Speakers:

• SPEAKER_01: John Daub

00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo, one of the greatest cities in the world. In particular, driving go-karts around the streets. It's kind of a cool activity that a lot of tourists like to do. You need an international driver's license. You need some experience, of course, driving it. You've got seatbelts. There's a lot of protections. They should be quite experienced doing this. No accident should occur, right? But they kind of do. And in the news recently, I'd say about 10 days ago, we saw that an accident did take place with a taxi. You could see the go-kart or the Mario Kart or whatever you call them colliding with a taxi. It happens. And when it does, it puts the industry in the spotlight and not in a flattering way. They look at the rules, the laws, and I'm actually here on purpose. Check it out. You see the traffic light here is a weird one. There's an arrow saying go straight. You actually can't make a left or right here. You can only go straight. But there's also a red light, which confused me. So does that mean stop? Like the roads of Tokyo and in fact, all of Japan are different than in other places around the world. You're going to see this light changing again. And I'm going to bring back this light in a second. I really want to talk about this story. So let me just show you in the news and go over what I saw just recently here.

00:01:01 John Daub: You can see that the news is showing the go-kart having an accident with the taxi right there. They made a left turn into traffic on Hibiya Avenue, which cuts across the Imperial Palace. Past Shimbashi Station. I've been on it many times before creating damage to the taxi. And the lucky thing was there's no injury of the driver or the go-kart rider, which is a really good thing. But then it puts this whole thing into perspective. Like the taxi driver was interviewed. What was wrong? What happened here? He kind of runs down the entire thing, telling me that he was just driving like he was. And this driver came out made a left turn right into me. You know, their go-karts had gone past me. And I guess he was a straggler leave behind and trying to catch up. And this caused an accident. And it's so easy to do when you're trying to catch up. You know, you want to stay with your group here. I can see they're showing it. Even the graphics are kind of cool. Here comes the car. See all the carts took a left on from this small alley, small street into the main street. And then the other one just came out a little bit too late. Probably darted out.

00:02:35 John Daub: It's not the taxi driver's fault. You can't make a left turn in the traffic like that. That's just crazy. And you know what? A lot of these people don't signal either. I've been watching them for years. That's also something that kind of scares the crap out of me. Because I honestly, I don't want to be driving on the streets of Tokyo with these go-karters on here. They're not experienced. Many of them coming from North America driving on the other side of the road. So they're not exactly good at this. You could see. This is the part where I'm going to jump in here for a second. This is the part that is the most critical here. After an accident happens, I'm telling you, this is how Japan reacts. They all of a sudden will look at all the dangers and the risks involved with it. And it's a bad thing for the industry in general. This industry that's doing these go-karts absolutely wants no accidents, no incidences. Because every time there is, it comes to the forefront within the Japanese media and questions arise. And then lawmakers see this. They have to go back in here and take a look. Now they start to show the go-karters. I guess you could call them. Essentially, right in here they're wearing the Nintendo outfits. They now say that they no longer do that. There's disclaimers now saying they don't use copyrighted outfits and whatnot. But they do have costumes, various costumes. But you can see like this. Only one of the drivers is signaling. The other ones aren't signaling at all. It's kind of confusing for the drivers behind. Every driver should be signaling if they're going to be making a left or a right. I guess, I don't know if this is one of the guides or one of the other drivers. For the other people in traffic, here they are. They're kind of getting out. This one is the most worrying. Some guy, and they say this is a staff of this company, got out of the go-kart in traffic. This is against the law. You can't get out of your motor vehicle in the middle of the night. He's in the middle of traffic like this. He's taking selfies. You can see he's taking pictures. Japanese media is all over this. And this is embarrassing for this company or whoever it is. You see, this is the intersection here at Roppongi. You can see here he comes again. The tour guide getting out of the vehicle, taking pictures. Again, against the