Ask me Anything about Japan | ONLY in JAPAN

anniversary and every year expats that have been living in japan the longer you live here the more important your japaniversary is and uh in the middle of july i hit my 24th year in japan which is pretty incredible um i still can't believe it it seems like yesterday i arrived here and then when i look at all the things that i've done it seems like a really long time ago but uh in this episode i just wanted to do a question and answer this is only in japan go this is an all live streaming channel i also have an edited channel called uh only in japan uh by john dobb that's uh only youtube.com j-o-h-n-d-a-u-b if you want edited content that's where you'll find it all excuse me um i'll be going to hokkaido in about 18 hours to uh go on a motorcycle adventure a kickstarter with my friend peter and we're going to be going around hokkaido for about 10 days with this crowdfunding campaign which is totally awesome i'm pretty stoked but i'm super busy right now and i thought this would be a great time just to kind of take a step back and take some of your questions about japan um about the channel about anything uh for the next 30 minutes or so i'll try to put a chapter playlist so that you can hit each question and i'll do my very best to try to answer as many as we can a quick question from ram um what's the status of the insert tech firms in japan i have no idea john high from malaysia want to ask is japan open for tourism now akira that's a good question and i don't really have a good answer um tourism for tourists if if your only purpose is to come here for tourism the answer is actually no i would say there's package tours that you can go to but you need a visa every country needs a visa to enter japan even the united states even the netherlands countries that had really strong partnerships with japan uh that were visa-free you need a visa now and i'm guessing that this will stop probably in the fall but it's i've been wrong before and it's just really hard to predict the future um i'm i'm i believe though that japan is moving in the right direction with the steps to open up in the fall and despite right now we're in probably the worst um infection rate because this all has to do with the pandemic uh japan is not shutting down it's not doing anything to move backwards and that's a really important thing so i think that that's a huge step forward towards moving to that next step which is tourism right now if you're have a business purpose to come to japan you can get a visa if you have family in japan you can get a visa and if you're on a package tour with a concierge i guess i don't know a chaperone you can get a visa but those are a little bit expensive so i would probably hold off until october that seems like the earliest that will return let's look at another question here i heard that there isn't any foreign tour groups yet uh lee richard there's 252 tourists entered between june 10th and june 30th which is a ridiculous number uh we thought we thought it'd be a lot more but um i guess it was the foreign minister somebody in the government was quoted as saying we're just in the early stages of this so we believe that things will open up in july and already i think there were 17 000 visa applications for july i'm getting reports from people on the ground like friends who live here that they're seeing tour groups a lot of them um at meiji shrine at ascusa at you know shibuya scramble they see groups of tourists together with somebody with a flag so not so many westerners but more people from vietnam uh more people from uh asia and i think there were some westerners i but people send me stuff on instagram and on discord and i get these messages and it gives me an idea of what's happening out there so it is ramping up the tourism but it's not a very successful successful thing because the tourist agencies were extremely confused on how to get these visas how to do this it just was like thrown on them and they didn't do a very good job the first few weeks but i think that was to be expected question if you are moving to japan again as a young adult moving to japan for the first time what area of tokyo would you move to and what city outside tokyo would you move to that's tough question my favorite place to live i can answer generally tokyo is not my favorite place to live i've lived in 16 or 17 different places now in japan i've moved a lot i've been to every prefecture at least three times and i would say that my favorite place is hiroshima because of the weather because of the people is really friendly because the city is very small and compact and it's easy to get around um tokyo is quite large there's shibuya shinjuku all these places and it takes you like 45 minutes to get everywhere hiroshima everything is just so central everything you can find in that one area around the hondurai shopping street and i was very lucky to live there for about a year and a half of my time here in japan and i loved every minute of it i could walk around the entire city lives in a place called yokogawa miyajima is an island that's really close that's a great weekend trip you can get on a ferry and go to shikoku or some of the islands on the inlet sea it has this beautiful sunshine the seto uchi region of japan lemons it's just and it gets sheltered from the um typhoons so they're not so bad in hiroshima and also there's not as many earthquakes as there are in tokyo and tohoku hiroshima doesn't really get that so i kind of like this yamaguchi hiroshima tottori area i like this region very much the chugoku area of japan um but for tokyo i don't know you know i lived in a place called shinozaki and i lived in a place called futako tamagawa and right now i'm living in central tokyo in chua ward which is near nihonbashi near the river near tokyo station i think futako tamagawa if you can afford it is a great place it's got a river it's close to shibuya i think if you're a first timer this area of setagaya is pretty interesting it's got a lot of click rest cliquish restaurants but it's expensive um you know so there's trade-offs to no matter where you where you live in tokyo it's a good question will you ever go to the studio ghibli museum as far as i know it was closed because of covid i went there um once i didn't really think it was that great i think it was cool as if you're a big fan of ghibli but i i think that if you have a waiting list it's a little bit expensive i don't know i would prefer to go to the park i you know kashira park um there's a zoo there i kind of like walking around kichijoji instead of going to the ghibli museum i'm i'm a fan of the julian movies but i i didn't really think the museum was that great um did you do you see yourself these are good questions did you see yourself staying in japan for so long and starting a film no this is for lamborghini zero seven um you know i i came here year by year and i didn't know if i would stay when i came in 98 i was teaching children english um i was actually really bad at that job i was lazy um we had it's can i leave him for her job now leo's asleep i was lazy my first six months i didn't know how to teach i came in an emergency situation the teacher was fired before me and they threw me into it and i felt pretty unprepared um but i got a ribbing from my the trainer who trains the teachers and he was upset but he also understood so and i understood too because i wanted to do a better job so he brought me back um the headquarters was okayama i was living in okazaki near nagoya and i became a really good teacher from being a bad one i learned all the bad stuff first and then i became a really good one because i could understand the mistakes i was making and i stayed with that company for about seven years um so i'm not you know i'm not sure um i'm just a different person than i am now um i even forgot the question uh i didn't see myself staying um i could tell you there's a lamborghini i left with that i left every year but um i did such a good job with that company that was relevant what i said i did such a good job that i became friends with the with the ceo of the company not the ceo but the guy was in charge of this the children's division and he told me that i could come back anytime i wanted he said look john i know you're gonna backpack and i'm a backpack i was a backpacker i blew all my money just traveling i got a bonus for finishing the year and i'd saved a lot i think it was like i had like seven thousand dollars and i backpacked around the world and before i was going back to the us um i was in australia and i met a girl and fell in love and she was japanese and i came back we lived together we broke up i finished the year took the bonus and then i backpacked again and in germany i met this this small japanese girl couldn't speak any english and i helped her get around and i came back and we lived together and then we broke up and did it again so i mean after the third time i thought it was destiny and i just thought i'm just gonna stay here i hitchhiked learned about the country started learning japanese and i'm still here today so i didn't think i would i