00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Kyobashi. This is very close to Tokyo Station. It's a nice place to start this episode about tourism in Japan. Just over there is Ginza. Over there is Tokyo Station. This is Nihonbashi. And there are a lot of tourists in this area as well.

00:19 John Daub: And in the news, how you doing everybody? I'm seeing increased discussion on this. I think it's going to happen. And I think it's going to happen for one reason. Japanese residents, Japanese citizens are getting priced out, especially in Kyoto and tourist spots, at peak times when they have time to travel. It's kind of a no-brainer. You have to kind of fix this in a way. But two-tier pricing is something I'm totally against. I think it's not fair.

00:49 John Daub: I remember this is something they do in Hawaii. I was in Waikiki a couple of years ago. And I remember experiencing a $35 cheeseburger. Hotel prices were really expensive. But you can get cheaper deals if you're a resident. It makes sense. So residents can enjoy their own island. But now we have an island here called Japan. And in the news recently, we're seeing that even the Japanese can't get hotel rooms at peak times here.

01:20 John Daub: So this comes from the Nikkei Asia. Foreign visitors make up 36% of the first-day bookings. This is when Japanese have the time to go. And they can't go and travel. And they can't do it because there's just too many. There's the Osaka Expo going on here. Hotel prices have skyrocketed. Supply and demand, basically. Hotel rates for Japan's Golden Week holidays are on the rise with foreign visitors accounting for nearly 40% of the reservations on the first day. The average daily rate for bookings on April 26th, the first day of the long week-long string of holidays, was almost 20,000 yen. $135, which is a lot cheaper for Americans. Up 60% from the previous year. And it's getting more and more expensive for Japanese in Japan to go on vacation, especially if you have a family here.

02:11 John Daub: The other problem is that I've been looking and following what's happening in Kyoto very closely. This comes from the Asahi Shimbun. Kyoto is so packed with tourists, the Japanese stay away from it. So even Japanese tourists aren't going to Kyoto. Which is crazy. It's sad because kids have to learn about their own culture, their own history. And Kyoto is the cultural and historical hub of Japan. It was a place that was not bombed in World War II, so a lot of that is still intact. It's a beautiful city. It's just not as beautiful as it once was because of the tourism boom there.

02:52 John Daub: Japanese are just saying, I don't want to go in there and mingle with all of the people. Tourists from all over the place. It's just too crowded. Japanese on sightseeing trips seem to be avoiding key landmarks in the historic city due to hordes of foreign tourists. Hordes. Sounds like an invasion that residents also gripe about. City authorities sought to assess the situation with a study of visitors during the autumn season that passed last year when leaves changed color. This turned up a roughly 30% increase in tourists. This is a 50% decrease among Japanese tourists.

03:34 John Daub: The study was done by analyzing GPS between November 1st. Kyoto's peak season is probably autumn for Japanese tourism because all the Japanese tourists want to go to Kyoto to see the autumn foliage. And they have like a time where they can get off of work pretty easy. Use their vacation days at this time of year. And if you're a retiree, this is a place where you can go to see the autumn foliage. 30% increase in foreign tourists. 50% decrease in Japanese tourists. That's something pretty big.

04:06 John Daub: I think city officials said the results the Japanese were increasingly going to less crowded parts of the city than the past setting an uptick between 10 to 50% among Japanese visitors to those areas. So Japanese are going to other areas of Kyoto, not the center, not that Gion region, not Kyoto Station, Kiyomizudera, Higashiyama, or people are going to different places. But the study only contrasted year-on-year trends and the city government did not release visitor numbers. For the reason the increase in Japanese visitors to the less crowded areas may not have been enough to cover the declines.

04:45 John Daub: Kyoto's legislature increasingly is starting to lean towards the foreign tourists and there's a reason why. Foreign tourists spend way more money than domestic tourists do. The study of the city government found that tourists from overseas spend an average of 37,437 yen, $250, in 2019 before the pandemic. Double. It's a lot more than what the domestic tourists are paying. So yeah, Kyoto very much wants the mula. So they're prioritizing foreign tourists. I don't know how long it's going to last. The residents will strike back. Eventually residents will strike back. They already are.

05:41 John Daub: So this year we're going to have over 40 million tourists visiting Japan for the first time. That is a pretty big number. That'll put Japan in like the top 10 countries in the world with tourists. And we're talking just like 10 years ago. It was a fraction of that, like 10 million. And when I came to Japan, it was like 2 million tourists were here. So this is a huge, huge increase. However, I don't think that this is going to stop. And Japan's not the only place experiencing over-tourism. Just look at Spain, look at France, look at Italy. What's happening in Barcelona is a tragedy. The locals can't even enjoy the city of Barcelona.

