00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo. This is — I'm at home today. It's a little chilly outside. So I thought I would take a chance right now to answer some of the questions that a lot of you have. We have our Discord server open. So we'll be taking some questions through call-in, which is great. Discord is a community that we have. I think it's about 17, 18,000 strong. You can get advice on the go live from people that are actually here. So our Discord community, very positive place that you can share your photos and information.

00:00:31 John Daub: About travel in Japan. I've been in Japan now for, boy, next year will be my 27th year. 1998. Yeah, 27. Oh my gosh. So we're getting closer to 30 years. It's crazy. And I have a wealth of information and knowledge that I hope I can help you with. For the last couple of years, doing these live streaming shows since 2017, I've gotten a chance to get to know a lot of you through the back and forth. And I know many of you are planning your trip to Japan. And it's really nice if I can add anything to help you out with that planning. Because you're coming to a foreign country, you're investing lots of money to do that. Getting as much information as possible can really enhance your trip to make sure you don't, you know, do something wrong or wreck it or come unprepared or lots of stuff. But this is Japan. And even if you do come unprepared, you could probably pick up and manage just fine. However, I'd like to answer some of the questions that we have here. What do I wear for December, Nat? I made a live stream about that. I actually went into the Uniqlo, kind of showed you what they have in the store. And if you take a look at that live stream, I kind of answer that in pretty good detail visually by showing you what's actually being sold at the stores and how people are actually dressing on the streets. But this is one of the questions that I get quite a bit. And I guess this is what I also got here. This came just a few days ago from Pittman33. Very interesting. "Looks mild there. This is about last week. Does that mean it's cold, a colder spring in Toronto?" We have highs of around one degree Celsius now. I've seen the weather in Canada. It is pretty chill there. I was in Montreal and we had some crazy — we had like 30 people show up at a meetup in Montreal about five years ago. It was like minus 30 with the windchill factor. It was deathly cold. And I remember asking, it was like, "Who the heck voluntarily want to live here in Canada?" And they said, you know, and they didn't take it personally. Like, no, you had to be born here, born into it and to really be able to manage this kind of winter. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's true. Same with heat and cold, the extremes. Japan does not have extreme weather except maybe in Hokkaido and down in Okinawa. It's a little warmer down in Okinawa. And it's a little bit cooler up there in Hokkaido. Lots of snow and already minus temperatures, in particular at night right now in Hokkaido. So when you talk about Japan, you have to keep in mind that the geography of Japan is — you know, Hokkaido in the winter, much, much colder, pretty much under zero most of the time, you know, minus 32 degrees snow, longer winter, I would say five months, it feels like five months of winter in the north part of Hokkaido, maybe four months in the south. It's a little bit longer than down in, let's say Kyushu and Okinawa, where the winter is like very mild in Okinawa. And Kyushu, it does get down, it could actually snow in Kyushu at certain times — they have, you know, also Sun, which is a pretty high volcanic peak might get snow up there as well, depending. But it's much milder down there in western Japan. The geography of Japan is also set up that it's — it looks like it's going north to south, but it's actually going east to west more like Hokkaido is north of Tokyo, then it goes like this to the west. So that's another thing when people talk about western Japan, they're talking about like, Tokyo would be eastern side and then Osaka would be like the start of the western side where Japan is going west. So it's more like west, southwest, so therefore more west. So the geography of Japan might not be what you expect if you're coming into Japan for the first time, taking a look at it.

00:04:18 John Daub: All right, let's look at some of the questions here. Do we have any in the audience? Not yet. We have HelloHi821, our moderator. How you doing, Jim?

00:04:28 HelloHi821 (Jim): Hey, I'm doing very well.

00:04:30 John Daub: We have a few questions that are about appearing in the fireside text. Are you ready for one of them right now?

00:04:36 HelloHi821 (Jim): Oh, yeah, let's go.

00:04:38 John Daub: Okay, this is from Majikas. And they're asking, "What are some interesting or fun things to do around Christmas in Tokyo other than the most known tourist things? I'm staying over Christmas and I'm looking for ways to pass the time other than staying in my hostel."

00:04:58 John Daub: Great question. Yeah, you know, I'm not sure what my — Tokyo has about, like, 12 well known Christmas markets. I say 12 because I was just looking at my friends at TokyoCheapo.com, they have a website that lists them all out. There's only one — really? Kind of like I would say like real Christmas market, it's the one in Jingu Mari where the stadium is — the National Stadium with the 2021 Olympics were held. Just next to there is a big event field where they had a baseball stadium, or baseball place for people to play baseball. They've opened that up into a park now, and you can go in there, and they have, I guess it's not sponsored — maybe it's sponsored, but also a collaboration with the German embassy, and they've made a very realistic-like Christmas market. Now, I would say it's not international touristy because German tourists coming to Japan might not want to go to a German market in Japan, although it might be interesting to see that. This is stuff that locals would definitely go to, and I know my family will be there. My friend EricServe6, we all love Eric — he went there, and I think he ate every single food imaginable. I cannot compete with EricServe6, but he went in there, and he did a pretty good live stream laying out what you can get there. It's much better at night, though. The other Christmas markets are great. Now, besides the touristy stuff like Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Skytree, the attractions in Odaiba — what's that one called with all the lights? Besides those things that you already know about, the museums — we have Christmas illuminations, and this is a reason to get outside at night. Despite the chill, places like Tokyo Dome has a really great and, in particular, romantic illumination this year where you can get your pictures in a snow dome. I don't know what that means. I was going to investigate this, but there's a snow dome where you can get these really cool photos in there. But besides these native or local attractions that we would like to do, I think it's really interesting to take a step back and see what locals like. That's almost an attraction in itself because it can be sometimes really cheesy or it seems like really East Asian kind of stuff. That might be fun for Westerners to take a look at. The illuminations are really good all over the city. Roppongi Midtown is quite famous for it, as well as the Roppongi Hills street behind Roppongi Hills. It's illuminated with really beautiful white and blue lights. It's stunning. Other places, Tokyo Skytree is said to have, what, three or four — three million LED lights or something ridiculous around that area, which really makes it come to life. You're going to see Christmas lights just about everywhere. I went to Ginza the other day. Window shopping is big in Tokyo. Usually the department stores, and Japan has a lot of department stores, they have Christmas window displays. However, this year I saw that they were kind of lacking in color and style. They seem to be very modernish. It wasn't really my type of thing. I was quite disappointed this year with the Ginza displays. Maybe Shinjuku is another place. Shinjuku Sanchome. Shinjuku is a huge area of the city. Sanchome is its own station. This is where a lot of the department stores, headed by Isetan, which is a massive department store. You'll see in the windows there, you'll get some of that shopping feeling that you might be missing if you were in a Western city, like going to Oxford Street in London, or you're going down to the West Coast, or going to 34th Street in New York, or something like that. If you're looking for the place where you might feel a little bit more Christmassy, I thought it might be Ginza, but actually it seems like Shinjuku might be more of a Christmas vibe to it. Walking down Shinjuku Sanchome, which is not the south exit, but the other side of it, walking down towards Yotsuya. It's really good. There's lots of other attractions. I could list them off for hours, but those are the big ones that come to mind. Even Tokyo Tower — being the tourist attraction, has a miniature Christmas market underneath there. The Christmas markets are usually overpriced food and very expensive German beers, where you have to pay ¥1,000 for the deposit of the glass, so you bring it back. I think the deposit is kind of weak, because you could probably just take the glass away, and the glass probably costs more than the deposit, to be honest with you. Nevertheless, it does elevate the price of just getting a beer at some of these events. Some of them are now just using plastic cups that are recycled, or — I don't know — burned. I don't know what they do with the plastic here, depending on the cup, but it seems like that might be the way to go. Thanks for the question. Anything else? Hello, Hi821?

