00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo. Greetings, how are you doing on this really chilly Sunday afternoon here in Tokyo? In this episode, I wanted to talk about the exchange rate. If you take a look at it on the map here, the exchange rate chart, it's at 156, 157. A couple of days ago, it hit that peak of 157 and it keeps getting weaker and weaker and the dollar keeps getting stronger and stronger.

00:00:27 John Daub: I started looking at the data and just recently on Instagram on one of the reels, I saw this thing popped up here. It was mapping out from 1963 to 2023 and you saw Japan was on the top of the list for one of the world's richest countries per capita. Then all of a sudden, it started to just shrink off around 2018. I was like, what? I couldn't believe that by 2023, it's not even on the map. Canada is there and I can't believe Canada, which has been somewhat stagnant. I'm suffering with Justin Trudeau and all the other turmoil that's going on there. Shout out to my Canadian friends and family over there. It's a really tough time.

00:01:06 John Daub: It looks like this is what worried me the most. I didn't really realize how bad Japan's per capita income is. This is something that is of great concern to me. I'll talk about that in this live stream. I wanted to first talk about why the Japanese yen keeps getting weaker and weaker. Some people have been talking about this online. If you take a look at the interest rates around the world, the interest rates after the pandemic have been going up, except in Japan.

00:01:37 John Daub: Japan has had deflation for decades. The economy is not strong. The Bank of Japan just simply does not want to raise interest rates. If they did, that would strengthen the yen. But nobody wants to invest in Japan when the interest rates are 0.01 or 0.03%. Why would you put your money here? There's a lot of reasons why Japan is not growing. Japan is not raising the interest rates.

00:01:57 John Daub: The new Prime Minister, Prime Minister Ishiba, who came in a couple of months ago, it seems like a couple of months ago now, doesn't seem to have a lot of energy as a Prime Minister. I'm not going to judge him yet, but it just doesn't seem like he's got a lot of energy. He was seen at some economic conferences keeping to himself, playing with his smartphone while all the other leaders are discussing things. He's not a very engaging person, it doesn't seem. It was somewhat concerning to see that on Japanese TV, which doesn't give us a lot of hope.

00:02:28 John Daub: But one of the things that he did do was he told the Bank of Japan that he didn't want to see any rate increases. This automatically signals to investors, yeah, you know what? Japanese yen is... the US dollar is a better bet than the Japanese yen, so now it keeps getting weaker and weaker. We had it this year at a low of about 140 yen to the dollar. I have a chart here which shows it. Here it is. So it was at 140 yen to the dollar on September 16th, and now it's gone up to 156. That's like a 10% decrease in the strength of the yen. That means that tourists are as rich as they were at probably the worst time for the Japanese yen last year. It was like 160 to the dollar. You guys remember that? That was crazy.

00:03:21 John Daub: I think we're going to surpass that this time when I look and explain to you some of the data here. And it just like freaked me out. I went to Hawaii about a little bit over a year ago. Shout out to our Hawaii viewers who are still awake watching this. Aloha. And I noticed something really significant. There weren't almost no Japanese tourists. The people that were coming up to say hi to me on Waikiki Beach were Hawaiians that watched this show and very few Japanese at all. It was just crazy to me. I was like, where are the Japanese? It was just because Japanese yen is so weak, Japanese tourists aren't traveling. But it's a lot deeper than just the strength of the yen and the lack of it.

00:04:05 John Daub: It has to do a lot with the fact that in Japan, Japanese corporations are not raising wages. And the Japanese per capita income keeps frozen at $39,000 per person per year. There's an asterisk here because I think in America, we're seeing the richer getting richer. You know, there's one guy, a very smart guy, who's worth almost a billion dollars, Elon Musk. It's fantastic to see his success. Take that out of it. The guy is making a lot of money and that's a good thing. Now, we don't have that kind of wealth from individuals here in Japan except for Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank.

00:04:54 John Daub: And the point I want to make here is that he is investing his money, not so much in Japan. Of course he is, but not as much. He's investing in the United States. He was on the stage with the incoming president where he said he's going to be investing $100 billion. That's pretty significant. And probably more than that, that's pretty crazy that he's investing in the American economy more so than the Japanese economy. Because there's a lot more growth there than there is here, except in tourism. And WXRTourism in the house, how you doing? Long time no see.

