00:00:01 John Daub: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tokyo. This behind me where you see all of these foreign tourists is Tsukiji Market. The outer market used to be the fish market where you would see the auction for the tuna. Now it's turned into probably the greatest tourist trap in the history of Japan. It's not my kind of place, although it is a little bit fun if you're looking for international people who don't know where the trash can is. And this is the topic of today's livestream.

00:00:34 John Daub: And there is a big problem that's going on in the city of Tokyo and other places in Japan where a lot of tourists have been congregating. It's been in the news again recently, and I've talked about it on this channel before. There's just a lack of public trash cans, and tourists don't know where to throw the stuff away. Now, the answer is pretty easy to me. I mean, in my bag right here, I actually, I carry always a plastic bag that I get at the convenience stores.

00:01:07 John Daub: I have it with me because I know that there is a lack of public trash cans. And if you have wet food, let's say you got ice cream, for example. I've got a son who's 4 years old, so I come prepared for something like this. A lot of the people that are visiting Japan expect the trash cans to be something like they would be in their home countries. Not the case. So in this episode, let's go over exactly where you find these places, because these right here, these are not trash cans.

00:01:41 John Daub: These are recycle receptacles for pet bottles and cans. And the one over there, it's really kind of disturbing. Let me turn the camera around here. There's a couple of them. And this is why when you sometimes you'll see vending machines without those recycled receptacles, it's because they get trash put into them. And what I've been seeing is wet food, like discarded food, skewers sticks. I saw like half of a daifuku get thrown into there.

00:02:11 John Daub: It's pretty nasty. So whoever has to recycle the cans and pet bottles in that bin is not getting a lot of the pet bottles. The answer is like, should the city be putting in public trash cans? I don't think so. I think it's... this is a tough call, and I'd love to hear your opinions on this. Now, just over there is Tsukiji Market, and at the end of the live stream, we're gonna walk through here. I'll take you in there. And then you could take a look for yourself, how they're doing stuff. But I made a video for you to kind of highlight the issues because this is the place that is kind of nasty.

00:02:42 John Daub: When I compare it to other places in Tokyo or Japan, Tsukiji is kind of nasty. And it's just because the tourists don't know where the trash goes. So a lot of it goes on the ground. This is Tsukiji Market. After this is the end of the day, pretty much. And locals do a pretty good job of picking up and sweeping up the streets here.

00:03:17 John Daub: But you'll see, like the trash cans, they're very strict. The store owners don't allow you to throw stuff that's not purchased at their shop in their trash cans because they have to pay for it. And it adds up real fast. This one shop that's very popular in the corner, selling tamagoyaki or eggs, Japanese style eggs, has their trash cans right here for the trays in which they serve it. Only for the customers, of course, they use that directly to recycle that.

00:03:49 John Daub: But look what they've done there. They've made it so that you can't put other trash in there, like plastic cups, you know, frappuccinos and stuff like that. You have to put only the tray. They thought about that. So the trash cans are pretty much controlled here. There's a vending machine and they recycle receptacles where a lot of people have been throwing trash here. And as I was taking this video, somebody came and started to throw trash.

00:04:20 John Daub: This is recycling, Bing. Don't throw away trash here. Put it empty plastic bottles and cans only. And look right there, there's some tourists that are trying to put their other trash in there. You have to go here to the convenience stores. And you know, this is the toughest thing. And I think Tsukiji Market, it's sort of a problem that they have with the messaging and what they're trying to do here. They have a sign that says you cannot eat food in front of the shop.

00:04:53 John Daub: You can't... do not eat and walk. All right? They're literally like, this is not... this is not the tourists fault. I started off. It kind of... it is in a way, but it's not because they're selling street food in here. Lots and lots of street food stuff on skewers, ice cream cones that are going to get messy on your hands, which is another reason you should probably come prepared and bring, you know, your own wet tissues with you, which I always carry as well in my utility belt or bag.

00:05:27 John Daub: It sounds cooler like Batman if you say utility belt. But they're selling the food here and the stores won't take the other stores trash. So what happens if you're walking around with the food? You're going to have to find a place to get rid of it because you don't want to keep holding it. And foreigners that are visiting Japan don't have the same culture as Japan to throw it out at the hotel. Which is what I would do if I were staying in another area.

00:05:59 John Daub: So what you get is a mess. I noticed this at Ameyoko Market when I was doing a live stream there about two weeks ago. There were areas just a mess, garbage, like discarded food. It was really nasty. And then the rats come in and other vermin and stuff. The populations really start to increase.

