speakers: UNKNOWN: John Daub

00:00:00 John Daub: Ah, it's raining in Ginza. This is a wonderful time to be in Tokyo. How you doing everybody? I thought I would go live and bring you some of the really good news that's coming out of Japan this week, which kind of surprised me. It came sooner than I thought, but Japan has exceeded the numbers of tourists here.

00:00:25 John Daub: Here, when you compare it to 2019, which was the year before you know what, when everything in the world kind of went sour, and travel to Japan was pretty much ended, all of a sudden, those numbers are way back up, and that is such a good thing.

00:00:45 John Daub: I'm in Ginza today. I wanted to go to Asakusa, but it's just not a nice day, and this is my backyard, and tourists are here, but not a lot of people are here. And the people are out anyways, which makes it, I don't know, it's just a crummy day. Didn't Guns N' Roses sing about something about rain in November? Well, this is one of those days. I have to be honest with you, I'm not liking it at all.

00:01:35 John Daub: It's one hand with the umbrella, the other hand with this. Alright so let's get into it. As Andrew reminds me, November rain is about divorce. Well I feel very divorced from summer right now and it's really a horrible feeling. You're right about that. So I'm going to take you around and show you a little bit about Tokyo in the rain but before that I want to go over this really quickly because I think it was a pretty big news here.

00:02:14 John Daub: Japan likes to compare itself with other countries in the West. Everybody knows that it's just something that they take pride in because I think that Japan sometimes feels inferior to the West sometimes. I don't know why I think it's just the older politicians perhaps or you know we talked about this like a level of shame that people have they don't really like this. I don't know I don't want to get into it too much but Japan cares too much what they think. The outside world thinks of it and this kind of stuff makes the news all the time.

00:02:46 John Daub: So let's go over it. I thought it was pretty unique. Now tourism in 2020, 2021, 2022 was abysmal and over the last in particular six months since the cherry blossoms and I'm shouting because it is way louder. Every single car going by I can't even hear myself. Every car going by is tracking the water through the streets.

00:03:09 John Daub: It's starting in October the number of tourists visiting exceeded that in 2019 which was I believe a record. So we're record-breaking now in terms of tourism Japan. I'm gonna go into the numbers of this but the article from Kyoto news which has an awesome English news site here. Japan's an estimated 2.5 million foreign visitors in October up 0.8% from the same month in 2019. That's crazy. The first time the monthly figures had surpassed levels from before the you know what. I don't like to say it because you don't want to jinx it.

00:03:59 John Daub: What makes this really amazing is the fact that the numbers aren't coming from China. And it was China that was bringing in a lot of packaged tourists in the past. It's not them. It's something else. The increase from Asia, Australia, and parts of Europe and North America in particular in an environment of a weekend resumed airline services contributed to the return.

00:04:13 John Daub: Arrivals from January to October totaled almost 20 million on pace to read 25, which is really amazing because we had a slow start. Most arrivals reporting this month came from South Korea. Warming relationships between the two countries more than tripled compared to the figure in 2020. Korea have been really warming up thankfully. And that's led to tourism on both sides. It's not just one way.

00:04:39 John Daub: Tourism from China is also in the increase but not even that. It's not even near the levels that it was in 2019 for better or for worse. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, however, anticipates flights connecting the two neighbors from China to Japan to increase. So tourism is just going to be off the charts in 2024.

00:05:03 John Daub: I thought this was really interesting. And Common Rider writes in here, it's raining here in Yokohama. Japan's raining everywhere. Currently waiting for my train with my niece, Hega. Hega, how you guys doing? You're probably going to go right by me, you guys. It'd be nice to catch up with you. Yesterday, the weather was so much better. I was here. Do you guys know where this is? If you want to get out of the rain after this livestream, check out the one. It's very short from yesterday. This is from Yamadera in Yamagata, where I was just like 12 hours ago, it seems like.

00:05:36 John Daub: Look at the view from the platform. It's just so amazing with autumn is past its peak now. But it's still looking pretty good. Looking down on the town of Yamadera in Yamagata Prefecture. It's just stunning. And I'm making a video on this as well. So I hope to get it up just maybe right after Thanksgiving. Hopefully before December, I'll do my best here. But there's nobody there. And it was very windy. But the wind wasn't too bad through the editing software.

00:06:22 John Daub: There's a train station. So it's a very quick walk from Yamadera station to the actual temple, which is just so beautiful. So you might want to check that out as well. Let's show some of the numbers here, because I think it's a numbers game, right? I love these charts. Now I put the link. I'm over here. I put the link to the JNTO site where you can get all these charts and stuff for those that are interested in it. It's in the link. A link is in the description, OK? So you can check it out on your own time.