00:05:31 John Daub: I think that tourism is going to be one of the growing factors to Japan's economy because they're getting in all that foreign income. I see the numbers increasing over the next five, six years because of the weakness of the Japanese yen and the strength of the dollar among other currencies. It just seems like Japan is going to get leapfrogged by other nations. And when you look at this, this is what's happening. This is the thing that worries me the most, not the exchange rate. And you can see it. This is the last year. I also have the exchange rate over the last several years here. This is the five-year. You can see it just went around the pandemic. It's like 107 to the dollar. And then it just keeps getting weaker and weaker.

00:06:20 John Daub: And there's some valleys. And then there's some booms. And it looks like we're about to boom up past the 160 from July 6, 2024. It looks like we're going to be booming up to 160. And there's a very good chance of this. Anything can still happen. But just if you look at the trends, it looks like we had a valley, 140. Now it looks like we're ready to boom up. So I took this chart that I saw on the Instagram reels. And I saw it through time as Japan got strong and then got weak below the Canadians. Just crazy. Which is a shame. Canada is such a rich resource country. I'm concerned for my friends there.

00:07:07 John Daub: So the year 2000, United States per capita income was $36,000 per year. Japan was $39,000 per year. Japanese had more money, more disposable income, more opportunities to travel than Americans. It was just Japan's economy was pretty good at the turn of the millennium. We're going to fast forward through here to history. Now we have 2010. America's income is higher than 36,000. But Japan was still much higher in 2010. If you look on the chart next to me, which is 2018. This chart shows that the per capita income of the United States is $63,000 and Japan's is $39,000. You see, like the per capita income has gone down in Japan. That means Japanese have less money than they did before.

00:08:21 John Daub: That means there's going to be less tourists out there traveling. Japanese are going to be staying put in Japan, traveling domestically in Japan. So you got that going on there. Less people going to Hawaii. Everybody who's thinking the Japanese are going to return to Hawaii, I don't see it for a very long time, which is concerning for the Hawaiian tourism industry. I know that in a lot of other places that rely on Japanese tourists get ready for domestic tourism in Hawaii.

00:08:50 John Daub: But this is where the things really freaked me out. So you guys see in 2028 to 2024 here. Here's the map for today. Japan's per capita income is $32,000 per year, right? And the United States is around $80,000 according to the map. Can see the US one here. $86,000 per year per capita income. There's been an increase because a lot of people are making more money. But it looks like the United States is $50,000 more per capita income than Japan in just six years. That's crazy.

00:09:35 John Daub: The International Monetary Fund had this chart. Well, you can try whether or not you trust them is up to you. $102,000 per year per capita in America in 2029. Japan's at 42,000. It's just a rise in the next four years of $3,000. Wage growth looks like stagnant as it's almost nothing in Japan where the United States looks like things are just going to explode depending on how the next four years go with the new president. That's pro-business. Things are pretty good. I think for the US and it doesn't look so good for Japan.

00:10:15 John Daub: And this is something that scares the crap out of me because in 2029 Japanese will be making less money than they did 30 years ago. And Americans will be making more than double. And what does that mean for the Japanese who want to travel? It's going to be harder and harder to find jobs that pay well. And the caveat here again is like we don't know how much like we have super rich in America and we have like super poverty in America. And that is something that's not unique to any other country. It's just out there. It's in Japan. We have poverty as well. But more people are in the middle. So there's a lot of people who are comfortable.

00:11:17 John Daub: They do not in the same kind of poverty as they would be in the United States. CEOs don't make as much as the CEOs in the United States and the people who are in complete poverty don't make as little as the people in the United States. So Japan is more in the middle, I think. But when that middle keeps shifting down comparatively to the United States, whether or not the rich are making so much more in the United States, everybody's making more money. The rising tide lifts all boats, so to speak. So it might not be as much, but definitely people are making more money in the United States than they are in Japan. There's more opportunity in the United States than there is Japan.

00:11:41 John Daub: And seeing Masayoshi Son with incoming President Trump talking about a mega investment of $100 billion, a pledge of it, maybe more. That is something that's quite significant. Everybody pay attention to because these are people who know some stuff that's going on here. And that's what concerns me. So when I look at the charts and I'm looking at the purchasing power of the Japanese traveler and the citizens and the purchasing power of the American traveler who's coming here. And I look at the trend marks going back for five years. This is concerning as can be over the last five years.

00:12:26 John Daub: And it looks like when you hit that valley, which I couldn't really see it, it looked like Japanese economy could be getting stronger. It's just like the Bank of Japan can't raise the interest rates. And I don't think that they're going to be doing it for quite a long time. And as long as the Bank of Japan does not raise interest rates and the United States continues to have a more practical financial monetary policy, if the economic worries, if something does happen, then the US has a little bit of flexibility to lower the rates again. Japan's got nowhere to go but negative now. So I mean, there's a lot of risk to the Japanese yen. And with stuff brewing with our neighbors on the other side of the Sea of Japan, it's quite concerning on what the future of Japan is going to look like.

