Single Podcast Tax

(upbeat music)

They are doing some kind
of construction next door.

So I set this up, I was gonna
go super early in the morning,

I was gonna ton done
today, and then they started

putting up scaffolding
right outside my window.

I’m not angry about it, these
guys got under their paychecks,

and the people next
door have to have the

right to fix their house
if something’s wrong.

Just, it was one of those things where you
have all your plans for the day laid out,

and then it’s just like,
good done, good done.

And I was like, okay, better day
than the minister of farming in Japan.

I guess the Japan farm
minister was giving a speech,

and he said that he has
never had to buy a rice

because people give him
so much rice, his supporters,

people who think, who
agree with him politically,

everyone loves him so
much they give him rice.

Now, rice prices in Japan
have hit an all-time high.

So you might think, hey, it
might be a little bit insensitive

for the guy who’s almost
in charge of rice prices

to talk about how he
gets all his rice for free

to a bunch of people who
have to pay for their own rice.

This is the case of an
out-of-touch rich guy

talking to another bunch
of out-of-touch rich people

who probably thought the
idea of him getting all his rice

for free was awesome, especially
in this time of very high rice prices.

So, you know, the poor people,
he said he gets so much rice

from gifts and from
supporters, he could sell it.

Now, that made people
angry, he came out again,

and he said, hmm, I’m
sorry, I may have misspoken.

I may have exaggerated to please the crowd.

So this is, again, rich poll
talking to other rich polls,

being told, and his
audience finds it really funny,

the problem is outside those
doors, other people actually

hear the things he says
and think, what an asshole.

Then he got in trouble with his wife.

I just got scolded by my
wife because, of course,

in real life, someone in
his household does buy rice.

So, when they run low, she goes out
and buys rice and comes back more.

He calls him up, he’s
like, what are you saying?

You absolute moron.

So he gets in trouble from his wife.

He does his apology.

The prime minister calls him in
and says, dude, what the fuck?

I mean, that is just the short,
I mean, of course, summarizing

paraphrasing, but he’s like,
what the fuck are you doing?

You’re the guy in charge of rice in
the country that eats mostly rice.

It’s like the staple of
everyone in this country

and the rice prices have
gone through the roof.

We have this store of rice that we are
releasing to try to keep the rice prices low.

The rice he’s prices to keep those lowly.

And he goes out again, the
prime minister apologizes,

and this is actually a point of
respect for the prime minister.

He says, I chose this guy,
I put him in charge of this.

He said something stupid that’s
just as much as my fault as it is his.

I’m not saying it’s the
prime minister’s fault,

but him taking responsibility
for the guy in his cabinet.

I think that’s a pretty smart move.

His approval rating is very low.

So it’s really hard for
him to make a mistake

anyways, but he’s earned
one point up from me.

I still don’t really know
how I feel about him.

From being really honest,
Japanese prime ministers,

I’ve never had a particularly
strong feeling about any of them.

So the prime minister apologizes, and then
this guy goes out and he has to apologize.

Again, he says, I retract my
comments and fully apologize.

And I would just like to say,
you are a rich piece of meat.

And I retract my statement and apologize.

(upbeat music)

This is actually quite scary.

A 25 year old has developed
dropping head syndrome.

You know, I see people
on their phones all the time.

I’m one of them.

I actually started
suffering slight neck pain.

I think because I was looking at my
phone too much, because I was on the train,

and I have a very long
train ride, very long commute.

I watch movies, TV shows on my phone.

So I’m looking down at my phone.

I noticed I was starting getting a
stiff neck of sore neck regularly.

And I was like, I have to fix this.

I have to sit up straight.

I have to hold my phone
up or something like that.

I have to change my behavior so
that I’m not looking down at my phone.

I’ve gotten on my kids about it.

It’s much harder with
kids ’cause they don’t,

you know, right now
they’re bouncing back.

But again, this kid, 25 years
old, he’s already developed this.

But this started in high school.

He was getting bullied.

He stayed home and he spent all
his time on his phone playing games.

So he was sitting
hunched over all the time.

He developed a large
lump in the back of his neck.

Now this is probably
torn tissue healing itself,

stretching out and then trying to heal and
getting into this big lump mass of flesh.

But then it became difficult
for him to lift his head up

because he’d actually kind
of like the ligaments had

stretched out too much and
he’d done damage to the vertebrae.

But because his head was forced downward,

he was finding it really
hard to swallow food.

So he started losing an
immense amount of weight.

He goes to doctors.

They at first try to
do exercises and stuff.

That doesn’t work.

They put a brace on his neck.

That doesn’t work ’cause it makes it.

He’s just saying like, my neck’s gone numb.

I just don’t feel anything anymore.

So then they had to do surgery.

They had to remove part of his vertebrae
and stick rods and screws in place.

He can now hold his neck up without pain.

I’m sure this is going to
cause problems in the future,

but for anyone out there
who’s spending a lot of time

on their phone or knows
someone who spends a lot of time

on their phone, in this
hunched up position.

This might actually be worth mentioning.

I think it might be one of those scare
stories because this is incredibly rare.

It’s an extreme case, but it
is a real thing that can happen

if you start experiencing
net pain, if you start

experiencing net pain,
please take care of yourself.

(upbeat music)

Very recently on the internet news.

I guess yeah, this is internet news.

This isn’t news.

Internet news is its own thing.

You’ve probably seen an article that says,
“We now know why orange cats are orange.

” And I, when I read that headline, my first
thought was like, well, it’s their DNA.

Like I just, I’m not even a scientist and
I know it’s their DNA, it’s a chromosome,

something, something
in there makes a orange.

I don’t need to do any
research to find that out.

Turns out I was right.

Without even reading the article,

a Japanese group has figured
out why calico cats are calico.

And let me tell you, before I even read
the article, I was like, it’s in their DNA.

Yeah, the DNA is making them that color,

those shades of color, it’s
things that are turned on

or turned off that make
them different from other cats.

120 years ago though, this was the
actual interesting part, 120 years ago.

People started noticing that
almost all calico cats are female.

So you’ll hear the statement,
all calico cats are female.

That is for the most part true.

There’s no point getting
an argument about it.

It’s like in the 90% it’s very high
percentage of calico cats are female cats.

It is not 100%, nature
doesn’t do 100% like the way

we would like it to to
win internet arguments.

Or I guess if someone makes
that statement, then you can pull

the technically correct so that
you can always like one up them.

So nature’s sort of on
the technically correct side.

60 years ago, they found that there were
two X chromosomes that were inactive.

To me that, again, it
was put on the path of,

oh, I know what you’re
talking about, it’s in their DNA.

We don’t really need, this isn’t news.

Then, of course, they
came out, it’s a specific gene.

A Japanese team found that the actual
thing is the ARHGAP36 on the X chromosome

and that is what makes
calico cats calamicious.

(upbeat music)

Californication.

Cala.

Because I was swearing
so much in the last one,

I think I might have gotten into a
little bit of swear mode in my head.

I have decided going
forward to censor my swears

just because I think it sounds
funnier when I put in censorship.

I mean, that’s literally
not because it’s gonna

be better for YouTube
or better for stuff.

It might be, I don’t know, but I think
it’s funnier when you censor swears.

I’ve been listening to different
podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff,

and I actually think I find it
funnier when they censor the swear.

‘Cause I know what the swear it is,
but I don’t know, it’s entertainment.

Two 16 year old girls have been arrested.

Whew, usually on Engineers Japan,
this would be like a lot, it’s not.

It is the food terrorism, which I actually,

it seems to have gone away,
it seems to have been done.

We had the guy doing stuff on the
Kaiten sushi, the conveyor belt sushi.

We had people like eating from the ginger
stuff that is shared at the Gudon places.

This is the reason I
don’t go to Gudon places,

is ’cause they have all
this stuff out in its shared,

and then you get idiots and gross
people who think it’s funny to do this.

These two girls took
a shared picture of tea,

so they’ll basically
have a big thing of tea

on the table and you pour
a glass and you drink it.

That’s how civilized human beings do it.

It gets shared around
maybe about a couple people.

I go to a round in place on occasion.

It has water and a big
jug, and then you’re at a

bar, and there’s about
two or three on the bar.

You grab it, you pour yourself
some water, you drink the water.

It’s shared amongst multiple people.

These girls thought,
“Haha, wouldn’t it be funny?

” If we filmed ourselves
drinking directly from the jug,

they did that, posted on social
media, and were immediately arrested.

(upbeat music)

Last week, I talked about the
guy who climbed up Mount Fuji,

had to be rescued, left
his cell phone up there,

went back up Mount Fuji and had
to be rescued again on his way down.

I did say, do these people have to pay

for the cost of the
rescue, because it’s a

helicopter, and I know
helicopters are expensive.

Something I learned,
and this was 20 years ago,

so the volume of money
we’re talking about has changed,

it was 300 an hour, it was $300 an
hour to rent a helicopter for a movie.

So that includes wait time,
spin up time, flying around,

waiting, get your shot and
then landed and all that stuff.

So 300 bucks an hour, I
don’t think that includes

fuel, that’s just
renting the helicopter.

So helicopters are crazy expensive.

When people are rescued from
Mount Fuji, they use a helicopter.

So this became interesting for two reasons.

One, I learned what you
do and don’t have to pay for,

and then I learned that
the mayor of the area,

the mayor of a town that is responsible for
these rescues has similar feelings to me.

A UK couple, one wearing a
long sleeve shirt and shorts,

and the other wearing a
short sleeve shirt and pants,

decided they were gonna hike up
Mount Fuji, and they, of course, I guess,

I think it’s because Mount
Fuji itself is accessible,

and this gives people the wrong impression
of how easy it is to climb up Mount Fuji.

And there are trails, and
you just walk up the trails,

and I think for the first part,
probably maybe the first 1,000 meters,

you’re not terrible if
you plan to go back down.

If you’re gonna go all
the way up to the top,

the 3,000 meter mark
or however high you can

go, the highest way
station you can stop at,

you need multiple, like you
need hot and cold weather gear,

you need boots, you need
like stuff to keep you warm,

you need food, you might
even need oxygen people,

they have like way stations
where you can get oxygen.

That kind of stuff is necessary,
because it’s not that easy.

This UK couple clearly didn’t look into
it, they’re wearing their spring clothing,

and they go up the mountain
immediately getting trouble,

because it’s too cold
for them to make it all

the way to the top or
come back down again.

So they call helicopter is dispatched, the
helicopter rescues them, takes them off.

I hope they’re not hurt, they
got stuck at 1,750 meters,

and they couldn’t find any shelter, so
they called emergency services in Japan,

that’s 110, and they sent a
helicopter to go rescue them.

The mayor wants people who get rescued on
the mountain to have to pay for the rescue.

So right now, he was actually very generous,
he actually said off season hikers.

So when it’s the main time, I guess there’s
people up there monitoring or helping,

or maybe there’s more in
place when it’s on season,

but off season, I guess you
can still just go up to trails,

he says those people
should have to pay full price.

He said they are not
listening to the warnings

and selfishly choosing to
climb during the off season.

The cost of rescue
operations is tremendous,

so shouldn’t the burden
of paying those costs be

carried up by the people
requiring off season rescues?

They have a responsibility
for the result of their actions.

I agree, this is really, really important,
the people who actually get in trouble

should actually have to pay
for the trouble they cause.

I think would actually stop people
from doing so, actually probably wouldn’t.

‘Cause again, these people aren’t thinking,

they’re gonna climb up the
mountain and get in trouble.

They’re thinking this is
gonna be a really nice hike,

we’ll get up to the top of
the mountain in like an hour,

and you know, just look
out, it’ll be a beautiful view.

Right now, rescue ease, pay
for the fuel for the helicopter.

They don’t pay for the
helicopter, or the people’s time, or

the before and after, or the
maintenance of the helicopter,

and every other other cost
that would go into a helicopter

rescue, I guess air traffic
controls also in there.

Like, there’s a lot of stuff
that I’m not even gonna be able

to think of on the fly that needs to be
paid for, for these things to be successful.

Right now, they pay for the fuel for
the helicopter to go up and go down.

I’m sure that’s still a lot of money.

It’s only a fraction of
the cost of what it must

actually cause to send a
helicopter up a mountain,

pick some people up,
and bring them back down.

Like, just the pilot’s fee has to be a lot.

So the mayor of the city
thinks that the people who get in

trouble off season, should
have to pay the full cost, I agree.

I think the people who
get in trouble on season

should have to bear a
certain amount of the burden,

because right now,
this is coming out of

taxpayer’s money, cause
this is rescue services.

It’s gonna be maybe in a
special burden on that town,

but he’s now making appeals to like,
for federal funds, this kind of stuff.

And then putting the federal
side on it, actually make the

government be like, hey, yeah,
we don’t wanna pay for this.

Maybe you, the idiot
who went out Mount Fuji

in the T-shirt, maybe
you should pay for it.

(upbeat music)

You’re planning your burglary, God damn it.

So you’re planning your burglary.

So you’re a serial burglar.

You’re the ham burglar, cause
you’re stealing ham wherever you go.

I found out that they don’t fingerprint
into DNA, like they do in the movies,

like when someone like Burgles a
house, the cops show up, they kind of go,

what was stolen and they’re
like, all right, thanks to you.

Now that’s North America.

If it seems like a serial case
in Japan, so there are like

multiple burglaries, I’m gonna
mess up this word multiple times.

There are multiple, there are
multiple burglaries in an area.

They will start taking fingerprints.

And they were very frustrated
because there was a serial

burglar burgling because I’m
having trouble with the word.

I’m gonna say it as much as I can.

Because there is a serial
burglar burglaring in an area,

they’re like, we’re gonna
actually start taking

fingerprints, but they
weren’t finding any fingerprints.

So this guy was leaving no clues.

He wasn’t leaving fingerprints,

probably wearing gloves, pretty
simple solution to that problem.

He wasn’t probably going full clean suit,
like they do when you assassinate someone,

you don’t wanna leave any hair
follicles behind or anything like that.

But he was being careful.

He was burgling with expertise.

And this is, it puts
them in a spot because

without clues, how are
they supposed to get them?

Well, then one day, the case broke.

And it broke in the best way possible.

He, being a 68 year old man,
actually took medicine regularly,

he had his medicine bag with him, he
dropped it or left it in one of the house,

he had burgled, and the
medicine bag had his name on it.

So this is always one
of the things that I think

about burglers and like
robbers and stuff like that.

There’s two problems.

One, you’re never as
careful as you think you are.

He was careful enough to wear gloves,
but you’re always gonna make a mistake.

And that’s one of the things I
always think like criminals do,

is they make more mistakes
than they think they make,

or they get overconfident and
overconfidence where it comes from.

Then the second one is
always they’re too greedy,

because you get a certain amount
of money and you should stop.

Now this guy, he was burgling residences.

So a burglar burgling residences
is only gonna make so much money,

because you might get
lucky and get one of those old

people’s houses who don’t
seem to believe in banks,

and they keep like millions and
millions of millions of yen in the house.

Like we’ve had stories
in the past 70 million yen,

150 million yen were kept in like
under the bed in a box in the house.

If you broke into my house, there
wouldn’t be much money available.

I do almost all my purchases
on my phone, so using pay pay.

My wife doesn’t keep a lot
of money around the house,

the kids don’t have any real money,
so you’re not gonna get millions of yen

from this household,
should you burgle this house.

