Japan's Bumpy Road Back to Tourism: 2023 Japan Travel Update

00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody and welcome to the city of Tokyo. This is Tsukuda, where they're going to be having a major festival, one that they hold every two years, coming in the next couple of weeks. You see them preparing for it over there. They've got some of the stands going up here, even a makeshift torii gate down there. Japanese summer is here. You can feel it in just the humidity. It's pretty hot. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about Japan's struggles with tourism.

00:34 John Daub: And this is going to answer a lot of questions for those of you who are wondering if this is the right time to come and visit Japan and maybe why you should probably wait a little bit longer. 2024 is going to be a lot better year. At least that's what I'm hoping for. And these challenges that I list off here are going to explain that. The first of them. Let me run down what my agenda is for today. We're going to talk about the staff shortages that are everywhere right now.

01:06 John Daub: In particular at hotels, taxis and at restaurants, which impacts you greatly when you do come to Japan. The next is construction and the speed in which Japan is building a lot of the new infrastructure, in particular since the Olympics in 2021 were held. And then there's the attractions right now—they're not as many as they were in 2019, believe it or not, but that's being remedied. And we'll get into what I mean by this. A lack of attractions, maybe not enough or not enough promoted attractions.

01:39 John Daub: And then finally the overcrowding of Japan right now. Everybody, it seems like is coming here to Japan. If you just go to social media, it's crazy to see the amount of Japan-based content. Maybe it's just because I live in Japan, but I've actually said I'm not interested in Japanese topics because I personally want to see what's happening outside of the world as well. But I keep getting this especially from other YouTubers that are visiting Japan, from other countries that are just in love with this country.

02:13 John Daub: And I can understand why. I love this neighborhood because they have all this stuff out here and you can see they're getting ready for the festival. Down there at the end of the street there's an omikoshi which I'll show it to you. It's a portable shrine that they'll be carrying at the Sumiyoshi. It's called the Sumiyoshi Festival. They hold it once every two years and you can see them getting ready for it. It is a crazy festival. And in a good way. This island, it's in the middle of Tokyo Bay.

02:45 John Daub: It's an actual original island because a lot of it is reclaimed land. But Tsukuda is special. This is where the Osaka fishermen used to be stationed during the Edo period and would send their fish from here onto, I guess you could say the main line, because there's no bridge connecting it. And it's a very pleasant place to live. In fact, I've got a lot of friends here. Let's go over the staff shortages. I even wrote this down on an envelope so I wouldn't get too distracted and keep this in there.

03:18 John Daub: So this is called Tsukuda, T-S-U-K-U-D-A, and it's one of my favorite places to walk around. Here's a poster for the event that's coming up. You can see they will be carrying around an omikoshi, which is very heavy and very symbolic. And this neighborhood is famous for being different because there is that kind of Osaka feeling to it because of the history of this place. And they hold this every two years. So it builds, the excitement builds. And you will see.

03:49 John Daub: I noticed there's a lot of tourists from France that come down here because France has this promoted in their guidebooks, this neighborhood. But the Westerners, you won't find a lot of Americans in this neighborhood, but the French, they come here quite a bit, which is interesting. That was a group of French travelers. WRX Turbos in the house. Did I say that? I'm still working on music to announce you when you come here. It's nice to see you again.

04:19 John Daub: Staff shortages are everywhere, and this is impacting Japan, in particular in the cities. To kind of understand this, we have to go back to November of 2022, the Japanese government before this. You guys will remember this. In 2022, we couldn't quite understand why Japan was so hesitant to reopen the country. They were just slower than the rest of the world. And I, in my updates to everybody, I was telling you that this is going to lead to some massive problems, because when they do reopen, they need to make sure that everybody knows that this reopening is going to take place.

04:58 John Daub: And one of the things that I really didn't agree on was that Prime Minister Kishida did not give a lot of heads up that he was just going to say, I'm opening up the country. Just all of a sudden, the country was just open and all these restrictions melted away. It left some people that were coming to Japan in limbo, whether or not you needed to use an app to enter and all this other stuff. So Japan did not get that couple of months of change they needed to get ready for this.

05:29 John Daub: There's a lot of people that said, look, I want to invest and make some tourist attractions for people, but I don't know if this is the right time because what if it closes again because the government is so wishy-washy on this? People entrepreneurs did not invest in tourist infrastructure for the foreign tourism. So you're starting to see the strain on the system today as a result of that. They just didn't have the time to prepare for it because they didn't want to invest in something that they didn't know was going to be there this summer.

06:05 John Daub: It's very much a political thing. So you have here hotels. If you go to any hotel now in the countryside, you're going to find that there are workers from South Asia in particular from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. And I was talking to one of them who was working at a convenience store in the countryside. Just caught him after work and I asked him like, how did you get to Japan? And he told me, he says in India there are places where you can study Japanese and you learn about the culture and the language.

06:39 John Daub: And after you graduate from that, you can get into a program to get a visa to come here to work for a specified number of years or months and you get paid very well. And it's a very good society in which to live in. Super happy with his job and he's able to send money back home working at a convenience store here. So I was pretty happy to hear that, that it's like a win-win for everybody. And the workers coming from South Asia, you can tell because they kind of look like me because my mother's from India.