didn't think i would stay but love brought me back love is strong and when you're backpacking and you throw yourself out there um into a situation that like backpacking is kind of scary and i'm i was solo the whole time um when you don't not traveling with another friend of course you're at risk of danger but you're also at a greater advent advantage of meeting people and i have so many friends who live around the world from that experience and i'm the guy in japan so a lot of them came to visit me which is pretty cool that's my life in a nutshell here anyways how did you branch into making videos after teaching at 63. point this is nice you guys asking me about um about me instead of japan um so in 2003 when i said i was going to decide to stay i had a college friend of mine he's a genius he he's um so my mother's from india and he's indian he he lived in bangalore i think he studied like molecular genetics and something and he ended up working for national geographic making travel videos all right he bought the same camera that i he bought a camera and i went to his house in bangalore and he showed me the camera because he just finished a video on like um the most dangerous snakes in japan or something and i was just like fascinating how did you get into this job man so he said i just bought a camera i contacted national geographic and i started working with teams i was like whoa so i bought the same camera um and i came back to japan and i hitchhiked all of japan from this north to the south and tried to make my own documentary it was really hard because i didn't have the computer power to do it wrx turbo's in the house and randolph thank you i'll get to this question in a second so with that camera i started to learn how to edit in 2003 this was six three years before youtube even started so i had mini dv cassettes i was learning on um bootlegs video software that i bought in the streets of bangkok premiere pro 1.5 i think it was um an adobe photoshop i was learning all this from scratch from reading books and taking tutorials in the books and then um i started a company to make educational videos called weblish some of that content is still on itunes if you search my name used to get it was so popular if you search just john you would get john lennon john kennedy john dobb and it was really kind of cool because it was like whoa look at that you know and you can do anything if they put my name like at that same category on itunes in 2007 right that was a big deal i was like whoa so it gave me a lot of confidence to be able to do anything but i was making educational videos for japanese to learn english comedy english language videos comedy kaiwa using blue screens and it was a lot of fun um but i made zero money off of it and i lost thirty thousand dollars paying for bandwidth so in 2011 after the earthquake i changed and started to make videos teaching the world about japan kind of the same thing but just turn it around and i took my experience working at nhk with location shoot teams kind of the same way my friend did with national geographic but i spun that into a youtube series and um you know i i i was in debt i needed uh some kind of financing was working with somebody that i thought was a partner it didn't turn out that way uh i didn't like the terms i didn't like the direction and i left and had to restart over and that was a really hard process too but everything is another step in your life and each one is like a scar or a mark and each mark on your face adds character and personality and the older you get the more you appreciate people that have battle wounds and have been through the tr you know like trenches of war if you have that experience it actually works out in your favor and a good thing for you um great questions but like crime in japan the best person to ask is pbg he has a podcast and congratulations to peter uh he's finally getting attention from apple podcasts we changed the art on the channel it's a cool um picture and and peter's watching right now peter wanted he wanted to show like half his body and i said dude just show your face and show character on it and people will buy into that because your voice and your face and he we did in that then i'm so happy because it's an amazing series on crime no it's not about japan but you should check it out because he's my partner in crime and we're going to be riding in hokkaido in 18 hours i can't believe it um what you seem like subcontinent india yeah my mom's from mumbai but i was born in the u.s my dad's american i don't mind the personal questions pd-170 is a classic i still have it in my closet but i don't even know if it works how do you get involved with nhk that's a good question um so i was i showed i made that documentary on hitchhiking japan and i showed the content that i was making to teach english to you know japanese and it was quite popular in japan and my mom my mom came and visited japan in 2003 and she met a woman on the street in shibuya this is like fate and how life works she met a woman on shibuya crossing and asked her to take a picture of her and she did it was a really nice english lady named angela jeffs she was a writer for the japan times and my mother and her get on got onto talking and i think that coffee or something and angela ended up interviewing me for an article in the japan times weekender in 2004 about my story which was an interesting story at the time i didn't know what i was going to do and was thinking about going to bangalore to work um i had an offer from america online i'm glad i didn't take the job they just opened up a new center in the middle of bangalore and uh i was interviewing for jobs to train people to speak english um i i'm glad it didn't work out but it would have been an interesting ride anyways i ended up coming back to japan um so when i did angela was still here and i told her about my adventures because she wanted to hear about it and then she introduced me to adam uh who's also on tokyo i and i told adam what i wanted to do and he goes i'm you know i work on this show called tokyo high do you want to do it and i said sure so he got me one episode and i did a good job and they brought me back and then i did a good job and then they kept bringing me back and that's how it worked but it's all about getting your foot in the door and i don't know how it all works out but life for me has been like just i just jump and i fall and i somehow things just come and you catch them but the thing is if you don't do anything nothing happens and if you just go out there and you just i don't know just do something you'll find a door that opens up that takes you to where you want to go but if you don't do anything and you're trying to map it out too much life is random that's what i've found to be and you just do something and something else happens like we'll go to hokkaido and i think something cool will happen on this trip that will open up another door maybe i don't know that's been the way i've experienced life living here in japan and throughout my whole life actually it's pretty interesting philosopher no i'm just a little bit older and grayer how did you where can i find photography models for practicing photography i don't know i'm not a photographer what is your favorite shin constant probably the tohoku-shinkansen i like the colors one question writes in leo i like the name will you cover areas that you have done in the past like harajuku um i think you know if i do cover places that i did in the past it's gonna be from a new angle uh i see a lot of youtubers will go on these hit these topics straight on but i like to find another way in to do it and if i can find that and find a compelling story then i'll invest time each episode i make takes a lot of time so when you invest time to make one you really want it to be a good story so that's why i like to hit home runs instead of singles i guess you could say it's really popular to produce as much content as you can but i always thought if the content's not good it doesn't really matter like let's just make a bunch of stuff and see what sticks against the wall i like this just put my love and time into it and create something that's just really really delicious that people want to eat instead of just creating a bunch of stuff that might get people to click but not watch to the end whereas when i make an edited video the retention time to watching to the end is really high so that's why the videos do quite well people click and people watch to the end and that's sort of how youtube works and the algorithms recognize that and the channel can succeed but you do have to have topics that people want to click on it but when they do do they keep watching so i kind of kind of like to focus on that what do you expect the most from hokkaido i expect to have fun but i expect to learn about another learn about hokkaido in a new way um see things that i haven't seen before um and experience it in like on a motorcycle which i've never done in an rv which i've never done and the mode of transportation makes a big difference it makes a big difference i have no plans to come to india but i i i