Fine Bad Tourists in Japan Shibuya Bans Street Drinking Discussion

00:00:01 John Daub: Hello, everybody. And today we're going to be talking about a topic that I talked about a couple of days ago. It's the alcohol ban, public drinking on the streets of Shibuya. Now in Shinjuku as well, for the Halloween event. We're going to learn a little bit about this as well as talk to somebody who does a little bit of public drinking, maybe a lot. I don't know. We're going to ask him. We have a guest that's going to be joining us. Sam. Tokyo Sam is here. Tay K T K Y O Sam. Is that how you say it?

00:00:33 Tokyo Sam: Yeah. TKO Sam, you know, for the layman, you know, hearing impaired. TKO Sam, you know. All right, we got to separate ourselves from the other Tokyo's. Hi. Hi, everybody.

00:00:43 John Daub: Got it. All right. To set this up. Thank you, Sam. To set this up, we have the Asahi Shimbun, which published an article just recently. It is Tokyo Shibuya Shinjuku Wards Crackdown on Street Drinking. This is an issue that's just growing more and more. We have this word overtourism. I think it's got a negative connotation. I've been doing episodes on overtourism now for, I don't know, a couple of weeks, and it's been bringing me down. So I don't want to do too much more of this. But if you just look at the image in the article that is published on the Japanese newspaper site here, you can see Shibuya is filthy. This is not the kind of image that they want to be presenting to the world. And there's a lot of residents that live in the Shibuya ward and they themselves don't like to go to these areas. Since public drinking is something that you can do in Japan, it's a right that we all seem to have. We're going to learn more about that with Sam. When rights are abused in Japan, they tend to just take them all away. And. And we're starting to see this more with the overturism or people who just don't understand the rules. We're going to discuss whether or not that's the right way to go in this article. Let's go over this really quickly before we bring Sam back in here. They're going to be banning drinking from 5, 6pm to 5am year round every day. And this is something that the mayor has decided that he's going to enact. It started with Halloween and other events like New Year's, and now it's going to be extended to the rest of the year. They've noticed an uptick in the article. They talk about this, an uptick in public drinking with the opening of Japan in 2022. And that has led to more people I don't know making it says here the daily. I'll just read from the article. The daily average of street drinking cases on Friday, Saturdays and days before holidays increased about 1.5 times on around 70% of the cases involved foreign visitors, according to Shibuya Ward. The revised ordinance will prohibit street drinking from 6pm to 5am and its target areas include Mieshta park, the ward office neighborhood and Maruyama Cho, where nightclubs are concentrated. Shibuya Mayor Ken Haseba said the ward will increase the number of patrols starting from October. Some municipalities have ordinance against polarization public drinking, including Chatan. So there's places in other places in Japan, but this is the one that is the most urban. Shinjuku ward's planned action stems in part from Shibuya's original ordinance. According to the Shinjuku office officials, the number of people in Kabukicho that have been drinking has increased in the Halloween time. Last year's increase was thousands compared to a typical year. Tourists, both international and domestic. That's important. Contributed to the jump. Many of the drinkers are believed to have avoided neighboring Shibuya because of the ordinances there. They went to Shinjuku to drink. So the mayor has drawn up plans to ban drinking during Halloween. And here we are. Sam, welcome back to the screen. I see you're eating breakfast. Sorry to keep you waiting.

00:03:59 Tokyo Sam: No, no worries. I was hungry.

00:04:03 John Daub: I've known Sam for.

00:04:04 Tokyo Sam: Hi, everybody.

00:04:05 John Daub: How you doing? I've known Sam for. I don't know, several years now. I've been watching him on YouTubes for over 10. You've been in Japan for what, 15 years now?

00:04:16 Tokyo Sam: Almost. Yeah, over 15 years now. Yeah. It's wild, man. Not as long as you, though.

00:04:21 John Daub: I think you're missing a button on your shirt. You're missing a button.

00:04:25 Tokyo Sam: No, I just, you know, this is. This is the Japanese style, John. I'm just trying to be like the natives, you know, was trying to be cool.

00:04:32 John Daub: Okay, well, you're gonna cool. There's like a naturally. That's one way to do it. Let's dig into this because we have Shibuya, which has, I guess, internationally reputation of being a party town. I don't know if that's warranted or not, but it's certainly a bright place with marketing. You see that? It's Shibuya Hachiko scramble. When you first heard this story that their population publicly banning drinking in 2019. I believe it started after a car was flipped on the streets again with Japanese tourists. They weren't Shibuya locals. Japanese tourists and foreign tourists drunk, flipping a car, doing damage, crime in the area. What did you think about that 2019?

00:05:18 Tokyo Sam: I mean, like, it's. It's understandable that like, if you want to have like, you know, because like Tokyo is basically just a bunch of cities clumped together, right? So every sea, like city has that person, like the mayor or the ward, the whatever, like the, the mayor of the ward or whatever, like the kucho that's in charge of all this stuff. And so like, of course, like, you know, they want to look the best that they can while they're in office so they can get reelected for whatever thing. You know, it's just typical the wire stuff. But I don't know, man. Like, I feel like flipping over a truck is one thing, but, you know, they caught the guys that did that. They spent thousands and thousands of of police hours just going through cameras to find these guys, go all the way home. And you know, so like, they caught him, but it's like, I don't know, I mean, like, I think, you know, I live in Shinjuku and there's a lot of drug selling here. And I remember one tourist got sold. I saw him. Like, one guy came up to him, tried to sell him drugs. And then the guy went up to the cops and he's like, this guy tried to sell me drugs. And the cop was like, I don't care. Like, you know, like, I don't care. And I feel like the reason why people get away with finishinjuku is because it's all kind of concentrated more into this area than anything. But Shinjuku's becoming, I mean, like, yeah, like Shibuya and Shinjuku are developing quickly. And so Shibuya too, like, for a while, like Shibuya's been under construction for the last like 20 years. They keep trying to build up all these buildings. So like, they're trying to clean up their, their party town image. So like more rich expat, you know, kind of companies and stuff will move in there. And they're already doing it, but like, they just want to make it clean so they can push that partying to somewhere else. And I guess Shinjuku got that now. Shinjuku's like, ah, and they got to move it too. But I don't think Shinjuku is going to be able to move that. So you, you still.

00:07:11 John Daub: I'm. I'm 50 years old. I don't go out and party. I don't hang out in front of convenience stores. I don't do that. Do you still do that kind of stuff?

00:07:19 Tokyo Sam: Well, I don't, I don't hang out in front of convenience stores. But like, I'll definitely, before I go to a bar or something, like if I'm out with my friends, we'll go to the convenience store and buy a can or two of like just beer or whatever and then we'll like drink, like walking to the bar or something just to be cheap. But I don't see. I don't think there's anything wrong with like, you know, Japan allows public drinking. So if you want to get a beer and drink wherever, as long as you're not gonna drive a car.

00:07:45 John Daub: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

00:07:47 Tokyo Sam: Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I. I caught myself. Sorry. Yeah, this is a Christian live stream, this stuff here. Yeah, the. The whole point is, as long as you're not like doing anything to endanger other people or like harass other people, then like, let bygones be bygones. Let people drink. You know, like, you know, I don't see the problem with it. But at the same time, like, I'm not going to Shibuya and drinking on the street. Like, I stopped doing that when around the time that started becoming more of a thing, so.

00:08:19 John Daub: Right. Yeah, you can see it. It doesn't really help your reputation to go out drinking in front of a convenience store when you're over the age of, I don't know, like 30. But let me. Let's put this in perspective. Halloween is a fun event. I'm not somebody who's going to go out to the streets to, you know, go Halloween trick or treating and all that other stuff that. The madness that is Halloween. But I'm showing now your video from 2015. This is before we were younger. This is like 10 years ago. So we. You look younger. Tell me a little bit about this video. What was it like before all the bands and, and what was Halloween like? And what did it mean to you?

00:08:59 Tokyo Sam: Oh, dude, that Halloween was so fun. I think that was like the first because they had been trying to do Halloween in Shibuya for a while, but like every year it was kind of like a build up, but there wasn't like a lot of people participating. And for some reason that year just so many people got into it and like, they were like, the cops were so not Prepared. And there was like, no regulation. It was. This is why I don't go to Halloween anymore. Because, like, this was the best one. Like, it's just random. Like, look at that, like, shrine with, like, pumpkins on it. Like, no. Who thinks of that stuff? And then like, people are climbing on vending machines or whatever. But, like, there. I don't believe anybody was hurt or like there were any kind of like, you know, bad feely, touchy incidents or at least 20.

00:09:41 John Daub: 15.

00:09:43 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a while ago. And. Yeah, it's.

00:09:48 John Daub: It's.

00:09:48 Tokyo Sam: It's pretty. Yeah. I don't know. It was fun. It was fun. It was great. But like, I feel like it's one of those things where the. They. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Right. You know, so it's like, if you're gonna allow. I mean, like, there's always going to be people that want to go outside and celebrate and stuff. And.

00:10:06 John Daub: Yeah.