00:09:41 HelloHi821 (Jim): Yes, there's another question.

00:09:44 John Daub: Let's see. This is from Eclair and Paki. And the question is, "Is it true you still can't get Suica cards at the airports, Haneda and Narita?"

00:09:58 John Daub: From everything that I understand, you can get that, but you can't get it at the airport. I haven't heard — I don't have a need to go to the airport and pick up a Suica card, but I can go to Tokyo Station, and I can go to all the other places all around Tokyo, and during the live streams, I've been showing this just a couple of days ago in Yurakucho, and I was able to walk up to a vending machine and get a Suica card. However, the Suica cards where you have to — you do have to type your name on it, and it prints out your name. You can't just get one that doesn't have your name on it, which is probably a good idea, because if your information is not there, your information is stored or embedded in the Suica card, if you were to lose it — and I have — the police will call you if they find it, and you'll be able to get your Suica card back, which is incredible. I remember losing it — where was I? I guess it was — yeah, not too far from Toyosu, and I got a phone call from the police about three hours later, and I went there and picked it up the same day, and all the money was on there, because it's just something you could tap and lose all of your money. So unless you have a copy of the number — Suica number — if you lose your card, and I'm talking about all of them, ICOCA is the same and all the other ones, if you register it, they have your personal information, and they can get it back to you, should you lose it. But those are available everywhere, so I haven't heard that they weren't available at the airport. However, with that said, there's a lot of tourists that come in. Locals don't need to get a new Suica. So availability might be limited, but if you're in a — just based on a flight coming in, and 100 people got a Suica, and the machine's just sold out, and they need to fill in the machines again, which is a never-ending thing. So it might be good to ask the window. This is the situation where if you can't get it from the machine, go and ask the window, and if they don't have it, then they don't have it, you can get it in the city. Just buy a ticket into Tokyo Station, or to Hamamatsucho if you're taking the monorail from Haneda Airport, and you'll be able to get it from the station there. It's not really an issue anymore, we don't have a shortage of the Suica cards anymore. Again, I just got one a couple of months ago in a live stream at Tokyo Station, was able to do that. I see Brondani is in the house, thank you. Oh, good. I see a cloud dust. I'm not sure what that is there, Brondani. But I appreciate it. Mahalo. If I do this, it means like hook 'em horns, it's like a Texas Longhorns thing. It's a great question. Anything else that we have here?

00:12:32 HelloHi821 (Jim): No.

00:12:34 John Daub: Yeah, we got another question that just appeared. This is from Michio Bengal. The question is, "Do you know if it's possible to teach English in a remote part of Japan? I went to Yakushima Island in 2014, and my wife and I fell in love with it. Would love to teach there for a year or so."

