Japan Travel Update Sept 2021 | Easier Entry Coming?

here how you doing everybody welcome to the city of tokyo this is me on my balcony once again reporting on a japan travel update it's a very rainy day the weather has turned cool autumn seems to be here that summer humidity and and uh the hot weather is gone and it's replaced with like fall it feels like october already it's weird um september first comes fall sort of hits real quickly and uh in this episode i'm going to see if i can go to our discord server we're going to be doing a um i'll be taking phone calls from the discord server so if the moderators can and can help to set up a discord chat i'll see if i can patch you in through the computer here and we'll be able to have a conversation so i'll hear from you uh the discord server link is uh discord dot gg slash only in japan um there's been some big developments just in the last 36 hours and today they're going to be making a decision on some of the travel restrictions and and easing them because it hasn't really changed much for over a year we seem to have the same very stringent policies japan could have one of the toughest ones i know hong kong still requires a 21 day quarantining but the talk of the town is that the quarantining time for those that are fully vaccinated will be moved from 14 days to 10 days which is a significant change because that's four days of your life you get back if you decide to quarantine so if you decide to travel to japan this is for people that are japanese residents and citizens and also for anybody who's coming into japan from the outside somehow you have to quarantine for 14 days this is set to change and this is good news for kanai and i because we are considering to travel to the united states this winter to go and see family which we haven't done in a very long time and in the over this uh live stream i'll take some of your questions and also get into more detail about some of the information that has been coming in today about travel uh changes and this gives a good indication what travel is going to look like in the next i don't know few months because once japan sets a course and creates rules they don't get changed right away there has it has to be a lot of debate again so it seems like september is going to set the course for the next few months so uh you might want to have your ears to the news in japan for this if you're considering traveling to japan i'll be posting as many updates as i can on twitter my uh only in japan tv is my handle name on twitter and um when i get news i will i usually post it there and on the discord servers coronavirus um update area where residents living here are also adding to it so you have a better idea what's happening here on the ground the news came in on the uh on the olympics in the paralympics so the paralympics had 323 people infected and the olympics around 500 so the total for the olympics and paralympics of infected people was were 878 since july 1st um so that was the damage done from the olympics not as bad as i thought it was going to be so i have to to say if that was one of the successes of the olympics i guess it was i don't know i because of the bubble we as residents didn't really feel it and i made an episode on on the main channel edited about my experience covering the olympics and being a resident of tokyo during it check it out if you haven't already it's a pretty interesting episode of life in tokyo during the olympic games and the things that we could see and do which wasn't much but i still had fun somehow so a lot of these effects are going to be a lot of these changes are going to go in in effect in november so it's not something that's going to happen in the next two months but japan's already thinking ahead and planning for this now for me as a resident the more pressing news is that the state of emergency is going to be extended for 19 prefectures which are already in a state of emergency from september 12th to september 30th that's kind of a big deal um but i think when i'm see what i'm seeing with the information here is that if you're fully vaccinated and if you um you know if you take a pcr test there are exceptions to interperfectual travel i don't know if if they're going to announce that tonight but i i'm going to have to travel for work anyways despite the state of emergency i just can't um run a channel where other creators are creating and stay inside of my house i need to take the precautions meaning pcr tests i'm fully vaccinated already so i need to be able to make the show so this is good news for me seeing that if you're fully vaccinated and willing to take a pcr test you can travel very important um i was just watching the news before this the screenshot currently is from the news broadcast showing the state of emergency and and reporting on it and one of the things a commentator said is that um japan needs to thank you so much for following me on twitter i'm getting some some of the notifications here japan needs to change the way that they think about the virus here it seems like all of the way people think is still left over from last year and one of the reasons why people are still i guess have have just have not changed before this delta strain is because they they haven't been told much about it here i know we've heard a lot about lots about in the united states and other areas and we know about it here but we haven't really been given information about how it's different so the vast majority of the population doesn't quite understand or grasp the gravity of of this new strain that that is now the predominant one in japan so i think over the next now that the olympics are over over the next couple of months we're going to be seeing um japan really again once again late but push this information that you can get infected with with close contact much more quickly than you could before and this is dangerous and i think that this came in in the decision to extend the state of emergency to september september 30th now they've given some information the government today released some information that gives criteria of when the state of emergency will end and let's see if i have it here yeah so they don't want people to return to their normal lives and they said that um uh the state of emergency should only be lifted if hospitals beds occupancy rates fall below 50 percent and patients with severe moderate symptoms so this is the criteria for them lifting the state of emergency should be lifted only when hospital occupancy rates fall below 50 and patients with severe to moderate symptoms are on a downward trend new daily infections should be on a steady decline for two weeks and tokyo has been in a state of emergency since july 12th so obviously it's not wasn't working the same way but it's it's much worse if there's no state of emergency um so we got to look at those those metrics that that data and i put a link in the description of this video where you can check out in english this just the statistics for the city of tokyo the city is doing a great job of making this accessible in english and to make it easier to understand where the situation is with this pandemic and i think that's a great thing um tony p is in the house thanks for continuing to keep us updated on the situation out there john we all appreciate it thank you tony it's nice nice to see you here and irvin is here as well cheering me on thank you so much yeah you know um we're gonna see over the next few weeks the pattern evolved for any kind of travel for this fall and i know a lot of you had had changed your trip or your travel plans many times from spring to summer to fall and summer probably you just skipped the fall because the olympics were a no-go zone anyways uh and it looks like if you have a trip planned for november there is some hope um but i think the airlines are gonna have the most up-to-date information so you're gonna want to keep in touch with them and if you can't get information from the consulate or embassy go to the airlines and go to go to tour tour groups like his jtb ask them for information on travel to japan jtb has offices that's japan travel bureau has offices in new york chicago los angeles i think they have them in sydney and london and all over the world contact their website they have a phone number you can get in touch with them and they sell package tours so it's in their interest to make sure that you have the most up-to-date information to decide if you want to take a package tour to japan right so call them if you can't get information from the consulates and embassies to get up-to-date information as well they're probably going to get that through internal information and that's good good to have jnto is another organization the japan national tourism organization's website also has some really good resources a link is in the description here as well um school restarted on september 1st here in japan i can see kids in uniforms all over the place now in the city it's a good sign because things have calmed down everyone is wearing a mask at school and there's still social distancing but vaccinations are not possible for kids 80 of the population over the age of 70 has been vaccinated so there's herd immunity amongst the elderly here and japan is an elderly cited country it's a um the average age of japan is i believe 46 years old where in india it's like 26 years old so you can see um india versus japan and i think the united states is in it's it's maybe the late 30s right so japan is 46 as an average age so japan's population is much heavier on that side so that said of the population is vaccinated but it's the people under the age of 30 that is the least vaccinated especially school-aged