probably will soon just it's not the best time to be traveling anywhere um [Music] johnny can i thinking of moving out of tokyo yes we are i can say that publicly i think that we probably will but not in the immediate future but it it's working on there uh is your wife jealous of peter no she's not we're all friends my wife knows his wife and our wives probably talk to each other more than we talk to each other how many camera lenses do you have about 13 for micro four thirds which is a different system and for um sony so the different lens lenses for that um let's see here is that katayama yeah does your age concern you for when leo gets older that's a fair question not really there's nothing i can do about that so um i don't think about it i take it day by day and you know you plan for it i'm trying to save more money trying to make things work so that it will work for a while instead of you know you know you have to adjust your life when you have a child and i'm still kind of getting used to it because i'm a a different kind of person than other people i was a pretty free-spirited um you know bachelor for a very long time and when i got married that changed my life um but i could we could still travel and do stuff and now we have a son and then that requires a whole different level of focus and responsibility and it's a lot harder it's a lot harder and i'm still kind of coming to grips with how to balance it so i gotta say to all the fathers out there that are really good fathers it's really hard to balance everything out and be successful in everything you feel like i feel like i have to make compromises that i don't want to do but if it's for the good you know you have to put your family first but your work also uh is essential key to your family's success and finding a way to balance that i'm still kind of i'm still kind of working through that it's a good question i don't speak hindi i can i can speak uh what my family says to me i they give they feed me all the time so i go boosh like enough like no more food because when they go to india and you have family they keep feeding you i don't know like do they want me to be fat and unhealthy like what are these people doing you don't eat rice at 10 pm people all right you know what's with the samosas that like like midnight you know i can't figure out you know what's going on sometimes but i i wish i had learned a little bit um of hindi but you know when you grew up in the us in the 1980s it didn't seem like there was any use for it maybe that's why i didn't learn it or was taught it but um you know maybe that's something leo we could teach by taking him there and meeting his family in india would be pretty cool i didn't meet my family in india until i was 23. i didn't even know i had a family in india really because my mom when she moved to the to india in the 70s and 80s it was so expensive to fly back to india you really didn't go home a lot so you know and to take kids it was so expensive um when my mom went i remember dropping her off for i think she took a pan am flight from jfk it seemed larger than life to see like the new that new york airport when we drove i think it was just a kid but i remember she left and i guess we were with her dad for three weeks and that was really hard because i don't think he could handle us because i i think i wasn't one brother two brothers at that time but uh yeah she came back a few weeks later and uh yeah everything got back to normal but back then you know he didn't go back and and i didn't get a chance to meet the family until after i'd finished college and i was shocked how many family members i had there it's like wow it's like a whole village turned out when we came lines of people were around us it was crazy like a scene from you know indiana jones or something i don't know um but made me feel good and i i try to go there every couple of years now to say hi what do you think i'm missing some of these questions here uh what's the festival you guys picking up flame bunch i'm not sure offhand will japan help you achieve your professional goals i think it already has your professional goals are decided by what you're doing as a profession so i don't i think i could do this job anywhere but i live in japan that channel is called only in japan so i guess it would ishikoku region worth visiting robert writes in here absolutely i think um my advice to you is your first time to japan do what everybody does and add one thing that nobody does go to tokyo go to kyoto go to hiroshima you see the peace museum go to himeji castle do all that get it out of your system do one thing that nobody really does go to a countryside onsen or something just for one night plan to come back and try to go completely off the off the rails go to shikoku go to kyushu go to hokkaido go to these places that i'm showing you now and then you're gonna come back for the third time i think you're going to keep finding stuff that's going to bring you back to japan um and then you might end up being like me being here 24 years later how would you describe your idea of a perfect day how does this relate to japan um a perfect day warm sunshine spring afternoon um beach or mountain um with friends family lots of laughing barbecue i don't know i don't know i agree with your attitude just uh jump into life and take let it take you where you want but growing up with higher functioning autism learning disabilities can make such challenging it absolutely still pushing forward through regardless nicholas i think you have to um whether you have disabilities whether you have you know responsibilities life still kind of works the same and you have to find a way to to do that and the hardest thing gosh is to i'll tell you the hardest thing for me in my life has been to cut out cancer as people and there's always people who kind of pull you down sometimes there can be people that are close to you um they're people that are i guess more or less distractions right um and you have to find a way to cut them out so that you can you can focus on your goals these people it's the hardest thing that you might have to do in your life ever but i found that i've been in a lot of like poisonous relationships with people or know people that would just continuously be distractions to me and i've had to cut them out and it's been a a like when you cut off the dead limbs of a tree new new things start to sprout and grow and it's the hardest thing if you feel like you're lost in your life and i have as well you just have to cut off some things that are working for you people habits things and new things start to grow but you can't um surround yourself with cancers people that are distractions i just found that to be something i guess i have in common with a lot of the people that are doing really great things in their lives they don't have a lot of distractions do you think it's bad idea to travel around japan without much planning no i think that's great i think it's more difficult if you don't speak japanese it'd be more difficult with planning if you didn't speak japanese too but um i think it might be good to plan the first three or four days and then just the only caveat here is when you visit if you visited a high season it might be hard to find hotels but i always find found like you could probably if you're off of the reservation and i mean this like like off of the tourist route you can always find accommodations but if you're gonna try to go to kyoto during the autumn season when the leaves change it's gonna be really hard to find a hotel unless you planned so that's just something to think about when i hitchhiked i didn't plan anything i had a tent and if i couldn't find accommodations i slept in the tent if it rained it rained you can find a bath in japan anywhere there's a sento or an onsen bath so you always clean you don't have to worry about that there's a restaurant everywhere in japan convenience stores vending machines so you don't have to live your life planned out mapped out there's freedom to it if that's what you're looking for and that's what um i've always found is that michael see michael cesano's here hi john so happy to catch your live stream missed you the last two but thank goodness for the replay hey looking forward to your bike stream adventure yeah we'll be live streaming probably from the airport we're going to be too excited to to hold that in i can't believe we're like 18 hours away or something hey john do you think it's a bad idea to travel japan without much play okay answer that one um is kanai still teaching ballet she is she's um so leo started it goes to a place called in japan they have hoikuan which is like a daycare or a nursery school i guess but because of this seventh wave and and we don't want to get sick before the trip i'm going to hokkaido because we have a lot riding on it because we have backers and we have a whole project um leo is home with us so it's been really hard to do anything um but we think next week he'll have to go back because we just can't do anything can i has made some concessions and stopped teaching for some classes and i've made some concessions where she