Why Visit Japan Ask Me Anything August 2023

00:00:01 John Daub: Hello, hello everybody. It is time for Ask Me Anything. And since this is a channel that is dedicated to Japan as I travel around the country showing you all sorts of neat things, recently in, where was I? Nara. Gosh, where the heck was I? Fukushima. I've been all over the country over the last several months. So I think this is a good time to talk about your questions. And I've been getting a lot of them because in the live streams when I'm talking about one thing, I get questions about a completely other thing. So we've got a ton of them that I've found in the videos from the past that you asked me questions about. I'll bring them to the forefront. As well as questions from the live chat right now, which you can also see in the playback as people ask me questions about random stuff. I've got a computer here so it makes it even easier for me to see what you guys are writing. Yes, we are live. So first of all, let me look at some of the questions that I have as people start to find the live stream. Here's one from Kev Taylor. No offense, why would you want to go to a country and you can't eat the food? Well, I think Japanese food is not just sushi. It's not just raw stuff. Japan over the last 10 years really the cuisine has evolved quite a bit. So if you need to eat halal food, you can find that a lot easier now than you could about, you know, just 5-10 years ago. It's getting better for international people who come to visit. But come on, this is Japan. Japanese food is what's on the menu. The great thing though is that you can find pizza, burgers and other stuff, cuisine that might be suitable to your palate. In particular in Tokyo, in Osaka and the big cities where countries have embassies here. Those embassy workers have to eat. So I thought that comment was a little weird but yeah, I mean you gotta remember where you are.

00:02:10 John Daub: AmeriCo 99 writes in here, is it a good time for relocating to Japan? I want to retire there and live among anime cat girls. I don't know what anime cat girls are but. Yeah, you know, I think the time where Japan starts to accept more people to relocate to Japan, to retire in Japan might be coming because, well the population is declining. Just last week for the first time, you know, the population has been declining for decades actually, every year. And the population is now under 125 million. So like it's going down faster and faster and under 100 million, I think, within my generation, which is crazy. To think about that. The old people that are leaving are not being replenished much at all. And that leaves an opportunity for a lot of people to perhaps come here and move. But Japan being Japan, it is a very homogeneous country. They also look not for immigration. This isn't a melting pot like America is or even Canada or some countries in Europe. This is a country where it's almost entirely Japanese people on the whole. At least until now. Now, a lot of the businesses have robots, have automated. You see convenience stores with nobody inside of them. I saw a cafe yesterday with just a robot. It's got an arm. So you plug in what you want on the menu and the robot arm brews your coffee. So if you're a barista at Starbucks, you know, trying to unionize, hey now, you— now there's actually, I think, coming really soon, not even a reason for a barista to miss write your name on a cup. Usually, Kanai had trouble with that when she was in New York. So instead of saying her name was Kanai, she would say her name was Katie. And that worked out a lot better. Although they spelt it in many different ways then too. I think if you did it on the computer, they'd have to write your name. But that's just a small thing. You know, we all have to support people. It's all about the people. But in Japan, it might all be about the robots sooner than later.

00:04:20 John Daub: What city or prefecture— by the way, a prefecture, I got a question. What is a prefecture? It's basically like a state in the United States. America has 50 states. Japan has 47 prefectures. And each prefecture has its own— almost each prefecture has its own dialect going back historically. So it makes Japan quite an interesting country when you learn about the prefectures and the culture within each one of those states, those prefectures. So that's what a prefecture is. But what is the best prefecture to visit for someone who has never visited Japan before and wants to do culinary travel? That is very interesting. Thanks for this. This is coming from Tomiputra in Indonesia. You know, the best— I really like Aomori for that. I think that Aomori is a pretty good country for food because it's got mountains. It's got the Sea of Japan. It's got— even the Tsugaru Strait, which is between Hokkaido and Honshu Island. It's got the Sea of Japan as well. Three bodies of water which have somewhat varying different kinds of fish that they catch. It's also got Wagyu. It's also got a really good chicken. Amazing vegetables in Aomori. For cuisine though, the most famous ones are probably Hokkaido and Kyushu. I want to say Kyushu because whenever I go to Kyushu, I eat so good. The chicken, the beef— Wagyu beef is maybe the most famous down in Miyazaki and Kagoshima which won the Wagyu Olympics. There is an actual Olympic event for brands here in Japan. Miyazaki is like the perennial favorite. That's down in Kyushu. So you're going to get really good meat and vegetables down in Kyushu. Hokkaido, really good seafood. It's also a vegetable place. They've got a lot of land. It's also known for its chocolate and desserts and milk. It's a dairy up there. But every prefecture— This is a hard question because every prefecture has its own specialities. I should say. If you're talking about Unagi, for example. Shizuoka and Kagoshima and Kochi down in Shikoku. These are all places— And Unagi is freshwater eel that are very famous for that. If you're looking for chicken, you have Oita. You have Miyazaki. You have Nagoya for the Kochin chicken. And you have Iwate. Those are the four places where I would say chicken is very famous. You have Wagyu beef. There's Miyazaki. There's Kagoshima. You also have the Hida-gyu of Gifu which is also very good. Matsuzaka-gyu in Mie Prefecture. You have Hyogo Prefecture is Kobe beef. And you have Omi-gyu in Shiga Prefecture. So, I mean, like every single prefecture has something really unique. Nagoya has eggs. The Kochin eggs are some of the best. Those yolks are super yellow. So, I mean, you could travel around this country and eat. And if you just took the specialities from each prefecture, you could put together a super meal. Which probably would be a pretty interesting episode, I think.

00:07:45 John Daub: Maria is here. Hi, John. Long time since the stream. Hope you and the fam are doing well. We're good. Right now, Kanai and Leo are visiting grandpa. And I'm editing over there. And thought I would just take a break and hang out with you guys for a little bit. I'm also going to be taking questions on livestream on Discord, which is a platform where you can talk with people that are traveling here in Japan right now. It's a community for the Only in Japan viewers. And it's grown quite a bit. I think we have, what, 16,000 now? 17,000? And I'm going to go in onto the— I guess I'm going to come up on the stage here. Let's get the hellohi821. Can you hear me? So this is the stage for the Discord. And if you go into the Discord for Only in Japan, there's a link here. You can join me on stage and actually talk during this livestream and ask me a question live. As long as it's a good question. Because I'm going to just cut you off if I can't understand what you're saying. Or the question is a little bit weird. Stuff happens when you're live. Not to encourage you. Hey, Torotoropoko's here. Oh, look at this. And I see Catherine Peso's here. Oh, look at this. We got it. All right, it's starting to really populate. I got 26, 27, 29, 30, 31. Awesome. So we'll take some questions and bring you onto the stage. Just raise your hand. There's a chat on the Discord server, so you can type your question in. That's the way maybe we kind of vet this a little bit. But try to keep it on the topic of traveling in Japan. Not too personal. Because, you know— Hey, Michael's here. Aloha. Oh, that's awesome. You know, when I'm doing the livestream walking around the town, it's a lot harder for me to look at the chat. But now, when I'm sit down, it is much easier when you're doing a Q&A. So we have Monke here on the stage. I believe it's unmuted. How you doing? Do you have a question?

00:09:54 John Daub: Yes, I do. First of all, I'm a fan of yours. I've been watching for years. My question is, how bad is the inflation currently in Japan?

00:10:06 John Daub: We feel it now. I don't think I felt the inflation even though they said it was happening last year. But since the start of 2023, you start to see it in particular with— I think we started to see it first with beer in October of 2022. Then I started to see it with egg prices, which are up about 100 yen compared to last year, which is a 40% increase or so. I started to see it in milk. Meat has definitely gone up. Chicken, I can see that. So the costs of things that first went up were things that came from abroad where they needed to offset the weak yen because it's been now weak since October of 20— It's almost been a year since the 150 yen to the dollar, which has thrown Japan— You know, it's just expensive to procure any ingredients here. They delayed passing this on to the consumer for a very long time, which was surprising, actually. I thought it would come a lot quicker. But the supply chain now— I would say for me, my life— Let's just boil it down. Let's get to the, you know, brass tacks. Probably I feel like I'm paying like 15% more for everything. That's what it feels like. But it's not great.

