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OPE Season 3 Episode 56 Off Season Off Topic: Jpnguides
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Aloha and welcome to another episode of Off Season Off Topic! This week we are joined by JPNguides.com found Mike Zislis! We discuss all things Japan! We find out about Mike's love of Japan and all the great places to visit when traveling to Japan!
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Transcript
Intro
Introductions and Guest Overview
00:00:20
Speaker
yeah Hey, it worked. Here we go. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome to another episode of the Ohana Packers edition podcast. We are hope I am Iowa Joe.
00:00:32
Speaker
That is Kwan-o-san. And this week we are continuing our off season off topic with Japan guides.com founder, Michael Zislas, Michael, Mike, as we were kind of talking earlier.
00:00:48
Speaker
Mike, it's good to have you on. Thank you for joining us over here on OAP. I'm excited to be here. i'm I've told you before, i'm I'm a big Broncos guy, but I'll do anything for an NFC team. I wouldn't do anything for any AFC team podcast. That would just be ah ah no-go. But I'm excited to talk to you guys about Japan and answer all your questions and umll hopefully entertain everybody during this too long offseason.
Exploring Mount Fuji – Cleanliness, Culture, and Comedy
00:01:14
Speaker
It is indeed a slow burn, but Mike, we want to thank you for this. yeah you know it would have we normally wouldn't have Bronco fans on here because, you know, I'm still salty about Super Bowl XXXII. Eight-year-old Mike has never recovered.
00:01:36
Speaker
But yes, we continue in our off-season topic episodes. And hopefully you guys have been enjoying it so far.
00:01:47
Speaker
This week we're going to talk Japan. Why I brought Kawano back on with me because that's our resident Japanese expert. But Mike, the first question is, what does Mount Fuji smell like?
00:02:02
Speaker
I mean, to if if you want to get into it, Mount Fuji just smells like like air. You know, I'd say that the biggest thing when you go to Japan is everything is so clean there. It's so nice. And especially when you go to a place like Mount Fuji, you know, like you're breathing in and like, you know, it kind of breathes in deeper. And my one thing I always tell people is if you're from a dry climate, Japan is extremely humid. So when you take that breath in, it's going to be you know hydrating kind of breath you know it's the time i'm glad that i'm not there that that gives me a little bit more of an answer because the reason i asked the question is because a couple years ago i was looking for a deodorant and i just was going down the deodorant aisle and one of the smells was or since was mount fuji so obviously i contact the one guy that i know
00:02:59
Speaker
that has a little bit of experience with japan because i think what and was it last year mike because it was while you were or just before or after you got back from japan and i sent him the question i said what the hell does mount fuji smell like because i don't know if i want to get this scent or not and he goes i don't know so as it didn't go better it It's funny.
Climate and Culture – The Japanese Experience
00:03:26
Speaker
I kind of want to say too, whenever like i think about Mount Fuji, I don't know why, but the first thing I think about is there's this story about how these guys like hiked up to the top of Mount Fuji, and then they proceeded to pay about $250 US dollars to have a Domino's pizza brought all the way up the hill. the guy The delivery guy got to the base of the mountain, got up, and walked all the way up for like $250. And now want to say like,
00:03:52
Speaker
and so now i want to say like I don't know. like Maybe Mount Fuji just smells like pizza. but yeah i did Depending on the day. it Depends on if those guys are there. My brother-in-law did hike it, and there wasn' he was not there when the Domino's guys were there, so he cannot attest to that.
00:04:14
Speaker
I read something recently. there Right now, it's it's really cold. Like in the winter season, you're not allowed to climb it It's like you can climb it at your own risk, and there's a guy that had to get airlifted off the mountain. He was like a tourist from somewhere, and he actually went back because he lost his cell phone.
00:04:31
Speaker
And he had to get airlifted out a second time. So do it in the summer. Do it when they you know they recommend it. Don't go in the wintertime. Funny thing is, is I know people around me that would actually probably end up being this that that person. so But that's interesting that you say the climate is more of a humid climate because I'm used to that.
00:04:53
Speaker
you know Iowa is nothing but humidity and all that when it comes to the summer times. You know, as we don't get into the 110, 120 degrees temperatures too often.
Michael's Journey – From Sushi to Cultural Insights
00:05:07
Speaker
We only hit like 90s, maybe into the hundreds once in a great while, but it's always that humidity factor that kills us here. So I guess I would be kind of at home there in Japan when it came to summertime, even though I hate the heat, but, you know.
00:05:20
Speaker
So, Mike, what really got you into, you know, the Japan culture and wanting to be this guy that knows about Japan?
00:05:32
Speaker
You know, it just kind of happened organically. But it all started back when like in high school, I was really getting interested in like going to sushi restaurants. And I'm lucky I have an uncle that's like kind of like a second dad. He doesn't have kids or anything. And he loves sushi. And all the time he would be like taking me out. And as I got like, you know, i would i wouldn't like waste money or time like not eating. I would try everything.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so we would kind of like go up the level, go up the level, go up the level. And then like right around the end of my high schooling, he was like, hey, I'm going to go to Japan. If you plan this trip for me, I'll take you and you can eat at these restaurants with me.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I did it and I went to Japan for the first time. And after that, I was just kind of hooked. Like, I love American culture. I think there's a lot that's beautiful about America, but going somewhere and seeing just this homogenous culture where there's a lot of like kind of common respect going on.
00:06:34
Speaker
People are very cleanly. People are very kind. I grew up on the West Coast. It kind of reminded me of like a little bit of like down south kind of hospitality mixed with like being in somewhere like New York.
00:06:47
Speaker
And I'll just never forget the first time I got into town looking at the street and being like, I feel like I'm at like a movie set. This is all so clean. It's pretty insane. And the more i enjoyed the trip, the more I told myself, I want to go back.
00:07:04
Speaker
And I ended up traveling to Japan about 10 or 13 times in the past 10 years. And then I lived there for three. And over that time, just all my friends, every time someone's going to Japan, i get a message like, oh, hey, my friend Joe's going to Japan. Can you send him a little?
00:07:24
Speaker
you know, itinerary of what to do. And I was like, man, I feel like I'd be pretty foolish not to try to monetize this. And it's given me a reason to enjoy Japan more and to get more interested and, you know, learn the language and do all that kind of stuff.
00:07:39
Speaker
It's made it so it's become not like a hobby, but, you know, something that I can really ah ah contribute to, you know? That's cool. You know, I got a friend, the Green Bay guy, Ben, who did the same thing. He was always getting asked, you know, where do I need to go to eat in Green Bay? And what do I need to you know, where do I need to go?
00:07:58
Speaker
And so he did the same thing a few years back where he started the site. and Now he's, you know, he's the go-to for people in, you know, his website, greenbayguy.com and all that. And So, you know, that's really great to that's that's awesome to hear that that's what got you into it. Now you can kind of tour guide a little bit for people.
Tradition Meets Modernity in Japan
00:08:19
Speaker
What do you think is the biggest misconception about going to Japan as a an American? I'd say the biggest misconception for me, like when I'm talking to people and I'm getting them, you know, ready to travel, is you imagine Japan as like this neo-futuristic, you know what i mean right out of Blade Runner kind of thing.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I tell people it's a real mix of new and old. Like... They have to-the-minute trains and they have like vending machines that serve hot tea, but at the same time, they love faxes.
00:08:57
Speaker
And like you if sometimes your hotel might ask you for a fax or something like that, and you're like, I haven't used a fax machine in years. And along with that, like You know, it's a bit old in the sense that, you know, it's a very extensive railway network.
00:09:14
Speaker
I don't think they're trying to keep up making it like ADA accessible and having elevators and stuff like that. So a big thing I really tell people when they travel is really try to pack light, like make this your biggest mission of the trip is to pack light.
00:09:31
Speaker
and there's tons of coin laundry all the hotels offer laundry services and you know take a little bag that you can get souvenirs at the end but man every time i fly into tokyo i'll see some uh some tourists and they're all pushing around like four bags of pop and i'm like you guys are not going to have you're not going to have a fun trip or you're going to spend a lot of money you know, having bags delivered to and fro or hiring a taxi every time you leave.