can teach and i have to stay home and i can't edit it's been really a challenging couple of weeks water do you miss the freedom of the us what do you mean by freedom i think if you ask people they um americans who live in japan might have more freedom it feels that way because we don't have the same societal we don't feel the societal rules that the japanese feel we just get the best of both worlds we can't vote and stuff like that but it does seem like i don't know it's it's pretty convenient culture to live in here in japan but the longer you stay the more you start to feel those societal rules but i think you can find a way to cope with them and try to balance everything out it's just something that's taken me a lot of time the more i get involved with my community the more socially bound i feel to japan and that's hard that's really hard um wow these are great questions hey hey ade aid welcome new traveler thank you so much japan does smell pretty clean except on trash day which is today um we took out the trash so we're all good one time in a live stream i heard the trash talk coming i had to stop and run outside i had to chase the trash truck down or else can i would kill me if i didn't take the trash out in time but today we're okay um i enjoy seeing you hanging out with pbg i like the fact that you guys know his name is pbg and that peter van gaal i can't wait to see the trip videos people call them pvg uh is is there a reason why japan isn't completely open yet just communal fear um like a lot of people have the same kind of questions gara uh but i don't think that that's that's the only reason why i think um fear there is a fear for the older people and there's a fear that any in japan after world war ii just the way that the pacifist constitution is and maybe not so much these days but japan wanted to preserve every life like every life is pretty valuable so they don't want any any loss of life if they can do it i think we're seeing like this maybe i don't know what china's zero cobit policy is but in japan it's very very similar like any loss of life is a big deal here um just like personal possessions is a lot bigger deal here than it is in the united states people won't steal your stuff if you'll leave it on a table for example nobody walk away with it same with life people really want to protect that here um and i i think they don't they see it as a risk to the older people and and um now it's more like shoganai can't be helped so what i've seen over the last couple of weeks is that things are pretty bad here but life isn't stopping anymore even the japanese here they're not getting tested think like there's a lot of things i can talk about this not all of it is is positive here um but they've people moved on now a lot of people are wearing less masks despite the fact that uh the situation is worse it's not the same as in the us but it's it's starting to get more normal just we gotta we have a really tough i think uh month ahead of us before we get back to there it's it's a tough question i did just japan has its own way to deal with stuff and people are never going to understand it because it's japan it's as simple as that japan has a japanese solution for it just like us as a u.s solution um and one thing i can tell you is this in the united states i don't think i ever once learned about japanese history we i i took american history like every other year which was kind of crazy from like third grade until high school it's like american history american history american history american history but we never really took world history and if anybody ever studied japanese history you'd learn that japan has like this very unique way of doing things that's just different in fact you would learn that almost every country has a unique way of doing things their own way and i never really understood that until i started to travel and live outside um one of the biggest culture shock was going to vietnam and went to the museum there and like wait the vietnamese don't call it the vietnam war they call it the american war that was like um that was pretty big i still called to vietnam war but it was just interesting to see to see that there was another side to it that i'd never heard of i was just never exposed to that no teacher ever been to vietnam now i guess it still travels a little bit more but back in the 80s and 90s like nobody really left to go to vietnam as a tourist back then and my teachers never explained that a lot of them were vietnam vets um teachers that i had so you know i started to learn that it's just it's just different and it's uh it's important for people to travel and learn that there's a there's a different side to everything so japan's got a different way to approach things than um the us does and it doesn't have to make sense and you can get upset about it but if you're getting upset about it japan's probably not the place to live and and start a life because it will frustrate you there's something called the six month blues and i have not met an ex met an expat that didn't go through this first six months of living here with that magic of japan kind of fades and you have this six month blues where everything is really makes you frustrated because it's not going the way that you wanted it to go right um it's not what you thought it was going to be it's a lot of bureaucracy it's a lot of stuff a lot of pain um but you work through it thanks for the super chats guys nicholas wright's in here solo traveler is safer than most countries in japan right oh yes i believe japan is a very free nation regardless of silence solo traveling in japan is fine i've traveled um i hitchhiked with limited japanese and was fine in 2003 i hitchhiked it was okay maybe it's different now i don't know uh kl writes in here what would japanese history be like if samurai class was never outlawed i don't wanna i don't know that's pretty i don't know i'm it but it is it'd be just different it it would be like um you know feudal they the meiji restoration was pretty much needed i think uh um i'm uh youssef writes in here can you still get in with a tour guide i think you can you have to find it though if you go with a japanese citizen can they register or count you as a guide i think it has to be a certified guide so you didn't have to be jnto certified japan national tourism organization has an exam so you need to pass that test so i can't just be anybody although who knows i don't know even at this stage if that's possible um but maybe it's something that you have to ask the consulate and maybe you can get away with stuff but usually it has to be a registered guide um adroit's in your hokkaido ramen versus soup ramen i wouldn't i wouldn't see it like that hokkaido ramen is what okay ramen asahikawa is um shio ramen sapporo is miso ramen like every there's lots of different kinds of ramen and hokkaido so there's no one hokkaido ramen so i would say super almond soup curry they're both good that's a tough one scott tan is is the japanese government doing anything about the low birth rate that has continued for decades i don't think so um when we had leo we had some subsidies so it was a little bit cheaper but like like the programs you can tell they're like they seem interesting but you know they're not going to work like they they give us vouchers for stuff to have for to buy for leo i think a thousand dollar voucher from the city of tokyo but it's like you know it's you have to buy it within this group of companies that they have and i don't know if we've actually used it yet i think we got a microwave or something i'm not sure um they they haven't made life easy enough to have kids because when you have kids you have to you have to get like you know you have to put them through school which is all these ridiculous costs there's juku you gotta take your kid to a second school to study what they didn't learn in school like there's so many things that make no sense so when you add up the cost of having a kid it's probably twice as much than in the united states so can you blame the japanese for not wanting to have kids and instead kind of enjoy their life a little bit more i think this is something that japan is a societal issue the cost of having kids for young people when you look at it as a parent you have one kid and you're like that's it i know so many people that have one kid and very few have have more than two and they need to change that my history teacher at tracy high school taught us a decent amount on japanese history good tracy is in central california i think um california is a has a little bit more japanese culture and history as a state anyways than in the east coast where i grew up because we're so much closer to europe um california might be close to asia so you might get a little bit different but that's really good to hear um i i studied back in the 80s so we had a different education back then ahmad writes in here is there anywhere i can i can call to get exact details on traveling to japan um i would check jnto the japan national tourism organization website um you can go on twitter and there's organizations on there that have ad