Japan Earthquake Watch July 5th Live in Shibuya Tokyo

00:00:01 John Daub: I'm in Tokyo, Japan. It is July 5th. This is the day of the prophecy. You cannot predict earthquakes. You absolutely cannot. And in this episode, I'm going to take you around this area just for a little bit and talk about the fact that today is this day that everyone for the last year has been talking about due to some prophecy from a mangaka.

00:00:20 John Daub: All right, I understand there's been a thousand earthquakes or so out in Kagoshima and they've evacuated the island and there's the news is saying that there's magma underneath the island and the tectonic plates are shifting. That's a way over there. We're in Tokyo today. And look, it's scared tourists away from Japan for the last couple of months, in particular from the neighboring countries where superstitions and fortune tellers have been telling people that there's a magma.

00:00:51 John Daub: People better safe than sorry. Look, I'm here in Japan. I'm not leaving. I've been here. I've been through the last big earthquake and tsunami. I'd be somebody who's going to volunteer to try to help out if that were to occur. But look, what does it actually look like right now on July 5th? We've got a ton of tourists here. Shibuya is just kind of waking up. We're near 11 o'clock. There's no panic. There's nothing going on here. So this is a really important live stream. I think to talk about what could happen but more importantly if it did happen we would be live.

00:01:25 John Daub: So I don't want just say it, oh so this I'm not panicked and I'm not concerned. I did not sleep next to my helmet either last night and I did not have my earthquake bag near the door but look I got to be honest with you this helmet is really hot but more than that when the media and everybody talks about this day in and day out for the last couple of weeks and it's increasing because today I'm seeing on all of the news medias here. India is probably the worst with this sensationalism. They're very good at it. But you can see just putting Japan earthquake in there. We're starting to see a lot more. Timothy is here. Timothy, my wife is landing in Haneda in a few hours. She's gonna be fine. People already talking about the possibility of a doomsday.

00:02:42 John Daub: For the last year and a half now after an earthquake that happened down in Miyazaki it was a Shindo 6 which is extremely strong. The Shindo 6 is like a magnitude 7 or 8 which is very strong. That was last year. So there's been a lot of talk about that.

00:03:01 John Daub: Japan Sinks: 2020, which is this manga, which is this anime that's on Netflix, has been seeing a lot more views. And that's my kind of image, which scares the crud out of me. "How Japan is bracing for the earthquake." Here's CNN just yesterday. "Why scientists say Japan's quote-unquote big one could have come soon." Yeah. This is the kind of stuff that stokes the fears. And I'm hoping, my greatest hope, is that on July 6th, when nothing happens today, maybe we're going to come back. People are going to stop talking about this. But should they stop talking about it?

00:03:39 John Daub: Yesterday, and for the last couple of days, we've been hearing news about 800, 900, 1,000 mini quakes have been occurring on an island off of the coast of Kagoshima. They've evacuated the residents. It was under 100 people that were living there, I believe. It's a really pretty little island. There's an island there. You can see India always has doom and gloom in their news. They know how to scare the crap out of people. But this island that the news is talking about, the Tokara Islands, I've never been there. It's really small. Kagoshima, from Kagoshima, I believe there are ferries that will take you there. Because I saw the commercial Takara ferry going by there. They've experienced like 1,000 mini quakes, including some big ones. There's Amami-jima, which is also Kagoshima. And there's Okinawa, which starts another prefecture. But between Amami and Kagoshima proper, you have the Tokara Islands. It's a beautiful place. This is the one that's been evacuated.

00:04:45 John Daub: Seismologists from Todai, Tokyo University, have said that one of the explanations for the massive amount of earthquakes could be that there is magma movement underneath the island. This came in yesterday. So it's probably going to be a big one. It's a good idea to evacuate people. But Miyakojima, we've had islands also in Tokyo where they, when I first came here in 1998, they evacuated an island and brought the evacuees into Tokyo. And these kids went to, because of poison gas and stuff from eruptions, and they went to school and pretty much grew up in Tokyo for the next 10 years before they could return to their islands. And it was deemed safe again. I see Brondania was here. This is the island. It's a really small place. Looks like they're doing something. They're doing some farming too, probably raising some wagyu, which would be pretty cool. And maybe I'll go there and make a visit, you know, to support them and everything calms down. But right now they're evacuated and there's a ton of earthquakes that are going on right there. But that's really far from Tokyo.

00:05:52 John Daub: But then today, look, you can see tourism is going on. And by the way, I was going to do a live stream. They're starting to regulate that. So it's a win for the residents of Japan and Tokyo and Shibuya Ward. But they're still there. So this is the island. This is Nantrop. I'm going to go through a couple of things here. This is going to be an interesting live stream.

00:06:12 John Daub: This Nankai Trough here, it's quite a large part of the Pacific side of Japan. It goes all the way from Miyazaki, which is an amazing city down there, famous for so many things. Its produce, its wagyu beef, its gyoza, its shochu, a lot of stuff down there. All of Shikoku, including Kochi, which has a lot of earthquakes there up the Pacific. And then the Wakayama region, which also just on the north is Osaka and Kyoto, right in the middle of it. And extended all the way up to Mount Fuji just about. Yeah, Mount Fuji is in this region, but Tokyo is not. It's kind of on the fringe. But trust me, if this earthquake happens, Tokyo is going to feel it as well. Just the extent of it, we don't know. But that trough is off of the coast of the Pacific about, I don't know, 150 miles or so. So it's far out there.

00:07:06 John Daub: So that's the Suruga trough right there. And Tokyo, you can see, is in the worst position. It's like three troughs all coming together. So Tokyo is, if something were to happen, Tokyo would be one of the places you probably don't want to be. Hey, Patrick's here in the house. How you doing? Patrick, thanks always. I appreciate it, brother.

00:07:31 John Daub: But look, for the last, I'd say since 2020, when we were all at home watching that manga, the anime called Japan. It's called Japan Sinks. I don't know if you guys haven't seen it. It's really good. It starts off right away. I think there's like five or six episodes to it. I didn't want it to end. It shows the flight of a teenager separated from her parents. She finds them. People die in this. Okay. There's freaks, stuff, weird stuff happens. It's scary because I live here. This is where I live for more than half my life. And it shows it's sinking. The whole country sinks at the end because it's in the title. At least I think it does. I don't want to ruin it for you. But the stuff that goes on in this is stuff that we think about. And it's something between a combination of The Walking Dead and I don't know, like what's that one volcano, the one with Dante's Peak or something. It's something across between these two here. It's a pretty interesting look at this issue. But this was five years ago. Yeah. And now when the Nankai Trough started, the talk started about 18 months ago and the prediction or the visions of the mangaka came back. Then we started to really, we started to really, I can show it to you. It's like, here's the trailer for it from Netflix here. It's a really good anime. I think you guys should check it out here.

00:09:04 John Daub: They show, I think it's definitely like a Shindo. It's a Shindo seven, which is like a magnitude 10. This is catastrophic. And she's in Tokyo, I believe. And look at that. It just kind of, it's a really hardcore manga. It's on Netflix. I really enjoyed it. I probably going to watch it again tonight. I don't have a lot of time to watch it anyways. I'm going to go climb Mount Fuji. Speaking of which, if you are a Patreon supporter, you can get, today is the last day. Well, until tomorrow anyways, till July 6th. If you're signed up to it, I will be sending the postcards from the summit of Mount Fuji. So make sure you're signed up by then on the Patreon postcard club. There's the link right there. I don't know if you can see it. Go in there. You can join the postcard club in the next 24 hours and I'll be taking your postcard to the summit of Mount Fuji. So I appreciate it. And you'll get the little postmark from the summit there.