00:11:20 John Daub: Thanks for that question. Oh, thank you for answering. I'll be going back to Japan again in November, and I was just wondering if the actual— How bad it was for inflation and if it was better just to convert money right now or wait to near the trip to convert? I would convert if it's— I would convert now. Can you say— I don't think it's going to get any better than this. It's 146 to the dollar right now. It's been going up over the last couple of days, closing in on the high of 151, I think it was, in October. October of 2022. I would convert money if you had it. If you're thinking about coming the next three months, it's not going to go above 150 for very long. They've already said that the Bank of Japan has already hinted that they're going to intervene if they ever get to 150 again. It's not going to get any better than this. In fact, I would expect it to go down. I don't think it's going to— Yeah, I would change money. I do. What are you talking about? Any dollars that comes in, I put it right in the yen right away. If it's over 140, it's a pretty darn good exchange rate. You want to lock that in. If you're thinking about coming in 2024, you might want to lock it in too. But changing money in advance is always a gamble. So you have to think about the pros and cons. But I've been here for 25 years. The only time that I saw it this bad was when I first came to Japan 25 years ago in July of 1998. It was 147 and it dropped down to 120s again pretty soon after that. So I think that this is a good time. This is a blessing for tourists. But keep in mind that Japan is also maybe altering the rates for things that tourists like knowing that there's a weak yen. At least I get that impression. I don't have proof, but I get that impression.

00:13:13 John Daub: I see HelloHi821 is here. How's your mic doing? That's our wonderful moderator. I guess he can't get in here. EZ4CP, how are you doing today?

00:13:33 John Daub: Hey, John. I'm doing great. How are you? Pretty good. Where are you calling from? I'm from India. Okay. I'm planning to visit Japan in January for two weeks or so. I've read a lot of posts on Reddit and on the internet that January is kind of a weird month when it comes to weather because it is somewhere in between. It is wet. It is snowy. So should I plan my trip to Hokkaido in the month of January? Keeping in mind that the weather can be very uncertain and the weather is very uncertain. What do you think about that? Also, I'm vegan. So Hokkaido, I'm vegetarian. So I mean, I do not know if Hokkaido is the seafood town or seafood island. And what is in it for me?

00:14:21 John Daub: Okay, why don't you stay on the platform here so I make sure I answer your question. You can ask me a follow up. Hokkaido, the weather up there is not very, doesn't fluctuate too much. It's cold. So I'd say the first snows start to come around November. And there'll be snow on the ground for most of it. I don't know with global warming. You know, one of the reasons why Sapporo is trying really hard for the Winter Olympics is because in 10 years, 20 years, Hokkaido might be one of the only places that has snow around because of global warming. At least that's what I've been hearing on the news. Sapporo is always going to have snow in January and February. That's why the snow festival is pretty much a lock. My favorite time for Sapporo is February, to be honest with you. But yeah, you know, there's no bad time to go to Hokkaido. I don't think. With in terms of the diet, I've seen, and this is pretty incredible, in particular if you're staying at Japanese ryokan, traditional Japanese inns, you can get vegan kaiseki ryori without any trouble whatsoever. Just before you get there, or if you make the reservation online, give them a call and tell them that you have a dietary need, that you're vegan and you can't eat meat. If you tell them in advance, they will really work hard to make sure that you are happy. In fact, even if you did it on the day, there's a high possibility that they'd be able to accommodate you, but definitely at least one day in advance. And that's a challenge for the chef, by the way. So they kind of like that. If there's a challenging customer that's different than everybody else. Not challenging in a bad way, but challenging for the culinary skills, because a lot of the chefs at Japanese ryokan are actual real chefs. They're really good at what they do, which is the reputation of the traditional Japanese inns. In Japan, the cuisine is outstanding. Do you have any follow-ups? Did I miss anything?

00:16:23 John Daub: Just another question. Thanks for that. So I'm confused between Hokkaido and Yamagata Prefecture. So as you said about ryokan, should I go to Ginza onsen or that area? In the Yamagata Prefecture, or would Hokkaido be better? Because I mean, I have to choose between the two. Oh, yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. Yamagata is an amazing place in winter. They do get a lot of snow. And Ginza onsen, after I made that video, and everybody's made a video on Ginza onsen, I think all the YouTubers, it's extremely a popular place. Unless you have a reservation already, it's going to be really hard to get one. You should make sure you get the reservation six months in advance, but it's still possible to get it. Expect to pay a premium because of supply and demand. There's just a small town, and there's not a lot of rooms available. I book— It's always good to call, not book online for Ginza onsen, in particular the Notoya Ryokan, which is world famous. It's got the ambiance of the 1920s when it was built. That hotel does not do online bookings well. You have to literally call them. They don't ask for a deposit, because no one ever cancels if you get a room. People book six months in advance. I was lucky enough, I called and I asked them, so do you have any availability? Did anybody cancel? And they said yes. And Kanai and I were able to book a place like two months in advance. But other than that, they're booked solid like six months in advance. So you have to call like on the day that they open, essentially. They speak only Japanese at the time, but if you call the Ginza onsen terminal, the tourism association, they speak English there. It was in my video on Ginza onsen, and they will help you out a little bit, in particular. I would say if you can get a place at Ginza onsen, then go to Ginza onsen. But if you don't, then I would go to Hokkaido. I think it's pretty much as simple as that. Or, you know, do both, which might be hard. But I think for sheer entertainment, I think Hokkaido, of course, is going to be better. Sapporo is going to have so many different options for entertainment. They're both going to be really cold. But I would say that there's going to be more to do in Sapporo, more diversity of things, and in particular with the food and options. But Ginza onsen is a place where you want to relax and do nothing. It's an onsen town that's very separated from the outside world in this little mountain enclave. It's like deep in the mountains. Unless you have a rental car, it's hard to get in and out, so you're trapped sort of in the— It's like a little ryokan. So I usually will bring a book. This is a place where you relax, maybe immerse yourself into the culture of the little village there. But it's not the same as Sapporo. So that's something that you should really consider.

00:19:18 John Daub: There's some super chats coming in here. I want to say thanks, everybody. SirChubbs1, I'd love to move back to Japan to live. I don't have a degree, but I do have 20 years experience in tech with clients like Volvo. I've heard you could get a special skills visa for work with over 10 years experience. Is that true? I believe it's true. This is something that's still evolving that I don't know quite well. But because Japan is in need for certain skills, you can apply for the visa. It doesn't mean you're going to get it. But if you go online, you can apply for the visa and see if you can get it. I guess it's worth a try, right? I'm not sure about specifics of those visas because I live here. I don't really need to look into visas, but they do have this visa. And it's bringing in a lot of people, in particular from South Asia which is awesome for me because it feels like, because I'm half Indian, as you guys know, it feels kind of cool to see other people who sort of look like me, a little bit darker working at the hotels and stuff. So this is sort of like a kinship, like a nod, like when I come in, like this nod, and I'm really happy. And then usually people from South Asia that are working here can speak really good English. But I have not seen, this is the best thing of it all, of these special skills visas, in particular from English language countries. And this is incredible. The workers that are coming from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, to work here in Japan, I see zero drop off from the level of service that I would have gotten from someone who was Japanese. If not, sometimes the service is even better because they seem to care about the job a great deal more. This isn't everybody. But I've noticed, the same way where they'll kneel down to the customer, they speak in keigo, very polite Japanese, they know Japanese better than I do. They've been to the school to study these kinds of situations. They're more hardcore into this. And they've decided this is what they want to do. And they've become amazing additions in small rural areas. So I don't mind if the worker that I get is not Japanese. I almost, I'm kind of happy about it. Not only because they can speak a little bit of English or English fluently, but because the level of service does not drop off because someone is not Japanese now. And that is extraordinary to me. And this is worth maybe talking about in another episode soon. But I'm just blown away. Even when I go in a convenience store and I see somebody of South Asian descent, I'm almost, at first I would give them a pass because they're not Japanese and perhaps they don't know the culture. That's not true. They know the culture pretty darn well because they studied this at schools, like preparatory schools, before they came here. And I'm just really surprised by that. But Sir Chubbs, you should definitely look into it because if you can with your experience, that would be great. And I'd love to hear from you if you can do that.

