00:00:01 John Daub: This is a live view of Tokyo right now. You can see in the distance the Tokyo Skytree. The top part of it is covered in the clouds and I guess in some respect there's some sort of impact with Typhoon Shanshan here in Tokyo. Thank you all, but how you doing? It's a whole lot of nothing so far and a lot of people in Osaka have been writing me. I've gotten hundreds of messages. I'm going to show you some of them. I know a lot of you are worried about your trip. I feel for you all. It's a tough situation because a lot of you haven't lived through the typhoon season like I have and this is a perfect example of what to do and what not to do in this kind of situation.

00:00:43 John Daub: As you can see the sky, if you look up, there's blue sky over there. It's bizarre. We've got wind. It's actually raining a little bit right above me. You can see the sunshine coming out. It feels warm. That sun up there is starting to come down, break through the clouds. This is certainly not the kind of day that I thought we would get on the 31st of August. We've been talking about this for quite a long time. The point is that you can't, as I said a few days ago, typhoons are living. They're alive. In the sense that they're going left and right, up and down. It's like a running back on an American football field. You don't know which direction they're going to go. They're getting blocked. There's a front on the east, there's a front on the west and it's kind of pushing the typhoon all over the place.

00:01:40 John Daub: Right now, the Shinkansen is delayed. Yesterday, I did a live stream there. You can see Tokyo and Nagoya. This was yesterday. Apparently, it's still suspended because the area between Mishima and Tokyo is still closed. Nagoya is really getting a lot of rain. I'm going to show you that in a second. Yesterday, they closed the gate around the Tokaido Shinkansen. You can see that live stream from yesterday. This has disturbed a lot of travel plans. Right here, I'm going to bring this up kind of big here in the center. You can see, this is the current situation, the rain here in Japan. A lot of it is centered around just east of Osaka. You can see it's starting to move over towards Nagoya.

00:02:27 John Daub: Nagoya is getting slammed right now. I'll bring it down here. You can see the Gifu, the Nagoya, Mie-ken (Mie Prefecture), Aichi-ken (Aichi Prefecture), Toyohashi and even Hamamatsu in a way along the Pacific coast getting slammed. Now, it's moving over towards Gifu and Kanazawa right now, Ishikawa Prefecture. It's just like a mess right now. That front is not doing much of anything. It's not coming towards Tokyo. It's sort of like spiraled around. It's hanging around the Tokai region. That's what's causing the delays with the Shinkansen. That's what's causing some flights being canceled. For the most part, the flights are going from Haneda.

00:03:09 John Daub: Here's Tokyo right there in the center of your screen, that circle right in the smack dab in the center. That's Tokyo. A whole lot of nothing. No rain. There's a little bit of sprinkles right now, but stuff going on around here. This is the situation that we're in right now. So, like we expected, if you look back at it like a couple of days ago, this is from yesterday. This is going to be making its way along the coast and coming up towards Tokyo on the first and blah, blah, blah. Who knows what's happening now? What I see from the news right here, this is Yahoo News, which is still a thing. Yahoo Japan is a pretty strong brand here, to the surprise of a lot of people in the United States. But you can see the meteorologist who, instead of a green screen or a blue screen, holds a stick. I kind of like that. Pointing out that the front, it's sort of like squiggling, and it seems to be going up towards the Sea of Japan now.

00:04:24 John Daub: I don't know what's going on. I think it might go up and then push over here. It's very hard to predict. So, Brun Downey is in the house. Dutchman goes to Japan. 50 months as a traveler. Thank you very much. Ramsay's silent. I think it's time for that emergency coffee. You can see I'm getting some sunshine. Good for the vitamin D. I didn't expect that today. And I think a lot of you didn't either. Here's some questions that I got here, and I think this is really important. This comes from a viewer from yesterday's livestream. Let me turn it off here. You don't need to see my head. I have a trip plan for Tokyo for September 3rd to 8th. Should I plan on canceling this trip? Does anyone know if it's the islands only or if it's all the way to Tokyo?

