00:01 John Daub: Ah, the rainy season today. Officially, they've announced that the Kanto region, which is Tokyo, is in the rainy season. I wasn't sure when exactly it would start. The Japan Meteorological Agency has it on the website today, the 21st, which is the first day of summer. You can see all around me it's raining a lot. The radar looks not great. There's a rainstorm here in Tokyo. It's been going on since last night. It started raining around midnight or so. I think I can hear the pitter patter on the balcony. This is a time of year that some people think you should probably avoid coming to Japan. But maybe there's some benefits to coming during tsuyu (rainy season), which is the name for the rainy season. Tsuyu meaning like rain every day.

01:01 John Daub: I want to give you some information on why Japan has a rainy season or like a monsoon, more or less. So I set up this here for you to kind of explain it. This is the official document from the Japan Meteorological Agency. 2024. I put an arrow to mark Kanto, which is Tokyo, and it starts on June 21st, just today. It's 14 days late. It's usually starting around June 7th. The rainy season in Tokyo starts around June 10th and goes on to like July 20th, give or take. It just depends. Some years are earlier, some years are later. Last year was really short, if I remember. The rainy seasons typically don't last forever, but it sometimes can feel that way. Nagoya region also started today. The Chugoku region, that's Hiroshima, I don't think it's listed as started yet. Shikoku started on June 9th, Kyushu on June 8th in Kagoshima, Fukuoka on the 17th, and Okinawa on May 20th. Everywhere, it was late. Two weeks late here in Tokyo.

02:30 John Daub: If it didn't come at all, I'd probably be happy too. Let me explain it to you. The rainy season is essentially just like a line. It's weather that's caught from the Sea of Okhotsk, which is up there north of Hokkaido, and Ogasawara in the Pacific, which is really warm weather, really warm fronts and cold fronts that sandwich it. It just keeps the rain trapped in this region until the line moves up, and the summer heat pushes the chillier weather further up to the north, and then the rainy season's over. That line keeps going up and up and up. I hope that's one way that makes it easy for you to understand what's going on with the rainy season. Let me show you on the map where exactly we are. You can see Japan, not a very big island. Osaka is west of Tokyo. This is the Sea of Okhotsk up here. It's a lot cooler. Down here in the Pacific, this is the Ogasawara Islands. It's a lot warmer, like kind of tropical type of weather. These warm and cold fronts kind of trap that monsoon line in between here for like five to six weeks during the summer. Hokkaido doesn't typically have a rainy season, but it kind of hits in the south part.

04:19 John Daub: It's a good thing because we get fresh water in Japan. It cleans the streets. It's a nice time of year for the summer season, because it's good for the first week and then I get really tired of it. Now, I'm wearing a jacket. It's chilly. Japanese summer is that hot, sauna-like feeling, but when it's raining like it is right now, it doesn't feel like that. It really feels a lot cooler. Tokyo has an amazing system to get all the rainwater out of here. Although it's raining quite a lot right now, you can see here in the gutter, it will flow towards the drain and go out to the same place where it's semi-processed or something. Then it goes into the river. There's a big cavern that Tokyo has created for this. It's especially important when typhoons hit because typhoons will bring in a lot of rain. The city streets don't flood because of the amazing system to get the water off of it and to take it to these underground caverns. You can see right there, the water is going into the sewers underneath here, or to rain collecting spaces where they are put into a place where they can get out of this urban area.

06:11 John Daub: In the summer, it's 10 degrees cooler. But there's a chill in the air from the water. Your legs do get wet, your feet get wet, your pants will get wet if you have pants on. And that wind makes it a lot cooler. The breeze coming from Hokkaido, I guess. It feels a lot cooler. It's really hard for you to dress for summer. You need a raincoat for sure if you're coming between June 10th and July 20th. Around July 10th, the weather just gets much warmer and that cold front, the chill definitely starts to dissipate so you don't need a sweatshirt anymore. But wow, it is getting windy. It's a lot of rain. I wanted to show you the cars going by here and give you an idea. But it sure is a lot cooler, and that's not a bad thing because if this rain wasn't here and you can look up there in the clouds, if it wasn't coming down as rain, it would be a hot, humid day, which is what Japanese summer really is. So it gives you kind of a break.