00:22:18 John Daub: I think I might have missed a couple of other chats in here. Fattyback Soup, Hi John, is the Suica card availability situation still the same? It's funny, alright. I got blamed by people who said, I got a Suica and this is all fun. It's false information. It's not false information because it's actually a press release from PASMO and Suica directly that they did in Japanese and in English saying that they were suspending it indefinitely. How is that false information? If you can get a Suica, you got lucky. I think more power, more power to you. The welcome Suicas are available at the airport. Anybody can get them. They've made that the priority. Personalized Suica and PASMO are hard to get and what I would say— A colleague, Harb Life, who is working quite hard doing updates as well, he had an update saying that I believe just recently it popped up on my LG TV YouTube app that the availability was not very good. So I have to go with that. I don't need to get a PASMO so I don't check in, but if you can find them, then that's really great, but you shouldn't count on it. And if you have yours, bring it because you don't need to buy another one or at least take that risk. Bring it. You can charge the PASMO and Suica anywhere, but you can get— The ICOCA card seemed to be okay, but there's places like Osaka Station where I've heard people had challenges and Kyoto Station where there's a lot of other tourists because tourists buy them and they don't recycle them. You can actually get your deposit back on your Suica card or ICOCA card. If you put it back in the machine before you leave Japan, you'll get your 500 yen back and those cards are wiped. And then reused again. But people don't tend to reuse them. So yeah, there's that. Great questions. So it's not me giving false information. I was just literally reading the press release from them.

00:24:24 John Daub: Thank you, John, for the last answer. Is there any app that would— This comes from Tomi Putter again. Where we should prepare before going to Japan. Is there any translation app you recommend? I don't have any translation apps in particular. I thought Google Translate does just a fine job for free. You just need to have a Wi-Fi or pocket Wi-Fi or 4G. You can get by with that. But there's some really good ones. There's nothing that I can recommend. I don't use them, so I wouldn't know. But on our Discord server, this is a place where people are discussing that as well as you'll— If you have a translation app, please write it in the comments of the video to help Tomi Putter out. That'd be really great. As well as me. I just don't know. I don't know what other people will say. The ability for Japanese to speak English is much, much better than it was when I first came to Japan 25 years ago. Put this in perspective everybody, all right? Because I've been here half my life. When I got here, it was hard, man, all right? You guys are having it easy. Anyone who complains about not enough English— You're coming to a foreign country. Before, I think, like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, like I would go to Europe and there are tons of places where people didn't speak English at all which was actually I have the opposite opinion I prefer places that don't speak English you want to know why because it feels adventurous to learn the language and work stuff out and I never had any problems because um you could always manage and that's part of being on an adventure to me if there are places that were spoke English I would consider them to be touristy and not an authentic experience at all as the backpacker and me preferred to go to places like Chile and South America or you know places in Southeast Asia outside of Bangkok where you know and tourist areas I really love that so I just have a second opinion a different opinion on that but every single let me put it to you like this hotels now have translation apps at the desk if they're used to dealing with the language and they're not used to it and they're not used to it and they're not used to dealing with foreigners as well or they have someone who speaks English so um that's something you should consider before you buy a translation app and the second one is that I still have books I still have dictionaries that I like to do because I like to learn Japanese and I'll use phrase books and dictionaries to look up words it keeps me um from using my smartphone too much as well I want to get into the question here uh Neil T is here how you doing what is your question I'm doing great I'm I hail from Oklahoma.

00:27:00 John Daub: there's a website called calculator.net that I used a lot and I wanted to know if you knew about it because it says one Japanese yen is 0.00687 sorry that no I'm saying that wrong one dollar is 145.46 five three seven yen I don't use calculator.net I I use google.com and all you have to do is type in here uh USD JPY and you get the current rate right away and I always feel like I always feel like the apps might not have what is actually happening right now on the market but you never get that rate anyways so it doesn't matter it's too much right you're not gonna get get that rate unless you're using a credit card maybe but that might take a percentage did you have any other questions no just that was it was if you use that one I I don't use that one but um yeah I just use google.com but there's a there's a ton of places where you can check the currency exchanges but it's thanks for adding that one too I'll check it out yeah yeah keeping up to date on the currency exchange rates is um important in particular a week before you come to your trip um the exchange rate is over 145 to the dollar I would say that that's a pretty good rate for you to want to change your money because I I can't guarantee that it's gonna like it dip down to 128 after it got up to 150 and those people who came in March got a lesser rate by like 20 yen and then it went right back up so just keep that in mind 20 yen per the to the dollar that's a a lot of money if you're gonna change a thousand bucks it's like a couple free dinners or something um let's see I I want some of the questions from our Patreon supporters. I want to say thank you to you guys here. Diana Martin writes in here, today we had a very strong earthquake in Bogota, but hey, next week we depart for Japan. Hey, by the way, I got my hands here on the side. Today's the last day to sign up for the bus tour. If you're thinking about coming, you have like hours before the link disappears. I'll put that on the screen right now. It should be on the screen. It's on the screen right there. So you have just a couple of hours to join before we close it, because we have to make the hotel reservations. And let me go back to the questions here. Diana. Satria writes in here, well, I'm looking forward to seeing you, Diana. And Satria writes in here, I'll be visiting Japan by September 21st. Hope to catch you there. Question, I'll be arriving at Haneda at around 10.30 p.m. and stay at Asukusabashi. Great choice. What's the option for transportation?

00:30:06 John Daub: Besides taxi. You could take the monorail into Hamamatsucho, and then you could take the Asakusa line to Asakusabashi. So that'd probably be the way that, if you had to ask me how I would do it, that's how I would do it, Satria. So I would take the monorail to Hamamatsucho. The only thing is that if you have luggage, it's kind of hard to transfer from the monorail, which is on the second or third floor. You have to go down the elevator, then wheel your suitcases and try to find another elevator, or you have to carry it because there's no escalator, down to the basement, and then catch the Asakusa line there, which is kind of deep in there. Just give yourself a little bit of time, and you can get there with public transportation. Or grab a taxi. If you've got four of you, it probably makes a lot of sense. It's almost a straight drive, just going up Chuo Dori, which will take you pretty much to Asakusabashi, take you near Akihabara. And it's just a couple of minutes. And if you're tired from the flight, I would say just get a taxi. But, like, because with four or five people, probably turns out to be about, what, like, 1800 yen in a taxi might cost you about double that. And it's so much easier. But, you know, just depends. Thanks for asking that question. And that came from our Patreon supporters. Thank you guys for the support there. Appreciate it.

00:31:43 John Daub: Let's take another question from, hey guys, can you remove the microphone? I'm not sure if you can hear me. Can you remove people from the stage after they've answered, asked the question? D188. Do you have a question? Hello, John. Hello. Hello. Hi. Yes, I have a question. So, basically, how do you feel having lived in Japan for all these years? How's the weather changes like? Like, is it gotten worse because of global warming? Like, how is it?

00:32:08 John Daub: You know, it's funny. First of all, the sea, there's, there's four seasons in Japan. So, this, it, it does feel quite similar to, like, Tokyo's weather to me feels similar to, like, Washington, D.C., for example. But the thing is, with Japan, maybe it's because it is an island. The weather seems to change exactly when it's supposed to. It's funny. September 1st, it seems like the humidity just dies. Like, somebody has given the calendar to Mother Nature and said, oh, it's time to end humidity. And you can start to smell fall in the air. It's weird. And, you know, summer, when the rainy season hits this year, it's a little bit different. This is the first year where the rainy season seemed to not even be the rainy season. Like, it started really early, and then it never really came. It just sort of didn't really hit Japan. So, it's bizarre this year. But the rainy season always, almost like clockwork, June 10th, you have rain for, like, six weeks. That's pretty constant. Cloudy skies. The rain is, makes the weather a little bit chillier. So, you definitely need a jacket in June. I think June is cooler than May because of the rainy season and the typhoon, the winds coming in as a result of it and just being wet all the time. Just like clockwork, you can count on the middle of July and all of August to be a sauna outside. Like, you're breathing in soup. That's why I'm inside today. It's just so hot. It's hard to breathe outside in the air. Winter's going to be cool. You can count on November starting, like, November 1st. You can, it starts to chill in Tokyo. Also, the other thing that you should think about in terms of the weather, and I haven't really noticed anything big with global warming over the last 25 years. It's just been pretty consistent. There'll be, there'll be days, years where it snows so much. And then, like, 20, for example, 2020 didn't get a lot of snow. This is like, I went to Ginzan Onsen in Yamagata in January of 2020, right before the pandemic, and it didn't snow. There was no snow on the ground, which is so weird. Everyone said that this is so weird. We don't have snow in Yamagata. Then the next year, it was all snow. It was like the most snowfall that they'd had in several years. So, you know, it's hard to say what is the result of global warming and what is not. But I haven't noticed any particular, there'll be some years that were warmer than other years. But I haven't noticed any particular— early in other areas of the country and it's just really hard to predict year to year on that but the good thing with that is that you know how to dress right if you know the weathers in Japan you know how to dress you know when you need a jacket you know when like April you know that April is going to be warm some days and then at night it's gonna be really chilly and you need to wear pants and a jacket because the night or some days are gonna be chilly even though you could you feel like you could wear shorts maybe from like 12 to 2 when you get that the longer you stay here good question um do you have a follow-up did I get get all of that you're welcome.