00:10:10 John Daub: So why am I wearing the helmet? It's a good question. I think it's mostly for this live stream and because it's fun. And I like to have some fun with this, but I am kind of concerned and we do have helmets. Japanese residents are very well prepared for earthquakes. Okay. So I could see on the ANA live Shibuya camera. There's a couple of them. I don't know. Can you see me waving? There's a couple of live cameras right on this spot. So you probably can't see me. Thank you Yota Jedi 01 for signing up. This is the big one. I'm taking postcards to the top of Mount Fuji and the post office. I'm working with the post office on this. So it's getting pretty funny. I am trolling you with the helmet. It's hard for, it's hard to miss me, but this is also a very important reminder. So I look, Japan's suffering from this. I don't know if you could sue the mangaka. That's not something anybody's talking about, but the amount of money that Japan lost due to tourism and hitting their tourism goals because of this rumor and the media propagating this, cause it's a pretty good story. I don't know, but this mangaka is not the only one. And if there's no earthquake today, what do you do? I mean, a lot. A lot of tourists have stayed away, including those from Hong Kong and the neighboring places here.

00:11:24 John Daub: This is in Kyoto news just today. "Manga quake prophecies, keeping Hong Kong travelers away from Japan." This is real stuff. People are just waiting it out. In fact, I don't know if many Hong Kongers are going to be coming to Japan in 2025 at all. And that's the fourth largest country, fourth largest place where people are coming in. So you could see here better safe than sorry approach. Now, based on this, since January, soothsayers in Hong Kong have talked up potential national disasters in Japan. Thanks to the pregnant practitioners who generally trade in recommendations about personal arrangements and physical directions of belongings, advising residents to stay clear of Japan. All right. And then the fortune teller from the future I saw, which is the manga, YO Tatsuki predicted a major calamity in March, 2011 also said that a catastrophic, catastrophic, would occur in July, 2025. They didn't say July 5th. Maybe they did, but this is the day. Speculation says cause anxiety among Hong Kongers with a number of visiting Japan declining 11.2%. They've been canceling flights because they can't get people on the flights. Former British colony, which ranked as the fourth largest source of Japan bound tourists in 2024. They're really, really playing this up in Hong Kong and in China, I guess. Yeah.

00:12:52 John Daub: So the earthquakes in the islands down at Kagoshima are real. You can see here a list. Japan always gets quakes. Japan gets about 1,500 earthquakes a year. Okay. And the seismic activity has been going up in Kagoshima and those islands down there, but it's quite far away from Kyoto and Tokyo. You can see the number has been pretty consistent throughout cumulative number of activities near the Tokata islands. Has it pretty consistent? Around 300 quakes. 300 quakes a year. But they've gone up this year and it is pretty concerning because you see that trend line and it's, and they did color it red, but this comes from NHK. So you know that the source is pretty good as of July 3rd. That's a lot. We're talking over a thousand quakes right now. So it is something that people are quite concerned about here, but look, there's not a lot that can be done. You just can't do it. Even Time. I don't even know if anybody reads Time magazine anymore. A lot of it's online. Just yesterday, everyone's talking about this. "A manga is causing earthquake panic in Japan." And you see on the side here, they've created an article on this and it's, you know, when the, hey, Jeff Kennedy's here. My brother from the East Coast. You can see Time has really played this up here talking about a years old Japanese manga that claims a mega quake or catastrophic quake. Yeah. The magnitude of eight is on its way to Tokyo.

00:14:27 John Daub: You know, Tokyo is really well prepared. You can see the cranes in the distance. They've taken down a lot of the older buildings that were suspect and they're, or possibly damaged in the 2011 earthquake or would not hold up to a magnitude nine or 10. And they're going to make sure that all of the new buildings that you see here are up to code. So Japan's really well positioned to weather a mega quake. Yeah. And the government has warned about earthquake predictions. You know, seismologists, I'm going to separate their seismologists and volcanists. You got to do that sign. They're people who did their actual, that's an actual profession. I talked to them at Tokyo University a few years ago and they said, you just cannot predict earthquakes. I have a episode coming up on this. Tokyo university allowed me to interview these, the specialties. So I'm very grateful to them. But it did take a while to get permission and you could, I talked about the, and there are three people. There are three groups that are very involved in earthquakes here in Japan, volcanists, seismologists and engineers. And the engineers are the ones that make sure that we stay, we stay safe and can help us with issues that occur when an earthquake does happen based on structural integrity of the buildings around you. And Japan is well positioned to weather a big one here. But Japan, it's so secret that Japan has a hotbed of earthquakes. It's on the ring of fire. Yeah.

00:15:55 John Daub: It's a very, it's a very concerning time. So we're here on earthquake watch. We obviously don't see, we don't see any that are taking place here, but tourism is still boy, it's like everybody on the streets of tourists, everybody on the streets of tourists. It's obviously people are not too concerned that are here. In fact, nobody else is wearing a helmet. And if it did occur, I probably would sink into the ground after seeing Japan sinks 2020. Imagine thinking a building is completely safe after a quake. Look. It's a building that swayed for five minutes in 2011 and it was fine, but it was still scary because you're like, this building is going down. You're thinking it's the end of, end of the end of the world, but it's not because the quakes, they stand up pretty good. I don't want to move the spot because the signal always goes in and out. If you move too much, I found a good one here, but you're very concerned when you, that quake and the, and it was more than just the main quake. It was the after shots, shocks. Every five minutes there was an aftershock after the big one. And that was extremely concerning. Why isn't everybody wearing a helmet? Maybe they don't sell them or they're sold out. I've got three, a yellow one for Leo and another one for Kanae, but they're not in the country. So they're at home in Japan, but it is July 5th for everybody's watching. This is the day that the prediction where something is, is going to happen. And you might be watching me on the live cameras walking around. Maybe you can see me. There's a live camera on this side over here.

00:17:38 John Daub: But the city of Tokyo is just undergoing, there's people up there. Someone was waving. Maybe they're watching, but people are experiencing nothing right now. We had an earthquake a couple of days ago. It was a small one. I hardly felt it. So Saiya was there a quake? It's all down in Kagoshima, but I gotta be honest with you. I am somewhat concerned about this. I have because look, they are warning about the mega quake. The Nankai trough. And they keep talking about it and talking about it. I'm going to be on the summit of Mount Fuji next week with your postcards. That's not the place that you want to be this year, but you can't predict this kind of stuff. And I'm not going to let the fear mongers win. You can't scare me.

00:18:33 John Daub: Why the helmet, John? Isn't the thumbnail look a little bit better with the helmet? I'm prepared. I'm a local. I lived here more than half. I know you cannot be prepared enough. And it's actually a very comfortable helmet. You can get these at Don Quixote and online on Amazon. Just don't skimp on it because this, when you wear one, you wear it. So Lulu just sign up to the postcard club. Thank you, Lulu. I see the notification. Anyone who signs up, I'll probably see the notification. Be able to thank you on this live stream. Michael Sano is in the house. Aloha, my brother. I'm glad that so far. Things are fairly normal in Japan, despite the prediction. Still need to be aware as things can change in an instant. There is so I've been in a lot of earthquakes here because I've been here since 98. A lot of earthquakes. There is this I can tell maybe in the first two seconds if it's going to be a bad one after you felt. I've already talked about this a million times, but in March 11th, 2011, I was at home in Shinozaki. I was editing videos for Weblish, which is a comedy English language stuff where I did blue screens. I did like 30 different characters. It's kind of interesting. And right away, you know like, oh crap. Your heart goes into your stomach and your stomach sinks. You feel helpless. You are a deer in headlights. You don't know what to do. Everything is moving around you. My coffee pot broke and was filled with coffee. Wine glass. The glasses started to topple out. The TV fell over. My apartment was a mess afterwards. We were still hours away from Fukushima. It was quite far away from where the earthquake happened in Tokyo. It was much worse up there in Tohoku.

