00:00:02 John Daub: Well, well, well. Another typhoon is upon us here in Tokyo, and it's creating some travel plan havoc with those on the Obon (summer holiday period) holiday. Japan started the Obon holiday a couple of days ago. It reached peak Shinkansen (bullet train) usage yesterday, so we're actually going to be okay for holiday travel. Obon is the summer holiday period where a lot of Japanese, in particular those living in Tokyo and Osaka, go back to their hometowns. So there's a lot of travel getting out of the city, and it'll return to the city in a few days, which is probably the biggest issue.

00:00:39 John Daub: But for typhoon number seven, which you see on the screen there, and for those traveling within Japan that are not used to typhoons here, you might be in a little bit of trouble. In particular, when JR, Japan Rail, announces in advance that the Shinkansen may be suspended. That could be a problem, especially if you have hotel plans to get from A to B, or even if you're at Narita Airport, Haneda Airport, or Kansai Airport for that matter. There's a high possibility that your flight will be canceled on the 14th, 15th, and 16th, just depending on when this thing will hit. So you need to start to think about this now. You need to have your eyes on the weather. And don't worry, we got you covered right here.

00:01:29 John Daub: All right, so let's take a look here. Weather forecast. This is the typhoon path. It looks like it's going to hit the day after tomorrow. Basically, you'll see it impacting weather maybe tonight or tomorrow morning. You'll start to see weather change around you. And then on the 15th, it starts to make landfall. It looks like it's going in Mie and Wakayama Prefecture there, but it's going to be impacting Nagoya. So it's going to be pretty hard. Now the middle of it has shifted. It was going more towards Tokyo, and now it's shifted a little bit towards Kansai as a result of a high pressure system which is in the ocean there.

00:02:31 John Daub: I'm not a weatherman, although one of my college friends is a very famous meteorologist on the Weather Channel. How you doing, Mike? So what does that mean for you? Well, it means that if you're riding the Shinkansen or you're at a hotel and you're checking out in the next few days, you're going to need to ask your hotel management if the typhoon hits what are your contingency plans because you need a place to stay. You can't stay outside. I live here, so I'm fine. But you don't, and I don't have space for all of you, maybe one or two if you're really in trouble. You know, I'll turn my house into a place for comfort for you.

00:03:07 John Daub: So the typhoon's by month. You can see that if you look around here, you can see in the winter they kind of end around the first or second week of November, so you still see that there are some. Then December, January, in particular February, March, and April, I've never seen a typhoon in Japan. May, I've seen a couple, but it really starts to get crazy around the end of June and July, August, which you see is the peak here, and September and October. These four months, they make a lot of landfall in Japan. But it can happen as late as November. We've had a couple of them that did some real damage at the end there, the first couple of weeks in November. So this is the time where you should be watching the weather in particular more because this will impact your travel plans.

00:04:06 John Daub: The awesome Adam from 2099 is here. I love these because in the U.S. you've got hurricanes. This is a big one. It's gone past Chichijima. Do you see Chichijima? It's Ogasawara. That's a place where I visited a few years ago. You can see the travel path is going to be making its landfall right across the center. It's shifted a little bit. It used to be closer to Tokyo. Now Tokyo is going to be impacted, but Osaka is getting the direct hit, or Nagoya. And if you're in this area, you better start to plan now, meaning plan now. So what I would do is I would talk with the hotel management. There's a high possibility that they're not going to have those people that were planning to stay there are going to come. So there's a high possibility that they will have available rooms. But it makes a lot of sense for you to maybe book a place that you can cancel.

00:05:14 John Daub: If you've got Genius Level 3 on Booking.com or something like that, you might want to go ahead and make sure you have the 14th, 15th, and 16th, in particular the 14th and the 15th nighttime in those areas covered for you because you don't want to be stranded at the station and you become like a refugee. It's not wonderful to sleep at the station. They'll usually keep it open in situations like this because it's just too dangerous to let people outside. High winds, umbrellas are dangerous, just to point out to you. They don't work well in high winds. So you're just not going to want to be outside. You're going to get wet. The best thing to do is to have a raincoat, and if that, just stay the heck inside.

