00:01 John Daub: Hello. We've been seeing images in Japan of tourists gone wild since about the cherry blossoms. This has gone on for quite a long time, going all the way back to when Logan Paul and other YouTubers came here and were disrespecting Japanese, taking advantage of the hospitality. People are very kind and easygoing here in Japan, and it's very easy to take advantage of that. And we're seeing that more and more. Now on Japanese media, this is leading to some really big problems, and it's a troubling direction for me to see.

00:36 John Daub: During the cherry blossoms, we saw tourists shaking the cherry blossom trees. These trees are very important because for a lot of people who live here in Japan, we see these trees every day, every year for our lives, and we walk past them. They're very special. And when tourists come here and don't have that same connection with the nature that we do here, this is just appalling. When I first see it, it brings me to tears because I know that tree deserves better. I think we all deserve better than what we're seeing here, and it's just heartbreaking. Arthur Vandelay, it's nice to see you here, buddy.

01:17 John Daub: This is the kind of behavior we've started to see from about the middle of March since cherry blossom season. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you to everybody on Instagram because it keeps sharing these images with me. There's not a lot I could do with it, but this one in particular has really hit me hard.

01:42 John Daub: We all know that the geisha in Kyoto and Gion have been suffering through tourists' abuse. Worse than paparazzi. At least paparazzi have standards. But tourists are unpredictable; they'll do anything to get the shot. I don't know who this tourist is. Obviously, her behavior is over the top. It's awful. I see Irvin is here. Nice to see you, buddy. I was shocked. My mouth was on the ground. And I traced this back to the Instagrammer here, and I left him a message to try to talk to him. We have a mutual friend in common who comes here to Japan quite a lot. I was just appalled at this behavior. How far do you have to go?

02:30 John Daub: Maybe it's a misunderstanding. Maybe Japan is not doing a good enough job explaining that this is their livelihood. They're going to work. This isn't anything out of the ordinary for this neighborhood. And when you see it and you're drawn to it like a fly to a light, it should be more like an electric light. Put these people out of their misery. I feel bad even saying that in a way. But if you look at this lady's eyes, she's just in the zone. She's got to get the shot, like she's a journalist. She's not a journalist; she's just a tourist. This poor geisha is weaving left and right, trying to get out of the way. She's being very respectful. She can't open up her mouth. She knows that if she says something, it only does damage. You never show anger here in Japan. When you do something like this, it looks very bad and it brings your reputation down more. I think she's doing the best thing she can do: just try to weave out of the way and be respectful.

03:44 John Daub: While this video and I go over to this Instagram page and check it out, Zozala Jail—actually very interesting creator who's here in Japan. I apparently got this clip. I haven't been able to confirm that, but you could hear in the background other tourists telling this lady, you can't do that. Don't do this. This is wrong. I think it's when the other tourists start to police other tourists, this is when things maybe start to improve. This behavior, I don't care what country, it's not just illegal because you're not allowed to take pictures on some of these streets. It's wrong. You can't post this stuff on social media either without permission. There's portrait rights here in Japan. It's a misunderstood thing. I can go into this a little bit more in another livestream, but when you see this kind of behavior, it just breaks your heart as somebody who lives here in Japan.

04:45 John Daub: It's going to be really hard for municipalities, for the city of Kyoto. Obviously, they've done some stuff, but it's not working. What more can they do without damaging their own reputation? Look, right now I'm seeing here on Japanese media more and more TV news showing the rude behavior of tourists that are coming here to Japan. That really breaks my heart because I've been here for 26 years. I get tossed into the tourist group by people who don't know me because I'm a foreigner. And there's a lot of Japanese tourists too, of course. But people just assume that foreigners don't know anything.

05:33 John Daub: You can see here at a very popular site I was at on this channel just last week, some of the bad behavior: crossing the street illegally. They have yellow, orange cones that are very easy to see. They have signs telling you not to do this. Despite all of this, the tourists are going ahead to try to get the shot, crossing the street, going in dangerous places. And there's a TV news camera there with a guy with a microphone. You would think that maybe they're going to do this. But they're not. They're just being disrespectful, rude, and dangerous to themselves. What happens if they fall? What happens if they get injured? What happens if a car strikes them? In Japan, when we do stupid behavior like this, we're also thinking about the other person. What about that other person? What if the person in the car who hits you gets killed? And what about their family? So there's a lot of things that we think about here in Japan.

