Japan Blocking Lawson Mt Fuji View but why

00:00:01 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to ground zero of Japan's over-tourism challenges. This is Kawaguchiko, on the base of Mt. Fuji, and this Lawson's has been at the center of the Japanese news for the last several days when they said that they're going to be putting in a black tarp, which they are now constructing just across the street from here. You can see they have cones, they have a group from the city that are putting it in. They're going to do a press conference when it's completed. The black tarp won't actually be here until the middle of May, so until then they're going to do their very best for crowd control. But there's a reason why. And I mean like right now, if you look over here, you can't even see Mt. Fuji, and yet there are dozens of people outside of here trying to get a shot. Like I don't really get it. I'm going to come out here because I don't want to be part of the problem. You can walk across the street. But to just stand there in the middle of it is probably not a good idea. A lot of people wielding suitcases. Again, nothing wrong with that, but if you look here at the parking lot, this is the problem. It's not that they're just taking a picture. It's the fact that they're taking a picture. This is the entrance into Lawson's right here where all those groups of people are. The cars have to honk their horn to be able to get in. So you can understand why there's a problem now.

00:01:29 John Daub: And this is the side that they don't show you. I was watching Japanese media. This is really interesting. Standing here on the corner. Japanese media was standing here on the corner for quite a long time just filming the line waiting for foreign tourists to step out onto the road or cross the street illegally to prove their point. And that kind of ticked me off a little bit. That's kind of disingenuous. It doesn't happen very often that tourists are actually walking into the street. Most people are well behaved. They just want to take a picture and then get out of here.

00:02:07 John Daub: Now, the reason why they're putting the tarp, I thought that they were going to put the tarp over the Lawson's, right? They just said they're going to block the view. How do you block the view? Well, here's how they do it. Across the street over here, this is a dental office. This dentist is now renovating the outside of the shop. I guess he also knew that they're going to be doing the construction. The dentist here put out an official statement. He was also very worried about tourists maybe hitting the scaffolding or maybe having a problem with the collapsed roof. So, he's going to put a tarp over the Lawson's.

00:02:46 John Daub: Let me show you where I am exactly before I get even deeper into this. This is where I am. It's about a 90-minute drive from Tokyo. I came here this morning. I drove in Yamanashi. This is Kawaguchiko. This is the parking lot and you can see the dentist office has the green roof where I am. And it's not very big. The road that goes through here is quite narrow. That's the Lawson's with the white roof and the dentist's office with the green roof. Now the dentist's office, see that parking lot? A lot of tourists would have their tripods and set up their cameras there, run across the street really quickly to get a picture of that Lawson's with the Mount Fuji behind it. That's the problem. It's not that they want to block the view. They want tourists to come here. But they're doing it more for safety reasons.

00:03:41 John Daub: And I just, about 15 minutes ago, got here. Got the official response from the city of Kawaguchi about what they've done to try to, before they actually decided to put this black tarp here. You can see the proximity of Mount Fuji right there. So I hope that gives you an idea of where we are. Now to talk about the issues.

00:04:02 John Daub: You can see here that this road is very narrow. There's almost no shoulder and you have just a lot of traffic. In particular during the day. And this is Golden Week holiday, so it's going to be more traffic than usual. There are places to cross the street. There's a crosswalk over there. I'll take you out to that side in a second. There's actually a guy over there who is helping with people to cross but not allowing them to cross on this side of the street because of the construction. And then there's a traffic light right here. This is the stuff that they don't show you in the news. There's actually a police station right there. You can see they're getting out into traffic. It is kind of challenging to do this. But you can push the button and cross the street. It changes pretty quickly. But it is very, very narrow and it would be very easy to get hit if your shoulder was on the other side or if you accidentally walked with your camera and not doing it. And that's exactly what has happened. In the Japanese media they wrote it. Last week a 26-year-old woman from Tunisia was hit by a car. Not at this spot. But in this spot. And she was in the city. And the reason why she was crossing and there was no crosswalk. The city feels quite responsible. Like they didn't do enough to protect her. So they're finding ways now to try to stop it as much as possible.

