00:01 John Daub: Hello and welcome to beautiful Tokyo Station on a sunny spring afternoon. I have some good news because you're all coming with us. We're going to be going to Guam in May. I think it was May 12th or May 10th—I'm not quite sure. We'll give you some more information. But if you are a resident, if you're living on Guam, resident or not, I would love to meet you if you're part of the Only in Japan family. We'd love you to somehow find a place to meet up and get everybody together to say hi because I would love to meet you.

00:31 John Daub: I've had people from Guam come up and say hi over the years here. Very friendly, big smiles, larger than life. I'm really looking forward to this. I know we had Postcard Club members that were from Guam because I would send the postcards to GU, which is like what New Jersey is NJ, New York NY—Guam is GU. So I would have to put that on the postcard. So I know we do have some viewers there. But please contact me on Instagram, on Patreon. I would love to hear from you. We'll make a Facebook group, try to get everybody together and make it a little bit more fun. Maybe for an hour or so, kind of just hang out.

01:01 John Daub: We're staying at the most touristy place that you could possibly stay, which is Tumon Bay. Let me show you a little bit about Guam. And what I love about it is that it's just four hours away from Japan. A flight from Tokyo on American Airlines or United Airlines—I can't remember. I got it through my mileage from ANA or else I would have lost it. So I got together my miles and said, well, we were thinking about going to the Philippines, but we just didn't have enough time to do that. It's a little bit too long of a flight. We would love to have gone there and then go to the islands of the Philippines, but we'd have to stay for longer to make it work out. So Guam seemed to be like this happy medium.

01:31 John Daub: And I'm kind of excited about it because this is America. Well, it's a territory, but this is America. It's also Guam. It's part of Micronesia and it's super exciting. Look at the color of the water. There. This is going to be so incredible. We're staying at Tumon, which is where a lot of the tourist hotels are, but we're only going to be there for two or three nights. I just booked it a week ago. It's out there far in the Pacific. And there's also scouting on an episode. I thought this would be good for an Only in Guam episode. I mean, everybody who's coming from New York, you're coming maybe 14 hours on an airplane. It might be fun for some of those people that are interested to take that four-hour flight.

02:33 John Daub: I know Okinawa has got a really big draw. That's about two hours, two and a half hours away. Guam's four hours away and that's America. It's kind of a unique look at it. So I'm super excited to go out and check out Guam. So that's where Guam is. If you weren't sure on the map here, it's pretty far south there. May is on the fringe of not being the best season, but I don't think there's a real bad season to go to Guam, to be honest with you. The ocean's going to be so beautiful. I'm hoping for sunny days, but you just never know. I think the rain started coming around July or so.

03:02 John Daub: I know Brandy is coming at the same time from Hawaii and we thought about going to Hawaii too, but for some reason we would have been waitlisted. Hawaii is quite a popular place. But I also know that Guam is a good spot because the dollar is so strong and not a lot of Japanese tourists are going there. So the flight was not full, which is interesting. I know that because of the economic situation in China has changed quite a bit. A lot of Chinese tourists were going to Guam because it was the closest place from China to get to the United States. You get to visit the U.S. It's kind of cool. So a lot of Asian tourists aren't visiting at this time. I also wanted to give some support to the beautiful island of Guam too. It's like a win-win. Okay, I got to use these miles or they're just going to get deleted. What are you going to do? Let's go to Guam.

04:02 John Daub: So I made three days and Kanae and Leo are going to come with us. And we're going to go to Guam. We're going to fly from Narita out and then come back flying into Haneda. It was pretty neat that we could do this. I guess it's United Airlines, because if ANA is on the Star Alliance, it'd probably be United. JAL would be American Airlines. I thought Continental did it, but I think maybe United, American Airlines bought Continental. I don't know how it all works out, but somehow we're getting there on a United flight, which is the first time I'm probably not flying ANA in a very long time, but it's going to be really exciting.

04:32 John Daub: Sean, peace out to you as well. I'm not making this a really long live stream. Just a couple of other things here. Every time I send the postcards, I like to say hi to some person. This one's going to Russian Angie in Wailuku. So this one's coming to you. This is this month's postcard from the cherry blossoms. This was taken like 10 days ago, this picture. It's completely different now, but I'm putting this in the mailbox to you guys. So I want to say thank you so much for supporting Only in Japan.