06:25 John Daub: I love Barcelona. I've been there so many times as a backpacker 20, 25 years ago. I don't know if I would go now. The Las Ramblas, that whole area, it feels less Spain now and more foreign. Because you don't see Spanish faces as much. And I'm seeing less Japanese faces in places like Asakusa. In places like even Ginza here. I'm seeing less Japanese faces, which is interesting. And I don't know if that's a good thing.

06:54 John Daub: So my point is, if you could raise prices or tax tourists that are coming in here, which I'm against, and they would still come, then you're meeting the market right. And they can use that money to help local residents to afford to stay in their own tourist attractions. I just know that this is very much gaining steam in Japan. And for the simple reason that Japanese can't even go to Kyoto anymore. They can't afford to travel outside of the country either.

07:44 John Daub: And I'm talking about my own personal experiences. John, drinks and snacks for me. Well, thank you, buddy. Arigato. Let's see if we can find a vending machine. We'll go around here. So I think that that's a big deal.

07:56 John Daub: Look, in 2023, I made a trip to go to the United States as a tourist to Massachusetts. It's New England. Of course, it's going to be pretty pricey here. And I remember the hotel. I was doing an episode on John Mangiro in a beautiful city, New Bedford and Fairhaven. The hotel was over $300 a night. U.S. And in Japanese yen, that's 50,000 yen. It was like a regular Marriott, which was like a two-star hotel. That's really expensive. And everything else, dining out, everybody wanted tips. Like the average tip is like 25% or they include service charge. And they want tips. You go to Starbucks, they want tips. U.S. is just so expensive for Japanese right now.

08:44 John Daub: I think U.S. might be expensive for Americans right now. I'm not complaining. I kind of am. But the point is Japanese can't travel outside of Japan like they used to because the yen is weak and the prices are soaring. And the real wages of Japanese workers has stayed pretty stagnant since the year 2000. If you look at the chart, and it might be skewed a little bit because the rich are getting richer and you know how things are. But in general, annual incomes in the United States have been going up. And in Japan, they've been kind of like going up a little bit.

09:21 John Daub: So now we're reaching a point where the Japanese tourists can't go to Guam, can't go to Hawaii, can't go to neighboring countries. Maybe they can go to Thailand or Bali, but prices are going up there too. There's more tourists. More countries like China have more money to travel, although that might be changing as well. More countries are getting in on this travel boom and that's why you just, there's not enough hotel rooms and not enough space to go to the popular destinations. And Japan is now one of them. So if Japanese can't travel outside, they want to travel domestic inside and they can't do that now either. Not at least not like they used to.

10:06 John Daub: I think that's all going to sort itself out. It's just a little blip. But this is a long-term thing that's been happening for 20, 25 years in Japan. And tourism on the increase has been happening for well over 12, 13 years now. Japan just has not had a way to deal with this. They can't deal with the over-tourism.

10:26 John Daub: And I'm trying to do something a little bit different. So what I've been doing is, just the other day, I'm trying to show you new tourist attractions. This is a really great episode to show that the snack bars from the old Showa era can actually become tourist attractions. They're the ones that are suffering. Local business owners, not enough people, there's not even enough Japanese going in there to eat and for them to make a living out of the snack bars. So it's kind of neat that foreign tourists might actually go in there and be the ones that save this really precious part of Japanese Showa culture. That's how Japanese got married and met their partners and found work contacts through this. Check out this episode. The link is in the description of the video. Definitely leave me a comment and a like on this video. Try to encourage me to do more of this kind of stuff.

11:14 John Daub: But the point is, this has been going on for a very long time, predating any sort of current political things that are going on here. The dollar is actually getting weaker, making it cheaper for me to go to Japan. So that's completely false. But I think that in the end, though, Japanese are going to want to travel domestically and if they can't do that, then this type of two-tier pricing system becomes an actual real thing. And I was surprised that it's gaining steam. Now, it's based on the Hawaii model and this is the Hawaii...

11:46 John Daub: I'm going to show this on the side here. I'm going to talk about it. I don't think there's any audio, so we're just going to see it and then I'll talk about it too. But this is Hawaiian TV talking about how Japan is going to be doing tourism, having tourism fees. And the Hawaiians aren't really surprised. They kind of understand this. They get this because Hawaii is... There were so many tourists in Hawaii that you had to have this because Hawaiians needed to do this.

12:19 John Daub: But this is the Japanese tour, guys. We went just a few months ago. I'm going to pause it here. We went to just one area and there were thousands of people just standing and we decided not even to get off the bus because of how populated that area was with tourists. This is Kyoto. This is the reality. It is bad. In certain areas, it is bad. It's very bad.

12:49 John Daub: Kyoto residents, especially senior citizens that rely on bus travel, couldn't get on the buses. So Kyoto started a tourist bus to try to alleviate the amount of people on the buses. Foreign tourists don't understand to give up their seat for elderly people. So they would end up... You'd see people there in their 90s standing and no one giving up their seats. There were some really tough situations going on here. Local stuff. I don't think the news media talks about it enough. But Scott's experience is one that a lot of people coming to Japan now are facing. Kyoto is not fun anymore. It's just too many people for the Japanese but for also foreign tourists themselves.