00:12:56 John Daub: Wow, that's a great question. First, these questions are coming from our Discord server. There's a link in the description. It's discord.gg slash only in Japan. It's free to sign up. There's lots of communities in there, but I think we have, what, 17,000 or 18,000 people strong now, and the server is well moderated, and you can ask questions all the time and get answers pretty quickly if I'm not available. So it's people helping people. I would say, you know what? English teaching jobs are interesting. Usually, there's a process where you would ask — you would find an ad, or they would have a help wanted sign, and you would need to have the proper visas. For example, if you were married to a Japanese national and your spouse was Japanese, it would be very easy as a Westerner or an Easterner, just a non-Japanese, to be able to get a job, but you need to have that visa. If you don't have a work visa, it's really challenging to get something called the Certificate of Eligibility, meaning you need to have somebody or a Japanese company sponsor you, give that Certificate of Eligibility, through the embassy where you could pick up the work visa to come in, get a residence card at the airport, and then you'll be able to work, rent an apartment, open up a Japanese bank account, and start a life here. Without a Certificate of Eligibility and a work visa, it's really difficult to do. When it comes to Yakushima, and any place that you — let's say you want to be an English teacher, and there's a specific place that you want to go — the best thing and my biggest advice to you is: one, first check the internet to see if there's any help wanted stuff, because it saves you a lot of money from having to go there from step two, which is what I'm going to tell you in a second. Number two is, if you have a specific spot that you really want to go to, my advice to you is to go to that spot and do some legwork. This is how we used to do it in the olden days, you know, before the internet. You'd have to bring your resume, bring a suit, try to look professional. I don't even think you — I mean, I got a question recently from somebody who said, "Do you need a college degree?" And a bachelor's degree, Japan sort of needs to have some sort of — I don't know, like litmus test to see if you're qualified. It's not like college these days is as important as it was maybe like 30, 40 years ago, or 25 years ago when I went to Ohio State. It seems like you could probably get experience and have a — and use those four, five, or six years, or how many years it takes you to go through college in a more practical way than getting into debt and going to college these days, because it's just the tuition costs are so expensive. But in Japan though, they see that as sort of — you've been able to complete something significant in your life. So getting a degree from a university, it's not easy to do. So you have this ability to complete what you start. And that's sort of a litmus test. But I'll tell you something, as somebody who worked for the head office of an English school, a lot of these English teachers will leave, like before the contract ends. They're not the most responsible people just because they got a college degree. And I think a lot of Japanese companies that have to hire these people understand that. Sometimes having world, real world experience and being able to relate to people and being a person of your word and being able to complete a contract and having the ability to sell and understand that eikaiwa, 99% of it is a business more than a school. If you can understand that, you could probably find a job real quickly despite not having a university degree. You can find ways to get around it. That has — but they're not going to hire you outside the country without that degree. You can come in to the country and you have to do some legwork. But then after you find the job or secure something or you've made connections maybe with a local business that needs it, then you've got to exit the country, get the Certificate of Eligibility, get that work visa and then come back through the proper channels. That is just the way it's been done and I don't see that changing. You could go to Korea, and pick up your COE at the embassy there. It just depends on the business and where they're going to send your Certificate of Eligibility. But you need to get that. You need to get the company to hire you, to give you that Certificate of Eligibility through the immigration office and then you'd be able to work in a place like Yakushima. You would be able to set up where you want to work. However, you have to find the business to do that. The third way would be — if you have, I guess, what is it, like a few thousand dollars or maybe more, you could get a business investor's visa. This would take some time though. And you could set up a business in Yakushima and teach it yourself. But you'd need to hire two Japanese nationals and you'd probably need to have, pay them some fees and you can decide to keep them or lay them off. I don't know, after you initially get this going. But this would be able to give you a business investor's visa which would allow you to work and set up an enterprise in Japan. And hopefully you would hire more Japanese to help you manage the business and help you market your business. But you would be able to set up an English school. And that's the fourth thing here that you need to consider with all of this is that it's a business. That means that if nobody in Yakushima or if the market is really small, which it doesn't have a massive population, you probably are not going to get a lot of people who want to study there. So you have to pick and choose a market that is very popular. When the Nagano Olympics came in 1998, I would say like — so many people in the prefecture of Nagano, not just in the city, were trying to study English because they knew that a lot of internationals were going to be coming there and it seemed like a valuable skill to have. And the English language schools were like booming in Nagano because there was a desire for it in that particular place. I probably in the Osaka Expo 2025, I bet you there's sort of been a boom in Osaka in the Eikaiwa sector for trying to get ready for all the international visitors coming there. So you have to find a place where there's a market, which is why Tokyo is so popular with English language. It's just because there's a lot of internationals coming here and there's a need for it. So again, Eikaiwa is — and this is my biggest disappointment with Eikaiwa and the hardest thing for me to comprehend, English language, English conversation is a business more than a school. And if you can't get people to like you and continue or sell the lessons, then you're not going to be able to keep the school running. It's like you don't have the budget. It's not like you're getting tax dollars to do a curriculum that is state mandated. You need to have a business plan. You need to be able to get the students to continue. And this is the biggest way that Eikaiwa make money is that the students — they continue, especially children, from like one or two years old all the way up to high school. The chain that I worked at, the kids renewed every year and the word of mouth got around and the schools, if you had a good teacher, were building up a very busy schedule where they were making a ton of money on my back. But that's not an industry I ever want to get into. Again, Japan's population is shrinking, especially outside of the cities. I don't know if you want to get into Eikaiwa business now, but I encourage you to give it a try if that's something you have a passion for. Having a teaching of English as a foreign language, a TOEFL certificate is also really helpful. If you don't have a university degree and you have one of those certificates, I don't think it's that hard to get. But if you've gone through that course and taken the test and did well, that's something you can use to market yourself in Japan to get a job. And people would rather have a very competent, well experienced person — over just a university degree from a young person who might just leave right away. Again, you have to make that sale in person and you can bypass some of the stuff, but you're going to have to invest in yourself by making the trip here. I love the question. I love the question because a lot of people want to come here to live. I didn't when I came here. I thought it was only going to be for a year. And I was thinking of over the holidays telling you my story. Let me know if you really want to hear this. A TOEFL is very, very easy for English speakers.

00:21:16 John Daub: Yeah, teaching of — and Saya, this is the teaching of English — teaching of foreigners of the English language or something. I don't know what TOEFL stands for. Not tofu. Chan, get out of the trunk. Tofu, not TOEFL. I like that. That was funny. It takes about a year. What? Saya wrote in it takes about a year. I'm not sure how long it takes you to get that certificate, but it's really useful to get it. And I don't think it's too expensive to do. A lot of people want to come here to live in Japan, but I didn't want to come here because I didn't want to do that. If you really want me to tell this story, let me know in the comments below after the video you watch it. But there's a reason and a super interesting story on how I got here to Japan. Why I got — I picked Japan in 1998 and how I got here. It's like — it's — that path is bizarre to me. And I often think about it and I was thinking about it again. It all stems back to a roommate that I had. And that story in itself is like — it's like a fate and destiny type of thing. I think it's pretty inspirational because it's just weird. It's super weird. I'll tell you about the origin story. You know, I've been here for over 25 years. So, I mean, there's a lot of stories I have. This one's pretty cool. So I'll tell it over the Christmas holiday when everybody is off of work and stuff and we can sit down and talk for a little bit longer. It's crazy. I hope you are — well, Chan's in Australia, so I bet you it's pretty warm in his trunk. Hoping if he stays cool. Send you some of the cool stuff. Teaching of English as a foreign language. Thank you, Saya. Any questions there? Hello, Hi821.