00:05:06 John Daub: Answer: Don't ask this on YouTube. Nobody's really going to know in the comments section because nobody is a storm whisperer. We don't know how the storm is going to go. You got to talk with your airline. They're the definitive source here. And apparently this typhoon is going to be, it's just going to be rain right now. Not a lot of wind going on. Just very heavy rain. I say you're fine. But again, the ultimate source, if you're asking me, and I got hundreds on Instagram, on Patreon, on Facebook, which I don't answer. Don't write me on Facebook. Even on email. I got so, I can't answer them all, which is why I'm doing these livestreams. And this is the way to answer you the best way. Call your airline. That's the only way to know. And you'll be fine here.

00:05:55 John Daub: Here is somebody's experience here. They shared this email to me. I guess this is with Konnichiwa [?]. We came to visit Japan from August 21st to September 1st. We visited Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka. This morning, our Shinkansen to Tokyo got canceled. I'm so sorry about that. We got lucky because we left early. So we took the Hokuriku Shinkansen and many others were in our situation. So a lot of people out there. They're sharing the same situation. Because of the situation, many tourists, people behave very rude towards the staff and neighbors. I feel very ashamed that these kinds of behaviors from Westerners. Just a reminder, if you come to visit a place like Japan, please be courteous and consider others. The people at the station are very helpful and happy to help. If you ask and follow the rules, finally we got there and are in Tokyo. Thank goodness. Hopefully, we and everyone are safe and hope to remember this as a beautiful experience in Japan.

00:06:55 John Daub: Typhoons always are going to happen. First of all, there's this thing in the West. It's not a thing here. If you get angry and complain, you're going to get something for free. Or something's going to benefit you. That doesn't happen in Japan. This is Western culture. I don't know what this victimology type. Everybody's a victim. If you have that kind of a thinking, you're a victim of what? The typhoon? There's no reason whatsoever to treat the JR staff, who don't even make these decisions, rudely. They're trying their very best to help you reschedule to extend possibly your JR rail pass.

00:07:38 John Daub: That was another good question. If you have a JR rail pass that's going to be terminating today, do they extend it? I'm not really sure if you know the answer to that. Again, this is a social media and a live stream. Leave me in the live chat or in the comments below. I'd love to hear your experience with this. But there's no reason to treat the JR staff rudely. They're some of the best in the business. I've worked with JR East, JR Central. JR Central's a little bit tougher. JR Hokkaido, JR Kyushu. Love them all. JR Central, JR Tokai. Maybe if I had to do a ranking, maybe at the bottom. But they're still very good. Never mind that. Let's leave it there. But there's no reason for you to be rude to the staff here. Again, this is out of their hands. All they're going to try to do with the window is try to help you with your ticket and give you options.

00:08:35 John Daub: And look, if you've watched this channel for years, typhoon season, you know it's now. You know summer's typhoon season. You know you're going to have a situation like this. The longer you stay in Japan, you know it's going to be possible that you're going to be canceled. Your flight's going to be canceled. Your train's going to be canceled. And you're going to be stuck somewhere. We just roll with it here because we're used to this. You're not. So again, I was disappointed to hear this kind of stuff happening, but not surprised. In Japan, we don't complain about this because we're intelligent enough. We know that there's nothing they can do. And I think 99% of Westerners know this. There's always one out of 100, right? So keep it positive out there.

00:09:34 John Daub: JR published this. Again, I told you if you check at 5 in the morning, you'll see an update. They had one last night at 6:30, which they haven't updated. But right now, apparently the Shinkansen are still offline. I haven't been to Tokyo Station this morning, but because of Typhoon 10. It's more about the heavy rains. And there was a great amount of rain this morning. It hit in the Gifu Hashima [?]. Again, like I showed you what the rain situation looks like right now. You can see this right here on the right side. It's hitting pretty hard in the Tokai region. It's hitting pretty hard in the Hokuriku region right now. It's hitting pretty hard in Gifu. And that's where the Shinkansen goes through. It goes through Gifu. And the amount of rain is just too much to safely run that Shinkansen through there.