00:13:11 John Daub: I'm just saying it's going to be somewhere between 150 and 200 yen to the dollar unless things change. And the thing is, anything can change. Things can change real quickly. And I've seen over the last 26 years of living here, I've seen the yen go to 78 yen to the dollar. And I've seen the yen now at 160 to the dollar. So nothing surprises me anymore. But it's still very much looking at the trends, more probable than not that it's going to be somewhere between 150 and 200 yen to the dollar. And Japanese are going to be making less and less comparatively to their American friends across the Pacific Ocean. And that concerns me.

00:13:50 John Daub: And it concerns me because, you know, I'm glad I'm on YouTube. And I can make a living off of this platform. But we're going to see more and more people in Japan doing worse and worse. And more and more people from abroad coming and moving here. And they're going to be, hopefully, becoming residents of Japan and supporting some of these towns. Because the declining population is going to hit real hard. It's going to hit real hard in Japan over the next 5 years, 10 years. There's no relief to be seen. Kids are not having kids. New people aren't getting married. Kids aren't having as many kids. There's not a lot of financial incentive to have kids. The system needs a complete and utter overhaul.

00:14:33 John Daub: I look at the school and the education system in Japan. It is like based off of the Shōwa era. The teachers don't really teach. You have to memorize the stuff. And then you have to go to a juku (cram school) afterwards, which costs parents an arm and a leg. If you want to go to a private school or an international school, it's ridiculous. Now that I have a kid, I'm looking into this stuff. It's really hard to be a kid right now. And the Japanese just don't know how to change the system. It's just really hard.

00:15:10 John Daub: And unless there's some kind of change there and it makes it easier, more affordable, it's just the population decline has a lot of repercussions to the Japanese economy that we don't see often on the surface. And education is probably one of the biggest ones that we should pay more attention to. There's not enough teachers in Japan to teach the kids. And the teachers that are teaching right now are old. They're kind of unable to change. And that's what they need the most of. They need the best teachers in Japan. We don't really have them. There are some good teachers in Japan. But it's really challenging right now because you don't have a talent pool that is very large or increasing. You have a talent drain because they're just passing away now or retiring. And that scares me.

00:16:04 John Daub: Because if you don't have a really strong education system, then the future of your country is kind of not going to look as bright. Am I optimistic about the future? Yeah, in a way. Because I deal with tourists and tourism and I have that opportunity that a lot of Japanese don't. So there's a lot of growth for what I do. But there's not a lot of growth for the majority of the Japanese. And that scares me.

00:16:20 John Daub: The other thing is the tech sector is here. I see DJI and a lot of the other tech companies in China that are able to diversify and innovate and make exciting products. And we don't see that so much in Japan anymore. The innovation has kind of stagnated because the risk is high and reward the way the Japanese big corporations see risk and trying to avoid it. Chinese companies see reward and they're willing to take more risks. And I'm seeing Chinese companies create products that are on par or better than a lot of the Japanese. Why doesn't a Japan maker make a good smartphone? Why can't they do that? The innovation is not there. The ability to take risks, to think outside and be disruptive in the market isn't there anymore. And that worries me. Whereas America still has that advantage comparatively.

00:17:12 John Daub: I'm going to go a little bit off on a metaphor here. But I see like college football. Because Ohio State just beat Tennessee. Sorry to the volunteers. We love Tennessee and Ohio. But that was a tough loss for them. Anyways, we're starting to see like players going into this transfer protocol and coming from one team to the other. Whereas you were on the same team for life. If you got recruited, you were on that team. You didn't really transfer. Now you can transfer at any time and join another team, a winning team. Japan is now... the countries are now sort of in the situation where Japan can bring in talent because it's such a desirable place to live.

00:17:56 John Daub: Everybody who's graduating from the top universities in the United States, Japan should give them a permanent residency visa and say, come to Japan. We want the most talented people to come here and live here. We'll give you a free house and the government will subsidize you with an amazing salary for the first three years until you can help to grow and foster an entrepreneurial business to help to compete. I think Japan could do something like that. And that's probably their only hope. Unless the education system can be revamped, they can start to be more competitive internationally and they can kind of try to shift a little bit the risk and reward which is so deeply ingrained in the culture, they can shift that where they take more risks.

