00:01 John Daub: It is a beautiful afternoon here in Tokyo. You can see there's the Skytree. It feels like spring is here. And a lot of people have been contacting me about visiting Japan in relation to the influenza outbreak that is happening or has happened. I'm going to talk about this in as much detail as possible.

00:22 John Daub: This is the news article on Barbie Hsu who died from contracting influenza in Japan. She was an actress in Taiwan. She was only 48 years old, got sick, and yeah, the flu this year got a lot of attention because of this. It really kind of panicked a lot of people that are watching because Japan, especially Tokyo and Kyoto, very much crowded with people. It's a very crowded area where it's easy to catch the flu or the cold and all sorts of stuff here. It's different than if you're living out in your hometown, your countryside. When you come to a big city like Tokyo, especially riding public transportation, expect to get sick. It's just sort of part of it.

01:12 John Daub: So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this and kind of put people at ease. I went into the NIID (National Institute of Infectious Diseases) website. This is where the official data is for influenza and whatnot. This is a website that I use to get information about the flu. I'm just going to go through the information that I have. I think it's good to look at the facts here, so we'll talk about it after taking a look at these graphs. They show you and highlight where the peak areas are. In October, there was no influenza reported, but it started up pretty quickly in November, which is a little bit early. Hokkaido is always going to be pretty big because of all the tourism that's going on there, in particular around Sapporo and Hakodate, that area. You can see it got around December. It got really hot around the end of the year with the influenza infections. You can see on week 52 of 2024, which is the last week of the year, it's all red. Yeah, it was pretty bad. You see Hokkaido starting to get over it. They peaked there. And you can see going into February, it's pretty much subsided. And in the beginning of February, you could see last week was not really much of an issue.

02:24 John Daub: So I'm going to say that this influenza outbreak is probably done. The graph that I think, and I'm only getting this because this was in the news and a lot of people are talking about it. The influenza season is different in each country, I suppose. In Japan, we already peaked like in December and January. So I'm not too worried about it. And on a day like this where it's gotten a little bit warmer, I'm starting to get spring fever, which is a dangerous thing. But I would say do not cancel your trip to Japan just because of the flu. There are some things that you can do about it, but that doesn't mean that you should cancel your trip or avoid Japan. And you definitely don't have to wear a mask if you don't want to.

03:24 John Daub: Let me walk down and get into the sunshine here because it's a little bit warmer down here. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do to protect yourself. You can get the influenza vaccine, which is one of the things that we've been doing every couple of years. Because the strains are different all over the place. It seems to have done a lot of good in the past for our family. So we typically will do that, especially when you have a kid, a child in your family who's going to get sick quite a bit.

04:07 John Daub: And I want to show you something else from yesterday's live stream. Yeah, I was really unfortunate about Barbie's death. I didn't really know about her until this happened. So it's kind of a shame. Looked like a lovely person. Seemed very talented. Influenza is something that gets a lot of people every day, every year. We don't talk about it because it's so prevalent. And for the most part, if you have a good immune system, you're going to be fine. One of the reasons why influenza is so bad in Japan, I think, is because people just don't get enough sunshine. Vitamin D3, which is the sunshine vitamin, it's something that people stay inside in their office buildings, stay inside playing video games and digital stuff. They don't get enough sunshine, so they're more susceptible to getting quite sick. Diets aren't as good as they were maybe 10, 15 years ago. More people eating flour and wheat and stuff like this. Less organic foods. More inflammation in Japan than there was. Less people drinking green tea. So people are getting a little bit more sick more seriously over the last 15, 20 years, according to the data. But people got sick all the time just because it's Tokyo, right? It's hard to avoid getting it.

05:28 John Daub: I remember meeting a 106-year-old woman. She said she'd never been sick in her entire life. She didn't eat processed foods and was always drinking green tea, lived a very clean lifestyle and very rarely got sick. She said she never got sick. Maybe she forgot about it but it's quite impressive. She's still working at 106 years old in the farm field in Tottori, which is amazing.