00:10:20 John Daub: It has nothing to do with the wind or the typhoon. The weather conditions, despite the sun burning my back right now in Tokyo, which is crazy. It's not that great in Nagoya. It's not that great in Gifu. And that's what's causing the Shinkansen line to be suspended. And that's what's ruining your travel plans here. If you can, you can take local trains to get as close as you can. Eventually, they will open up the Shinkansen. But according to JR here, it looks like tomorrow. Tomorrow, they're going to be starting up operations around noon. But they'll have another update pretty soon. But they're going to start operations around noon on the 1st.

00:11:11 John Daub: Actually, it was another news agency that released this information. For those that are wondering about the flights, you should be just fine. This is Haneda Airport's departures. And you can see, like, one flight was canceled here to Fukuoka. But all the other ones, this was just about 30 minutes ago, departed for Kagoshima. That's in Kyushu. It's fine. Osaka departed from Tokyo, going to Osaka. That's fine. This one going to Osaka to Kanku, which may be Kansai. That's fine. So it looks like domestic flights and international flights coming into Tokyo are fine right now. We don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow. But just keep your eyes and ears on your airline. And keep in touch so you can plan accordingly. If you're leaving the U.S. tomorrow, probably it's going to be fine. Again, by the time you arrive into Tokyo, I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to land. So there's, again, your airline's going to be the decisive source of information with this.

00:12:20 John Daub: This is what the sky looked like about an hour ago on the bridge towards Monzen-Nakacho. I was going to go to the Mister Donut there because they have some pretty awesome donuts. But that Mister Donut is under renovation, which is quite a disappointment. I usually use the Skytree as a way to guesstimate, estimate how bad the weather is. Usually if it's hidden behind the clouds, you know it's a low-hanging storm or something. But it looks like it's just fine here in Tokyo. Nothing to really be worried about. Same as in Osaka and other places here. But, again, according to the Yahoo Japan News, which had a journalist had called JR Tokai, JR Central, and gotten the information that Shinkansen are canceled. This was information from an hour ago. So it's pretty recent. Shinosaka to Nagoya was running. But right now, because of the rain, it's not running right now. But they're assessing it. Apparently, the amount of rainfall that had happened was beyond the safe limits.

00:13:29 John Daub: So they had to suspend the Shinkansen. They were doing like two Kodama an hour. But there was limited Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka going towards Nagoya. Now, apparently, because of that rain that I showed you, it's suspended and the Shinkansens will be coming back. After they assess that the rain is enough where they can do that. Again, Japan's always going to err on the side of safety. It's just a risk-averse country. You might not like it. Yelling at the staff is not going to help you. And, again, like I'm heartbroken to hear that there are people that are doing that. How bad is the rainfall? In those areas, again, it was like a foot and a half of rain. 400 millimeters or more right now is being reported in the Gifu region. It's just kind of getting stuck in the mountains there. So you got, I can't even imagine what the river that cuts through Gifu is flowing like right now. It must be just craziness.

00:14:15 John Daub: I don't know if there's any live cameras in Gifu. But it's a beautiful little city with a castle on the top of a mountain. But all that rain has got to be running into the river. And I would not be surprised if there's some sort of flooding or landslides or something. Because when you get that much rainfall and then a little earthquake happens or something, I don't know. The landslides are pretty common here in Japan. And we've seen a couple of them already during this typhoon. So, look, a lot of people come to me and asking advice. How should I handle this? The international media and the domestic media is all telling me that this typhoon is coming in. The projections look bad. It's going to hit Tokyo. It's going to cancel my trip. Stop and relax, first of all. Nothing you can do about it, okay?

