00:01:00 John Daub: Well, well, well. The rainy season in Japan started a little early this year, something like two or three or four weeks early. It's officially called in southern Kyushu, maybe not here in Tokyo, but it sure feels like it. We're getting the weather coming all the way up. We have a lot of people in Japan right now suffering through or enjoying the sound of the pitter patter on your umbrella. The rain coming down really hard right now. It really started coming down hard in the last minute or so. You can see it really starting to fall here. Wow. The radar does not look promising for the rest of the day.

00:56:00 John Daub: The Sanja Matsuri (Sanja Festival) in Asakusa is, I guess, canceled. I'm not really sure. But that's the biggest festival, and typically it's been fairly good weather for the last 20 some years that I've been coming to go and see it. Not today. I wouldn't call it—man, I don't know if any tourists or anybody's going to go out there except for hardcore people. But that's not really for spectators. It is more or less a very religious festival.

01:34:00 John Daub: Let me activate the map here. You can see the weather for Tokyo, which is in the middle of the screen there off of Chiba—that peninsula does not look promising for the rest of the day going all the way throughout the afternoon. And right behind it, there's more rain. And on Monday, I'm going to be going to Osaka to the expo. So I'm a little bit worried. Yeah, you know what, I'll make do with what I get. Whatever the weather is, it's just weather, but it's a lot more fun when it's sunny. Oh my goodness. So that's the weather that we got today. Let's look at the story from the Japan Times here. And then I'll talk a little bit about sunnier times, which was in Guam this past week. We just arrived here a couple of days ago. Actually, 36 hours ago, we got back—yesterday we were beat.

02:05:00 John Daub: Rainy season begins in southern Kyushu. This came out about three hours ago, May 17. That's early. Now usually starts down like Okinawa or something. This time it started down in southern Kyushu, which is Kagoshima. So let's hold it there. I'll read this for you here. This gives you an indication how to pack for Japan. You're coming now or next week—make sure you got an umbrella and a little bit of rain gear. But Japan's rainy season appears to have begun in southern part of Kyushu region. The Meteorological Agency announced Friday. This is the first time since statistics began in 1951 that southern Kyushu has entered the rainy season earlier than any other region in Japan. Holy macaroni. This is early.

03:06:00 John Daub: And that means it creeps up north. And that means Tokyo is like a week behind, usually week to 10 days. The start of the rainy season officially in the region also comes 14 days earlier than usual and 23 days earlier than last year. Crazy, right? That's more than three weeks, like almost a month. The announcement was based on preliminary results that may be corrected in definitive statistics to be released in early September. Rain season usually arrives earlier in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture, then Amami Islands, works its way northwest towards Tokyo, and then eventually to Hokuriku. Hokkaido does not have a rainy season, just to point that out here. Another reason why Hokkaido is beautiful to visit in the summer.

04:06:00 John Daub: This year, however, the Pacific high pressure system extends widely, making the seasonal rain front come to the northern side instead of the southern side first. The season may be advancing faster due to westerlies over Japan running more northward than in an average year. This is not an average year. Nothing average about it. It's a pretty special year. So that means you're going to get a special rainy season. Carrie is here enjoying the weather, as well as I think Brandy [?] is somewhere. I don't know, in Wano or somewhere around there. Tachimachi, maybe. I got to be honest with you.

04:36:00 John Daub: Rainy season—there's some positives. I think as you can see, the colors are very, very vibrant. The greens are greener, the reds are redder, it seems. But it is raining and there's a chill in the air with the rain. So despite June being the famous rainy month in Japan, the wet season, it is cooler than May, which is typically a lot sunnier than June. So it just feels the chill when the rain is there. When the sun comes out in June, it is much warmer than May. But more of June seems wet than sunny. There's actually some lightning apparently going to be coming. I was looking at the radar. So it's going to be an interesting day. And you can see the colors are more vibrant in the rain. Great for photographers. See, the reds are redder and the greens are greener. Japan is Japanier, perhaps.

05:46:00 John Daub: I used to wear at the Naked Man festivals I participated in, you get a little bit of a wedgie. This is sort of a cold wedgie. It's an unusual feeling. Interesting. Alright, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about warmer times. Just to share with you, you all know that I went to Guam last week, and we came back about 36 hours ago at night. It was pretty late. It was crazy late. So let me just share with you some of what happened in the last day here. I think I showed you already the experience at the night market that we had there. We met up with—I don't know—there must have been about 30 people, 25-30 people came and found us. Some people couldn't find us, but we had a great time. This is such a beautiful local festival. The food is amazing here. I couldn't believe the prices.