00:22:59 John Daub: And we have Vin Jin in the house. Vin Jin, you have a question for John? Did Vin Jin write anything in the text? I'm guessing not. GodzillaMega54, who we know well, is here. How you doing? Hello again. How you doing? Good.

00:23:31 John Daub: Oh, man. Christmas at this time of year in Japan. All the stories I keep hearing, especially the KFC story — how they serve the best food, food, compared to the rest of the world, except for China. I could go off on a rant on that and how international YouTubers have really blown up this story more than it really is. Yeah, Japanese — Tokyo Sam is in the house. Tokyo knows — He probably knows a lot about this too. He's down on the ground talking to more people than I am. But I see the lines are somewhat long. But trust me when I say this, the vast majority of Japanese are Japanese. They're not eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. A lot of people do. They make a lot of sales. But you have to be a real lonely or like a kind of a confused family in order to think that. Wasn't that stuff — wasn't that stuff pretty much made for American GIs in the first place? Because that's what I hear, but no one else seems to mention that because — yeah, usually turkey would be the thing for Christmas. But you can't — the turkeys don't exist in Japan. Well, they do. You can get them. There's a website called The Meat Guy. You can order almost anything these days online. He was based in Nagoya. I think another company bought them out. But The Meat Guy will send you turkey. You can get them at Costco. I think you've seen them at Costco before. And I took you to National Azabu in Giro just about two weeks ago. And they have turkey there too. So you can get — you can get turkey. I even got eggnog at National Azabu fresh from Portland, Oregon. From Oregon. I don't know if it's from Portland, which is crazy. And the carton type is so good, like fresh eggnog. Like how do they do that at National Azabu?

00:25:12 John Daub: But the story with the — I don't even know if that's your — is that your question? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Well — well, no. What I was gonna ask that I know is — From what I looked up, New Year's is the biggest holiday in December in Japan, not Christmas, since it's mostly a Western holiday. Which is why there's so little — little — Christmas spirit on Japan's side since it's not really their thing.

00:25:39 John Daub: That's right. I had a comment yesterday on the Ginza window shopping episode. The viewer said, well — He called me out and said, "How could you — how could you complain about the lack of Christmas decorations when only like 1% of Japanese are Christian? Imagine if Americans celebrated Japanese New Year. They don't do that." So you can't complain about that. And I said, are you kidding me? Walk into any single department store in Japan and they're playing Christmas music. You see Christmas trees all over the place. It's on marketing on like half of the food in the supermarkets. They put it on beer. Santa Claus is all over the place here. You're not gonna see any Japanese New Year music or marketing in the United States, of course. You can't equate the two. It's crazy. So I think that there is something behind Christmas in Japan. It's just — it doesn't have any of that feeling. Although sometimes they try to do it. I've seen baby Jesus' scenes in some of the places. I don't think they understand why it's there sometimes. But to me, that's kind of a big part of Christmas. But anyways — well, that's the thing about Christmas. Like I said, it's a Western thing. And if you knew the history, people acted like it's always been Jesus. But that was just an excuse for Christians to get pagans to join them. That was pretty much how this whole December 25th thing started when it was just Babylonian origin. And another thing about these holidays is that each country has their own take on it. Like for us Americans, New Year's Eve, while big, it's not as big as Christmas. It's mostly just drinking, watching the ball in New York go down. Right. For Japan, you do it a lot differently. More like a more serious — it's not like how we do Christmas, but in a New Year's way. And just like with food, we all have our different tastes on how we make it. It doesn't have to be culture appropriate. It just has to suit us what's best. Just like how you're teaching your son on both sides of the culture, not just one side like most parents in one country does these days.

00:27:58 John Daub: Yeah. You said it very well. And I think as you — as you rightfully so, Christmas in Japan is more like a couples' holiday. It's like a night that you go out — I'm being serious here because this was shocking to me. So before I got married, like when I first came to Japan, I was a single guy and all this other stuff. And I had lots of foreign friends that were single. And we talk about that stuff. And the 24th would be the night where you go out with your girlfriend or your boyfriend on romantic dates. And the love hotels are quite full in these days. And it was a romantic time. For couples. But when it came — but in the United States, for example, with the Western world, Christmas is a time for families to be together. Where you travel across the world or the country to get back and you all come together just like Thanksgiving. Also in the United States, it's a great time of year. The businesses close down mostly and you can take a break. We have that exact same thing, not for Christmas, but for New Year. So in Japan from, I would say, like December 30th, if you really feel it, but the 31st for sure, January 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, a lot of stores are closed. Offices are closed. Of course, convenience stores and essential services are open. Shops are open too. But a lot of the businesses will close down. It's quiet. You want to see the most eerie time in Tokyo? January 1st, after the New Year. Ginza is completely empty because all the businesses are shut down. It's like deserted streets. It looks like 28 years later, that new movie that's coming out next summer, which is — I can't wait to go and see that one because I love zombie stuff. It's like all the streets are clear, except for a few tourists maybe. For me, I think it's one of the most fascinating times to visit Japan for your second or your third or fourth trip to come during Shogatsu because it's a completely different vibe. And that's just coming up in a few weeks from now. So, yeah, I would recommend it. And it's also not as crowded. And it's so much more relaxed. There's less tourists at this time because everybody's going home to their family. You bring your family to Japan, you might have a pretty unique experience. You like zombie stuff?

00:30:02 John Daub: Yeah, I like Walking Dead. I thought they did a pretty good job with the drama. I get hooked in the soap opera stuff behind there.