07:51 John Daub: Now I want to look at the weather report here. Let's make this really useful. And I want to shout out to Michael S. I think we got a super chat the other day and I wasn't able to see it. I want to say thank you for that super chat here. The weather report for the next week here in Tokyo. It looks like it's sunny down in Hiroshima and Kochi. It's sunny in Osaka? That's not fair. This is Friday the 21st. Then Saturday the 22nd, the sun comes out in Tokyo. Then Sunday it's cloudy with some rain in the evening. Then Monday cloudy with rain. Tuesday gets up to 31 degrees Celsius, which is mid 80s or low 80s. And then by the end of the week, I think it's going to rain. Look at the radar here again. This is Yahoo weather by the way. It's still a thing. It's kind of a mess right now. That line of rain is going to come up here to Tokyo and it's going to keep hitting. The weather reports are never really accurate on this. In the rainy season, just expect rain. And if it does rain, expect it to linger and just keep raining.

09:34 John Daub: A lot of storms going through Chiba right now. The Tatayama region going up to Choshi on the end of Chiba over there. Working its way up to Ibaraki. Mito is starting to get hit right now with rain. Yokohama is starting to pass. On the Izu-hanto Peninsula down there, it's starting to ease up on that side. So the sun will eventually come out, but it's quite wet and loud.

09:58 John Daub: So for lunch today, what do you do? How do you stay busy? Well, I went out looking for food. And I found my favorite. This is the food truck here. This is a brick oven pizza truck. And nobody was really buying any pizza from this guy. Usually there's a line. Today there's nobody. He's got his brick oven going. Look at that. There's a fire in there. Awesome. This is Uncle Ken. He's been coming to this area for like about four or five years now. And I ordered two pizzas. One for me, one for Kanae to eat for lunch. You can see him preparing it there. The rain coming down. There's the menu. You have a bunch of good ones. I got a garlic shrimp, which is the second one for 1,600 yen. And a margarita with smoked bacon and sausage, which is 1,400 yen. So it cost me 3,000 yen. They got the four cheeses, the iwashi down at the bottom. It's all pretty good.

10:54 John Daub: And then here he goes. He's putting the pizza in the brick oven. Uncle Ken going to work. Uncle Ken's not a talkative gentleman. He likes to keep to himself. He's never said hello. He just nods. He knows me. Some people are like that. Don't take it personally. I got the pizza. And I want you to tell me which one you think looks better, the garlic shrimp or the sausage with smoked bacon here. Here is the garlic shrimp. Look at the little bit of black olives on there. Not too bad. There's some garlic. Wasn't too overpowering. Mostly in the center of the pizza. I didn't distribute it quite so much. But I cannot complain. And that's the one that Kanae and I ate. I took this one. I like the sausage with smoked bacon. The sausage looks more like just hot dogs, which I don't complain about because they were actually quite tasty. Smoked bacon is very good. Look at that mozzarella cheese. Which one do you think is better? This one or this one? The garlic shrimp or that margarita? Half margarita, half margarita and half sausage with smoked bacon.

12:00 John Daub: Well, that's how you survive a rainy day. But that food truck is going to be there this evening. It's in this area called Tsukuda, which is near Tsukishima. So you can come out here near the Lincos supermarket if you're in Tokyo. He's here in the evening, I guess. But he's definitely serving lunch until 2 p.m., he said. And then he's back doing dinner from 5 to 8. But we'll see how the weather affects that. Yeah, it was really good. I see Michael Susano is here. How are you doing, Michael? I'm trying to stay warm. Aloha. Yikes, not a beautiful day in Japan. Brick oven pizza is one of my faves. I'll treat some of your lunch. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you definitely did. Appreciate it. Yeah, I didn't know what to do for lunch. I felt kind of bad. I wasn't going to get pizza, actually, because I bought a bunch of avocados. I stopped and said, Uncle Ken, where is everybody? All right, I'll get me two pies to go. And we got them. And Kanae was quite happy with the garlic shrimp. She made a spinach salad with it, which adds a little bit of healthiness to it. Well, thank you, Michael. Thanks very much.

