00:00:00 John Daub: The view, do you see that? This is Mount Fuji and you can see the Lawson's right behind me. This has become sort of ground zero for the over-tourism issues, the challenges that Japan has been having. I've come here a few days since they erected the wall over here. Do you see this behind me? This is now a two and a half meter wall. If you take a look at the live stream I did about three weeks ago and the live stream I'm doing now, the vibe is a little bit different. I wanted to show you live if erecting a two and a half meter wall is a good idea.

00:00:30 John Daub: This one is a two and a half meter black wall across the street with some barriers. It's made an impact on saving lives, which is why they really did it. Not so much blocking the view to keep people from crossing the street illegally, which is happening all the time. I've seen already a couple of issues. There's some right there as people climb on the sign. That's not exactly safe to do and they really need a sign saying don't climb on the sign. I've seen a lot of people trying to get that photo just because they erected the wall. That didn't make sense.

00:01:02 John Daub: I mean, people stopped coming here and that was a little bit surprising. I thought for sure that tourists would go someplace else. You can take photos of this from different directions all over from like a 500 kilometer radius of Mount Fuji and you get a really good view of it. I'm not sure if it's necessary to erect this wall across the street. I'm going to show you some of the issues that I found in this as well as take you around and make sure you get a good view of it. Maybe we'll talk to a couple of people.

00:01:32 John Daub: I want to say thank you to the few people, one from Germany and a family from India, who stopped to say hi and who also watched the show. That was really nice. But this Lawson's has become quite popular and there are some people going in there, but most people don't actually go in there and shop. I don't and I think a lot of the locals don't even want to come in here to eat at this Lawson's because it's just such a hassle. They've done a really good job with signage. It's gotten brighter. Do not run out into the roadway. You can hear them honking the horn as there's people out on the roadway.

00:02:03 John Daub: So I don't think it's so much about just going out into the roadway. It's just people being in the roadway taking a step off the curb. You can see there's really not a lot of space there. Let me show you how narrow it is. And if you just take a step back, you're going to get hit and there's a red light and a green light and this isn't where the red light is. It's over here. And this is the issue. This light. There's a crosswalk and it's only about 10 meters away, like 30 feet. You could cross here on a green light.

00:02:36 John Daub: You see the light is green. There's actually a button that you can push to cross it. But despite the fact that it is red right now, despite the fact that there's a traffic signal here telling you when to walk, I'd say a third of the people just cross anyways. If a car has stopped, even if it's red, people are crossing. That means people don't see this very well, the tourists, because there's another traffic light up ahead and there's a crossing without a traffic light. If people do cross on the other one, traffic slows and tourists think it's safe to cross despite the red light.

00:03:07 John Daub: We're going to see if maybe they break the law here. I mean, if you're going to break the law, this isn't the place to do it. Not right now. Anyways, so far so good. But they didn't push the button. And there's a police officer at the police box over here and he was standing nearby and he was pushing the button because by pushing the button, it causes the light to turn red for cars and allows the traffic to stop legally and people to cross legally. But if you don't push it, the button will change a lot slower. And tourists didn't figure this out yet. I didn't see anybody push the button on either side.

00:03:38 John Daub: Okay, here's the light is changing right now. And this is how you should be crossing. All right. That was a model crossing. It's a model crossing. That poor 711 over there or fortunate one has very few tourists standing in front of it. Here's my rig. I'm doing the opening to my show right now. I put my camera away for the live streaming. Let me show you the view that the people have of this crossing from where they're taking the picture. And then I'm going to cross the street with you and take a look at this black tarp, which is somewhat see-through.

00:04:17 John Daub: I'm staying on the curb, but it is very... Wow, that bus is really close. I'm on the right side of the line. But it's really scary. And with this wall here, you can see now the guard is walking back and forth through there. So you can see it is somewhat see-through. But he's telling people to keep on moving. The thing is, he's saying it in Japanese and nobody knows what he's saying because nobody speaks Japanese. I've talked with him before last time. See, the traffic is very narrow. You can't even see around the corner there. It's very tight at this roadway, which makes this the worst place to have a tourist attraction. And this isn't an intended tourist attraction.