marks that you can contact there's other jtb japan tourism bureau has an office in in new york i used to get my flights through them so that would be a place to call jtbusa.com i think it is those are just places to start but then they'll point you in the right direction i think his is another tourist company that has i believe has an office in new york um i to be honest i don't even know i tried searching for the tours i know how complicated it is because i can't find them um smaller tourist companies also are a little bit risky i always would have fear that they might be taking the money i don't know they're not reputable but you can try contacting them and if anything they might might point you in the right direction um the the challenge though is that you have to get a visa and it's that tour company that will take your passport to get that visa that's the key to all of it without that you can't go so you have to get trust somebody to do that process for you um sandra writes in here has american residency increased is it easier for americans to move there i think so um you know that's a good question that wasn't the right way that's a good question but you know there's lots of things have changed a little bit um for americans that move here there's more um i don't know it's just harder than it was back in 1998 i think uh for some countries under the age of 30 the work holiday visa is a really good deal i think canadians have it the dutch habit there might be a few other nationalities maybe the germans have it i'm not sure the australians probably that's a great way to come to japan and set up if if you do if you do if you do visit japan and you like it you think you want to move here everybody almost everybody comes here as an english teacher you do a year as an english teacher and when you take a job in japan let me just give you this advice if even if it's a job that you didn't really want to do you just wanted to travel here do it better than anybody else can do it and this will open up doors and set you up for a life in japan if you just do a half-assed job no one is ever going to want to help you because it's so easy to see that you're a loser i i say this because when you when you watch the way that the japanese work here they're just so competent and so good at what they do they try to be the best at it um when i filmed in wayno station the team that cleans the station they clean the toilets they clean the trains they clean the floors they take out the trash they do the recycling and they try to do it the best that they can do it they try to be do it better than anyone else can do it they try to do it so that they're proud of the of how when people see the station um it looks clean they feel proud that nobody complains that the station's dirty they even get compliments from people so i like like when you take that approach to your job it's not about the money there's there's a lot of happiness in your life if you're proud of the job that you do it doesn't even matter what you do um we have a trash man here that we've been talking to a little bit more because leo likes trucks and he waves at everybody so he's been waving at the trash man and the trash man he's not always just in front of her house we see him all around our neighborhood and leo sees the blue truck and is always waving the trash man knows leo and waves too and we can tell like he's always smiling he always he always likes a job i'm just using this as a as as an example but he's trying to do the job as efficiently as as he possibly can and he takes a lot of pride in it um and i have a lot of respect for him for doing that and those are the people that will be really successful in anything do and the japanese look at the details they see this type of stuff and that will help determine whether or not you can have a life it's it's hard to explain but in japan the sun is always the sun is always watching you someone is always watching you i i guess you don't really understand this if you're coming as a tourist but the longer you you you're here you do the right thing because someone is always watching you you feel like that anyways and someone will complain there's only people japan is a country of of anonymous complainers and uh you feel that you see you you do a good job because you know somebody's watching you too and uh and you care about it i don't know like i wear the masks not i don't want to wear a mask um you know after two weeks in the u.s it was like this is great not having to wear a mask but i wear a mask here because i know that it makes people feel uncomfortable if i don't wear a mask and i can feel that and i do it because it's not a big deal to me not because i want to but because it's just easier i know that makes a lot of sense are you guys planning to have another baby soon lily i don't know that's my wife great to see you live again been watching you since i caught you visiting um my home in oita oh wow that was a while ago yeah monkey park up there yeah we'll be back i'll be down to kyushu again probably in the fall no definitely in the fall i have a schedule to film a couple of episodes in kagoshima have you ever done a video video from nagano with the snow monkeys um yes check my main channel only in japan there's a video where i went there a few months ago i think i think it was a pretty good video too john do you think japan will be open tourists in april yes from guam yes do you ever look back and think you could have come come you could have covered an area differently no no no i think i've always taken the best approach for the time you work with what you have in the beginning when i when i did youtube videos you didn't have a lot to work with so you did the best that you could but now um i try to find a story that's compelling i i don't think i've found i don't think i've ever made a mistake with the way i covered it with an angle i try to find an original angle and and it's worked out pretty good i i don't have any regrets with anything that i've done oddly even the ones that weren't popular videos i watched them and they're very watchable even today on the old channel so i don't watch that channel anymore but um do you collaborate with filipino japanese um one of my friends was a very famous filipino japanese here i used to teach her english believe it or not about 12 years ago she was a singer um i haven't gotten in touch with her for like it's been like eight or nine years but she was a singer for quite a long time and was teaching her a little bit english she was filipino japanese absolutely beautiful so talented so friendly so nice everybody she was a dj a singer um and i think sakura kiss was one of her songs back in the day but i taught a lot of really famous people english that might shock you but she was her english was really good and she was the first filipino japanese that i'd met who was half but i guess you'd be she kind of seems more japanese than filipino but you can tell she's a little bit mixed just like i am half can you live stream from otaru probably probably we're gonna live stream a lot from hokkaido so it's not just gonna be the kickstarter documentary we'll be we'll be bringing you with us in live streams maybe once or twice a day on this channel so it's not an exclusive thing but we do hope that you back the kickstarter because that's how this project that's how we're able to do this trip because it is uh quite an undertaking um the bags that we made are pretty cool the echo bags you're going to like them we just got the design in and i guess we're going to order it before peter goes to the u.s hey ahmad's here again when traveling to japan can you literally not go anywhere without a tour guide um i don't know because i haven't talked with anybody who's been on one of these tours but my feeling is that you can't you can't just go anywhere i don't know but i i i'm looking forward to talking with people that might be able to do this maybe when we go up to hokkaido we'll see a tour group i'm not sure but it seems like you have to be with the chapel around and they're taking precautions and they're studying um these group tours to see what are the patterns of the of foreign tourists and if we do open up japan what issues will arise now i don't think that this is much about much ado about anything because they're gonna have to open the borders anyways they're just trying to find a way to do it and be prepared for it and the reality is that japan can't prepare for this you just do it but they're trying to do it safely they're trying to find ways to reduce risk and that means it takes time that's just the japanese way of doing things everything takes more time and that's the most frustrating thing that you'll learn when you move to japan and you after six months you have the six month blues because the bureaucratic process to get stuff done and the way things work is not aligned to the way you you work and it's frustrating but i'm over it because i live here you're still here um ac is on like 29 degrees so it's still it's still pretty warm in here but it's not humid so the air conditioner turns on and off we we keep it at 29 or 28 which