00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings. Welcome to Tokyo Station, which is behind me, the Marunouchi side. I received a comment. Let's just get right into it. That really made me sad, disappointed. I could see some truth in what this person was saying, somebody that might be hurting. But also at the same time, I was unsure on how to approach this kind of a comment. Do you go for the fatherly comment with a pat on the back or do you go for the big brother kind of comment? Or do you go for the friend who's giving some hard truths to them?

00:00:32 John Daub: But the comment came down to somebody who's been living here in Japan for the for two years already, has been making some observations through their own experience living here in Japan, as well as observing the Japanese interacting with him and with everybody else. And I read this and I didn't know how to respond. So I thought maybe this is something to share with the community because look, Japan is what you make it. It's not some kind of paradise. You see other YouTubers and me and other. You see other the news, the movies, anime, manga.

00:01:05 John Daub: This is not reality. All right? Well, this is actually reality. But what I'm trying to say is that everybody has their own story. And the story that you have and your personality and the way you fit into this country is going to be a little bit different than the way I do it. I've been here for 25 years and by no means have I had like the perfect, flawless, this place has everything that I want type of situation. My first few years were really hard. The first six months were the hardest of them all.

00:01:35 John Daub: Everybody goes through these kinds of growing pains. But let me read you this message and I'm gonna. I had to cut it up piece by piece. I'm gonna expand it on here and kinda go through it so you could read this with me again. Everybody's different and I wanna read this with some heart here to try to understand this person better. Comes from Brownshoe72. I'm coming on my two year anniversary of living in Japan comparative to living in the U.S. what I have learned through personal experience by interacting with the Japanese and watching other Japanese interact with each other.

00:02:10 John Daub: In the USA, a person, any person, can aspire to be anyone that they would like, meaning social opportunities are abundant. People are open and genuinely are interested in getting to know the other people around them, especially foreigners. People are flexible in understanding. And when understanding someone or something isn't understood, the person of whom does not understand will put forward the effort to try to understand in order to draw a conclusion and if a clear conclusion cannot be determined or agreed, the person will simply agree to disagree.

00:02:44 John Daub: However, it will not infringe on the ability to possess a relationship with the person from whom they disagree with. Of course, this is concerning day to day decisions and social, economic, philosophical, race, religion, political. In Japan, everything is about conformity. Every single person who is born, raised or immigrates to Japan is pressured to conform to the way of life and thinking in Japan. That was only like. That was only a part of this email message. It goes on for four more pages. I'm gonna just go through this really quickly here.

00:03:17 John Daub: I could see better because I'm in the shadow of a building. Thankfully it's so bright outside. As for the other foreigner, as for the other foreigners, no matter how hard they try to fit into the Japanese society, they are shunned. The only through Japanese, only through Japanese obligations that the foreigner will find any Japanese interaction interacting with them. Japanese are not interested in learning anything new with regard to people from other nations who have experience from other countries.

00:03:47 John Daub: They have no interest in making friends outside of the friends that they already have. New friends are considered outsiders and therefore are ignored. Alright, you know what? Maybe it's better if I go this piece by piece. So there is an ounce of truth to this actually. Like there is conformity everywhere. People are born, you're raised into this culture and the culture is quite rigid. That means when people do leave Japan, Japanese and particularly younger people, they're a lot more open minded, easier to talk to, freer, they take more risks when they leave the country.

00:04:22 John Daub: There's this expression that the sun is always watching you in Japan, which is why people are quite honest. Everybody's like policing everybody. Everybody is sort of critical of everybody. If it's underneath the voice, you know, a whisper or something like this, it's just that's the way society is. It's very judgmental here. I think Asian society in general might be very much like that. I know in India it is like this. But first of all, the first page worries me because the longer you live outside of Japan, the United States, the more you start to see how great the United States is.

00:04:57 John Daub: And this is a true thing. The grass is always greener on the other side. You see all the wonderful things about the US but I just went back to the US in no way did I think that this is the way people actually interact all the time. There's a lot of people who do this, but there's a lot of right now, yeah, people don't listen to you, people don't understand. People are not as compromising as this commenter writes in here. I guess it depends on what part of the country you're in. But like I thought this was a little bit.

00:05:29 John Daub: I could relate to this because as I've lived here in Japan for many, many years, 26, 27th year coming up, I can understand because I see the rosy side of the United States and a lot of you who live there bring me back down to earth and say, it's not really like that anymore, John, and maybe you're right, but the great thing about living apart from where you grew up is that you really do take away and fall in love with the great aspects of the United States. And there are so many great things about it.

00:06:00 John Daub: Like this person writes, and I love the people of America, but there's a lot of Americans who don't. They love the people here. They prefer that. But again, the grass is always greener from the other side. After two years of living here, this person is seeing things in a different way. Now, let me bring up this second page again. Due to the tight restraints of Japanese society, a person emigrating to Japan from any Western country finds not only assimilating to be damn difficult, near impossible, but they also can't be who they were, who they are.

00:06:33 John Daub: They are forced to be someone different than themselves. However, even for those who have managed to conform, completely change themselves so that even their own family don't recognize them from outside of the face and their face and the tone of their voice still find no favor by the Japanese. Even people who have gone to the trouble of flawlessly read and write in Japanese, even these people have found no favor by the Japanese. Gone are the days when somebody gets off work, hangs out with friends to whom they have accumulated at work and other areas of their life, like the neighborhoods and so on.