kids so we're seeing a lot of infections here in japan among younger people and i think it's the same like is in the united states and elsewhere i don't think until japan's vaccination rate gets to like 70 or 80 percent international travel here will continue but i think that's why they're planning for november in a lot of the news that i'm getting here for that to to continue now what is the state of emergency here in japan i'm gonna i'm gonna try to cover a lot of a lot of this information to you and take your questions here here's the current situation right now you can see from the beginning of the year uh january 1st there was a wave that went up and down and that was quite concerning i remember that then in may it started to increase and then it went down and then the government saw in um right before the olympics an uptick here and they called the state of emergency before the olympics started and the reason why was because delta had arrived and there was a massive surge as you can see that blue patch there really high that peaked at around the time that the olympics ended and it started to go down as the olympics was ending and through the paralympics the numbers were going down and it's getting down to where it was the worst part of the beginning of this year and you can see the daily cases in japan this is tokyo so that's that's almost 6 000 a day at its at its max in the city of tokyo and in the country of japan there was 25 000 at that time so tokyo was certainly the leader in urban areas of the infections and it's starting to come down so this is a very promising thing to see this so i want you to understand this current situation in in japan so just you see that the the fourth wave is what they're calling it is starting to go down so that's really good news um if the numbers can get down and the populations can get vaccinated we're going to see more easing of visa procedures and countries um being able to return to japan i started off talking about the restrictions um which newspaper article do i have here um nikkei asia is reporting that japan let me see if i can get this up here i'm i like doing an analog here japan is to cut the quarantine uh to 10 days for vaccinated travelers that comes from nikkei asia um and this is a really good thing it it reduces the isolation period for those that receive vaccinations accepted for use in japan this is information that you need to know so if you've had the j and j vaccine it looks like you you probably should get a booster shot if you're thinking about international travel anyways uh because japan doesn't recognize uh johnson and johnson they recognize these three shots only moderna pfizer and astrazeneca these three vaccines according to nikkei asia so if you want reduced isolation period you're going to need to have had one of these three vaccines so yeah that's going to be really tough for indian people in india who did not receive any of these three shots they have a domestic version and and people in china have had a domestic version as well as in russia where sputnik was the version there so it doesn't look like if you if you've been taking vaccines from other makers not recognized in japan that you'll be able to take advantage of this this is just an idea of where japan is going um currently japan is refusing new entry by foreigners in principle due to the pandemic for the time being the easing of quarantine measures would likely be applied to only japanese citizens and foreign residents who already had visas for staying in japan i'm saying this um because if this is going to be unveiled to people like me who are residents and my wife who's a citizen it's going to eventually be rolled out to all travelers so this is the direction that japan is heading the change will be included in a set of measures due out on thursday which is today that are designed to ease ease the restrictions as japan's inoculation campaign makes headway japan ran out of supply it's just putting it in you know frankly they ran out of supply they didn't have enough pfizer and they didn't have enough moderna and the moderna that they had there were some tainted veils vials of it that led to some deaths here there was one as recently as i think last week somebody died from tainted madrid vaccines so they had to get rid of that as well so the vaccinations are quite slow going right now but they're apparently coming in with new supply this month to push ahead with the vaccination it's hard to get to herd immunity at the moment especially outside of the city of tokyo and urban areas they haven't had a lot of supply moderna was being issued at mass vaccination sites run by the japan self-defense force and at corporations which were vaccinating mass amounts of employees and pfizer was given out more at private clinics and hospitals and smaller municipalities around japan so the majority of people were receiving the pfizer my wife and i also received two shots of the pfizer um last our second shot was last month so we're fully vaccinated but um that rollout has gone been quite slow because there's not enough supply for everybody and we according to the data that we have by the end of october beginning of november we'll will have reached herd immunity so the vaccination campaign now that the olympics are over it can can go ahead as planned um which is good news and once that happens i believe they're going to open up the country more to new travelers but japan is always going to lean to the side of of safety and less risk okay when i go to america right now if i were to go to the united states i would not need to quarantine at all apparently you can just go and meet your family and um i probably can i and i probably would stay in a hotel for a couple of days and take a pcr test before we went to go meet her family i think just to be extra safe but um yeah apparently you don't need to quarantine so it's interesting that fully vaccinated people coming to japan need to quarantine um but then again they're gonna always air and this is gonna frustrate a lot of people they're always going to err on the side of reducing risk and and and complete and utter safety even if it's detrimental to like the economy and to families it's about um being extremely safe and i i don't think that there's a lot of leadership um in this i could tell you a couple of stories here one of them is i was uh um asked to to travel to another prefecture which does not have a state of emergency this was about a month ago and i was supposed to go there sometime in october but because of the state of emergency they don't have a plan b which makes me think that there's a lack of leadership in government everywhere right now on what to do with certain situations they haven't thought things through and it is quite concerning and i think that what's happening today within the government whether they're they're deciding these tough issues is going to lead the way for the smaller municipalities and and it's led to a lot of chaos for me as somebody who works in the travel industry traveling a lot because it's part of my job i get mixed signals and the mixed signals have caused a lot of chaos and misunderstanding and i'll explain some of that uh in a second here i'm logging in now to discord see if i can get see if i can get some of you on the on the phone here which is pretty cool yeah um also in the news in japan new zealand was really lauded and australia too for keeping numbers down but having life fairly stable within even though there are lockdowns fairly stable within communities so japan i think is is looking at new zealand and australia as models but i'm not sure like i think that the the everything is already here so i'm not sure how useful that's going to be going forward we're going to find out uh let's see here all right so thanks so much for ufo ufo bob and peso and others have um let's see i guess i have to make myself a speaker here so i don't have push to talk enacted everybody i apologize for that but i see ufo bob and peso are here moderating how you doing ufo bob hey john good to see you we'll hear you yeah so we're still live here so if you if you're listening and you do come up as a speaker please turn off the youtube sound and only listen to the the uh discord sound once again um the voices that you hear coming from discord which is uh a platform that we have where we can talk with the whole community we have about 13 14 000 people in there um currently um yeah so let me for those who want to talk there's a little icon on your screen with like a hand waving pressed at and you'll be invited into the king to speak with john and ask awesome let me see if i can raise the speaker up a little bit to make it see i can i can raise the speaker up there by putting it on a cooler i'm very analog here it's part of the experience okay speakers are raised um yeah so before we start this q a um and we have about 60 60 people and increasing quite quickly now in the audience um against if you want to join us it's um uh discord d-i-s-c-o-r-d dot g-g slash only in japan and uh that's an invitation you can come on in join us for fireside chat here as we talk about it nhk world is reporting and i want to get get through some of this before i go into it um the 19 prefectures that are still under the state of emergency is in the thumbnail of this video and you can see on the kyoto news article attached to the description of this you can link in there and you can see that information more specifically but tokyo and the neighbors are still listed as in the state of emergency currently which means that people are urged to avoid crowded areas and restaurants are told to stop serving alcohol and close by 8 pm so restaurants close early