00:00:01 John Daub: Sometimes miscommunication happens when you're coming from a foreign country, you come to Japan, things are lost in translation. They made a whole movie on it with Bill Murray. It's not just on literal translation, but it's more about the representation that life here in Japan is very different. We had something that happened a few days ago brought to my attention from a lot of you. I got so many email messages like, is this true? And the answer is no, but there's a good story behind it. So I thought I would share with you what happened with this town in Chiba. There were four actually around Japan, but there was one town in particular in Chiba that was connected as being the hometown of Nigeria for Japan. Now, it's very, very ambiguous. Even the statements from the Japanese government, from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a town that is doing a lot of work in Africa to help out over there. They were very ambiguous, like it's not clear exactly what they mean, leading to a lot of confusion inside of Japan.

00:01:08 John Daub: But this snowballed when the Nigerian president's office misread the translation and started saying Japan's like giving free land to Nigerians to create Nigeria town or something. It was really weird. It got corrected, but not even fast. It's like fax line speed. Four days it took for them to fix this thing. So I thought we would just go over this really quickly because it's hilarious. Asahi Shimbun's been all over this. Again, Japan scrambles to refute. The title is kind of interesting: Japan scrambles to refute claims it is bringing in a flood of Africans. This is really, we just don't know what's going on. And you can see there's the website in Japanese. And then I guess people were independently translating it. This is when you get like Google Translate and AI doing it. Misinformation about a project aimed at promoting friendship between Japan and Africa sparked a wave of online protests concerning expected flood of immigrants and prompted the foreign ministry to take action.

00:02:28 John Daub: Immigration is a big issue everywhere. Japan kind of needs it in a way. Japan's side said erroneous media reports in some of the participating African nations as well as mistranslations likely led to bogus information that spread rapidly on social media. Japanese officials and organizations involved including JICA scrambled to issue details that immigration plays any part of a friendship project. But the information was so erroneous and it spread so widely that the foreign ministry got involved. This is where things got into the higher levels where the boss takes over. The brouhaha from the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development that was held in Yokohama between the 20th and 22nd. Actually NHK World talked about this on the 17th. August 21st the conference JICA announced that it had designated four Japanese cities as a symbolic JICA Africa hometown for four partner countries in Africa.

00:03:17 John Daub: The project pairs local governments in Japan and African governments. JICA supports these partnerships as exchanges and collaborative events to promote international exchanges. I think this is a great program but it's not explained well. The announced pairs are Imabari in Ehime Prefecture with Mozambique, Kisarazu in Chiba—which I've been to many times—with Nigeria, Sanjo-Tsubame area known for ironwork, pots and pans in Niigata with Ghana, and Nagai in Yamagata Prefecture with Tanzania. These are like brother-sister towns I guess in a way, but cooperating bigger with JICA. So these towns went crazy. I mean there was a lot of people upset online because they just didn't understand. The project aims to further strengthen relationships that each municipality has built with African countries. They're already sister cities. However after the announcement protest posts appeared on social media over the fake notion that the exchange program was aimed at bringing Africans to Japan to work without any permission from the citizens. Suddenly it became an official hometown of Africa.

00:04:32 John Daub: I think the thing that made people upset was that it was like an official government thing and government is elected by the people and they had no say in this kind of thing. They don't know what's going on. A common question asked on social media was if immigrants come flooding in who is going to take responsibility. Exactly. It's people need a lot of help when they move to another country that's so unique like Japan. So corrections regarding this took place like days later. So this thing propagated for a while. Mayors of all four cities issued statements. Then they asked the ministry, the national government to get involved basically. Sanjo Mayor Ryotaro Takizawa said in a statement it is not true that the city has requested to accept migrants or immigrants from Ghana. Nagai Mayor acknowledged a statement that a city had received a large number of opinions regarding the issue. There is absolutely no truth to what's being reported on social media and other platforms.

00:05:17 John Daub: The claims from the people who read in the Tanzania Times with the headline Japan dedicates Nagai City to Tanzania. Africa was reporting it like this. Media in Africa was reporting it like Japan designates the city for African citizens. So you get the African media promoting it like what a great thing. They're basically turning Japan into Africa in these certain localities. And they can understand why the population is decreasing. They need more workers. And Africa's population is expected to be a quarter of the world's population by 2050. I find it regrettable that information is spreading this way that's contrary to the facts. As the mayor, Imabari Mayor chimed in here and released a statement on August 26th, days after. There's absolutely no truth to the claims that the Japanese territory or the authority of a local government will be transferred. Like we're giving away land.

