00:00:01 John Daub: So I have these stamps here. You can see they are — well, they got glue on the back, but the glue just wasn't sticking. So I had to go and get some glue to glue the stamps onto this. And this is what I picked up. It's called glue — G-L-U — and I discovered that Japanese glue is just so much better than any glue that I've ever used before.

00:00:28 John Daub: Can glue be a thing? Can it be like something that is only — yes, it can be only in Japan. This is one of many makers here. I'm right now trying to send out a bunch of postcards. I'm going tomorrow morning to the top of the Skytree to send all these to my Patreon supporters. And this is a real hassle because I have to literally glue each one of these end-of-year New Year's stamps because the post office didn't do a great job with the nori, which is glue.

00:00:56 John Daub: And actually in Japan, nori would be confused by beginners of Japanese with nori, which is seaweed. Nori also means glue in Japanese. So if you just write in nori, you'll get in seaweed, and you also get glue. Don't ask me. I don't know. It's Japanese — different kanji. But it's been quite a task here.

00:01:17 John Daub: So I had to go out to the store to get the glue because, well, it is Sunday tomorrow. I got to send this. I got to do a couple, several hundred of these postcards before.

00:01:28 John Daub: There's a big difference between Japanese glue and foreign glue. Japanese glue is designed to be gentle and beautiful. Really, surprise, surprise, American glue is designed to be strong and practical. And that sort of makes sense — this is like a microcosm of the cultures, isn't it?

00:01:44 John Daub: It really is. I just — when I started to think about it with my American brain from a Japanese point of view — it's quite interesting how the stationery — how you doing, everybody — the stationery is really unique. I'm going to talk about that, but first let's look at my adventure or misadventure of how I was glued to this topic today — pun intended. Here, I've got a video to show you here. So sorry, I turned the phone — I was watching the — oh, I was watching the Ohio State–Indiana game. Shout out to the Hoosiers — great game. I just could not get the stamps to — even though I wanted them — quite a lot. This is the glue on these Japan Post stamps just wasn't sticking. I know that Japan Post isn't having a great time — a lot people selling, sending a lot less letters. But a lot to be desired with this year's design. So I do have a complaint, one, but I don't want them to go out of business, so I'll still — I just got to find — I was a little frustrated, of course, but I had to find another way around this. And the answer was to go to Tokyo Hands, which has a really good stationery store. Home centers — you can find them at convenience stores as well. But inside of Tokyo Hands, you can find the pens, pencils, all the kinds of really cool stationeries. And then the glue section, which is right here. The pens are over there. I was like, well, should I — no, stick to the glue — stick to the glue. They have glue tape. You guys ever hear this one? I thought of — I thought of you buying that, but it's not the best thing for stamps, but it might be something worth picking up if you're in Japan. Stationery is one of the most prized things that you can buy in Japan — gifts from Japan. Now, this Print is a very popular brand. There's a couple of other ones. This one here — Pit — I don't know what the difference between Pit and Print is. I've always used this one, down here — the orange one. It was always — when I was an English teacher, I would use this one. But that wouldn't be great for stamps. Then I noticed that one of the big companies in Japan — um, I think it's Kokuyo — Kokuyo has this new kind of glue. I'm pretending to pick the thumbnail. And it's square. And this is the best thing with the stamp — it just makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? And I was able to fix the 25 initial postcards that failed. And then I'm gonna have to glue all the other ones, and there's a lot to go — there's a lot to go. So that was my misadventure with doing these postcards. I've done 75 of like 400 or something. By the way, if you do want to get a postcard, you can sign up on Patreon right now. I got about 25 left. If you sign up, I'll take it to the top of the Skytree to send it — so you get a beautiful Skytree cancel mark, you get the end-of-the-year stamp, and you know that I've been struggling to do this today while watching the — while watching the football game, which is kind of crazy. I still got several hundred to go, but Japanese stamps are just different. They're engineered differently. Japanese love paper. It's still kind of — despite the fact that I see cards of paper culture — right, so it's not developed for sure. If you have the best paper in the world, washi paper, you have specialized — you go to the — let's just say newspapers still have a circulation in Japan, alright? Maybe because the population is a little bit older, but we still really respect paper. That means we gotta respect glue. We need good glue if you're still using paper. So journals, planners, photo albums, letter writing, and origami requires sometimes glue if you wanna keep it together, right? So glue in Japan is engineered to be low moisture, non-wrinkling, acid-free, safe on thin washi paper. They gotta be able to work with a wide range of kinds of paper, low odor or no odor, and mess free. This is why Japanese glue sticks — Pit, Glue, Print — feel smooth and light, which is true compared to heavy and tacky. Japanese prioritize no wrinkles over brute strength. I think I might be going a little bit too far there, but that's one thing here. I hope the audio is okay. I hope you're okay here, everybody who's tuning in.