You could get my picture of
Dave there in the background

and believe me, this would
be a John Wick situation

where I come after you and your
family and everyone you’ve ever known.

I would kill so many people, so as to
erase the memory of you from this world.

Anyone who had met you and known
you and could say your name would die,

and to the point where
you just cease to exist.

But on a more happy note, between December
2024 and February 2025, you stole 1.

3 million yen from homes, and he’s suspected
in participating in 48 other cases.

So this is again, 48 in these houses.

So we’re talking like 50, 60 houses,
he burgled over a couple of months,

’cause it’s really just
December, January, February.

But 1.3 million yen isn’t
even enough to live on.

Like you’re gonna need
four, five million yen.

Over the course of, I
guess that’s three months

a million yen, you might
be doing a mediocre salary,

but you might as well just get a job
because then you don’t risk going to jail.

And at 68 years old, I gotta say, I do
have some appreciation for the physicality

and was required for
him to be 68 years old,

get the motivation up,
go break into houses.

We had the guy last
week who got out of prison

and immediately went back
to, he’s like, I got bad legs,

I can’t work, so I’m gonna
immediately go back to crime.

Start breaking into people’s
houses and stealing stuff.

An interesting fact of
Japan having a grain society

is that Japan has a
grain society of criminals.

So you get these guys in their 60s
and 70s who are still committing crimes,

’cause at this point, the only
thing they know how to do.

(upbeat music)

So this is something that
has come to really bother me

about news and it’s one
of those things that news,

especially in Japan because it’s
so sensationalized on the internet.

One of the things of having
Western people come in,

so they’re coming from their
Western environment and the

Western internet into Japan,
where a lot of the stuff they know

or the information they have
just comes from the internet.

And so they’ll believe things
that are straight up not true.

So about two months
ago, maybe a little more,

but around that time, there
was a story going around

that they were going to make
breeding passports for Japan.

And the thing about breeding passports

is if you know anything
about the Japanese mentality,

the last thing they want
is a bunch of foreign people

coming in an interracial mixing, intermixing
intermixing with the Japanese people

because what they’re
really afraid of is diluting

their culture, Japanese people take great
pride in the uniqueness of their culture.

So the idea of just like, yeah, we’re
gonna give extra special easy passports

for people to come here and knock up
our women is just inconceivable to anyone

who’s actually lived in
Japan for any length of time.

So this information is very skewed.

And it’s like, if you
know anything about it,

you would know like that’s
completely unreasonable.

It wasn’t a real thing.

Last week, it showed up in my Discord,

it showed up on a bunch
of my feeds was this thing.

It was primarily on Reddit.

I’m sure this is on TikTok.

This video gained a
certain amount of notoriety

because she’s talking
about a single’s tax.

Now, what she’s saying isn’t factually
incorrect, but her presentation is so skewed

as to what it’s actually
doing that I found a defensive

and I think this is basically, they found
a pretty girl, stuck her on the screen.

She says some stuff,
everyone like freaks out.

And I realized a long time ago, if I
could get a pretty girl to do the host role

of Ninja News Japan, like I’ll write
it, send it to them and they say it,

and they’ll, we would
again be making millions of

dollars by now, but
because it’s a 50 year old,

kind of gross looking man, well,
you get what you get I guess.

So let’s take a listen to this and I
wanna do a quick analysis at the end

about how much I hate this
and her and everything about life.

  • In Japan, bachelorette
    tax will be introduced

from April, 2000, 26, due to the glazing
of birth rates and low population in Japan.

  • A bachelorette tax is
    not going to be introduced.

They certainly wouldn’t
introduce it like that.

That’s not how that works.

They do want to increase the birth rate.

So they want people to be
more comfortable having babies.

They want more people to have babies.

This is a real problem in Japan.

They want this to happen
and they are introducing taxes

in the future, but let’s get a
little more of this presentation.

  • Basically being single will be taxed.
  • Mummy, I would break it down.
  • I hate that, Nummy.

Her accent almost sounds fake to me.

It’s almost like she’s
probably got a bit of an accent

and she’s pushing it up so that to make
it more, to make it like more Japanese,

but she’s actually gone to a
point where it actually sounds

like ’cause it’s stronger
than most of the students

I’ve had in my time as an
English teacher in Japan,

like to the point where I’m
actually a little suspicious

of it, but anyways, the
Nummy really puts me off.

I guess that’s just, you can
make a big face at the screen.

  • Great and low population in Japan.

Basically being single will be taxed.

  • Mummy, I would break it down.

So the government’s Japan will
increase the tax to help raising a child.

  • Okay, so increasing tax to help raising
    children is not a tax on a bachelor.

That is, everyone pays those taxes.

So that’s the first thing.

Yes, you have to pay more
tax, I guess, technically,

but that’s not just
’cause you’re a bachelor,

that’s everybody that’s
called supporting society.

And that’s one of those
things that really bugs me.

If you’re a single or married, no
having children, doesn’t matter.

Everyone has to pay this tax.

  • So there you go.

It’s not a bachelor tax,
it’s not a no-kids tax,

it’s a tax for everyone,
it’s a societal tax.

So she’s already inadvertently backed,

like walked her statement
back from when she said,

it’s a bachelor tax because it’s like, look,
we need to support people who have kids

so they have more kids
or it’s easier to have kids.

And if we do this, then
people might have more kids.

This is a societal problem.

  • Like this, if you give a course,

you receive money from the
government more than before.

  • So even that, more than before.

So I have had two kids in Japan.

I received money benefits from the
government for having kids in Japan.

There’s actually lots of countries support
families with kids in different countries.

It’s not just a Japanese thing.

In my town, like you’ll
actually find different cities

are different, in my town, medicine was
free until my kids were 15 or 16 years old.

So that’s not a tax on healthy people.

That’s not a tax on adults or old people.

That’s just a tax that is given to all of
society to support raising young people.

  • Stuff like that because
    government’s gonna use that tax

to give money to the
people who have the kids.

  • Government wanna
    Japanese people to wanting kids.

So they’re introducing this battle of tax.

  • And then she’s gone right back to,
    okay, I’ve made my initial statement.

I walked it back, I actually clarified

that it’s not just a tax on
bachelors or single people.

It’s actually just a tax on everybody,

but then I can go back to my original
statement and call it a bachelor tax again,

sort of reinforcing the disingenuous
nature of my initial statement.

  • Do you think this will help
    Japanese people to make babies?
  • So the very last statement is that,
    do you have any ideas on how to do it?

If you listen to an engineer’s
Japan for any amount of time,

you’ve heard me talk
about this multiple times.

‘Cause it comes up constantly.

It is a real problem
for Japan as a country,

declining population,
we’re talking pension issues,

we’re talking medical
issues, all this kind of stuff.

This is something that Japan
as a country has to deal with.

I think governments really struggled to
find ways to make people have babies.

It’s almost like they don’t
understand how babies come about,

like ’cause it comes from
financial security and having

time to make babies, which
people do not have in Japan.

So it has nothing to do
with money in my opinion,

or at least not as much
as they think it does.

It has a lot more to do with free
time, time to have relationships,

sort of the optimistic nature of people
when they feel positive about the future,

because if you hate your life and
stuff, you probably don’t wanna have kids.

When you see internet news,
and like this is it in that little video,

she actually gave you
all factual information,

but then disingenuously
reframed it two times.

Once at the beginning and once at the end,

please be careful about your internet
information, try to get the actual information.

The only source you should
trust isn’t engineers Japan.

(upbeat music)

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Back from the break

I’m trying to find a
lawyer that I could

talk to maybe on a
regular basis to get some

actual questions
answered, like actual legal

questions, sort of the subtleties of the
legal system that maybe I don’t understand.

That’s a challenge because, of course, I
send an email from a guy named Chung with

beef chest, talking about a
podcast called Ninjevous Japan.

And serious lawyers
are like, “This is a

bunch of nonsense, I don’t
want anything to do with that.

” Oh, that is crap,
let’s let that go away.

Hello homie, I had great
joy when I came across

the channel in game
style, despite the fact

I’m streaming in podcast
and not playing a video game.

I will love to be a friend and be a help to
your channel to be the top rated and well

know and get affiliated if you don’t
mind kindly add me up on discord.

Candies 001, I will not be doing that.

That’s a bot.

Yes, it is a scam.

They have bots that just
send out the same message.

One of the words I
actually keep forgetting to

do, one of the things
I should do that I keep

forgetting to do is put
buddy as a word that

gets you banned instantly
because all the scams

go, “Hey buddy, or
what’s up buddy,” because

they don’t take the time
to check your username.

I actually think if they were smart because
a lot of them are names, they should get

the URL you’re looking
at would be like twitch

slash something chunk
with beef chest or kick

dot com slash chunk
of beef chest, they could

take that and include that in their scam
bought message and it would actually be way

more convincing but they’re lazy and they
put in like spelling mistakes and stuff.

I found out they put
in spelling mistakes on

purpose so that they
want because what they

want are people who aren’t going
to look into the message too closely.

They want people who
are naive, who are just

excited by the prospect of becoming famous
so they can then take some of their money.

I, they suffer from the fact that I
don’t care if I actually ever get famous.

Well, no, it’s a bot.

So it’s just like any channel that
goes live, it hits it with a message.

They should wait 10 minutes because again,
I’m not having even started yet and they’re

like, “Oh, I just came across your
stream and you’re so good at what you do.

” And I’m like, “Dude, I
haven’t even started yet.

” Even if I was playing
a game, it would have

been seconds after I got started on
the game for them to send their message.

I’m going to start this whole
thing again and go through my plan.

That was a bit messy anyways.

Ok, so I’ve come back from a Tuesday break.

It was only, Golden Week was only an actual
week for me, but it was a full week because

of my days off and the
holidays, the way they lined up.

So it was a two weeks,
if you listen to Ninja

Ninja Japan week to
week, it was actually

one week holiday for
me, but we are back and

I’m very happy to be
back and I’m feeling

refreshed and invigorated and I actually
do want a podcast again, which is good.

I wanted to get back to the podcast.

I have come to semblance of a plan.

My plan right now is
going forward for the

next little while at
least, is do three weeks

of Ninja New Japan and
one week Seamick Bee.

Because I want to keep
Ninja Ninja Japan going,

it’s a new show as
good as a weekly show,

but I want to bring Seamick Bee
back and I’m finding it’s really difficult.

I really only have two
days when I can do stuff.

I have Monday before
I go to work because I

go to work quite late
and then I have Tuesday,

which seems to be the whole day, that’s my
podcasting day, Monday I’m doing slightly

different projects and then I have
one day a week to do podcasts.

I used to try to do
Seamick Bee and Ninja Ninja

Japan in the same day and I
would honestly get burned out.

Maybe if I get super excited or have a
bunch of ideas, I might try to record extra

long a couple days,
but it seems like for

longevity, for long-term
sustainability, three

weeks Ninja Ninja Japan, one week Seamick
Bee might be the way we’re going for it.

If we hit a five Tuesday month, I guess,
I didn’t even, I just thought of that now.

I guess it just, it
doesn’t matter, it’s a

pattern of three, one,
three, one, it doesn’t

matter how many weeks
there are in a month.

I’m not looking at the months that way,
glad to be back after the golden week break.

Let’s get to the news
that is happening in Japan.

We did this story.

We covered this.

It was a couple months ago.

There was a BTS
member that he had just

gotten out of his two-year
mandatory military service.

He decided to hold, I
guess his agency, not him.

They decided to hold a hug event for fans.

I found that already to be a bit weird,
because to me, what you’re doing is priming

about, so all these
ladies are horny for them.

I mean, that’s why they’re there.

That’s to me the first indicator.

It’s the first thing you know, like these
ladies are horny for this guy and they’re

like, let’s set up a situation
where you pay a certain

amount of money, you come
on and you get to hug the guy.

I watched a video of it and
they do this very cursory hug.

It’s just like arms are
round and then he pats

you on the back and
then a lot of the ladies

bowed and then went away
because they were saying, thank you.

That was it.

I’m like, this is
hundreds and hundreds of

women and they’re excited to
get into contact with this guy.

It turns out two people, the story,
the original story was just one person.

It turns out two people during their hug
decided to take their shot and kissed him.

One was a 50 year old
Japanese woman who kissed

him on the neck and then
ran away and left the country.

We don’t know if she fled the country.

I don’t want to like cause dispersions
or cast dispersions on anyone.

But she probably just
went there for that

event and then flew
back to Japan, didn’t even

know she caused a problem
until she was looking at the

news, probably maybe
listen to an individual’s Japan.

Hey, if he kissed me on the neck, what
am I saying, that’s never going to happen.

I’m never going to do a hug
event for an individual’s Japan fans.

I’m sorry.

I might, should I ever get
big enough to do an event?

Yes, but it will not involve a hugging.

I can promise you that, although I
am open to being hugged for money.

The Korean police,
so I did a follow up on

this story where the
Korean police are like,

look, they’ve gone back home,
they’ve gone back to Japan.

We can’t open a case and
continue investigating a case.

It’s too difficult because
we’re not going to go to Japan

and hunt this lady down for
this crime of kissing a beating.

Now it’s sexual assault.

If we’re going to be
really technical, this

lady committed sexual
assault on this famous person.

He didn’t press charges.

In Korea, they have
an interesting system

where if I see a crime,
I can report that crime

and it gets taken just as seriously
as if the victim reported the crime.

And this is what’s
actually happened with

Johnny Somalie in his
time in Korea where people

aren’t directly reporting
him, but people who

are watching his stream
watching them commit

crimes are calling the police and
then ratting him out to the police.

And then it is now a case on the
docket that they have to take seriously.

So the police did
take it seriously, but

they’re like, you know what,
this lady went back to Japan.

We’re not going to spend the
resources to try to find her.

We’re not going to ask Japan to
extradite her or any of these other things.

We’re just going to
call it case closed for

the moment or actually
just like a cold case.

Then it turns out just before the hot week,
golden week called it ended, she went back

to Korea and turned
herself into the police.

So the police have taken her and
handed her over to prosecutors.

So she could have
just stayed in Japan and

just I actually think I
was doing sort of the

suppositions like the what situation would
be like like you’ve committed this crime.

She it was unknowingly, she thought because
I’m hugging this guy, kiss him on the neck.

He’s not going to be that upset.

He we don’t know how he felt about it.

He looked like they had
pictures of him on the internet.

He was kind of grossed out about it because
he got kissed and he wasn’t ready for it.

But he didn’t press charges so he’s not
as upset about this as are the fans who I’m

assuming wish they
had gotten their kiss and

not this lady or grossed out that this lady
kissed their man or something like that.

I totally just lost my train of thought.

She could have just stayed in Japan
and it would have been case closed.

She would have gotten any trouble.

But should she ever travel back to Korea, I
get her passport would probably be flagged

as having like an open case against her
and then she would probably get in trouble.

So she I think she was getting ahead of it.

She’s like, I know that
there is problems coming.

She’s a big fan of BTS and
these may be Korean pop stars.

So she wants to be
able to go back to Korea.

So she went back to
Korea to turn herself into

probably just get rid
of this mess to clean

this up, to get it
fixed so that she could

have freedom to travel
to Korea again in the

future would be my
supposition and it’s actually

a pretty sensible move
because prosecutors

are going to be like, look,
this lady could have run.

She could have stayed away.

She could have gotten away
with the crime but she’s come back.

I’m betting what they ask for as apology.