00:10:06 Tokyo Sam: Like, look at the cops there. They're like, they're like, we're gonna make a difference. They're not doing anything. You can't tell crowds what to do. Are you kidding? Like, you know, what is that? It's like trying to teach a bobcat how to, like, play chess. You know, it's not gonna. It's not a realistic expectation. But now it was fun. But like, yeah, the cops have just like over the last couple years, they try to say, like, no, you can't have, you know, you can't. You can't drink or like, you're gonna have to hide your alcohol in like a water bottle pretty much. And you can't buy any alcohol there either. And I don't know, it's just. It's very. It's like they're trying to restrict this thing when really they should just try to make it in one area. But, I mean, I get it, John. Like, the whole big picture here, I think, is that no government official wants to be responsible for if something like, if somebody dies. Like, it doesn't matter if it's one person or 100 people. They don't want that on their, on their, like on their resume. That it's like, oh, yeah, while I was in office, like, you know, two people died during Halloween or something. Because then, you know, in America, like, people die every day from violent murder. But in Japan, it's like, if something like that happens, they're gonna, like, it's gonna stick with you. They're gonna make such a big deal out of it. And so that's why they're trying to be so strict about this, I think.

00:11:20 John Daub: Sam, I'm. I'm showing an image. I paused it here. I'm looking at two dudes that are sitting down drinking, and there's trash all around. The pet bottle area, which is supposed to be for recyclables, is filled with garbage. This, I think, is maybe one of the biggest reasons why they're cracking down. When there's alcohol involved and people are lingering and drinking, the city becomes a nasty mess. And if you ask me, where is the dirtiest place in. In Tokyo, it's Shibuya, maybe Kabukicho. But Kabukicho has really cleaned up quite a bit over the last. At least the area around the Godzilla, that part of it, because it's just been renovated, it's been rejuvenated, it's been new buildings and new construction and business, like Shibuya wants to do. But. But when I look at this from 2015, before the construction started, it really does look nasty. And what the city found was that it hasn't changed much, which is why they're doing this year round. What do you think about that? What is Shibuya a nasty place? Does this banning of alcohol gonna make it cleaner, a better place?

00:12:28 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean, it's like. It's like one of those. I don't know, it's kind of like Michael Jordan in basketball, right? Like, you know, like, he was like the best of the best. Like, you could. You knew what to expect if you saw Michael Jordan, like, go on the court, right? But then he's like, I want to be a baseball player now. It's like, okay, you know, but like, like you're pretty good at the other thing, you know, like. And so, like, you know, when you're watching all this other stuff, you're like, ah, it's a. Like, you know, like you. When it comes to Shibuya, like, Shibuya has always been the trashy, dirty place that, I mean, at one point it wasn't. But, like, ever since I started coming to Japan, it's always been the young, trashy place where, like, people can go and get cheap food, cheap drinks, and then, like, hang out on the streets and drink. And it wasn't even a big deal that much when, like, I came here, like, for the first time in the early 2000s. But, like, I think that the more tourists that started showing up, people don't want to go to clubs, they don't want to pay money, or at least if they do, they Want to drink like cheaply before they go there.

00:13:25 John Daub: You're basically confirming what the mayor's whole point is. The people that are doing this aren't actually contributing to the economy at all. They're not doing much of anything good for the city of Shibuya. Is that. Am I wrong in that assumption from what you're saying?

00:13:41 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean they're. They're paying. They're not stealing the alcohol that they're drinking, John. They're buying it from stores that.

00:13:48 John Daub: 250, 250 yen. I don't know. They're not going to the restaurants to do it. They're not. I, I think that's the point. If you want to drink, go drink inside. Go have a. Actually, the Nama beater tastes better and it's like what, 280 yen at some of the places.

00:14:04 Tokyo Sam: But I mean the thing like. But Shibuya used to be a place where it was a lot of young people, cheap stores. Now they're all trying to make it affluent stuff for like the. My favorite arcade arcade, 50N game arcade. Six floors of cheap games that it's been replaced by the stupid something, something bad curse word gold shop. Now that like I would never go to, you know. And it's like there's a lot of fancier, expensive restaurants and like all this stuff that people liked has disappeared. So when you take away those cheap options to go and drink, where do you think people are going to go? They're like, well, we're used to going here. Might as well still go on the street. There's still going to be people showing up here. I mean like you say people like, oh, they're. They're spending money on convenience store drinks. Like they're not contributing to the economy. What about the homeless people in like Adachi Coup or Katsushikaku who aren't buying anything? You know, they're citizens.

00:14:56 John Daub: There's a difference. They live here.

00:15:01 Tokyo Sam: Economy.

00:15:03 John Daub: That's not the point.

00:15:06 Tokyo Sam: What you can't have, you know, it's like you gotta. The thing is, is that people are.

00:15:11 John Daub: You don't get rid of your citizens, right? You, you. The tourists are one thing, but citizens are perhaps another one. They have social. They have other problems. These tourists coming in, what's their problem?

00:15:24 Tokyo Sam: John? Most of the people that are drinking. Nobody lives in the area where people are drinking in Shibuya though. That's all businesses, all expensive businesses that people that are going to go there, that's. And spend money on.

00:15:34 John Daub: I think you might be wrong with that. Because there's residential. Not that far away from that area starts residential areas. So there's that area around Shibuya, Mieshta park and some of the clubs. You go a little bit further past the Love Hotel Hill. The, there's actually, it's. Shibuyaku is mostly residential.

00:15:54 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, no, it's mostly residential. But I'm saying people aren't going to go all the way to the streets. I mean I've been, I'm a, I'm a veteran drinker of that area and like I don't, you know, that's why

00:16:02 John Daub: we have you here. That's why we have.

00:16:05 Tokyo Sam: I mean to be fair, I've been retired for a couple years. But you know, I'm happy to share my, my knowledge with this. But that's, but I mean I, I think like it's like, oh man, these people are like, oh, look at all that trash. And it's like that's one day, you know, like that's not every night. That's like one party night. And if they had more trash can, you notice how all the trash was still in that area where the trash can was. And it wasn't like they were just like, yeah, I hate trash. Eat this street. Like they're like they, they tried to do the, the most they could with like what they had, you know, and I don't think that that's, I mean, well, what's an alternative? John, tell me, what's an alternative?

00:16:42 John Daub: The alternative ban.

00:16:44 Tokyo Sam: Just ban all foreigners.

00:16:45 John Daub: Ban them. No, ban public drinking. Take away the rights and we're having a debate on this. This isn't. Maybe, maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but perhaps they're doing the right thing. Then we're banning public drinking from 6pm to 5am this has had an impact after 2019. In 2019, when they first put this in place for Halloween, they didn't have any problems. The problems really dissipated then in Korea when they had the mob panic and people got killed in Korea at a Halloween event. Very similar, narrow streets, very hard to control the crowd if you're drunk. Then it becomes an uncontrollable mob that doesn't listen to anything and then panic. There's so many issues with alcohol. They just want to do it. An alcohol free event. Of course you could go and get drunk somewhere else. But by banning public drinking, not only does it keep the street cleaners, but it keeps it more under control. Perhaps. But they seem to be using 2019 as a comparison here. What else should they do what? What else should they do?

00:17:55 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, well, I mean, like, when it comes down to it, you always got to think about, like, one, where's the money? Like, what's the. Where's the money involved? And also, who's. Who's trying to shift blame, right? If people get drunk on the streets and they like, if something happens on the streets, that's the government's problem, but if it happens in an individual, private establishment, that's their problem. And so I think they're trying to push that responsibility on other people. They're trying to make it so it's like, well, you pay for it. Like, you know, like. Oh, yeah. But like, the thing is, is that, like, you could have. I mean, compared to total chaos or something in other countries, like, this is still so mild. And I feel like even if they still keep regulating it at the pace they would do right now, I. I don't feel like it would escalate too bad. I mean, I don't want to get political here, and I won't. But, like, compare the flipping of a truck to Black Lives Matter protests or something. You know, it's like it's a. Mostly a peaceful protest. Those buildings on fire and looted. It's for democracy and stuff. And it's like, I don't think it would. I understand people are worried about it escalating to that level, but I really doubt it would get that far in Japan. I mean, Japan's one of the great places where if you do something like you punch an old person, they're going to take you to the police station, beat the crap out of you while you're in the interrogation room.

00:19:03 John Daub: Well, I don't know about that.

00:19:05 Tokyo Sam: It's like, well, I mean, you know, the likelihood of that happening is.

00:19:09 John Daub: Let's get down to brass tax then here, should we? We're already taxing tourists, so in a way, they're paying through the taxes perhaps that they have at their hotel by staying in Shibuya. I don't know, maybe you add on to that. So they're collecting money from tourists one way or another. How about they're adding these rules in place. They, if you do break these rules, they can't find you. They're not going to fine you. This is. Makes me wonder, like, what is a rule about? But by putting this rule in place, it gives them now an official ordinance that they can tell you to stop to do something, which they could have done anyways. But now it's official. This is very Japanese thinking. So they're not Going to find you. Don't worry about that. But what can they do to you? And I don't. There's no bite to it, so to say. So in Western thinking, if there's no bite to it, people just tend to ignore you. When I was at Kawaguchiko, where they put up the black screen now before that, they had one guy who spoke no English telling people, please stop doing that and don't cross the street, everybody ignored him. There's no bite to the punch, the no bite to it. So people just do what they want to do. What do you.