00:06:01 John Daub: US glue is often strong and more industrial. That's an understatement. We tend to use a lot more. Basically, we're just thinking of power, and that's a very US thing. Oh, good audio. Thank you, Peck and Northwest. I appreciate it. US consumer glue tends to skew towards heavier bonding, stronger tack, more moisture, faster hardening, convenience, multi-surface use. But also, you know — you want paper, wood, plastic — you want a jack of all trades, one glue for all of this for consumer stuff, especially for students. You don't wanna carry a bunch of different glues, right? So my image is always gonna be the Elmer's glue. I use that through school. And my favorite glue was rubber cement. Is that still a thing? Ah, I love rubber cement. Maybe the smell of it, which is probably not a good idea, but the — like, that smells kind of funky. It's rubber cement. But it was always cool how you could just rub it off of your hands. Gorilla, which is industrial strength — you're thinking of this kind of stuff. Scotch, permanent. American glue assumes you're gluing cardboard, science fair projects, posters — I guess, stuff like that. But when we look back at the Japanese ones, we just love the iconic formats unavailable in the US. Which is — Japan has uniquely Japanese glue designs because I think the situations are different. It's not just the culture, but just the situations and the way that they use the paper too is a little bit different. So there's also the Japanese consumer, which is expecting different things. This Kokuyo glue — which is the square stick — is this not the most genius thing? Square makes so much sense. I never understood why we didn't do square from the start. It was always circle, but square makes a lot of sense. I'll explain in a second here. But flat sides, no rolling off the desk — first of all, so it stays — it stays flat. Here's the camera here, which is great. Corners, precision. Paper is flat. So having a flat glue stick, it's able to glue the little flaps that stick up here. The round ones, you got to kind of finesse, like play with it a little bit. This is just so great. The form factor — by the way, made in India. So I'm a little bit proud of that. I'm kind of happy that they're making this glue made in India. Designed — same as Apple — designed in Cupertino, made in China. The Tombow Pit goes on purple, dries clear. This company has it as well — a blue one. You put on the blue glue like this, and then the blue color goes away. It disappears and it turns clear, and you don't even notice it. I like the colors that kind of dissolve when it hits the oxygen in the air. A very controlled application and a mild formula to avoid wrinkles. Avoiding wrinkles is the most important thing. You want it to be perfect when it comes to Japanese stationery and Japanese glue. Perfection. Which is why I don't understand how the Japanese stamps are so bad this year. It's not just this one — all of them that required licking, which you shouldn't do — any moisture to put it on. The nori or the glue on the stamps just don't stick this year. So if there's a sticking point I have with the Japanese post office, it's that.