00:06:15 John Daub: So the Nigerian government took a little bit of time with this as well. So let me explain to you how this happened. It's a funny story. And I'm sure we're going to get a lot of comments on this. But isn't Nigeria town just Kabukicho? No. That would be more like Roppongi. Because I've met a lot of people from Nigeria on the streets of Roppongi after hours. Most of them are very very good people trying to make a living here, married to Japanese so they're here legally. And some of them are not, and they're not good people. And they're here to scam. And that's why there was a massive crackdown in Roppongi. Maybe they moved to Kabukicho. I don't really know. But there is a population from everywhere around the world.

00:07:05 John Daub: Before I get to that, I have to show you the facts here that even Asahi Shimbun didn't cover. We're going to take it deeper on the Only in Japan channel right now. This came out from NHK World, August 17th. It says here, JICA to recognize four Japanese cities as African hometowns. So this stuff goes to like weeks ago. Two weeks ago at least. It was a big story on NHK World. And even the story on NHK World is kind of ambiguous. Four Japanese cities are said to be recognized as hometowns—what does that even mean in quotes—of African nations? Aiming to foster human resources. Which is what? Bring people here? Who can serve as bridges between Africa? It's so ambiguous. The initiative is being launched in conjunction with. It doesn't mean anything. I can see why things could get lost in translation.

00:08:09 John Daub: This is Japan being Japan where they don't want to announce anything because of the risk that they could get it wrong. But announcing anything at all is a risk that you're going to get it wrong. So I feel very passionate about this because I hate misunderstandings that will upset a continent. I don't think people are that upset to be honest with you. JICA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Let's just say everybody learned something from this. The problem is that the press releases in Japanese were translated after they were released in Japanese. They didn't release a press release in English. And I think it's important for JICA, which is an international agency, to do press releases in Japanese and in English so that you can control the message and things are not translated maybe by the President's office in Nigeria. Because if it comes from the President, that's kind of like written in stone in a way. Like how would the President get this so wrong? You wouldn't think that.

00:09:14 John Daub: So here's the timeline again. They are already discussing in NHK World on the 17th of August that they're going to designate four quote-unquote hometowns for African nations. The day after, Nigeria's presidential office issues a press release claiming special visa plan. Meaning, Nigerians will get special visas, they're making a place where you can settle in Japan. The press release from the president was pretty like, holy crap, this is pretty cool. It took four days, four days for Japan to request a correction. Nigeria withdraws and issues a clarified statement. Four days. Media, including the Asahi Shimbun, which I showed you, and the embassies confirm the misinformation and retractions. Six days. When you let things propagate like this, and I guess you could even say fester, it just makes it worse. But things in Japan move so slowly. We need somebody higher up, but he's on vacation. We've got to wait for him to get his hanko. In order to be able to approve this, to be able to give this out.

00:10:38 John Daub: Is there any questions on this here? I mean, it's fascinating, more than just this story, is you have to understand if you do come here and move to Japan, that this stuff is going to happen to you. I find it kind of humorous because it happens to me all the time. Where there's some sort of miscommunication, even between me and my wife, not so much because my Japanese has gotten a lot better than it did five years ago, ten years ago, so I can communicate more effectively. And I know where the pitfalls are in the language where we get miscommunication. So the miscommunication originated from the Nigerian government's press release in English, which wrongly claimed that JICA program included new visa privileges for Nigerians. But if you look at what NHK World published, it's not just about the visa privileges. Even in English, I don't know what it freaking means. Like they've designated hometowns for Africans in Japan. What does that even mean?

00:11:41 John Daub: So I'm adding a little drama with my passion so it's more interesting. There was an official pushback. It took them four days for an official pushback. That's why things got really out of hand, because it took forever to get that here. But it's a fascinating story. And this is something where stuff happens in Japan with miscommunication. But it's important for one, don't use AI to do your translations. Never. Two, confirm everything before you post a press release. Maybe talk with the Japanese embassy about the programs or get an official Japanese source. Three, JICA needs to do everything in English and in Japanese. Four, keep these stories coming, because it's fascinating to look at these kinds of mistakes. It's like, won't we ever learn in Japan? Do you guys have any questions before we end?