00:36:04 John Daub: peso knows a little thing about the weather as well he's been here a lot right I did go like to like a really dry desert in the western Japan and and it was it was dry in the desert and then the next day was raining so it was a bit chaotic and end of June early July yeah there's a desert in Japan you heard that right yeah exactly I was surprised too but towards the beginning of the year it was definitely way more chilly in February so I was a little nervous and I was a little bit worried about it but yeah yeah it's been a bit of a bit of a run down but I think it's been a bit of a fun year for me and um definitely bring thick clothes if you're normally from a tropical country but yeah I mean it goes through four seasons in a year like like most other northern countries so it's expected Australia doesn't have for it maybe Melbourne Queensland you can't just say Australia you have to say like Queensland would be different right Carrie you might be watching okay it's a little bit different up there I think compared to I think where I am right now, it's like I think one of the coldest days of the year. It was like one and a half degrees Celsius. Right. Yesterday. So I bring that up. So the only reason I bring that up is because I want you also, I want you to change the way that you see Japan in a way. Japan is quite a long country. And the weather that you get in in Aomori, for example, is not going to be the same as the weather that you get in Kagoshima. But it's not a north and south thing. In Japan, we see it as the island is east and west. And this is the thing that blows a lot of people's minds that visit. There's east Japan and west Japan. And west Japan starts like around Kyoto or Osaka. So everything from Osaka going down to Kyushu, I say down. It's actually going west. So in Japan, they see that as west Japan, not south Japan. And everything that's like north of Tokyo, we see that as east Japan. And that's the thing. And that's just domestically, that's the way we would see it. But for tourists that are coming, they think that Japan is a long country. But we see it as long this direction more than we see it in this direction. However, the weather, as someone who hitchhiked the whole country in a month, the weather in Hokkaido is definitely different than the weather in Okinawa. And it takes days for a typhoon to get from Okinawa all the way up to Hokkaido. So it is quite a large country in that sense. It's basically, it looks like the size of California and might very well be. But when you get here, it feels a lot larger than you think. And I think that has to do with the 47 prefectures and the great amount of diversity in food, in regional dialect, in regional identity. People in Aomori are not people from Akita, for example. And they're right next to each other. The San'in area, that might be an area, but people in Tottori and people in Shimane are different. Definitely not the same. And they would tell you that. Because there are some battles. I remember there was a prime minister who came from Shimane. Tottori hasn't had a prime minister yet. But whenever you have a prime minister, there's a little level of corruption where they will build and give some money more to their home prefecture as a reward. And I remember the story from the Tottori people. They said, so why do you hate Shimane so much? It's like, not hate, but maybe a little bit. But they said that the prime minister that was there at the time, he was like a four-lane highway in Shimane. And when you got to the border of Tottori, very quickly, it became a two-lane highway. Because he didn't invest any of that money into Tottori. He kept it all in Shimane. So there's like this little bit of corruption. There was also a prime minister back in the 80s and 90s. He built the Joetsu Shinkansen to Niigata. Does Niigata need a Shinkansen line? Probably not. They had really fast local express trains. But they— He got the Shinkansen done as a promise to the people in the Joetsu region. And Niigata has this, you know, Shinkansen. Like they only had the Shinkansen to Kanazawa in 2014. But they had the Shinkansen to Niigata decades before. Because of a little bit of corruption. But there's a prefectural identity. That's my point with people inside of Japan. That I think you don't get until you've lived here for a few years and you've traveled around a bit.

00:40:48 John Daub: Alfie. Welcome. Alfie. Alfie? Hello. Thank you. Hello. So I've been considering moving to Japan. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, there's a lag. Sorry. Don't watch off— Please use the Discord if you're asking the question. Don't watch off of YouTube. For all of you too. Okay. Yes. So I have two kids approaching middle school. And I'm a bit apprehensive about hearing the rigors of school life. Juku, etc. I know Leo is pretty young. But imagine you've given him some thought. So how do you feel about the school life in Japan?

00:41:37 John Daub: Thank you. That's a tough one. And I think for, in particular for couples that are non-Japanese living in Japan to enter into Japanese schools. Number one, you must speak Japanese. Because the teachers, you cannot expect them to speak your language. You're going to Japanese school. It's the same in the United States. If you come speak in French, you go to a school in Minnesota, the teacher's not going to speak French. All right. So you can't expect that. So you have to understand Japanese culture. And there's a lot of silly things, rules that you're not going to understand. But you have to go along with them. Because those are the rules. And that doesn't make sense to me. But those are the rules. So after 25 years living in Japan, I think the first few years I might have— And Ide-san has closed the trip. To the bus tour. So if you go to this link right now, you probably can't even get on to it. But if you do, just send me an email if you did want to join. She just closed that link. Crazy. Can you leave it open for five more minutes? If anybody wanted to do it, leave me a comment in the chat in this video. Not in the chat, in the comments in this section. Just a brief update on that. There's still a contact button on Ide-san's website. So if you still want to join, there's a contact. Yeah, contact her directly. And then she'll send you the payment information. But the link to it is probably off to the Google form. But that's okay. You can get in touch with her directly. Probably got a couple more days left. But we have to lock down the hotel. That's why I'm asking. We have 17 people, which is amazing. I didn't think we'd actually get to the threshold where we'd be able to hold this. But we did. So I'm really happy. And I wish we'd held this on different days than a Sunday-Monday. But, you know, this is the day. This is the day of the festival. And this is the day that we had. So we made it work. I'm very apprehensive to enter Leo into a Japanese school. So we are looking at international schools. And I found out that the city of Tokyo will help you subsidize some of the costs of that. International schools are not cheap. They can cost like $30,000 to $40,000 extra a year for kids. And that's a significant cost, in particular good ones. But, you know, the city. Tokyo will subsidize that if you do get into it. And let me also tell you this. Just because there's an international school and they're really expensive. I'm getting the notifications from Ide-san about the Hopi and all the other information now. Because this is the deadline that we posted. Just because there's a school that you like in Tokyo and it's expensive. You might not even get in. Because the spaces are limited. The one school we went to. It's like, how many people do you take every year? 30. 30? What? So the chances. Yeah. So just I noticed this too. I wanted to place. I had a budget of about $2,000 to place an ad for my business before I started YouTube. And that would have gotten me four months. And I wanted to negotiate to get five months. There's 50,000 yen for an ad in this free paper. And the guy came over to my house. And just because I wanted to place an ad and I had the money. He. That didn't mean I was. He was accepted into their company to place the ad. And in the end, he said that he couldn't take the money and place the ad. I was like, what? So there was a first. That was the first like this is 2005. The first eye opening shock of Japanese bureaucracy and rules and the way that they do things. Just because you're qualified and have the money and all this other stuff. You might not even be accepted into what you thought would be. You just pay to play. That's not the case. You have to also be accepted. You have to be accepted to sometimes. And and international schools are sometimes like this. Despite the high prices, there's a demand justifying that high price. That's crazy to me. But that's the market. Right. If there's 30 spots, if there's 30 spots and people are willing to pay $30,000 a year on top of, you know, even though they could send their kids to free school, then that's going to be the price. If not, maybe they'll raise it a little bit more every year to because they can. And that makes a lot of sense. But the downside of the Japanese schools, though, I think there's two sides to look at this. Each school is not the same. So you're going to have different teachers and different levels of adaptability. But they tend to stick to the rules so much so that in my opinion, I'm very scared to let Leo go to Japanese school. And after hearing that, you know, can I made it through the school and she's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think he's going to learn a lot of stuff at home. But Japanese schools do not encourage free thinking at all. It's about memorization. This is the general overall concept that varies between school to school and teacher to teacher. Don't get me wrong. It is like Korea has the same problem. It's almost a corrupt system in the sense that the kids don't ask questions of the teacher because you're not supposed to question the teacher. It's like some I'm not sure why. I used to ask questions and disturb them. I was like, I'm going to ask the teacher all the time. It's my way. I was curious. You don't do that here. If you have a question, you ask another student that's sitting next to you. If they heard it, if you say, could you repeat that again? You would never say that to the teacher. That means you weren't listening. So kids go to something called juku after school to relearn the things that they should have learned in school because they're afraid of asking the questions in the class. Or it helps them understand better the principles that they learned in the school because they didn't have enough time. Yeah. In class to do that, which which blows my mind because these jukus are not cheap. So I wonder, like they probably for decades have had this side business where these teachers are working with the juku, just like the pharmaceutical industry. I don't know where they're trying to get these kids to go in and relearn the stuff from school. So you got kids that are doing club sports afterwards. They do extracurricular activities. And then in the evening, they're going to their scram schools called juku to learn stuff from school. And their kids are exhausted at the end of the day. You know, I don't think it's really healthy, but Japanese kids, that's the style you have to learn. And it's not about what you it's not about what you know. It's about what you can memorize. And a lot of these tests are about memorizing the format of the test and the answers from past tests and being able to regurgitate that. And that's your power. And for kids that can do this, you're going to do well in school. Thus, when you get to college and you have to free think, this is where Japan's maybe some of the issues that they have in leadership or in society might be hurting them with globalization, having to compete with other countries because they don't have those skills to free think. Everything is done by consensus or the rule book that they have. You know, and this, you know, this is this is relevant. But the Netflix had a dramatization of what happened in Fukushima with the meltdown. And you see with Tepco. They are the biggest problem that they had was that they had a rule, a book, and they could not deviate from the book because nobody had the free thinking or the skill to ask their boss what to do besides what was in the book. The manual. Sure. It's outside of the script. Right. And the bosses didn't know what to do either. So they weren't transparent with the national government. And then you saw the prime minister. Right. And the prime minister, Kan, was just frustrated because maybe he can't get that information because no one is telling him honestly. And that drama exposes this goes going all the back to the education system. Don't now don't hold me to every single school. It's not that it's not like that. But there's too many of them in particular in the countryside where I think that they stick to the rules and they don't they don't see that in order to compete globally, they need to have a little bit more free thinking. So that's what I'm scared about with Jeff and the bullying in Japanese school is is on another level too. And I do fear that because he's half that he might be bullied. Yeah. So that's something I worry about too with my kids. But yeah, I suppose maybe international school. They have maybe a wider variety of kids there, maybe less singled out. I think you can try Japanese school, see how they like it. And if they don't, then you can try international school. But it's for a lot of families. It's just out of budget to do international school. But, you know, I can see the benefits by doing it in particular for Leo at this age as he's learning English. I want him to learn English more. I want him to learn more free thinking and I want him to, you know, but if he does go to Japanese school, then that'll he'll be bullied because he is a free thinker, which is crazy because he's asking questions and he's different and he's more analytical in that sense. He'll be bullied because of that. So or because his English is too good. His English is too good. So he's bullied because he speaks English better than everybody else because everybody should be the same. If you're different, you're bullied. And you can choose your battles, I guess. Exactly. So it leads to different lessons for him. And that's why parenting is going to become very important if he does go to Japanese school to tell him it's not his fault and all this other stuff to counter what he learns in school. And some of the teachers encourage this to get in line, you know, learn the Japanese language. This is the Japanese way. This is the way that I learned it when I went to school in 1950, 1980. This is the way you're going to have to learn it. That mentality is still here with some teachers in Japan. I learned it this way. We don't involve evolve. This is the way I learned it. This is the way you'll learn it. And that's very frustrating, I think, because, again, Japan is not a young country. It's an old country. And they don't I don't feel like they change those policies enough. So we'll see, because I'm looking into it. And you're right. I'm quite worried. And I thank you for asking that question. Yeah. You should think about this when you get the chance, John. What? I said you should pick Joji's brain about this when you get the chance, given his experience. I'm not sure Joji is the ideal person to ask. He seems to like Japanese school. And there are some downsides. But I don't know. I think Peter is the one. And Joji. But Joji, of course, has lived it. And I think in a year or so, he'll be more be able to talk more. And I think he'll be able to talk more analytically about it as he can process. He still is just a teen. Milk toast writes in here. Hey, John, hope you and the family is doing well. I just wanted to say thanks for all the live streams and videos. Love the two-part Hokkaido adventure. Been a fan since the OG venue. Really? That's 2013. I was back in junior high school. That is crazy. Some people know me when I also looked quite different. This is 2013. Wow. 10 years. I've been doing only in Japan. Actually 11 if you count my experience before that.