00:15:02 John Daub: Second thing, keep in touch with your airline. Third thing, they're not going to make a call until about 24 hours before. Because we just do not know the trajectory of the typhoon. How strong is it going to be when it hits? Is it going to weaken? Usually when it comes to Japan, it does not pick up strength because the waters are a little bit cooler here. When it hits land, it sort of messes up and dies. The way the fronts are right now, one out in the Pacific. And then one coming in from China. And the direction in which the typhoon has to go. It just kind of got messed up, tangled up. And now it's just a mess. There's not a lot of wind. So my estimate is that everything is going to be fine here in Tokyo. We don't even know if this rainstorm is going to come to Tokyo probably over time. It looks like it's going to go to Kanazawa and then go up, hit north of Tokyo. I don't know. I can't even predict it because the model that I'm seeing this morning was totally different than the model that I'm seeing now. The model that we saw like 36 hours before. So your guess is as good as mine when it comes to this.

00:16:04 John Daub: Typhoons, we just live with it and we try to adapt to them. Same with all the other natural disasters here. Floods, landslides, tsunamis, earthquakes. Japan is not as safe as you guys think. You know that. It's baked into your trip. And everybody who romanticizes about Japan, they forget about the natural disasters here. We get a lot more. But it's the same as Florida. You know, you got hurricanes that roll through there. That's not any more dangerous than Japan. They don't have volcanoes. But hey, you know, they haven't erupted. Mount Fuji hasn't erupted in hundreds of years. So not a lot to complain about there.

00:16:42 John Daub: I can, if I walk a little bit further, I can see Tokyo Tower right there. You can see Tokyo Tower on the other side. It looks like a sunny day. I got to be honest with you. I thought I'd be inside. I have to do a podcast in front of my green screen. But it looks like it's going to be just fine. I got blue skies here. So there you go. There's your report. Again, this could change. I'm happy to answer your questions here. But the reality is, I can't tell you to cancel. I can't tell you if you can come to Japan or not. You're going to have to find, contact your airline and work it out with them. It depends on when and where. My gut says that Narita is going to be fine unless there's a massive amount of rain that's over the airport. Then they cancel the flights and it would only be for a couple of hours. I can't imagine that they're going to cancel flights right now. It just doesn't look like that. Haneda looks like it's going to be fine unless, you know. And there could be another typhoon brewing in the Philippines or near there. Again, this is the season. There's always one right behind it.

00:17:58 John Daub: If there is something that looks like it's going to hurt your travel plans, I'll be back here. It's been a few years because during that era, those three, four years where you couldn't come to Japan, we forgot about typhoons, didn't we? We kind of forgot about them. Andres writes in here, it's already a tropical depression and isn't getting worse. That's not how storms work. Yeah, so, well, that's not exactly true, Andres. I've seen storms that have come and hit land. Then they go back to the sea. They strengthen. And then they come back and hit land, just depending on where the low pressure systems are and how they can maneuver. I've seen storms weaken, go over land, come back over to the Pacific, and then come back and hit Osaka and Tokyo at a stronger rate. Like, it's so unpredictable. But we have pretty good models. But I think in this time, the models weren't very accurate. So it's just very hard. We didn't see the typhoon coming and moving at the speed of a bicycle. Apparently, it's definitely not true. A tropical depression is not going to go back and form another typhoon, if that's what you mean. All right? That's not going to happen. But I've seen typhoons come in, weaken over land, go back out to the sea, come back stronger. I've seen that so many times before. I've seen typhoons that went over Okinawa. They weakened a little bit, and then they strengthened before they hit Kagoshima. So it just depends.