00:20:40 John Daub: Your nerves are burned. You don't know what to do. I'm standing in the doorway. I just felt like, oh, you should get a span in the doorway. You got to go in the bathtub or under a table. I don't have a table. I had a desk made out of glass. I wasn't going to go underneath that. I got rid of that after the earthquake. I grabbed my hamster, Kiki, put the hamster in my pocket. And as soon as things subsided, I took a bottle of water and I went outside. I went to the park, which is supposed to be a safe place. And once I stepped outside, an aftershock occurred. And that aftershock was so strong. I'm talking like I'm on the street. All right, I'm going to turn it around. I was on the street. And the street was moving like this. The road that I'm standing on, outside. And I could not stand up on the road because it felt like I was on a bus. You know how like a bus, if you're standing and moving, you have to hold on to something. It felt like I was on a moving vehicle. I want you to process this. I was so scared out of my mind. It burned me. I still have, you know, PTSD, I guess you could say. It's mild. I'm not sure. I don't know how it comes up when I talk about it a little bit. But when I see the people's faces or I think about it, the people's faces from volunteering and going up to Tohoku and hearing their stories, I really do get a little bit teared up. But I think everybody has scars. But that day, it was awful.

00:22:11 John Daub: I was outside for about 45 minutes with my neighbors. Some of them I'd never talked to before. It brought us all together real quick. I went back in. I started to tidy up. Put the TV back up. Turned on NHK. You could see they were replaying all the stuff that was going on. Then that's when it occurred. It was about like, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour after the earthquake happened that the tsunami started to come in. And it came in really bad. The helicopter showing the images of towns getting wiped out. We saw cars that were driving in the wrong direction. And the helicopter pilot, the reporter on there, he's like, you can't say anything. There's no speakers to say, don't go that way. And you're seeing cars getting wiped away. You see people just getting wiped away. And then when I went up there to volunteer hearing the story, I still remember the one guy. We helped him put his, he was digging the mud out of his house. He had to take out all the tatami and the flooring. And he wanted to move his refrigerator back in. And when we did, he broke down. He had photos of his family. And he told us. He was at home. His wife told him to stay there in case the kids came back. She went out to look for the kids. All three of them never came back. And he's lived with the guilt. I don't know. My friend Mike and I, we talked about it. I'd like to go and find him and see how he's doing. That story really impacted me. But this was just like a couple of months after that happened.

00:23:49 John Daub: These kinds of mega quakes, people take it seriously because we still remember those stories. And how hard Tohoku was hit. And I'm sure to be somewhat scarred because of that. But when you hear these stories, that's why stories like this are important to be told. You're reminded of how powerful and how catastrophic and how the loss of life, how earthquakes just cannot be controlled. You can't control this. It is out of your control. Humans, we feel like we have so much control. We don't in life. And I think Japan understands this because we've gone through a lot. Japan has undergone this for generations, you know, throughout its history. It's riddled with massive events. The last big, big one was in 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake. There's the Kobe earthquake in 1996. There's earthquakes in Niigata, in Kumamoto, in Ishikawa last year, last January. You see houses collapse in puffs of smoke. We see sinkholes in Japan where the street will just collapse within itself because of constant earthquakes, activity under the ground. Japan is the safest country in the world for a reason because we all know that we're not safe because at any moment we can get wiped away by an earthquake, a tsunami, a typhoon that could come in from the Pacific. We're getting constantly hit land and sea. We're getting landslides, constantly hit by natural disasters. And life is so precious. We understand that here. So I think that that's one reason why one of the culture is so safe. That's just a guess on my part. But I think we're all like brothers and sisters in this, right?

00:25:47 John Daub: So it's nature's way of reminding us humans we're not in control, Jason P. writes in. And you're absolutely right. God don't punish people when they know what will happen. They punish when they think it's over. Writes in Natsuki. Take care, John. It's traumatic remembering. It is. Kate, thank you. Know the feeling, John. I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand. Yes. And we had some big earthquakes there. It does take a mental toll. It does. How powerful nature is and how fragile life is. We forget about that. I'll put the camera down. I don't want to get anybody in here. Don't think the megaquake will happen, Damien. I'm hoping so as well. Judging by the swarm of quakes, the volcano eruptions, it may be a sign of something big happening, Epic Green, we just don't know. I'm looking at your comments right now. I don't know. Can I bring the comments in here? I don't know if you can see the comments, but I can turn it. We're at the end of the signal changes every 90 seconds and it goes on for 45 seconds according to my... I've done this intersection for NHK like a bazillion times. You guys are watching me in the live cam. You can see me. I'm kind of leaning up against the pole here. That's a hard thing to talk about.

00:27:17 John Daub: Carrie's here as well. There's a lot of foreign residents here in Japan. Many of them have just come here. I'd say in the last five years, the number of the foreign residents has really increased greatly. And I think... Michael Perkins, thank you for the comment there. I think for the last five years, the number of foreign residents coming into Japan has been great. And a lot of them are starting to realize that this is the place where quakes can happen at any time. And being prepared for them is not a joke. We have an earthquake bag. I've done a live stream on it. We have recharge batteries for our smartphones. We have long shelf-like food in there. We have raincoats. We have warm blankets, foil blankets that you can wrap around and make sure that you stay warm. So I think that there's a lot of things that you can do to prepare as a resident. But if you're a tourist visiting Japan, it's really hard to prepare for an earthquake. But I think the best thing you can do is to understand that they happen. And when they do, start looking around and start following what locals are doing. Which is, at first, a lot of them are going to be standing like a deer in headlights, looking around, going like this, because you don't know what to do. And if you're outside, you're probably going to be safe. But there's also, you know, sinkholes that can happen, explosions that can happen. Most loss of life that happens from earthquakes comes from not the earthquake itself, but from things falling from buildings. And I think they've reinforced a lot of the signs. That's so bad. 45 seconds, you've got to get out of the middle of the road, guys. A lot of these have been reinforced over the last couple of years. A lot of the buildings have been re-renovated to make sure that they're earthquake-proof. Shibuya Station is also, this is the Tokyo department store, the Honten. It's a whole renovation project. It started before the 2021 Olympics. And the purpose of it is, a lot of this started after the 2011 earthquake, is to make sure that Tokyo can weather the big one, which seismologists and volcanists have been predicting for, I always do that, have been predicting for the last 50 years or so. But there's not a lot that you could do. It's July 5th, and we're just sort of on a casual earthquake watch. Anything can happen. If it did happen live, that'd be pretty amazing. But this kind of stuff doesn't really, you can see me on the live stream, live camera as well. I'm not going to be here for very long, but I kind of am. I don't think, I'm wearing the helmet more as a safety thing for you guys to see that you should take earthquakes seriously.