00:07:10 John Daub: This is partially true. The part where it's very hard to make Japanese friends. Very true. And I'm relating to the writer through my own experience. You have to make. The thing is like in the US you'll be standing in a line, waiting in line, and quite often people will talk to me or I'll talk to them. It's very easy to make friends like this after work. It's very easy to make friends, but this isn't Japan. You are an outsider. People don't know. People see that you have not had the same kind of shared experiences.

00:07:41 John Daub: So there's some risk in being your friend. You have to make that effort to get to know the people. It's required of you to be more forthcoming and more. It just takes a lot of time. It's not something that instantly happens in Japan. It isn't having a circle. They called it a circle. It's very hard to penetrate the circle. I mean for guys to have other Japanese guy friends, it's really hard. They already have their own circle. To penetrate a circle of Japanese friends, you're an outsider. I don't think it's that different in other countries.

00:08:14 John Daub: I think the United States people are more welcoming of foreigners or anybody from outside of the circle if you're even out of staters. But you know, we're talking about the same kind of culture. America is a melting pot of different cultures. This is not Japan. Japan is not a melting pot. It will never be a melting pot. I don't want it to be a melting pot. It probably will eventually become a melting pot. Maybe they have to, but I don't. I want Japan to be Japan. I want people to be who they are.

00:08:44 John Daub: And it. And you as a visitor and somebody living in Japan it is your responsibility to conform to the Japanese way of life. Just as somebody who's coming from abroad. Japan is not a melting pot. Your culture is great and it's something actually that you can use to bond people to you, embrace your differences, invite people over to your house, do lots of things. But you cannot say that the that Japanese which is such a gross generalization are very like I don't know against you in this way. This is not the case at all.

00:09:16 John Daub: You haven't really taken. This person really hasn't taken enough time. You've observed quite a bit. But again you're admitting that you don't have a lot of Japanese friends. I think it's time that you tried to make some Japanese friends. My case in point is that I spent. I spent quite a bit of time hitchhiking the entire country. My whole story and why I'm still here. A lot of you might know this. I told it actually when I was over in the other area over there. But I was at a cross points in 2003 and I felt sort of like this person does and I can relate to it.

00:09:50 John Daub: This is a live stream and I want to say thank you for all the comments coming in here. I appreciate it. Gimpy Lee why are western is all like this. I don't go interact accommodate with foreigners in the U.S. I don't expect special treatment when in other countries. You're pretty much on point there but you know again, this person might be. Might be feeling depressed. So you have to approach this from different ways. So I'm trying to think of it as a father, a brother, a friend and a viewer and somebody else that's in the community that's been here for two years.

00:10:24 John Daub: And you have to respect their comment and writing this and leaving it for everybody to read because it's a public comment. Look, you know, when you do come to Japan, you are expected to not change who you are. But this is a society where 99.9% of the people are Japanese. This is not a melting pot. So you really do have to make an effort to make Japanese friends. The effort is on you. You're the one who has to make this happen. This means that you have to change the way you approach things, which means that we all have to evolve.

00:10:56 John Daub: My first six months here. Every foreigner who moves to Japan has something called a six month Blues. It's just something where you just get depressed. It's not that. It's just that the way things are, that they work here are not the way that you expected it to be, or they're different. Because I didn't have any expectations whatsoever when I moved here. I knew very little about Japan because there's no Internet back then, there's no YouTube. Nobody was telling me to come to Japan, except for my roommate from college who did.

00:11:28 John Daub: But, you know, I had a tough time that first year, in fact, and it wasn't until I started to make Japanese friends. In the last six months of my first contract. I was here for 14 months, was my first contract here. I really started to understand Japan. I didn't learn Japanese the first six months. I didn't have any Japanese friends. All my friends were other foreigners, English teachers that spoke. And I had my own little group, four or five of us, English teachers. And we did not make much of an effort to get to know the Japanese.

00:12:00 John Daub: And that's on you, that's on me, that's on everybody who's living here. If you can't speak Japanese and read or write it, you are not going to be able to break in or understand the society that you're living in. And that's not a good thing. The same thing with the illegal immigrants that are coming across the border who can't speak English. You can't expect them to become millionaires and rich and prosper in a country where you don't speak the language, you don't speak, you don't understand the culture.

00:12:31 John Daub: You're just given these promises of coming to the US and I feel really bad for everyone who's coming to the US right now. They're breaking the law without a passport. This is unheard of in Japan to have no border and people just coming in and having to suffer in the country trying to make their way. But you cannot expect the Japanese to give you the stuff that illegal immigrants coming to the United States are getting in the United States, which kind of shocks us here in Japan when we hear, like, credit cards in New York City.

00:13:03 John Daub: These are all situations, and this person is an American. So I'm trying to get my mind around it. You're not going to be getting those same kind of benefits that illegal immigrants coming to sanctuary cities are coming. Guaranteed housing and all this other stuff. No one's going to be giving you this kind of stuff here. You got to earn it, all right? You gotta come here with a visa and a passport. You have to be documented, and you have to be, you know, paying taxes and all this kind of stuff. Japan is super strict on this kind of thing, and they deport refugees, for crying out loud.

00:13:39 John Daub: You are detained in horrible situations. You don't want to be in prison here. You don't want to be overstaying your visa in Japan. There's reasons why. It's a country of rules and laws, and you don't have to agree with it. Everybody and every country's values are different, but the values here in Japan are going to stay Japanese. And you cannot change the people here. This is just a fact. Look, I had a friend, a good friend of mine, we worked together at NHK. Whenever we talked and met, I know he was trying to do something to try to change NHK.