00:06:31 John Daub: To me, Tsukiji Market has always been kind of a cesspool because the fish market was old. One of the reasons they relocated it to Toyosu was because the conditions... although it was clean, it was not clean enough. And they had a ninja rat problem. These rats were very nimble. If you spend any time here, you would see them climbing those telephone and poles, see the wires up there. You'd see rats climbing across. That's how they got the nickname of ninja rats. But I see rats here now. It's kind of nasty.

00:07:01 John Daub: They moved over when they moved the market into Ginza, the highest high luxury streets. But they've moved back here because there's just so much discarded trash on the ground. I don't know what Tsukiji is doing about it. I noticed that locals are picking up the trash and putting it away, but they don't accept the trash. So what do you do? I mean, it's a really difficult and challenging problem here because these are not trash receptacles. These are for recycle bins.

00:07:34 John Daub: About 30 years ago. In fact, 30 years ago this year, there was the sarin gas attack on Tokyo. It's a very... I mean, that was just a couple of years after I arrived in Japan. And the posters for the criminals were wanted. Their images are ingrained in my brain because they were in every single train station, post office, police station. Everywhere you went, you could see the people who did that. And I believe that they caught almost all of them. Maybe there's a couple, maybe there's one or two. But you can't get away from crime here in Japan.

00:08:06 John Daub: The long arm of the law. But after that 1995 attack, they took out... this is the way the story goes. They took out a lot of the public trash cans. They used to have them, but it wasn't just because of that. There's an issue with the crows here in Tokyo. They will get into the trash and it makes it a complete mess. You'll see it sometimes in residential neighborhoods. They put these plastic nets over the trash so the crows can't get anything out of it, which discourages the crows. They're very smart. They really are.

00:08:39 John Daub: But another reason was when they took the trash cans, the garbage bins, the rubbish bins out of areas in Tokyo, they found that Tokyo was cleaner. Residents, citizens, they didn't have a lot of foreign tourists then would take their trash back home and throw it away. It was amazing. Not only that, the streets smelled a heck of a lot better too.

00:09:10 John Daub: So there's a lot of advantages to not having trash cans on the streets. Although you... for a tourist who does not know Japanese culture, this is the number one thing that they're pissed off about with visiting Japan. I don't know what Governor Koike, who's the governor of Tokyo Prefecture, is going to do about it, if there is anything you can do about it. But I'd like to hear what your opinions are of this in the comments below.

00:09:40 John Daub: A lot of you had visited Japan. Was this an issue? Did you... were you able to overcome the issue? Was this an impediment to your travel? Was it an annoyance? Where can you go to get the trash cans? As I showed you, you go to the convenience stores. There's a family mart here. I can... maybe I can take you around the corner here. One second. You don't have to look at my mug the whole time. There's a convenience store just around the corner here.

00:10:11 John Daub: They recycle bins inside of there. Boy, it's quite windy here. So you can just... on the intersection, they're going towards Higashi Ginza and Ginza in this direction, and eventually the Imperial Palace. So you could throw it away there. There's also like... like if you're staying at this hotel, you would get a plastic bag and then throw it away when you went back to your hotel. But this is the problem with street food places like Kanazawa.

00:10:42 John Daub: They banned street food in the Higashichaya district. The road there, it is the tourist road. And they had a ton of street food in Karuizawa. They banned it. You couldn't get street food in there. They said you had to eat it inside the shop or you'd have to take it away and eat it in a park or somewhere else because they had so many people littering. But Tsukiji Market has a food problem. Look at no food and no people inside of here because people would hang out.

00:11:15 John Daub: Look at all the food that the temple staff here has picked up and put away from tourists littering here. So there's obviously a massive problem. They put the signs in other languages too. So the purpose of this episode is to let you know that, I mean, yeah, I get it. It is really an annoyance. But you have to bring a trash bag with you to pull it away, throw it away. That's just something that is necessary.

00:11:46 John Daub: Wagyu with uni. No, thank you. You got to be kidding me. That does not look like top grade wagyu. I've... I've already discussed this with you guys. Don't buy wagyu beef at a from a stick in the market. And I... I... sometimes there's some unagi there. I'm very suspicious of everything in this market. When the... when the 99% of the people buying the food are not from this country, you can expect the quality to be way, way lower. And I'm sure that...

00:12:18 John Daub: And I wonder what they're building here. A lot of stuff going on here. You can be sure you're not getting the best stuff here. Not anymore. It just... it doesn't... I could tell just by looking at it. This is not the best stuff anymore. Ohtani is always following me. This is where I was showing you the garbage on the ground sticks. Like, I can kind of look in there, but look at the... look at the grime. That's not from pet bottles. And I bet you if you open this up... should I?