law. You can actually, you can take pictures if the vehicle stopped. And this is something a lot of locals did not know about. All right. A lot of locals don't know about this. But you can actually pull your camera and take pictures. I wouldn't do it. It's not a good idea. It's not a good thing to do. But it's okay. It's when the vehicle is moving, you shouldn't be taking pictures at all. Or getting out of the vehicle. This is dangerous. What if the light changes? What if, you know, there are other cars around? What if the light changes to people turn to the left and they hit them? This is a lawyer who talks about some of the things that are actually against the law and things that are legal. And I was surprised watching the Japanese media on this as well. But the thing is, even the staff of these go-kart companies are making massive judgment errors. And locals, as you can see, he's being filmed. Locals who are working for these companies are making mistakes. And it's hurting this industry. And it hurts all of you who want to try this out. If they're not doing it the right way. Look at all the people that are videoing. And I've been videoing them too. But look how, that's too many people. It feels like, that's like a convoy, right? This is like if a VIP or a president comes in. Sometimes these lines are just too long. It's chaotic. It's crazy. And if you're a new driver or a senior citizen driving, you don't want to be driving on the road with these low, small go-karts. And Japan's got a lot of drivers that like to hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. You see that on the news as well. I don't know. It's just kind of scary. They did a count of how many times in the afternoon between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. How many times did the go-karts go by here at Shibuya Hachiko Scramble? 80, I think it was 82 go-karts went by within the period of an hour. Maybe there's just too many of them. I don't know. Yeah, 82 right there. That's a lot. They're being led by tour guides. I don't know if they can be controlled. There's lots of questions. Now, accidents don't happen all the time. It's not something that happens. But the thing is, and this is what they discussed in the news and something you should be very, very understanding about on the Japanese perspective. We all feel here if something were to, if some tourists were to get killed doing this, it looks bad for the whole country and the entire country would be embarrassed that this all happened. There's no reason why there should be an accident of any kind where tourists dies. It just makes us all feel bad. And this is something that we want to avoid by all means. Right? Here's the now here's the arrow turning left. There is a left turn arrow and there's a right turn arrow and there's an arrow going forward and then there's a red light. It's so confusing. If you just watch it. This is what I mean here. You really hear the sound of the arrow going forward. You have to know the traffic and there's the center arrow. I got caught here driving. I saw the arrow going straight and I tried to make a left turn, but I didn't complete the left turn. I was only about 30% of the way and the police officer stopped me up there and he gave me a warning. And if I completed the turn, he would have cited me. But quite frankly, I did not know that that existed. I didn't. I'd never seen a three arrow traffic light before. Not even in the studies of for driving. And I was a new driver and I got the warning and they took my license and covered that. But it's not an easy thing at all to do. You see the go-karts. This is Shibuya. You can watch the live video and you see them going. This seems like four or five of them. That seems like normal, you know, but when there's 12 of them, I'm telling you, the ones in the back, if you're making a left turn, they're at risk of getting hit or hitting somebody like what happened. I can see this happening again and again. It's just that people behind are in. It's very confusing. It's very confusing. So the green arrow means straight only. Right. So only you can go straight and the red arrow means the others are, there's a red light for the other ones. See, yeah, really. And this is live, folks. So like right now, of course, you can't move at all. But when it does, when the arrow changes again, you're going to see it going to the left. And that's what's confusing. Sorry, I'm really zooming in. I'm going to show you the website of it and give you a little bit more feedback on my thoughts on this. I don't know if they should get rid of it. I'm not really sure what they should do. There it is. Now the arrow as a red light and the green arrow pointing to the left has turned on here. And that's really fascinating to me. So now you can see the cars below. They're turning to the left. Now there's an officer you see right there on the left side. He's peeked out at the corner watching the traffic.