00:14:12 John Daub: He said, well, if they did things this way, it would be a lot better. If they did things this way, it would be a lot better. And I agreed. And I said, you know, if they did, maybe it would be a lot better, but, you know, they're not going to do things this way, because this is the way that things are done in Japan, and this is just the Japanese way. You might not like it. And this is me now talking, you know, 15 years after this, you may not like it, but you're here, and you have to live in these rules.

00:14:42 John Daub: So you're not going to change. A couple of foreigners are not going to change Japan. You can't expect Japan to change for you. You have a choice. You have all the power over you. And this is just a fact. All right? This is why this is one of the saddest but yet most relatable comments that I've I feel like I'm talking to me in my first six months in Japan. 0xzulu writes in here in my experience, it's hard to make friends with sober Japanese. Once they have a few drinks, they become a lot more open and suddenly learn English.

00:15:14 John Daub: I'm going to adjust that too. Let's look at that next. Jason, that artist. Hey, John. Small YouTuber here, living in Japan. Hey, thank you for inspiring me to make content. You're very welcome. I'm really happy to hear that. Also a teacher slowly making it work after five years. Jason. Gosh, thanks for the super chat. I wonder what your experience was in here. I guess you could try to write it and I'll try to catch it here, but it would be interesting if you can leave it in a comment as well. But I think this is such an important topic because a lot of you are coming here to move to Japan and we learn from each other.

00:15:52 John Daub: I'm reading this comment here, so maybe wait until I prompt you to write in again. Gone are the days of weekend barbecues with friends and family. That's true. We have no barbecues outside law in Tokyo. You have to go and rent the barbecue in Tokyo. I don't know where you live, but you're not allowed to have open fires here. Gone are the days of being accepted as an equal by people around you just every day. People. Not just friends, but people. This is a country that respects seniors more than they respect younger people.

00:16:24 John Daub: It has nothing against you. It's just younger people have a great deal of respect for older people. And the older you are, the more respect you get just based on age. And I started to feel this as soon as I started to get a little gray hair. It really, when it came about 10 years or 15 years of living here, you can tell that more people Japanese were a lot easier to talk to me because of my age. Younger people versus older people. This is just a fact of the culture. Gone are the days when I can trust what is being said to me by others.

00:16:56 John Daub: Yeah, you know what? You shouldn't. This is such an American way of thinking here. Yeah, people aren't going to be direct and straight with you in Japanese culture. This is like a given when you move here. You have to sort of read between the lines here. What's the word? People have different masks and unless you make Japanese friends, you're never going to be able to read the situation. If someone says, why don't you come over to my house one day that doesn't actually mean come over to your house one day.

00:17:27 John Daub: Alright, like I'll send you a gift. Most of the time. Nobody sent me that gift. It didn't actually mean that. Like there's a lot of little quirky things with Japanese culture that you won't understand unless you start to learn the language and make Japanese friends. So those days are gone. Yeah, but you can trust what people say to you. If it's a work situation, you just have to learn to read the situations. Gone are the days of being accepted as a person, who you are, where you come from and the color of your skin.

00:17:58 John Daub: That is not right there. I don't agree with that at all. Gone are the days when you're in need of some help in public and you can't. You can actually find someone who has any interest to help you at all. I have, look this comment right here. We can have about a dozen people in here that can say that when they were lost, when they had trouble, they were helped not just a little bit, but Japanese who have gone beyond what they have. I was hitchhiking on the side of the road. People picked me up and asked me to stay at their house, took me out to dinner.

00:18:32 John Daub: A couple of people gave me cash, thought I was poor, I kind of wasn't rich. But they made me take their money so I could buy onigiri at the convenience store. They took me directly to where I wanted to go. I have never met a more hospitable people except for like it's debatable. There are very hostile people in the US and there's very so kind and warm hearted people in the United States. And again, I'm separated from the US now for several years. But I have to say America is a very warm hearted place.

00:19:02 John Daub: So I understand you there, but so is Japan. You're just meeting the wrong people. You're just meeting the wrong people. Gone are the days of spending time and doing hobbies with like minded people. Go join a club, go to your town hall or city hall and you'll be able to find people. I'm a little upset because I'm talking to myself six months. I'm talking to myself 25 years ago. Go to city hall and see if there are any activities where you can go and make some friends. You're not going to make friends with everybody, but gradually you're going to find some people.

00:19:36 John Daub: Start a club. You know what I did in Japan? I started what was called the Yakiniku Club on Facebook. I invited a few Japanese friends. It ended up being about 700 people, Japanese and foreign, who had joined a network on YouTube or on Facebook that I had created. And for seven years, every 29th day of the month, we would have a barbecue and 29, and it was getting too big. Like 70 to 100 people were showing up. I created my own friends network. I was a guy in the middle, so I was able to make tons of Japanese friends as a result of an effort to go out there because I wanted to do it.

00:20:12 John Daub: It's all up to you. You have the power. This is why it's kind of heartbreaking and sad to read this. Gone on to the days of saying hello to people in the streets just as nice gestures and receiving them. People are busy. They're going to work. They're not going to say hello to you. Because it's not the culture to do that to strangers. Nobody says hello to a random stranger in the streets of New York. Maybe George Costanza does, who puts a name. Or Kramer does by putting his name tag and walking around New York.