00:09:31 John Daub: The other thing is kind of funny though. You see the — you guys see the design of this year's — of — of — of next year's — hold on a second. It's the year of the horse next year. I'm guessing that they just didn't want to send the horses to the glue factory. You get it? That's such a bad — that's a bad joke. It's the year of the horse. You'll get this stamp if you — you — you'll get this stamp if you sign up for the Postcard Club. I took this image from the top — it's from the airplane flying to Hokkaido, and it's the Skytree looking down on it. You can see Asakusa here in the distance. So I'm going to send this postcard from the top of the Skytree. There's a special post box and they put a special post marker on it. So this is a Patreon Postcard Club. So thanks, guys. Japanese glue is just engineered differently. It's just better. I don't know if it's better. It's just better for the purposes that I use it here. But the reason why I think it's not for everybody — it's made for Japanese climate, really. It's Japan's climate, especially in the summer, more humid — in the winter it's more dry. So it has to consider this — like these are going to dry out a lot faster in the winter than they are in the summer. So the formula is different to take that in consideration. Japanese apartments are unheated and lightly heated. So it's going to be cold in the winter, hot in the summer. They just assume that. So the glues are engineered to be able to take a harsh humidity and harsh dryness. It's crazy. How do you do that? But you put a lot of thinking into the temperature that you're going to be using the product. I think that also is really good. No mold, stays stable. Even if stored for — for you — it stays usable even if stored for years, like these little things that — and it doesn't smell. Doesn't smell unpleasant. It smells actually not too bad, but — it's not too bad. So it's not too bad. So this often means Japanese glue has less initial tack and more stability. So Japanese glue will stick. This one in particular is extra strong. They had a couple of other kinds — neat, extra strong, small, medium, large, different sides. This is the medium, and the medium fits pretty good with the — with a stamp. So you can see, I probably should have gotten the large, to be honest with you. So I got to rub it a couple of times before putting it on the postcard. I really hope it's not going to be too much of a pain. This lighting has really made things a little weird. Indiana wins and the sun comes out. Great game from the Hoosiers. I was — I can't say I was rooting for them, but I sort of was because Mendoza is such a great quarterback, amazing team this year. So they totally deserve that win there. I was glued to the screen for four quarters. I would have done this live stream a lot earlier. It made it hard to go out there and actually go and get the glue. I had to — I had to wait until halftime before I would go and get the glue. So I was able to go out and get it and come back really quick and just miss a little bit of the second half. But a really great game. These — I don't know, these are probably printed in Japan. I don't know — maybe they're printed — in France, if France is really bad at stamps. But the weird thing is that Japan — Japan is not bad at stamps! They're just — I can't understand it. So I wanted to make sure that it was actually this year. So I have these Olympic stamps that they had for all of the sports, and I looked at the back, and you can — I can tell by looking at them there's just more glue on this one than there is on this one. So I know that Japan Post is trying to cut some corners to try to get less glue on this. I don't know. I just think that if I had known, I would — this is the last year I probably buy glue stamps with the Japan Post. I'm just gonna go with the sticker maker type. Japan has some amazing designs. This is from the Osaka Expo. You can see — hold on, I can just turn it around here. Japan stamps are really collectible. This is the mascot for the Osaka Expo and some really cool poses here. They make some great ones. This is the Pokémon card game stamps from about four or five years ago. These are a lot of fun. Actually, these are — a lot of these were stolen where the post — some post office stole the stamps off of the postcard but delivered the postcard. I thought that that was really weird. Canada comes to mind. I'm not saying the Demon Slayer stamps are some of the best. These are also stolen from Canada Post. Somebody in Quebec was stealing these from our friend Danny — uh, who deserved to have them. I resent — I resent a postcard to him and they stole the stamp again. So whoever was doing that route was not reported for theft. Just crazy. And the Olympic torch relay — they came in these little special ones. Didn't cost anything extra, but they had these Olympic torch stamps from 2020. And they had — oh, hold on a second. Okay. And these Mount Fuji stamps are really cool too. So they do come out some — some really great designs. So the stamps — it's just this year, this — the ones with the nori or the glue is just not good this year. So I'm gonna have to stay away from glue stamps for a while until they either fix the problem. Maybe it's just — you know, they had to get these out fast or they're using a new supplier. But Japan Post should be more glued to their business model, so to speak.

