Podcaster Trading Cards

(upbeat music)

Last week we talked about
the sewer cover, manhole

cover trading cards that
were being scalped online.

And it shows the depth to
which Japan has a culture,

that collecting culture, the
pokemon, all this kind of stuff.

It’s just deeply embedded in the culture

that you make cards,
you do these kind of things.

And they’re actually relatively successful,

but it turns out you can
do it with almost anything

because there’s a town that is
decided to make Odysan trading cards.

Now, Odysan, they
translate as middle-aged man.

I translate as old man,

but that really just depends on
your definition of middle-aged.

To me, middle-aged is gonna be in your 40s

because you’re probably
only gonna live to your 80s.

I think a lot of people extend
middle-aged into like the 50s and 60s.

Now you’re old, just give it up.

I have guys, guys, I know.

They’re in their late 30s and 40s and stuff

and they’re trying to
still claim to be cool.

I’m sorry, man, you’re not cool.

If you’re over 30, you’re not cool.

That’s just how it is
and they’re trying so hard.

It’s like, now let that
part of your life go.

You’re not cool anymore.

The interesting part, so you can get
like, Odysan farmer, Odysan fireman,

Odysan police officer,
Odysan, soba noodle shop chef.

The interesting part is within this
community, those are real people.

Now, most of these guys are retired.

So again, pushing the definition of
middle-aged, as far as I’m concerned,

if you’re in your 60s, 70s, and 80s,
you’re not middle-aged, I’m sorry.

I guess in Japan, if
you intend to live to 120,

60 could technically be
middle-aged, but I don’t buy it.

The cards are real people.

So there is a retired fire chief
who lives in the community.

You can get his cars and
these kids are trading the cards

and they’re like, look, I have
police chief Odysan autographed,

and he’s showing it off to his friends,
which is in a weird way, kind of cool,

because I always think
like, if you can meet the

real people who do the
thing, that is kind of cool.

So if you could meet, you collect the cards
and you get this really powerful cards,

and then you meet that
guy, you meet that Odysan,

in real life, that actually
is pretty interesting.

This was created by a
community center, and it’s

like these guys, they
donate to the community,

so like they retired, I think
it was a retired fire chief.

He like drives older people
around or maybe a retired cop.

He like gives back to the
community and now that he’s retired,

he drives people who can’t
drive their cars anymore.

So he’ll like essentially an
old person taxy service for free,

’cause he keeps him out, he
helps other people, he’s helping

his community, and so they
wanted to kind of pay it back,

and they made these cards,
they make 40 cards a day.

No, they make 50 cards a day.

A complete set of cards is 40 cards.

So if you get all 40,
you have a complete set,

and they might make more and more cards, it
just actually gets more and more popular.

But kids are showing an interest, and
they’re going by the community center,

they’re kind of talking to people,
they’re seeing older people,

they’re interacting with
them in a positive way.

So this is actually like a huge success.

They are hand cut by staff.

So you have staff members at this community
center who are making these cards,

I guess printing them out and cutting
them all day, I can hope not every day,

regularly to make at least
one set of cards every day.

Three cards costs 100 yen.

Six cards costs 500 yen, but
you get one prism finish card.

I have no idea what that means,

but I’m assuming it’s special
like a holographic version,

or a laminated version,
or something like that.

(upbeat music)

Fetishists cried out all in
one voice, with sadness and

pain and dismay, as the
world has now taken a shift,

although really the real
world doesn’t cater to

them as much as they’d
like, from this April,

police officers, female
police officers specifically,

will not have the
option to wear skirts.

Now, in real life, female police officers
in Japan have not been wearing skirts

for a very long time, or at
least very few of them do,

because if you’re out in
the street, you’re out in

patrol, you actually have
to chase someone down.

The skirt is not the most
functional piece of clothing.

So, they’re not gonna
have to wear skirts anymore,

because they’re not
gonna be skirts available.

And my first thought
was like it’s the fetish guys,

like the guys who collect uniforms,
there’s a lot of uniform fetishness.

This is in Japan, and they’re
all based around uniforms,

it’s like the stewardess uniform, the
schoolgirl uniform, the police officer uniform.

You’ll see Halloween
costumes as police officer,

and it’s an incredibly short
skirt and handcuffs in a hat.

And that’s about it.

I guess everything in
Halloween is just slutty version.

You’re still gonna be able to have that.

You’re just in real life,
there will be no equivalency,

because the cops are
all gonna be wearing pants.

This summer, they’ve introduced a
new breathable polo option for the shirt.

We’ve seen a lot of changes to
how police act in our treated in Japan.

Last year or two years ago,
they were allowed to drink on duty,

which you would think
is a really normal thing

to be able to do, but
they’re out in the hot sun

in the summer in Japan,
and they couldn’t get drinks

because they thought
that looked unprofessional.

So, what they had to do was
go back to the police station,

change their clothes, playing clothes, go
to the convenience store, buy some drinks,

go back to the police
station, change their clothes,

and then go back out and
do what they were doing.

Stupid.

Because what’s wrong
with having a police officer

come into a convenience store
and buy a drink and actually

drink it, because it is a
billion degrees outside.

We’ve just had a sudden spring.

Like, we could go last time I filmed,
I was probably wearing a sweater.

I am barely keeping up.

I have to probably take
off my light jacket off soon

and just be wearing a
t-shirt that’s so warm today.

And then next week,
it’s gonna be cold again.

It’s just flipping back and forth.

But it’s nice that they’re
starting to treat police

officers, not like machines,
but more like people.

The thing I didn’t know,
which was really interesting,

is they used to have
gender-based insignia.

So for their rank on their uniforms,

you would have like a sergeant
and insignia for a male sergeant,

and this insignia for a female sergeant,
were actually different insignias,

which I found very, very strange,
’cause the rank is the same.

It’s a weird thing.

So I practiced judo.

I think I’ve made that
clear many, many times.

In judo, there’s the belt system.

So we just talk about the black belt.

A female judoka, person who
practiced judo, who has a black belt.

The black belt actually has a stripe
on it, a white stripe through the middle.

To designate their woman despite
the fact that it doesn’t really matter.

I always found that weird, but
I’ve actually noticed in recent years,

a lot of the girls are just
wearing a regular black belt.

I have no complaints.

I think it’s a rank.

It has nothing to do with gender.

So why it would be differentiated.

It didn’t make sense
to me in the first place.

  • There’s gonna be someone yelling
    about how their taxes are going to them

to be policing and not buying
water or tea or whatever.

  • Unfortunately.
  • This was in Japan.

This was a propriety thing.

Like people who are
working should not be

hanging out of a
convenience store and drinking.

So I think the negative
impression was coming from

the idea that maybe the
cops were slacking off.

Not that they didn’t deserve tea or water.

It was that they weren’t working.

But you can’t be chasing
criminals all day every

day just because that’s
not how that works.

So I think you do have a point.

There is gonna be a small segment of people

who just complain and
they’re gonna complain

that these guys are
allowed to have drinks.

But I think the majority… This
actually was spawned like four years ago.

It was a picture that went
around, went viral in Japan.

And it was either too Canadian
or too American police officers.

And they both had like Starbucks
and they were drinking out in sunglasses,

hanging out with people and just talking
like doing essentially community work.

Not necessarily running down a
criminal all the time like they do on TV.

Doing the actual job
of being a police officer.

These guys, it’s sparkly like is this okay?

Is this allowed?

They’re working.

They shouldn’t be doing this.

And a lot of people
are like, dude, it’s hot.

They’re having like drinks.

They’re just staying hydrated.

They’re drinking coffee ’cause
they’ve been working for eight hours.

Whatever, the back and
forth was very interesting.

And I actually think that viral post
sort of impacted the Japanese mentality

to be like these are human beings
who need water in the summertime.

So I think you’re
right, but hopefully not…

In a weird way, I’m hoping you’re not right

because people realize that these are
actually human beings who need liquids.

(upbeat music)

Sashima City Shrine.

So Sashima City is on Sashima Island
and you may have heard of Sashima Island

if you’ve actually played the video game,
go Sashima or you’re in the video games.

It was very popular and
it brought a lot of tours

to this area ’cause people wanted to see
the place where the video game took place.

That’s kind of cool.

You get tourism off a video game.

They didn’t spend any money
for this like free advertising.

That’s pretty cool.

But it has also caused problems where
we have a lot of nuisance streamers.

We have the overtourism, a lot
of issues with tourism in Japan.

Sashima Island is not excluded from that

just because it was made
popular by a video game.

They released a statement
on their Instagram.

A foreign tourist committed a severe
and unforgivable act of disrespect.

Now they don’t say what the act was.

I found six versions of the story.

All of them had the statement
and not what they actually did.

There was some supposition.

Sashima Shrine has not had
an easy time with the tourism.

It’s easy to judge both ways though.

I know the tourists are bad, but
I think Sashima might not be him.

I think that Sushima staff at the
shrine might not be handling it very well.

They’ve had problems with people
yelling and getting violent with the staff.

They’ve had disruptive behavior,

which I guess yelling and getting violent
with the staff is pretty disruptive.

The shrine will no
longer allow visitors at all.

So the only people who
can go into this shrine

are local parishioners,
so people who live in

the city, or people who
are shinto worshippers.

Now that’s a very difficult thing to check
because it’s not like you carry a card

or have some identification to
indicate that you are a shinto worshipper.

You are not allowed to take any photos

and there will be no live
streaming on the temple grounds.

So this is pretty strict.

Now these guys have gotten
pretty strict in the past.

Back in 2020, they banned foreigners,

but then they eased up
when that post went viral.

So we’re not allowed any foreigners
to join our, to come visit our shrine.

But then everyone’s
like, that’s actually biased,

it’s racist, it’s against the launch of
pen, it’s illegal to do that kind of thing.

So if you’re gonna ban people,

you can’t ban just foreigners,
but is their point of view

was it’s just the foreigners are coming
to visit here who are causing trouble.

In 2024, they banned Koreans,

which I would say is
even worse than just

banning foreigners as
a broad kind of thing.

They banned Koreans after a group of them
smoked and spit and ridiculed the staff.

So they had a bad experience of Koreans,

they’re just like no more
Koreans are allowed on our shrine.

So whatever happened recently
is just another version of this.

And they’re like, maybe
we wanna ban this group,

they seem to be really quick with the ban
hammer, which I’m kind of on board with.

Like if people are gonna cause
trouble, don’t let those people in.

But then of course, because
it’s sort of open to the public,

anything you do is
considered racism or a bias,

which is true, and so
you’re not allowed to do that.

So they’re just like, you
know what, no more visitors.

You have to either be a shinto
worshipper or a local to come in and visit.

I don’t know, I don’t know
what happened to set them off

this badly, but they
seem to have been set off

a bunch of times in the
past and set up different bans,

which makes me think maybe
they overreact is very hard to tell.

The thing is the other
side of this is in 2021,

there was a typhoon and
knocked over a Tory gate,

those big red, very sort
of iconic gates in Japan.

Games fans of the video game
go to Shishima and soccer punch

the company that made
the video game race $260,000

to rebuild the Tory
gate and parts of the

shrine that were damaged
during the typhoon.

So they’ve kind of gotten
positive stuff from this video

game coming out and making
their island kind of a point

to visit, but they’ve also had now we’re
having all the trouble with the tourism.

I wanna know specifically
what was actually done,

so I can judge whether
or not they’re overreacting,

but it seems like the
staff and the people there

aren’t really big fans of
interacting with people anyways,

don’t know how to manage crowds,
don’t know how to manage tourists,

and so them just blocking it off
probably is just better for everybody.

(upbeat music)

We get lots of stories
about power harassment.

Actually again, I get a story
and it happens again and again

and again and after a
while I’ll ease off on it

because there’s nothing to say about it,
but when it comes to power harassment

and the variety of
harassment they have in Japan,

it’s always interesting
to see what actually

constitutes the definition
of power harassment.

So this was a section chief was
glaring at subordinates during meetings.

So basically they couldn’t
explain themselves very well

or they weren’t doing
as good a job as he

would have hoped and
he was glaring at them.

So just staring at them displeased.

Not apparently, I guess power
harassment isn’t a single thing.

So that’s any one of
these harassment that you

break down into, it’s
like different pieces.

Each piece doesn’t seem that bad.

So like a guy staring at
me because he doesn’t like

how good my explanation
is, that doesn’t seem too bad.

I mean that just seems like
all my bosses pissed at me

because I’m not doing
my job to his satisfaction.

They did put slamming his desk.

So I don’t know what that means.

Like taking the drawer
and slamming it shut,

slamming the top of the desk
with his hands, something like that.

He was hit with a
temporary pay cut of 10% now.

His defense was, I have a loud voice

and a Hakata accent dialect and
that may have made it sound harsh.

So importantly, like I don’t know
enough about the different dialects.

So the Hakata dialect apparently
sounds very harsh in the Japanese ear.

So he’s saying that the way
I talk my subordinates or the

people who work with me,
they’re taking it the wrong way.

But the bid I find interesting, this
is actually doing an international pan

and dealing with these kind
of statements and defenses

has made me realize what people do
naturally and it’s a diversionary tactic.

So they’re saying you
were glaring at people,

you were slamming stuff,
you were shouting at them.

These are all power harassment.

He’s saying, I have a naturally loud voice

and I speak in a dialect, which
means you’re misinterpreting it.

But your way of speaking does
not impact slamming the desk.

You’re glaring at people has nothing to
do with your accent, that kind of stuff.

So they’ve made a series of like claims,

like you did ABCD and
he goes, yeah, but I do J

and that’s why everyone is misinterpreting
what I’m doing is power harassment.

So that’s something to keep in line
when you actually maybe get into a conflict

with another person when
you are talking about a thing,

they will start talking about something
else and try to ease themselves away.

Like I don’t, I do this and so
therefore you’re misinterpreting it

but you’re actually not
talking about the thing.

Stay on target, stay on point.

That’s how you win an argument.

And when people
start deflecting like this,

you know they’ve
already lost the argument.

If all you have to do is say like a statement,
I’ve actually made a bunch of times,

maybe not a statement,
but it’s like I say

something, the person
defends himself and I go,

notice how you didn’t
answer the question I asked

or you didn’t deal with
the topic I brought up?

And that’s because what
they’re doing is some sort of

diversionary tactic to try
to get out of the argument.

He berated his employee
by hitting the desk with a pen.

So I guess it’s getting,
hitting it with a pen.

I, how hard is that I don’t know?

(upbeat music)

There was a traffic stop.

A guy had driven a car
into a traffic light pole.

So I’m, he’s either on his
phone and distracted or drunk.

That’s the only reason
you drive into a pole

is because you’re not
actually looking at the road.

So he was distracted.

The police show up.

They start questioning the man.

The man says, I don’t care anymore.

Any punches is the policeman in the head.

I don’t know why.

That story has no
details or anything to it.

I just think it’s funny.

This guy declaring, I don’t care anymore.

And then punches the policeman and gets
arrested because yeah, he had to open drunk.

I’m gonna cut that story out.

That was not useful.

(upbeat music)

Sukiya is one of those very popular
chain restaurants that I will not go to.

Not, it’s not particularly bad.

I just, if I’m gonna spend money on food,
I want to get good food and it’s just fine.

It’s not even, I just never would care.

There’s a lot of foreign
people come to Japan

and they like to go to the chain restaurants
like Koko, Ichiba and Sukiya and stuff.

And I actually never
have enjoyed any of those.

‘Cause it’s like, if
you’re gonna go out to

four food, go out for
at least mediocre food.

This is like lower than that.

I’m very pretentious when it comes to food.

Unintentionally, I don’t
see if myself is a very

pretentious person overall,
but it seems like I’m very mid.

I think mid has become an insult,

whereas my view is like there’s high-end,
mid and low, and I’m always gonna go mid.

I actually don’t like high-end food either.

Like if you said, let’s go to this really
expensive Michelin Star Restaurant.

I’d be like, yeah, really?

We could go somewhere a
little cheaper that’d be more fun.

You say, let’s go to this place
that serves garbage in a bowl.

I’d be like, yeah, could we just go to like
a mid place instead of that’d be better?

So I have my biases and
at least I’m aware of them.

My coworkers do make fun of it, though,
because I will not go to certain restaurants.

On January 21st, so
back in January 21st, they

Sukiya served miso soup
and it had a mouse in it.

Now, I, again, multiple stories, some
stories said mouse, some stories said rat.

Now, my image of rats
is that they’re very large.

So I think this was a
mouse and it turns out

the mouse had crawled
into one of the bowls.

So they have stacks of like miso
bowls, these little wooden bowls usually,

and then they grab one, fill it up with
soup, and then serve it to the customer.

A mouse had gone into that
and died, and then the staff

picked it up without checking
poured the miso soup in.

Obviously, couldn’t see the mouse
anymore and served it to the customer.

Now, here’s the thing.

When they switched it from mouse to rat,
that’s to make the story more dramatic.

It’s more click-baity, I think.

But I think it was a rat to be too heavy.

Like, you picked that up,
you’d feel there was something

already in there, so it
had to be really small

and really light, which makes
me think it was a mouse.

So that’s, again, I have no
proof one way or the other,

but I think if you put
a rat in a little tiny,

very light wooden bowl, you’d be
able to feel the weight of a rat in there.

They served it to a customer.

The customer, of course, went,
dude, there’s a mouse in my soup.

I don’t want this.

This is disgusting.

They closed that restaurant for two days.

Didn’t inspection
tried to find if there any

gaps or holes where
the animals could get in.

They tried to see if there
was an infestation somewhere.

They were given a clean bill of health.

It seems like a one-off kind
of random thing and off they go.

What made people angry
wasn’t so much, I guess it was,

but wasn’t so much that there
was a mouse served in the miso soup.

It’s that they did kind
of try to keep it quiet.

They didn’t announce it on their website.

They wasn’t part of the news.

They didn’t get out.

Then they made a statement
on their website very quietly

that there was an object
in a miso soup bowl.

We apologize.

We’re going to make sure
that never happens again.

We’re going to train the staff better.

All the standard corporate things you have
to say in Japan when there’s a problem.

The main complaint
online is that they didn’t say

anything for at least two
months before it got out.

It seemed like they tried to
brush over it, which I’m sorry,

if I was on the corporate side,
that’s probably exactly what I would do.

I don’t want people to
find out that there was

a mouse in the soup
that we served to anybody.

That’s going to kill your business.

So I get it, even if it’s
not completely honest,

I kind of understand
what happened there.

(upbeat music)

The university professor
previously was forced to quit

because of a sexual
misconduct with a student.

Now, they were found to be laying
down, which was a very weird way to put it.

So I’m assuming not
actually having sex, but laying

down together in one of
the labs in the university.

So maybe laying down
and hugging, laying down

and just like taking
a nap, I don’t know.

I think if they were having sex, they
would have been more clear about it.

So they were very specific
about laying down in the lab,

’cause I saw about three
versions of this story.

The teacher was forced
to quit because of course,

this teacher’s a inappropriate conduct
between a teacher and a student.

So I actually think that
was pretty reasonable.

Then they found out later, the
teacher had tried to defend themselves

by saying, well, I was
actually being blackmailed.

The student had said,
you have to do these things

that I want you to do,
or I will send messages

to the administration
and I will get you fired.

So basically, you do
sexual misconduct with me,

or I’m going to accuse
you of sexual misconduct.

So he was in a situation
where like rocking

a hard place, ’cause
what are you gonna do?

There’s no options.

What the student actually did?

This was very weird, to be honest.

So the student had
blackmailed the professor

and made a contract,
and the contract included,

you have to hug and lie
together with me once a month.

So once every month you
have to lay down with me

in the lab, ’cause this is
where this all was happening.

So once a month, once a month, okay, I’m,
the weird part on my side is I was like,

that’s not very often,
like just lay down together

and hug once a month,
maybe, I don’t know,

then go on a date
outdoors every two months.

Now this was in writing,
and then the student

made the teacher sign it, so
that, which is essentially saying,

I am going to black, if
you don’t do these things,

I’m going to blackmail you,
here’s a contract, please sign it.

So that was the weird part of this,
is that the teacher actually, in a way,

had the proof that they
were being blackmailed

from the beginning
when they had a contract,

a physical piece of
paper they had to sign.

I’m wondering though,
if the student took the

contract back, or how
they found the contract.

But the contract came out
that had these stipulations

of hugging and laying
together and going on a date

very few months, and again, a date
every two months is not very often.

I would, I would honestly,
okay, if I was going to

bother blackmailing someone,
I’d get something out of it.

I’d be like, every
single week, we go on a

date, or every two weeks,
depends how much time.

It’s a university professor, they
got weekends off, they got money.

And then laying in the
place, I wouldn’t want

to do it in the lab,
or go somewhere else.

Or maybe that’s what got the
student off, was doing it in the laboratory

where they’re not supposed to
do it, the risk of getting caught.

The professor tried to break it off,

has text messages where I sent to the student
like, I don’t want to do this anymore,

I think this is inappropriate,
I think this is wrong.

The student then returned
with, be my slave forever.

So that shows you kind of
the difference in psychology

they have going on with this student
who is blackmailing the teacher.

Again, through commit
sexual misconduct with

me, or I will accuse you
of sexual misconduct.

The professor, they haven’t said that,

whether or not the
professor’s gonna get their job

back, because I actually
think if the professor

could have had a little
more of a backbone in

this one, I’m actually
gone to the administration

and said, this student’s
trying to blackmailing.

Here’s the contract they tried to make,
and they wanted me to sign, which I sign,

but it’s not of course
not legally, you can’t

legally, I have lost the
word, not legally applicable.

We got to the last story
of my brain to shut off.

It’s just done.

No, it’s not legally enforceable.

I’m legally binding, thank you the show.

So we got two appropriate ones.

My brain just kicked in right as
you were typing that I assume.

It’s not legally binding,
it’s not legally enforceable.

This contract to force me
to commit sexual misconduct.

He could have taken that to
the administration who said,

this student’s trying to
do this, let’s put a camera

into prove it, if you want more
proof, we could actually do it.

Because we know the student wants to
do this laying down thing in the classroom.

We could have the student come in and say,
I don’t want to lay down the student then,

we’ll say something inappropriate, like
you have to, you’re my slave, whatever.

But yeah, that last
message, be my slave forever.

We don’t know if the
teacher’s gonna get their

job back, but they are
getting their unpaid wages.

(upbeat music)

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Murder in Japan 4

(upbeat music)

Okay, so we did a previous
episode of Murder in Japan where

we talked about the girl who
essentially used her family.

She had full control over
her family and their situation.

And she basically forced her father to
drive her to a place where she found a guy,

got him to a love hotel,
killed him into Capitated him,

put his head into a suitcase
and brought him home.

The dad basically knew this happened.

So the mother and the father
are both on trial for murder.

Or at least connected to the murder.

I forget the word.

I just started this, complicit,
complicit in the murder.

But so the father was,
the psychology behind

this is actually the
biggest part of the story.

He helped her practice the murder.

So he let her tie him up and then sat there

and then she practiced splitting
his throat like she’d seen in movies.

She watched the terrifying and
then some other horror movies

to get sort of like where she
should cut or how she should do it.

And then she practiced with her dad

and then she got her dad to drive her to
the place where she knew this guy would be

and then got him to go
to a love hotel with her.

And then she murdered him.

So the question is, how
complicit is the father?

‘Cause he kind of knew
this was gonna happen.

And he said he actually was
praying that it wouldn’t happen.

But he did assist in
almost every aspect of it.

He was found guilty of
abandonment and mutilation

of a corpse, which
comes with a one year,

four month prison sentence that
has been suspended for four years.

So if he doesn’t do anything
wrong over the next four years,

he’s actually not gonna
get punished at all.

Now, I think his home life and everything,

there’s a lot of punishment
going on there anyways.

They were both, the mother and the father

were completely subservient
to the murderer in this case.

And it is absolutely terrifying.

But as these cases are finished, I
think it’s good to follow up to see

like how complicit they
were, how much trouble

do they get into, what
is the actual punishment?

It’s interesting to see those facts.

(upbeat music)

The second update was
for a story of two girls

who bullied another girl and basically, it’s
hard to tell whether they pushed her off

or bridge or she jumped,
but they forced her to do it.

Now, what happened
was this girl took a picture

of a group and one of
the bullies was in the group

and she said after that
was posted on social media,

said I didn’t give you permission
to post that on social media.

So I’m now gonna cause
you an immense amount

of terror and pain
over the next two days.

So her and her friends were bullying her,

torturing her, pushing her around,
beating her up, that kind of stuff.

And over the course of two days,

this accumulated with
them being on a bridge

out in the countryside
’cause they said like,

come out to this place, if you apologize,
we’ll stop and we’ll just let it all go.

So if she sees an opportunity
to get this to stop, she goes out.

They’re like, sit on
the edge of this bridge.

So climb up on the railing.

She’s sitting there and then she fell.

Now, it’s unclear as to whether she was
pushed or fell or just slipped or whatever.

But she was up there
because these two girls.

It seems like she was pushed.

So this is murder.

This is not attempted murder.

It’s not, the girls involved have basically
admitted that they pushed her off.

But there’s no actual
visible evidence of that.

The admission is pretty clear.

Prosecutors asked for 25
years in prison, the judge gave 23.

So bullying someone for
two days and then pushing

them off a bridge,
23-year prison sentence.

The girl is in her 20s.

She’s not gonna get out of
prison until she’s in her 40s.

The crime was extremely
cruel and malicious.

They showed no respect for the victim’s life
and integrity, which is absolutely true.

I mean, if you’re bullying someone for
two days and then push them off a bridge,

you’re not showing a lot
of respect for the person.

This is the more interesting
aspect of this case

is that the girl, she was only about 19
at a time, the bully, was 19 at the time,

and she was having a relationship
with a married police officer,

which cast a lot of aspersions as
to what was going on with this case.

It seems like that cop
tried to bury this case.

He was in a financial division of some sort

and he had this murder
case moved to their group

and then basically tried to suppress it.

So there’s a whole other aspect of this
case that was going on at the same time,

but at the end of the day, she got
caught, the other bully got caught.

She’s still on trial, so that
actually hasn’t been determined yet.

And the police officer has been fired,
but we don’t know he’s actually been

arrested or punished.

That’s the case, I actually,
I’m more interested in,

because this guy clearly was trying to
help this girl get away from with murder,

which actually would be a crime in itself.

I assume, but I don’t know
enough about Japanese law.

I gotta find a Japanese lawyer

who will just talk to
me for a couple of days,

so I can ask a whole bunch of questions,

because as we do these
stories over and over again,

I end up getting more and more sort of
detailed questions, but I’m on the lookout.

I don’t know how to find or track one down,
but if you, anyone knows a Japanese lawyer

who’ll be willing to talk
to you and introduce

Japan for like an hour,
every couple of months,

man, I would love to do that.

It does sound like the plot to a movie.

It actually sounds, it’s
one of those ones where

the movie, you’d be like,
well, that’s a bit much.

Like a lot of stuff in it, it’s like
almost like too much to be realistic.

So this is a story about a
murder that happened last week,

and the shocking element
more than anything

else, is that this woman
was live streaming,

her walk around the Yamanote line.

So there’s this very famous train line
in Tokyo that basically goes into loop.

People will ride it, get
off, take a little walk,

they’ll go to the next
station, they’ll write it for a bit.

It’s kind of a cool tourist thing to do.

A lot of Japanese people do it.

If you’re into trains, you
really know what this is.

It’s a very famous loop around Tokyo.

She was walking on one of the side streets.

There was no one else there.

She was streaming to about
6,000 people when a man came out

and started stabbing
her with a hunting knife.

He stabbed her for a full
minute up to 30 or 40 times.

Now, they always say
how many times they were

actually stabbed, but
it just shows the intent.

I think that more than anything else,

when they start talking
about like she was stabbed

30 times, it shows that
his intent was to kill her.

Because of course, when he was arrested,

he said I did not intend to kill her.