in tokyo alcohol is limited to when i did drink alcohol it was .5 alcohol and new beer called beery released by asahi is allowed to be served so it's got so you need to drink 10 of those to equal one beer it's actually quite good they make regular beer and then they extract the alcohol to 5.5 percent which means that the flavor stays pretty good and there's enough alcohol in it to give it a little bit of a sting which is a beer taste you have to drink beer to know but um that's that's keeps people from shouting and being louder and less let's be honest probably tokyo could use a little break from from drinking too much for those that go binging after work every day so the panel of experts this is from nhk a panel of experts advising the government on on the response said wednesday the state emergency would only be lifted if the bed occupancy rate falls below 50 and patients with severe to moderate symptoms are on the downtrend so until the state of emergency is listed and lifted in japan i i can't see foreign travel to japan returning in september or october but it seems like november there is a possibility and we'll know more about that later today with that in mind let's turn to the discord server we have john who's here john do you have a question i thought i heard you mentioned a second ago about them possibly lifting the no travel ban to tokyo wait not lifting it due to the state of emergency would that include entry through the airports such as haneda and narita i i don't think like so john i don't think one i don't think tokyo is going to have a lift of uh uh have the state of emer sorry have entry lifted uh as just the city it's going to be the entire country or no place at all i think gotcha um what was your other what was the other part of the question well if they uh you just uh i think you answered it uh my questions about lifting it at all the travel ban is still in place and i don't think they're gonna come up with a decision um maybe maybe they do today i'm not sure i think they're discussing it right now but if if a travel restriction is lifted we will probably hear in september about when that will be i think they're still looking at the bed occupancy rate is still quite high right now in the cities of tokyo and osaka and it seems like there's a lot of people that are still quite seriously ill that caught it during the olympics they're still in on respirators and in beds but the numbers are going down which is very promising so they might not announce the end of a travel ban today but i it does look like they're thinking about it and that's a really positive sign and um i think i said earlier if you're if you're following me on twitter i'm going to be posting quite often about updates as they come in especially in the next couple of weeks yeah thank you uh for answering it you're welcome all right we have and john didn't seem too happy about that chad how you doing i are you are you still in the trunk yeah yeah i'm kind of like that um that cat with the uh with the radioactive vial i'm halfway in and halfway out oh okay that's sort of good so one step further from from travel restrictions lifting um during the olympics people were nervous about foreign travelers coming and being encoded with just the hand what's your gut feel about that same sort of sentiment happening once power signals are lifted so are you talking about the state of emergency or travel restrictions here well um i mean i'm looking at post trouble restrictions being lifted so once the state emergency is lifted and and there's some sort of travel again back into japan um do you think that people generally in japan will be welcoming of tourists or travelers or do you think there may be a little bit of hesitancy there and people may not be so happy to have people coming over potentially bringing in different strains of code right that's a great question so china's asking if you didn't hear clearly will will japanese be welcoming of tourists when the restrictions have ended and um i i think there's two japans here we have to think about one is the tourism industry you will be welcome with open arms if you came back today all right i i've already been out even in the worst of of the pandemic when i was in what where ordinary people weren't allowed to travel but i was invited and could travel i went to kanazawa at the height of the first state of emergency um i was welcomed everywhere that was not an issue people in the travel industry are hurting really badly and when they see non-japanese faces in places where it's mostly japanese they get really happy i i don't think that's going to be an issue at all i think you're going to be very much welcome especially if you're trying your best to comply to the rules and i i have a very strong feeling that japan's rules are going to be a lot more stringent um than in the united states like in the us we have the um a political issue which about wearing masks or not wearing masks i think japan is going to be a mask country it's a mask country even when it's you know not a mask country because of a pandemic we wear masks in the winter just to reduce infection rates of influenza in crowded areas so we're quite used to wearing it so a lot of places require masks and i was talking with concierges from japan and i'm going to be giving a speech to an association and next week of concierges around the country about uh some of the issues that are happening with travelers and one of them is is if you're fully vaccinated a lot of people don't feel they need to wear masks in japan there are rules and you have to follow the rules even if you don't agree with them and indoors at certain private places like at hotels you have to wear a mask in designated areas or else they get things get dicey a little bit it's weird um so i i i do think if you're following the rules and you're here you're going to be so welcome when you come to japan within the tourism industry now everyday citizens that's another issue um i have not i'm a foreign resident of japan a lot of people don't know me when i walk around they some of them could think i'm a tourist or something i don't know i have not had any problems with with me myself going out there and traveling when i was um invited to to leave the city of tokyo and go out to small towns i was i did not have a problem with with people being welcoming or having dirty looks or things like this for the most part a lot of the towns that don't have that are not impacted by kovid they have zero cases in those towns right now just everybody is i went to kochi prefecture in the middle of the mountains a small town with a very small population nobody had masks on it's like they didn't even know there was a pandemic so they and they still haven't had an infection rate i inquired about this because i was thinking about going to kochi to interview again some of the residents there they still haven't had a case in that town so um i don't see i i think if you do come to visit japan you're going to be welcomed especially in the tourism industry but there might be cases where people feel uncomfortable as long as you're wearing a mask and you are uh complying to the rules around you which are in english by the way should be fine i i don't i don't see an issue i appreciate that question so i guess if i stayed in my trunk with a mask on it should be okay i think so especially with as long as you have the mask on you might have to i don't know how you're going to get here in the trunk but i guess you could send the trunk i'm not sure i haven't really inquired what kind of trunk i got a lot of questions for you chad a lot of questions thanks for the question we'll ask more later absolutely belgrade's in the house how you doing belgrade i'm doing well how about you i'm doing all right it's raining can't do what i want to do today but this is going to be okay i'm going to see the owl bro i know that feeling um so i hope you don't want me asking two uh one just quick thoughts on prime minister i forgot his name i'm so sorry about that just thoughts on prime minister yeah for um him not running again after only a year yeah japan was before prime minister abe took over japan had a string of failures as prime minister after koizumi left koizumi was in office for five six years quite a long time and he left and yeah it was like one in and one out um through the through the um tohoku the great great tohoku earthquake and tsunami one in and one out so we had political instability until abhisan came back at the second time and brought it for quite a long time that was a great thing now we have prime minister suga who's out after a year and we have um leading candidates um noda and ishida look i think i i think prime minister suga had a a really a good agenda he had a lot of things that he wanted to change um he was very proactive in reaching out uh to groups to try to get ideas on how about tourism about the direct the economic direction of japan um and honest for goodness i thought i think he's an a really great guy and he would have been a great leader if not for the things that that he was dealt uh to him um with the olympics that he couldn't change and the pandemic um and the olympics was a um like a loaded gun at his head he hit there's no way to get out of that yeah i don't think i don't think any any if we haven't seen the contract that they had with the ioc but i think looking at all the people that would gain and lose and the economic impact by not holding it and holding it i think they probably made the right call although i was against it and i still am that they held it um as a resident here i think they probably made the right call to get it out of the way um okay the elections are the elections