00:05:50 John Daub: I usually will come out when there's a dead period and I can look at the sky and you can see the clouds swirling and it's quite an interesting time to be out there, but I don't travel very far from home. You can see here the Asahi Shimbun, which is one of the newspapers that publishes in English. They have an article. Yesterday they came out talking about the impact that typhoon number seven is going to have on Honshu Island. A powerful typhoon number seven is expected to move southwards and approach Honshu around August 15th or 14th, disrupting transportation during the busy Obon holiday period, mostly people returning home. JR Tokai, which is the Tokaido Shinkansen, Tokyo to Osaka, announced on August 10th that the Tokaido Shinkansen line may be canceled or suspended from the 13th to the 16th.

00:06:47 John Daub: It's not going to be suspended on the 13th. They're just trying to get people prepared. You start to panic a little bit on the 13th, which means you should probably make some arrangements on the 14th and the 15th. In addition, JR East, which is Tokyo and above up into Tohoku, also reported possible cancellations and delays. Joetsu and Hokuriku to Kanazawa and to Niigata probably going to be canceled. They're going to be suspended as well on the 15th and 16th. Typhoon 7 is churning southeast of Chichijima, which is Ogasawara.

00:07:22 John Daub: I think Michael Sasano is in the house. He is. Very scary such events within the past several weeks. Our sister island of Maui in particular, please stay safe, my friend. Thank you. And our hearts, we're watching it here on the Japanese news of what's happening in Maui with the wildfires. It's uncontrollable to see such a beautiful place destroyed. But gosh, you know, as soon as they come back online, we're going to go over there and try to support them. I know the world is going to be supporting Maui because I can't imagine anybody who wouldn't love to be there or all the people who had their honeymoons there over the years. Thank you, Michael.

00:07:58 John Daub: So talking about Japan and typhoons, I looked at how strong the winds are. This is like a hurricane-sized storm. Of course, the typhoons that come out of the Pacific, not quite as powerful, although you cannot underestimate it. You can't use that just because the Pacific is not as warm as the Atlantic. A small Pacific is a bigger body of water. We don't have the same kind of powerful storms as you would have in the Atlantic that start off on the west coast of Africa and then they move up towards the Gulf of Mexico. Those are quite powerful storms. But here, the Pacific is still kind of warm, pretty warm, in particular the last five years. And that ocean is creating more super storms. And this I don't think is a super storm. I'm not sure. But it's definitely going to shut some places down and make it hard to travel.

00:08:44 John Daub: You can't go outside and one day of your travel is going to be probably spent at the hotel or going to the convenience store to get some food and watching out the window as rain pounds the side of the building and winds start to whoosh by making that cinematic sound. It's pretty crazy. You can take a look at the news here. I like the way that they do the news in Japan. They have these pointed sticks with felt tips. They still do it very manual. Sometimes they have staff that actually create all of the artwork for it, which employs a lot of people. The digital stuff is probably more accurate, but I do prefer when they use cotton balls for clouds. It's just so nice like that. But you can see they're taking it quite seriously in Japan. Every single news network has one.

00:09:44 John Daub: We've been talking about this for the last 24 hours, getting people ready because this is hitting the most populated areas of Japan between Tokyo and Osaka. It's going to ravage right through Kyoto, and they're already starting to prepare some of the temples and shrines. They're a little bit older. They're made of wood, trying to make sure that they're prepared. Maybe prune some trees. I don't know what else you can do, but these are areas you definitely want to stay out of because in a typhoon, the most dangerous thing is when things start to fly at you. Things will collapse from the buildings and stuff can happen. Here they are. You're looking at the power of the storm. You can see how the wind is coming, and it's going to really start to impact Nagoya first, we think. Nagoya is on the top right of this. Probably going to hit Nagoya and Wakayama, of course.

00:10:46 John Daub: This area, not too many people on the coast there. Going to start to feel it. Shikoku, Kochi Prefecture gets a lot of typhoons, and they're going to feel it as well. Hiroshima is more going to be impacted, and I'm going to be stuck. I believe on the night of the 14th, I might have to spend the night in Hiroshima because if I can't get back, I've already made sure that I have a hotel arrangement. Also for Emi, who's my assistant, is going to be going along on this. We both have a place to crash at a hotel in Hiroshima, should all the trains be canceled. Because there's a mad scramble to find accommodations, and it's just really hard.