She apologizes and then
they just like let it go.

That would be my guess
because they’re going

to be much softer on
someone who took the

time to fly back to a
country to turn themselves in.

Now there is a second case open that
I didn’t know about until this came up.

The second case is the exact same thing.

Hug event, lady kisses the guy,
sexual assault, people report it.

That person is whereabouts
unknown so that case is still open.

So they didn’t actually
say because they don’t

know in this case they
knew it was a Japanese lady.

In this case they don’t
actually know or they

haven’t said is it a
Korean lady Japanese

lady or who are there hunting down but the
manhunt should be crazy for this one and

they’re just going to
like nail them to the wall.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
which is referred to as Meti in Japan has

released a cautionary
statement that AI spoofing

a voice actors is an
infringement of rights

under the Unfair
Competition Prevention Act.

So what does that mean?

AI is very new thing, laws
haven’t necessarily caught up to AI.

So people are like oh
I can like spoof things,

copy things, use AI
to make art that looks

the same and I won’t get in any trouble and
actually at the moment you kind of won’t

and you kind of won’t
because there’s no actual

law in place other than
copyright infringement

which isn’t as broad
as that and there could

be arguments that
this isn’t the same thing

as just in the same style or something
like that or it’s just the same sound.

So there’s a lot of IP gray
zone going on right now with AI.

But in Japan they’re like you know
what let’s make a couple things clear.

Meti has gone on and
said if you take AI and

copy a voice actors voice
that is IP infringement

you will get prosecuted under
copyright laws which I think is great.

I’m not a big fan of the idea of AI.

The thing about AI is
what we were promised.

The AI promise was
it’s going to work on

climate change, it’s
going to work on solving

problems, it’s going
to work on making work

easier or faster or more
convenient or better

for everybody so that we just won’t have
to work as much and what it’s actually done

is like hey you like making art we’re going
to steal and or copy that art so that we’re

going to push you out of the industry that
you want to make because you love art so go

fuck yourself and I
think that might be the

basic feeling that is
making everyone so angry

at AI because why are
you wasting time making

art with AI why are
you wasting time creating

spoofing voice actors
or deepfakes or anything

else with AI when
what you could actually

be doing is solving real problems that exist
in the world that we were promised that

would be solved with
AI that they’re not

being promised and I
think that’s why I have

such a negative reaction
to AI right now it’s

because you’re not
doing the thing you said

you were going to do which was actually
make the world better for me and my kids to

live in instead what
you’re doing is stealing

art from people and
spoofing voice actors

voices so that you can make your stuff so
they wanted to give us some examples many

give gave some examples using AI voices
to sing songs that the original voice actor

was not involved in
so like I want to get

the voice actor for
Dragon Ball the main guy

Goku and I want him to sing back in black
by AC DC or a Britney Spears song or an XG

song or something like that I could do that
with AI that’s now illegal that’s just so

they just you know
right out there you’re

breaking the law you’re
doing IP infringement

if you want to take an AI voice and use
it in something like an alarm clock I guess

navigation systems things like that the
one they said was alarm clock so it’s like

your alarm clock will
now use the voice you

said it to so I want it
to be Darth Vader I want

it to be my favorite
anime character I want

it to be someone else
I’ve used AI to create

that voice and it will say hey good morning
Chuck with beef chest it’s time to get up

you’re a very handsome man it’s time for
your daily affirmation weekly you should

do that I could read
the daily affirmation

weekly to you in the
voice of my choosing James

Earl Jones so any
of these products that

use AI to spoof a voice
are now very clearly

in Japan I mean this is
only many only has power

in Japan but it will
happen to other countries

but it means if they
do it in other countries

and use like anime they’re focused very
much on voice actors because that’s still a

very big industry here
but if they use a voice

actor and they spoof it with AI in another
country that will cause problems if there’s

any sort of interaction
if they can get

their hands on you
they’re going to prosecute

let’s just make that clear
right now and I actually

agree because maybe
take that AI processing

power and put it more
towards fixing global

climate change or the
economy or making me rich

or something a music
producer I mean I assume

music producers make
I don’t know there’s

got to be like low level music producers
and high level music producers but when you

think of people who
produce things you think

of people who have
money this music producer

saved for ten years
to buy the Ferrari of his

dreams the 458 spider
the base price so without

all the like the good
stuff is two hundred

and forty nine thousand
dollars I did a little

bit of math and that is twelve point five
times my car or four hundred and fifteen

place station five I
just try to find things

that I could relate
to so I have a car it’s

very small car it’s
a hybrid it was about

three million yen it you
could buy twelve and

a half of my cars
for the price of one of

his cars or the
PlayStation five it was sixty

thousand yen when it
was released you can buy

four hundred and
eighteen PS five so I guess

you could link them all together and have
a big really powerful computer I’ve seen

them do that with like the PlayStation three
went through a phase where everyone was

linking PlayStation
three’s to use the

processing power but I
don’t remember it being

that special I guess I
never used it the right

way so this guy seems
for ten years to buy

the car of his dreams which I have a lot of
respect for because it means he had to like

you know really buckle down and save money
it shows that he was making money it was

an important plot point in the movie chappy
it was also in the movie person of interest

when which is basically like a almost batman
when they had lost their bat cave which

was really just the guys apartment they
went down into the subway and they set up a

a bunch of ps5s to be
their super computer that

is the only insta a
ps3s they set up a bunch

of ps3s to be their super computer and that
is for some reason stuck with me for years

like person of interest
was not a particularly

impactful show in my life but for some
reason I remember that I think it was because

I was like but it’s a
lot of ps3s anyways

this guy has discipline
so I’m gonna go ahead

and say he’s making a
normal to good salary

but so he has to save money and saving for
ten years to get the money to buy his four

fifty eight spider
that’s a big thing and it’s

an achievement and
it’s something he should

be happy about and I don’t I don’t wish any
ill for him for I wanting to buy a really

expensive car I think
expensive cars are cool

I would never buy a
super car only because

I’m tall and a little bit
older now and they’re

really low and hard
to get into but that

actually is my reasoning I would be looking
at a G wagon only because I would find it

very easy to get in and
out of a G wagon not

because it’s necessarily
the car of my dreams

but I was like no that
would be very comfortable

for me to get in and out of so I want
the G wagon so the guy gets his car and he

starts driving around
he drives around for one

hour and it bursts into flames and I feel
so bad for him because well okay there is a

part where I do feel bad and a part where
I’m like no it must have been because what

was the cause of the fire if he got one and
it was a bit of a lemon or something went

wrong and it went
up in flames insurance

should pay for it but
I’m thinking this is a

guy who loves his big fancy new car who and
anyone who buys like a Ferrari Lamborghini

these things one of the things they love
to do is make a lot of noise with their car

and the thing you don’t
think about when you

make a lot of noise
with the car what you’re

doing is running the engine really high and
there’s a lot of fire in the engine if you

do it too much up it goes in flames if it’s
a brand new engine it actually might not be

ready for that like you have to like break
in and warm up engines before you like hit

like top rev speeds
so they don’t like

overheat and crack
because they’re not used to

those stresses yet
currently the cause is

unknown so if it was
just like a mistake in his

car burst on fire I feel really bad for him
but if he was revving the engine and being

kind of a dick but
also like this is the joy

of having this car I’m
a little torn because

it’s a little bit his fault because you
shouldn’t be a dick with a new car I can’t

imagine he wasn’t
revving the engine fairly

constantly to set his own
car on fire so a student

university student
climbed up Mount Fuji this

is a great thing to
do this is back April

twenty twenty second
and they lost the clamp

things that you put
on your shoes so they

fell off and they
basically were high enough

in the snow and stock
they couldn’t safely

descend the mountain and they didn’t have
the equipment to get anywhere so they had

to call for help so they called for help
and that’d be helicopter off they don’t say

whether the victim or the person actually
has to pay for the helicopter I’m wondering

if they do or don’t
that is actually a really

big question for me
but it’s not answered

in any of the stories because that’s not
what they focus on they focus on the second

part while he was up there being rescued
a lot of his equipment got left behind so

like the thing that the
clamp’s office boots

I’m probably backpack or something else
the problem is this university student left

their cell phone behind
so then a week later

like you know what
it’s like expensive cell

phone I bet it was like
an iPhone or something

like that they like you know what I want to
go get my iPhone so they start going back

up Mount Fuji of course they’re going back
to the place where they got stuck and what

happened is they got
stuck again so they

returned a week later
to get their cell phone

the second time they
had collapsed and someone

called rescue services it
seems to be a combination

of altitude sickness while trying to
descend the mountain so I don’t know it’s

sounds like they actually
got their cell phone

and were working their
way back down and then

the altitude sickness
kicked in and they

kind of collapsed and
someone called for them

to get help they didn’t
where they weren’t

helicopter out the second
time they had people

come up the mountain
and carry them down

people think because
Mount Fuji’s kind of open

with pass it’s actually a very easy climb
it’s not it’s a real big mountain and then

they also think because you can like just
climb up it it’s very convenient and open

and therefore shouldn’t
be a big challenge

or anything but this is
someone who suffered

from altitude sickness
because it is like three

four thousand meters they
have way stations where

you can stop and
wait and adjust to the

temperature one of the
complaints a couple years

ago where people
were going to Mount Fuji

going to climb up the
mountain and they found

women were wearing
high heels and then people

were in inappropriate
footwear for actually

what is quite a grueling hike up a mountain
that is not smooth it’s not paved it’s not

easy they have passed because people have
been walking the same paths but they’re not

easy paths for people to walk up so if you
do plan on coming to Japan and you do plan

climbing my own Fuji
which is a fine thing to

do I personally have
never climbed Mount Fuji

I’ve gone to the Mount Fuji area to sit and
look at Mount Fuji because I know once you

get on Mount Fuji what
you’re doing is looking

out at the city or
stuff it’s just not quite

as impressive Mount Fuji the mountain is
very impressive to look at I don’t feel any

desire to be on that thing looking out
when I could be at the bottom of that thing

looking up but if you
do plan to do that please

plan to take it
seriously that is a safety

message for everyone
out there from Ninja News

Japan to you a search
has begun a 67 year old

man has found out that
he was switched with

another baby at birth
they found out because

of a DNA test in 2004
back when he was 49 and

the Tokyo government
has ordered the search

for his real parents
to be found this is an

interesting thing only
because of his age he’s

had his entire life so he’s had his parents
who are not his parents who raised him as

their own I assume I don’t know whether you
had a good home life for a bad home life it

needs those parents
also had their baby so

we don’t know if this
was a one for one or if

they just took all the
babies and just mixed

all the babies together
was kind of a grab

bag of babies like here’s a baby you get
a baby oh you had a boy here’s a boy and

just off they go but once you’ve lived
the entirety of your life like he’s 49 when

they find out he’s 65
67 now when they’re

actually trying to do
something about it there’s

a very good chance
at 67 that his parents

are dead so if he finds
out that other people

are his parents he actually finds out who
those parents are what is the ultimate goal

of this because it sounds
like the government

has said let’s find his
parents they wanted

to go back to the hospital records but that
hospital where he was born was actually

shut down and all the records because it
was you know 60 years ago we’re not exactly

on computer or they were on paper and
they’ve all been destroyed or lost there’s no

actual record of who
was where and what

parents were in this
hospital at the same time

so it’s actually turning
out to be a really

hard thing to do but
my actual thought is like

is it worth it now
like maybe he’s hoping

that his actual parents
his birth parents who

did not he we did
not grow up with had a

lot of money and maybe
he should get a taste

of that that would be
the only reason because

if you’re real parents
you don’t know if

they were good or bad
people but if you know

if you’re the people
who raised you were

good or bad just appreciate it if they were
good and if they were bad maybe then it’s

worth trying to find
another family I could kind

of see that they don’t
give us his reasoning

for this happening
they actually talk about

the government has set
this in motion and part

of me is thinking
like is this a good idea

because what if the
other guy who’s 67 years

old doesn’t know that his parents aren’t
his parents and then he finds out in the

harshest way possible
when some other guy

shows up like this
could either be a tragedy

or a comedy movie in the making I just hope
that everyone is well aware that this might

not be worth it you’ve been in prison
and it’s the day you get out of prison what

do you do the day you get out of prison
it’s a very interesting question if you are

like the man in this story you go to the
horse races and you start betting on horses

now I’m my first thought
was like how much

money does this guy
have when he gets out of

prison like I’m sure
you have to do a certain

amount of work in
prison and you get paid

a nominal fee for that work so if you’ve
been in prison for a long time you’re going

to get out with some money but I’m sure
it’s not like a massive windfall they don’t

like reward you for
going to prison certainly

not in Japan so I’m
wondering how much money

he actually would have had which actually
leads us to a story he managed to spend or

lose 200,000 yen the
day after he was released

from prison so this guy
got out of prison somehow

had 200,000 yen which
is the low end of a

monthly salary in Japan
the average salary per

year is going to be
three to five million

yen so let’s just say
four million yen is an

average salary so
that’s going to be like

somewhere between 200,
300, 400,000 yen a month

somewhere in there is
going to be the average

number sorry I didn’t
actually do the math

on this but he’s making enough to survive
for a couple weeks to get himself set up in

a in a proper life I guess maybe look for
a job I don’t know he is older yes so it’s

going to be really hard for me to get a job
so once you’ve gotten out of prison taking

all the money I assume you have and spent
it or lost it on the ponies what do you do

next when you go back to the thing you know
how to do in this case what he knows how

to do is burglary which
is why he ended up

in prison in the first
place he was the next

today he was caught
in an apartment by a

resident he said to them
I just got out of prison

I have bad legs and I
can’t find work and the

resident let him go
so that’s an interesting

tactic where he’s like plays a sympathy
card japanese people in general are so nice

the guys like you’ve had a hard time yes
you just leave my apartment I won’t call

the cops on you but it must have been like
someone else like someone in the building

or someone else or
he went to some other

apartment and they
did call and they did call

the police on him so
he was getting arrested

the police suspected
him of stealing oh the

police of suspect
suspect the police suspect

him in a string of
burglaries that happened

a few days after he
was released from prison

which means he is
most likely going to go

back into prison which I
guess means he doesn’t

have to worry about
his money or getting

a job which actually in a sad way might be
what he was actually hoping for what makes

crime better I shouldn’t
be too flippin about

this there’s a hit in a
run where a guy actually

dies in this but there is the element of if
you’re going to commit a series of crimes

especially over one day like a whole bunch
of like crimes and people news stories were

calling it like a GTA style rampage that
kind of stuff but it’s because he committed

so many crimes in such
a short period of time

he was basically going
from place to place

committing different
and yet related crimes

he also did it while
naked and that may be the

bit that was the most
interesting to everyone

a man is being
investigated for hit and run

theft of a taxi and three
other incidences and

it’s actually been
added to since I actually

wrote these notes they have been trying to
put together the night it seems like this

guy comes out steals
a car he steals a car

and then he immediately
runs into two people

on motorcycles and then he drives away one
of those people actually gets hit and dies

so that’s a man
slaughter if it’s an accident

but we know that
because he’s in the process

of committing a crime
it’s going to be more

serious than that it’s going
to be some form murder

police started getting
reports of a completely

naked man with
tattoos stealing a vehicle

in saitama we do have
to know to be completely

fair and transparent
and honest that he

was wearing flip flops
so he wasn’t completely

naked he was just mostly naked and yes
he did probably have tattoos after he got

out of that immediate
and run he went and hit

another car he ended up hitting it multiple
times I’m assuming backing up hitting

it backing up hitting
it got out of that

stolen car got into the
car he had just crashed

into which had a woman and pulled the woman
out stole that car and crashed into a taxi

then he stole the taxi
which had passengers

in it which could include
then kidnapping he

then stopped at a
company stole some items

from the company got
back in the taxi crashed

that taxi outside of
a cram school tried to

break into a house
which I assume was across

the road or next door
then went into the cram

school staff started
like shouting at him

like hey naked guy with tattoos please stop
breaking into our cram school he picks up

a mug and hits a guy with the mug and then
when he was arrested they said why did you

do this and he was said to the
police it would be bad if I told you that

so you can send a message to speakpipe dot
com slash chunk of beef chest you can leave

me a voice message I will answer questions
I will have conversation topics if you’d

like to come on the show and actually have
a chat send me a message send a message to

chunk of beef chest to gmail dot com and
get in touch we can hang out we can talk

about Japan we can talk about you wanted to
come to Japan we can talk about things that

are good and bad
about Japan the call to

actions I can’t do
because I keep trying to do

them like off the
cuff I have to actually

just write a little
script and do the little

script so speakpipe
dot com slash chunk of

you chest you can leave
me a voice message you

can ask me a question
you can make a comment

I will respond to them
I do listen to them

you can send an email
chunk of beef chest to

gmail dot com I do want
people to come on the

show we can talk about a story we can have
more we can do a little bit of interview I

can answer questions
about Japan or we can ask

I can ask you questions
about your experience

in Japan I just want to create
more interactivity for this podcast

Sexy AI ladies cause problems

(upbeat music)

Okay, so last week I talked
about the Ghibli Art Style AI trend.