00:05:38 John Daub: This over-tourism or congestion of tourists coming into regional areas or into the city. It kind of disturbs the locals. But it also, that congestion makes it not a great experience for tourists as well. And Japan is one of the few countries. I mean they're in Europe and in Bali and in a lot of other places. In Venice for example. They're trying things out to try to alleviate this. But social media has made us all want to go to the same spot. That is not actually a place where you should be taking pictures. You should not be congregating in front of a convenience store. In fact in the United States they always had no loitering signs. Maybe they need to bring that here. So the poor lady is still in critical condition. This is last week. And the lady from Tunisia is still in critical condition. In the hospital. And this is sort of the catalyst to it. So it's not that Japan wants to block tourists. It's not that Fuji, Kawaguchiko is doing something that is anti-tourist. They just don't really have a choice. And if you really look at the amount of space here. And it's just a convenience store. And you can see people are just walking around the parking lot. Cars are coming in here pretty quickly. And they're doing it to get this view.

00:06:45 John Daub: Let me run through a couple of them right here. I just snapped these from Instagram. If you want to follow these people. By all means. Please do take a look at them. I appreciate me sniping these here. But it gives you an idea of the view. You're not going to see it today because of the clouds. But it is really pretty, isn't it? To be able to get this photo. I mean, I would love to get one today. But it's not going to happen. There's even this one. I love this one by the pixel artist. Check it out. It's so famous that he's taken this Lawsons and made it into a pixel version of it. And it's so beautiful. You got to appreciate that. Glimpses of life has one in here. A lot of followers. And then the Tokyo Weekender has this picture here. "Mount Fuji Lawson puts up blockade to keep out disrespectful tourists." I don't think that's the full story. It's not just disrespectful tourists. The vast, vast majority of them are not that at all. It's about the city protecting the tourists. Because you're not allowed to cross here. There's also a disrespecting problem. It's more than one thing.

00:08:11 John Daub: And yeah, it's probably a good advertisement for Lawsons. I saw that comment. But honestly, this isn't the kind of press that they want. There are more convenience stores. There's one just about 300 meters down the road that also has a pretty good view of Mount Fuji I saw on the map. So it's not just this one. But it's the closest one to the train station. And I'm going to take you over there because I got to go get my gear and tripod to film the overpass. And let me show you something. This is the main channel for this opening of this episode for the main channel about over tourism. But this has become ground zero.

00:09:07 John Daub: It becomes famous because social media put this up on Instagram on tik tok. And a lot of people wanted to come and see. I've been listening because the Japanese media has been interviewing people about it. The questions that the Japanese media is asking. That in itself is pretty telling here. I want to. I don't think I need to cross the street. But this is something I wanted to show you. And there he is putting the, drilling the holes into the ground for the tarp. They're putting it on this side because, for those that are joining us, getting the picture from the other side of the street is how you would see Mount Fuji. And I guess if you take the picture from here, you just don't get the same view as the one that's on social media. So, well, you know what, let's read the official response. I just got it. I just got the official response from Kawaguchiko not very long ago. This is translated into English for you guys. Let me go over this.

00:09:34 John Daub: Background, leading up to the construction since the beginning of this year, the number of people, especially foreign tourists, who take pictures of the convenience store with Mount Fuji in the background has increased rapidly, and this has become a major local problem. I think that's worded right. I think the position is the problem. In this area, the narrow sidewalks are crowded with many people gathering as limited photo spots, causing frequent photo shoots that extend into the roadway, crossing between the cars at non-crosswalks, making the area extremely dangerous. You can see how with very little sidewalk, this would be so. In addition, there are frequent nuisances such as littering and unauthorized parking on private property, the dentist office across the street. To ensure the safety of both tourists and drivers, we have unfortunately had to make difficult decisions to construct this project.

00:10:26 John Daub: During the coming tourist season, during Golden Week, the number of tourists is expected to further increase. Actually, yes. So the possibility of accidents will increase, which is possible. There are not as many police around or guards. Everybody's on holiday. So they're starting to do this, and there are actually retired police officers that are also helping out. So shout out to them for taking the time to be here away from their families. So a lot of tourists are unaware of the situation. So you see the drivers are driving more slowly here, and that's not just because of the traffic lights, because it's now quite famous in the town. In addition, the tendency for nuisance behavior to escalate on private property has forced us to take measures to prevent tourists from gathering in those areas.