00:10:02
Speaker
So, like said, it's very futuristic, but also, you know, bring your walking shoes because we're going to walking.
00:10:10
Speaker
That's a lot of the novelty. You can throw in it anytime you want, Kiwano. Yeah. i mean No, i was just going to say, i do agree with everything Mike's pointed out regarding packing accommodations at hotels. There's a lot of laundry available. And honestly, what we did when we went last year is at the end of the trip, we went to one of the Don Quixotes. So it's this...
00:10:32
Speaker
it's this it's like their version of a mire for like the the that's the like yeah best way i can dumb it down it's like their target mire i can easily say we have them here in hawaii but i don't i don't think even california has a donkey ote so but you can go there especially if you're in tokyo you can go to any one of them and you can buy these like massive call it a duffel bag because I don't know what else to call it, but it folds up to like maybe eight by eight or something like that, but when you unfold the thing, it's like
00:11:08
Speaker
the you can fit the size You can fit the equivalent of like two full-size suitcases worth of clothes in it. So basically, that's what we did. All the the the the trinkets, omiyage, snacks that we brought home, we threw those in our good suitcases and all of our dirty laundry. We're like, throw it in the Don Quixote bag and it'll just get tagged and taken home that way. so uh definitely agree mike yeah it's kind of what mike was alluding to there's a lot of walking a lot of train service the one and like you point like mike pointed out one of the ada initiatives that the bigger see so tokyo osaka kyoto are all invested in is if you walk around these cities you'll see yellow paths like yellow trails on the on the ground and
00:11:55
Speaker
So I didn't know about JPN when we went last year, but luckily brother-in-law has been in Japan. He's been living there from 2013. twenty thirteen So he's been there over a decade now. So he was our de facto tour guide.
Beyond Tokyo – Discovering Japan's Hidden Gems
00:12:06
Speaker
And he was explaining how that yellow path, that's the ADA path, not ADA, but it's the it's for the blind because it's a different paving method that they use on that path so that they know you're on the sidewalk, you're on the sidewalk, and then it has like different bumps for when you approach an intersection and things like that. So as Mike noted, they're trying to move forward with the times. They're trying to retrofit old stations with elevators and stuff. but It's a lot like walking around certain parts of Chicago and stuff like that where you're expected to, if you want to catch the train, you've got to get up to elevation to get on the L kind of thing. It's it's really similar to that. so
00:12:44
Speaker
But I know mike we'll go into it further with Mike, but there's a lot of good sightseeing, a lot of good food, and it's it's really easy to get around these cities once you understand how the train routes and bus routes work in the cities.
00:12:59
Speaker
So let's go ahead and just jump into that. I mean, obviously, most people are going to know Tokyo. You know, that's the main spot for Japan. But what is the you know, what is the go to that not a lot of people would know coming from a different country and visiting Japan for the first time?
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, so ill I'll kind of go in and this is like, it's become like as I've started my company, like this has become a big main point because right now everybody's going to Japan. Nobody got to go during the pandemic.
00:13:32
Speaker
So there's all these people punching their ticket and it's made, there's a really convenient bullet train line that will take you from Tokyo all the way like through Fuji and this town called Hakone, which is like a onsen hot spring town and then you can take it all the way to kyoto and then to osaka and it people call it the golden route i'm guilty of taking it many times but it's this really easy trip where you can kind of visit the top three or four cities in japan
00:14:03
Speaker
and right now japan is being so over-touristed and everybody's just doing that route so like i like right now when i'm playing trips for people i'm like this is your time to like try to get outside of that bubble there's so many different towns in japan there's amazing food everywhere you go and it might you know like i want people to go to japan and want to go again so like this might be a first trip and you might not i might tell you not to go see those things that everybody's trying to see but on your next trip you know you can try to the like cities that i always recommend to people my first is like sapporo up in hokkaido so it's like the island up to the north i call it like
00:14:50
Speaker
a mix between Seattle and going to Alaska. the summertime, it's really like mild weather. It's a lot more dry. In the winter, it gets very cold, but it is like seafood lover's paradise.
00:15:05
Speaker
It's a lot cheaper than Tokyo. It's a lot newer of a city. Like Japan's like couple thousand years old. I mean, Tokyo, it's it's an old place. Sapporo has only really been modernized and developed since the eighteen hundreds So it's got a grid-like city. It's like Manhattan. They got a central park.
00:15:24
Speaker
They got a whole kind of like underground city when it gets cold. And it's like a 30-minute plane ride and about 50 bucks on a little, you know what i mean, like puddle jumper kind of air airplane.
00:15:36
Speaker
And I recommend that to people because it's like a good value. It's great weather if you go in the summertime. If you like to ski, you can go skiing. And then, i mean, I'm just going to plug it. I used to live there. It's this town called Niigata.
00:15:50
Speaker
And it's about two and a half, three hours north of Tokyo on the bullet train. So you go all the way up and it's on the Sea of Japan side. Like you're over near Korea and that that little sea right there by China.
00:16:03
Speaker
and it's where like 60 of japan's rice is grown they have a lot of like they have a lot of hot springs and onsens and traditional hotels it's very like got a lot of nature and things like that and you're right on the coast again you're on another ocean so the sushi is great there's all this great food and I always tell people this anecdote that when I was living and working uh I lived in Niigata and then I would travel to Yokohama or to Tokyo for business and I'd be at a restaurant and people would be like where do you live and I'd say oh I live in Niigata and people would literally like grab their be like oh my goodness like that is the best place in all of Japan to live so I've kind of now like I equate it to like living in a place like Napa
00:16:50
Speaker
or Sonoma. Like, it's where everything is from. They also make a lot of Japan sake there. So people will be like, oh, the sake is great. The rice is great.
00:17:01
Speaker
The sushi is great. Such a great place. And ever since I lived there, now I've been traveling more to smaller cities. And ah ah big thing of Japan, guys, is to try to get you to go to one of those towns because I've gotten to meet with tourism boards and you know do things where they're trying to get people to come and their biggest thing that like deters people from going to those cities is that the golden route lets you kind of like keep traveling so like you can go from tokyo all the way down to osaka and they have an international airport there so you could just leave and the train to me god it just goes there and back
00:17:42
Speaker
And people, I feel like, are, you know, they're going to Japan for their first time. They really want bang for their buck. So they want to kind of do this itinerary that lets them kind of like start somewhere and end somewhere else and fly home without having to get back to Tokyo or Osaka.
00:18:00
Speaker
Those are where you like your two international airports are. And our kind of goal is trying to get people to understand like, you know, it's a few hours trip at the most. Like, why don't you try to go somewhere like Akita or Yamagata, which is really fun too. It's above Niigata.
00:18:17
Speaker
There's all these really cool prefectures.
Cultural Impact and Travel Stories
00:18:19
Speaker
And to be honest, they could really use some love at this time of their history. Yeah, kind of to touch on what Mike was touching on with Sapporo is if you've ever gone and perused Asian aisle at your local store and you've looked at some of like just the drinks, you're going to see Sapporo on a lot of bottles, and a lot of food.
00:18:41
Speaker
the I think the best dry ramen brand is Sapporo Ichiban. If you've ever seen it, it's the... Oh, I think they still make it this way. the it's the The noodles are in a plastic wrapper. It's mostly white. And then the flavor the flavor is what determines the but the boundary on the package. So I think pink is shrimp, red is original, green is chicken, and brown is beef and stuff. So you've seen that. and then a whole bunch of the different drinks are Sapporo products.
00:19:15
Speaker
then they do have like ah ah there's a there is a Sapporo beer museum up there. So that's up there. think a lot of Japan's potatoes are grown in Sapporo in Hokkaido.
