00:00:01 John Daub: How you doing everybody? I just left this Uniqlo here in Ginza. It's got everything. I like this one better than the one on Chuo Dori, which is one of the largest in the world. This one, the floors are a lot wider and you get to see everything in one space. And in this episode, I want to talk about how do you pack and dress for November, which is this month, basically the end of fall and maybe the beginning of December, January. Packing in this time of year certainly takes up more of that luggage space.

00:00:31 John Daub: One of the things that you have to remember is that you don't have to pack everything that you think you might need because you can pick up a lot of it pretty cheaply here, especially with the exchange rate as it is today. Let me take you inside really quickly because I think when you go into the stores, you get an idea of what they're selling and that's pretty much what you probably need for this type of temperature. I know that Uniqlo, these down jackets, 6,900 yen, which is what is that like 50 bucks or less. These are really light and super warm. Like you don't really need to bring a jacket. This is more than enough for November and December. If you want to pack super light, you could pick that up here if you wanted to.

00:01:33 John Daub: Now the sizes might be a little bit different in Japan. I'm a medium in the United States and I'm an XL here in Japan just because my shoulders are a little bit broader. This sweater, the lambswool is pretty cheap, about $50 for that. My suggestion to you when you do pack, instead of bringing really heavy stuff, better to bring layers, meaning bring t-shirts, long sleeve t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, and fleeces, and then one jacket. And then you could alter that based on how the temperature fluctuates. It's impossible to pack for every type of situation. But layers means you could take it off if it's warmer. You can put stuff on if it's colder. It's never really that cold. And we'll look at the temperatures in a second here.

00:02:03 John Daub: This is a down jacket. It's a micro down jacket for $50 as well. I thought that that was pretty unique. The other one was like a puffer jacket. It wasn't down, but it looked pretty warm. I don't like the fact that the hoods are attached. You can't detach the hoods on those, but you know, it's 50 bucks. So it might be something that you just need to buy in a pinch. And the great thing about buying your clothes when you do travel is that you get to wear them when you go back home. It's kind of a memory of your trip. It's maybe the ultimate souvenir.

00:02:34 John Daub: This is probably the way to go is one of your layers. You don't need anything bigger than this. You don't need to buy a lot of them, maybe just one. There's lighter HeatTech. There's a lighter one that's upstairs on the men's floor. Women have the women's variety as well on the women's floor, which I think is the second floor there. You can see there's a lighter HeatTech. I just went past there. And these puffy fleeces. I don't know what these ones are called. They're on sale for like $14. Those are also super warm, a really good layer.

00:03:04 John Daub: I found that the pants, the lower part here, they're starting to get like where they could be either casual or dressy. These are like stretch pants. This is the kind of stuff that the gym teachers used to wear in the 1980s. You know, the football coach would have these on 24-7. They made them out of pants that look pretty good. And I thought that that's, you know, the colors are nice. I might get a pair of the gray ones. These work well and keep you warm in the winter, but they're also really comfortable to wear like in a cafe or lounge wear as well. The women's down jackets are also quite good. These are the nano puff, which are super light. And they pack down really good inside of a suitcase. So you don't need to pack as much.

00:04:04 John Daub: If your down jacket is too big, maybe wear one onto the plane and pick one up as soon as you arrive at the airport. They have a Uniqlo at the airport. They get a bunch of other shops. Not that this is the best one to go to. But if you're strapped for cash and you need to get stuff, this is like where I get my layers. Cashmere sweaters. I was surprised that these were like 10,000 yen or about $65. Just another layer that you can add in there if you wanted to.

00:04:35 John Daub: The long coats are really nice as well this year, but I don't think the fashion mixes with me here. You can see some of the mannequins show you how people are dressing in November and December. And I'm going to take you around Ginza as well. You can take a look and see how people dress what was a cold day yesterday is a warmer day this afternoon. So again, the temperature is fluctuating quite a bit right now. It's wide, but I could probably get away with shorts today. I got pants on. Walking down here, you can see they're now really set up for the end of fall with the clothing that they have on the first floor. The first floor pretty much lays out what the heat and the temperature is for this time of year.