00:13:25 John Daub: They're beautiful cities too. Let me show you Kisarazu. It's on the other side of the Aqua-Line. You can do it from Kawasaki and Yokohama there, just going in this underwater tunnel to get all the way around without having to go into Tokyo. That Aqua-Line is so convenient. It's a beautiful city. I didn't know it was that industrial, but along the coast going up to Tokyo, up in Chiba, there's a lot of factories and industry, but it looks like a beautiful place to live. Look at all that green in there. Looks pretty new. You can see nice buildings, orderly, almost zero crime, I think. It's a beautiful place, Kisarazu. I've driven through there. I've taken the train through there. They even have a tower, which is very artistic. Kisarazu Tower. Look at that. Very artistic, isn't it? I'm guessing that's where the castle used to be.

00:14:41 John Daub: The other town in question is Imabari. It's a beautiful town in Shikoku, in Ehime Prefecture. They have a very good cotton industry. Imabari quality towels, some of the best. If you see the Imabari logo, you know you're getting some of the best stuff in Japan, maybe even in the world. High quality cotton items grown in Shikoku. There's a castle there. It's a beautiful town. It's also a very industrial town on the coast, and inland, more of a countryside type of thing. Ehime has Matsuyama and Dogo Onsen, a very famous place. Beautiful, right? I can see why maybe some people from Nigeria or Tanzania or Mozambique are really looking forward to this. Mozambique, that's a country where the AK-47 is on the flag, right? Beautiful coastline in Mozambique, too. But anyways, this story is just a brouhaha is the right word. Asahi Shimbun used that word. It's not really true. Everything's been corrected. But boy, for a few days there, we had some drama, and it was really fascinating.

00:16:07 John Daub: Connected with the immigration, illegal immigration, migration, whatever you want to call it. You all know the terms there, and every country pretty much is facing some sort of issue with this right now in the West. But in Japan, yeah, it's an island. Things are a little bit more controlled. The people really weren't contacted on it, so there was a lot of online panic, concern. Like what's going to happen? How is this influx of people and diversity going to impact our town? Like we just didn't know. Even though I love these kinds of stories, I do hope it continues. Because it's really funny for me as someone who's lived here for a long time. But I thought this is something that would happen, these kinds of mistranslations, maybe 25 years ago when I came here. The issue is though, like, I'm guessing there's so much more reliance on AI, a false reliance on AI due to hallucinations, that people really need to triple check their work here. And that didn't happen on the Nigerian side, and that didn't happen on the Japanese side.

00:17:40 John Daub: I can understand why Nigeria probably got the translation wrong. I can't think the president's office putting it out is pretty crazy. But the messaging has to come from Japan. And from the start, when you read the article from NHK, three days before the conference, it doesn't make sense to me. Four Japanese cities are set to be recognized as the hometowns, in quotes, of African nations. What does that even mean? So I think it's very easy to understand how this all occurred. Japan's messaging was really bad with this. I'm Japanese, not a native English speaker, so I might make some mistakes in English. Exactly. I make mistakes in English. I make mistakes in Japanese as well. I know where there's a lot of the pitfalls are, because I've had so many miscommunications. Like there's a word called unko, which means poop, and then there's unko suru. There's lots of words where if you pronounce it wrong, it could be mis—chizu. I've had friends get women getting upset because of a pronunciation of the word map in Japanese (chizu) and the way they used it, which is somewhat derogatory.

00:19:21 John Daub: That's why it's so important to learn hiragana and katakana and the way to pronounce Japanese words because if we try to do it with Romaji, you could make some mistakes that can be kind of insulting or kind of like this. When I first read the article, right, it said in Ehime Pacifica, I assumed hometown was a mistranslation of sister city. And how does that—I don't think Google Translate would get that better than AI. Yeah, I think hometown, it sounds like something from AI. Google Translate's better in many respects than AI now. It's fascinating. But it's JICA. There should be lots of people who can write. Somebody used AI and left it and didn't check. I think that's what happened. Can we are we in agreement here? We have a few hundred people watching this chat. Are we in agreement that somebody in Japan used AI or somebody in Africa used AI to translate and they just left it as it is? I think it was NHK World.