00:19:26
Speaker
So that's a whole thing in and of itself. But yeah, and kind of what Mike was saying, my brother in law, he took a so He takes an annual trip up there and he just goes goes bar hopping basically and he's just trying to find like little basically what's it called?
00:19:44
Speaker
Whiskey bars just to kind of like, you know, spend his time, you know, just kind of he likes to bike around and stuff and then, you know, at night he'll go and kill time at a bar and stuff. So Like Mike said, there i don't want to say they're I don't even want to say they're off the beaten path because Sapporo is a pretty big city.
00:20:02
Speaker
But as Mike's been kind of going back to, because it these are places that are not of the big three hubs along the bullet train route, a lot of foreign tourists don't go there and i'll be fully honest when my family went last year it was everyone except for my mom's first time in japan so we just hit you know quote unquote the greatest hits in um major cities and we basically started it we flew into osaka went up to kyoto took the bullet train to tokyo and then flew back home from tokyo so that's you know that's what we did but i do agree and
00:20:38
Speaker
Don Paul, my brother-in-law, he did suggest that the next time we visit, especially if I just go or my wife and I go, we would do like a bike tour of the countryside and stuff like that. Just as Mike has been recommending this whole time on the pod and really what his website does a really great job of is encouraging tourists to step outside of the sort of the comfort zone and go and hit some of these more lightly, these lightly visited tourist attractions.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah. And that's rare. Oh, keep key I was just going to add to that. So you're totally right. like so course It's like a big dairy place. Like all of your big seafood. It's kind of like a big food hub.
00:21:21
Speaker
But yeah, you really nailed it. And just how like, you know, these cities aren't off the beaten path like Hiroshima or Nagasaki or you know Fukuoka they're all really big towns but people just don't go there and it's it's kind of sad and when you meet with these people at the Tourism Bureau and like I've been like shown around to like you know like a knife making factory in Niigata and I got to help make a knife and they made me like a key chain and they were like yeah we barely get anybody
00:21:51
Speaker
that comes out here and you're like this is sad like I want to get people to go here instead of like going to you know the Super Mario thing at Universal in Osaka sorry just see that would be a me no that's fine I was just gonna say that would be me because I'm Obviously, I'm a small town guy.
00:22:13
Speaker
The town that I live in is like 900 people. So when I went up for the NFL draft, that was the most amount of people I've ever been around in my life. And that was, you know, that was combined over 600,000 people.
00:22:28
Speaker
You know, that's why I love going to Green Bay is because they're a town of 120,000, 160,000
00:22:33
Speaker
you know That's a big town compared to what I'm used to. and you know If I go somewhere, I don't want to be amongst the crowds and the and all
Media Portrayals and Cultural Realities
00:22:45
Speaker
that. Even though some of that stuff would be fun to see, you know I'd love to be in Tokyo just to say that I was in Tokyo, but that wouldn't be the part that I would enjoy more.
00:22:55
Speaker
I would enjoy more being around, you know as some people would call them, the small town yokel, because that's what I'm used to. That's what I've grown up in. ah ah you know The nearest town, the nearest city to me that's The biggest is Otumwa, and that's about 26,000 people.
00:23:16
Speaker
So it's not like I'm in you know these huge areas and stuff like that. So you know I would love to be around the smaller areas and the smaller towns. because And we have the same thing here in the United States where you can find nice little niche areas, but it's not going to be on the you know the main interstate.
00:23:36
Speaker
You've got to travel off the road a little bit to get to them. So that's great to hear. Now, or I mean, that's good to know that there's areas like that that could use it and that you're trying to guide people to those those those areas.
00:23:51
Speaker
Now, I got to say this, my Japanese knowledge come is limited to what I've learned from the karate kid, teenage mutant Ninja turtles.
00:24:03
Speaker
uh, the episodes of King of the Hill that caught and went back over there. you know, my knowledge is really limited on, uh, Japan. Now i have listened, like there's one of my favorite podcasts our fake history uh,
00:24:18
Speaker
Has done episodes about Japan history and stuff like that oh So beings that my knowledge is limited. I have to ask about the one place I do know and that's okinawa and obviously that's you know karate kid big thing there, you know according to the movie It's just a small little hub that nobody or the the village that Miyagi was in with like this little hub that nobody knows it So what is Let me see if I can phrase this question right. what
00:24:52
Speaker
How realistic do they depict Japan in media?
00:25:00
Speaker
That's a really good question, I think. it's It's got layers and nuance to it. Number one, i feel like they do a good job in Karate Kid showing off Okinawa. I really like that they did because when you start to learn about karate, it's from Okinawa.
00:25:14
Speaker
like And it's the little island that's like really far away from where Japan's main island is. And it's got a lot of Chinese influence. During World War II, that's where like a lot of the...
00:25:28
Speaker
really you know the last battles kind of went down that's near iwo jima and all those places um it's got a lot of an american influence to it it's kind of like japan's hawaii but it's a very cool place and i really suggest uh people try to get down there especially if like you're going in the winter time it's you're in the tropics But I would say that they do a really good job. I feel like sometimes, though, a lot of people try to just kind of focus on like samurai or, you know, certain kind of like aspects of the culture that I feel like are a bit played out.
00:26:04
Speaker
And for me, I feel like once I started really learning about Japanese culture, like some of my favorite shows to watch are like these Japanese game shows where they'll quiz Japanese people on like certain cultural things or like little objects and old things.
00:26:23
Speaker
And they'll be like, do you know what this is called? And even Japanese people don't even know what it's called. And it's like a little like incense burner that's shaped like a pig. And like it's got this weird name. But like,
00:26:35
Speaker
that i tell people the more i learned about japan the more i learned the language that was a really big thing that got me to keep going back because i would be either solo traveling or with a friend or you know there for business and as i got better and better at japanese i'd find myself like sitting at a bar and i'd like look and some guy would be there and you'd you know say something in japanese and I do my best to so reply and kind of tell them where I'm from. And they're just really fruitful conversations.
00:27:08
Speaker
And i always tell people when they do try to go, like, try to watch a documentary. Like, try to learn a little bit about the history and, like, why you know what shinto is and you know what's the difference between a temple and a shrine um a a shrine is uh for shinto and a temple is for buddhism but like there's all these little things that you can learn and every time you like and when you go you'll be able to interact with it a bit better because in japan there's a lot of subtlety going on
00:27:40
Speaker
there won't be kind of people like jumping out to tell you this and that. Like Japan is the kind of place where people might ignore you, but they're not doing it out of rudeness. They're just kind of doing it because they don't want to embarrass themselves.
00:27:54
Speaker
And like, they'll just kind of let you do your thing. So if you do that time and effort and like you read up on Japan or like, I have this really, I love this show on NHK world.
00:28:07
Speaker
that's on youtube you can find it it's called japanology and they they have episodes on everything from like koi fish to vending machines to remote islands and they'll just tell you everything about japan and every time i go i'm like wow i want to go like do this thing or find this weird vending machine. Like there's a vending machines in Japan that sell alcohol, but sadly as Westerners and tourists, we can't really use them. They now require like ah certain pass that you have to get through the mail. And it's a whole thing.
00:28:38
Speaker
Hmm. But yeah, there's just tons to learn about. And I always tell people, and that's a big part of the site, we have a blog. We're trying to tell people about little things about Japan.
00:28:49
Speaker
The more you know, when you go over there, you're not going to have this kind of like surface level knowledge and be like, oh like, you know, I saw this samurai movie and this is my perception of Japan or I'm really into World War II and this is my only perception
Preserving History – Japan's Architectural Aesthetics
00:29:03
Speaker
of Japan. Like,
00:29:05
Speaker
as you start to learn more you get to have more fun because it's just kind of that it's that kind of place it's not surface level i would say that's really interesting uh because yeah my knowledge is just basically what i've seen depicted uh in media and then i've got a friend who's uh It's one of his like friends, his kid or whatever, started speaking Japanese one time.
00:29:35
Speaker
And we're all like, what the hell? How'd you... From all the anime that the kid watched. He would read you know he was learning it from the subtitles and from them talking about it And it's like... I, okay. So, you know, it's just interesting how people can pick up on that stuff. So I know anime is a big thing for them.