13:31 John Daub: And you can see the numbers have been going up. But the biggest issue compared to the big year in 2019 was 32 million. We're now getting millions more. And they're talking about this in Hawaii. It's fascinating to see the Hawaiian perspective on it. They're a lot more understanding because they have this kind of a system. But Eric Takahata, who is in charge of the Hawaiian Japan tourism group here, says he doesn't think that there's going to be a really big impact on tourism to Japan. Raise the fees. Do it. But people aren't going to stop coming to Japan as a result of it. I think that you're going to hit that 50 million mark one year despite the fact that fees are going to go up and up and up. And they're going to find that sweet spot to where they maybe go down. And then they lower the prices and keep it there. But can you blame them? I'm against it. I don't think it's good. But can you blame them? I can't. The city's at a breaking point.

14:34 John Daub: I wonder how elastic Tokyo really is. Just yesterday I read a Google Maps review complaining about the double pricing system, izakayas and Kawaguchiko immediately. I thought I wouldn't be going there on my trip. Kawaguchiko has too many tourists. I think the double price is a way to weed it out and maybe get some relief. They can't accommodate all those people that are coming there. They simply can't. And there's just too many problems associated with the tourists that are going there. The double pricing system is a win-win. They're going to get more money and maybe it'll help them alleviate the travel. But there's a lot of other places to go.

15:23 John Daub: The final thing I want to leave you here. I don't want to harp on this for too long. And these are very relevant impressions here. And I want you in the comments to give us your opinion on this as well. In particular, if you're living in Barcelona, or France, 100 million tourists in France. Japan's going to have 40 million this year. France has 100 million. Italy's got something pretty close. And Spain might even have more than that. So their problem is even more compounded than Japan's. But they've had a little bit more time to deal with this. But it seems like Barcelona really wants that tourist money. But there's a reckoning coming. And I think in Japan, with that island mentality, there's something that's breaking here. So I feel it might not happen this year, but there's some big changes that are going to be coming to Japan.

16:17 John Daub: Himeji Castle will have double pricing, two-tier pricing starting in 2026. So you can go onto the Himeji website right now, and you're going to be able to get the tickets just fine. But that's not going to be like that for much longer. I went onto the Himeji website just to check this out here. So it's actually quite easy to get tickets here. In fact, it's much better than the Osaka Expo. We'll tell you that story next week when we go there. But getting tickets to go to Himeji Castle, not too hard, actually. And you can get it online, and it's 1,000 yen. And that's a bargain. You're going in there. I think it's too little. It's about $6.50 for American tourists.

17:06 John Daub: To get the tickets online, the digital ticket, really cheap. I like the fact that they limit only 250 people per hour. They're doing a lot of stuff here. You can see here, 500 per 30 minutes. So they limit the amount of purchases so they don't get overcrowding. They're doing some things that are right there, but it's still too crowded. They're going to raise the price in 2026 to 2,500 yen, which is like 20 bucks, to enter the most beautiful castle in Japan, the original beautiful castle. I think it's a little too white. They whitened it too much. But it looks like a Disneyland castle. But it'll dull down a little bit. Very easy to get the tickets, you can see here. That's changing in 2026, and you're going to have dual pricing, so residents of Himeji pay 1,000 yen, and tourists and Tokyo, I'm going to have to pay 2,500 yen too. So if you're not from that area, you got to pay more. People are still going to pay because it is the best castle maybe in Asia.

18:11 John Daub: But we are seeing, this is picking up steam. And I don't blame them. You got to go to other places. I'm trying my very best. And this is why I want to shout out to my Patreon supporters here. This is this month's postcard. Thank you to Scott in Arizona. This is going out to you. We're almost at our goal. I wanted to get 15 new Postcard Club members this month, and we're at seven right now. So we're almost at our goal. And I'm going to take the postcards from the Osaka Expo. That's next month's postcard. And send them from Osaka. So you get an Osaka postmark. I said I'll do that if we get 15 new members. So we're at seven now. So thank you, Scott.

18:55 John Daub: I'm doing my best to help you find places that are not Kyoto. I like Kyoto. I do. You can't just go there and expect it not to be super crowded anymore and have the same kind of experience that you had 10 years ago. It's just not going to happen. You got to spread people out. If you're going to have 50 million tourists, some of them got to go up to other areas. Rikubetsu in Hokkaido, up in the very north. Or maybe down to Kagoshima to go to Sakurajima where the volcano is erupting. Maybe you want to go down there. You got to spread it out through the whole country. Maybe go down to Okinawa. Maybe go to Kanazawa. Even there is getting pretty crowded. So go to Toyama. Go to the places. Toyama's got a castle too. I don't think it's an original one. But you can go to places that aren't on Instagram.