00:30:11 John Daub: Over the course of the last 27 years that I've been living here, I've been through a lot of the earthquakes enough to understand that, you have to understand, they have a yellow book. I don't have this queued up in the live stream, but there's a yellow book that they send to all the residents on where your evacuation sites are. So you have to make sure that you know exactly where that is. But like if a catastrophic one does occur, that's like in the manga, or sorry, in the anime, Japan Sinks: 2020, which is a fantastic look at, it's all fictional. But that's the image that I have of what a catastrophic earthquake in Tokyo would look like. Literally, the country in this anime gets swallowed up into the sea. By the end of it, you're like, crap, could this happen? And that's where sci-fi meets reality, and that's where we are today. Look, the prophecy by the mangaka, she's already downplayed it. I don't know if the government got in touch with her and said, you should downplay this. A lot of tourists have decided to stay away this entire year. And I'm looking around. Tokyo right now, and I don't see, I still see a lot of tourists here. But let's go to the questions here while we take a look. This is a live shot of Shibuya Hachiko right now. And we'll go over this a little bit. I'm looking at your chats here. You can see the Mario Kart's are still at, Shibuya's cracked down on it, where everybody has to send in their permits for the companies doing this. So they're starting to crack down little by little because of complaints in the area. They had thousands going by every day, hundreds every hour, which is just too much. Locals don't like it.

00:32:00 John Daub: I'm buying a bigger suitcase so I can fit a helmet. They're quite comfortable, because I did not skimp on this helmet. It's a nice one. It's got a little bit of ventilation. If it's going to happen, I will definitely travel somewhere else, not staying there and streaming. I think what you don't get though, I didn't, in 2011 with the Great Tohoku Earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake, they have a lot of names for it nowadays. When it happened, we were all kind of unprepared for it. It just sort of happened. There were indications that there was another earthquake, kind of giving us an indication that something would happen, but we weren't sure. With all the calls of the Nankai quake lately, it's even scarier than that. But in 2011 when I was here and experienced that, I don't take this for granted anymore. So when seismologists say to be prepared, yeah, we did go. I did go out and I did buy like portal potty stuff, like that powder that we could use. We don't drain the bath until the next morning, just in case we have bath water. And then I scrub the bath after we drain the water. So we do a lot of stuff here in Tokyo and around Japan to make sure that we don't... It's always in the back of our minds. But Governor Koike, Tokyo is actually considered a... like a state, okay? It's a metropolitan area. Japan has 47 prefectures. Each one is like a state. A prefecture is like a state. It's basically a land mass that has a governor, a kensho. And Tokyo itself is not a city. It is a state, a prefecture, a to, a metropolitan area. So the governor, Governor Koike, who is the governor of Tokyo, she's done a really great job of helping the city prepare for what could possibly happen. But at the same time, I am somewhat disappointed about losing a lot of the older buildings. But in a place like Japan, the trade-off, you have to really think about it, saving lives. And over the course of the last 10 years, since the Olympics was... The Olympics was an utter disaster. It was a massive failure for Japan. You can take a look at Shibuya Live right here. The 2020 Olympics was a massive failure for the country because nobody came. They didn't have an economic... They didn't have an economic upside to it because of the tourism dollars and people coming to visit. But the reality was that the Olympics had another value to Tokyo. They were able to inconvenience a lot of people to prepare for the Olympics, like doing the stuff that they've been doing here in front of Shibuya Station, and be able to rebuild the city. And that inconvenience and that those five years where people didn't come, the three years, that was also a lot, a lot of people were around, and they were able to do a lot of work to try to rebuild the city. And that has helped Tokyo be more prepared for something if it were to occur in the future.

00:35:13 John Daub: So, just panning up there, you can see there's a lot of people. They got... One of the reasons they got rid of the chairs here was because people were taking photos of people's skirts. So I think that they probably did a good job thing with that. I don't know. It's like you would look up there and you're not looking to notice it, but you're like, oh, and you would look away. And then there's that one person in a thousand who just keeps staring. And then you stare at them, and societal pressures in Japan make them stop. And then you go in there and tap the person on the shoulder and say, look, man, it's a thing here. Everybody who reads manga knows. It's a problem. Escalators. I heard somebody say that escalators are not as steep in Japan because of that as well. Somebody said. Societal issues. There's a word for it, right? Chikan. That's exactly right. Exactly. Catford. There's an issue with that, so people are mindful.

00:36:14 John Daub: I'd like to hear, if you're watching this live, I'd like to see your comments on this. I'm going to read some of the questions. Japan has been warning us for years on this. The Nankai Trough, which is right here, this is an area of Japan that extends from right from Mount Fuji, on the very tip, on the right side, down to Miyazaki on the southern part of Kyushu, and almost all of Shikoku. But even the red areas outside of the red areas if there was a catastrophic earthquake, they would certainly impact even Tokyo. And with this map you can see the positioning of the Nankai trough. Tokyo is in the worst position of them all because you can see it's on three troughs. So that's why my wife wants me to move another reason because we're in Chuo Ward which is right on Tokyo Bay, which is not the best place to be. Because if water did come up we would be swallowed up. And I tell her at least you can get it over with. But we want to survive it. So I just saw I just saw a security guard. Do you see that up there? There's the construction a lot of you haven't been to Shibuya in a while. Are you gonna see this? Walkway just came in. It's a little shaky because I turned out the stabilization to get a wider view but that walkway's new. Shibuya is gonna be really easy to get around in a couple of years but right now the construction is still quite bad.