00:06:46 John Daub: But you can see here, Korea. It makes up the vast majority of tourists to Japan. It's not China. Taiwan has more visitors than China does to Japan. And this is all October data. Now one thing that struck me was that North America, in particular the United States, is such a small part of it. I think there's more people coming from Taiwan than the US. A lot of that might have to do with just flights. Everything is getting more expensive. Even though that the yen is weak. And the dollar is strong. It's still not bringing in a lot of people from the US like I thought it would.

00:07:26 John Daub: You have more people coming from the neighboring countries. And those are the ones that are fueling it. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore. And the neighbors make up like 70% of tourism here. Europe and the West make up a very small part of it. I'm actually impressed with Singapore. It's not a big country. But the amount of travel between the two countries, and I met a ton of people from Singapore yesterday as well, at Yamadera, wanting to see the autumn colors. Singapore is not famous for its autumn. Or winter for that matter.

00:08:02 John Daub: We got a chance to see that. That's the bell in the distance at Wako striking 12. It's lunchtime. Or is it 11? I don't even know what time it is. That's 12. So these kinds of charts are super interesting to me. They also have this here. Now, when you break down tourism from 2019, you can see the colors that they did. 2019 was a booming year. The whole year was so strong with tourism. You had numbers surpassing 3 million tourists in one month. There's a lot of countries that don't get that. I mean, there's a lot of countries that don't even have 3 million people.

00:08:42 John Daub: But the tourism numbers continued to grow. And it was a testament to Japan's hard work in promoting itself. And maybe a little pat on my shoulder, because I think YouTubers that are promoting the beauty of Japan at that time were doing a pretty good job. They did a pretty good job. And then you can see 2020 looks abysmal. I like that word. It's just like January was good. February, eh. March, bad. Tribute to Joey. And then the rest of the year, it's like nobody was coming. I don't know how those people got in. And then it's 2021. Whole year was bad. 2021 was worse than 2020.

00:09:20 John Daub: And then 2022, you see, from October, the trickle as the quarantining started to get, they started to get rid of that quarantining and they made the process to get into a lot easier. And then 2023 started off really tepid and then got stronger and stronger. And we're going to finish 2023 with more tourists than we did in 2019 at the end of the year. I got a feeling about this. A lot of people are coming for the holidays here. You know, people have been shut up. They shut in. They don't want to stay at home. They want to travel. The weekend is also a contributing factor leading not a lot of people from the U.S. and Canada and Australia and the West, but enough that it's way more than 2019.

00:10:08 John Daub: So that's good. We're still on pace. So I think they're going to have 25 million, which exceeds my expectations. All right, let's take a look at this really quickly. If you look at the U.S. and Canada, I'll put it right on my face so I'm censored. Most tourists came at the cherry blossoms. Do you see that? And then the numbers have kind of, after the summer, kind of slugged off a little bit. But you can see the U.S. hasn't even had a quarter of a million visitors. So it's not a lot of people coming here to Japan from America. What's wrong, America?

00:10:44 John Daub: All right, forget Europe. Japan's way, way nicer. And Europeans are probably saying, yes, please, tourists, go there. We have tourists. But not too many. Thank you, Europe. Maybe not. Because I love to travel to Europe as well. But USA has 150,000 so far this year. Probably maybe, well, we'll get about 200,000 perhaps. And from Canada, maybe 50,000 for the year. But after the cherry blossoms, the numbers go up. So this is what is really important.

00:11:18 John Daub: Yeah? Cherry blossoms are not a great time to come to Japan. It's not a great time to come to Japan. Why? Because everybody's coming to Japan to see the cherry blossoms. And it is a bunch of white flowers. Yeah, it's beautiful. But if you're coming here to see more than just the blossoms, there's better times of the year. Yesterday, I had Yamadera to myself after, before 10 a.m. and after 3 p.m., there was almost nobody around Yamadera. And it was just amazing. It really was. Especially at sunset when the light was coming into the platform. I didn't expect that.

00:12:00 John Daub: In the winter, the sun travels in a different trajectory than it does in the spring and the fall and the summer. So the sun's a little bit different on the horizon. And it was just perfect. The best time was after 3.30 at Yamadera because this warm light came in through there. And it wasn't bright on the colors around. And it was just stunning. Yeah? All right, I want to show you some other stuff here. We've got more data. This is all about the data today.