00:20:25 Tokyo Sam: What is.

00:20:27 John Daub: Is it enough? Should they be fining tourists? Should a tourist be fined for breaking a rule?

00:20:34 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean, to be fair, it doesn't like Singapore do something like that. Like, if you like, if you like sit on the ground or something or chew gum, like you get like. Like, I don't even know how they enforce that. I mean, obviously you go to jail until you can pay the fine. And if you can't pay the fine, maybe you're deported or when you leave, you're not allowed back into the country or something. Like, I mean, Japan loves their tourism dollars. So if it's like a minor inconvenience for one store, I really doubt they would care, you know, Like, I mean, like, they didn't, you know, so it's like, I mean, the whole point is like trying to get them to care and finding a way to enforce it and maybe making an example out of like, the people that are doing bad. But like, again, I think like, in Japan it's all about shift in responsibility and being like, well, I did what my boss told me to do and my boss's boss is happy with my boss, so. And I mean, like, I think that like, yeah, like maybe doing. I mean, if they want to go full, like, we don't care about tourists anymore, they could find people. And you know, if you're a tourist in Japan, you have to walk around with your passport. And so, right, the police could take the passport number down and give you an official notice or whatever. And then if you go to the airport and you're like about to fly out and they're like, oh, yeah, you need to pay this fine before you go or you don't get to come back into Japan. I bet that would stop a lot

00:21:52 John Daub: of people from doing stupid crap that would.

00:21:55 Tokyo Sam: You know that.

00:21:56 John Daub: Absolutely. By the way, this is Tkyo Sam. He's got a YouTube channel. He shows things around Japan. He's sometimes riding around on his Motorcycle. But he has more experience drinking out on the streets of Tokyo than I do. But not as much recently as they're learning. Not as much recently.

00:22:15 Tokyo Sam: I'm the degenerate here, everybody.

00:22:17 John Daub: Yeah, a link. A link is in the description. Hey, no, I wouldn't say that. But a link in this is in the description. If you want to go check out his channel, which is interesting. There's some good content over there. You had the one video of the sushi conveyor belt that was somewhat controversial.

00:22:32 Tokyo Sam: Yeah.

00:22:32 John Daub: You made cnn. You made CNN for all the wrong reasons in a way. Although it was a beautiful video.

00:22:38 Tokyo Sam: Posted my video.

00:22:39 John Daub: Yeah, it was a beautiful video. It was. It showed a slice of. Of life in Japan with a camera going on a conveyor belt. But maybe it wasn't something that I would have done. But that's what makes it.

00:22:50 Tokyo Sam: I mean, retrospect, I probably wouldn't have done that again. But that's, you know, we all gotta learn from our mistakes, right? But they, you know, I think. What is it? I don't know, man. Like, that's why it's like, I feel kind of weird about like calling out people for their bad behavior because, like, I feel like I wouldn't do that again kind of thing.

00:23:07 John Daub: Right.

00:23:08 Tokyo Sam: But you know, at the time I wasn't really thinking about that. Right. And it's like, I don't. Like, again, you know, compared to other places, like, and again, I'm not trying to get political or anything, just saying, like, in general, compared to other countries, like, the situation here in Japan is so good. It's so peaceful. You can walk around without having to worry about getting like violently attacked or robbed or anything. And it's just like, I understand that Japan wants to regulate stuff, and maybe it's because of media pressure, maybe it's because they actually care about the locals complaining. But it's just at the end of the day, like, you got to think about, will tourism either go, like, will it be lower? Like, will it lower from now or will it just keep going up? Because if it keeps going up, then they got to bite this in the button. Bite, bite it right now. Otherwise it's just gonna. They're gonna wait till something escalates really bad and there's going to be a tipping point and then they go full on full Stalin with this kind of thing, and then they're going to ruin this tourism golden ghost that they have here.

00:24:05 John Daub: Yeah, I got a sense of that in Kyoto yesterday. And just. We got about five more minutes here with Tokyo Sam Tkyo Sam, Tokyo Sam and I'll discuss what I, I. Because I want to go over this. Yesterday I was in Guillon and I was utterly confused at the end of it. I felt like I was had a distaste for Kyoto after that experience. And I'll talk a little bit about this after, after Sam goes here. But so finding people now, Guillotine, they'll find. Find you 10,000 yen or something. I don't know how they enforce that. They didn't explain that either. I don't think they've actually fined anybody. I think it's more like a threat. But again, Shibuya and Shijuku said that they're not going to be finding anybody. Nobody's getting fined. In Kawaguchiko. There is this element of Japan wanting to do something but not being able to do something that would impact Westerners. So what, what would be. If you're the mayor of Shibuya, what would be your response? What would be the step that would get this to clean up Shibuya? What would be the right direction to take here?

00:25:13 Tokyo Sam: That's a good question, I think. And this is why I'm running for mayor. 2026 Tokyo, Japan I think that, well, I mean, one thing they could do is just. I mean like Japan works on social contracts, right? Where it's like nothing's really set in stone, but there's just a understanding. I think one way that people can do that is that like, you know, aside from putting up signs everywhere, even though Japan, I think they got rid of trash cans a while ago because they were afraid of like people planting bombs or something in them for domestic, domestic terrorist attacks or something. I don't know.

00:25:49 John Daub: They found, but they found with no trash cans, Tokyo was cleaner. Oh well, that's why they kept it doing it.

00:25:58 Tokyo Sam: Well, I think that you know, during, during like Hanami or whatever, right? Like in your yogi, they have these like big bins set up that are temporary that like, it's just huge. You just dump your stuff in there and you're good to go. And like, it might not be like you might not, not permanently do it. But like if you, you, you can, you know, use your statistics, find out the concentrated areas where there's the most public litter or whatever and then put bigger trash cans there that are like just easy. Just like, yeah, just dump it in there kind of thing. You could do that. And also, I mean like, because there's, there's two ways of thinking about it. It's like, do you do the Carrot or do you do the stick right? The carrot is like, make it easier and more accessible for people to, you know, make, you know, give bake benches. Make public sitting areas where people can get drunk that are far away from. I mean, most of the stuff is already far away from residential stuff. So, like, you know, be drunk outside on a bench, nobody cares. All the businesses closed around you.

00:26:53 John Daub: I don't want to see anybody getting drunk. Alcohol is a drug. If you abuse it, it creates a lot of social problems. I don't think that. I think you can sip alcohol at a restaurant. No. And you're contributing to the economy. It's ambiance. It actually tastes better. I don't think it's that exciting.

00:27:10 Tokyo Sam: This is the old man of you talking. This isn't the young John talking. The young John would talk different about.

00:27:16 John Daub: Would I? I don't.

00:27:16 Tokyo Sam: The young would be like, what is that guy talking about?

00:27:19 John Daub: I don't think you know, the young John. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I. I would. Look, I have drink outside on the street, and it is nice in a park. At Hanami, when we have cherry blossoms, we drink outside. It's usually something that. Something we can enjoy, but we do it responsibly. We as we know as much as we can. And it's something that we've had in Japan as long as I can remember, 25 years. But I don't know, Sam. It's a tough one.

00:27:49 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean. Well, John, you're also a guy that has a very clean public image. So you don't want to, like, do things that you. You care more about people.

00:27:56 John Daub: I don't try to be clean. That's just who I am. That's not. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to do anything. No.

00:28:04 Tokyo Sam: I'm trying to make mean a clean image.

00:28:06 John Daub: I'm not maintaining anything. I don't swear because I don't swear. That's.

00:28:11 Tokyo Sam: Don't twist.

00:28:13 John Daub: What do you mean?

00:28:13 Tokyo Sam: You're not.

00:28:14 John Daub: This is. This is.

00:28:16 Tokyo Sam: You're. You're. No, I'm just saying, like, you're a guy who, like, you're a good guy, but you also care about being a good guy in front of other people. I guess I could say. I don't know. Don't twist my words. I'm just. I'm not saying you're putting on, like, you're, like, secretly pumping, like, punching puppies, like, after the camera finally

00:28:37 John Daub: I cut him off,

00:28:43 Tokyo Sam: I think.