06:28 John Daub: The top right panel on the other side of the screen that the news is reporting—this is just one of every single major news network posting this kind of material inside of Japan, and you don't know about it because you don't see it. And I see it here on a daily basis if I just turn on the media, turn on the news. I'm going to take some of your questions as well, because I think this is a livestream. This is a really good topic to have a discussion. But if you're watching this in playback, please by all means leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on all of this. It's a heartbreaking topic. It's one that I hope I don't have to do very often.

07:03 John Daub: Sorry, Jen, I normally love watching all your streams, but I can't stay here for this one. OK, that was like something that I was covering. And the next sentence here from Michelle: I hate people. Well, don't hate people. The flip side on this is a lot of the tourists don't have those crazy eyes. They just don't know. I'm not giving them a pass. I think this isn't behavior that is acceptable in any country. But I think that there's some people, in particular from the West, who think that this being Asia, it's OK to do this kind of stuff. Let me tell you something. Stop you right there. Japan has more rules than maybe any other country in the world. There's so many rules for cultural situations. People have to hire consultants to explain to them how to navigate certain cultural rules. There's so many of them. And it's deep. I've been here 26 years and I'm not even scratching the surface.

08:10 John Daub: I remember we went to somebody close had passed away and we didn't really know what to do because Japan has so many rules in that respect. We had to have a consultant come and tell us what the procedure was. And it was really deep. It was one of the first times in Japan where I learned there are so many little rules that I will never really know. And that's not unusual because Japanese don't know them either.

08:34 John Daub: There's a story that's gone viral here inside of Japan on Twitter in particular, where an English guide was out a couple of weeks ago. Some of you might have seen this. I'm not going to show the clip because we don't know what the context is for real. But there's Jeffrey Hall, who is on Twitter, who posts a lot of news stuff, has been posting some interesting information on this. I'll follow the story as well. Because he's an English guide with people from England coming and visiting Kyoto. And they were at night at a temple. And they were shaking the bell way too loud, like going crazy with it. I don't know what transpired because this Japanese viewer did not film that part. So we don't know actually what happened. Maybe they were very apologetic.

09:47 John Daub: That was up kind of late. It's going to be something that Japan really grapples with. But this situation with the English guide, the Japanese who filmed him trying to shame him—we don't know what the context was. It wasn't filmed. They posted this on social media. And then Japanese started to put in bad reviews. And then they put him onto his service because he's a guide, a registered guide. He's been here for eight years. He's nationwide. Now, that English guide approached the situation extremely poorly, right? When I watched the clip, he was a little standoffish. He was saying, I've lived in Japan for eight years, speaking in Japanese and in English. I think maybe it was a little bit insulting. But we don't know the context of it all. And that Japanese person who posted it on social media without blurring his face also is breaking the portrait rights rules.

10:47 John Daub: I noticed in the post on Jeffrey Hall's Instagram was that there could be legal implications with posting somebody's picture like this. You can't just start filming people like you would in the United States. And this is something that I'm going to probably do another episode on. If you see something wrong, you can film them, but you really shouldn't be posting them on social media. Now, that lady, I don't know where she's from and whatnot, but she's all over social media already. And I think what she's doing is despicable. I would love to hear her try to defend it. But you can't put a camera in somebody's face. And if they say no to that, then you can't post it on the internet. It's just not [in Japan]. There's portrait rights rules. You have to read between the lines here. And if you do go to court and get sued for it, you probably should just take it down first of all, to try to avoid that because there are legal costs with that respect.

11:41 John Daub: But it's something I think that if you do come to Japan from the West, just because somebody's outside does not give you the right to take their picture and then publish it. You can probably take their picture, but don't publish it, right? And if they end up feeling uncomfortable, everybody has a right to privacy here in Japan. Now, there are live cameras all over the country on Shibuya Crossing. From my understanding of this law, it's only if you focus in on that person and it's like a portrait type of thing that you're doing. If you get them in the background and stuff, and that's why we can do like these live streams and why the TV news media can also do live broadcasting on the street without blurring faces is because they're not zooming in on anybody and putting them on the spot and breaking their rights.

