00:00:02 John Daub: Wow, ladies and gentlemen, this is just three and a half hours. How you doing? I think Hank is here too. How you doing? I wanted to give you a quick update, talk about the trip over here, our experience in the morning, and that's about it because we haven't had a lot of time to do much. We arrived here at around 9:30 or 10 p.m. at night. The rent-a-car was pretty smooth. We got to the hotel, went straight to bed. We woke up, ate breakfast, and that's pretty much it. We got to do except go to the pool down there. Kanae and Leo just got back up from the pool, and I'm going to talk about it and show you a little bit around, give you a quick introduction to where the heck is Guam.

00:01:03 John Daub: A lot of Americans might not even know that, but this is part of America. It's one of the territories out in the far Pacific that's been a place that I think a lot of Americans have visited before, but it's so close to Japan. We'll talk about that in this live stream, but let me just zoom through the beach here. It's incredibly beautiful. The colors remind me very much of the Maldives, that turquoise blue. Maybe Maldives might be—I don't know. They're both pretty comparable in my mind. Looks like Hawaii. Philippines is really close.

00:01:40 John Daub: Joy, if I yell or wave, would you be able to see me? The flight in was really good. Again, only three hours and 30 minutes. Land—it was pretty quick, I thought, to get here. Guam is way south of Japan. It's a lot further than Okinawa, but not that much further really if you look at it on the map, which I'll show you right now. So for those wondering where exactly we are, there's Japan right there on the big globe marble we call Earth. From Tokyo, which is in the center, the underwater crevice there is Guam. You just have to follow it down south-southeast, and you're pretty much in the middle of the Pacific here.

00:02:12 John Daub: This is Tumon Bay. It's so beautiful. Check out the colors of the water here. And it's so close to the airport—that's what really shocked me. I got in the rent-a-car and I was at the hotel in 10 minutes. I drove right past the Kmart, which is one of the last Kmarts in the world. Look at that big globe. Look how beautiful Earth is. But look how big the Pacific is. Here's the continental United States. There's Hawaii. You have to go pretty far to get to Guam. You can see that blue spot is where we are.

00:02:54 John Daub: Just south-southeast of Tokyo. And boom, we're at this beautiful hotel called the Crowne Plaza Resort. It's part of IHG, which is a bunch of Holiday Inns and stuff. I have a lot of points here, but it was actually pretty affordable—I was surprised. The flight was only like 30% full. I was like, well, maybe because the flight was a little bit pricey. I used my miles, so I was able to get a pretty good deal. Even though I used like 70,000 miles, I still had to pay a few hundred dollars to get the tickets. I don't know why—that's ANA for you. But in the end, it's kind of all worth it because you just wanted to get away from here.

00:03:41 John Daub: Now, Kanae has a really strong connection to the island—my wife came here as a kid 20 years ago. A lot of Japanese travel to Guam because it's so close. It's a foreign country, closer than Hawaii. There were so many deals back in the day. Nowadays, because the U.S. dollar is so strong, it's like this weird time here. The Chinese economy—a lot of Chinese tourists have been coming over here for the last seven or eight years. I'll learn more about this when I talk to people that live here in Guam and meet the tourism office. But a lot of tourists from China were coming here over the last seven, eight years when their economy was so prosperous. Koreans as well, and Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Singapore. A lot of people come here because it's pretty close to Asia.

00:04:27 John Daub: It's so beautiful, but it's also the United States, which makes it really unique. They use the U.S. dollar here. English is the language on the island. So I think it's very convenient for people from the continental U.S., but it looks really far on the map. What I'd really love to see is more Americans come out here that are coming to visit Japan, that maybe want to make a trip to one of these places you normally wouldn't go to. Like in New York, there's somebody swimming—look how clear that water is. You normally wouldn't come to this place because you might go to Okinawa or some of the other islands that you're going to dive into that culture. That's one of the reasons I wanted to come here because I love Pacific Island culture. Sometimes we lose sight of it in the beauty that's out here in the Pacific. But there's a very deep culture on this island, and I'm going to explore that with my son and my wife over the next couple of days.

00:05:26 John Daub: The flight here was okay—United is pretty good. But the food was kind of questionable. It's a hot meal so you can't really complain too much. You can see we just arrived in Tumon. We got a nice photo here. But it's nice to come here—it's a very warm welcome. Because it's a pretty small airport—actually, it's a big airport but it feels small when you arrive at 10 p.m. perhaps. It was really easy to get in and out. In the morning, just a couple of clips here you can see. They have a really nice breakfast—it was included because I was an IHG member and was able to get that in the package. That's our view from breakfast here—kind of chowing down. We came late so there was not as much selection.

