00:00:00 John Daub: All right, I wanted to introduce you to what I'm wearing underneath here. This just came in the mail, so shout out to Ellis and David. Thank you guys so much for putting this together, making these T-shirts. I want to show you what's in the box here as well as what the design looks like as a preliminary. First T-shirt. Talk about the Tokyo marathon, answer some of your questions. It is an awful rainy day. Actually. The temperature's not that cold for February. It's about 13, 14 degrees Celsius? What is that, like upper 50s, which is pretty good. A lot better than the east coast in the US which is digging itself out of snow right now.

00:00:00 John Daub: But this is really exciting day because I've never done anything like this before. A T-shirt. This is so. This, this is like hot off of the presses, too. This is the first one, apparently. The design from the opening. What do you guys think? Is it too big, too small? The color is okay. I kind of didn't want to just put a logo on there, so we inverted the logo so it looks like he's flying over it. Sort of a little bit of a shadow action going on here. I like this color. This gray is really nice. This is the first ever T-shirt design. We'll probably have a few other ones, but yeah, we get some people who say they love it here.

00:00:00 John Daub: Okay, leave it the live chat on here because this is a big deal. I've never done anything like this before. I guess I would be considered something of an influencer. I always consider myself to be a storyteller, but really, I just want to tell a story, to be honest with you. But what we've done over the last nine years, since I started this live streaming channel, was also build a community, which is really awesome. And a lot of people have been asking me for T-shirts. So here we go. We got T-shirts. This thing fits really good too. This is a medium size men's medium. I'm about 179, 180 centimeters. Was it 5 foot 10 and a quarter and 5 foot 11? About depends on how I feel that day.

00:00:00 John Daub: Let's look inside here. Inside this box. So there's a bunch of other stuff I haven't even opened yet. Ellis, if you're watching this, David, it's exactly how you packed it up when it was shipped here. This is so cute. This is for Leo. This would be. Yeah, this is Leo size. Check this out. So we even have, like, a toddler size. That's so cool. Oh, I'm so excited. This is amazing. Look at the. Leo's gonna freak out. Oh, Ellis is here too. Thanks for being here, Ellis. Leo's gonna freak out. This is a cream colored shirt. I like this. It's like. Like a natural one. The quality of the cotton is really good, too.

00:00:00 John Daub: Oh, that's different. It feels different on white. I don't know. I think it's more striking with a darker color T-shirt. But this is a. This is really nice, too. Look at that. Everything's nice. I took a long time to come up with this design, actually, because we tried so many different things. Like, how should I do it? The tengu (long-nosed goblin) is very, very iconic for Only in Japan. And it's part of the. When I redid this series, this channel, that animated opening became the pivotal part of it. This is for Kanae. She's gonna love it. Thank you. I think you guys nailed the sizes too. And it smells like America.

00:00:00 John Daub: This will be sent inside of the US too, by the way, so it'll reduce on the tariffs and everything like that, I guess. This is nice, too. This one is a navy blue. This is medium. I like that. The only thing going against this color is that it looks like a Michigan blue. Being an Ohio State person, nevertheless, I like it, and I do wear blue, but this is really nice as well. Yeah. Well, I want to wash these a couple of times, see how they hold up, make sure everything is good. Because the one thing that I noticed when you're making up products for everybody, you have to test it out before you start to sell the stuff. You know who told me this? Scotty from Strange Parts. He had an issue with some hoodies that he once made. He goes, John, whatever you do, test it out before you start to sell it. Do quality control yourself.

00:00:00 John Daub: I like it. This one on the black, Ellis. I can see. You can tell. The gray is probably the best one. The black is real striking. Yeah. But you can see some of the outlines on it. But it's not bad at all. It's hard. You have to really pixel peep to see it, but it's a really nice design. I like this. We'll do a couple of other ones and I get a couple of other ideas with this, but to me, this is my favorite for sure. This one's my favorite. Look at this. This is awesome. He's coming right at you. Like the animated opening, right? Like that. Oh, very cool. Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this.