00:20:27 John Daub: Google Translate and DeepL are much better than AI. Yes. I think NHK the first place that I saw this was on NHK World. And I think in Japan, we don't openly criticize, but I have a criticism of NHK World. There's a lot of people who criticize NHK World. They're using AI narrators instead of hiring the actual talent that we have here. I talk with this with some of the other narrators. A lot of them have lost their jobs. It's a trend that everyone's going to be moving to anyways. But a lot of the Japanese media is now putting out content in English with AI narrators. It's kind of a slap in the face. This is too early for that kind of stuff. But it's inevitable. Even I put AI I use AI a little bit, but it's to enhance rather than to rely on. Right? If you've got another brain working with you to think about how to do stuff in a different way, you have to critically think whether or not that AI is doing a good job. You have to double check it. That's your responsibility.

00:21:47 John Daub: So it's odd that JICA, which is an international agency, would get it so wrong. But it's odd that NHK World is doing it. I mean, I don't know why NHK World would get it so wrong right here. They're the first ones to write it. It's hometown. Maybe the quotes comes from information from JICA. It could be JICA that gave NHK World, but NHK World should have cross-checked this to make sure that the translation was correct. Somebody is not doing their work. But in general, I think NHK World is not being viewed as much as it was 10, 15 years ago because of YouTube. I think there could be a lot of cutbacks in budgets, which is why they're not using narrators who are contracted workers. But the producers who make big bucks, and a lot of them have second houses, they're not taking a pay break to keep contract workers in. That's just a part of the business. I don't know who to blame. For me, NHK is evolving. I think criticism is not a bad thing. I think they need to take some constructive criticism.

00:23:10 John Daub: That's the culture of a Japanese corporation. You have to be yes-men. But nobody knows how to change. A lot of my friends at NHK, the directors and producers, they would work there. And then they would leave and go to private TV, like TBS, Fuji TV. There's a bunch of networks. And then they would rise in the ranks there and then come back to NHK as executives. And you get paid quite well at NHK. It's guaranteed money because they're getting, not from advertisers where the money's going down, but from taxpayers where the money is probably going down because the population is too. But NHK reports opinions only. They do reporting. But it's like somebody said that they're somewhat biased. But it's more like down, it's closest thing to down the middle.

00:24:41 John Daub: The longer I live here, the less surprised I am by these kinds of things. But look, I think NHK showed its true colors and its bias when the tsunami and the Fukushima reactor melted down in 2011, and we saw which was a very, a side leaning too far to there's nothing to say about it. See here and then Western media was leaning too far to there's everything to see here this is the worst tragedy in the history of the world. Right and they bent and Western media destroyed the name of Fukushima the prefecture which is one of the largest prefectures in Japan it goes out way. I mean Ibaraki and Miyagi which are much closer than the further sections of Fukushima where the pears are grown are much closer to what happened but their reputation remains intact in Fukushima just got nailed as a result of it. And as somebody who lived in Fukushima I was always really ticked off at the Western media for just saying Fukushima Fukushima when they should have been just saying like Daiichi all right the Daiichi plant on the Pacific coast or something just keep it local because it really is just around two or three towns.

00:26:07 John Daub: But it also hurt the businesses pears I remember Brazil and a lot of countries would not accept any products from the entire prefecture of Fukushima but they would accept items from Ibaraki and Miyagi which are really close see what I'm this is what I'm talking about and then NHK lean too far to there's nothing to see here go about your own business they were very uncritical of the government they were not critical of anything and as journalists you're supposed to start to ask questions. I can understand maybe in the first 24 hours I mean I've watched a lot of Jack Bauer in 24 you know the journalist is going to go rogue and create mass panic you might want to waterboard them I don't know what Jack Bauer does but I can see maybe that would happen in Japan but for months I don't know I was really upset with the news reporting and the programming in particular. They tried to go too safe. It's funded by the people. The government made the law, but the people fund it. And I think that's the thing. If the people don't use it, then I think it should be same with all public broadcasting and radio.

00:27:46 John Daub: Because people need unbiased, straight sources. And I really don't know. It's a good question. We're struggling with this in a lot of other countries. Canada, US, Europe, BBC. It's a debate that goes on every year, all the time, what to do with these. And this was mostly before the internet. When we had very limited resources in rural areas, we needed to get this out. Now, PBS and NPR and I love PBS and NPR, the programming, but it has 1000% gone in one direction. That is not the straight down the line. If you compare NPR with NHK, NHK is dead center and NPR is far left. But NHK is also I don't even it's not that kind of reporting. They need to have some kind of investigative look at stuff. And they don't have that kind of investigative journalism. So where do the headlines come from? The government tells them what to say? I think that that's a disservice to the people.