00:37:47 John Daub: Basically, there could be an earthquake and there has been earthquakes, but there will be more earthquakes. Kazumi hit it on hit the nail on the head bingo. $5,000 prize right there so to speak. The earthquakes come 1,500 a year come to Japan. They're going to come. They will come. If you come to visit the chance of you experiencing one that you feel is not that high. You might be sleeping and earthquake will happen and you'll sleep right through it. You won't even know. So I'd say like 99% of the earthquakes you won't even feel. But there's that one and if that one in a hundred or one in a thousand that's a magnitude four or five and you feel it and that's when that you see the dead deaths. So, you know, who's tourists? There's the people that are tourists that jump underneath the table. They're doing the right thing. And then there's a locals like me who think that oh, it's a small one. Don't worry about it. But here's the reality and why I got that wrong. When I talk with the Tokyo Fire Department about this, they said that you based on the earthquake and when it starts you cannot predict the intensity as it goes forward. So although in 2011, I knew within a second that it was stronger than usual and this is gonna be bad. You cannot predict on a week one that it's not going to intensify greatly over the course of its of its life over the course of the earthquake you cannot predict it. So the right course is to be to take all precautions if you feel any earthquake because you just don't know if it's going to be strong or not. When I when I interviewed the Tokyo Fire Department chief. He the or at least the guy who was in charge of the earthquake simulation center. He told me you cannot predict the strength of an earthquake. You cannot do that. So the best thing to do is to take precautions and treat them all the same. But you can't panic either and the more you go through them the more you kind of be able to manage yourself in the case of it. So what I'm trying to say here is that Japan's gonna have 1,500 earthquakes a year. There seems to be more activities because down in the islands in Tokata Islands right now, which is down in Kagoshima. We are getting about a thousand we've had about a thousand a little bit over a thousand earthquakes some of them we seven intensities get stale called Shindo in Japan. It goes up to intensity seven. Seven is like catastrophic. They had it in lower six, which is extremely strong and it caused landslides. The news is showing it they've evacuated all the people on their Seismologists and volcanists at the Tokyo University told reporters in Japan yesterday that they're the one of the reasons potentially they don't know for sure is that there's some magma activity underneath the island. But this is down in a place where they do experience 300 earthquakes a year, but it's spiked to about a thousand or eleven 1,100 right now. You see just a little island between Kyushu Kagoshima Prefecture. It's part of Kagoshima Prefecture. It's sandwiched between Okinawa and Kagoshima and Amami Jima is also quite close Amami Island. So that's where they're evacuating People right now, but it's quite far from Tokyo. It's quite far from Osaka. It's like a two-hour plane ride to out here and you know if an earthquake does happen here the chances are we don't even get anything on the seismic scale in Tokyo or Osaka for that matter. It's just really really weak so to us in Tokyo so that's It's a it's a thing of concern and the media is playing this up. Of course, they are the media places up because there's a place in Japan where we've had a thousand earthquakes Recently, so they're gonna play that up because today's July 5th and July 5th is the prediction day, but you can see nobody's panicking in Tokyo. I'd say the media in India is probably the worst and by the way the media in India quite often Takes my videos and uses them without asking but what are you gonna do about it? It's I don't have the resources to battle it and YouTube is not gonna police it for me. But the Indian media is is very good. It's compliment. I guess at getting people to be scared. Not me. I'm used to it now. But we're okay in Japan. Yeah, this earthquake watch is quite interesting. I said I'm gonna be here for about an hour or so. This is the most public place that you could be Shibuya. I'm surprised that we still got a signal here. But you can see there's a Ichimaru Q in the distance 109 building. This is a hub Shibuya if you've never been to Tokyo, it's like to the Times Square of Japan. This is the Q front where if you saw This was just built when Sofia Coppola produced that video with Bill Murray. What's it called lost in translation and that TV screen is up there. I think they got to now. That's what the dinosaur crossed up there. It's still here, but it's now quite an old building. It was new back then. He cut EA is a building that came up around 10 a little bit over 10 years ago. And this is where Google's headquarters are. She blew his streams in the back there. I've been in there a couple of times. They got really good Wi-Fi. It's like I remember doing a Wi-Fi check and I was like, holy crap. You guys get fast Wi-Fi. I was like, yes we do we are Google. Yeah, it's funny. I used to go in there for meetings because I had a partner manager back in the day. And this hotel here. It's got some nice views overlooking this the most famous intersection perhaps in the world. The Hachiko scramble Hachiko is over there for those that are tuning in right now. I'm gonna zoom in it's gonna be a little shaky because I don't have the stabilization turned off on the gimbal, but you'll line up to go. There's the dog right there in the center of the screen move truck. People line up very politely to get pictures with Hachiko the doggy.

00:44:10 John Daub: And I want to say thank you. We had about ten people sign up for the postcards. That's really great. I'm sending postcards from the summit of Mount Fuji. If you're interested in one go to the patreon site sign up for the postcard Club by tomorrow because I'm I won't be able to put the label on in time you sign up on the patreon site by tomorrow. I'll be able to put them into the I have about 300 of them. I'll be able to put them take them up with me to the summit of Mount Fuji and you get a cancel mark from the Mount Fuji. I'm making a video on how they do the mail up in the top of Mount Fuji. They bring it down by bulldozer and here's the awesome thing with this video. I'm producing for my main channel. I get to write up on in a couple of days in the bulldozer. This is gonna be awesome. So I'm not climbing Mount Fuji ladies and gentlemen. I'm riding in the bulldozer and it takes three hours to get up to the top by the way. But I'll be making an episode on this so should be really interesting. But if you sign up in the next 24 hours, there's the urgency is because I'm going I really appreciate that helps put the channel and you will get a postcard with a mount Fuji summit cancel stamp on the top and a video there's a QR code on the back of the of the postcard that you'll be able to scan and see maybe not your postcard but your postcards in the group because the privacy reasons I can't show them that your address but I'll show the postcards being stamped and then sent By bulldozer in the video that will be producing for the main channel. So you got about 24 hours to sign up for that. So we're on earthquake watch for the next couple of minutes. Live from Shibuya, you can probably see me on the live cameras if you're watching. I've been here for about 45 minutes. I'm just curious. I came in here just kind of curious. Hello, maybe.

00:46:06 John Daub: Nice to meet you. Oh, thank you. Are you concerned about the earthquake? Time? Early morning, but I I don't think it's true. Hopefully. I think so. You said you do you want to be on it? I turned the other way for privacy, but okay, but. Yeah, sorry, oh no. Oh, wow. You want to plug it? Sure, there's a 2,000 people watching you on it. Okay. No, no plug your book. I don't want Japanese onsen. Hi everyone. I'm you ball. Sorry to interrupt. There's no earthquake. We're all doing all right for now. I released a new book called towards a nude architecture. It's about onsen architecture. I live in a small little onsen town called you go. I don't know if you've been Prefecture it's Kanagawa, okay. Yeah right near a Tommy can be a day trip can be a day trip in beautiful onsen a lot of great food either shot in the Number-one ranked ramen in the whole country you should come sometime. I had not been to the town in particular. Yeah, I've been at Tommy many times. But that Tommy's nice you go are is the hidden gem. I don't even want to tell people here about it. So you just keep this between us. It's too late. But yeah, yeah, it's really nice and. I've seen you've done a lot of onsen content. So who doesn't the longer you stay here the more the first year I was a little bit shy to go in there. But now not anymore. What's the book again? It's called towards a nude architecture. I'm it's a new architecture. I'm an architect and. So I kind of did a book about telling the whole story of Japan through the through onsen. Which I think the more you look into them the more interesting it's on Amazon and the bookstores and stuff. Oh, wow cool, all right my friend Matt alt writes a lot of books here, too, so that's really cool.

