00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo Station. This is the Shinkansen platform. I am so hot. You can see I'm drenched. Jeopardy summer is here in full power. This is the start of the Obon holiday. Yesterday the 9th a lot of people were leaving Tokyo. Now it's the 10th and people are making their ways to Kochi Prefecture all over the place. The next Shinkansen is coming in right now.

00:00:34 John Daub: But this megaquake has actually had a really not great impact on travel. As you can see here, I was really curious about this because JR put out a note right here. Check this out. On August 8th, the Japan Meteorological Agency announced a Nankai Trough earthquake emergency information. Massive earthquake caution. First that we've had in Japan ever. In response to the magnitude 7.1 earthquake centered in Hyogo.

00:01:05 John Daub: Nara which is in Miyazaki Prefecture? In accordance with this, the passenger who possesses the JR ticket which is valid between August 8th and August 15th decides to postpone or cancel the trip. The ticket will be refunded without handling fee. However, unlimited ride passes such as Japan Rail Pass and JR East cannot be refunded after the passenger has started the pass. So get your money back because travel is going to be impacted. But I wasn't sure how much travel was going to be impacted until I actually came to the station and wanted to figure this out. And the first thing that I saw was the board.

00:01:35 John Daub: It says here that all the trains are delayed by five minutes. I thought it was ten minutes. Right now they're running five minutes slower. The reason why is because between Mishima and Shizuoka, I heard, because this is the biggest risk area, they're decreasing the speed from 285 kilometers per hour to 230 kilometers per hour. So it's not that big of a delay. You can see in the windows here, if you don't already know, between August 9th and August 15th, there's a delay.

00:02:09 John Daub: If you're riding the Nozomi Tokaido Shinkansen, you can only do it with reserved tickets. That means the Hikari trains are absolutely full with standing room only sometimes from the origin here in Tokyo. So Obon holiday really under full swing here. It is super crowded. Here's downstairs in the station. This is after you go through the ticket gates. Yeah, this is pretty crowded for a Sunday. Usually you don't see this much traffic in the afternoon. I'm sweating like crazy, but there's a lot of people down there. All right, there goes another Shinkansen.

00:02:50 John Daub: So the Nankai Trough megaquake warning, which was issued on August 8th, is in effect until, I don't know, I think it was like a week or something. And if it doesn't happen, we're just going to have to wait. This is not a perfect science. There have been some commenters saying the news and the government is panicking people, getting into their psychosis, making them binge buy into things like this.

00:03:26 John Daub: Look, the reason why they're doing this and issuing this warning is in light of what happened 13 years ago in Tohoku, because this exact, well, very similar situation—a magnitude 7 quake and a slow slip occurred. Then a week later, roughly, that's when the 9.1 magnitude earthquake happened in Tohoku. And we all know the history of that. Had Japan been a little bit more prepared, perhaps we would have lost fewer lives, in particular when the tsunami hit afterwards. Maybe the nuclear power plant would have been better prepared for it as well. But now you better learn from history because history repeats itself, more or less. We just don't know when.

00:04:23 John Daub: The articles in the newspaper, this is from Asahi Shimbun here. Delays expected during Obon as the Shinkansen will reduce speed. You can see there's already signs in front of the station in the article here. They're also telling you about the reserved tickets. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued the Nankai Trough earthquake extra information. Mega-thrust earthquake alert. These are very anime-ish, aren't they? Central JR Tokai on August 8th announced it will operate the Tokaido Shinkansen between Mishima and Mikawa-Anjo, which is right before Nagoya, at reduced speed.

00:05:06 John Daub: The purpose of lowering the top speed is to minimize damage in the event of an earthquake. The slowdown is expected to continue for about a week. This disruption will affect packed trains. As of today, August 9th to 18th is the peak of the Obon holiday. The JR Tokai has scheduled many extra bullet trains. There's a lot more Hikari running right now. The Tokaido Shinkansen will operate a record 483 trains per day. That's crazy. That's a lot.

00:05:32 John Daub: West JR on August 9th—you can see the article there. I'll put a link in the description. But this was just yesterday. If you take a look at the Tokaido Shinkansen, you can see the track between Shizuoka and Nagoya. That's the impacted areas. Right now, that's where the delays are. So I can't even say if this downspeed is creating a massive delay or if they've factored that in. But right now, as I showed you on the platform, they're showing a five-minute delay, which is pretty significant for those that are riding the Shinkansen. In Japan, we don't get that too often.

