00:00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. That's where I'm based. I've been living here for about 27 years now. I've gone through some mega quakes myself, experienced them from a distance, of course not in the zone where they occurred, but really felt the power of them. That earthquake that happened 15 years ago in Tohoku is still one that resonates very strongly in my mind. I have somewhat of a post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of it, thinking about that day. And we had another strong one in Aomori. You can see the image on the top there of the earthquake just off the coast of Aomori. Happened about 36 hours ago at 11:15 in the evening.

00:00:45 John Daub: These earthquakes can happen at any time, including when you're asleep in bed as it did in Kobe 30 years ago, a couple of years before I came here. These earthquakes, it's nothing you can do about it. They just hit. If you're a visitor coming to Japan, it's something you should know about. You should understand that earthquakes happen. You should have an understanding of where to go and what to do in case an earthquake happens. That's your responsibility as a tourist coming to Japan, knowing that we are on the Ring of Fire where earthquakes take place quite a lot.

00:01:23 John Daub: I'm going to be taking some questions from this live stream from viewers that are watching this that are maybe concerned about this. And I just want to tell you that this is probably the most important piece of information I can give you. There's a lot of fake information out there. Foreign media is propagating that this flyer right here, you see it? This was a flyer issued as a public safety announcement to the people in the area to be aware of earthquakes. It's not a prediction or it's not an official megaquake warning from the government.

00:02:02 John Daub: I just want you guys to know this because right now if you look at the international media, you just scroll through it. You'll see that megaquake warning is in place. Like that is actually not the case, according to the Japanese language sources. It's part of a public campaign of awareness to get people prepared for it. It's not an actual warning or prediction that this is going to occur on that plate where Aomori is located. I think this is extremely important to differentiate between what is actually like a prediction that an earthquake is going to happen, a mega quake, and what is just a public campaign to get people ready for it.

00:02:51 John Daub: And you can see the international media is already announcing like there's a mega quake warning. That is not the case. There's no mega quake that is predicted to happen in this area at this time right now. I think that that is something that the international media is not telling you and it's something that's scaring a lot of people from coming to Japan. So please be careful with the information that you're getting. If you want to go and get some information, go to reliable sources. The best place is to go to Japanese sources. One of the best places that I like to go to is where I used to work as a reporter, which is at NHK here.

00:03:25 John Daub: If you go to the NHK website, you'll see that they have information on the earthquake. And this is Japan's public broadcaster. They have a lot of information from government sources, from official sources. This is a great source of information to get instead of going to your local news on the other side of the world. Get it from Japan in English. I think that's the best way. So they're talking about the megaquake warning, which is not actually a warning. It's the potential of a megaquake. These are these brochures that were issued. You can see there's actually a physical flyer.

00:04:07 John Daub: It says major tremors of magnitude eight or higher could occur along the Japan Trench. It's not a prediction. It's just to get people, officials are urging people to check evacuation routes, make sure that home furniture is secure and prepare emergency kits, including food, water, and portable toilets. They use this opportunity to get people prepared in case something does happen. It's a chance to raise awareness, not an actual prediction that there's going to be some kind of a megaquake that's going to happen. But I think it is important that disaster management helps the public become prepared because when you can't predict when these are going to happen, when they happen, the more people that are somewhat prepared, the better chance there is to save a lot of lives.

00:04:58 John Daub: There's a difference between prediction and public information. Yeah, that's exactly right. We just got a notification from somebody right there. So yeah, the Japanese go. I would highly recommend going to NHK and taking a look at it. NHK also highlighted the fake news warnings. Right now the cabinet secretary is also telling everybody to please be careful of that, which is absolutely an issue here. NHK is a great source of information with no opinions, no bias. I'd like to think that the public broadcaster is bringing you up to date information, just the facts on what we need to do to prepare.

00:05:32 John Daub: So that's really important for you to know if you're coming to Japan, you can download the NHK World app. It's all in English. In fact, I think you can pick the language in which you want the information to come to you. So if you are from Thailand, you can get Thai language support for NHK World, I believe, which is really important. When I'm talking about this earthquake that happened in Aomori, you can see it. We slept through it. I didn't even know it. I went to sleep at around 10:30, 11 o'clock that night. It looks like it was like around a magnitude two here. So we wouldn't have barely felt it if I was awake.