00:11:12 John Daub: You can see just across the street from here, I want to show this to you really quickly. This is where the clients to the dental office would come. See, that guy just crossed the street. I'm the policeman now. That was so bad. And look at them, they're in the middle of the road. That's bad. That's dangerous. That's why. And there's a police box right across the street. Did you see that? Patients only don't sit down here. So they had to do that in multiple languages. Right? And there's a 7-Eleven over there, but no one's going there because they don't have the view of Mount Fuji.

00:12:01 John Daub: All right, let me get into this press release a little bit more. That was pretty crazy. That guy just ran right in the middle of the street. All right, the response is based on consideration of the safety of tourists and an avoidance of trouble with neighbors. That's why they're doing this. That's what they're doing it, okay? I mean, I'm going to be honest. I think that the rude tourists and the nuisances are a problem, but this is more reaction for safety, or at least that's the excuse. And I can get behind that. I'm panning around for you guys so you can see this as I talk about the official things here. So they're using the blackout curtains. So this is what they did, the measures that they took before they got here. Since March last year, we have in this area, we've had a lot of people who have been here. We've installed warning signs and cones in four languages, English, Korean, Chinese, and Thai, and painted the road surfaces to raise awareness of traffic rules. I'm not sure if I see the painting on the ground, but I'll look for that. Since last June, a security guard has been assigned to the area to guard. He's over there on the other side. He probably should be here where they're crossing. There's a guy over there, but I think that's for the construction zone. Most of the crossings are happening right here, and there's no guard in this spot. The guard is actually, I've seen him over there on the other side. Probably not the best position. Recently, we have installed signs. Police alumni and current police officers are on duty to guide tourists. I met one of them, very nice guy. Currently, no accidents have occurred at this spot. They have at another place, but we have received numerous phone calls and emails from residents complaining about the situation. Yes. Construction details are coming here. This is the official statement from Kawaguchi Coal, ground zero of the overcrowding issue here in Japan. To prevent road crossings, protective fences, barricades will be installed between the sidewalks. On the north side of this road over there, 80 centimeters high and 3 meters long, to secure residents' lives, a curtain of mesh metal. So, I think they're also protecting you, and they're also protecting the tourists. They're putting this black sheet here, not just to stop you from taking pictures, but to stop you from walking across the street. Now, they're making it really difficult. They're making it really high so you don't climb across it. Because even if they put it up waist high, they know that tourists are still going to cross. I mean, we all know that. Tourists are still going to go across it. So, they're doing it as a double-edged sword. One, the one edge is to block the view, and the other one is to make it high enough that you can't jump across it.

00:14:47 John Daub: We are very grateful for visitors to come to Fuji-Kawaguchi Coal town, among many other activities and tourist spots. But it's necessary to protect the safety and tourist lives nearby, blah, blah, blah. Okay, you get the idea. It's a story. And I don't think that this is something that's happened here in...

00:15:08 John Daub: Like, I don't understand what the photos are. You can't see Mount Fuji, but there's a lot of Instagrammers. I don't get it. Is this an age gap or what? You can't see... Mount Fuji is supposed to be right there. It's not here. So, what are they taking pictures of? Let's go ask.

00:15:26 John Daub: Maybe let's go ask them people. A couple of viewers were here. Some from California, one from Malaysia. One guy who was a tourist. I didn't ask where he was from. I want to be mindful not to be part of the problem. And that's part of the issue.

00:16:16 John Daub: Hey, Rainer is here. How you doing? Hey, Rainer. Eilish is cute. How you doing? Hey, Jen. I just wanted to thank you for all the work you do showing us Japan. I'm going to be studying abroad in Japan for a year starting in September. And your videos are a big help. I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you.

00:16:42 John Daub: I guess they're just fans of Lawson's, huh, Jason? I guess they are. I mean, you can't see Mount Fuji. Are they going to Photoshop it? Are they just going to Photoshop Mount Fuji in? What's famous? Is it just Lawson's is famous? Or is it the view? Or what? Or is it everything? I don't know. Let me ask. But you can't see Mount Fuji, right? But people still want to take the picture. How come? I don't know. Where are you from? He's from Germany. I didn't want to put him on the spot, but he's not sure what the heck people are doing here. I should ask what he's doing here.