So OpenAI allows you
to say like I want to take

this picture and turn
it into Ghibli Style Art.

And then people are
using as profile pictures.

It kind of spread across Instagram.

All these people are like, oh
look, I made Ghibli Cartoon.

I’m so cute.

Now my point was, is
an art style copyrightable.

Because I don’t think it is.

The problem is to train
an AI on a style of art.

You would have to take the copyright in art

and feed that into the AI in order to
get the ability to reproduce the art style.

Okay, but that was a hard sentence.

So my feeling is, while they
can’t maybe sue for the art style,

they can say you clearly
have had to take copyright

and material, feed it into
your AI, and now you’re

producing this content
without our permission.

There might be something there.

People aren’t necessarily
taking my opinion too seriously

because I’m just a very tiny
podcaster in the world of the internet.

But there are other people,
artists who have some renowned

who are now taking to the
internet and saying like this is awful.

The director of one piece said that
they are in despair over this trend.

The fact that these clearly
copyright and materials

been fed into AI and that
AI is then taking that material

now is changing pictures
and that art style is going out.

And it’s being copied around the internet
and it’s really unfair because again,

you’re stealing art from
the artists who make them.

You’re stealing a style of art
that maybe someone took years

and years to develop and
learn and create themselves.

And you’re just throwing
it away in minutes.

So this led to this
actually being discussed

in the house of
brevity, but god damn it.

This led this to actually being
discussed in the house of representatives

because they were again having
the same qualms and queries

about that I do, like is
it copyright infringement

to steal a style of art when you’re
not actually stealing the art itself?

So if I make a copy of a character,
that’s copyright infringement.

If I do something that if I
draw a new original character

in the same style, is that
copyright infringement?

So this was part of their discussion.

If it is only a matter of the
style or ideas being similar,

then it would not be
considered copyright infringement.

He explained the law.

So that’s copyright law.

So if you’re not stealing
the actual thing, then it’s not

copyright infringement, even
if you do it in the same style.

However, if AI generated
content is determined

to be similar or reliant on
pre-existing copyrighted works,

then there is a possibility that it
could constitute copyright infringement.

So the use of styles and ideas is legal,
but an AI generated image were recognized

as being jibbly itself, then
it would be a violation of law.

So saying me as an artist,
I make a jibbly style image,

but I draw it myself,
as long as I’m not using

their actual characters
or properties, that’s fine.

But because AI doesn’t
have that process or thought,

they have to have taken
copyright and material

to learn from, then
there could be a violation

because they haven’t paid for that copyright
stuff to be used in the first place.

Dewey Sukarno is this lady on TV in Japan.

She’s like 70, something
years old, I hate her.

I hated her from the first time I saw her.

She just reeks of rich entitlement.

So she’s old, she’s rich.

She’s probably been rich her whole life.

She used to be really hot.

I guess she was on TV, she was famous.

She’s now famous for being old and rich.

And so of course she’s classy,
and I do that with air quotes.

She does all these like
really annoying things

that rich people do that are
really pretentious and awful.

And so everything about
her is the antithesis to me.

I hate everything that she embodies.

So I’ve always hated having her on TV.

My family used to watch
this show on Sunday nights.

She was a regular feature.

If she was on it, I would whip
out my phone or leave the room.

I found her that disgusting
to have in front of my face.

My family didn’t get it.

They’re like, guys, she’s just an old lady

and she’s kind of funny
because she’s out of touch.

And I’m like, no, she’s out of touch

because she thinks she’s
better than everyone else.

And I find that really gross.

Dewey Suckarno was in
a restaurant in Shibuya.

And she’s been accused.

Now accused is an interesting
thing because that’s the legal term for.

She did it, but we haven’t
actually prosecuted her yet.

She’s been accused of
throwing a champagne glass.

The boosiest crime you could commit is
throwing a champagne glass at someone,

injuring someone or
attempting to injure someone

or something they
probably couldn’t even afford.

They were at an employee of her agency.

So she’s sitting at a dinner.

There are six employees of
her agency working together.

They’re talking to her.

One of her employees obviously
says something that pisses her off.

Not her employee directly, but works
for the same agency that promotes her.

So she gets pissed off.

So she does what any
reasonable human being would do.

And she throws a glass, the only glass in
front of her, which is a champagne glass.

Of course, ’cause she’s a fucking
old bitch and I hate her guts.

The reason she got angry is
because they were talking about

a political party she
has recently formed now.

I was really surprised
to hear that this lady

had formed a political
party because I didn’t think

she had sort of any political
aspirations of any value.

And then I found out what the
stated goals of her political party were.

The one young peace party.

Now, if you don’t speak
Japanese, one young’s

already a big clue as to
what kind of party this is.

One is dog.

And Jan is sort of the sounds
that dogs and cats make.

So they go one, one, and Jan and stuff.

So it’s the one, Jan, peace party.

Focused on dogs and cats
protection policies exclusively.

So this woman who feels it’s
perfectly appropriate to pick

up a champagne glass and
throw it at another human being

is so devout to the protection
of animals, dogs and cats

that she’s actually forming
a political party to do it.

The level of fucking hypocrisy
in that moment is astronomical.

She has no regard for
the safety or wellbeing

of other people because
they’re not as rich as she is.

But you know this boozy bitch has a bunch

of fucking dogs and cats,
little poodles and shit.

And like I’m saying that while I have a
poodle in my own fucking lap right now,

because I would actually
never equate the value

of the animal to another
person in a negative way

like saying, well, my boozy little poodle
is worth more than your actual human life.

I might even find them
equivalent because I hate you and

love the dog, but that’s a
different thing altogether.

The dog has proved its value to me in a
different, I think I’ve gotten off track now.

I see my own irony in this statement as
I may say this thing because I right now

have a boozy poodle sitting
in my lap, the same which if

you watch the YouTube video
has a portrait of on my wall.

But I consider human life
just as valuable as the dog.

So I have nothing
against forming a political

party that will protect
the rights of animals.

I do think I have a problem
with forming a political

party that will protect
the rights of animals

who’s leader seems
to think it’s perfectly

acceptable to hook glass
at another human being.

It’s just such a rich lady thing to do.

I’m going to protect all
the animals in the world.

I don’t really give a shit
about the human sitting

in front of me, in fact,
they can go fuck themselves

if they don’t agree
with everything I say.

I think it’s perfectly
acceptable for me to throw

shit at their faces and
maybe scar them for life.

(upbeat music)

So we had a story about an American guy

who had a gun in his
backpack and turned himself in.

We have another story of the next week,

just last week of another guy who packed
weapons saying he intended to go to expo.

Now we have a sort of third story,
it’s expo related and weapons related.

So it just seemed to fit this theme.

Expo seems to be bringing out the crazies.

I think the first guy was
just coming to Japan.

I don’t think it was necessarily for expo.

The second guy though, specifically said,
I’m going to expo and I brought my gun.

Not making clear if
there’s a relation there.

I’m still actually
following up on that

story, seeing if there
is an actual connection

between bringing the
gun if he intended to

experiment with the gun
with the crowds at expo.

But this is why expo has extra security
because this kind of stuff is happening.

There was an 80 year
old man who was arrested

for claiming they had
a bomb in his backpack.

He basically was going into expo.

And they said, they want
to do a backpack check.

So they take your
backpack, they open it up.

When they go to open his backpack,

he says to them, “Ha ha,
there’s a bomb in my backpack.

” Staff, of course, can’t
tell if he’s joking or not.

So they do the only thing that’s
perfectly reasonable for them to do.

They call security, they call the police,

they shut down everything,
they get all the people out there,

like 200 people had to be
evacuated from that area.

And then they actually had to go
through his bomb and the man was arrested.

When he was arrested, he said, “I got
excited because I’m a fan of the expo.

“I said it half-in-just, I didn’t
mean to disrupt the event.

” Now, half-in-just is already
the wrong phrase to use.

You should not be joking at
all that you’re having a bomb.

But if you’re saying your joke is that
you have a bomb, it should not be half.

There shouldn’t be
like half a bomb in there.

You’re either going to make the whole joke

or no joke at all, the problem is
no one can tell that you’re joking.

And I actually hope this guy
gets quite severely punished.

(upbeat music)

A Japanese music label has released songs
by Aki Ashido, previous hits and others.

So basically, this is one of
those like greatest hits of Aki,

all the songs that were
popular 10, 15, 20 years ago.

And they’ve decided that
we need something special.

So basically, everyone who’s
a fan already has these songs.

They don’t need another
CD with these songs.

So you have to do something to make
the people who really want to buy this CD.

So they included in the CD two nude
photos from when she was in her 20s.

The problem is she died in 2023.

So we have no idea if she
actually approved of this

or would approve of this or
has approved of this in writing.

So basically, these guys
have the rights to the CD.

They seem to have
the rights for the photos,

but they haven’t necessarily
gotten her permission

to publish them, but they’re
going to go ahead with it anyways.

Governors in the area are actually
saying that this should be canceled.

You should not be allowed to
release this without her permission,

without her statement without,
I don’t know if they do estates

like they do in North America,
without her estate’s permission.

But basically, everyone is
kind of grossed out about it.

But at the same time, you know a bunch
of people are actually going to buy it.

We’ve got a very weird AI porn-ven
diagram happening in today’s episode.

So we’ve already done one AI story.

We’re going to do, we
just did a new photo story.

Now we hit the combination.

Shui-e-shoes, Playboy magazine.

So not the Playboy magazine
you would be familiar with

from North America, where it’s just
like center folds and stuff like that.

This is more of a men’s magazine in Japan.

They do have bikini
spreads and stuff like that.

And that I actually never bought it.

So I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate.

But I know sexy girl
on the cover, sexy girls

inside, I don’t know
what they actually do.

I’ve never actually picked
one up and opened it.

On April 14th, so a couple of weeks ago,

they released an issue with Satsuki
I on the cover, I being an AI model.

This is not the first time she’s actually
been promoted or featured in the magazine.

She was first released,
’cause I can’t say like

she came to the scene or
debuted in summer of 2023.

They call her Playboy describes
her as a little sister type,

to a little sister type,
beautiful girl with a

raccoon face that
embodies every man’s ideal.

And this shows the very different
cultural way of explaining things.

So I don’t know what a raccoon face is.

I looked at the picture, I
mean, if I’m gonna be honest,

very attractive woman,
I get that she’s not

real, so it doesn’t really
do that much for me.

But she is a very ideal, pretty person,
but I didn’t see the raccoon aspects.

I assume they mean big eyes.

And small nose maybe,
maybe eats a lot of garbage.

I’m not really 100% sure what they
mean by raccoon face, raccoon faces,

clearly a type in Japanese
that I haven’t come across

’cause I haven’t spent
a lot of time talking

about women in Japanese
terms in Japanese.

Little sister type, again,
the fetishization of youth

is very set in Japan,
it’s a very common thing.

There’s not much you can say there,

we’re not getting away from
it even if you think it’s gross.

The only benefit here is they haven’t
tried to hide the fact that she was AI.

So viewer reaction is mixed.

Some people are like,
put real women in there

if you’re gonna put
real women in there.

And some people are like, oh yes, the
AI beauty ideal is the ideal of every man

because of course it can
actually achieve real ideals

and like doesn’t have
any sort of human flaws.

And we don’t actually
have to deal with people

and let’s face it, if you’re into this,
you’re not dealing with people anyways.

I don’t know how I feel about it.

I mean, my actual feeling is,
people are still buying magazines.

(upbeat music)

And then we get to
our final set of stories.

So I’ve stuck these two
together because they sort of,

again, the then diagram of overlap
is almost a circle with these two.

We’ve had the first AI
porn arrests in Japan.

And so four people were
arrested, three men and a woman.

They were arrested for the distribution
of a scene material in obscene images.

So they’ve been accused of training AI

from free internet tools
using data of women’s bodies.

That in itself is not a crime.

They said, we’re gonna take
these AI images of women we’ve

created and make posters
and you can buy those posters.

That in itself is not a crime.

They said, like the legal thing in
Japan is that if you have genitals visible,

you have to blur them out
or do a mosaic or something.

They said these posters, when you get them,

they will be censored, they will
be mosaic, they will be blurred out.

But when the posters
actually arrived, they weren’t.

So you were getting full genitalia
visualization of the AI image on the poster.

So you were getting, that’s
where the obscene part comes in.

The bit that was supposed to be censored

was not censored when you
actually received your poster.

They seemed to have
made 10 million yen last

year using selling these
AI uncensored posters.

Everything they did
before the uncensored bit

was technically legal when they actually
sent out the image that wasn’t censored.

That’s when it became illegal

and that’s when they all got
arrested and got in trouble.

Which leads me again to the
same statement as previously.

People are still buying
posters for their walls.

Like, I know it would be a
lot of work to train it yourself.

But also, you could just go on the internet

and do some printing at home
if that’s what you really wanted.

A new issue as a risen in Japan
and as the combination of AI

being used with graduation photos
and then deep faking them onto porn.

There is no national law
about deep fakes yet in Japan.

There is one into a totally prefecture.

So this seems to be where it happens.

So someone got to hold it
the data for graduation photos.

So these are very young people.

They’d be graduates of high school.

And they are taking those faces

and putting those faces in
deep faking them onto porn.

And so you have this
essentially still under age vision

of pornography being used
even though no one’s actually in it.

And then what they’re
doing is actually trying

to extort the people
saying, like, here’s a video

that I made a view,
give me extra amount of

yen and I won’t release
it on the internet.

Totori, a single prefecture
has made this a crime.

So it’s threatening, it’s extortion
and it’s using sort of revenge porn laws.

The revenge porn laws
are already in place in Japan.