00:04:51 John Daub: So you can see the picture is not as good from here as it is across the street. You get a much better view. I'm going to do that now. All right, it's a green light here. The dentist put this here. Patients only, don't sit down here because people were sitting there and eating. I think my camera gear is going to be fine over there. I have my third eye or an eye on it. The guard doesn't mind if you take pictures from right here. He's doing his best to keep people safe, not keep people from taking pictures. But just keep them safe. As you can see, obviously, is the wall making it helping? I think it is.

00:05:54 John Daub: Look at that. She's trying to get a picture through the wall. She failed, and she keeps on moving. And if you move past here, there's another crosswalk in view about 10 meters or 30 feet away. And the guard is there to get people. He's instructing her to keep walking. Okay, that's very good. But you can see from here, it's off-center, so you don't get the kind of view that you were maybe hoping for from this actual position. I don't think it's such a great view, but you can see that the buses come here and block the shot. But the material you can see is not... You can see through it a little bit, but not enough to make the kind of impression you want. I'm not sure. Was it worth it? I can't imagine how much this cost to install here. What do you guys think?

00:07:57 John Daub: I'm just gonna walk. And this is also for the dentist to walk through here. This is interesting. They also have here, so if you do decide that you want to be some idiot, they actually have a CCTV camera that's now watching this as well. I guess it must be at one of the poles or it's on the other side. But there's a closed-circuit TV camera somewhere watching. And again, they put the sign here. All right, already this guy is really... It's really narrow. I see Michael Sassano is here. Beautiful day in Japan. Thank you for the snack. Ah, be careful. Somebody just crossed on a green light.

00:08:56 John Daub: So you can see they're not seeing the light was obviously green right there, or red right there. So you really do have to cross on a green light. Or ao (blue) is what we say in Japan. But it's so high up here, tourists don't see it. And this is like one of the issues that they have. Japanese push-button traffic light. Push button in yellow box attached to utility and wait until the traffic light turns green. And look, they have these flags here to... I guess the staff will come out here and help direct people to cross at this particular spot. So this is a really good thing. There's been some improvements, but the biggest one I see is these crossing lights. Way, way too high. You can't even see them.

00:09:57 John Daub: You have the mirror and the box and everything. These need to be lowered so that people can see that there's a crossing here. Because I saw maybe, as I said, 30% of the people are still crossing on a red signal because they can't see it. They just see that a car has stopped here. So there's a misunderstanding. It's fascinating stuff. But you can see that it is a beautiful spot, but there's so many places that are way better than this. And in fact, just down the street there is another Lawson's that has the same view.

00:10:33 John Daub: And Lawson's, when they issued their apology a couple of weeks ago, they actually wrote that they're taking measures. They're going to be taking more measures here. And they're going to be taking measures at the other location because they noticed an influx of tourist visits and hanging out in the parking lot and loitering. Let me show you my experience driving into this spot here. This is about 30 minutes ago. You can see it's very narrow. There's the guard there. On the left side is the wall. On the right side is the Lawson's.

00:11:23 John Daub: The last thing I want to do... I stopped at the line because I don't want to be there. Even... Look up! See, that's a red light for them. They shouldn't be crossing. That's dangerous. Because if there's a bus there, there could be traffic coming in the other direction and hit you, not seeing you cross the street. That's why the near misses are there. You cannot see around the corner. Those tourists should not have crossed the street in front of me, but that's the way... This is why they put this wall there. And this is why the crossing light needs to be lower. It's still not enough.

00:11:52 John Daub: It's still not enough to stop people from crossing despite that. And if there are two buses and one bus has stopped there and another bus in the other lane is moving, a tourist is going to get hit. Look. Right there. Stop. Don't walk. If that was a bus, not a white car, they would have been hit because they wouldn't have seen this other bus coming. They could have potentially been hit. If you look up above, that's a green light. This is why... And now it turns red. And it was yellow light. I could make it through there. That's what I'm talking about with the dangers here.

00:12:31 John Daub: It was way worse though because when Mount Fuji was out, people were jumping across the street like maniacs, not considering their own health. I guess they think that the cars are going slow or the cars will stop for them. There have been too many near misses. I'm just shocked that nobody has gotten hit yet, but I'm sure that if they had not done anything, somebody would have. There's the crossing here and there's one across the street there and there are more tourists coming in here. Most of the tourists coming into this spot are coming in by train and by bus. The buses come right to the station here.