00:48:17 John Daub: Do you guys? I think you wrote a book and I'll check it out for sure because I love onsen. Absolutely we'll keep in touch. I'm on the Instagram just okay. All right. Yeah. All right. Thanks for seven. Bye thanks, sir. Thanks for saying hi nice guy. He lives in Kanagawa nearby architect. Plug his book. I think that that's great a lot. You know I got honestly I. I've been in Japan for 27 years, but for the first year I lived here as an American I was just shy to get naked with a bunch of people. I was even in PE you didn't want to take a shower after PE because. Like nobody did and if you're that weirdo that would gotten get naked with a bunch of teenagers. You know in high school. You know America had that kind of at least in the 90s then I came to Japan and then public nudity now. I'm so used to it. I'm doing naked man festivals. You can see it on my main channel just a few months ago. I did one in Niigata. Was last year I uploaded it a few months ago where I'm in minus 10 degrees Celsius in a thong running around. Nudity in Japan is just a different approach. It's funny people are shy about it in public here, but at the onsen in the bath. There's an expression that everybody is equal when they're naked. What is it called hadaka no tsuki-ai and. You could be in the bath with the Prime Minister of Japan or the CEO of your company and as long as you guys are In the bath you are of equal status. When you remove your clothes in Japan rank does not matter, but once you put on that business suit or the samurai kimono. Whatever then you're back to your rank and file of everyday life, but going into the onsen or a public bath is a big deal for Japanese society I like that hadaka no tsuki-ai. Thinking that in the bath we're all equal and nobody sees one different than the other. But I still kind of will hold my towel in my front because I don't want to share everything with anyone. Especially the the konnyaku ofuro the co-ed public baths. There's some still around where the guys get nothing and women's get dresses. So I'm gonna I'm pretty honest in these live streams. That's a cool bike. You see so many cool cars and bikes in Japan. I have to be honest though when I first came to Japan and I went to a konnyaku bath three years in. I went with somebody and I'm My first image was this is gonna be so amazing because I get to see there's gonna be like like naked ladies all around. This is cool. Like wow and in my image because you don't see images and this is before the before YouTube and stuff. This is like 2000 year 2001 or something when I went to Kusatsu onsen they have a large public bath and then Takara gawa onsen, which has a large public onsen bath. I was like this is gonna be great and then I got there and. It's not what you think. Every all the ladies were wearing robes and the ones that weren't and there were At least back then 25 years ago. They were all over the age of 85 and you can't unsee that. I'm being completely honest. I I've been here since 98. Japan life in Japan stopped when Seinfeld was still on TV. All right friends are still on TV. So sometimes the things I say are politically incorrect, but I don't really care. That's just the way this is the way it works out. But honestly. You'll see co-ed baths being talked about in a cornea con yoga baths and it's not that. It's not that it's not what you think. Cognac is gelatinous potato. Which is really good. Also. We're still on earthquake watch here. No problems in Tokyo. To just July 5th the day of the prophecy. I've been going back and forth on this if you're still watching I appreciate it in the playback. But yeah, look a lot of this that has to do A lot of the panic has less to do with the prophecy right now and more to do with what's going on at the islands. Anakagoshima and NHK reporting and showing this graph here. It is quite concerning. They've evacuated the residents of the Tokara Island down there and everybody's safe no fatalities. But they had some really strong shakers down there really strong ones and I can I I I know what they went through. When I was a I'll tell this story really quickly because we have some more people that are coming in to watch. But. When when I was in the great East the great tohoku earthquake in 2011 I was here in Tokyo. In Edogawa Ward, which is closer to Chiba. It felt it worse there than it did in other parts of Tokyo. It's a little bit closer to Fukushima but. In the aftershock I was outside on the street. I'd taken my hamster Kiki and we went outside. Aftershock occurred when I was on the road. And the road was moving as though I was on a bus. This is the aftershock after the big one and. I had to sit down on the road and other people were sitting down and the buildings around me were swaying and. It was probably the scariest moments. The first one was was scary. I thought I was gonna I thought if my life was over. The thing with a massive earthquake is that you you do not have control of your life anymore. You are in your life is in the hands of Mother Nature or whatever is gonna happen and the building that you're in and hope that the Architectures and the builders did not skimp on the on the earthquake proofing. Kiki. That later on that year. He didn't make it. I had a heater in there and he I think it just got it just got too cold despite the apartment and he was like three years old. I don't know if it was that in the winter is when he passed away. If I had one of those plug-in little heaters underneath his house and he had so much cotton and stuff at his house, but he didn't make it but in the earthquake. He did we both made it out of that okay.

00:54:39 John Daub: After the big one I don't want to talk about this because I still have stress. Like a PTSD about this. I went up to Fukushima a couple of years ago when no tourists could come here. We're trying to promote the area for when tourism did return. They invited me up and to Minami Soma. That's not that far away from where the reactor is. It's a sensitive topic today. They've redone it. It's pretty safe right now. The area is around there people live up there. It's all brand new which shows that it's a Remembered what happened because it's all been redone. But they had an earthquake simulation machine and in the live stream. I I went in there with some school kids. They their parents are with us. So they have permission to be a live stream. There's always some Karen in the live chat here and. We went in and afterwards I was Very emotional because I started talking about remembering what happened in 2011 and I still have a lot of stress from that. Mainly because I talked to a lot of people and we went up to volunteer. We did some Truck drives up to to go for a second harvest as well raise some money in our community back then but. After the great earthquake you couldn't get up anyways to volunteer for about two months because the roads were blocked and it was just a safe thing but after. After the big earthquake we had aftershocks. This is the thing that they don't people forget when they would we relive this. Aftershocks every five minutes were occurring every five minutes and it's okay for a few hours. But after the after three or four days of this. You feel seasick like you're on a boat because your house is swaying all the time after a big one. There are hundreds of aftershocks. Thousands of aftershocks and they're different ones. There are a lot of magnitude 5 earthquakes too as aftershocks and you just get you almost get numb to it, which is scary. So about a week and a week after this I didn't have a live streaming channel there. I got on the shinkansen and I went down to Kansai and I was able to stay in a capsule hotel. The lot of people were just sleeping at Osaka station and a lot of people were people escaping Tokyo to get away from it because they Had like seasickness from all of the swaying in your apartment a lot of people had evacuated to get to Places like there and I have friends in Kansai too, but the the first couple of nights I stayed at a capsule hotel. Kevin Riley's down there. I didn't know him as well back then. This is before I this before I started only in Japan and. I was really sick, but I didn't stay I didn't leave all of the foreigners had left in 2011. I don't want to be I don't want to be mean about this, but there are a lot in particular the French and. The Belgians got free flights to go back to their country. From their embassy the US Embassy did not offer free flights back US Embassy said for three thousand dollars. You can come back home to the United States via Taiwan. It's like what? It's like a 24-hour flight and then you have to still get your flight from the military aircraft to like wherever you wanted to go. So I stayed. But it was the important to stay because these are the times that the tribe men souls. Japan needed volunteers man. Japan needed help back then and we call those people fly jeans the ones who left and I'd say about 80% of my friends left and a lot of them never came back. We were all worried about the radiation. I remember people were buying Geiger counters going to the supermarket making their sure that their food was okay. I never did that. I don't know. I'm gonna regret it later on. I don't know but we stayed. Because Japan's home. Those are tough days, man.

00:59:06 John Daub: It's great that that's in the past, but if a catastrophic earthquake does happen in Tokyo. There's a politicians going by you see they're waving at us. Tourist bus is empty. This is before I was doing YouTube YouTube was hamster videos and Like really short pointless stuff that people would upload back then so we didn't really talk too much about it. I took some videos with a PD 170 a Sony PD 170. I was reporting for NHK at the time back then NHK World a show called Tokyo I. But it was it was that the events after that that got me into doing YouTube to start off. Because what NHK was reporting wasn't good stuff and the world media was just hamming it up. It was in. I was a resident. I don't know I'm talking about this now. Was a resident of Fukushima for a while in Iwaki, which is a city that was not very far away from where the reactor was. I had people that I care about up there. I had a lot of students. I taught children in the year 2025 it was 11 years before back then. And I kept a touch of them on Facebook a lot of them found me. One of them owned a hotel not Nick not far from you walk you station and. Their business was wiped out. Nobody went up there. They had to evacuate. They weren't sure what was happening. People lost their lives. The days the the the hours days weeks and months following that was some of the worst and if a catastrophic earthquake does happen here and. Just don't like the media playing this up and maybe I did a little bit wearing the helmet. Maybe I did a little bit with the title, but there's a serious message here. Like if a catastrophic earthquake were to happen. If a megaquake were to occur. I firsthand. From Tokyo and it's quite far from the the hypo center the epicenter of where it happened. There's a lot of people that are impacted by this. There's gonna be a lot of lives that are still lost. There's gonna be a lot of lives that are just destroyed. Businesses destroyed. People. The things that you don't think about supply chains break down. Store shelves are cleared. People don't remember this they don't talk about it in the supermarkets in Tokyo. You couldn't get food and water. All the bottled water was gone all of the food of the shelves bread everything. It was fresh was gone a lot of the canned food stores were empty. They couldn't get resupply because trucks weren't weren't able to get through certain areas. Stuff from Kansai could still come up but everything coming from North Japan down could not get through because the highways are blocked. The train lines the sheen content. They had to check out the integrity of the train lines too. That wasn't me. People sometimes take for granted the most famous intersection in the world, do not cross when the light is red. This is a very dangerous intersection. So I do take this extremely seriously because I lived through it. Not just that I was in a strong earthquake, but I saw a lot of the people lose their lives. Not just family members and people, but their livelihoods. And they had to rebuild and start from zero. And that's never an easy thing. I know because I had to restart this channel from zero about five years ago when I lost my channel. I had to start over. It sucks. But imagine if it's completely out of your control. Earthquakes do that. It just impacts a massive amount of area. This is the non-contact. The one that the media is talking about. That's a lot of people. That includes the influence. It's Kyoto and Osaka is influenced by the non-contact here. Tokyo is up there on three tectonic plates. Unless it's down in Miyazaki, we're going to feel it in the city of Tokyo. That's a lot of people. This is the Pacific side of Japan is the most crowded. If it's catastrophic, it's not just an earthquake. And I said this earlier. If you're just tuning in. It's not just the earthquake that destroys lives, but it's what happens after. It's the fires that happened in the great Kanto earthquake in 1923. It wasn't the earthquake that destroyed the city so much. A lot of buildings fell down. It was the fires. People were cooking the fires. You know, things shook. Things caught on fire because it was also lunchtime in 1923 when that happened. So lives are lost. And not just by the earthquake. By the stuff that happens as a result of the earthquake. So I want to wipe that out because I wanted this to be. This was supposed to be more of a fun thing. I guess a watch because this is July 5th when they made this prediction. And I've been talking about it and warning people that it's just a prediction and it's probably not going to come true. But for the last hour, we've seen no panic. No one's talking about it. But the international media is going to hand this up. I'm sure. So I want you all to know that you were here. And I might just have to go back and do it again. I might do another livestream later on because that's what I do.