00:12:48 John Daub: I'm gonna see if I can open this up. You can't. Oh my God. My hands are all messy. I bet you if you open that up, you're going to see a lot of trash that's not supposed to be in there. I feel bad for whoever's got to do that. The recycle job around here, it's pretty nasty. My hand... my fingers are all sticky. I'll take some questions from the intersection here. I'm just going to go and take a look here on the corner. The signal is not that great, but since it's the end of the day here at Tsukiji Market, what I've noticed is that the locals have done a lot of cleanup here on the left side.

00:13:30 John Daub: You can see that they do have a place for trash that was purchased at their store, this Tamagoyaki place just shut down and they removed their trash cans here. But the tourists... there's a ton of street food. They're doing business, but there's no real place to sit. There's no real place to enjoy it, but people just make a big mess. There's a trash can underneath here, but it's for that shop. And the shop owner has an eagle eye and usually looking at the people to make sure that, I don't know, they just don't want to pay extra for all of the trash.

00:14:08 John Daub: They've done a pretty good job of cleaning up here because there's a ton of trash going all along the gutters here, but you can still see that there's some on here. This is usually... it would be a lot cleaner than it is right now, but it... it doesn't... it does look like a dumpy area, but that's also, I think, like, I'm a little bit split on it. I hope that they kind of keep Tsukiji Market the way it is. It's got that old 1960s, late 50s, early 70s feel to it.

00:14:41 John Daub: Right. And there's some new hotels that have been put in here. I think that's part of the attractions. If they were to knock all of these buildings down here, I think they would lose some of the attractiveness of the market being like that old 1960s Tokyo. And that would be quite a shame. I think... The alleys here are really nice as well. That might be one reason to come and visit Tsukiji. But yeah, when it comes to the street food here, highly suspicious of the quality.

00:15:14 John Daub: I... it's not... it's not... for me, it... and literally it isn't. I would not come here anymore other than to just kind of out of curiosity to see what tourists are buying here. Everybody getting their smartphones and taking selfies or pictures for Instagram. You can see he's walking with his ice cream and taking a picture of it, but where does he throw that cup away when he's done? That's a problem. It's a problem. So I hope that they fix it.

00:15:45 John Daub: I hope that they fix it. Tokyo is one of the... you know, despite all of that, it is still one of the cleanest cities, if not the cleanest major city in the world. So is that not an amazing fact just right there? Despite the fact that they don't have any trash cans?

00:16:19 John Daub: When a place that's in Tokyo promotes Kobe beef, that's so far away. And you have hundreds... there's literally 250 Wagyu brands around Japan. And there's hundreds around Tokyo that are probably closer. Maybe 100 brands that are closer than Kobe. It just... that's really suspicious to me. Kobe beef. It should be around Kobe. This is regional stuff. You cannot taste much difference, if any, between Kobe beef and some of the other brands. Highly suspicious. I mean, if you still have a good time, I can't fault the people buying it. But you're totally getting ripped off here.

00:16:50 John Daub: They're selling some food, but there's no gomi. There's no trash can. So if there's no trash can in front of the shop, where do they throw that away? Yeah. I came here. I remember I did an episode. A Tsukiji market episode. And the great thing about the outer market was that I was able to get a lot of sashimi and I was able to get... by the way, this is the honten. This is the only sushi zanmai that I will ever go to. Despite having lots of chains. This is the best one. This is the honten.

00:17:21 John Daub: And me and Mike Chen sat right there eating as they prepared us sushi after sushi about six years ago. Used to be able to get a lot of sashimi really cheap. Get a bowl of rice and for almost nothing you could get an amazing kaisen don for like 500 yen. Can't do that anymore. Instead you have daifuku. And those strawberries. Do not they look okay? They look okay. But I'd not buy daifuku here. Suspect. Especially with the season at the end right now in June.

00:17:53 John Daub: Strawberry season is done. So Mike does have a bottomless stomach. I'll take some questions I want to hear from about this issue that is really a problem here in Japan. In Tokyo. In tourist spots. Only in tourist spots. You just don't see trash anywhere except for tourist spots now in Tokyo. And it's kind of... it's not the tourists fault. It's not the city's fault. I don't know whose fault it is. So I just don't like to see trash.

00:18:23 John Daub: There's a cafe in this area. I would recommend Tsumugi. They do a good breakfast set. You couldn't pay me to stay in Tsukiji anymore. I... I thought about doing a Tsukiji episode. I don't... I don't... I don't think I would touch this area for content anymore. It's just... I... I don't know. It's just... it's changed too much into a tourist trap. The only Japanese I saw were the ones behind the counter. And that's good business for them. I just don't think...