00:17:46 John Daub: It feels like a party, but it shouldn't. I don't get it. Most of the people here don't speak English. That's one of the things that makes it a little bit challenging. I don't speak Chinese. I've seen a couple of really close calls. I've been here now for about 30 minutes. You can see them up there doing the construction in the dental office, the renovations for it. I saw cars coming in here, and they were not a lot of honking. Tourists still didn't move very quickly. I think you could see how it would be quite dangerous here and why there's no security guard on this side. I'm not quite sure. But do they really need to? What do you guys think? Leave me a comment below. Let me know what you guys think about this situation. Again, I'm filming this for the main channel. This isn't the only place I'll be going, but I think this is something that we really need to wrap our hands around because this isn't the only place in the world that's dealing with overtourism. The results of overtourism, not just the safety, which I didn't know about this woman getting hit until yesterday, not just the safety, but also the vandalism, the excessive noise at late times in the night. Trash has been an issue. The poor dentist office and a lot of these businesses have found trash on the steps, stuff thrown in between the bushes, according to their official statement. So I mean, I guess it's about finding a way to deal with this. In Japan, they don't know exactly what to do. And for municipalities, look, the way that Japan, safety is important. That's right, John. But for municipalities, this isn't something that they can fix very quickly. The biggest reason why is because everything is a consensus. They have to get it. There's nobody making one particular policy and going, this is it. It has to go to meetings. It has to be a consensus with everybody. Then they have to get the budget for it. And then they have to do it. And that takes such a long time. So the reaction time is quite long. But I think there could have been a discretionary budget to be able to install something like this. I don't know how much it costs, but I'm hoping that it's.

00:20:23 John Daub: Here's an EV bus. So you know that they're trying to do the right thing. It's a sustainable, dependable, dependent goals, development goals. I mean, they're trying to do good stuff here in Kawaguchiko. They definitely want tourists. Fuji-Q Highland, which is the amusement park, is here. And that's kind of a really fun place that everybody likes to go and visit. I think Mr. Beast was here just a few months ago, rented out the entire park. Kind of cool. But this is a bit much. Yeah, that's a lot of people just standing in a parking lot. I don't know. I don't know, man. That's not right. Trying to get that view. But like I told you, it's not there. There's no Fuji.

00:21:27 John Daub: All right, let's walk across the street. I don't know if the signal is there, but I'm going to bring this to an end. And in the end, when the tarp is done, according to the news, it's going to look like this. It's a 2 meter by 2 and a half meter high. A 20 meter by 2 and a half meter high partition that stops people from crossing the street, as long as they're on that side of the road. Cross at the official crosswalk.

00:21:54 John Daub: Oh, there they are. Hey. There's some of the only Japan viewers from Sacramento visiting. I don't know how the signal is on this side, but I want to just give you a chance to look at the construction. And this is the view normally that they have here.

00:22:47 John Daub: They're going deep. You can see this is not a good place to cross away from the crosswalk. But this is where you get the view. And this is why they would cross the street. Because you would get the view from here of Mount Fuji right here. That's where Fuji-san is, right there.

00:23:21 John Daub: So if they put the partition here, you can't get the shot. You're too close on this side, apparently. Interesting. That's in Thai, Chinese, Korean, English. You can understand why it's a problem. And the poor dentist's office right here. There's the scaffolding. And on the other side, you can see one of the crossing guards. He's making sure the tourists can't come this way. But there's nobody over here. Let's see if he talks to them. Stop. In the name of love. Sorry, you got to cross right here. Ah, there you go. He's doing his job.

00:24:42 John Daub: Feels kind of fun to be here, the center of the news, huh? Well, I hope this was informational for you. You learned something a little bit about the story. And about me. We all want the best. I know the vast majority of you that are watching absolutely love this country. That you want the best for Japan. You want everything to go really smoothly. But when you see the evolution, and it's not always going to be easy of Japan to grapple. Like, when I came here in 1998, there were 4 million tourists the whole year. Now we have almost 4 million tourists in a month. We're getting close to 40 million tourists in a year, which is a crazy amount compared to 1998. And since 2012, it has just been a steady rise from that. We got the 10 million in 2013. We had the 20 million in 2015, I believe. 30 million in 2019. Over 30 million. And it looks like 2025, we're going to pass 40 million. In particular, we had over 3 million in one month last, in March. So, the numbers are there. And it's not a seasonal problem. This is now every day at Fuji-Kawaguchi-Ko. That's the problem. If it was seasonal, they could deal with that. But it's not. It's, uh... So this is hard, because the turning is the crosswalk here. But she's local, and we have to really respect that. So we have a green light here.