00:20:43 John Daub: Hello, Kramer. Hello, Joe. Joe. This isn't an episode of Seinfeld. Essentially, if you're in the city, you're saying hello to some random stranger. They're not going to. But I will tell you this. Go hiking at Mount Takao. Go hiking on Mount Takao. Every person that you pass, if you say konnichiwa, they're going to say konnichiwa back to you. In fact, the higher you get to the summit, the more broken their konnichiwa becomes. Everybody says it. I don't think if I said most, and I only know this because people were saying it to me and I would say konnichiwa.

00:21:16 John Daub: Konnichiwa. Like, the higher you get, it basically becomes just like gibberish because you're so tired or you're getting to the top. The people are so friendly. When you're climbing up and hiking up mountains, there's like a brotherhood. And I thought, I felt that with other Japanese that were climbing with me and it didn't matter that I'm, you know, brown skinned or whatever. Doesn't matter. You know, your skin color doesn't matter. You're just seeing it through the wrong prism. He has the wrong idea about Japan and America writes in any.

00:21:49 John Daub: Yeah, you know, I'm not going to pass judgment too much because I feel like I'm talking to myself 25 years ago. In the end, I'm going to. I'm going to give you my thoughts here. Yaminogames. When I got lost in Japan, I made my first Japanese friend in Tokyo. That was 10 years ago. Still friends today. You know, I think one of the people, one of the foreign YouTubers that I think one of the most heart, one of the most heartwarming friendships is the one between Chris Broad and Natsuki. And I don't know the story.

00:22:20 John Daub: I only met Chris once at some Halloween party at Simon and Martinez house like 10 years ago. I remember talking to him, might have been having a few drinks. But one of the most heartwarming friendships is the friendship that the two of them have. So when you say this kind of stuff, I think that, you know, Chris had to make an effort and Natsuki had to make an effort. I'm sure it wasn't easy at the time. There's a lot of Natsuki's out there. Well, actually that's not true. There's probably only one.

00:22:50 John Daub: But Natsuki approached Chris. Alright, well there you go. But there's a lot of Japanese who will approach each other. I don't know the story so well, but I just know that Natsuki's an outsider. Chris and Natsuki are both one of a kind. All right, we getting a lot of fans here. But my point is though, that that friendship, it's somebody who's Japanese, somebody who's British and it's a real close friendship. And that kind of friendship is possible to make, it's rare, it's not easy, but it just takes time and luck.

00:23:21 John Daub: Imagine if they never met, they just walked in the wrong direction. This is the great and wonderful thing about life. You just. I'm just saying, I don't know how many Natsukis out there. There's just one Natsuki and there's one Chris. But the point is though, that the friendship that they have is really heartwarming and I like that very much. Because you know, even for me, I know as someone who's lived here for a long time, it is very hard to have that kind of a close relationship with anybody who's Japanese because they're busy, they got families, they got careers.

00:23:56 John Daub: Life has very little free time here, especially in the cities. It's just a different lifestyle. In the US you finish work at 5pm and you're off the hook. In Japan, you continue to work. Sometimes late into the night you go out drinking with your co workers. You're a team, your life is your job. So much so that your company's doing your taxes, they pay your bills, they have apartment housing for you because they know you've given your life to the company. I want you to think about this because you have to understand where everyday Japanese are coming from before you start to pass a judgment on Japanese like this.

00:24:33 John Daub: And I'm not. I'm not upset at this comment. It's just someone who's only been here for two years. Gone are the days when people ask you for your phone number, where you live and what I would listen after having a bunch of stalkers. I wouldn't want this anyways. Nobody. If anyone asks me for my phone number, there's no way I'm telling them. In order for you to build some sort of friendship. Gone are the days of self expression. I don't see that at all. Gone are the days of free speech.

00:25:03 John Daub: What? Are you kidding me? I'm right near. I'm in the front of Tokyo Station talking about this. Gone are the days where people will try to engage with you first. Trying to engage them. I don't have that experience at all. Here are the days where everybody stares at you like you have some sort of physical deformity. Look, I think now we're getting into a little bit where I think maybe you need to go home, reset. Which is okay. Consider what you're doing here and then come back and then come back with a fresh perspective on this.

00:25:35 John Daub: And I did that too. Look, when I. Japanese do that too. This is not an easy culture to live in for a lot of people. This is a lot of stress on everyday life here. It's just a fact that you don't feel as a foreigner. And I actually don't feel it the same as my wife does. There's this ability to. This desire to want to be perfect for society, for things that I think, does it really matter that much? Why are you doing so much for this? It doesn't matter. All these kinds of situations that my wife is doing.

00:26:06 John Daub: But then I think about it. Look, she's Japanese, I'm not. I don't get it. And I can't question that because I have to understand her point of view. I have to be in her shoes. And I can only do that by having made Japanese friends, understand Japanese culture a little bit and comprehending what she sees. It's not easy in particular, this kind of a marriage. Even though I've been here for so long to marry someone who's from such a different background. It's not easy, but it gives me a different perspective and I'm old enough where I can compromise a lot better.

00:26:40 John Daub: I don't think I could have gotten married in my 30s. There's no way. There's no way. All right, let's finish this up. Here are the days where you're hated because you're not Japanese. This is again, this is where it gets into, like, really sad. And you can see my pores. Here are the days when people yell at you on the street for no reason in Japanese. I never had that happen. It's my hope. What were you doing for that to happen? It's my hope that in time, my mental perception of the country and the people who live here will become more positive.