00:11:20 John Daub: The weather here looks pretty good though at the moment. You can see Nagoya is going to be 39 degrees today. So what that means is that it's going to be almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity, because that typhoon is going to be bottling up some of that nice sauna-feeling stuff. Tokyo is not getting as hard hit because the storm has shifted, and there's a high-pressure system, meaning the sky's... There's nothing really keeping that humidity in. Bottling it up, it's more let loose. But it'll be bottled up again, trust me. The heat will be as strong as it usually is in a couple of days. Okayama's going to be pretty hot, and Hiroshima looks like it's going to be 34, which isn't too bad. That's today's weather.

00:12:12 John Daub: Yeah, there you go. That's good enough. It's going to be sunny most of the day. So Sunday, the Tohoku region, not so much. It's your local weather forecast here. I like what they've done with this one here. They have a chart that will tell you which days will be the highest impact. And the Tokai region, which is just south of Tokyo, Nagoya, the Tokyo region, Shizuoka in particular, is going to be hit the hardest on the 15th. And the Tokai region, it's over on the 16th. So it's going to roll through the morning of the 15th, and it'll be out of there by the night, I think. The other regions are probably going to be okay. Kanto, which is on the top one, is going to be impacted. But Tokyo's not going to get such a strong impact, I think, comparatively. So Tokyo's kind of in the clear. But as I told you, they're already preparing. JR's already preparing.

00:13:09 John Daub: And this is where you should be watching the news if you are in Japan right now. You can see this is last night, and they have video footage of the Shinkansen. And when they start rolling this, and they start talking about big rain and high winds, you know you better either have a reserved ticket, or you should probably start to consider whether or not you want to travel at all and try to avoid the perfect storm, which is the holiday people coming back home to Tokyo and you on the train with other tourists. It's probably best to avoid that storm. It's going to be as bad as a typhoon, I think. It's not pleasant.

00:13:47 John Daub: Let's take a look at the weather right outside your window. My window. And this is what it looks like here in Tokyo. This is the Sumida River. This is my hometown now. There's the Tokyo Skytree, which is rated to be in the worst of the worst, storms and earthquakes. So that's going to be just fine. But I would love to be up there on that top deck to see the clouds go by just as an experiment. But yeah, you still got to pay. You can't see anything except for rain against the windows. The clouds look pretty nice. It looks like a perfect day. It's hard to tell that a typhoon is on the way. High pressure system is over us. It is starting to bottle up a little bit of the clouds, but we're pretty much in the clear here in Tokyo. At least it feels like that for the typhoon.

00:14:36 John Daub: So I'll be able to get out of the city. It's going to be between Nagoya and Osaka, or between, I should say, Shizuoka and maybe Okayama that has the highest chance of having suspensions. So what they do is they have to suspend the line, but sometimes the Shinkansens will still run between Tokyo and Shizuoka, for example, if the impact is not so high from the storm. The Tohoku Shinkansen is probably going to be just fine. It depends on how the storm turns. And again, there could be some twists in the drama plot. That is, a typhoon always is.

00:15:12 John Daub: Any questions? How often do storms come? If you look at the chart here, I'm glad you asked that question. If you look at the chart here, you can see that the typhoon is coming. Brewing in the Pacific Ocean, there's about 73, on average, typhoons coming in in August. And of those that make land in Japan, it seems like, it feels like 10% of them will make land. I think if you live in the Philippines, you're probably thinking like 20% there. Okinawa gets hit a lot because a lot of them will start off in the center of the Pacific and start to move their way up. The further out it starts, the more powerful it can become.

00:15:57 John Daub: There was a typhoon super, I think it was called Rai or Ray, that was really powerful and that devastated, I believe, the Philippines and a couple of other areas. I bet you everyone who's watching in the Philippines is like, yeah, you know what, we're born prepared for typhoons. Manila gets hit so much that the city is just so well prepared for the typhoons, but yet it's hard to prepare because you don't know how strong they're going to be. So you always have to prepare for the worst. Storms can get weak and powerful just like this, and I've seen storms, they turn into tropical depressions and those are even worse because they'll just die in the center of land and drop so much rain that you have flash floods.

00:16:36 John Daub: This is another thing that I want you all to be, I don't think it's something that you have to be concerned about, but you need to have this in your mind. Japan is a volcanic country with a lot of mountains and hills. These hills, they create problems because when there's a ton of rain that falls, in particular during a typhoon, landslides will occur. I've seen some hideous landslides, in particular one in Atami about four or five years ago. It looked, it must have been the scariest thing when you see mud and land, just it broke off of the hill and then just came, vroom. It's one thing to see water going by, but when you see water and mud and you see land go by, that just, there's no coming back from that, folks. It's like, that's scary stuff.