00:06:13 John Daub: We're about four hours on the Shinkansen from Aomori. So it's quite a long ways away, about an hour flight. Yeah, the earthquakes, they do travel. You can't feel it from a distance in Tokyo, but Aomori in particular, Hachinohe city, beautiful place, Aomori city and Hakodate in Hokkaido felt this earthquake quite strongly. The news report showed that it was quite violent shaking. I could show you a little bit of it in the little window here as I talk about it. There was a really, and the aftermath in Aomori and the area, especially Hachinohe is quite bad. Not, I don't think it's quite as bad as what happened in Ishikawa prefecture on New Year's, two years ago. That was really bad. You saw houses like implode, just fall on itself.

00:07:10 John Daub: But this one was super strong. You could see the sake bottles falling to the ground there. It's really just a sudden look at that. It's so violent. Earthquakes are, if you're from California, you probably have felt many of them, right? Japan is the same. Chile is also a place with a lot of earthquakes and all along any of the faults there. It's really something that when you feel it, you feel powerless when you feel an earthquake, when you go through anything that's magnitude five or greater. You feel powerless because it's the whole world is shaking around you. There's nowhere you can go. Really. You can't escape it.

00:08:02 John Daub: The shaking, but you can protect yourself, get under the table or go in the doorways or certain things. People evacuate the bathtubs. The other thing that I learned by making an episode on this was that you can't predict the intensity of an earthquake just because it feels weak at first. Initially you feel a little bit of shaking. That doesn't mean that the earthquake is going to be weak. It can suddenly get stronger. So the earthquakes are incredibly hard to predict just because you feel a little bit of shaking. Oh, it's a small one. You don't know that it could end up turning into a very large one by shaking because the epicenter could just be really close. It was just weak at first and then boom, it'll hit you really hard.

00:08:36 John Daub: I knew right away on 2011 it was a strong one. I think within the first two seconds, I knew right away. There's something wrong. This is going to be a bad one and I really didn't know what to do. Just hang on for dear life. It was scary. Everything is shaking. You hear this telephone lines outside like everything is just shaking violently. There's really is a rumble as all the buildings around you are shaking violently as well. Everything. Most of these houses are like prefabricated houses these days. They kind of have a squeak to them sometimes when they're reverberating. They're oscillating. So you hear the squeaking sounds as well of every bolt on every house and every product inside the house is squeaking. So there's a very loud noise.

00:09:34 John Daub: And again, like your heart just goes into your stomach and if you haven't done any training, you're not going to react right. If you haven't done any training, look at the torii gate here in Aomori has collapsed as a result of the earthquake. That's gotta be, that's how you know it's super strong one when something like that happens. That's not your typical earthquake. The Ring of Fire. You can just see on Google Earth. If we pull this up really quickly, there's Osaka and Tokyo. You can see how far away from Tokyo Aomori is up there. This is a beautiful prefecture.

00:10:18 John Daub: It's got the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean and the Tsugaru Strait (Tsugaru Kaikyō) that cuts between Hokkaido and Honshu right there. So Aomori is so blessed with so many resources, so much wonderful hot springs and everything. It's one of my favorite places to go. It's a snowiest prefecture, snowiest place on earth, the Aomori city, the snowiest city on earth. And right off the coast of Hachinohe you see right there is where the earthquake happened. It's north, northwest of the Fukushima earthquake that happened off the coast of Fukushima Miyagi in 2011, March 11th.

00:10:48 John Daub: So it's in the same vicinity, but you can see, you see the trough right there, the dark area in the Pacific Ocean. That's where the trough lines are. And then there, you can see the other one just south of Osaka. There's another trough there. And then it all points up into Tokyo and that armpit of Chiba. You see that? That's where there's another trough. There's another where the plates, the tectonic plates meet right there as well. So Tokyo is in maybe the worst position in many respects for a mega quake.

00:11:17 John Daub: And it's something that my family and I, every time there's an earthquake on the news or another area hits, I go back and I recharge the batteries in our earthquake bag, make sure that we have water. We have a supply of food that lasts about three, four days of canned goods. We make sure that the expiration dates aren't too far gone. Replace some of that. That's a good reminder for us to do that. And that's what, when you see these mega quake brochures, stuff like this, that comes from the bōsai (disaster prevention) center. Bōsai meaning disaster center in Japan, they'll announce these types of things.

