00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. I'm in front of Yurakucho station on a chilly afternoon. It's about 2 p.m. on January 20th or 21st—I can't remember the date. All I know is that last year the numbers are in and we had 25 million tourists come to Japan. That's a startling number considering just a few years ago we had almost zero. But it tells you that Japan is back. And so is this live stream. Sorry about the troubles a little bit earlier.

00:33 John Daub: In this episode I want to talk to you about the numbers and the trends, what it all means. There was some startling information in those numbers that I'll share with you. What kind of tourists are coming and from where? Is it from Europe? North America? Australia? Neighboring countries? What are the trends? And the one thing that I found most startling, I'm going to share as well. So stick around for the next 15 minutes as we go over the information. The numbers don't lie. This is all factual stuff from JNTO, the Japan National Tourism Organization, which has a free site with all the data going back about 15 years in PDF format. It's fascinating to look at the trends of people coming here.

01:17 John Daub: Right now the dollar is at 148 to the yen, which makes the yen one of the weakest in the world. I came here in 1998, 26 years ago, and we had 148 yen to the dollar back then. Then it was down to like 78 about 12 years ago, and now it's back around 150. This is critical to understand some of the trends happening in Japan. As you can see, just the numbers today over the last few days, it's going up. And that means it's not just a trend—it looks like this is here to stay for quite a while. That's good for travelers coming here to visit, and perhaps it makes a big impact on people from the United States in particular.

02:07 John Daub: Who exactly is coming to Japan? This graph here is fascinating to me. It comes from JNTO as well. You can see in 2019, the big year, we had over 30 million visitors come to Japan. Here's 2023 up until November—we had 25 million visitors. So we can now compare the numbers and get a really interesting look at it. East Asia, the percentage of tourists from East Asia has shrunk a little bit. That doesn't mean there are less tourists coming—there's just more from other places. The biggest number is going to be South Korea, which jumped exponentially. It's like four times the amount of people coming from South Korea than four years ago.

03:05 John Daub: South Korea and Japan have patched up a lot of the issues that they had, mostly. There's always going to be lingering stuff—it's a generational thing, a deep thing between the two countries. But as long as Japan and South Korea are working together strongly, they're always going to have a brighter future because the two of them have more similarities than differences. And putting those differences aside is going to be really hard, but also critical going forward for the next generation. It's nice to see this. I think the numbers are back. The number for China basically flip-flopped with South Koreans coming and Chinese not coming. But that number is expected to rise a little bit.

03:37 John Daub: The economic situation for China has drastically changed. The Chinese economy is not as strong as it was before the pandemic, and we're seeing that as a result of the tourists. It's not like Chinese tourists can't come to Japan—they can. They just aren't right now because of economic situations. And the number of visitors from Taiwan has increased. It's all good numbers. But for me, the startling one is right there on the top—those many colors, that's Europe. There is no change or shift in the number of European visitors coming. The biggest ones are the United States and probably Canada as well. That's a huge shift.

04:28 John Daub: I'm trying to wrap my head around the reasons why Americans are coming here more than usual. I think a lot of it has to do with the weak yen. Let's be honest—Japan's on sale like 35%. You throw in inflation, it's about 25% cheaper than it was in 2019 for most people coming here. So that's always a good sign, and I think this is going to continue. So if you're in the United States and you're watching and wondering when is the best time to come to Japan, the answer is right freaking now. Just do it. It's never been cheaper, especially in the winter during the low season. Yeah, it's chilly, it's cold, it's raining. This could be snow—it'd be prettier if it were. But at this time of year, things are even cheaper because there's not a lot of Japanese tourists traveling as well.

05:11 John Daub: Now I want to pivot here to a trend that I thought was really interesting. We're going to break this down into several groupings. This is fascinating. This goes back all the way to the 1990s or so. But the pivotal year is around 2014. 2014 on the chart is when the tourism numbers exceeded the business traveler numbers. That's when the tourism numbers started to boom. Now, I think tourists—when I first came to Japan, you can see looking on the left, it was about 50-50. But most of the visitors coming to Japan were business travelers. And I think that was true until about this pivotal year 2014. And it seemed like in 2014 everything changed.

06:26 John Daub: That's a huge shift. And this next graph is going to break it down. So let's take a look inside of those tourists that are coming here. Most of them are coming as individual tourists, which I think is fantastic. I know that tourism from China, a lot of tourists come here on package tours—that would be the dark blue number. Most travelers, in particular from Europe and North America, come on separate arrangements, which are do-it-yourself. And a lot of my friends from Singapore, Southeast Asia, India, other countries, Europe—they also come on separate arrangements. They just make all the plans themselves because they're not really into the budget package stuff. And then the group tours—not really so popular right now, which is interesting.