is really hot but it it's cooler than 38 or whatever it is outside good night hail do you check out any rock band concerts no i have have not been to any concerts so the baby medal is pretty darn good i stopped going to concerts after def leppard in 1990 that's not true i went to ohio state university and i went to several of the i went to the pink floyd stadium tour the billy joel elton john stadium tour i went to everyone because it was in our stadium not because i like them or whatever it was just because there's a stadium tour i think the rolling stones came to ohio stadium as well those are the last rock concerts i went to um and then the only one in japan was in um eric clapton concert with somebody else at the budokan about 10 years ago and i saw chris peppler who's the host of tokyo eyes manager there and i thought that was one of the best concerts i've ever been to because i have only been to so few although the stadium tours are pretty cool but there are parties before them and i don't remember that much i just remember i have a ticket babymetal should play stadiums jd what is your shoe size randolph that is really creepy did you have difficulty finding bikes okay are you asking because all right um so my shoe size is 28 to 29 centimeters and it's really hard to find in japan japanese shoe sizes for men typically stop at 27.5 centimeters or like nine and a half nine or nine and a half if you're above that bring your shoes from your country to japan just bring an extra pair if you're living here trust me uh have you done any videos about music seen in japan not yet what's the weirdest thing you've ever covered on a main channel episode from disabled gamer jh you know a lot of the things that i covered that i thought were weird were not that weird when you understood them which is why i covered it but the kanamara matsuri or the the um phallus festival in in near yokohama in kawasaki that was bizarre but when i interviewed the priest and no one had ever done that before she'd done like maybe two interviews over 10 years the foreign media never interviewed her about why they do this festival they just showed the fallacies but when i interviewed her about it it made a lot of sense all right which is like amazing and that episode was maybe the weirdest one because it looked weird but it wasn't um then every naked man festival where dudes run naked outside with a thong is weird all right but it's awesome weird because they do that it's you can watch all you want but being in a group of dudes um with thongs there's like this feeling of community and you're one of them you are a strange dude running in a thong i was i've done maybe four or five of them and it's a good feeling there's like this feeling of brotherhood that you know i guess like a fraternity or something do you have at those festivals everybody's slapping everybody on the back we're all drinking we're all laughing it doesn't matter if you're a stranger you're there at the moment and i love that about japan too just like at these festivals if you put yourself out there and if you are living in japan it's kind of frustrating get involved in your community take part in the festivals learn just go and you'll find people are really friendly at these times in everyday life maybe not so much but at the festivals there's like this feeling of a really warm brotherhood i love it so i probably will do another another you know naked man festival but those are always pretty weird have you been to any japanese stand-up comedian shows um i'm dying to go to the pirates of the pirates of tokyo bay have a comedy and they're a bilingual group and they're pretty funny um i've got a lot of friends in the in that group too so i'd love to see pirates of tokyo bay but i've never seen any rakugo or any kind of japanese comedians there's a different sense you know as an american i think we had slapstick i grew up with the three stooges bugs bunny road runner you know we we had a different sense of humor than the japanese but i think i don't know i don't get into it the same way with my wife peter and i we talked about this too our our wives have much different taste in entertainment than we do it's just true it's cool but i totally different totally different kerry thanks for reminding everybody to hit the like button thank you how are the bees in the summer um you that's a that's funny that you brought that up because i'm actually editing do i have it here i'm actually editing the um your body melon video and i'm gonna have to stop this really soon because i want to finish this video before i go to hokkaido tomorrow gosh if i don't finish it's going to be really bad um bees are a very important part of the melon process or the cantaloupe process because they have to pollinate the flowers in order to make the melons so uh um i'm editing with a lot these are fine here i haven't had any issues with it um i've never been stung by a bee in japan so and i've been out there um mosquitoes can be an issue so probably you know it's the thing is if you are traveling just wear pants sometimes if you're hiking even if it's really hot because i think that there's a lot of mosquitoes and nasty bugs out there and um you know somebody asked me about if they needed a japanese encephalitis shot because it has japanese in it and the answer is i don't think so because i don't think the japanese have japanese encephalitis vaccination shots but it doesn't hurt to get it so you can get a japanese encephalitis shot if you're going off the beaten track maybe it's cool but for the most part i would say there you go i would say no because um um if you're traveling in the cities and stuff there's no problems we had deng fever once and they they tap that down in yoyogi park wiped out i haven't seen deng fever for a long time probably those festivals like the cambodian or the the thai festival that they have they probably brought something and one of the mosquitos got out i don't know um why are cantaloupes so expensive two dollars at my local safeway forty dollars in japan that's the episode that's coming but i'll tell you this um they grow the cantaloupes in the they started when it's cold outside and i found this um strawberries in the united states and i'll use strawberries as an example you grow them in the summer whereas in japan they grow them in the winter and they do it in vinyl greenhouses where they can control the temperature and the sugar content of fruit is much higher you don't need to add any like sugar or anything to it the flavor is just so much more explosive than japanese fruits i've never had a bad peach i've never had i can't think of a time i had a bad melon or cantaloupe here or a bad strawberry i actually get blueberries at the nagano store in ginza i've never had like a sour blueberry it's just like i don't know how they do it but they i think i do it's through temperature control and the strawberries in the winter are grown um in colder weather so they grow slower and the sugar content is so much more intense it's so much higher and and they also look better because they grow slower and when you the the thing is when things grow slower you can't produce as many of them so the price is going to be naturally higher but there's also another side to this if the flavor is so darn good people will pay a lot more for it because in your life there's two things i think that are the most important things to do with your money besides save it ex pay use your money for new experiences and use your money for food that basically will is a new experience i like to use my money for food really good food i don't eat like a king but every now and then i would like to spend 40 for melon because that flavor is just so much it's such a beautiful thing when you cut when you have like blueberries that taste like those nagano blueberries are they better than normal blueberries yeah i think for me it's worth spending some of my disposable income to enjoy that sometimes so food here in japan is is definitely part of the the culture so dennis thanks for pledging 5000 yen the motorcycle uh kickstarter appreciate that just got the notification quality over quantity i think you can balance it out sometimes you need quality sometimes you have to pay for a 25 burger out of curiosity to make up your own mind if it was better or not you don't have to just like my dad my father is a very he's kind of a frugal person and he doesn't like to i don't know try new things there's people out there that are like that you know i think it's worth it to try new things because then it it keeps you young and and keeps life exciting um is it a rip-off sometimes but i have never had a bad fruit i'll pay an extra dollar for our two dollars for a peach that that explodes sweetness in your mouth like they do here because it's so much pleasure you know it's hard to describe either you do it or you don't and if you're and if you're we have a limited amount of times in our life most of us won't be around at age 90 let's say i'm being generous but in that in that small amount of time that you do have you should probably try some really good food and splurge a little bit in