00:15:34 John Daub: And anybody who's watching here — yes, President Trump — they used his mugshot in there, which I think is really cool. It's really awesome. Leo is studying all the presidents. He knows them all, including their — some of their middle names. Just crazy. Like he can look at their face and he knows which president it is. How many American kids know that? It's crazy. He's obsessed with the presidents. I don't know. I don't know. His favorite president — um, who is it? I think he said it was Gerald Ford. I don't know why. He was a good football player, just played for the wrong team. You know what I'm talking about? I'll take some questions here. Yeah, there's a lot of puns today. What are you going to do? Uh, I — they did use two different pictures of — of President Trump. There's one from his first term and one from his second term. And the second one is the — is a — the notorious picture. I love that though. That's really cool. They — but you know, Grover Cleveland is the other president that was non-consecutive terms and they used the same picture of him. I don't know why they went different. But it kind of makes it kind of cool. I don't know. I kind of like it. You use glue sticks for your stamps. I have no choice because I typically use a — um, a sponge and some water and I'll put 10 on the sponge and just go, but this time I have to literally glue stick each one of these and it's taking a lot more time. So I hope I can fit — I'm going to be up probably late tonight getting all these done and then taking it to the — the next day. I'd love to have it in the Skytree very early in the morning. So if you are visiting Japan, you wanted to come and see me going to the Skytree tomorrow, that would probably be the way to do it. I think it opens at 10 AM tomorrow. I'll be there at the front of the line trying to get to the top. And I'll be delivering these postcards to all of you. You'll get a special postmark on it, which is really cool. The — I don't know why the glue is so bad this year, but I only need about 20 of them and they turned out okay. This one — this one is — um — the stamp is half glue, half their glue and half my glue, and it still looks really good. So I was able to use — they have two kinds. So this is small and this is medium, okay, size. The small one — they're both square, but this has a different purpose. This is for beauty, so it doesn't wrinkle. And this one is for strength, because this is a thicker cardboard that I use for the postcards. So I needed a stronger adhesive and the medium-sized shikari, which means strong. [I was able to use] a well-deserved — take it, Pepper. Ridges, go Indiana, IU!

00:18:20 John Daub: I went to IU to see a game once — we — I think it was like 30 years. Ohio State's one of the longest streaks in football — Ohio State had defeated Indiana 30 times in a row with class most of the time. And then this time it was so well earned. I don't know — that quarterback Mendoza, absolutely, one thousand percent wins the Heisman. He's such a competitor. That team played good. I hope that they meet again in the national championship tournament because that would be really, really fun. I don't think there's going to be two other teams that could compete with them. And for the rest of the world that's watching this — has no idea what I'm talking about. That's it. There's one other thing that I want to share with you before we leave here. Besides stamps, Japan is really good with this. This is Saran Wrap. I thought Saran Wrap was invented in the United States — I guess it was — but a lot of people take this home. This is made by Asahi Kasei. There's another brand as well that does it really well. But Asahi — and the other brand — they allow you to microwave this Saran Wrap. And we take this back to the US and it's really, really popular. I guess they have this. This might be worth talking about again in the future. But from minus 60 to 140 degrees Celsius, which is like 300 Fahrenheit probably, you can use it in the freezer and in the denshi-renji, which is the microwave. And this is one of the gifts that people take back to — to Japan. You can get a lot of stuff at the supermarket. Asahi Kasei has some kind of patent on this. So it's supposed to be safe. I kind of am skeptical, but my wife is very adamant that it's perfectly safe. The plastic doesn't leach into the food. Really? I'm kind of thinking that perhaps some of that plastic is probably leaching into the food. But she says no. So this is one of the great Japanese inventions along with glue. Just part of the culture. Plastic — plastic is a big deal in Japan, I guess. I get an episode I'm thinking about doing on this next year on the use of plastic in Japan. I think Greg — Greg, life from Greg — good friend of mine, also made a good episode on plastics. But I get another take on it. Brandani is in the house saying hi, fast. I got to drive. Brandani, I have one thing I want to show you really quickly. Do you see that on the tree? It says here, December 2023, made in Hawaii. Love — Brandi. Just saying. Very cool. So we — and where's the — we have a Totoro given to us by David and Ellis as well somewhere. I don't know. Or maybe Leo took it. Sometimes he takes the — sometimes Leo takes the ornaments and the stuff and he puts — he hides them because he keeps them. So Ellis — he might have taken the