00:27:13 John Daub: But this can't just be my responsibility. There is responsibility that lies in the hands of the Japanese. Huh? Which whom, from what I have witnessed, are non conforming and without interest. First of all, how could you be. So let's see what the next two years bring. I'm surprised you still want to be here for two years after writing that. And again, maybe, you know, people feel down, they have bad days, they write stuff. This is the kind of a message where I probably wouldn't have pushed Enter.

00:27:43 John Daub: It's like when you first ask out a girl. I don't know if you've done this before. You would write a letter or practice the telephone call, but then you'd rip up the letter and you would never actually send it. And you do that like a hundred times. This is probably one of those times. You probably should have done that before you pushed Enter. But I'm glad that you did because it gives me a chance to talk about this. Look, man, it'll get better the longer you stay here. And this is the, you know, the big brother and the fatherly side.

00:28:16 John Daub: Now you just have to give it some time. But here's the tough love here, bro, you better. You better. If you're going to stay for another two years, it's on you. It's not on them. You are here, you are in Japan. It is on you to conform. Not conform, but for you to find how you fit. And if you don't, then go. I had to find how I fit. My biggest value to Japan. And Japan has been very good to me. My biggest value to Japan has been able to take the hospitality and the kindness and the history that I've learned and all this experience and put it in my prism as a Westerner and take that and bridge Japan with that from 26 years and visiting and traveling, all of this, that's how I can give back to this country.

00:28:58 John Daub: And I feel like that's really important for me to do, because again, Japan has been really good to me. And I wouldn't. But I would not have thought that in my first year. Maybe I wouldn't have thought that in my first year like you. So it's. So my response to you is, you have the power. It's on you. You're the one who has to go out there, find your friends, find your niche, find the right people, learn about the culture. Never get angry. Blow it off. I remember going to an NHK audition and point blank, the producer goes, you're really good, but sorry, you're not white.

00:29:33 John Daub: Like, what if you did that in the United States, this would be like, you know. But you know what I did, I smiled, I said, thank you. And I said, well, if you need me, please call me for another gig. And I ended up eventually. This is before I did NHK World, Tokyo Eye, where I was on the show for many, many years. So, look, Japan is not a place you're going to have situations where things are not perfect, where things are weird. These are great stories. It's a good story when something like that happens, right?

00:30:04 John Daub: But it depends what kind of a person you are. Are you the kind of person that is the victim? The kind of person that takes. That can't take a punch? I love that speech that Sylvester Stallone gives to his son. I think it's Rocky 5. Is it Rocky V maybe, where his son, who's that guy from Heroes, you remember the NBC drama of the superheroes. And his friend is talking about, you know, like, he's a victim and all this other stuff. And Rocky, you know, Sylvester Stallone, he's a tough guy. He goes and he said, life, it's not about.

00:30:36 John Daub: I don't want to mess it up, but life is about how hard you can take a punch and get up, how hard you can get knocked down and still come up and keep walking forward. That's life. That's how you succeed. Life is supposed to knock you down. Life is supposed to beat you up. You're going to get beat up. If you lived in the United States, not just by physically beat up, but I mean, society, life, job, relationships, my God, I've had tons of heartbreaks. I've had tons of work issues where things didn't go my way or, you know, discrimination or, you know, foreigner.

00:31:10 John Daub: No one wanted to sit next to the Foreigner on the subway. Ooh, you know what I said to that said, great, I got more space. Do I really want to sit next to somebody anyways? Probably not. I put my bag down. And anybody who sat next to me, welcome. If not, it wasn't my fault because I smelled just fine. I don't know what it was, but I did not take it as being a victim that I was being discriminated against. But that's just the way I am. And for everybody, you're going to have your own approach. So before you come here and you move to Japan, you're going to have to get rid of that victim way of thinking that maybe we have a little bit too much in the US these days.

00:31:51 John Daub: When you come here, you have to be able to. What's the word? Be more tolerant of the differences. And you can't give up. When they punch you down, you get back up. If a situation pushes you down, you get back up and you get up stronger. That's why I hitchhiked. My God, I was scared to death. This is in 2003. I'd never heard of anybody else hitchhiking. I'd seen a couple of people, but I didn't know any other friends. I saw a couple of Japanese doing it when I was on my Seishun Jihachi keep out by one of the interchanges.

00:32:22 John Daub: And I'm like, what are you guys doing hitchhike? I said, interesting. So you use a cardboard sign and you write it down. This is 20, 21 years ago. I was scared to death. I took a ferry from Niigata up to Otaru, and I took a bus to Wakkanai. And I said, I am going to get to the other side of Japan, and I'm scared to death to do it. I felt so uncomfortable. I'd never done anything like this. But I said, if I'm going to stay here in Japan. And I'm getting a little sad thinking about this because this other person who's been here just has not been long enough here to understand this.

00:32:57 John Daub: If you put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, you become a stronger person. You learn more about yourself, and you find the things that you're really looking for. Hitchhiking. I don't recommend it for anybody. I think this is something you just have to decide if you want to do or not. There are risks to it. I knew that going in there. I made signs. I stood up there with my backpack. People picked me up. I rode on the sign. I learned how to do the Japanese kanji. I wrote Asahikawa.