00:29:55
Speaker
i and of course, you know, the big stereotypical thing is the Godzilla movies and and and stuff like that. So it's really...
00:30:07
Speaker
It's the stereotypical American thing where we think we know something, but we don't because all we know is from media stereotypes and that That would be my feelings over there. It's like, okay, when's the ninja going to jump out and get me?
00:30:24
Speaker
you know we' you know where Where do I go? or do we have Do we hear the alarm when Godzilla comes out of the sea or something like that? So...
00:30:38
Speaker
but so you kind of touched on the Shinto and the the Buddhist temples and stuff like that.
00:30:48
Speaker
Are there still a lot of like the ancient like buildings in that that they incorporate? Is it kind of like Europe where they incorporate some of the older stuff into more of a modern usage? Or do they still retain a lot of their ancient kind of styles and ways?
00:31:09
Speaker
That's a great question, and i know Mike will probably chime in on this too. i think this kind of the sad thing, but it's still cool about a lot of the architecture in Japan, is that a lot of it's been rebuilt after World War II.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's not like England where there's a lot of castles that have been untouched since time immemorial uh sadly you'll see a place that looks really old and you'll feel the oldness and then they'll tell you they rebuilt it in 1947. yeah they started rebuilding it and it's just a part of the history and you gotta have to like get over that but at the same time they're recreating that same building right there right where it used to be to the t you would never know unless somebody told you yeah they had to rebuild this after the war and that being said you can still find stuff that looks really old like shrines everywhere always tell people like japan taught me that everyday spiritualism is like accessible there like
00:32:13
Speaker
You'll be walking down the street and like Michael tell you, like you'll be walking in this Tokyo alley. It's like city everywhere, super futuristic. And then you'll just stop and like one little place has been carved out and it's like a little shrine.
00:32:27
Speaker
And like people have put like glasses of sake there and there's like a little bell that you ring and there's a bunch of money there and you walk up and you just like. throw a coin in and you you pray like man i hope i can get into this ramen shop today or like man i hope i hope the broncos squeak one out you know that was back before the bow back before bow came but yeah i would be doing that i'd be like please and like it kind of like showed me that spiritualism sometimes is just taking a moment to stop and like being thankful for what you're thankful for and then like being like man like I hope this happens today like flip a little coin into thing and uh yeah I'd say like even in a place like Tokyo you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to the right or to the left
00:33:13
Speaker
and you'll see like this little shrine and you feel like you've just been like thrown into the movie spirited away and uh it's one of the cool things about japan Yeah, it's I equate it for people who have been to Europe. It's kind of like walking through Rome where you're like modern building, modern building, modern building. And oh my goodness, there's Osaka Castle in the middle of it kind of thing. and or Or even like Mike said, some of the smaller ones is like you're walking around Osaka.
00:33:41
Speaker
And yeah you just kind of want to go off on some of the side streets, see what all the little shops and stuff are. And then you turn a corner and there's just a ah ah Shinto shrine there. And there's like you know a couple There's a couple people, you'll just see them doing the very things Mike noted, like giving a little incense, giving a little prayer, doing you know tossing the coin in and all that kind of stuff. so And yeah, like that's the the the one note that Mike commented on that I think people from the outside don't fully take into account is a lot of the country was damaged during World War II.
00:34:19
Speaker
So there's a lot of areas where they've tried to rebuild to, you know, to kind of... put it bluntly to help the tourist economy to say, like, this is what, you know, historic Edo used to look like. This is what historic Kyoto used to look like. And, you know, they can't do it everywhere because obviously, you know, progress is everything. They have to move forward with the with as time moves along. But, you know, the main tourist— Osaka Castle is one of them where, you know, from the exterior, the facade, ah ah they've you know, they've restored the castle walls. they've They've tried to keep the exterior facades all as—
00:34:56
Speaker
historically correct quote unquote as they can you know so that you get the very like stereotypical you're inside the castle walls there's there's cherry blossom trees there's plum trees all over the place you can get the nice you know the instagram photo spots yeah i can't even say let's code act that because no one does that anymore but and then but then you go inside the castle and like they just very clearly tell you, we have renovated the inside because if we didn't, this thing would have collapsed under the foot trap, the annual foot traffic of all the tourists and the and the the the residents who go to see a lot of these historical, I'll just call them monuments at this point. So, you know, it's not so much that they don't have, and Mike did allude to it very well, that it's not that it's out of a lack of respect or it's more,
00:35:47
Speaker
how every one of these places has decided to try and maintain these locations to best preserve them for the future generations. You have some of the areas like the Tori Gates Walk where they have really tried to keep the architecture as true to the original work as much as and you'll legitimately see particular Tori gates that have fallen apart because the root has, the wood has just rotted out from one of the posts and they haven't gotten to like, they weren't able to get to like fortifying that one or anything. And then you, you get to the top of that hike and there are just the like,
00:36:24
Speaker
very stereotypical or like the like you see it in anime movies and stuff where it's like it's just a shrine that was carved out of stone and there's still the original you know the kami figurines that are on the shrine and that are in the shrine and stuff and you know obviously nowadays they have signs that say do not approach do not touch anything and stuff but you do get a mix within the three you know without along the golden route you do get a mix of the truly historical but i'd honestly say it's somewhere in the like 70 30 of like it's historical facade feel but it's definitely been modernized and 30 of the like they have really done all they can to keep this thing as a time capital to when you know it was
00:37:13
Speaker
pre-modernization, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, like pre-Meiji restoration kind of timeline. So it's really neat. But I know that in the out in the province, in the the more rural areas, you do see more of the light time capsule-y, historically-kempt regions.
00:37:33
Speaker
and And like Mike has said repeatedly, those are the ones that please go visit those shrines, go visit those temples to help those entities keep their, to keep whatever monument, museum, shop, whatever, all these um all these great Japanese food hubs that are the definition of ma and pa shop kind of things.
00:37:59
Speaker
People need to keep going to get them. And that's the, you know, you're going to find great food when you go to any one of the major cities. Japanese food, like, I joked that after I went there and I tried I told i told myself that I would eat things that I wouldn't eat here because once I ate them in Japan, I'd be like, well, shit, it costs three times as much here and it's not half as good. So what am I doing here?
00:38:22
Speaker
But it really did make me question. Why do Japanese tourists buy anything that they could get back in Japan in Hawaii? Because it's not as good, it's it's cramped, it's overly crowded, the people aren't as polite, and and it's so much more expensive. So long-winded way to say, like, go out, see as many of these attractions as you can. and The beat that Mike is pounding on here is to not just get trapped within the cities, go out and see more of what Japan has to offer.
00:38:55
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. i think, you know, to your point too, like...
00:39:02
Speaker
over time everybody wants to go and see these really staple items they want to see osaka castle they want to see the imperial palace they want to see like kyu mizudera which is like this big temple in kyoto they're all beautiful and i suggest everybody to go there But I just think right now, and like I'm a big proponent of this when I'm online and giving people tips, like we're at a crux. Like right now, I saw this really sad video of all these people just packing Tokyo and some of the streets are not sorry, not Tokyo, Kyoto.
00:39:36
Speaker
packing some of these streets and it looked like you couldn't even breathe like joe like you said like you want to be in a more rural place i agree with you this is the last the last place i'd want to be and then i see things like people like scribbling like it like carving their
Tourism and Cultural Responsibility
00:39:51
Speaker
name on pieces of bamboo like a big bamboo tree and i'm like this has to stop like and i you know when i talk to people on places like reddit or you know different forums where i can chat with people i really say like we as tourists have a responsibility with Japan, especially with Japan and any other country in the world.