00:18:54 John Daub: I don't know. If you go to the Sea of Japan side, if you make a trip out to the countryside, you're gonna get the really good stuff, but you just don't know about it because a lot of people don't talk about it. But everybody talks about this because it's convenient. So I can't blame anybody for going here. This is the Lawsons. I wanted to take you. This is where you could throw your trash away. There's literally a trash can right there.

00:19:25 John Daub: You can see that might be the only one right there. So they will take your trash. Nightshade giggles like no, it's tourist fault. No, it's a tourist fault maybe, but if you're not trained in the job, if you're not trained in the local etiquette, how do you really know you're spending money here? That's appreciated, but how would you really know? So maybe it's the city's fault in a way as well. Maybe it's Japan's fault. When you enter, you should be given a rule book on how to behave.

00:19:59 John Daub: I don't know. But this is just one of maybe a list of 20 things that locals have reacted to. But alright, the one thing and the comments here are great. You should always learn about the local culture before you visit. That would be the ideal. Train platforms as well. Yeah. Major bus stations. Train stations, hotel and departments. Store lobbies. Sometimes you can throw your trash away there when you enter into the department store.

00:20:30 John Daub: Sometimes they have a trash receptacle. Supermarkets and yeah, almost every convenience store, some of them where it's been abused. The convenience stores might say no to outside garbage. I've had that happen as well. And you say okay, it's up to the private business is up to them. Not all convenience stores have toilets. The lack of public toilets in certain places. Convenience stores are supposed to be the place where you can go and use a public toilet.

00:21:02 John Daub: But in the city where it's abused, sometimes they tend to close them and then you don't have access to it anymore. It's a hard thing. So if you, if you got a kid who's got to go, you go to the convenience store and typically there'd be a public toilet that you could use. But I carry my trash bag with me, I carry the trash with me or I eat it in front of the shop and I throw the trash at the shop in which I bought it because they feel a responsibility to do it.

00:21:34 John Daub: Behind that Tonami car is a convenience store. That's why I was kind of showing this. But, yeah, don't bring back trash cans. That'd be disaster. I don't like it. I think that the trash cans are just going to get abused. It's going to stink. Especially in the summer. Especially in the summer. One of the things that I noticed, Tokyo smells wonderful. You don't get the smell of... maybe just in Shinjuku, you don't get the smell of, like, urine that you do in New York City.

00:22:07 John Daub: Everywhere you go, it smells like pee or trash. You don't get that in Tokyo. In the center, in places that's crowded, you just don't get weird, nasty smells. And that's something. I guess it's... I sometimes take it... I forget about, you know, because I... When I leave Tokyo to go to other countries, then I remember this place stinks. I want to... I like going back to Tokyo where it smells kind of nice. Smells like roasted... roasting a grilled fish right from it here, which it probably should.

00:22:41 John Daub: It's more appetizing that way. Tourist guides should instruct visitors the do's and don'ts, and maybe some certain youtubers as well. John, let's be honest. There are spots in Tokyo that smell... smell like a sewer. Yeah. And I was inside one of them. Literally inside of a sewer pipe. I had some episode on my old channel. Me and my friend Joseph Tame went inside of a sewage pipe at their sewage museum. Yeah, sure, after it rains, there's certain times where it can...

00:23:14 John Daub: But if you compare... All right, I want you to compare New York City with Tokyo with smell. You tell me on a scale of 1 to 10, which city's closer to a 10. That's all I'm saying. But there, as I said, like around Shinjuku, you do get some pretty nasty smells. Maybe a couple places in Ikebukuro where young people hang out. Shibuya, that area around Hachiko, can smell pretty bad on a Sunday night. On a Sunday morning, after everyone's been drinking and throwing garbage and peeing in weird places.

00:23:48 John Daub: Because people do get drunk and do that still, they can get in trouble for it. But there's a... certainly there's a... there are places that don't smell good, but you could predict where they are and this would be one that should smell worse than it does. But the locals do a fairly good job of it. But they could do a much better job because... just people don't know where to throw the trash away. Actually, I'm going to cross the street here.

00:24:19 John Daub: I call the sewer poo tooth smell very gross. Yeah, that pipe was pretty nasty smelling. Although it didn't smell as bad as I thought it would smell. All right, the nasty part about that episode, I probably should make that into a short real. The nasty part. I mean, I've been doing that actually for the old episodes. I just uploaded on the main channel a reel from the Nada Mochi guy, which got almost 2 million views on Facebook and 9,000 views on YouTube.

00:24:51 John Daub: So I don't understand how these short content's supposed to work. It's got 200,000 views on Instagram, almost 2 million on Facebook, and it's got like 9,000 views on YouTube. So it's... it's... it's confusing to me. It's like, how do you, how does this all work? Ben writes in here. Thanks always, John, for your passion and energy. Ben, you're very welcome. Thank you for that.