00:13:07 John Daub: Let me show you on the map here. I'm going to bring this into the software so you guys can take a look. This is why this site is so popular and why this site is so crowded. It's right next to the bus and the train station. You see Kawaguchiko Station on the bottom right. And you see the Lawson's where I am, that blue spot. And it's just like a 100-meter walk for people, like a couple of minutes. So you'll see people wheeling suitcases. And then they'll leave their suitcases right in the middle here.

00:13:38 John Daub: And when I was filming the opening to the main channel episode, I actually had this 360 camera going for a reason. Because I wanted to catch people if I could. And there were suitcases in the middle and a police car was coming through. And a car wanted to make a left into the Lawson's. And the police officer got on the horn and he told people in Japanese to move their stuff. But the tourists don't speak Japanese. So there was a complete, first of all, like, a shock. Then I guess you could read the situation.

00:14:10 John Daub: You can see people walking on the other side of that black tarp. But I don't know. This is news. This is interesting. For me, the fascination is that this is a direction or a solution that Japan has for an issue that just keeps getting worse and worse. I'm glad that they came up with one. But I'm also going to be going to Fujiyoshida in about an hour from now. And check out the solution that they've had for another famous picture that has been more famous than this one for quite a long time. They come up with solutions. And they've had this enacted for quite a long time. And I'm going to be interviewing with the staff over there.

00:14:48 John Daub: So I'm looking forward to driving over there and talking with people. This main channel episode, these live streams are pretty good. And when you see the main channel episode, I do have a second channel. You're going to feel like you were here with me on this particular day, which is kind of interesting. And then on that episode, it'll have a lot more inside of it that gives you a really great overview of the challenges that Japan has going forward. Can't say I blame them for trying to keep this under control.

00:15:19 John Daub: I'm not sure if it's working as well as they want it. Lloyd, I don't know. I think it fixed one problem and maybe it causes another. I think it fixed the big problem, though. There's less people going across the street. And there's nobody taking pictures from the street. There's nobody taking pictures from over here. The guard, the poor guard, and I'll have this in the main channel episode. He was trying like waving people, yelling at people to move out of the way. He was body language. He's irate, upset. And there were about 30 people still taking pictures. They weren't listening to him at all. And he has no power to make them move. He can't physically touch them. He can't speak English. It was just a really bad situation. Really disgusting.

00:16:12 John Daub: Walter L. Walters is here. Sadly, I don't think any more serious or stricter rules will go into place until someone gets seriously injured or worse, unfortunately. And you're right. I think Lawson's might take some action apparently in their press release. They definitely need people off of there because if they fall down from there, whose fault is that? Is it the city? Is it Lawson's? If they break a sign, Lawson's has to pay for that. A lot of people are putting their hands on the sign, using it to prop up tripods. There's a Lawson's kanban (store sign) over there, a sign for the convenience store. And people are using that in ways that they should not be doing it. It shouldn't be touched. There's light bulbs in there, electricity going through there. It's still kind of chaotic. Definitely, I think more needs to be done.

00:17:04 John Daub: One small step for the city. One giant leap for safety. How does that one? Neil Armstrong. Here's a dude with a selfie stick. He's trying to get the shot. That's not a great shot. You're too close. Is it really that good? Next month's postcard might be this image, though. Let me know what you think. This is this month's postcard. It's from Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO World Heritage village in Gifu Prefecture. Really beautiful place. I just sent that out yesterday. That's for this month and starting on June 1st. I might use this one as the image. This is a pretty interesting image, I think. We will see.

00:18:18 John Daub: Last time I was here, I talked with the dentist who actually lives here as well. You can see that's his house covered with the trees. He said that the greatest regret... He doesn't mind so much that the tourists are taking pictures. What the greatest regret would be for him, if somebody... He knew that the situation was out of control, but if someone got hit by a car and lost their life, he would feel really guilty that he didn't do enough. So I think that that plays a part into it. A lot of Japanese... The near misses, they're not happy about it, but they don't want anybody to lose their life. That's the most important. They don't want anybody to get hit.