00:12:21 John Daub: This is surprising. I think right now, there are more visitors from Hong Kong than there are from China. And JNTO still separates this data. You can see here for Hong Kong, not a lot of people came in the spring because I think they still had something of a pandemic issue. But as the summer wore on, it got a lot easier to travel and flights started to increase. But September was a pretty weak month for everybody. Just summer travel ended. That's when you should travel to Japan. Just look at the numbers here. As soon as summer is over, actually, summer wasn't that good for some of these countries too. Thailand and Singapore, they're both pretty strong this year, but the numbers seem to be going down here.

00:13:04 John Daub: This is also interesting, the differences between India and the United Kingdom. India has got the most people in the world, but so few Indians are visiting Japan. Look at this. This is where Japan is going to make some massive gains. They need to increase flights from India. And appeal to Indians a little bit stronger. And I know that tourism numbers are going to get to like 40, 50 million in the future. And the United Kingdom is, it's growing, but it's still like 30,000 the whole, during this whole period. It doesn't sound like a lot of people.

00:13:41 John Daub: So I'm a little bit surprised that there's so few from the United Kingdom. Come on, what's going on here? I came in September right in Rock, but it was brutally hot and humid in Osaka. I think if you come after around September 10th, 15th, it's a little bit better. The humidity dies down, I'll be honest. If you thought that was hot, you should come in July and August. It's even hotter. Alright. The humidity noticeably died down in September. Like September 3rd, I could tell. Ryan C., John, thanks for keeping us up to date. Thank you. I love being out here. It's better than, you know, staying inside.

00:14:24 John Daub: Let's see what else we got here. So here are Japan's neighbors. This is where the power comes from. Korea and Japan, they are so... They really need each other. Not just in tourism, but in business. And if Japan and Korea and the neighbors too, I'm talking like the Philippines and Vietnam and all the other countries around here, work together better and put the... Which is... It's a hard thing to do, but put World War II, which is 78 years ago, away. A little bit. And start to look to the future. Japan's an ally. So many amazing things could be done.

00:15:00 John Daub: But you look at the synergy that Japan and Korea have, and it's the other way as well. Japanese love to go to Korea as well. So there's a lot of love there, but it's just... The numbers changed this year based on the fact that the relationship is warming up. And, you know, stuff from World War II is so toxic. The young people were getting into it, and I think that that's wrong. Older people should step up in it. But, you know, for me, I don't think unless you live here, you really get it though. So it's gonna be different. But I see it from a third eye, a third party, and that's the most important way because sometimes we're blinded by the things right in front of us. Tunnel vision, maybe.

00:15:50 John Daub: But if Japan and Korea could put the stuff into the past and start to look to the future, I think anything is possible. It's just so exciting. But what is so interesting is Taiwan here. It's like ten times more than China. That little island, which is so powerful, is... The visitors from Taiwan are coming. So they break down China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Whether you think it's all one country or not, whatever you get to the politics of it, this is JNTO's data. And Taiwan is... Well, actually, I said Taiwan. It's not ten times more. It's more than China, I should say. But it's still extraordinary that Taiwan has more visitors than China.

00:16:29 John Daub: I think that's gonna change pretty quickly, though, in 2024. Yeah. You guys can talk about the politics behind it. I'm not gonna get into it. I got friends in both places. I got friends in low places. I had to say it. Now everyone's thinking of that song when you go back to college and you're at a cheap bar. They played that song. It used to be Nickel Pitcher Night at Not Al's on campus in Columbus. And you know it was time to buy a new pitcher when they started playing. I got friends in low places. Oh. How do they make money? Nickel pitcher. I think it was just kegs of beer that expired or something. It was a nickel. And I wasn't even old enough to drink. And somehow I got a pitcher. I never drank it. I was mostly giving it away. Whoring.

00:17:31 John Daub: If you haven't already seen it, definitely check out the Samurai Racing. And this one will definitely make you see Hiroshima in a new way. Add a lot of value to your trip if you get to understand more of the background. This is a story, a heartfelt story, that I think you guys are both gonna, y'all are gonna love. You know, I want you to feel emotion when you watch an Only Japan video. The Blue Bandit is here. Visited Japan twice. Going there in a week. Seeing the stats is wow. Hello from Singapore. How you doing? We have an amazing community from Singapore. When I went there, we had over a hundred people at the meetup on Sentosa Island. And that was like six years ago. So we're due back for another visit.

00:18:18 John Daub: Today we're in Ginza. This is now Wako, Yonshome, where those bells were ringing in the past 15 minutes. And you can see they're starting to get ready for Christmas. And there's kind of a smell of roasted chestnuts in the air. Which is quite nice.