00:28:45 John Daub: All right, Sam, we can't hear you by the way. All right. He's left the building. Tkyo Sam. I noticed some of the comments. We'll call him back. I can't. We can't stop like that here. So we'll call back Tkyo Sam and get him on here. I'm sorry that it did. That's not. That's not a good thing to do. Look, I'm already getting some comments in the chat here. Like, why are you talking to him? I. I see them trekking beyond and this is fair. Tokyo Sam has. Is such a hypocrite. And I'm so surprised that you have him on this live chat, even though he has also bad mouthed you and your content trekking behind. Look, I'm not. I. I'm somebody who will talk to everybody to try to come up with answers. He's lived here for 15 years. He knows more about Shinjuku and Shibuya, probably more than me. He. He's been to a lot of the smaller bars. He's been to a lot of the clubs. He knows more about this culture than I do. He's somebody who has more experience than me and somebody that I know quite well now. I kind of enjoy talking to him. He's not always the same type of person off camera that he is on camera, which kind of took me aback because I don't pretend to be somebody that I'm not when I'm on camera. I'm just who I am. I'm not. I don't swear. I don't try to drum stuff up. I'm just this. And I think Sam is a different person off of camera sometimes most of the time than he is. Let me give him a link here. It says, start your next. I gotta wait eight minutes to start. I have to pay for the zoom or something. I'm sorry. WRX Turbo is in the house. David Camuto, thanks for sharing and for keeping us updated. We're going to be on for, you know, another 15 minutes. So, Sam, if you're watching, we're going to give you a call back. Let me break down a couple of things. I went to Kyoto yesterday and I want to. I saw a lot of comments that came in here. At first I thought that the signage was clear, but I want to explain to you what makes it so chaotic and such a bad thing for Japan in general that what Guillon is doing. Look, I think that the harassment of geisha is awful. They got to do something. The Signs sort of make sense, but it's so confusing because if you come from a different direction going into the main street, there are no signs. So you don't know that this street is a street that you should not be filming on. It's only on one side that they've only put in the signage. Please don't film. No smartphones, no cameras. And they don't explain what's happening or why there's. You're being monitored. I don't know if that's true. There's a fine of 10,000 yen. I don't think they've ever fined anybody yet. I've never heard about that. I don't know how they would enforce it. The City Tourist Office of Kyoto, the official one inside of Kyoto Station. I literally. You can see it in that live stream. Ask them, can I have a map of the areas I should not be filming? Or. Or can you mark them off on a map? So I'm very careful not to use a camera. And they said that they don't know. They don't know. This is the official Tourist Office. This is why it's so confusing. You go on the street, you see the sign. It's pretty clear. But I had a comment from somebody who works with that tourist office. I haven't been able to confirm that they do, but they wrote in English and I pinned it to the top, that it's only one small alley, that this is actually being enforced. And it's not very big and it's a dead end, I believe, because I didn't walk there, because it's no entry. Just that. So there's signs all over the streets. No filming. But it's not enforceable because it's only one side street out of that whole area. So the message is so crazy. Do they not want us to use smartphones there? No, they want us to take pictures to be on social media to help Kyoto and promote it. The City office probably in disagreement with some of this signage. It seems to be a local neighborhood thing. It's not actually Kyoto City that has their name on the sign for this ordinance. It's a local neighborhood. I don't understand how it works. But again, the Official Tourist Office is like, we don't know. Sorry, there's signs to let you know. But. But when I looked around the neighborhood, the signs are not pointed this way. They're pointed this way. So you look at the sign and said, is it this street? No, this is the main street. There's other people taking pictures. They came out of the restaurant and took a picture with the restaurant owner. There was a local person who was, you know, a restaurant owner with tourists. And they're taking a picture in front of the front. Is that wrong? Cause they have a smartphone. Then they're taking a picture. What's the line? What's the limit? There's nobody there to explain it to me. So it really led to, like, kind of a bad feeling in my mouth about Guillaume. I don't understand the rule, and a lot of the people do not. The national news apparently was giving the wrong information. They said that that whole area is banned, but that's not the case. That's not the case. And like, what are tourists supposed to understand? They don't watch the national news inside of Japan. What's the messaging from the Gion Komu, which is a comu. I think it was on the site. What's their message? I don't see it on of the websites or anything. Explaining a map of where you can't film it doesn't make sense. So it just wasn't clear to me. And that's my response. David Kimura. Thanks, John and Sam for keeping us updated. Again, I'm going to talk to Sam because he has a different perspective and a point of view, and that's the kind of person that you want to be talking with, not just somebody that you agree with. I don't agree with Sam a lot of the time, but there are some times where I'm like, damn, Sam, you're really smart. That's a great idea. And I'm learning new things. And I think you have to talk with all sorts of people. And sometimes in today's world, you know, we get too polarized because of politics and people who you disagree with. I think having an open mind and learning, you don't have to agree with them, but you definitely have to listen to them. And maybe you learn something, maybe you don't. But I've always learned something from. Has always been somebody that I could talk to and learn from. And, you know, I really appreciate it. So we got three more minutes to wait here before I gotta pay for zoom. This is crazy. All right, we'll do that. Nobody uses Skype anymore, do they? This the issues with the over tourism here. Like, we've been talking about this now for a while, and I'm not going to do this much more anymore. I'm only covering it because it's a main channel episode that I'm planning to release as soon as I've covered enough of these places. That have an over tourism challenge. I don't think that we're getting the full picture from the media. I don't think we're getting the full picture from the tourists. I don't think we're getting the full picture from the municipalities that are trying to deal with it because their solutions don't make a lot of sense. But when you put them all together, you seem to have a clearer picture. Like what I saw in Guillaume yesterday really disturbed me. On the one hand, we saw that image of the geisha being harassed by a foreign tourist. Taking pictures of her. She just couldn't move. She just can't even walk in a straight line. What do you do about that? On the other hand, I go there and I see the signage. I see that it's only marked in certain areas where there's. The reality is that the filming is only one particular street, not the whole main street through there. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So there's. The messaging is not clear yet. And I think this is something that Japan is going to work on. I certainly hope so. But what I learned from the trip to Kyoto, and I'm so glad that I went because the result of that was that I have a better understanding of the issue. If I hadn't gone at all. And like looking at this article about the average, the daily average of street drinking cases on Friday, Saturday and days before holidays increased about one and a half times. 70% of those cases involve foreign visitors, according to the ward. That's from the city office. So we're seeing the information. More people are drinking out on the streets. That's not exactly what you want. Like the question to. Like I've been here for 26 years pretty much now, and I want to ask why is. Why is drinking banned on the streets in the United States? I. I want to know for. For real, why is alcohol banned on the streets? Why can't you drink a beer in New York City publicly on the streets sitting in front of, you know, a convenience store? Why is that bad? Why is that illegal? Can somebody write that in the comments? Because perhaps the same issues with that in the United States are what the reason why Japan is now banning public drinking between 6pm and 5am and I think that there could be some parallel between the reasons why the United States doesn't have public drinking at all to, you know, you have to have it a brown paper bag to what they have today. Not everywhere in the US writes in people. Exactly. It's most of the people to prevent Public drunkenness. And why would you want to do that? Let's go to the next step. Why would you want to prevent public drunkenness? It just causes a lot of problems. So what we're seeing, this is like basic stuff. You all know it, but we don't. It's not illegal in New Orleans. That's true. But there's some places in the U.S. some. But for the majority of places in the U.S. i went to school in Ohio. Columbus, maybe more conservative culture there. I don't know. Columbus is a very liberal city, though, in many respects. It has. Well, it's a, It's. It's an interesting city. But I thought that, you know, there's no public drinking outside and the police will take you in. Like, they won't if they see you drinking out on the streets. I've seen it before. Or be fine. You get in trouble for public drinking. But that's the majority of the US not everywhere, but the majority of the United States. So I want to really. I want to really consider this because, look, if you can't do it in the United States on the streets, and because there's a lot of issues behind it, we have to understand that there's got to be reasons why this is something that can't be allowed in Shibuya, in Shuku, Shinjuku, places where public drinking and if people were drunk as a result of this, you know, it just can't go on. And right now, Sam, I'm sending you the, the new link here. I apologize. It's. It is my fault. There's a new link for you to come onto. Zoom, buddy. All right. I think Sam is a good, good, good guy. I don't watch his content that much. Sorry, Sam. I don't watch any Jim face content. But I know that he's a good. He's a good, A good guy. And I love hanging out with him because he's fun. He's different. He's got a unique point of view. He has a different background than me. Everybody does. And he is an expert more than me on going out and drinking. Although, you know, we're both getting older and we don't do stuff like that as much. So I want to put it in perspective. He knows more than me and he's another voice. And we can learn something from Sam. Absolutely. Whenever you get the link, Sam, you can come on. On. All right. Welcome back. Welcome back. Sam. I'm sorry. I do feel, I do feel bad about that. Tkyo. Sam seems great debate, though. Writes in jotty I think so. That's what it's all about. It's about talking about talking and learning new things. Take care on doing this kind of journalism. I think so as well. DJ you really do have to be. Be careful. And I see, Sam, you're back here. I apologize for that. You got cut off as a result of me not paying for Zoom, and then they banned me.

00:41:17 Tokyo Sam: No worries. I had two rice balls I still needed to finish, so it's not a big deal.

00:41:21 John Daub: John, so I've been. I've been talking about. Apparently you're somewhat of a controversial person. I'm sure that's nothing new to you.

00:41:33 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, I mean, like, I saw you read that comment from that guy. I don't know who that guy is, but, I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, whenever you do stuff online, you're gonna get people that don't like you, but it's like, you just gotta accept that and, like, it's okay. Like, I don't mind if people don't like me. In fact, I secretly. I think that these haters secretly just want to be my friend, and they're just, like. They don't know how to go about it. So they're just like, I want to be his friend.

00:41:57 John Daub: Well, they don't know you know him. All right.