00:29:32 John Daub: It depends on a person's integrity. And you have to find sources that you trust. And it's really hard. Money does not make you happy. It just buys you some freedom. Right? If you have too much of it, it buys you less your freedom starts to go away. Because then the money is connected with something else. Greed is a bad thing. I think we should look at the root cause. Japan needs foreign labor because. You're right there. I don't think Japan needs foreign labor, though. The reason why AI is still it's amazing what AI can do now that it couldn't do a year ago. We're relying on it too much. Now when AI comes in in about I'd say 18 months or so, I can see these trucks where they need truck drivers being self-driven in 18 months. I can see accidents happening. Some growing pains. But accidents are happening already because bus drivers are overworked or they're too old or they're not getting enough sleep. There's accidents happening all the time. The media is going to really be sharp on any AI driving accidents, though, because they're not human.

00:31:00 John Daub: I can see a lot of robotics solving a lot of the problems. I can see AI online stuff solving a lot of the problems in Japan. I really don't think that they need to go to importing people. I think that that's what AI is doing. Looking at the future situations in the prism of today. You have to look at the future issues in the prism of what the potential for the future looks like. And we get it wrong all the time. If you look at the 1950 and 60 renditions of 2020, we had flying cars in cities that looked like the Jetsons, right? So it's very hard to do. But you also can't look at the future in the prism of today. And I think that's what a lot of people do. People look at countries in the Middle East in the prism of what they know, which is American democracy. And that's not the Middle East either. So you have to see things from the point of view of what it's going to be like or what it's like there now. It's not easy to do. Maybe AI could help with that, but you need people to double-check that and you need human reasoning. And that's what makes humans so great because we can reason. And we have feelings. We can reason from mistakes, most of us.

00:32:15 John Daub: Sometimes information in NHK World aired in other countries and within Japan by NHK was not the same. They have like two faces now. NHK World, most of the program comes from JIB TV, Japan International Broadcasting. It's a separate company. There's a lot of good people at JIB. There's a lot of stuff to be critical as well. It's hard for us to be critical because it's hard for me to make I've been here for a long time so it's easier for me to make content about Japan because I have a much better idea of the culture and the subculture, the popular culture and the culture from 20 years ago and the language and things than a reporter at BBC who's just reporting the news in Anchor, for example. But it's hard for the leaders at JIB TV who might not have traveled or seen the news or studied abroad to make programming decisions for the rest of the world using a Japan point of view. And to JIB TV's credit, they have more Westerners working there than they did 15, 20 years ago.

00:33:39 John Daub: NHK World is a subdivision of NHK which hires outside companies like the United States and other countries like JIB TV to create the program that airs on their channel. So you can see NHK World, like 90% of it is just a shell. It's a channel. And the content is created by outside groups to air on NHK. There's a lot of shows like that. Tokyo Eye was developed and broadcast was created by JIB TV and that aired on NHK World. There's one called Catch! Japan and that's I think that's JIB TV as well. A lot of them are JIB TV. And again, in 2008, when I started at Tokyo Eye, the set looked like a 1992 magazine program. It was so analog. There was no perception of what Westerners wanted to watch. It was just what did Japanese want to produce. It was more audience-centric. What does the audience actually want? Because now NHK World or JIB TV is competing with people like me and other YouTubers that have fairly large audiences that put up a video, upload a video, and they get more exposure than the content that they're putting up.

00:35:21 John Daub: So why doesn't somebody watch a news story from NHK World that's now on YouTube? It's because they've been on YouTube for a very long time. They do now. Reporters like me were utilizing YouTube and building a reputation of sharing information and stories in a way geared towards what the audience was really interested in. For a long period of time, NHK's reputation is really good inside of Japan. Internationally, I don't know. It's really a fascinating look at how Japan works.

