, I wonder if you've got it in the U.S. Do let me know when you receive yours because it went by C-mail, but I figured they're going to start arriving soon. It's been over a month now. The documentary for the Kickstarter is going pretty good. We got a little update on that. Peter von Gomm and I are coordinating. Our schedules are not really great right now. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to Hiroshima. You're coming with me on the live streaming channel, which is going to be awesome. You're going to get a chance to see Miyajima and Rabbit Island, I believe. And, yeah, tomorrow and the next day we're going on a field trip with Leo and Kanae. How awesome is that?

24:35 John Daub: So, you know, we'll do this in glorious 1080p. Hopefully, the signals are good out there. I think that they are. And then at the end of the year, I should have about three episodes to release on the main channel. I'm working on them as fast as I possibly can. One of them is on this exact topic I'm doing right now, and that should be done hopefully on the weekend. I'm doing my very best to edit this stuff. Thanks for the patience, everybody. This is the holiday season. It's just such an amazing time to be, I don't know, alive. It's just really great. It's exciting. I love the holidays. In fact, when the holidays are done, it's a year for me. That January, February, it's really a slug. Unless you're a skier, which I'm not, I don't really enjoy my time living in Japan so much. That's a time to get out, maybe go to Okinawa or Guam and escape. January, February, my gosh. It's March when the cherry blossoms open. Then I start getting really positive again about the weather and the year and travel.

25:45 John Daub: But tomorrow, I'll start getting really excited. I'll see you guys. Probably do a Shinkansen livestream and then some livestreams from Hiroshima Prefecture. One on Bunny Island, maybe. We'll take you to Miyajima for a couple of livestreams there the day after that. Get ready for some travel. This is going to be exciting. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Click that Like button. I'll see you tomorrow. I've got to get these back now. We've got to package it. Those two gifts, by the way, are for a couple of Patreon supporters.

26:15 John Daub: Oh! Hey, where'd you go? Oh! I did it. So the end of year Patreon postcard is coming out. It's probably going to be an image. It's going to be a little bit later because Kanae couldn't take the photo for it, which we normally take because she's been busy with the dance performance. But we're going to take the photo for it tomorrow at Bunny Island or the next day at Miyajima with the deer. So if you want a postcard from Japan with Kanae, Leo, and I to end the year, all you have to do is be a Samurai member. You don't have to join the postcard club. All the Samurai members and postcard club members will be getting postcards for December. It's the end of the year, so we try to give them out. And if you are a welcome member, do leave your address because you never know. You might receive something too. I don't know. You could. You could. All right, everybody. Take care. I'll see you from Yurakucho. I'll see you tomorrow as we make our way to Hiroshima for an amazing adventure with the family. And I've gotten permission to livestream that with you guys. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Good night. Good day. No Shinkansen. It just took off. Lunchtime.