00:53:08 John Daub: And Faisal writes in here. Hello, John. During November, I am booked at Machiya. I love Machiya. In Kanazawa. Three nights and planning to go to Kurobe Gorge. Do you recommend going there? I do. I do in November. Because the autumn foliage will be like a fireworks show. You're in for a treat. I'm also planning. I'm going to Karuizawa. I love Karuizawa, too. That's like the escape for Tokyo. I love Tokyoites in the summer. It's cooler there. Which places do you recommend? I'm a Beatles fan. I don't want to get too much into Karuizawa. I should make a main channel episode on it. But I'm a big Beatles fan. And Yoko Ono is from Karuizawa in Nagano. And as you walk around Karuizawa, you see a lot of pictures of John Lennon. And he used to walk into the bakeries. He used to walk into some of these local businesses that are still in business. And they took photos of him. Because they knew who he was. He was huge. Even in Japan. The Beatles. So I, when I did an NHK show there, I stayed in the room that John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed at. There's a hotel in Karuizawa where you can stay in his room. It's kind of cool. And there's a little bit of memorabilia there, too. But, yeah. That's kind of a neat thing with Karuizawa. There's so many attractions there. They have some good shopping malls. Onsen. There's a vegetable stand that I go to. But a lot of it is local stuff. But it's definitely different than Tokyo. Thanks for asking about that. I think I just saw something that passed here. Faisal, I appreciate it. And I might have missed a couple of other ones before here. How is Otaru during Christmas? Otaru is up in Hokkaido next to Sapporo. I'm not sure. But I think from the pictures that I've seen, it's very festive. It's got more of a European feel to it. So I would say Otaru is going to be more Christmassy than Tokyo. And it's got that small village feel. And it's going to be cold. And I'm pretty sure there's going to be snow up in Otaru. So, yeah. I would say it's a good place to spend Christmas. Although I say get out of Japan because it's very hard for me to feel any Christmas spirit here in the holidays. I started to go— You guys want to get out of Japan? Give me a minute here. I'll tell you my feelings on Christmas in Japan. I don't go home back to the U.S. that often for Christmas. I'll usually— Not as much. And if I stay here for too many years without going back to the U.S., I start to feel a little bit depressed. Because I don't feel the Christmas that I had when I was a kid. I don't feel any of that spirit to it. There's no religious element to it. Not that I'm a religious person. I just feel like it's not there. So, I started going to Europe for Christmas markets. And I felt even more Christmas spirit in those European Christmas markets than I felt back home. Of course, there's no family there. But I really felt it. And that was really— Brought me back out of my little Christmas depression. Because there's a time of year that should be snow with some music. And you feel it. But I don't feel it in Japan. Not with the illumination. It's cool to spend one year here. But you just don't get that same Christmas feeling if you're visiting at that time of year. Shogatsu is different. The New Year holiday. So, Chris writes in here. For someone visiting for a month and wants to travel around with a flexible schedule, how far in advance would you recommend booking each hotel?

00:56:54 John Daub: That's a good question. Look. Most places that are popular. And you know that they're popular because you've probably heard of them. They start taking reservations a month in advance. Sorry. Six months in advance. That's half a year. That means that— That means that the six months plus one day, they won't take a booking for that day. So, the six months— When the six months hit, you better in the morning call them and try to book them. That's what I'm saying. Number two. Sometimes the hotels are not available online. Japanese hotels, they know that they— Look. Booking.com. I don't know the rates that they charge the hotels. But I heard that they're not good for the hotel. So, a lot of hotels don't need to go to Booking.com or Hotels.com or Jalan.net or any of the TripAdvisor.com. They don't need to do that and pay those fees. So, they can just do it off of their website. But they don't do the website very well. So, they just take phone calls. And sometimes they don't even speak English. So, that's when the agencies in your country start to play a factor. And then you end up giving them a cut of what you would pay to the hotels and take their tour, for example. Which is nothing wrong with it. But it's very hard to book Notoya Onsen, Notoya Ryokan in Ginzan Onsen, for example. Or my favorite onsen which is probably Kurokawa Onsen in Oita, Kumamoto Prefecture near Mount Aso. That's maybe my favorite little onsen village down there that not a lot of YouTubers have covered, I don't think. There's some great places around Tokyo, too. But six months in advance. But I would say it makes more sense three months in advance if it's a popular place. If it's not popular, I would say a month to six weeks in advance you should have your hotels booked. And if you're coming here without a hotel reservation, good luck to you. You're still going to be able to find something, but the pickings are slim and it's not going to be like Notoya. It's going to be whatever's left over. And in particular, at high peak seasons like August, you better have booked three months in advance. For autumn season, November, you better have booked six months in advance if you can. Autumn, in certain areas like Yamadera or Ginzan or places up in Miyagi. Fukushima in particular, because the domestic market will book these places six months in advance. And everyone wants to go for the autumn foliage in the countryside. No one wants to stay in the city. It's depressing. So they're booked. Autumn is like high season, more so than the cherry blossoms, I would say. Because you got cherry blossoms in the city, but you don't got that autumn foliage in the city. Not the same. So the autumn is even more popular than the spring. So you better book six months in advance depending on the time of summer. But if you're coming in February, you could probably book a month in advance. Or maybe even the day of, because it's low season. Unless it's a ski resort like Niseko. Then it's high season. I hope that helps.