00:36:07 John Daub: Was Brandania here? Thank you, Brandania. It's nice to see you. I sent Brandania one of the daimyo packages and the Hawaiian Customs stole it from her box. And there was no meat in there. I couldn't see any meat products in what they took from you. I think they just wanted to eat it. I'll have an update on the mail as well. The talk with a lot of people at the post office I go there almost daily. There's a wait and see mentality right now. The issue is not so much the tariffs. The issue is how to collect them. And it's my opinion $800 as the minimum threshold was way, way too high. And it was getting abused by other countries, in particular China, to send stuff where they probably should have paid duties. All of this pain and suffering I'm being real with you guys. There's going to be some people on the fringes that are going to they're just deranged. All of this pain is trying to prevent countries from taking advantage of it and selling things on marketplaces like Alibaba from China at a very cheap price on goods that American sellers are trying to make a living off of.

00:37:41 John Daub: And it's really hard for a lot of American sellers now, because they have to pay duties on this. But in another way, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's now preventing people from directly selling from China to the consumer. Right? And now you have to go through people who will pay the duties in order to get you a better deal. It helps American businesses more over time. So you might not see Heather, you're so right. It is bad growing pains. It hurts right now. A lot of packages might come back to me. But what I've learned is that emotional reactions to something that occurs, your first initial reaction is usually wrong, because you don't have the correct information and the media spins this in an emotional way to get reactions out of people to get them to watch. And you need to take a step back when you get something like this that could hurt your business. Try to understand it. Try to adjust and evolve with it. Contact your congress people if you want, but not to get outraged and not to show your feelings online in a negative way about it, because quite often I've learned what you're upset about isn't actually what is being reported in the media. Surprise!

00:39:02 John Daub: This is just a level-headed opinion, my level-headed opinion here. It's level-headed because I'm kind of looking at it from all sides. Based on I'm somebody who sends packages as gifts to people. They're not buying packages from me. I'm really thankful and I love to send care packages to people. But nobody's buying a care package from me. That's how it's treated. I think the threshold right now is $100. Everybody who is American and is upset about this, I want you to ask your Canadian friends what their threshold is. Ask them and you will be told I think it's zero. Gifts are taxed. I had so many comments that said my Canadian family said not to send packages for Christmas to them because they have to pay taxes on it. Americans, despite the fact that this is really hard, have it a lot better than a lot of other countries. I have to pay duties if I buy something from America, from let's say L.L.Bean or J.Crew and I have it sent here, I'll have to pay duties on it. They don't contact me. They assess that at customs. When it comes in, they knock on the door and I have to hope that I have the cash on me because nobody carries cash and they don't accept credit cards yet to be able to pay them to get my stuff or else they retain it. What a waste of man hours and going back and forth.

00:41:04 John Daub: It's bad for the economy. It's bad for the environment, I guess, if you're looking at it from that point of view. But everything's going to be taxed and it's not going to be. It's less about. It's more and this is my own opinion and you're free to have your own. I really don't mind when people say I'm wrong. That's your opinion, that's your feeling. That's cool. Whatever. I don't care about people's politics. I have friends on all sides. I don't really care if you're Republican or Democrat, you're Labor or you're Conservative. It doesn't matter. We're all brothers and sisters on this rock, hurtling through space. Look at the big picture. The bottom line is that we all get emotional over this stuff. It doesn't really matter too much. In the end it all gets figured out. But the decision on this is to stop it from being abused. And it was being abused. It's factually being abused by other countries to get cheaper goods and other stuff and now the country without being detected and now everything is.

00:42:12 John Daub: The philosophy of Japan has been something similar. When you react to something that needs to be dealt with, you react to it swiftly and you react to it harshly. The reason why is because it can be rolled back. It's better to be really, really, really hard at the beginning and roll back than to be soft and to make things worse. If you're a teacher, you know this too. You're not a softie on the first couple of days of school. You should come out somewhat straight and somewhat yeah, straight, not joking around. Please call me by my first name. You shouldn't be a teacher like that. When you start as a teacher, you're somewhat strict at the beginning and then you can roll it back and become friendlier with people. As people get to know you, you can get to know them. But you're a teacher first. And I think the same thing goes with a lot of these policies. You need to be you need to get it right and it's better to be harsher than to be weaker. You can't go the other way.

00:43:22 John Daub: Hey John, sorry this isn't related but I'm flying domestically to Japan for the. So sometimes I do get distracted and when I do, it's because it's a live stream and I get comments, people just asking questions that have nothing to do about it and that's fine. When I was a teacher, I found if I whacked a ruler on the table at the start of the lesson, my students paid more attention. That's a good idea. Or slam a book and then smile. Maybe not smile. Yeah, you're right. Some sort of action that is abrupt gets a lot of attention and then usually holds people. People will respect you a little bit more. It's a silent threat. Like the possibility is. Because if you tell somebody that they are powerless to discipline then you'll get taken advantage of all day long. But one little reminder, gets people to listen up a little bit. I'm not sure if I would slam the ruler down but I bet you they do in Japan.