05:02 John Daub: Next month's look at—I just got the stamps for this. I had to get this real quick 'cause I'm not that far away from the post office here. Check it out. So this is going to be May's postcards. Hold on a second. These are the Osaka Expo stamps. They just came out. That one on the top is really cool with Osaka Castle and Myaku-Myaku, which is the Expo's mascot. All these stamps are going to go on the next postcard, which should be taken of our family. I'm going to take it out of the Expo. Our family's probably not going to be in it 'cause it's in this month's postcard, but it'll be an Expo postcard, sent probably from the Expo.

05:37 John Daub: So if I can get 10 new members, I'm going to take the Shinkansen down and send it from the Expo. That's my goal. Actually, I should probably make it more like 15. So if we can get 15 new Postcard Club members on Patreon, I'm going to go down to Osaka, do some live streams with Kevin Riley, and I will send them to you guys. So thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.

06:08 John Daub: I'll send these from the Expo so that they'll have an Osaka or an Expo postmark on the postcards, but we need to get 15 new Postcard Club members. I think we could do it. So I'll be promoting this for the next couple of months. And before I go to Guam, maybe I'll be able to run down to the Expo one last time with Kevin Riley. See if I can get Kevin to go out here and we'll do some live streams with him. So 15 new Postcard Club members. I think we could do it. If not, I'm going to send it to Kevin probably from Tokyo, maybe from the airport on our way to Guam. I'll send it from Narita airport. So maybe it'll get there faster.

06:38 John Daub: Either way, it doesn't matter, but it'd be kind of cool to go down there for a day and go say hi to Kevin. But yeah, we gotta hit some kind of target. We gotta make it fun like that, right? Gotta make it fun. So there you go. I'll be looking to see the notifications to see if we get some new Postcard Club members and in May and these will go out before we go to Guam. It's going to be fun. I think it'd be cool. It'd be cool to take the Shinkansen, go to Osaka for the day and say hi to the Expo, but to send the postcards from the Expo of the Expo, that's kind of cool. I'm a geek. I'm kind of a geek like that, you know, 'cause the postmark will say Osaka on it. The stamp will be an Expo stamp. It'll be an Expo postcard, kind of get in the feeling of it. I'm cheering for the Expo, despite the fact that it's been kind of a rocky start to it, but it's all good.

07:40 John Daub: You guys know where I am right now. I'm at Tokyo Station. Yesterday I spent it and the postcards just went out. This is from the post office. So I sent these out. They actually check each one and make sure that the stamp and the address is on there. They're so nice to me at the Tokyo post office and they get a Tokyo postmark, a cancel mark on it. And yesterday I was—I went here right after I did the live stream eating the 7-Eleven hot oven pizza, which is amazing. I drove out to this place, which is in Tochigi. And it's kind of like a strawberry theme park, so to speak. It's just one scene from an episode that's coming soon on the world champion strawberry. I don't know. I say world champion, but Saitama won the strawberry championship, the Strawberry Grand Prix.

08:10 John Daub: So I went down there to talk with a strawberry grower. He let me in and he showed me how he's packing up the strawberries, how they do it as gifts. So it's a pretty interesting episode. I'm going to go ahead and get back to it. I like to focus on these luxury fruits, but to understand how Japan made 300 varieties of strawberries, that's going to be a pretty good episode coming. I think this month in April, I'll start editing after the one on Shimbashi that I'm doing right now. It's a lot of work going on right now. So I'm staying really busy. All right, everybody. Yeah, the pizza was crazy. Michael, if you saw that live stream yesterday, the pizza was really crazy. I don't think you could find it in Tokyo. I checked my local 7-Eleven. I didn't see them with the margarita pizza, but if you get a pizza for less than five bucks, that's like a brick oven pizza taste. And I thought it was pretty well done. That's kind of impressive. And they said they can do it in two to three minutes. Mine came in about three minutes. It doesn't take a long time. I don't think it's a real wood brick oven pizza, but it's a taste of good.