Because he doesn’t want
to be arrested for a murder,

he wants to be arrested for manslaughter,
which is a much lighter sentence.

When he was arrested and they asked
him, why did he murder this woman?

He said he had lent her
more than 2 million yen.

It seems like 2.5 million yen.

He had asked for it back and
she refused to give it to him.

So this was an act of revenge.

I saw the preview of a stream where
Sato went on foot around the Yamanote line.

So he said I saw her on stream.

I saw she was in Tokyo.

So what had actually happened
is she announced that tomorrow,

I’m going to go around the Yamanote line.

He was living in different
cities like tomorrow.

I’m going to go to Tokyo, find
one of those stations where she is

by watching her stream
hunter down and kill her.

When she was on the ground, a witness said
that he was aiming his phone at her face,

and they claim that he
said are you dead yet?

So this actually is
immediately counter to what

he said, what he
didn’t intend to kill her.

If he stabbed her that many times
and then the last words he said

to her corpse at this point
probably is are you dead yet?

Which I’m assuming the
stream was still running.

Because when she got
attacked, she dropped the phone.

It’s hard to say whether or not
they could actually still see it,

but they could certainly
hear what was going on.

And it seems like the last thing he
said to her was are you dead yet?

Then the police showed up very quickly.

He just put up his hands
and just immediately gave up

on immediately admitted
to being her attacker.

So because this is
such a high profile case,

we got the background of
the guys situation with her.

We got a lot of information
about the background of the victim,

and then we got sort of the
aftermath of what’s happening.

He saw her stream first in 2021.

So she was out streaming,
doing live streaming 2021.

In August 2022, he started
visiting bars where she worked.

So he had created that relationship.

So he’s like I’ve watched
this girl on stream.

He’s probably very attracted to her.

She was 18 at the time. He was in his 30s.

He was 38 and he said
I want to meet this girl.

I’ve watched her on stream.

I feel like I have a connection to her.

If I meet her in real life, you know
what was really going on in his head.

He’s like I actually already love her

and probably has convinced himself
that she actually already loves him.

He goes to the bars where she works.

Now she works at Cabaret bars.

She works at the kind
of bars where the girls

are paid to make you
think that they like you.

A Cabaret bar is where you go
and you sit down and you drink

and you buy drinks and you pay at thousands
and thousands of dollars for champagne.

And the more money you spend, the
more time you can spend with the girls.

So for the girls’ profits, she wants
you to stay there as long as possible.

So she wants you to fall in love with her.

This is the sort of weird
parasitic relationship

of the whole host club
Cabaret club system.

Where you’re manipulating
people to fall in love with you.

So they’ll give you money.

Now this goes back to last
year when I was obsessed

with the leading gen story
where she was scamming

guys online, trying to get
them to give her money.

This is to me only one step away.

Now I think because it’s a Cabaret
club, you should know going in

that the girls don’t actually like you.

They get money from like a
percentage of the money you spend.

So they’re trying to get you to
spend as much money as possible.

But he fogged by the love,

probably also fogged by the idea that
he’d spent so much time with her online

that he knew her that she
wouldn’t be treating him that way.

He’d convince himself to this.

She said she needed money.

She needed money for living expenses.

She needed, she has the
loans she had to work out.

She was having a lot of problems.

He took out two loans of a million
yen each and gave them to her.

So they found bank transfers and stuff.

She said she was going to go back.

She was going to pay you
back as soon as she could.

She’s also making claims
that she’s making tons

of money streaming,
which is probably not true.

There is a certain amount of
duplicity here on both sides.

Now I’m not going to imply that
she deserved to be killed because she

absolutely did not.
She probably deserved to be arrested.

She probably deserved to have her funds
taken away from her and given to the guy.

He sued her in 2023 and at
that time the judge said, yeah,

she should have to pay back the
2.5 million yen that she took from you.

You have proof of how
much money you’ve given her.

It’s all pretty clear she
should pay you back.

Then she disappears.

Now the problem with
disappearing and making

your primary source
of income or your life

streaming is that the
situation where you say,

“Tomorrow I’m going to go
around this yamanote line in Tokyo,”

means that the people who watch
you know where you’re going to be.

So you can’t really disappear
if you want to be a streamer.

That is falling in line
with a lot of the stuff

that’s actually happened
over the last two weeks

where really famous streamers
have had people break into their house.

They’ve been attacked on the street.

Live streaming seems to have
suddenly become more dangerous

because these, I think we’re
being honest, it’s primarily women,

attractive women.

These guys follow them online.

They’ve given money.

They feel like they have a connection.

They feel like you owe them something.

Then they start hunting
for you on the streets.

I don’t think any live
streamer who’s a female

should be going out without some
form of security, like someone with them.

They could stay off stream, but I think
they should actually have someone there.

But of course then you
can have to pay that guy.

And this woman, the victim here,
was clearly not good with money.

Now she does have a tragic backstory,
like there’s no good aspect of this.

She clearly did not
intend to pay the guy back.

People are terrible at
not doxing themselves.

That is true.

Like I know if you collected,
I never leave my house,

but I know if you went
through back all my podcasts

and all my streams
and all this other stuff,

you could figure out
probably exactly where I live.

Or at least you would know like the
city you would know this other stuff.

I mentioned to go a lot of times
because I don’t live in Nagoya,

but I bet you could
piece together a lot of

information about me if
you actually wanted to.

I’m lucky in that no one is interested
in a 50 year old man in that kind of way.

I’m not going to have to worry about
that sort of parasocial relationship.

She never intended to pay him back.

And so again, she deserves
to be punished for that.

But when you actually hear about
her life, there’s a lot of sympathy there.

The thing is, online, the
sympathy wavered back and forth.

This woman was killed.

She was murdered on the street.

I saw a vlogger show one shot
of the outside of their window.

And I immediately knew
which building in Chicago.

It’s the only window which is lucky.

And there’s usually just a judo suit there.

There’s a story way back in this guy.

Oh, wow, there was this guy who took a
picture from Instagram of some woman,

so I assume a woman
he found very attractive.

He found in the background some
stuff and then a reflection in her eye.

And with that information, he found
a way to triangulate where she was.

And that meant, since she was, you know,

the post was probably
like getting off work, going

home, that meant it was
close to where she lived.

That’s how she found out where she lived.

Essentially the reflection in her eye
is how she found out where she lived.

And when I read that
story, I was like, if you use

that power for good, he
could help so many people.

But of course, it’s just
all awful, selfish stuff.

The victim here had a pretty tough life.

I mean, that’s just, I think, fair to say.

The mother of the victim was an
alcoholic and she left the girl on her own

when she was a child
to take care of herself.

And we’re implying from when she was, like,
just two, three, four, five years old.

She was already on her own.

Her mom’s already an alcoholic.

She’s already trying to,
like, having a tough life.

She started working at a cabaret
as soon as she became an adult.

And that actually probably
means before she became an adult.

Before it was legal for her to
work there, she actually started

working in a cabaret, which
is where you start drinking.

So at a very young age, she starts
drinking a lot regularly with the customers

to keep them buying stuff
so that she makes money.

The mother would come into
the cabaret where she works,

drink all evening, and then say, my
daughter will pay for it and then left.

So her mother, even after her
daughter starts making money,

starts supporting herself, is already
created this situation where it’s like,

well, I’m going to put more on her
because she’s making money now.

Now we’re both kind of living
this sort of very tragic lifestyle.

She has a baby, but
she’s a really hard drinker.

And so she neglected her child and
then pretty much in the same way.

She would leave her
daughter in daycare and

go out drinking and
then not come back like,

staff at the cabaret, a place where
that is designed to abuse customers,

would say you need to go
get your kid, but she’s drunk.

So she would show up drunk to get her kid.

The state then eventually
took her child away from her.

This made her break down.

She then sort of does
a left turn and says like,

okay, I’m going to still
keep working at bars.

We’re going to start streaming
because streaming seems

like a good way for people
to be able to make money.

I’m assuming if she’s working at cabaret
clubs, she is conventionally attractive.

She’s attractive in some way.

That’s going to get you a
lot of traction on a stream.

She’s like, I’m going to put this together.

One of the things her friends said
about her was she was a hard worker.

So all these negatives you
can talk about, she was lying.

She lied to people.

She was now alcoholic.

She was willing to put in the work.

So that’s how she built up an audience
of 6,000 people watching her per stream.

The problem is because of the
sentiment of these crimes in the past,

like the these each,
where she was scamming

men, this seems like
she was in the same line.

She was just taking money from guys.

No intention of giving it back,
seeing it was perfectly acceptable.

If they give me the money, that’s fine.

That has actually created a
lot of online hate towards her

and a lot of sympathy for the guy
who actually committed the murder.

Now, the guy had
did a lot right against

giving her money was
probably not a good idea,

but then suing her to get it
back probably was the right idea.

Going through the legal
means to get your money back.

When she disappeared, I always run into
the problem of he was able to find her.

That means he could point the police
to her and actually catch her that way.

So instead of getting a knife
and going and hunting her down,

he should have called
the police and said, hey,

this person who owes me 2.5
million yen, I sued her for it in court.

She owes it to me.
She’s on the street right now.

I would like you to go get her.

And then like, I don’t
know, again, garnish her

ways, wages put
something on her, arrest her.

I don’t know something to push her
to pay me back before you jump to the,

I’m going to get a knife
and hunt her down myself.

Because he was able
to do it, he was able to

point the authorities
in the right direction.

And I think that’s where all
sympathy for him goes away.

Because of course, 2.5
million yen is a lot of money.

I’m sure he wasn’t rich.

He had to borrow money
to be able to give it to her.

He still don’t need to
kill someone for that.

So this was streamed live.

He said the reason he did the attack was so
that people would know about the situation,

so that people would know that she
was, she had stolen money from him.

But then as soon as he was arrested,

the first words out of his mouth
were, I did not intend to kill her.

So I am going to follow on this case.

Devil’s advocate, he told the
police and they wouldn’t actually.

Okay, if he had told the police, I think
that might have been because again,

I read 20 versions of
this story to make sure

I got all the little
subtleties back and forth

because I want to be
able to say what’s true.

And what’s true is going to be the
consistent throughs lines of all the stories.

I don’t know, no one
mentioned him calling the police.

So I think if he had done it,
one of the multitude of stories,

especially when they started
looking into his and her backgrounds,

like we got more background information
on this from Tokyo reporter and on the

the same Japan than any
other murder you’ll actually read.

Like now that this is
kind of what I do on my

day off is just collect
stories and read stories.

I know how much
information I’m usually going

to get and it’s usually
not very much because I

want all the information so that it’s
because that’s the more interesting part.

Like how did we end up in this situation?

Because the first story
is just guy comes out of

nowhere and kills woman
while she’s live streaming.

Then you find out they
had a history and then

you find out that she
was manipulating him,

then you find out that
like he had this idea

that they had a relationship
that did not exist.

Then your attitude goes
back and forth, but then I

never want to just end up
with a conclusion of who’s

right and wrong because there’s
still probably information I don’t know.

The internet being the
internet, all these like

in the cell guys are
taking this anti-female

stance and saying like she
manipulated him, she deserved it.

There’s guys jumping on
the memorials that were

put down like the flowers
where she was murdered.

There’s some people have put out memorials.

There’s guys like kicking
it over and jumping on

and stuff just being as
awful as they possibly can.

Because they have this
negative view towards

women because of the whole in-cell
community is just decided to band together.

She’s not completely innocent but
she did not deserve what happened.

But the guy absolutely
could have taken steps

because she was streaming because it
was right there out in front of everybody.

It was not too hard to find where she was.

She said, “I’m going to be
going around the Yamanote line.”

He could have called the police and said,
“Hey, this person owes me 2.5 million yen.

He’s going around the
Yamanote line tomorrow.

Could you please pick her up and
try to get someone money back?

” And that would have been a way better
resolution than what actually happened.

Basically, I’m just going
to keep following the story.

So in six months or another
year because of course,

justice system views
very slow in every country.

I will come up with follow-up, just like
I did at the beginning of this episode,

where it was the
follow-ups to the father of

the woman who committed
the murder in Hokkaido.

And the two bullies, one
has been convicted and

the other one is still
the trial is ongoing.

I’ll follow-up with those
as often as I can and

keep this series going
because this is essentially

an extra episode, an
extra series, murder in

Japan, where we just
go through the facts.

I don’t want to make
too many strong opinions,

but the interesting part
for me is how this system

works and how much
information you don’t get

before people form a
judgment and then how

more information changes
your opinion back and forth.

But I still think we
can always end up with,

we shouldn’t really
be committing murder.

[MUSIC]

Diamonding my Banana

(upbeat music)

So I didn’t have an episode last week.

It took last week off.

Life just sort of happened.

It was nothing of a particular, it
was just a bunch of little things.

And then I realized I’m just not
organized enough to put on an episode.

So today’s episode
might be a little longer.

A lot of people in the past
have told me that the 20, 30

minute mark is actually to the
sweet spot for a news podcast.

Because they get a bunch of news stories.

It’s the length of their commute,

their train ride, or their
drive into work or something.

So it seems like a lot of people
listen to this stuff on the train.

This one’s gonna be longer
’cause it’s got eight stories.

I usually cap out around six.

Just a restaurant, closed for two days,

after 33 customers became
ill due to food poisoning.

That’s pretty bad.

Five of the seven employees
tested positive for notovirus.

Now, I’ve heard notovirus.

I thought it was a flu.

So maybe it is a flu.

And they got their flu
particles all over the food.

And that made all the people sick.

But I feel like they wouldn’t
call it food poisoning then.

So maybe it’s notovirus and food poisoning

like salmonella or
ill-prepared food or something.

Clearly there’s a cleanliness issue here.

That I think maybe is the
underscore of either point

like whether it was
notovirus or food poisoning.

This is a dirty, dirty place
and you do not wanna eat there.

That would be my feeling.

If I’ve heard that a restaurant had 33
people get sick, I might not go there to eat.

I’m just being really honest.

So they shut down for three days.

And the government’s like scrub your stuff.

Clean everything, get these dirty, dirty
employees out and let them get better.

And then you can reopen.

They reopen three days later.

23 people get sick from
food poisoning immediately.

11 had notovirus.

So I should have, this is
one of those things where

I was like, I meant to
look up what notovirus is.

Clearly it’s something
that’s spread through touch.

The staff who were sick
before either they got better

and pass it on to
other staff or just they

didn’t get better and
came back and kept working.

I would actually put money on.

This is not in the story.

I would put money on
the people who had the

notovirus were the
ones actually cleaning.

So they would clean something,
touch it immediately afterwards.

And there you have your
new blossom of notovirus.

So when they reopened the restaurant, it
was just there germinating, waiting to go.

And oh my God, please be
careful when you go to eat.

(upbeat music)

First in Japan, the birth
rate is a constant new story

because it’s a thing that needs to be
fixed because they don’t know how to fix.

And there’s now been
some really weird stuff

that I’ve experienced
in my own personal life.

But we’ll get the story out first.

Burst in 2024, 729,880.

That is down 37%, the 37%,
that is down 37,643 from 2023.

So that’s a 5% drop in
one year, that’s really bad.

We’re looking at less than 700,000
babies in 2025 if this trend continues.

So there might be something that happens.

Maybe I get out and they’re in the world.

And I have, oh God, I was in a pharmacy.

And they had a drink for men to
become vigorous called diamond banana.

I really wanted to buy it.

Just to see primarily what it tastes like.

I wasn’t planning on having
any sexual escapades that day.

So I was a little torn ’cause
A, it was stupid expensive.

It was like 3,000 yen, it was like 25, $30.

B, I’m assuming it’s just a placebo,
but if it works, would I just be

turgid for the entire day
with no release schedule?

That’s maybe the issue I was running into.

I did look at the ingredients list.

It had soup on, which is soft shell turtle.

It had cobra extract.

And I don’t know if that’s the
venom or the blood of the cobra.

It had scorpion.

It had skeleton.

So I’m assuming seal bones ground up

and put in it or maybe some
shark or something like that.

And I was like, I bet those are all like

traditional Chinese remedies
for the male issue at hand.

But I bet it’s also a placebo.

So my thinking, what
these actually drinks are.

So this I actually think Ninja Ninja Japan

might be expanding its
product line into a drink.

And you put in a whole bunch
of just stuff that sounds manly.

Like when you say it has cobra venom in it

or cobra extract or shark fin muscle
bone, you’re like, oh, man, that’s manly.

And you put that in my body.

And I get more manly as a result.

This is a placebo.

But you want the placebo
to have an indicator at work.

So I was actually betting like these things

have a ton of caffeine
or a ton of nicotine.

So you drink it and then 10 minutes
later, you’re like, oh, I feel good.

I feel ready to go.

And then you’re like,
that drink is working.

It is diamond in my banana.

And now I am diamond banana.

And then that placebo
effect is exacerbated by that.

So it’s just like increased tenfold
because you do feel something.

And you’re like, this is working.

Now mentally, I think it is working.

Therefore, it works.

And I think that might be the
secret to these energy drinks.

And I have read a placebo study.

And it said the more expensive
the pain killer, the better it works.

But it doesn’t– like it could
have the exact same stuff in it.

It could just be like 600
milligrams of acetaminophen.

Cost like the no name brand
is going to be like 1,000 yen.

Let’s say that.

And then the acetaminophen,
buffering, dx, extra

fast, powerful, you
know, that’s 2,000 yen.

It works twice as fast.

The exact same contents doesn’t matter

because your brain’s like if it costs
more money, then it must be more effective.

And it does work that way because
that’s how placebo is working.

People talk about like, oh,
it’s just a placebo effect.

I’m like, if it works,
like if I feel less pain

faster, I’m willing to
pay the extra money.

Like, I don’t care if it’s real or placebo.

If diamond banana works because it’s
all in my head, because maybe that’s it.

Maybe the problem I’m having is in my head,

like when Spider-Man
couldn’t shoot his webs.

Maybe I just need to believe– and
this is the catalyst that makes me believe.

Now, it would be expensive
to drink that on a regular basis,

but I’m at a age where
that’s not a problem anymore.

I am totally off the baby
train, just what I should be on.

Ishiva, the current Prime
Minister, he made comments.

That was a wicked tangent.

His comments was, there
are less opportunities

for women to meet and get
married, which I actually agree with.

This is one of the few times
I’ve agreed with prime ministers

on the baby issue, because
usually they’re saying,

can we find a government mandated
solution to the baby issue and the answers?

No.

Because you can’t
make people do this stuff.

You need them to want to do it.

The way they want to do it is
if they have free time to meet

and fall in love and form a relationship,
they need to have enough money to live.

Those are the two fundamentals
for people making babies.

I’m not going to get into
any of the other subtleties.

You need to have enough money to survive.

You need enough time to actually
make and take care of a baby.

So you need a massive shift in
just the work culture in Japan.

Then went on to say, the
government shouldn’t interfere

with people’s values,
which again, I agree with.

The government shouldn’t be
telling people how to live their lives.

So that’s a good attitude.

But then he said, can the government
create opportunities to meet?

And I actually think, you
know, that’s not a terrible thing.

They’ve had like
government-sponsored dating parties.

I don’t know how successful they were.

They never sounded to
be particularly successful.

They had one where they
were like ladies from the city.

You could come meet like basically farmers.

That might be a good thing.

Again, I don’t know
how successful that was.

I don’t know how attractive it is going
from Tokyo living in the countryside.

But what he’s basically
suggesting we bring back Omiyai.

Now, when you say arranged marriage,

you think like Game of Thrones,
I’m going to take my daughter.

And then I will choose a
guy and they’ll get married.

They’ll have no saying it.

Omiyai is not quite the same.

It’s arranged marriage, but
through like a marriage broker.

So like, let’s say I want to get married.

I go to this person.

They have like a catalog.

And we go through the
catalog and we have attributes.

And we have a discussion.

Then we meet.

And then we decide if we like each other.

Now, we both know
we’re looking for marriage.

That’s the whole point
of the Omiyai system.

So at least that’s all on the table.

I actually know a couple of people I’ve
met whose parents met through Omiyai.

And they actually say they’re really happy.

And this was a really good way to meet.

So there’s clearly, I don’t
know, cultural elements

or opinions or things
like that will come into it.

But it does seem that overall
a good Omiyai is very good.

I’m assuming, again, we
don’t have stats on it.

But Ishiba thinks this
might be the one one way

to step forward is like,
look, people aren’t meeting.

Here’s an organized way
to get people to meet.

Maybe we should be encouraging
that as opposed to Tinder,

which I think maybe people’s
attitudes on Tinder might be different.

The marriage rates is lower
among temporary workers.

So either we need to raise rates for those
workers or just let them quit their jobs.

Make a situation where someone gets
paid enough that they can quit their jobs.

But in a slight amount of good news,

this is the second year in a
row that marriages have gone up.

It’s gone 2.2% up since last year.

That is attributed primarily to COVID.

So people weren’t out and
meeting and being able to do stuff.

So they weren’t hanging out.

They weren’t getting married.

Or they were like, let’s defer our marriage

until after the pandemic
has kind of finished.

We had a new group of
people join our company.

And one of them actually
brought up the breeding visa now.

We were in a professional environment.

So they didn’t say that.

Yeah, they went like, yeah, and now they
got those visas for young, single people.

And I was like, oh, that’s not a thing.

So this is internet information.

It’s really interesting because the idea

that they’re going to bring in young people
to hook up and breed and make babies.

And then I assume, since
they’re not really like staying,

they would just be
abandoning those children.

So they become like state
sponsored children or something.

Like that plan doesn’t
sound very thought out.

It’s also the exact opposite of
what Japanese people would want.

Japanese people don’t want a ton of foreigners
coming over and making foreign babies.

Because they will always
hold on to that core idea

that these are not pure,
true Japanese babies.

Like I, as a foreign person,
have talked to a class of students.

And they’ve been like, oh,
yeah, we don’t want that.

And I was like, you realize
you’re saying to me, a foreigner,

who’s come to Japan and had two kids in
Japan that this is not the solution you want.

Like that is not the way it should go.

But they’re thinking of
just Japan not being Japan

anymore, which is not
really the way countries work.

But you’re also not going
to change anybody’s mind.

That said, in April 2023, an oral
abortion pill was approved in Japan.

Now, this is very new.

And you can think
2025, they’re now just

getting plan B, which
is basically what this is.

It was, this is the difference now.

They actually had it before,
but now it’s over the counter.

You don’t need to go to a, I guess you’d

do a prescription or a
pharmacist or something.

This was just talking
about, it’s been introduced.

It’s easier to get.

And now you can use
it, Japan, when I arrived

in 2001, had essentially
this abortion cabal.

And it’s a very weird thing to think about.

But there was an abortion industry,

and they charged huge
amounts of money for abortions.

So they didn’t want
safer, faster things brought

in, because they would
lose all the money.

So these abortion
doctors were telling the

government that abortion
pills were not safe,

so that they wouldn’t come
in and cut into their profits.

And then it was, you can
get the abortion pill, but

you have to go visit the
doctor so he gets his cut.

Then it was kind of okay,

’cause then the doctor was
still making some money off this.

Now this is taking it a notch.

It’s making it more accessible.

So I’m assuming you just have to go to
the pharmacy and talk to a pharmacist.

The last year it was used
1,440 times, as opposed to the

120,000 abortions that were
performed in Japan last year.

It’s good up to nine weeks,
and it’s safer than surgeries.

This is one of the big problems
is, if you have multiple surgeries,

it might actually impact
your ability to have a baby

down the line, whereas this
is a much safer alternative.

Last year, abortions rose
for the first time in 22 years.

I don’t know what that says about
the culture or country or anything.

You’ll have to interpret that
information your own way.

(upbeat music)

A Japanese company is
selling optical lattice clocks.

They are, what are they?

That’s actually the interest.

I only found this story interesting,
’cause I really like watches and stuff,

and I found that all the young people who
come to Japan now, they don’t have watches.

And it makes perfect sense.

You have a phone, the phone
tells you the time, it’s your alarm.

It does everything you needed to do.

Why would you buy a watch?

Watch is now, would just
be a fashion accessory.

But I grew up thinking watches
were cool, so I like watches.

You can actually see one
on my desk just over there.

I found it interesting that they’re making
this incredibly expensive accurate clock.

This will be accurate.

It will lose less than one
second over 10 billion years.

Which, actually my immediate thought
was like how long do the parts last?

Like the parts aren’t
gonna last 10 billion years.

So I don’t think that’s true.

I think something in the
machine is going to give after the

first million years and then it’s
gonna lose accuracy and time.

I guess you would be able
to maintain it or something.

It looks like a mini fridge.

And it is 109 centimeters tall.

They, their plan is to sell 10 units
over three years at 500 million yen a unit.

So they want to make $3.3 million off this.

And it’s like what is the purpose

of a mini fridge that tells
time to that level of accuracy?

Well, this is designed for
monitoring the movement

of the Earth’s crust
and like volcanic activity.

So we’re talking like you
set up this clock somewhere.

I guess you check where
your tectonic plate is.

And then you can see how long, how far
it shifts over a certain amount of time.

And then you can extrapolate where
that tectonic plate is actually going.

It seems like this is measuring
time on a cosmic scale kind of thing.

Like we’re not gonna be
around to see the results

of these experiments
or whatever, but they are

or someone else is whoever inherits
the clock that costs five million yen.

I won’t be getting one because I
actually do prefer just a wristwatch.

(upbeat music)

Mr.
Pan has a lot of like collectible culture.

One of my first experience
of this was my son

when he was little wanted to go to
like all the stations on a certain route.

And then you would get off on the station,

you had a piece of
paper, like a little booklet.

And then you could get
a stamp at that station

and he could prove you
had done the whole route.

And if you did the whole route,
you got a special stamp at the end.

This is not an uncommon thing.

Manhole covers in Japan in
certain cities are quite artistic.

So like they have, I
remember they’ve done some

anime ones and they’ve
got a lot of attention.

They’ve done some like
ones for the city or the style.

So they have a lot of
stylized manhole covers.

These people would go and
take pictures of, no problem.

These got so popular that
they started making trading cards

with pictures of the manhole cover or
maybe just the manhole covers art on them.

And then you can basically get
them from different municipalities.

So you would go to a town
and I guess go to the city hall

and say I would like a
manhole cover card, please.

I don’t know, the story that I was
reading didn’t tell you how to get them.

That actually was a bit I
was very interested about.

But you’re gonna have to go to
the town, find the place, get the card.

The card is free.

But because it’s a
collectible, there are a limited

amount of different cards or
maybe some are harder to get.

The government saying
we want to promote local

attractions and awareness
of sewer infrastructure.

And I was like, okay, the first part I get,

we want to like, oh, this is
where this one piece cartoon

where the artist was born
or this is where it’s based

or something like that,
that makes perfect sense.

But are you really raising
awareness of sewer infrastructure?

I think they just care
about the cards and the

pretty pictures and stuff
of the castle and whatnot.

I don’t think people are
looking at the card going,

man, the intricate maze that
sits beneath me when I poop.

That is a thing of wonder that
I should appreciate more often.

Although I just did it now.

So I guess it did kind of work.

It’s supposed to be one person.

So like I show up at the
city hall downtown, let’s

say in my town and I say,
can I have the sewer card?

And they’re like, hey, yeah, thanks, buddy.

Here’s your sewer card.

Now I’m not supposed to
be able to get another one.

I would collect them all, to be honest.

I wouldn’t.

I just wouldn’t be
willing to put the effort in.

That’s really the issue.

It’s not that I’m opposed
to collecting stuff.

I just have no interest in
going to a place to get them.

I bet if I went with
you, like if we went

together, if I went with
friends, I would enjoy it.

But just by myself, no, I’ve never
been that into collecting, I guess.

But they found that some
people are disguising themselves

so they can get multiple copies of a
single card and then sell them online.

So then I go outside into
my car, take off my hat,

shave my beard, go back
in, hey, I’m a new guy.

Can I have the card?

I get another card.

Then I put on a different jacket,
a wig or something like that.