00:11:51 John Daub: And it is an idea you can see on the bottom left side to make sure that you prepared, you know where your evacuation centers are, you know how to react and as best as you can, you know what happens before, during, and then what happens after the earthquake. A lot of the issues happen after. Don't say armpit of Chiba. It kind of is in a way, but I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, you can kind of get an idea. This is a live stream. I'm kind of thinking off the cuff here. I don't think anyone's going to take it considering Tokyo was in the armpit. This is, I don't think anyone's going to take it too seriously.

00:12:33 John Daub: So this information is very important if you're coming here as a visitor, you don't need to know all the information that the locals know, but if the locals know, and they were informed here, following the local people is probably the smartest thing to do. So if you're staying in a hotel, what I like to do is to make sure that I get an understanding when I check in at the hotel. I do this often. I'll make sure I understand where the evacuation route is and where the closest evacuation center is, where I would have to go. So it's in my mind, and then I just kind of forget about it. But if something does occur, I'm not going to be at a deer in headlights anymore, right?

00:13:18 John Daub: I was in that position in 2011 where I felt extraordinarily helpless. And ever since then, I've been a lot more, I've got helmets at the door. We have water, we have a go kit so we can pick up our stuff and just, if we have to evacuate, we evacuate. I have plastic containers, 10 liter containers, two of them where I can fill up emergency water in case after the earthquake, we need to get water for the family. So I have tanks for that as well. We have portable toilets, emergency toilets. If we have to go a week or two without running water or pipes, we at least will be able to survive I guess. And that might come from watching The Walking Dead a little bit too much. It's one of the greatest TV shows ever.

00:14:12 John Daub: But I think this past earthquake that happened in Aomori, you were going to see aftershocks for quite a long time. I was looking at the Japan Meteorological Agency's updated list. You can see here on the list that happened about 36 hours ago. The magnitude 7.6, I think it's been updated. And since then, almost all of the earthquakes, there's been a couple in Okinawa, all the earthquakes going up the aftershocks that happened after the Shindo 6. Shindo is this Japanese scale for the shaking. And one just recently, just a couple of hours ago, a magnitude 4.3 happening in Aomori.

00:15:17 John Daub: So the aftershocks after a big quake, magnitude seven or 7.5, a Shindo 6, which is on the Shindo scale, the Japanese scale, seven would be the strongest where you are thrown off your feet. A Shindo 6 is you cannot stand up. You have to get down. You could get injured if you're standing up. You could fall down. You could hit your head on a table or something. So you want to be down closer to the ground, closer to the center of gravity so that you don't get thrown. Also stay away from items that might fall down on top of you, for example. Stay away from windows is a good thing that kids learn that in school in Japan.

00:15:42 John Daub: But you can see here a lot of the aftershocks are in the Aomori area. So I'm taking this very seriously, as you can tell in the tone of my voice. If you do want to know more about this, I have a video that I produced about four years ago at the Bōsai Center, the disaster center in Tokyo at Sumida Ward. They have a simulation where you can simulate what it's like. I think more tourists are going here to experience it. They've updated it to fit more people so that they can get more people to experience what an earthquake is like. But I highly recommend that you check out this episode here. I'll show you a couple of clips from it.

00:16:17 John Daub: All right. So this is the Great Tohoku Earthquake. Wow, 2.1 million views. Wow. I take you inside here and I give you my feedback based on my own experience going through megaquakes and then going into megaquake areas to help volunteer to help with the recovery efforts. I think that's one of the things we have to do as citizens when it's safe for us to do that. We all kind of help each other because Japan, everybody here is a community. This one is the Great Tohoku Earthquake. They have the data to simulate with very realistic detail what it was like. And I highly recommend that you go and you watch that video. It'll help you prepare for what it's like in an earthquake.

00:17:03 John Daub: So when you do come to Japan, you have an understanding of the strength and the feeling of an earthquake. Just watching it, I think will help you get prepared. Not only that, the jingles, the sounds, how they will announce a megaquake is taking place. That video lays it out pretty good. I think it did a fairly good job with that. But I really do appreciate it. It was the Tokyo Fire Department and the Bōsai Center shared a lot of their resources to help me make that episode. So yeah, I think there were 20 people injured. I don't know about the fatalities. A lot of the information is still coming in about what happened in Aomori.