00:18:41 John Daub: This building is under construction. Do you remember the spiral building? I forget the, was it Toshiba? Had an ad on the top of it. They're gonna redo it and it's gonna look like that. It's gonna, I believe, I haven't got a lot of news on it. It was kind of a shock to see it under construction. But it looks like it's gonna be really stunning when it opens up again. But Yonshome definitely has changed. Yonshome is the big intersection here in Ginza. These lights are always up. But you're starting to feel a little bit of Christmas in the air. And I like that. I like it a lot.

00:19:21 John Daub: Lynn is here from Singapore. Buy yourself a cup of something warm. Let's see what we can find. Probably not too much around here inside. I gotta go inside.

00:20:23 John Daub: Yeah, they still do this. They still do that. Don't knock it until you try it. I haven't tried it. I've never done the Mario Kart. I don't think I have. I would remember if I did. I'd remember if I did. Wako threw an umbrella. It's just not as attractive.

00:21:07 John Daub: Alright, looking back at the intersection, you can see there are... It's not a beautiful day, is it? I don't mind it too much. It's kind of nice to be outside anyways. So I was here... Why is this such a famous street? So I was in Kyoto a few weeks ago, and I was surprised that there weren't that many tourists. It really did simmer down. This was in October. And I could tell that the tourists from the summer, the boom was over. And you can see here as well, usually the street is just packed, but there weren't that many tourists. And I can appreciate that. Kyoto, from the cherry blossoms till around August, was just super crowded. And it's still quite crowded, but not nearly at the same levels as this summer.

00:22:14 John Daub: So that's kind of a good... That's some good news here. This is Ninenzaka from back then. You can see... Yeah, you can still move around, okay. Not quite the same as before. I've crossed the street, and there's a view looking back onto Ginza Yonshome. And the construction on this building here, it's going to be really nice when it's done. They didn't really change it since the bubble period, so it was certainly time for an upgrade.

00:22:48 John Daub: All right, let's go check out that Nissan building and see what cars they got. It was nice to see my friend Peter dropped his Tokyo Motor Show video. He always does an impressive job with that.

00:23:07 John Daub: Wow. This is not a day to drive in a convertible, but it just reminds me of the bed that... What was that Mike Myers movie? Austin Powers. Instead of Austin Powers, you've got a car. It is a nice looking car. And they got some concept cars in there. So it's kind of cool to see what's going on in there. There's a cafe up there as well. All right, let's walk down the street. It's getting darker. Do a little walkabout. Talk some more about the numbers here.

00:23:57 John Daub: Ginza in 2019, I made this comment that I couldn't really hear much Japanese in Ginza. You'd walk the streets and you'd hear Chinese, which made it feel really unique. It sounded like Orchard Road in Singapore or Beijing or Taipei. It was just mostly Chinese. I'm not always sure where the tourists are coming from. Just because someone is speaking in Cantonese or Mandarin, it doesn't mean that they're coming from China. Right? They're coming from mainland China. So that's one of the, you know, you have to be careful with that.

00:24:37 John Daub: But the buses, which you see right here, would stop, let off tourists, and they would pick them up at the end of the street as they went through all of the Gucci, Bvlgari, Coach, all the big brand names, Junicolo, brand name for people who don't have a big budget perhaps. But I haven't seen that yet. I've seen some bus tours from China and talked to people from mainland China a little bit. I'm somebody who's always curious with people asking, so where are you from? How are you doing? What have you seen in Japan? What impressed you? I always like to talk and get a feeling of what people are thinking about, what they're seeing, what's changed because...

00:25:22 John Daub: Oh! It's getting windy here. I'm going to lose this umbrella. Whoa! It's gotten really dark. It should be getting brighter, not darker. It almost looks like 5 p.m. So the storm is... There's a storm coming in. Oh my gosh! All the umbrellas are going crazy. I'm going to hide here in the corner. Whoa! This is a typhoon. I think I'm going to lose my umbrella. Behind me is the biggest Junicolo in the world. It's a good place to get Christmas presents. It has gotten dark comparatively.

00:26:17 John Daub: Um... I'm not too bad in the corner here. Camera... I had some... I got water into the lightning port and it wouldn't do the microphone, so I had to start a little late, but... Yeah, even with the umbrella, it doesn't really help that much. I'm getting wet like crazy. I am... If you look at me from a distance, I probably do look like Mary Poppins. I think I'm getting some... I'm getting a couple of feet in the air now.

00:27:07 John Daub: Do they sell Ron Martin right now? Wow! Holy smokes! Oh, it's coming down hard now. Whoa! I got my umbrella facing into the wind. It's coming in in bands now. I think there's a lot of people watching from their hotels in Japan, because they don't want to go outside. Holy smokes! Look at the street! Wow! Oh, it's getting into my shoes now. Oh! Run away! Run away!