And I come in, I try to
get multiple cards that way.

We do, of course, then have how
much these cards are worth online.

The Osaka Castle Manhole
Cover Card is worth 6,100 years.

There is a 10 card set for Mount Fuji.

So I would bet you have
to go around Mount Fuji,

go to different places
you can collect 10 cards.

That set of 10 cards is 88,000 yen online.

The Okazaki Castle is
selling for 100,000 yen.

That’s like 700 bucks with the
current exchange as it is right now.

For a single card with Okazaki Castle.

So they didn’t explain why
the Okazaki Castle’s card is

so much rarer, so much more
expensive than anything else.

Well, this is, Jay’s point is
actually perfect accurate.

You are, this is robbery, this
is scandalous because these

are supposed to be free for
people who put in the effort.

They just don’t want to have people sit at
home and just order them off the internet

and get them because then you didn’t
go to the place, you didn’t do the thing.

You didn’t see the town that
you’re supposed to be promoting.

This is scalping and scalping
has become a real issue.

Everything that is collectible is
getting scalped and then these now,

municipal governments are
like, what do we do about it?

Well, the excessive reselling
is going to end the campaign.

So the governments are now so angry
that they’re selling this stuff online.

I don’t know if they’re angry that they’re
selling online or they’re selling online

and they’re not getting
a cut of the action.

But anyways, I actually think
this is a little arch-ultruist.

They’re like saying, oh,
we’re trying to give this out

for free and then people are
taking them, making a profit.

That’s not really right
in the right spirit of it.

We’re going to shut down the campaigns.

But then I thought, oh, what’s actually
going to happen is that’s going to increase

the value because now
you can’t get them anymore.

So if you have that Okazaki Castle card
that is worth 100,000 yen, when they end the

campaigns altogether,
I bet that doubles are

triples in price and now
I might go scalps stuff.

Ah, there’s been a lot
of streamer stories lately.

The streamer story
that actually I was a little

aware of doesn’t really
apply to Japan anymore

is that Johnny Somali
is on trial in Korea.

So he came to Japan,
did a lot of dumb stuff here.

He got arrested, held
him for like a month or

something, then they
let him go and I think

basically he’s not allowed
back in the country.

His visa’s been marked or
his passport has been marked.

Other people and then he went to Israel and
then he went to Korea and now he’s caused

so much trouble in Korea that they’re
actually talking about prison times.

So he’s been charged and found
guilty on two or three charges.

They’re doing one or two more,
but these are all cumulative.

So now he’s essentially a repeat offender
and they’re looking for real jail time.

I’m very interested
in how that plays out,

just unfortunately does
not fit into the format

of Ninja News, Japan
and what we do here.

But there are other
streamers and other streamers

have been like, hey, Johnny Somali
built up an audience by being an asshole.

I can be an asshole, I might
even be really good asshole.

There’s a guy, Ice Poseidon and Action
Man, they have been going around Japan.

They’re not doing the same
degree of offensive stuff there.

Like there was one
where they were purposely

smoking cigarettes
on a non-smoking car.

They are right now going
around some islands so they’re

going on the ferry and they
were denied entry of the ferry.

Now their sort of way of doing
stuff is they just almost like Trump.

They just immediately start
denying any of the stuff that you’ve

actually seen them do because
they’re streaming everything.

So they’ll go somewhere, behave badly, get
called out for it and go, I didn’t do that.

That wasn’t me.

And that’s if that was some
sort of convincing argument.

This Coast Guard guy wasn’t having it.

See, he spoke English and
that’s already already the first one.

So they go, they’re going
to get on a second ferry.

So they’ve already
caused problems on the

first ferry probably and
filmed it and streamed to live.

And the Coast Guard
guy comes out and he says,

unfortunately, even
though you’ve already

bought this ferry ticket,
you cannot get on the ferry

today because the ferry
owner has decided and refused.

So that’s it.

This is like the guy who owns the
ferry, he doesn’t want you on his boat.

So you’re not getting on his boat.

They turn around and go, why?

Like as if this is an
unreasonable thing, he

says, because they
acknowledge you have already

done a lot of troublesome
activities in Japan.

So basically, we’ve seen the
way you’re behaving in Japan.

We’ve seen the stuff you’re doing.

We don’t want that nonsense on our boat.

So you’re not allowed on our boat.

The group then denies
they’ve done anything wrong.

So of course, even
though they’ve live

streamed, and these
guys obviously have picked

up on the live stream
somehow, like maybe

someone has said, hey,
these guys are traveling

on your ferries, maybe
check this internet stuff out,

the record of them
behaving like dickheads online.

They’ve seen it because the guy said,
like, we’ve seen that you’ve done this.

We don’t want any part of it.

The Coast Guard, so they say,
oh, we haven’t done anything.

He says, many people have watched.

So he’s like, it’s not like you’re being
convincing by saying we didn’t do it.

You’ve broadcasted it on the internet.

So people have seen you do it.

So this denial means nothing.

Then one of them goes, he got lied to.

It’s fake.

I’m going to start with
this whole fake news thing.

He’s really infected the language.

I think I’ve never heard the
word fake as much as I do now.

And then says, wouldn’t we be
in jail if we did something wrong?

Now, there’s doing something wrong
and then there’s committing a crime.

Now, they might brush up against each other,
but there’s not always the same thing.

You’re not going to get arrested and put
in jail for smoking in a non-smoking car.

You’re going to get told not to do it.

Maybe you’ll get kicked off the
ferry or the train or whatever.

But the Coast Guard dude’s not buying
it and he just doesn’t let them board.

He’s not having the argument.

And I think that’s
always the thing is the

streamers want you to
have the arguments so they

can use their sort of circular logic to get
you stuck in a loop where hopefully they’ll

just be like, eventually
he’ll give up where

this guy’s just like, look, I said, no,
I don’t care what you have to say.

I’ve seen you do it.

The answer’s no, you’re done.

The interpreter then tries to talk to
them and get them to let them on board.

Because again, this
interpreter, he might not

be one of the news
and streamers, which is

how they’re referred to in Japanese,
but he is getting paid by them.

So he wants them to keep going and making
their content so he can keep getting paid.

He tries to talk to
the Coast Guard guy in

Japanese and then he
comes back and he says, they

said because of things on YouTube and
whatnot, we’re not going to win this battle.

So they’re like,
because we’ve seen what

you’re doing, because
we’ve seen clips of how

you’re behaving in Japan,
you’re not allowed on

our ferry and you’re
not going to win because

it’s again, the company, the management
company can decide to refuse to serve you.

I’m think what we’re seeing now is a
shift in the culture in Japan towards these

news and see Johnnie
Somalis is the one who

set it off, like you’re always
people who doing dick moves.

I don’t know.

One of the Paul’s Jake
Paul Logan Paul, he

went to that, that
forest and found the dead

body and thought it
was a really good idea to

stand next to it and film and make
like light heart of jokes and stuff.

He was just being a dick.

Johnnie Somalis, I’m
actually betting saw

that and saw like I can do
that and took it to the next level.

These guys aren’t behaving that badly, but
they are trying to hit that sort of peak

of just getting as much
trouble as they can

without getting arrested, which actually
might be where his argument came from.

If we were really doing a bad thing, we
would have been arrested by now, right?

When that’s not actually the case, like
you can misbehave and not get arrested.

So they’re trying to
push the borders, but

then Japan is a culture
is now just being like,

no, we don’t want this
in culture in our country.

We don’t want this associated with us.

We don’t want people to
come here and do this thing.

And I think that might be the next step is
either just people start acting back, like

you behave badly and then people, the
citizenry at large to start like pushing back.

And then like this
Coast Guard guys is like,

no, you’re not allowed
to travel with us

anymore and it’ll make
harder for them to move

around or this being Japan, I
actually bet they legislate it.

I bet they do like a
nuisance live streaming

act of some sort where
it now becomes illegal

to stream with showing
other people’s faces

in the background, it’s
going to be something

superstitious, it’s not going to be
like, you’re not allowed to live stream.

It’s like you’re not
allowed to live stream

and you have to get permission
from everyone to actually do it.

Japan needs to just do
what Korea did to Somali.

I agree.

I actually wish they’d put him in prison.

I wish he had gotten actual jail talk.

Just beat their ass whenever you see them.

Open season.

You’re talking about the people in Japan.

There was that like the Korean
version of the Navy seal who

like went up and decked them
and then they started calling.

The best part was they started calling the
Korean internet netizens, started calling

Johnny Somali a golden golem, which is like
someone, you kill that enemy in a game and

you drop a lot of loot
because they were

like, if you beat up
Johnny Somali, all these

people are going to
donate money to you.

So that guy got arrested for
punching Johnny Somali in the face.

The day, the next
day, like people on the

internet put him up into like five star
hotel and paid for all his food and stuff.

So I think the world is pushing back, so
it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

These guys have all pulled
it down a little bit because

I think they don’t want
to lose access to Japan.

Japan is one of these
like four nerdy people.

Japan is one of those
like dream destinations

and they know if they can come
back to Japan and film stuff here.

It’s always going to
get an audience whereas

if they get kicked
out of the country and

they can’t come back in, they’re
going to lose that sort of avenue.

Japanese couple visited
the Great Wall of China.

It’s very nice thing to do.

Go to China and visit the Great Wall.

I actually would like to go there.

I haven’t been there yet.

So that’s something I
would actually like to do.

They decided the best memory of this situation
would be for the man to pull down his

pants and his female
companion to take a picture

of his buttocks, generally
referred to as the moon.

Man, Japan could just
pull the, we don’t need

to tell you why we
arrested you for a while.

They held Johnny Somali for the 20 whatever
days and you’re not Japan’s rule is that

you can hold someone for
24 days before they’re charged.

So basically, I don’t
know if weekends can’t.

So that might just be a full
month and they did that to him.

So they held him.

Korea’s got a very interesting
thing where he’s not allowed

to leave the country but
he’s also not allowed to work.

So he has to like
basically burn through any

savings he has and then become
poor as the trials drag on and on and on.

So they’re actually just
like burning his money in

a weird way as he has
to just sit in the country.

Because I read multiple
stories, some said

record the picture, some said
take a picture, some said video.

So I’m not sure if they did a
video of the guys butt or if they

just took a picture of the guys
butt and I never saw a picture.

So I don’t know how
good this guy’s butt is.

So maybe he has a great
butt, maybe it was worth

like the same level as
the Great Wall of China.

Like if you’re going
to go to the Great Wall

of China, you’re
going to take a picture

and you’d be like, my man’s butt is
as good as the Great Wall of China.

I think both of them in the
same picture, chef’s kiss.

I think that’s what it should be.

Unfortunately, there was a cop
nearby and they were immediately

arrested for public indecency
and disturbing the peace.

They were held for two weeks.

This actually shows like my, so I do
again, all my information comes from media.

So I have very
significant biases that are

incorrect because like
my belief in the violence

in America comes from
American media, my

understanding of America as
a country comes from media.

They talk about
violence and I know the

reality is media makes
it seem like violence is

going up where the reality
is violence is going down.

We just had some people I
talked to some Americans.

I talked to I’ve just met
and they were saying

where they’re from
and once from Alabama

and I was like the only thing I know about
Alabama as a state is racism because all

my information about
Alabama comes from

movies and the only time
someone makes a movie

about Alabama is when they
want to tell a racist story.

Now I’m betting it’s
not as racist as I think

it is, but there’s still
a lot of racism there.

I’m not making those
movies, but you can see

like there’s a fine
balance between reality

and opinion and I have
to be aware of my biases.

My bias about China
in this instance would

be they’re just going to give
you the maximum sentence.

So in this case they didn’t, they’re like,
okay, you’re a young couple, you’re being

dumb, you mooned on
the Great Wall of China,

they held them for two
weeks and like probably

pressure them a lot but
they didn’t end up charging

when they’re like, please go
back to Japan and they did.

They claimed they were just doing it
as a prank and I do tend to believe that.

I think if you were
going to do like an

anti-Chinese protest or
a sentiment or something

like that, you wouldn’t just
moon on the Great Wall of China.

That seems like a very
in the moment thought.

It doesn’t seem like they sat
down or like, let’s really teach

China a lesson and show my
butt on the Great Wall of China.

So I actually believe this because yeah,
it doesn’t seem like a political statement.

Of course, China’s
anger Chinese citizens

anger towards Japan and that sort of
resentment that goes back and forth.

They were like, they should come
back and have to apologize publicly.

They should be arrested.

They should find, I mean it’s the internet.

So of course it went
off the rails really

quick about how much
punishment they deserve.

I think being held for
two weeks would be scary

enough that you would,
that’s enough punishment.

That’s basically all I want to say.

Mooning in the wrong
place, getting held

for two weeks and
then getting released, I’m

thinking that’s actually
more than enough.

Director of a nursery
school, so this is

someone who is dedicated
their life to taking care of children.

You know the fact that I’m
doing this story last and I’ve

changed sort of the tone of
my voice means it’s extra gross.

But also you can tell by the flippancy of
my voice that it’s not, you know, that bad.

This director of the
nursery school wanted to

scare the children into
doing what he wanted.

So that’s already like,
ah, not the nurturing

techniques I would employ if I
was a director of a nursery school.

I think I’m going to say
that was some confidence.

If I was director of
a nursery school, I

don’t think I would use fear as a
tool to get these kids to do what I said.

I would maybe, I mean you want
to have that in your, in your pocket.

I can scare the kids
what I need to, but overall

the methodology should be positive
reinforcement, encouragement.

Like, hey, let’s try to work together.

Let’s try to be better people.

The nursery school, my kids went to,
actually my son, I remember picking him up.

It was connected to a
Buddhist temple and so

they did some meditation
and stuff and they

were trying to get
these kids to be like,

they weren’t pushing
them into the religion.

They were like, hey,
maybe sitting and calming

down and thinking for
a minute’s good for you.

So let’s try that.

And they tried it.

They didn’t force it on the kids.

Like if the kids like
got rest of the stuff,

they’re like, okay, you’re clearly
not in the enlightened mood today.

Let’s just remove you and so
the other kids can give it a shot.

It was cool.

If I’m being really honest,
because they didn’t

push a religious
aspect on it in any real

way, they talked about
it, but they were never

like, you need to join or
you need to pay money.

There were a lot of like cool
things like that that happened.

This guy’s philosophy
obviously is very different.

Now, my thought was, if I
was, okay, let’s say I’ve gotten

to this point where I’m
like, I need to scare the kids.

I think my size, I’m a big six foot
200 pound guy, I might use that.

I might use a really loud voice, scare the
kids with how angry I can get, not actually

do anything, probably
not even be as angry

as I’m presenting, but put on a
bit of a show to scare the kids.

If you’re going to go
way off the rails, dress

up and come in and
scare the kids and dress

like a devil or a zombie or
something, really freak them out.

I think that’s way
too much, but the

psychological harm there
might be minimized by the

fact that it’s not really
no one actually gets hurt.

This guy decided, and I wish
I’d organized a quiz for this week.

I’ve been very disorganized.

That’s why I didn’t do
an episode last week.

I’m having a not rough time,
but it’s just a lot of stuff going on.

He decided to scare
the kid by peeing in his

water bottle, filling the boy’s
water bottle with urine, okay.

So let’s be really honest.

That’s not scary.

It’s just gross.

Like the kid, if they
get the water bottle,

doesn’t know there’s
pee in the water bottle.

If they drink it, they
go, this is disgusting.

I would hope they don’t think it’s pee.

They just like, this is gross.

I’m not going to drink this unless you peed
into the water bottle and then just looked

at them and went, hey, I just peed
into water bottle isn’t that scary.

So this guy’s methods
of discipline and

control don’t seem to mesh
with what his actual goal was.

So I think he’s not
trying to scare the kids.

I think he’s not trying to do
the thing he’s saying doing.

I think he’s just free who likes to pee
and stuff and be really means little kids.

He was arrested.

It’s difficult.

What do you arrest him for?

He was arrested for
destruction of property

because now the bottle
is considered unusable.

Of course, that story
got out and he lost his job.

He lost a lot more than just whatever the
fine would be for destruction of property.

But he, thankfully, he will not be
working in childcare anytime soon.

[MUSIC]

Unconsensual Podcast

(upbeat music) New theme song.

I’m drowning in theme songs.

This is so awesome.

This one was by Nigel Grover.

I will link to his sort of profile
somewhere in the show notes or whatever

so that you can check
out his music if you want.

Since I have two theme
songs for the show now,

I’m thinking of alternating
month to month or something.

I don’t really have a plan.

It was just like off I
have two and I like two.

I might as well use both.

There’s no reason to limit myself.

It would give sort of a sense of, oh,
it’s this month or that month or whatever.

But you didn’t come here for that.

We have a couple of
updates on previous

stories, which I always
really am happy about.

The updates on old stories.

We had the Tokyo election
story when it came to the poster.

So in Japan, it’s not like North America.

It’s not like other
countries where you go on

TV and it’s millions
and millions of dollars.

Basically a politician in Japan
is allowed to put up a poster.

Of course, they can put up
posters and multiple places.

The posters that are allowed
to put up are designated though.

So they basically put up a
little sign and has squares on it.

And on those squares, you can
put your political campaign poster.

Last year in the Tokyo election,

a couple of people decided,
hey, let’s abuse the system.

So the NHK party, which is
basically just the troll party

of Japan said, we’re gonna
rent out some of our space

to people who have, let’s
say non-relevant talking points.

There was someone who
posted their own Instagram.

There was someone who just said
like, I need friends and I’m lonely.

There’s someone who
posted picture of their dog,

which is ironic because if you watch
the video for an engineer’s Japan,

you will notice the portrait
of my dog up in the top.

Left corner, I don’t know
which way it actually shows up

in the video and now that
I’m staring at my screen,

but knowing it might
flip my brain just broke.

The irony of that statement, but to see,
I have not decided to take this picture

of my dog Dave and put
it on a political platform.

It’s a great portrait.

Thank you, it is a great portrait.

I am very happy with it.

And today you’re getting the Dave
sleeping under the picture of Dave.

So it’s just that whole
universe I’m building behind me.

We have the judo suit
hanging up here drying out.

There was a adult professional
who added her image.

It was slightly censored, but just so.

That seemed inappropriate.

That actually seemed to be
on the kick it off, the most.

And it turns out you can just buy this
space and put up your non-political message.

And they’re like, this is
kind of abusing the system

of the political portraiture
posters in Japan.

So they’ve decided to set
standards, regulate the posters,

which actually I’m
surprised Japan hadn’t done

already, but I guess
at this, to this point,

they hadn’t actually had anyone
try to abuse the system yet.

So now someone’s abused the system.

I’ve actually found this is Japan is
very good at being reactive in its own way.

They have a problem,
they react to the problem.

So we had gun controls very tight in Japan.

And then for about three
months, maybe four years ago,

there was a whole bunch of
crossbow attempted murders.

I don’t remember if anyone got killed, but
people were shooting crossbows each other.

Crossbows are now
illegal, knives are illegal.

They just just like, oh, you did that?

We don’t like it, illegal.

So now they’re like, you
want to put like not porn,

but almost nude women
up on political posters.

Now we’re going to regulate it.

The new rule is you must
have your name on the poster.

Now that actually seems
like a very small thing.

It actually seems like
you would do that anyways.

But if you put your name on the poster,

it means you’re not going to
be able to just like slap a poster

that has random stuff on
it and then be able to hide

from the fallout of the
poster that you created.

If you abuse the poster system,
you can be fined up to 1 million yen.

And if you promote a product, you
can also be fined up to 1 million yen.

The NHK party let their donors
post anything they wanted.

And that’s probably
where this is coming from,

because basically any poster that
goes up in the name of the NHK party,

where they’re going to have
the actual name on the poster,

they will be fined a million
yen for each infraction.

(upbeat music)

Not really a direct update, but last
week’s story about a man who got scammed

be because he had been
served a warrant by the police.

That was not a real warrant.

It was a scam and the
police were like send us money

to this bank account to prove
that you are who you say you are.

And we will drop the warrant.

He said like there’s a warrant in
your mailbox right now, he went

out to his mailbox and there
was a very official looking form

that looks like a warrant
sitting there, freaked him out.

And he started paying money to these
people who he thought were the police.

Cost him, I forget how much money.

But of course, scams that hit the news
are always millions and millions of yen.

And it’s terrible because they’re
just taking advantage of this poor guy.

Who doesn’t really understand the system?

Well, Japan is going to digitize search and
arrest warrants to speed up the process.

So basically right now,
they have to go to a judge,

get a piece of paper, get
the judge to physically sign

the piece of paper, go back, and
then they can execute the warrant.

Now this, again, is information
that people need to know.

Because the concern for
me is the digital warrant

means these scammer guys can just
start sending it out to anyone they want.

They can send it out to whoever
with the claim that this is a real warrant.

So once they get a look at
what these warrants actually

look like, yeah, I think
what’s going to happen

is once people
actually start finding out

that warrants are
digitized, these scam guys

are going to start sending out
more because it’s a lot easier

than taking a physical piece of paper and
putting someone’s mailbox is a lot of box.

Taking a piece of paper and putting it
in someone’s mailbox is a lot more work.

Although I would actually
say a lot more convincing.

If you sent me a digital
warrant from my arrest

saying I had to pay money, I
think I would probably ignore it

and I bet is a very good chance it goes
direct to spam so I never actually see it.

If I went outside and there
was an actual piece of paper

in my mailbox, I would be actually
more likely to take that seriously.

So maybe the scammers
will be continued doing

like, oh, people actually
like check their mail.

These are the people we want to abuse.

These are the old people who don’t know
that arrest warrants have been digitized.

This is all just to make it for
more efficient for the police.

I’m just seeing like connecting to
last week’s story to this week’s story.

It seems like there is the
potential for an exploitation

there and I’m just waiting
to see if that comes about.

They are also going to allow
evidence to be digitized as well.

So basically you don’t
need the physical evidence.

The picture of the evidence is
going to be fine in many cases.

This is probably mostly talking
about documents and whatnot.

(upbeat music)

South Korean police and Seoul have
asked Japanese woman to turn herself in.

After forcibly kissing gin from
BTS, this happened on March 1st.

Now there was a bunch of
stories and the as I looked

for more details, the title
of the story changed slightly

but then the actual content
seems to be exactly the same.

This is a woman in her 50s.

She went to Seoul, South Korea.

So K-pop stars are very popular.

This guy, Jin, had done his
mandatory military service

that is necessary if
you’re South Korean man.

So he got out and then he rejoins
BTS and they decided to do an event.

It’s like a welcome back event
and then this is called for 1,000 fans.

I don’t know if they were
chosen or they had to pay money.

I’m assuming they had to pay a
lot of money but it is a hug event.

And I was like, already, I
don’t know who to blame here.

I don’t fully accept
who is fully responsible.

Because you’re putting these women who are
honestly just horny as hell for these men

in a situation where
they’re allowed to hug them

and you’re getting
angry that she kissed him.

Now the forcible kiss is not
acceptable but I can see how it happened.

Maybe that’s what I want to say.

So what happened is they
were having this hug event.

So I don’t know how it’s set up.

I don’t know how it works in Japan.

They have a lot of hand-shaked hands.

Hugging 1,000 people sounds
like a terrible time for the people.

I think engaging with a thousand
strangers is already off putting enough.

Japan has hand-shake events and these are
already, I already think these are gross.

So basically you have usually
the like team pop star groups,

the idle groups and they line
up and then fans can pay money

or they have to have bought
so many CDs and then they get

tickets or whatever and they go
up and they’re allowed to shake

the girl’s hand and often say something
to them and then they move along.

99% of these guys are fine.

Again, we’re talking
about thousands of people.

So a small percentage out of a thousand
people is still a big group of people.

Imagine how chapped your hands would be.

Well, the problem is a
story and this is an old story.

This is like a decade old was it was AKB48

and these girls are like
honestly like 14, 15 years old.

This guy walks up and he shakes her hand

and he says I masturbated
to you this morning

using this hand as
they were shaking hands.

And I remember the picture of the girl.

She was disgusted and as a
father, I would have freaked out

and this is why like when my
daughter showed any interest

in like, oh, I want to
be in like the magazines

or I want to do a pop
group or whatever.

I was just like, no, absolutely not.

And it seems very restrictive and
awful but it was just me being protective

because I understand the desire
to go out and do entertainment.

I mean, I do this podcast.

I understand the desire to go out
and like share things with the world.

Like I get it, but also I
understand that for a young woman

in entertainment, everyone
around you is a leech.

Like the fans are, the producers are.

I’m just thinking everybody’s gross.

We had that thing last year with Johnny’s

where we found out
like for the last 30

years, they’ve been
abusing all the boy bands.

Like for me, it is just a rampant
aspect of pop culture in Japan

and I’m assuming other
Asian countries as well.

I mean, I’m assuming there’s forms
of abuse across all forms of media.

It’s usually I would say financial
but clearly in Japan is sexual.

So, but that was a huge tangent just ’cause
it’s something I actually remembered.

So you have this event.

This guy, he’s done his
two years military service.

So these fans are desperate and they’re
the ones who are willing to pay money

or do whatever they need to do to
become one of those chosen 1,000

and they get to go up and I assume say
something to the guy and then hug him.

Now I don’t know what
the rules are on the hug.

I actually tried to look it up
because I bet there were rules.

I bet there was like no grab and ass.

There was no like cupping heads.

There was no like
leaning and kind of stuff.

I’m gonna guess, this is not factual,

but I’m gonna guess you
were allowed to like put

your head on his chest and
he put his arms around you

and you were probably
supposed to keep your arms down.

Like I’m gonna guess that
was something like that.

Maybe not that exactly, but I’m
betting there were rules in place like that

to make sure that the women didn’t
get too excited about touching this guy.

Who is a dream come
true as far as their concern?

So this woman, she’s
in her 50s, she’s hugging

this guy, he’s in his
30s, she kisses his neck.

So her face, I’m gonna
go, that’s just again,

assumption, height wise,
she’s around neck level,

she just leaned in and
just gave him a little kiss.

I don’t know how hard it
was or how gross it was,

but the reason this came
to light is they took pictures

of his face immediately
after he had his neck kissed

unconcentrally,
non-concentrally, non-concentrally.

So he had been kissed on
the neck non-concentrally

by this woman and
then he made a face

and that face made rounds on the internet
in Korea and it became kind of a meme.

I was trying to find the
picture, but I think it’s in Korean

and I’m not able to suss
out enough to actually,

I bet I should just
try a little harder.

Maybe by the time I actually
published this, I’ll have a chance.

Now in Korea,
something I learned very

recently was Johnny
Somali being over in Korea.

You don’t actually necessarily file
complaints with the police on your own behalf.

Other people can do that for you.

So people were filing complaints on
behalf of others for Johnny Somali.

So this is something that can happen.

If I see a crime, I can go and
file a complaint amongst the crime.

So because this was a
picture that was put on the

internet and everyone saw
it, people started sending

in complaints to the police that this
woman sexually assaulted this man.

Friends of BTS filed complaints
via a government petition site.

So I don’t think they even
had to go to the police.

They just saw a picture on the internet,
swap browser windows, maybe made a new tab,

went to this other thing and
started lodging complaints.

So a thousand or a couple
thousand of them later,

the police are like, okay, let’s put out a
request for this woman to turn herself in.

She has not turned herself in,
but they did find out who she is.

She has a blog and on her blog, she wrote,

“My lips touched his
neck, his skin was very soft.

” So I’m waiting to see now
because they have her name.

If she’s returned to Japan, she’s
already gone through immigration,

but if she actually tries
to go back to Korea,

because obviously a big
BTS fan, big fan of Korea and

wants to go do these things,
she’s not going to be able to,

because she’s not going
to be able to get through

customs, because she’ll
get arrested in customs.

So it’ll be really interesting
to see if she a turns herself in,

admits her mistake or gives
into the charges that have been

laid out in front of her, or if
she just tries to hide away,

but then that denies herself the
opportunity to see BTS again in Korea.