12:24 John Daub: But this lady who put the English guide on the spot broke those rules and she can get in some big trouble. And there's other things, including being sued for damaging this guy's business because we don't know the context in which this is done. But this is the issue here is all a fundamental problem because we're seeing in Japan all of these stories coming up on the news media and we're trying to find ways to deal with it. And it's not easy as you're seeing here, like they're on the street, they're in dangerous situations and they interviewed the locals in this media report. You can see there's a clear sign right there. They're interviewing the locals in this area and the tourists are coming to this quiet place that I went to at six in the morning. That's not the problem all the time, but there were some tourists that are extremely rude, super rude, I can say. And those are the 1% that just really ruins it for everybody.

13:30 John Daub: Japan is still, I believe, a new destination. It's a place that I think for many of you—you might not know I came here in 1998. There were like no tourists here. There were Japanese tourists when I went to Kyoto and it was very crowded back then. But there weren't a lot of foreign tourists. Since 2014, 2015, we've seen an explosion of tourists. And over the last four years, during that time where we couldn't all travel, the tourist numbers were like zero. So it was like we were back to 1998 in a way. But Japan is sort of grappling with this word overtourism. And I'm going to talk about this even more. Overtourism has a negative feeling to it. It's maybe not a great word to represent Japanese feeling of this omotenashi (the spirit of welcoming and being a good host) and wanting to show you a really good time. That's what Japanese really feel in their core. Like 99.9%. There's always going to be a minority of people who don't want you here. It's like in every country, isn't it?

14:37 John Daub: Japan really needs tourists to come here. And I think that the vast majority of people understand that because they themselves are tourists too. They understand when they travel outside of Japan. So this word overtourism, I think, is misrepresented a little bit. It's more like Japan trying to find ways to balance everyday life of locals with the tourists. And overtourism is also bad for the tourists because if you all go to one spot, it creates this inauthentic and really crowded situation that's just not fun. And that's why I don't like Kyoto that much. It's just not fun. And I'm talking about central Kyoto, the main sites that everybody likes to go to. It's not fun when you're shoulder to shoulder with a lot of people. You kind of want to go and feel Japan.

15:19 John Daub: Here's some locals being interviewed and saying, look, somebody's going to get hit by a car. We don't know when. We don't know how. But when that happens, it's going to be a really awful thing. This is the same as when I showed you Kawaguchiko and I've done that a couple of times. I showed you they put up a black tarp. And this is how unprepared that Japan is for foreign tourists and this kind of overtourism problem. The tarp is made with a material that is translucent or see-through. It's not a really thick wall. It's basically just a canvas, right? Already, tourists have punched holes through it, of course they have, through the wall. And the city is like, how could this happen? Well, I bet you every single one of you who's watching could have predicted that that was going to happen. And I kind of figured that someone's going to burn a hole with a cigarette or something through this wall.

16:20 John Daub: The wall is supposed to be temporary. The site, I believe, is going to be gone in a couple of years, if not in a couple of months. I don't know. I think people just tend to move on to the next trend. But I was heartbroken to see that the efforts—they think they paid like $20,000 for this wall. And it's already been like a waste of time. I mean, look at the images here from Japanese media. This is what we're getting here in Japan. And it's heartbreaking to see this.

16:47 John Daub: Francis writes in here, I saw that clip, I think the English guy was quite rude as well. Yeah, I got that feeling too. He handled it poorly. He kept asking the Japanese lady to speak in English, but in the end he made some rude comments in Japanese as he was walking away. He absolutely did. I think, again, he handled it wrong. But that doesn't give the lady the right to publicly shame him and put this up on social media without at least blurring his face and giving him a chance to respond or showing what he actually did. I really appreciate that comment. I'm glad that you saw that clip. It's making its way not so much around the foreign social media, but Twitter, which is big in Japan, or X. It's huge here.

17:34 John Daub: Again, if you haven't followed, let me see if I can get him up here. I just got a message here from Zozala Jail, who posted that Instagram thing. I messaged him a couple of... Hold on. I'll put the video up here. If I can get it up here. Well, he wrote in here, Hey, John, I'm very well and enjoying Japan as usual. Thanks for asking. Yeah, I did take that video. It didn't do well here, but it reached 29 million on TikTok. Ah, so Zozala Jail wrote to me. He's a really cool creator. He's from Qatar. And he's the one who took that video on 29 million views on TikTok. So go check him out on TikTok.