07:15 John Daub: They're also very good at their jobs. So they have this real attention to detail that I think meshes well with the rest of East Asia. And they seem to have a lot of people in India as well right now. So we're seeing workers coming in from South Asia where there is a population boom to places here where there's a population bust. And that's really interesting. My biggest concern was are this staff going to be able to keep the high level of service that Japanese expect and that tourists appreciate?

07:50 John Daub: And the answer is yes. Actually, I have had really good service from these staffers coming from abroad who know the language better than me. I never studied in a school. I'm conversational. Yeah. I'm on TV sometimes. Do I know what everyone's talking about in the studio? No. When I'm having fun and I'm able to talk about it with confidence when with the job that they're doing is just incredible. And you can see that the way that they'll give omotenashi and how they learn this is incredible.

08:23 John Daub: So when you do see somebody from abroad doing a job that Japanese would do, I tend to give them a little bit of leeway. But maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should make sure that they are doing the same kind of job that Japanese. And let me put it to you like this. Not all Japanese give really good service. There's the baito or part-time jobs that I remember going into places to rent stuff and go in there with young kids that didn't give a damn about their job. And it was really not a great experience.

08:55 John Daub: Not like what I'm getting at the Japanese ryokan with foreign workers. So I'm very interested to see how this evolves over the next year. How many more workers from abroad are going to come in and work in the hotel and taxi industry as well? Yes. Two days ago, I was waiting for a taxi to go to the TV studio. Typically I have to wait about two or three minutes. This time I had to wait about 15 minutes or more. I would have had to, but I said I can't wait anymore.

09:25 John Daub: So I had to book to the train station and I got to the studio about 10 minutes late. But it was 40 minutes before my appearance, so it's okay. But I was just surprised. I can't get a taxi. Reason? There are too many tourists in Tokyo. There's not enough—everybody's riding the subway. There are not enough taxis. There aren't enough taxi drivers. In particular, the foreign tourists are taking those taxis as well. As right now, Japanese students are off. Japanese students are on the go.

09:57 John Daub: So summer vacation has started. Families are also on the go. It's a perfect storm right now out there. So you can expect it to be more stressful for not just the locals, but also for the tourists and locals. I mean, Japanese citizens, this is their country after all. But without tourists visiting here, there wouldn't be a lot of growth sectors in Japan at the moment. So this is going to be a struggle. In particular because of the staffing shortages.

10:27 John Daub: I've noticed restaurants staffing also from abroad or they just can't find enough staff to staff those restaurants. Restaurants is a hard business. I used to wait tables in college. I was pretty good at it. You work for tips. You don't get tipped here, so it's harder to—which is probably a good thing. But it's also harder to get people to go into this into the food industry, for service. Even the high school and kids and college kids don't want to do it as much as they did in the past.

10:59 John Daub: I don't know what those kids want to do, to be honest with you. I'm going to turn it around, show you the Sumida river as we go through this list of here. But restaurants, I've noticed have also had a huge problem. Not just with staff shortages, unlike the hotels. Well, the hotels have this as well. Inflation has really hit them hard. You can tell what the prices of the food is starting to go up faster. The inflation is going up faster than the prices that they introduced.

11:31 John Daub: So they're all introducing more higher prices that would normally be because they know that inflation and costs are going to be higher. Here's the Sumida river, everybody. This is the main waterway through the city of Tokyo. And this will lead you over to Tokyo Bay, just about, I don't know, about a kilometer past those sky-high buildings right there. Just go straight and you're in this really big open waterway. But yeah, the restaurants have a lot of problems.

12:02 John Daub: Not just staff shortages, but the ingredients for their food is a lot more expensive. And the weaker yen makes things that they would import from abroad even more expensive. And that's all getting passed to us who live here in Japan. But for foreign tourists getting 140 yen to the dollar, right, I think this is the exchange rate, a pretty good discount on everything. So you don't feel the price hike so much when you visit Japan. Not right now anyways, but we all are.

12:33 John Daub: I started noticing it last year with the price of beer going up, which I kind of—I quit right now. I don't drink. I haven't had a beer in a very long time. Alcohol, food, eggs, milk, everything has gone up. And you can feel it now when you go to the supermarket. Everyday cooking, everyday life, rent is up. And the next thing I want to talk about is construction is way up because now we don't have—I'm going to walk along the river here—we don't have enough people in the construction industry in Japan to make all of the new buildings that are required.

13:09 John Daub: We saw this as an issue during the Olympics, where the reconstruction of Tohoku was almost suspended so that we would have enough workers to build the infrastructure for the Olympics in 2020, 2021, 2019. Now that we're finished, we're not actually finished. A lot of construction is happening right in front of Tokyo Station. Right now in Roppongi, I saw a lot of construction. Even in Shibuya, the construction is ongoing as the Tokyo department store in front of Shibuya Station is under construction.

13:42 John Daub: This has thrown a lot of tourist attractions into limbo because it's the places that you used to go. It's like you're looking at them with new eyes all of a sudden, because everything has changed. The way you used to go into those tourist attractions are different. So Japan is struggling quite a bit with the construction, but I'm seeing more migrant workers, in particular from the Philippines. Met some friendly people that were on the job site, taking a break.

14:12 John Daub: They're from the Philippines, met some people from Sri Lanka. Their government and their economy is not good. So they're very happy to have the job here. Working in construction, more than capable. A lot of them had experience working in Qatar for the World Cup over there. So now they're over here, which is interesting. Some of them are on contracts. And they had to learn Japanese to come here, though. That's the thing. It's not just English. Learning English, you have to learn Japanese.

