00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo Station. Typhoon number 10, Shanshan, is on the way. It's causing a lot of problems in Kyushu. I don't know if you've seen in the news, torrential downpours. We're talking like a foot and a half of rain hitting some of these areas. It's really bad. The wind is really starting to pick up here in Tokyo and as a result the Shinkansen have been cancelled. I wanted to bring you inside of the station because this impacts a lot of people. You can see the sign over there. We'll go over there in a second to get a closer look.

00:34 John Daub: But they're saying the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Nagoya has been shut down for the day. There's a lot of people who are trying to find hotels, trying to manage their trip as a result of these changes. Again, it's weather and it's unavoidable, but you can see the Shinkansen platform has been closed down. They've actually put the plastic wall there that they usually do after the Shinkansen closes at 1am. So they keep the station open. The station has really settled down since they made the announcements. A lot of people were kind of panicking. There were long lines in front of the JR Shinkansen ticket window for reimbursements, for rescheduling.

01:03 John Daub: JR has put out a... I'll show you right now. The typhoon is right here. You can see this was taken... let me see what time it was taken. They're saying about 30 minutes ago. So it's just passing what looks like over Ehime. Just going through Oita Prefecture. So it's moving quite slowly. So we're expecting this to hit Osaka sometime in the evening or the middle of the night. But it's already impacting. And you can see Osaka on the right side of that yellow circle is now in the influence zone of the typhoon. It's only going to get stronger. The eye, again, is going to go through here in the evening time, I guess, at the speed in which this is moving. And again, Kyushu is not out of the woods either. You see on the back end of it, they're getting hit with the typhoon. Some of the winds. It's mostly rain. I think it's been downgraded to tropical storm. But because of the slow moving of it, it's causing a ton of issues here.

02:14 John Daub: Yeah, let me show you the information from the Tokaido, from JR Central here on August 30th. Hey, Sachiya, nice to see you here on August 30th. Based on the forecast of heavy rains and strong winds, we will stop operation between Mishima Station and Nagoya all day after the start of the operation, which is this morning. We were informed that a number of operating units was significantly reduced between Tokyo Station and Mishima Station, but the operation will be discontinued all day.

02:43 John Daub: So all Shinkansen are down, going towards Osaka. Between Nagoya Station and Shin-Osaka Station, the trains will stop scheduled operation. The train will be operated with Kodama for only about two lines up and down per hour. This came out 9:45 this morning, so it's about three hours old due to the heavy rainfall in the Shizuoka area and the other areas. The same section will start operation on both upper and lower lines from 10 o'clock. The heavy rainfall and strong winds are forecasting continuously the long-term operation. Please refrain from traveling between Tokyo Station and Shin-Osaka Station.

03:23 John Daub: This is today. Direct operation on the Tokaido Shinkansen and the Sanyo Shinkansen will be discontinued. I believe the Shinkansens are running north to Tohoku. Some conventional lines connected from each station of the Tokaido Shinkansen. The other Shinkansen also have operation deadlines. So we might be seeing operations suspended on the other Shinkansen lines, but right now the Tokaido one is the one in the middle of all of this. Tokaido Shinkansen, they made a graph here. There's no service.

04:00 John Daub: So if you're between Hiroshima and Nagoya, there were two extra trains per hour to try to get people out of there. But between Nagoya and Tokyo right now, there's just no service because of the winds in the Shizuoka area. So there's limited Shinkansen if you need to get from Shin-Osaka to Nagoya. So yeah, apparently there are some right now, but this might change quite quickly as the day moves on. Please check with JR Tokai's website for more information.

04:15 John Daub: Now this is about tomorrow. Based on the forecast of heavy rain and strong winds, we will stop operations from Mishima Station and Nagoya Station all day after the start of operations. So tomorrow it looks like the Shinkansen are going to be delayed as well, or if not canceled the entire day. So please make plans accordingly. Now according to this, they said they're going to add at 5 a.m. They're going to make the exact announcement. Sudden changes in weather in the future may cause long-term operation misalignment. So they're just not sure yet, but check back 5 a.m. But this information doesn't seem like it's going to change today. But again, you might want to check in to make sure.