00:28:32 John Daub: This is the wrong station. Ah! All right, let's go down. We've got no choice. Oh, my... Okay, I don't know how the signal is underground. They've changed a little bit, so you got to go around here. I'm going to come up on the other side. It's nice and warm here.

00:29:27 John Daub: I love what they've done with Ginza Station. Look at the glass and all this. It looks so modern. Wow! Lloyd Powell's here. Stay safe, gentlemen. I'm looking forward to Christmas lights in the week's time. Yeah, it's going to look really lovely. I think the Christmas lights are going to be coming up soon enough. The illuminations, as we call them in Japan. All right, I have to go back outside, but we're going to walk through to the end here.

00:30:03 John Daub: Stay warm a little bit. We're starting to see Christmas stuff a lot more. Oh, my God. Oh, we have to see Christmas. That's kind of nice. It's cool. She has some Christmas dioramas up with booze. That French wine that everybody likes was in the news as well. The first bottles of this cheap French wine that nobody wants to drink it in France is here but the Japanese love that wine but lately it hasn't been as popular the numbers of drinkers of that wine has gone down I can't remember the name of it I remember what I went to their launch party with a friend of mine who's in the industry and he as she invited me she was the MC of the event so I got an invitation to go in there so I got in all the newspapers and as they made like this wine pyramid and one guy poured bottles and bottles of that that cheap French wine until it all trickled down to the glasses I'm in the background with my mouth open going yeah yeah now I don't you know drink that much so I never really drank that much anyways just a little bit but you know unless it's nickel pitcher night all right up we go maybe the rain has stopped yeah all right there you go well that's live it's Friday they even have a little marker and make sure you know it's Friday go back down it's windy

00:32:57 John Daub: Well the store that I'm gonna go to really quickly is over there all right everybody I hope this is a useful information again you know the numbers of tourists coming here is only going to keep increasing and for those of the people that are complaining like now they raised the JR ticket prices I'm not coming or Japan was not good to me during the pandemic I'm not coming all the people that are complaining and saying I'm never coming back to Japan they came back to Japan anyways so don't believe this is the internet don't believe what people say they say one thing and then they do another the people that said they're not coming to Japan obviously they came to Japan because the numbers show and I want to say thank you for coming to Japan for all of you I got a new video that's gonna be coming out do I have a picture of that thumbnail that's gonna be coming out if I can't tonight or tomorrow

00:34:02 John Daub: on gyoza I was working on that thumbnail for a very long time where'd it go you see I do the I do the I do the thumbnails like this in my house and I have to cut it out with Photoshop look at that really really beautiful shot of gyoza so none of the all the thumbnails you have to take them with really nice light and put them together and it gives you an image that makes you want to be able to see the whole thing that's the only thing that you have to have looking for something that's going to be really cool for your video because this is just a video there's a lot of different things that you can say and you can leave that in the comments and then we'll have a video for you so you can post that in the comments as we go the next thing that I need you to do is leave a comment down below if you have any questions on this and I'll do my best to answer them and before I leave that comment I want to thank all of you for watching guys and thank you for watching until the end I'll see you next time bye bye

00:35:03 John Daub: I'm not going to be here for most of December, but I'm thinking maybe next week we do a fan meetup, a viewer meetup if you're around in the area. Just a quick one, because I want to know where you guys are from and it's something I haven't done this year and I feel bad about it. But I got a chance to meet with some really great people. A lot of people came up to say hi to me, which is great. If you do that, then obviously I will give you a You Found Me card. I've got a lot of them left, so maybe it's the time to get rid of all those You Found Me cards. So let's try to see if we can do a meetup next week sometime in Tokyo. I still got a little bit of travel to do. I'm going to be at Hokkaido with my friend Matt Ault, who is an author and he's on NHK as well. We're going to do an episode together up there for Only in Japan at the end of November, which I hope to get out by Christmas.

00:36:02 John Daub: So that's it. Matt's coming up as well. I might be going back to Kyoto. There's a couple of things I might be doing before that, but for the most part I'll be in Tokyo for the rest of November, except a couple of times. I'm always traveling around. But leave me a comment below what you thought about these numbers and I'll see you in another episode probably tomorrow. And I'm hoping that the sun comes out. It's Saturday. It better, although I'll be working. It's a lot easier to work when it's sunny. It's raining actually, but not live streaming. Stay dry everybody. Stay warm. I'll see you again soon. See you Jason. Mata ne.