14:45 John Daub: And the schools in India and surrounding countries are giving them an opportunity to come here and take advantage of those necessary jobs that are here that pay well, but no one else can fill them because you have to—if you can't communicate with the other workers and the foreman, you're not going to be able to do a construction job here. You learn Japanese pretty quickly, though, on the job. Let me show you some of the numbers here to give you a better idea of how this boom has hit Japan.

15:16 John Daub: This is from JNTO. So from 2018 to 2019 until the beginning of 2020, you could see tourism was like, amazing. You had 3 million visitors a month coming in. At some times, you see at the top there. And then during the pandemic, everything just shut down. And because that period is extended through 2020, 2021 and 2022, needlessly in my opinion, a lot of businesses closed, hotels closed.

15:47 John Daub: They couldn't fill them. They couldn't get enough money to keep them open to pay the rent. We're seeing this very hard and hit in Akihabara, for example. And then in 2022 you can see in November it just goes boom, right? You see that within a few months they were at 101.5 million and now they're at 2 million. And it's only going to rise. I think it'll be at 4 million next year. With China returning into the fold with tourism. The numbers are incredible. When you look at it from JNTO and they just released this data recently.

16:21 John Daub: I'll go over it with you because it isn't Japanese here. This is the amount of money and the—you just—and they say follow the money and you'll know that big blue box in the center of your screen was China. The one that's not too bright and not too dark. It says Chugoku, which is China. That number in 2019. And then you look at 2023, you can see the dates. China plays a very limited role in the amount of money coming into Japan through tourism. The biggest changes are in Korea.

16:53 John Daub: You see a modest gain there, but they had a pretty good proportion before. And the United States and Taiwan. The United States is the biggest growth area for visitors coming to Japan. You could see it, it was like a little fraction there. And then now it's the—you see the black one on the bottom is Taiwan. The next one up says Bekoku, which is United States. America has seen massive gains. Not like tremendously massive, but pretty big, which has made up the difference with Chinese not coming to Japan.

17:27 John Daub: And Americans are spending more money because of the weaker yen. So actually, despite the tourism of 2019 being the peak at—what is it, 31.88 cho en—is that OK? It's like, you know, billions of dollars. They're at almost the same amount of money that they're making for tourism right now over the last two months as they did in 2019. So the tourism sector is back in Japan. You might not have the same numbers, but the amount of spending in Japan is nearly the same as it was in 2019.

17:59 John Daub: And that's pretty important, right? I think that's pretty important. We're starting to see articles. I like this comment here. The influx is helping stir demand-driven inflation in the world's third largest economies. The hotels, restaurants and retailers find that they can charge more without denting sales. They could charge more without denting sales because the yen is so weak to tourists. They're charging more. Japanese are gonna buy it anyways. But everybody knows, or at least you should, about the famous restaurant for sushi in Ginza called Kyubey.

18:36 John Daub: And in April they had to halt their lunch sales because it was just too expensive to get those ingredients. Kyubey is a pretty significant restaurant to take a hit like this, but most of their customers came from Europe, the United States and elsewhere in Asia. So they're willing to pay that extra amount for the cost of the things that were really—well, they—Kyubey was pretty expensive before, but it's even more expensive. But the thing is, Kyubey is also a Japanese restaurant.

19:07 John Daub: And if you're catering to just foreign tourists all the time, you're going to have a more tourist-centered menu just because that's—you give the people what they want, which is that. But like, one of the things about Kyubey that was good is that it is authentic and the chefs are authentic. And now that it's all booked out by foreigners and they're not going to say no to foreigners, they're not going to say no to anybody. Japanese diners and you see at the end there can't get into the restaurants that they like.

19:41 John Daub: So it's making the plans change quite a bit. This is leading to stress inside of Japan and why, I think that the tourism sector is struggling in that way because the foreign tourists are not happy. There's not enough staff, not enough English speakers. Which leads me to the last point here. The overcrowding is awful. American tourists, not everybody, 95% are doing the same thing. You guys are going to the same places, doing the same thing. You're coming in through Tokyo, you're going to Kyoto, you're spending some time there.

20:16 John Daub: You're going to Osaka, to Dotonbori. Then you're going to Himeji Castle. Then you're going down to Hiroshima to see the Peace Museum. Some of you are actually going to Miyajima. Then you're coming back up and maybe you do Nara to see the deer, go see the big golden Buddha there—you're doing the same stuff. All those places are so darn crowded. No one is really leaving the golden route. And this is creating a massive headache. You go to the Skytree today.

20:46 John Daub: You go to Tsukiji Market, which is just over there, maybe a couple of kilometers. You go to Asakusa. It is a ridiculous madhouse of people. You can almost hear exclusively English right now, mostly from American tourists. Not a lot of people are going to Tohoku. Not a lot of people were in Okayama when I was there. Going to the garden in the morning. I was hoping that I would at least meet some foreign tourists doing that walk from the station, going up to Korakuen.

21:17 John Daub: Nobody, nobody. Only expats that were working in the area. So I mean, like, I hope over the next year that, you know, some of us that live here in particular, you know, you know who they are—YouTubers that live here in Japan can do a better job of trying to get people, convincing them off of the beaten path, not just taking sponsored jobs to do it. Because I get sponsored jobs, I won't say sponsored, but I will get budgets to go and highlight places that I was going to go to anyways.