00:19:12 John Daub: As a car stops across the street on a green light. The light was green. They're not supposed to do that either, but... They did get the shot. People doing stupid things to try to get a picture. This is the most important thing. I want to leave you with this, okay? I'm going to walk across the street to try to get a nice view for you. This is what it looks like as a selfie picture from as far as you can go here. All right. I'm going to make sure I get out of the way. Japanese shouldn't feel like that, but they do. You can't make people not feel the way that they feel.

00:19:55 John Daub: It's a cultural thing as much. People feel a sense of guilt, a sense of responsibility. It's different than the way you and I see it. That's why when you saw the World Cup, Japanese fans were cleaning up the stadium because they felt guilty or they felt shame. That area was dirty and they were there and they saw it and they didn't clean it. And for a lot of you, you might say, well, somebody's been paid to do that. That's their job. I would rather them having wiping it down. People should be picking up the big trash. People shouldn't be leaving it a mess. And I'll let the staff get some cleanser and wipe it down and they'll have the time for that. Keep things looking nice and neat.

00:20:50 John Daub: If you look at New York City these days and then compare it to Tokyo, there's really no comparison. Look at that. The poor locals got to go between the tourists taking pictures there in a parking lot. That's crazy. This is still a little bit much, but I'm not going to fault the tourists. They're happy. They know what they want. I'm not going to fault the city. They're doing the best that they possibly can. I think over time, they're going to find new ways to make it safer. And maybe that's the best approach. Leave me a comment below. Let me know what you think is the best way. What's the best approach for this? I'm really interested to hear your feedback on this.

00:21:28 John Daub: I don't want to say it's a problem. It sort of is, but it's more of a challenge. Not just here in Japan. It's a global challenge. It's something that's going to be an issue for many years going forward. As Japan moves on to get 40 million tourists a year, they're getting really close to that. They're over 3 million every month, which would put them at 36 million tourists, putting them in the top three in the world. I think the United States and France maybe. There's a few countries, maybe China, just based on how big it is and how many ports of entry China has. Tourism is only going to get heavier here in Japan. And they're going to have to find these solutions to the challenges to make the locals happy.

00:22:21 John Daub: Because you should not have to change your everyday life for tourism. And to make the tourists happy, tourists should be considering the locals' feelings when they go to a country. I think because more people can afford to travel now, there's less responsibility because there's just more people breaking the rules and other people see that and then they respond to that. And I think that that's not a great thing. You see other people doing it, so you do it too. There's more people. It's harder to control. And I'm talking about that guy at the end of the road. There's just one guy behind the pole there you see on the right side. He's doing his very best. And when I go by him later on, I'm going to say thank you to him. I don't want to disturb him.

00:23:03 John Daub: See that bus is packed with people. It's a very popular destination. Especially today with Mount Fuji. And by the way, I would say in the summertime you're not going to get a very good view here. It's usually in clouds because of the humidity and the haze. And the snow melts so you really don't get the same kind of view. It's kind of boring. It's really not that spectacular of a view when the snow is gone. But it's just a volcano. But it's the most beautiful site because you can see it from everywhere. And as I say in the main channel episode, for centuries artists have been painting it, drawing it. And for the last 20 years people have been smartphone photographing it and putting it on social media. Making this a very popular site. And it's a little bit less dangerous than it was a couple of weeks ago. And I think that's a pretty big win.

00:24:08 John Daub: Roro2k writes in here, aloha from Hawaii sir. Rest assured us Hawaii folks don't act like these other tourists. I educate my travel group. Yes, thank you for that. I think Hawaiians are quite used to over-tourism or tourism in general. And seeing the behavior of other tourists makes Hawaiians a lot more comfortable. And I feel like I have family in Hawaii. A little bit more responsible. There are still some crazy people. But a little bit more responsible than people from the mainland. And also because it's an island. And I think people are a little bit more responsible too. Because they keep their island looking very beautiful. At least that's my opinion and feeling of it all.

00:24:52 John Daub: Alright everybody. Mahalo. Now you have the Hawaiian vibes. Thanks guys for watching. I'll see you in a few weeks. I'm going to Fujiyoshida next, which has a really incredible view as well. I'm going to check out that other Lawson's which has a pretty interesting view as well. And then next week I'm planning to go down to Kyoto and Nara for some quick filler video for an episode that I'm hoping to upload as soon as possible. The main channel will be getting some love ASAP. I appreciate the support guys. See ya. Or mata ne (see you later).