00:00:00 John Daub: And by the way, I'm guessing this isn't for me, right, Ellis? It's probably for. For Kanae, right? So I'm just gonna. I'm gonna wait until she comes home for that. The black was a test run. The guy. The gray is the final production. Okay. The gray is perfect. The gray is perfect. I can't even see. I can't even see the lines when we. We cut. This is perfect. So I'm gonna wash it a couple of times. Hanging out to dry. See how this. This thing ages over the course of the next ten days or so. But I mean, like, sign me up. Let's get this out there on the store.

00:00:00 John Daub: We actually do have some stuff in the store. Let me see here. Here's. I guess I could put it on the screen there. Is that the right link? Ellis and David have been helping me with this. I'm going to do a stress test for sure. That's the link right there. It's Only in Japan store, I guess. I think that's. That's what the link is. How's our bandwidth for this? I don't think we can get it like a thousand orders, like, or anything, but, yeah, that's where you would go for it. Only Japan, we have fireworks goods. We have a shakudama (fireworks shell), the number five fireworks shell from the Kickstarter campaign, as well as some of the goods.

00:00:00 John Daub: Ellis and David, we've put together this really amazing, like, ultimate fireworks package, which is also in the store. And. Oh, and we still got, like. I think we got about 30 or 40 of these. I have about 10 here in Japan, but I still have some of the Blu-rays here on. On the store for sale. This is the entire trip. It's about two, three hours long, I think. And you can watch it twice because there's a separate director's track. So you get a lot out of it. And inside of it you have. I don't know. I'm just so excited right now. It's like a boost of adrenaline coming in when you got a chance to see something new like this.

00:00:00 John Daub: I don't have a copy that's opened up, but inside of it is. I guess I can just open this one up. Sometimes you just have to, like. I haven't. I haven't seen my own Blu-ray in a long time, so maybe it's time to watch it. So this. This is the original Blu-ray disc. I made like a thousand of these. Actually. We're almost done. I think we're down to like the final 30. It opens up like this. And here's the disc. And you have all of the pictures of the. Of the people who picked me up along the way. These are my. On this side, I put the. I mucked up in Photoshop all the signs that I. Well, some of the most memorable signs that I use.

00:00:00 John Daub: So if you take out the disc, it's a Blu-ray, so it's pretty good quality. You get the signs from that. And then on the back, there's the timeline of all the places that I stopped on the hitchhiking trip. As well as I like this one here. This is a lot of the signs that got me from the bottom of Japan to the top of Japan hitchhiking. So this is really cool disc. Everybody who's gotten it has been like five stars. So I have to say thank you for my first ever movie, which is very cool. Wow, how exciting. The marathon is almost here. We're like four days out.

00:00:00 Caller (Richard): Hey, John, it's Dimitri's friend, Richard.

00:00:00 John Daub: Hey, Richard, how have you been? I'm good. Hope you come back to Japan this year. Please do. Would be nice to meet up with you again. Absolutely, yeah. I remember. Dimitri is one of our moderators too. I'd like to see Dimitri again. It's always fun when he was there, but I remember when I met you. That's great. Thanks for chiming in here.

00:00:00 John Daub: I'm not going to be wearing this, but I want to shout out. I'm so excited to be representing it. Just. This hat is not me. It's like, too big. I got a small head, but I don't know. Do you. Does this. It's weird to me. This hat, it doesn't really look good. I usually wear hats like this, you know, or I wear it backwards, but. But look. See how much I have to, like, choke up on the bat? You see, it's like right here. It's like I got a small head, so it just doesn't work. The hat looks great. Ellis, stop it. Now you've gone too far. The hat does not look great, but it is a cool hat.

00:00:00 John Daub: I will wear these in the beginning anyways, because they are pretty cool. I got Pocari Sweat gloves. They sent me so much stuff. I love the team at Pocari Sweat. This has been an amazing journey with them which culminates with a trip to the Pocari. You guys are coming with me live on this. On this too. I feel like Dexter, look at this. I need to get me a Pocari Sweat. Where do I have one? I don't have one handy, but yeah, I get gloves and I have the shirt here and the shirt is being washed because I ran in it a couple of days ago.

