00:00:03 John Daub: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the infamous or notorious Lawson's with Mount Fuji view. Kawaguchi city versus the bad tourist. And you can see the parking lot despite the fact that you can't even see Mount Fuji at all. There are people here. Across the street is a brown wall which replaces a black wall. This is wall 2.0. It's very interesting. I'm trying to get a clear signal here. We're going to work out, work out, work on this.

00:00:34 John Daub: But they've made some changes here to the Lawsons at Kawaguchiko over the last 36 months. An ongoing drama that continues to get deeper, thicker, more interesting. It keeps bringing me back here. So what they've done here is they've taken away the box or whatever was here. They put signs clearly saying don't run into the street. This is so much clearer. They've added these things here to make sure that people don't stand on them.

00:01:05 John Daub: Whether you think it's going to work or not. They're here. I don't look like a bunch of used tires kind of just cabled in there. Did they really load it up with signs? I don't blame them. Now typically on a clear day you'd look over this and you would have Mount Fuji right here. But it's in the clouds today as it is with almost every summer. It's very hard to see in the summertime. Mount Fuji is just closed up here.

00:01:36 John Daub: But I really do want to talk about the great Kawaguchi Wall 2.0. That's it right there. It's about up to my torso so it's a lot shorter than it was before. I know that the business owner, I talk with him off the record, he lives back here but this is also his business, a dental office. And he told me that this was really, really a burden on his business, on him personally. But you know, he didn't—he understood why the tourists wanted to take the pictures here. He gets it. But it was really hurting his business. No solution was really helping him.

00:02:38 John Daub: The original wall, if we take a look at it here, I was here about less than a year ago. And you can see we had a view here. The weather was a little bit cooler. So I think it was over a year ago. This is where the tourists are supposed to cross and you can see they're standing up here. They're breaking the rules. Japan was panicking. What do you actually do now? You see there's a girl standing up, which she shouldn't be doing. And there's the black wall. This is wall 1.0. It was black, dark. It was meant to discourage people from even trying.

00:03:08 John Daub: All right. What happened was a tourist went back there and they took a knife or something sharp and they busted maybe their finger—some dude's got long fingernails—and they busted a hole into wall 1.0. So you had little holes that you could take the pictures of Mount Fuji from inside of there. Now they don't need to do it because it only comes up to about here on you. The other reason why the wall was really necessary—and do let me know if the signal is really not good—the other reason that they needed to have the wall come down was that the buses were hitting it. It is really close to the street.

00:03:39 John Daub: There's like no shoulder whatsoever. It's very important if you're a tourist here to walk on the sidewalks, not walk on the road. You can see there's the—there. When two buses go past there, they use every single centimeter, every inch of the road. So there were instances where the buses were actually hitting the poles and damaging their rearview windows. So they ended up making sure that the buses would not hit them for the longest time.

00:04:10 John Daub: After last year's typhoon season, this wall was down. The typhoon was also a problem. The wind would blow it down. The higher it is, the more wind it would catch, the more pressure on these poles underneath here, the more chance that these things would just break and blow and cause more havoc and danger to the drivers that went by there. Now it's a lot lower. It's more manageable. It's engineered better. It's like, why didn't they come up with this in the first place?

00:04:44 John Daub: Right? Despite the fact that there are no tourists—no, wait. Sorry, the fact that there's no view here, there are still a lot of people in the parking lot. This Kawaguchiko Lawson's here. It's fascinating how much it's changed over the last 36 months that I've been covering this story. Sorry about the video lag. I might have to upload this later, but I really wanted to share with you as I take about 15 minutes of video. For a video I'm doing on overtourism, this has been an example, a story of two cities.

00:05:20 John Daub: Because the neighboring Fuji Yoshida does things differently. Shout out to Michael Sasano, who's in the house making up for the last time, which was unnecessary. Mahalo, Aloha, my brother. Since you're close to convenience, you might as well get something as a snack. I will because I'm going next to the Mount—the Yoshida Trails fifth station to fill some insert shots for a video I'm making on Mount Fuji. So I'm here around this area today driving in a rent-a-car.

00:05:53 John Daub: The traffic was legendary trying to get here. Mr. Black Tears writes in—hey John, longtime not watching a stream. Glad to catch up right now. Thank you for always giving us updates and excellent coverage about Japan. I'm really glad that you're here. For a lot of you, maybe not everybody here, this—mount—this Lawson is like some sort of a tourist attraction. People just—again, despite the fact that there is no—see, the one guy's laughing, he's saying there's no view of Mount Fuji. He's asking the bus driver. But people still have to go and take the photo because this place is notorious. They've done a really good job with the signage.