06:43:00 John Daub: At the hotel, we paid like $60 a person for the dinner. I mean, it's a resort and all. But here, we got more—what seemed like more food—for like $12. So it was pretty impressive. Look at those ribs. And I think I have the plate here at the end. Oh, the water's coming down. Look at that red rice, too. Oh, my goodness. Some good memories.

07:16:00 John Daub: All right, moving on. I got a chance to meet the governor of Guam. Let me show you a little bit about that experience. Before we met the governor, we did something very important. We also visited Stack's Smash Burger, which so many people said is better than In-N-Out Burger, which is a very tall statement. And I have to agree, having never eaten In-N-Out Burger, this is much better. But it was really good. There's Leo and Hank. Hank knows food. Amazing burger. I would get the double. I got the single. But I'm trying to diet after all the buffets I had there. Hungry Hank approved. Hank, our good friend Hank Rice right there, he approves. You'll find them all over the island.

08:16:00 John Daub: We ate in the car. And the guy behind the register knew who I was, which is amazing. So he got a little welcome note on the burger. I guess a lot of the people on the island knew I was there. That's crazy. That was so good. That's a jalapeño burger. I like that they weren't pickled jalapeños, but actual real jalapeños. And Kanae Daub's had like these onion rings on them with some chipotle type of sauce. It was really good.

08:28:00 John Daub: And here we went to go visit the governor at her complex, which is a minute or two away. This is such an amazing meeting. She is a nurse, a mother, a business person. I really don't know much about her politics, but it was a great meeting. We talked a lot about the local government, local culture and the food. And then we went to Slow Walk across the street from the governor's office. Look at this place. You wouldn't expect this in Guam. It's like you might expect it in New York City or something. It's massive. They certainly spend a lot of money on a cafe here. I can see myself spending a lot of time getting work done here, editing videos.

09:10:00 John Daub: It's empty because not a lot of tourists in the area and locals are probably busy working. It's where they probably should be. But we were on our way to the airport, and I stopped by here. Slow Walk is what it's called. It's a place where you can eat. It's a place where you can get coffee. It's like one of these must-stop places if you're in Guam, just to check out the inside and get a coffee here. Very nice. It'd be smaller in New York. Hank said that this used to be a bank. So you can see, it's got a lot of space here. There's Hank filming me filming him. And that's the iced coffee I got there. It was pretty good. We got it to go. That order took a little bit longer than usual. That's called Slow Walk for a reason, I was told. And we got a free waffle. I wanted to show you the license plate. It's kind of cool to see license plates in the U.S. size, but it does say Guam, USA. For Americans, that's a license plate you never get to see, right?

10:10:00 John Daub: And now we're back in Tokyo, in wet Tokyo. I got one more for you. So this reel comes, this clip comes from the Guam airport. I hightailed it back. We got there an hour and a half before the flight, just in time, I guess. We turned in the Hertz Rent-A-Car with the gas tank mostly full, but I'm sure they're going to find a way to— I didn't have time to stop at the gas station. Leo likes his Jet Kid, which is highly recommended for any kids from two to ten probably. You can make a bed out of it, but we didn't need it. It was only a three and a half hour flight to Guam from Tokyo and back. But you can see the airport's pretty empty, which is shocking. The flight was only about 30% full, which is crazy.

10:54:00 John Daub: Here's us doing our Instagram message saying bye and thank you to everybody. We were sad because it felt like we were leaving family. There's a real spirit to almost any island you visit. I got it in Hawaii as well, but Guam's a smaller island and it's a pretty warm place. And so saying goodbye to Guam was really sad. So when the airline took off into the air, we felt the spirit kind of faded into the air. We got a beautiful sunset though. And the captain came out and gave Leo some wings since we're one of the few passengers on this United flight. That was really nice. Nice captain there.

11:38:00 John Daub: I think he flew manually because it was an unusual feeling. He certainly didn't have it on autopilot for part of this, which is kind of a neat feeling. He's going, "Bye Hank," because he really connected to our Leo, Hank and Sienna and some of our viewers. And he was saying, "Bye Hank," as the flight took off. I don't know if Hank heard him, but Hank's down there somewhere, probably eating. Hungry Hank. And we got a really nice sunset. I gave Leo the window seat. Yeah, I did kind of want it, but at my age, I better give it to the little one. Look, there's the two moons leaving us because the airport's right near Tumon. And we got on the beach side. So you see the resorts and the water from the plane. That was really nice. You'll get this view coming in. So I would sit on the right side coming in and the left side going out, perhaps.