00:00:00 John Daub: I'm going to be wearing a Smurf blue Pocari Sweat shirt. And I have my tenugui (hand towel), which is iconic. That's, that's more me. I wear the gloves, but I'm probably not. It's going to be 16 degrees Celsius, so that's like 60s. That's a little bit too warm for a marathon. Believe it or not. You kind of want it to be between like 5 and 10 degrees Celsius, which is like 40, 42 to. It seems cold, but it's not 42 to like 50 ish. That's probably the sweet spot for marathon after running them in both hot and cold. Hot is the worst. Cold is too cold is too cold. But if it's, you know, over freezing, you're good because you're going to be running, you're going to be generating a lot of heat.

00:00:00 John Daub: So it's a little bit warmer than I wanted it to be, but it's a lot cooler than the Osaka marathon a couple of days ago, which looked ridiculously hot. It was 22 degrees, like 70s. And that's just way too hot for the, for the marathon. Guys, this is incredible. Just shout out to one more time, Ellis and David. I love you guys. You guys have done such incredible stuff. I'm gonna have to send you a thank you note. I'm sending out these daimyo packages today. This is the EMS, Ellis, David, yours is in there as well.

00:00:00 John Daub: And I want to say thank you to Hamza from Saudi Arabia. I just received a package that you sent me. I'm so grateful for that. If you. If you want to know what's inside, I think it's dates. Hamza has been sending me dates for a while and we absolutely love them and I'm so grateful for those dates and I put them in yogurt and everything. They'll be powering me. Your dates will power me through this marathon. So thank you and. Oh, and I got a package from Ranjit as well. And I'm so grateful, Ranjit, for that as well. Like the Cadbury, he sent me UK snacks. Walker's Worcestershire sauce, potato chips, a Cadbury egg.

00:00:00 John Daub: It looks really good, but I can't eat it until after the marathon is finished because I have a very strict policy of not eating anything overly sweet unless Kanae gives it to me, which is Valentine's Day. That's kind of. Kind of the way to go. You can't not eat your wife's thing to stabilize. Worcestershire sauce is so good. They put that in. Worcestershire sauce is so famous in Japan because they. They put it in that. The. One of the okonomiyaki sauces. I think it's an okonomiyaki sauce. So that. That flavor. No. Tonkatsu sauce. Breaded pork cutlet. They put that like a Worcestershire sauce on top. It's so good.

00:00:00 John Daub: So I've got two cameras for the Tokyo Marathon. This is one of the questions that I got. Thank you to Richard. Richard is my camera sponsor who I met at the. At the hotel in January. I'm really grateful for that, actually. This is, you know, all paid for with the budget, but this little camera is going to be one of two cameras. So I've got. This is crazy, right? I've been trying to find options here. So I've got. On the inside of my shirt, I have this heart monitor band. And there's no heart monitor, but it takes the magnet and the magnet goes here and the camera attaches there. It's like rock solid on there.

00:00:00 John Daub: So this is. And I have a stabilizer on the top of it to help with the oscillation in the front. And so we're going to get some really cool time lapses with this camera. All things given. So my assistant Emmy is going to meet me in a couple of places and. And I'm going to give her this camera and she's going to give me another new one that's been charged and I'll put it back on there and then I'll start again because the battery life on this is about 40 minutes. My main camera is one that I'll be holding the whole time, which is annoying. It's like. I don't know. What is it? Like 200 grams maybe?

00:00:00 John Daub: So this case opens up a 360 camera. Now I'll need to keep like a microfiber rag with me, but for the most part, I found that it's performed pretty good. But a 360 camera gets everything. Not only is it super wide, it can also be really close in 8K. It's got an ultra battery on it. This is one of the new ones so it can record probably the whole time. I've got a 512 gigabyte SD card inside of here. This will be my main camera and if I hold it up like this, like eye level, you could actually see just like this. You could actually see my legs running. That's how wide it is.

00:00:00 John Daub: Alright. So this is the Insta360 X5. I'm actually using all Insta360 stuff which is crazy. I'm so impressed with the technology out of China. They make a pretty good camera. So this case is not ideal for everything, but it's just perfect. So I push this button and it folds back in here. Easy. I got to keep this on here because I don't want to drop it if I'm racing or if I. I'm not going to hit anybody. But you have to keep it. I just hold it like this. I do. This comes out, I push the button and it starts recording. I think it's got voice control too but I just push this button automatically starts recording in 8K which is great.