your life make it special you don't have to do it for everything just do a little bit of homework and and make it count three hundred dollars for a sushi dinner sounds exorbitant but if you freaking do it you'll probably be thanking me all right i'd say 80 of the people will say thank you and 20 percent won't see the value in it because not everybody's the same as me just a fact um [Music] let's hear how come you never do sponsored deals on your channels i don't i don't see the value in it i don't know thank you gustavo for pledging 5000 yen for the documentary and the postcard thank you gustavo for kickstarter i i don't i know that i could probably make each one of those is like like between three to five thousand dollars for those shout outs on main channel episodes okay so if you do like uh audible or you're probably making between three to five thousand dollars so i just decided that if you're going to make an episode and it means something to you i mean yeah you should go for the money i think there's nothing wrong with that i think i have friends that are youtubers that put in sponsored deals because it makes sense you know you don't make that much money unless a video makes like i don't know like a million views or something you don't really make so much money off of a video when you comparatively think about the time you spent in it it took me two weeks and i traveled to east hokkaido to make the melody road episode on the main channel 43 000 views is about i don't know 110 dollars for two weeks of work all right it's not a lot of money so it makes sense to put in a sponsored like 30 second roll in there to make 5 000 bucks yeah but the downside of it i always think of things in the long term which could be a weak point of mine like in 10 years this company might not even be there and it's trapped in this video that i want to be relevant in 10 years or 20 years i want people to still be watching my content so i i take a long term step and say i don't really want to do that for the money i'd rather make the content because that's where i want the story to be clean and i feel like it would dirty the content maybe if there was a sponsor that that i think was a win-win maybe but i don't know i don't know i'm doing good enough what does can i think about america she loves it i met canaan america um she likes she loves the people um they're different people more talkative and friendly and open um she loves the food she loves the junk food she loves the pizza the burgers the pancakes stuff we can get here but it just seems like it's better because it's in america i don't know it's bigger um you know it's and cities like new york she loves new york because it's just it's just so exciting so much energy just being in the city so um we want to try to go on the west coast do you drive a suzuki or a toy i don't drive either you often show mcdonald's while a majority of japanese don't go there that's not true majority of japanese probably do go there but they don't tell you i'd say that there's a line out the door every lunch time maybe it's the same company same people but young people i'd say every young person goes to mcdonald's in japan i don't think that there's someone that's health conscious that says i'm not going to mcdonald's in tokyo every young person i think is has been in mcdonald's like one time a week you see these um very thin girls in mcdonald's they eat it but they don't eat a lot they'll eat they don't drink coca-cola at mcdonald's very few people do they drink tea like mugicha or uroncha or green tea and then they'll have one burger which is smaller in japan and then they have you know small french fries or something which isn't a lot of calories so i mean they're not eating big macs they're not eating super sized stuff here it's just a different thing so mcdonald's is not that unhealthy in that sense you know volume in japan but people do eat here and i don't eat i i may show mcdonald's because it's interesting the only time i ever eat mcdonald's is when i do only in japan i i'll be honest with you i don't eat it for pleasure i see because it's i'm curious okay because it's interesting for this which is why they do that why they'd have like grape flavored milkshakes and and you know rice burgers and things like this they want you to be curious about it so i um we cook um a lot so we try to eat a lot healthier we don't eat mcdonald's very often i if i mean at my age i have really have to consider trying to eat better but nothing wrong with it what are your thoughts on buying an ikea why not show me one i gotta find one that i like i i don't know shaky's pizza is great um shakey's is all right i wouldn't that's not on my top ten though there's a lot of good places tips for studying japanese what i did was i learned i got flash cards and i made katakana uh flash cards and in and in 36 hours i could read signs on the subway i could read menus at restaurants in 36 hours um i could order yeah i could i could understand menus a little bit and things started to make sense so i got excited after learning katakana i started hiragana and i started to learn a little bit of kanji and then i started to like moriagar i kind of picked up steam um there's some momentum i got excited about it so i started first with katakana because katakana is used for things like pizza pizza coffee coffee beer once you can start to read that it's pretty cool and then you get more into it so my tip would be to start with something that you know english in japanese with katakana and then once it's like you start going you start the first time i remember seeing coffee i said i was like this epiphany and that was the first time i i understood something in japanese that i had studied i'm like whoa and then all it takes is a spark and then you can start an inferno language you can't watch a 2003 hitchhiking video because i used copyright music i didn't know learning japanese now is easier i think so it's easier because there's so many more assets you can just watch youtube we didn't have that when i came here in 98 we had books um probably it's going to be about finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend for most people everyday life and then finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend because not a lot of people will speak english and you should learn a little bit of japanese to communicate if you want a boyfriend or girlfriend so that's a big motivating factor yeah will you ever have another under the fridge hamster probably we'll see probably leo get i'm afraid if we did get one now leah would just like squish it not understand but maybe in a year all right one or two more questions this is crazy i can take the wall i don't mind have you ever thought about producing a media like tick tock i thought about it i'm i'm look i'm i gotta focus on the main channel episodes and just getting that out so you know once i get that under handle maybe i'll go back to twitch twitch should be next and then maybe tick tock but probably you're going to see some youtube shorts coming soon um and they'll be coming in like once a week i think so we'll get those out what law should people know about japan i don't know if you're a good person that's never been an issue i i don't i don't think there's any laws that you probably don't know like there's social norms like don't put your chopsticks in the rice don't wear your shoes in the house don't uh you know do some things but you can do that by observing other people so if you're an observant person you'll never have a problem in any country you just can observe what people are doing around you and you just kind of fall in love falling in in in step with everybody else if you ever get lost just follow the crowd they're probably heading to the station i was walking in yokohama last week or two weeks ago i couldn't use my google map so i just said everyone's going in that direction i followed them was in the station i made it you're just observing don't eat on the subways unless you're really hungry they actually have food vending machines on the platform quite often so you know eat it eat it but be discreet don't the thing with eating on on public transportation is you probably shouldn't do it but if you do don't eat mcdonald's don't eat anything that smells don't eat anything that's hot or messy eat stuff that you know um is play i think they were selling apple sliced apples at a vending machine in tokyo station and you could eat those on the subway and it didn't offend anybody what do you eat in a day i skip breakfast um we do intermittent fasting i eat around 12. usually oatmeal with almonds thank you for the almond slices katayama um a little bit of honey no snack dinner can i make something really good sometimes we'll we'll order out a thai food or something but usually um can i just make stuff it's so good i try to make pizza and american stuff every now and then but it's like i give up because it's just so damn good if i can find some time and i probably will i probably learned to cook go back to cooking school or something because there's a lot of pleasure if you don't know how to cook there's a lot of pleasure