13:18 John Daub: So that's the rainy season. Live, that's the way we roll. Kind of give you an idea or feeling what it looks like, it feels like. There's a breeze. It's wet. The rain sticks around for a while. It's just weather. It'll go where you can see the shirt blowing from the wind there, a little bit of a chill. Again, all those clear umbrellas allow you to see through them. Use it like a shield to get around. But temperatures, yeah, in the 60s, for sure. And the wind and the rain gives it a nice chill. And that makes the rainy season a weird time in Japan, because it doesn't feel like summer. Although it is the first day of summer, it certainly doesn't feel like it. Jesus is here from Mexico. Thank you, brother. Not humid at all. I don't feel any humidity at all. I'm actually shivering a little bit. Some warmth would be nice, but not during the rainy season. It's just kind of chilly. Not a comfortable day. But again, I'm wearing sandals and shorts because I know I'm going to get wet. There's no way avoiding it.

14:46 John Daub: So having a pair of rain pants, which you can get at Montbell or at Uniqlo, I think. A good rain jacket certainly helps. Having an umbrella, you can get 70-centimeter umbrellas, which I highly recommend, because it'll give you more coverage. Those are about 5 to 800 yen, depending on where you get it. And then the 65-centimeter and the 60-centimeter umbrellas are a little bit cheaper. But the bigger, the better. The thing is, you kind of do have to dress a little more. Bring in a sweatshirt if you're coming in June. You probably don't need it in July. But if you're coming in June, I would bring a sweatshirt and a pair of slacks, not just all shorts. Some people from Scotland or Canada or someplace like Finland or Norway are coming here with some kind of a sweatshirt. You know, Speedos and stuff. Nah, it's not quite that weather yet. I have a friend from New Zealand that wears shorts from March to November. You can't break the habit. Do you need a rain backpack? Maybe. It depends on your umbrella. The 70-centimeter ones will probably give you some good coverage for it. But it is a lot of rain, and it typically will rain all day. So you can't just go underneath a tree and wait for it.

16:09 John Daub: But when August hits, the monsoon or the rainy season, tsuyu, is finished. So when it does rain, it's either a typhoon, which means it's probably going to rain all day with lots of heavy wind, and then the next day is going to be super clear where you can get beautiful views up to Mount Fuji. Or they're going to be like these popcorn Florida-like showers where it'll rain for like 30 minutes or 20 minutes, and then it goes away and it's sunny again. Those kind of tropical-like storms that you get on the islands or Florida or something. That's what you get here in Japan in August. And maybe the first week of September because of the warmth of the Pacific. So, you know, it won't be like this for much longer. I think they said that the rainy season is going to be shorter this year. So we know that the rainy season started today. I actually have a historical graph here we could take a look at. This is through the years. This is 2023. It started on June 8th. This year it started on June 21st. So it's very hard to predict when it's going to start. The percentage is how much longer or shorter than it is from usual. Last year was actually 10% longer. 2022 was the shorter one. We've been having longer rainy seasons. 2020 was the worst. It was 174% longer than usual. But you know what? It didn't matter that much because we were all inside as a result of you know what. There were state of emergencies going on. 2021 during the Olympics, it was a longer season as well. But if you look at 2017, it was super short. June 7th to July 6th. 69%. So it was a little bit shorter. It's neat looking at the data. But you can see typically the rainy season will end around July 20th. And almost always by the first week of August when all of the summer festivals, the Obon Festival start around Japan. The weather is very nice. So the best time to come to Japan in the summer, probably sometime between July 29th and September 7th. But it's very hot. You got long days. Not a lot of rain. Probably pretty good. Except the typhoons.