00:25:22 John Daub: I was... I... I was thinking about doing something else today because we have... Yesterday it was rain. Today it's like perfect May weather. This is May. I have a long sleeve shirt just to kind of keep the rundown. You can get burned real fast. The days are a lot longer than they were. This is why May is the best time to visit Japan. I think it's hands down, the spring vacation's over, the golden week holidays over, first day back, kids are back in school, things are not crowded. The cherry blossoms are all gone, thankfully.

00:25:54 John Daub: Well, I kind of miss them. But when they're gone, the tourists kind of go along with it and you get better weather. So you really can't do better than May for traveling here. May would be the best. Osaka, actually, Osaka does kind of smell. Yeah, there's some... there's... yeah, Osaka might smell worse than Tokyo. I don't know. There's certain places. But if you comparatively, Osaka compared to New York, Osaka still smells a little bit better.

00:26:26 John Daub: I grew up not that far away from Philadelphia too. And see, look, they got... everything is recycled pet bottles. People are pretty responsible with it, right? I grew up not too far away from Philadelphia and I remember, well, maybe it was a lot of garbage strikes, you know, sanitation strikes and things like that going on here. But Philadelphia did not smell wonderful. It's still a great city, but like the nuts smell wonderful.

00:26:56 John Daub: But bottom line here I'm walking around the streets, you just... you don't see trash cans here. You won't find them you got to go into the shops, which can be a little bit embarrassing. Say, can I throw this away here? Or you got to carry it out, which is your responsibility. You bought it. Or take it back to the shop at which you bought... don't walk and eat, which is in this video here at the end, there's the sign. It says here, please do not eat while walking.

00:27:28 John Daub: You can eat the food in front of the shop you bought it from. And the reason why is because when you walk and you eat, you drop a lot of food. Or if there's hundreds of people, maybe three or four are going to drop the food, which creates a big mess. And that's where the trash can is. So throw your food away at the shop at which you bought the food. And if they don't take the trash, just give it to them and run away. Like ding dong. Ditch your trash.

00:27:58 John Daub: That's what I would do. You have to ask permission to use the shop garbage can. Yeah, because where is it? The garbage cans are usually behind a counter. Let's say you went into this, this ramen shop. You'd have to ask permission to use their garbage can because it's not right there. Say, could you take... because you have to hand the trash to the owner who is going to put it into the trash receptacle. You could also throw it away at the McDonald's if you could find one.

00:28:33 John Daub: Convenience stores, department stores, train stations, bus stations, your hotel. And that's why I carry a plastic bag. These are called... that was close. These are called fukuro, which means blanket in Japanese. So whenever you go to the convenience store, they're not going to give you one of these right away. So you have to say fukuro negai shimasu. And they're going to add 2 yen to 5 yen to your bill. But you get a bag which you could throw your garbage away.

00:29:05 John Daub: If you walk out of there without a fukuro, good luck. It's not the best thing for the environment. I think that that's one reason why they did it. It's probably a good idea. It reduces a lot of the plastic, and we certainly need to do that. There's just too much plastic. But I think if you're a traveler, you really need to have a plastic bag with you at all times in Japan. So that... that's my advice to you. It's not a very big one.

00:29:35 John Daub: They don't weigh much of anything, right? Hey, come back here. Where are you going? That's it. It's a plastic bag, weighs one like 0.1 ounce maybe. You know, like one gram fits in your bag pretty good. You whip it out, put your trash in there, put it back in your bag so nothing gets sticky and you throw it back at the hotel. My advice to you, eat at the restaurants, eat in front of the shop, don't walk and eat because it's something that's kind of ground down in Japan.

00:30:08 John Daub: Maybe a reason why. And if you do walk and eat, don't throw your sticks in the recycle receptacles because that is not a trash can. This is not a trash can. It is nasty if you do that. So my lecture is over. Class is dismissed. I'm dropping in to say aloha. Gotta go back to work. Hey, Brad Dhania. See you tomorrow. Tomorrow, the day after. See you real soon.

00:30:39 John Daub: Looking forward to that. Plastic is incinerated and added to concrete for building. I did, we did something for it. I did something for NHK in 2009 for Tokyo Eye. We went to where they're making like near Odaiba where they're making the islands. They're using trash to make islands out into Tokyo Bay. You can see it if you use Google Earth or Google Maps. It's an area that's, well, there's nothing there except for trash and there's sea. They put these poles deep into the ground to get the methane gas to come out of it so it can settle so it doesn't explode.

00:31:13 John Daub: You got to get the methane gas out of there. But they're making these islands from the trash there. But the burnable trash, they burn it. But those high chimneys that they use for it have these massive filters that apparently get rid of 99.99% of all the pollutants in the air. So technology and modern innovation has found ways to make burning trash safer. But again, there's that .01% that, you know, perhaps Mark Carney won't like.