00:09:56 John Daub: Okay. Now it turns yellow and red and then it goes straight. Like it's it's so confusing in a way. Back in the clay rights in here. John Dubb alarmist. The reason for this is not to sound an alarm. Maybe it is for the industry, but it's to let you know what what's happening here in Japan and what people are thinking about. So, you know, because the behavior of everybody else does really make a big impact. And if you're watching this and you're thinking about doing the go cards, don't get out of it and start to walk around because it does. It does put a bad light on everybody here. I mean that like for everybody who wants to do this. So let me show you here. The last part of this news thing. I don't think I caught it. So this is the problem here. And this is happening so often. If you see here, the go cards are in are moving right now. Someone is recording with their smartphone. They just could not put it away and they're driving. This is absolutely against the law. They put it back into their costume. You cannot do that. You just you just can't do that. That's how accidents happen. And you know what? Japan is watching. There's somebody recording this. So when they do something like that, you're going to be captured in this goes back to that company probably getting fined. They should probably find these people who do this. I don't think you should have your smartphones on you. I think they should they should you should have to leave your smartphones behind and they should have like GoPros attached to it and you guys can take pictures or 360 cameras and they give you the footage later or something. There's no reason why you should have a smartphone and be operating motor vehicles. But here was the interesting thing with this. They they asked the people in the studio here. They asked them if they would comment on whether or not taking out your phone and filming with it was against the law like they're doing here. And the lawyer said no. But you can see why this would be confusing because you're now focused on your phone and not operating your motor vehicle, which is okay because you're turning on the air conditioning and you're messing around with the GPS sometimes or, you know, maybe your rearview mirror. I don't know. But you're more focused. You're playing around with another device your smartphone you're gonna have issues. I personally I think the people should pull over and then take the picture somewhere. Look it's these kinds of things that you see happening where an accident happens like this that they start to assess the laws and try to make it safer and the reactionist is reactionists are quite powerful. The laws could change quite quickly and they're usually very harsh and rolled back lightly over years. Look I don't want to see them there's go-karts. I kind of want to see go-karts go away and I also don't because I want to I want you all to try who want to do it. I understand that it's kind of fun to do that but look accidents do happen if you are riding in the go-karts I'm gonna give you my point of view here if you are this isn't gonna be a very long episode like maybe we'll see some going by here if you do ride the go-karts. Like it's ultra dangerous all right the reason why is because you're so low on the ground there's a lot of Japanese drivers are pretty good in particular pretty good in Asia in fact probably pretty good around the world but the thing is in Tokyo people do drive a lot in Tokyo but outside of Tokyo there's a lot of like weekend drivers. I'm just saying because the public transportation is so darn good in Tokyo people don't drive as much as they should. It's a little bit scary out there all right and I drive I'm one of those drivers I drive maybe two or three times a month quite a bit and it can be kind of scary to be driving around like there's the Omawari he spends some time at the intersection and some other time going around so that's good he's always looking out making sure everybody's safe here. Omawari-san the guy who goes around on the beat yeah this is the cold bond there right the cool bonds right at the intersection so if you do make the turn it they're gonna be right there to make sure you get that infraction on you but you know one of the things that they brought in here was that were the rules and one of the things that they discussed was possibly these drivers wearing helmets they do that for motorcycles of course you got to wear a helmet but it seems like if you're gonna get into an accident like this and accidents increase it makes sense to have a helmet maybe doing these kind of go-karts because there's no roof on the car I don't know I don't even know if there's airbags in there look this is it this is a reason why if my son if Leo was gonna go go-karting I would wait until he's like 25 before because I could see him wanting to hit the gas a little bit I don't think that there's airbags if you get hit you're probably going down pretty hard there's go-karts they don't look so safe let me show you the website here so they even started off with a warning go-kart street car and this is one of the companies I'm not saying that they're the company that it had infractions I'm not even sure that this is there's several companies this could be one of the better ones I'm not sure I had never taken them so just a disclaimer there the ones that were listed on TV they didn't list the name of the companies make sure you do shop around if at any moment there lacks on safety get out of there seriously