21:49 John Daub: So I would prioritize those. But lately I'm just going because I think it's a really important thing to do to go to promote some of these locations. And over the course of the next couple of months, you're going to see on Only in Japan Main Channel some places that are really off of the beaten path. I got nothing and no incentive to go to these places. But I think that this will open your eyes to beyond the golden route. Because there are people, when they say overcrowding, they're like, when you go to the countryside, like, what are you talking about?

22:25 John Daub: There's nobody here. We were all expecting a tourist boom and there's nobody here because Chinese tourists love them or hate them because we all know that, you know, there are always issues. There's issues with every country's tourists. But they would go to places like Kanazawa more. They would go to places on the Sea of Japan more. Cruise ships from China would help with places in Yamagata, with places in Akita because they had ports for those cruise ships and would generate a lot of income for the Tohoku region.

23:00 John Daub: Tourism, they're not there. So the Americans are coming in through Tokyo. They're not going to these other places yet. I'm turning the camera on for a reason. As I complete my rant—how did it turn into a rant? I'm having fun though. I had to turn it around so I could share this with you. I think you all know what that is. Me and this boat, we got a history. This is the space boat—it's actually the SWEO bus, but it's a thing of beauty to me.

23:30 John Daub: I always thought that it would be able to dive down. Maybe one day it will. Whether it comes up again, that's a whole different question. You have to yell at space boat. Spaceboat's packed. I could see it's completely packed with tourists. And a lot of you remember—I should have zoomed in a little more. A lot of you remember they used to run that with nobody there. So for me it's really a really good thing to see space boat go by there.

24:00 John Daub: Yeah. Construction has been an issue now. It's slow. There's a lot of projects that started. But the cost for the raw materials because of inflation, because of the week yen, because of Japan's—they say, almost loose policy, I guess—you know, the interest rates is like 0.01%. They don't want anyone saving their money. They want more spending. They want inflation in Japan because there's been deflation. They want to be able to control that inflation. And that's really not easy to do.

24:32 John Daub: The weak yen has caused—the yen is weak, Japan's an island. They have to import everything has caused a lot of issues with the construction now. And a lot of the tourist attractions that were supposed to be built in time will not be in time. So 2024 is going to be the better year. There'll be a lot more stuff here to enjoy. And because Japan is solving its staffing shortage problem with importing workers from abroad, this system is still kind of new and I think it has a lot of potential because I'm seeing some amazing people coming over to Japan doing as good a job as Japanese would do, speaking in Japanese and have the added bonus of being able to speak in some English.

25:16 John Daub: Not always that you can understand, but their heart is in the right place and they can speak pretty darn good enough. But the overcrowding is definitely something that you feel right now. And a lot of that is due to tourists not going off of the beaten path. And also there's just also a lack of support in the Japanese tourist sector. If you go to even some of the information booths, there's not enough people working there either. More Ghibli attractions to visit too.

25:47 John Daub: So I think you guys got a list of reasons English speakers don't go to non-popular tourist places. I don't think you've got much of an excuse because they don't speak English. That is the worst excuse. I like to think that our viewers have a sense of adventure, a language—I've traveled to 72 countries in my life. I don't speak too many other languages. I studied Spanish in school. I learned Japanese over time through immersion. I don't speak the languages of the countries that I visited.

26:20 John Daub: Some of them can't speak English, most of them didn't. But you get around, you learn how to communicate. You buy a phrase book and that's part of the adventure of trying. You can—you end up getting food. If you have allergies, you ask a local tourist office to write down the foods in Japanese that you could present to them and say, I have an allergy so you don't have that issue. You learn to think and be creative with communication. And if you're afraid to go to the countryside because they might not speak English, you're not really much of a traveler, are you traveling?

26:57 John Daub: If you're going here for a vacation, you can pick a package tour and get on a bus. But if you want to be an independent tourist, you're going to have to have a sense of adventure. You're going to have to learn to improvise to get a phrase book, to learn something on the airplane about the culture you're about to get into. Because I guarantee you it's going to be a hundred times more rewarding than if you just come here to try to eat at some restaurants in Tokyo.

27:28 John Daub: But if you are an adventurous person, you're going to want to learn a little bit of the language and you're going to want to explore outside of where there are a bunch of other people who are speaking English. Because I can tell you this right now, if you go to Asakusa, if you go to Tsukiji market, I do not feel Japan because I don't hear it. I don't feel it because I don't see it. I see foreign tourists and I hear English and it does not feel like Japan to me.

27:58 John Daub: And I don't think you can get an experience of traveling in Japan if you are going to these particular places right now. So I have to encourage you to get the heck out of Tokyo. People need to venture out on non-golden route places. You'll be surprised where you'll find English speakers. This is very true. It's not that—you know, it's not that tourists are not going to those far away places. You'll find them. In fact, they stick out like a sore thumb because they're so different, which is a good thing.

28:33 John Daub: That's that. Now you'll feel like my first 25 years in Japan, wherever I went I felt very different. But not enough people are going out there and everyone wants to do the same things. And I'm hoping if it's your second trip, you're not coming to Japan just to do the same things because you enjoyed it so much. I'm hoping that perhaps you'll get—maybe you'll rent a car, get a triple A international license for $10, and you'll rent a car for $50 a day. And you'll go out to the mountains and start hiking or doing something.