00:17:26 John Daub: If you look at Atami landslide, Atami is this beautiful town in Shizuoka that's famous for the onsen (hot spring). They've recovered pretty good from it, but when you look at the images, it's scary. Hiroshima has had a lot of flash floods and landslides because they have a lot of hills and mountains where the rivers come down, so they get hit quite a bit. Same with Nagano and other locations. So you have to, if you're in the countryside, you have to be quite careful. Tokyo's prepared for such a thing.

00:17:54 John Daub: Nagoya John, would it be crazy to share the ANA forecast link in the description? It would not be crazy. I can do that. Afterwards, I will do that. Jeff and Akiko, Nagoya Day. Nagoya Day, hello. How you doing? Thanks for the shout outs there for everybody. Unrelated, but where are you streaming from? This is the Chuo Bridge. This is my backyard. Beautiful location. This isn't a lot of Japanese water, but it's a lot of dramas actually. This is this neighborhood because of the beauty of it on the river. It's just a nice place to live. This is River City 21 is what it's called. And these are old apartment buildings.

00:18:33 John Daub: And the reason, they were some of the first mega apartment buildings built in Tokyo on the seaside because over here, everything is brand new land. So they were too soft to build. But in the 1980s, during the bubble era, even at the end of the 1970s, these were starting to go up. You can see the colors look very 1980ish. And the people living in there, most of them are over the age of 70, I've noticed. You can tell with this style of curtains that you might see in there. There's like grandmas living there. I also see a lot of, these were really pricey, so people bought these apartments at the time. And I sometimes go shopping in these supermarkets. Sometimes. And I see celebrities in there all the time that I remember from TV from 25 years ago when I came in here. And that's kind of cool. They were older then, and now they're retired and still living in their apartments here.

00:19:27 John Daub: So there's a lot of retirees, a lot of Porsches and Ferraris in this area because during the bubble era, this is the place to live. This is a rock solid land right here. This is rock solid land. So this isn't one of the islands that was manmade. That's the reason why they could build these high buildings in this corner. And if you look from down here, towards from Eitaibashi, which I did a World War II damage episode, you could see where the fire bombs from the US hit the rafters on that bridge and you could see some of them are bent. And one in particular that hasn't been repaired. That was a really interesting find. But if you're looking from there back, it looks like Manhattan. So this is a great place to live if you're over 80.

00:20:23 John Daub: When will John be getting a Ferrari or Porsche? Number one, never. Because I don't like them. I'll ride in them. They're too low. I prefer, if I was going to get a car, I've been thinking about this, HelloHi821. If I get a car, it'll probably be something like a RAV4. And then I would convert the back into a bed so I could do video shoots and I could sleep in the car and then wake up early like at 4:30 and get done and I would be able to edit inside of the RAV4. So I've been looking at that because it's a good size for a family, but it's also a good size to sleep in inside and make a little editing center. So it'd be cool to be a mobile YouTube creator and be able to go around. But RAV4s aren't cheap, so I'm going to have to save up for quite a bit.

00:21:13 John Daub: And I don't think I'm going to buy one for a while because the EV stuff is coming in and I think it's going to be a hybrid. It's probably the best option, but I don't know. What are you going to do? Japan is not ready for EV cars yet really. Warren Day, New York is right here. Can you try touring Tokyo sewer system? What do you... Gross, first of all. What? That's sick. All right, and second, I've already done that. I went, I made a video. Unfortunately, it's on the old channel. I'm not going to recommend it, but I went with my friend Joseph and we went into a sewer pipe and you can see the sewage floating underneath us and it looks the same as probably in New York. All right, it smelled the same. Actually, the sewer pipe smelled like New York, so some areas anyway.

00:22:13 John Daub: Good questions here. Yeah, there's like a Konami building, but I think they evacuated, not because of the typhoon, because of the economy. Why not just buy a camper van? Because they eat a lot of gas and it's more than I need and they're not easy to park. You can't go up into a parking garage, for example. It's too much. You can rent them. And my friend Jared, he used to rent them. I think Jared had, I forget the name of his company. Greg Lamb and I, we rented one last, two summers ago and we drove up to Fukushima to do some wild onsens with it. But I don't think he rents them out anymore. He sells them now. So that's an option to buy them.