00:30:11 John Daub: This is Japan! Speaking of zombie stuff, there's an interesting thing coming out next year called George Romero's take on the Resident Evil script that he was supposed to direct the Resident Evil movie, but he got thrown to the side for that. Romero of living dead fame. That's nice. Documentary. Yeah, documentary. I hope you do Resident Evil on your top because Capcom really is the king. And since you like zombie stuff, I hope you do that in the future. It's a long shot, but I hope you do it.

00:30:44 John Daub: No, you know, I'm really interested. I'm not a gamer myself, but I'm really interested in the technology and the way Japan approaches gaming. It is quite different. And I've been to Tokyo Game Show many times watching the technology evolve from consoles now to AI and goggles. And I didn't — it's funny. Tokyo Game Show set it up where influencers or news outlets can't really go. You're picked like through a lottery now. It's not the same as it was back then. But I do think, you know, more people — more people — but it's a topic I'd love to cover considering, you know, Capcom's in the background on my videos sometimes. Go ahead. Sorry. We got Zara on here. And my ex. Yeah, you're on. What you make is like Japan's.

00:31:39 John Daub: Thanks. What do I like? What do I like? Well — yeah, make — What you make is like Japan's. Okay. Thanks for the question.

00:31:55 John Daub: So I like a lot of stuff about Japan. It's a pretty broad question. Gosh. The food, the weather, the culture, the safety, the convenience. You can go to a convenience store, a vending machine, usually within, you know, a minute from your house, wherever you live in Tokyo, or even in the countryside. It just works, you know. It's predictable, which also drives people crazy too. That's not always a good thing, but comparatively to the United States, things are really predictable here. The weather's great. You got four seasons. I love the cuisine, the freshness of it. I like the food quality is a little bit better, although the portion is a little bit smaller. You can't get the best of every — you can't have everything, but there's a lot to — it's a very big list of things to love about Japan. Thanks for the question. That was really general. It's hard to approach something like that.

00:32:51 John Daub: We got a question here. Just returned from Japan last week, says Gimpy Lee. Japan outdoes the USA with the feeling of Christmas spirit. Really? Roppongi Hills, Midtown, and Yokohama has the best life. I'm glad that you brought up Yokohama. I don't know — I think it just depends on maybe your family life in the United States. It depends on — some of my best childhood memories was going to grandma's house or going to Christmas parties with the family and drinking a little bit. Everybody has a sweater. There's a fireplace roaring in the background. There's some music going on. There's always one crazy uncle that had too much eggnog. This stuff happens. It's Christmas. You don't get that here. I don't even think — maybe you do during Shogatsu. My wife's family is not too big here in Tokyo. I've heard Peter and other friends who are married to Japanese wives and have to visit their families. There's a drunk uncle there too. There's a drunk uncle involved somewhere. You don't get the same Christmas type of feeling. However, when it comes to illumination, Japan might be the king of illuminations. Again, the culture going back to neon lights and very bright Ekimai station fronts. LED lights are incredibly bright here in Japan. They really do a good job with lighting up some of the areas. I haven't seen it too much this year, but in years past, they were for sure. I know Shinjuku, Western Front, and when it comes to Christmas markets, the Yokohama Red Brick Place is also highly recommended if you want to get out of the city of Tokyo. It's a great question.

00:34:29 John Daub: What else we got here, HelloHi821? Anything on this side?

00:34:34 HelloHi821 (Jim): Yes. Okay.

00:34:36 John Daub: I see Katayama's in the house too over there. By the way, your postcard, the post office lady saw that your postcard didn't have a stamp. I literally put it in the post box yesterday. I'm sorry it's going to be a couple of days late, but it was funny. She tracked me down in a live stream. That means the only way she could have found me is if she was watching the live stream. That's mind-blowing to me. All right, go ahead, HelloHi821. Thank you. Okay. This is from TonyQuestions. Left a question in fireside text. Here's the question. "Which taxi app is the best for tourists visiting? My mom is 82 years old, and I'm sure she will want to take the taxi at times."