29:08 John Daub: Go on the Nakasendo and hike there and go to some of these amazing villages that haven't changed for 150 years to see another side of Japan. Go to ryokan out in the countryside and learn how to soak in an onsen and not be afraid of getting into a bath with a bunch of other people who don't care what you look like. You do. I took me a year. Hey, you know what? It took me a year to get over my fear. And the biggest regret that I have about living is here was the first year where I did not go to an onsen because I was worried and thought that public bathing like this was just weird.

29:46 John Daub: And after that first year and the first time I tried it, it changed me completely. And it said, why? Why did I have those fears to begin with? And I can understand—it's just—it seems a little weird. The AAA license is now $20. Okay? It's 10 more dollars to get a Japanese license will cost you like $3,000, unless you have from the school here. So 20 bucks is a small price to pay to drive the roads in Japan. Use that savings for the tolls and stuff.

30:17 John Daub: But the local roads are free, and the gasoline you can see is probably cheaper than the United States right now. There are advantages to it. The trains take you to some places, but not a lot. And there's an amazing amount of freedom and culture that you discover on the roads. Because everybody knows—I love these questions. I'm going to sit here for a second. Everybody knows that Japan is a car culture. I think even before train culture, Japan is a car culture in the places that you will want to go.

30:50 John Daub: To discover Japanese culture, you probably are best served with having a rental car. And they start as little as like $50 a day, maybe even less if you want a compact or a subcompact. If you've got a family of four, you don't have to carry your luggage on and off of trains. You put it in the trunk. It's awesome. Highway tolls are expensive. Yeah. You don't have to take the highway the whole time, but you also get the places really fast. And if you're spending $3,000 or $2,000 or maybe even a lot more for a family to come over here.

31:25 John Daub: I don't think 50 bucks on a highway toll is going to be a massive issue when you save that money. Also on the trains, the train passes, the trains can be also very stressful. I took the Shinkansen from Okayama back. There were a lot of foreign tourists, even on the Nozomi, and they carry these massive suitcases that just added so much stress. So if you're sitting in by the window, you got this tourist who has to put this massive suitcase—what the heck are they carrying in there?

31:56 John Daub: Like, in front of their legs? So they can't stretch their legs. So it obviously cannot be very comfortable for them. They have their suitcase right in front of them. They can't put it in the overhead luggage. And they failed to get an oversized baggage reservation. So that everybody on the train has to suffer because of these people who have these massive suitcases of stuff that they don't need to bring. They can just, you know, pack half. What do you need in there?

32:27 John Daub: Watch the boats going by. It's kind of fun. I'm very passionate about this, wouldn't you say? Because I want you to have a good time when you come to Japan, I want you to enjoy yourself, and I don't think that you're going to—I think you'll enjoy yourself, but not as much as if you come in 2024 when things settle down. And I think tourists start to get back to the countryside. It's not—and it's not exactly 100% fault that in particular, Americans are not going to the countryside.

33:00 John Daub: They're probably not ready for the tourism boom. They're probably not ready for it, but they should have been. And this is why I think Japan is where it is. MB, thank you. It's expensive because I'm from a place with no tolls. Yeah. If you drive in the US you don't have to pay tolls. It's not as high as they are in Japan. That's a good thing. But look, I'm going to be honest with you in respect with the tolls, because the tolls are high, less people just get on the highways, and it is a lot more fun to drive them as a result.

33:34 John Daub: So because the highways are premium—not always, but because the highways are premium, they're probably less crowded. If the highways were cheaper, they probably price them like that because it's at a point where it's uncomfortable for people, but comfortable enough where people could afford them. You know what I mean? I'm going to keep it real here. If you had cheap tolls, do you think riding the highways would be enjoyable? If it was a traffic jam, I'd rather pay more to get where I need to go faster.

34:07 John Daub: It all works out. Probably there's a reason behind everything that you think that there's no rationale. There's probably a Japanese explanation to it. And that would be mine. Jersey Girls here. I want to visit the Tohoku region. I also want to visit Tottori to go sledding down the sand dunes. Yes. So I'm learning Japanese. That is one of the biggest unexplored off-the-beaten-path places. Tottori and Shimane make up the San'in region. You have Mount Daisen, which is more comfortable than climbing Mount Fuji.

34:41 John Daub: You get an amazing view from the top. It is like—it's a volcano. Dormant one. But this—the views and the slopes go straight to the sea. It is such an impressively beautiful view from up there. There's so many attractions. The food is some of the best that I've had in Japan. The water they say is the best to drink. They say Shimane's got Matsui, which is an amazing castle town. You have Izumo Taisha, which is one of the most important Shinto shrines, the shrine of love.

35:12 John Daub: When Kanae, my wife and I got married, we got married with a shrine that was associated with Izumo Taisha. So that's an amazing place also to see. The castle town of Matsui has lots of amazing businesses around there. It feels very local. Great place to spend a couple of nights. Yonago is a fun town. There's Sakai Minato, which is this area that has a yokai for GeGe no Kitaro. They did a good job with it. You feel—you doing—they did a good job with it.

35:42 John Daub: You can feel that—it's hard not to say hi with you guys. How's everything going? Yeah. Oh, good idea. That's what I'm doing at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So that these are all really great attractions in the San'in region. So you can fly in—also flights there are pretty reasonable. You can take—I'm glad that somebody brought this up. No one's going here. You can take from Tokyo station the 10pm night train. It's still available. You can get reservations up to a week in advance on the Sunrise Izumo.