00:06:59 John Daub: And despite that, the city of Kawaguchi still has hired two policemen—well, let's just say keibin or security guards on the other side. And they're patrolling this to the best of their ability. But in Fuji Yoshida, the neighboring town, they do a completely different job of doing it. They don't have policemen. They have people that are more like guides. So instead of trying to stop—and this was the best, maybe the two cities have finally talked to one another. But instead of trying to stop the tourists from doing what they're going to want to do anyways—which is this urge, like a—like a moth to a light—to make sure you get a picture in front of the parking lot of Lawson's to get what is a nonexistent—nonexistent Mount Fuji over here.

00:07:31 John Daub: You got to get the tourists to stop coming here. But now they're leaning into it. And some of you have asked like—they got a sign says no drone, no running into the roadway. A lot of you ask, why doesn't the business across the street just charge people to go up on his roof? The answer is you're not getting the point here. People want to take the Mount Fuji with the Lawsons. It doesn't matter about the street. They can do that for free right here. Why would you charge to go up here when you can do it for free down on the street? I don't think the people were really getting the reason why this was such an issue. The issue is that this is actually a really crowded roadway.

00:08:39 John Daub: Let me break it down for you here. If the signal's not going up, I'm going to upload this video for you guys so you get a clean version of it. There's Tokyo and there's where I am—that blue spot, Kawaguchiko, on the left side, down the center, just really close to Mount Fuji. This is a popular one of the Finger Lakes—one of the popular lakes of Mount Fuji. So it's a kind of resort. Lots of hotels here. Train station, so it's a tourist hub. That's where I am. That blue spot that's in front of the parking lot of the Lawsons. And you can see the road right next to the train station is really, really busy. So we've had too many near hits. About two years ago, a woman was hit, which started to prompt action from the citizens of Kawaguchi to do something.

00:09:14 John Daub: But they didn't know what to do. There was no consensus on the right way to do it. So we had 36 months or more of chaos since 2020, since 2022 when tourism reopened. 2023, it exploded on the scene here. There's what you're supposed to see today. Today you got none of that. The explosion of tourism in 2023 led to this—in particular on social media exploding this particular site. And the city has struggled to find ways to deal with it.

00:09:45 John Daub: Social media was the culprit. And Fuji Yoshida has leaned into social media more than Kawaguchiko, which tried traditional media. I told them that I would be happy to help them out with this, but Kawaguchiko did not listen. For better or for worse, so I'm here to help. They wouldn't utilize me, but they brought in CNN and all the other media to do a press conference. The mayor is really a little bit old school, I think, not coming up with 21st century solutions here. And eventually, after a lot of taxpayer money which probably could have been avoided, they came up with this solution. I'd like to hear from you if you think this is the right solution or the wrong solution.

00:10:50 John Daub: And in a video coming up, I'm going to show you other solutions that Japanese cities have had. Every city, every locality, every region seems to have another way to approach overtourism. Theirs is a wall, but it's not that bad of a wall, right? It's not that bad of a wall. This Lawson does a roaring business. And there were talks of closing it down, but apparently they're not doing it. In fact, there is a cell tower right there, but for some reason I can't get a signal. So I guess this is just not linked up yet. Odd. Social media has really done a number.

00:11:22 John Daub: Now I want to cross the street and show you the other side of the road when the light turns green. This is also a weird part of the problem here. So they've tried all these solutions. Maybe they did watch the show. Now they have it in English on how to cross the street. This wasn't here before. They have people who take these up and help guide at certain times. But this whole problem was across the street from a police station, which is really weird. And now here's a—there's somebody who's sitting across the street who should not be sitting there. There's actually a sign that says, don't sit here. But you can see up here on the roof—the resident of the dentist's office here. But that lady that's literally—there's a sign there. It says, patients only, don't sit here. And she sat there. And I don't know.

00:12:28 John Daub: So we're gonna go across the street to the—to the wall. Just take a closer look at it so you get an idea of what it looks like in 2025. Look how close the bus gets. And there's no traffic on the other side, so it's a little bit better. But if there's another bus coming, they really, really hug that curb there. I'm gonna push the button. All right. I guess pushing the button really does work sometimes. You ever push the button and you never cross the street. Good afternoon from Kawaguchiko. For everybody watching, we're gonna walk the Great Wall of Kawaguchi right now. You normally would have Mount Fuji, but it might come out. Who knows? So here it is.

00:12:59 John Daub: It's not as high. It's brown. So it kind of blends in a little bit better. I don't know how they picked black. I guess it was cheaper. The end of the pole has reflectors on there, so at night you can kind of see it. I guess it's meant for buses or for rearview mirrors, so you don't smack it. But you got a walkway here that tourists—especially with luggage—walk. This is actually not a bad thing because there's so many suitcases that can go out into the traffic. You can see here—this is no longer an issue, but they had this here before. Trying to really work out the signage.