So you’re not allowed to
take an image of someone

and post it on the internet to get
them in trouble or make them feel bad.

That’s already illegal.

Pretty much everywhere
in Japan, I’m pretty sure.

But this is a new version
because you’re not getting

a picture of them having
sex or images of them nude

and posting those on the internet
and threatening them that way.

You’re just taking their
face, which is almost publicly

available because of the
graduation photos and using that.

So now all these people
are basically sitting around,

A, should we continue with the
graduation book photo tradition in Japan?

B, is there any way we can protect them?

And C, if someone does this, do we have
laws in place to actually protect them?

And they are now– Totori
has now set a precedent.

So I’m betting other prefectures
will take that precedent

to be able to apply it to any instances
that happen in their actual prefectures.

Later on, so it seems
like, again, a lot of

rules are going to be
changing very quickly.

As AI becomes more common and more usable,

more laws need to be put in place to
actually protect people from the abuse of AI.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Because of the way the golden
week holiday falls this year.

So it’s going to be the next two Tuesdays,
which is when I actually record this.

Ninja News Japan is going to be
on hiatus for golden week, at least.

I’m actually thinking of
revamping all the things I do,

because I have so many
things I actually want to do.

I need to rework my schedule
so I can kind of do everything.

I do see– I want– I do Ninja News Japan.

I want to bring C, McBee back.

So I’m actually trying
to make plans to do that.

I have another side
project called Sounds Great

English, where I teach
English on the internet.

I want to do that.

I want to work on Montana, El Diablo.

I want to learn new things.

I want to stream.

I have all these things I want to do.

And I’ve just simply sort of burned
down and trying to do them all.

So I’m going to take
at least golden week off

and try to revamp my life so that I
can do everything in a manageable way.

This might be Ninja News Japan
goes down to twice a month,

or every week, but it’s
shorter, or I do a bit every week.

I have no idea what I’m going to do yet.

But I want to do all these other things
in concert with doing Ninja News Japan.

I want to work on the new– on the next–

I want to work on the next
book from Montana, El Diablo.

I want to work on video projects.

I want to work on editing game
videos so they can go up on YouTube.

I want to work on C, McBee
IMDB, so you get more videos

of me making like Mystery Science
Theater-style jokes about movies.

So I’ve overwhelmed
myself with the things I

want to do, but I do
want to do everything.

And so this is just a case
of managing my time in a way

that I get to do a little bit of
everything, maybe every week.

So I’m not saying Ninja
News Japan is going away.

In fact, what I want to do is
bring more content to the internet,

but I want to do it in a way
that doesn’t actually burn me out.

So that’s kind of where I am right now.

I’m going to see you two,
maybe three, four weeks from now,

back with the Ninja News Japan, and I
actually put money on if I’m at home all day.

I actually bet I do an Ninja News
Japan just throw it out there.

But I don’t want to promise
that and then not do it.

So we’re looking at a two week
break minimum, maybe in a little bit–

maybe even a little bit longer.

But that doesn’t mean Ninja
News Japan is going away.

It just means I’m trying to make my life
better so that I can make your life better.

With more content that you can enjoy, and
hopefully just a broader variety of topics.

Happy Online

I just had lunch, I’m
not afraid I’m going

to burp, I’m no I’m
going to burp, so I just

wait for a second and get that out before
we actually start doing the news, I should

do a burp ASMR, I
should just do that, that

should just be the
thing I do now, just give

up on all the new
shit, all the talkie talkie

shit, no video games, just sit here and
burp, I should do an only fans, a burping

oriented only fans, burpee
fans, my new website.

Update, last week we
talked about the assembly

member who was
calling for female sanitary

products to be made
available in city hall

for free, like toilet
paper was her comparison

in an eye, and introduced
Japan as a company,

we supported that position, we think people
need stuff, it’s city hall, it’s for the

people, what the people
need should be in there,

women or people, it’s not a hard stance to
take, let’s put it that way, the city hall

came back with a
response and they said they

pulled other municipalities,
so this is their

way of saying this isn’t our idea, this
isn’t our feeling, this isn’t what we think,

this is just what people
think, what people

think is cheaper for
us is really the answer,

they are not going to
place female sanitary

products free in the
bathroom, because of the

risk of theft and the
cost was too high, or

the cost could be too
high, now risk of theft,

I think in my episode last week I said they
could put it in a machine that dispenses

it, I think one of my first suggestions was
they could put it in a machine that would

dispense it, I think
if you threw a small

tertiary price of 100
yen or something, I don’t

think anyone would
actually complain about that,

I do actually think
it’s better if it’s free,

but if you really want
to justify the cost or

the price or something
100 yen for something

that’s apparently
necessary is fine, the thing

is theft, is it free and
is that theft question,

because we did have
the same story last week

of the woman came
into a convenience store,

where a bunch of free
condiments for, I think

condiments isn’t the
right word, whenever

I say that I get stuck,
the stuff for coffee,

so the sugar and the
creamers and stuff, she

went in, grabbed a
bunch of those, put it in

her backpack and left,
and she was arrested

for theft, the risk of theft though, I mean
that was my initial thing was like put it

in a box that dispenses them, and if you’re
worried about theft of sanitary pads,

you probably should
be just as worried about

theft of toilet paper,
and if you’re going

to get strict with toilet paper, and you’re
not getting strict with toilet paper, so

why are you getting so
strict about sanitary pads?

It’s just, it’s one of
those sort of indefensible

positions that the city hall is taken,
probably just to save money, but the inherent

greed of the capitalist
system, I don’t

know, it just seems
like a really lame set of

reasons and or excuses
to not do something,

that is pretty easy and
fairly convenient and

would make a certain segment
of the population’s life a lot easier.

So last week we had
the story for me, it was

one of the bigger stories of the week was
the American who accidentally packed a gun

and came to Japan,
now he did the right thing.

He realized he had a
gun with him in a country

that really doesn’t
like guns, and he turned

himself in, he turned
himself in, he turned the

gun in, he handed
everything over, he didn’t

cause any trouble, prosecutors dropped
the charges and let him go on his way.

That was handled
correctly, so of course now

we have another week,
therefore we must have

another gun story, because
stories seem to come

in little trends, this is
something I’ve noticed,

the streamer being
a nuisance trend is all

over the place, actually
I’m not doing a couple

of those stories, there
was a Russian streamer

who went into an
onsen and cut her hair

and put on her makeup
and everyone was really

grossed out, and
then I don’t know if it’s

the same, I think it’s
a different streamer,

Russian streamer was
walking along the street

and like videoed a
pedestrian guy, which is

technically illegal,
you’re not allowed to film

people without their
consent in Japan, and they

got into a tussle, but
those are now at this

point just repetitive, there’s nothing new
to those stories, or those streamers aren’t

big enough or whatever to
make it worthwhile to cover.

Another man, another
American, therefore

another gun, a 35 year
old man, his suitcase

was being x-rayed and
they found a gun-shaped

object in his suitcase,
so of course they

opened it up to look
at it and they found a

gun in there, then they
found dozens of rounds

of ammunition and then
he had shoes in a box

and in the shoes, there
was a knife in a case,

so he was trying to
bring in a gun, ammunition

and a knife into Japan,
all of those things

are heavily heavily
controlled in Japan, his

decision, his excuse,
his justification for

this was I decided to go to Japan while the
world expo was being held, I don’t think

that’s a justification for bringing a knife
a gun and ammunition into a country, unless

your plan, what you’re
telling the police is

my plan was to shoot
up my plan was to shoot

up the expo and then stab
anyone who was left over.

This is not a justification, it’s not like
the other guy, he said, “Oh, I, you know,

I packed my bag, it
was in my bag, I didn’t

realize it was there,
I got into the country,

I realized it was
there, so I turned it in.”

This guy’s like, “I packed my bag, I packed
my gun and I was going to the expo, so this

is a much more serious
concern, he had no

intention of showing anybody,
telling anybody we’re turning it in.

“

There was a question
like, “How did these two

guns get into Japan, a country
was such strict gun control?

“

And it turns out, the people who are more
responsible for checking bags and stuff are

actually departures,
so both of these guns

got through the departures in
America, not the partures in Japan.

So if someone in Japan
tried to do the same

thing, maybe more
likely to get caught, I bet

there would be less
guns being, you know, a

secreted out of Japan
versus secreted into Japan.

You’re not going to buy a gun here or get a
gun here and then try to take it to another

country, it’s probably
easier in almost every

other country to get a gun
if that’s really your intent.

But this guy sounds like his intent was to
bring a gun into Japan and go to expo, and

I don’t know if his was for self-defense,
he didn’t say that, he didn’t say if he was

like angry at a certain
pavilion, he didn’t say

that, he just said, “Oh, I brought
a gun because I’m going to expo.”

Just mentioned that I wasn’t going to talk
about streamers, and then I actually have a

YouTuber, which is the
same thing as a streamer,

let’s face it, a streamer
who does marathons,

which is why I’ve never heard of him
because why I don’t understand marathons.

I understand people doing them, I don’t
understand watching them in like two, three

hours long, it’s people
running the whole time, I mean, I

only want to see the last two
minutes if I want to see that.

This guy has a YouTube channel, it’s fairly
popular, he’s been arrested for smuggling

THC tablets into Japan for
the 2025 Osaka marathon.

Most people would claim
ignorance, but he went

on a podcast earlier
and he actually talked

about how he brings like
THC gummies with him

everywhere he goes, it’s probably
to relax, it’s probably for pain.

If I could get something
similar in Japan for

all my years of judo, I have lots of joint
pain, I hear that helps a lot, I actually

probably would start taking
something similar myself.

I would do pretty
much anything to lessen

the amount of pain I have without
just doing drug drugs drugs all the time.

He went on a podcast
and then he said he

knows he brings them
into most countries, most

countries see them and
they don’t do anything,

but he knew they
were illegal in Japan,

so he tried to get around this, he didn’t
put them in his luggage, he actually tried

to mail them to himself,
so he left, I assume America.

He left America, he
mailed them to maybe the

hotel he was going to
stay at or some place

he was going to stay at, he then took the
trip so he wasn’t carrying them with him.

So he’s trying to get around the system, so
he’s not going to carry the illegal drugs

with him, he’s going
to mail them to himself,

I’ve actually read
tons of stories where

what they do is they let the mail go to its
destination and that’s how they find you

and that’s how they arrest you because
once you receive the illegal drugs, you are

then in possession of
illegal drugs, you’re not

necessarily going to get
arrested for trafficking

illegal drugs, but you are going
to get in trouble just the same.

So he’s been caught,
no one seen anything on

his YouTube channel
for the last two months,

so I don’t know if
he’s been arrested and

being held, I don’t know if he’s been
deported and just sent back to America.

We don’t really know,
honestly, we don’t

really care, don’t bring
drugs to Japan, Japan

sees all drugs as
equivolently, equally bad,

it was a trying to
make a harder word out

of a relatively simple
word, that was a weird

instinct I had just now, there’s actually
been instances of people who come to Japan

and joined my company
to work for my company

and they have medication that they’re taking
back home and they didn’t take the time

to check if that
medication is available,

never mind legal in
Japan, we’ve had a couple

of people come have
to work for a couple of

weeks or a month and
then realize they can’t

get the medication
they need that they’ve

been on for let’s say
years or months in Japan

and then they have to
basically pack up and go home.

So that is something,
should you intend to go

to another country and
you are on medication,

legal medication in
your country, you should

check if that medication
is legal and available

in the country you’re
going to and let’s

face it, an illegal
drug, don’t even bother.

Evangelion, 3.0 plus
1.0 thrice upon a time

Jesus, these titles, I
mean I’m not biased against

anime, I actually
quite enjoy anime as a

general art form but
the titles are ridiculous,

Evangelion is the worst, they get the most,
I guess the story can be relatively obscure

but they get the
most obscure titles, it’s

almost silly, a real
train station in Shizuoka

is in the anime and
they did this, was it your

name, your name the
movie happens in partially

in a real city in Japan
and Gifu and so I

actually went out and
they actually had part

of the tourism thing
was like if you stand

here and take a picture
in this direction, it’s

this scene from the
movie, if you’re on this

bridge over the train
and you wait till this

time the trains will
go through, it’ll be the

exact picture from the
movie, that’s actually

really cool stuff and they’re like you can
go here and see this and it’s really good

for tourism in a small
town in Japan, this

place in Shizuoka has
the same kind of thing,

we want to improve,
we want to encourage

tourism, we want people
to come to this place,

we don’t care if their anime nerds, anime
nerds have the same money as everyone else

in Japan, we’ll take your money, so they
took one of the big spear spike things that

it happens, so what
happens in the anime is a

big spear spike thing
hits that train station

and they made one
of those, it’s actually

quite small, when I
heard about it, it sounded

like it was really
impressive, it’s actually

quite small, they put
one there and then

there’s a train that kind of rotates in the
background and you can take a picture with

both the train and the spear to
show that you’re in the right place.

The problem has arisen,
you’re only supposed

to approach this thing
on a guided tour because

this is still an active
train station, so

they don’t want to
risk injuries, they don’t

want someone
inhibiting the trains or the

other passengers or
other stuff, so they want

to do this in an
organized way, tourists, I

would actually put
money on, they don’t want

to pay the tour fee, so they just
want to roll in whenever they can.

People have been trespassing to take photos,
originally I thought it was going to be

like they’re sneaking at night, it’s just
like people in a station, they see this big

anime spear, they’re like I’m going to go
over there and take a picture with a big

anime spear, which actually makes perfect
sense, so they want to put up more signs

and more stuff because they’re just about
to do another Evangelion campaign, I think

in the next five or
six days, and they’re

expecting tourism to
increase, that also could

lead to interruptions
in the train line, which

is the last thing they
want to have happen.

This story popped up
like four or five times

in my timeline of
news stories, and I was

a bit like I don’t
really want to do this

story, Japan, there’s
an online poll and 60%

of Japanese respondents said they were very
or rather happy, which puts them 27th out

of the 30 countries,
according to this online

survey, the happiest
countries in the world

where the people with
the countries with the

happiest citizens, Mexico
is number three at 82%,

the Netherlands is number two at
86%, and India is number one at 88%.

The least happy countries are South Korea
at 50%, Turkey at 49%, and Hungary at 45%.

So Japan’s in the bottom
tier of these countries

that say they’re
unhappy, and I actually

had a moment where
I was like, well, you are

just asking people
in an online survey, so

maybe people who are
perpetually online doing

surveys are not very happy people, because
if you asked me, I’m a relatively happy

person, although I did
just talk about burnout

at the beginning of the
episode, if you asked

me, I would say
overall, I’m quite happy,

but that’s probably because I don’t
spend my time doing online surveys.

Like I think the people
who do online surveys

would statistically be
less happy than people

who don’t do online surveys, that
might be actually something to look into.

Like if you call me on the street and you
said, are you happy, chunk of beef chest?

I’d be like, yeah, I’m pretty happy.

I mean, my life goes pretty good.

I got very few problems, really.

All my problems are
like self-manufactured,

and that’s sort of a
self-fulfilling prophecy

of failure, something like that, but I mean,
if I actually step back and take a look

at my life, my life is pretty awesome,
and how can I complain about it?

And so there is sort of a weird
thing, like I’m happy, but I want more.

Is that the problem?

Is that like Buddha
would say, the thing

that makes me unhappy is
my ambition for more in my life?

Is it comparing myself to others?