I’m most interested to see
if this woman turns herself in,

or tries to pay the
price for what she’s done.

Three teens, so a
15-year-old, a 16-year-old and a

14-year-old, they’re all
from different prefecture.

So I was like, first, how do
these kids know each other?

Like, how do three teenagers from
different prefectures know each other?

And I realized, of course, it’s
internet gaming of some sort.

Well, it’s actually kind
of worse than that.

It was online gambling is how
these three kids met each other.

And of course, gambling is
essentially illegal in Japan.

So what kind of online gambling,
they’re not actually clear about.

But the fact that these
teens are doing online gambling

shows they’re already
sort of a criminal bent,

or they’re naughty boys,
they’re trying to do bad things.

They met through online gambling,
and between May and August last year,

used a program to try and log
in to Rakuten mobile phone lines.

Accounts. So basically Rakuten is just
one of the big mobile carriers in Japan.

And they had paid for 3.2
billion login account numbers.

So they had just on a big
database on one of their computers,

and they basically
tried to force their way

in and every account
that they could get into,

they could take over account
or try to resell that account.

They used chat TBT to
help write a program to make

their brute force login
process more effective.

So this is, you got now, kids, teens who
are using AI to help them commit crimes.

And I mean, these guys are young,

which means they haven’t even
developed their skills yet, really.

But I mean, who am I talking about?
Like 15, 16, 17 year olds.

Those are the ones who are
really good with computers.

They’re the best ones with computers.

It seems like one kid
was the mastermind and

the other two were kind
of the computer guys.

One kid, the main, the ringleader was like,
I did this to get clout on social media.

I wanted people on social
media to know that I had got

X amount of phone numbers and lines and
accounts, and I was selling to other people.

So this was for internet fame.

The other two kids.

15 year olds are trashed with computers.

Depends on the kids though.

I actually understand what you’re saying.

Because the average kid isn’t
learning programming and stuff.

They’re just in taking like a TikTok.

So they know how to use
TikTok interface really well.

So if I don’t know how to do
something on let’s say a TikTok program,

I asked my kids and they
just find it instinctually.

They know how interfaces
work slightly better than I do.

But yeah, if you’re talking
about actual programming,

the average kid is garbage because
they’re not actually engaging with it.

They don’t have to figure anything
out because all that’s done for them.

But the kid who is into it, he’s
amazing at it, which is a bit freaky.

So I agree with what
you’re saying to a degree.

Interesting development
in my job because I meet

a lot of sort of younger
people who are just

out of university and
they come to Japan.

And I’ve realized, and it’s not, I
don’t think it’s a criticism of them.

None of them have watches anymore
because they all use their phone.

And it’s just, I was like, of course,
why would you have watches now?

Because you ask them,
do you have a watch

because they need to
use a watch when they’re

like keeping time and whatnot because we
don’t want people using their cell phones

because it looks like you’re waiting
for a phone call or it’s kind of rude.

It has sort of like a negative feeling
for the average Japanese person.

If you want people using
their cell phones as a timepiece.

But the average person,
younger person, let’s

say in their mid 20s,
has never had a watch.

And it’s never going to have a
watch unless you force them to.

And I was like, ah, of course not, which
is a little freaky, but, and then I’m old.

And of course, having said
that, I am a bit of a watch fan.

I have about seven or eight watches.

This is the one my most
recent one that I wear the most.

It’s an analog watch.

It has complications
and all that other stuff.

But they’ll borrow
my watch the one I’m

wearing for whatever they’re doing
so they can, you know, do their work.

And then they just look at it and you
can tell they can’t tell what time it is.

Like they don’t know
what they’re looking at.

And then because mine are always
so complicated with multiple dials.

Like this one has the three
dials that has a second hand.

It has a timer and stuff like that.

They have no idea what they’re looking at.

And it’s just too many things on the watch.

But I actually like all the complications.

I like all that extra stuff to make
the watches more appealing to me.

It’s a nice watch.

That’s actually, it is a very nice watch.

Thank you.

It’s the T-So C-Star.

And the reason I like it, it’s
got the Pepsi sort of style dial,

which is actually a Rolex thing, but
it’s just how people refer to it now.

It has, it’s a mechanical watch.

So, you know, it does the
move it around and it’ll, it’ll wind.

But it has a 72 hour power save.

So it means if I don’t
wear this for the weekend,

it still runs, so you don’t
have to wear it every single day.

That to me was the big selling feature.

But anyways, back to these kids.

They made 7.5 million
yen in crypto selling these,

these, uh, phone lines,
these phone accounts.

The 15 year old said he wanted
to gain attention in social media.

And the other two said they wanted money.

We’ve done multiple stories
about how prisoners are treated.

We had a guy who was being
held by the police hadn’t been

fully arrested yet, but he
was being held in Japan again.

They can hold you for up to a
month without actually charging you.

And this guy’s lawyer gave him
a t-shirt and the teacher said,

“I am not answering
any questions.

” And the police took that t-shirt
away saying it was dangerous.

And then the lawyers like, look,
the words are not dangerous.

I just wanted to really remind my client
that he was just answering your questions.

And there was a lot
of back and forth there.

People being held by the police
in Japan are not treated well.

Now, you could take a very hard line
and say, well, they’re suspected criminals.

Why would we treat them well?

But this is the case where they’re supposed
to be innocent until proven guilty.

So you should treat them
with a certain amount of respect.

Maybe you have the idea
that prison is punishment.

Then yes, absolutely go
ape-shit on them when

they’re in prison because
they’ve been proven guilty.

I don’t necessarily believe that.

I personally think there is
still the big question of prison

being rehabilitation and/or
punishment because it can’t be both.

But that’s a whole other thing.

I can tell you that in
Japan, prison is punishment.

It’s not designed to rehabilitate you.

It’s not designed to make you better.

It is punishment.

Prison, they don’t use heaters.

They don’t use cooler.

So the summer’s hot
and the winter’s freezing.

My understanding is they don’t
give you enough food and stuff.

It sounds like going to jail in
Japan is a pretty awful thing.

They’ve had another problem.

They had a guy and he was in prison.

So he has been proven guilty.

He is in prison and he asked
his friend to bring him some books.

These were tattoo
designs in a coloring book.

And what he wanted to
do was just look at the

designs because he was very interested in
design and images before he was arrested.

They don’t actually say
what he was arrested for.

He had it taken away and the police took
this coloring book away because they said

the desire to look at
these designs promoted

anti-social behavior
because criminals in Japan

have tattoos and if you
admire the tattoos then

you will learn to admire
the criminals and that

is anti-social behavior and
we don’t want that in our prison.

But viewing original
designs of tattoos which

symbolize anti-social groups could
foster admiration for such organizations.

The tattoo book he was looking at had birds
and unicorns and was very fashion-oriented.

So there is the yakuza tattoo.

The yakuza tattoo, the
cliche one would be a big

dragon or a big demon on your back
covers your whole back that whole thing.

There is a style of tattoo that
is connected with the yakuza.

I’ve played a lot of the
yakuza video games and

everyone has a unique and
very beautiful tattoo in it.

They always rip
off their shirt in an

impossible way which
I’ve always really enjoyed.

But they always rip off
their shirt so you can see the

big tattoo it’s a big reveal
what tattoo they have.

A gold koi?

Yes, that’s one of the main character.

Kiritu’s friends actually had a koi.

I think it was in Qwami
but I want to get into that.

I’m going to get into which
character has what tattoo in that game.

But there are set of cliches but
there is certainly a style connected to it.

I can guarantee at
this point that there has

never been a yakuza who
came out with a unicorn’s

tattoo which honestly I
think would be awesome

if you got a unicorn
tattoo in the style of the

yakuza tattoos like coming out of a big
wave a big unicorn would be awesome.

But again birds tattoos
these are no normal things.

They are ripping their
shirts because it’s always

a button down that
gets thrown to the right.

I know it’s too much I love it.

Sometimes they rip off their entire jacket
and shirt and stuff all at the same time.

I just think they’re so
strong that they just

rip off everything that’s on their body
because they’re awesome men and I love them.

The point is these were not yakuza tattoos.

These were fashion oriented tattoos and
his desire was to study this while he was

in prison and then no no
it is not breakaway clothes.

They are so physically strong their
hands are so powerful they just rip it off.

If I can’t do it right now with my
jacket because I am not that strong.

I am not the yakuza
video game level strong.

I refuse to accept what you’ve just said.

They are ripping clothes that
were made by tailors yesterday.

This other tangent I’ve
always wanted to do this.

I think I saw the thing
on this on the internet.

I’ve always wanted to
wear a suit and then go and

do some wrestling and fighting
and see how the suit holds up.

I do an MMA match with
a suit on because you

know you see John Wick
and stuff and they have

their magic suits that
are bulletproof and stuff

but how would a suit
actually hold up in a real

fight is a very interesting
question and so like

an MMA fight where
people are actually wearing

normal clothes and fighting
to see how the clothes

hold up not necessarily
the winner loser or

the fight would be really interesting to
me but now we’ve gotten off on a tangent.

This is this guy.

A well tailored suit
would hold up pretty well.

Stop it you’re going
to kill me because I

really want to talk about that
as well but I go to the podcast.

A t-shirt would rip.

It depends on the quality t-shirt.

I have a t-shirt.

Fuck you.

I have a t-shirt in my closet
that is like double thickness.

I actually don’t think I could rip it.

I think a normal t-shirt I actually
physically am strong enough to rip.

I know like Hulk Hogan you know
big fan of everything he’s ever done.

He pre-rips it so he
can pull it off because the

collar is the hard part
so you have to cut the

collar a bit but I have
a t-shirt and I didn’t

know it was industrial
strength when I got it but

anyways the coloring book he
bought was not yakuza tattoos.

It was fashion, stylish,
different styles, different

pictures so that he
could get sort of a broad

range so that he when
he was released from

prison his goal was to
become a tattoo artist.

He thought oh here’s something
that I’m interested in design art.

I could do this.

I could do art on bodies.

It would be really cool.

He has no intent to
actually like support

these organizations
that they’re talking about.

So this is another case
where the police will

just saw something
they don’t like tattoos so

they’ve decided to like extrapolate from
the tattoos something of their own morality

and now they’re saying
like this is maybe a

human right violation
because you’re basically

denying this guy the
ability to study to do

something to improve
himself once he leaves prison.

Two people go to a
ramen shop great they go to

a very top rated ramen
shop that’s even better.

They apparently didn’t
have a great experience and

I think it was one of
those things where if you

go to a top rated ramen
shop your expectations

are much higher so if it doesn’t meet
your expectations that it’s going to you’re

going to give like a
particularly low score.

So since you have
these high expectations if

you don’t have the
awesome experience that you

expect you’re going to
give it a really low score.

The owner of the ramen
restaurant saw the reviews

and seems to have had a
very interesting reaction.

He went to social media
and he said I saw your

post and you seem a bit
weird. So that’s already

like not a great way to
start your counter argument

to the people who have
given you a bad review.

We try not to treat people like
you as customers so it’s fine.

So he’s saying like I don’t
care if you don’t come back your

piece of shit anyways but you
should probably avoid eating out.

Someday someone
like you will get screwed.

I don’t care. Just come
correct. Just come directly.

I’ll deal with you. So
that’s a veiled thread.

Now he hasn’t said I’m going
to beat you up or anything

but he’s already implying
like if you come back

to my restaurant I
personally am going to take

care of you in the sort
of the traditional take

you out kind of way. But
then he continues to make

it really clear. We run a
planned business so if you

get in our way we’ll get
in the way of yours too.

He’s like you cause me trouble.
I’m going to cause you trouble.

The only thing he
can do is come back

he continued and he said like
basically I want to kill this guy.

The only thing he can do is come back eat
again and write a good review with a photo.

So he’s saying like if
you want to make up for

this if you don’t want
me to track you down and

kill you you need to come
back you need to come

back give a good review
take a picture add that

to your review and then maybe I’ll for
you but otherwise I will not forgive you.

Not even for the safety of his
family. If he does that he’ll be

killed right away. This
kid is so scared he’ll

really do it so he’d better
just come back and eat.

So this is he’s kind
of flip flopping back and

forth and what he wants.
He’s basically saying

don’t go out to eat. I
don’t care you’re about

your opinion but at the
same time you should

come back eat the food again
and give us a really good review.

I’ll kill you but I’m
not going to kill you.

I’ll forgive you but
I won’t forgive you.

The guy clearly
has just lost it.

The owner asked social
media users to give him

any information they had
on the two men who left

negative reviews offering
them 100,000 yen if

they had useful knowledge
for their whereabouts.

I’m pretty sure
everything the owner of the

restaurant just said is
illegal. I don’t think you’re

allowed to threaten
people’s lives.

I’m pretty sure that we’ve
actually done that story before.

I’m pretty sure you’re
not allowed to offer money

to track people down.
I think that’s going to

be some form of harassment
or stalking or something like that.

I think maybe just
maybe the owner of

this restaurant has made a bit of a
mistake and maybe crossed some lines.

So now we have our last
story of the day and our

last story of the day is of
course an older gentleman

doing something absolutely
insane because that’s

apparently what older
gentleman do in Japan.

A man 61 so he’s passed our 50 year old
threshold for crazy behavior so he’s really

I guess maybe
just a late bloomer.

He decided it would be a
really good idea to throw

burning paper through
the window of an apartment

building so he had two
things of papery set on

fire and he threw
them into an apartment.

It says through a window
which I have to assume was

open but it’s also winter
time so I’m a little torn on that.

I was trying to find more information
to see like when this actually happened.

I know it was June 9th.
I actually did find when it

happened because I do
sort of do my job sometimes.

June 9th 2024 he walked
by a house in apartment

building and he threw
two burning papers so I’m

assuming balldups set
on fire. They didn’t get

into specifics of that and
threw them into the house.

So I’m going to guess
that the window was open.

I don’t actually know
that for sure but they

say through the window
the only way that would

really work was there
was no it’s actually weird

that there was no like
mesh on the window to keep

bugs out but maybe
he broke that first.

There’s a lot of scant details
to the first part of the story.

What we do know is
he threw burning stuff

into an apartment building.
Would you be surprised

that he ended up
accidently setting the entire

apartment building on fire.
Nine units were destroyed.

A 48 year old woman on
the second floor actually

died as a result of
oxygen asphyxiation.

He set the fire because he
had feelings for a female resident.

Now his plan was
he was going to set

the fire and then rescue
the female resident that he

was attracted to. But he
set the fire and then the

fire got into hand really
fast and he says the

fire was bigger than I
anticipated and I couldn’t

handle it so he ran
away. There are so many

problems with this but
to me the biggest one with

his plan not with like
again committing these

kind of crimes and arson
and whatnot and actually

killing someone is that the
woman he wanted to save

was not even home. So
his plan was based on I’m

going to set a fire and
then when this woman is

in trouble I’m going to
save this woman and then

she’s going to see me as a
hero and then fall in love with me.

He didn’t take the time to check if
she was home first before he set the fire.

So now he’s being arrested
for arson and murder

and I just got to wonder how he got to this
point in his life where he thought this

was actually going to work out.

Warrant Scam

(upbeat music)

Survey was done about work.

A lot of surveys about
work, a lot of people work.

Pretty much everybody works, socks.

Only the most interesting part
of the current work situation

is the change in attitude,
specifically in Japan.

Japan is known as a very
hard working work culture.

They work the long hours.

You have to stay later than your boss.

There’s a lot of rules and stuff
that go with working in Japan.

This is changing.

And I’ve said that there’s
going to be really big

changes in Japan over
the next two generations.

Because the generation that’s coming up
now that’s going to be replacing the bosses

and replacing the politicians and stuff,
they have a wildly different attitude.

And the generation that
follows them that sees that there

can be change, I think is
going to make massive changes.

Currently, only 20% of workers
say they want to become managers.

So 20% of people in a company who just work
like office, staff, different positions,

most of them, 80% don’t
want to become managers.

They don’t want that responsibility.

They don’t want to move up in the company.

They want to do this because
they think it’s more important

to maintain a good home work life
balance as in prioritizing the home part.

The quality of their
personal life is now just

more important than
their actual work life.

They were working to
live and not living to work,

which is the exact opposite of the
post-war Japanese attitude towards work.

It was about work work work.

And this is we’re going to rebuild Japan.

They rebuilt Japan.

They had the bubble.

They had the 80s when Japan was super rich.

And everyone was throwing money around

and they thought, oh,
this is going to last forever.

It didn’t.

Then they went into a recession.

There were sessions
been like 30, 40 years now.

And they’re slowly clawing their way out,

but they’re also not because Japan’s not
state competitive, declining birth rate.

All these other issues
come into play later.

But right now, what younger
people and people who are not

in managerial positions
are prioritizing is

themselves, which is a very
interesting shift in Japan.

They did find that management
style drastically impacted

whether or not people
wanted to become managers.

So if, of course, everyone
prefers if your manager is

trying to create a positive
team working team building

atmosphere, they’re trying to
make it a good place to work.

They’re trying to make you happy.

They’re trying to make
work a good place to be,

which is exactly what
these people are saying.

Like I’m working.

It’s not the most important thing in
my life, but I’ll do it because I have to.

But if I can work in a place
that’s nice, I’ll be extra happy.

That’s even better.

We did the story it was
last week about the company

that let you take mornings off if you
were hung over and let you drink at work.

And like basically like we
pay minimum wage, we pay shit.

And we have almost zero turnover
because people love working here.

So money has become less the priority

and more I want to happy
life has become a much

bigger priority for the
average Japanese person.

That story from last week about the company

that pays really low
wages and lets you drink

at work is a unique
entity in the world.

But this, most people don’t
want to become managers.

They don’t have that
sort of ambition anymore.

That shows a whole mental shift of
most of the people who live in Japan.

If you have a good boss though, so the 20%
who did say they want to become managers,

a lot of them said the reason
they wanted to become a managers

because they had a good boss
and that boss treated them well

and they would like to
then move up into that

position and maybe do
that for someone else.

(upbeat music)

Man’s in a food court.

He’s having lunch of course with his lunch.

I’m gonna go ahead and assume
this is an old Japanese man.

Just from the next
sentence, he was smoking.

So Japan like most countries
are making most areas smoke-free.

If you’re in a big city, if
you’re in a company or

something, there’s basically
no smoking areas left.

When I came to Japan, smoking
was still pretty common on the streets.

It’s now a lot of streets
are actually making it.

Like you can be fine for
smoking on the streets.

A lot of buildings had a
smoking room or a smoking area

that was enclosed and
man, they were disgusting.

They’re getting used less and less.

So smoking is becoming less common,

which again, this is why I think
this might be an older dude.

Of course, because he’s
in a mall, public place,

no smoking, staff walk up to him
and say, “Hey, please, don’t smoke.

“Could you put
out your cigarette?

” That kind of thing.

He decides the most appropriate
response to that request.

Very reasonable request
is this is where I do a quiz.

If I had done any sort of
prep, which I have not done,

February’s been a shambles for me.

I was gonna be just put
that out there right now.

Maybe I should put a personal
report at the end of the episode.

So if you actually want
to know about my life

and complain to whatnot,
you could listen to after the

end song, but I’m trying
to keep it out of the show.

It’s just weird ’cause it rolls
around in my head as I’m talking.

It’s actually easier to get it out
than to just pretend it’s not there.

But you know, pretending it’s not
there is how men deal with problems.

So let’s just keep doing that.

Staff ask him to stop.

So he pulls out a gun
and points it to the staff.

Now, here’s a question.

Guns are pretty hard to come by in Japan.

That is true.

This gentleman had a gun-shaped lighter.

So he thought, ah, I have a thing
that looks like a gun on my pocket.

He pulls out a gun and points it to the
staff and tells them to leave him alone.

The staff then sort of
does leave him alone.

They certainly do leave.

They of course immediately
go and call the police.

Having a gun pointed at you in
Japan is gonna be particularly weird

because you’ve probably
never seen a gun before.

Like I’ve seen in Japan guns on the
holsters of police officers on occasion.

Like most cops don’t actually carry guns.

Some of them do.

So it’s an unusual thing to see.

This, of course, then led to the police
showing up and he was arrested immediately.

He did do the smart thing in remain silent.

So if we’re gonna give
our criminal advice section,

he followed the advice that had
been given in previous episodes.

He did not talk to the police.

He just stayed silent and
it turns out he was drunk.

There have been a spate of heists,

crimes involving food.

I know there was an egg heist in America.

I actually wanna look into that.

There was the really famous
maple syrup heist in Canada.

Like a tanker truck of
maple syrup was taken away

and disappeared, probably
just taken into Vermont

and then sold as Vermont
maple syrup, that kind of stuff.

There was a high egg
heist recently and I wanted

to look into that story
but have been very busy.

In Japan, this is not a heist per se
but it kind of fell into the same thing.

Like food now is becoming
a valuable commodity

and people are stealing or committing
crimes based around food more often.

Three people were arrested
because they had 240 million

yen’s worth of Wagyu beef bound for
Cambodia that they rerouted to Hong Kong.

So that is 30 tons of frozen
beef that was supposed

to go to Cambodia is what
they wrote on all the forms.

When it got out to see,
they took a left turn.

Let’s see if we put down my left turn.

Maybe I’ll do like a 380.

I immediately actually started
looking at a map of my brain

and to see which way you
would actually have to turn

if you were heading towards Cambodia
and then turned to go to Hong Kong.

30 tons of frozen beef sent
that they put on the forms

was gonna go to Cambodia,
they rerouted it to Hong Kong.

Why did they do this?

Because the inspections
for beef going to Cambodia

are lower and more lenient
than those going to Hong Kong.

So they could save money on inspections
and send them meat to Hong Kong.

So this was essentially
going to be not only

Wagyu beef, it was going
to be a legal Wagyu beef,

which I would actually
guess is particularly delicious.

And that got me into the
sort of the scam frame of mind.

So I really, I found this
one very interesting.

We’ve actually mentioned this before in a
previous episode, the arrest warrant scam.

There are a lot of scams
targeting older people in Japan

using technology and stuff that
they don’t understand they’re

not comfortable with and this
causes them a lot of trouble

because it’s harder to see a
scam if it comes from a source

and you don’t know it well
enough to know it’s a scam.

I mean, that’s how what they do.

They prey on people who don’t know stuff.

So this is one that has come to
the forefront in the last little while.

It used to be, they have
the Japanese famous

for it was Ore Sagi,
Sagi, Sagi, Ore Ore Sagi.

I forget what it is.

Ore is me and Sagi is like, I’m
in trouble, help me kind of thing.

But the ideas they would
call up and just call up random

numbers and go, oh my
God, I’m in trouble, I need help.

Can you help me?

And they might throw in a
grandma or a grandpa in there

if a man or woman
answers that kind of thing.

And then there’s older person thinks

that their grandchild is in
trouble and needs money.

They would go direct to the ATM
and transfer money, that kind of thing.

Hoping that they set them into such a panic

that they start behaving
and acting on defensive

their grandchildren without
actually thinking it through.

So that was a scam.

I heard about it, man.

It was going on for years.

This is a new version
of that where you’re in

trouble and you need to
pay money to get out of it.

So that’s already the first thing.

If you are being approached
by someone and they’re saying,

you have to pay money
to get out of trouble.

That’s actually never how you get out
of trouble when it comes to legal systems.

You never give someone
money and make it go away.

You always have to go through a
process and then like a finance issued

and then a ticket is
issued or that kind of thing.

If you have an arrest
warrant, which is what this is,

this is the arrest warrant scam, you don’t
just pay the money and make it go away.

You have to go to court.

You have to talk to the police.

You have to go to the police
station and that kind of thing.

So this guy gets a call.

He’s about 70 years old and on
the phone, he says, I’m a police officer

and your phone number
has been used in a crime.

We’re going to suspend
its use in two hours.

Now, actually the first step
would be to wait two hours

and see if they actually
suspend its service.

If they don’t, these people’s clearly
don’t have the power they say they are.

But they are trying to put you into
a position where you start to panic.

He thought, oh, maybe my phone
number was part of a data breach

or something like that
and online scam and they’ve

taken my phone number
and they’ve used it in a crime.

And so now he’s starting to
feel like, oh man, maybe I will be

implicated in this even though
I haven’t done anything wrong.

Then they tell him an account
was opened in your name

in the Bank of Columbia in
Canada, which is not a real bank.

And you have received
10% from money laundering,

which makes you an
accomplice in this crime.

Now, he doesn’t know if
he’s actually received 10%

and that 10% may not be going
into his personal bank account.

But he’s hearing this
story, his phone number,

he’s getting the 10% he’s now a part
implicit in part of a crime implicated.

He’s now implicated in a crime.

He’s starting to panic even more.

The arrest warrant has
been delivered to you already.

So he goes out to his mailbox
and there’s an envelope in there

and in it has a very official looking
document that is an arrest warrant.

Now, as you’ve watched on television,

arrest warrants don’t
tend to be delivered by mail.

They tend to be delivered
by police officers who show up.

And the reason is most
arrest warrants are for criminals.

And criminals don’t tend
to get pieces of paper

and go, ha, this says I
need to turn myself in.

I better go turn myself in.

They go, ha, the police are looking for me.

I better head to ground now and hide
out so they can’t actually catch me.

So arrest warrants are delivered in a very
specific way for a very specific reason.

Of course, this older
gentleman doesn’t know this.

For all, he knows this is
how arrest warrants are given.

Because for all, he knows this is
how arrest warrants are delivered

because he’s not a criminal and he
doesn’t know how criminal things work.

He doesn’t know how arrest warrants work.

It said it was from the
Tokyo District Court.

The numbers he was getting
the calls from all had a plus one.

So they are out international numbers.

So he asked, why are the police calling me?

The Japanese police calling
me from international numbers.

And the police officer,
the defect detective

on the other side said,
we don’t use regular

numbers because this is
a top secret investigation.

In fact, you shouldn’t tell any other
police officers or financial institutions

because there may be
people working with them

on the criminal side
in those institutions.

So if you tell anybody,
then you’re going to

be implicated and they
might come after you.

So now they’re trying to show,
we’re trying to help you out, buddy.

We’re trying to make sure that
you don’t actually get in trouble

for this implicated 10%
money laundering you just did.

So don’t tell anyone, we will save you.

Then they tell him to prove his innocence,

he can transfer money to
a financial services agency.

And they’ll use that to confirm
the bank accounts and stuff.

And in that way, he can prove
his innocence and not actually end

up going to jail, not have to
worry about the arrest warrant.

A woman took over the phone.

So this is like a team of people
who are working on this scam.

And she tells him to go to the ATM.

She stays on the phone with him

and she walks him through
the steps of transfer money.

There’s a limit to only sending
200,000 yen a day from ATM in Japan.

And this is for this reason.

So many scams try to get you to empty out
your bank account as quickly as possible.

They try to put a limit on it.

So you can only transfer
so much money every day for,

again, this is sort of a
defensive against scams.

They badgered him to
transfer every single day.

They tried to get him to take money out

and then go to the counter
and transfer it that way.

So trying to do it different ways.

He’s got to get more money out.

And again, he’s in a panic.

It took him a few days before he’s like,
is this how police are going to talk to me?

Is this how, because they
are now on the side of like,

oh, you need to prove your
innocence or prove your innocence,

they wouldn’t be treating
me like a criminal anymore.

And so it took about a
week and he started to

realize, I don’t think
these are police anymore.

By that time, they
had already taken 3.

7 million yen from the guy.

Now they didn’t interview
with him and he was, of course,

very defeated and very
embarrassed and it’s a terrible thing.

But he said, I want, like,
I don’t watch the news.

I don’t watch a lot of TV.

I just, I’m retired.

I read a lot of books.

I’m sort of disconnected
from society in this way.

I didn’t know what this was real.

And there are other
people in similar situations.

I want them to know so
that they don’t get scammed.

And I think this is shining
the light on the scam

is one of the best things you
can do because it hopefully

will save someone else
from suffering the same fate.