36:15 John Daub: They have the Nobi Nobiseki, which are these seats which you sleep in these cubbies. It's Japan. It's perfectly safe. But it's so peaceful to be rocked to sleep on a train, you wake up passing through Okayama, going to the Sea of Japan side. The train's available on the JR rail pass. You can also get compartments if you upgrade a little bit. That'll take you there and you can bring the train back. So, I mean, there's not a lot of excuses not to get to this San'in area and take advantage of not that many tourists.

36:49 John Daub: Exit 14B, the New Jersey Turnpike. I was raised pink. Yeah. But the turnpike is not that expensive. I remember—I remember paying—was it like—like $10 or something? You can ride all three all the way through New Jersey. Might have changed over the last 20 some years, but. Yeah, I used to live down near 7A. That was one of the closest entrances to the Jersey Turnpike. I guess that's the one with Route—what is that, Route 130. Yeah. That goes through Tabernacle down there.

37:21 John Daub: Not—was that the one? I guess you could also go to Great Adventure. There was—maybe it was Exit 7. I can't remember. But I read the term bike quite a bit. It's not even comparable to Japanese tolls. But it's so convenient, though. It is so convenient. Yeah. And there's a Hoki town. Yeah, thanks for bringing that. Hokue Town in Tottori. There's a lot of attractions in there. There's the sand dunes. So if you can take a train up from Yonago or you can go up to Tottori.

37:52 John Daub: I think that you should spend a couple of days at Dyson. There's a village up there. I've already done about five live streams from this mountain village. That's amazing. They put up some great historic cafes. And the shrine is 3,000 years old. There's a cobblestone street. It's not even cobblestone, it's cobble boulder. They made that 3,000 years ago. I believe they have this in June when they open it. Natsu Baraki, they call it. They have this torch festival from the shrine going all the way down to the town with 3,000 torches.

38:23 John Daub: It looks like people are going out to get Frankenstein or something. I love taking part of that. I've done that festival, I think three times, once for NHK, but I might do that again next year. I love that area of Japan because nobody goes there. If you're looking for the Japanese experience, you get off of the Golden Route. Because I think despite the fact that Kyoto—it's not that I hate Kyoto, I just think that it's lost sometimes—it's just too much of a tourist attraction.

39:00 John Daub: And I think it's getting harder and harder. The residents don't appreciate the tourists as much as they should perhaps. But I think if you go to Kanazawa you get pretty much the same experience. But you gotta go to a place where they appreciate you more. That's important. I think you feel that as a tourist—Kyoto, you'll find great places in Kyoto. Don't get me wrong. I just think it's getting harder and harder because that's overwhelmingly the place that people go to too much because they feel that that's where they're going to get the best Japanese cultural experience.

39:38 John Daub: I think that thinking is wrong. I think it's flawed. I think you get the better experience in nature, not in the center of Kyoto. Go to Uji. Kyoto is a big prefecture actually—it goes all the way to the Sea of Japan. There are places within Kyoto prefecture that are great. But Kyoto proper in the center where all the temples and shrines are—for one day, day trip Kyoto. Go see Ninanzaka, the stairways there, going up to Kiyomizu Dera and then get out.

40:08 John Daub: I think you can keep going on the Kanazawa where the hotels and the food and everything is cheaper. There's not as many Westerners speaking English and you feel more of the heart of Japan out there. That's just my two cents. It's actually maybe more than two cents. Funky Bears here. So it's 13.99 Canadian cents. I went to Nagasaki and Okayama last month. It was awesome. And they were very futuristic. There were a little more Naosima, Art island and Kurashiki, but still not too many.

40:40 John Daub: Kurashiki is this beautiful samurai warehouse district used to be the location of the Denmark-influenced Tivoli Gardens which was like a very—which is exactly like a miniature Tivoli. If you ever been to Copenhagen, that's since gone out of business. But it's still an amazingly beautiful warehouse town and a good tourist attraction. But you don't have as many tourists as you do in like Asakusa for example because it's off of—it is sort of off of the beaten path.

41:11 John Daub: I'm glad you brought that up. And Nagasaki also does not get a lot of love because it's so hard to get to from—if you're coming in from Tokyo or Osaka, you really have to commit to Nagasaki and this region. And with the new Shinkansen there, it does make it a lot more easier to get there, some. I think Nagasaki's got a pretty good future ahead of itself with tourism because it's got one of the best night views. And the food is also amazing. And those that make it over there are rewarded with that.

41:44 John Daub: So I have a Patreon supporter from California who's coming in October, and she just wrote me today, you know who you are, about help of finding new places to go to in Japan. And one of my suggestions was to go consider going to Shikoku or to Kyushu where you got a lot of the same attractions as you might have in Nagano. You're going to get culture everywhere, all right? You're going to find cultural places all over Japan. It doesn't stop because you're getting away from Tokyo.

42:16 John Daub: It gets stronger the further you get from Tokyo. I just think that the challenges in communication offer amazing chances for you to feel the omotenashi. When people don't speak English, you start to feel the effort that they put into trying to communicate to make you happy. And that's when you start to learn the heart of Japan. How do I know this? Because I hitchhiked—I didn't know a lot of Japanese in 2003, but I hitchhiked from Wakanai in the very north down to Kagoshima in the very southwest.