00:41:59 Tokyo Sam: I hope he gets to know me.

00:42:01 John Daub: I'm sorry for interrupting. I just.

00:42:03 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, no worries.

00:42:04 John Daub: I know you a little bit better because we've gone. We've shared a burger, we've had discussions. I've always had a lot of fun when we're talking privately to one another, but you seem a little bit different than. Than when the camera's on you slightly. I don't know.

00:42:18 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, and just for, like, the.

00:42:23 John Daub: Just for, like, that, I just.

00:42:24 Tokyo Sam: Just the sake of clarifying, I was not saying that John's a different guy off camera. I'm just saying John's a nice guy. That's all. He's. I'm. I have more. I'm more blunt, and people don't like that sometimes. And I kind of act out, he's blunt. He's blunt, you know, and so people don't like that, but I accept that, you know? And I'm just saying, John, like, you're more. You. You're more better. You're better at being a polite person and being, like, a good person and, like, you know, being. Versus, like, what is it? You're more diplomatic about things. I guess I could say I'm more of an adult, so, you know, that's all I was saying because you're Daniel's son after all. I'm Johnny. You're Daniel's son. So, you know, I had to move

00:43:06 John Daub: off my picture because the comparisons now to the Karate Kid. We're gonna start here. Hey, whatever. It followed me all through 1984. Thanks a lot, Daniel LaRusso. Anyways, moving on to get back to this, you know, I asked you a question and I thought it was really interesting and this is a debate. I don't agree with you on many things, but I mean, we need to have people that we can learn from and debate and, and like, as I was saying, why are you here? It's because you know so much more about Shinjuku. When it came to Golden Guy, I had you on because you knew Golden Guy, like all the little corners of it so well, so much better than I do because you spent a lot of time there and there's a lot of value in talking to people that know more than you on something and you absolutely know more about this and, and, and the point of view of, of somebody who might do more drinking outside. And I really appreciate that fresh perspective. So look, we both have been doing YouTube for quite a long time. Honestly, I don't care about what trolls say about me. I get it all the time. I, the moderators do a good job of filtering some of the really, I don't know, stuff that would really make everybody upset in the comments. But that's not the purpose of this. We're here to try to find some answers and discuss, you know, how this implicates people visiting Japan. What are maybe some of the solutions? What is going on? Like how did we get to this point? As I always tell to people, and I want to get your perspective on this. I'm going to set this up. Like when somebody flew a drone onto the roof of the Prime Minister's office, Was that like 2014? It was like 10 years ago now. They banned all drones right away. They took a hard turn against it and then they started to softly roll it back. I think this is Japan's MO Whenever something like this, especially if it gets big time news happens that makes them look bad or they can see potential big risks, they just ban it and then they roll it back after discussion. And I think that this is what's happening in Kawaguchiko. All right, just get rid of the view. Let's just block the view and then we can roll it back. We're going to put up a temporary screen. They didn't Put up a wall. It was just a screen. Oh, well, then they put holes in it. What do they react? Now we got to put up a real wall. So Japan is very reactive to this and usually very harsh, but they also roll it back after discussion to see how it works out. Very. People are very analytical in Japan than I thought. Toyota has a guy who's like analyzing 60 ways to make the process better and give it to me. It's all the littlest things. And they come back with stuff that some of them get initiated into the process. What do you think about. And now we lost audio. We can't hear you.

00:46:04 Tokyo Sam: Can you hear me now?

00:46:05 John Daub: Yes, yes. Thank you.

00:46:06 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, sorry, I pushed the button. Yeah, no, it's. I mean, like, you're right. Like, Japan's very reactive for all this stuff. So it's. I mean, it's just like YouTube when like something happens, they just make like, you know, they're, they don't. They're not proactive about preventing this stuff. They're just very reactive about it. And it's like all it takes is one person to like, ruin a party, right? And so like, yeah, that guy, like before, before that guy flew that thing over the Prime Minister's house. It's like they didn't care about drones. They didn't know about drones. And if like a drone fell from the sky and hit somebody, like, ah, that's too bad. But then main media gets like a hold of it, right? And then they're like, they, they make a mountain out of an, like an anthill out of a mountain, right? So I think that Japan knew that like, there was going to be a tourism boost, but I don't think they were expecting the yen to dip so bad and have like a huge influx of people come down. And it's just one of those things where it's like, I think the people in charge, because you, you said that you went on like the ground level and you talk to these people. It's like, it's not that they don't know what's going on. I think just the people that above them are not approving, like, all these new ideas on how to deal with it. I mean, like, like Kyoto, you have too many tourists, right? You know, but the whole town relies on tourism. Like, that's their biggest money maker. So it's like, well, there's not enough buses for locals, so just hire more bus drivers. You have the money, you're getting all this money from the tourists. Just like, buy more buses, hire more bus drivers. You Know, it's like. And then, you know, you deal with that until you figure out a better system on how to regulate everything. And I feel like, like, you know, you made a post on Instagram where you're like, yeah, guys, this Lawson is blocked. And I'm not saying anything cough. But there's another loss in like 15 minutes down the street and that's still got another view. I'm not saying it though. I'm not saying anything but cough call. You know, I was like, yeah, like, I mean, it's just one of those things where I feel like they're more reacting to the media and they're hoping that the media will just be lazy and make it a one time thing and then just have it die down so then they can just ignore it and not have to deal with it versus actually having to deal with it. But I think with Shibuya and stuff, like with the public drinking, it's more about the image. They're trying to make it like a second roppongi. They're trying to make it cleaner.

00:48:20 John Daub: You know, I, I'm glad that you

00:48:21 Tokyo Sam: brought people that have money to come in.

00:48:23 John Daub: Do. Are you happy? Are you happy with Shibuya's image the last few years? Do you think that that's good? Do you think that's good for the city of Tokyo and do you think it's good in general for tourism in Japan? This, you know, the, the dirtiness, the public drinking, the fights, the. We have IRL streamers. You know, the one I'm talking to would always be in Shibuya because it's kind of a nasty place.

00:48:48 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean my whole, the, the whole big picture here though, John, is that like once they clean that up, they're just going to move somewhere else. Like you can't stop like a certain sect of like, you know, people or whatever, like a certain demographic from like doing. I mean, like, you know, it's like drug users will always find a way to get drugs. Like people that want to IRL stream or get drunk outside, they're gonna find like if Shibuya closes down, they're just gonna go to some place that doesn't really care about regulating it that much and then they'll move over there. But where, Where? Ike, Bukuro, Ueno. Any college town, you know, like was. I used to have a girlfriend that lives in Higashi Jujo. There's like two or three universities around there. That train stationary just has a ton of drinking places for just for like students and stuff. And I think, I don't know, man. I mean like, I don't, I don't like drunk, loud, noisy people. But I think if you're gonna have it somewhere, have it in a place where the people that spend money aren't there while that happens, if that makes sense. Like, I don't think a lot of the people that go to the gold shops or Zara or any of these places that are really spending the high end money are gonna be there at 9pm While like some English teacher or some college students are out drinking beers in front of Family Mart trying to hit on chicks. You know, Like I think like, you know, like you gotta, like there's, there's things that like if it was like in front of a school or something at 3pm and these people are getting drunk in front of kids, I'd have a problem with it. Like I'd actually, you know, I'd have a really big problem with that. But if it's just like, oh, they're in Shibuya, all these businesses are already closed after this time and, and like it's only concentrated in this one area and all the, all the rich Japanese people and all the expats or whatever that have that go to work there, that's not even in Center Guy. That's not even where most of the drinking is. So like if you just regulate it to one area while the other areas aren't. That aren't touched that much, then like where's the harm? You know, like it's better to concentrate in one area. We saw it out.

00:50:45 John Daub: I think we saw that after Shibuya initiated these no drinking, no sales, people went to Shinjuku. So, so Shinjuku last year saw an increase in its Halloween crowd because Shibuya was just a mess with these rules. You couldn't get in. I think it was really hard to get in for Halloween last year. It made it pretty chaotic, but apparently it, it was good enough that they're going to continue to do it. Which is if there's any silver lining for this, they're still going to do the Halloween events, right?

00:51:18 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, well, I mean Shinjuku's been, they've been building up like hotels and like they even made new bus routes to the new hotels. Like they're trying to streamline tourists here. Like they made new bus routes from Haneda and Narita just for people to come in here. And they've got. God, like even the new, the Godzilla building and even the new. I don't even know what it is, like the cyberpunky kind of building. Like those are two brand new TED or hotels. And so it's like I feel that Shinjuku will embrace the tourism more than other places because they just, they see it. I mean Shinjuku has always been the Mizu show by, it's like it's the place where you make money off of like you know, doing the stuff that's very temporary that gets you a lot of cash and tourism is just that. So like, I mean I love Golden Guy and Golden Guy almost got, you know, the government's trying, they've been trying to close that place forever during Corona. They almost like a lot of those places almost went bankrupt and like even the Japanese people didn't go there. So it's like I have friends that don't like the tourists being here but at the same time if the tourists help keep the stuff alive that I like and they're not violently attacking people and they're like oh, they're drunk or whatever and they, they litter around the trash cans then like I, I don't know, I, I don't see it as such a big issue. If it happened all over Tokyo like at once regularly, I'd have an issue with it. But I don't think it's that, I don't know. I, I don't think I, I and besides Shinjuku I think is a little bit more mob justice y than Shibuya maybe.