are set for go ahead sorry oh no it's it's the elections are set for the 29th of september i believe and and he'll be stepping down so there'll be a new leader on the um on the time the day of the the end of the state of emergency so maybe this is also a political issue where the day after there's a new leader so the 29th i think will be prime minister stuka's last day the 30th will be the end of the state of emergency so the new prime minister will be coming into good news no matter what right go ahead i'm sorry huh oh no i i was uh hoping that would be the case because that actually leads me into my next question which is um i'm actually um the school i'm going to right now is uh has a study abroad program uh to tokyo uh during the spring quarter which is march to june uh i don't know if that was still going because of the pandemic i don't know what the vision's gonna look like uh freaking eight months from now so i was just wondering you know um if you think it'll still you know be if it'll be back by then like it'll be safe to go regardless if you won't have to quarantine or uh like provide all the papers and stuff like that or you might have to so that's that's the next question yeah with regards to this um i know that there's a twitter group that i follow with with people that are stranded outside of japan that can't get in especially students um who had visas um i guess overturned is the right word they had all the all the paperwork done and just couldn't get in i i it's hard to say i think that uh student visas and entry would have returned if not for delta and right now because of the infection increase japan is reactive to that and now that it's starting to come down and even prime minister ex-prime minister aso put his foot in his mouth once again uh i i by the way i really like prime minister asso i think he's he's a really interesting and fun guy but he said that it was like a george bush mission accomplished type of thing with uh the pandemic and said that japan has like overcome it i can't remember the exact quote i think that that's sort of the wrong thinking but they see the numbers coming down i do feel that in september we're going to have a much clearer vision of it of going forward maybe after this meeting on thursday but they're thinking about the future i don't see it all opening up until november if that and then probably looks like 2022 is going to be after the winter it's hard to feel this out too will the winter have another surge because it's colder and people are it's more transmissible in the drier air is is this gonna happen we don't know yet either so there's a lot of hesitancy to start travel up in the winter from the people that i talk to um in the travel industry they're looking at like march or april 2022 for a hard opening but there might be a soft opening meaning um like if you are a student or you are you do have a reason to be coming into japan other than tourism to work then i i would think that you're going to be on the front line the front of the list of being able to enter in the soft opening because you have an employer you have a you have a visa this is my just this is my just my opinion and my feeling on the direction that things are going by watching the news like every day here um they want you to come here but they're scared and this is just the leadership is going by rules set by somebody else that don't make a lot of sense and the meeting today and the reason why i'm quite excited about what they're doing right now is that um they're making hard decisions today and i think that they're going to have a path forward for this i i think i'm not i can't say for sure but i certainly hope that you don't have to wait another year because a lot of people have been waiting a year or even more to get this to how long have you been waiting for um well i haven't yet applied but it's just a quarter uh in advance so you have to i have to submit all the paperwork and everything that's required uh to be uh taken into consideration uh so sometime probably before new year's wow i have to get off the papers then um although i probably that's i'm probably wrong it probably needs to be a little earlier than that so yeah um i i think probably mid october november i i think i need i actually think i need to get all the papers and from what i read from what i remember i think it was december or something but i think it's actually october okay yeah i i have you been in touch with the embassy and consulate and in your area i've been looking at the website and um right now nothing's changed really um although based on what you're saying it sounds optimistic perhaps so i i'm always optimistic but yeah but i i'm probably just going to keep looking up every couple days and seeing if anything's changed um i just know that um for the for the visas uh i probably do need um do need to look a little bit more into that um do you have your certificate of eligibility i i do not yet um again i'm still uh waiting um looking at the embassy right uh i last time i looked at it yesterday nothing's changed it's still rather the same it's because delta variant they're not really letting anyone in so um right now i'm still waiting on like things to change and then i can start maybe thinking more about what i want to do with that so i think getting that coe certificate the certificate of eligibility is critical um and that is that has gotten through your employer or or the the school or the association that is bringing you into japan that i don't know i i know that immigrations is open i don't know if they're still issuing it or not but checking in with your employer or your school and seeing if they can get that certificate of eligibility is going is the most important step because if you have that i know that people are still coming into japan to be residents again like citizens and residents can come to japan and if you're a resident in waiting that puts you sort of on the the the front end before the tourists in my opinion so but you need to have that the the coe certified the uh uh certificate of eligibility which you get in immigrations here and is sent to you or to the to the embassy um in place yeah i'm calling to school tomorrow to see what i need to do about that specifically but i think i can i think i can um as long as i understand the papers and everything or as the instructions i think i can probably get that submitted uh soon yeah if you can get the coe then you have a much stronger and with all the other documents you have a very strong case to be at the front of the line and the day that they do open it you have everything ready to get that application in and and get that the eligibility to enter that's but the coe certificate yeah i i would make sure your employer is on that and keep in touch with them for that thanks so much um for talking about that i know a lot of you also watching have that on your minds amicio how can i help you today hi how are you can you hear me okay uh yeah i think so can you can you hear michio i'm talking to the viewers out there thanks so much okay i want to speak up a little bit on your mic you're a bit low okay go ahead michio okay um i guess well it keeps dropping the push to talk here but uh my question is in regards to we want to move to japan me and my wife for at least a couple years uh not saying long term more than that necessarily but possibly however my wife wants to get well she's studying to go into coding medical coding um and she wants to study specifically biomedical informatics which is like just medical coding it's super specific but not a lot of people do it and in short i've been reading on reddit and i know that's not exactly the best place to look for it but i can't find much information but apparently in japan they don't treat women in the i.t field with much respect at all i don't know if this is necessarily true but just to give you a brief example summon was saying to the effect of the make women workers work an average two to four hours more than male workers and they to continually talk down to them and stuff is that true and have you heard anything about that i've heard i've heard that this is true in every country though i've heard of situations of discrimination and racism in every country japan is a little bit on the slower end of um equality with in terms of it it really does depend on where you work how you work i know a lot of friends that work i get a lot of friends that work at google they love it there maybe it's because the foreign run um company i don't know but they i've not heard of any problems um for female engineers working at google for example um i have friends at rock10 that seem to be quite happy but i had i also know some people at big corporations like nec like really old traditional companies and yeah a lot of them just understand their role is that they have to make tea for all the men in the office i still kind of shake like like turn my head like this like what like why can't they go do that themselves but a lot of the women that do it they kind of like doing it because they feel that it's just part of of their job and there's a some of them that don't but it certainly doesn't make equality when one group is serving another group right so i i can't i can't say i can't say to this definitively because it really just depends on the place that you're going to and i really don't want to comment on any company because within the company there are different divisions where are headed by a leader who sets up that culture so it really depends on who is the manager and who is the head of that of that area that will determine the culture within the company i do know it's changing but i know it's not changing fast enough so i