07:20 John Daub: I think with the yen being as weak as it is, people just want to do their own thing. And it's cheap. Now let's take a look at the chart here. This one, 2014 is a pivotal year. This is around my second year as a YouTuber. And there are more YouTubers in Japan showing off the beauty of the country. I'd like to give a little credit that we were doing a pretty good job because just three years ago, the Great Tohoku Earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake had taken place. Tourists were fleeing—no one was coming here. There was worry about radiation. I think a lot of you remember this that are old enough. And I stuck around. A lot of people weren't here. I really felt like it was 20 years earlier when there weren't any foreign faces in Tokyo. It looked really odd out there.

08:18 John Daub: But just three years later, it just completely flipped on its end. And tourists—Japanese tourists were finally overcome by foreign visitors coming. For decades it was the Japanese tourists leaving Japan and not that many foreign tourists. And now it is the other way around. In fact, it is extraordinarily so. And that trend just keeps getting wider and wider. The weaker yen means that Japanese aren't going anywhere really, except for domestic tourism places. A lot of Japanese aren't even going to Hawaii, which is crazy because that was maybe the number one spot for international tourists going. Even the Chinese aren't going to Hawaii. A lot of Asians—just because the dollar is just too strong right now. And Hawaii is pretty expensive for that.

09:07 John Daub: But 2014, you can see the situation changing quite a bit. I love the graphs and looking at the numbers here. And you can see the trend just right there—the shift right after the Great Tohoku Earthquake. The numbers going bing bing BING BOOM! And it just kept skyrocketing! And I can't imagine what the numbers would have been had it not been for the pandemic. It just dropped right there with the pandemic. And now look at the rebound. This is undoubtedly the most impressive. Look at that—zero and then back up to 18 million and 25. Now we're back at 25 million a year. And Japan's ultimate goal is 60 million a year. And I've got a pretty good feeling that they're going to get there.

10:15 John Daub: So now that we know that individual tourists are coming here to Japan, we know that North America in particular is increasingly visiting Japan, we know that Japanese tourists are decreasing and that gap is getting wider and wider. So that means that the way that Japan sets up its infrastructure for tourism is also going to change. And I think 2024 and 2025, you're going to see that the most. If you've been in Japan before, you're going to see a different Japan, in particular Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto in 2025. And it's starting, and I can already feel it now. I think those that are here now, and those living here, also can feel it too. There's more emphasis on catering to internationals than there is to Japanese tourists. For better or for worse. And maybe it's about time.

11:11 John Daub: That means there's more of a need for Japanese to speak English, and we're starting to see more interest in that as well. We're seeing more signs in English. We're seeing more things that non-Japanese would be interested in, like ninja, samurai, Mount Fuji, geisha stuff. The cultural things that are taken for granted by Japanese tourists are starting to blossom here in Japan. There's sort of a renaissance in Japanese culture for Western tourists. And I think that's fascinating. More English in Osaka than ever before, writes Kevin Riley. No doubt. And I would know that if I had been in Osaka recently, buddy. I do hopefully plan to come and see you. It's been ages.

12:04 John Daub: We're now like a couple years older. And Kevin looks way better than I do—I've aged way more than Kevin, he's ageless. So it's nice to see you here, buddy. Let's walk here towards Yurakucho, and I'll take you towards the Hokkaido store and a lot of the places in here on this side. Michael Sassano is in the house. Nice to see you, buddy. So let's walk a little bit as I go through this data. The data doesn't lie. I love talking about the facts here. Visitor arrivals and Japanese overseas travelers—you could just see the numbers for 2023. There were 25 million visitors, including December. And Japanese really didn't travel internationally in December. So I'd say the number was certainly under 9 million.

12:46 John Daub: But Japanese always travel. And it's just bizarre that Japanese are not traveling internationally right now because the yen is so weak. And thus I think that this also hurts our prime minister and government too—they're not very popular right now. But yeah, it's a startling thing for me to see that. Those that love chocolate with Valentine's Day coming, in this building here in Yurakucho, Godiva. They have a bakery. I think I might have shown this to you. This used to be the Osaka store, but Osaka's gone. And now all these confections are made with chocolate. The Godiva chocolate. And there's usually a line out the door. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. I just get a waft of baking chocolate. You can see the weather is not really good here. Let's walk over to the square.