00:52:51 John Daub: I, I, I get that. I think Shinju Shinjuku is more business oriented, more business people and restaurants than residential in many ways. I think Shibuya is just a little bit more residential than Shinjuku. But look, this is such great points. Look, I, I went to Fuji Yoshida which is the neighboring town to Kawaguchiko which is where they have that black screen for the Lawson. Yeah, Fuji Yoshida has had a problem because they had a, at a Instagrammer Instagram viral image of the retro town going to Mount Fuji. Some of you might have seen that and you have people walking across and there's these old signs. It looks like 1950s. They had issues with people crossing the street and a lot of near misses. So I went there and they found a way to successfully deal with this. They have four people who can speak pretty good English, clearly marked with yellow vests at that intersection and they are very friendly and telling people don't cross. And even with them there on all four sides, people are still trying to cross. Too early to take pictures of Mount Fuji in the background. It's Crazy, right? And they're doing it at further on down the street around them. But when you cross the street when the light is red, can go ahead and take the pictures. They're just there to make people safe. They're doing a pretty good job with them. They took the tourist office, get this. Two years ago there was like a. I think it was a bicycle shop. They bought the owner out and put in the international tourist center on that intersection. Now there's always eyes there because this was the prop. This was the point where you could get the best picture of Mount Fuji. The international tourist office is now there with all the information to tell the tourists other locations around Fuji Yoshida to go and visit. It's brilliant. Across the street is a cafe serving craft coffee now too. So it's like, this is pretty good. They understand that their resurrection of their town, which was declining and dying, more businesses are coming because of international tourism. Because of that picture, they turned a negative into a positive. And now, you know, I think a lot of people could use that model. I don't know if Shibuya and Shinjuku are doing the right thing, but you can talk about that.

00:55:13 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean, it's just like, I think at the end of the day, it comes down to money, right? Like, they want to know, like, you know, it's like, are they gonna. I think Shibuya is just thinking like, okay, like, what's more money? Like the foreign investors moving their companies into these new, brand new buildings that we're building in Shibuya or like, you know, and that's like long run stuff. Or we temporarily let these tourists like drink here and they're giving money a little, you know, a little bit like, or maybe a lot at once. But like, you know, that might. That might just turn off all these up people with real money coming in here, so we might as well just take care of it now kind of thing. And I think Shinjuku's always been this area that was mostly for Japanese people doing sketchy stuff. And now they're like, oh, well, we can let foreign people do sketchy stuff, but also like, we can kind of turn this into like adult Disneyland kind of thing. And I think Shibuya wants more of a long term, like kind of a businessy town. Like maybe they want to make it into something like Maruchi area or Ginza, I don't know. But it's like they obviously want to change it because there's a lot of. There's a lot of Japanese. I don't even Know what you call them? Japanese people who lived abroad who then come back to Japan.

00:56:24 Tokyo Sam: Like, a lot of those people live in Shibuya and on the train line that goes to Shibuya, like on the Denon Toshi center, whatever. So. Right. You know, all those people are working for either Japanese companies that are set abroad, like Toyota and stuff too, or they're like, working for foreign companies that set up their branch in Japan. So they want to make it more international, they want to make it more clean. So it makes sense why they want to change the image. But it's just, you know, what is it? What's up? What's this old phrase, like, call a spade a spade? Right. I don't think it's not about, like. I don't think it's about like the temporary, like inconveniencing people for being drunk and littering. I think it's just they want to clean up the image so they can change the whole overall theme or like industry of the town. Right. And moving it to like Shinjuku. I think Shinjuku's embrace. I mean, like, it just comes down to, like, do you embrace the tourism and make money off of it and like, try to, like, sidestep the wall, or do you just run straight into the wall and keep trying to run into it, hoping that it's gonna break? And you know that one place they set up the net and then you told, you said in your live stream that like a. A dentist has an office or something in front of there and now dental

00:57:29 John Daub: office across the street, right?

00:57:31 Tokyo Sam: Yeah. See, the. He can't see Mount Fuji anymore because they put that thing up. Right.

00:57:36 John Daub: I don't think that was an issue. And his house, I believe he can see it from the second floor anyways. But look, it was. It's more about his business. He's been there for decades. He doesn't want to have to move to a new place. Tourists were sitting on the steps, drinking on his steps, and his patients couldn't get go up there. They had the patients have to say, could you please move? I need to go up to a dental. Like, that's not good for business.

00:57:59 Tokyo Sam: That's not good. That's not good.

00:58:01 John Daub: So of course there were, well, you know, lots of factors with that. But he doesn't hate tourists. He loves tourists. But he said this is the most important thing with that. He said if a tourist got hit and was killed in front of his shop, he wouldn't be able to, like, he wouldn't be able to deal with that it would really hurt him personally because he feel like he could have done something and by putting the wall, he feels like the city's doing something to make sure that that doesn't happen. What else can they do? So.

00:58:31 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean, I couldn't they have set up something so they could have charged people money for it or. Well, I guess it's the characteristic. Yeah, they give like, they get like a little spot and you pay to sit there and if you don't, you get fined or you get kicked or, I don't know, I guess out or get a fine or something.

00:58:48 John Daub: I, I Sorry to interrupt. This is the, this is the fundamental issue that I asked with Fuji Yoshida with their solution, like why not just have people pay? Or what about finding people? And the response was something that I didn't really think about. And now I've been saying for the last few days there's something within Japan that neither me or you really understand. At least we do because we've lived here for a while. But it's that word omotenashi. Right? Is there something like inside of Japanese that makes them give really great service without having to be tipped to be able to give the best of themselves and it makes them happy to do something like that. If you start charging people, if you start doing stuff that are more like Western type of solutions, finding people, you start to kill that a little bit inside of the people that work with the tourists. I don't want that. Look, I know this is something that Westerners and we've been here a little bit, we're not Japanese, we are Westerners. But what Westerners that don't live in Japan understand is that like once you start tipping people and people get used to this as the reason why, that they should be acting better, oh, we have to do it to get a tip, you start to kill off that spirit. That is what makes this service so extraordinary here in Japan. To start off with, people do it for the love of the job, for the love of serving others. And when you kill off that spirit, you're killing off a piece of Japan. And that would break my heart more than anything. And that's why I'm so against tipping. Employers pay enough. Once you start to do Western type of stuff, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, you should do what is in your heart. But it's not a cultural thing here in Japan and it sets up some bad direction. This is a different country with different cultures. People do things for different reasons.

01:00:43 Tokyo Sam: Oh yeah. No, no, I mean, like, I, I hate tipping too, you know, Like, I'm not a. I, I, I agree. Tip with your heart, you know, Tip when your heart, you know, when you're like, wow, that was some really good service. But I meant, like, because it's like you're moving from, like, you're talking more black and white, like, versus, like, you know, it's either got to be this or that. And I'm thinking more of, like, kind of like a hazy gray area where it's like, they're not doing it for the money. They're just doing it because they know tourists would not want to do that, and they're moving them to another place, right? Like, they're basically just hurting them in a certain style to get away from there. And it's like, oh, I have to pay for this? Nah, screw that. I'm gonna go somewhere else. And like, versus, like, having that be more of a deterrent versus getting money. And. But I think, yeah, I mean, it's just like, what is the solution? But I think making one. One area of town, that one area where people can kind of let loose and there's not a lot of residents nearby, and it's easier to clean up because it's concentrated in one area would be better. But I don't know, man. Like, the, the public drinking. I think it's just, like, I don't think that you should ban stuff like that. But at the same time, like, if you need to do that until you, like, temporarily, until you find a better solution, I'm all right with that. I mean, like, dude, like, I, I make less money than I did in my 20s now, but I have so much more free time. So, like, I don't go out that often as much as. Because when I was working, like, every day before, go home, go out and, like, get some beer or, like, you know, go out and eat somewhere. But now, since I don't do that that often when I go out, I don't mind spending money at, like, a bar or, like, going to a restaurant. But I know that there's a lot of people that are not like me that, that just want to kind of let loose and go drink at the park or something, or drink outside and, and talk to chicks or whatever while they're doing that. I mean, I, I love, I used to love doing that and E. K Bukro, get off work, crack a beer, go to the park and be like, hey, what's. How you doing? You know, like.

01:02:33 John Daub: But I forget those days. I'm Married. Happily married. I don't remember that. What are you talking about?

01:02:39 Tokyo Sam: Never Chunk. John's a pure Christian man. Yeah, that's. I think. No, but you're right, John. I think. And I love that you brought up the Fujiyoshida thing too. I've been to that town once and it is so beautiful. And I can't believe nobody heard about that town until the. The picture practically because, I don't know, it's showing that it's like you can move this in a way that's positive, that benefits both parties versus just scream, here's a net. Poke a hole in the net.