00:40:15
Speaker
Like we need to be thinking outside the box. We need to be thinking about like kind of what's called is like sustainable travel. Like how can I go visit a place kind of like America? Like, you know, nobody's gonna go to America and like on the, you know, things say like, you gotta go to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
00:40:34
Speaker
Like it's people are going to tell you to go to like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York city and Chicago. You know what i mean? And it's like, no, like if you were to go to a place like green Bay and like, if I did tours for America, I'd say, Hey, if you're going to America and you're going to be going there around football season and you like the NFL, going there.
00:40:54
Speaker
Lambeau Stadium is the most famous stadium in the entire world. The entire football world, you'd be remiss if you didn't go check it out. like It's got this beautiful town and you know the Packers are a publicly owned team. It's the only one. like There's all this beautiful stuff.
00:41:11
Speaker
and I'd say like I try to do the same with Japan you know and that in that sense. is like Getting people to kind of realize, like hey, I don't mind if you go to New York City or go to Los Angeles, but maybe try to go to that little town like you said and meet that rural yokel or you know get that small town feel and and really get it you know so to kind of touch back with what you were saying about the rebuilding that they do Do they try to use material from the period or do they use more modern things? and just
00:41:45
Speaker
And the reason I ask this is I'll preference it that we have a church in here in or the county over from us that is like one of the oldest churches in Iowa.
00:41:59
Speaker
It was like built just after they became a state or something
Work Culture – Tradition vs. Modernity
00:42:04
Speaker
like that. And the cemetery there has one of like a Medal of Honor winner or recipient, not winner. I guess you don't really win those things. You're a recipient.
00:42:17
Speaker
But anyway, it's been burnt or stuff so many times but they've been able to find like old barns that are from the same time period and they've been able to use those structures to rebuild that do they try to do that there or do they just strictly go well we're going to take this modern stuff and just incorporate it into what what's currently there Yeah, so that's a great question. I have two kind of examples that I would put. Like one, like Mike was talking about Osaka Castle. I recently got to go there for my first time last September.
00:42:53
Speaker
And a big theme of the museum and stuff when you go there is they show you like – They're like, yo, this place didn't just get destroyed in World War II. This place has been destroyed three times over its history due to wars and, you know what i mean, the new Shogun taking over.
00:43:12
Speaker
And then they'll show you, like, how they've been doing all these excavations and they find little, like, architectural cues and things, and it's informed them about how they recreate the space.
00:43:25
Speaker
And i'd say like to that point, yes, they're really trying for authenticity. And then I'd say like the the big second one, and I just love to talk about it is, have you guys ever heard of a place called Issei Jingu?
00:43:38
Speaker
and I can't say I have. my Mike has maybe. It's like it's the Holy of Holies in Japan. It's like the Shinto shrine where the two gods that are related to the Emperor of Japan are. It's in this town called Ise.
00:43:53
Speaker
And it's for thousands of years has had this history where there's two separate sites for the shrine. And every, i think, 25 or 30 years, they rebuild the shrine.
00:44:08
Speaker
all completely the same they literally have a forest somewhere like a couple hundred miles away where they that's the only forest where those trees to build that temple come from a shrine and it like moves this that and the other and like people can't see it you like literally there's a wall around it and it can only be viewed by the royal family it can only be entered by the royal family But it's like a huge deal. And when I like watch these, that Japanology show, they'll like show these people like restoring pagodas, shrines and stuff like that.
00:44:42
Speaker
And man, do they go for authenticity and do they go for original techniques and original woods, original lacquer? Like it's ah ah it's really quite impressive. And that's what I tell people like on the surface when we started talking about it, like yeah these places have been rebuilt since world war two but don't think for a second that anybody was kind of skimping out because like i said like they're they're taking that is a jingu approach where they're like oh like back in the day the the wood for this temple was sourced from this uh forest up on the hill they're gonna try to get that wood as best that they can and um and
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, like I i said, but you know that's why you know people will think that you're at the authentic site. And then when you're told later on, yo, they they so they actually rebuilt that and it was finished in 1957, you'll be like, wow, I never would have known if you told me. I would have thought it was like couple thousand years old.
00:45:44
Speaker
out.
00:45:45
Speaker
I'm always shocked when it's mine. Well, that's I just, yeah, I really have no idea why mine is because we have some of the best internet in the area and I just, and it's all underground. So there's nothing.
00:45:57
Speaker
above, but All right, where were we when I cut out? we We were just talking about like kind of going on, like the authenticity the authenticity of these places. And I think one last thing, there's a place I love to recommend to people to go to Japan and like try to see.
00:46:15
Speaker
So there's this prefecture, let me like make Japan, up in the north, right before you get to Hokkaido, there's this place called, it's Akita. no Yeah, I think it's in Akita.
00:46:28
Speaker
but know i just got to look up real quick um japanese jesus japanese jesus it's like this crazy thing there's like a town up in northern japan and they literally believe and like have evidence and all this stuff that jesus escaped his persecution on the cross in bethlehem and was taken on the silk road all the way along until he reached japan and he lived out his days in northern japan and lived to the ripe old age of 100 and had a wife and two kids and um and
00:47:04
Speaker
That's the first time I've heard that one. It's little things like that. where like That's actually like a high thing up on my list. cause like I mean, wouldn't it be interesting? like What if they found that out to be true?
00:47:16
Speaker
I'm a healthy skeptic. you know I don't think anything is true unless I actually found out. and I mean, the jury's out on where Jesus went. you know I don't know Dan Brown wrote the book on that one yet, so I can't i can't agree or disagree. it's the It's the little town of Shingo in Aomori.
00:47:35
Speaker
Aomori. That's where it is. It's in Aomori. Yeah. Yeah. So... It's just about as north as you can get on Honshu. So, yeah. Hey, if I was Japanese Jesus, I'd be doing my summers up there in northern Japan.
00:47:50
Speaker
Spare us out. Hey, the fish is a symbol of Christianity. And Japan is one of the best fisheries in the world. And he was a carpenter. So, you know, there you go.
00:48:02
Speaker
so And I just kind of kind of go back to what i my point was, is that we kind of have the same thing here in the United States that you were kind of talking about with the tourism over there, even though ours is more done by the idiots that live around here, where that church that I was talking about is burnt down like three or not completely down, but three or four times and they've had to rebuild it a different because people will go up there and they treat it like trash.
The Cultural Phenomenon of Baseball in Japan
00:48:27
Speaker
And you know, that that's the sad fact about just people in general that they go to these places and they treat them like that. I mean, what was it a couple years ago that somebody defaced the Liberty Bell and and shit like that. So it's really sad when that happens.
00:48:43
Speaker
But, uh, So one of the stereotypes that a lot of people get from Japan is the, the, the way they work, you know, the hard work, the, you know, the joke that I always tell people is if I'm falling asleep, I believe like the Japanese dude, that if I'm taking a nap, that means I've worked too damn hard. So, you know, just leave me alone.
00:49:05
Speaker
like So what, what, uh, what can you speak on that type of thing about the the people of Japan? I would say that the people, you know, having gotten to the pleasure of working in Japan, I'd say that people in Japan are very like, they're to the T. They really value the rules.
00:49:26
Speaker
And like, I've had people explain to me, like, if you've been to like a grocery store and you're checking out and you've bought all these groceries and your total is $100. $75.79. In America, you could like, got $79.50. And be like, no problem. Get out of here. In Japan, they'd actually be like,
00:49:42
Speaker
seventy nine dollars and fifty cents and they'd be like cool no problem get out of here you know in japan they'd actually be like I'm sorry, you have $79.78. You need one more penny, you know, what one more yen to make this happen.
00:49:59
Speaker
And so that being said, they're really about the rules. They're really about the process. And yes, people like to work long hours there. They have this concept called karaoshi, and it means ah ah death by overwork.
00:50:13
Speaker
And i would say it kind of stems from and like, don't know, this speaks to a larger issue that's going on in Japan. Like I try to keep abreast of everything. In Japan, it seems like we're at a crux where people are actually more rewarded for office presence than office performance.
00:50:30
Speaker
And for a long time, we've had this perception that Japanese people are in at seven, out at eight, and you think that they're working all day. But to your point, like, they could just be spending 6 to 8 p.m.