00:00:00 John Daub: It looks great when you go underneath tunnels and stuff, underneath bridges with the 360 camera. So this will be my main camera. While I've got this and recording every now and then I've got this camera on my chest which is going to be going right about here on my sternum which is the point of gravity. As long as it's attached really good, even if it jiggles a little bit. The stabilization, the in camera stabilization is going to get this really cool hyperlapse. I've been trying to test this out. I might be able to show you one of them.

00:00:00 John Daub: Okay, here. So it's kind of. It's kind of like I've been kind of playing around with this here. I'm not going to be using the neck strap. I've got another, another system but a series of hooks, a heart rate monitor strap and something else. And I just keep doing trial and error to try to find a way to work it out. It's kind of hard but that's sort of the fun, fun thing with this. You know, you just kind of try it all out. Okay, here's. I think I took a time lapse here. Okay, here we go. Is that it? I'm going to pull this up here.

00:00:00 John Daub: So this is what the 360 looks like. I went on a test run with it here. Hold on a second. Let me get the audio down. I apologize in advance for that. Might have been way too loud. So the thing is with the 360, you can reframe this any way that you want. Do you see this? So you can see my leg. It's not ideal with my hand right there. You can kind of see something in my hand, but I can crop that out. And I'm just in the software, just kind of panning around. Right. And this is along the Sumida River during a 25 kilometer, my last long run.

00:00:00 John Daub: So that's sort of what it looks like here. Oh, this is the turnaround down around Asakusa. You can see that angle is pretty cool. And the bridge. There's so many bridges along the Sumida River. It's really cool. So this will be my main camera on the course. I'll be able to see everybody cheering. I'll be able to. If something happens in front of me, I can focus on that. I can turn the camera around. I can even do picture in picture. I could show the timeline. I could show the front view and the side view and the back view, which is so cool.

00:00:00 John Daub: So there's so many different ways that you can play around with this. Personality of a brick wall. Nice to see you here. Yeah, look at that. So you can just kind of pan around and make it more. Make it feel. Yeah. All we need is the Rocky music Steve writes in so we can make this really dynamic. So this is this camera that's on my chest here. Check this out. So this wasn't stabilized enough and I'm still playing around with it. So if I can get this smooth as butter, this is going to look really cool.

00:00:00 John Daub: This is running around Toyosu, which is one of the places that I run a lot. But it's still. It was just oscillating a little bit too much on the top. And I think I found a workaround for this to keep it more stable with. The heart monitor is certainly lot stronger. Doesn't jiggle at all. But if I can get rid of that jiggling, it just looks so cool to use this time lapse in between shots when I'm talking on camera. Right. So I don't think anyone's ever done anything like this for a marathon before, but yeah, I kind of filmed it for a while. So this is. This is my solution. We're gonna see how this all goes.

00:00:00 John Daub: Things can go completely wrong. Not to worry because I've got at least three camera people helping. And if you're watching the Tokyo Marathon, I encourage you to check in. I'm going to be releasing the how to my track, my number, my bib number, which can be tracked on the Tokyo Marathon website. And you can see where I am on the course, so then you can be able to track me, which is pretty cool. Any last questions here? That was one of the questions. How am I filming the marathon? So that was my answer. It's very cool. I'll take one question if we have it really quickly.

00:00:00 John Daub: I've been trying so many different things, like ways to attach. I've got these hooks, like little stitches in the shirt, different ways to kind of stabilize the camera. So how to buy the shirt, Joy? It'll be on the. The T-shirt. This T-shirt will be eventually on the Only in Japan store website it goes through. I think it's a Shopify or one of the. One of the online payment things. I'm not sure. But store OnlyInJapan TV is where it's at. I believe we'll put it there right now. We're just kind of in the test phases, but I was just too excited not to talk about it.

00:00:00 John Daub: Curious how it compares to strapping the iPhone to your chest, as it has an optical stabilizer. The stabilizer is not quite enough for running unless you're holding it in your hand. The stabilizer peso in this is so much better. It's because you're holding it in your hand. But if you attach anything to your body, you need a harness. The iPhone is too heavy. This camera is light enough where it just sticks on with a magnet. So the iPhone is not an ideal tool to use in a marathon. And the stabilizer is really. It seems like a really good idea, but it's just. It's just not. It's too heavy. You need, like, a chest harness.