05:54 John Daub: But there's lots of things that you could do. Make sure you get some sleep before your flight. Jet lag is something that's going to wear down your immune system. Make sure you're taking vitamin D. Most people are vitamin D deficient. Make sure you're getting enough zinc, things like this. Make sure you're eating right. Maybe lay off the processed foods for the next 48 to 72 hours before your trip. Make sure you get your body into some good shape. Maybe go do some exercise, get some good sleep. And you should be fine.

06:37 John Daub: If you do get sick in Tokyo, there are places where you can get an international doctor. We just had one of my friends from Hawaii came to visit and we took—I advised him to go to an English-speaking doctor at Tokyo Station. There's an international clinic there inside of Tokyo Station on the Yaesu side near the bus terminal. They'll give you prescription drugs, maybe something not quite as strong as you might get in your own country. But getting sick in Japan kind of sucks. So you want to kind of try to not do that, right? Just as a common sense, you don't want to get sick here. Try to avoid it as much as possible.

07:18 John Daub: UFO Bob, I don't think vitamin C makes a big difference. I've been looking at the studies. But vitamin C is sort of like—you have to take it naturally. Make sure you get enough citrus and stuff like that. But taking vitamin C pills is not quite as good as getting enough sunlight. Sunlight is more important. Everybody's going to have to do what they have to do. So just take that with a grain of salt and do your own research. The flu shot, probably a good idea to get it like three weeks to a month in advance because it takes some time to build up that immunity. But again, if it can reduce the impact on your trip to Japan, probably a good idea because if you do get influenza, you're going to be knocked out for a couple of days instead of a week. That's a big difference. So at this stage though, looking at the data, it looks like we are done. The peak was in the beginning of the year. And now when you look at February, the flu season looks like it peaked early and it's gone.

08:30 John Daub: I don't know what people are going to be bringing in, the visitors from Japan, so who knows. But it's good just to be vigilant. We do have an outbreak of the bird flu virus, and the Japan Self-Defense Force had to neutralize 400,000 chickens. I think it was a couple million. So egg prices might go up, but we haven't seen that in Japan at the same level in the U.S. There's no Tylenol in Japan that I can remember seeing. I would bring your own if you're worried about it. The medicines in Japan are absolutely not as potent. But don't bring a lot of it. Make sure you check it out. I made a video about this about two years ago talking about prescription drugs. And maybe if you're bringing in a lot of them, especially for heart medication or things that might be on the banned list, you definitely need to check that out. You can just Google it in YouTube, search "only in Japan go drugs, bringing prescription drugs into Japan." And you'll find it up there. It saved a lot of people. A lot of people went and got their certificate. A couple of people did get stopped. And that certificate really saved them a lot of trouble. And most of the people don't get stopped at all.

10:40 John Daub: So you might want to bring your own medication if that's something you're worried about. But just bring a personal amount. Don't bring a lot of it. I think Advil has a banned substance here. But I don't really get sick because I have pretty good vitamin D levels. And I try to stay in shape, get enough sunshine and exercise. And I've been really doing a good job keeping off of processed foods and sugar and intermittent fasting as much. Well, not overdoing it, but staying in as good shape so you don't get sick.

11:26 John Daub: Happy Valentine's Day, by the way. Kanae, my wife, it's her responsibility to get the men in the family Valentine's chocolate. So she got me and Leo the same thing so we wouldn't fight. Because we both have a mindset of a 12-year-old. Meaning that Leo is quite mature for his age of 3. But we both got the same thing so we wouldn't fight about it. Although he got 12 in his and I got 9 in mine. I don't know how this company justifies it. But apparently I got less than Leo did. So I'm not quite happy about that. But we did get to share the chocolate brownies, which were really good, microwaved slightly. So thank you to Kanae. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody still in the US. We have White Day so March 14th. We have to reciprocate and give Kanae, our wife, and all the women in our lives something in return then.