00:50:45
Speaker
taking a nap or just sitting at their desk doing something. And they're going to be allotted as somebody that's at the office all day. So sometimes it's more about presence, things like that. And yeah, like, don't know, I kind of feel like the United States has gotten a bit better about like,
00:51:05
Speaker
you know rewarding people for the actual work that they do. And right now Japan is in like a real crux where their economy is not doing great and they're trying to get better. And it's one of the many things that people have been calling out has been like, we got to ditch this work culture.
00:51:23
Speaker
We got to be rewarding people based off of results. Rather than like presence. And I remember, you know, I loved the business that I worked at. It was great.
00:51:34
Speaker
But I remember one of the little things that always made me unsure was like once 5 p.m. hit, it became a contest to see who could stay there longest after 5 p.m. And I was like, this ain't my ball game.
00:51:47
Speaker
i'm a I'm a results guy. i want to come in and be like, hey, I produced everything that I needed today. Here it all is. i was a graphic designer. So I'd be like, I designed all this stuff two hours early.
00:51:59
Speaker
I'm leaving two hours early. You know what I mean? Like, i don't want to sit here and do stuff. And I feel like Japan has really started to get that kind of wake up call.
00:52:10
Speaker
And it's really interesting when you start to learn about like Japanese economics and Japanese business. Like, it's almost like there are two schools of thought. There's like the traditional thought and then there's people that are trying to break the mold.
00:52:23
Speaker
And like, I feel like the people that are trying to break the mold right now are like having more wins. Like they're not trying to have people employed for their entire lifetime. Like they're they're trying to get rid of some of those things and try to be like, hey, like, you know, Joe, if you join our company, your your performance is based off, you know, we're basing this off of your results.
00:52:45
Speaker
We're not basing this off of your tenure. We're not basing this off of how long you're here during the day and in general. we're We're really basing this off of how you perform. And yeah, it's it's interesting. There's two different schools of thought and they're they're always at battle.
00:52:59
Speaker
Yeah, that that old school mentality that Mike's talking about, it's like there's a lot of Japanese stereotypes that you know that perpetuate and stuff. and A lot of them are more true than a lot of people would like to admit to, but like just that old school working mentality, it's like they took the like traditional Japanese mindset that like your lifestyle is like your job is part of your lifestyle. So you're a blacksmith, you're a cook, you you know, you do the, you're a farmer and you just do these things into perpetuity you and you pass the knowledge down onto your children so that they maintain your, um, your,
00:53:36
Speaker
they They maintain your life, your family's livelihood. And then in terms of their economy and business there, that's where, you know, you hear so much that like Japan has like adopted so many American ideals and things like that.
00:53:51
Speaker
And that whole, but the Karoshi that, that Mike was alluding to, that's sort of one of those like where Japan took all the wrong lessons from American like business work, where it's like the nine to five, but you put in your hours and you do all this kind of stuff. And it's like, they...
00:54:10
Speaker
the They bought in and really like doubled down on all the wrong parts of American capitalism and economy. They've created some wonderful things. you know like I joke that Japan doesn't invent anything. They just make everything more efficient and smaller.
00:54:27
Speaker
look at... like you know and We'll just stick with like video game consoles, TVs, like the electronic hub of the things that- Cell phones. Yup. And unfortunately, they're not as often made in Japan anymore, but a lot of the technological advances Japan did push out. did push out But like Mike said, there has been a shift really within the 10 plus years my brother-in-law has been in Japan from 2013, where He says there has been a relatively seismic shift in how the workforce is managed. And like Mike said, it's not a whole top down, you know, full 100% coverage yet, but there is a sizable movement within enough of the economic structures. A lot of the bigger companies are moving in that direction where they are recognizing that like, oh, we could get better production if people were more
00:55:18
Speaker
like it Like Mike said, it was more of a results oriented, not just who can stay in the office for 16 plus hours a day, kind of like that, like junking that attitude and getting the most out of your eight hour workday kind of thing. So and another another sector where that has been a problem is ironically, it's one that you mentioned before, Joe, and it's the the manga and anime like the the if you really read about Japanese mangaka is the the artist who draw the manga and anime as a like kind of a sequential result of that.
00:55:53
Speaker
It's a kind of a dark mark in a sense because like the the the deadline expectations all that stuff compounds on these artists and that's why you do you don't see anymore the long running like but you know like one piece is one of the last ones that's like we're still making new or a lot of these more recent ones like you know like a demon slayer or Shokugeki no Soma, Food Wars, a lot of those are like, they run for like three to five years and the artist is like, I've told my story and I've, you know, on some level I've become famous and made my money out of it and, you know, I made it to Jump and, which is the the weekly manga like publication and it's like,
00:56:44
Speaker
i've had my five years of hell and my people have recognized my my um my my my storytelling and my my artistic ability and that's enough for me and stuff so yeah it it doesn't just perpetuate in just the straight like stereotypical office works that it's at all levels of the japanese work life and it is one of those things that japan is a country i do see them and hear that they are trying to break a lot of those trends and move in a more, really a more healthy direction, to put it.
00:57:16
Speaker
ah ah Yeah, I would, sorry, just to add one more thing to that. It's really interesting to learn. Like I, once I started really getting into Japan, I started being like, let me take a history class. Let me, let me do all this like really academic learning.
00:57:30
Speaker
And one of the things that I learned about that was really fascinating is that like most of our perception of like Bushido, samurai culture, all of that kind of stuff was really like refined and honed in in the years preceding World War two Like before that, wasn't really that big of a thing.
00:57:50
Speaker
But then like when the Meiji Restoration happens, like in the early 1900s, like Japan starts to really ask those questions like, what can we do to motivate the working class?
00:58:02
Speaker
And so they start to like really play up samurai culture, duty, service, doing everything over the the mark and for the cause. And you would sit there as all of us Westerners from our perspective and be like, oh, that's just the way Japanese people are.
00:58:19
Speaker
No, it's that's actually just how they've been for the past 80 years.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:58:24
Speaker
And to Mike's point, like they're trying to move away from some of those things because there were good sides to it and there are bad sides to it. And yeah, it's really fascinating to learn things like, like I said, like Bushido and stuff like there very scarce texts about Bushido and the way of the samurai and things like that. But then you start to see in like the early up to like the 20s and
00:58:51
Speaker
everybody's starting to really refine what that is. And people like when they point out in history classes, it's something that's used to motivate the mass to work harder.
00:59:02
Speaker
And now we've reached a point to where Japan's in an economic stagnation. You know what I mean? They're they're trying their best, but they are they're never really going above their GDP. They're kind of staying the same.
00:59:14
Speaker
So now Japan's having to kind of go back to the drawing board and be like, Samurai ethics in the workplace aren't really working out. Yeah, it really was. So basically what you're saying. Well, I was just going to say, basically what you're saying is it's kind of like the myth of the American dream, that the harder you work, the the more you're going to advance and the higher up, you know, you work this many years doing this, you're going to become a billionaire in no time. And really now people are starting to realize that that's a ton of shit and
00:59:47
Speaker
and ah ah And not to go on a deep history course or any history class or anything, but what Mike's alluding to is, so Japan had this very long-standing closed border. We're we're an isolationist nation for the longest time.
01:00:00
Speaker
but They didn't even call themselves a nation. We're just, you know, it's the land of the samurai and we're an isolationist. We don't want outsiders coming in, all that stuff until, you know, Commodore Perry came into Tokyo Bay and stuff in the late eighteen sixty s and You can read up on the history of that.