can't say definitively what kind of experiences you're going to have but i do know that that happens in in japan and happens in a lot of other countries maybe japan a little bit more oh yeah thank you the information i was saying is try to look for a foreign company to hire and everything so yeah it makes a lot of sense but uh major companies i would expect to treat people a lot better so yeah definitely i i agree with you with that as well um i know that foreign companies are much for for people that are looking for a more equal stage to for careers foreign companies are way more popular here in japan than japanese japanese companies but japanese companies understand that they need to have the best talent too and so i think the culture is changing as a result of the need for more talent and that requires making sure that you give women a very the same opportunity as men and and treating them same ways they can step up too because without having that you're gonna i've already seen japan's tech industries and a lot of industries lose out to other people because of lack of competition it's not a man's world anymore and and japan is waking up to it just a little bit slower but they are waking up to it so that's again like it's promising but a lot of it is generational we started with the rewa era just three years ago and i've already seen massive changes to japan as a result of the emperor stepping down and a new era i i supposed to be quote science but the it's very significant that we we call it the raiwa era it's an era of of modern like a modern era now where we put the past behind and that thinking has to die and we have a new thinking and i think we do have new thinking and it's just a case of the leaders that are from the heisei period to step down and let younger people come in and we're going to see that happen but it's going to take some time japan is it doesn't move very quickly it's sort of well you'll bang your head on the wall and hurt yourself a lot if you if you get frustrated with this the pace of speed here they still had fax machines people were faxing in comments to nhk for um for support for the athletes on the tv station said please fax us in your your support and they give a fax number and i was like shaking my head like what i think you even put this on twitter it's like i i i've never seen like in 2021 fax numbers being promoted only in japan for sure so we're in the right direction but we're way way way we're still quite distant from being where we should be um with that uh hey i see angus here and merlin nine uh nine million nine merlin i have a question nine merlin engines hello can you hear me you okay yeah all right uh great uh i was wondering what is the current like um public perception of tourists uh returning in tokyo right now like how do like the citizens of tokyo feel about uh tourist returning like do they want tourists to return or are they like against it or actually so i'll i'll reiterate what i what i said um a little bit earlier i think was the first question there's two type if we look at two types of people in japan there's the tourism industry which is quite large and been increasing they can't not they can't wait for you to come back they're so excited sega world wants you to come back all the businesses that have been going out of business want you to come back especially in the city of tokyo and then there's the average everyday citizen that is quite worried with what more tourism is going to bring in um they also have a lot of distrust with with the government and the handling of the pandemic and i'm speaking i might be just speaking as my as myself here as a resident of japan and tokyo like i'm kind of kind of confused about the messaging from the government and worried that if they do start tourism they're they're grossly unprepared for it but i think that perception is going to change after the meeting today and we're going to see more news especially tomorrow and next week about that and i got my eyes on the news here and again please please follow me on twitter if you if you can because i'll be posting as soon as i see the information there um as well as on discord tourism industry yes um the average everyday person they're not quite sure but as a foreigner living here i have not had any troubles whatsoever because people might mistake me as being a tourist just because i have a non-japanese face haven't had any problems at all i think if if if you're following the rules and you're wearing masks and you're vaccinated i think that this is going to be you're going to be treated like everybody else if you're if you're trying you're talking really loudly and you're being disruptive and you remove your mask and you're making people feel uncomfortable around you um not following procedures and being um like for lack of a better world a d-bag you're gonna things are gonna get really bad and you know that if we let in masterism there's gonna be some of those people that ruin it for everybody the few bad apples ruin it for the for everybody so japan can't pick who japan can't pick who comes into the country but my feeling is that if the rules are not clear from the government to those coming to visit japan before they buy the ticket then they're going to run into some problems and there's going to be more hooligans or d-bags or whatever you want to call them that come here and ruin it for everybody else and japan will react to what the people want which is look it's not working out let's ban tourists again so i hope that that doesn't happen but uh it's hard it's hard to not see that happening too it's a tough one um but tourism industry yeah yes 100 yes i'm talking to too many people that that thought that tourism should have returned already we should have had um people here for the olympics which probably would have been a bad idea but some people were for that too so yeah i don't i don't have too much to say about that but the you know right now the mind you can yeah yeah go go ahead and go ahead i'll i'll answer this hello can you hear me yes i can wow great man i have a big difference i've been watching you on tv and something and i'm i'm talking to you right so um here's my question john um i'm planning to say japan like when the borders open and this time i'm planning to visit it a bit longer like maybe four weeks um but here's the problem i'm doing some freelance job and you know i can just leave my job and i have to bring it over every time when i travel and problem is i'm planning to stay in japan like longer than usual so usually i i just spend like a week or two but uh this time i'm planning on four weeks and then um you know i went to reddit put on some research some people said you need a working visa or something like that because you're bringing your work even though it's freelance but some people say it's really okay not to you know not to do or submit any um working visa because i'm still a tourist it's kind of a gray area there so yeah i'm just confused i don't know what to do but you know i really want to travel a bit longer and but i cannot leave my job at the same time yeah so what's your personal update on this john we call them work vacations okay workations right there's a word that japanese had so people in japan are already doing this too we had a go go-to travel campaign which is weird at the height of the pandemic but they were the government was encouraging people to go on vacation to work and um i i don't i i don't think you need to get a work visa if you plan to be to be doing your work here because you can say that you're balancing your vacation with your work meaning probably you're doing more vacationing than working so that the way that i see it is that if you're doing like 51 vacationing and 49 work then the vacation wins so you're a tourist but i think the reason why they want work visas and and such is because they they don't want people coming here and competing with with japanese um people for the same jobs right they don't want and they also want you to pay taxes here but if you're not if you're working for a job abroad on a laptop computer here i'm going to lean and lean on this and say that japan has already defined a workation like a work vacation to the citizens here so i think that's pretty much what it is and a vacation is in it it's a vacation man so you're you're buying your own hotel room you're paying for the food you're contributing to the economy so i i don't see why you would need to get a work visa that seems a little bit extreme if you're coming here to on a work patient meaning you pick japan to do work on a computer you should be okay with that um yeah no issues at all just as a personal analogy um i do have friends in the game deaf industry who have spent like two weeks in japan so they are working but for entirely remote they just happen to be in japan together and work by day and then explore the city by night so that sort of thing yeah that would that would qualify as tourism and once again it it also depends on your company i know uh somebody who is a supporter here who had the a visa and documentation from their company but they were also on a work vacation so you know it just depends on what your company is comfortable doing if your company wants to give you a visa to work in japan they have an office here that's okay too if you're going to be working with a japan based office then maybe you want to have that the paperwork done because you're you're literally connected to japan in that way but if you're working remotely i don't think you need a work visa because you're not competing with jobs here in japan and to answer your question right now there is a trend with people that are coming to japan and somehow