00:44:28 John Daub: Alright, so the question was about domestic flights here. I'll do this really quickly and then I gotta get back to work. I'm flying domestic in Japan for the first time. Anything I should be on the lookout for? Don't go to the airport three hours in advance. You can check in if you have luggage, you can check in as late as 45 minutes but don't get lazy about it. An hour before the flight is good. They have a water bottle on there. They have a special machine so you don't have to throw your water out. Don't waste it. They'll check it. Get to the gate 30 minutes before departure. I always check in 60 to 45 minutes before a domestic flight. It sounds like crazy but we don't have TSA in Japan. They use advanced techniques to determine whether or not you're a problem, I guess. They have the best machines as well. For domestic flights they don't even check an ID which is crazy to me. I can just take the app I show the QR code I can get my baggage without having to talk with anybody and I'm on the flight and from the time I enter the airport to the time I get to the gate usually it's about 7 to 8 minutes which is crazy for most Americans listening to this. The average is 7 to 8 minutes sometimes 5. I get in, I show the app I put the thing on my suitcase it goes through. That's 120 seconds if the taxi drops you off in the right spot. You go through security check 3 minutes. It's so painless. You touch your QR code they give you another piece of paper and you're done. Usually there's only one or two people in front of you. Usually it's because it's Japan and it's domestic travel they're not with a lot of luggage. It's so fast. You don't have to take your computers out either anymore. They just said leave it all in the bag. I always take drone batteries out though if I have to travel with a drone battery and I always travel with a special case to put the drone batteries in that is non-flammable so I take out the drone batteries and they're always going to ask me about it if I don't.

00:47:04 John Daub: To get back to round up the reason for this live stream I meant if Japan is encouraging more Nigerians they should encourage more Americans since Japan has more Nigerians already. I'm trying to wrap my head around that logic. I think it's really good to have exchange programs. I think it's great when we have people from other countries come here and we're always going to have Japan has more international marriages I'm a product of that now than 25 years ago. I've seen foreigners living here in Japan that are married to Japanese husbands and wives than they were 25 years ago and I think that's really great especially in the cities and in the smaller towns I've seen foreigners that were married they're living in a small town with no foreigners so what do you do here? I'm married to a Japanese so we're seeing more of that and when you're married to someone who's Japanese you have a hoshounin you have somebody who will take care of you so if the Japanese police stop me I'm talking about I mention this because I've had other husbands and wives that are married to Japanese they'll ask about your Japanese husband and wife because they trust that your Japanese husband and wife will keep you in line because you're a foreigner and you probably don't understand the culture it's interesting there's advantages to having a Japanese husband and wife there's advantages to taking your Japanese husband and wife's name as well yeah, my hubby was my sponsor in the US, right? so there's good things to having spouses it's funny to put it like that but it's sort of true I don't mind don't take everything in an offensive manner even if somebody tries to offend you the best way to disarm them is not to take offense to just smile, laugh say nothing and go away it destroys the people who are doing it that you don't react it's just my experience here.

00:49:12 John Daub: Japanese are just gonna love more Nigerians here maybe the interactions that I've had with people from Nigeria have always been really good so with Ghana not so much the people in Roppongi that always bothered me were from Ghana I would ask them I should say more aggressive it just depends on the person and I don't think you can generalize a nationality like that but that's just been my limited experience here but you can't judge people by their color you can't judge people by their money they make you can't judge people by the car they drive or the clothes that they wear and the older you get the better you get at this but I'm gonna make an episode on how Japan has changed me but I'll end with this because I think the misunderstanding from people on the fringes can be really misconstrued as something being racial and that's not the case at all they would be upset with any nationality right now and that was not from Japan from the outside it's a really sensitive topic right now because of tourism and certain issues domestically but there's this word that I learned after it took me about 4 or 5 years of living in Japan it's hadaka no tsukiai (naked friendship) means naked and means we're all equal when we're naked so when you go into the Japanese onsen let's say you are the janitor and I'm not saying that's terrible, you're in the mail room because I have so much respect for janitors and people who keep schools and places clean I don't know why we look at them as being lower workers I think maybe it should be the other way around sometimes.