00:18:39 John Daub: That's a sweet car. This is why I love to stand on the side of the street. The cars rolling by, they give me a little bit of energy. It's a good thing. Hey, Michael. Sasa'a no aloha. I can't wait to come and visit you. It's probably going to be sooner than later because I think it would make a lot of sense if the yen is going to get to 175 to the dollar to see you when it's 150. Right now, it's like a bargain. It's really cold outside.

00:19:04 John Daub: All right, everybody. That's all I had to talk about. I love live streaming and I love a chance to be able to talk with you like this because the comments are probably going to refute what I have to say. There's going to be some people that are economists, people that are very closely related to the banking industry or the monetary policy industry that might chime in. So take a look at the comments below. I respect everybody's dissenting opinions as well as those that also see the trends that I'm kind of seeing here. This is like obvious stuff. You could feel it coming along a mile away.

00:19:34 John Daub: I saw some positive stuff in the summer. I thought maybe there's going to be some young blood coming in and then they elected Ishiba who is still young but he lost his government. Now it's much more fragmented government in Japan. It's harder for them to get policy through. They weren't doing a great job anyways. I don't think there's innovation happening in government. I don't think there's a lot of good policy either. So they need to do that. There needs to be some young leaders that come in as well. But I think it's time for that generation to sort of bow out and for the newer generation to come in and start coming up with some innovation and competitiveness and more energy.

00:20:13 John Daub: Because what I saw from Prime Minister Ishiba, he seems like a great guy. Very low energy to take a quote from incoming President Trump, number 47. Low energy and not a lot of innovation coming from him. And that scares me a little bit because this is the time where we don't need somebody like that. We need somebody who's going to be pushing ahead and getting people really excited. And I don't see that yet. Jared's here. Aloha. Please don't stand so close to the road. I'm going to be fine, Jared. I'm not as close as the camera makes you think. I'm about two meters away from the edge of the road. So I'm good.

00:21:07 John Daub: I think, you know, it's going to take somebody who's very much... I don't think a lot of this has to do with politics. Except for a politician that recognizes that they need to bring in more talented people, entrepreneurs into Japan to come up with disruptive businesses that challenge the likes of these big corporations. Toshiba is not really innovating anymore. Panasonic, we're not seeing massive innovation from them either. Toyota is doing some innovative things with hydrogen instead of EV, which might be the solution since there's just not enough power in the world to power this EV revolution. There's just not enough. It's just impossible without nuclear power to be able to do what they require to have by 2030 or 2050. You just can't meet those goals.

00:21:56 John Daub: And is it really more environmentally friendly? Like you have to find a way to get a balance between what's actually possible and what isn't. Toyota is doing some really exciting stuff with hydrogen and they're sort of betting on that as much as EV batteries, lithium batteries. So hydrogen seems to be something that... I might try to rent a car. You could actually rent one of the hydrogen cars from Toyota Rent-A-Car in Japan. That's pretty cool. The Toyota Rent-A-Cars have the Mirai, which is a hydrogen car that you can rent. In fact, if you guys are interested in it, I would totally make an episode on it. Let me know in Patreon.

00:22:51 John Daub: I don't know if it's something that interests you, but the innovation that we're seeing from Toyota, when everybody's going one direction, sometimes you got to go the other direction. Because that direction could be the breakthrough that everybody's looking at. And hydrogen, right now, it's very much too energy inefficient to produce hydrogen for these cars right now. But innovation can make it a lot easier where it's more cost-effective to use hydrogen and more efficient than it is for the other sources than just making electricity. Ammonia, right. Daniel, exactly. And we got plenty of that. So, I'm really big on Toyota, actually. They're the largest car maker in the world. When they're going in a direction, maybe they got the answer. And again, that's one of the few companies in Japan that's innovating.

00:23:41 John Daub: That scares me. Sony tried to make a drone. They couldn't do it. Sony tries to make a smartphone. They never put out the good stuff because they just are so risk-averse or they're trying to be too greedy and they're trying to stagnate it so the next version is more powerful. That's not how it works, Sony. Release the best thing that you can release right now to get everybody talking about it and investing into your brand. So, everybody buys a Sony smartphone. That's not how they do it, though. And that worries me. That does worry me about the future.

00:24:09 John Daub: I think that there's going to be some turnaround here. I think that they're going to get... Because Japan is such a desirable place to live and the US is a harder place to live, I could see how smart Americans or smart people from India, for example, a lot of them go to the United States, they might start coming to Japan instead. You know, we need doctors. We need nurses. We need a lot of people in the medical field. Everybody talks about how great Japan's healthcare is.