00:06:28 John Daub: We were at the pool about 30 minutes ago—you can see it's really pretty. But I can talk to you a little bit about what we want to do here. If you are living on Guam on the island, I would love to meet you, talk to you a little bit more about Guam, the island and some of the history and the culture and learn more from you guys. Leo and of course Kanae will be at the Wednesday night market. Everybody knows what that is—it's not too far away from Tumon. Of course it's on Wednesday, which is tomorrow night. And we're going to be talking, eating. Leo wants to get some coconuts, and I want to eat as much as I can. But I want to learn about the culture here—that's what's really curious to me, the history and culture of the island.

00:07:16 John Daub: Leo is playing on the railing here—I have to be daddy too. Leo, please sit down over there. Yeah, I saw it too, but sit down because you can't. I tried this green slide here before Leo did, just to see how safe it was, and it's pretty safe—actually kind of scary. I haven't done a water slide since high school maybe. The water is nice and warm here. Leo did it one time and he didn't want to do it again—he was kind of freaked out by it because it's pretty hardcore. But we'll probably eat dinner here. I'm looking forward to seeing Hank as well—he has a magic show inside the hotel here which is awesome.

00:08:22 John Daub: I'll take you around the island. Tomorrow I'll have another report—I'll be driving around showing you maybe a little bit about the traffic driving around here. It's a good idea to have a rental car here. This is Kanae—she hasn't been on the island in about 20 years. She came here three times and the last time was like a long time ago, 20 years ago—she was just a kid. It's very Hawaiian but different too. The culture is very different and there's a lot of similarities, but there's a lot of differences with all the islands in the Pacific. So I'm so curious to learn more about Guam.

00:09:09 John Daub: When I was on Chichijima, Ogasawara—which is part of Japan—they had a zip code that was San Francisco. It used to be America until 1968, which is crazy. And then I was talking to the old timers, everybody over the age of 55 or 60, and they all had this connection to the United States, to the military after World War II. A lot of them said there wasn't so much freedom when the Japanese were there and Americans brought that with them. That's where George H.W. Bush—Papa Bush—his plane was shot down right off the coast of Chichijima. He was picked up by a U.S. sub—his other flymates were not as fortunate. The 360 camera's pretty cool, but the Pacific Islands are just fascinating to me.

00:10:22 John Daub: I'm deeply interested in learning more about the Pacific Islands. There's some YouTubers that have gone around some of these islands—it's not cheap to get to, but I'm very curious about some of these islands, some of the other territories around Guam. A lot of them have World War II historical significance, which I'm fascinated about to learn, as we have the 80th anniversary—our memory of the ending of World War II is coming up this year. There's a lot of events happening around the islands as well as in Japan marking that. It was a very tough war, but thank goodness it ended because it was an awful war. We don't want to see that anymore. This is the 80th year since that time, a very historical point in world history. Guam plays a part in all of that—back 80 years ago, this was a different place.

00:11:17 John Daub: The development of Guam has been fascinating to see over the last 15, 20 years as more Asian countries became more prosperous—more tourism came to the island. EK writes in, some great history you're sharing—absolutely. I'm hoping I get more time to come back here and spend some time looking at the culture and history of Guam and the surrounding islands. My friend Joe was just at Tuvalu—which if you've ever seen a .tv website, that's for Tuvalu—an island in the Pacific that's apparently sinking as well. These places I would love to go to. So I'm thinking about maybe making YouTube content on Pacific islands. And why not start with the friendliest of them all, perhaps Guam?

00:12:18 John Daub: I had about 30 or 40 people—probably more than that—message me, several of them sending amazing messages telling me all the highlights that I could do, but it's not enough time to see all that stuff. We're pressed for time—I'm wishing I'd come here for five or six nights instead of two or three. We're here for three nights, so I'm going to have to come back. But this is just kind of a getaway. Actually, after I did the hitchhiking thing in 2017, I said I was going to take Kanae here, but we never did. So in a way, this is getting back to a memory. When I was hitchhiking Japan from Wakkanai to Kagoshima—the entire country—I was able to get quite a bit of money from the Kickstarter, from selling the Blu-rays. The purpose was to bring Kanae out here and build up the channel. I saved up the money that's been sitting in the bank for quite a long time, and now finally we are here with Leo, who is absolutely loving this place.

00:13:47 John Daub: Right now—this is live—they're shooting some kind of Japanese drama. I kept walking back and forth here, and they're telling me to stop. Because it's so windy, they're holding up a lot of these reflector things and umbrellas, so it's not that easy for them to be filming. I don't know who it is, but it looks like some stars down there. I'll have to ask if this is a Netflix thing—we're going to figure it out. I might be a background character—you'll see this guy looking confused, doing a pinball back and forth, figuring out if I should go inside or outside. But I eventually made it to the pool.