01:00:06 John Daub: Alright, I'll take one or two more questions. Megan, sorry I muted it. There's a little bit of static. So my question is, I wasn't doing Obon. Like I know most people go to the countryside to visit their families, right? Yes. And they basically go to their ancestral house to do the Obon things. How was the city during Obon? Is it like empty? Yeah, actually if you see the typhoon, there was a typhoon coming. Tokyo was pretty much really relaxed. Of course there were tourists here from international places. But everybody had left. So typically Obon, Golden Week, the cities feel very quiet. So I'm glad that you brought that up. And during Shogatsu in particular, New Year's Day, 1, 2, and 3, the city streets are like empty. Like a zombie town. It's really, in many neighborhoods, it's kind of neat to see that. It is quiet. From what I've read and seen on the internet, I've heard that the countryside is more lively since they have one orderly and festivals. I was wondering, The tourists want to make friends with a group of Japanese people. Would they be able to do the Test of Courage anywhere? Or would they just— Would they not be able to do the Test of Courage? Okay, I think I get the answer. Thanks for the question. The countryside is— It'll feel more crowded than usual. But it's not crowded. But the actual transportation will be crowded. The Shinkansen during Obon was crowded. But when you get there, it doesn't usually feel as crowded. But local festivals like the Kanto Festival in Akita, Akita City will definitely be crowded. Aomori's Nebuta Festival brings in over a million people to watch. It's not a massive city. So Aomori is definitely going to be more crowded. It's definitely going to be more crowded than normal. So I don't think that— I think these are really great— When the cities are more crowded, people are more used to tourists. So it's definitely a good time to try to make Japanese friends. It's much easier to talk to people. And it's much easier— I remember when I first went to the Nebuta Festival, I had a great time making friends. People would drink a lot in particular. And when people had one or two drinks, or more, they typically will have more courage themselves to talk to you. So in that sense, yes, it does work out quite well. But I would say Japanese people in general, they might not look like they want— This is gross generalization. This is just based on my experience. They might not look like they want to talk to you. They don't want a confrontation. But almost, almost, not everybody wants to talk to you. But almost everybody probably is curious about who you are if you go outside of Tokyo, and what you're doing here, and where you're from in particular. And by telling them and talking to them, that'll probably make their day, make their week. And they'll have a story to tell people for the rest of the day. I just met somebody who was visiting from Nepal. And they are visiting a distant relative or something. It's really interesting for them. But they are not going to be the ones that take the first step. The thing that I learned— Well, this goes back to my experience, my 25th year here in Japan. The thing that I learned about Japan is that no one is going to take the first step for you. You can't count on anybody— And this is in life in general. You can't count on everybody taking the step to meet you or make you happy. You have to take that first step more often than people take steps to you. And that makes you successful. That'll make you a successful person in your life. If you learn to take the steps forward to talk to people and not wait for people to take the steps forward to talk to you. Because the person that's taking the step forward to talk to you is probably going to be a more successful person than you are. So if you want to be a successful person, you have to be the one who is taking steps to talk to people. So when you travel, as a solo traveler after college, I was shy to take those steps. But traveling solo forced me to do it or else I would be alone. So I ended up when I went to hostels to talk to people and say, hey guys, would you like to go out to dinner? Let's go get some food. And even though it was a couple, probably on a honeymoon for all I know, sometimes you can go the three of us. And I made some friends from that. So it's a skill set. With Japanese, it's the same. But they might not look like they want to talk to you. But sometimes they let down their guard and then they actually really did want to talk to you. They're just shy. And Japanese are shy. Or they were afraid that they couldn't speak English. Or they were afraid that the miscommunication would cause some trouble. And they didn't want to cause any trouble. Or they don't know what kind of a person you are. Maybe you're an angry person because sometimes there's misconceptions of what foreigners are in the Japanese media. Sometimes not misconceptions. But there's a little bit of fear with that too. So you have to think about what's going on in the mind of the person that you're going to be talking to. And you have to approach it from that. The biggest skill that I learned, well, I knew this stuff. But the biggest skill that I kind of could, not perfect, but work on the most, was learning what it's like to be in someone else's shoes by being an expat. Because there's not a lot of people that are like me. And if you want to relate to people and be able to make friends here, you're going to have to step into their shoes, who are Japanese, and kind of understand what's going on in their mind. And once you do that, it makes it a lot easier for you to learn and talk to and make new friends. Just like our good friend here, Michael Sassano. How you doing, Michael? I saw that. He chimed in here just in case you stepped out for a snack. That's my lunch money, buddy. I appreciate it. Aloha. Hope you guys are doing well.

01:07:17 John Daub: I'll take one more question from the chat. I think we have somebody who raised their hand. And then we'll close this audience chat here. We have Five Ami. How you doing? Hello. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Gotcha. I just wanted to say thank you for all the videos you've done. I've been following for a little bit now. And I really appreciate them. Thank you. Where are you watching from? I'm from California. Okay. So I had a few questions. Well, really mostly just one. Me and my wife are going to Tokyo in February of next year. And we're going to be going down to Osaka through the Shinkansen. I was wondering about baggages, though. Is there a fee for a lot of baggages? Or is there a service I can use? Is there a way to transport them from Tokyo to Osaka?

01:08:12 John Daub: Okay. So the first thing I think you can actually send it by Takkyubin. If you go to the hotel lobby, bring your suitcase down. They'll put a tag on it. And overnight it'll be sent to Osaka and probably be waiting for you when you check in. So then you don't have to deal with a big bag at all. That's an option. I think it's about 2,000 yen per bag or something like that. It just depends on the size of it. They have a tape measure that'll measure the total size of it. And the tape measure color changes as it exceeds that size. So then you know how much it costs based on the size of it. That's one option. The other one is the Shinkansen now does not have— If your bag is considered oversize, Shinkansen does not have a lot of places for oversize. In fact, I might have a picture. Hold on. A picture or video of what it looks like above on the Shinkansen. I took it when I was coming off the Shinkansen a couple of days ago. Where is it? Is it here? Oh, here it is. I'm going to bring it up here as we talk so you can see this on the top. That's the luggage space for above the Shinkansen. I think I can bring it up bigger here. It's about the same as an airplane maybe. A little bit more perhaps than an airplane. You don't have to shove it into a small hole. But if you can get it up there, that's really good. Oversize luggages, people tend to put it by their knees. But if you're a big person over 180 centimeters tall or six feet tall, it's really hard to put your legs, put a bag in front of your legs because then you can't stretch it out at all. You can't have the bags in the aisle. But there's enough space to get a large wheel suitcase into there. But it creates a problem with other passengers trying to get off. So I kind of recommend against that. And it adds a lot of stress to your trip to take big bags with you, which is why I tell everybody to pack light, and you'll enjoy your trip more. But that's just me. Some people need to have everything with them. With that said, there's no charge for oversized bags. You just have to get a reservation for a place for it before you get on that train. And you can do that at the ticket window. And there's actually, you can get an oversized bag ticket at the vending machines if you have a JR rail pass. You just have to get that, and it'll tell you where you can put your oversized baggage. Because the space is large, and the cars are limited, you need a reservation for oversized bags. And then you'll have a place to put it when you enter the car. But in general, oversized bags, yeah, don't bring them if you can avoid it, because they just create problems, not just on the Shinkansen, just getting around a country that's not meant for that. Unless you're driving a rent-a-car everywhere. And in that case, I don't even know if an oversized bag would even fit in the rent-a-car. You're going to need to get like a RAV4. Just something. Do you have a follow-up on that?