14:00 John Daub: Now who's coming to Japan? Let's break this down here. South Korea, the neighbor, is always going to be the biggest, I think. And it's the same with any country—your neighbors are going to come and visit. And it's good that things have simmered down between the two countries. In 2019 it was a lot of politics hurting the relationship. And now in 2023, that's with a new prime minister over there in South Korea. We have a cooling of the hatred and the stuff that's been hurting the relationship. And that's brought back tourists on both sides. Japanese are traveling more between the two countries. I think that's great. We're stronger when we're working together.

14:43 John Daub: China has decreased by 6 million tourists—that's a crazy number between four years, minus 76.2%. That's a massive decline. But if you look beyond that, Thailand is also still quite low comparatively. Malaysia is quite low. So it looks like Southeast Asia is getting hit. The United Kingdom is minus 25%, France minus 17%. Europe has been way down, and Russia of course minus 65%. So Europe, for some reason—maybe because of the war, flight prices, I'm not sure. But North America is up like 20%. The U.S. is at almost 20%, which is a massive increase. This stat is even more fascinating. As the Shinkansen passes above me, you can hear it in the background.

15:47 John Daub: All right, that brown color on the right side are first-time travelers. Overall, 35.8% of people are coming to Japan as tourists for their first time. But look at that other number—these are repeaters. And these keep getting bigger. This keeps getting wider and wider. People, the repeaters in 2023 were the story. Those that were coming to Japan for the second, third, fourth, fifth, tenth, hundredth time have increased. And you can see here 20 times or more, almost 7%. That's crazy. Awesome, right? I love the stats coming from JNTO. I'll put a link in the description if you guys want to check this out. All of it is just fascinating when you break it down. But repeaters have been the story. Those that come to Japan love it so much that they come back. And that's a testament to the services and the people here in Japan that just do a good job. Second to none.

16:46 John Daub: And everyone who's taking Kevin Riley's tour, definitely make sure you tell them. Only in Japan, Sanjay. Go see my friend Kevin because he's giving amazing tours around the Osaka area. If you love hiking, the history, he's the king of Osaka. There's a plug for you, buddy. It's nice to see you. So I think in 2024, we're going to hit over 30 million and beat the 2019 numbers as long as there isn't anything to get in the way. And we started off this year really poorly. As all of you know, the earthquake in Noto hit this country pretty badly. It hit pretty hard on the first. The recovery is still going on. Shelters have had their own issues. There's been some trouble in some places.

17:37 John Daub: I've had our accountant—his family is from Noto and he sent us a message saying that the family was okay. I think they've evacuated to a neighboring town. And they're staying just as they check their house, the integrity of the house so it doesn't collapse from the aftershocks. So many aftershocks have been going on that a lot of the houses and structures are being checked over before evacuees decide to return. Some places still don't have water. Some places still don't have electricity, I've been told. And it is cold over there. So that's the situation right now. If you're looking for a charity to support, I'm always going to say Second Harvest. Second Harvest Japan has been the charity that I've been donating to since the Great Tohoku Earthquake 13 years ago. And that's who we donate to now. So definitely check them out online and you can donate to them. They're sending food, which is much needed to that area right now.

19:04 John Daub: From what Mike, my friend Mike who does a lot of charitable volunteering, told me, they've set up food stands over there in Noto so people can get food, hot food. So that's maybe the charity that I would support right now. But there's loads of others because I know everybody's heart here is really big. And as long as an earthquake or something like that does not happen, I think there's a very good chance that we exceed 30 million tourists this year. And where are they going to come from? Yeah, so like I did a livestream last year about India, about South Asia. And I've been seeing, and I think all of you that have been traveling here to Japan have been seeing in the convenience stores, in the supermarkets, in the service industry, at the ryokan (Japanese inns), more staff from Southeast Asia, in particular India, Sri Lanka, and to a lesser extent Nepal for those that are just coming here working in the service industries in Japan.

19:50 John Daub: But what is most fascinating is that those people that are coming here—they look sort of similar to me and they know Japanese better than me. They know the culture so freaking well. They actually have a lot of experience in the service and speech in India before they come here. Then they have training here in Japan and then they're released at the store. And one guy from India was running the entire 7-Eleven out in the countryside. That's not an easy job. Not only do you have to run the copy machine, the fax, doing all the online services that they do, sending packages back and forth, stocking the goods, knowing all the digital services. Again, like you could pay your gas bills at the convenience store. You have to know how everything works when things go wrong. You have to be able to read kanji. You only need to know about 2,000 of them to read a newspaper. So it's not as hard as Chinese, but it's still a lot of work.