00:24:43 John Daub: About a year ago, Leo had a fever of 104. We were just scared to death. It just spiked. So we had to call an ambulance. And the ambulance came. It took about 12 minutes. And he's breathing heavy. It scared the heck out of us. Any parent, you understand what I'm talking about. Ambulance came. I'd never seen Leo got so scared. He loves ambulances. But then when he had to go inside of one, he was so scared. They're putting something on his finger. It was going beep, beep, beep. All these noises around there. This is like middle of the night. And the ambulance is calling around looking for a hospital to take Leo.

00:25:24 John Daub: The first responders, such amazing people, they instantly said, like, I think he's going to be okay. It's really concerning right now. They had some medication that they could give to him to bring down his fever. It just looks like he had a really bad influenza or something. And his fever broke. And he was okay the next day. Like, he still had a fever for a couple of days, but not at that level anymore. It was scary. But what scared me even more, they had no hospital where they could have taken him. They said, well, we could take him to a hospital, but it's going to be like a 30-minute ambulance ride or something.

00:26:01 John Daub: And we're like, if you say he's going to be okay, and he seems to be talking, and he's not passing out... He looked like he was going to pass out. His eyes rolled around. But after the ambulance, it's like the situation where you go to the doctor's office, you're really sick, and when the doctor sees you, you start feeling better. Maybe that was part of it. Heart to the first responders, absolutely, we don't have enough of them in Japan. We don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough capacity at the hospitals. And despite the fact that we have this healthcare system that's really good and very inexpensive, we don't have enough of them.

00:26:36 John Daub: So if you do have a heart attack in Tokyo, there's a good chance that you die in the ambulance waiting for a place to open up because there's just not enough doctors to take care of you. That scares the crud out of me, which is why you see me losing weight. Like, I was in bad shape during the pandemic. I'm losing, I lost a lot of weight, intermittent fasting, trying to eat as little carbs as possible, running more, exercising more. And the reason why is I want to try to stay in as good shape because I want to stay out of the Japanese hospitals. Now, they do have good care here. They just don't have enough doctors.

00:27:16 John Daub: It might be a worldwide problem, but they just don't have enough. They could bring in nurses and doctors from the Philippines that have a lot as well because they get paid pretty well here in Japan or a little bit better. But the tests that are required to come into Japan are too strict and they're starting to loosen them up, in particular to get nurses from the Philippines. And Vietnam, who are fantastic healthcare providers, I'd love to see that happen because we definitely need it. But there are a lot of concerns in the Japanese economy. That's just one of them.

00:27:56 John Daub: I know, like, you don't want to get sick in Japan. I almost drink no alcohol now. I have a glass of wine maybe once a week. So if I open up a bottle, the bottle will last about two weeks. I don't open up a lot of bottles. I'll drink some sake with Kanae's father every now and then. But I rarely drink alcohol now and I'm trying my very best to stay healthy. And I hope all of you are doing well too. There's nothing wrong if you want to eat some high fructose corn syrup or maybe some extra chugs of eggnog. I'm probably going to do that as well over the next couple of days. But it's important that you all stay healthy out there and take care of your bodies, which is the temple. You have to take good care of it, keep it clean. And it's hard to resist the delicious foods that we have all over. But again, like when I see the lack of health, when we went through that thing with Leo not being able to find a hospital that would take him, it scared me. It really did.

00:28:56 John Daub: All right, everybody, take care. Leave comments down below. I love having the back and forth with you on this kind of a topic. I'm sure we'll have some professionals that chimed in the last time I talked about currency exchange. But it looks like, you know, right now it's at 156. It could go down again to 148. But it looks like it's going to keep blowing up because it just doesn't look like there's a lot to invest in Japan. And a lot of Japanese investors, the rich that we do have, they're investing in the United States. They're investing abroad. They're investing in pro-business places. It's kind of worrying. Just a little bit.

00:29:32 John Daub: Darkest night. Nighttime writes in here, Merry Christmas and thank you for your consistency. I really appreciate that. Merry Christmas to you, too. You know what? We're going to be doing a Christmas Eve for you in the US special. I'll probably live stream some of the packages. This is the first time that Leo's going to be opening his packages. I love Christmas. We're probably not going to be doing Christmas in Japan next year. Might be going back to the US. So I think it might be a good time to do a Christmas special and share Christmas on Christmas Eve for you, Christmas Day. Maybe for a couple of presents and share with you some of our family. I'm going to try to make gingerbread men tomorrow. So have a little bit of Christmas here.