00:23:01 John Daub: All right, last question. Have you ever done a show on the areas around U.S. bases? I have not. I think that's something you need to get permission well in advance because to be filming there is a little bit sensitive. As an American citizen, I would love to do that. Okinawa, I didn't film around the bases. We'll see. Maybe Yokosuka, you know, maybe the air base. Iwakuni would be quite interesting. I'd like to see where the Marines live because I had a lot of Marine friends when I was living in Hiroshima the first time in '99. A lot of them didn't stay there for very long. They moved on to other locations.

00:23:38 John Daub: But China is allowing group tours. I was going to talk about that. Mooncake, Tin. Yeah. China recently. So when we're talking about the perfect storm, talk about August. The second half of August is going to be a perfect storm. This is a travel update. They started. China was the one that basically started to allow citizens to come to Japan, which is interesting. So now we're going to have not just the tourists from the West. The second half of 2023, we have packaged tours from China starting up again. I'm going to do an episode on this live stream to talk about this when it starts. But this time around, I know that this is something that some people are worried about because Chinese tourists don't have the greatest of reputations. It's only some individuals. I want you to understand. It's not everybody from China. I got a lot of friends in China. All right. I like China. I'm not a political person.

00:24:39 John Daub: People in China, they had the same aspirations as people in the US to better their families and stuff. So I do hope that the two can get along. I think we all do in particular in this region, but it's hypersensitive in the US and in China. But we for everyday people, my friends, people who do come here. They're more like America. Chinese are more like Americans than Japanese are like Americans. Can I put it? I can put it to you like this. When you drive around China and you see the lifestyle, I see more comparisons. I see more comparisons with the US than I see Japan with America, which is really interesting to hear, right? I didn't expect that the highways look like America too. In many respects. I was shocked. They got bigger cars over there. You know, the supermarkets look more like America. It's crazy. Well, except that they get all this Chinese stuff, but it's so big inside there.

00:25:34 John Daub: So what I was saying is this time around though, China's got some big demographic problems here. And I don't know if anybody has been following this stuff on, I read some books on this stuff because it does impact Japan. Western geopolitical experts sometimes don't get Japan right. I'm always like tongue in cheek when I read that and saying, maybe you should spend some more time in Japan. But on the whole, they're pretty accurate. And China's biggest issue is that because of, they're hitting this deflation right now they have. They also have an issue with jobs. Young people can't find them. They didn't build enough wealth as a country to be able to continue through times of trouble. Some people might be billionaires, but the vast majorities don't have amazing amount of savings. So we're going to see less traveling. I already see it in Japan.

00:26:32 John Daub: This is an issue with Japanese tourists. When I went to Hawaii, I didn't see many Japanese tourists at all. It's mostly people coming from the west coast of the US and other countries. Not so much from Japan because the yen is weak right now. But China's got other issues. So I don't expect that they're going to have as many tourists as they did in 2018, 2019. So it's going to be different. The kind of tourists that come to Japan also going to be different. It's going to be people who have been to Japan before. So they're more used to traveling here. And they're probably more accustomed to travel in general. So that's it.

00:27:10 John Daub: Was there much flooding in China? Yeah, there's some really bad floods. And I have friends all over China. I get messages from them. They're good people. I don't think anybody likes politics. It gets in the way. But if you travel around China, the food is good. The people are friendly. I loved it. It's an amazing culture. It's just the political. Some leaders are not great. In all countries. It's the way it is. China has some floods there. It's hard to get information. But if you have friends there, you hear stuff. Shanghai looks amazing too. I just hope that we can. I'd love to see more people travel to Japan. And then travel to China. And vice versa. When you travel to China, stop off in Japan. I think it helps both economies with tourism. China is just an amazing. There's so many attractions in that country that are just like, it blows your mind. The natural beauty. The people are just amazing. The beauty of that country as a tourist. You know.

00:28:21 John Daub: The Great Wall of China. I camped there before it was illegal. It was in 1998. I went from a guest house with a bunch of other budget travelers. Backpackers. No Americans. One guy from Japan. Mostly Europeans. And we camped in one of the guards chambers. We built a fire. There was a dude who came by. We didn't even think about possibly the reason. Probably robbers and people with guns and stuff. But a guy came by selling instant ramen. So he ended up buying a bottle of wine and a lot of instant ramen. We boiled water. And we ate instant ramen. And we slept in the guards chamber. I didn't realize how cold it was going to be at that section of China. The Great Wall of China. We woke up in the morning to an amazing sunrise. And then the guest house micro van picked us up and took us back to Beijing. That was an awesome trip. That was 1998. That was when there were more bicycles than cars. And China hadn't gone through their industrial revolution yet. It was still like an amazing place. Now it feels more like America. It's a different feeling. And how fast they industrialize. It's just mind blowing to me.