ornament and hidden it because he's like four. Ellis and David made me a really nice set of ornaments. There you go, guys. I hope that this is useful or really interesting. But Japanese glue is kind of a big deal. Ramsey, silent — 66 months. That's five — wow. Sixty-six months is crazy. Thank you. Highway 66. That's a long time. I can't believe I've been doing this. Well, I started doing live streaming in 2017. Super chats did not exist yet. The reason I did live streaming was because I had a lot of stuff to do. I needed — I wanted some company out on the hitchhiking. So the first videos on this channel are — if you go to not popular but oldest in the search on the Only in Japan Go channel, you'll see all of the hitchhiking videos, which are actually really interesting. Because I'm just out there on my own nowadays — a lot of people are live streaming. But back then it was very, very unusual. But I saw this as a chance to connect with a lot of people, but also to make content without spending so much time to edit. Because I slow bake everything — I still edit everything myself. A lot of people do that. But if you want to get stuff out faster, some people get some help. I don't get a lot of help, but it's okay. I slow bake all of it. But while I'm slow baking this, I can get out content a lot more frequently here. I can't believe it's been 66 months or beyond that, Ramsey Silent. I'm so appreciative of you being here for so long. Ramsey's is also one of our moderators. Hello. Hi. A to one. I'm going to miss so many people, so I better not get too deep into it. UFO Bob. We've got an amazing group of moderators that have been here for a very long time. You might not always agree with them, but I will always have their back because they're like family, right? We've got to have them — they're part of our family. Any questions on glue or anything? Using the actual Fulton County mugshot would have been badass. But the second photo — well, the same. Same expression is actually the presidential portrait. Is that true? Well, that's even — that's even cooler in a way. That's his portrait. Wow. We've got — we've got — we live in quite some times. Glue — do you use hot glue? John, what does that mean? Oh, you mean like the melting ones? Sometimes. I find that I've used — the last time I used glue was for my shoes. I had — I have Keen, which is a brand of shoes made in the US that falls apart real — they're great shoes when they don't fall apart. They're glued together and the glue tends to not stick quite well. So I was able to find glue. I was going to use a glue gun, but then I realized — well, the super glue. They have a special glue for shoes. So if you get a little surface on there and the glue stuck together, I was traveling in them. Where the heck was I? I was away from Tokyo. I drove past — I was in maybe Nagano. I drove past a Daiso and I was able to get the special rubber glue for — at a Daiso — and my shoes are still okay. Gave those Keens a second life.

00:25:10 John Daub: Plans to have the Osmo — six. I believe I have the Osmo — oh, do you mean the — the pro, the action camera? I don't see any benefits to it. It's not any better than the five and just reasonably better than the four. I think they just — a lot of gimmicks. Now, you don't have to buy new equipment every year. I think it's like every three years I did get the new gimbal. This is the Osmo 5 — I think which I didn't get the seven. I skipped a year, which made a lot of sense. Of Vice President Vance had the same kind of shot. That's kind of funny. Your best bet is to reach out to others in the community. They — thank you, Burn, and if you're having issues with logging in the Discord, Carl, reach out with other people in the community. I don't really know how much that I can help you. We show you the link for the Discord server in here. You click, you put your email. There's a sort of a — an initiation period where you have to click the terms of agreement and stuff and — to avoid the bots, because there's a lot of bot attacks with fake accounts that come in here, to protect everybody who's in the community. There's a couple of steps that you might have to go to, but — nobody else is really having any issues getting into there. If you are in the Patreon, you get to a special Patreon group that we have on Discord, and you have to use the same email address. So the bots know that you are from Patreon community and it'll give you access to our Samurai group, which is a really tight-knit group of people. So you can tell — you can tell if the UK has received the postcards, or if Wisconsin or Florida or Greenland or Aruba, because we have somebody in Aruba who's getting postcards. Argentina — we have — got it. Somebody in South Africa. We used to have somebody in Mozambique that got the postcards. They said they get it like every couple of times I sent it. So that was kind of funny. India. We've got postcards all over all over the world. I think I've sent postcards to 94 different countries, which is crazy, right? I don't know if they've all arrived, but I've sent it to about 94 last time I checked. That's really cool. So thanks, everybody, for the support on that. I gotta get back to work. But uh — if you have any questions, you can leave in the comments below. I think 30 minutes on glue is more than enough time. Can I DM one of you on the Discord