21:01 John Daub: So there's an increasing amount of people from South Asia that are coming here to work, but there's not a lot of tourists from that region. And my guess is that in 2025, we're going to have more tourists from South Asia than we are from China. And that's going to get you to 60 million real easy, I think. We're right on the precipice. John, you don't look Indian. Well, that's true. I look American. But I'm half from India and half from... And you know what? When you say that you don't look Indian, actually India is a much more diverse country. This is only in Japan, by the way. India is much more diverse than a lot of people realize. The amount of languages that they speak in India is in the hundreds. The way people look is also quite different—people are more fair-skinned in the north, darker in the south. So maybe I don't look Indian, but there's a lot of mixed Indians in India as well.

22:18 John Daub: A common writer writes in here: I've been to Japan six times for vacation, three times for work. I stayed in Japan for one to three weeks. Fun fact, Ueno has a community of Middle Easterners living and working there. I believe that. I've seen an increasing number of people from Asia and the Middle East in the Shinjuku area as well, Okubo in particular. And the Indian community is mostly in Ikebukuro and in the Kasai area, which is closer to Chiba, not far from Tokyo Disneyland. I wonder if that had anything to do with it. But yeah, there's communities here from all over the place. Satrio is here, will be arriving in Japan mid-February and hope to pop in your livestream again. Satrio, we would love to see you. Oh, you're coming with the kids! Awesome!

23:32 John Daub: Alright, I'm gonna take you down towards the square here. For those joining us, we're talking about the tourism numbers here. This is Yurakucho Station. You can see it's quite busy. This had a renewal recently, so it's really nice. And right above there, you have the Shinkansen. Everything's buzzing here. This is my backyard, so I'm quite often in the Ginza region. Oh! Right there! That shop! Some of my favorite Japanese cheesecake. That's from Hakodate. I think that's the only shop that they have. It's like 800 yen, you get four cheesecakes. Moist, melts in your mouth, it is the best. I brought Peter von Gomm a pack of them. Loved it. So if you're in the Yurakucho area, stop in there and get it. It's called Hakodate. It's one of those gifts, but I don't think a lot of people know about that little mini shop that they have there. They don't have enough people going in there to visit. I don't want to see them go out of business. It's too good.

24:50 John Daub: Here's Yurakucho. Rain is coming down here in Tokyo, and it is chilly. It's like one of those really miserable days that you probably should stay home, but nah, let's go out and get a walk kind of day. The Expo in Osaka is coming in 2025, and I think Osaka's sort of having a bit of a problem setting that up. A lot of it has to do with the economy taking a downturn. It's just really tough. Osaka had the Expo in 1970, and this was when the Japanese miracle was taking place. Do you guys know what that is? I think this kind of plays into this tourism thing.

25:45 John Daub: So there's a Japanese miracle. It happened around 1962, I would say, started when Japan got the Olympics coming here. That was a catalyst to start the reconstruction of Tokyo and modernize everything. So the 1964 Olympics showcased the Shinkansen. It showcased a lot of the things that shocked the world on how modern Japan was compared to just 20 years ago when World War II ended. It was crazy to see the progress that was done back then. Five years later, six years later, they had the Expo in Osaka, which highlighted the future of Japan. And this was 50 years ago. And you could see amazing technologies that are still pretty revolutionary today, which were highlighted at that 1970 World Expo in Osaka.

26:36 John Daub: Osaka won the World Expo again in 2025, which was 75 years after the first Expo. And we're going to be seeing the next stage of Japan. And I think that's what the hope is. But my feeling is that they're falling a little short on it because... They're falling a little short on it, just like the Olympics. And I feel like it's getting all these hopes that Japan has of breaking out into this next level of... I don't know, like the Japan miracle number two is not really formulating. Maybe because the world economy isn't behind it. Japan's economy isn't behind it. There's a lot of debt here. There's a lot of other issues that were not taking place 75 years ago. And I think that the strongest sector that Japan has right now is, believe it or not, tourism.

27:31 John Daub: And this is maybe the 2025 Expo. I know there's going to be a lot of technology. They're already going to have flying taxis, meaning drone taxis, which is definitely the future, going back and forth to the island where the Expo is going to be taking place. So you're going to get highlighted a lot of this amazingness that's going to be coming in Japan in the next 20 years. But flying cars are like right there in Japan. But tourism, I think we're going to have to see more technology in tourism. And I wonder if Japan is going to lean into this at the Expo. If we're going to see some things that are going to really impact that sector of this economy here. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of that at the end of 2025 or 2024. But the trend has changed. And I hope that this livestream has highlighted this.