01:11:12 John Daub: Not so much a follow-up, it's kind of a separate question, if you have time for it. Sure. So, is there any websites you know that are good for making pen pals with people in Japan? I'd like to share and learn about their culture, as well as share culture from America with someone from Japan.

01:11:34 John Daub: That's a good question. I was just at a high school recently, on an episode I'm working on with school uniforms, and I was talking with them about this. And they do have like sister schools in other countries. So they do have these pen pal partnerships. But in terms of like general people, I'm not really sure. That would be really cool, because there's a lot of grannies out there that have a lot of free time that would probably, that probably speak English, and that might be fun to them, because you don't get a lot of snail mail anymore. But I don't, to be honest with you, I don't know a lot about that. But you know, we do have this Discord server, and I know that that's something that you could ask here. People might be able to help. In fact, if you know anything like making pen pals, if you can, leave it in the comments or in the live chat. I appreciate it to help you out with that, because I don't know much about that anymore. I used to have pen pals with people that I met when I was traveling, when I was backpacking. This was before, we didn't have Facebook when I was backpacking in 1996 to 2004. These eight years, I went to 72 countries and backpacked quite a bit and met a lot of other travelers. And we kept in touch with snail mail, and I still have their addresses. So I should probably write them a letter. But since the advent of the internet, I haven't kept in touch with stuff like that. So I'm not sure.

01:13:05 John Daub: Okay, well, thank you for your time, and thanks for answering my questions. Thank you. Awesome. John had Friendster, MySpace. I never had MySpace. I went straight into Facebook. And it was, Facebook was by invitation only. So I had to have somebody invite me in to be on Facebook in 2008. And those were the days. I don't think I ever did MySpace, seriously. And yeah, I came up with America Online. I was, I was one of the first people to use email. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I was using email in 1992. All right? You didn't hear about email in 1992. It was literally, this is before America Online, I think. Email was basically college to college networks with Eudora, Popmail and text base. It was initially all text base. And the only person I could email was my friends, my geeky friends who I love. They went to, Cornell and the other went to University of Chicago. And I went to Ohio State. And we had really big tech departments at all three of these schools. And we were able to do email back and forth. We were geeks. And we were the first people at the university to do email, which is crazy. You know? So that was cool. Eudora Mail. Going back to the early 90s. Yeah. This was like a separate program. It wasn't even a net-based program. I think it was weird. Like a DOS program or something. I can't remember. 31 years ago. Yeah. And then I was using Hotmail. A couple years later, we had more HTML Geocities and sites like this where you could do HTML websites. So I would keep my travel stuff on an HTML website on Geocities, which is now defunct. And then, this is really real history. And in 1995, I think I got my first Hotmail account. And I was then able to, I'm sorry, 1996. And I was able to keep in touch while backpacking with people via Hotmail. But they had a data limit on there. So I lost a lot of those messages because you can't go past, it was like 10 megabytes or something. So my Hotmail, I lost a lot of old messages from 1996 or something. And that's sad. But, you know, now you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore.

01:15:41 John Daub: All right. I appreciate it, everybody. I'm going to check really quickly to see if we had any extra questions on our Patreon. I want to say thank you. Hold on a second. I can show you this month's. This month's. Yeah, so I've been doing this for five years now. I think it was the first one ever with a postcard club on Patreon. I don't know. But this is this month's postcard. And this is, they're climbing the Great Buddha at Nara, which is one of the big attractions of Japan. On this day, every year, August 7th, they clean the Buddha. And this is a main channel, but it's probably coming early next month. This is that's this month's postcard. And I'll put a stamp on the back for you. There's a nice picture of Todaiji on there. This is my friend Toyo-san. And this is the postcard from last month. He's got a, he does have a cigarette in his mouth while he's blowtorching, flame throwing fish. This is the vending machine restaurant. Take him with a 360 camera so you can see them all. Vending machine corner of Sagamihara, which is super cool. Deppo's Castle, Ameyoko. This is one of my favorite markets. This is the sunset view from Nijima, which is an island out in the Pacific and a free onsen. This is a hot spring bath overlooking the Pacific Ocean at sunset. And that other person is Kanai. And that was our, that was a postcard. Here's one of the Shinkansen speeding past Mount Fuji on the bridge at Fuji City. I spent some time there and took a picture. Here's Shibuya during the pandemic. It's empty and pretty cool. And this is, I said thank you to everybody when I got my 1 million subscriber award for the main channel. And that's what the postcard for that looks like. And I was, I got the award from Hikakin, who was the, I think number two in subscribers in Japan. But that was really cool to see. I was able to go on the stage and then get a postcard, get my award from him. He actually re-handed me the award because I'd gotten it a few months earlier. But to go, I was the first foreigner to go to the Japan fan fest, YouTube fan fest. That was a cool experience. But that's the Postcard Club. And I do it every month and it helps to support the channel. And I want to say thank you to the Postcard Club members. If you order one now, if you join, I will send it out today from Tokyo. And it'll come probably in a week or so. That's about all that I had to say. If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments below. I'm really thankful for all of the support over the years through the members here. If you guys are, you know, a member of Only Japan, you have access to really cool emoji like that one that I just posted of me with, needing a haircut. So, you know, this is all, all, very much appreciated. I'm gonna, I'm just looking back to see. Okay, I got a couple more questions from Patreon supporters. Chris Jones writes in here, if much of my image of Japan is based on a slice of life anime, how does actually being there match up?

01:19:30 John Daub: Well, Chris, the only way to find out is to come to Japan and learn for yourself. I think it doesn't, but I'm not a big anime fan. But I will say that for fans of anime, seeing high school kids, in uniforms, going to certain sites, seeing the trains going by, or slice of rural Japan, can make you feel that anime spirit. Because I believe that the animators, anime artists, very much want to encompass the reality of Japanese everyday life, which is fascinating to me too. But I don't, I don't read a lot of anime, but you will see that it is, I'm not sure, but I would say it's, there's certain parts of Japan, a lot of it really does, and certain parts are not. In a crowded train, when I'm on a crowded train at rush hour, I do not feel any love whatsoever, or any images of anime. I feel, get me off this train. It's true.