19:45 John Daub: Instagram is one of the problems. It just keeps showing the same places over and over and over again. And one of the things that my friend Matt Alt and I... Michael, I was very sad to hear about that, to hear about the Pope's passing. And there's a lot of my friends here I've seen on social media that are, yeah, it's been a tough day. So I feel it. But, you know, with it being Easter and all that, thanks for that, reminding me. But DMs. We lost the Pope, if you don't know. Yeah.

20:23 John Daub: I think, though, if we can spread out tourism, and I can, and other influencers, I guess I'm an influencer, can show you spots like Nishio, like, I don't know, Tottori, like Shikoku Island. That whole island looks like it could take a lot of tourists. Kochi. If you can spread it out and go to other places, then we're not going to have much of a problem. But everybody's going to the same place. Over and over and over again. And that's the problem.

20:52 John Daub: So people are getting priced out of these popular tourist destinations. Instagram keeps showing the same stuff. But Matt Alt, who's a friend of mine, he knows this stuff very well. He's an author of Pure Invention. He did, you know, NHK with me. He's extremely good with insight on this stuff. And he said, tourists are creatures of habit. And they like to go to the same places that everybody else is going. We see something popular and we all want to follow the trends. And I get it. But you got to do your research and you have to understand that maybe you don't want to spend your whole trip in the same place that everybody's at. And that's part of the problem. The over-tourism is an issue. And I don't see it getting better.

21:41 John Daub: Personally, not interested in seeing imperial castles and palaces. I think it's kind of neat, but I've never been impressed by going inside of a castle. They look beautiful from the outside. But after you've been in one, you kind of, you can do like a YouTube video and get a tour of the whole thing. You don't need to go in there.

22:04 John Daub: I was going to ask John if you're still getting the postcards too. I'll send you, I think yours is on the way, buddy. So should be coming. This tourist pricing will drive tourists to franchise restaurants. Could be. But look, if a restaurant is booked every night and the regular customers can't go in there because the tourists are coming in, tourists go there once and never come back. Regulars come there, go there every single week or month all the time. And if you lose your regular customers, you lose your sense of income. If something in the world happens where tourists can't go to the restaurant, the locals aren't going to go anymore because you've sold out to the tourists. So it makes it really challenging. They've got to find a way to balance the tourists with the locals. And having the two tier pricing system, might feel unfair to you, but you don't have to leave a tip in Japan. It's not really that expensive. And locals are getting priced out. They can't even go to their favorite restaurants. There's a lot of little issues here that are nagging. It's stuff that Barcelona and Venice and cities like that are feeling. And I don't see this getting better. I see this becoming something that, it's gaining traction and I see it happening now.

23:32 John Daub: I was on the fringe like, okay, this isn't going to happen. But we're close. And I think this year pushed it over to, yeah, let's do the two tier. I don't know how this is going to impact people from Indonesia, from Malaysia, young couples that might not be making as much as their American counterparts, but should it really matter? If there are enough people who have money that are coming here and pay it and the numbers for tourism keep increasing to Japan, they're going to keep raising the tourists, these tourist taxes, and they're going to find a happy medium.

24:22 John Daub: So there's a tax to the tourists of Venice, yeah, there's going to be a tax to come to Japan. And they're going to use the money for probably misappropriated, like most governments do. I want to see how they spend the money. Are they doing it to make red? I'm very curious to see how Kyoto is spending the tax dollars that they earn from the tourist stuff. I think it's, I get the feeling it might not be appropriated, but in the right ways. But it's up to Kyoto residents to police that, not up to me.

25:01 John Daub: I was super, I think also the politicians are screwing the, they always do that. And if you're Canadian, you know that. You're like, you can't vote for either party in Canada now. Like one side is bad, the other side is bad. Which one's not as bad? Maybe the one that's not in power right now. Maybe the one that's not in power right now. I probably would go with, I'd probably go with the other one. I wouldn't go for the same party in Canada. I'm not Canadian. But I think we get that feeling in Japan. I want you to look at the expo. And this is a lot on the politicians now. I think the local residents are going to start to actually vote and care about this stuff.

25:40 John Daub: The expo should have done something, a no brainer. They should have let Osaka residents have one week where only Osaka residents can go to the expo and fix the problems that they had before the tourists came. But they didn't do that. They just opened it up to everybody. They should have let Japanese citizens, who paid 90% of all the expo costs, that's going to have basically no benefits to society over the next five years, they should have allowed citizens to go there for the whole month of April before opening up to foreign tourists. Now you have a lottery system where some people don't even get to see any pavilions. And if you do, you have to queue up for two to three hours to get into the one pavilion that you might have gone to see and you waste your time at the expo. And the reviews of the expo are very mixed, mostly leaning towards negative right now. Maybe that can change. I'm hoping it is.