12:21 John Daub: Yesterday's livestream was a really interesting one. Sorry about the audio issues. But I got a ton of comments. It had to do with yesterday about racism in Japan. But it was more than that. Yesterday's livestream was fascinating because I've been seeing an increase in rage bait. Where people will come without talking with the business. Japanese will put out a sign to try to avoid any kind of confrontation. Because people are risk averse here. If they can't do the job perfectly, it's better not to do it at all.

13:02 John Daub: So I got this comment from somebody and I respond to it. And I thought this was an interesting response. The comments are fascinating on this one. So I think there are a lot of places to get a haircut for English speakers. But I think it's very scary for Japanese. Not used to cutting foreigners' hair because of the reactions if they make a mistake. Especially due to communication. They don't expect to make a mistake. They're professionals. But if they did, Westerners in particular, all foreigners seem to get quite upset. And Japanese are a little bit more composed. It can be quite scary. We see it on TV too. So the Japanese media I'm sure is propagating this. Hair is a personal thing. People don't want to look bad. So barbers and stylists want to be perfect. In particular in Japan. And this is my experience 27 years here. It's a weakness and a strength. This ideal of trying to be perfect. It's a weakness and a strength depending on how one looks at it. Don't do something because you can't be perfect at it. This is something that I've had to talk to a lot of Japanese friends about. You're never going to be perfect at it unless you start to do it. But a lot of my friends would try to go to school and perfect skills or learn something before they even started to do it. And that was a weakness I thought. Look, you're just going to have to do it and learn as you go along. And that's how you'll get better at it and perfect it. But a lot of Japanese are scared to do that. So they study and take seminars and pay money to go to school. And they have to be gurus and stuff to try to get perfect. And they end up never doing it at all. Which is a shame.

14:30 John Daub: We've got a friend here, pigeon. Sorry, scared him. I had friends who didn't do something because they didn't feel they were ready. But most of the time you learn by doing it. It's not the usual way in Japan though. Despite it being so in the West. So just Japan is a different way of doing things. And I think it's important that those that are visiting Japan understand that. In Japan, when you are a professional and you're doing something like hair cutting. And I compare it to surgery. It's kind of the same thing. Although somebody chastised me for comparing surgery with getting a haircut. Look, they both got scissors, man. And both has to do with health in a way. You got a healthy haircut. But the fact was that if you can't do something perfectly in Japan, they just don't want to do it at all. They'd rather avoid it because they cannot give you a product that they feel is up to standard. And one of the great things about Japan is you don't have to tip. So you're not tipping for the service. I think which is great.

15:45 John Daub: Nevertheless, we're going to see more of this rage baiting. And that's the issue of yesterday's live stream. It really upsets me. But I think people are getting used to this. I don't know if it was because of the last election or what. But the rage, like the selected rage and selected people being selectively offended by something. I think a lot of people in particular, those that are watching here, are not triggered by that anymore. And I'm seeing even the reaction starting to go down on rage baiting. It doesn't work as well. It doesn't work the same way as it did maybe two, three, four years ago. Because they're just sick and tired of it. And we know that we understand when it happens that you cannot say Japanese are racist. You just can't say that because you're grouping in an entire group of people. That all of a sudden you're saying 130 million people are like—you can't do that. Everybody's different. Every single country around the world has this issue. To throw that word around just so freely I think is something that is just really in many ways hurt the US in the political discussions. In the discussions, the talking heads news doesn't seem like it's news. People don't research it so much. Everyone's giving their opinions nowadays. And they throw that word out like crazy. You don't throw that word out here in Japan. You don't hear the media doing stuff like that.