00:31:43 John Daub: I... I saw the White, the White House meeting and I... I follow Canadian politics. Don't ask me why. Unlimited prices are also prices are going up everywhere. They're going up in tourist spots more than local spots. The two tier pricing system seems to becoming a reality here in Japan. I'm seeing that but just in tourist spots. This is exactly why you need to travel outside of the city of Tokyo to go out to the countryside where there aren't a two tier price.

00:32:15 John Daub: If they... you go to a place that has a two tier pricing system, you're in the wrong spot. I'm just saying, you know... that where can we watch the NHK episode? Yeah. You know what? NHK back in the day, they would broadcast it and then it goes into the garbage bin. I do have some CDs or like DVDs that they gave me of poor quality that I've got to. Literally. I have to do AI enhancements on it or else it's... you can't even watch it. It's so bad.

00:32:46 John Daub: But those might be the final copies of the archives of material that... it's like gold to me and to you. But I don't... I don't know if I got that. And I'm not sure if I... I might be able to get a copy of it. I could... I could write to Jib TV and ask them. I had a neighbor that was shooting bullets at the trash pile. What? Not in Japan.

00:33:16 John Daub: If everybody prepared their own plastic plastic trash bag, would that create more plastic waste? I don't think so. The idea is that they're gonna... those plastic bags are gonna get used and thrown away anyways. But I think you're gonna need that so you don't get crap in your bag. All right. You have these plastic... I get the plastic bags for travel, for situations like this. When I'm with my son and he needs an ice cream cone. We can't stay in front of the shop. What are you gonna do with it? Let's say he can't finish half of it and his hands all melted.

00:33:48 John Daub: I've got wet tissues and I got a plastic bag. You know why? Because I'm prepared. I know Japanese culture, and I know how this stuff works. Locals got plastic bags. Biodegradable plastic bags. Yeah. Japan's invented a plastic that is biodegradable as well. And we're going to probably start to see those in the stores rolling out in the next year or two when they become cost effective. You can't... it's very hard to get this, the biodegradable stuff at a price point that makes sense to average consumers that are already kind of having trouble paying the rent.

00:34:27 John Daub: It's hard to justify that. So we'll see how that works out. But yet Japan found a way to make plastic biodegradable. And heck, it's pretty smart. Pretty smart can't fix a culture problem. The US is having a culture problem and trying to export it. I'm not sure what that means.

00:34:59 John Daub: What's a depachika? De Pachka are the department store. It's funny when you see it in Romaji, in the basement of the department stores. They have these places where they have food. It's really awesome and it's really good food. You can get it and eat it at your hotel. If you were ever going to do takeaway, I would go to the Depachika and get like 500 grams of this, 500 grams of that and take back... That's actually a lot of food. I don't know, 200 grams of this, 200 grams of that, 200 grams of this. I don't know, maybe a carton of this. And go back to your room and have a smorgasbord. That's what I would do. The depachika, if you go there, they're just so much fun.

00:35:33 John Daub: You'll find gifts as well. You'll find really high quality stuff. High quality food is down in the basements of these department stores. Yeah, a food emporium or a food hall. Not all of the department stores have them, but a lot of them do. In particular in Tokyo, the bigger ones, Mitsukoshi has them, Matsuzukaya has them, Seibu has them. So a lot of department stores have this. It's almost like a museum. A food emporium is a good way to look at it.

00:36:04 John Daub: Sometimes there are supermarkets in the basements as well. It's convenient. It's really convenient. And having more bins would be a better start to a solution than having tourist litter. I disagree with you. I'm not gonna put in trash bins just because tourists don't know... don't... follow Japanese culture. It's against Japanese culture right now. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to put in trash bins. I think it's up to, if you ask me this, the solution I'm kind of soliciting for these comments.

00:36:39 John Daub: I really love that. I'm not... I'm not big critical of your comment, maybe a little bit, but I love that you wrote that. I want to get more of this feedback here. It's up to the Tsukiji Outer Market association, which is a building down that alley over here. It's an old building. There's a leader who collects money from these businesses to run their association. If you get a business in the neighborhood, you have to be a part of the association.

00:37:11 John Daub: You get money. It's up to them to make the signs to tell the tourists not to do this or that. They haven't done that. Maybe they haven't spoken to somebody who can help them. I don't know. Maybe the association went bankrupt when they moved to Toyosu. I don't know, but I think it's up to the neighborhood to get the word out. And I think what I'm seeing is it's not a clean place, but it's not a dirty place. And it looks like the locals or the store owners or the people...