01:03:07 John Daub: You know, Cooler, Cooler writes in here. Japan has plenty of adult entertainment districts. This is true. And the thing is, it's the difference between the public space and the private space. What you do at a restaurant, go ahead and get drunk. I don't think that's good for your health. But look what you do in a private area that you pay to get into. And all of this, that's according to the laws and that's fine. When you're in a public space and you're cons and you're. And you're becoming a nuisance or you're littering or you're breaking the laws or you're making society worse, that's an issue. And this is why the majority of places in the United States has no. Has open container laws. Right. Why, Sam, can't you have a beer in New York City in front of a convenience? Yeah, well, you know why?

01:03:58 Tokyo Sam: Oh, well, you can't have a, you can't, you can't drink in public because, well, we learned, you know, early on that when people drink outside, they go and they get drunk and they're bored and then they harass other people. They do bad stuff. It enables bad behavior.

01:04:14 John Daub: Okay, so you're basically. I. Shibuya is now confronting this and saying, we're not going to do what America does and ban it like completely off of the street just from 6pm to 5am Isn't that fair?

01:04:31 Tokyo Sam: Again, I feel like you got like in America like that there that leads to violent crimes, to sex crimes, to like graffiti, you know, I don't think it's escalated to that level besides, like, ah, there's trash and that guy was yelling at me. Like, I think when it gets to the point where there's a lot of. I don't know, I feel like it, it doesn't deserve the media ban for how little it's escalated. I think that in my opinion, you know, I think it could get a lot worse compared to New York or like, you know, Philadelphia or like wherever the places you see where people are just on the street doing drugs and stuff. Like, I, I don't think Japan will ever become that way. But I, I do agree you gotta proactively act. But I mean, John, do you really think. Well, I mean, do you. Well, John, are you. Let's say if I had the power to snap my fingers and then tomorrow it's like super strict, like fines and if you don't pay the fine, you don't get to come back into the country, would you be okay with that?

01:05:26 John Daub: No, because you have to. I think there should be some kind of process where you would give your side. I think it is a trial in some ways. You can't just. Because sometimes it's not exactly the way it seems. With the IRL streamer that was put in jail, it was everything that it seemed because he livestreamed the darn stuff. But look, I, you know, I'm not. Again, I'm not for that. But if you are becoming a nuisance and you are getting, getting drunk and you're hitting on girls, you know, Nampa. And it's somewhat uncomfortable for residents if you're trying to go home and there's a drunk foreigner who's, you know, like very aggressively hitting on you because he's drunk and he blames alcohol as the reason why. Why did you do that? And then he tells the police officer, because I was drunk. What do you do? You ban public drinking. And the problems will eventually go away. Because if you're sitting there drinking on the street, there's more likely that woman who's going home is going to feel more uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to walk past a group of drunk foreigners and drunk anybody. I should say, and I'm saying this because this is the biggest thing. Before you, before you say anything, Sam, just the videos that I showed you about 2018's Halloween with the car tipping. The two people that were in the back of the car were Japanese, but they weren't from Shibuya. They were Japanese church tourists. When I say tourists, I'm not just talking about Japanese international tourists. I'm also talking about Japanese young tourists coming from other places in Japan to drink. In Shibuya, it's not just international tourists, but what they found. And from the city's data, 70% of the people that were, that were coming here to drink were foreign visitors. So that's the point. It's not exclusively to foreign Visitors. And I have to make that point clear. I'm not picking on foreign visitors. It's just that the vast majority, and I say 70% is more than a majority, is foreign visitors.

01:07:27 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah. So I, like. I mean, at the end of the day, John, like, if you want to, like, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make society safer and make. Make the people that actually, like, hold passports here feel safe and feel calm and feel like things are under control. But it's just, I feel like you're. You're trying to fix a disease of a Band Aid kind of thing. You know, it's not like, you know, like, you might fool somebody of a camera, but you're not gonna fool like a hundred people with it, right? And so it's just like, it's fine. But when you declare it as like, this will be the end all, be all, when you're just literally like, telling people to go somewhere else, it's. It's not providing a solo, like a permanent or at least even a semi permanent solution. You know, like, you're just saying, like, okay, well, we don't want to deal with it. Let the other guys deal with it. And then you're just. They'll either just not care and it'll just kind of like fizzle, or it will escalate where it'll get worse. And.

01:08:27 John Daub: No, you're right.

01:08:28 Tokyo Sam: You know, you're right.

01:08:30 John Daub: Look, it reminds me of the. Of something I. I used to. I used to teach at Gaba and, you know, man to man, a Kaiwa, everybody come. Almost everybody comes here. Starts off at. As an English teacher, and the students were very powerful people. All right? They were like. The people that I taught were VIPs, and I was teaching in Ginza, and I made a lot of great connections. And one of the students told me, look, you can't fire somebody. And this probably happens in the US Instead of firing them, I would promote them so they would go to a different department and they would be out of mind. And that's sort of the same kind of thinking. It's the best way to get rid of a problem is to move it somewhere else, because you can't fire them. So, look, you can't get rid of foreign tourists, so make them go somewhere else. But they're still going to cause problems in the city. So you're right in that I think you can't fix the problem of people wanting to drink in front of a convenience store at 7pm by making them go somewhere else. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's a problem.

01:09:36 Tokyo Sam: Like Gus, Gus in your chat brings up a great point where he's like, the alcohol companies are probably so happy with all the tax revenue they're getting from all the alcohol sales. You know, it makes me think like, you know, when I first came here I was like, why don't the trains run 24 hours? And like Japanese friend told me, oh, because the, the taxi companies are too strong. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like they're, I guess they have lobbyists here in Japan too. And they're like, nah, the, the tra. Taxi companies make more than half of their money from like people who miss their train. So like they, they'll never. Even if the trains could be like have round the clock maintenance and stuff, they wouldn't do it because the taxi companies would lose money. I wonder, I don't know. Do you think that Japan will ever go to the point where you need the, the paper bag thing? Like, do you think that it will escalate like that?

01:10:22 John Daub: I don't, I don't know. Japan, no. Certain areas perhaps. But just to make a point here, it's not the, the beer company is collecting tax. It's the city and the, it's a national tax on beer. So it's like they're getting money from whether you buy it at a convenience store or you're buying it at a, at a pub. But I don't think it'll ever happen. Nationwide. Most of the towns, most of the land area around Japan is declining population. If you go to chicken front of a convenience store in the middle of nowhere Japan, no one's going to notice that you're there. Not even the clerk. Probably you're the first customer in, in a week or a month or something. So yeah, it's. I don't know, man. It's not gonna happen like that.

01:11:07 Tokyo Sam: Do you think that? Well, I mean like I, I guess the, what we're getting at here though is like, do you think that,

01:11:15 John Daub: do

01:11:16 Tokyo Sam: you think that it would. I think that a lot of bad behavior happens when people drink. Those like when they're unemployed and they have like low aspects or something versus just trying to party. I mean, it's a, it's both. But I feel like the I don't know in chat can correct me, I don't know, I'm not. We have people here, but like we

01:11:34 John Daub: have people in here in this chat, no doubt. And viewers who know somebody who has an alcohol related problem or has Died from, you know, liver problem or. There's always somebody who has. Has been abused by an alcoholic. There's lots of social problems as a result of alcohol. I myself, I don't have more than three drinks a week now. I mean, I've changed a lot because it just. I'm getting older and it's just a little bit. But alcohol creates more problems than it actually solves, of course. So nobody wants to see that. That, that's why I don't. I'm not really for, you know, like people are going to drink anyways and Japanese has a sake culture. You use Japanese sake for religious events. When I got married, you had to take a shot of sake, which has a very cultural important significance here in Shinto culture, it's alcohol. So it's not like I'm against alcohol completely. I drink it myself. But it does create a lot. Alcoholism creates a lot of social problems and I think we have a lot of that already with people in Japan. I have a friend who works in an advertising agency. They just opened up a bar in the ad agency because people aren't drinking enough and, and they have alcohol companies that are clients. So like the people in that age, ad agencies are getting drunk all the time. And by the way, it's an open bar so they can be drunk all the time if they want. I'm like, oh my God, is that real? I'm not gonna tell you which agency.

01:13:03 Tokyo Sam: That is so awesome. That is so cool. Can we go there sometime, John? Can we go visit?

01:13:07 John Daub: I'm never taking cameraman. It's. I'm never taking you there.

01:13:12 Tokyo Sam: I promise I won't say a single word. Just let me. Just let. Bring me to that open bar.

01:13:17 John Daub: How dare I even know. How dare I say anything about that? Just a little bit shocking. But again, the issues too. Go ahead.

01:13:25 Tokyo Sam: Well, I'm just saying, like, John, if like alcohol has been such a big thing with Japan for up until now, do you think that it was worse? I mean, what do you think it is like? I don't know, because the population of Japan is more than the tourist population, obviously. So do you think that, I mean, Japan's such a deep rooted alcohol culture. Like, do you think that doing something like Australia or Ireland did, where they just taxed it and made it super expensive, do you think that would help at all to curve the alcoholism, the alcohol usage?