09:41 John Daub: Just to reiterate before we end this live stream here, one of the reasons I'm going—not just to support Guam and because I want to use my miles before they expire—I want to learn more about the culture of the Pacific islands. I've been to Thailand, to Vietnam, to Cambodia, to China, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong. I've been to Korea. I've been to so many places on the Asian mainland. I would like to learn more about the islands of the Pacific. I've been to Tahiti. I've been to Easter Island. I guess New Zealand and Australia, Oceania. I've been to Indonesia, which is so beautiful—Java and Bali. I'd like to see more islands there. I'd like to see more Malaysia as well. And Brunei actually would be kind of interesting. I don't know much about that place, but I think there's so many islands in the Pacific that have a story.

10:11 John Daub: So that's something that I might kind of focus on because from Tokyo as a hub, you really have access to all of these really beautiful islands. Yeah, you know, Vanuatu. Is that the one? Tuvalu? My friend Joe Hatab, he does it in Arabic, but he now dubs them in English. He went to the .TV country. There's like Only in Japan .TV. That's supporting the country of Tuvalu, I think, when you purchase a .TV. And I have a .TV. He went there and made an episode there and kind of showed it. It's a country that's kind of sinking, I think. But I'd love to go there too and kind of tell the story in my own way. But he made an episode there, which is quite good. But I'd like to, and Hawaii as well. I have an episode on that coming soon. But I'd like to take a look more at some of the neighboring Pacific Islands and get the story behind that because it's all associated.

11:56 John Daub: The Japanese tourists during the '80s in particular started booking flights to go to these tropical locations. And now that tourism has kind of slowed down from Asian countries to go there. And it's so far away from the U.S. mainland, a lot of the places and the U.S. coast, even the Australian mainland. It's quite far. They're not getting a lot of tourists right now from what I hear. So that'd be pretty cool. Explore the Pacific Islands. We should do it—Only in the Pacific Channel or something. Because that would be so amazing. And I went to Ogasawara, which is Japan's furthest island that you can get to by ferry. It's a 24-hour ferry ride. Loved it.

12:33 John Daub: You know what the best thing of the Pacific Islands are? The people. But I noticed it takes time to get to know islanders. You have to spend some time there. You can't just go there and leave. You have to show your face and build trust with people. And that's why I think you have to stay on the islands a little bit longer to get to know the island. You don't get a story by just going there in one day. You got to stay there, observe people, be friendly, talk to people. And yeah, that's what I love about the Philippines too. I mean, every single person from the Philippines has a smile larger than life. And so inviting. It's like family, it feels like. So we're definitely looking forward to going to the Philippines to eat. I've always wanted to ride a jeepney. Don't ask me why.

13:19 John Daub: It's an exciting time. So if you're in Guam, direct message me. Let's try to do this. Let's try to get some people meet up. I'd love to go to a market. Leo wants to—Leo has one mission. He's four years old. He wants to eat a coconut in Guam. I think we can make that happen. He's gotten coconuts, but he wants to see a—he's never seen a coconut tree and he loves coconuts. And Diana from Singapore knows this too because she brings us Singapore coconut jam every time because she knows that Leo loves it. She brings the best stuff too. So he's going to see his first coconut tree and maybe first banana tree. This is going to be awesome. Team coconut in Guam. There you go.

14:09 John Daub: So let's make this happen. It's going to be a lot of fun. And of course I'll be taking you with me on this channel to explore Guam. I don't know where I can do live streams. Even if it's from the hotel, I'll be able to take footage from Guam and then I'll be able to insert it into live stream, maybe from the hotel or something. But one way or another, you're going to be with me in Guam and I'll be sharing that experience with you because you guys are like family too. It'd be a lot of fun. Yeah. Guam. Wow. It seems so far away. And yet from Japan, it's just four hours. It's full of people. It's just full of flowers. But if you grew up on the East Coast of the U.S. and you look at a map, it's like Guam is so far away, but really isn't if you're here. And that's what's kind of cool about it. All right. See you guys soon. Thanks for watching. If you're from Guam, looking forward to hearing from you.