Dating apps.

I’m of the generation before dating apps.

So I never have really used one, certainly.

I’ve never used one successfully.

I don’t think I would
be good at dating apps.

I can honestly say that.

Like I, I’m pretty good at
talking to people in real life.

Once I get comfortable,
now that I’m certainly not

trying to impress anybody, it’s actually
very easy for me to talk to anyone anytime.

I’m probably way more
charming now that I’m not trying,

trying back within when I
was younger and actually trying

way too hard and probably
looking like a huge idiot about it.

Dating apps were not my thing.

I’m certain I would
have been really bad at it.

This guy was meeting girls on dating apps.

And his thing was like, hey, why
don’t we train at my private gym?

That sounds pretty cool.

Give a private gym.

It means you’re pretty well off.

That’s pretty attractive.

I don’t know what the pictures are like.

Let’s just assume he looked
pretty good in his pictures.

Girls were saying like, OK, yeah,
let’s go train at your private gym now.

I’m going to go into dad mode
for a minute and go first date.

The word private should
not be involved in there.

It should only be a very public thing.

And as soon as he says, let’s go to my
private gym, I was like that suspicious.

That’s already very, very suspicious to me.

I don’t– I’m not
happy about that.

I don’t want anyone
to go to a private place

on their first date because
you don’t know this guy.

And that’s all it really comes down to.

Do a couple public dates.

Go get some ice cream.

I know it’s the opposite of
training, but it is certainly fun.

Go to a public gym.

That’s fine.

Do not go to a man’s claimed private gym.

When they would meet, he
would actually take them to a hotel.

I assume they mean a love hotel.

Now, second point.

I do not want a victim blame.

But if you look at a love hotel,
you are going to immediately

recognize that this does
not contain a private gym.

Do not go into that
building with the man who’s

clearly now lying to
you about this situation.

Like, hey, let’s go into my private gym
that just happens to be in this love hotel.

I’ll get us a room.

Rooms are usually done relatively
randomly on a computer or something.

Not that I would know.

I don’t know anything about a love hotel.

But you now know something’s up.

You now know he’s not being forthright.

You now know he’s not being honest.

You should now bail as soon as you can.

Just run away.

Then he took him to the love hotel.

He would say you’re my type and basically
trying to force himself himself on them.

One woman escaped.

Sometimes victim blaming is OK.

No, no.

Because it’s only a
not OK in this situation.

There is– OK.

If I can deal with that
statement, because I’m taking

information from the news, I’m
not getting all the information.

So I don’t know how
charming, how impressive.

We don’t even really know.

It said hotel.

It might have been a proper hotel
and it looked better, something like that.

I don’t know anything about it.

So I don’t want a victim
blame because that

actually takes me to the
territory of assumption.

And once I start assuming, that’s when I’m
going to make some incorrect statements.

If I knew all the information,
sometimes it is OK to victim blame.

I think I could agree with that.

But you need to have
all the information first.

We do have a lot of
dumb people in the world,

and they deserve to be blamed for
the things that go wrong in their life.

But if your date says,
let’s go to a private

gym and then takes
you to a public love hotel.

That’s sevens of it.

It’s diplomatic answer.

I try to be very honest
and engineers Japan.

And I try to give factual
information more than anything else.

And when I make assumptions
and stuff, I do try to say.

But yeah, it is diplomatic.

Because again, I don’t know.

Maybe it was convincing is the problem.

Like whenever we talk about
scams, it’s the same thing.

We talk about scams.

And it’s always like,
how did you believe that?

But the previous story, the whole point

was to set that guy into a
panic so he wouldn’t be thinking.

Scams are designed by people to create a
situation where you’re not thinking clearly.

And then you don’t
realize afterwards and

afterwards, yeah, it
is terribly embarrassing

to realize you just got scammed
out of a whole bunch of money.

He would say you’re my type.

And then he threw them on the bed.

One girl struggled and got away.

She went down the emergency
exit and called the police.

And he got arrested.

Last story, creepy, creepy guy.

He goes into a cafe locker room.

And he gets one of the staff
members’ keys and he copies the key.

And then he breaks into the woman’s house
and he goes through her underwear drawer.

Now you would think this is just
a regular underwear theft story.

I actually don’t do those very often anymore
because we did so many at the beginning.

It’s now just become
a repetition of this guy

steals a lot of underwear, which has nothing
interesting, I can say about it anymore.

This guy gets arrested when he’s arrested.

He goes, I didn’t intend
to steal the underwear.

I just wanted to know
what kind of underwear

she was wearing as if
that was somehow less

creepy than the actual
stealing of the underwear.

I think at any point, once
you’ve gone into someone’s house,

the level of creepiness,
what your intent is,

suddenly does not assuage how
awful everything you’re actually doing is.

I didn’t intend to steal.

I just wanted to know what
kind of underwear she wore.

He’d enter her, entered her
house or apartment 10 times.

Now, was he going in and
stealing underwear every time?

No, what he said was the room was very
clean and sunny and it was very comfortable.

So he’s actually just like to sit there.

So he basically was breaking
into this woman’s house

and just sitting there having
like a peaceful afternoon

apparently it would stay for like two
hours and watch like music shows on TV.

I just relax in this woman’s
house, which I actually

find almost creepier than
stealing the underwear.

I don’t know why.

It’s like someone coming and
just making themself at home

is so violating to the
sanctity of your home, I guess.

When the police arrested him, they
found he had 10 copies of other keys.

So they’re actually wondering
if maybe he’s been just

like moving around from house to house.

Has he actually been
sleeping in these houses?

These different things.

But they do know he’s been
getting keys, copying the keys

and spending a lot of time
in other people’s houses.

Please be careful.

Get 20 locks and put
them on your doors, please.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Serial Squisher

(upbeat music)

This is a short one.

I thought I had my life
all organized, got sick

last week and that
deleted just an entire day.

And then of course there’s the
recuperation recovery time to get over it.

And then just suddenly it’s a
new week and you’re supposed to

be doing stuff again and you
haven’t done as much as you thought

you were gonna do and
I’m not gonna complain.

You don’t come here for that.

You come here for news about Japan
and that’s what I’m gonna deliver to you.

But again, I got the benefit of me
having gotten sick even just a little bit.

It’s that little rasp that
comes with the voice.

For those very few people I
know who have listened to this

when they go to sleep
because they’re just like,

I guess the monotone boring kind of things
I talk about and there’s no surprises here.

It’s all love.

You get that voice
for a day or two in 20

minutes, 30 minutes
as I just, you know what?

We’re switching to an ASMR podcast and
I’m just gonna talk about the new picture

in the background of my dog
Dave dressed up as a general.

I’m some kind of renaissance thing.

I don’t actually know what time
period that’s supposed to be.

You can’t see it if you’re
listening to the audio version.

So you just have to close
your eyes and imagine Dave.

Do you know what kind of dog Dave is?

Doesn’t matter.

He’s, you know, your dog of your dreams.

February 10th.

This was just one of those ones.

There’s, there’s regularly
we get the stories

of people getting arrested
over incredibly small crimes

or sums of money or
stuff because they escalate.

I don’t know if this
woman actually escalated,

which means I don’t
know if I fully agree

with her getting arrested
for this beyond just trying

to teach her a lesson that
she shouldn’t be doing this thing.

It seems like there’s a
lot of background here.

February 10th, a woman
goes into a convenience store.

Not a particularly weird thing to do.

What happens all the time?

Dozens of our stories start with
people going into convenience stores.

Millions of people going to
convenience stores every day.

And you don’t hear a word
about it because nothing happens

because they don’t do
something weird or stupid.

She was arrested for
destruction or property.

Now, the property she
destroyed was a single bun.

So what she did, she
picked up a pack of four buns

and she took one and she squeezed
it flat with her thumb and finger.

And, but because
the bread didn’t sort of

refluff, the owner of the
convenience store said,

I can’t resell this,
therefore you have to pay

for it or it’s a damaged
property or something.

The woman left the store so he
called the police and he had arrested.

The buns in total cost 181 yen.

So this is one of those things where it is.

Is it worth ruining your
life over a 200 yen crime?

Because you do have to involve the police.

You have to deal with the police.

There is a crime there.

No matter how small it is.

She claims I only pressed
it lightly in my hand

to see if it was firm, but he’s
saying it was squished flat.

Like you couldn’t squish it anymore.

This apparently was
not the first occurrence.

So that’s where my opinion
sort of starts to change.

Like, okay, I’ve probably
picked up a product in a grocery

store or something and maybe
squeezed it too hard by accident.

Now, I’ve never done it on purpose.

I can honestly say
that, but I probably have

ruined a couple products
by accident once or twice.

Maybe I drop something.

I’m sure something like that has
happened and I would apologize for it.

And if you want me to pay
for it, I’d probably just pay for it.

But it’s not consistent behavior.

This woman seems to come
into this convenience store

on a regular basis and squish
something and then walk out.

Maybe she buys something else, but
she’s got a thing for squishing bread.

Because this was not the first occurrence,

the owner was on the
lookout for the serial

squisher so that he
could have them arrested.

And have them arrested,
he did this woman again.

So we only have proof of
one crime worth 181 yen.

But we can assume she’s sort of a serial.

We can see that there’s
a pattern of behavior here.

She might not have realized
she was destroying the property.

So there is sort of a defense there that
she didn’t maybe realize what she was doing.

But that being said,

maybe it’s better to just
not squish anything at all.

(upbeat music)

There’s a company called
Trust Ring Company in Osaka.

And they paint crap.

I mean, it’s just let’s just be straight.

They paint crap.

They paint up just slightly
above minimum wage.

And they do that, but
they’ve had zero turnover in

the last three years, which
seems almost impossible.

‘Cause even like good minimum wage drops,

the ones where you maybe like gas station
attendant where you just take money.

Like you don’t actually
have to fill up gas or anything.

You just sit in that little booth.

That probably has higher turnover.

Like you probably have people
leave more than every three years.

So why are they able to keep their staff?

It’s because of this weirdly,
this unusual benefits package.

And their benefit package
includes coming in late because

you’re hungover as a valid
excuse for coming in late.

So I go out and I’m drinking.

And I say, you know what?

I don’t feel good.

I’m still a little hungover.

I’m gonna sleep till
about 10, 11 o’clock today.

Then I’m gonna go in
and start work at noon.

I can call up the office and say,
“I’m taking my hangover leave.

” And the company’s gonna go,
“All right, please do that. Go ahead.

” They also allow
you to drink at work.

So they have beer on tap.

They offer other drinks,
which means you can be

at the office working
and having a drinker too.

And if you get too much during
the day or continue into the evening

and then you have a hangover
the next morning, you can take

a little extra time off or shift
your schedule later that day

and come in and start
the process all over again.

This is created.

Job satisfaction for the
people who work there.

The people who work there clearly,
they’re not there for the money.

They’re there because this is
a good environment to work in.

They’re there because they enjoy drinking.

They’re there because they’re
drinking as an acceptable behavior.

They’re there because
people do not give them

a hard time for going
out on Friday night

or Sunday night or whatever
day would impact their work week.

They can go out and do what they
want and their company is understanding.

So this weirdly demonstrates that
money is not the deciding factor.

‘Cause I have something to argue against.

Like you wanna keep
people, you gotta pay them.

But if you have, pay them
a ton of money and have a

really terrible work environment,
people are gonna leave.

If you pay them less money
but make it a great place to work,

a place where really they’re
happy to be where they

enjoy being every day,
they’re actually gonna stay.

The company says they are striving
to make a positive work environment.

They clearly understand
the people who work there.

They clearly understand
that giving them a certain

amount of flexibility will lead to them
having more satisfaction and staying longer.

And then they don’t even have to pay
them more than just above minimum wage.

(upbeat music)

There seems to be a second wave of news and
streamers that have descended upon Japan.

They’re not making as big
a splash as Johnny Smalley.

Johnny Smalley has now moved
to Korea where he got in trouble.

And now he’s being held in perpetuity.

Who knows how long
he’s gonna be held there?

In perpetuity, he’s not the right word.

He’s in limbo, essentially.

They’ve taken away his passport
so he can’t leave the country.

So I’ve still been following that story

but I haven’t been talking
about it on an individual pen

because this would be Ninja
News career or something like that.

It’s a different country.

So it kind of doesn’t
fit except that it would

be a follow-up on a
story I’ve done in the past.

He’s gone.

So we’re not really worried about him.

In Hokkaido, there seems to
be a group or a whole bunch

of different sort of people
who follow in the same vein.

I wouldn’t say as bad, but they
spend their time getting drunk,

being loud, being difficult,
causing trouble for local people.

In Hokkaido, I don’t know
why Hokkaido specifically.

It is the winter.

So Hokkaido’s a kind of magical place.

It’s a very winter place.

They’ve got lots of
snow, that kind of stuff.

They’re probably going
there for events and stuff.

And that’s where they’re going
to get drunk and cause trouble.

Well, it seems they’ve gone
to a point where they are in

conflict with each other because
an Australian streamer who is 32

hit an Indian streamer who is 38 with a
selfie stick and apparently multiple times.

The police are looking into the history.

I can almost guarantee if
there’s multiple streamers

in an area and they’re
trying to create drama

and their nuisance streamers,
they’ve caused problems for each other

or they’ve worked together
and then had a falling out

or something like that,
there is some history there.

And it’s going to be well documented
because they stream everything they do.

The Indian streamer had cuts to his face.

The Australian streamer
defended himself by saying,

“I didn’t hit him
with a stick, it’s a lie.

” The interesting part I
do like about these defenses

is because, again, I’m
sitting outside of this.

I have no sort of, I have
no sort of stake in it.

So it’s very easy for me to
pick apart the statements.

He says, “I didn’t
hit him with a stick.

” That doesn’t mean
he didn’t hit him.

He means he didn’t hit him with a stick.

And he didn’t say, “I didn’t
hit him with a selfie stick.

” ‘Cause a selfie stick,
he might in his mind say,

“A stick in a selfie stick
or two different things.

” And he’s being
semantic about it.

It’s a lie.

It’s a lie he hit him with a stick,

but it isn’t a lie he
hit him and it might not

be a lie that he would
have a selfie stick.

He might have just hit him.

Might as a straight up punch the guy

and the guy is actually, “I
wonder if hitting someone

with a closed fist or hitting someone with
a thing, like a stick, if that’s worse.

” I’m sure it’s
probably just assault,

but assault with a weapon
can actually be worse.

I don’t know about that as far
as Japanese, the law is concerned.

The article I read said both
had disputes in the past,

but didn’t get into the
specifics of what they were.

I am honestly confused as to
why news and streamers exist.

Japan is going to very
soon just lock it down.

They’re gonna be like, “If
you’re streaming in public

“or we’re gonna make
streaming in public illegal,

“or if you’re streaming in public
and you cause a disturbance,

“that’s just gonna be immediate
crime, “you just get deported right away.

” There have had enough
experiences where they’re starting

to handle this and see it regularly, and
once it becomes a big enough nuisance,

Japan just makes a law about
it and closes it off altogether.

So then in no longer becomes an option,

and then Japan will be closed
two streamers in the future.

(upbeat music)

A 43 year old man, a little
younger than our 50s losing

your mind theme of the
last few months, to be honest,

broke into a club room and stole
a variety of dance team uniforms.

He did this on two evenings,
a January 4th and 5th.

He broke into the club room.

So a lot of Japanese clubs
have their own room in a school.

That’s where you keep your stuff.

So you have like, the Judo
team might have a changing room.

Doug and I certainly gonna
have to tell me dojo area,

but they might have their own
place where they keep your stuff.

Judo guys, I mean, it’s just Judo students,
so they probably just hang them up.

Something with equipment.

If you have an American football team,

they’re gonna have a place
to store their equipment.

If you have a volleyball team, they’re
gonna have a place where they keep the balls

and then the net when it’s
not out and that kind of stuff.

The dance team’s gonna have
a place where it’s essentially

again another change room with lockers
and stuff where they keep their uniforms.

They might not be locked
though, ’cause the room is locked.

One morning, they came and discovered
a broken window in the club room.

The man was the rest, they
didn’t say how they found him.

I don’t know if there was
a lot of security footage

or something, but they
figured out who it was.

They arrested him.

He said, “There is no doubt I stole
them, but I did not break the window.

” Which again, led me to
believe like, is there a question

of is breaking the window
making your crime worse?

Like, you’re being arrested for theft.

You’re all clearly
entered is not breaking the

window enough of a
difference to the actual crime.

Like, there’s a lot of
people when they get

arrested for murder
in Japan, they go like,

I did not intend to kill
because that intense might

will change how much
the punishment would be.

But in this case, I’m wondering if
that would make any difference at all.

Like, someone else broke the window.

I used that opportunity to
get in and steal these uniforms.

Police then, of course, searched his house.

And when they went to his house,
they found, what would you expect?

More uniforms.

And our last story, and
therefore our grossest story

of the day, that had to make us very sure.

When I did want to get an episode out,

I’m trying to be consistent,
at least about releasing

episodes just so that I don’t lose
the habit of doing it every week.

I’m trying to reorganize
so much stuff right now.

It’s a bit insane.

You don’t want to hear about it.

I keep forgetting that people
don’t want to hear about it.

They just want the news.

I used to hate channels
that would come on and

be like, hey, I haven’t
posted for so long.

Here’s why.

And then they don’t
post anything ever again.

I get it.

Your life has changed
or something’s happened.

Yeah, you don’t want the updates.

You just either want the contents or not.

I got to get that straight in my head.

It’s because I feel bad about not
doing everything I wanted to do.

And then I feel like I’ve let
you down the viewer or listener.

And I haven’t because
you get in an episode.

Screw you for being so selfish.

You should care about me a little more.

See how quickly you can turn that around
if you’re actually like follow the logic.

A senior stock exchange official.

So he’s in his 60s.

So he’s beyond our 50s
range for losing your mind.

So maybe he was holding it in for the whole
time, which is how he lost it this time.

He was arrested for attempting
to take up skirt photos

of two 17-year-old girls sitting
across from him on the train.

So he’s sitting on a bench.

They’re sitting on a bench
on the other side of the train.

They’re facing each other.

He’s like, ah, they’re school girls.

Probably wearing high school uniforms.

They’re skirts.

I’m going to assume we’re pretty short.

So that’s how he thought.

I’ll maybe I’ll be able to get an
up skirt photo of these two ladies.

I don’t know why, man.

This is the bit that got me the most.

He used a tablet.

So a lot of these guys, when they

do up skirt photos, they
have these tiny, tiny cameras.

They put on top of their
shoe, and it’s almost impossible

to see, or they’ll take
like their cell phone,

and they’ll try to
like on an escalator,

try to get it going up
to skirt at the right angle.

That kind of thing has
a level of subtlety to it.

This guy is on a tablet.

And I don’t think you can pull out a
tablet and aim it up someone’s skirt.

Like even if they’re sitting or standing,
subtly enough that people wouldn’t notice.

Weirdly, that’s not what
the girls say happened.

They say they heard the shutter
sound and reported to the staff.

So I’m sure they heard the
shutter sound turn around.

Saw an old man with a tablet out.

And we’re like, I think that guy
might be trying to take pictures of us.

They went and reported to the staff.

Staff called the police.

Police picked the guy up
when he gets off the train.

His defense is, I only took pictures
of their feet as if that was better.

No, I saw two versions of this story.

And this is an interesting
translation note,

because what he says is I
only took pictures of their ashi.

Ashi can be either feet or legs.

Because it’s really just the
lower limb is all it really refers to.

So the first article said feet.

And I think that writer is like, well,

I’m going to translate this to
be the creepiest version of it.

And somehow, foot fetishists are creepier
than people who take up skirt photos.

But of course, he’s probably
doing both, who knows.

Maybe he was taking picture of their feet.

Maybe he was trying to get up skirt photos.

Either way, he shouldn’t
be taking pictures of people.

I think that’s pretty much set.

The second article I read
with the same information

translated that last
sentence is translated

that last sentence as, I only
took pictures of their legs.

Still bad.

I mean, there’s, again,
not much of a defense,

but it’s interesting when
you get into translation,

when you get into articles written
from one language to another language.

There are some decisions
the translator makes

that will definitely influence
the feeling of the reader.

And it’s something to be very aware of.

Should you be reading
news from other countries

or even the news
from your own country,

that language choice,
the images that go with it,

the things those are
definitely chosen to paint a

picture for you as the person
in taking the information.

And something you should be very aware of.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Not a viable solution to a three yen problem

(upbeat music)

Two private arrest
YouTubers were arrested,

which I believe is
the definition of irony.

Private arrest YouTubers,
these are people who,

we’ve done an extraordinary
couple of these guys in the past.

And what they would generally
do is try to find someone

committing a crime, and then
tackle them and make a really

dramatic arrest, or they
would berate them and stuff.

But then of course, that
relies on you, happenstance

coming across a crime,
particularly a hard thing to do.

So what you need to do then is start
manufacturing crimes that you can then catch.

So they would generally
try to do predators and stuff.

We had the guy who was last week or
two weeks ago, who was like luring people,

pretending to be like a high
school girl on some kind of app,

and then when they
would arrive, he’d be like,

you’re a bad person,
give me 300,000 yen.

That’s not the same.

‘Cause he’s just trying
to extort people for money.

This is, I want to arrest
you for the content.

I want to tackle you to the
ground, and hopefully wrestle in fight,

because that’s actually
probably what they’re looking for,

’cause that’s really
traumatic YouTube viewing.

And then I still have
the moral high ground,

and then they take them to the
police box and get them arrested.

They pretended to be a
woman, so these are two guys.

They pretended to be a woman online and
asked a man to bring them methamphetamines.

So you can see there’s a
couple of problems there.

This is, yeah, again,
I’m sort of in this

place where I’m like,
how do I contact a lawyer

who’d be willing to talk
to me about these issues?

‘Cause I want to know what
aspects of this are illegal.

So there’s pretending to be someone
online seems like a low level fraud.

Asking for methamphetamines
seems like an illegal act in itself.

Yeah, they haven’t bought them or anything.

They’re just like, hey,
bring them to this place.

But soliciting drugs is
probably a crime in Japan.

Drug crimes are very serious in Japan,

so you got to take every
aspect of it very seriously.

Lying to the guy, I think
is probably the crime,

but that’s again, pretending
to be a woman in stuff online.

This is maybe a form of entrapment,
or maybe that’s just a solicitation.

Me guessing is not the right answer.

I need, I’m trying to find some
lawyers, a Japanese lawyer,

who’d be willing to spend
a couple hours with me

talking about different
aspects of crime in Japan.

Because I want the details.

And I think you want the details too.

We all want the details.

So this soliciting drugs
is actually against the law.

So they committed a crime
to get a guy to come to a place

so they could arrest him for
the crime of him having drugs

and turn him into the
police, but they had to commit

a crime to make that
happen in the first place.

So the question then is how much
do you get punished for a solicitation?

Well, one guy is getting 10 months.

The other guy is
getting one year and four

months, but both are
received suspended sentences.

So basically, the judge is like,
okay, you’ve committed a crime.

We’re not going to send you to jail.

You’re not getting in trouble yet.

You got three years if you
don’t commit another crime.

So basically, they’re YouTube
channel where they actually commit

these minor crimes to catch
these guys making bigger crimes.

Has to go on high eight, it has to stop.

Because if they do
this again, then they’re

actually going to prison
for basically a year each.

Their statement was
we had no intention of an

innocent, we had no
intention of inciting the crime.

[MUSIC]

April 2023, then Prime Minister
Kashita is making a speech.

It’s a stump speech.

I’m going to be really honest.

I don’t 100% know what a stump speech is.

I should have looked that up before,

but then I forgot because I
was busy setting up other stuff.

It’s a national holiday, which
meant there were people

in the house today instead
of this being my day off.

You don’t care about any of that.

I was rushed.

You’ll actually, if you watched the YouTube
video, you can tell how much time I have

because if I have more
time, the editing’s better

and you get like the
scroll or along the bottom

with extra jokes, whereas if I have no time,
it’s just like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

No actual additions to the viewing
pleasure of the YouTube channel.

If you’re listening online, it
sounds probably exactly the same.

If you’re listening to
the podcast, the audio.

If you’re listening to the audio version,
it probably sounds exactly the same.

So there’s about 100 people at a warehouse.

This is like a man of
the people kind of speech,

which immediately
throws up red flags for me.

Because that’s super fake.

But whatever, that’s politics.

Politics is super fake.

Prime Minister is making
a speech to these people.

Guy Hux, a pipe bomb, into the middle
of the crowd, aimed at the Prime Minister.

It doesn’t go off.

There’s like some smoke and
stuff, but basically it doesn’t go off.

If even a small explosion had happened,

dozens and dozens of people
would have been hurt and or killed.

So this was not just attempted murder.

This was attempted
mass murder of his sorts.

He had tracked the Prime
Minister’s movements that day.

So he lived in another city.

He’s like the Prime Minister’s
going here to make the speech.

She’s making this appearance.

I followed him on Instagram or something.

So he shows up to the place
where he’s making a speech.

So it is intent.

There is intent for him to throw this thing

that could explode at the
Prime Minister at the time.

The defense lawyer says
he wasn’t aware of the power

of the bomb, the bomb
that he built himself at home.

So this was an interesting defense.

Because he’s basically saying
this guy wanted to attract

attention to like electoral
issues, things like that.

But so he built a bomb at home.

And in the defense lawyer
saying he didn’t know

how powerful this bomb
could potentially be.

So he should not be charged with murder.

He should not be charged
with attempted murder.

He should not be charged
with the same sort of severity.

The thing is, if I was the
judge or the prosecuting

attorney, I would immediately
go, he built the bomb.

So like he had instructions, he must have,

I’m going to go ahead
and guess he got it online.

So he goes online, he gets
instructions, how to build a bomb.

That’s going to include information of
how powerful the bomb is going to be.

Like this bomb could blow up a house.

This bomb could blow up a car.

This bomb could, you know,
give someone some ringing ears,

but not actually injure
anybody in any significant way.

That information is probably included in
the recipe for the bomb, is all I’m saying.

Since it didn’t go off, this
is attempted, whatever.

Probably attempted murder,
primarily of the Prime Minister.

But because you did it towards the
Prime Minister, it’s actually more serious.

Now, this is a legal quirk.

Because if you throw on
a pipe bomb at a regular

person, you’re going to
get X amount of years.

If you throw a pipe bomb at the Prime
Minister, you’re going to get way more.

No, people are supposed to be
viewed equally in the eyes of the law.

I think that’s pretty fair, but at the
same time, this is a political statement.

So now it becomes, is it
an act of terrorism or not?

So you can see that’s how
they’re actually twisting it.

The prosecuting attorney
is asking for 15 years.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

January, 2024, there was
a school board meeting.

The vice chairman of the
board was making statements

and a student objected towards these
statements during the meeting publicly.

So the vice chairman
got really upset about this.

I would really love to know what the
statements were and what the objection was.

Like what were they actually talking about?

That’s not in any of the news stories.

I found about four versions of this story.

Not one of them actually
says what the statement was

that was objected to or
what the objection was.

Which is I think–
because if you’re in high

school, you’re a teenager
standing up and objecting

to this statement of an
adult is a very hard thing to do.

It’s big.

So I’d like to know what
it was that they were

talking about that would
have said everybody off.

This enraged the vice chair.

And he demanded through a teacher,
which is a very cowardly way to do it.

He demanded a letter of apology.

But he didn’t go to the student
said, what you did was wrong.

You should write a letter of apology to me.

He went to a teacher and said, tell
that student to write a letter of apology.

And I was like, ah, this is the kind
of power dynamic these people have.

Like it’s like, I have power, but I’m
actually scared to confront people.

So they’re cowards.

I think that’s actually it.

So he told someone to
go get a letter of apology.

If the student– so the
school tells a student,

if the student does not write this
letter of apology, they will be expelled.

So the student capitulates.

I mean, no reason to get expelled.

This is like the third year of high school.