26:33 John Daub: Yeah, if you're Canadian, it's a tough choice. Next week's the election and thank God for that because we won't have to hear about it anymore. I'm rooting for Canada. I'm not going for any political party. I'm just rooting for Canada. I love Canada. I love my Canadian friends here. I'm just rooting for Canada, man. I'm not going to say anything. Danny knows who I'm... Danny knows. Jason knows.

27:08 John Daub: Maybe you can buy the expo tickets at the gate. I really don't know Carrie. I just know that Kenai spent like two, three hours. She still can't... Just recently on the expo thing, she keeps having to go back to the app and mess around with it and it's just a disaster. That's the Bridgestone building. If you guys don't know, Bridgestone is a tire company. But they also are a bicycle manufacturer. And they're Japanese. So that's kind of cool. That's a Bridgestone building. It's beautiful. Tokyo station is in that direction there.

27:39 John Daub: Natives in the U.S. are... What is that? Just hoping that it doesn't rain when it comes to the expo. I know. Tell me about it. I hope it doesn't rain next week. I'm looking at the comments here. I'm from Indonesia. Two-tier entry already implemented for a long time. No problem whatsoever. But many of my friends from abroad feel like they're getting ripped off. I understand. For Indonesia, it's probably a good thing because... Like a place like Bali or... Even when I went to Yogyakarta, there weren't that many tourists. I don't know what it's like now. But I can understand why there'd be a two-tier pricing system. Jogja was so cheap though. I could have stayed there for months just eating. If it wasn't for those darn batik salespeople, everybody bothered me with batik that I ended up saying, like, Oh, come in and see my batik. Don't you like batik? I would say, No, I don't like batik. I love batik, but I would have to say, No, I don't like it, just to get them off my back. So Indonesia is such a beautiful place. But the two-tier pricing system... In India, they also have that. If you go to the Taj Mahal, it's like a fraction of the cost for Indians, but it was very expensive if you were a foreign tourist. And they kept raising the price. So it's going to happen.

29:09 John Daub: There you go. Yeah, Bridgestone is... I think it was like... Hashiichi, I forgot what the name of the company in Japanese is, but the translation was Bridgestone. It's a strong name. They're very famous for bicycles in Japan as well as tires. My bicycle is... Actually, let me go see before they ticket me and I get fined for leaving my bike here. Yeah, there's my bike. It's a Bridgestone. There's the Bridgestone B. They make pretty good bikes.

30:05 John Daub: John, you can go to Osaka Expo whenever, whatever. Yeah, I... Ishihashi. I get that, yeah. But my wife has more than one person going, so she had to do group tickets and stuff. And getting into the pavilions is impossible. So it's just something... It's been something of a real painful disaster. I think it's just that the app developers, whoever made the app, it's really painful. But maybe better just to go on the day and get the tickets, perhaps.

30:37 John Daub: The two-tier pricing system has got trouble written all over it. Yeah, it very well could be, but there's already trouble. I think what a lot of people... So I'm against this, and I see it too. I see there's going to be some trouble. But I already see... The counterargument is there's already trouble. As I showed you, the articles are saying here, Kyoto's so packed with tourists that Japanese are staying away. There's trouble. So the trouble is here.

31:22 John Daub: And if Japanese can't go to Hawaii anymore because it's too expensive, Japanese can't travel as much because it's too expensive, and they can't travel in their own country because it's too expensive and crowded, it's a reckoning coming. I could feel it. I could feel the locals kind of turning a little bit. Where are you going to see the two-tier pricing? In places like Kyoto. You're going to see it in ski resorts where it's mostly foreigners. You're going to see it at the Sapporo Snow Festival. You're going to see it in Tokyo. You're going to see it at Tsukiji Market, which is the biggest... Don't even go to Tsukiji Market. I can't recommend it. It is the biggest tourist trap in Japan.

32:29 John Daub: I tried to ride my bicycle through there. Not one Japanese. It's just... Well, you know what? Tsukiji Market could be pretty interesting. I can't say that it's a bad thing. It's interesting to have so many different foreign people in one area because you can make friends from all over the world. That's kind of a cool thing. But the prices? And the type of people that are there? It's already two-tier system pricing. And Japanese stay away. It's not Japan in Tsukiji Market anymore. It is so like this made-up fantasy of what tourists want. It's no longer Japan. It's a tourist trap. And that you could... I could tell... It's so easy to tell. All the YouTubers promoting Tsukiji Market right now don't know what they're talking about. They don't live here. And if they are doing it, but they live here, they're getting sponsor money or something. There's no reason why anybody should be promoting Tsukiji Market. It doesn't need it. It's over touristy. You can't even move. It was so bad. The alleys of Tsukiji Market. It's so bad. I'm happy for Tsukiji because they were thinking they might have to close up. But it's not really locals anymore. A lot of the locals sold out to groups that bought them up and now putting in tourist stuff in there. So it's made for tourists.