00:00:00 John Daub: This one, I just need the heart monitor and the magnet. And I need a one point, which is this up here, which helps to stabilize the pitch forward. So that'll be the way that this stays truly rock solid in a marathon. So we're gonna see how it goes. The marathon is this Sunday. It's today is Wednesday, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I got three more full days before the marathon. I had a my glutes calmed down a lot. But I had some knee problems because of the IT band was all messed up because my glutes were sore and now they've calmed down and now my knees have calmed down, which is really crazy.

00:00:00 John Daub: I had a lot of knee pain, but all the knee pain went away as soon as my butt absorbed all of the workouts from the running and the exercising from three weeks of intense training. Because I had a calf strain at the beginning of January so I couldn't do much for three weeks. Once the calf strain was okay, the muscles had been rebuilt, I went on kind of a tear and now I'm on the taper and everything's going good. Everything is really good. Everything is really good. iPhone can't compete with action cameras. No, it's. And you don't want to drop it. And I'm not even going to carry it, by the way.

00:00:00 John Daub: So this Apple Watch has 5G on it now. So I can just say call, you know, call my assistant, call Emmy. And it will call. It will call Emmy while I'm running. I could tell her I'll be there in five minutes so they can be ready for me to do the camera swap. So I give this to her. She puts it in the charger which takes 30 minutes. And then she gives me the other camera which has a battery life of 30 minutes. She gets on the subway. We've already worked out where she's going to be going. I've got another cameraman who's in another spot. So we're going to be able to get images of me from different places, which is. It's kind of exciting.

00:00:00 John Daub: Tomorrow, tomorrow I'm gonna be going to get my bib, picking it up at Big Sight which used to be the goal for the Tokyo marathon. So I'll be there tomorrow, which is amazing. If you are gonna be going to the Tokyo marathon, I might see you there. I'll be there first thing in the morning, like 10am I intend to get this out of the way real early. Trust me, you don't want to wait till the weekend to pick up the bib. It's just a lot more stressful. I got stuff to do. Then the next day I have a. I think on Saturday I'm giving us. Hold on a second. Saturday, no, on Friday I'm giving a talk to. I think it's about 100 people about conditioning and post race relaxation and hydration which is going to be exciting.

00:00:00 John Daub: And then the next day I have. I'm going to be running on the Tokyo Expressway for a special run with the Pocari Sweat family, as well as I think there's about 100 other runners that are going to be participating with this with Pocari Sweat. And I'm super excited about that. And then race day is all about survival, and we're going to have a lot of fun. I don't know how I'm going to do. I'm not trying to win the race. I'm not trying to get a time. I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm just trying to have a lot of fun. My best time is 3 hours and 12 minutes.

00:00:00 John Daub: This time, I didn't really train. I got the call that I could participate three months ago. It's not a lot of time. If you want to train for the Tokyo Marathon, the best thing to do is to build a base, which means to strengthen those glutes and the muscles around there before you start to go into heavy training. So at least for three weeks, I would have been doing muscle training, but I didn't get that time. So I've been cramming for this. So I don't think I'm going to break. I probably get around 3:30, which is my time for my first Tokyo Marathon in 2007. Crazy. Twenty years ago, I didn't train well for that. And I still got 3:30.

00:00:00 John Daub: So I figure I can get close to that. I'm 52. It's not the same as when you were 33. I ran my first marathon at 33. I can't expect to get the same time. But I shouldn't undersell myself either, because in some ways I'm in better shape. Maybe. We'll see. Finishing the race is the goal. No, that's not the goal, Joy. The goal is to have fun. I didn't train not to finish the race. Finish the race is a given. It's. I trained so I could have some fun. All right, I trained so I'm not feeling like crap the whole time, but I'm only feeling like crap at 35km till 42.

00:00:00 John Daub: I get a philosophy. You train. So my longest training run was 25 kilometers. I usually like to go to 30, but if you can do 25, you can do 35. If you can do 35, you can do 42. If you can do 42, you can do 42.195. You can do it. If you can do 25, you can get to 35. Race day is a different beast. It just carries you. Once you get to 35, you're like home free. You're in pain, but you're only going to be paying for like another 30 minutes. So you just fight it out. I'm serious. It's all it is. It's another 30 minutes. It's a Seinfeld episode or two.