01:04:49 John Daub: There's a lot of trucks. I'm surprised that the signal is still okay right now. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I think that this is going to be a really important one. I think that if you're a tourist coming to visit Japan, this is a great opportunity to start to ask the questions that maybe you didn't ask before you booked the trip. It's like, what do you do in case of a strong earthquake? And I do have a video on that. There's a politician across the street. I'm going to go to the airport. There's a politician across the street. I started this just in the early morning before a lot of people started to come here. In the next 20 minutes, it's going to get extremely crowded, so I'm not going to be livestreaming here for too much longer. Before you come to Japan, just do a little research, like five minutes, on what do you do in case of an earthquake just so that you understand that it happens. And that is the most important thing, that you're coming to a place where earthquakes do happen. It is the safest place in the world. You can walk around here around midnight. You're not going to get mugged. You're not going to have problems. You might get ripped off. They're starting to crack down on other foreigners that are pickpocketing other foreigners. That's been in the news recently in Japan. But it's not going to be through violence. And one of the reasons, perhaps, is because we've all, everybody feels like brothers and sisters in the times of when natural disasters occur. We all sort of come together. And one of the reasons why Japan's safe, kind of in my gut, I feel, that we've all gone through these strong earthquakes. I'm not going to lie. We've all gone through these earthquakes. And we all, in these moments, we'll pass the water bottle around and make sure that everybody stays hydrated. We'll share our food with each of us. And if you do watch that Netflix drama, Japan Sinks, right there, you're probably going to be a little bit concerned. The weird stuff happens in that anime. Maybe it happens over the course of days and weeks and months after an earthquake. But if it's catastrophic, God help us all.

01:06:51 John Daub: They talk about it. They talk about it. The media talks about it. But unless you've lived through it. If you were in Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures and Iwate on that day, you do not know what it means. Because it's just, it's devastating. All right? I'm driving this home, right? You guys can feel it too. That's important. It's important for me through this livestream that you do. All right, this is a little bit longer than I wanted to go. Have you ever heard about a robbery in Japan that was done by three overstate Indonesians? I haven't. I probably have. A lot of things go past my desk. Yeah, that's a good call. There's BOSSAI, B-O-S-S-A-I. BOSSAI is the word for emergency disaster. All right, BOSSAI. There's an app that I believe it's also in English that will help you with this as well. You can download it for free, the BOSSAI app. It should be useful. It's a yellow with a rhino on it, I believe. Have you ever heard about, okay, I'm looking back through some of the questions here. I once, when I was in Kappabashi, talked about an earthquake and I said, we haven't had an earthquake in a while. There's a big one that's coming. And that night we had a really big one, like a magnitude five, magnitude six or something in Tokyo. The intensity was pretty high. And my livestream community let me know, don't jinx it. But I think that this is, I don't think anything's going to happen today. And I wear the helmet. It's kind of like as a half joke, but also as a reminder that you should be prepared. And you should know that they do happen here.

01:09:00 John Daub: Tomic love's right here, July 25th, dude, not July 20th, July 5th. Yeah, maybe. The international media's saying July. I've been told July 5th. Nobody knows anymore. Tomic love, you can stop that. We get the message. The moderators are going to get on you. If you have any questions, you can let me know in the comments below. Do we have any moderators in here? I timed them out. And, you know, I'm not going to be talking about the moderators. Andrew, thanks for the livestream. My brother come in to say hi. I hope he comes in the next two minutes because I'm out of here. July 5th is when she had the dream. News Now TV writes in here. Fake news. See what I'm talking about? The whole thing is fake. It doesn't matter what day they made a prediction. It's just not going to happen. I'm going to cross the street to the other side real quickly. All these people that are coming here, just keep in mind that you only have 45 seconds. And by the time they get to the middle, you probably should turn around. But it is a pretty crazy intersection. It's chaos because there's people coming from one, two, three, four, five, six different sides. Shibuya is a pretty amazing place. Just making a megaphone because it's election time. So the elections, they do it with megaphones here. It's old school. It's old school in Tokyo. In Japan. They wear those sashes with their name on it. And they'll talk about it. They'll talk about their political stuff really loud in front of the station. That's why I started a little bit earlier than usual. Yeah, the crosswalk itself is a landmark. I thought that they used to have more white on the Hachiko scramble, but a lot of stuff has changed here. The crosswalk is quite famous. There's another one in Osaka near Namba, which is also quite famous. Deshawn writes in here, I lived in 2011. Scary. Yeah. I was in the south part of Yokohama. You still felt it there? I live in the 13th floor. The higher you were, the more you felt it. The land was waving like water. And you didn't leave. Yeah, I said earlier, the fly genes that left, you can't blame them. Because we were talking about radiation and stuff. I mean, this really impacts your family. This impacts your life. You just don't know. Better safe than sorry is the expression that they're using in Hong Kong right now, not to come to Japan. But the reality is that, look, back then in 2011, you probably left. We didn't really have YouTube to inform us of both what was true and what was not true. You just took what everybody said, and that was fact. And European countries had free flights back out of Narita. No tourists were coming. Well, thank you very much. Tokyo, the airports were not bringing in anybody in. Tourists were canceling, of course. But there are a lot of... The flights going out of Japan were full. And everybody who left was called... I mean, the ones that stayed called the ones that left fly genes, because out of the name gaijin, it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek making fun of those people. But when you think about it, you really can't blame them. And if I had a free flight, if I was Belgian or French, I probably would have taken that flight too. Maybe. You know what? No, I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have. I didn't have YouTube. I wasn't going to do any live streams back then. We had Ustream or Justin.tv. We didn't have any live streams back then. But I still wouldn't have left. Because my job, my life was in Japan. So I wouldn't have left. I stayed. But after these earthquakes do occur, there are a lot of things that you have to think about.