34:02 John Daub: So you're gonna see two-tier pricing in Tsukiji Market. I think it would have been... I think Tsukiji Market two years ago might have been okay. Maybe last year. It's jumped the shark. It's pure on, all out, in your face tourist trap. Tsukiji Market. That's not always a bad thing. Everybody speaks English. You know what you're gonna get. Sort of. The wagyu. They write Kobe beef. I don't know if that's Kobe beef. Ask them for the 10-digit wagyu database number and you can search it and see what you're eating. If they say wagyu, and if it's domestic wagyu, it has a 10-digit number that you can track on the database. If you know that, then maybe the price goes down. You can bargain. But you guys know that because you've been watching for a long time.

34:53 John Daub: Hey, Ninja Monkey's here. Things might change with Tsukiji Dome. Yeah, they're building that right now. It's probably not gonna be done for another five, six years. That's true. I think it should alleviate some of the pressure on this little area that's just full of tourists and maybe bring in even some locals because they're building apartments as well. But Ninja Monkey, two days ago, we saw that the price of a condo in Tokyo is now one, almost like a million dollars. It's 100,000,000 yen, which is crazy expensive for a normal condo in Tokyo. You can get the same thing for 30% the cost outside of Tokyo. It's crazy. It's maybe half price in Chiba and 30% anywhere else and maybe even less than that in some prefectures like Tottori. Probably get that for 10%. They're just giving away houses. But it's like a million bucks for a condo in Tokyo. There is a breaking point where no one's gonna be able to afford that that's Japanese and they're just gonna sell them to foreigners that wanna live in Tokyo. Open it up. Why not? Population's decreasing. At least you'll have an economy.

36:01 John Daub: So they're building the condos in that Tsukiji area. I actually live in that area. So I feel it. And that's why I can tell you I can't recommend Tsukiji. But I'm not saying don't go there. I just personally can't recommend it. I would never go there unless I'm going through there anymore or making a report on it as a tourist trap. But I think that if you're a first-timer coming here, it's in English, so there's value in that. But that's not Japan. It's just not. And it's gonna take its toll on the people. And again, we're feeling it.

36:46 John Daub: The TV news likes to focus in on this and they show the negative side of it. The amount of trash. Tsukiji market also has a lot of litter and trash and it's kinda dirty over there. Because they don't have trash cans. There's not a lot of responsibility. The owners are starting to take responsibility. But it's been an issue for a long time. Overtourism has a lot of negative consequences. There's no trash cans on the streets in Tokyo. The streets are quite clean. But we're seeing more people leaving trash around. Actually, there's trash right here. We're seeing more trash around just because people don't feel... They just throw it on the street because they can't find trash cans. It's part of it.

37:26 John Daub: So, there you go. If you haven't already, by all means, check out this latest episode on the main channel. For some reason, it's not being suggested. I don't know why. People are watching. More than 50% of people are watching till the end. So, it should be doing quite well on YouTube. I don't know why it's not doing well. Maybe it'll pick up. If you're a Discord booster, we could definitely use the boosts on the Only in Japan Discord server. We have almost 20,000 people there. But we lost a couple of boosters. But if you have a boost to spare, we could use a boost. Just saying our community would really appreciate it.

38:08 John Daub: And, yeah, for sure. And the Only in Japan TV store. We have some really great items in there. There's one that has a story. I'm going to tell you about it next time. But we have some of the items like the fireworks shells from the fireworks projects in the past. That's now available on the OnlyinJapan.tv. So, some of the stuff from the Kickstarter projects you wanted to get and you missed it, that's now available on the posters and stuff. That's available on the OnlyinJapan.tv store. And you can get that. I think it's store.OnlyinJapan.tv. One word. So, I appreciate that. A lot of people have been getting the Blu-ray discs. I think we have about maybe 15 or 20 left. So, yeah, go ahead and grab one. It's a good Blu-ray. It's got a director's audio track with Kanae on there too a little bit. So, it's kind of cool.

39:01 John Daub: How will this affect the pricing of property in Japan? I'm not sure. In Tokyo, it's still really hard to buy property. But I just met for lunch a friend who's not Japanese. He's got a permanent residency, but he was able to buy property here. He bought land in Japan. So, I mean, it's not something that's as hard as it was 10 years ago. But I don't think it's going to make much of a difference. I think it's just about tourists. It's not about living here. But things could change. I don't know how things are going to pan out.