18:37 John Daub: They should move Mount Fuji, writes in Meow Meow Meow jokingly. You know, that's the funny thing. I think you should move your feet, tourists, because you don't really have to go that far in order to get a really good view of Mount Fuji. You just have to go anywhere. It's a volcano. It's almost a perfect cone, except for one section that exploded back in the 18th century, which was the last time that Mount Fuji erupted, leaving a little hump on there. You can see that from Mishima, from that side of Mishima being near Odawara. So you can see it from this side, Kanagawa, when you're coming from Tokyo to Mount Fuji. And then when you get to about Shin-Fuji, it looks quite good again. But if you go on the backside of Mount Fuji, it's again a perfect cylindrical volcano looking thing that you can see from anywhere. Why do you need to have it with Lawson's or a convenience store? I guess people just want to feel like they're in a famous place.

19:40 John Daub: They just want to feel what they want to feel, you know, what's going on around them and show that picture, put it on social media and share that with everybody. Like, hey, look at me. I'm here as well. I watched a YouTuber yesterday who uploaded a video about, I think it was divorce or something. I don't know. But people on Instagram and on TikTok, typically they're showing part of their life that's not reality. And I think we all know this, but sometimes we need to hear this. What you're seeing on social media isn't always really the reality. It's kind of what people want to show you. The reality is that a lot of people are hurting. Probably people that overshare on Instagram are hurting inside and probably don't have really great lives.

20:26 John Daub: I'm not posting pictures of my family or my, you know, lovely wife and son every single day. I'm not taking them to experiences to film them, to put them on YouTube. I do sometimes because, you know, I'm still a YouTuber at the end of the day. But I don't do that because I'm quite happy. And I want those experiences mostly to be for myself. And I share a little bit with you guys. And when you do find me and you see our family, we're really happy to meet you. That's normal everyday people life stuff, common sense. And I think we should all realize that what we see on social media is crap.

21:05 John Daub: So this is a new format. I'll be, whenever it's raining like it is today, I might go live like this and talk about issues in particular that are really useful to you that in this format, I can really highlight and I'll try to do them live because again, like hearing from you guys live is really good. So what do you guys think? Leave me more comments down in the chat about this. This fake room behind me, this green screen. You can see it's just a green screen. Basically, I think you get the idea. It's behind me.

21:50 John Daub: I want to leave you with the video from before here. This is a despicable scene. And if you do see people doing this, I think you don't have to be told. Please let them know. Let them know that what they're doing is wrong. Share videos like this. I think I love the fact that he shared this too, because it lets us know that these kinds of people are here. And it shows us that if you do this kind of behavior, then you're going to have to pay a price socially. But when I every time I see this image, what gives her the right to do this to somebody, this poor lady who's just going to work? What gives her the right to take this picture like this? Where's she going to put it? And it's not even a good picture. I can't imagine with a smartphone. This is going to be something that's worthy of putting on your wall. I don't know if you find her social media account. And she did post it there. Please share it with me. I'd like to see what her final result was for all this hard work to be very disruptive, a member of society here in Japan.

23:03 John Daub: We're seeing more and more of this in Japan. I think Japan is going to get used to it, but we cannot excuse the tourist behaviors and we have to, the Japanese have to find ways to solve some of these issues. It's going to be some growing pains. I think 2024, 2025 is going to be a little bit rough, but the more images we see inside of Japan this happening, the more I think we all kind of worry. The more we're going to have people like that lady who saw something happening with the English guide. Some disrespect at a Japanese temple or shrine. We don't know what exactly he did. And they kind of went off of the deep end. I think they both were wrong, but you shouldn't have been posting that on social media. You probably should have told that guy and you can leave bad comments on his site, whatever, or she should put her face up there and then show it. And she's also accountable for her words. She can't be anonymous basically.