42:49 John Daub: It took me 40 days. I think I spent $150. And I learned the heart of Japanese countryside from the people who picked me up. And I don't recommend hitchhiking to anybody. There are risks involved. But one of the reasons why I'm still here is because of that trip in 2003, three years before YouTube even started. Okay. So my incentive to doing this trip was not to document it. I did make a documentary out of it, but was also to really get to know this country.

43:19 John Daub: And I think I did that with that trip. And I can say with much confidence, language is just—it's not as big of a hurdle as you think it would be. And being worried about it—I—unless you're breaking the law, like bringing in stuff you shouldn't and selling it on the streets or something, you don't get anything to worry about here. I saw a familiar face here. Michael Sassano is in the house. Maybe you're on to something, John. You could start the off-the-beaten-path Japan Tours business.

43:51 John Daub: What a wonderful segue into the promotion of today's sponsor, which is me. Yeah, this is fun. I am doing a bus trip to a—nightbot will put the link in the live chat. You can see it—to go there. Edison, who is a connection of mine through the Japan National Fireworks Association, is helping me with this bus tour where we're going to have 30 people, a maximum of 30 people take a bus from Nagaoka station and Niigata, from the Shinkansen station. We're going to drive around the countryside of Niigata to the birthplace of carp, Ojiya.

44:26 John Daub: And also we have reserved seats, premium reserved seats for the fireworks that are going on, as well as a hotel that's reserved with an onsen, which is going to be great. We're going to go to a grandma, mom and pop restaurant and try to support local businesses. Try to go, you know, get some local soba, local cuisine with ingredients harvested in Niigata. That's the kind of trip I want to do. I want you to feel that. And you know, I'm getting my fingers into it if I can.

44:57 John Daub: It's not as easy to do, but we've planned it out pretty good. Everybody gets a Hoppy, which is a Japanese festival jacket, which I think is going to be fun to wear. We'll be able to identify one another and yeah, it's only one night, two days, two meals, 70,000 yen. That might be pricey to some people, not so much to other people. This is the first time we're doing it. I'm not making anything off of this. This is something that I might make something if we can fill the trip.

45:28 John Daub: Actually, I don't know, but the costs will be covered. Pretty much the minimum that we have is 10 people. 10 or 12 people to start this and we're at like 10. So we need a couple more people to sign up. Then we can have this 100%. So you could sign up and you'll get information from Edison directly who will tell you that we're not going to accept any money until we have enough people to do that to make sure this trip goes ahead. But we're almost there yet. I'll make a video to kind of build this up next week because August 10th I think is the deadline.

46:04 John Daub: So I want to see if we can shore up some more support as people plan the trip to come here for September. I appreciate the Michael the shout out for the off-the-beaten-path trips. I'm trying to do it. Don't talk the talk, walk the walk. You got to be a leader in this, right? You got to be somebody who's willing to—to put in some time and try to help—try to help businesses out in the countryside. I also thought about opening up like a guest house out in the countryside.

46:35 John Daub: There are some prefectures that would have an interest in this. So if I can work together with partners and people, it's not something I want to do alone. It's a lot of work. If I can work together with partners and people, I would love to build some guest houses and make sure—with my love of Japan and being able to see things from a diagonal way, both sides—to make an experience that is really special and experience-based for everybody coming here that's more authentic and less geared towards tourists.

47:09 John Daub: Because I have a feeling I know what people are looking for with their experience in Japan because it's something that I looked for too. And I'm finding—finding less and less. Although entrepreneurs are getting creative now. Did the Aomori—the Hakodate ferry get the unreserved room? Yes, I think it's still it. You can still get to Hakodate via ferry. I would recommend that—it takes about three and a half hours. But the view coming in the Hakodate is amazing.

47:39 John Daub: Hakodate was very quiet in early July. I don't—I buy—I believe that Hokkaido is pretty quiet until the Japanese tourism season starts. Hokkaido is not the thing. This is the thing. I don't think Americans are too interested in Hokkaido because they have places in America that are similar to it. It's like you can go to Colorado, you can go to Vermont, you can go to these places, places that have mountains. So I'm not sure it's something that's so attractive.

48:10 John Daub: But this is the part I want to take you down the street because I want to show you something. Take you down the street here. But people feel to fail to realize that the natural beauty is part of what Japan's soul is all about. That Zen is out there. It's not in just a Kyoto garden. It's out there in the wilderness in the coastal towns and the fishing villages that nobody goes to—seeing the beauty that a guidebook has not found yet. And you can find that there.

48:42 John Daub: And you know the food—amazing. You still got Japanese chains. If you look for McDonald's Japan, they got that out there too. But you have more seafood. I think you're going to get a better gastronomical experience in Hokkaido because those ingredients are the same ingredients that are being turned down into Tokyo. Eventually they're fresher up there. This is one of the last neighborhoods where you'll see these pumps that still work. And I believe this tag is new.

49:13 John Daub: I guess you could still do it. Look at—back in the Edo period and the Meiji period—you see the water running. I don't want to waste the water. This is where people would come with buckets for their—they didn't have plumbing, so they would come and get their water for cooking, for bathrooms, everything. So this was the meeting place of this neighborhood. There are a lot of these pumps here. But all the neighbors would come and then talk, waiting for the water.