39:29 John Daub: I just know that Japan is watching what happens with the dude in the Philippines and Johnny Somali, that guy. They're seeing how this goes. And there's going to be some legislation on streaming, on social media use. There's going to be some harsher penalties for people that disturb the peace. There's going to be some new laws for tourism. And you can already feel it. This is a long time coming. Japan, things move slow. We still have fax machines and newspapers, people with flip phones. And you know what? I like that. I don't want Japan to change. I love that I can get on the subway in the morning and see people reading the newspaper. There's kind of an inner peace in me that I'm still connected to. I'm connected to the era of my childhood. Things move so fast these days that before you know it, we're in another era. But in Japan, you can see the future and you can see the past. So everyone who goes, Japan's living in 2050. I'm like, no it's not. I just had to fax a business proposal to a client two weeks ago from the convenience store. Fax. So what are they talking about, living in the future? That's what tourists think, maybe. I don't know. But every time I see that, I just chuckle and I move on.

40:48 John Daub: Japan, maybe some things in Japan are in the future, but Japanese are living in the past. And thank God for that because it was a very peaceful society in the 1990s and 2000s. When I moved here, I hope it stays like that for a while longer. I kind of want to savor that for the last 30 years. I've been here for almost 30 years now. My God.

41:13 John Daub: There you go. All right, everybody. Take care. I really like talking to you about this kind of stuff. I think it's a big issue. Your comments down below are being read by officials that are thinking about two-tier pricing. A lot of people are very concerned. They're very interested in what foreign YouTubers, people like me, are talking about with this issue. What you who are watching this have a say. So if you don't like it, let them know in the comments below. Let them know what your solution would be because I'm giving you the other side of it. Kyoto, Japanese can't afford to travel abroad. Japanese can't afford to travel in Japan. The same as in Indonesia. The same as in India in some places. The same as in Venice, Barcelona. This is not a Japan-specific problem. But we're seeing Japan's using a template. I think they're considering the template of Hawaii right now for better or for worse.

42:11 John Daub: But I think there's some synergy between Hawaii and Japan. You know? And I love Hawaii. I was there. I was there only once. I can't wait to go back there. In fact, I can't wait to see my Hawaiian friends that come here to visit because I feel like I'm back in Hawaii. When Brandy comes, and I hope Brandy, who hates being on livestreams, comes back, it's going to be a lot of fun hanging out with Brandy. And Michael, when you come here, it's like family when our Hawaiian friends come here. So when Jared, whenever I can actually see Jared, it's going to be great. Or Saya. We've got a California family going on here as well. When Saya comes here. Or Diana from Singapore. We've got a Singapore family. We've got a lot of people that we love here. So I mean, yeah, you know. There's a lot of synergy with these places. And Hawaii and Japan seem connected in a lot of ways. So that's some good stuff. And some bad stuff. Two-tier pricing. I'm not there yet. I'm against it. But I get it. I get it. Overtourism.

43:17 John Daub: And again, this is maybe the most important thing. And I've already said this, but this is I think where you want to end here. Japan has an overtourism problem. But it's very easily fixed if people spread out and go to other places. If everybody goes and does the Golden Route or is going to Kanazawa and Kyoto and Hiroshima and doing the same things, we're going to have a problem that sticks around. If people spread out and go to, like, other locations and everybody starts to see a shared benefit in tourism, then we're going to have a different reaction. But you can understand that people in, like, Shimane Prefecture, maybe not as happy. They're not seeing as much of this tourism boom as, say, somebody in Kyoto who's hating tourists. And people in Shimane are like, Come to Shimane! And Shimane is so beautiful. We've got so many attractions in Shimane. Why aren't people coming? Because they don't know about it. Because influencers aren't going to share that. The beauty of Shimane, or the Sanin region, and Sanin's not doing such a great job either of promoting their region. They're doing an okay job, but they could do a lot more. They're putting the money in the wrong places sometimes and it's just a bureaucratic procedure.

44:35 John Daub: I tried to work with one prefecture. I'm not going to tell you which one. And it was like they just didn't get it. They don't get it yet of how to make things work and promote and get people to spread out. So it's not just the tourists' fault. And it isn't. It's the Japanese prefecture's, the local government's fault, the national government's fault. Everybody's at fault here. Even me. People like me. I think I'm doing a pretty good job of taking you to places that nobody's going to or people don't know about or at least spreading it out. But we need to do more of that. So I call on you, Ninja Monkey. I call on everybody else. Stop showing the places that everybody wants to go. And just go out to the middle of nowhere. Actually, Oriental Pearls did a pretty good job doing that too. And a lot of other YouTubers are starting to do that as well.

45:31 John Daub: I don't agree with all of the YouTubers, but I don't disagree. Everybody's got to have their own way to do stuff. So I'm not going to call out any YouTubers, but I will praise those that do. Like Chani Japan, who lives in Wakayama and has a house. Awesome. Wakayama. Get out there. This is a beautiful place. Beautiful sight of Kansai. The countryside there. Amazing place. There's so many YouTubers that are out in the countryside in Japan that are showing a different side. And I hope that that opens the country up to you.