00:26:48 John Daub: It's just funny, because there's so many suitcases here. What's she doing? I don't know. What do I know? I woke up so early this morning to get here. I'm going to go get my tripod so I can do the opening. And I think I found a good place to film. It's interesting here. There's a chance that Fuji comes out tomorrow. It's going to be a better day. I should have came tomorrow, but what are you going to do? You can't predict the weather. It's really hard. I want to hear from you. Let me know what are your thoughts. I'm going to walk back to the station. I'm showing you how close the train station actually is to here. And this is another part of the problem. The train station is just about 100 meters away. So it's very easy to access this spot, to take a picture before you jump on the train, which is why people have these suitcases. And the narrow road is not made for that. You can see it's just hard to get around. You know what I mean?

00:27:46 John Daub: Yeah, actually Lawson's is originally from Ohio. And then they moved to Canada or was bought by a Canadian company, I think, which then sold it to a Japanese company. So Lawson's has been around the block, but originally started in the great state of Ohio, OH. And it's Lawson, not Lawsons, although I call it Lawsons all the time. It's Lawson. Lawson Convenience Station. Lawson.

00:28:20 John Daub: Here's the station. That's it. You're at Kawaguchiko, Fuji-Kawaguchiko Station. That's crazy, right? It's pretty close. I'm going to take you to my car right now because you might as well join me for a little bit longer. You can take a look at the Kawaguchiko Station and then I'm going to get back to work. But I told you yesterday I was going to bring you here and here we are. It's beautiful, eh? It's a beautiful area. Fresh air today. Here's a train coming in. Every time a train comes in, that spot gets more crowded. There's that EV bus on the right side going to Fuji-Ku Highland. And a lot of the people getting off here are eventually getting going to Fuji-Ku. This place is really crowded during the cherry blossom season, but today no blossoms. We're a little bit past the season there. This is interesting.

00:29:26 John Daub: This is like a very quick peek inside. There's a cafe area. There's a little store with country food. Gift shop in there. Postcards, which you don't see very often in Japan. Mount Fuji stuff. Oh, there's one guy you couldn't see Mount Fuji today, but he bought a Mount Fuji shaped cookie. And he filmed that. That was kind of cool. People are pretty creative with that.

00:30:09 John Daub: Here's the bus schedule up here. And here's the train station that gets you in there. I don't believe it's JR. I don't think it's JR. I always drive here. It's really hard by train. It's such a nice drive, too. And getting around by bus is pretty easy here. It's easy to find. They have separated by colors as well. So you don't get lost. And that bus is pretty crowded. This one's going to the sightseeing bus, the Kawaguchiko sightseeing bus. You can't see. It's all blurred with the digital and the shutter speed here. Not ideal for it, but you can see. They have a map. It's so easy to navigate Japan these days. They really did think a lot about this. The green line taking the Fuji-Q highland. The red line right there. It goes to where the cherry blossoms are on the other side of Lake Kawaguchiko. It's actually Lake Kawaguchi or Kawaguchi Lake. Beautiful. Yeah, Kawaguchiko station is in JR. It's a Fuji Express connecting to a JR line.

00:31:21 John Daub: Is that a foot bath? Hey, I love the ashiyu. Except nobody knows it exists. Or it's just nasty. Why? There's nobody dipping their foot in there. I'm not going to do it because I'm wondering why there's nobody in there. It opens at 10. It closes at 3. We're well within the hours of operation. There's got to be a reason, right?

00:32:04 John Daub: The overcrowding problem, I see that at Tsukiji Market. It's really bad right now. Tsukiji has been probably ground zero of a lot of problems. The road is not made for... My car is over here. The road is not made for people to stand in the middle of it and eat street food. Which is a problem.

00:32:42 John Daub: We all know about Kyoto's Gion, which has a... They shut down the alleys because too many tourists were taking pictures of the... Too many tourists were taking pictures of the geisha and they couldn't do their job, which is perfectly understandable.