00:05:09 John Daub: They sell clothes for the next two, three weeks and the next month and month and a half. And then the new winter stuff will be coming out probably in two weeks. But I was surprised that like they're doing a lot of this. You see this shirt here. This could be a shirt for the next two, three weeks or it could be a layer like a jacket. So I like what they're doing here. This vest is a down vest, but it can also be a layer. And inside of there is a turtleneck, which I guess are coming back in style. Used to be if you wore that in the 90s, that's how you hid your hickeys. But I was in college students. So we had more of those back then. Maybe not now.

00:06:08 John Daub: The thing for men, though, you want to consider if you do buy a shirt here, the shoulders are narrower than Western shoulders. So you're going to like an extra large in the US probably going to need to go 3XL. But you can find that upstairs. They have up to 4XL for a lot of stuff. So they do have extra, extra large sizes. But it's just funny, though, because when you get back home, the labels are different. Because it's like there's Western sizes, and then there's Japanese sizes. You can see there's a lot of good stuff inside of there. The one thing that I really like is that they're making this stuff like dressy casual. So again, this is another way you can pack light, you're really good for almost all situations in this kind of a setting.

00:07:09 John Daub: I like these down scarfs as well, which keep you super warm, but they've got the hats and the gloves that are really ridiculously cheap price there. You don't need to blow all of your cash there. These are thicker down jackets. If you're going up to Sapporo, they got you covered as well for what is 12,700 yen or $80 and you have a really thick down jacket. I think that's 600 fill, which is pretty amazing. That's just a quick summary. I like going in there and taking a look at it because it gives you a summary, a really good view of what is on sale here. That's how locals are dressing at this time of year.

00:07:39 John Daub: Which Uniqlo outlet is this? You can get the plus ones off of the main one at Chuo Dori. I think it's up on the seventh floor, but they have an entire corner for plus sizes, which I thought was great. And if you go in here and you ask, you can get it. But more than that, I think once you find out what your plus size is for Japan, if you're an XL and you find out you're a 3XL here, go on to the online store and they can send it to your hotel, which is even more convenient. You spend less time looking at the stuff. You can see the sizes for the normal sizes and have it sent online. They have it up to 4XL on the online store.

00:08:10 John Daub: I do that too, because they don't have my sock size. I take a 27 to a 29 centimeter sock, which is size 10 and a half. And they don't have 28 size socks or 10 and a half size socks. Socks in here for men. Men have smaller feet here. So I ordered online and they sent it to me within 48 hours. It arrives in Tokyo, which is pretty convenient. Yeah, I'm a fan of Uniqlo. So I don't mind. I do think, you know, this is sometimes it ends up being like a commercial for this place, but that's not the case. There's a lot of stuff I don't like inside of Uniqlo. So I had to say something that was critical in order to make sure that you guys understand that.

00:09:10 John Daub: Tokyo temperatures here just to highlight. This might help you also figure it out. Here's a chart going all the way from June and July and August, you know, 31 degrees. It was like it was much hotter than that. And on average, I think it was like 34 this year, which is like real upper 90s for a lot of the summer. Upper 90s for those in Fahrenheit. And when we got to October, you can see the temperature start to drop. But December, it drops even more than that, nine degrees off of October. So you really do have to start to bundle up. And this is more like December 10th, not December 1st. I noticed that the real winter stuff starts to hit around December 10th. And then you really start to feel that chill. And it feels cooler than 12 degrees, which is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Trust me, because it's got island weather at 50 degrees Fahrenheit here. It just feels a little bit chillier than normal. So you definitely want to have layers in there.

00:10:08 John Daub: This is for Tokyo. Let me give you another chart here. This is very significant here. This is the rainfall. So whether or not you need an umbrella, you probably don't. It only rains four times in December on average. And there's a lot less than in October and September because of the typhoon season. So you don't have to pack as much rain gear for Tokyo and for Japan. I'd say this week pretty much ends any chance of having a typhoon. One more thing here I want to show you. There's also a lot less daylight in Tokyo. We don't have daylight savings time, which I think is the biggest joke. I think it's really dumb to do that in the United States. That's my opinion. It just creates a lot of havoc. And I don't think in the 21st century it's necessary anymore.