01:00:16
Speaker
And so Japan was a feudal system, right? The lords, shogun, sat at the top, and then they had their samurai, and then you just had common peasants at building the bottom of the pyramid. And it was when Japan became a recognized country, served honestly with you know with some success and real you know they they did well for themselves and the allies in world war one and it was at that point that for not the as mike said not the best reasoning japan was like there is no more feudal system but at some level we are all samurai we all have samurai spirit and like mike said bushido came about as a way to like enrich the masses and like help accelerate japan japan's
01:01:07
Speaker
growth as a as a power, as ah ah as an international power country kind of thing. And it was that way to like motivate you know national pride and all that kind of stuff. Whereas like you know your ancestors before, they might have just been common farmer folk, but now you all have a strong foothold in where this country is headed and stuff. And like Mike said, there's a lot of good that came out of it. But then also, you know that's how you get the kamikaze and stuff like that. like As we've seen in any country's history, too much national pride mis you know misplaced or misgrown national pride leads to bad results. So the the very basic DNA of that came in in the industrial Japan's industrial revolution in the early 1900s. And so like Mike's kind of alluding to, before Bushido wasn't really a word. It was just like a samurai is an honorable person who serves a lord and knows right from wrong kind of thing. and then
01:02:03
Speaker
When Japan tried to become an industrial power, it's like, we're going to weaponize this and use it. and And now, obviously, it's a part of pop culture and stuff. But it it really, that's just one of many things that you know Mike's website goes into it. I know he has courses and he's willing to point as many people willing to visit Japan in the right direction on a lot of these things. But there are so many rabbit holes with Japanese culture that you can go down That Bushiro crash course that the two of us went on the last 10 to 15 minutes, that's just one of them that we know, like, a lot of Westerners know to some degree what Bushiro is, but when you dig below the surface level, you can go down a rabbit hole that leads on for days and hours and stuff. So, yeah, there's a lot of interesting twists and turns, even within, like Mike said, the last 80 100 years of japan Japanese history.
01:02:56
Speaker
was perfect. Nailed it. Yeah. So we're going to wrap up here pretty quick, but I would i would i'd probably get yelled at if I didn't bring this up.
01:03:08
Speaker
So one of the big things that that I know for sure is big over in in Japan and and a lot of the other Asian countries, and of course, you know, it's America's game and everything like that.
01:03:21
Speaker
The Japanese are big in baseball. Now, obviously that probably had to do a lot with post-World War II type thing. But kind of like Mike said with the industrialization and that, they've really immersed themselves into baseball culture. is is that How do I want to ask the question?
01:03:48
Speaker
what makes it where jeff japan just like immerses themselves into this thing and and you know because like i said over there it's not a game it's like life or death when it comes to baseball and you can't do this one of my favorite movies is mr baseball with tom sellett and they go through all these little friggin things about You know, you can't spit on the field. You can't, you know, you can't charge the mound. You can't do this. You can't do that because you're going to dishonor this.
01:04:23
Speaker
What lead, what kind of goes into that process to where, you know, over here, it's just, it's a game. It's a sport. You know, you go out, play it, but over there, it just seems like it's life.
01:04:36
Speaker
Great question. I'd say there are two but there are two big reasons, like surface level and then we'll kind of dig deeper. Like my one thing I always point out to people is like in Japan, a lot of the sport names for the sport are like the borrowed word and it's very Japanese. Like like football is called like Amefuto, which is like a combining of American football.
01:05:01
Speaker
And like hockey is like Hokei and soccer is Saka. Baseball is called Yaku. That's how hardcore Japanese is. They got their own name for it.
01:05:14
Speaker
And a big reason why is it actually it precedes World War Two. But in the nineteen twenty s like in the 10s, when people were having World's Fairs and stuff, Babe Ruth visited Japan and did a whole thing where he like went around and met with people and like people went around to go to Tokyo to see Babe Ruth.
01:05:35
Speaker
So like Babe Ruth left a real big mark on Japan. It made people get really passionate about baseball. And I think it's just one of those sports where it's a kind of like a skill based game and it doesn't require like at that time, a lot of like physical prowess. It's a lot about like how you play it. And I think that in, you know, over American football or or sports like that, Japanese people could really excel.
01:06:03
Speaker
And now, like i was actually just telling somebody today, like whenever I try like to plan somebody a trip in Japan, if it is baseball season, I'm telling you to go to a game.
01:06:16
Speaker
And I have there's so all the teams have like a college level type environment where people are. you know, talking about or cheering for their team. They have songs for each player.
01:06:29
Speaker
It's quite insane. And the concessions are really cool too. There are people that walk around, they got beer tag on the pack, you know, on the pack. And they're like, oh, do you want beer?
01:06:40
Speaker
They'll pour you a draft beer while you're sitting in the stands so you don't miss a moment. It's quite amazing. You get sushi. You can get ramen. and It's just really cool. But, yeah, i would say that like baseball to them is just it's a historical artifact.
01:06:55
Speaker
You know, it's one of the first Western sports that they really engaged with. And I feel like they just took to it. And like I said, having somebody like Babe Ruth, I mean, like that would be like having like, you know, like, you know, I can't even name like a great football player. It would be like having like Joe Theismann or somebody come to Japan and show them how to play a little bit of football.
01:07:19
Speaker
You know, you'd be like, okay, they got they really got with it. And over time, the sports really like elaborated and got bigger. And now you have like kind of the likes of Shohei Otani in the rest and You know, I never knew this and until I started digging into it. I'm not a huge baseball guy, but apparently there hasn't been somebody that's a pitcher and a hitter like Otani was since Babe Ruth.
01:07:46
Speaker
So it's a really kind of like, you know, inspiring story-esque kind of thing where, yeah, like they're producing players that are out of caliber that even the United States can't have.
01:07:57
Speaker
And yeah, fun. Yeah. And kind of to build off what Mike said, like so Ruth visiting was definitely the genesis of it. And he kind of touched on where baseball, it it it buys into a lot of Japanese stereotypes where like we're not the big you know, we're we're not the biggest. We're not the most physically imposing, you know, people by ethnicity, know, we're athletic in certain sense, you know, the the ninja and samurai genes are in all of us. But, you know, it's a lot of the like Japanese people are very meticulous. They're very detail oriented.
01:08:37
Speaker
They're, you know, they're studious of a craft and all that kind of stuff. You know, all of those like you have guys who train to make katanas for their whole life. And you just you just you're blacksmithing and you're folding metal for hours to make a blade kind of thing.
01:08:52
Speaker
Japanese people took that ancestral, really almost psychotic nuance of a craft and we're like, we're going to apply it to a professional sport.
01:09:04
Speaker
And like Mike said, they've crafted the game so much that, yeah, you know, you can still, the the the leagues are, you know, the the biggest league is NPB, the NIPA.
01:09:17
Speaker
that the Nippon professional baseball. And so they you know there is baseball, but it's yaku. Yaku is the one that's going to get you in the door. And the you know the game looks the same. It's relatively played the same, but like It was really when Ichiro came over to the States that like it really opened the door on like how different the game is played, where it's like they don't have... you know Forget the steroid era. They just don't have guys until like Otani who are 6'4", 2-something, who can crank 30 homers a game.
01:09:52
Speaker
The game is built on playing, you know quote unquote, old school baseball with the short game, bunting, moving runners over, all that kind of stuff. and Like when Daisuke Matsuzaka came to the Red Sox, one of the big things that was always controversial is like his pitch count is always astronomical. What's he doing? He won't get ah But like in Japan, they don't care as much about pitch counts. Like whereas in the US, it's like, oh my God, he's at 100 pitches or he's near it Get him out of the game kind of thing.
01:10:21
Speaker
In Japan, it's like, no, you're setting up a pitch for a pitch for a pitch in Japan. the third at bat kind of thing. And, you know, we in the States, it's like, you never want to get to a three, two count. You don't want to get, you know, you don't want to get past two balls to a hitter in Japan. It's like every pitch is to set up the next pitch.
01:10:39
Speaker
And the three, two count is like this revered thing by pitchers. Cause it's like, they almost look at it as such a challenge that it's like, it's almost fun to them to get to a three, two count. Cause it's like, what am I going to do at my peak to challenge him at his peak kind of thing and stuff. So it's,
01:10:58
Speaker
It's to say that baseball really captured the imagination of the whole country. And it didn't have to work that hard because one of the jokes is that Japanese people smoke because Americans smoke. Like that's one of those ones that we that Japanese picked up from these the states and all. But baseball, like Mike said, is the one sport where the Japanese looked at it and were like, we can do that.
