00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody. Sorry for the late start. Was talking to somebody that just walked by here. I'm in Tokyo on a not really wonderful day. We have gray skies. It's been raining all morning, but April showers bring May flowers. So I kind of have to roll with it. I had some plans to go to Nihonbashi to a friend's exhibit. He's an anime artist, but it looks like it's already sold out. And anyways, the rain would probably keep—not a good idea to go to Nihonbashi. I'm going to get on my bicycle and ride downtown today. So I'm staying within my backyard, my ward, Chuo Ward here in Tokyo. And I would take some of your questions. We got a bunch of questions over the last couple of, a few last live streams, as well as some news. There's always something to talk about when it comes to travel to Japan. Summer is coming up. This is the between season, between the cherry blossoms and summer holidays. Kids get out of school in June. People start to take their summer vacations in June. May is the perfect time to visit Japan, if you ask me, because the weather—it's, well, you do have days that look like this, but it's very low humidity and it's warm enough to wear shorts. The mosquitoes are out. I can feel them biting me, but I'm okay with that. You get used to it.

00:02:00 John Daub: Somebody said in Sweden, that in Sweden, they go up to the north of Sweden. Some people do and they lay naked outside and let the mosquitoes just bite the hell out of them all day and all night, where they're just one walking mosquito bump, and then for the rest of the summer, the mosquitoes don't bite them. I don't know if that's true or not, but my Swedish friend said it's true, but he never said whether or not he did that or not. I went to a school that had a lot of Swedish students, but I'm okay with the mosquitoes. They kind of go away pretty quickly, and Japan does have mosquitoes.

00:03:00 John Daub: Question, should you get the Japanese encephalitis vaccine shot to come to Japan? Answer, it depends. I've actually done a live stream on this before. Japanese encephalitis has the word Japanese in it. It's something that you would get from mosquitoes, insect bites. You might get it if you go deep into the forests in Japan, but if you're just coming to Tokyo, Osaka, you're doing the golden route, I'd say like 90% of the tourists, 99% of the tourists don't need to get that shot. Japan's a place with very... very little of that. I don't want to say don't do it, because if you end up getting it, then you're going to reference this live stream, so you have to make that determination, but it does have the word Japanese in it. Japanese encephalitis is in a lot of places other than just Japan, but you would get it. You could get it deep in the woods, just like you could probably get it deep in the woods anywhere in the world. You could probably get mosquito bites.

00:04:30 John Daub: I've had to get yellow fever vaccinations. I've had to get dengue fever. When I traveled, I had to get all sorts of vaccinations. I was thinking maybe of going to the Middle East, so they recommend getting cholera vaccinated, which I think I did. Probably not the nicest stuff to inject yourself with, but the vaccine I'm talking about. Getting vaccines to travel, Japan is one of the places where it's actually not that necessary to get all of these vaccinations for travel, but if you are going to India, you are going to China, meningitis, for example, is one, hepatitis, typhus. You might have to [?] in China. If you are going to India, meningitis for sure because I had an aunt in India that passed away from a mosquito bite getting meningitis and then dying so that's the one that I make sure I kind of get up to date but you don't need to get vaccinated so much to come to Japan because it's a very especially in Tokyo and Osaka you don't have those issues.

00:06:00 John Daub: We did have a dengue fever epidemic probably people were in Yoyogi Park of all places and they ended up spraying down Yoyogi Park and killing all the mosquitoes and they solved the problem but they think that it came from the fruits or some of the food because Yoyogi Park next to it has a lot of um I don't know like Vietnam Thailand Cambodia like a lot of ethnic festivals and they think that some of the food or that they were brought into the area brought in some mosquitoes that had dengue fever in it and that might have caused the proliferation but they got rid of it really quick and dengue fever has not been an issue inside of Tokyo that was like 12 or 13 years ago time really flies.

00:07:00 John Daub: So there's just some pretty good questions right off the bat here um what do you guys what else is on your mind when it comes to travel here to Japan let's see here how you doing oh here we go uh that one scene dude i've done Tokyo and the Kyoto Osaka area so i'm going to do a little of the history with that one so you can kind of see where it's going to go okay so i'm going to go to a hard drive in Korea the reason why we're going to go here is we're going to have a lot of people the people who are going to be traveling and the people who are going to be able to enter the store where they're going to be able to go to the store so we're going to get a few people at that point.

00:08:30 John Daub: I would say probably Hokkaido is so nice because there's no humidity. Japan in the summer is it's like a sauna It's really harsh It's not that fun to be outside during the day. I have to be honest with you It's really really hard and wears you down you get this thing called natsubate (summer fatigue) means like summer death or something you just feel all of your energy is stolen from you and if you go outside too much and you don't want to stay in the air conditioning either You're kind of you just kind of survive. That's how bad the summers are between Osaka and Tokyo Kyushu is not too bad It's about the same to be honest with you, but Hokkaido is great. They don't have a rainy season in Hokkaido That's another thing to consider if you're coming to Japan in June and July when it's raining in Tokyo They don't have a rainy season in Hokkaido So that might be the that might be why Hokkaido is so popular you get a lot of sunshine and nice blue open skies up there in Hokkaido.

00:10:00 John Daub: So I would recommend in the summer It seems like it's pretty safe bet if you go up to Hokkaido But you get you get you know, you could do more active summer activities in the summer. So I don't know Shikoku and Kyushu are two of the four main islands that don't get a lot of love So I would recommend I love Kyushu. It's got such great food. You have some of the best onsen (hot spring) spas in the entire country Traditional Japanese yokan (sweet jellied confection) really great in Kyushu. The roads are pretty good Shinkansen is really good. You got the its link to it the Shinkansen. You can go you know to Nagasaki, which is off the beaten path. You can go to oh it's Miyazaki, which is off of the beaten path even You know, Beppu, which is a great hot spring town there. Kyushu has got so much going for it and it's got Fukuoka Which is a massive hub to going in there.

00:12:00 John Daub: Shikoku has got is more backwater so I think that for adventurers, especially sports enthusiasts and people who like hiking, there's a lot to love about Shikoku. Prices are a little bit cheaper there I believe. The food is just as good, but it's more spread out. I like Kagawa. I like it all in Shikoku actually. It's all really nice places. Kochi Prefecture though is on the backside towards the Pacific. It's best to fly there. You can get there by train. You take the train from Okayama and get there, but you get off on the Shinkansen in Okayama and you can take an express train to Kochi, but I always think it's more time and cost efficient to fly there in 75 minutes rather than 6 hours right? So you have to think about that. But in terms of the food, Hokkaido and Kyushu and Shikoku, you can't go wrong with eating. In terms of natural beauty, if you want to be outside in the summer, maybe Hokkaido might be better just because it's more comfortable outside. But it's also getting much more crowded. A lot of tourists from neighboring countries, Korea, Taiwan, China, they really,