04:51 John Daub: Fixed period from September 1st to 2nd, there are possibilities of planned shutdown. So it just depends. They really don't know and according, they're gonna have to check the tracks and then also see if there's been any damage or anything that might cause delays. So after a typhoon, removing debris from the tracks, for example, some of these are elevated platforms. So they're gonna need to do a very thorough job. After scheduled shutdowns are not planned. So it looks like operational return on September 3rd, 1st and 2nd, not quite sure. Tomorrow looks a high percentage chance of being canceled. And there's the refund for those of you that have Shinkansen tickets. Many of you just have passes here.

05:31 John Daub: Let me see if I can take you over to the sign here. It's always kind of historical in a way. When you see the Shinkansen canceled like this, look at this. So here's the sign here. Tokyo Nagoya closed. It looks very official. They have QR codes here if you guys want to scan it. The typhoon looks like it's gonna be passing in you know, a few days.

06:02 John Daub: So the typical procedure for getting food and supplies is make sure you have three days worth of supplies. You don't need to buy big bags of rice for this. Although we don't know what the impact is going to be of the rice industry. The rice harvest in the long term. But it's not a good idea to hoard food. So if you are living or resident in Japan, you're not sure what to do. Follow the local guidelines and your local leaders. Each area, if the typhoon does hit and winds are devastatingly strong, you can ask neighbors. This is the time where having good relationships with your neighbors really pays off. You can ask them for some help and they'll guide you to evacuation. You guys can look around the evacuation centers if you can't speak any English. I think you can figure it out even if you don't speak the language like Get Out of Here right. You can see the station is really empty for the middle of the day.

06:53 John Daub: I'm going to go over here in this direction and see if the Joetsu in the Hokuriku Shinkansen have any planned delays. The windows to get tickets reimbursed has really died down. It was quite long a few hours ago. Robert is here. Thank you, Robert. Hello, John. Please stay safe. You got it. We're okay right now, but it looks like Saturday is going to be the day that's going to be really hard for Tokyo. But we just don't know what the winds are going to be. Again, typhoons can change. As I said, they're living, meaning they're trying to survive. And we'll see how over the next 24 hours this shapes up. But it looks like Osaka is under the influence of the typhoon and very shortly Tokyo as well. Looks like Saturday is going to be a wet one here. It's already a wet one today.

07:49 John Daub: All right, the Tohoku Shinkansen is running right now. You can see there's trains from 1. There's six trains at 1 o'clock running north and northwest to Karuizawa and that side of Japan. So looks like those are okay. Let me pan over. You can see there are some delays of the local train lines. Yokohama line. These might not be caused from the typhoon. And then the local trains seem like they're running okay. There's a Tokaido line and some limited express. So that's all really good news here.

08:42 John Daub: I'm going to take you outside and take a look at the weather right now to give you an idea. Here's that chart on the suspensions for today. I like how JR makes these. It's really clear. So you can get an idea of how to plan for your trip to Japan. When these kinds of natural disasters occur, whether it's an earthquake or a typhoon or a volcanic eruption, they're going to make some kind of graph that explains to you in detail what you should and shouldn't be doing or what's running and what's not running. So it's easy for you visually to figure this out. There's some news media here taking pictures. Interesting. So there's more signage here. Tokaido Shinkansen August 30th operation plan. You can see they have suspended it. They'll have new notices and I like it. They're both in English and in Japanese so you can be sure that you're going to be able to understand it. And there's a QR code with other languages which is really smart to do. That's not the Japan I know from 26 years ago when I first came here. They did nothing in English.

09:59 John Daub: Alright, let's go outside and take you. Alright, already you can kind of hear or maybe even feel the wind. It's not that bad, really. We're just in the early part of Japan. Parts of the typhoon here in Tokyo. You can see the movement on the trees. It's not too bad right now. There's gusts of wind but nothing really strong. There's a lot of construction here. You see there's some cranes. So I wonder how they're going to fare. I don't know if the wind is going to be so strong hitting Tokyo. It looks like if it's going over land usually it starts to subside a little bit, especially at this speed. It's just going to be the amount of rainfall. Again, some of the areas are reported to be... It's reporting 400 millimeters of rain. Let me see here. I think I have a chart that I took a screenshot of here.

10:55 John Daub: Yeah, right here. You can see there's expected to be 400 millimeters of rain. That's 1 foot 4 inches about of rain is going to fall in Shikoku. 1 foot 4 inches is going to fall in Kyushu in the north part. Just a little bit under a foot in the southern part of Kyushu. A little under a foot in the Tokyo area. That's a lot of rain, folks. And this is going to be coming really quickly. So I expect issues. I expect the Sumida River to be quite high as well as other places, localities. It's going to be something.