00:35:18 John Daub: Oh, that's a great question. I use the Go app. I can't say which one's better, but I can tell you if you use Uber, you're going to get Uber black cars. I haven't done it recently because I use the Go app because you're going to get other taxis. The app's really convenient. However, I believe they — all right, from where I live, I'm about 5, 10 minutes away from Tokyo Station. In the morning, I've got to jump into a taxi. I go straight to Yaesu-guchi and get right onto the Shinkansen. It takes me like — I can go from door to Shinkansen in like 10, 12 minutes. It's really convenient. So I use taxis quite a bit. It's a short hop. I found if I use the app, it's ¥1,400. And if I flag it down from the street, it's ¥1,100. So they seem to add on a couple of hundred yen as I guess a tip or a processing fee. Now, here's the other thing with the apps. It takes between 3 and 10 minutes for the taxi to come. Whereas there's so many taxis, depending on the time of day, it's just cheaper to flag them down. You mentioned your mother. And if you're going to be booking the taxis in advance, the app is super convenient. Like have to wake up at 4 in the morning to get to a 6 a.m. flight or something, 7 a.m. flight. In this case, I would use the GO app, G-O. And the GO app is you can put your credit card like you would with the Uber app, and you get local taxis as well as Ubers, I think. The Uber app, I think, is only Ubers. And the Ubers are Uber Black because they don't compete with the normal taxis. And the Uber Blacks are 20% more than the local taxis. And over time, you pay — that really adds up, the 20% more. But they wear like white gloves, and the cars might be better. There might be EV cars, for example. I mean, like little things. But it is maybe a slightly more comfortable ride, but you really pay for it. There's a couple of other apps, I believe. I haven't had any issues, I haven't heard of any issues with anyone using the other apps that were negative. But I have not had any problems with the GO app. I've had to cancel rides before. I remember I had to get to, I called for a taxi on the street. It was 5 in the morning. And it said that it was a 12 minute wait. And I had to get the shinkansen. You know how like I am with the shinkansen. I like to run for the drama. I don't know. I'm like a procrastinator with the shinkansen. So I said, well, you know what? Okay, I ordered the taxi. And then a taxi came down the street. And I got into that one. And I was able to cancel the taxi without incurring a fee right away by texting him. Or you could even call that driver and say, sorry, I would like to cancel this ride. I don't know if they charge you or not, but I haven't been charged yet for canceling a taxi ride. You know, 12 minutes is a significant amount of time. And sometimes it's hard to cancel within, they should give you like a 60 second cancellation. Like you could push the cancel button. Because sometimes I do it and like, oh crap, there's a taxi right there. So, so far the GO app's been pretty good with having to cancel a taxi. But you know, I do feel bad for the driver if they're making their way out there. You've made sort of a commitment for that taxi. The other thing is they tell you, like a four digit number. Make sure you remember that four digit number because they will not allow you into — like Japan is very strict with the rules. They won't allow you into the taxi unless you remember that four digit number. Like say the four digit number, what was it last time? Somehow I always remember them. 1430, I got this number, 1430. So he said, you know, he asked me for the number and I said, hold on a second. He could have obviously allowed me in there. No one else is going to be jumping in the taxi. I'm looking left and right, there's nobody around. So I said 1430, he goes, okay, now you can get in the car. I'm very strict about that. So just another thing to keep in mind. Great question. Do the apps have anything related to language preferences? You can do anything. You can do everything in English. You can do everything in English. Yeah, I haven't seen — I was able to change the settings from Japanese to English. When it comes to communication with the taxi driver, I think they've set it up where AI is automatically translating everything now within the app to the driver's side of stuff. So there might be some — there might be some miscommunications, but a lot of it is like, I'm canceling the taxi or where are you now? Or I'm on this corner or I see you, but I don't see you. Like it'd be pretty much easy to predict kind of stuff from passengers if they're communicating. But from what I've seen, everything is done in English and I believe AI translates it on the other side for the drivers who can't speak English. But a lot of the drivers are speaking English more. I'm shocked. I make conversation with every taxi driver. Even if I'm not in the mood, I don't know why I do that. And I've noticed I do it in Japanese and then I always — I say something in English just to test them. So like, what's the temperature outside? And sometimes they respond in English. And I say, 今何度ですか? 相当に何度ですか? It's like, 何度? Like what's the temperature? So I can, if they don't understand that, I'll say it in Japanese, but I'll test them out. And I'm surprised. An increasing amount of taxi drivers can speak some passable English, basic English conversation, which is so helpful. It was impossible 15, 20 years ago. It was impossible probably five years ago. It's crazy. Thanks for that, Katayama. Appreciate that. I see you on the screen, but I don't see you on the street. Yeah, stuff like that. I thought like the comment was like talking to me. I'm like, no, I'm not on the street. Am I? It's like this could be a surreal world out here.

00:41:06 John Daub: I'll take a couple more questions here before I go and eat lunch. These are great. Hello, I to one. Do we have anything down in the chat?

00:41:14 HelloHi821 (Jim): Yeah, this is from Michael Fidelos. This was relayed, I believe from YouTube by one of our moderators. "What holiday do Buddhists celebrate this time of year?"

00:41:30 John Daub: So that's the question. I — that's such a great, great question. I noticed that when I went to Nara, I got a chance to talk with the head priest about about Buddhism in general. And he was such a — he was he was. It was just such a peaceful guy. And he was so easy to talk to. I could understand why he became the head priest. You know, not a — Todai-ji goes back to like the year 700, which is crazy, maybe even older than that. Seven hundred and eighty two or something like that. When the big the giant Buddha was built there. Book Gill is one of the two related books. I coordinated with the religious in Japan. The duality of Japanese religion is well known. You're like born in Shinto and you die a Buddhist. Most people have Buddhist funerals and Shinto births and they celebrate both religions interchangeably, although it doesn't always make a lot of sense. But if you can understand that, Japan starts to make a lot of sense. There's a duality to life in general as a result of this backbone. So when it comes to holidays, I guess it's all wrapped up in the shogatsu. I know that there's a like once a — once a month, Todai-ji told me that they do kind of a ceremony there to worship, but other than that I don't know in particular any specific holiday for Buddhists in Japan in December. I apologize for that, I just don't know. But I think during shogatsu, which is more Shinto, I think that there's elements of — there's got to be elements of bukkyo inside of there because just the two of them are interchanged so much. Wherever you see a temple, you almost always see a shrine next to it. Wherever you see a shrine, usually there's not a temple too far away, so they kind of work almost interchangeably, which is so interesting. In Asakusa, Asakusa you have Senso-ji temple, it's the biggest oldest temple there. It's like it goes back to the year like 700. It's — it's quite old, you know — millennia over a millennium. And right inside is Asakusa Shrine. Like it's literally 50 meters away from the main temple hall of Senso-ji, the main Senso-ji temple. Asakusa Shrine is like right there. So the two like religions go together. They don't fight one another. There's the ying and the yang, I guess, you know. It just kind of works together. My — my um — my wife — yeah, Shinto but there's elements of Buddhism thrown in there too. It's very — it's very cool. I like that. Great question. You know, that's another thing with new years. Here's one thing. One of the traditions that they do have in Japan is the ringing of the bell at midnight in Japan. In the U.S. we dropped the ball, and in Japan they ring the bell and they bring the bell 108 times specifically. That bell ringing goes on for quite a while and I've done some live streams with it. So if you're going to Kyoto instead of going to a shrine, you might want to go to a temple because there's a — there's always a bell at a temple. Like in Kyoto, there's a couple of really famous ones, and they ring that bell 108 times, and it's a part of the tradition. I don't think it's an ancient tradition. I think it goes back just a couple of hundred years to be honest with you, maybe back to the Tokugawa shogunate, but it's certainly a tradition here in Japan. 108 times for the um — the spiritual like the demons or something. Pretty deep. It's pretty deep stuff.