street cart is healthy adventures recreation service that provides our customers the opportunity to ride our custom go-kart's all the time. The street street cart is no way a reflection of Nintendo the game Mario Kart you can see they're great I think this is one of them that got sued in the past or they know they don't want to be associated with Mario Kart we wish our customers to respect the safety of yourself and others while having fun so you have to click OK to go on to the website to understand this you know people go online and and then there you go you get people dressed in costumes again I'm not a big cosplay person then there's a news article here they'll thank you for your continued support. We were providing as usual services. During that era, they weren't doing much of anything here. Extremely exciting and must experience when you visit Tokyo, Japan. Just imagine yourself on a custom-made go-kart specifically tailored to realize the real-life superhero go-karting experience. Mario Kart. Just, they can't say it. Look at all the news organizations. Half of them are publishing how dangerous it is, maybe. I don't know. What you do need here is an international driver's license. So you can get that. It's just a paper license that you get for 10 bucks in the U.S. from AAA on your normal American driver's license. There's a Japanese translation of your license. So if you ever get pulled over, that's what the law makes you do. So you have to get that before you decide to do this. But, you know, I mean, it's something that I would try out doing, but I would probably pick my time of day and avoid. I would avoid certain times. I know how the traffic is in Tokyo. I know what it's like. But it seems like they did a really good job of laying out the rules here, actually. So I can't fault them at all. Again, I don't know if this is the company or not. Again, not all companies are the same. They showed you the vehicles over there. It looks pretty cool. I don't know. I'd like to know in the comments below. What do you guys think? Have you done the go-karting? Was it safe? What was your experience? At any moment, were you a little bit afraid? If you're from North America, when you're driving on the other side of the road, how did you feel? Did you get nervous doing that? Was it comfortable? Was that transition okay? What did you think about before you did it? And what did you feel after? I'd love to hear your opinions. And maybe this is a good thing for the go-kart industry. I'm not telling you exactly not to do it. I'm just saying what you rightfully should. As the website says, be aware of the risks. I probably would not do it. Yamano Games writes in here, I am nervous renting a car for the first time this trip. I was nervous. When I rented a car as well the first time, and I almost got into an accident taking a left turn, which is really hard. Again, you can see here, Michael Sassano, thank you brother. I'll read your Super Chat in a second. Aloha, my brother. Mahalo for sharing this. That's something I would try just to expose the traffic. You can see here, the traffic lights are just so confusing. Just to expose to the traffic. I feel, I could feel how residents would view this as a traffic nuisance though. Can you see this in the streets of New York? I can too, but I've seen these electric scooters, which are now legal. It kind of scares me because they just dart out there. I don't know, you have to have a driver's license, I believe, to use them because there's a number plate on some of them. If you're driving in on traffic. There are lanes on the roads that are for bicycles. In fact, I'll take you out there. As you can see, the traffic is so confusing. The traffic lights are weird. See, it turns yellow. They're not blinking in real life, by the way. That's just the electric... And here's the arrow to go straight. So now you can't make a left. But I tried to make a left on a straight arrow and they caught me. But I didn't complete the turn and didn't get the infraction. So, they gave me a warning. They were nice and I apologized. I said I was being real safe. It's quite dangerous because you can see the crossing right there. So that's pretty much all that I have to say here. I just wanted to show you one thing here on the intersection. Do you see this right here? There's actually a bike lane. And I want to say technically, I'm not sure if it's the law. I believe it is. If you're riding a bicycle, technically, you should be on the street with the cars. Or at least you can be. And these arrows, they're something new. They've been here for a couple of years now. Maybe four or five years. But it lets the drivers know that bicyclers are going to be on the road. Or on the left side of the lane as well. Or on the curb. But these scooterists. I'm seeing if I can even go by. Today, there's not much traffic. I thought it was a guy jackhammering the road. I thought it was a construction thing, where the guy is holding on the jackhammer. A foreign friend of mine said it was two people doing something. I don't know. I've heard a lot of different things. And these lanes here are set up so that you can ride a bicycle and other things on the side of the road which is you know it's great to do but you're not supposed to be riding a bicycle in particular fast on a pedestrian area like this they basically encourage you to make sure you're on the street but the thing is a lot of cars will be parked on the side of the street like right here and you can see how do you