11:35 John Daub: Here's the trajectory from 12:45, which was 15 minutes ago. You can see the typhoon has just passed the eye of it past Oita Prefecture. It looks like it's going, it's heading now to the east towards Ehime, which is Matsuyama City. And where I was just about 4 days ago, you can see on the Instagram, Zentsuji City in Kagawa Prefecture, the north part of Shikoku Island right there. It's going to be making its path all the way. Usually it comes from the Pacific to Kochi, but it's coming from Ehime to Kochi. That's a little bit odd. We haven't seen that kind of movement in a while. And then over the course of the day, it's going to hit Wakayama. The eye. And then start to go up. So the eye will be going over Nara and Nara Prefecture and Mie Prefecture and Nagoya City. So Nagoya is going to have the eye go over it if you look at the bay there. It's at Ise Bay. If I remember correctly, you have a living there. And then I don't know if it's going to go over towards Niigata or if it's going to come to the east towards Tokyo. Either way, Tokyo is going to get hit. Unless it makes a really sharp turn towards the Pacific.

12:47 John Daub: Robert writes in here, I'm a devil looking forward to my first trip to Japan in 2026. Look, I think this is really good. And one of the reasons why you can tell an urgency in my voice because I'm not sure how this typhoon is going to shape up either. We've cleared off the veranda, the balcony on our apartment. I've seen my neighbors doing the same kind of stuff, so we're preparing for it. You kind of, I don't think we need to bolt the windows, but usually I've seen people will be taping the windows, just making sure staying away from them because the high winds are rattling everything. Right now it's not raining. It was raining really hard this morning. We had thunder. We could hear it in the distance. So there's some weird weather here right now in Japan.

13:29 John Daub: But if you're coming in September or October or August or even July, July, August, September, October, this is the typhoon season. So you get days like this. And usually the day it's over in 16 to 20 hours, I would say. Just overnight. And then the next day after the typhoon, you have beautiful blue skies. It's often the best time to go up to the Tokyo Skytree because you can see all the way to Mount Fuji. And when I was riding the bus here, maybe I have a video of that. I took some video of what the Tokyo Skytree looked like. Right now it's not under a lot of clouds. So you can see the situation really not being impacted too much other than a little bit of wind. Usually you can't even see the Skytree from June. So you can see the sky. But you can see the sky from the Chuo Bridge along the Sumida River there.

14:21 John Daub: But you have to plan accordingly. And that means during a typhoon season, as I tell everybody, make sure you leave a day early. So I mean it works out okay. You get a day to recover from the jet lag if you're going to the U.S. But if your flight is canceled, you can make it to work without having to call. Now if your boss is okay with that, then hey, you might get an extra day in Japan. The flights get canceled. So you plan accordingly. But just keep in mind, if it's important that you've got to get back the next day, plan. It's going to be July, August, September, October that there could be a cancellation for your flight for like 16 to 24 hours based on the typhoon. The bigger it is, the worse it is. But again, Japan also leans on the side of safety, which everybody should, on risk aversion. And that's just the way it is. Even if it doesn't look too bad, you're like, oh, they can fly. They might just cancel it because it's safer because of wind shear and all this other stuff.

15:15 John Daub: They don't close Tokyo's Skytree, I don't think. It's interesting. But regardless, you should not be going outside in a typhoon. So if it's got a really bad situation, you better stay put inside your hotel room, inside of wherever you are, and brave it out at home. Don't order Domino's Pizza. It's not 30 minutes or less. They're closed. Try to get three days' worth of food. Yeah, maybe two days. Three days is like for worst-case scenario. I don't think the winds are going to be that bad that's going to impact the city, but the general guideline is three days' worth of food and water so that you'll be able to weather this okay.

15:56 John Daub: And we have an earthquake go bag with some water in there, so it's always an extra day, although I don't want to eat five-year-old biscuits unless I have to. You know, everything's going to be closed, Demi. Everything's going to be closed. Game centers will be closed. Tomorrow, I expect a lot of stuff to be closed depending on the wind and the rain. I don't expect a lot of things for people to do because they don't want you out on the streets, and nobody's going to be going out on the streets. Game centers often open up the front of the window, and they let on everything. They don't have – they either have gates to close it or they just open completely up, I believe. I don't know what's going to happen, but, you know, we can't predict the weather, so I'm not going to make a prediction that everything is going to close. Check again tomorrow at 5 a.m., but for now, the Tokaido Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka is suspended. It's canceled, so there's no trains running from here to there.