00:06:22 John Daub: People have been asking me for tourists here. You can get extra information from the U.S. Embassy, which is doing a really good job of keeping visitors, U.S. citizens, up to date. It's good for all the travelers. They have all the apps and all the things that you need to download, all the information in case of a megaquake. It's all on the U.S. Embassy for Tokyo's website. So the ambassador and his staff are doing a pretty good job. I can't fault them for getting that information up there.

00:06:52 John Daub: And if you want to see what a megaquake feels like, I have a video on this if you haven't already seen it. It's pretty hardcore watching me. And these are bad memories because I was in the megaquake in Tokyo back in 2011. And it basically changed my life. And I still have, when I talk about it, you can tell I'm a little bit traumatized by it, even 13 years later. It's something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Every human being has scars. This is one that really scarred me, so to speak. So go check it out. The video, I think, is interesting. I think you'll learn a lot about it. Look at my eyes. This is right after it. And by seeing it, you see how crazy real it is.

00:07:44 John Daub: This is the area that's impacted right now. So this is where the Shinkansen is being slowed down. Do you see up in the top part of this yellow zone? That's the Nankai Trough. This yellow represents the area that would be impacted, according to seismologists, volcanologists, and engineers. It would be up there. And that's where the area of the Shinkansen is. That's where the Shinkansen train is slowing down. As you hit Nagoya, which is in the bay on the top there, and then Kyoto and Osaka are outside of the megaquake zone. But mark my words, it doesn't really matter that much.

00:08:28 John Daub: So if you look at this map, everywhere in the entire country of Japan is going to be impacted by the megaquake, except maybe the north of Tohoku. The areas that are in red, that is catastrophic. The areas in orange, that is catastrophic. That's very close to catastrophic. It's very, very bad. And the yellow, we're going to get a really bad shake. That includes Tokyo, going at like Shindo 6 and 5. And you can't predict what it's going to be, so people in Tokyo are preparing for this as well. Despite the warning only being in a certain area, Tokyo is preparing as well.

00:09:05 John Daub: Now, if you've ever been to Tokyo Station, you can see they've been really renovating the front of the station. You can see the old station. The old show windows buildings out on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station have been knocked down. And over the last 10 years, they've been redoing Tokyo in preparation for this—one of the reasons—knocking down the earthquake-prone buildings and building up new ones. And also the new real estate and demand for it. There's more construction on the other side of this new building here. So Tokyo is a very safe place to be if you're coming here for a vacation. Even the Shinkansen, everybody is minimizing risk right now. The reason why, because of what happened 13 years ago.

00:10:03 John Daub: The last time a 9-point-something quake happened on this planet that we know of. A lot of people in this country in particular lost their lives and we don't want that to happen again. So whether you think Japan is overdoing this, I guarantee you we're not forgetting what happened up in Tohoku. And I'm going to keep you up to date on this information. If you have any questions, or you're out there traveling, we have a Discord server. Please do go check it out. We have people in Japan right now and I'm monitoring as well to hear from you guys how this is impacting your travel. And I want to hear from you guys. Let me know what you guys are thinking here.

00:10:32 John Daub: Also watch out for the fake information or just false information on the internet. There's something going around on Twitter that on August 14th something's going to happen. It's completely false. We don't know what's going to happen. Take everything you see on Twitter with a grain of salt. Make sure it's linked to a government site or some sort of official information. I'm getting my information from the United States Embassy, from the Japan Meteorological Agency, and from Japanese TV which is vetting the information. We don't have that same kind of problem of massively fake news as maybe the United States has.

00:11:12 John Daub: The U.S. got it wrong. They marked the Nankai Trough going up to Tokyo. And they actually don't know where the Nankai Trough is. And I'm picking on this NBC channel but that's not the Nankai Trough. And they should know better, but this is here. And you can see the Philippine Plate and the Nankai Trough stops around where that V is. That's where Mount Fuji is. John Wright? That's the wrong information. So just be wary of that. There's a lot of people that are going to be putting donation sites and whatnot, taking advantage of tourists and good-hearted people who want to help.

00:11:56 John Daub: I'll do my best to point you in the right direction based on the United States Embassy and the Japanese government. I'm going right from the authoritative sources here. And if you want to, vet your charities and vet your donation centers with the embassy, with the Japanese government. The Prime Minister of Japan has an English Twitter site. He also has an English Facebook page. And they dub or they translate all of the speeches. So you're able to get the information that's happening in Japan from the source, from the government, from those pages.