49:44 John Daub: And we—since piping came in here, we've lost a little bit of that culture. But I noticed supermarkets coming back and bringing in free water points that are similar to something like this filtered water. And that's kind of cool. The supermarkets that we go to, we got four-liter bottles that I can go and get filtered water. So you don't need a burrito or something like that here. William, thank you for asking that question. Commonwriter wrote from Singapore writes in here.

50:15 John Daub: A couple of years back, me and my buddies decided to cycle around lake starting from Otsu, that's the big city in Shiga Prefecture. We got lost along the way and ended up in Suruga. Oh, I love that city too—or something. Luckily we managed to find our way back to Otsu. Tsuruga is just like a beautiful city. If you're coming down from the highway, which you might have done it, you see the city on the seaside. It's like—it's a little jewel of a fishing village.

50:45 John Daub: There's some interesting stuff, but it's definitely not a tourist attraction in that sense. But you can find the beauty as a tourist in it because it's not a tourist attraction. And I think that that's what's going to happen more in 2024. Thanks for sharing that. That's a great story. I—I ended up in—the only reason I know Tsuruga is because of when I was hitchhiking. I was let off at the Tsuruga interchange and I had to camp there at night and nobody picked me up.

51:16 John Daub: Next morning I had to wait for three hours and some truck driver took me to near Osaka. He took me all the way to Osaka and camping in Tsuruga interchange. I had to hike down to the city to go to a convenience store to get some food to eat for that night. So I know, I know Tsuruga a little bit, but I remember from up there, from the interchange looking down onto the city and it just looked like this jewel glistening with the sea below. Just a beautiful-looking little town there.

51:47 John Daub: That's all I got for you. My list is done but this stream actually continues in the comments below. And I love the fact that our community writes a lot of things in there to add to some of the things that I might have missed or sometimes even gotten wrong. That happens. But you know I've been in Japan for 25 years. I lived in 17 different cities. I've moved maybe 20 plus times and I've been to every prefecture. I think I'm working on my fourth time around.

52:19 John Daub: So I know a little bit about a lot of the attractions here. I know a lot about a little of the attractions. My neighborhood, this area—Tsukuda, you're almost finished. This is going to be one of many. If you are here, it's going to be taking place. Hey Irvin, are you going to be here? Let me know it. I think it starts on the 4th and it goes on until the 7th and I think this Sunday is going to be crazy on the 6th and it's going to be so much fun. They know how to have a good time here.

52:51 John Daub: It's got that again—that Osaka vibe because this is where Sumiyoshi Jinja is the name of it and the shrine right there on the other side of this building. And it's going to be a lot of fun. I'll try to live stream it. I think it's going to be if I'm here. Hold on a second. I might not be here on those days though. I wish Kanae could live stream. Oh yeah, right. Jason. Last thing before I go, I'm going to shout out to Ronald. Your postcard is going in the mail right now.

53:22 John Daub: This month you get to feel the heat. This is my friend Toyo San. I did a video about him on my old channel which I can't recommend a couple of years, maybe about five years ago. I've seen him since then. He still remembers me and he gave me this photo and I made it this month's postcard and on the back is a—because he's—he's so cute and cuddly. This month he's in person. This month we have Winnie the Pooh stamps on the back so you might get one of the new Japan Post Winnie the Pooh stamps.

53:55 John Daub: Don't ask me why they have Winnie the Pooh stamps but it seems to complement Toyo San pretty well. And I'll send this to you from Tokyo if you sign up for the Patreon Postcard Club. So, Ronald and Maryland, thank you. Also, the memberships on this channel, for only 99 cents, you get to open up a bunch of emoji. And I'm going to start adding polls and things like this to our membership community. Make it a little bit more vibrant. Because I've been focusing on the main channel with edited videos over the last several months now and.

54:30 John Daub: And I swing back and forth between that. Now I'm editing a bazillion episodes that I've taken over the last couple of months. I have hired a cameraman. You're going to meet him soon. I've hired some people that potentially could help me with editing as well. So my goal is to get more content out there maybe once a week by the end of the summer and focus on sometimes a little bit shorter content. But I think everybody appreciated the longer stuff because I do too.

55:01 John Daub: It takes time for a story to evolve. Oh yeah. I like the back of the postcard too. I gotta hide Ronald stuff. But you can see the food and the little blurb about my experience there. See the food that we got served there on the back of it is nice to have and you can start collecting it. I usually for new signups, I usually will send two postcards to say thank you and to get your collection started. I try. PBG is on vacation, but I'll probably catch up with him in the next next week or sorry, this week coming up since Sunday.

55:36 John Daub: All right, everybody, my bicycle is over here. I'll see it—I'll see you tomorrow when we do another live stream. I'm going to be this week going to Fukushima to the Soma Noma Oi, which is a samurai horse festival that's been—that's been going on for over a thousand years. But in Soma Fukushima, which was heavily hit by the tsunami and earthquake and the aftermath, this is a big deal to them. This is the 700th anniversary being held at the exact same spot. And the 33rd generation or 34th generation of the Soma family, which is what the town is named after, the clan, I guess you could say is going to be participating in this.

56:17 John Daub: It is hardcore. I'll try to do some live streams there on the weekend. I'll be in Harajuku on the 28th. So if you want to meet me, I'll be in Harajuku around lunchtime to do a live stream. So I'll see you on the 28th, and maybe I'll announce some more stuff really soon. Bye, everybody.