ride your bike you can't go in the left side of it they shouldn't be parked there but they are it's not a parking spot in fact he's not even in his car right next to the police it's probably not a good idea so that you can see that the bicycle things here they do allow you to some sense of safety as you go along here I like it but more and more of these scooters with batteries are like rushing through here and it's making it harder for drivers because they don't know the laws look at the guy left he actually ran into the see people do that he ran into the gas station to get something yeah if he's there for a few seconds I guess it's okay but you know with a city of millions it is confusing it is confusing and if you're and if you're a new driver this intersection is not easy to navigate you got to make left turns there are two left turn lanes and one that goes straight going straight takes you on to a bridge and then you could also go straight and and be slightly to the left and then stay on the local road and then there's the bridge above that expert that goes over this intersection which is quite busy it is confusing actually and if you're not sure the roads it's very easy to get into an accident in Tokyo and that's why I just don't get it in one of the most chaotic streets in the world one of the most cities in the world let me show you heavy a dirty this is where the accident occurred all right this is you see the Imperial Palace on the top right it'd be a doity it goes right past it in the front of it it's a pretty big road I don't know what is about five kilometers or so I think I ran on it on Tokyo Marathon there's shimbashi station and this intersection here is where the accident happened that little road in the center of your screen that left turn coming out of the alley from the bottom at the top that's where they came out and one of the cars just darted out and hit a taxi coming through there I'll zoom into that intersection there but it's chaotic the amount of lanes sometimes there's two left lanes sometimes if you're in the left lane and you stay in the left lane you can only go left you have to know to stay in the center lane it's like it's so crazy sometimes yeah after years I'm really starting to get comfortable driving in Tokyo but like it took years I can't imagine tourists coming here for the first time and then being completely comfortable with driving here and if you're not nervous then I don't think you're prepared I don't if you're not nervous driving in a city of Tokyo I don't think that you're prepared for what could possibly happen it's kind of scary especially on the shootoko which are the highways that are above ground and sometimes underground if you miss your exit man you're and it's so narrow and no one's going the speed limit everyone is like 30 kilometers over the speed limit across the street you can see the elections are coming the mayor Koike will be running off against Renho I think Koike is gonna win again I'm not sure I'm not a political person here but she's had a good enough job to continue for a third term which is pretty amazing and there you go we're gonna see you in Tokyo! So it's gonna get pretty loud around here because the elections what do you guys think would you feel comfortable driving around this street in particular going to Monza Nakacho is fine but I don't think going around Shibuya is gonna be a lot of fun the the streets of Shibuya are very crowded there's a lot of people the traffic light it does make me nervous granted it is like a dream come true for a lot of people who do video gaming you do feel like a superhero driving around here I felt that too if I've kept my damn driver cam in the front going and I watch it back some of the highways it's like video game for sure so many Oh Expressways going over and under and sometimes you're going up and around and a left and right none of the roads are straight it's kind of cool the buildings Japanese signs on the left and right neon flashing at you all you need there is it like a hit points in it and a game score on the right side how many lives you got left I did the go-kart I get the cart and broke down on Rainbow Bridge and they left me no you know what way Ross T that is awful you gotta be kidding me oh my gosh that'd be the worst can I said that they go so many go-karts go over the Rainbow Bridge uh she says that that that's uh been something that she thought that was a little bit crazy I don't know I think they might have quotas on them I think there's too many go-karts at the at this time I don't think they should have as many people I think maybe six to a group is enough but then you don't make enough money that's why they start to put in 12 and maybe with two guides I don't know what way to do things is but if you just watch the traffic like you should be a little bit nervous doing the go-karts but again like I'm somebody who says it's okay to rent a car I'm somebody who encourages people because I think renting a car Japan's a car country this is where you would rent the car to get an experience Brescia Studios of the house I will let somebody else do my driving well for the last couple of years I've been doing all the driving for Leo and kanai so I can understand that it doesn't make me tired but if you're looking for a car, your car is meant to be there for you. Get used to it it is a lot of fun driving into into in japan because you can go to all those places that the trains don't go there's no other tourists or very very few out on the