00:12:37 John Daub: So that's also a place, if you're coming to Japan, you might want to bookmark JNTO, the disaster page they have set up there on Twitter. You can do it on Facebook. Follow the Japanese Prime Minister's office. It changes with the Prime Minister, but the information's in English. And I thought that that was really good. Kono Taro, who is the digital minister for Japan, he's a graduate of Georgetown University. He speaks English, and he has an English Twitter as well, which is humorous. He's making fun of sometimes the very old procedures in Japan. You might want to follow Kono Taro. Sometimes he goes by Taro Kono.

00:13:23 John Daub: Japan is ready for it. They've taken precautions. The Nozomi ones are the only ones that are slightly delayed right now. We're seeing that with the message board downstairs. You can see all of them with a warning sign. Five minutes away. And the other ones look like they're okay, but they're not going all the way to Osaka, I believe. That's why. Five minutes is nothing. So yeah, there's a lot of extra trains right now.

00:13:52 John Daub: There's one note I think I do have to say, because we're keeping a watch on a typhoon that's going to be hitting north Japan. Japan's always got all these storms. It's got earthquakes. It's got landslides. It's got tsunamis. It's got volcanoes. There's a typhoon that's going to be rocking northern Japan. So if you're going to Aomori, Iwate, Akita, even Fukushima, Miyagi, maybe even Yamagata, be wary and keep attention on the weather and just see how that typhoon is going to be swinging. We're not sure which direction it's going, I believe, but it should be hitting. And JR's preparing for that. I see signs already in the station warning people that there might be some delays or cancellations based on where the Shinkansen is going and how this typhoon progresses.

00:14:45 John Daub: So, not typhoon strength, though. All right, well, that's good to know, but it's got enough wind to delay or slow down the trains. And the Tohoku Shinkansen up in the north, that's the one that exceeds 300 kilometers per hour. It's very fast. They're definitely going to be reducing the speed in any kind of a storm. So just keep that in mind if you've got a trip up there. Here goes another Shinkansen on its way out.

00:15:14 John Daub: So Japan is ready for these kinds of events. And I hope this sets your mind at ease. Don't cancel your trip to Japan because of this. Get travel insurance. You just don't know. If no megaquake happens in the next week and I said don't come to Japan, you ruined your trip. I'm not going to say don't come to Japan. There's a risk of an earthquake any time, any place in this country. But if there's any place that can handle it, it's going to be Japan. And we're really ready for it. And yeah, that heightened sense of emergency because of what happened 13 years ago is a very good thing.

00:15:51 John Daub: And it should be, especially if you're traveling here in Japan because people are more alert and they're ready and they're here to keep you safe. I'm talking about this megaquake because I cannot stress how important it is for you to be prepared and to kind of assume that this could happen. Because it could. And if it does, it's massive.

00:16:18 John Daub: Boy, these poor people got to go up the steps. The escalator's on the other side. Obon holiday is crazy right now. There's so many people. So with that, I just wanted to say goodbye. Japan just can't get a break from all these natural disasters. No, they cannot. My thoughts and prayers out to all of Japan.

00:16:48 John Daub: Thank you guys. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and keep in touch. I'm going to bring you some updates here. And if something happens, I'll make sure my family's safe and I'll go live and bring you news about this because you can tell that the country is a little bit tense but at the same time, it's like everybody's prepared. People have gone to the supermarkets. The supermarkets are resupplying. If a megaquake does occur, there's going to be supply chain problems. I ordered something from Amazon and it's taking two days longer than normal because there's just so many requests to get goods from one place to another. So every day that we have, if this were to happen, is a really good thing because people really are preparing for this. All good stuff. I'll keep you up to date. Have a good weekend.

00:17:34 John Daub: It's sunny. It's Sunday. It's super hot. I'm drenched. Going to get a water. Thank you for the super chat. Going to get an iced coffee. Kind of chilling and go back home. Get back to work. See everybody. Take care.

00:17:48 John Daub: The escalator is on the other side. So you don't have to carry your bag up. Just go to that side for the escalator, okay? I want to help the tourists. It's not that easy. Sometimes you don't want to get involved. But she's fine. She got her suitcase up there. I just feel bad. Just go to the other side. All right. See you. Bye.