00:37:44 John Daub: After the tourists leave, which is at this time right now, around 2pm, they do clean up the area, but from around 9:30, because this is a morning place. Around 9:30 to 1, it's kind of a mess here. It's up to the local areas. It's not up to the city. And the city should not... a country or a city should not change its culture for the demands of the tourists. It just does not make a lot of sense anyways. It costs money to put in the trash cans.

00:38:15 John Daub: There's security issues involved with the trash cans. Having no trash cans solves a security problem. They close the trash cans out anyways. Tokyo has a lot of political meetings, G7, G8 summits, politicians, when they come in here. From what I can said before, a lot of those train station trash cans get closed during times where there are a lot of VIPs in the city of Tokyo, which is quite often. So those trash cans would be taken away half the time anyways.

00:38:47 John Daub: Because this is Tokyo. It's a capital, it's a political capital, you know. But it's not up to Japanese to change Japan. Tokyo still a super clean place, but I'm just seeing an increase in trash and rubbish and not to react to it. I think it's about a better job of explaining to people where is the trash can. That's what they should do. All right. If you're looking for views, I took everybody into Tsukiji Market to explain it. You can take a look at the video here as I talk just one more time.

00:39:22 John Daub: This is the end of the Tsukiji market day around 1pm you can see there's just a total lack of trash cans, despite having a ton of street food. And the trash that they do have is for that store only, a reason to eat and drink the food in front of the shop. The guys right there standing there to make sure you don't throw the trash away. They might take it, but they might be a little strict about it. Shops get inventive. What they do is they have these special trash cans that they do for just their trash here.

00:39:57 John Daub: So you can put the sticks in that bag and the box there and then the trays into there. And they make it so you can't put other things inside of there so they don't have to pay for it. And they want to keep it nice and clean and tidy. It makes a lot of sense, you know, and they don't want to deal with all of the everybody else's trash. They don't want to propagate the culture of walking and eating, which is something that goes against Japanese culture.

00:40:29 John Daub: But the thing that just bothers me is if you just spend two or three minutes walking around, you're going to see tons of people just putting nasty trash in recycle bins. And that's just a bad thing to do. And people were doing it as I was there, and I told them, please don't do that. And you would go to the convenience store, like right here. I'm not a policeman. That's not what I do. The worst thing you could do as a local is to start telling tourists what to do.

00:41:02 John Daub: It's not your job. They're here to have a good time. I want them to have a good time. The part of me, as I get older, be that grumpy old man with assault gun in his front yard waiting on Mischief Night to get the little kids throwing TP and his... That just makes kids want to throw more TP on your trees. Okay, just wait until you fall asleep. That's what happens when you're like 80 years old. But there's... they're doing a pretty good job of keeping it as clean as they possibly can.

00:41:36 John Daub: But, like, it's just... they could do more signs in English. They could make it fun. They could do a better job of it. Tsukiji's not locally... Tsukiji does not have a great reputation. Not anymore. The fish market's not here anymore. It's over there in Toyosu. So Tsukiji market is just famous in guidebooks. And 99% of the people here are tourists. You get Kobe beef, you pay 10,000 yen for it. Locals going, so I don't know. I'll take one more question here.

00:42:07 John Daub: They need to have designated eating areas with communal bins. They used to have a place inside of where I was showing you. I don't know if they've gotten rid of it. There used to be a place, when I made the episode for my old channel on Tsukiji Market, we bought sashimi. I bought sashimi with my friend Greg Lane. He's one of the founders of TokyoCheapo.com, great site. And me and him, we bought food sashimi and we made our own rice bowl.

00:42:38 John Daub: And we were... ate it in a place that there weren't like almost no international tourists back then. 2015, I think 2014, I don't know. That place still exists because the fish market left. But I just... Tsukiji Market, though there's a lot of hotels that have come in the area. Most of the people going to the Tsukiji market here stay at their hotels. So you take your trash back to your hotels. That's cool. Or eat it in front of the stands and we're all good.

00:43:10 John Daub: It's all good. By the way... thank you. We just had somebody who bought a Blu ray from the hitchhiking days at the Only Japan store. Thank you so much to that. We just put it in the mail for you from the US so it's going to be there pretty quickly. Thank you to David and Ellis for helping out with that. And you know, we've got some stuff that we've got a fireworks shell as the firework season comes in here.

00:43:46 John Daub: I did a story. I did a crowdfunding for the fireworks industry because they had to cancel all the fireworks shows. So we got a chance to launch... to buy your own fireworks from them. Launched them and put up a show. And I got some of the goods from those Kickstarter campaigns on the Only in Japan store, store.onlyinjapan.tv and it's sent from the United States. David and Ellis and I did a... I'm gonna say I was in on it too. But they did an amazing job of packaging it up and we made it a really special thing. So if you something that you wanted to get like a number 5 shell Japan fireworks shell.