00:45:10 John Daub: What is difference between a shrine and a temple? A Shinto Shrine? And a — Buddhist temple. That's the difference. Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine. So the S's go together, if you want to try to remember that. The shrines have a torii gate, a red torii gate. You know the torii gates? There's an emoji for torii gate. These red torii gates are Shinto shrines. The shrines have the torii gates, and the temples usually will have the oni or the demons on the left and the right of the gate there. But I think it's pretty much the same. Don't walk down the center, things like that, going to the main temple or the main shrine. There's a lot of similarities in that sense, but there's a lot of differences, of course, within the two religions. Jonathan is also sharing the torii gate right there. Thank you, in a live chat. It's frustratingly slow, writes Insaya. Yeah, if you come there to stay till the end, you might be staying for a while. I think it takes over an hour or something like that to ring all the bells. Going late into the night, so if you live next to a bell, you might not be able to sleep for a while. Put your AirPods in, or your earbuds. All right, I'll take one more question here before we chop out.

00:46:25 John Daub: Okay, so this is from Abby on YouTube, and the question is, "When's the best time to buy osechi from the grocery from December 29th to January 1st? Like, when will the grocery stores close if they don't? I'll be in, let's see, I'll be in Fukuoka. I'll most likely buy NY food for NYE." Thank you. And there it is.