46:05 John Daub: Yeah, Chris. Chris Broad is doing a good job of showing the countryside. The trips going out to the countryside. You got to give him a lot of credit. That's great. And I think, you know, we agree on that very strongly. And there is a synergy, I think, that we have in that sense. We want Japan to win very much. And it's not the tourist areas because they don't need to win anymore. We want Hokkaido, we want Shikoku, Kyushu, these local areas to win. So there is a... The longer you're in Japan, the more you feel a responsibility to help those areas win, to help communities not that need the most help. But sometimes these communities don't want to help themselves. And it's really a hard job. It's really hard.

47:06 John Daub: And it's YouTubers too. YouTube, if I say I'm a YouTuber, I can't get access to even help them or they don't take me seriously. So the Johnny Somali stuff does play a big impact on what I do and getting access to tell a story. It can be really hard. But that doesn't mean I give up. There's one story I've been trying to get for five years. Before I did the Square Watermelon, I contacted JA, Japan Agriculture, every single year for three or four years. Before I got the Hitachi Elevator video, which I wanted to do for a very long time, I had to ask them for like two or three years, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And they eventually broke down and said yes. So I'm not someone who's going to give up on it. But I've got a very good community of Patreon supporters that allows me a little bit of luxury to be able to wait out stories like that. Not a lot of creators do. Thank you, Patreon. Thank you, everybody.

48:09 John Daub: John Michael, eSIM provider for Japan that you can recommend. I don't know a lot about that. Hit me up on, I know you're on Patreon. Hit me up there. You can direct message me. Whatever you can find. I would say, Docomo is the best for the entire country, meaning the signal's pretty strong in every location. Maybe the cheapest reliable one is SoftBank. But I think there's a lot of resellers that resell coverage on these that get second priority. But unless you need a lot of data all the time, there's no reason not to use those super cheap third-party resellers. You don't need to have a Docomo there. You can just have a Cadillac plan like I do so I can get the best signal. You can just have a third-party reseller on another network and make a lot of money.

49:08 John Daub: I'm sure Chris is probably a multi-millionaire 10 times over. I could never be that successful. It would ruin me. I still edit the videos myself. I still do everything myself. So I don't want to be ruined by that. I know there's a lot of other creators that we've had this discussion. I don't want to get super rich off of YouTube. I'm hungry. Like Rocky, Eye of the Tiger. Remember where he lost it? Rocky 3 with Clubber Lang. He lost it. Rocky got too much. He lost his Eye of the Tiger. And he needed to go to LA with Apollo Creed. Action Jackson. And he had to go back down and get back his Eye of the Tiger, man. You got to stay hungry. You got to stay hungry. It's easy to lose it. So I'm Rocky. I'm hungry. Eye of the Tiger.

50:26 John Daub: All right, everybody. Take care of yourself. You should have made a connection with Karate Kid, not Rocky. Yeah. You know what I would have? If there's been any benefit to Karate Kid, I would have never seen Karate Kid in my life at all. All that Karate Kid has been done with Ralph Macchio and what's his name? The character. It's all been just a living hell. Ever since like 1984, you know, junior high school, high school, college, YouTube. Everybody, they say the comments. They're not flattering. They're not doing it to flatter me. They're trying to troll me. Yeah, I would make a Karate Kid reference. But it's done me no good. And until Ralph comes and meets me and we make amends, I don't know.

51:22 John Daub: The boy from New Jersey. And I'm a big Ralph Macchio fan, you know, since The Outsiders. Remember that movie? Rocky's better movie. Cobra Kai has kind of jumped the shark for me there. It's a little bit too out there. But there you go. Don't do it. Don't troll. Daniel is amazing like you are. Hey, I'm just saying I'd love to meet Ralph Macchio and then I think it'd be pretty cool. Then we can put this to rest and then I could fall in love with the Karate Kid all over again. But until then, Ralph, you have an open invitation to come to Japan and say hi, hang out. I will take you to maybe the best sushi and one of the best pizza places in Japan. And you would get a definitely good experience if you went with me. So. Ralph, if you're watching this, it'd be really cool. I think we're both aging pretty good. But Ralph, ever since Karate Kid, man, I've been hearing it.

52:44 John Daub: All right, guys, I got to go. Take care. I got to get back to editing. But please let me know your comments below. I'm really curious to hear the feedback. I think it's great if we can talk about this. And maybe the feedback that you give is something that the lawmakers or these policymakers, take under consideration because I know that they do watch the show. They do. All right, everybody. Matane. And thank you, John, again for the super chat. I appreciate it. That was really nice. John Michael. Oh, John had a question here. I got a question. Was wondering if you could help answer me. Two of my best friends wanted to do a trip to Japan. And what's best? Can you hit me up on Patreon? This is such a long question. Actually, I can answer it in a Patreon Q&A. Want to do a trip to Japan and what's the best? That's a really long question, John Michael. I'll answer that for sure. I can write it to you, in fact. See you guys. Take care.