00:33:05 John Daub: Oh, that's nice. Tripod. I am the Lawson. I think they might need it. This is how far we walked. Do you see the Lawson's Law? Digital zoom in the corner. It's pretty close. They made that sign so high that you could come out of the station and go, oh, that way. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And there's tons of places to store your bags and lockers and things like that. I thought that that's pretty interesting. Yeah. So what do you guys think? Do you have any questions, comments? Leave them down below. I'd love to hear from you. I am going to drive back to Tokyo probably in about two hours from now. I also want to go to Fujiyoshida, that crossing where a lot of people go. But like, I don't know because...

00:34:27 John Daub: Oh, wait. Oh, oh, waiting for Mount Fuji. It's like waiting all day for it and finally. I might just stick around a little bit longer. I could finally get that view. I was just going to do it with a walk through there with the 360 camera. There she blows. That's the tip. Just the tip. Bago pork rinds. I beat you. I beat you to that. Bryant Vu writes in here, hello. Sad that the tourists are ruining it for everybody. Wasn't... Well, not ruining it for everybody, but they're ruining it for a lot of people. Wasn't that bad when I was there at the end of January, the end of February. I think the tourists are getting a bad rap. But there are some bad tourists. So it's not all tourists. But now you can see where Mount Fuji is. The clouds are starting to do it. There's a high pressure system coming in. So I knew if I stuck around a little bit longer, I'd eventually get Mount Fuji. But now I can take my camera gear over there. I know what to expect. I'm just going to take the whole backpack, I think, and get the shot. I do have my drone, but this is not a drone-friendly place.

00:35:45 John Daub: If you have any questions, again, I love hearing from you guys. Please let me know what your thoughts are on this whole thing. I know that these live streams are going to be great. 35 minutes to talk about this seems a little bit long. But it's a live stream. That's what we do here. I love the feedback. I can hear from you. But it's going to be a pretty long way. I might even stop at the Costco at Zama on the way back. So if you're in Zama, let me know. Maybe I'll see you at the Costco at 4 p.m. I've got to get the car back by 8. But I had a good time here so far. It's been nice because the great thing about this channel and about having a YouTube channel that's been around for a while is that I know a lot of you. And when you do hear my voice or you see me, it's kind of cool because people come and say hi. It's like having an extended family wherever I go. I've already met five people that came and say hi just hanging around where Lawson's over there. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who are here visiting Japan. I do like it if you stop and say hello. I might not always be in the best mood. Most of the time I am. But you get the picture. I mean, you're like family. So it's all good.

00:36:37 John Daub: Can you do a Costco in Japan? I could but they're not really happy with filming in there. You really need to get a permit these days. I mean, it is private inside of there. I've done a bunch of them actually. But I know that they really don't like you live streaming in a Costco.

00:37:12 John Daub: I'm not the...actually it would be Peter Von Gum is the voice of Japan. He's the voice of Tokyo Tower. He was the voice of ANA for a while. It's getting better. Today looks promising. Very good. Very, very good.

00:37:19 John Daub: Yeah, there was that one guy. I feel sorry for him. He said he had to take his train at 11.15 and he's going to miss it. Air to the RON. Hey. Oh my gosh. Did the package come yet? I don't know if you're getting the EMS ones but it's on the way, buddy. Seven weeks and I'm there. Oh, this is so cool. Let me know when you're here. I definitely want to come and say hi to you. We have the Air to the RON buggy. Leo will come in the buggy to say hi to you. The Air and Buggy. Inventor of the Air and Buggy. Thank you for... That's great. I'm glad you're going to be here. The weather will be... Well, I think it's going to be close to the rainy season but it's going to be fine. You're going to have a good time here.

00:38:04 John Daub: Oh, yeah. And do sign up for the postcard club if you can. That would be really helpful too. We have... Yeah, times are tough. I get that. And I appreciate everybody who signed up. But actually this month we had five people rejoin who came back who had left earlier. So I really appreciate that, guys. Thanks for that. It's on Patreon which is the best way to support the channel. I'm going to go back but if I get another chance to do a live stream I might just do that. Maybe from another area. But, you know, Mount Fuji is coming out so, hey, this day is not wasted. This is going to be... I might not have to come back here until the Black Tarp and that's my hope. This is really so far turning into a good afternoon.

00:38:47 John Daub: All right, everybody. Take care. I'll see you in another live stream pretty soon. Either today or tomorrow. Bye. Happy May. It's May 2nd here. Nata ne. Thank you, David. David Kimura. I appreciate it. Just got that in.