Which you shouldn’t do because,
you know, that’s the thief of happiness.

We’ve all heard that saying,
and I think that’s very true.

When they were saying, why
are you unhappy Japanese people?

And the question
wasn’t is because you’re

always online, and that
has been shown almost

proven to make you less happy
if you were perpetually online.

64% said because of
their economic situation.

I can kind of understand
this, Japan is a very

monetary-driven
society, it’s status-driven.

People always want more money.

I think that’s true of a
lot of capitalist societies.

64% of the unhappy people
in Japan on this online

survey, which is, again, they
didn’t say how many people.

So how many people are actually
being surveyed as a problem?

How many people are unhappy is a
percentage of that small group of people?

So that’s my problem with surveys.

You have to talk about
sample size, you have

to talk about like
what the situation is.

If you sample size a similar group of
people, you should expect a similar answer.

I think if you’re
perpetually online, you’re

going to get more people
who are generally unhappy.

64% because of economics.

I think that’s true.

Japan’s been relatively
stagnant for a very long time.

27% said life does not have
meaning, which is a really sad thing.

They’re saying, I actually think
those two would be combined.

Maybe they feel like money
is their way out of this.

Maybe they feel like
life doesn’t have meaning

if they’re not making more
money and stuff like that.

But the reason so many
of these online people

who did this survey were
unhappy were because

they don’t feel like
their life has meaning.

I think that’s terrible.

But if you want to talk
about the top end, 13%

of people said the
quality of life was good.

And I’m like, yeah, I
bet that’s, again, of

the people on the internet, an online survey
is going to reveal a certain segment of

people that’s going to lead
to a certain type of answer.

I think that’s a big skew as to actual
answer you’re supposed to be getting.

Okay, there’s a town called Modioca.

And the head of the chamber of
commerce was making a speech.

And he’s like, we have a geisha tradition
in Modioca, and we want to keep that going.

Everyone’s like, yeah, so at their peak,
they had a hundred geisha who were working.

They were kind of doing
shows and entertaining

and they would work
in hotels and stuff.

This was a big draw.

Right now they’re down to like two.

So they only have two geisha left in the
city and they’re like, we want these geisha

to train new people to
become geisha to take

their place so we can
rebuild the tradition.

This sounds like a really good idea.

So what went wrong?

Well, let’s put it out there.

This was a dude saying it and the problem
is the dude was being a little too honest.

So they said they wanted applicants
between the ages of 18 to 25.

And then someone in the
audience probably a reporter went,

why do you want applicants
only within the rage of 18 to 25?

And he said, geisha, bring out men,
obviously men like young women.

There’s a weird honesty
there because he’s

saying, look, this is something that
appeals to dudes and dudes like young women.

So we should do our best
to appeal to those men

because that’s where
we’re going to get our money.

And that’s advertising
like advertising

doesn’t put on average or
ugly looking people for a reason.

They put on attractive
people, they might be

young or older, but they have
chosen specifically attractive people.

Someone of course had
to pull it back because

there’s a certain
backlash that comes with.

Geisha bring out men, obviously
men like younger women.

A committee supervisor
tried to pull it back

by saying, not
necessarily apologizing that

it is a physically
demanding job and therefore

younger people would
be able to handle it better.

43 year old man.

So you can see near the we’re at the tail
end of the episode because we had a man

he’s being gross in his own way, but I
think he was just thinking commercially.

Then we have this guy,
a post office employee.

So he hasn’t hit our
50 year old threshold

that I’ve been putting
on for the really creepy

behavior in Japan,
but I think working in

the stress of the post
office maybe has added

to the stress of his life and maybe added
that extra 10 years we need to get him past

that threshold because
he is certainly in the weird

creepy old dude committee
group that I have created.

He was arrested for
sending an envelope with

used condoms to a female
staff at a different post office.

Oh gosh, even saying
this sentence is gross.

And it’s I want to
do the psychological

breakdown of how did you
get to a point where you

woke up in the morning, you’re
like, I’m going to do this thing.

I’m going to put it in an envelope.

I’m going to send it to this lady
who works at another post office.

And that’s a good thing or like, what
did he think the results were going to be?

Like the woman wasn’t
going to be horrified.

She’s like, who sent me this?

This is exciting.

Like there’s no positive.

So it must be the bullying
aspect of this, the inciting a

negative feeling of this is
actually the appeal for the person.

He was arrested for intimidation
and obstruction of business.

It’s been a while since we had a
true obstruction of business charge.

Welcome back to the
obstruction of business counter.

The statement was I sent the
envelopes and I say envelopes.

So this isn’t a singular incident.

So this isn’t a singular instance.

He admits in his
statement, this has happened

multiple times by
using an S which makes

it even grocers on how I sent the
envelopes to satisfy my sexual desire.

I would like an explanation
of how that works,

but I did not intend to
obstruct business operations.

And I don’t know if
you work at a post office

and you are sending what is essentially a
what envelope to another post office, how

you would think that
isn’t going to obstruct

business operations, how that
person is going to receive it at work.

And that is not going
to get a reaction that

is going to obstruct
business operations.

So I think he’s just trying to
get his two charges down to one.

But I think the second
charge is very, very

reasonable in this case,
often I think obstruction

of business is a catch
all to just arrest, but

it’s just a catch all to arrest anybody
for everything and is often abused.

But I think in this case,
it absolutely is justifiable.

How do they catch them?

And it’s not even ironic DNA analysis.

They have the DNA.

They analyze the DNA
and then they must have

had some of his other
DNA on record somehow

because they tracked
it back to him real quick.

He got arrested when
they searched his home.

They found two more envelopes at his home.

So I guess pre-prepared envelopes, which
means I don’t know how long those had been

stewing or fermenting in the
corner, which is also really, really bad.

The fact that this is
just stuff that’s laying

around your house,
apparently there have

been a dozen similar incidents
across different post offices.

They are trying to find
out if they are connected.

I’m pretty sure the
DNA is going to match up.

I don’t this.

I don’t think this takes a Sherlock
Holmes level of investigation.

I think I need a break.

I realized I was reading all
the symptoms of burnout.

I actually have all of
them, which is a bad thing.

Do the right thing

It seems like, again,
I think nerdy people

stream and nerdy people
love Japan, so nerdy

streamers come to Japan,
and they seem to think

the way to get attention
is to do dumbshitting.

Now these are two very
big streamers, so that

already is like why
do you need to behave

this way, you can just do normal
shit and your fans would eat it up.

This isn’t like a Johnny
Somali level stuff

where they’re trying
to get in trouble, I think

these guys were just
basically ignorant and

then behaving, so
mitzkiff, I don’t actually

know if I’m saying
that right, I’ve seen it,

he’s big enough, I’ve
seen him, so that’s

actually it, like if you are a streamer and
I kind of know your name, you must be huge,

and Tokyo Simms who I’ve seen on TikTok
and stuff, they have come under fire.

How bad is it?

Yeah, I don’t know, I’m a little torn, and
I think I’m torn because I think what they

did was bad, but then the response was bad,
and so if they had done something bad and

the response was good, I
think they just forget about it.

Because of the way
they handled it, it became

news, so it was
primarily mitzkiff because

he’s the bigger streamer, they were out in
Tokyo, and they’re like ah, what we’ll do

is have a good time,
and I’m going to go ahead

and guess there were
some alcohol involved,

and they’re out with
the cherry trees, this is

cherry blossom season,
it’s a very important

time people sit out
under the cherry blossoms

and they drink, and they
have a good time, and

it’s a very important
part of Japanese culture.

They have predictions as to when the cherry
blossoms will come out, they have guides on

the best places to
go, like this is a big

deal in Japan, they’re
out, again, I’m going

to go ahead and give them the benefit of
the doubt and say that alcohol, they were

inebriated and that
impacted the logic circuits

in their brain, and
they thought ah, let’s

show off how strong we are, I’m going to
jump up and grab some branches and do some

chin-ups, and then
it’s like, well, if you’ve

done that, I have to
take a step further,

I’m going to jump up,
grab some branches, and

then swing my legs up
so that I do sort of a flip.

So, the immediate title
of one of the articles

I read was Miskiff
and Tokyo Sims doing

flips on Japanese cherry trees,
draws fire, whatever the title was.

It seemed weird because I
was like, doing flips on it, but

they’re hanging off it and then
trying to flip their way off it.

The conversation is did they intend to be
disrespectful, and I think they did not, if

I’m going to be given
the benefit of the doubt

because they were just
like doing stuff to have fun.

I don’t think they really realized what
they were doing, but then, of course, people

were like, that’s disrespectful, you
shouldn’t do that, and how do they handle it?

Well, the way they tried to handle this
was they just tried to delete the video.

So they were trying to pretend
that this never happened.

And then, of course,
people saved those clips.

They were on vods or what.

I assume there’s a
group of people out there

who just like download
everything someone

who’s vaguely popular does
so they can get them in trouble

later if they try to delete to
hide something, didn’t work out.

So people started
immediately re uploading

the videos that they were trying to
hide, try to suppress, try to delete.

Shibuya Kahu came on
and she gave her opinion.

She is also a big
streamer being based in

Tokyo, being Japanese
who speaks English and

having a background that has
made her popular in certain circles.

She garners a lot of attention immediately
and she has said, this was disrespectful.

You should not have done this.

Now, she’s saying, if you want
to flex your muscles to show

how much testosterone you
have, go touch your own wood.

Now that’s perfect.

I mean, I don’t think you
could phrase it better.

It’s like if you want to behave this
way, just go take care of yourself.

Mitzkiv took personal offense at this.

Now this was a bad move.

He sent some angry
messages to her on Discord,

which he then
immediately tried to delete.

Of course, she
screenshotted them because

she’s a very smart
woman and then she used

that to show like this
is how they’re behaving.

He’s I think what’s actually happened
here is he didn’t intend to be disrespect

But they tried to be edgy and then everyone
came back and said, like, don’t be edgy.

That’s not cool.

And then he’s like, okay, I’ll
just pretend this didn’t happen.

But then it comes out.

And then someone who
else is famous comes

out and says, the way
you behave was poorly.

And he’s like, why are you
calling more attention to this?

Why are you giving me a hard time?

This isn’t fair.

But he hasn’t owned up to it.

Now.

Are you shooting on him?

Because he sent me a personal message.

Yeah.

Shooting on me.

Yes.

That’s fine.

And it’s over me.

Me.

Me.

You’re like three.

Yeah.

So I’m like, OK.

So you can meet the actual effects you bow.

I was like, I was shocked.

I was shocked.

And he actually deleted that
comment later on from like a discord.

Now, but of course I screenshot it.

That’s evidence.

Yeah.

You shouldn’t be calm.

I hope to meet you.

It’s the best.

Oh, thank you.

Well, you were one of the best.

Yeah.

It’s like so disappointing.

I got super disappointed.

I saw like, you know, he didn’t
know what they didn’t know.

I mean, I was just not about
this one guy, they didn’t know.

You know, of course,
they can always excuse it.

I was going to, you know, help them have
the opportunity to explain themselves, even

to the Japanese community
and English community.

And they were like, oh,
yeah, reverb response, reverb.

And there were three me in three sentences.

And there was no
period in sentence that

really, you know, my OCD
is just like freaked out.

Now I have the Johnny Somali counts on me.

You don’t realize what you’ve done to me.

Please leave me alone.

And then she said, what
the fuck, what did I say?

It’s not about you.

Because this is not about him.

It’s about behavior.

It’s about people coming to Japan.

It’s about being respectful.

Of course, after that,
he realized he’s caught.

So once you’re
caught, then you have to

issue the apology to
show how mature you are.

And if you had just
done this initially,

instead of all this
other bullshit, like trying

to delete the videos, just to own up to
it and not trying to call people out, like,

why are you calling
attention to this on me?

I think this actually would
have gone away really quickly.

Mitzkiff issued a response
saying the moment

I was informed by a
friend on the severity

of the situation, I immediately deleted
the post and regretted my decision.

I think the reality is he was told,
this is going to get you in trouble.

This makes you look bad.

So he deleted it
and it’s not, I think he

regretted his decision
to do it because it got

him in trouble because
it wasn’t going to get

him the kind of attention that he’s
trying to garner as a popular streamer.

I’ve grown a lot here as a person.

I bet that’s debatable.

I mean, for being really honest,
I bet that in itself is debatable.

People like this don’t grow.

I think you’re living
in a bubble and in

that bubble, it is very difficult
to actually grow as a person.

You need people telling
you you’re a piece of shit.

You need people guiding
you to be a better person.

You need to have be
in a situation where you

can be taught and be open to being
taught to actually grow as a person.

I think that’s something that
people and bubbles don’t do.

It’s like the Hitler argument, everything
always goes to Elon Musk right now, but my

feeling is like Elon Musk is
not going to learn anything.

He’s just going to get worse because
he’s being a richest man in the world.

He lives in a situation
where everyone around

him will tell him what he’s
doing is good and great.

Whenever he hits any
sort of adversity, he

really struggles because he doesn’t
know what that’s like anymore.

This is the same thing on a smaller scale.

He’s a popular streamer.

He’s surrounded himself
with people who are

going to encourage him to
do the stuff to get the views.

I’m not going to realize
it’s bad because if anyone

telling him, dude, you’re
fucking idiot, don’t do that.

He’s not going to have someone who slapped
him in the back of the head and say, don’t

climb the fucking tree
because that’s going

to disrespect the culture that
you’re residing in at the moment.

Anyways, back to his apology.

I’ve grown a lot here as a person.

I’ve made so many
friends that I truly value

and have experienced
so much of the Japanese

culture that has changed
my life for the better.

Maybe I do not want to
promote my actions as proper.

They were wrong and should
have been seen as such.

So you should have
said that immediately, like

right away, not sent
other people like messages

like, hey, why are you giving
me a hard time over this thing?

Why are you drawing attention to me?

He advised his viewers
who may be considering

a trip to Japan not
to repeat his mistakes.

Cherry blossoms are sacred to the Japanese
culture and are extremely delicate.

I’m okay with the criticism
and understand it was Rome.

So that’s all debatable.

If you’ve listened and
introduced Japan for

any length of time, you
have heard a thousand

apologies and you’ve
heard me analyze a

thousand apologies as what
is sincere about them are not.

I think this is exactly the same.

I think the only thing he’s
unhappy about is that he got caught.

The only thing he’s unhappy
about is that he’s in trouble

and that’s the only reason
he would change his behavior.

But there is always
the opportunity that this

actually does have an impact
and they always do something.

What you’ve seen is a multitude of
streamers come to Asia, come to Japan.

There was that dude
in the Philippines who

just got arrested,
Johnny Somalis in court in

South Korea and they come here and behave
badly because they think they can get away

with it and now that
they’re not getting away

with it and now that
people are now getting

a little stricter saying like, look,
this behavior is unacceptable.

We’re going to call you out on it.

They get upset and
then they apologize

because they realize they’re
not going to get away with it.

Yeah, kuzah numbers in Japan have dropped
below 20,000 people for the first time.

So this year at the end of 2024, there
were 18,800 Yakuza members arrests.

There were 8,249 arrests last year.

That’s down 1300 because
there’s less people to arrest.

The numbers are interesting.

So the Yamaguchi Gumi, which is the
biggest Yakuza organization in Japan.

They are down 500 to 6,900 members.

The Sumiyoshi Kai is
down 300 members to 3,200.

The Inagawa Kai is down 100
members to 2,800 members.