00:19:25 John Daub: Everyone is a meteorologist in typhoon season. That's sort of true, because we're all trying to figure out whether or not we can plan our... if we can get here or not. You know? There's a lot of people that are stranded in Osaka that got to make their flights here in Tokyo, and they're wondering what to do. Your best bet? Probably get a flight if you can. There's a bunch of flights. Try to get a flight from Itami to Haneda, and then you can make your flight tonight. I don't know. But... Yes, that's what I meant. Andres writes in here, I'm a Floridian that lived through Hurricane Andrew. Yes. Hurricane Andrew was a devastating one. There might be people who are watching that weren't even around when that one hit. I remember when that one went through, where it hit like Miami and go straight across Florida. It was a massive category five, and a lot of people lost their lives in that, lost their livelihoods in that one.

00:20:21 John Daub: We don't get... I don't remember a typhoon that was as strong as that, because in the Pacific, we usually don't get such warm water that the typhoons are the same size as the hurricanes that hit Florida. Not when they get to Japan. It probably could be... It's probably different when it gets to the Philippines or other areas. Then they can be quite strong. But by the time it gets up to Japan, the seas are a little bit cooler down. Not recently, but in the past. And the storms were never as dangerous as something like an Andrew, which is just... It was massive, that amount of power from that Earth... And that ruined the name Andrew for a generation, I think. Not many parents... That was like Dennis the Menace, you know, Andrew. You wouldn't name your kids Andrew. That's why I'm kind of against this naming of the typhoons. In Japan, nobody's calling it Shanshan. All the news calls it number 10. I love that. It's the Reiwa 6, which is the year right now we're in. Reiwa 6, number 10. Keep it simple. Give it a number. Forget about the storm. No reason to remember it, okay? Let it go. No one named their kid Andrew in Florida after that hurricane, I'll tell you that. Well, maybe somebody did, but they probably had issues.

00:21:41 John Daub: Anyways, I think that these kinds of updates are important to you. It wasn't what I wanted to do today. Mister Donut is closed. Tomorrow, I'm not going to be talking about the typhoon unless something completely changes. But this typhoon has changed from what I thought it would be yesterday to what I thought it would be two days ago. And what we thought, we just don't know. And it was a learning experience. What did we learn? You don't know until it gets close. So you can't make a prediction on your travel plans. All you can do is to give your best and to go ahead as planned. And if it does impact your travel plans, you're going to have to roll with it because this is typhoon season. As I said, book your departure to go home a day in advance of when you have to be there because there's a possibility that your flight will be canceled and you'll have to leave two days sometime to catch another flight. At least if you have an extra day when you get home, you have a day to get over that jet lag before you get back to work. That's my advice. It could be wrong. I don't know. I'm wrong sometimes. I admit it. I'm not always right. But I have a little bit of experience and if I have to read the leaves, I probably can read them a little bit better than somebody who just arrived here because I've lived through a lot of it.

00:22:56 John Daub: Just like Andres, who's a Floridian, can understand her own life. He knows hurricanes going through Florida a lot better than I can. I probably know typhoons a lot better than someone in another area except for my college buddy, Mike Bettis, who is an actual meteorologist. I should get in touch with him. It's been ages. Mike Bettis, I believe, is on the Weather Channel and sometimes on the Today Show. Sometimes he's one of the guest meteorologists on the Today Show. We both took science classes together. We just had one science class together. I still remember it. That doesn't make me a meteorologist. It makes me able to tell the story. That's all. And being able to follow his career has been a lot of fun too. I wonder if he watches Only in Japan. I'm sure he does not.

00:23:55 John Daub: All right, everybody. Have a good day. I'll be back. If there's any updates, probably not. I'll do them on Discord and on community updates. But tomorrow we'll be talking about autumn coming here. It's already started. I already see Halloween stuff. It's bizarre. All right? It's still summer, but it's not. And we're going to talk about that tomorrow because, again, once September 1st hits, summer's over. That's just the way it is in Japan. It doesn't matter how hot it is. Summer's over. I can make the argument that summer is over right now. All right, everybody. See you. Stay safe.