tourists are still making it here i'm not really sure how and why but in general globally people are taking one month vacations rather than two weeks the reason why is because they factor quarantining in to it i know the u.s doesn't have that but a lot of countries do i think hong kong is still 21 days i believe i think grace grace told me it was 21 days japan has 14 days currently so people are incorporating 14 days in your hotel room as as part of your trip so if that's the case people will stay for 28 days so it's it's it seems to be quite normal um now for longer vacations and i i know when i leave i'm probably going to take a one month vacation too because i've just been stuck in this bubble for way too long to just be satisfied with two weeks hey john how are you good uh the previous person maxwell at with prior to you so just make sure max are you there john davies try sending a trunk through airmail i don't okay well let's go yeah ahead uh john how are you i'm from montreal canada i still remember that video you made when you ate a poutine from a food truck i've been seeing it and i was like yeah it's kind of an insult to every canadian here like but anyways yeah my point is that we're talking about tourism we're talking about japan and even myself like i've been i've well i changed my my my plans like five or six times even today i had to call air canada just to change my uh my my plane ticket from november to maybe may i change it for may 2022 but we've been talking about tourism and everything but we don't even have information um concerning the people who wants to go to study i don't think tourism will start before uh people who has to go to study in japan i mean you know i've been talking to david de rossi i don't know if you know him david rossi uh he was talking with with with politicians with japanese politicians but the problem is we don't have a plan about or we only have crumbs you know yeah at the beginning of the year they've been talking about vaccination they want to make like 1 million vaccines every day everything like you know crazy crazy stuff but when it's about tourism recovering or about uh well people who want to study in japan it's there is no information at all you know only crumbs only yeah uh we will have a plan maybe at the end of the year maybe we'll have a plan at the end of the year maybe it's to be between december and march 2022 you know right it's it's it's not nothing is certain when it's about tourism or studying no i don't know like i don't have like they seem like they kind of a clear plan i don't know there is no clear plan because there's there's not really much leadership on this um we have a pandemic czar konosan who has a very strong case to be the next prime minister um he lays out the plans but look japan is a country that is led by consensus right there's no one one leader that makes these decisions it's led by consensus we can't get a consensus on anything which leads to chaos that's the disadvantage to leading by consensus meaning if everybody is not on board then they can't go ahead with this or if a majority are not on board they can't go ahead with this there's nobody stepping up there's nobody who wants to put their neck on the line for fighting for this bringing in students um to japan you know students don't vote students don't you know it's not really high on their on their pecking order which is um for for things to do which is a huge shame and that's why you're only getting crumbs honestly there are people that are putting pressure on politicians but even the politicians will say one thing and they really don't want to put their neck out for this it's there's no reward for it right what was the political gain out of doing that so i um they just see the risk they don't see their reward so the risk of not allowing students to come back is not great enough for them at the moment and i i don't know if we're going to see i just know that they japan is a country that does its very best to be very fair with this i i i seem like they don't want to discriminate in the g7 the only country in the g7 not accepting students canada started being students in october 2020 2020 yeah italy and france around july 2020 and united states and uk they never closed their borders to students you cannot compare that might be a way to add pressure to japan but japan will never compare itself to any of those other six countries they're going to do what they want to do and the more that the media and everybody pressures them the more they'll actually close down because arguing is it doesn't help um in the japanese way they and they don't compare themselves to the other countries there's some people who do but that's a non-starter for them they don't care about what the other g7 people are doing they care about what the people in japan feel um is the right thing to do um because the elections are suitable yeah and also because of the olympics they didn't they you know they they did what they had to because of a contract i believe and they just wanted to get it out of the way so they could get back to the issues that the people wanted to do it was just a huge thing that's an anomaly but for the most part my experience here living in japan is that they try to make it very fair and i don't see tourism um returning before students i do think that if you have do you have all your paperwork no i i will come as a tourist another oh it's just talking about the students because it seems like it's more logical like you can't accept tourists before students it's impossible it would be that would be a huge that would make a lot of people upset including me um exactly absolutely i'm a tourist but i think about other people you know i'm just thinking like logically yeah i tourism industry because of the lack of it a lot of there's a huge lobby to get the tourists back but my thinking is that if you're going to be a student if you're going to be a worker here and you and you have your coe a certificate of eligibility that means you're a resident in waiting and that means you should have the same rights as citizens and residents and you should be able to come to japan but it's going to be up to you to make that point and if you can't get your coe then complaining to the embassy and complaining to um online into politicians isn't going to help it all starts with having that coe and your employer getting that for you so if your employer your school can't get you the proper um certification i don't you can't even start to make the issue that you're on the same level as a resident but i think resident in waiting is a is the designation for that and you should get the if you have a visa to come here to work you should be afforded the same rights as a resident or a citizen should be because you're going to be contributing to the economy in the same way and that's different than tourism so i agree with you um we need to we need to you know i think people need to think about it that way gary chan writes in here t green tea time worst vending machine video you've made thank you i've made some bad vending machine episodes apparently i i i even saw the news about like there's um there is a dj reunion happening or something like that in in in japan and it's starting to become like a scandal because they're accepting djs before accepting like students and and you know like politicians are starting to talk about it and they even asked some politician about it and politicians were like okay we don't want to answer this question um you know even two days ago i think they asked um the politicians why are they accepting djs for an event in osaka and the politician was like uh i don't know like seem like they're not i don't know like they're not i'm not gonna say they're not serious about all that but they they don't have like i said a clear plan about what's happening well that's that's obvious right there is no clear plan and that's what i think today's meeting is uh about to set a clear plan um for the olympics with this this big mess that was in the middle of everything it just really made planning for the future impossible from like april of this year onwards um and now that it's all finished they can finally the leaders just put their heads together and come up with a clear and and a clear plan that we all can can understand because even as a resident here i don't know what a state of emergency even means right apparently like i'm fully vaccinated there shouldn't be a reason why i can't travel if i'm invited so with a pcr test and following you know normal precautions so i'm gonna have to do that anyways and i do hope that people don't get upset but i'm gonna have to continue only in japan i can't wait for a state of emergency to end if i'm fully vaccinated and can get pcr tested and um and taking precautions and invited to go there i i don't see how i can not not continue my job when everybody else is but it's not fair and and um i had a comment from somebody from india who said that she couldn't come to stay with with her husband who's already here in nagoya and then they'd allowed an athlete to get a visa to to come in um and be with with uh her husband but she didn't understand why she couldn't do that with her with her husband and i said like i don't understand either and i don't know what else i can do about it but i don't think there's a country in the world that doesn't make exceptions force for vips and certain people and when it's discovered they're exposed japan is no different i can't think of a country that doesn't do that or has special exemptions or in the us a private airport that is allowing citizens to come in through this these little portholes somewhere i don't know even just look at the u.s