00:13:32 John Daub: But people still come to the other side of the road and they still take the picture of Mount Fuji—which is—oh, you can just sort of see the line there. You can sort of see the line of Mount Fuji. The shadow right there. But nothing today. It's an interesting way to try to solve this problem. This is one of many efforts and we will see how this goes. So far, people are still here. I was wondering how long it was going to take for the trend to end. It does not look like it's going to end anytime soon.

00:14:39 John Daub: The more interesting story are the tourists that go in here. It's kind of crazy. Yes, Simon75, I saw that issue with tourists in the suitcases earlier. People were just discarding of them or trying to sell them. Japan's got a lot of issues. So many things arise with having 40 to 50 million tourists a year that they did not plan for. And there's growing pains. And I think Japan attracts more neighboring tourists from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, where the issues are a little bit different.

00:15:10 John Daub: You really do have to push the button to cross. And the light changes quite quickly. You can see right there, it's a red light. He almost hit me. They were looking. So this car here—I mean, I'm not looking at the screen when I'm walking. That's why I don't answer your questions a lot. I've been doing this for a long time. That car went through a red light and nearly hit me. I mean, if I had—if I was looking at the screen, I would got hit right there. I've been doing this for such a long time. That's why I've never walked into a pole. I'm never looking at the screen when I'm walking. You know better.

00:15:41 John Daub: Do not run out into the roadway. You've got lots of signage now in English, in Thai, in Chinese, and in Korean. Across the street is a 7-Eleven. They don't have that problem. But I think that Lawson's has done a pretty good job. They've done the best job that they can do. I don't know. I think they got to work with the city. You got to come up with solutions. I know Lawson's has been extremely good at leaning in over the last three years with the business, trying to find new ways to be more competitive with 7-Eleven and Family Mart because they're number three of the big three and they don't want to disparage their reputation.

00:16:18 John Daub: And I don't—I think that by keeping the location here and trying to work with the city to find a solution has been good for them. But I just think that the city is somewhat incompetent with dealing with tourists. You can't blame them. They just don't know. It's like, who are their consultants? All right, guys, I hope this is interesting as a kind of a history of Japan's overtourism evolution, as maybe overtourism will just become tourism again. But you have to find answers to some of these problems. And this is their one answer in particular for this place.

00:17:20 John Daub: So a lot of people loitering. A lot of loiterers. I'm not that grumpy old guy who's across this—that lives across the street that yells at all the little kids to—to be quiet. But there are a lot of travelers here in this part of the world, in this part of Japan, and you got to find a way to—to do it. I think this is an uplifting video, right? They found a solution. Wall 2.0.

00:17:52 John Daub: I'm going to deal with stories that are interesting to our viewers. Not just walking around the city. I've walked around Tokyo, the entire city, like three times. There's a city walk on every single neighborhood in Tokyo, I think. So yeah. I'm not a get off your lawn type of guy, but if you'd like to do a—if you'd like me to do a walk, why don't you leave me a comment? I'm being serious here. Of a neighborhood or an area you think that I have not done yet that would be interesting to walk. And I'll consider it very seriously, especially from our Patreon supporters, because I like the people who support the community, especially the postcard club members. The $10,000—took 2 kg of cherries was this month's postcard with a message on the back. And they went out last week. And two people who didn't get their Mount Fuji postcard—I'm actually going to be sending their postcard from the fifth station today. At least I'm going to be trying to. Two people whose postcards did not arrive, they let me know. I got kind of an insurance. If it didn't arrive to you, I will resend it, no questions asked. Sometimes the mail just does not deliver it.

00:18:55 John Daub: But today we don't have Mount Fuji, but we do have tourists. I think it's interesting. Jesuits Gidmore says, stay safe. Thank you. I think it's good to say when you say, stay safe, stay hydrated, all right? And especially if you're driving. The traffic was horrendous coming here. I think it's just the summer or the end of Obon, the summer holiday season. But we do have our own problems here, which is the wall.

00:19:26 John Daub: I think they've done a good job. I don't know if the wall's gonna do it, but I think these security guards are pretty useless where they are. And my suggestion is instead of hiring old—old security guards, get some young people who can talk to the tourists and help guide them, and then maybe even upsell. I used to do this at restaurants and have people that are working there and upsell. Or put a little tourism booth here. Put a little tourism booth and then you can have the tourism office help guide people on what to do and what not to do. But having police officers or keibin which are rent-a-cops or rental guards, it does not make a lot of sense. Not just for the taxpayer money, but it just—it makes—it looks bad. Some old guy. I'm not the old guy yelling at the people. It's that guy over there. It just looks bad to have some guy yelling at the tourists in Japanese who does not have any idea how to speak English, Thai, or Chinese. It's not productive. It looks bad for the city. And you know, I'm gonna stick with that.