00:29:32 John Daub: Japan has been in a good position for the whole time. Because it's been so slow. After the bubble has already been 40 years. They're used to this kind of stuff. But China, this is new. Alright everybody. Please be safe. If you are coming to Japan. Maybe not now. You've got to think about the typhoons. You have to think about this. Because it will impact your trip. This is the route of the typhoon. It's going to change. Hey Paul Jay is here. How are you doing? Paul Jay is here. Yeah it's going to impact your trip. I mentioned this before. But if you are coming here in the summer. During the peak times. Right when I showed you this graph here. If you are coming at these times. I highly highly recommend you take one more day from work. And keep that as a safety day. You're going to need it.

00:30:30 John Daub: Because you're going to have jet lag. If you're coming from the east coast. Or even the west coast of the US. You're going to need that extra day anyways. But use that as a day. Because if a typhoon hits. You're not going to have a flight home. And that's going to cause problems at work. So you better be prepared. Take that extra day off. And use it as a repair day. If you do. If you can't fly home. As scheduled. Or change your flight maybe. But the typhoons. If they hit. They will destroy your travel plans. And it's not fun. Unless you like weather. And then it's fun to look out the window.

00:31:02 John Daub: Sir Chubbs1 is here. Hey. Thanks for the super sticker. Yeah it's not fun. But it is. If you wanted to take a break from work. And you can't go into the office. Now you have to do it digitally. But it's kind of cool. To break open a bottle of wine. And look out the window. And watch the rain. And the wind. And the lightning. Just stay indoors. And stay safe. That's my best advice to you.

00:31:27 John Daub: Finally. If you're going to be in Japan. September 10th and 11th. I just want to say that we are almost. We're almost. I almost said we're almost full. We're not almost full. We're at like 15 people have signed up. So we're over half full now. With me and Kanae and Leo going. So I think we're almost there. We're almost half full. But if you're interested in joining us for fireworks. I highly recommend that you come to the Mega Shell Fireworks Festival. In Katakai. Where they have what used to be the Guinness Book of World Records largest fireworks shell. Still that's fired every year. We're going to see that. As well as a festival. The food stands. You're going to see a Japanese fireworks festival in the countryside. This is the one thing I want. I want everyone to see the Japanese countryside.

00:32:12 John Daub: So I'm going to start bus tours. To do it. And I'm hoping that this is a big success. To learn from. So I can take you with me. Or not. I don't know if I can go every time. But I want you to be able to go out to the countryside and see it. And I don't want it to be feeling like a tour. I want it to be planned by me. Because I know how to do this pretty good. I want to say Brandy and Diana. Thank you for coming. They are flying in for this. I'm so stoked. That you guys are going to make it. We're going to treat you like VIPs. As much as we possibly can. Again, this is my first time doing something like this. So I don't know how it's going to go. Here's how I treat you with the VIP. Help me out. I think you're going to be fine.

00:32:56 John Daub: Actually, we have two people that are going. Three people that are on the trip. That are Japanese. That are going to be helping out with this. Including Hayashiya-san. Who's going to be meeting everybody. Including me at the station. And helping us get on to the Shinkansen. So we don't have too much to worry about. I'm glad that Hayashiya-san is going to be there. She's Japanese. She speaks really good English. She used to live in Malaysia. So she's pretty cool like that. And yeah. I think it's going to be fun. One night and two days at the onsen. Where we're staying. And by the way. You can also pay by credit card. I think it was just an issue of the fees. So I talked it over with Iida-san. We want the payment process to be as easy and smooth as possible.

00:33:40 John Daub: If you wire the money. She was doing it by wire transfer. No one likes that. So just hold off for a day or two. And you probably can get the credit card option. But I think there were charges associated with that. That cut into it too much. Because they're not really making. There's not a big profit off of this. This is more of an experiment. So the. I think this might charge like 3% on top of it. For using credit cards. Which is understandable. But it might be cheaper than the international transfer fee. Always be transparent with people. That's what I have. Said. With these kind of things. Because stuff goes wrong. You know. You want people to have all the information possible. Because stuff goes wrong. You have to be prepared for that. Japan could learn from those words. Actually. Just be transparent with people. Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.