in cooking because you can just put everything away outside the world and just focus on one thing that's what's so great about cooking you don't worry about the stuff that's happening outside of this one thing where you're slicing and dicing and cooking and oil and and you know sauteing it's it's really relaxing cooking it's not that relaxing if you suck at it when it isn't here it is if if you can you know it's you can just focus on that i'm not gonna shave my head for a while um i'm not sure about the japanese economy either i can talk about that for like an hour um we've been wanting to come to australia for a long time intermittent fasting is kind of hard but i i finish eating at seven and i wake up at uh you know at eight i can go four hours without eating i'm not that hungry in the morning anyways especially in the summer volcano eruption has been sakurajima erupts like every few years it's not that big of a deal they evacuated the town it is a big deal but it's not that big of a deal to kagoshima prefecture they're used to this this is the if you go on youtube you'll see a major eruption every two or three years they have manhole covers in in kagoshima city they don't have any patterns on it because the manhole covers need to get replaced more often than anywhere else in japan because of the soot that comes from the volcano and the them cleaning it off of the streets requires a lot of scraping so when i asked the kagoshima city officials why don't you have like really pretty manhole covers maybe with a volcano and they said it's just a waste of money because they they go through mantle covers so much more than other places um it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest in that um the the city of kagoshima is very well prepared for volcanic eruptions now if it was a major eruption that's a different thing but we'll you know i think it's because it's on the news a lot the internet is a lot more um vocal people are asking about it and and they should um but that the village there has been evacuated before when i was there they were just coming back from an evacuation they closed down a lot of businesses it wasn't the best time but that island sakurajima is pretty cool i've been there many times thanks for the trader joe's snack you're very welcome i'm glad that you got that any insights on the current russian ukraine no i'm going to stay out of that um i don't like watching it on the news but i hope ukraine the people there can find peace um and fight for it because it's not worth you know i wouldn't give up freedom is you know braveheart you fight for that it's worth everything as the new hampshirites say live free or die and then there's a lot of outlets because there's no tax i was just there the yen will probably stay pretty high for a while that's my my thought but i don't know how much longer uh japan doesn't want to do want to intervene um and raise the interest rates there's a i got some i got some ideas on why but it doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about it it just i think that japan's monetary policy will continue as a status quo and the japanese dollar will be a lot stronger than the yen for a while longer i keep it i keep my teeth white by brushing them and then getting a sun tan and then all you see are my eyes and my teeth in the summer it's true brush your teeth three times a day uh hi from new zealand hope we get to travel to japan soon i hope so too i hope so too gosh i'd love to get to new zealand again as well i haven't been there in a while all right guys thanks so much for watching uh this is a long one but i appreciate it it's kind of nice to say hey psy is here i just sent the box too box on the way um i i i'm glad that we can connect up again this is kind of celebrating my anniversary 24 years in japan and uh next year will be 25 years and i'm planning to do a very special main channel episode uh edited video on this um looking back and seeing seeing if i can find some of my old students i was teaching a girl that was she was one years old or just turned one when i came here in 1998 and i'm searching for her because now she's going to be 25 years old and i have pictures of her when i'm holding when she's one i've been in japan that freaking long that i have students that were just born and now they got like families that are the same age as mine so her kid is probably the same age as leo's kid because i heard a rumor that she had had a kid she's 25 and i had a kid and i'm like double her age that's freaky that my kid will be playing with a girl that i was carrying like this um and teaching her english 24 years ago but that is life life does not go in a pattern i had a friend who worked at google um i think he was one of the designers for chrome i don't know he was i don't know kind of a very weird guy but he told me that there was you know when i started dating kanai he told me that it was wrong because he had this equation i'm only i'm only what 12 years older it's not a big deal when you're you know as old as we are now but he had this equation he said that um you can only date girls that fit in this math equation or else it's creepy like what are you talking about see life doesn't follow any kind of a pattern it is the most random thing in the world did you ever see jurassic park it's random it's chaos all right and if you try to try to put it in a box and you try to control life nothing ever happens it's when you break out and you just fall and you just do something something happens do something good and then you know you won't get arrested but if you don't do anything nothing happens you're trying to put yourself in a box and you know date girls only in this equation like what kind of a freak show are you i don't think he lives here anymore he started bodybuilding and trying to get big to get girls or something i don't know what happened to him but um yeah that that didn't make me happy when he told me that you know i was too old so just don't tell me that dominion stink stinks because i was gonna just i was gonna see if i could watch it on the internet you can buy it on the apple tv or something um that's just life here and i guess once a year i have that the pleasure of talking about it in the look back on your anniversary thanks everybody for taking the time to watch i gotta get back to editing this video and then and then packing for the trip to hokkaido if you haven't already um we're trying to get the 500 backers so even if you give a dollar that'd be pretty cool we're going to bring as many of you with our hokkaido trip of course we're still going to be live streaming but um the support for the kickstarter is much appreciated and we're we're going to be announcing a stretch goal probably tomorrow at the airport which is cool we'll have two goals maybe three but my biggest goal is 500 backers and right now i think we have 350 so we're 150 short with two weeks to go on this kickstarter so that's plenty of time to get 150 uh more backers and i really do appreciate the support it's going to be an adventure and all these things i talked about i will prove it to you out there on the road this is life this is the way that we all should be living our life not just get on a motorcycle get on a bicycle leave your door and just walk for 24 hours and see how far you go like just do something crazy like this and you meet people on the way and new things open up to you and that's how you find your path in life because you don't know what you want until you experience it and there's a lot of things that i didn't think i would ever experience if i hadn't come to japan and if i hadn't done what i'm doing imagine if i'd taken that job in bangalore if i had never come to japan or if i had never worked at the international dormitory and made friends from spain from korea from all these other countries around the world and visited them in a backpacking trip i would there's no way it would be here there's no way i would be married to kanai there's no way i'd have a son named leo there's no way i'd be making a show called only in japan life is all about just trying something and seeing where it takes you and then on the way a door will open and you walk through it or you don't but you have to have that choice and you only get it if you do it and we're doing it on the kickstarter so back it and then get more all right guys only in columbus definitely go bugs only in bangalore with john dub alternate universe imagine if this was only in india there's a lot of content actually you know i always thought about that thank you that'd be pretty cool all right everybody have a good day have a good night i'll see you tomorrow probably at the airport with peter as we pack and i try my very best to get this melon video out i wanted to be perfect um but i'm running out of time um so take care and thank you look at my screensaver look i just feel like i gotta show you something different bye everybody

Channel: ONLY in JAPAN * GO

Views: 18,589

Keywords: Only in Japan, Japan, John Daub, Japanese, Tokyo, travel

Id: M8LYSuZy3X8

Length: 82min 56sec (4976 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022