00:17:33 John Daub: There's going to be another earthquake in Japan. We just don't know when, where, how. So there shouldn't be something that discourages you from visiting Japan. Absolutely not. I think earthquakes or any kind of a disaster can happen anywhere. I think it's a good thing. Nippon Kuma, John, I'm landing in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon. Should I be concerned of aftershocks? No. I haven't felt any aftershocks in Tokyo. All of it is up there, up in Tohoku and northern Hokkaido. And even now, I don't think you really need to be concerned about it.

00:18:04 John Daub: An aftershock is just a settling of land. It's the settling of the tectonic plates. It's not a bad thing. Having small earthquakes is actually a good thing. It's a healthy thing. It means that the plates are getting rid of their stress. When you have a long period of time without any earthquakes, that's when in the back of my mind I start to worry a little bit, to be honest with you. I remember about three years ago, we had a big, a strong earthquake where all of my office here that I'm in, my desk was shaking. And I videoed it and I was able to, a lot of the news agencies, I think BBC and ABC News picked up on my Twitter post and it had like two, three million views on Twitter really fast.

00:19:07 John Daub: Tokyo is one of the cities of the world that is prepared to have a devastating earthquake like that and be able to survive it. You really don't have a lot to worry about. Nippon Kuma, you're going to be just fine. I appreciate the super chat and the chance to answer your question. But I will keep Japan in our prayers, Angie and unfortunately. I'm looking at some of the questions here. This is a time where you can write in. I'm not going to jinx it anymore. If you have any questions, go ahead and ask it in the chat. In the live stream comment section here, I'm going to pull it up.

00:20:13 John Daub: Do you think there will be an even worse one than 2011 in the near future? It's impossible to say. I'm not the person qualified to predict that. But they said at the time of all the media reporting and all the government, all the agency feedback, people that did know what they were talking about said that it was like a once in a generation type of an earthquake, like once in a thousand years type of an earthquake that happened. They just can't say that. So it's very impossible to predict that an earthquake is going to happen. They can give you warnings, but they have like these data points where if these strong earthquakes are happening at these certain places, then they can kind of get an idea like within 30 years that a mega quake is going to happen.

00:21:16 John Daub: In 2011, Tokyo was rocked, but it was fine. That was a mega quake. That was one of the world's strongest earthquakes. It was a couple of hundred kilometers away, a little bit more than that. And Tokyo was fine. So I want to put everybody's at ease that if a mega quake does occur, Tokyo is positioned to be one of the cities anywhere in the world that would be able to survive it, which of course is the building standards and the ways that they have it. Is it better to fly from Narita or Haneda? Haneda. It's a good question. I'd say whichever one is the cheaper flight. Haneda is a lot closer.

00:22:24 John Daub: It's like a prequel to another 2011. I would never say that. I don't think that's the case at all. I can tell you this before the magnitude nine plus earthquake happened off the coast of Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures, there was a 7.5 earthquake in that same spot in the same vicinity. And that was a week before you just can't predict this kind of stuff. It's like a million to one chance that there's going to be something that happens like that. It's like you have a better shot of winning the lottery. You just don't know. These megaquakes don't happen very often, but in the age of the internet, this information gets out there faster and worries more people.

00:23:16 John Daub: I told you when I looked at megaquake, I was just shocked that the international media, it's not their fault. Maybe they just don't know how to translate it. They can't say the Japanese names very well, right? They couldn't say the prime minister's name for a long time. I guess they get the translation wrong perhaps, but there was no megaquake warning issued. It was a megaquake advisory, I guess. Not even an advisory, just a public, we would call it like a national awareness campaign. So there was a megaquake national awareness campaign, not a warning. All right. I just, that has to be clear. It's not like all of a sudden we just had our 7.5, 7.6 earthquake. Now we'll make a quick warning. The international media doing what they do best really exaggerate.