00:10:38 John Daub: But in Japan, we don't have daylight savings time. But if you compare it to July, we have four and a half hours of less sunlight. That's significant. All right. So just keep in mind that it's going to be cooler longer. So the average higher temperatures, the high will hit in the afternoon and then it starts to drop real rapidly and it's colder more than it is warmer because there's just less sunlight and there's even less up and there's one hour less sunlight up in Sapporo, which is nine hours of sunlight. So keep in mind that. I think that's something that you need to think about when you dress for Japan. Here's the figures for Fukuoka and I'll put the figures up. OK, let me get rid of this here. I'll put the figures up for Sapporo as well. And this will give you an idea. These are the extremes in Japan here. There's Sapporo and here's Fukuoka.

00:11:49 John Daub: You can see it's about a 10 degree difference here in Celsius, which is about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's pretty significant between Sapporo and Fukuoka. The result is also there's a lot more snowfall. There's more 15 times of precipitation in Hokkaido, so a lot more snowfall and only eight times down in Fukuoka. So it rarely gets any snow at all. So this is something I think looking at the temperature is really important. But the point I bring this up is this. I see Tokyo Sam is here. I dress the way John dresses. Classy and practical. Heart sign. The heart sign does not excuse the fact that we dress like slobs. You won't find me in a suit very often. I wouldn't say slobs. I'm being a little bit hard on myself, but definitely I dress a lot more casual than I did in the past.

00:12:36 John Daub: People in Tokyo are a lot more dressier than I think in other places in Japan. I think style is important inside the cities and you can dress more casual on the countryside. I can show you around, give you an idea. I'm going to try to pan down just to give people a little bit of privacy, but you can see the way people dress here. It's a lot more casual. Maybe it's casual these days. You know, I think if you compare it to 10 years ago, people are dressing a lot more casual because they're finding ways, in particular Uniqlo, all the makers are like this. To make things both casual and dressy using materials that stretch. Jeans today stretch, which is really you can use it for hiking if you wanted to. They dry a lot faster, so the materials are changing and that allows you to pack a lot lighter as well.

00:13:39 John Daub: Don't forget your kairo (disposable hand warmers), right? There's these things that are actually made of kairo. There's a lot of kairo. There's a lot of things that you can also buy at the convenience stores in the supermarket, sometimes in bulk. And you scrunch them up and it produces heat and you can put them in your pocket and it keeps you warm and you can also slap these on inside of your shirt. I rarely use these. I think if you're going to the Sapporo Snow Festival you can, but you can get them at the convenience stores pretty cheap. There's a sticker on them and you can put them on top of your HeatTech and if you wear a down jacket, it just starts like building up the heat. Maybe so it's so much hotter. You can find these everywhere in Japan. You scrunch them up, it activates the chemicals inside and it creates amazing amounts of heat. So you're never really cold.

00:14:16 John Daub: My wife is Japanese. She's cold all the time and I told her, look, babe, you got to build up your tolerance to it. But at the same time, I know that she's just built differently and I don't want her to get sick. But still, I don't like to turn the heat on until December 1st to build up a little bit of let the body know that it's winter. Start to build up a little bit of fat. Which is normal. I think so. But what do you know? Ario's got the Kanae sticker there. Kanae, thank you for being a member, Ario.

00:14:51 John Daub: For those that are Patreon members, here's this month's postcard. The fall is here and this is Kiyomizu-dera with the beautiful leaves. I think this was like eight or nine years ago I was there. So yeah, if you'd like this one, join the poster club. I'll send it out to you. There's some information about Kyoto sites and some of the other temples. Every month I try to put up an image here. This is this month's. Thanks so much for the many hundreds of people that get the postcards from Greenland all the way to Argentina. Nobody in Antarctica yet, but that would be really cool.