01:13:56 John Daub: I don't know. I. Look, I think that there are case studies there. People have done stuff and you can see if it works or doesn't work. You know there's lots of guppy. I, I don't know from my thinking is that a lot of this stuff in, in Japan for Japanese is locally is policed by other people. I don't go look, kids didn't go to an alcohol vending machine to buy a beer under age because. And they, they do because probably someone's going to see them do it. A granny who has hawkeyes is going to catch you and tell your family and you're going to be embarrassed. And that's going to be worse than getting arrested to be publicly embarrassed in your neighborhood. There's certain aspects of Japanese culture that are stronger than, you know, just having a law on it. People seem to self police themselves quite well. Why you return a wallet. One person Japanese told me it's because if someone saw me not do it, I would feel shame. So I do the right thing because someone saw me do the wrong thing. So I do the right thing. So there's an element that I think that we don't 100% understand because we're not Japanese. There's a different way that Japan works and I think you could agree to that. So what works in other places like Ireland is probably not going to work here in Japan.

01:15:15 Tokyo Sam: Well, I mean this is, this is a whole other topic for a whole other time that maybe if you want to keep talking about this we can talk about later. But do you think decriminalizing marijuana like before.

01:15:27 John Daub: I'm not gonna go there.

01:15:28 Tokyo Sam: Like if I don't know if they made weed available, I don't know. I think that they would, it would be better. I've never get rid of alcohol.

01:15:37 John Daub: I don't know anything about that. So it's a different issue. I have no comment because I've never in my entire life I've had a cigarette, maybe one puff and it was disgusting. My mother smoked. I'm completely against it. I hated it as a kid growing up. It's not something I would do. Peer pressure never really worked on me. Look at the way I dress. It's the same way since I did. So that was like a kid. I wear the same hat I did when I was nine. Now I don't know anything about it, so I can't really comment. But look, in Japan when a government makes a law and a rule like this, usually it just adds more confusion to stuff. People police themselves pretty good I think here. But in the US and the west you really do need to have laws because that's what needs to be enforced. And it has to Be clear. And I don't. I don't know how they solve this. And we're just two dudes talking about it on a YouTube livestream. Two residents that have been here for more than 15 years. I think that this impacts the. Our everyday life more than the tourists and I. My biggest fear are the two things. One, that Omotenashi spirit within Japanese die because of 0.001% of tourists that are just awful. Japanese see this, they see it on the news, and they apply it to everybody. And that hurts me because there's not too. This is the one thing for my Japanese friends I really have to emphasize, and everybody knows this, but it's not Japan versus the world. It's Japan. And there's so many different cultures and nationalities with different ways to do things, but Japan sees it as Japan and everybody else. And for me, it's hard to teach, and I had to teach it when I was teaching English because culture is very important. American culture is not the same as Thai culture. People have different personalities and ways to do things. But for Japanese, they see foreigners as foreigners. And, you know, everybody speaks English, right? If you speak English, then that German guy's gonna understand you. But he doesn't speak English. He's German. It's hard for Japanese to understand sometimes, right?

01:17:46 Tokyo Sam: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess the, the whole thing. I mean, the bigger. The bigger overall picture of this is just like, how is Japan going to adapt if the tourism doesn't let. Like, if it doesn't let up and you get more and more people here? Like, how is Japan gonna adapt to the new temporary, but very often foreign influence that comes into Japan? Like, are they gonna find a Japanese to regulate it, a Japanese way to regulate it? Are they gonna go full getting rid of a multination and be like, you know, to the gulag with you kind of thing, you know? I don't know, man, but I mean, I hope it doesn't go. I hope they find a Japanese way that lets people know that they screwed up, but still gives them, you know, a chance to make it up or whatever, you know?

01:18:30 John Daub: Yeah, it's. It's going to be something we're not going to see a result for. For another year. But Japan is grappling with this challenge, I like to call it. They're not going to get rid of tourists, but they're going to have to find a whale. They're going to have to find a way to balance the everyday life of locals and the everyday experience of tourists that are coming here to enjoy the best of Japan and. And manage that better. And the solutions that they're getting are not quite good enough, but I think they're going to get there. It just as much as you think Japan is a technological wonder and great place, things take time here to evolve. Sometimes they never seem to get there, but I think they will with this. And it's just going to take a little bit more time as people grapple with this issue. Sam, do you have anything you want to say? Yes, we're going to wrap this up.

01:19:19 Tokyo Sam: Yeah, yeah. John, we don't have that much time left on the zoom thing. Yeah, no, I just, like, at the end of the day, guys, like, I want you guys to know that it's like. Like, I think there's a lot of foreigners that live in Japan that want to gatekeep this place, and they don't want people to, like, have fun or experience it. And I. I want you guys to know that it's like, Japan is a big place for everybody. Like, you know, there's enough Japan to go around for everyone. And, like, learning even a couple phrases goes a long way here. And don't worry about, like, if you're not doing, like, the stuff that, like, other crappy tourists are doing, then don't worry, like, you're not. Like, Japanese people are smart. They're not going to lump you in with those guys. And especially if you showed that you learned at least how to say hello and everything in there, too. So it's just like, you know, try to do the best that you can while you're here. Be nice, make connections, make friends, and. And just remember, like, you know, take what you. Take all the good stuff from here and share it with people. Japan needs more people to come here, more people to experience how awesome it is. And also, don't forget to sign up for John's Patreon, too. Please support him. We need. We need more John going on trips, please.

01:20:21 John Daub: Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Sam.

01:20:23 Tokyo Sam: Bye, guys. Yep.

01:20:25 John Daub: All right, I see. See you, Sam. I. I think so. All right, I appreciate it. So that was. That was tkyo, Sam. The link is in the description if you want to check out his channel. He's entertaining and I really appreciate him coming on here. He didn't have to do that. He has a. A very unique point of view that's different than mine. And that's what a debate is all about. That's about talking about these issues. Not just one voice, but having somebody else to challenge you. I'm not always right, and I Learn from the comments. Quite often just reading from you and it gives me new ideas as well. I think that's very important for some of you who might be a little bit critical or a lot critical of Sam and me. Just keep in mind that, that that's not a reason not to listen to what they have to say. And especially in a format like this where we can learn from one another. Thank you, Sam, once again. Tkyo Sam, look, this is an issue that's not going to be going away and as I said, Japan's going to grapple with this issue for the next year. I think after the Osaka Expo they're going to assess and then they'll have a probably a better plan. I see taxes going up for tourists. I see more tourist centered areas. I see maybe better infrastructure yesterday in Kyoto and this is, I'm going to do a live stream on this a little bit later. But I noticed that they finally launched their bus subway service. They stopped all of the bus day passes. They brought it back, but this time it's connected with the subway. So now you can take the subway or, or the bus. You don't have to take one or the other. The subway is not comprehensive in Kyoto. It doesn't take you pretty much anywhere except for Shijo and a couple of other places. It's not that useful. But it gets you close and the buses can fill in the gap. Perhaps, but they launched that as well as a new tourist express bus that'll take you directly to those places, thus allowing locals to be able to get on the local buses. Because a lot of the older generation didn't really want to get on a crowded bus and were complaining about the overcrowding of it. And now it's alleviated a lot of the pressure. So you have to give Kyoto some credit for finally launching that. It's just that it took a long time to do that. Dimmy dm thank you. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I think all of you, I'd like to hear from you. You don't have to agree with me either. You can leave your comment down below. Just keep it clean enough to. We can keep the comment up there and I appreciate the feedback. Look, I'm looking for answers. I want to be a positive force in all of this. The word overtourism has negative meaning in my opinion. I don't think it's a great word. A lot of people that I talk to, Japanese also agree that over tourism this word has a very negative meaning to it. I think it's it's more of a challenge that Japan has, and it's different than Venice and Bali and some of the other places we're seeing with where there are just sometimes too many tourists. They're not prepared for it, but there's not enough space to prepare for it, really. They can just do a better job with the messaging. My issue with Kawaguchiko was that social media created the problem. Social media could help solve the problem, but instead of going to social media, they went to CNN and BBC and mainstream media to get the message out. Probably they should have gone to some social media, not. Not me. It could be anywhere, anyone, to. To get the message out of why they're doing this. Because once it got a hold in the, you know, in the mainstream media, I think it took a spin because they want viewers that they were building a wall to block the Mount Fuji view. The real story, they're building a wall to protect people from getting hit by cars and because they were running across the street. And you didn't get that until like a minute or two into the report. And by that time, most people had stopped watching. So you just get the headlines and the headlines are all catchy. But the reason why they did it was to save lives more than just block a view. Because they don't like tourists. They love tourists. They just want to keep the tourists safe. Because the worst story is a tourist getting hit by a car and dying in because they didn't do anything. And that's the same thing with this story about Shibuya. Before somebody dies as a result of a riot or a mob or somebody who gets drunk and is violent because of alcohol, they're trying to do something. Now, I don't know if it's the right thing. It's what they're doing. It feels like the right thing because it's been working. They've been testing this out for a few years. I'd like to know your comment below what you think about all of this, including the debate with Sam, who I thought did a really great job explaining his point of view. Thank you, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you in the next livestream. We'll talk about some more stuff about Japan again.