16:53 John Daub: So if you've got to go, there are some highway buses that you might be able to catch, but even then, I think they might be suspended by now. They were leaving a couple of hours ago. I don't know. That's somewhat scarier. I don't think the winds are too bad in Shizuoka just yet, but they are getting very strong where the Shinkansen, which is traveling at 300 kilometers per hour, could not manage to keep running, even at a slower pace. It just canceled them all. So this is live from Tokyo Station, and this was just, I don't know, 10 minutes ago I took this video. So in front of the Shinkansen gate. So, yeah, that's the situation right now, and hopefully this is over with soon.

17:43 John Daub: Tokyo Station itself has some issues. There's some flooding. You can see security guards. There's somebody sitting there trying to figure out what to do, where to go, because they can't make their way there. And there you go. No service. So if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. We have a Discord server with people that are in Japan right now.

18:03 John Daub: The weather looks pretty good for the rest of the week. After you get through the 31st and the 1st, I don't think there's going to be any issues with the 2nd or the 3rd. The only reason the Shinkansen might be... Nagoya is the bottom one, and Tokyo is the one above that. Second from the bottom is Tokyo's weather. Then Nagano. So if we go over to the top, Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Nagano, Tokyo, Nagoya. And you can see it looks like the typhoon is pretty much done, even for Sendai and Niigata on the 2nd. It looks like the worst days are tomorrow in this region of Japan, Tokyo. The Kanto and the Tohoku regions are the 31st and September 1st. Looks like on Sunday, maybe half the day, Shinkansen will be suspended. We're just not sure. It's best to check at 5 in the morning. You might have jet lag. It might be fine for you. And then find out what the current situation is. And if the weather looks promising, go to Tokyo Station and you can possibly wait it out. But they have to check the tracks to make sure there's no debris on there after a typhoon. So that's why, despite sunny weather, they might be doing safety checks. Because the line is quite long going up to Tohoku and the Tokaido Shinkansen.

19:19 John Daub: Live from Tokyo. It's interesting. I'm going to get my wife... Thank you always for the super chats. I'm going to get my wife a Shake Shack burger for lunch. And then I'm going to take the subway back home. And I'm staying put. Probably tomorrow I'll do a podcast thing in my house. I don't think I'm going to be able to go outside. I just dropped on Instagram a new Reels, which is really nice, about my visit to the temple stay. If you've never done a Buddhist temple stay, it's a pretty unique experience compared to a hotel. And they were doing these three-day tours, which I took advantage of. And it was pretty good. The monks are pretty creative with having meatless cuisine. And you can see this on Instagram Reels right now.

20:12 John Daub: Right here. I can show it to you. Zentsuji. And I narrate a little story Instagram style. Kind of give you an idea of what this kind of trip is like. I don't know. It was fun. It's not exciting, but... I mean, that's not the point. It's more like for meditation, relax, and history. That's kind of what I'm into. So check that out there. Leave me a comment. I always like to hear from you.

20:42 John Daub: Last day to get the Squared Watermelon postcards, by the way. If you want to guys support the channel, I appreciate it very much. Where's the Patreon here? You guys can get that right there. Last day for Squared Watermelon. Next month will be the largest fireworks in the world. I'm the only one I believe that has gotten access to film it. And everybody's been using my clips of the Yon Shakudama on Instagram and the other platforms. That's the way the Internet is. Everybody's kind of poached it. So that'll be the postcard for next month. The delivery of the largest fireworks shell that's launched annually twice in September. It's pretty cool. That's in Katakai in Niigata Prefecture.

21:24 John Daub: That's all I got for you from Tokyo. I'm not going to do any more typhoon updates unless it's from home or unless the situation is safe enough where I can go outside. I don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow. It could be just a lot of rain and not a lot of wind. And in that case, it's not as dangerous and I can go outside. But safety first. And I want you all please to remember that. Safety first. Seriously, safety first because that's the way we have to roll here. Thanks, everybody. This is a live chat and the playback. I do it a little longer because people are always coming in to say hi. I'll see you in the next live stream. Stay safe.

22:05 John Daub: Look at all the water here. Again, the Tohoku Shinkansen is running up north and the Tokaido Shinkansen is shut down. So good luck finding accommodations here.