00:33:28 John Daub: I was up in Wakkanai. Somebody picked me up. I said, oh, my God. After that first ride, this is incredible. I made two new friends. They were university students, they lived in Shinagawa. They were driving too fast. But I made it safely to Asahikawa. And I said, this is going to be interesting. And then I hitchhiked from Asahikawa. A mother with two kids picked me up and took me from Asahikawa down to around Sapporo. It's like, wow, this is the kind of people that I was meeting on this adventure.

00:33:58 John Daub: This changed the way I thought. And this was six years after I had moved into Japan. When I finished that trip, after 20 some rides and I got to Kagoshima, which is the length of the entire country, I felt really different about Japan because I put myself in a situation where I had to make friends, where the people who wanted to meet me and thousands of people passed me. I remember seeing people laughing at me in the car or pointing at me, probably saying those things that you said that they were saying about you on the street.

00:34:30 John Daub: I didn't bother me at all because I know that if I stood here long enough and I held a cardboard sign, somebody. Somebody who wanted to talk to me and be my friend or learn about me or take the chance to meet me is going to stop. I did this again. I liked it so much. I did it again in 2017. And actually, if you want to, I guess I could plug it. You could buy the Blu Ray disc. We have a bunch on the Only in Japan store. Maybe if you're watching the live stream Nightbot, I'll promote it. But it was a.

00:35:00 John Daub: I did it again because I wanted to. I filmed it in 2003, but I wanted to do it in 2017 because I wanted to film it in high definition. But I also wanted you guys to see that trip. There it is. Store OnlyInJapan TV I wanted you guys to see this trip because that's what changed me about Japan. And when I see the comments from this person here, I really feel for this person. I'm not angry. I know that this person just doesn't know Japan yet. Brownshoe72 but I'm also sympathetic to this person because what they're writing is just their feelings.

00:35:33 John Daub: And this is also something that people in Japan never show you. It's like a poker face, right? People don't show you their feelings because you're a stranger. Why would we show you your feelings? That's reserved for your family, your good friends. They don't even show their feelings like this at work to their friends. Everything is. You could say it's kind of fake, but that's the culture. You wouldn't start to cry. Or show you. You hold it in and you wait until you go home to your wife. And even then, I don't know if you cry in front of.

00:36:06 John Daub: Maybe you do it in front of the dog. I don't know. Everybody's different. But the final thing I want to say here, and I want to read some of the input here and thank you. D.C. miller. Love the Blu Ray. Put out the more recent Hokkaido road trip on Blu Ray 2. Actually, it's not a bad idea. I should do the motorcycle RV trip with Peter. We should do a Blu Ray for that. Does anybody use Blu Rays any anymore? Anyways, the. The final thing I want to say in all of this, and I'll take a couple of questions real quickly.

00:36:37 John Daub: Look, don't ever generalize Japanese either. I know that they're 99.9% of of the people here. And you know, what I learned is that if you did, and I'm not angry, I'm just saying this as somebody who cares for you, this person, you have to make that effort. And if you do, you're going to learn that everybody's different. Not everybody is like that person who might have screamed at you. Not everybody is someone who's going to talk behind your back. Not everybody is that kind of a person. Everybody comes from.

00:37:08 John Daub: There's so much diversity in Japan that you don't realize somebody from Tohoku and somebody from Okinawa have completely different backgrounds. It feels like they're different kinds of food, different kinds of weather, different kinds of accents, different kinds of approach to life. I've noticed you only notice this if you travel around the country. Different cuisines, different, you know, different styles. I would say there's some prefectures where people seem friendlier than other prefectures.

00:37:38 John Daub: It's just true. Tokyo is the melting pot of Japan, but it has a different sort of feeling here, people, because everybody's from everywhere else. Tokyoites. And as somebody who's lived here now for. I moved to Tokyo in 2004, so it's been 20 years in Tokyo. That's a long time. Tokyoites are really friendly. They grew up here. They were born here. They're used to it. But the majority of people who live in Tokyo are not Tokyoites. All right? They come from Tohoku, they come from Osaka, they come from small towns.

00:38:09 John Daub: And when they go to a big city, they're kind of scared. Just like somebody from, I don't know, a small town moving to Manhattan, you're on your guard. You know that people's gonna try to deceive you there's more crime, although there's very little crime in Japan, you would think there's more crime in Tokyo than there is in that small town that probably never had any crime at all. Right? So I want you to think about that. People that are coming here from Tokyo just because they live in Tokyo, they're probably not originally from Tokyo.

00:38:42 John Daub: There's a lot of. There's a lot of walls that people put up in the city that's not the same out in the countryside. Osaka is a friendlier city than Tokyo because Osaka is more osakan. It's not so much a melting pot, although people from the area go there. A lot of the universities are here in Tokyo. So this becomes the melting pot for most of Japan. And the longer I stay here, the more when I hear generalizations about Japanese, I have to kind of. And I do that too sometimes. There are some things.

00:39:12 John Daub: But in the end you have to really remember Junin Toido. We have something different strokes for different folks. 10 people, 10 different things. And this is a Japanese expression. Everybody's different. All right. You can't generalize like that. And you just have to find those people that are going to be on your side, like Chris and Natsuki. Maybe there's a Natsuki clone out there, I don't know. But you'll find it. You just can't give up, get knocked down, get back up again. Reminds me of that 1998 Chubb thumping song.