00:00:00 John Daub: Yeah, it's like a Seinfeld episode. So you just keep going steady, don't look back, hydrate, stay relaxed. You know what scares me the most? If I have to pee at the starting line, that scares me the most. All right. And nothing else scares me except for one thing. If I have to go pee before I get into the corral and I. I'm going like this. I gotta go. I gotta go pee. I gotta go pee. That's the worst feeling that happened to me once in my first race. And I had to. Had to get off the course for a second to get to a toilet around 10 km. I held it in, and then it took about 45 seconds off my time.

00:00:00 John Daub: But I'm not doing this for time. Yeah, I am. I want to break 3:30, but that's. That would make me really happy. But I'm doing this more for fun and for survival. But it's about having fun. That's why you train. You train for the marathon. You train as hard as you can so you can have fun on that day. If you don't train for the marathon, you're not going to have a good day. It's gonna be a bad day. So I trained as hard as I could, and we're gonna have a good day, I think.

00:00:00 John Daub: But I hope to see you guys on the course. If you're here, what's the first thing you want to eat at that end? The last time, all I could think about was beer and pizza carbs. That's the only thing I could think about at. When I hit the 37, 38 kilometer mark, I was thinking pizza, pizza, pizza, beer, beer, beer. But now I gave up drinking and I don't really eat pizza that much. I'm probably just gonna be like, whatever, just food, onsen, Pocari Sweat. I don't know, just give me some food. Maybe some dates from my friend Hamza, you know?

00:00:00 John Daub: Yeah, the toilet is always kind of an issue, but if you time this right, it can work out pretty good. There's some hidden toilets, but you got to get to the corral, the area that you are 45 minutes in advance. And then you gotta make sure you don't gotta go pee for 45 minutes and hydrate. the same time, that's where problems happen. That's what scares me the most. Other than that, it's just a race. It's a battle, but it's just a race. It's not my whole life. It feels like it right now because it's a freaking marathon.

00:00:00 John Daub: All right, guys, so there you go. This T-shirt was about this. This episode was about this. The T-shirt, which is here, which is cool. I'm gonna test it out. If we got all systems go on this, we're gonna put this in the store and you can pick it out. I would recommend the gray, actually, but the other colors look pretty nice. But I think the gray is the way to go with this one. It's neutral. I like gray because it's. It's just neutral. Or the shiro (white), which is this color, which is the. The Torii gates. I love that shiro. It's part of the Only in Japan logo.

00:00:00 John Daub: All right, that's all I got for you guys. Stay dry. Have a good day. And tomorrow I think the weather's gonna be just a little bit better. We'll go for a walk even if it's raining and take you outside. Actually, what am I talking about? I'm gonna be indoors at the Tokyo Marathon Expo. So we'll see if we can do a live stream from there. Asics knows I'm coming to their exhibition. I got a chance to talk with them. So they know I said I'm gonna be there at, you know, very early to live stream this one. So Asics knows I'm coming.

00:00:00 John Daub: And I'll bring my camera if I. If I can't live stream. And I'll do that picture in picture thing again because that worked out pretty good. I'm looking right here. Yeah, there you go. So I did a thing with Asics the other day. I'm gonna look like that, like a madman. See, I'm holding the camera. That's my. That's my setup right there, holding the camera. I'm probably gonna wear the glasses too. It's gonna be sunny, so that's what I'm gonna look like.

00:00:00 John Daub: Alright, guys, take care. I'll see you again in another episode tomorrow from the Expo. The Tokyo Marathon Expo. We're gonna have some fun. And if you have any questions, you can leave in the comments below. If you ever want to DM me, do so on Patreon because I try to respond really quickly. Even if you're a free member on Patreon, you don't have to pay anything. But yeah, I will respond a lot faster there. If you have any questions. And I'll do my best to catch you there.

00:00:00 John Daub: Last couple of days before this postcard goes away as well. This is the Patreon postcard, by the way. The Bijin Hime strawberry variety. The next postcard probably looked like something like this running down the streets of Ginza. Maybe, if my cameraman can get a good picture. But thanks guys for the support. I'll see you. I'll see you again tomorrow. And take care. Stay warm on the west coast, digging out of the snow and mata ne.