01:11:20
Speaker
And they've spent the last hundred years in their own way, perfecting how to play the game. And you do see it where the one league, the one international league that has relatively regularly sent players who can compete on the MLB level is the Japan league. And, you know, you see some guys from Korea come through every once in a while, you'll see a Chinese player or like an Indian player, but it's the Japan league.
01:11:45
Speaker
And then obviously the, you know, the, Mexico, Cuba, those are all feeders in their own right, but those guys are getting, groomed in the major league farm systems. They bring those guys in completely different. Whereas the Japanese guys are professionals in their own right and they're coming over in their mid-20s kind of thing. So unfortunately, I did not get to go to a game when we were on our trip, but it is something that I do definitely want to hit up the next time I go.
01:12:12
Speaker
It's like Mike said, I've heard so many great things about what the experience is like. And yeah, it As someone who did play baseball is in Little League and whose son is playing T-ball now, it is definitely something that I want to go and experience the next time I get to visit.
01:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's super fun. one One last little thing to your point about the meticulousness. I watched this whole documentary. There's a Japanology on baseball. It's great. And one of the things they talk about, like they're not about the guy that hits the grand slam.
01:12:43
Speaker
They love the dude that makes the sacrificial bunt that makes the whole win happen. And like, you'll see all these stories of people and like, it's way less flashy. It's more about the meticulous nature of how the game works. And it's a big reason why personally, like i like the NFL because I know all the rules.
01:13:02
Speaker
The MLB, I don't know the rules. I didn't even know until a few years ago that depending on which stadium you're at, if you're in an NL stadium or an AL stadium, the rules are different. like Baseball has got wild historical complexities to it that like feel like really speak to the Japanese soul.
01:13:20
Speaker
And like when you go there, they have this like really raucous environment. Like they're cheering on players like they're singing their college fight song when they come up to bat.
01:13:32
Speaker
And like for me, I'll tell you guys I'm going to be open. I'm a Yokohama Bay Stars fan. And it's because I got to go to a game and I stood in like the all fan section and I was like near the band.
01:13:46
Speaker
They have people that bring like their own trumpets and drums and flags and they're singing songs. I'm like, everybody's got beers. And I was like, this is like a college level environment turned up to 100.
01:14:00
Speaker
So I always tell people, like, go to one game and you're going to leave Japan being like, wow, I'm a big Hanshin Tigers fan like because I went to a game in Osaka. You know, like, you're going to go see one game and leave and be like, that's my team.
01:14:14
Speaker
I'm rooting for them whenever I see them on the news or something like that, you know. It's really cool. That's great. I mean, I'm a big baseball fan. I love football. I love, you know, obviously I'm more of a football fan because, you know, you know, obviously we have the podcast and and it's a football based podcast, but I I've always been a baseball fan. And like Mike said, I played through little league and,
01:14:36
Speaker
And a lot of that stuff too. And, and so that would be one of the things I would love more than anything is to see how they do it. Now, I think I would be a little bit more confused with it because I do know more of the major league baseball rules and entry, you know,
01:14:54
Speaker
I would be going over thinking, okay, well, why aren't you doing this? Why are you doing this instead of this? you know why why it You should be hitting away, not bunting over. you know What the hell? Come on.
01:15:04
Speaker
So it would be really interesting to see that stuff. In Japan, the big thing is is like the the enthusiasm does not stop and you'd think that it would stop because it's baseball but literally every time the opposing team comes on there or no sorry the home team comes up to bat they're singing a song they're singing a song the whole time the guy goes and then they go oh and then the guy tries to hit it and everybody he's quiet for a second and then once they're back the band's playing and everybody's going and you're just sitting there going like
01:15:40
Speaker
this is insane like this is a game that's normally like really slow like when you watch it in the states but they're like there's not a moment where you're not like you know clapping and singing some song and it's fun like i said before if you learn japanese and you learn a couple of phrases like i'm to the point now to where i can like turn to somebody and ask them like what are we singing here and they'll be like it's this and like they're like giving me a flag and like they're getting me to get into the game and I feel like Japan's, you know, to kind of end it, Japan's one of those places that really rewards you the more you learn about it and like the more phrases and like words that you can get into your lexicon, like you'll all of a sudden just feel like you're one of the guys.
01:16:24
Speaker
And that's why I'm a big Yokohama Bay Stars fan. You know, i wish I could love the Hanshin Tigers or Osaka's team. It's like the Red Sox of Japan. Everybody loves them. That's like a foreigner.
01:16:36
Speaker
But like I went to one game and I sat with all the fans and I sang all the songs and I had a great time. And now I'm a fan of that team. You know, that's kind how it works.
01:16:48
Speaker
That's great. Kawano, you got anything else you want to throw in there real quick? All right, Mike, it was great to have you on here. You know, this was a really great conversation.
01:16:58
Speaker
I didn't know how it was going to go because, like I said, my knowledge is very limited on things. Again, that's why I brought Kiwano back with me. Why don't you tell everybody where they can find you, what you're about, and and all that good stuff?
01:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, so my site is called jpnguides.com. Very simple, J-P-N-G-U-I-D-E-S. And we're just all about making people custom itineraries for Japan.
01:17:25
Speaker
So if you guys came and you're like, hey, we're real big Green Bay Packers fans, but we want to see Japan, this, that, and the other, I learn about you know the kind of essence of what you guys want to do.
01:17:36
Speaker
and then I create a custom PDF or I can get it printed for you. But it's like a 100 plus page guidebook that's built for your trip. So like if you're staying at a weird hotel in some place, you know, kind of far away, I'm going to tell you everything about that station that's closest to you so you can get into town.
01:17:55
Speaker
And anybody can find me. It's free for like a consultation call if you want to sit down and talk about your trip. And guard guides start from around $250. And I feel like it's a great added value to your trip because I'm taking out all of that guesswork. You're not getting lost.
01:18:14
Speaker
big thing I tell people is like, you could accidentally spend $200 taking a taxi from Narita Airport to Tokyo. It's very easy. It's like very far away. It's about a two hour trip, but it's still Tokyo's airport.
01:18:27
Speaker
So I'm trying to get people like to not make those classic tourist faux pas. I'll help you get reservations. I'll do all of that. And it's in like a PDF guidebook. So I let you kind of take the lead.
01:18:41
Speaker
and get outside of your box. But then I give you like a ah little framework where these are the kinds of places you want to go. Maybe you're I have a lot of people that are interested in watches and I'm like, hey, this is the neighborhood where you want to go check out vintage watches.
01:18:57
Speaker
It's like having a guidebook that you don't have to skim through the entire thing. It's literally made for you. So, yeah, if anybody's interested, yeah, just hit me up. Tell me you're from the podcast or you're a listener and happy to give you guys a little deal for it because I'm always happy to help people explore Japan.
01:19:18
Speaker
There you go, Kwano. There's your next trip. You don't need the brother-in-law.
01:19:26
Speaker
All right, guys. So thank you very much again for being on. it was great to have you on. Be sure to check out his website.
01:19:37
Speaker
JPNGuides.com. You can find our website, which is upon a Packers dot org. We got ah Carlos is pumping out articles by the minute, it seems like anymore.
01:19:48
Speaker
Check those out. Find past episodes of our podcast and Brian's po podcast. podcast. ah Make sure you go over the merch store.
01:19:59
Speaker
Buy something. Help support the show. you know Make it so I can send Kiwano over to Japan one of these times. um but yeah Go over there.
01:20:10
Speaker
You can find us at Ohana Packers Edition on Instagram, Facebook, at ohana underscore packers on the elon machine i'm iowa joe over on blue sky kiwano is on blue sky and twitter as kuwano mike as my mike you want to go ahead and give your final say i've been stealing it for the last couple shows no that's good just uh one time go pack go and aloha