So there’s getting expelled now is going

to ruin your university
opportunities, things like that.

Your future education, if you want
to continue education, it’s not worth it.

Rights the letter of apology.

But this kid, the kid who’s
brave enough to stand up

and object in a meaningful of
adults, is not going to back down.

Like you already have a
taste of what this person is like.

And I really like them whoever they are.

June 2024, she files a criminal complaint

that she was coerced into writing a
letter of apology by the school board.

So she didn’t be like, let’s
argue this back and forth.

She’s like, you forced me to do something.

That’s coercion.

Corision is illegal in Japan.

She goes to the cops and she says, I was
coerced into writing a letter of apology.

I was threatened that if I didn’t write
this letter of apology, I would be expelled.

That’s against the law in Japan.

They’re like, hmm.

This seems a little not clear
as to what the legalities are.

But they kicked it up the road.

Some investigators did– they’re
like, hey, we got some time, I guess.

Japan is a very low crime society,

which is why maybe stuff
like this gets more attention.

They started investigating.

So that means the police went to the
school, the police go and talk to the staff,

and they start talking to people,
and they start doing an investigation.

So the police show
up, the school then goes

to the kid and says,
please drop the charges.

And then she’s like, nah, you guys
did something that I consider wrong.

I’m not dropping the charges, screw you.

I mean, no one’s going to jail over this,
but there might be like, fines and stuff.

So then she was expelled.

She was expelled for
disruption of school order.

So her drop in the cops on this
school board is disrupting school order.

And now, so this is the interesting part.

The teachers say that this
student never disrupted school order

that the younger students
looked up to the student.

They came to her for help.

She was a very positive
influence within the school.

So this statement that
she disrupted school

order clearly is only
implicit to the power order

of the upper echelons of
the school hierarchy system.

So the teachers disputed this.

And some of them said, I was shocked
when I found out she’d been expelled.

I was shocked when I found
out the school had gone this far.

The principal then
acknowledged the expulsion.

So of course, newspaper
start coming around the school

and being like, do you
want to make a statement?

He’s like, yes, we expelled the student.

We expelled the student for
the disruption to the school order.

They go, what specifically did the
student do to disrupt school order?

And the principal was
either unable and unable,

was either unable or
unwilling to comment on that.

When they started asking about for more
details, he basically shut it all down.

That’s already showing
that you’re on shaky ground.

If you’re not willing or
able to defend your position

on the things you’ve
done as a person in power,

you know you’ve either abused
that power or done the wrong thing.

Two days later, a lot of attention.

So again, news story start coming up.

So the expulsion was then withdrawn.

Now, this is actually at this point,

’cause this is again, now
we’re getting to like a year later.

She’s actually finished high school,

but she says, I don’t want
an expulsion on my record.

So I need you to remove
that to expunge the expulsion.

There’s a great sentence.

It went to court and the court
recommended a settlement and

the school’s like, okay, we’re
gonna remove the expulsion.

I don’t know if money
passed back and forth.

They didn’t give any details of the
settlement ’cause that’s a private thing.

But as far as I’m concerned,
this kid stood up to the power

structure of the school and
won and that is fricking awesome

’cause I wish I was able
to do that when I was a kid.

(upbeat music)

So if you go to a convenience store in
Japan, now they haven’t been made illegal,

but basically the government
said like, don’t give out plastic bags.

We actually kind of wanna
get rid of plastic bags.

If you want a plastic
bag, they charge you two

yen or five yen, depending
on how big the bag is.

They have self checkout machines.

So I can get my drink
right now is chai milk tea.

I think I drank too much yesterday.

Maybe that’s why I have a
bit of an upset tummy today.

Chai milk tea, maybe my chocolate
fudge and then only giddy and stuff.

And then I go up to the
front and I can beep it out

and then I take my barcode off my
phone and I hold that up and I pay for it.

And then I can walk out.

If I want a bag, I’m
supposed to take the bag.

The bag has a barcode on it.

I’m supposed to put that up to the screen

and it will charge me two
yen or five yen or three yen.

Whatever.

It’s a nominal sum to just
encourage you to not use plastic bags.

Now I often have a messenger
bag that is around my shoulder.

So I just throw everything
in my messenger bag.

I don’t use plastic bags
as much as possible.

I think this is fair.

This is a very Canadian thing of me to do

is to just not use
resources if at all possible.

48 year old British
man had a different idea.

Now he’s a tourist.

So maybe he didn’t know.

So it depends how much forgiveness you
want to give to him but he’s a colonizer.

So no one wants to
forgive the British empire.

I think that might be part of it.

This British man, he’s
a tourist in Hokkaido.

He uses the self checkout.

He gets his stuff and then as he left,

he grabs a three yen bag
and starts walking away.

So there is a question of did he know
he was supposed to pay for that or not?

Did he know how to pay for it or not?

Because they are just hanging
next to the self checkout thing.

I could actually see you assuming
that you just take it and go.

That it’s just like a free service.

If you didn’t know about Japanese
culture or the rules and stuff,

I’m actually slightly
forgiving of that aspect.

The clerk chases him down.

So he goes outside and
he starts walking away.

The clerk comes out and this
is very Japanese thing to do.

If you like over pay or
something and there’s change

and you don’t pick it
up like it’s three yen,

they will run down the street and be
like, “We have to give you three yen.

” It’s just a very important
aspect of Japanese culture.

You’ll get chased down for
incredibly small sums of money.

He chases down the tourist and he says,

“Look, you gotta pay
three yen for the plastic bag.

” You just took.

Now he’s probably speaking Japanese.

Maybe the British dude doesn’t understand.

But he’s like,
“Give me three yen.

” Let’s just say that.

He’s like three yen, three yen, three yen.

And we all know three yen
is not worth anything, really.

It’s not worth certainly a conflict.

The British man then decides
that the most reasonable

solution to this is to
punch the clerk in the face.

Now, you could say he did not commit
theft because of misunderstanding.

So again, I could be
very forgiving of that.

He took a three yen bag.

He didn’t know he was stealing,
but he was actually stealing.

But I think we all know that
punching someone in the face

is not a viable solution
to a three yen problem.

Of course, the police are called.

Assulting people is
not acceptable in Japan.

It’s not really acceptable anywhere,
but it’s a pretty big deal in Japan.

You get arrested for that pretty quickly.

When he was explaining things to the
police, I assume through a translator.

He said, “My hand may have
struck his face as I pushed him aside.

” So he’s saying that the
clerk was coming towards him.

He pushed him away and
that maybe while doing that,

he slapped him in the face or hit him
in the face, that this was not a punch.

Now, the problem is
that if you lay hands

on another person,
that is assault in Japan.

If you push someone,
that is assault in Japan.

So basically he’s saying I
haven’t assaulted him by

punching him in the face, but
then inadvertently admitted,

I have assaulted him by
pushing him in the first place.

So if my hand hit him, that’s
actually irrelevant at this point.

So should you come to Japan and you’re in
a convenience store and you see some bags,

if you accidentally steal one of those
bags and the clerk comes running after you,

just give him to Yen, just
give him three Yen, whatever

he asks for, just give
him the Yen he asks for.

Say, “Sorry, I move on.

” Do not punch him in the face.

(upbeat music)

Yeshiba is the current prime minister
of Japan and he met with Trump.

And of course, when you
meet Trump, when you meet

a president, you probably
give him a president.

There’s a lot of present
giving between countries

and there’s been some
really weird ones in the past.

I believe that Obama gave Queen
Elizabeth like a bag of CTs or something.

Like that feels like you didn’t
have a gift and you pulled

everything out of your car
and put it in a bag handed to her.

But I’m sure there was
more thought to it than that.

I know like there’s desks
that were made from ships that

sailed from England to Japan
as like England to America.

Like those are the kind of gifts
that other countries give America.

America’s not really
good on the gift giving part.

You know, Trump accepts gifts
and doesn’t even think about the idea

of giving gifts back,
but he has received gifts.

And when the Japanese prime minister comes
to America and meets with the president,

he’s gonna give him a gift.

That’s a very Japanese thing to do.

Gift giving is a big part
of Japanese culture.

If you don’t know that, you should
know that before you spend any time here

because you’re either going to be giving
or receiving gifts on a regular basis.

So what did he give him?

He gave him a golden samurai helmet.

So this is because of the
popularity of the recent

show, Shogun, because
it won Emmys and stuff.

He’s like, ah, this is a popular thing.

Americans like this.

Let’s give him a samurai
helmet and it’s gonna be gold.

And I was like, actually, I bet
Trump is really happy about that.

Trump seems to be one of those
guys who thinks gold’s awesome.

Anything in gold is awesome.

And he’s currying favor with Trump.

Because let’s face it,
since Trump is the president,

you do have to deal with
him for the next four years.

It would be the best tactical
decision to appeal to his base desires.

So giving him gold, paying that
homage is probably the best route.

Because the trade things he’s doing right
now, he might actually softly be like,

“Well, that guy gave me this
sweet Japanese samurai helmet.

“Why do I wanna
impose tariffs on him?

” Yeah.

So I actually think this
is a very smart political

move on the Prime
Minister of Japan’s part.

I don’t know if it’s intended that way.

Like, I don’t know if
he’s actually that smart,

but at least inadvertently
he’s doing a very smart thing

by currying that favor
because it’ll just be

easier to deal with Trump
for the next five years.

Like, even if you think he’s an idiot,

let’s say I was suddenly
made Prime Minister of Japan,

I am now in charge, and I think
Trump’s more on, which I absolutely do.

It would make more sense to
give him something made of gold

so that he thinks you like him, so
that he’ll just be easier to work with

for the remainder of the
four years until he disappears.

A company received an
order from the foreign ministry

and saying it was a gift
for a VIP, so the people who

made the samurai helmet
didn’t know who it was for.

That was an interesting aspect
of this that I hadn’t thought about.

Because what if you run a company
and you hate Trump and they’re

like, we want you, we want to
commission you to make a thing

that we’re going to present to
the President Trump that you hate.

Do you refuse that order?

Now, the company here is
like, we’re really happy to be

promoting our goods on the
world stage, that kind of stuff.

Again, very diplomatic answers.

He’s saying he’s very
happy that the Prime

Minister thought of this
thing and gave it to the,

gave it to the President
of the United States.

But I was like, there’s
sort of a moral issue there

because you making it is almost
a political statement in itself.

Something else, so I was
looking up some of the other gifts

the previous Prime Minister,
Kishida, when he met Trump in 2016,

he gave him a golden golf club,
which I was like, again, very good idea,

makes him not much easier to work
with because he’s an absolute child

and giving him a gold toy is really
probably the best way to deal with him.

(upbeat music)

55 year old man.

That’s it, I mean, I don’t
even finish the story.

You know, this would
be what the quiz is going.

I got to reorganize myself
and get the quizzes back on.

I’ve got to reorganize and
get a lawyer back on to ask

questions because there’s so much, so much
I want to do and so much I want to know.

But everything takes
like hours to organize.

55 year old man.

So I would do the quiz
like, did he expose himself,

did he steal something,
did he beat someone up?

55 year old man in
Hokkaido walked into a

convenience store on
November 16th and 29th, 2024.

Sounds like it’s not too bad so far.

He was wearing a jacket.

Now, I say that very specifically because
clearly he’s not wearing much heels.

He was wearing transparent
stockings and nothing else.

They were see through,
which actually, to me,

almost goes like, why are you
bothering with the stockings?

Like, if you’re going to
go in and expose yourself,

which is what he did, what, I guess the
stockings were for him, not for the viewer.

I guess the whole experience
is for him, not the viewer.

So he comes in, he’s
wearing stockings in a jacket,

he walks in, he walks around, and
then they say he exposes himself.

It makes it sound like
he took the jacket off

and just started walking around the
convenience store would just the stockings on.

But that actually wasn’t very clear.

He was arrested on January
30th two months later.

So the police in Hokkaido,
for the last two months,

they had security
footage, they had this guy,

they had his face, they
spent the next two months

hunting him down, finding
him so he could be arrested.

And I was like, man, they
didn’t give up on it though.

Because as far as crimes
go, this is very small

’cause yes, the woman,
the clerk behind the

counter, she was really
grossed out fair enough.

I would be really grossed out by it too.

This is not a pleasant experience.

But as far as crimes
are going, no one got hurt.

So you can see the police being like, yeah,

if we see him again, we’ll
pick him up, whatever,

just call us next time it
happens, that kind of thing.

They spent two months hunting for this guy.

The reason when he was arrested,
he said he did it out of curiosity.

And I’m just wondering
what that accent means.

What was the curious thing
he was trying to experience?

‘Cause he did it twice.

So the first time did
not satisfy his curiosity.

The second time, maybe
that satisfied his curiosity?

I’m not sure.

The curiosity, I’m
assuming there is some sort

of sexual element to this,
the excitement element.

What aspect of the curiosity,
the single sentence statements

when someone gets arrested
are not satisfying to me.

I want to paragraph with explanations as
to what and why they’re doing these things.

Give me all the information you can get.

This is killing me now after
having done “The Engineers

Japan” for however many
years I’ve been doing it.

They have not said what he’s been arrested.

Having said, I guess it’s
decency laws, but they haven’t

said what kind of punishment
he’s gonna get for this.

Although he has admitted to doing it.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Meiwaku Podcast

(upbeat music)

Okay, of course, instantly
confused by settings in OBS,

but we’re here, we’re ready to go.

Let’s get it on.

Useful Japanese lesson for this week is

may waku gagukjin. No.
Gagukjin is foreign person.

It’s the, actually more
polite version of Gaijin,

which is the more common way to
say it, which can be done insulting.

I take all, you know, positive negative
phrases, depending on how they’re intended.

So if it’s intended negatively, it
doesn’t matter how polite the word is,

if it’s said in a rude way,
intended to hurt your feelings.

But yeah, you should know, you
should know the difference technically,

and then you can interpret the actual
expression as it is presented to you.

Maywaku is a form of nuisance.

So maywaku gagukjin
is a nuisance foreigner.

This shouldn’t be a term,
but I guess as far as terms go,

it’s actually not the
root, is this is Japan.

So these still fairly polite
sounding things are still insults.

This came into the news, it
was used in the news today,

because there’s a lot of overtourism,
there’s a lot of foreigners in Japan.

There is a sort of meeting spot in Shibuya.

There’s a conveni that is
like the dead center of Shibuya.

This is where people go.

They meet their friends there, and
then they go off to bars and stuff,

or they drink there while
talking to their friends,

and then they go off to other
places, this is where they make plans.

Who knows?

There are a lot of foreigners who hang out

right out in front of this
one conveni in Shibuya.

Last week, a crowd was standing
around in front, as I have just explained.

A dump truck, not a dump
truck, a garbage truck.

A garbage truck slows down
and starts to try to return.

There’s a whole bunch of people in the way,

so it sort of honks gently, I
don’t know, it honks at them.

And then of course, the two foreign guys

who are probably drunk
have a really good idea.

Since the giant garbage
truck is going very slowly,

it would be the perfect
thing for us to climb on.

So they climbed on it.

This, of course, upsets Japanese people.

You’re not supposed to do this.

It gets put on the news.

This gets put on the news.

And this is just to
make foreigners look bad

in the hopes that
they will behave better,

but I’ve met a lot of foreigners
and a lot of them make us look bad.

And I’d really like them to stop.

I think that might be the shortest version
of this story ever is stop embarrassing.

You represent me in a
way, because I’m a foreigner,

so people see me and
they see a foreigner.

And then they, you behave
badly and they look at

me go, oh, he therefore
behaves that way as well.

I’ve spent a big part of my
time in Japan, I have spent a big

part of my time in Japan trying
to dispel some of the stereotypes,

but I mean, I can really only
do it one person at a time

and even then, I can honestly
say, I haven’t been successful.

(upbeat music)

So we had our scandal news from last week

where Nakai, a member of
SMAP, had done something,

paid a girl off 90 million yen to
keep her quiet and then had to retire,

essentially from show
business altogether, because

he lost all his sponsors,
he lost all his TV shows.

I mean, there’s nothing you can do anymore.

He could be a streamer,
he could go on YouTube.

I actually bet if he just
like did something by

himself, he would still
be relatively successful.

People would still follow
him, he still has fans

and whatnot, people will still support
him just because he had so many fans.

It’s certainly not going to maintain
the status of what he had before.

And that might be too much of a step down.

I always thought, like when
these guys get in trouble,

why don’t they just retire
and just live a quiet life and not

be bothered by any way, he
has millions and millions of dollars.

So he doesn’t have to work anymore.

I did something just dang.

That is not the only scandal
that’s happening in Japan.

It was probably just the biggest one.

I’m interested in the fallout.

So saying famous person abused their position
and assaulted someone or did something

sexual to someone, that is
not actually that interesting

inherently, like there is
the titillating aspect of it.

I could stuck on the first
part of that word, maybe.

The titillating aspect
of it, but that actually,

like when you hear the
story again and again

and again, kind of
loses any sort of impact.

So I don’t really find
much interest in that.

I actually find interest in
the punishment, the results.

Do they lose their position?

Do they get their position back?

This kind of like rise
and fall aspect of it.

It’s the hero’s journey is
really what I’m looking for in life.

A comedian was reported
to have grabbed a girl in 2015.

So 10 years ago, this
guy may be grabbed a girl.

I mean, we’re going to go ahead and
assume he did because he probably did.

He defends himself in a weird way.

Yeah, there’s a lot of weird bits
about not knowing what happened.

It was also a decade ago.

He invited her to a hotel.

I’m assuming they mean love hotel.

She didn’t want to go.

So he grabbed her arm and pulled her.

Now, we have no idea
what that actually means.

Did he pull her down the street?

Did he just grab her arm and pull her once?

How bad did we have no context to
really understand what actually happened?

But he was denied and
he tried to coerce her.

And that’s maybe all you need
to really take away from this.

As a result of this
singular action 10 years ago,

he, because it came out and
because it’s coming out on the heels

of this nakai scandal where
he lost all his advertisers,

he has had every scene of his from a drama
that’s come out, removed from the drama.

So he actually made a show.

He went through the effort.

They filmed a show.

He’s in the show.

And then they’re like,
we’re going to go back.

We’re going to edit it again and
take every bit with him out of it.

There was a scandal of a guy.

It was one of the yakuza video games.

And he was found two of done drugs.

I think it was cocaine or
stimulants or something.

And then they took his scenes out.

Oh, no, they didn’t take a
season because it’s digital.

They swapped his face with some other guy.

So they had some other actor come in.

I assume did his lines again.

And then just swapped his face.

So he was removed
from a video game digitally.

I bet that was a very smooth process.

But taking, going back and re-editing
a show, that is so much work.

It’s almost insane.

But this is because now the Fuji
president of Fuji TV stepped down.

He retires, based on the nakai scandal.

There’s another scandal.

It was a guy suing a
magazine for defamation.

But then he had to drop it.

And he hasn’t been back on TV since.

So now that there are multiple scandals,

these other scandals
coming out of the woodwork

from the past are now
having real world implications.

It’ll be interesting to
see, have we hit sort

of the initial wave of
scandal punishments?

And it looks like you
can go back 10, 15 years.

And you still get the same punishment
now as if you had just done it yesterday.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Drink a bunch of water before I started.

I really have to burp.

Usually I get coffee and
stuff, not coffee, but coffee.

C-O-U-G-H-Y coffee
or a sore throat or a

rough throat after the
second or third story.

Now I feel like a big burp brewing.

I don’t want to burp mid.

I generally have a pretty good
control over my burp function.

So I could force it.

I’m not going to do that.

That’s maybe not the best idea.

I can tell you why I’m never going
to get on professional news television.

I will never be an actual news anchor.

Probably because I’m too old.

I mean, there’s more realistic reason

is I would stop in like burp
midway through the show.

All right, that’s just extra.

Let’s just cut that.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Two teens.

And again, I think
when I started a story

with that, I was like,
this story is awesome.

These are two young people
who have made bad decisions.

Love young people making bad decisions.

I made lots of bad decisions.

I’ve talked about previous episodes.

Some of the dumb stuff
I did when I was a teen.

I don’t expect them to
mature any time soon.

And yet, my experience with teens in Japan
is they are tend to be overall more mature.

And maybe it’s because
they have to study so much.

They don’t actually get so much free time.

I had tons of free time to mess around.

And that is when my mind
went off with my friends

and flights of fancy and was like,
what’s the dumbest thing we can do?

One of the dumbest
things we could do was

get eggs and throw
them at a police station.

In Japan, they have police boxes.

These are not– it’s not like a box.

It’s like a two, three person police station
mini-police station for the community.

So instead of having just
one large central police

station for a city or a prefecture
or an area or something,

they will have a big police
station and then a lot of little ones.

They’ll have three, four,
maybe five cops in the my town,

has a police station
and I think it’s like

six people tend to
stay– tend to staff it.

And that’s for the whole city, though.

So it’s actually very small still.

But I could still go
towards the train station.

I bet I could be able to
find a police station with

like two guys who hang
out in it most of the time.

You’re out.

You’re 15, you’re 16 years old.

You’re with your friend.

You want to like be stupid and impress each
other, which is what was going on here?

Like the dumber stuff you
can do will impress your friends.

You have some eggs.

I don’t know if they go buy eggs.

This is another question of preparation.

I, as a teenager, doing dumb stuff,
never went fully on the preparation phase.

We never like pre-planned this.

It was like always in the moment stuff.

These guys had eggs.

So they either went and bought
eggs or as someone got eggs

from home either way, that
level of preparation being

increased makes it
actually like a little worse.

They get the eggs.

They go to the police station.

What are you going to do?

You’re going to throw the
eggs at the police station.

So the cops are sitting
inside the police station.

They hear something
hitting the outside wall.

They go out.

They see broken eggs.

They’ve egged the car and
the outside of the police station.

What does a police station have?

It has police inside, yes.

So maybe the police don’t see you.

It’s very hard for them to prove.

What else do they have?

They have surveillance cameras.

I mean, every single one has
a camera facing the outside.

Every single one has
cameras probably inside as well.

If any place is going to have cameras
on it, it’s going to be a police station.

So of course, they have video
footage of these kids doing it.

They track them down pretty quickly.

They are suspected in a similar situation

where another police car got
egged at some point in the past.

I’m going to go ahead and say they did it.

Last week, I was lamenting the
lack of sexiness of the Yakuza stories.

All the Yakuza stories
I’ve had, since I started in

his newspaper, they’ve
been bland, low-level stuff.

And so my information about Yakuza
primarily has come from movies and media.

So in the movies, they were
always like international drug dealers.

They were trafficking people.

It was always like really big things.

And they had massive amounts of money.

The stories we get are them doing what I
would consider honestly low-level crimes.

Three members of the
Yakuza were arrested recently

for breaking into a mobile store
and stealing 31 cell smartphones.

L-O-L anyway.

Back to the Yakuza
from Eggs and egg prices.

That’s the smooth transitions
you get at Nintendo’s Japan.

The segues here are perfect.

You won’t even notice them.

We’ll just be into the next story.

Anyways, back to the Yakuza.

But I think the reason this stuck out to me

was stealing cell phones is not my
image of what Yakuza should be doing.

And it’s because again, all
of my information comes from

movies and video games where
they’re doing really big things.

These guys breaking into a store,
stealing– like, even 30 isn’t enough.

Like, it was 30,000.

It was a truck, a
trailer full of cell phones.

That would be Yakuza level.

Ceiling 30, I think I
could steal 30 phones.

I think I could break into
a place of steal 30 phones.

There have been 10 similar thefts.

So now we’re getting up in the 300s.

But still, it would be like, if you’re

going to do petty theft, I guess
each phone might be $1,000.

Like, the Galaxy phones and stuff?

They’re like $1,000.

So I guess this could actually
be quite technically a big crime.

It just doesn’t feel that way to me.

Like, they’re not stealing gold.

10 similar thefts in two prefecture.

So maybe these are all connected, and
they’ve stolen like 300 phones at $1,000.

Yes, that’s a fair sum of money.

Still not Yakuza numbers in my mind.

This is like petty crime
still on the grand scale

of what the Yakuza as a family
organization should be doing.

It’s just not glamorous.

That’s really what I want.

I want my Yakuza to be
doing big glamorous crimes.

Last week, we had the Yakuza
buy a private road and then

coordinate off and then try to
charge everyone for using the road.

And then they got arrested
not for the attempted

extortion of the people
who live around this road.

It was– they were
arrested for being Yakuza.

Something that they’re not Yakuza.

But has the same feeling to me, Starbucks.

Starbucks, Japan, is going
to start location-based

pricing, which I weirdly
am not surprised that it–

like, I actually, this
is the kind of thing I

would have assumed
they had already in place.

Do you remember it was like
a year ago or two years ago,

they were going to have
the menus dynamic pricing?

So if it was a peak of time, your
hamburger, whatever would cost more.

And then if you went,
I’d like to, o’clock in

the morning, the
hamburger would be cheaper.

I’m surprised that didn’t take off more.

Because I know there
were some machines in

Japan that were going
to try some machines.

We’re going to do like spike pricing,
dynamic pricing, that kind of stuff.

This is different.

And then what they’re
saying is if your Starbucks has

like a prime location, the Starbucks
is going to cost more in the store.

That feels more Yakuza like to me somehow.

That feels like a large
national network scheme

that’s going to bring
in millions of dollars.

That feels like the
Yakuza, but it’s Starbucks.

I think maybe in my mind, I need to switch.

It’s the Yakuza are doing
all this garbage crap stuff.

I had my sentence just fell apart.

So I’m just going to cut that part.

From February 15, 30% of the
1,991 stores will change prices.

So not all of them.

It’s going to be with ones in
Tokyo, Osaka, that kind of stuff.

They’re going to be the downtown stores
that they’re going to increase their prices.

If you go out to the
countryside, so where I

live, there’s not actually
a Starbucks out here.

That’s how small the town I live in is.

We have a McDonald’s.

That’s like a big point of pride.

And my understanding is
they’re going to open a KFC.

Ooh.

You can see how my tiny towns becoming
a big city when we finally get a KFC.

Service areas and airports
are going to go up by 6%.

So places where you’re locked in.

So you’re at the airport.

You can’t really leave the airport.

They’re going to increase
all their prices by 6%.

If you’re in a service area, so a
place you’ve driven, there’s no options.

There’s only so many places you
can buy from in a single service area.

They’re going to
increase their prices by 6%.

Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major
cities, the major city I work in is Nagoya.

And they didn’t mention that one.

They’re going to increase their
prices by 4% in those locations.

This is supposed to be for
sustainable store management.

But we know that Starbucks is
already a massively profitable company.

So that’s not what this is about.

This is just about seeing if
they can gouge more money

from people because
they’re locked into an airport

or they work downtown, and they
don’t have any other coffee options.

Everyone forgets Nagoya.

Everyone forgets Nagoya.

Nagoya was voted the most boring
city in Japan multiple years in a row.

And I actually agree.

But to me, the most boring city in Japan
is why it’s the best place to live in.

The exciting cities
have lots of stuff to do.

But if you have to live there, it’s always
like Tokyo’s always packed full of people.

Osaka’s very busy.

Man, there’s stuff to do in there.

No, no, there is stuff to do in Nagoya.

It’s just it’s location and stuff.

It’s smaller and quieter, which
is why it seems boring to outside.

It’s like if people are going
to come and do tourism,

I would say, yeah, go
to Tokyo, go to Osaka.

If you want to live,
you come live in Nagoya.

Nagoya is a great place to live.

I live in the suburb.

Wow, I live in a different prefecture.

But I live in essentially
a suburb of Nagoya.

And it’s awesome because
I can get to Nagoya.

And from Nagoya, I can get anywhere.

Like I can go to Tokyo in a day.

I can do day trips all over Japan.

Being centrally located,
I think, is really good.

And that is your message
from tourism to Goia.

Ninja, Ninja, Ninja, Japan,
big fan of living in Nagoya.

But don’t come to visit.

Keep your fucking
tourist ass away from here.

Was it Maywaku?