00:51:10 John Daub: I guess you do it in the sense of education I suppose which is maybe the wrong way to look at it sometimes but if we look at it in terms of the highest ranking officer which is probably the CEO the stockholder and the lowest ranking person which might be somebody who's cleaning up or somebody who's in the mail room or something when you are in a public bath you are both the same and that is the time when you can talk to the boss and not have to worry about your rank because you're both naked you don't have your suits or armors or your flag or whatever on and the case was the same with nationality I found, I don't know what it's like now with more tourism here and more people from abroad here but 20 some years ago when I went into a public bath people did not treat me differently because I was it was easier to talk to Japanese because I was in the bath naked, disarmed you don't have your sword with you unless you talk to Peter von Gomm and he's a he would both be a little silly there but there's a and don't misunderstand that either it's livestream crap and jokes and stuff guys are always joking around but it's very very good term, hadaka no tsukiai and I think that that is Japanese society and after you get out of the bath your outer appearance really is important but in the bath it is not important and I thought that was fascinating like how do you wear these different faces and these different masks and that's the complexity of Japan when you don't have your sword with you.

00:52:59 John Daub: Jotty, see I knew it Jotty Jotty you're lucky you've been here for such a long time and we love you because I figured you would jump onto that all the way from Finland sauna culture my friend sauna culture you know what I'm talking about but the idea that you could you're equal in a bath with a CEO but in society you are not equal at all you're less equal than in the US where everything should be pretty much equal but it's not it's a complex issue my point is in Japan it's even more complex and I kind of like that so complexity adds a little spice to life here I don't have to agree with it it is what it is and I take that approach I always have a long sword with me in an onsen it's below my waist I knew I was going to get these kind of comments I deserve that I earned these comments that's actually a pretty good one that's not what I meant because when you took a bath samurai had several swords they had the katana the long sword, the short sword the daggers, the hidden daggers and when you took a bath there was no place to hide them that's what I meant see why that would be misconstrued let's not compare the swords to various types of consumables, okay?

00:54:48 John Daub: Alright, take care everybody, I think I've gone too far it was a fun chat, this is what we do it here for us, it wasn't just about the topic but it is something that I think is very sensitive because the fringes make it so and the media does to me this is such a funny story because it's happened to me so many times before but never on an international scale between the president of a country the president and the leadership of two different countries it's a funny think about the people in Nigeria and Tanzania and Mozambique and the other country I can't remember which one it was, in Africa they were getting excited like, yeah, I am moving to Japan oh crap guess not. Akizaru was for Nigeria Kisarazu was for Nigeria Nagai in Yamagata was for Tanzania that was Tanzania's hometown Tsubame Sanjo, the Sanjo area in Niigata, I love that place Ghana, and Imabari was for Mozambique and these are going to be the hometowns for these countries in Japan does anybody else know what that really means? I don't know it's funny though partner cities, sister cities hometown that's, it's funny right? it's got to be funny I think if you're not taking this stuff with a sense of humor and laughing about it you are missing out on life anyone who is outraged and offended geez, get a life join me on the other side the side where we're laughing about this stuff alright take care I love you guys, see you in the next livestream tomorrow.

00:57:00 John Daub: Yesterday I was at Shimbashi filming a store that's been around for 10 generations and then I was filming their factory in Chiba the day before yesterday, so that's why there weren't any live streams I was really focused on filming the main channel episodes I was extraordinarily exhausted Leo is starting a new school on Monday so it's been really busy but everything's going well already there's a break in the heat summer is starting to fade away the humidity is starting to go down a little bit I can feel autumn coming it might be because of the Halloween stuff everywhere that we're seeing in the stores it's crazy, Christmas stuff is coming it's even crazier, this is Japan and Tokyo Disneyland is going to be having the Halloween stuff coming in about two weeks, less than two weeks now so I'm looking forward to that I usually go to Disney right before the Halloween rush because it's empty right before they turn to Halloween that's the best time to go to Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea in Tokyo a week before Halloween because everybody's waiting for the Halloween stuff and it's like, pumpkin pie at Costco yes, I gotta go I gotta get onto that, thank you for reminding me I love pumpkin pie I don't know how good it is, but it's good but I know it's big alright, take care, see you in a stream tomorrow mata ne.