00:24:08 John Daub: Have you ever learned about how Japan designs earthquake proof buildings? I have actually, I have an episode on the Tokyo Skytree that'll be dropping probably next year. I went inside the Tokyo Skytree and I looked at how they earthquake proofed it. I went to the very bottom of the Skytree and it's an amazing design that they were able to do that. Every building has a different way to do it. I think the Landmark Tower, which used to be Japan's tallest building in Yokohama on the top floor, they have a big like marble, really heavy marble and it counters the sway. So when the earthquake sways this way, the marble goes this way and it balances the building from swaying too much.

00:25:11 John Daub: I'm really looking forward to it. It's a very hard video to edit in a way because it's very technical, but I think when you get a look at it, gives you a lot of confidence that Tokyo is prepared for such a disaster. And I in my heart believe that very much. I wouldn't live here if I thought my life was at risk everywhere I go. In Japan or anywhere I go. I could get hit by a bus in New York City. I could get a landslide, an avalanche. Anything can happen anytime. You just can't predict this kind of stuff. Earthquakes are a common occurrence.

00:25:46 John Daub: 99.999% of earthquakes in Tokyo, you don't even feel them. They're like magnitude one, magnitude zero, like 0.5. They're like little teeny rumblings. If you're on a bus, you don't even feel that. An earthquake, even if it was a magnitude three or four and you're riding the subway, you probably wouldn't even feel that earthquake. That's like the vast majority of them. These mega quakes, like 0.000000001%. It's not going to happen. Probably we don't have another one in our lifetime. They said Miyagi in the next 30 years. They said Tokyo in the next 30 years. They're prepared for it, which is what they're supposed to do, but they can't predict it. They just can't predict it.

00:26:35 John Daub: If it isn't actually a mega quake warning, why do say one has been issued in the title of this clip? Because everybody is going to be looking at this out of fear that there's a warning issued, and I'm going to dispel the fear because that's what people are going to be looking for. I think that's the most important thing. Everyone is looking at the warning and trying to get more information. It's not a warning. That's the most important thing. It's not click baiting. I guess in a way it is. But I think it's really important that people understand that it is not a warning. The best way to do that is to get people to understand what a warning is.

00:27:10 John Daub: I haven't seen the government actually issue a mega quake warning like the JMA, which is the Japan Meteorological Agency, issue one and predict a date. I've never seen that. So the best way to inform people is to understand what is not true, and that's not true. It's a public awareness campaign, and that's true. What happened leading up to the 2011 earthquake? Were there any signs? There was a strong earthquake. I think it was about a 7.5 happening out, but it was in an area where you got strong earthquakes quite often, right? We got warnings of an earthquake about a week before, I remember, but nobody really looked into it.

00:28:16 John Daub: I think there were warning signs, but again, like there's no way you can predict a magnitude nine earthquake taking place because nobody is underneath in the crust of the earth seeing this stuff. Nobody is under there except for God. God can understand what's happening with the crust of the earth. You get signs. Mount Fuji, there's some activity underneath there. There have been advisories or more drills on if Mount Fuji erupts, which would be a devastating effect considering how big the city of Tokyo is and how close we are. Tokyo would feel that. So I think that this is something that we are prepared for.

00:29:04 John Daub: These advisories are really important because it gets people to remember and take precautions now to prepare their kids to, especially kids that maybe like my son who's four or five who is starting to understand more about this. These advisories is a chance to make sure that everybody knows, even the younger ones. And at the schools, they also teach this kind of stuff too. When a kid who's five or six goes through an earthquake like this, they don't forget it and then they also become quite prepared. It's very important for the education to keep going with the younger generation.

00:29:41 John Daub: Last earthquake you had in Japan, if I remember rightly, upset the nuclear power. That's not the last earthquake. Last earthquake was about two days ago. Actually, there was an earthquake this morning. Japan has thousands of earthquakes that take place every year. Thousands. Megaquakes are something over like magnitude eight. Eight perhaps. Eight point something. And as you get into over magnitude seven, when you go to magnitude seven, eight, and nine, it's just multiplied by so much. A nine is so much bigger than a seven. A nine is like ridiculously massive earthquake. The power that's generated. It just goes by just add another zero, add another zero. It's like from thousand to a hundred thousand to a hundred million. It's like really big.