00:15:22 John Daub: I want to take you around a little bit more, show you the sites and give you an idea. I'll try to point the camera down just to let you know how people are dressing. Nobody's got shorts anymore. So if you're a tourist, you want to wear shorts, do what you want. But keep in mind, the colors are the thing. I can tell the tourists based on the way that they dress. So if you've got on like orange, bright oranges and yellows and sports memorabilia or your high school sports sweatshirt and things like that. Yeah, you're from abroad and nobody really wears that stuff. I didn't see any Philadelphia Eagles gear. I see they demolished the Cowboys yesterday. Nothing yet anyways.

00:16:05 John Daub: So I'm taking you out to the main avenue Chuo-dori, which is it's Monday, so it's opened up. But on the weekends they shut it down and you get a good chance to people watch as well. Wow, what is that car? Is that a Rolls? Sometimes I see the Rolls Royce and sometimes I see the Century, which is Toyota's Rolls Royce and I get them mixed up. It looks like a Rolls. Is that a Century or Rolls Royce? It's hard to tell. It's a Century. They look so similar. The luxury is very much similar inside there. I wanted to drive one of those Centuries. I'm just scared to death. Those things cost up to like I think they start like quarter of a million dollars or something. That's Toyota's super luxury brand.

00:17:05 John Daub: You're going to see a lot of really nice cars going down in Ginza as well. But the temperature very, very moderate today. One of the things I don't know if it's in style anymore. I have these here. Do you see these? These are like zip off pants for shorts and you can get these at a place called Montbell (outdoor gear store). The Montbell is actually just down the street here. You want me to take you there? You know, I could take you there. I'll take you really quickly there because I got to head back. But Montbell has a lot of stuff that's made for hiking and camping and this kind of stuff. But I found that a lot of this stuff is crossover. It's very much like an L.L. Bean or an Eddie Bauer. So you can get a lot of stuff.

00:17:54 John Daub: It's two traffic lights down this way. I didn't realize that it was that far. It said it's at Kyobashi station, which is the next station from Ginza. And the Montbell there has a lot of stuff, a lot of layers. It's maybe a little bit more. I don't know if it's more stylish or more. Maybe it's more my style, but it's sort of like the I guess like an L.L. Bean or a North Face of Japan. It's a Japanese company like a Patagonia brand and Montbell. I always think that the materials seem a little bit cheaper though but the prices are pretty affordable but they just they find a way to make everything really thin and versatile and that's sometimes a good way to pack if you are traveling to Japan.

00:18:57 John Daub: But you can see here that the style that people are wearing that like one guy with shorts was definitely a tourist hitch a t-shirt and short sleeves is like whoa you don't fit in bro but that's okay it's not about fitting in it's about being comfortable i think that's something you really have to remember i have to remember because i've been here for a very long time i live here and for those of you that are trying to i'm talking like the people who didn't win the election trying to flee the US to move here because they don't like what might happen stop thinking that way think positive we don't know what's going to happen so and we don't need you here i'm saying that because you're not going to like Japan if you're leaving because of that you're not going to like coming here it's the wrong reason to flee your country.

00:20:05 John Daub: There's a uh well that's a Mercedes-Benz that's a nice looking boxy car the Land Cruiser looks the Toyota Land Cruiser looks very much like that the new Toyota Land Cruisers are very pretty and they're very cheap and pretty very nice looking car g-class yeah we don't need disgruntled people making trouble there's a Hiroshima store by the way you can get momiji manju (maple leaf-shaped steamed buns) there which are so good from Miyajima island you don't have to actually go to Miyajima you get inside that store Ginza's got a little bit of everything including spots to build the building look at that very rare to see something like that what is that car there a nice looking car there had like a Defender what kind of car is that one there's a lot of nice looking cars here all right we'll go down here yeah we'll go down the street Land Rover Defender i haven't seen a crazy number of Land Rovers what i wonder why aren't those more expensive somebody told me whatever you do don't buy foreign cars in Japan because they're so expensive buy domestic because they're so much easier to fix if you have any kind of issues and Mercedes-Benz is the story is that a Japanese guy went into the Mercedes-Benz and said i don't want to tell the story wrong but yeah this car is awful why does it always break down and the Mercedes guy says you should have bought a Toyota probably some Toyota guy made that story up but it's a lot bigger.