00:34:37 John Daub: Aloha. Hey Brandy. Aloha. Oh. And that talk about the credit cards is for you Brandy. So. I will live stream while I'm there. So. I'm planning to live stream the carp. Which is. Like this is the birthplace of Japanese koi (colored carp). So I plan to do a live stream there. I plan to do a live stream of the street food. And maybe of the festival. But I think we're probably going to be just watching. We will get lost. Is that Joss? Joss you will not get lost. We're going to see you at the station. You can't get lost. Please no. We need you on the tour. Both of you. This is going to be so much fun. And we're going to get some stuff to send to Michael. Yeah. I have stuff to add. Let's make a box Brandy. And we got stuff to add. We're going to pack it for Michael. So he can feel a little Tokyo from this trip.

00:35:34 John Daub: Aloha from Hawaii. How you doing? Yeah. Diana. We got to meet. We got to meet at Tokyo Station. I think it was 8 a.m. Hold on. Do I still have the timeline here? Here's a timeline. So I think it was something like 8 a.m. But you probably know what I mean. You probably want to be at the meeting point 10 minutes before just in case the worst happens. Like your taxi driver takes you to the wrong exit or you can't find it because there's so many places that you can meet. But I'll send you a map and we'll give you some guidance.

00:36:05 John Daub: Oh by the way. There's one person who I'm glad I got you guys here. There's one person. We couldn't track you down. Your email was wrong. You signed up for it but your email was wrong. So if you didn't get an email from Iida-san yesterday or the day before yesterday, please send me an email or register again. In the next live stream, I'll see if I can give some more hints on who this person is. But please double check to see that you got the notification for how you pay for this because the email on one person's was wrong and I want to make sure that they go. And I don't want to say their name publicly because everyone has a right to some privacy. I'd like to say that now because it's true.

00:36:58 John Daub: Alright everybody. Thanks for watching. I hope you stay prepared for the typhoon. I'm hoping that we don't have a typhoon for that event by the way, but we do have a contingency plan sort of. Give you refund the money or something. Go out and go out and have lunch at Tokyo Station and make it make an afternoon of it. But we'll be ready for it. If you're gonna visit Inakadate and Aomori for a rice paddy art. Yeah, you know, that's a beautiful place. I've gotten a chance to go up there. In the winter as well when they did these snow walking art. This is there's a lot of really unique stuff going on up there in the north of Tohoku. So thanks for the shout out on that. Mahalo John for everything. Thank you Our Life Hawaii.

00:37:42 John Daub: Just say the first letter and the first what of the first and last name. That's a good idea, but I can't remember it. That's another reason why I was stalling. Transparency. I love this corner. Bring a bento (boxed lunch) from the supermarket and eat it right here and watch spaceboat go by right there. I love it. You might even find me there sometimes. Actually, I go running here and I see people doing that and I always wonder if you guys are watching. So I might say hi, but you know, I might not because I probably think you maybe you're not a viewer. So you have to say hi to me. Precious of elimination. Alright back home. Thanks everybody. I'll see you in another video.

00:38:23 John Daub: Live stream. Tomorrow I'm going to Hiroshima tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. So look for a morning live stream if I have the time to do it or I'm gonna be live streaming from Hiroshima tomorrow, which is gonna be totally awesome. So you guys are coming with me as I film a main channel episode and I'll be back again. I want to do a midnight snack run and I also want to do the streets and alleys one more time of Tsukishima. Which is a beautiful area. This is when I think if you're staying in Tsukiji or Ginza or Tokyo you should come to this neighborhood and check out the old houses because they're not going to be there much longer. These alleys between them it takes amazing photos and you can feel the old Showa (era name, refers to retro culture) culture and they have these pumps that you can pump water out so you can still feel the history of Tokyo in the Tsukishima area. I love it here.

00:39:23 John Daub: There's that hydrogen bus going by. Alright everybody. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow. Another live stream. Morning at Shinkansen to Hiroshima. How cool is that? I'm fingers crossed that this typhoon doesn't speed up and get here quicker. But I'm pretty sure we're gonna be just fine and all of you prepare and you will be too. What's that guy doing? He's ready for the typhoon. He is a typhoon. Bring it! See you tomorrow.