00:20:33 John Daub: Where Fuji Yoshida—actually, this is part of the episode. They've done an amazing job. Used to be a street where everyone was crossing illegally and cars were hitting them—to get a shot in the middle of the street of Mount Fuji through the retro town, you know what they did? They—so genius. They moved their tourism office to where the tourists were on the intersection, which is perfect. The whole street over the last four years has had a revitalization and an economic uprising where there are now people who stay in that town. And what was a retro town is now becoming a cafe town. It's so wonderful. So just a little bit of outside the box thinking. Put the tourism office there. The tourism office is helping with locals that are not policing it, but helping tourists to get into the street—to take the picture, making the intersection light maybe a little bit longer than ushering them away so it's safe for the people to go. And using that as a place to upsell Fuji Yoshida for more tourism opportunities.

00:21:41 John Daub: There's nobody here from the city of Kawaguchi. There's nobody here. I know what I'm talking about. There's nobody here to sell more attractions in Kawaguchiko to these tourists that might have come just on the train and this picture. I'm serious. There could be somebody from the city of Kawaguchi's tourism office helping to keep people safe and also upselling. Just give them your brochures. I don't know—digital things better than the rent-a-cops over there. Just giving my two cents.

00:22:13 John Daub: All right. With that, you're going to walk with me because I think we hit our super chat goal. We're gonna walk with me to my car because that's what I want to do. Or at least to the station. And you get an idea when you walk on this side of the road how bad it is. Now this is another thing that really, really—I mean, is a problem. It doesn't upset me because they just don't know. But if you look across the street, there are tourists that are just sitting in a parking spot that could be used by a car. That's not wonderful. That's what—right now all the other parking spots are full. In the 7-Eleven, they're sitting in a parking lot that a customer could use. But maybe the 7-Eleven should put a picnic table there or something. I don't know. But they're literally—oh, there's a spot open now. Maybe create more benches. There's just not a lot of space on this—on this road here.

00:23:21 John Daub: Cobra bebop is in the house. Thank you. But they've done stuff like add lockers here—a lot of them. Kimono rental place. Better signage than there was before. More tourism bases. So it's starting to change. This is new. This was in here seven or eight months ago. It looks new too. Illumin wonder from Switzerland. Water is better. Thank you. Yeah. Stay hydrated. Heat exhaustion is a problem today. It is quite hot, but there's a slight breeze which is pleasant.

00:23:54 John Daub: Man, these things are so bad on that road. These rental batteries—scooters. So many near misses. People just don't know how the traffic works here. And here's Kawaguchiko station. So it's so close and so convenient to the buses and the trains that everybody goes to that Lawson's. Why is that such a tourism hotspot? Social media. Because people—and you see the people there that are taking the picture, they're kind of not the normal type of tourists. They're kind of like—they're kind of cute and they're kind of influenced. They're like the people that are influenced highly by influencers that keep going to the spot to show it.

00:24:26 John Daub: And yeah, I'm here because of wall 2.0. This came up this month. They put this brown wall up. So on my way to Mount Fuji's 5th Station to get some background, I decided to come here. Influencers are people like me. I call myself a storyteller. I don't want it. But marketers created this world called influencer because people actually do what they say. And you know, I do this because I like telling a story. But influencers said come to this Lawsons down the street and people do. There's not a lot of space. Not a lot of space. Is there a way for influencers can move them to Shiretoko so they get eaten by the bears?

00:25:33 John Daub: I saw the stories. I know about the bear attacks. I've been researching this. Shiretoko up in Hokkaido is a national park where the bears have been eating the tourists. I'm not smiling because of that. I'm just smiling at your suggest—well, that would be smiling at it. I'm smiling because it's ridiculous. Don't send tourists to Shiretoko. It's a danger zone now. After I've said that—if tourists wanted to go there, you're perfectly safe. Nothing to worry about really. We were just there. Stay in your cars. Don't—if you see a bear, don't run. Back away and make noise and look big and have bear spray. That's if you know you're gonna be going there and hiking, for example.

00:26:03 John Daub: Yeah. Thanks, Carl. There you go. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If you'd like to support the channel, Patreon is a great way to do it. And I'll be back again maybe later today from the fifth station. If there's a signal, I'll let you know and maybe I'll show you what Yoshida's fifth station is like a couple of days before the hiking season ends.

00:26:35 John Daub: Usually August. I think it goes on till September, but the main hiking ends around August 20th. The post office closes on August 20th and I want to get this video up as soon as possible. Hopefully in August. So I'm working double time on it right now. But it's about the bulldozers and how Mount Fuji does business. It's not just climbing. It's about the—the veins of Mount Fuji. That sounds even worse. I'll think of a better title.

00:27:06 John Daub: All right, take care. I'm glad to see you all doing well. Stay cool. Thanks for the super chats, guys. I'll see you tomorrow. Or later today. Matane. I might actually go back and grab some water. Thanks, guys. Matane.