00:14:37 John Daub: I can't believe we're on Guam. This is the place I've been wanting to come to for a very long time, and for Kanae this is a 20-year long-time-no-see reunion, and for Leo this is his first time. We're still unpacking. Any questions here about Guam or anything? Because this is a live stream—I see a lot of you coming in and writing. We're actually going to go drive around a little bit, maybe find some lunch. Of course, when you have a breakfast buffet, you eat too much. I think they had a little bit of French toast and some eggs, and some local dishes which were really good, savory. But we're going to go out to lunch and see what we can find, drive around—I have a car.

00:15:37 John Daub: You know, Docomo—if you have a Japanese phone, you can get this GigaPlan on arrival. So I can do data roaming—it was $20 for three days, which I think is pretty affordable. It allows me to use this as a GPS to get around the island as well. Would love to see you at the meet and greet—if there's a signal, I'll do a little bit of it live, but it might be a good idea just to film it and then upload it in 4K. The one thing I love about filming the meetups is that I get the chance to look back on it, and I can see how we've all kind of changed over time. I did meetups in Munich every time we went to the Christmas market, in New York on Times Square, in India, Montreal. Doing it live allows you who are watching to feel like you're a part of it as well—it's really fun. Especially on islands, it really does feel like a family. The population of Guam is bigger than I thought, but it's small enough where it does feel very friendly.

00:17:13 John Daub: I want to go to Tinian—they have an event coming up. That's where some bombers were launched in World War II. There's an American side to the history as well. I went to Pearl Harbor when I visited Hawaii a couple years ago. I'd like to see more of the American side because I think I've seen so much of the Japanese side, especially in 1944 and '45 when there were a lot of harsh bombings. But I'd love to see more of the Pacific Islands, the American side—it gives us a chance to remember our grandfathers. A lot of them fought in the war on both sides.

00:18:02 Kanae Daub: Did he parachute in? How did he arrive in the Philippines? By parachute? He arrived by ship? But then everybody died, you said—later.

00:18:16 John Daub: One of the islands in the Philippines, and everyone in his group died, right? No, just five or three people survived—like three people survived, and they're just hiding in the jungle. They arrive, it lasts like less than a day, and then everyone is gone except for a couple of them, and they're hiding in the jungle because they didn't want to be there. He said he ate some coconuts for survival. So my grandfather fought in the European front, and her grandfather was in the Philippines. All this stuff happened so quickly to them. So it was awful some of the stuff that happened in the Philippines, but his group—they didn't last very long. He's just hiding out in the jungle, and the first time the Americans came, he just threw up his hands, and they gave him chocolate and eggs and all this stuff that he could never get, and he was so happy, and he fell in love with America instantly. So then when he found out that I was American, there were these memories of going back when he was rescued by an American. So interesting history, but we're kind of continuing—I'm connected by these islands as a result of it.

00:20:05 John Daub: Over the course of the next few years, I think I might try to focus on some of the Pacific Islands, maybe even start another channel, because I'm deeply interested in Japan, but there's so many people making Japanese content—I'm never going to stop doing that, but it might be interesting to explore other places. Every island is very unique, very special—each one has a local culture and a lot of history. For a lot of YouTubers that make the content, we do it from a perspective of tourism. But if I can make videos that show the history and background of some of the beauty of the islands, you kind of understand what you're coming to visit as a tourist, and then you have more respect for the local cultures. I think that's something maybe lacking on YouTube. And that's why I'm so happy to meet with people here in Guam, talk about this.

00:21:51 John Daub: We're going to get in the room, rent a car, drive around—I'll have more to report to you tomorrow. That was a Japanese TV drama, right? He said "mamonaku" (soon) meaning soon they're going to start. I was like, ah, "nihonjin desu ka?" (Are you Japanese?) Hai, hai, nihonjin (Japanese person). I should ask them what they were filming. If you're American, this is probably worth coming to visit because not a lot of tourists—well, there are mostly tourists from Asia, but my flight was only 30% full. Using your miles and swinging out to Guam for a few days, this is pretty awesome. You come in and it's like America—I'm still shocked like when I went to Hawaii. This is Guam, but it's America—it's like two things at once. It feels like a different country, but it's not—and it is, but it isn't. I'm going to explore a lot of this over the next couple of days.

00:23:05 John Daub: Thanks, everybody, for the tips and the help—I'll get back to you real soon if you're joining us live. That's really interesting when you meet people whose family have been there—because I listened to those Ian Toll audiobooks. They're quite long and very detailed. To hear about each one of the battles, and when you get first-hand information from people that were there, it's really fascinating—stuff that we shouldn't forget. We should always remember the people that came before us. All right, guys, take care—I'll see you in another livestream real soon. But we are here—we're on Guam. It's pretty incredible. Matane (see you later)—see you on Wednesday night. I guess around 5:30, 6 o'clock we'll be there, probably for about an hour and a half. So see you at the Wednesday night market.