00:22:23 John Daub: I wanted to show you look Shohei Ohtani is everywhere so he wins the World Series and then comes out and drinks some tea it's a nice looking picture what's he looking at all right Shohei turn a little bit to the right all right no smiling look serious i wonder how the director got him to do the pose Ario yeah that Toyota Land Cruiser is really nice if it got better gas mileage i would consider getting it i although it's quite big for the streets here i've seen a couple of them a lot of people will buy the cars abroad and then import them into Japan i saw a Toyota the other day where the steering wheel was on the other side i guess it's legal to drive like that just it would be hard oh here's that Century you're right all right so are there any questions about the style i think you get an idea just watching looking at the style pair of jeans t-shirt layers button down a fleece light jacket and if you pack light and if you need anything that's the Uniqlo I was in but there's one just down the street it also has plus sizes and that's something you need to worry about you can get them online you can get the stuff sent by Amazon within tour i order it at night it comes the next day that's how quick Amazon is here in Japan in Tokyo in particular.

00:24:11 John Daub: But also consider where you're going to go in the city where are you going to go sorry in the country Japan is not like you know not one zone the temperature between Fukuoka and Sapporo is like 10 degrees Celsius which is like i guess it's something like 18 degrees Fahrenheit so you have to dress appropriately based on where you're going to go and there's also don't forget you can rent the clothes here i did a story about this i like you all to check it out if you haven't this is an episode i made about renting your clothes with Japan Airlines i got a chance to try out their rental clothing program you get to pick out sets of clothes and if you're going up to Sapporo they have a winter set where you can get some extra clothes this way you don't have to buy it let's say you don't want to throw clothes away you can just rent them for two weeks and i thought that was pretty good it fit okay check out the experience i take you up to Asahikawa and the Blue Pond in this episode i get on a plane and fly up there and pick up the clothes at the hotel for you so you get an idea what that's like.

00:25:21 John Daub: I think it's kind of neat to you know when it comes to saving space less luggage is good for the environment there's so many positives with this i certainly wanted to try it it was kind of a novelty i thought but i could see this thing taking off just depends on if the public can get over the wearing clothes that other people have worn but if you can do that with bed sheets you know people are in that for 8 to 12 hours a day for some beds maybe more and you don't know what action is going on in there it's probably nastier than clothes i think maybe rental clothes have a chance.

00:26:08 John Daub: There you go all right everybody that's all i have for you this is fun i'll try to do another episode next month for January and February i think it's kind of neat to take a look at what the shops have on offer and go inside and see what's on sale as well because it gives you an idea of how to shop how to pack and what to wear and what the locals look like so that you feel more comfortable here and you feel more comfortable when you hit the ground in Japan. Uniqlo is kind of like a bellwether place to go certainly you should look around but i can find underwear socks and t-shirts and jackets and layers and that's like 80 percent of maybe my wardrobe a lot of it i get at L.L. Bean i don't know why they've gone downhill recently a lot of fast fashion materials are cheaper no more lifetime guarantee on clothes i guess people just took advantage of it i can understand that it's just the culture.

00:27:08 John Daub: All right everybody take care Uniqlo versus GU which one is better and cheaper i always thought the GU was the same as Uniqlo but i never go to GU i always go to Uniqlo i don't know which is cheaper but i also think that Uniqlo might be better more and more i'm starting to think more about where they source their stuff as well and for a percentage of people here that might be an issue as well i'm not sure where they source their stuff if they're paying fair wages and all this other stuff it's something that i think we're starting to as a world think more and more about all right everybody take care i'll see you in another episode and talk a little bit more about this pack lighter pack your suitcase then take half of it out you don't need it you don't need big suitcases you can get everything here and sometimes picking up something from Uniqlo or another shop becomes one of the most interesting souvenirs that you get during your trip the essentials but i'm not going to tell you what to do just advice.