highways and the roads you get a more authentic look and japan's got more car companies than probably anywhere else in the world nissan mazda um uh honda toyota uh daihatsu um gosh i could this suzuki there's so many companies out there that make cars it's it's crazy in japan for just a country that's you know the size of california the dr the driving culture here is incredible and if you talk to expats that have been living here for a long time like some of them got motorcycles some of them got cars it's the way to get around too uh for long-term travel trains are good you can't be driving for a lot of this stuff here you really can't uh rentals are not expensive either that's true remember that's true rentals are pretty affordable i don't know how much the go-karts are either they didn't really list the price uh up front so i can't really tell you for sure but what i can tell you is that if you are doing it accidents do happen um like we saw in this report here it's kind of crazy the bus going by that's another thing i would be scared to death with those buses zooming by too there's so many buses you're so small chan writes in here is someone stuck in a japanese car truck and they're not going to let you in the bus you're going to be stuck in a japanese car truck and they're not going to let you in the bus you're going to be stuck in a japanese car truck i could say most oh chan i just missed your message shoot that's the thing with these platforms sometimes i could say most japanese drivers are pretty safe well thank you very much yeah i'd agree with that i'd say for the most part you're going to be fine but when you do see something like this happening it does it does scare me but there are also a lot of paper drivers is is is the point i think that uh we have to we have to make that point and you know i i think that it's good that uh they're calling out that japanese media is calling out these uh companies i think they could do a better job of safety just look at that i mean like i just don't i don't feel if i was in an accident and you know you're gonna and and you know that's a possibility in these cards if you just make one small mistake your life can be ended by because you're you're like an ant on a road of elephants okay that's an exaggeration but with protection these cars have have us have roofs airbags um better structure i think i'm sure that these go-karts are are pretty strong too they're customized apparently but obviously if you get into an accident and you flip like and you don't have a helmet on things can hit you there's so many so many like i see a lot more risks than i see rewards i'd probably just get a motorcycle go around i don't know the go-karts are too low to the ground for me that's it that's all it took and thank goodness it was just an injury that nobody died nobody was seriously hurt probably going at low speed making a left turn and the taxi driver just going through an intersection uh being quite careful making a left turn uh looking out and noticing it fast enough to be able to stop and it looks like he was going slow enough that i don't see any skid marks and was able to stop pretty instantaneously and he looks like a taxi driver with some experience um again when this happens the media calls everybody out and the industry has to look at itself and this is what the japanese media does it's a reflection point for the whole industry so when i see them i see like i see a nuisance i'm i'm that as somebody who lives here i see a nuisance but i'm not i'm not in favor of banning it because i think that you know if it's not against the law i don't want to be law dog remember that i don't want to be a law dog water i want to be more like doc holiday i'm talking val kilmer doc holiday just bad so good but so bad but this is this is seriously bad never get out of traffic never get out of the cart never take off your seat belt and start to do this and put yourself at risk tombstone michael absolutely all right everybody take care i'll see you another live stream tomorrow we got a lot more stuff to talk about some more podcasting formats in a link in the description tells you the phone number that you could use to leave a message on my answering machine um i think it was one eight hundred what was it one three two five call oij call only in japan one three two five call only in japan i believe it's a texas area code international and local uh fees may apply sounds like a commercial when i say that but double check the number it's in the description leave me a comment it might be used in a live stream which i'm not sure about but i'm not sure about that but i'm not sure about that it's going to be a lot of fun i want to say happy father's day to all the papas out there you all know that uh leo and i leo is my son and uh he's three years old him and his mama got me some flowers made me really good got a kiss out of it and then leo my son when it went ahead and at night he wouldn't give me the flowers he wanted to sleep with them because they're so beautiful and i let him but in the morning i took them and said that they're mine because hey i got to do some fathering but happy father's day to all the papa's there like five years ago i wouldn't know but now i do it's a pretty hard job being a disciplinarian and also a buddy ask peter about it it's not easy a lot of respect to all the other dads you have more than one kid even more respect man because one is a lot in these days today it's not easy to do all right everybody take care