This has been a constant decline from 1963
and the reason this is happening is because

the organized nature
of the Yakuza, any

organized crime really, is
such that they’re easy to track.

I think that is going to be the biggest
problem because the police know who you are.

They know who your associates are.

They know what kind of stuff you do.

They followed your whole
life as you’ve become a Yakuza.

Of course, it’s not going to last forever.

So they lost their power.

My complaint over the
last couple of years of

covering any Yakuza
related story is the absolute

loss of glamour that the Yakuza lifestyle
seems to have because I remember the 80s.

In the 80s, every bad
guy organization was

the Yakuza and they
were like international.

They were gun smuggling, human trafficking.

They were doing drugs.

They were just
everything was on the table

and these were like
super rich dudes and they

had like hundreds of men
who would gun fight for them.

Now all the stories were
like, they stole 10 cell phones.

The last one I did was
they blocked off a street

and tried to charge the
local 10,000 yen to use it.

Like these are not the
glamorous Yakuza of yesterday.

The ones that sort of would
have captured my imagination.

They seem like sadder,
older organizations just

clamoring for anything
they have left over.

What’s actually
sprouted up in their place

though from organized
crimes disorganized crime.

So it’s these groups
that are loosely affiliated.

They meet online.

They try to recruit members online.

They’ll organize for
one job and then rob

someone and then
disappear, spreading out,

going finding another
job, that kind of thing.

So it seems like disorganized crime is
actually replacing organized crime in Japan.

From September, 2028, gas
pedals in Japan, I used to just

for a moment, we got to
stop calling them gas pedals.

If all cars go electric, which is one of
the predictions is that eventually all cars

will go electric, they’re
not going to be gas,

but you’ll have to use
the term accelerator

because it’s not going
to be a gas pedal anymore.

But anyways, gas pedals in Japan will have
mandatory safety devices attached to them.

This is because of the
elderly drivers accidents,

which have been increasing,
where they accidentally

push the accelerator
and drive into a building

or a group of people,
this actually happened

last week, elderly drivers
outnumber gun deaths.

Of course, elderly driver
accidents outnumber

gun deaths because there
are so few guns in Japan.

So if you want to know if gun control is
a good thing, that’s a great stat to have

that your old drivers are
killing more people than guns.

Now they’re looking
at accidents with old

people and like, “Well, how
can we reduce these numbers?

“

So they’re going to put
a safety device on the

gas pedal that means
if there is an obstacle

that is one meter to
1.5 meter ahead, the

speed will be kept to
below eight kilometers.

So it means if you jam the accelerator and
there’s someone standing one meter in front

of your car, it will not increase
to over eight kilometers an hour.

This will lead to some very
amusing slow motion accidents.

Because if you don’t
run out of the way in the

car in time, let’s say
it’s an electric car.

It’s dead silent.

It’s creeping towards it.

It’s going to nudge
you sort of gently and I

actually still, if it was another
old person, they might fall under it.

There might still be accidents
with this, but at least this will

reduce the amount of actual
injuries that occur because of this.

There was a fan of an AVEX idol and
he said, “I’m going to come to your event.

” He sent an email saying, “Go
die,” and then, “This isn’t just a threat.

I’m going to come kill you.

” So basically he was saying, “I’m
going to kill you if you have these events.

I’m going to show up these events.

This is not a threat.

I’m really going to do it.

” He was very easily
caught and arrested.

She had to cancel three events.

So because she was
worried that this guy was

actually going to show
up and do something,

she actually canceled two events
in Osaka and won somewhere else.

This then becomes obstruction of business,
which is something that I had a counter for

and then won away
because we weren’t getting

any obstruction of
business ones anymore,

but thankfully they’re
back because that is

an engineer’s depend
mainstay, the obstruction

of business as an excuse to arrest
anybody for anything and threats.

The threats is a separate charge.

He gets two charges this
way because he caused

her to lose money to
interrupt her business

of putting on concerts
because of the threats.

That’s one charge.

The second charge is actually
threatening her with death.

When he was arrested, he
said, “I thought she was cute.

” And it’s just one
of those things where

he’s like, “Well, you’re
clearly not very…

You don’t got a lot of rizzes, I
think what the kids say nowadays.

If you think that the
way to get someone’s

attention when you think
they’re acute is to say, “Go die.

“

He did say further, “I wanted
her to know how hurt I was.

” Now they don’t explain
how or why he was hurt.

He may have gotten to this
point where he was deluded.

He had followed her so long, he’d
sent her messages or something.

She probably ignored them because
she doesn’t manage her own social media.

He got angry because he wasn’t getting
the attention he thought he deserved.

This is all speculation,
but it also fits

into a very natural pattern of behavior
that happens with these kind of people.

They create the parasocial relationship
in their head with this person.

They’ve never actually met her talk to.

They think they’re now owed something.

They start to get hurt because they’re not
getting the attention back because of what

their beliefs which are
very one sided because

the other person
doesn’t know they exist.

Then they lose the
plot and they go threaten

people with death and
then they get arrested.

Cocaine use has
significantly increased in

Japan which is a big
surprise to me because we

only ever hear about
marijuana really because

marijuana is still considered
one of the worst drugs ever.

All the drugs in Japan
are considered the same.

In North America, like
marijuana is not that bad.

Cocaine and heroin are much worse.

They have different classifications
for the different drugs.

This in Japan is not the case.

All drugs are bad.

All drugs are exactly the same.

Any drug you have that
is not legal is terrible.

The increase of cocaine
in Japan is a surprise

to me only because
it’s got to be super

expensive, but what the
police said was very interesting.

There were 231.8 kilograms seized last year
that’s five times more than previous years.

586 arrests for cocaine related crimes.

So this could be like
selling cocaine, getting

cocaine, possession
of cocaine, trafficking

cocaine, anything that
have like connected

to it, 586 arrests for cocaine
related crimes last year.

That’s up from 214 so
it’s more than doubled.

Seven times more arrests
over the last 10 years.

The National Police Association said
many people use it as a fashion statement.

So they’re not saying people
are using cocaine to get

high so much as they’re
using cocaine to look cool.

73 year old American
man came to Japan and

accidentally his statement was, “I
accidentally put a gun in my luggage.

” Now, I cannot think of a more American
statement than I accidentally packed a gun.

How many guns do you have around you where
you are, you know, packing your t-shirts

and you’re under wearing your bag and a gun
just drops in off the shelf because let’s

face it, there’s guns
everywhere around your house.

It seems to me, okay, so you want to
talk about responsible gun ownership.

If you accidentally pack a gun,
you’re not a responsible gun owner.

That’s actually to me
one of the number one,

like you can’t say
you’re responsible gun

over and accidentally do
anything with a gun, like

an accidental discharge, you’re
not a responsible gun owner.

I’m accidentally putting
one in your bag and

taking it with you to another
country, not a responsible gun owner.

I accidentally put the gun in my luggage
when traveling to Japan and three bullets.

It’s a very small gun.

It’s a little revolver.

Maybe it only can hold three bullets.

It seemed like one of those ones you would
put in your sock if in a police movie.

He decided the best course of action
would be to throw away the bullets.

The bullets were
found at a port terminal

and the police, because
one of the problems,

okay, so this is the actual problem is
a lot of garbage is burnable in Japan.

So if you put bullets
in burnable garbage and

that goes into the
facility, it might actually

go off when it’s heated because it’s being
burned and shoot someone, it could be weeks

later, but this is
actually a real possibility

of like a CSI style
murder where they try

to figure out how this guy in this facility
got killed and it turns out it’s from

a bullet that was in
the incinerator and

then they have to find out
where that garbage came from.

That’s actually a pretty good
episode that I just wrote there.

So he realized while he was
already in Japan, which actually

means he managed to get into
Japan with a bag with a gun in it.

Now he was on
cruises and stuff, so I’m

actually thinking maybe
because they spend time

on the boat and
they’ve kind of checked

everything before the
boat or maybe they check

when they get on the boat, they don’t check
so closely when they get off the boat.

So that’s my suspicion.

I don’t know if that’s
true, that cannot be

confirmed, but it seems
like the most logical

thing because it seems
like if they x-rated

the bag and there’s a
gun-shaped thing in it,

the Japanese police would absolutely check
that bag, he kind of does the right thing.

He says I was thinking
where to declare it

and then because he
wanted to make sure that

he didn’t get
misinterpreted, he wanted to

make sure they had
sort of the English skills.

He didn’t want to like come in and say I
have a gun and then get arrested himself.

So he went from Kobe
to Osaka, this is again,

he’s spending days
in Japan with this gun

in his bag and he goes
and declares it to the police.

Now unlike Mitzkif
from our first story, this

is the right thing, so
he’s made a mistake.

He’s brought a gun in
Japan, he knows guns

are illegal in Japan, so he’s
like I need to tell someone.

Now he took a couple
of days and that could

be a little like is this
okay, have you done

the right thing, but he’s like I
just don’t want to make it worse.

So I’m thinking he
has the right intention,

he goes to the police,
he says I have a gun,

I’d like to turn the
gun in, he turns the

gun in, he sells them,
I had bullets, I threw

the bullets away here,
the police go to that

place, luckily the
bullets are still in that

garbage can and they
recover the bullets.

Then everyone’s like this
is going to be a terrible thing.

I actually was like
okay, he went to the

police, he told him he
made a mistake, he made

it very clear, he did
everything in a relatively

safe, throwing the bullets
away was a bad idea.

But he brought the gun to them and he made
sure that he like they understood, he had

no negative intentions,
he didn’t plan to shoot

anybody, he just
accidentally packed a gun,

which again, the most
American thing you could

do in the world is
accidentally pack a gun.

He plays later, charges are dropped.

And I think this is
because the police, the

prosecutors are like
look, he made a mistake,

he did a bad thing, but
he immediately owned

up to it, he brought
us the gun, he’s not

trying to make any trouble, I think this
is fair, we’re just going to let him go.

He probably just left
the country the next

day, which again is
almost the exact opposite

of how Mitzkiff handled his issue where he
did a bad thing, tried to scrub it, tried

to make sure no one
knew about it, called

people out for calling
him out on it and then

apologized afterwards,
if he had just immediately

owned up to it like
this American who had

made a mistake, charges
dropped and you’re on your way.

27 year old assembly
member called for menstrual

products to be made
available in public restrooms.

And I as a non menstruating
person, think this is fine.

If you need that, I
think she made available

to you, I think she was
calling for them to be free.

I could understand if
you wanted to charge

like 100 yen, you have to put
it in the machine to pop one out.

But I actually think my taxes
are going to this, if women

need it in the bathrooms
to make it free, I’m on board.

So there you go, that’s how that’s
that’s an engineer’s Japan stance on that.

Someone else on the
other hand took issue

with this, with women
having things they need

being made available to
them and they sent 8,000

threatening emails,
including death threats.

Now the very weird thing was, they sent one
every minute between 8 p.m. Friday to 350

p.m. Monday, which
would imply that these

death threats were
automated because no one, no

individual is going to
stay up for three days

straight and sending
an email every minute.

So some sort of AI
had to write the program.

He had some kind of
script to send out the

email and he just set
it to go every minute.

I won because if you
look at the statements

that I read, it was, it
was 8,000 threatening

emails, including death
threats, which meant

not all the emails
were exactly the same.

So yeah, I’m thinking
AI wrote a bunch of

emails and then he had a script to just
send the emails every minute on the minute.

So this assembly member
actually posted this

on X and the statement was, I was caught
off guard by my period and was in trouble.

There were no sanitary napkins
in the rest room of City Hall.

I hope pads can be
provided like toilet paper.

That is the thing that set off someone
to declare that this person should die.

And I can’t fathom why
this was so offensive.

I actually believe
it’s just the fact that

someone mentioned menstruation publicly
and wasn’t like deeply a grossed out by it.

I don’t know.

I actually don’t know what was
so deeply offensive this person.

So this, there’s not been
any talk of an arrest yet.

So I am very interested
in the arrest and the

statement of the person
as to why this statement

was so offensive to them in the first place
because honestly, that statement itself was

I had a problem, went to the toilet,
the things I needed weren’t available.

I think they should maybe
be available in the future.

Certainly in City Hall,
if you have employees,

so like assembly
members who are both male

and female, they
should have all the things

they need to take care of themselves
at their place of work at City Hall.

It’s a public building, so it
should be provided for the public.

That makes a lot of sense.

I really, really am interested to see what
this person’s justification was for sending

8,000 threatening
emails because someone

thought they should have someone
should have the stuff they needed.

My sentence just fell
apart at the end because

someone said they would like
the city to provide for them?

I don’t know.

I just have to finish one
more sentence than I’m done.

And then I’m going to, I’m
going to play Rob Wilkoff.

Dave heard his leg this morning and
it has meant I am kind of distracted.

So he’s able to, he
was, he fell over, he

wasn’t able to use his
back leg, freaks me out.

It was like easily the per thing person
I spend the most time with in my life.

So they really had a
surprisingly large impact on me.

And it’s, it’s just
resting in the back of my

head and made it really hard for me
to formulate a sentence, apparently.

Women should have sanitary
pads in the bathrooms.

I think that is just a pretty
fair and easy statement to make.

It’s a, it’s a pretty fair stance to
take in more, the, see I can’t do it.

I’m not even trying to
say anything like offensive.

I’m saying like, chicks
should have what they need.

What’s the most misogynistic
way I can say that,

you know, chicks should
have the shit they need.

It’s like the, the redneck who says
like liberal things, there’s a meme.

It’s not, they don’t do it anymore.

I actually really enjoyed that one.

It’s the redneck saying like really liberal
stuff in the most rednecky way possible.

He’s on the bed over there,
he’s been lying down all day.

I gave him like a one
hour massage on his leg.

So I think he’s fine.

He’s able to put his foot down again.

But I mean, okay, last
sentence, last sentence.

I would like to know what was so
deeply offensive about this statement.

Was it menstruation or was it the fact
that the city should provide sanitary pads?

Because then you could
complain about your tax

dollars, which I think you
could take a stance on,

it’d be pretty hard to justify.

But I think that would
be more justified than be

offended by the fact
that 50% of the population

actually has this thing they
have to deal with every month.

[MUSIC]

Angry with a Beautiful Face

(upbeat music)

Last month, there was the
hug event for BTS members.

They had a woman, 50 year old Japanese
woman, went for the hug, it’s a paid event.

I looked into it, it was
basically there’s a BTS member

on stage, you walk up
to him, you say hello,

you have this like really
cursory hug, it’s really very fake.

And then you move on and you’re thrilled

that you got the opportunity
to touch a BTS member.

I assume.

This 50 year old Japanese
woman decided to take advantage

of her opportunity and she kissed
the BTS member on the neck.

Now this went viral in
Korea and South Korea.

Because of the reaction
the young man made facially.

So his face went viral,
’cause he kinda went,

’cause this woman
kissed him, which is not

the reaction you want
when you kiss somebody.

Like if I kiss somebody and then
they went, “Oh, that’d be pretty hurt.

” This is sexual assault though.

So I have, I’m torn with the
issue of your priming people.

So you have a thing for this guy.

You’ve paid money to
get into physical contact

with this guy, you’re
going to hug this guy,

he’s going to hug you, and of
course this is gonna happen.

I don’t wanna blame the victim.

Like true, if a man
kissed an idol on the

neck, I would be probably
far more incensed.

So this is showing some
of my very normative biases.