00:46:53 John Daub: All right, so we are getting closer to shogatsu, the new year, Japanese New Year. Just a note on Christmas cake, I think it's already too late to get your bucket of chicken at KFC. It's not really a big thing. Just to go back on that, you have to reserve your bucket of chicken, like, at the end of November. So, you can get your bucket of chicken at KFC, at the beginning of December, and then you pick it up. And if you don't have a reservation, I think you could still go in there and get, like, a set to go, but you can't get, you know, massive amounts of chicken. They prepare that specifically. I don't even know if you can do that. So, Japan does everything in advance. There's, like, no — this is so predictable, too. If you want a Christmas cake, you can get them, you know, the day before, but almost every Japanese family in advance orders a Christmas cake, like strawberry shortcake. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't like — I'm not a big strawberry shortcake fan. I love Japanese strawberries, but they do it in advance, like weeks in advance, because you want to get your — because they only make a certain amount. This is the same thing with some of the other things with Japanese culture and holidays. You want to do it in advance. You have to order stuff. You have to make your hotels, reservations, like three or four — three to six months in advance during holiday periods. You got to get your shinkansen tickets in advance. You have to be well prepared, which kind of takes the spontaneity out of it. And it's not good for four months. There's a lot of foreign tourists that are coming here who think that you can get the stuff right away. Your first choice or your second choice is going to be gone because people have reserved it months in advance, and they like that because they're guaranteed money if it's reserved. So the deadlines would be — like, I think you can get the mochi and the stuff almost anywhere up at the supermarket. Usually they have a surplus. So a lot of that stuff goes on sale, like, 20% off after the holiday starts. So most people will buy it in advance. And waiting the last minute can sometimes pay off for some of that stuff. But I've seen the Japanese New Year stuff started to go on sale. This is important. It started to go on sale about two weeks ago. And I've seen it at Daiso, the 100 yen shop. You can get almost everything at Daiso. It's probably not made in Japan, though. But I was surprised. A lot of the stores, the supermarkets, two weeks ago they started to do it. Until they sell out. So you want to buy early just because if they sell out, it's gone. I was talking with Costco because I see this Christmas tree. I actually had to get this Christmas tree from the United States. Amazon.com was cheaper and better quality to buy one from Amazon.com and spend like $60 on the shipping instead of trying to get a fake one in Japan of not a really good quality. This one I thought was pretty good. It's called Puleo, a family-run business. Although it was made in Cambodia. So I had to make quite a trip to get here. But yeah, this is the same thing with the Christmas tree with Costco. I wanted to get a Christmas tree at Costco because they had really beautiful, easy-lit, beautifully lit, like 500 light, 6 1/2, 7-foot trees. And they were sold out of the lit ones. And I said, how come? They said, look, we're still like a month away from Christmas. They go, mmm, once like December 1st hits, we don't get it. We don't get any more new stock because we're already looking to the next holiday. We're already looking to shogatsu. We're moving our Christmas stuff out. They started the Christmas stuff the day after Halloween. So for one month, they start selling it. And then once like December 5th happens, they don't have any more Christmas stuff. And that Christmas tree across the entire country that I wanted to get, this easy-lit, beautiful, slim Christmas tree, sold out, not bringing any more in, they said. You know, they have one that wasn't lit. And I said, no, I don't want that one. Everything sells out. So they're already moving now past Christmas towards winter. They're already looking at past Christmas in Japan now. So whatever you got here, if it sells out, it's gone. So if you're looking for holiday stuff, buy it now or else once it's gone, it's gone. But you might get lucky and find some leftovers, like roaming around Okachimachi or the 100-yen shop or something, for example, the resellers. That's always interesting to see. Walking around Tokyo, not everything sells right away. Couple of notes here. The postcards to Canada and to Loba. Thank you so much for the super chat that just came in. The postcards have gone out except to Canada. Japan Post is not delivering anything to Canada because of the mail strike there. They've been on strike for 27 days now. And I feel bad for my Canadian friends. But not to worry, during the four years that there was no, like, travel to Japan, there was a time where the mail was shut down. And for the few hundred Patreon supporters, I want to say thank you. I accumulated hundreds and hundreds of postcards just saving them up for you. And then once they reopened the mail, I was able to send them out. And you got, like, a barrage of postcards. And I tried to send them out slowly. They eventually all came. If they didn't, just let me know. But, yeah, these postcards might not get to Canada right away. But if you'd like one and you order it, you sign up today, it supports the channel, I will send it out to you today and it will get to you. I believe before the end of the year. If you get it in a week from now, it's probably not going to be coming in 2024. But it will get there. The postcards, I'd say, like, just a fraction of them don't make it anymore. It used to be, like, 1% or 2%. Now it's even cut down to less than 1%. So that's really great unless it gets damaged. And if you ever have a problem, I'll send you a new one with that question. This month I have an extra three Daimyo packages if you'd like to sign up to the Daimyo level. We usually — I put in here a photo of me and Leo and the family with a message of the goodies inside of here. This month we have — this is candy lemons. I love this stuff. Like, I was snacking on it all the time from the Seto region, from Okayama, Hiroshima. So good. It's all local, regional stuff here. The latest and greatest from Calbee. These super cheesy with professional wrestlers on there. That's really good. I saw — I put in here a Tomy car. And this one, every few months I put in a Tomy car because I love to collect these things. It's a truck with a truck on top — on side with a picture of the truck with another picture of the truck. So these are limited edition, I think. It just came out. So one of these is in your car, in your box, which is cool. Strawberry season. So we have the latest strawberry cookies, which are really good. They look interesting. And on the bottom here we have — this is special cookies from the north of Hokkaido. When I was up in Hokkaido, I got to know this confection maker and I ordered enough for every one of our supporters and I got some extra ones. So these are minus 41 degrees Celsius is the name of it. Minus 41. And it's done that because this is the coldest temperature recorded in Japan and the cookies are made to look like ice. I don't have a picture of it yet, but they put — I don't know how — they're so creative with confections. These cookies are so good. There's like an almond nuttiness to it with some hard caramel and a cookie. And they put on this coating of snowy ice on the top of it. And when you eat it, it's like, this is so interesting. So this is a fascinating box. I think there's eight cookies inside here and it won't melt on the way there. So that's in this month's Daimyo package. And I've got three of them left. If you send them to the Daimyo level, you also get a postcard sent to you as well. There's tracking on it. You can sign up with EMS, which takes two to three days, typically, depending on where you live, or a regular mail, which takes about seven to 10 days. So I appreciate the support, guys. This month I got three extra boxes for the holidays. If I send it out now, it should make it by Christmas for EMS. There you go. Saya has a collection. Saya, you've been in the Daimyo level for quite a while, so I'm sure you have about seven or eight of the Tomy cars. One of my — one of my favorite ones was just the postal van. They have a Japanese post office car, a little Tomy car, and they had a Japanese dump truck or garbage truck and the Japanese — the city buses. So you get Japanese culture in these little teeny Tomy car boxes, which are so cute. They collect the boxes even. It's nice to put these into the boxes to send to you every couple of months or so. The Shinkansen ones. They have a Tomy car of a truck pulling the Tohoku Shinkansen right now. They also have a Tomy car of the Neko Bus from Ghibli, which is so cool. It's like this little Neko bus on wheels. And I got one for Leo for Christmas, which is really cool. I thought I had that around here. I could have showed it to you, but he'll probably get it underneath the Christmas tree. He collects the Tomy car. His collection of Tomy cars, he's got like a hundred of them because they keep — they're more like for me because it's just like cool. You look at all these Japanese cars like, whoa, K cars and little buses and micro dump trucks and garbage trucks with Kanji on the side or ambulance. Little Japanese Hyundai ambulance. It's kind of cool. Suzuki K cars and stuff. Honda. It's kind of neat to get that. But I send these out to the Daimyo supporters every couple of months. And it's kind of neat to have a little parking garage in your house. There you go. Thanks so much for watching here. I appreciate it. If you want, you can leave a question down below. And I'll try to answer it in the comment section. But join our Discord server. I would love to see more people get onto there. Particularly if you're setting up for a trip. There's a lot of travelers here that they're sitting in their hotel rooms and they have a little bit of extra time. And they share their experience with us in the Discord server. There's a photo and video section in there. You can upload your photos and share places that you find on the road. The reason why is because I think that you should check it out is because I'm a big fan of the Thorn Tree, which was a — I think it's a pretty planet internet forum where travelers were sharing with other travelers. And when Discord came in, I saw it and Katayama introduced it to me. I didn't really see the value in it. But now I can see how this is more of a meeting place for everybody in the community. And I think we have an amazing community of really fun, good people. And everybody's helping everybody out. I like that. I'll help you as much as I can. And if you can't find me, we have some new moderators. We have some new moderators, right? HelloHi? We just added some new moderators. Yeah. Yeah. We have two new moderators, Picon and Pirate Queen. Welcome. Thank you for all the work in the community. Pirate Queen's been there for quite a while. One of the most active members on the Discord server. So I appreciate that and helping to make the server as good a place. It's still the internet — as good a place as we can. As good as we can. As good as any of the other places. So thanks so much for watching. Tomorrow I'll be back out on the streets taking you around. But if you have any questions, anytime go to our Discord server or leave them in the comments below. I might just cut it out and paste it to you. I didn't hit this one here, but I can leave you with this question and you can answer it in the questions below. A lot of people are saying that Shibuya in the comments is overrated, meaning it doesn't match the hype. And I was like, really? I think it's a sensory overload, which is the attraction to Shibuya, like Times Square or Piccadilly Circus in London, for example. So it's got that going for it. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is Shibuya a must visit place in Tokyo? Is it something that you could skip? Is there another place that might be equivalent? Or is it just a waste of time? Or is it something we should just wait until 2027 when the construction finishes? Because it's kind of a mess getting around there. But I think it's still a place that you should go, but not a place that you should get a hotel. I don't think that it's — I think it's just too much construction. It's just too busy. It's too loud. And it just depends on you, what kind of person you are. My recommendation is going north to Ueno, Okachimachi, Akihabara even, or Asakusa, which is the cultural heart of Tokyo. I think that's a much better and probably cheaper stay. Or Ryogoku for the budget accommodations. But I'd love to hear what you guys say. Leave me a comment and I might cut it up, ask it as a question. Because I can actually filter questions only. If you ask a question, I can just check that out. And then I'll just screenshot it and bring it up and try to present you with a Q&A for each one of these episodes because it helps everybody. A lot of people are thinking the same things.

00:58:51 John Daub: See you!

00:58:56 HelloHi821 (Jim): Thanks, Jim! Thank you!

00:58:59 John Daub: Katayama! You're welcome!