Don’t be a Maywaku guy, Goku Jin in Nagoya.

Go to Tokyo and bug them.

All right, I’m going to do the song again.

That’s probably all we need to cut to.

There was a sinkhole in Saitama.

And a truck didn’t manage to
get away from it and it fell in.

And the driver was in the truck.

And he’s been locked in
there for at least three days.

This actually story is a little dark.

To be honest, when I saw other foreigners,
I was like, TF is this foreigner.

No, I kind of feel the same way.

In my town, in my town, my understanding
is there’s one other white person.

And so people honestly
think that we must be friends.

Because there’s the one other white guy in
the city is very, again, very small city.

They think that we must know each other.

We must hang out and stuff.

And I’ve seen him once at the liquor store.

And I honestly never went
back to that liquor store.

Because he didn’t seem like my type of guy.

He literally walked up to me.

This is really off-putting.

Because I’m out in public,
a very conservative person.

He walked up and he’s like,
what are you doing here?

Like this was his introduction of
himself as a person to want to talk to me.

Like I was going to
respond positively to that,

which showed me that he
was already socially inept.

So I just ignored him
completely and walked away.

So what he saw was he made a statement

towards someone in that person
just turned around and walked off.

What I saw was someone
who doesn’t know how to talk

to other human beings,
trying really hard to break

down a social barrier
and completely failing.

Because my walls went up immediately.

But enough social talk.

Anyways, there’s a sinkhole in Saitama.

It was huge driving down the road.

A truck actually fell into it.

And the driver was trapped in the truck.

It came from a damaged sewer
pipe ate away at the surrounding soil.

So basically eroding underneath the road

to the point where
when a truck went over it,

the road actually
collapsed into this big hole.

The driver’s still in there.

Now, this is actually a tough story.

Because I followed it for days.

Again, I wanted to see,
do they pull them out?

Do they get the truck out?

What happens?

Then, as they’re trying to
dig away sort of the material,

like this is taking a full day,
they lose contact with them.

So we don’t know if he’s
actually still in the cab of the truck.

They don’t know if he’s OK.

Another sinkhole forms
nearby than those two sinkholes

actually join together and
become a much larger sinkhole.

At this point, they’re actually
like this is day two now.

They’re actually saying, maybe
people need to evacuate their houses.

We don’t know how far this is going to go.

They’re trying to scope out the area.

They’re still trying to get
this guy out of this sinkhole,

but they can’t bring heavy
machinery into this area

because they’re
actually unsure as if the

ground underneath is
actually stable or not.

So you want to bring a big crane
in and lift up the truck to pull it out.

But you can’t bring the big crane in, because
maybe it’ll collapse the road under it,

because you don’t actually
know how big the sinkhole is.

They tried to construct
a slope to get down

more smoothly into
the ground to get them.

That started filling up with water.

Three days later, they’re still
saying that everything’s unstable.

They’re asking city residents in this area
to not take baths or showers or do laundry,

try to minimize all that so that
they don’t have water flowing

through these pipes, which is actually,
again, exasperating the situation.

They’re searching for more risks.

This is actually like now
they’re actually more concerned

about the people in
the property around the

sinkhole than the actual
sinkhole they’re doing in.

Three days after this happened, the
news about the driver just stopped.

So my assumption at this
point is they never got him out,

but they didn’t actually want to report
it and it just kind of stopped altogether.

But I really would like
to know what happened.

And now they’re talking about like,

how much of this
infrastructure do we have

to rebuild to keep
Saitama in the city safe?

How many other areas
are there like this in

Japan has become a
pretty significant question?

(upbeat music)

So we had the sexy
advice giver who was using

a AI generated sexy female
avatar to advertise his

give you dating advice and
investing advice practice.

So he would do videos and it was an AI girl

and she was super hot
and she was bouncing around

and doing girl things
that are attractive to men.

And then say, if you want
dating advice, send me money

and then you’d send the
money, it would go to this guy.

He would give you dating advice.

The question was, is this fraud?

Because you were paying
for dating advice and getting it.

It just wasn’t coming from the source.

You thought you were getting it from.

My actual feeling is the fraud is these
guys who were giving this AI avatar money

wanted to talk to the AI
avatar and not this guy.

They didn’t really care about the advice.

This was just their opportunity to talk
to what they thought was a really hot girl.

Rule 34 plus AI and anime is going to be
the combination that destroys the earth.

Two men were arrested for
generating sexy anime posters.

So it seems like nothing is actually safe.

I think that’s for the next little while AI

is going to try to
like, it’s going to be

prodding at different
things in different scams

and different copyright
violations in this case.

Other light crimes to see how far it can go
before it actually causes any real damage.

I think it’s going to cause
damage sooner or later

and that’s when actually
something’s going to come of it.

But we’re going to
see a lot of little stories

where someone employed AI to do a
thing that they weren’t supposed to do.

They were generating
posters for Evangelion,

a Yu-Gi-Go, and other
anime from about this period

which immediately gives away their time.

That was actually something that I thought.

It was like, as soon as I was
like, those aren’t modern anime.

That’s anime that I know
and I’m a really old person.

So they must be pretty old.

Turns out these guys were 36 and 40.

They’re both being arrested
for copyright violation.

One man made 10 million yen off
his sexy anime AI-generated posters.

And another man made 5.7 million yen.

We don’t know if they
were working together.

This may have been just like a coincidence
that these two guys were arrested.

36 is old now.

I’m sorry to have to tell you,
if you’re over 30, you’re old.

Now that I’ve hit my 50s, I
understand death is looming.

And I knew immediately,
okay, here’s an interesting story.

30 is old.

When I came to Japan, I was 28.

I think I was 28 or 29.

Okay, dinosaur, WTF.

I am a dinosaur.

I’m okay with it.

I’ve accepted who I am
and what I am at this point.

And that’s why I’m so confident in myself

and maybe why I haven’t committed
the crimes the other 50 year olds have.

But when I came
to Japan, I was 29

and I was very
attractive and I dated a lot

and I had many different excursions and
whatnot and women were attracted to me.

I can honestly say that with unbiased.

The day I turned 30, it was
like a pheromone went out

or a hormone or something
and everyone knew I was 50.

The attention stopped dead.

And I couldn’t explain what happened.

Like I was dressing the same
way as I had the week before.

I was acting the same
way I had the week before.

But suddenly a week before it was
really cool and sexy and charming.

Now it was like creepy old man grow stuff.

So yeah, 30 is the cusp.

It’s when you become old.

I have maintained that youthful spirit.

I do speak for myself.

I still pull.

I’m sure you do still pull.

I think if I tried really hard, I could.

It’s just now I’m so old, I don’t try.

You can tell that since I wear the same
sweater every single week in this episode,

you can tell I’m not trying
very hard on certain fronts.

Anyways, yes, I’m sorry
to have to tell you this.

If you’re over 30, you’re old.

You’re almost dead.

You might as well just give up.

I’m not advocating
for that kind of thought.

All right, 5.7 million yen,
the other man made as well.

We don’t know if these
guys were working together.

That’s actually a very interesting aspect.

The cyber patrol of
Japan who basically just

goes on the internet
and looks for crimes.

They’re like patrolling the internet.

I mean, pretty good job to be honest.

Sitting on your computer all day,
looking for things that may be illegal.

I mean, we’re on the internet.

There’s a lot of illegal
stuff on the internet.

I think maybe the biggest
thing to me was 10 million yen.

A guy in one year made 10
million yen selling AI posters.

If you had the desire for
an AI poster, you could just

go to an AI thing and just
have it generate it yourself.

Like, doesn’t that seem
like the better solution?

Like, instead of paying that guy to do it,

why don’t I just go on AI
and get AI to do it for me?

Probably for free or very little money.

And then I could, you know, you have
to have like a good printer or whatnot?

Nah, that’s more work.

Is it though?

This is the internet.

Like, AI is everywhere now.

It’s generating all this stupid stuff.

If you want the stupid stuff,
have a generator for you.

I’m guessing maybe he had some kind of large
printer to actually make a large poster.

Maybe something like that.

Maybe you worked at a
print shop or something.

I don’t know, but there has to be a reason

that they went to this guy
instead of doing it themselves.

But people are buying them.

That to me is the most shocking thing.

Like, people are buying
shitty, weird, generated

AI art from anime
that’s like 40 years old.

Since we’re talking about old and cool,
this is the perfect segue into this story.

70 year old, 71 year old
man, he wanted to look cool.

I mean, I still would
like to be seen as cool.

I would like people to think I’m cool.

I think now when you hit my age,
you’re only cool if you do cool things.

Like, it’s not looks in
appearance or attitude anymore.

It’s like, oh, he does, he does cool stuff.

He does, he’s a neat guy.

That keeps you cool.

The coolest I’m ever gonna be is
knowing that I’m not cool and not trying.

The not trying is the element
that keeps me the coolest.

I’m not gonna say cool.

The coolest I can be is that I don’t
go out of my way to try to be cool.

Because my cool days are behind me.

Also, I don’t know if I was ever cool
because I never had enough money.

I think a big part of being
cool is doing cool things

and doing cool things
often cost a lot of money.

So this 70 year old man
had the same thinking.

He wants to be cool and he
goes to expensive sushi bars

and he would be like, hey,
people in the expensive sushi bar.

It’s on me tonight.

I’m picking up the tap.

I’m buying for everybody.

Raw fish all round.

Which sounds really great.

That’s everyone in the
place really appreciated.

I mean, the coolest thing
you can do is go into a bar

and be like, this rounds on
me for everyone in the place

and everyone’s gonna cheer
and be really happy about it.

Sometimes the sushi bar tab was 300,000 yen

for the average person who’s Japan.

And that’s like a months salary.

So he’s really dropping coin
to look cool in the sushi bars.

Between 2023 and 2024, he funded
this by robbing 63 houses and he made 9.

3 million yen.

So actually pretty good haul.

So one of the things I talk
about is like it has to be worth it.

And if you got 10 million yen
in a year like our poster boy

from the previous story,
like that’s not a bad salary.

Like that’s really, really good in Japan if
you’re making that salary 10 million yen.

This guy targeted houses that were
rural so they were mostly farmers.

And the idea is that the farmers
would be out tending to their farms.

Their houses would be empty.

He’d break into their house.

Farmers are also kind of
people who would keep a certain

amount of cash in like
actual cash in their house.

So one of the times, a
couple of times I’ve said

like people have had 20, 30, 40
million yen stolen from their house.

And my question is why are you keeping that
much actual physical money in your house?

It’s still a very old fashioned
Japanese thing to do.

I think I spend all my
money using my phone now.

I don’t think I actually carry any
cash with me in any significant sum.

I might carry 10,000 yen
just in case for an emergency

but any normal purchase for me in a
normal day is gonna be through my phone.

There’s no money in my house.

It’s broken to my house.

The most expensive thing you could steal

probably on this little
shelf behind me right here.

So you’re not getting
much of a haul from that.

He, when he was arrested, he
claimed his welfare in pension

wasn’t enough to keep him
sort of in the lifestyle he desired

which was, you know, to be cool and go into
sushi places and buy sushi for everybody.

He literally said to the
police, the motivation

I had to do this was
because I wanted to be cool.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Impersonating a Podcast

(upbeat music)

Masahiro Nakai is a member of SMAP.

And I always forget what it stands for.

Smuddy,

masculine, you just say random words.

I know it’s sports,
music, maybe, and people.

SMAP, Japanese band names
don’t tend to make a lot of sense.

SMAP was the biggest boy band ever.

They’ve lasted in Japan for
like 30 years, maybe more.

They’re all in their 50s now.

They started when they were teens.

There was a time when I
came to Japan in the early

2000s when there was
literally a SMAP hosted show.

So a member of SMAP hosted a
show on every channel on Japanese TV.

So you could switch
channels and actually just

see like, oh, SMAP member
hosting a cooking show.

SMAP member hosting a chat show.

SMAP member hosting a clip
show or something like that.

And they all had like
six, seven shows each.

So these guys were like
massive money makers in Japan.

So they’re all insanely rich.

Masahiro Nakai is one of them.

And there was a dinner arranged.

It was Fuji executives arranged a dinner.

And it was a whole bunch
of people, him and a woman.

And then something happened.

And that’s the scandal.

The scandal is something happened.

We don’t know what happened technically.

But we do know that
he paid 90 million yen to

the woman to have her
not say anything about it.

And she’s not saying anything
about it because it includes an NDA.

And then I’m assuming
if she says something,

she’ll lose some of that
money, if not all of it.

That’s problematic in itself.

But that’s, she’s decided she wants
to keep the money and stay quiet.

We’re not judging her at all.

But this was, the arrangement
was a whole bunch of people

coming and then they all
started canceling canceling,

canceling, and then it was
just two of them at the table.

It’s clearly a setup.

It’s like this is a romantic
comedy or sitcom kind

of premise for an episode.

Like it doesn’t work in those shows
because it’s deceptive in its own way.

So why do they think it’s
going to work in real life?

This just makes me
think of like rich people.

They get to a point where they’re so rich.

They actually don’t think things through.

They don’t understand how
the real world works anymore.

So something happens.

And he’s paid 90 million
yen to keep a quiet.

And he kind of got
away with it for about six

months or a year but
then this story broke.

And then all these people
are like, is it acceptable

for someone to commit
some sort of sexual assault?

Pay a lot of money.

And then just continue his career on TV.

Is that morally acceptable?

And everyone’s like, no,
sponsors certainly didn’t think so.

So all his sponsors pulled their ads.

So we’re talking Nissan
Toyota, which to me?

Okay, conflict of interest.

If you do ads, you do
ads for Nissan and Toyota.

I assume in both ads you’re
saying that this car is amazing.

I guess it is technically possible

for two different car
companies to have amazing cars.

But it’s almost like
you should just pick one.

The Toyota is the amazing car.

Or the Nissan is the amazing car.

And that’s the one I support.

It feels kind of like double dipping.

Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about that.

It’s almost like, again, I believe there
should be some sincerity behind what you do.

I guess I’ve never been
in this situation where like,

Toyota is like, here’s a
million dollars to do ads.

And then Nissan comes over like, we’ll
also give you a million dollars to do ads.

And I’m like, why would I say no?

I don’t care about either
car ’cause I have BMW.

‘Cause I’m stupid, rich.

I should have chosen a better car
than a BMW, but we’ll just let that one go.

A Shcedo, which is a makeup company.

7-11, a life insurance company.

50 companies pulled
their ads that involved him

because they didn’t wanna be
connected to this sex scandal.

And this is kind of how
Japanese media goes.

Like these people, we know they’re
all doing dirty, gross, awful things.

But when it comes out, everyone pulls
their funding and you get sort of canceled.

Fuji TV said it did an internal
investigation and found nothing wrong.

Fuji TV, the executives
of which set up this meal

where all the other people canceled,
where all the other people disappeared

and just left, Nakayin, this
unnamed woman together,

they found that there was no
wrong doing in that situation.

Like, oh, it’s just a circumstance.

And this is one of the interesting things

about the whole idea
of internal investigations.

The people doing the internal investigation
work for the executive who do the thing

that set up the situation
that caused the sex scandal.

A week later, Nakayin retires.

So I, this started about two weeks
ago, and I was reading the stories,

but I didn’t wanna do it until I
actually saw like the actual fallout.

Does nothing happen,
which is actually very

possible because he was
that rich in that famous.

Or does he end up quitting or
does he end up trying to fight it?

‘Cause there was one guy in the comedy duo.

He sued for defamation and then dropped
when he had got caught up in a sex scandal.

And I was interested to
see if he went that route.

All TV shows and sponsors
ended their contracts.

That’s how he said it.

He did a press conference
he said, like I’m gonna retire.

All my TV shows and sponsors
have ended their contract.

So basically he just got fired
from everything by everybody.

Because, and then he
trying to justify his position,

he said, because the
money was paid and an NDA

was signed, he’s not
gonna say what happened.

And he fully expects the
woman not to say what

happened, which
again, feels really gross.

What, of course, he’s
obviously a really gross guy.

That’s how we got into this
situation in the first place.

There is a sidebar here of if
you are one of the most famous

dudes in a country and you’re super rich,
is it that hard for you to get a girl?

Like, I don’t know, there’s
gotta be a layer here

that I don’t understand
as a normal poor person.

Because if I really, really wanted to,
I could put a little effort into myself

and I could go out and I could probably
charm a person into spending time with me.

I could be nice enough to people
to get them to spend time with me.

If you add a layer to that of,
I’m super rich and super famous,

I bet it would be very easy to
get someone to spend time with me.

So why does he have
to go through this process

tricking someone into having a meal
with him and then sexually assaulting them?

Then at the end of
his statement where he

said, okay, he’s all his
sponsors and TV shows

have ended their contracts
and he’s not going to say anything

because of the NDA, he said
he will deal with it sincerely,

which I think if you examine his immediately
in previous statements isn’t true.

Fujitv will have a third party investigation
now, the station lost 75 of its sponsor.

So half of its sponsors actually
said, we’re not even going to

have our commercials on Fujitv
at all because of this scandal.

And they were discussing if
the Fujitv president should quit,

which is last night when I was making my
notes and then when I woke up this morning,

I looked through my feed really quickly and
it said the Fujitv president has desired.

The Fujitv president has decided to retire.

Little while ago we had
a guy on in the story was

that he was using AI to
pretend to be a woman

so that he could get
people to subscribe to him

and give him money to give them
dating advice and financial advice.

And there was a very gray
area as to how illegal this is

because they were paying for this
advice and he was giving this advice

but he was using an avatar to sort of say,
I am this attractive woman but he wasn’t.

So is that fraud?

Because you get the thing you paid for,

it’s just not from the source
you thought it was coming from.

I think the actual fraud
was a lot of these guys

who were paying for this
service were hoping they could

get into direct contact with
this very attractive AI woman.

Well, a 29 year old posed as a
high school girl on dating apps.

He would arrange to meet with a person

so they’re thinking
they’re going to meet a high

school girl and say, you
shouldn’t molest minors.

How much sincerity can you show me?

The market rate is 3 million yen.

So he’s saying, I’ve caught
you, your pedophile of sorts.

You’re trying to attract
or date underage women,

pay me 3 million yen
and I’ll keep it quiet.

He gets arrested.

He gets arrested because
he talks to a guy who

says, give me 3 million
yen and that guy says,

I don’t have 3 million yen.

So he calls his family and
says, can I borrow 3 million yen?

And then the family’s
like, this seems really

suspicious and probably
our sons and idiot.

That’s why he’s calling us
and asking for 3 million yen.

So they immediately called the police

and say, look, we think our
son’s being scammed right now.

Can you go check it out?

They go check it out and
they immediately arrest this guy.

He says, when he’s being arrested,
I didn’t say anything about money.

My goal was to make them
aware of what they were doing.

So he’s a vigilante of sorts.

He’s a beacon in the night
trying to protect young women

by pretending to be a
young woman on a dating app

and meeting these guys who are
creepy and telling them, don’t be creepy.

I just went into sort of
mental detective mode.

The first thing I would do
is check his bank account

and see if he’s got any 3 million
yen deposits into his bank account.

And continuing with our impersonating
other people theme, a 17 year old son,

impersonating people seems
to be a younger man’s game.

I don’t remember how old the guy
pretending to be an AI woman was online.

I think he was a little older.

He wasn’t enough to be able to
afford some very good AI avatars.

But last guy, how old was he, 29?

Yeah, 29.

So maybe 30 is sort of
your impersonating age.

And when you get into your 50s, you just
go like, ape shit and do whatever you want.

That’s most of the stories
you’ve done recently.

This is a 17 year old guy.

So he’s just like learning how
to be the criminal he wants to be.

The 17 year old
impersonated a police officer

because he wanted
to interrogate people.

He had a forged ID.

He got sort of a police
uniform off the internet.

He forged his ID.

He got like a fake Tokyo one and then
changed it to say Kyoto where he lived.

He said, I admired the
coolness of the police officers.

I wanted to act as a real
detective and question people.

He tried questioning a group
of teens who were hanging out

in a park and he wanted
their names and addresses.

Now the thing, he’s 17 and
I’m going to go ahead and guess.

I haven’t actually seen his picture.

I bet he looks 17.

And then a group of
other like 15, 16 year olds

are going to look at him
and go, he’s not an adult.

He looks more like us
than he does like them.

I think this is in a real police officer.

This is an interesting point of view.

Go back to the old TV show.

Jump street toward 21 Jump
Street where the police officers

were pretending to be high school
students and going into high schools.

And it was very obvious that
everyone in this police unit

was at least in their
20s probably in their 30s.

It’s amazing that show went
for as many years as it did

because again, you would age
out of that role very quickly.

This guy has the opposite problem.

He probably doesn’t look old enough to be
a cop and these other kids sniffed him out

and they started calling
the police and going,

we think there’s a guy
who’s here trying to get

everyone’s names and
addresses interrogating everybody.

We don’t think he’s really a cop.

So he bought a fake handbook in
Tokyo and he modified it to Kyoto.

He had handcuffs.

He bought a baton and he had an air pistol.

So he had a gun.

He had all the gear with him.

He said he did it three or four times.

The Tokyo Sunshine Aquarium.

Four people have been arrested.

One is the current deputy
director and a former director

of the Sunshine Aquarium
because they inflated the number

of endangered tortoises so
they could get government funds.

The staff gave away 10 of the tortoises

to private people, which
you’re not supposed to do.

That’s illegal.

Because of the space they had was limited,

but they continued to claim to have
all the turtles they gave away tortoises.

I got to get it right tortoises.

They gave away, so they
were reported to having 23

when they only actually
had 13 because they

took 10 and gave them
away to private people.

From 2002 to last year,
2024, they collected 1.

89 million yen and you’re
like, well, that’s not really

worth doing that fraud
over like two million yen.

Yeah, that’s a fair sum of
money, but it’s not enough.

And then you also think over 20 years,

that’s not very much
money to actually be getting.

Is it worth actually doing
this fraud and taking the risk?

Well, they weren’t taking
the risk to make a profit.

They were making a profit, but
that’s not why they were doing it.

The motivation was very interesting.

They didn’t do it for money.

They did it to hide the
managers in an aptitude.

So basically, the manager hadn’t
planned for having this many tortoises.

It’s like, god damn, we
have too many tortoises.

Let’s give some of the
tortoises away, but I don’t know

what everyone to know
that I gave away the tortoises.

So let’s just pretend
we still have those

tortoises and collect
that government money.

Yeah, I get it’s illegal to collect money
for things for tortoises we don’t have,

but we just won’t tell anybody, and
it’ll be fine, and there’ll be no problem.

And it went on for 10 years.

So actually, in a way, he
kind of got away with it.

It was just going to catch
up with him eventually.

It is illegal to own and
breed the tortoises.

Some other people, some other private
people who have them, may also get arrested.

(upbeat music)

The guy’s 46 years old, so
he’s on that early ’50s cuss,

but that we’re now very,
very aware of an industry panel.

He calls an ambulance at 6.50 in the
evening, because he has stomach pain.

Perfectly reasonable, perfectly
reasonable reason to call an ambulance.

I have stomach pain.

I need to go to the hospital
and call an ambulance.

Paramedic show up, and he’s really drunk.

Now, that already puts a
question of suspicion on the fact

that he’s got a stomach pain,
because maybe you have a stomach pain

because you’ve been drinking all day,
and they look them over and they say,

you don’t need to go to the hospital,
but you maybe just need to just drink less.

The guy got angry
at them for saying this

to him, and he threatened
them with a knife.

He grabs a knife, he goes,
I have a stomach pain.

I have to go to the hospital.

You have to take him to the hospital.

And yeah, I’m drunk, but
that’s just an extra bonus.

So somehow he got away from
them, and got to their ambulance first.

I would like to know the scenario.

So I assume they went into his
house, or he met them out the front.

There’s, again, this is
not in the story, so this

is me speculating what
actually how this happened.

Because if I say I have a stomach pain on
him in my house, I will call the ambulance,

and then I will assume they
come to my house and maybe

come into my house and then
take me out into the ambulance.

So they’re in checking
him over in the house,

and then he gets angry at
threatening them with a knife.

So maybe if he got
between them in the door,

but he goes outside, he gets in
their ambulance, and he drives away.

So there’s drunk guy who had stomach pain,

thinks the best solution to the
problem he’s having right now

is to steal the ambulance
that came with him.

The paramedics, I’m assuming, are just
standing gobsmacked in his living room,

and then they pull out their
smartphone really slowly and

call the police and go, hey,
guy, just stole our ambulance.

Can you go get him, please?

They found him 100 meters
away in a drugstore parking lot.

Didn’t even get that far.

Now we are lucky because,
again, this guy drunk driving.

He’s very dangerous.

So him going 100 meters and just parking
is the best possible end to this story,

because he could have
gone out and gotten hurt.

When arrested, he said, I thought I
would go to the hospital by myself.

A 55-year-old, yeah, Kuzal
leader and three other people,

but I’m gonna focus on
the 55-year-old, yeah,

Kuzal leader because
he’s now fitting my criteria

for insane people
when they hit their 50s.

This isn’t so bad.

This actually just takes
some of the shine off

sort of the yeah, Kuzal
lifestyle, as I believe it,

because all my real information
about yeah, Kuzal is very small.

It’s all from media, it’s all from the 1980s
when there was a Yakuza boom in movies.

Every action movie, the
back guys were the Yakuza,

the Yakuza were very rich and
very sexy and they handled things.

And that might have been true in the 80s,

but now whenever we
see a Yakuza oriented

story, it’s always some
really low-level stuff.

Stuff that I would be like, I don’t
see this as being a worthwhile

crime to perform, and certainly
doesn’t live up to the legend

that is the Yakuza
family clan kind of lifestyle.

These guys came up with a plan.

Now there are private roads in Japan,
and there are public roads in Japan.

I actually have my house
has essentially a really long

driveway that is shared between
my house and the house next door.

That really long
driveway is a private road.

So I cannot deny access to my
neighbor because they technically own,

I think it’s the far side of the road
and I own the inside of the road.

That just came as part of our property.

And it’s to ensure that we
don’t block each other off,

which is a hint as to
where the story’s going.

But we could come to an agreement and put
a gate at the end of our very long driveway

and say no one’s allowed in
because this is private property.

Now I can’t deny them entry,
they can’t deny me entry,

but if we agreed on it together,
we absolutely could put a gate there.

If we wanted to, we could charge people
to use that pathway to come to our house.

We wouldn’t be able to get
mail anymore, things like that.

There would be other
problems that might arise.

It’s also not worth it.

This for an hour situation is just, if
there’s an earthquake or something

and there’s damage to that road, this
city doesn’t have to pay for that road.

That’s actually the reason they did it.

It’s not to benefit me.

It’s not so that I have this
extra land that has extra value.

It’s just so the city
doesn’t have to pay for it.

I don’t mind owning it.

I have earthquake insurance
and all the other insurance.

As since that’s my land, it’s included in
sort of owning my house and other stuff.

It’s a very interesting piece of
information about living in Japan.

I very technically own a tiny, tiny road.

These guys found a private road that
was part of a town for the last 50 years

and it was used by residents
of the town for a very long time.

And they thought, “Ha, here’s
a plant, let’s buy that road.

” They bought that road.

They put barricades on the end of the road
and they’re like, “You cannot use this road

“unless you pay us 10,000
yen a month per household.

” So if you had two cars and
you paid 10,000 yen per month,

you could actually two
people could use the car,

but you’d have to be able
to prove it to the Yakuza.

This is, in this case, a form of extortion,
but it is a very legal form of extortion

when it becomes the problem.

So how did the police
arrest and stop these guys?

Because they’ve taken what was technically

the private road that was being used
publicly, it was being used by the whole town.

And again, for the last 50 years,

so people didn’t even know
it was a private road properly.

They distributed written
notices to the residents

of the town, saying, “If
you want to use this road,

“it’s gonna cost 10,000 yen
per month to use this road.