17:15 John Daub: The selective rage on a business that chose not to cut hair of people that they couldn't communicate with has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with their ability not to be able to give a service 100%. Which if you live in Japan you understand very well that if you can't do it 100% your business is going to suffer. And the other side of it is that tourists come and go. It's not a sustainable business to cater to tourists. Your regular customers will come for years and years. And despite the population declining in Japan you guys don't get it. Tokyo's population is not declining. Tokyo's population is increasing. So there are more Japanese, more people coming into Tokyo that are Japanese. So the businesses here are not suffering because of Japan's decline in population. That's a farce. This place is growing. It's so elastic.

18:11 John Daub: So let me just set the record straight on that. Maybe out in the countryside. But if you are encountering signs like that, you're in the wrong place. It's a place that's overrun with tourists, over tourism. It's an issue here as Japan adjusts to the hyper speed at which people and visitors are coming. Just in the last 10 years they've gone from 0 to 60 in like 2 seconds it feels like. 2014 I think they had less than 10 million and now it's 2025 and they're going to have over 40 million this year. So it's like a massive increase in tourists. And you have to give people—this particular country like Japan a little bit more time because we don't move at the same pace as the United States or the Western world. Despite all the technological advances, Japan is a very slow paced incremental change.

19:14 John Daub: I hope you enjoyed it. Just a little bit of a nugget of information. But anybody who's telling you not to come to Japan because of influenza, the season is effectively over according to the government. And if you decide to come to Japan, you're going to NIID, which is Japan's like CDC who does this data. That doesn't mean you won't catch it. But if you do decide to wear a mask in Japan, that's cool. Go ahead. A lot of people are doing that. If you do decide to come to Japan and you want to wear a mask, that's cool. If you don't want to wear a mask, that's cool too. If you are sick, it is polite to wear a mask. Whether or not you think it works or not. It's polite to wear a mask if you're sneezing and coughing all over people. And then once you get off the subway in a crowded place, take the mask off if you want to. But put it back on when you go into public transportation. It's just polite. And as someone who lives here, I would do that too even though I hate masks, face diapers, and I will not wear them anymore unless I am sick. And it's just because I care about the people around me and how they feel because I live here. You don't, but you should too maybe perhaps to help people like me out.

20:54 John Daub: So make sure you come to Japan despite influenza. But if you're coming in between December and February, this will be an issue. Another reason maybe to stay outside of Tokyo. But those going up to Sapporo, to Hokkaido for the snow festival, that's one of the things that propagates influenza. And we saw in 2020 it spreads certain infectious diseases, these big events like Sapporo Snow Festival. I remember that was the first time. They said put on masks in 2020 in Sapporo. They had it on the loudspeaker. So they're like, it's sort of mandatory, but it wasn't. That was way back when. And yeah, they know better. They know that this is where it all comes in, the Chitose Airport, the port of call. Because Hokkaido is such a wide spread out island. But Sapporo in there, things progress. It's spread quickly because of how concentrated tourism is. It's really massive out there.

22:02 John Daub: Our young granddaughter from Japan has arrived in Australia with mask in the past. So like you pick up things and cultural things living here in Japan. And the longer you live in Japan, the more it kind of sticks with you, despite the fact that you leave Japan and go back home. I found myself when I went back to the US, I was bowing when I went to Walmart. I would bow on the telephone if I picked up the call. I was a lot more respectful of the people around me. Things like this comparatively. It takes me a couple of weeks to get used to the way America kind of breaks down compared to Japan. But it's kind of cool. That also means like you miss Japan when that happens. A friend of mine that I always had waist-length hair moved to Japan. Within two months, she had chin-length bob. I think that Japan certainly has an impact. I do wash my hands quite a bit though. It's like some of the habits from 2020 and beyond have stuck with me. Washing my hands well. Leo does that. I guess it comes just with being a father. Try to teach good hygiene to your kids. But yeah, getting vaccinated for the flu, it's up to you. But I think if you're going to be traveling, make sure you get travel vaccines.