00:30:21 John Daub: The pay is $12 an hour. It's really low for minimum wage in Japan, but there's no incentive to raise it, to be honest with you, like in the United States. It's just because the business owners aren't making as much money either. There's a percentage. I'm glad that you brought that up. There's a point where the minimum wage, even if they did raise the minimum wage here in Japan, I don't think it would really make that much of a dent. The people that are working in the baito (part-time jobs), are students that are living at home. This is all just spending money to them. And these are the people who staff the restaurants, the other industries. It's a bigger problem than just the amount of money that they have for minimum wage. Not a lot of people are working on minimum wage to support their family. They're working on salaries from corporations. Minimum wage is something for baito, and it's not the same kind of an issue and not comparable to the United States.

00:31:10 John Daub: I don't think that the wages are going to be going up, but they've been about the same, like about 1,000 yen to 1,200 yen for a very long time. So I don't think that's going to be changing over the next for a while, but it'll eventually go up. Wages have to go up in Japan. Salaries have to go up in Japan or else, I don't know. Just to reiterate, because I think it's fascinating. In the year 2000, you can see the United States was making $36,000 a year per capita income, and Japan was making $39,000 a year per capita income. And if we look at the data for 2029, the United States is making $102,000 per capita income, and Japan is making less or about the same as it did in 2000. That is crazy. That's crazy. And that signals something that really worries me.

00:32:13 John Daub: The disposable income in the United States is only going to go up for the majority of people, and it's going to go down for the majority of people in Japan. And yeah, no more trips to Hawaii and no more trips to Guam and these places that rely on Japanese tourism. It's very concerning. When I saw that, that really worried me. Just a little bit of a tidbit. And if you're in the industry, chime down in the comments below, and let's have a conversation about it, because I'd love to do that.

00:32:44 John Daub: P. Morton writes in here, my wife has worked on a temp contract for 10 years at the same company. Her benefits are better on the contract than becoming a permanent worker. That makes a lot of sense. Is that here in Japan, right? So that could be, everybody's situation is going to be a little bit different. It also depends on the field that you're working in and the desire to do that. Companies that are investing abroad more like Sony, have a lot more disposable income to be able to pay workers better because their income is being made in the United States and their operating costs in Japan are a lot lower. So those companies are Uniqlo. We're going to see Japanese corporations do everything that they possibly can to break into the United States market.

00:33:29 John Daub: We're going to have to see more like Japanese fast food, maybe Yoshinoya start to make more inroads in the US economy. Ramen chains are going to have to make inroads in the American economy in order to survive. Japan Inc. is going to have to look outside of the tourism and start to set up outside of Japan to get that foreign income because they're not going to have the same kind of country if we don't start to compete internationally and get that. Because we're going to have to rely on the tourist industry and right now that's going to be a place of total growth. It just feels like it. But unless companies start to go to the United States and take advantage of Japan's strong brand there, it's going to be really hard to pay your workers if you're paying them in yen, making yen. Because the Japanese can't afford to pay more for a bowl of gyūdon (beef bowl), as an American would. So the cost of that American beef that they use is only going to go up. You know what I mean? You can sense it here.

00:34:38 John Daub: Sid P. writes in here, are you ready for the new movie Karate Kid? I am. You know what? It made me think that it's time perhaps to go to Okinawa and make a karate episode. What do you guys think? It's time to go to Okinawa and track down the origins of karate and do it as my Daniel LaRusso. Embrace. Growing up in 1984, I got to tell you, the Karate Kid was maybe the worst thing that happened to me in my life. However, it's time to embrace what was once the worst thing and turn that into something else.

00:35:11 John Daub: This is the meaning of the Japanese meaning of Only in Japan. This is a live streaming channel. Only in Japan means that it's a quirky, not a positive thing. Like, oh, that's only in Japan, where some of those wacky stuff that you see on the Internet. And I said, well, okay, let's turn that around. It's just a positive stuff here with that. But I'm taking the Karate Kid and let's turn that into a positive. Poor Daniel LaRusso. Poor Ralph Macchio, typecast as Daniel LaRusso. He turned that into a positive and now he's spinning it into the Cobra Kai and doing quite well for himself and all of the cast of the movies in the past. I love it. I love it. Thanks guys. Merry Christmas. I'll see you again tomorrow another live stream as the sun goes down in Japan sun goes down before 5 p.m. now.