tax um tax plan where there's so many loopholes to get to get what you want so i can't think of a country that's completely fair with this japan is absolutely no exception and it is not fair a lot of the things but i'm just really hopeful that after today's meeting and after september we will have a clearer vision and i'll be back in october most likely saying we have no clear vision it could be but i'm you know i'm going to be really hopeful on this i appreciate the question very much um kaiserin next we have kaiserina i have a couple questions to ask sure go ahead um the first one if tourism does come back right are the tourists stuck in one zone or can we cross to other prefectures oh if you can if you can come to japan after you're finished with your quarantine you'll be able to travel anywhere that you want to go but you're going to have to um um go through quarantine process and um i want to i want to actually i i'm actually apologetic that i didn't say this earlier it took me an over an hour before i could talk about this but um vaccination passports are going to be very serious thing here meaning you you're going to need this to come to japan we i believe it looks like they're going to ask for because japan wants to know what vaccine you took because it's apparently it's they're not going to recognize that the johnson and johnson vaccine so you're going to have to i think the u.s is going to have to make a vaccination passport and japan be comfortable with that before they allow tourism to return and i know american tourists are having problems going to europe right now um there's a lot of countries that are saying no to american tourists because they don't have uh vaccination passports it's hard for them to track if they're safe or not and to know if they should do quarantining for a certain amount of time japan is going to continuously lower the quarantining um from 14 days to 10 days uh but it's going to happen for tourists but you're going to have to have a way to prove that so you're going to need a vaccination passport so i i i believe strongly that that's going to be the case um but you're not going to have any problems traveling in a prefecture if you're in japan you're in japan after you've finished with the quarantining you should be able to travel freely from one place to another oh that's good because i had like my first shot a month ago and i'm getting my other shot end of this week okay great okay good and then the last question is in tokyo which areas need tourism the most in tokyo wow tokyo i don't think there's any particular area that needs tourism a lot of them are not the places that don't have tourists they're not set up for tourism residential areas i don't think really care if tourists come or not right now it looks like all the areas need tourism right now because there are no tourists i can't think of a i i i again i'll be talking with the concierge association um this coming uh sorry next week there's over a hundred concierges from from hotels all over japan and i'm gonna be talking with them about this and all of them are want you back it doesn't matter where you are um it doesn't matter which part of tokyo you go to you're going to be welcome everywhere i think tourism is going to quickly return to places like akihabara shibuya shinjuku harajuku like the heart of the city so if you want to probably the the places that are secondary would be outside of the yamanote line like um um um what is it yo which is what the sumo wrestling is there's a lot of hotels and tourism infrastructure was built up at yokoku but that might be a place where you might want to book it's a little bit cheaper there um stamachi up in the north taitoku um places north of akihabara ueno probably would be secondary so you might want to consider booking there if you're thinking about it but tokyo will be fine my feeling is more like places in the countryside like fukushima tohoku aomori yamagata iwate akita these places miyagi these places really do need more tourists shikoku needs tourism coach prefecture is quite far away from tokyo and to get any tourists there is is a lot harder because they don't have they're not on the shinkansen network but coach prefecture is stacked and i i really love that place and we'll be making more trips down there um including renting a car from kante airport and driving to kochi um which is going to be a lot of fun sometime in october or november so that that's my feeling on it but for tokyo right now everywhere everywhere i get i got time for maybe one one or two more questions uh i've been going at this for 70 minutes now and i gotta uh make sure that i do have a question if you don't mind oh sure go ahead jerry hi uh so i am coming in a little bit different uh aspect here i am actually a journalist and i am working for sony pictures and i already got my coe and the reason why i wanted to ask you this question is because you had said someone that has a ceo he has a better chance of coming in so um i'm just kind of waiting as well i'm going to stand by like everyone else but i just wanted to get your intake on that when the borders open is the chance of going to japan with the coe pretty pretty uh straightforward is it still a little bit more challenging um i i think it's pretty straightforward the procedures that they use for the olympics uh in the last edited video that i uploaded to to the main channel um amanda who is a journalist for nbc um kind of described what she had to go through the process she had to go through in order to enter into japan and a lot of people that have returned to japan have also said what the process was to go through which included um staying in a um having a pcr test and going through i think there was up to up to 12 different steps that they had to do upon arrival um including not being able to uh not having not being able to take public transportation to get to your hotel if you have a coe certificate um i cannot you know i'm not i'm not in immigration so i can't definitively say you know if if it makes it easy or not but it seems to to me the case for you to come into japan is extremely strong because you are a resident in waiting with you with you coming to work in here you are resident in waiting and i think you should you should um phrase it like that if you do talk with the embassy or the consulate or or people in power a lot of it has to do with the company on the japan side but if you have your coe i i honestly don't see how they can they can continuously um keep you out of the country after this meeting on thursday when they start to plan ahead how can they keep people who are registered and waiting to become residents of japan out of the country i don't it doesn't make a lot of sense to me so right because i um i already applied as uh you know i was trying to call the consulate from los angeles because i'm from l.a and every time i call them they keep saying that hey you know even if you sign something now we'll decline it because right now japan's closed which makes it makes completely sense but what i don't understand is that my work in japan because you know obviously i work for sony picture c in culver city and they're talking to so many pictures in japan and they're saying you know there's probably another way of getting you out here uh immigration that said you know that they have to testify and say how deeply i made it in japan but even then i spoke to them again and they said yeah even then we still can't let you in so and it just doesn't make sense because a lot of artists are coming in right now for the big festival but anyway that's a whole different story right it doesn't make a lot of sense to me i just know that this is the only thing that you could do is to to make sure that you are in the best position when something opens up and then you take complete advantage of it because without a lack of strong leadership on this it seems like one day a group of people can get through and then another day you know nobody can get through even though there's a lot of people who have so many things in their favor for this to happen i i can't understand it how can a baseball player's wife be able to come here and a doctor's wife not be able to come here and to me it doesn't make any sense whatsoever when i heard that story but i i i think that the best approach would be um to have your documentation and just be ready for that one that as soon as they do announce it and it just seems like right now they have officially started which is really sad today to start to talk about the procedures that japan moves forward with all of these things just hit the wire today so um if it's going to be happening it's going to happen pretty soon um right well thank you so much john i really appreciate that and i'm just going to stand by um yeah and if if you do follow on twitter as soon as i hear information on this i will release it on twitter and then on the discord server and then add it into another update i i just getting a lot of news right now that the vaccine passports are going to be very critical and even here domestically we're going to be using that a lot for travel within within japan or in restaurants and stuff a lot of countries have to show that you've been it seems like it's very easy to counterfeit too but you can you have to show your that you've been fully vaccinated that seems to be something that they're considering in the meetings today um which is very interesting yeah here's the article from the japan times you can check this out that came out on um on the 9th i wrote japan time so that's my typo here japan prioritized domestic trials of pfizer oh this is a different one sorry i get a bunch of information here but they are