00:39:44 John Daub: Just gotta do it, gotta do it. All right, I'll take a couple of questions here. I know this is a. A pretty strong rant. I wouldn't call it a rant, but this is. It felt a little bit like I was talking to myself from 25 years ago reading this comment. And it made me very sad that somebody had this kind of an experience. So maybe there's some hard things I said in this and there were some compassionate things and there was some understanding. So I think somewhere in the middle. I hope you find the answer to this and I hope that the next two years are a lot better than the first two years.

00:40:19 John Daub: Go find your Natsuki. Why not? Alright. I think it's a great example. I like that. I think it's such a heartwarming friendship there. I've been to many different countries and used this to good effect. Treat others how you would like to be treated. Exactly. I think that's the one thing that crosses international borders. Treat people nice. People are going to treat you nice more times than not. If you look like you're in trouble or you need help. People, someone. Not everybody, but there's gonna be people who come to help you.

00:40:51 John Daub: Are you okay? Do you need help? And when they do in Japan, they go the distance, man. It's incredible how much the help is. Yeah, you're not white. Means what exactly? It means that I wasn't. It's the same in Hollywood. They were looking for somebody who was a particular part. I mean, my photo was on the. Maybe it was just because of Summer. This is the NHK story. Just got a comment in there. I don't know what it means, but I don't take anything personally because if I put myself in that producer's shoe.

00:41:22 John Daub: He's just doing his job. He just wants this kind of a person for this particular. Whatever he was casting for. Can't even remember. I just remember the comment. And I also remember one of my friends who was behind there, sitting behind there and I asked him about it as well. He goes, yeah, you know, we were just looking for somebody who was just different. So you know what I mean? Again, if you are the victim and you have that kind of a negative point of view, you're a toxic person. You're never going to have a future trying to find another job if you're somebody who goes, it's not coming from a racist type of thing.

00:42:00 John Daub: It's just I have to put myself in this person. I'm just not the right person for this. Stay positive. Smile. Say if you need somebody else, I'll be here. And that opportunity eventually came and I was on Tokyo Eye for many years, which set up this channel and where I am probably today. So Vasily's here. Anyone else think John is getting more and more handsome every. Stop it. Maybe because the pandemic is over and I'm feeling a little bit better. Are you going to grow a mustache? This is just two days of hair.

00:42:30 John Daub: I don't know. Usually I shave every three days. How do these questions get about me? Stick to the topic at hand. Not taking things personally is a good way to live life. Brush up negative comments and move on. That's the happiest way to go through life. Don't let anything impact you. The more you do YouTube and the more people try to knock me, the more I'm. I get stronger. It's like I'm that. I guess that's the way I'm built. I take the negativity and I eat it up like Godzilla and I just get bigger and bigger.

00:43:01 John Daub: But don't. Don't. That's not a prompt for you to give me negativity, but it's a prompt is that it doesn't bother me whatsoever at all. The worst trolls. I've had it all. I never taken anything personally and I've never had anything that made me go, oh, I feel really sick because somebody feels like that about me somewhere in the world. You know why? Because right now I have a community of amazing people that I know for many years will always support me the best that they possibly can on Patreon, on this channel, you feel the love and the warmth of the people around you.

00:43:36 John Daub: And if you fill your heart with the friends and the goodness that you have. This sounds so a little bit bizarre, but if you feel the positivity of the people around you and you cut out the people that are negative, you start to just not care about stuff. When people are critical about you or if they are critical, you learn from that. But you never take it personally. That's kind of where I am, and I'm not 12 years old, so there's nothing you could do to troll me and make me feel bad. Great message on this video today.

00:44:08 John Daub: Have a great weekend. Well, thank you. Cobra Bebop, it's nice to see you. All right. I wanted to bring this to you. I think this is a great example of those that think that Japan is paradise and are disappointed when they come here. I understand that because I was in the same situation as this person. Maybe not to this degree, but I can tell you this. It was 99% my fault because I was not making enough of an effort to learn Japanese, to meet Japanese people, to read about Japanese culture, to learn the history, to understand why things are the way they are.

00:44:42 John Daub: I took classes for cooking. I forget what I did. Like I went to the city hall. I tried to make an effort to become a part of my community. Every single community in Japan has a festival go in there. They would love to have a foreigners come and join the festival. If you take an interest in your community, your community takes an interest in you. For better or for worse. Because then everybody knows who you are. And if you do break the law or do something bad, they'll let you know. But it's not just you Japanese are critical of other Japanese.

00:45:15 John Daub: All right? It's not just you people in Japan are critical of other people in Japan. Read the trolls and the comments that Japanese leave on other Japanese YouTubers or other Japanese people. It is worse than the stuff that we leave here in English. So look, it's just a reality of the culture. And I hope that, I really do hope that the next two years are good. Lewis Williams Suga Adams writes in here, Stay positive. Believe in goodness and people. Even though it sounds romanticized, I think that's the best way to do it.

00:45:46 John Daub: We're all alive. We're all human. Dr. Phil has a YouTube channel. I guess he's doing that instead of TV these days. And he made, he made in University of California. This is like two days ago. He made Democrats and Republicans look at each other and not talk about politics. And to see the human, this is, this is so geeky. And after that, they, you put the politics away. People saw each other as humans and that's what we all are. We're all on this spaceship Earth now. Crime still exists. People are going to kill you over a few dollars.

00:46:19 John Daub: People are going to hijack your. You bike, jack you or whatever. There's going to be crime. There's going to be bad situations that happen. You still have to be careful of risk. You still have to know that there are predators and there are prey in this world. This is a reality. But at the same time, once you start to also get rid of the goodness and you let that kill the other side of you, then you start to see everything that's negative. And that's why maybe, perhaps the older you get, the more people become negative or cynical.