12:37:00 John Daub: You can see there's the Marshall Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. It's kind of cool to see it on the map because you don't see your flight taking off from this. There's Tinian, which is where the Enola Gay got from there, I believe. That's kind of a historic place. They'll be doing some kind of event there as well this year, the 80th anniversary memorial. And it's three and a half hour flight to get there. It's kind of cool to look at the flight maps of this because you're going over the Pacific, man. Philippines is just to the left, not that far away.

13:13:00 John Daub: Kiribati, Samoa, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, all these, Papua New Guinea. There's the Fiji Islands. I want to go to all of these places, man. You look on all these Pacific Islands and it makes you really want to. Oh, there is the sunset at the end. There you go. There's the sunset at the end. That was really—it's like a very warm goodbye from Mother Nature. A lot better than this day, the official start of the rainy season in Japan.

14:03:00 John Daub: Tokyo hasn't been called for the rainy season yet. It started officially in southern Kyushu—they called it. Hey, you know, we're making news today, right there. Rainy season typically starts in early June, usually around June 10th in Tokyo, but I'm going to say it's going to be here before June this year, which is a good thing, perhaps, because that means the rainy season might be over by the end of June. Maybe some good stuff happens as a result of it. These flowers and these trees definitely need the rain. We need the cloud cover, so a longer rainy season is a good thing. Lately, we've been getting really hot summers. The result of that was that the autumn colors, especially in Tohoku, were not as vibrant. So when we get hot summers with less rain, we get bad autumns with less color in the leaves. That's something to consider and a reason why I'm kind of hoping maybe this rainy season is sticking around for a little bit longer. Not a bad thing, perhaps.

15:08:00 John Daub: But this also means that if you're coming earlier to Japan in the next couple of weeks, you might want to pack that umbrella. You can buy an umbrella here. You might want to pack some rain gear. I'll be wearing these rubber ones, not these Birkenstocks. You do it for practical reasons, because we got shoes that are just going to get drenched. At least it's a warm rain. This is absolutely a warm rain. It's a peaceful rain.

16:27:00 John Daub: Last chance for the postcard club. This is today. So, I'm going to Osaka on Monday. I'm taking a stack of postcards with me to send from Osaka Expo. And if you sign up today, like in the next 24 hours, I'll print out your address and make sure that it gets to you. If you don't, it'll probably be sent from Tokyo. But it'll still have an Osaka Expo stamp on it. So you've got 24 hours to sign up at the postcard club. We've got more than 25 new sign-ups, which is awesome. And the July postcard is going to be sent from the top of Mount Fuji. At least it's planned to be. And there's a very commemorative stamp from postcards sent at the top of Mount Fuji. So I'm bringing the stack with me. Stick in there at the postcard club. You're going to get some really cool stamps. Like the postcard sent from the top of Mount Fuji, that's kind of special. Because it's got to make that trip up and down. The fact that they have a post office at the top of Mount Fuji is crazy, which opens officially on July 10th. So the July postcard, make sure you sign up by July 10th for that. Or just sign up now and just be a part of the club by then. It'll be a picture of Mount Fuji, of course.

17:45:00 John Daub: Alright everybody, that's all I've got. I wanted to go to the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa. But it's so miserable outside. We're just going to call it. And we made news by not going. It's the rainy season. It started. And you can see the pitter patter in the city of Tokyo, just off of the Sumida River here. It looks like it's going to be an all day type of thing. I see all you guys in there. Each one of these raindrops represents one who is watching right now. You guys are making waves in Japan.

18:41:00 John Daub: I'm sorry we missed our Patreon livestream yesterday. But we'll work it out. Time just flies so fast. Maybe I'll have Brandy on this Monday. If you're a Patreon supporter, we have trip planners. Talk about Brandy's trip perhaps. There's all these filters that came up on the app. I don't know what I pushed. A little freaky. Again, rainy season officially starts in Tokyo. We made some news. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'm going to go get some coffee. I'm going to go inside and get some hot chocolate or whatever. Warm up and get back to editing. I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow. Hopefully, it clears up a little bit enough where I can take you to the Sanja Matsuri. Maybe see Brandy and a little bit of culture from the Japan side for once because we've been in beautiful Guam for so long. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Another live stream from rainy Tokyo. Matane.