29:10 John Daub: The technology will have to be one of the things that Japan leans on. And I think being a small island nation the size of California, Japan could change more rapidly. But I've noticed that a lot of Japanese corporations have lost, in particular the tech industry, has lost their edge to Korea and the United States. Why is there no Japanese smartphone maker, for example? I mean, there are, but none of them are really popular. Why isn't Japan excelling in a lot of technologies? Well, there's Sony PlayStation, but a lot more technologies you would think would be... And the reason why, Japan is also in a generational change. Right now, the Showa era, which is in charge—people born in the 1950s, 60s—are having a tough time keeping up and changing the culture to match what's happening in the world around them. And this has been something that has held up a lot of this change.

30:24 John Daub: Now, one of the reasons that I think the emperor abdicated was because he sensed this, and he sensed that Japan needed to change. And when the new emperor came in, it was a generational shift, the Reiwa era. And that abdication is supposed to signal change. But I've noticed that Japanese corporations are slow to do that. A lot of them don't want to give up that power. The older generation should probably retire or start to give more power to the younger generation. And I'm seeing a slower move to that. It's still going to happen—we're only in the sixth year of the Reiwa era. But in order for Japan to get to those numbers of tourists, 60 million, you're going to have to have the older generation give more power to the newer ideas that might be more risky. And Japan has to lean into the rewards and not lean into avoiding the risks. And that's the only way to do technology.

31:52 John Daub: I had a really interesting conversation with somebody yesterday who's in the tech industry. And we talked about the same thing. One of the things we talked about is Japan is losing that competitive edge in technology. And the slowness... Like in China, for example, products are coming out not when they're perfect, but they're coming out on a cycle more frequently. In Japan, products don't come out until they're perfect. They've been tested, they work, and everyone has signed off on it. So there's no risk. By that time, it's too late. And I think that's why Japan lost the smartphone makers. It was just too late. They lost that because Samsung was just releasing it. It's not perfect. It's a moderate update, but we're just going to release it. Because we've got to keep doing the new, the new, the new. Because now this generation always wants something new.

32:55 John Daub: Japan is not like that there because the older generation doesn't actually want something new all the time. They like having things older. We still use fax machines here. Some people still read newspapers here. So until the younger generation steps in and they embrace the newer ideas and accept risk—there has to be risk. It's going to be really hard for Japan and other industries, except for tourism, and even it should be in tourism, to start to grab the lead in anything. And you have to do that. I get some messages—I'm still using my old Samsung Note 9. I don't even know what that means because I use an iPhone.

33:45 John Daub: That's all I've got for today. I hope we learned something about the kind of tourists and maybe a little bit about the future of tourism in Japan. I think a lot of it is all related. I've been doing this for 25 years. I've been living here for 25 years. I've been doing these inbound videos for about 13 years now? More than that. My first video was in 2003, before YouTube. If you are interested in the Postcard Club, please join. This month's postcard is about toys that changed our world. There's a lot of them. I even added more than was in the thumbnail of this video. I'll send this to you. I love sending out the postcards to you. It's on our Patreon. It helps us support the site. And I'm doing a Q&A for Patreon supporters this weekend. There's a lot of stuff.

34:38 John Daub: The main channel just passed 300,000 subscribers. A little celebration. But I've got a lot more work to do. I just want to say thank you to everybody who's been supporting. I did have to restart the channel in 2020. It sucked. But that's where we are. I take the high road. It's all good. And it's so much fun to be back out there making episodes. I was driving up to Ibaraki yesterday making an episode. So this is my passion and I love to do it. And we'll discuss that in a Q&A on Patreon this weekend. I'd love to send out this month's postcard. I'm going to send out 25 more postcards to people all around the world. Every month it's been going up except this January. So just a shout out to everybody supporting. I really do appreciate it. I think it's because I just haven't talked about the Postcard Club in a while.

35:33 John Daub: But I'm going to get out of the rain. It's coming down harder and harder. And get back home and edit. So I'll see you all in another live stream tomorrow. I want to take you around Tokyo a little bit more. Get back into it. And this month, like I said, I'm going to be doing podcasting at home. I have it all set up now. Tomorrow I'm going to be having Matt Ault on a podcast format. So it'll be the first informal podcast. Now my studio isn't actually finished. There's nothing in the background really, except a tree with a squirrel in it. But that has nothing to do with Japan. But I want to try this out. And Matt and I are going to talk about Japanese toys and that episode on the toy episode that we made, which is this postcard. So if you're interested, tune in tomorrow around 10 a.m. And I'll have Matt Ault on. I'm really looking forward to that as well. He'll be on a Zoom call. And we'll talk about some toys that changed our world. I'm pretty excited about that. And I'll see you tomorrow. I got to get out of the rain. It's freezing out here. See you.