00:30:40 John Daub: But in Japan, we don't do it by magnitude. We do it by Shindo. I guess we do it by both. But Shindo is the intensity of the shaking and a seven, according to the intensity scale is you are thrown off your feet and that is the most intense earthquake. And that's what we went through 15 years ago, but that was not the last earthquake. We have them all the time since then. The aftershocks in 2011, there were hundreds of aftershocks, maybe even thousands going on for years. After the 2011 earthquake, I left Tokyo about a week after, because I felt seasick. I couldn't take the constant shaking. I was constantly shaking from the aftershocks.

00:31:28 John Daub: I went to Osaka for a few days and I felt a lot better. It felt like you're on a boat. A lot of people were going down to Kansai after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. A lot of people were going there because they were worried about what was happening with the reactor. They were worried about the fallout that was happening from it. I was more just sick from the constant shaking and I just needed to get away from the stress of it all. And I went down to Osaka for a few days. I stayed with a friend. I got my sea legs, I guess you could say. I felt a lot better. And then I came back up to Tokyo and about a month or so later when things cleared out and it was safe to do so, we started making food runs up the coast into Miyagi and away from the zone that was off limits, of course.

00:32:34 John Daub: But there were a lot of communities that just couldn't get food. There were a lot of communities that lost their houses. There's a lot of communities that even to today are not doing so well. So I feel like we haven't finished the job of making sure that everybody's lives were put back together following that, even 15 years later. And yeah, I followed the lead of my friend Mike. He's been on the show a couple of times. Mike has a big heart. He's one of the first people to go down to Kumamoto. After the earthquake to Ishikawa, he goes to these places to do whatever he can using his own money to do so. Buying mass amounts of food, renting a truck and then running it up there. I'm really lucky to have friends like that. It rubs off and then you start to get inspired by that and you do the right thing.

00:33:29 John Daub: And the thing is when the tragedy like this happens, you don't know what the right thing is, but we don't get looting. We don't get acts of violence and people being evil to one another, price gouging, we didn't see any of that in Japan. The whole country just comes together and we kind of work through that. I think that that might be something that's special and Only in Japan in a way, but I could be wrong. According to the Netflix drama Japan Sinks. I think it's what it's called an amazing anime. Japan Sinks 2020 or 2050, I can't remember what it's called, but in there, it's sort of like society kind of breaks down as a result of Japan's massive earthquakes. It's a really good anime. I would recommend watching that. But it's not based on science. It's an anime.

00:34:50 John Daub: I heard that Japanese phones will have tsunami alerts. They do. Actually, my phone alerts will go off. It's an annoying sound. Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. It's really loud. Everybody's phones will go off. Everybody knows about it. Sometimes the alert comes after the earthquake. Sometimes you'll have only about three or four seconds before the earthquake hits. Three or four seconds can make the difference. What can you do in three or four seconds? You can, instead of walking around the house, you can get down and sit on the floor so that you are not rocked by that initial bang. And then you topple over and hit your head on the desk. So those three or four seconds, that's the best thing you can do. You can get down on the floor, get underneath something.

00:35:46 John Daub: I don't know. Most of the time, they've happened. I was on the train. Not a lot you can do. Or I was in bed already and it would just wake me up and I'm groggy. I'm like, what? Oh. It's probably not the best thing to do, but you're freaking asleep. The Kobe earthquake happened at like five in the morning, all right? People were not ready for that. That's the tragedy right there. A lot of lives are lost because it happened so early in the morning, like 4 or 5 in the morning.

00:36:22 John Daub: Nightshade458 writes in here, I know we talked about the importance about earthquakes in Japan, but I hope you had a good Christmas. Thank you. Yes. I was thinking of taking Leo to the Christmas market, but we intend to go back in less than a week to stateside so we'll be in the U.S. soon thanks for that look I take one more question here. Um I thought people in Japan are lucky to have earthquake prepared they are if you have any questions leave in the comments below I have a postcard this month if you want to uh this is the end of year so you have a stamp for Japanese New Year I will send this to you and I'm really appreciative of all the support uh from you guys take care if you have any questions on the earthquakes uh do leave a comment here check out our Discord community where we talk to each other to help each other prepare for this kind of stuff but yeah your prayers to Aomori and the region is very much appreciated and I'll keep you up to date if anything changes here uh you'll hear it here first on this live streaming channel um take care matane.