24:07 John Daub: And I think when you do something like that, then maybe you're doing something useful, but come on. I think we're going to see now after, you know, an IRL streamer who went to Japan, you know, jail for three months for being extremely disruptive. It takes a lot in Japan to get arrested. It takes a lot here to be deported. It takes a lot for the police to take notice and say that you're not good because Japan wants you to come here. That's why it takes so long. The second is because they're probably building a case against you that's so rock solid that they'll be able to keep you in jail for months. You can ask IRL streamer all about that experience. But the end result is that all these little teeny things, all these issues, vandalism at temples and shrines where people are writing their names blank. So and so was here. When you see that, let them know. Be part of the solution, not the problem.

25:05 John Daub: That's what I'm trying to be. I'm going to show you this kind of stuff when it happens so that you can understand that it's wrong. And second, if you do see it to let them know, you can report it to the authorities. I don't think it's going to take a lot to get somebody arrested here, but there's not a lot that I can do except for this. And it's up to everybody around us to be the sun that follows us. This is one of the reasons why many people in Japan are quite honest. It's because there's this expression that a friend of mine, Japanese, told me: look, the sun is always watching us. Meaning someone's always watching you. And if you do, if you feel some shame, if you didn't give back, if somebody saw you walk past a wallet that somebody just dropped and you didn't give it back, they would feel some shame or some guilt. Just depends on the person. So there's this feeling that everyone's watching everybody and keeping society in check. If I do something wrong, a grandma is going to let me know. An old lady probably saw me or tell my wife or my family. This is the way Japan has worked in the past from my experience.

26:11 John Daub: So it's up to the tourists to police the other tourists sometimes. And you have to let people know that this is wrong. You can't do this. Don't you think that's rude? You should call them out a little bit. And I think other tourists that do see this action are going to be calling out the same thing. And maybe in the end, if we see enough of these videos about poor behavior in Japan, everyone's going to get the idea before they plan this trip and come here that, look, be respectful. Don't try to disturb everyday life. People here are also residents of Japan trying to live their lives, have a decent life. You know, everyday life. And like I am too. And we don't want tourists disturbing locals. We don't want Japan to take attractions away from us. We don't want that to happen. But in Japan, that's typically what would happen. And people would say this is bad PR and all this other stuff. Yeah, it probably is. But that's how this is still Japan. And this is how we react to stuff. If somebody gets hit by a car, we shut it down. And we take things away. And then gradually we bring it back, but safer.

27:15 John Daub: Just like when the guy flew a drone onto the roof of the prime minister when drones were new. This is a real story. About ten years ago, somebody had a drone that they flew in central Tokyo and the drone landed on the roof of the prime minister. And very quickly, they banned all drones and slowly let drones be used with regulation. Now you have to register your drone before you can fly it here in Japan. So that's the way Japan will react. Very harshly and swiftly when something happens. But until it does, it's sort of a passive-aggressive type of thing.

27:54 John Daub: I guess this would be the closest thing to a podcast I've ever done. This is a new format. Probably I'll be able to deal with issues on a rainy day. I tend to still like to go outside though. I find that it's good exercise. It's good to meet with people. And I don't like to be in a studio. And I like to do things live. I don't particularly like to record things and have to edit it. Because I think there's an authenticity to this format. If you make a big mistake, everybody knows it. You can't really fake it. I feel pretty cool with it. And I'm willing to take the consequences for an occasional slip.

28:38 John Daub: Alright everybody. I hope you're doing well. And share me your experiences. If you do come to Japan, we have a Discord server with about 17,000-18,000 people on there. We're sharing the photos, the stories. A lot of the stories that I have to cover comes from you. And I'm really happy to pop in there and to comment on some things that you do share sometimes if I can find it. Because we get a lot of people in there. And we get a very friendly community as well. So I appreciate it if you guys check out that Discord server. It's free.

29:10 John Daub: I'll see you in another livestream. Probably outside when the sun comes out. Kanae, Leo, and I are planning to go camping on Thursday somewhere in Japan. I'm not going to tell you exactly where. Out in the countryside. Perhaps we might do a livestream and show you a little bit of the other side of Japan. Outside of the cities. Going out camping. What's that like? What's that experience like? I've never done it with the family before. So this is going to be a pretty cool experience. As long as that typhoon that's on its way from the Philippines and out there in the Pacific doesn't do too much damage and ruin our Thursday. Should be pretty good. Alright everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. I'll see you in the next livestream. Matane.