23:38 John Daub: There's like some kind of a mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis, I think it is. I don't know if you need to get it. Get it if you think you need to get it. If you're going out to the countryside in Japan, I suppose. But I've never heard of anybody who's gotten it. But I'm sure people have. So it's just something to think about. Vaccines are very important when you travel. I remember I had to get a cholera vaccine because I was considering going to the Middle East where they required it. I had to get a yellow fever vaccine. I was in Beijing when I got it in the year 2000 or 1999. It was a weird place to get vaccine because I waited in a line. And they stuck me, put the needles in a big unsanitary mountain of other needles that they've stuck people's arms with. So I got yellow fever and a bunch of other stuff in Beijing as a travel vaccine. You got to get them though. Because you got to prove in some countries that you've had these vaccines for travel. Meningitis and typhoid was ones for India that I got. The typhoid ones can be quite useful. And hepatitis is one that you might want to think about getting as well. But Japan, I guess, is very much a very sanitary place where you're not going to have too many problems like that. But any country where the water is different, you could have issues with that. Even in Japan. If you drink from the tap water, you might have some issues with upset stomach. Just the biomes, I guess, are a little bit different here than they are in other places. But there's nothing really that should stop you from coming here.

25:16 John Daub: I just wanted to go live and just share with you some of my thoughts on the influenza outbreak. And it's such a shame that Barbie Hsu from Taiwan died as a result of contracting the influenza here in Japan. But could have happened anywhere. A reason to consider getting off of the beaten path and think about going somewhere else. Yeah, you could go to Tokyo, but maybe stay a little bit outside. Try to stay away from big crowds in the winter. You can go skiing, but I think that it's pretty crowded over there. If you look at some of the lines up in Hokkaido at Niseko, they get there 30 minutes before it opens and the line looks like it's worse than Disneyland. It's pretty crazy up there. But it's something I think you should consider. Bringing some medication from home, not a bad idea just in case you do get sick.

26:12 John Daub: You don't want to go to Shibuya. I don't really like to go to Shibuya at all, but I live here. But I don't think that that's a reason for you not to go to Shibuya. I think everybody should go check it out because it is a sensory overload. It's a famous place. And to be there, it's like—I'm in Japan! And you get that photo. It's really nice to get. And then once you take the photo, just get out of there. The restaurants and the food there, I think it's okay. But seems it's a lot better if you go to different places. If you want local stuff, go out to Saitama. Go out to Niigata on the Shinkansen.

26:57 John Daub: Speaking of which, there's an episode. It might drop tonight. I did the Naked Man Festival. It was last year. And that video is going out. I saw that my friends Tabi Eats released a video on Urasa in Niigata. Their video was sponsored by Hakkaisan, I think. I went out there on my own. And I'm at the same place as them. Urasa is a pretty cool place in Niigata, famous for this Naked Man Festival, which is one of the big three. So, I'm looking forward to that. This is this month's postcard, if you want, for supporters on Patreon.

27:36 John Daub: One last thing here. I did update with my friends David and—the Only in Japan store is now active. We have some limited one items per person right now. Store.onlyinjapan.tv is where you can see the Only in Japan store. And maybe get some of that fireworks. You can get some fireworks shell replicas on there. And some of the stuff from the past Kickstarter campaigns. We put it up there. Ellis and David did a great job of packaging it up and making it look real pretty in conjunction with myself. So, go check it out if you want it. They'll be sent from the US and get to you pretty quickly.

28:24 John Daub: All right, everybody. That's all I got for you. So, don't worry about it. Influenza, not a big deal. Seems like we've already peaked. So, it's just something that you should consider before you come here. But not anything that should make you not come here. Definitely come to Japan. And if you do, share your information. Share your photos on Discord. Because we have a lot of people that do that. All right. See you everybody. Mata ne! Satchryo comes just as we're leaving. How dare you, Satchryo. It's nice to see you though, brother. Your postcard's on the way, by the way.