yet? Carl, you can DM anybody here on the Discord, or if you leave your comment here, one of the moderators can also probably answer your questions. But Carl, you're very welcome. There's not a lot that I can do. I'm not into the micromanaging of the Discord server, but I very much support our team that is doing a great job of making sure that it is a good experience for everybody who's using it. Discord's been wonderful. It's a place where you can share your travel photos, share information about hotels that you've stayed at, where you're going, where not to go, for example — certain times, issues that might not be — people are talking about. You can ask questions to people who live here in Japan on the Discord server. Only in Japan's Discord server. We might be a little bit stricter than other Discord servers, which is not a bad thing. It just means that we have a better experience, I think, for those that are looking at it. Because it can very easily get into like crippling crypto scams and people who are direct messaging you with phishing stuff. So you have to be pretty tight with this stuff these days — as tight as you can be. I don't micromanage it, but our moderator team, especially HelloHi821 and Peso, who's also here watching, do such an incredible job of making sure that we have the best experience possible. We pay for some third-party services, right, that help to prevent stuff that happens on there. But you know, we do the best that we can. Have a great Sunday, everybody. Sorry for the messages here. I've got a lot of work to do, including getting through this brick of postcards. They come like this — this is one of two. And I got to send them to all the Samurai supporters as well this month, because we have so many of them that are supporting on Samurai and in the Postcard Club and all the Daimyo supporters for packages. Bless your hearts for supporting for so many months. And I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow. Bye. Bye, everyone! You can see me from the Skytree of all places, most likely, in the morning as I get back to work and I have to finish a couple of edited videos. We are back in the US on the 15th or 16th of the month, so there is only a week to go. Just a program note — I got this watch called the Ultra, and Dave, if you are watching, I did pick it up. I've been using it for marathon training. It has helped quite a lot to keep me on pace. It costs a lot more than I wanted to pay for it, but I think it's going to really help a lot with — with it. I'm running the Tokyo Marathon March 1st and I'm filming it for an episode with one of the race sponsors, which is great. So we have access to film on the course. So I need to do my very best to train for it, which I'm going to have to go for a run as well — really soon. I'm also making dinner for Kanae and Leo, which is going to be — I got a very, very busy afternoon, so I better get to it. Thank you. Marathon training is going very well. I've ran 18 kilometers at 5:16 pace — five minutes and 16 seconds. I'm running 12 kilometers today and I have a 20-kilometer run on Wednesday. So we're gearing it up, trying to get to 65 kilometers a week training, maybe get to 70, 75 in by the end of January, and then start to taper it down and hit March 1st really, really strong. But I'm over the age of 50. So that means I have to train smart. I can't get injured — which means I gotta get more sleep. This is so useful for getting good sleep, reminding me to go to bed at 11 and wake up at 7, to take breaks, but not overdo it. Try to keep my heart rate at a manageable pace, because I like to go out fast, and maybe this kind of brings me back to earth a little bit. I'm not — I don't want to get injured. You can have a lot of energy. Yeah, I mean — I'm not saying that I'm going to get a lot of energy and enthusiasm, but that can also lead to injuries. And that's the one thing I don't want to do. Try to avoid inflammation, which means I have to eat better. No more of those cookies. I got so many cookies. Saya, thank you for all the snacks. I'm trying not to eat them all at one time, but really appreciate it, guys. I will see you — thank you. I will see you all real soon tomorrow from the Skytree as I take you to another episode. I'm eating a lot of meat, mostly yogurt, and I'm taking that creatine stuff — just three grams. It's like way less than most people do, but they said it helps with recovery. So I'll take the creatine for a couple of weeks to see how it works and decide if I want to keep doing it or not. But so far it's been pretty useful, I think, but it could be more psychological than anything else. If you guys want to share your information — your plans with marathons in the comments, I do appreciate it on the Discord server as well. See all — and one more day. You can sign up to the Postcard Club anytime, but if you sign up in the next 12 hours, there's a — I'm probably going to be able to catch it on the notifications and take it up to you. So yeah, there you go. You'll be getting one of these stamps. I think I had like 20 more — 20 left here. End-of-year stamps with a beautiful cancel mark of the Skytree from the summit — the top of the Tokyo Skytree. There you go. All right, guys, take care. See you soon. I'm listening to Christmas music. There you go. I'm listening to Christmas music as I'm doing these stamps. My Dane.