looks like they're going to be prioritizing people with the vaccine passports and i can get it pretty easily by going to the prefectural the ward office or your prefectural office they're free if you have two vaccinations a piece of paper saying which maker you received your which maker of the vaccine you received when you received it and it's officially stamped by the japanese government to give you to give that information to officials to allow you to have less quarantined time or entry into certain places it seems japan is going that route and it seems that kono who is the tsar is on board with as well but the article about this um prioritized domestic trials of pfizers is quite interesting and shows it gives you more insight on why japan started so late with the vaccination um pretty good article by japan times uh i guess that's about it do you have anybody else we have we have one question that i'm going to share with you that's in the fireside text from the urea celix and he says do japanese want travel bans to be lifted so they can travel overseas and such for work or leisure and that would be the last question um like once again i when you say do the japanese want the travel bans lifted the tourism industry is is yes and you know everyday people are probably no because they don't understand um and they don't receive any benefits from tourism like most people don't really most people are happy to welcome tourists when times are really good but there's so much uncertainty and right now the leaders are not giving a direction for the country with this they're doing that right now so it's very hard to gauge what the average person feels like but the average person that is not vaccinated wants to get the vaccine there's not a lot of supply the average person sees that we're in a state of emergency and that means that the situation is critical but they don't quite understand why the average person sees that alcohol is banned from restaurants but they they don't quite understand why so there's a lot of questions and nobody's really explained to to them um no politician explains it in a really easy to understand way governor koike of tokyo is famous for making things in bite-size information that people can absorb quite quickly and easily but um japanese give like power points and they get up in front of a white board with a stick and they show you these points and it doesn't really get absorbed by people there's so many points that there's contradiction in them um jesse elle um 11 28 86 says here hi from australia i'm looking i'm looking it's looking like i'll be able to travel to japan before i'll be able to travel to my own country in my own country thanks for the videos australia has some of the most the strictest lockdowns um but they're also it's also a country with that has done really well at containing it and and keeping people safe i don't know you know what's better but it looks like you might be able to travel to japan before i don't know but i'll tell you this australian airline is earmarking japan to open up as an international travel destination by december 2021. australia has done an incredible job of keeping the numbers down and they're going to reap the benefits of that by being probably the first one of the first countries to be allowed to come in with restricted travel to japan restricted i said because you still have to go through the quarantining process but that's kind of i'm really great and i don't know who's going to want to leave because then it might be hard to get back to australia but i i don't know um how it's all going to work at the moment i just know that they're deciding this right now and that's that's pretty exciting stuff here australia is a police state rights and patio 87. um i've heard that too and i've heard some on the other side where people are are are kind of glad about it too that they're like like they feel that's a good thing because it's keeping them safe because they can't get the vaccine that they want they want the visor but they can only get an astrazeneca um and they want to keep it like this until they can get their shots so it's confusing to me too police state is fine right sin i think you'd not really write that in there who wrote that king granville celix also uh gave a little side question how many ducks are left and do we need a refill what how many decks of what i'm i'm guessing you meant your rubber ducks oh no please don't get me a refill it's already freaking out my son leo who has he sees too many of them and he's already psychologically damaged as a result of the gifted ducks please keep your ducks to yourself i don't know where to put them all right they're in the basement now okay leo does not like the ducks and i believe there's an emoji of rage in our discord server soon to be here by the way from members um yeah that's all the news that i have i really do appreciate you uh calling in on the discord server once again it's discord.gigi only in japan and we do live chats and and things like this quite often including game night with vivian uh the chomp who is our our game coordinator uh we've got some good stuff happening on twitch where we'll be trying to integrate some games into that going forward if you have any questions you can leave them in the comments below um hit that like button we're a little bit short on that if you want me to give you another travel update i'm thinking of doing that um maybe in a few weeks if there's some major changes in in september but at least once a month so when october rolls around i'll probably be ready to give a more definitive um direction and i think after the the politicians and the leaders have had a chance to meet and discuss this with the professionals i'm hoping that we do have a clear direction but from what i'm hearing from all of you a lot of you are have really good reasons to want to come into japan have really legitimate um reasons as students and as uh um you know people who have jobs here and can't get in and i i really hope that that's going to be addressed and i think a lot of you have reached out to politicians and i've seen other groups do this and i think that that pressure goes into meetings like this where those politicians bring bring up this but for the most part though for for many of the politicians there's no advantage to it um because you don't vote it's true i don't vote either so they don't care about my what what i think too much you're welcome frank um again leave me a comment below and i'll be back tomorrow with another live stream new episode coming on the main channel pretty soon here black belt simon writes in here thank you for the contents and the response dms on the instagram you're welcome um do you know would be overseas outbound and inbound arrangements for returning fully vaccinated japanese citizens i i'll be able to tell you about that next month because we got to book a ticket to go back home and we're going to we have to do that pretty soon but currently um it seems like the 14 day quarantine period is still here so if we leave to go to the u.s there's no quarantining because we're fully vaccinated when we return to japan we have to undergo a 14-day quarantine so we can seriously thinking about it leo is only six months old so we're not sure whether or not we want to even travel with him because he can't get vaccinated so it depends on the precautions and the security that we can take for him because we don't want him to get sick because he's too young and we're worried about if he can fight that off that's another reason though also before i leave i don't really have any excuses why i haven't been able to to travel and make make content and only in japan go live streams outside of tokyo and and get access to restaurants but a lot of it is me because i just don't want to get i don't want to infect my family and even though we're fully vaccinated our son is not and we we think about that every day when we go outside to the supermarket too um just because there are a lot of breakthrough infections at the moment so please be careful and and keep that in mind and i'll be back with more content as soon as possible there was one more thing i wanted to show you before you go the new postcard is in this is the postcard from osaka i'm i'm gonna send these out i'm gonna try to send these out from osaka so they'll have an osaka postmark on the back um but if you want to get it sent from osaka please join the postcard club on patreon um before before saturday because that i'll be going to i'm i got a trip planned to go to osaka on sunday or monday um to do a live stream which i'm invited to do so do that and then i'll se i'll send it from osaka which is pretty cool it's a cool one this is dotonbori right before the pandemic i took this with kevin reilly we filmed something in um december so it's it's kind of a yeah it was cold it's a december picture so it's kind of a neat one it's look at the sunshine up there nice postcard oh and the stamps are you want to see the stamps stamps are pretty good this time here are the stamps that are going on there these are the um i guess there are like um wood block prints of oid on which are geisha and uh it's it's a pretty cool set so you'll be getting one of these on the postcard as well it's pretty it's a cool of it very key day i always try to get the best stamps for you guys uh thanks again i'll see you in the next live stream uh tomorrow

Channel: ONLY in JAPAN * GO

Views: 23,614

Keywords: Only in Japan, Japan, John Daub, Japanese, Tokyo, Japan Travel, travel update, 2022, visa, travel ban, lifted, Narita, Haneda, open, When will Japan

Id: ytKOllzxeOY

Length: 85min 25sec (5125 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021