19:03 John Daub: What do the percentages mean for Japan? The percentages on the side was the length that it was longer comparatively to the rainy season typically. So if the rainy season was 110% longer than usual, we got more rain. If it was 69%, that means we got less rain. 100% was a typical rainy season. That's what the graph meant. And don't worry about it. You can get rain gear and you can get umbrellas here in Japan. Montbell is a really good place to get pretty affordable rain gear. You can get it at Daiso, the 100 yen shop. You can get the plastic ones. It's good to have some rain pants, I think, because you're going to get wet. Something waterproof is kind of nice. But yeah, Montbell is probably the place that I would go to. There's a Patagonia here that you can buy it online and have it sent to your hotel from amazon.co.jp. Typically in Tokyo, it'll take you about 18 to 24 hours. If you order it, it'll arrive at your hotel. You order on amazon.co.jp.

20:19 John Daub: That's all I got for you today. I'm going to go back in and find a place to get a coffee down there. There's a Tully's Coffee over there in the corner. Kind of work off that pizza I had. Alright everybody, tomorrow we're going to be doing maybe a podcast format. If it's still raining, if it's sunny, I might go outside. But I have a couple of really good topics. Some important ones that we've got to talk about that's not over tourism anymore. And I probably should do an update to that. Just a note, very quickly. In regards to the stream I did 48 hours ago at Tsukiji. Those two-tier prices are going to be happening at tourist centers. Like tourist traps. Like Tsukiji Market, which is a tourist trap now. It's not a nationwide sanction. It's not a nationwide sanction by the government type of thing. It's literally the restaurant decided to do a two-tier system. Or the neighborhood decided to do a tier two system. So don't get upset with Japan. It's just a reality. The reason why they're thinking about doing it more is because they can't raise the prices. Because the locals can't afford it. Because wage hikes have been really bad. Inflation has been really hard. Prices on everything has gone up. Tourists are coming in here with 160 yen to the dollar. It hit 159 today. It's crazy. So they're trying to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak. It's a very hard balancing act. It's not going to work. My advice to them, anyone trying to do a two-tier system. But some places in tourist trap areas are going to do it. Majority of Japan, 99% of it is not going to do it. And the way to avoid it, stay away from tourist traps. Stop going to places like Tsukiji Market to places where massive buses pull in. You know you're going to get ripped off. So don't go to tourist trap places or places that have tourist prices and expect to say, Oh, Japan's raising the price for everybody. Every single country in the world has places that rip off tourists everywhere. But the one thing about Japan is greed is not a motivating factor of it. You might disagree with me. That's fine. You could still go to the airport and get 85 cents bottle of water after you go in through the terminal. Try getting that at JFK in New York. It's $7 for a small bottle of water at the Hudson News at JFK. So it's not greed that's doing this. It's survival. And I feel really bad for the business owners that have to make this kind of a choice. Also, it is more associated costs with having tourists coming in Japan. But we'll talk about this more in details. I read the comments. I replied to as many as I could. They're very good comments. Ramsey Silas, thank you for the coffee, brother. I'm going to go get that right now. I'm actually really getting cold and wet now. Please say hi to my sons. Jesus Alfredo. He will go to Japan for the first time. All right, Jesus. Jesus, welcome. Looking forward to maybe try to find me in a live stream. I'd love to meet you, give you a You Found Me card. That'd be a lot of fun. Thank you.

23:49 John Daub: Oh, it is really cold. Look at the ladies here. They got their umbrellas out. Again, you can see how people are dressed. Long pants, long sleeves, jacket. I'm the only one with shorts out here. But they're going to get wet. There's no way to avoid it. Stay warm, everybody. Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny. I'll see you then. Matane.