00:46:51 John Daub: I get that now because I'm older, but there's a part of me that I think is still 12 years old and that will never die. There's this, like, undying curiosity about everything. Even the older I get, the more curious I get, the happier I'll stay. When you stop becoming curious and wanting to learn, that's when I think a little bit of you dies every day. And this is why maybe that 9 to 5 job is not really good for you. I don't do a 9 to 5 job. I'm here in an afternoon with a bunch of tourists enjoying the weather as much as I can.

00:47:23 John Daub: Frank or engineer. I'm human in my way. Kramer on Seinfeld. Any Seinfeld reference you could tell Larry David and Seinfeld were up at night thinking about just humanity and how funny it is it never goes your way. I mean, it never. It never goes perfectly your way all the time. And when that happens, you have to make an omelet out of broken eggs. I don't know, you think of all these metaphors and expressions, but the bottom line is you just have to stay positive in the worst situations and you make the best of it.

00:47:54 John Daub: If I was like, trapped, I often think about this, and I said, if I was trapped and I knew this was the end, like, how would I want to go out? That's a tough situation. But I would probably, instead of being, you know, scared, I would probably try to find. To make the last six months or six minutes or whatever, the best six minutes that I possibly had. That's just me. I don't know. I think about that sometimes at night, you know, There was a Hiroshima video that I made about a year ago where I interviewed a survivor.

00:48:25 John Daub: She was 14 years old at the time. She was the. She went to work 72 hours later on the train. Hiroshima, Amazing story about Hiroshima and how strong that they are. I used to live in Hiroshima and I used to sit down there. And of course I was drinking. I drink almost no alcohol now, but back then I was drinking a little bit more than normal because I'm in Japan. I remember I would think about all sorts of really deep stuff, philosophical stuff, things that happened during the day that I wasn't happy about.

00:48:56 John Daub: Why did it happen? How do I make it better? What kind of person am I? How do I fit into Japan? You have to sit down and think about that stuff. And I would sit down and think about it in front of the Genbaku Dome, which is that atomic bomb dome. There was nobody. There was almost no tourists at night in Hiroshima. Hiroshima was not a tourist attraction. It was a city that you lived in. Nobody was there, just school kids during the day. Very few foreign visitors at that time, 20 some years ago. And I'd have it to myself.

00:49:28 John Daub: And I would sit there on a piece of actually what was the destroyed building of the Genbaku Dome. There's a piece of. It had traveled, and that's actually one of the benches. A lot of people sit on it and don't realize that's part of that building. And I would sit there and I would think about all sorts of stuff. And I'm serious, when I made that video, that's what I would do. So I think about. I still do that. And you have to reflect on it again. That's life. You know, the comments here are really great.

00:49:58 John Daub: If you're watching this live, it's nice to see what everybody's saying, but. That's how we made it through the pan. Yeah. Through 2020 and beyond. I don't even want to say the word, but you made it. We made it through the toughest times because we had a sense of humor about it. Maybe if you can. But if you're losing work and you, gosh, it was really, really hard. Let's not rehash that time. Through it, we're in a better place and we're doing a lot better. Alright, guys, that's all I got for you.

00:50:28 John Daub: I still haven't eaten lunch yet. I don't want to lose too much weight, but this was important for me to bring to you again. Leave comments in the questions comments below to follow up on this. Look, whoever you are who wrote this, I made this because I'm looking out for you and the other people that are feeling the same way because I understand that and I don't want anybody to feel like that. Just, just keep on going the best you can and if you want, leave a comment and don't be afraid to do that.

00:50:59 John Daub: There's so many caring and loving people in this community. We'll do our best. Thank you. The only thing that disappointed me about Japan was the way women were treated. And I think that that's one factor in the population. It's getting a lot better now. It's getting a lot better. We have two candidates who are running for Prime Minister, the next Prime Minister of Japan. I'm not sure if they're going to win, but we have candidates that are doing it. We have more. There are more women CEOs of small businesses than there were in the past.

00:51:31 John Daub: It's a good thing. Things are changing for the better. But on that note, Chan, and I'm so happy you made that comment. Japan is going to change at the speed that Japan changes at. You cannot push people here because if you push them, you're going to be the one that gets knocked down. It's changing and it's such a positive thing. But you can't do it. You can't do it in the western way. A lot of people come here for the wedding photos. That's nice to see. Are they gonna throw the bouquet? That ambulance might be for me because I'm so hot and hungry.

00:52:05 John Daub: All right. Yeah. A lot of my wife is a, is a small business owner. Her friends are all small business owners. They're all very happy and they're all doing a lot better than if they opened stayed in a corporation. I think that Japan is changing a lot in that viewpoint. But if you enter an old school corporation, If you enter it had to be done. I think you're allowed to do it. I think. Okay, I'm going to see whether or not you're allowed to do it. I think kids are playing in it before I'm not sure you're allowed to do it or not.

00:52:37 John Daub: Yeah, I think you're. It's fine. Why should I do it? It's nice and cool. Puddles are fun. Don't expect to work for a big Japanese corporation and the corporation to be in, in 2024 US it's still 2024 Japan, which is like 10 years behind, maybe more. But the business scene in Japan, way, way better. And if you start a small business here, you're probably going to be in. Probably going to be pretty, pretty rich and powerful, if you've got a good idea. All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks for watching.