00:44:20 John Daub: It's done in such a beautiful box and presentation. I have to give them some credit. That's also available in the store. And we'll have some more... more merch Only in Japan merch on there this year. So it's pretty exciting time. They are still available. Walter... I think we have about 30. They're almost gone. And it's an amazing story in there. There's a director's audio track so you could watch it more than once of me talking about the trip.

00:44:51 John Daub: And Kanae breaks in on the Hakodate region because I hitchhiked the entire side. And she talks about going up there to meet me in Hakodate. That's kind of cool. So... and a lot of everybody who's bought it was really happy. Bring in new oij happy. I think I have one more actually happy. I should make some more. Mr. Potato Head writes in the final comment, which is great.

00:45:24 John Daub: I really wish that tourists understood that their vacation destination is also someone else's home. And I think about two years ago when the tourist boom, 2019 was kind of rough. But when tourists died out, I think at first we were kind of happy maybe then we got... I got really depressed in the beginning of 2021. And I think at the end of 2021, I hated not seeing tourists here. I have to admit it, 2022 really stunk because I thought it'd be over by then. I missed the tourists. I missed you guys coming up to say hi to me. And then when the tourists came back at the end of 2022 and all through 2023, it was a shock to the system because it happened like lickety split.

00:46:04 John Daub: And Japan in 2024 tried to catch up. They did. There's a lot of hotel accommodations now. Rooms are... there's a lot more than there were two years ago. A lot more. Prices have gone down maybe a little bit compared to that. But some of the issues that I thought would be solved like rubbish is not. And the messaging on following little things in Japan, some of the cultural stuff just is not getting through to people. And I think it...

00:46:34 John Daub: I'm telling you, I heard that maybe they're doing this, but to make up in a manga style, a leaflet that people want to keep because it's in manga style and it's funny on the culture that tourists need to know about Japan, maybe like the top 10. Japan wastes so much paper on brochures that people throw away. Make it something people want to keep and maybe do it like 10,000 of them. Make them limited edition and have another manga artist created.

00:47:05 John Daub: It's a great way to support local artists too and show the top 10 things that tourists need to remember when they come here to Japan to kind of make it more of a seamless experience. Because my experience here, I have to be perfectly honest with you, almost every single tourist that I've met really wants to make an effort to not be somebody who stands out to be a good tourist. They just don't know. And that's up to somebody to tell them.

00:47:36 John Daub: I don't know if it's me, but it could be. Seeing your videos in 2021, 22 helped me... helped make life enjoyable. R. Jones. That is the nicest comment. Micah... I got to get out the tent with Leo. Remember when Leo was born and before he was born, I used to get my tent out and put on a campfire in the background. We go to the supermarket and just get food and pretend like the world was just fine. You couldn't go out camping in real life, but you could do it in your living room.

00:48:09 John Daub: Maybe we're going to do a little bit of that just for fun. Bring back some of the nostalgic vibes of a time that we prefer to forget about, but lives in our mind, the back of our minds as we move forward. I love you guys. Thanks so much. You make my day a lot brighter. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. We've got a Discord server. You can ask questions there. If you're traveling in Japan, it's a great place to go.

00:48:40 John Daub: We're looking for boosts. If you want to boost our Discord server, you will be treated like, I don't know, VIP little bit. We got a special... we got a special community for just our boosters. So you do get that as well as a big thank you from all of us on the Discord server. Thanks so much for the boost and I will see you in another live stream probably tomorrow as I take you... Oh, one last note. The postcards will be here on the 12th.

00:49:11 John Daub: I'll get them right before we go to Guam and I'm taking them on the 19th. I got 30 more stamps so if you'd like me to send... And actually this is kind of a cool thing. I didn't think I would add this in here, but I might as well because it's the end of the stream. Where do I have it? Here? Okay, right here. The reason why we hit the goal and I'm taking with the Expo. So each postcard will have a cancel mark from Japan Post of the Expo.

00:49:41 John Daub: So you will have been there by getting this postcard because the postcard will have been there like literally... I'm literally wasting investing a day to go there to take these postcards. We had about 25 new postcard sign ups and if you sign up before the 19th, I will have at least the next 30 people. Maybe I'll... maybe I'll find a way to get some more, but I'll be able to... you'll be able to get this cancel stamp on the postcard with a Expo stamp on there, a Japan stamp, the 110 yen one.

00:50:15 John Daub: So it's gonna be pretty cool. I really appreciate it guys. Alright, take care. See you in the next episode. Matane.