01:20:31 John Daub: Michael Sano is here. Aloha with the US dollar being so strong against the yen. Have you noticed prices of popular items like konbini and street food have increased? Street food recently, and you know how you can tell, Michael, because they have taken a marker, and they've erased four, and they wrote a five. That's how you could tell. They just basically raised everything 100 yen. Many of the shops. Convenience store food, I think it's gone up a little bit, but they have sales that keep the prices low. So what they've done is they've raised the prices on many items, and then added sales. So you can't feel it, but it gets the consumer ready for when the sales are finished. It's so smart. They're so smart. So like an onigiri could be 100 yen, 150 yen, but they have a 30 yen sale. So it's the same price as it was before the price increase. But after the sale, people now know that it costs 150 yen for the onigiri. So they don't feel it at first, but they feel it when the sales are over. So that's what I've noticed at the convenience stores. But prices, it does feel like inflation has impacted us. I'm going to leave it to you with this. And this is a question that it seems to be consistent with people asking. As a foreigner, can I rent a house for a month in Tokyo? You can. It's called Airbnb. You can try. Inflation is starting to feel it in Japan. It's not the same as in the US, but we're starting to feel it. Gasoline prices are at a high right now. It's quite expensive. So renting a car is also the prices for the rental cars, I noticed, have gone up a little bit because it's more expensive to make the cars too. I think because of inflation, businesses have to start to give raises to workers. So when they start to give raises to workers, they're going to have to pay more. So they're starting to collect that money in advance to make sure that the businesses are going to be okay by raising prices. If they see a 10% decrease in business as a result of raising the price, you know, like 8%, then they're going to be in a deficit and obviously they can't give workers more money. So this is still like a trial and error thing because inflation is weird in Japan. We're not used to it. We've had deflation for a long time. So the prices are going up and you're going to feel it. But because the yen is weak, you're not going to feel it as much. But for those that came in November of 2022 and spring of 2023, you got a cheaper price for the goods inside of Japan than what you're going to get in 2024. You also got better exchange rates than what's going to be in 2024. I don't know what's going to be the exchange rate then. So that's why I said maybe consider changing your money now. Consider it. It's a gamble because you don't know if it's going to be 200 yen to the dollar. I seriously doubt it because then Japan would be paying an arm and a leg for services that they import. With that said, Sony is doing a killing, man, with international business. They're bringing in dollars. And there's a ton of Japanese businesses that are doing wonderful. Uniqlo, which is a retail business, is doing great making dollars in the United States right now. Bringing that into Japan. They're flush, right? But they also need to pay for the stuff for the clothes to make. And that costs more. But the weak yen is actually a good thing for them abroad. You're starting to see this. But a lot of this stuff is passed on to tourists. I agree that the Japan Rail Pass, JR Pass, I think that JR, I can't confirm this, but I get a feeling that the weak yen played a part in raising the price of the JR Rail Pass. There were many factors. But that probably was one of them. Like, oh wait, tourists getting their 30% cheaper now to go to Japan? Well, that's not fair. Because people like me have to pay full price. And I don't have any sympathy for you because you have to pay more for your pass. But, you know, Japanese have to pay full price. So, hey, you're still getting a pretty good deal. And I think if you travel a lot, it works out. But you're going to feel it more in 2024. And if you come to Japan then, it is not going to be, it's still going to be cheap. But the prices here will be maybe 10% higher. And you're going to feel it in that sense. Maybe going out to eat. Also, the supply is lower. If tourism continues to be really high in 2024 to Japan, and I expect it to be, Chinese tourists are starting to return from last month. Not at the numbers that they're going to return before the pandemic. Because China has its own recession right now. And they have their own demographic problems. So they're not traveling. I don't think China will be able to travel like they did before the pandemic. There might be some revenge travel. But I think that in the end, Japan is going to have more tourists next year than it did in 2019 before the pandemic, which means like 35 million tourists. And there's going to be a supply, issue where the demand is more than the supply. What happens? They raise the prices because number one, they can. And number two, they also have to offset the costs that they have. And that hurts people like me because we have to pay full price on things like JR Rail Pass. Again, like I have no pity for you complaining. Here's, all right, here's, I think I got, I think I might've gotten this one question here. Hold on. I got a lot of comments here. Some of them I didn't really use about the buses. Please know that I do read the comments. I don't particularly respond to troll stuff. Like, thoughts on staying in Kichijoji? I think it's a great place to stay, but it's more residential than it is. So you might not find as many hotels, but if you can stay in a place that has so many really wonderful restaurants, I think that that's pretty awesome. You know, you're also close to the Ghibli Museum. I think you can see them in places like that. So I, and by the way, this is probably my favorite livestream, if you haven't seen it, of the last couple of months where I went to the coffee town and I just walked around talking with people and drinking coffee and stuff. And this is a lot of fun. So if you haven't seen this livestream, probably check it out. This is a place, a neighborhood, that is off the beaten path that you need to know about, Kiyosumi-Shirakawa. And you'll discover, basically discover Japan in this neighborhood. It's Tokyo in here. So put that on your map and check out that livestream. But the question that I get the most, and this is the one that I'm going to end on, it's like, why is Japan hurting itself by raising taxes, like the hotel tax? Why is Japan, I'm pretty sure I wrote this, I got this one here. Maybe I didn't. Hold on, is this the one? Oh, this is the one on tourism. And then this one here. Oh, this one. Why is there an additional tax on hotels in Asia? In Australia, it's $100 a night, if you pay $100 a night, no random taxes on arrival. And other questions like this. Basically, why is Japan hurting itself by raising the prices? Why would they do that? Why would they raise the price of the JR Rail Pass? Why would they, like, I don't want to go to Japan now. All right, number one, the people that say that probably are still going to come to Japan. Be honest with you. I'd say just a small percentage of those people are not going to be coming because of that. The majority are still going to come because even if the price is raised. That's number one. All right, they know that now. Number two, during the pandemic, the entire world said that they didn't want to come to Japan anymore because Japan's entry policies were so bad. Japan is off my list forever. Yeah, I got all those. I got a ton of comments like that. Guess what? Japan didn't, Japan got, didn't really care too much. I think the numbers show that January to June, those people who were so frustrated and upset came back, or at least they're planning to. So there's that. So there's always a shock. And I can, I understand your frustration and everybody getting emotional. But come on, you're still going to come because it's an amazing country. And I think it's still really cheap with the strong dollar, a strong dollar and the weak yen for most people. If you're coming from Indonesia, you know, or India or countries where the currency is not that much stronger, then I, I feel, you know, I'm not that happy. But if you're coming from the US, I have no pity either because you guys are getting a pretty good deal. Strong dollar. Yeah. Hotel prices are definitely up as a result of tourism, supply and demand. Japan is not doing it to hurt themselves. They're doing it because they're smart. They know how the system works better than they did 10 years ago when they had the tourism boom. And they know that if they raise the prices of the hotel, they're still going to be full because they're popular and they're good hotels and they're worth it. They're worth staying in. And the price raise, probably, it was cheaper, it was too cheap before and now it's at the standards of everywhere else in the Western world. So, I don't think Japan is hurting themselves. I think they're still going to have 35 or 40 million tourists next year and break records despite it. And if you don't want to come to Japan as a result of them raising prices, then I think that that's your option. You can go to Thailand. I love Thailand, but prices are raising, rising there. So, prices are rising everywhere. And it's not Japan's job. It's not JR's job to be the ambassadors for Japan. They're private business made to make money. All right. And they were in the red, which means making minus money for a very long time. But they didn't— I got so much respect for Japan Rail. They didn't really lay off any workers despite the fact that they had all this trouble. They just took the deficit. And now that they need the workers, JR is in probably a better state than a lot of other companies. So, I got a lot of respect for them. They just— They asked some workers to take a vacation or, you know, to take a hiatus or something. Early retirement, they asked. So, they got people to do that. But they did it in a really good way for the most part. But now they're automating the trains. So, they're probably going to need less and less workers. But during the pandemic, they were in the deficit. So, I don't mind them making— You know, doing the right thing then as much as they could. I don't know everything that happened with Japan Rail over the time. But it's still a company that I have a lot of respect for because they're basically a monopoly with the Shinkansen. And they could charge a lot more than they do anyways. By the way, Shinkansen price ticket for me, the Shinkansen, they might raise the prices in October. But they're not— They announced it in advance for tourists. All right? They announced in advance that they're raising the price of the JR Rail Pass. They don't announce in advance that they're raising the prices for us. So, I want you to think about how nice that they are to tourists. All right? At least they gave you a heads up so you could plan your trip accordingly. I don't know if I have to pay more in October. And there's a high possibility that if they raise the prices in October 1st for you, they're doing it for us and just not telling us yet. All right? So, there you go. But it's going to cost more 2024. No question about it. Any more questions? Like, I'm going to have to get back to work. But if you have something, I'm very happy to answer one more.

01:32:47 John Daub: How is Hokkaido during mid-July? Cooler. If you want to know, frog head, you want to know, go to the last video I uploaded, which is 99% of the tourists don't ever come here. I think it was something like that. That's Hokkaido in July. All right? And you can see. You can see.

01:33:11 John Daub: All right. There you go. I gotta get back to work. I'm editing. And now I'm going to eat lunch. Thank you, Michael, for lunch. Hi, John. Do you think for someone who just drive a car in the U.S. to be able to drive in Tokyo? I think the question just went away. I don't know. But if you're coming from the U.S., you're driving on the other side of the road, there is a book that I would recommend that you get. There's a book that tells you it's called Rules of the Road by J.A.F. And hold on a second. You see this? It's called Rules of the Road. And this book, it's got like an anime character on the front. It's written in different languages, too. Chinese. Get this book before you drive in Japan because you really should know. I think it's on Amazon in the U.S. You should really know the Rules of the Road before you come to Japan. It's revised quite a bit. It's 1400 yen. I think you'd even get a Kindle version. And you can get a Kindle version. You can use Amazon.co.jp. You just have to make a new account for it. But it makes a lot of sense to learn the rules of driving here before you do because it is different. And I want you to be safe. But you'll be rewarded by driving here because there's so many attractions that you can't see unless you have a car. Yeah. There you go. 25 years of experience living in Japan. I've lived in 16 different prefectures. I've been to all 47 prefectures. Almost four times. So that's the experience that you get here. If you do subscribe, I really appreciate it. And join the memberships. It's 99 cents a month. And it really helps the channel or the postcard club which I will send to you from Tokyo. It's nice to get something in the mail that is not a bill. Get something from me from Japan to you. Like this. I'm handing it to you. Like that. All right, everybody. See you again. Another livestream tomorrow. I'm thinking about going to Akihabara. But if you have some more ideas, let me know. I want to know from you. See you.