” Now, that probably set off a bunch of
people who probably call the police and go,

“Is this okay, is this legal,
is this allowed to happen?

“Hey, I’m angry, this is a
road I need to use every day

“to get to work or
something like that.

” They could not actually arrest
them for the attempted extortion

of people using this
road because it is a

private road, and they
are allowed to do that.

What they did do was arrest
them for violating Japan’s

organized crime punishment
act, which means you’re

not allowed to be part of
an organized crime family.

You’re not allowed to do things
as organized crime members.

So they didn’t arrest them for the,

we don’t know if they actually
extorted any money, the

proposed extortion, they
arrested them for just being Yakuza.

(upbeat music)

You’re at home, you’re sleeping, you know.

I’ve actually been sleeping
a lot lately yesterday.

I woke up at 11, which
is really late for me.

And then today I woke up at nine.

So either I’ve been really tired,
maybe doing the gym too much,

or it’s just that sort of like winter,
doldrums thing, I’m not really sure.

Really, really sleepy lately.

Just want to sleep all the time.

It was really hard for
me to get started today,

but a woman is sleeping
at either eight or nine a.m.

depending on how badly
you think my handwriting is.

She was awoken because her roommate
was attempting to stab her in the stomach

through her futot now for non,
for people who don’t know about

Japanese culture, futon is
just an incredibly thick blanket.

You throw futons down to act as mattresses.

Maybe you, I always have to stack
two ’cause they’re a bit too thin for me.

And then you put a different
futon on top to act as a blanket.

So it’s almost like a really heavy blanket.

But I mean, I didn’t think futons
were thick and strong enough

to stop you from getting
stabbed in the stomach.

So they said a knife, they
didn’t say how big the knife was,

but almost all these
stories, it’s a kitchen knife

because knives are not a very common thing
to have people around the house in Japan.

So let’s say she got a kitchen knife and
she’s stabbing her roommate in the stomach.

It doesn’t get all the way
through and stab her in

the stomach, but it is enough
to wake up the roommate.

She wakes up, she kind of like, there’s
no information of a struggle or anything.

So it seems like she
just got up, got out of bed

and the roommate who
was attempting to murder her

was like, oops, that wasn’t
what you thought it was

or something like that,
like making excuses.

Nothing actually seems to have happened
after the initial attempted murder.

And we aren’t given any information.

We know that she was
sleeping in her futons.

We know the other one, the
roommate was standing over her

stabbing her in the
stomach when she woke up.

It did not even penetrate the skin.

She called the police,
the woman was arrested.

She said, I stabbed her with a kitchen
knife, but I didn’t intend to kill her,

which brings up the question
of when you stab someone

in the stomach, what do you intend
to do if it’s not trying to kill them?

There has to be some
other stuff going on there.

I’m gonna follow the story as
much as I can’t see if there’s

a follow up, but I don’t
think there will be this again,

because no one actually
got hurt in any real way.

She got caught right away.

The motivation probably won’t come up.

(upbeat music)

So for our final story, the title
was enough of a draw for me.

You don’t even need the story after that.

A polygamous ex fortune teller on trial for
sexual assault dies in a parent suicide.

You don’t need a story after that.

You could just unpack that sentence.

A polygamous ex fortune teller.

So he used to, as a job teller, fortunes.

He’s now about 76 years old.

So, well, he was about 76 years old.

The polygamous party.

He lived with 13 people.

He lived with his wife
and eight former wives.

They all lived in the same
house and three children.

I wouldn’t be able to date
two girls at the same time.

I always sort of fascinated by
how these guys can manage this.

Like, are they that charming?

How do they get women
to just live together?

This is not the first polygamy story
we’ve had on the engineer’s Japan.

We had one, I think it
was about six months ago.

And it was the guy living
in a house with four women.

He was married to one, and
he was dating the other three,

and they all just lived
together and contributed.

And he didn’t do any work.

Like, they all just paid for him to live.

I am not that charming.

This maybe is the thing I’m realizing

is I have missed out on
a certain level of charm

where I can actually, I can’t even
get one woman to pay for my life.

He was arrested in February 2023,
and being accused of sexual assault.

He’d been arrested four
times before for the same crime.

So, the next one that he’s been charged
with the one in 2023, it’s probably true.

I mean, he’s already
been arrested four times.

This is clearly a pattern of behavior.

He was 76 years old, he was
found collapsed by his wife,

and it does bring into question
the fortune telling aspect of it.

Because I don’t believe in fortune telling.

But if you believed in fortune telling,

you think you’d be able to see
some of these arrests coming?

I guess people want to believe something.

I don’t want to talk about this

because I know I’m just gonna
get off on really weird content soon.

I, before I left for Japan, my mother
arranged for a little party for me

and my friends to say goodbye,
and she actually hired a fortune telling.

I don’t believe it, she doesn’t
believe it, but we do find it fun.

So, like, I used to read my horoscope.

I didn’t believe my horoscope,
but I was actually reading

it to see what level of
accuracy or accuracy it held.

The fortune telling was
kind of the same thing.

She’s like, let’s just see what
she says, and then as we go

through our lives, we can
track what she accurate and not.

She was so wrong.

She should have gotten more
things correct by accident.

Like, every single aspect of
what she said to me was incorrect.

So, I think if we look at
this case and we look at my

personal experience, we can
say, be aware of fortune tellers.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Dangerous Doctors

(upbeat music) So it is 2025.

We have a new year, a new song.

Thank you to Jesse, Jayce Thomas
who made that new theme song for me.

This is an original theme song.

This is something that
I’ve wanted for a while.

I’ve gone to a couple of, so
there’s a whole epic story behind it.

I think I did it in a
C-McB where I did a thing

for work and I got a guy
to make a rap song for me.

I’ll Fiverr and then I wanted, oh, I
want a new theme song for C-McB.

Because I don’t want to find out that
that music is being used somewhere else.

Because it’s not really
than my song for my show.

So I had one for C-McB and
then for another whole year,

I was like, I kind of need
a song for an engineer’s

Japan, an engineer’s
Japan needs its own song.

I was gonna go on Fiverr
but then I realized like,

if I’m gonna give money
to someone I don’t know,

I should first give money
to someone I do know.

Jesse, Jesse Thomas, he’s done albums.

You can find out Spotify.

He’s done music for video games.

And now he’s done a theme
song for an engineer’s Japan.

Thank you, Jesse, for this amazing
new theme song for an engineer’s Japan.

Chef’s Kiss.

For those of you
listening to the only audio

version that sound
was the chef’s kiss me.

Don’t need to explain it.

I think you know what a chef’s kiss is.

Let’s get to the news.

(upbeat music)

So a new theme song, new transition beat.

Very happy about that as well.

This is an update to
C-McB episode 109 murder

in Japan three, how
to raise a murderer.

So I was thinking because I’ve
done this, I did an experiment.

I did some very serious,
dark, true crime murder

stories on C-McB
experiment to do I say it well.

Can I tell the story well?

Can I be sensitive enough to it?

And ’cause I mean, the whole
C-McB and engineer’s Japan vibe

is me talking and it’s often
very light and very flippant.

These are heavy topics.

I don’t want to treat them too casually.

But at the same time, I do
want to make them entertaining.

So I did three episodes of C-McB

just doing murder stories in
Japan, feeling at how I do it.

So I actually think that
last one I might release

this week as a bonus
and engineer’s Japan.

But if you want to know what’s going on,

C-McB is essentially where
I’m going to be experimenting

with different formats and
different things and different ideas.

Just random stuff.

And then the engineer’s Japan has a format,

but I think now I’ve gotten
comfortable with the idea

of how to present a
very serious murder story.

When the engineer’s Japan started,

I had to rule no murder ’cause
I can’t really make fun of it.

But there’s an update to the story.

So later this week, I will
release the full episode

from C-McB explaining the
whole case as it is up to now.

This is the story of a woman
who tracked down a guy,

brought him to a love
hotel and decapitated him.

And now the mother and father are
being arrested for aiding this crime.

The father has bled not guilty in his
role in his daughter’s beheading of a man.

So full episode C-McB episode 109.

But when you listen to
that episode, you’ll have a full

understanding of how
complicit he is in this crime.

He bought the saw, the saw
that was used in the beheading.

He bought the suitcase
that the body was put in.

He drove her to the place
to help stalk the victim.

So the murderer and the victim
knew each other in this case.

But she was hunting for him.

She was looking for him.

She’s like, let’s go to this club.

Let’s go to this place.

I know he hangs out here.

The father was the one driving her around.

He drove her from the crime scene home.

He also helped by simulating the murder.

So she tied him up, BDSM style.

She covered his eyes with
a blindfold and stuff like that.

And then she practiced the
action of slitting his throat.

She practiced the action of stabbing him.

She would say, how does this feel like?

How do you feel now?

She did her research by
watching horror movies.

So she watched something in a horror movie

and then she wanted
to try it out real life.

Sort of a dry run with her father.

Her father was complicit in this.

He helped her practice.

He helped her essentially train for this.

He helped her get to and from the crime.

He is about as complicit as someone gets.

He’s claiming he’s not guilty because
he didn’t actually know what was going on.

So I’ll be interested to see
why he did not do anything

directly connected to the
actual physical action in the crime.

He did everything leading up to it.

And he did everything helping cover it up.

So I’m really interested
to see, where does the

Japanese court system
land on this kind of story?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The Prime Minister, Prime Minister Ishiba.

He is apparently a heavy smoker.

I didn’t know any of this.

I don’t look into the prime ministers.

I don’t actually take a great deal
of interest in the prime ministers.

Much like the Japanese populace at large,
he’s finding being prime minister difficult

because he doesn’t have
time to take breaks to smoke.

So he admits that he only
gets several cigarettes a day.

He actually didn’t admit this.

I guess it was sort of his assistance.

And the people who work
with him, they’re saying

like, this dude was like
a couple packs a day.

He’s down to only a few cigarettes a day.

In a weird way, actually good for you.

But I’m sure that’s
because of the added stress

of being prime minister means
you don’t get these breaks

and those breaks might
be what he needs to survive.

He told Parliament
he will need a little time

to quit smoking, which
I found very interesting

because he’s saying to the
government that I essentially

promised to you the
government that I will quit smoking.

But is that something that
the prime minister has to do?

I remember Obama was a
smoker and he had to hide it

from everybody and it was
like a really shameful thing.

I was like, but as long
as he’s just smoking,

which is perfectly illegal,
what is the actual problem?

I guess they want to see the president
as someone who doesn’t do anything bad,

which of course we all
know was very unrealistic.

Once the prime minister of
Japan said that if he had to choose

between drinking and smoking,
he would definitely quit drinking.

So between drinking and
smoking, he would choose

smoking every time because
he loves smoking so much.

His wife is a non-smoker, so
in the prime minister’s house,

there is no smoking and in every government
building, smoking has been banned.

So this is a guy who has
to, during his prime ministerial

duties, find a corner
where he’s allowed to smoke

and then take a quick puff
and then head back to work

and he’s finding that really difficult
and is really causing a strain on him.

And I actually think
if that’s your biggest

problem being prime
minister isn’t that hard.

So a guy woke up and he’s
like, “I want to have a good day.

” So I’m going to hang out on my balcony,
which I actually think is really nice.

Japanese balconies don’t get used enough.

Japanese balconies tend to be
used primarily for hanging laundry,

which is too bad because I
have a balcony outside my house.

And if we put some table
on the chairs out there,

it’d be very nice to spend
sort of spring autumn evenings.

This guy had sort of a similar feeling
to mine only that I would go out there,

or maybe have a
cocktail, maybe drink

something, maybe just
read, maybe have some tea.

Who knows?

I’m just going to relax.

That’s what it’s all about.

This guy decided to add a little more
stress into his and other people’s lives.

He might be claiming that
this was to reduce his stress.

That is a pretty common defense
for negative actions in Japan.

But he decided that
the best thing he could

do was to hang out his
second story balcony.

And then when someone
walked by, throw a knife at him.

The knife landed four to five meters in
front of the man, who he threw the knife at.

So the victim, so
nothing actually happened.

But the victim stood there.

Basically, you’re walking down the street

and then a knife comes
flying from a building in lands.

Four to five meters in
front of you, so first of all,

we’re all very lucky that this guy
was not like a movie ninja kind of thing

where he’s throwing and
actually hitting anything.

He threw it, missed
about his belly as good.

He was technically anticipating,

’cause you know when you’re
trying to shoot something,

you don’t shoot at them, you shoot in
front of them so where they’re going to be.

He overcompensated and threw too far.

So that you’re walking
down the street one day.

And then just a knife
sort of clangs in front

of you about four
meters in front of you.

What do you do?

Well, you look up and you see the balcony

where the guy’s standing,
probably looking back at you.

And I just think of the awkward
moment where you sort of lock eyes.

And he’s like, the question, the unsaid
question “Did you just throw a knife at me?

” And that guy’s eyes are saying,
“Yeah, I just threw a knife at you.

” Kind of sorry I missed.

I don’t know how I feel right now.

And so the man pulls out his cell phone
very slowly and dials the police and says,

“Hey, I have just been a
victim of attempted murder,

“very clumsy, very lame, attempted murder,
“but attempted murder just the same.

” So the police show
up and arrest this guy.

He hasn’t said why he has done this yet.

I’m going to go ahead and bet
that he didn’t have a reason.

He just gave in to his darker instincts.

He just let those intrusive
thoughts sort of come

through and through
the knife without thinking.

(upbeat music)

Japan has 2,820 homeless people.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare
has done a survey, which is interim.

So my first feeling was 2,820 homeless
people in the entire country of Japan.

They didn’t actually survey Ishikawa

because they had suffered
from the earthquakes and stuff.

So they were like, we can’t honestly
don’t, we don’t know if these are people

who don’t have homes or their homes
have been destroyed and something.

So it didn’t really, it
wasn’t really applicable.

But overall, Japan has about
less than 3,000 homeless people,

which seems like a
very little small number,

but this sure is, let me get on my little
soapbox and be a pundit for a minute.

You know, this is like
social welfare, health care.

All these things are taken
care of people with, honestly,

maybe not a lot of
money, have found a way to

survive and not be
homeless at the same time.

That’s actually a very good thing.

It sort of like speaks
to these social programs.

Anyways, the Ministry of
Health and Welfare did a survey.

40% of the 2,820 homeless people surveyed

said they were satisfied with
their current living conditions.

Part of the survey was
where these people are staying.

So 25.2% live in city parks.

So they’re city parks, they set
up a tent or something like that.

They do a little sort of thing, village.

I should have looked at this one
more carefully from my language.

25.2% live in city parks.

So they usually set up tents
or coverings in city parks.

And they’re almost in a little community.

23.8% live along the side of roads.

So I’m not, I’m assuming not in
ditches, but maybe under bridges

and stuff like that where they
have a certain amount of cover.

22.6% prick them.

22.6% live along rivers.

So very similar to living alongside roads.

Maybe they live close to
bridges or under bridges

to get some cover and then
set up some kind of shelter.

6.2% live around train stations.

Which has got to be a lot
harder because you’re not really

allowed to to loiter or stay
around train stations at night.

So that might be where the
police sort of push you along.

You have to move along.

That’s why that number is a lot lower.

But basically city parks
and along major thoroughfares

are where almost all the
homeless people in Japan live.

34.4% of the homeless
people in Japan are 70 or older.

So these are people who
have hit retirement age

for whatever reason do
not have a home to live in.

But 40% of those people are saying they’re
satisfied with their living conditions.

Like the tent I live
in under this bridge

along this river, I’m
actually fine with that.

Which was a little shocking
because you think about it.

But then also you’re living your life.

There’s been a couple
of video games and stuff

where they do like
talk to homeless people.

I guess that’s not real.

They’re just talking about
like the freedom they have.

They’re outside the system.

Yeah, I don’t know
what to think about that.

That’s actually the biggest
issue because I’m looking at this

from someone who has never
actually interacted with these people.

So my opinions of what’s
going on there is based on media

and that’s an unreliable
source of information.

So I shouldn’t make any judgments.

This is a good way to think about
things for the rest of your life.

Is should I make this judgment or not?

No, I don’t actually have
any accurate information.

The rest of the information, we got 2,575.

So that is almost all of them are men.

172 are women and 73 of
them were gender indeterminate.

Primarily because they were
wearing like winter coverings,

like so much clothes that there was, it
wasn’t obvious to tell what their gender was.

It’s not that they wouldn’t reveal it.

It’s just the, I guess the
person didn’t want to ask,

are you a man or a woman
or how do you identify?

Well, Saka had the
most homeless people at

856 Tokyo with second,
which is a big surprise

because there’s a massive amount of
the population of Japan lives in Tokyo.

So you would think a
massive amount of the

population of homeless
people also live in Tokyo.

That’s not the case.

They only have 624.

17.5% said they wanted to
find a job and get an apartment.

And 12% said they wanted
to find an apartment

and use welfare and then
find some kind of light work

to sustain themselves for
the rest of their life in Japan.

It was interesting that
40% of the homeless people

in Japan surveyed, which
was apparently a majority

of the homeless people in Japan were still
satisfied with their living conditions.

I would love to know
why they were satisfied.

Like what was it about their life?

This story is broken my brain.

I would like to talk to some of the
people and find out why how their life is.

‘Cause maybe that’s the bit I’m actually
missing is maybe they’re living okay.

Maybe they have minimal
means or minimal desires.

And that’s why it’s okay.

Whereas I don’t live that life.

I have to have a PlayStation.

(upbeat music)

A 58 year old doctor.

We have a couple of doctor stories.

A 58 year old doctor.

It seems in these late 50s is when
the doctors really lose their shit.

A 58 year old doctor
missed a call for a flight.

So you wanted to get a
flight from one city to another.

It was called like please board now.

He missed it.

He walks up to the front.

He says it was never called,
which is a very doctor thing to say.

Like not I missed the call.

Is there any way he can get on board
or get on the next flight or something?

He claims he was never called.

So he goes to the front desk where
he was supposed to catch his flight.

He starts berating the
person working there.

So the ground staff that’s
actually working there.

Of course has no control over
whether or not he heard it or showed up.

You know it was called ’cause it’s probably
an automated system for part of it.

And then it’s like, hey,
last call, get on the airplane.

He slaps the staff twice
completely unhinged.

Like why you think slapping
someone a service person

is going to be in any way
beneficial to your situation.

He probably said like
get me on another plane.

They’re like, we can’t do that right now.

(whooshing)

Didn’t get exactly what
I wanted right away.

I’m a 58 year old man.

Do what I say or you get slapped.

He was, therefore, immediately arrested.

(upbeat music)

A 59 year old doctor.

So this is my point.

So I always talk about
like every now and then

the themes come through,
the themes come through.

It’s not intentional on my part.

Like I start looking for 50 year
old doctor slapping people’s stories.

It’s just like suddenly in
my feed of news stories

that I collect, there are multiple
doctors and the word slap come up.

And I’m like, oh, well, I’m
going to stick those together

and see if there’s like a trend
over the next couple of weeks.

59 year old doctor was on the train.

So he’s standing on the train and there’s a
man seated around him who was coughing.

So he dealt with it.

And of course, you know,
doctors take the Hippocratic oath.

I will do no harm.

He wants to deal with it.

He’s thought like back to
like all my bedside manner

and I became a doctor because
I care so deeply for humanity.

He took that and through
all that out the window

and said, if you
cough again, I’ll kill you.

And to just put it like an exclamation
point on that, he pulled out an ice pick.

The man he was threatening.

So he said like if you cough one more time,

I’ll kill you and point
it a nice pick at him.

The man he was threatening through sitting
down was a member of the Japanese military

at self defense force who then
in that in quotes detained him.

So I’m assuming just grabbed the ice pick

and then threw him to the ground,
held him until the police arrived

and then said, this dude just pulled
an ice pick out, threatened to kill me.

Please deal with that.

The man, the doctor.

So they get highly
educated person who has, you

know, we tend to esteem
doctors as being smart.

But the more I see about
the way doctors behave,

at least in Japan, I think a lot of
them, they might be good doctors.

So that doesn’t mean they actually
understand the rest of the world.

The God complex maybe
comes into play here like, I can do

whatever I want, but you
can’t go threaten military dudes

and then expect to just like
walk away with no problems.

No claim that he was
hurt, but he was detained.

So again, this is an athletic person
who’s in the military versus a doctor

who probably walks around and
tells people to do stuff all the time.

Police arrived, he was arrested.

He admits to taking out the
ice pick, but to nothing else.

So he’s saying, yes, I was on the train.

No, I did not tell the
man to stop coughing.

No, did I did not threaten to murder him.

I just took out my ice pick
to admire it for a little while.

As you do, when you’re
on the train, you’re bored.

You have time.

You take out your ice pick, you admire
the sharp edge, the long sort of shaft.

You sort of stroke a little bit.

This is what people do on the train.

That was about to get way worse.

I’ll just stop right there.

So I think he’s actually
undermined his own argument

by the very fact that he admitted
that, hey, he has been carrying

an ice pick with him, because
who carries an ice pick with him?

Doctors certainly not.

If he had a syringe or
a scalpel in his pocket,

while that would still be
a little weird and shaky

and like, he could say, oh,
yes, I had this scalpel at work.

I put a cover on it or
something, and I just put it

into my pocket and then
forgot it was in my pocket.

Still probably not
believable, but far more likely

than I’m a doctor at a
hospital or I’m a doctor at home,

and I put an ice pick in my
pocket just to hang out and be cool.

And then I got in the train and while I
was on the train, I was just like bored.

So I was like, hmm, let’s take a look
at the ice pick that I’m carrying with me.

Obviously, he did threaten this guy.

He did threaten him with the ice pick.

I think if you don’t say anything, let’s
take away the verbal threat of murder.

If you and I were standing
on a train and I took out

the ice pick and I just
like held it or pointed

out you, that is
inherently threatening.

So I think his, even his counter
argument that he didn’t say anything,

still the underlying feeling
there is guy was coughing.

You were clearly annoyed.

You took out a nice pick.

There is an unspoken threat, and
that is what he should be arrested for

because it’s exactly the
same as saying it out loud.

(upbeat music)

54 year old man.

How were 50 year old?

I’m 52.

And I’m like, again, I’ve said this before.

We went through a whole
summer of 50 plus year

old man doing the
weirdest sexual crimes ever.

Now it’s 50 year old
man just being unhinged.

Like that’s the, we seem
to have shifted from, it’s a

sex thing to just like, I’m
an angry, violent old man.

This guy wasn’t angry
or violent, but he still was

expressing those tendencies
is how I feel about it.

54 year old man had a hobby.

That’s a good thing for a 50 year old man.

You’re only a few more
years before you go bananas.

I’m looking forward to saying it.

Also true.

I mean, this is, this is now my concern.

I’m now conscious of my behavior.

Is my behavior going
to just like click off I go?

Now I’m like, is it a weird sex crime?

I’m assuming I would lean towards violence.

Having practiced judo my whole life.

Violence would be my more natural tendency.

I’m wondering when and
where it’s gonna happen.

The train is a hide stress situation.

It’s always when you’re in your worst mood.

You get on the train, but it’s
also like when you’re happy.

So you are on the train for your peaks
and troughs, your valleys, not troughs.

But like you know what I mean?

Like if you’re in your worst
moment, you probably still have

to get on the train and go home
and then someone annoys you.

I can see that happening.

But I so far my hobby is in
sitting this room and make content,

and which is the movie reviews
and podcasts and stuff like that.

It’s very hard for me to
hurt someone else from here.

And I think that might be the key to me not
getting arrested between now and sort of,

these guys all seem to be,
it seems to be in their 50s.

So it seems like past
60, it happens a lot less.

So if I can get through
the next eight to 10 years

in this room, basically never leaving,
I think I’m not gonna get arrested.

But let’s get on to our 54 year old man.

He has a hobby.

I have a hobby and that takes up my timing.

It means I don’t get into
trouble with other things.

This guy chose the wrong hobby.

I think that’s what we’re
really gonna learn from this.

My hobby is make content
people don’t like the content.

Maybe people do like the content.

That’s fine.

No one gets hurt either way.

He likes building things he
likes working with his hands.

Very admirable.

I think it’s really cool when
someone can build something

from scratch and he’s decided,
“Well, I’m technically skilled.

“I know how to make things.

“I’m going to make weapons
that are illegal in Japan.

” And that’s the first problem.

He was arrested because
he had a fully functional pen

that shot a gun that was
lethal to a human being.

So it had enough capacity or
power that you could shoot the

pen at a person and it would
most likely kill that person.

The police got an anonymous tip.

And as I said in our last episode, if
you’re gonna do illegal weird bad things,

you have to keep the
people around you happy.

So you can’t be off putting
in weird and unpleasant

if you’re going to commit
crimes or do bad things.

Because the anonymous tips are the ones

that are getting these
people in trouble lately.

These anonymous tips to
government lines or the police and

stuff are the ones that are
getting these guys arrested.

So this guy, I don’t know.

He had been making
these things for a while.

We will see in a minute because
of the volume of stuff he had.

No one said anything.

So he must have pissed
someone off at some point.

And that person
decided to call the police

anonymous tip and then
they show up at his house.

And they’re like, “Hey,
do you have a gun pen?

” He’s like, “Sure I do.

” And he holds it up
and shows it to him.

I don’t know if that’s how it happened.

They didn’t actually
say how he was arrested.

He actually had a YouTube channel where
he was showing off the things he’d made.

Like the anti-tank gun he built himself.

No, it’s a bit of his exaggeration.

It is a replica of a World
War II anti-tank gun.

It has a big shield and a big cannon.

It actually has wheels and it’s like
connects to, has like a trailer hitch.

So it connects to a truck or
something else to get it around.

It looks exactly like a miniature
version of an anti-tank thing,

but when I say miniature, I
mean like a one to four scale.

So it would go up to
like my shins or my hip.

That’s what it’s very hard to see
’cause I’m just watching on video.

But he was using an indoor and
he was shooting Rubik’s Cube.

So it was essentially a really
big, powerful, compressed air gun.

But if you put something sharp in there,

you have a gun that could kill a human
being, which is, again, illegal in Japan.

So he had his YouTube channel
where he’s showing this off,

shooting a stack of Rubik’s Cubes, which
doesn’t seem very threatening until again,

you take those extra steps to what could
he do if he modified this even further.

The police come in search of his house.

They find his workshop
where he has 90 other firearms.

Now, most of these look like guns,
but I’m assuming they’re actually air guns

’cause he said 16 of these weapons
violate the firearm control law.

So he’s probably got things that look
like real guns that are not real guns.

They’re like air guns or they
make noise or something like that.

He’s got other things he’s
made himself or he’s taken the

air guns and modified them
so they shoot actual stuff.

Maybe not just pellets
or something like that.

But because he was
making these things himself,

he’s also in violation of the
weapon manufacturing law.

  • Oh, one, don’t do crime.

Rule two, don’t talk about
our failure self doing a crime.

Rule three, don’t post about
said crimes on the internet.

Fully agree with.

Your dude did break all three.

The problem is these guys do this.

They think, ah, wouldn’t it be cool for
everyone to see the gun I made at home?

I’m gonna film it and put it on
YouTube and be really popular.

And then someone’s gonna say, it
actually could have been someone

who didn’t know him, who
wasn’t annoyed with him.

We just saw, here’s a Japanese
dude making a cannon at home.

I think this is wrong and called a police.

But again, don’t film it.

When we went through the hole, it
was like all the harassment streamers

and they were filming themselves
and then they all got arrested.

That was always like, dude, if you weren’t,

like if you’re harassing people, that’s
bad, but filming it and putting it online,

that’s just guaranteed
you’re gonna get arrested.

But because he was building these,

he’s also in violation of the
weapon manufacturing law,

which I’m actually betting is more
serious than just having like, possessing,

is bad, manufacturing is worse.

This is like trafficking drugs is bad,
producing and trafficking drugs is worse.

When he was arrested,
he said, I should have

thrown it away if I had
known this would happen.

Which I guess all I can say is correct.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)