01:13:16 John Daub: Hello. Hello. Can I put it behind there? They came up to say hello really quickly. They're watching live. I don't know. The channel might not be that popular. But, hey, Mike is here. This channel might not be so popular as it used to be. There's a lot of YouTubers in Japan. But I've been doing this for a very, very long time. Some people still come up and say hi to me. It feels like a family, really. We've got a really great community here. Lloyd writes in here, let's go get something to drink. Just a note, all the vending machines are downstairs, underground. But I'm going to end this live stream now. I'm really glad that you guys took the time. We're able to tune in, kind of get an idea of Tokyo. I'm going to walk a little bit around here. I know that the signal is not good. So we're going to, the signal is going to cut out. But, yeah, the prophecy said July 5th. And it's July 5th. And we're all okay. So I think it's something that you need to consider. Even those in Hong Kong, a lot of them, they canceled the flights because that's what the news is talking about. Earthquakes are always going to happen in Japan. 1,500 of them occur here every single year. It's a fact. Those are facts. So you should know a little bit about earthquakes in Japan, what to do in case of them before you come here. So you are prepared. And it's the safest country in the world. I think it's a great place for tourists to come and visit here in Japan. But you also have to be prepared. And I'm wearing this helmet, again, a little bit of a joke, but also as a reminder that earthquakes do happen.

01:15:06 John Daub: I'm prepared. So if it did happen right now, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put the Super Chat. Usually the vending machines are underground, but I found one right here. Let's get a drink here. What do we got? Cold water sounds good, actually. You can pay with your Suica card, but I'm going to use coins this time. Hold on a second. Here it is. It's really hot. Natchan is always good, but I'm trying to avoid the show. Who would buy a little bottle of water unless you just didn't have any place to put it? This is the American in me right now. $1.20 for half the size bottle, a pet bottle of water, and the full bottle is 20 yen more, or like 10 cents more. It's somewhat crazy. They're actually, and you know what? The water is all sold out. 60 yen. 60 yen. Japanese yen. 60 yen. Oh my goodness. It's nice and cool. Cheers. Oh, wow. He's actually refilling it. Oh, he's talking. He put in some coins and didn't get it out. The guy's come to give back his change. If that ever happens, there's usually a phone number on the bottom there. In fact, if you don't know where you are, if you ever get lost in Japan, the address of the vending machines are written on them. So if a crime does happen or something does occur, you can find out where you are by the address on the bottom. The vending machines. Locals know that, but not a lot of people do. Not a lot of people that are visiting know. Oh my god. Thanks guys for the water. I appreciate it. Super chats. Oh, that's really good. Maybe to my stomach. I saw that comment. I don't know if you'd say kanpai with water, but kanpai.

01:17:34 John Daub: All right, guys. I got work to do, but this is live from Shibuya Hatsuko Scramble, which is the most famous intersection in the entire world. You can see the construction happening in the distance as they earthquake proof and clean up. What is, I guess, you know, Shibuya is in a valley. In fact, the name Shibuya, the buya part of it is valley. So we're under, we're below sea level here. So probably not the best place to be. However, they've revamped. Now that I'm thinking about it, this is probably the worst place to be if a tsunami were to come. But they've revamped the water. Drainage underneath the station. It's a very sophisticated system, so maybe we'd be okay. But the subway on the other side, the Ginza Line comes outside because it's underground Tokyo. But when it gets out here, it's coming into the valley, into the, well, below sea level. And so the subways are above ground on that side, which is crazy. Tokyo citizens. People who are coming to Shibuya today. Yeah, my friend Mike is chiming in. Like, you just cannot predict earthquakes. You literally cannot predict earthquakes. It's impossible. You can give a, like, based on historical timelines. But the Nankai Trough, which everyone's been talking about for the last year and a half. I think, I think it's very hard for the Japan Meteorological Agency, which is the agency where the seismologists are. As well as people who analyze the typhoons, the weather people. I went to university with Mike Bettis, who's on the Weather Channel. So I've always been sort of interested in seeing his career on the Weather Channel. Storm Chaser. I don't know if Mike's watching right now. But the typhoons hit Japan all the time. That's another thing you have to think about if you're coming from July to October. Your flight could be delayed because of a typhoon. So I always say go back a day early. So that if you've got to get back to work, a typhoon does not cancel your flight. Because they do cancel flights.

01:19:53 John Daub: All my life I've looked like Ralph. Even in 1984 when the Karate Kid came out. I've been bullied thanks to Ralph Macchio. Ralph, if you're watching this, next time you come to Japan, look me up. Because for the last, almost all my life, since I was 10 years old, I've been getting bullied because I look like you. People doing wax on, wax off. Making comments. Getting him a body bag. It's been hard. But at the same time it's made life pretty interesting, Ralph. I can't blame you. I can't blame you, Ralph. But if you didn't come, we've got a lot to talk about, Ralph. Sweep the leg. How dare you? I've got a pretty good sense of humor on it. Don't worry. I don't get offended. It's almost impossible to offend me.

01:21:00 John Daub: All right, I'm supposed to meet Peter for lunch and we're getting close to that. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I'm just sticking around because it's just fun now. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'm looking forward to that. Make sure that you do brush up a little bit about earthquakes. Ask ChatGP, I guess. Internet search it. I got a video. Just search only in Japan. Space earthquake. The video has over 2 million views and I go to an earthquake simulator and I talk with the Tokyo Fire Department on the earthquakes as well as show you my experience when I was here in 2011. So, yeah, go and check that out. Yeah, Peter sent me a message. I don't know if... Sorry, a notification came up on my phone. It was Peter calling to meet up for lunch. Sorry about that. For a second, you probably thought that something happened. Notification came up. I tried to swipe away and it went onto it. I'm sorry. Thanks, guys, for the Super Chats and for the water. I appreciate it. Tomorrow is the last day. So sign up for the Only Japan Postcard Club and I'll be able to sign you, send you. I'll send you a postcard from the summit of Mount Fuji. There it is right there. If you want to sign up patreon.com slash only in Japan, I'll send you a postcard. If you sign up in the next 24 hours, I'll take you with me. I'm going to be on the summit of Mount Fuji in like 72 hours or Tuesday morning. I'm taking the bulldozer up with the Japan Post team. So, yeah, I'll take your postcard up if you sign up in the next 24 hours. All right, guys, take care. Live view from Tokyo. We're all good. Earthquake watch kind of ending. But if it does, something does happen. Make sure you subscribe. I will come back. The 1990 predictions have drawings around. My friend Mike is giving me all these things. Mike, if you want to meet up later today, we could do a live stream and talk about it. Mike's very knowledgeable as somebody who reads a lot of manga. Maybe we'll go online and do it again later today. But I'm going to get out of here. Go out, go have some lunch. Thanks, guys. Be safe. Japan is an earthquake prone country. Kind of do a little bit of research. Know that it can happen any time. And if it does, I'm going to be here and I'll let you know how things go. Don't take the helmet off. Why? I don't mind being silly here. I'm holding a stick. You can see me on the live street on the live cameras around Shibuya. I'm holding a stick walking through the most busy intersection in the world, perhaps. So I'm beyond that stage in life. All right, guys. There you go from Shibuya Hachiko Scramble. Please take care of yourself and I'll be back later on for another live stream. Definitely tomorrow. But maybe we'll see how this plays out. It's still July 5th. It's still lunchtime. Don't forget to hit the like button. We say that on YouTube. See you.