But I don’t think you
should be hugging people.

All these handshake events, the
hug events, all this kind of stuff.

I’m not really pro, this physical contact,
especially selling the physical contact.

That actually I think maybe
is what makes it worse.

Anyways, this is sexual assault.

Now in Korea, you can submit a claim
to the police even if you weren’t involved.

So if people saw it, they saw it online.

So all these people started submitting
these complaints to the police.

They’re like, please arrest this woman.

She committed sexual
assault on this member of BTS.

Let’s go.

The woman probably didn’t know she
was in trouble until she got back to Japan.

I’m betting she went to Korea
for the concert for that event.

Maybe stayed a day or two and then was out.

She was probably gone before the
police even opened the investigation.

Statement by the South
Korean police is that

if a suspect remains overseas
for two or more months,

it is impossible to investigate,
which is not impossible, it’s just hard.

Like you can’t go to
Japan if you’re a Korean

police officer and try
to investigate them.

But I’m betting this was a fairly low
priority for the South Korean police anyways.

Like, yeah, it’s pretty awful.

The guy, the BTS guy,
he didn’t put in the claim.

The other people did.

They’re like, we’d probably,
they’re on the lookout for.

They’ve probably flagged her passport.

She might not be able
to re-enter South Korea.

I mean, if I’m being really honest, that
might be the biggest fallout from this.

She’s not actually allowed
to go back to South Korea.

If she does try to go back to South
Korea, she might be arrested on the spot.

But they didn’t even like look for her.

They asked for her to turn herself in.

I think realistically, they probably
would have made her apologize.

I don’t know if that’s okay or not, okay.

I’m really torn.

I don’t like these events.

I don’t like this, like
the concepts, I guess.

I feel like you shouldn’t be doing this.

I don’t think it’s worse
when it’s the teenage girl

idols and the creepy dudes
who hand-shaken stuff.

That’s just really off-putting.

I essentially just disapprove.

You need better security for these things.

And you shouldn’t be setting
them up like this in the first place.

(upbeat music)

Another update, Sukiya.

The mouse laden miso
soup of last week’s story.

So it was a couple of
months ago this happened.

But it didn’t get released until later.

And everyone freaked out fair enough.

I mean, there was a
mouse found in miso soup.

I did like the transition
’cause originally it was mouse

and then it transitioned
to rat very quickly.

It may have been a rat, I don’t know.

But that’s the whole point is
just watching the news cycle

try to make more drama in the story
so that more people will click on it.

So more clickbaity.

So if it’s like mouse is in your miso’s bed

or rat in your miso’s way worse.

So let’s change it to rat.

Things like that.

I noticed things like that because I read
multiple versions of the same story now.

So I can see where the authors are adding

elements or dramaticizing it
so that they can get more clicks.

Well, they’ve had an unfortunate
follow up to their story.

This week, a cockroach
was found in some food.

They didn’t say what
food they were trying to,

maybe a little more vague on it or maybe,
so basically someone found a cockroach left

and then called and
complained about the restaurant.

And the company’s
like, we can’t survive this.

We gotta get this taken care of right away.

So they’re shutting down all the
stores and then doing like a deep clean

or trying to make sure
that there’s no rats,

no cockroach is nothing
in the restaurants.

Basically, every restaurant
was gonna be closed for one

day for a check, except for
the ones in shopping malls.

Now it’s not that those ones are cleaner.

I, you know, shopping mall food
is gonna be the cleanest food ever.

Now it’s the reality
is that they can’t close

the store for the shopping
mall, but they could.

But the reality is something
could come from the KFC

and X-Dore and crawl into
your food and it wouldn’t

really be Suki as fault but
Suki would still get blamed.

Or vice versa, Suki is a rodent and roach
problem might crawl into the KFC next door

and your new chicken nugget is special.

Please don’t think about that
while you’re eating junk food.

I hope you’re not eating
that kind of food right now

while I’m saying this because you may have
ruined your meal and I apologize for that.

But the reality is every time you put
something in your mouth, you are taking a risk.

The Imperial household is going
to launch a YouTube channel.

Last year, they started an Instagram
where they were posting thirst traps.

It was like the Empress and
booty shorts and the Emperor,

you know, with a shirt off
doing dead lifts, that kind of stuff.

It was, it’s awesome.

I mean, if you haven’t looked at it,
you should absolutely go check out

the Imperial household of Japan’s Instagram
page and just, just, you know, get horny.

This year, they’ve decided
that that wasn’t enough.

The income from that isn’t enough for them.

They have more media in them.

They are going to start a YouTube channel.

The YouTube channel is going
to include press conferences.

Nature walks around the palace.

And I’m assuming pranks galore.

That’s right.

It’s going to be the Emperor
pulling down the Empress’s pants.

It’s going to be putting flower
in the Empress’s blow dryer.

So when she blows her head at all, it
gets all turns white on, it’s crazy stuff.

There’s a prince in there somewhere.

I don’t know what he’s going to
do, but I’m looking forward to it

because press conferences
sound really boring

and nature walks around
the Imperial Palace.

That’s very nice, but I don’t
imagine myself watching it

until we get some
pranks, just a prank, bro.

This week, because this story includes AI,

it just dominated the headlines
for the last like three days.

So deep A, I open AI.

The names of all the AI’s are very similar.

So anyways, Chachi
BT is what it’s actually is.

Started doing image.

So we have other image
and things where it’s

like you type in your
image you want it to make.

It makes the image, it’s really cool.

And it ruins the lives
of artists everywhere.

Well, open AI couldn’t be left in
the dust, couldn’t be left behind.

They created an image generator.

And one of the styles you
can do is a jibbly style image.

And this apparently has
overwhelmed the servers.

Like the guy who runs it,
Mr. Open AI, chat, Mr. GPT.

He said Tim Apple, I actually
probably have his name

written down and then I
now am refusing to say it.

And even if I could remember
it right now, I would not say it.

He was saying that there
were so many people generating

jibbly style pieces
of art, that it was like

melting their servers,
melting their CPU.

So they actually were
going to put a limit on it.

They were going to make
sure that people didn’t go crazy.

But that means this is
now flooded the internet.

Now, this is taken on because
me asaki, the guy who created

essentially the very noticeable
jibbly style of art, he hates AI.

They keep cutting to a clip where
he’s talking about how disgusting AI is.

But that’s actually out
of context a little bit.

So there’s this clip that
goes around with this

because he’s like, oh,
this lacks humanity.

And I would rather die
than see this and stuff.

These guys were doing
a presentation for him.

And they had an AI basically take a
structure and try to learn how to walk.

So it was walking in this
really awkward, creepy way.

And they were saying
like, if for your animation,

you could use animation like
this for the monsters and whatnot.

And then he got really offended.

And he actually was relating
it to a friend of his who

has physical difficulties of some
sort and who isn’t able to walk.

And he’s like, I wonder how
he would feel if he felt saw this.

I wonder, like, and
then he actually took it

off in his very honestly
unrelated direction.

But they’re taking that out of context.

So it’s kind of related, but it’s sort of,

I don’t know, I wouldn’t say
tangential, but more like parallel.

What he’s talking about is parallel

to what they’re actually
talking about in these news

stories, but they take
the clip and they put it in.

So this is sort of your media awareness.

I’m sure me as Aki actually hates the
idea of AI and art and things like that.

But the clip they’re showing
of him getting really angry

at these poor guys who
are really uncomfortable,

who are just presenting some
technology they had created.

This is about five, six years
ago before the whole AI boom.

That’s not actually
what he’s talking about.

He’s talking about this thing
you’ve made is like grotesque.

And I don’t think it has
any place in this sort

of the hopeful animation art style that I
try to create when I’m making my stories.

So that’s something to be aware
of if you read one of those stories,

not from an engineer’s Japan,
where they’re not going to

give you that excellent piece
of background information.

Yeah, the CEO of OpenAI,
he changed his profile pick

to a jibbly style version of his own face,
which is showing that even he’s like aware

of the actual distinct
style that’s being created.

Now the problem is the
argument about AI in the first place.

How did OpenAI learn
to make jibbly style art,

if it did not take jibbly
style art and learn

from it directly, which
is copyright violation?

This is kind of the problem
they’ve been talking about.

Like so clearly jibbly art
has been fed into this open AI.

Open AI is taking it and learned from it.

That’s okay.

What they’re supposed to do, but they didn’t
pay jibbly for the art that they used.

They didn’t ask if it was
okay to use this version.

They just went ahead and did it.

This is going to probably be a lawsuit.

Like if anyone’s going to sue
them, jibbly probably could do it

and could probably do it
successfully because I don’t know

if they’ve copy written the
style, but it is very distinct.

And it is every movie they
do has the very similar style.

Miyazaki is also quite famously a hardass.

So when they took, uh, I
forget what movie it was,

one of the older ones,
Mononoke, maybe they took one

of the jibbly movies and they
were going to release it in America

and Harvey Weinstein wanted to
cut it down to make it a little shorter.

He’s like, you know, all this is like
stupid emotion shit that you got in there.

Let’s cut some of that
out, make it a shorter movie.

It’ll grade it’ll fit better into
sort of the slots for the movies.

We maybe show more movies during the day.

It was that kind of like fiscal version
of movie making that Harvey Weinstein

would be on the side
of Miyazaki sent him a

samurai sword with a
single note that said no cuts.

And that is kind of a
threat that I will stab

you with a sword if you
try to cut up my movie.

So he is a bit of a hardass.

And again, he was just looking at a
technical presentation from some guys

and he went in them about how
inhumane it was and he was really awful.

He was actually really
awful to them because

he could’ve just said
this isn’t really for me.

I don’t really like this.

It doesn’t really apply
to what I would like

to do with my company
or my art and move on.

He didn’t.

He like reamed them
for how gross it was and

everyone was very uncomfortable in the
room and it was weirdly quite fun to watch.

Auto thefts are on the rise for
the third year in the row in Japan.

So in 2024 there were 6,080
auto thefts that’s up 318 from 2023.

Most of these cars do
not get like resold in Japan.

This is actually one of the more interesting
things I found about car theft in Japan

is what they do is they take the car and
they put it on a boat and they’ll take it

to like Vietnam or Cambodia or some
other country and they’ll resell the car

or they’ll break it down
into parts and then ship

it off to another country
and then rebuild it.

And the most popular car is to steal.

Like you would think
it was fancy luxury cars

mostly but actually it’s
like mini vans and stuff

more utilitarian things
because again they’re

going to sort of these
developing nations

and they want to sell them stuff they can
use so a mini van is far, far more useful

in a third world country than like a sports
car when you’re on dirt roads all the time

and what you really
need to do is transport

people to a worksite
or something like that.

Most of the thefts quite
sensibly are around Tokyo

and one of the biggest
problems is the technology

they’re using they’re
saying in three minutes

they now have this
basically car remote hacker

and it can like unlock
your car and start the

engine then they can
drive it away with that.

They can then you know copy the
key or remake the key or something.

So basically it’s all being
done with computers now.

It’s not like a cool guy
runs up and he jacks

the window and then
gets in the car and like

rubs two wires together
and starts the car.

Now it’s a very nerdy
doing on a laptop or

something and he unlocks
the car from a distance

using Wi-Fi and then
they get in and they drive

away and again they’re
driving it to a port

and this is in Aichi
this middle part of Japan

where the Toyota city is which was
actually created by Toyota the company.

There’s a lot of car
thefts there because

being a port city they
can actually steal the

car get it into a boat
really quick and then

get it out of the port and
on its way to its destination.

I don’t know how many
cars they put on a boat

but I’m assuming it’s a
lot which is this is like work.

Apparently in IT there are a lot
of luxury cars on the road which

is the ones they can sell to
China and other places like that.

So while I was saying
that isn’t the primary

target it is still a
target there are still

people who want to buy
expensive stolen cars and 2024 44.

1% of the cars were
not found or recovered.

So basically because
they’re being shipped out

to other countries
because they’re disappearing

from the country the
police aren’t able to

find them and again
they’re probably gone that

night or the next day like gone from the
country you will never see your car again.

So if you’re in Japan you
have a car please be careful.

We’ve covered a lot of
arrests on the Indonesia

pan we covered a lot of crimes and we’ve
covered a lot of like what you would call

almost meaningless crimes or
petty crimes or things like that.

This is an interesting one
because this woman was arrested

for taking 160 free items
from a convenience store.

So she basically walked into a convenience
store there’s the self-serve coffee machine

so you usually go to the clerk and you buy
a cup you take that cup and then you would

go to the machine you fill up the coffee
and you take like your creamer you put that

in and pay some sugar whatever
you like you put it in there.

That all those sort of condiment
style things those are free.

She walked in she didn’t buy coffee she had
a backpack she just started taking those

things and filling up her backpack so sugar
and creamers and everything else the like

cup syrup stuff which is I guess
sugar but not sugar I don’t know

I don’t drink coffee so none
of this is really familiar to me.

The total cost of the
160 item stolen was 345

yen so we’re talking
about like three dollars

maybe total but and again it’s the moral is
kind of the issue do you just let this go.

So this clerk went
over and he’s like oh all

the creamers and
sugars and stuff are gone

but we haven’t sold
that much coffee so they

checked the video
camera and they’re like

oh there’s that woman
with a backpack she just

stole it all to be let
it go so they called

the police I don’t know
how enthusiastic they

were like yeah this
lady just stole a bunch

of free stuff that’s not
actually okay they went

and found her picked her
up and she got arrested.

Japanese politicians
are weird now normally I

talk about the old men
normally I talk about

the old men politicians
who say something

gross and when I read
the first half of this

story my mind was oh this is going to be
an older Japanese politician he’s going to

be like in the 70s he’s
really gross he’s out

of touch and then it
turns out it’s a woman

talking to another woman which really sort
of turned it the element so my expectations

were under mine which
is a good thing I guess

so I guess women can
just be just as weird

and creepy as men
which equality I suppose

on March 24th they had
a house of counselors

committee on education
we’re meeting and

they were trying to
how to calculate teachers

over time this is very
important teachers in

Japan do a lot of unpaid
overtime they have breaks

that are unpaid they
do like school activities

as sometimes unpaid and they’re like you
know these people are working fifty sixty

seventy hours a week
but they’re only getting

paid thirty forty hours that’s not right we
have to calculate overtime what counts as

work and not work is
it volunteer should we

expect people to
volunteer stuff it’s a very

important thing Japan
doesn’t have enough teachers

so you need to make
teaching more appealing

and paying them for all
their hours is probably

going to be step one
to making more appealing

counselor stood up said
made some statements

and was very angry and
then another one replied

with I can clearly
understand that committee

member Kita has gotten angry with a truly
beautiful face which is weird I mean it’s

just a weird thing to
say like what does that

have to do with the other bit and why are
you saying it and so again my first thought

was seventy year old
creepy man saying that

like a thirty year old
forty year old counselor

member is beautiful
in his old creepy way

trying to put her down
but trying to compliment

her at the same time because he’s socially
unaware not capable something like that not

turns out this is
essentially an equal and

then it the question
of why like the old men

saying it I can’t understand the group in
a different time they grew up when saying

gross stuff was acceptable they never grew
out of that they never understood the world

has changed but this
is not that this is like

someone who is an
equivalency saying this

is weird creepy thing to
them and then of course

there was a media
protest the the kita said

like hey what is my
face after do it why are

you talking about my
body is inappropriate

of course later there
was the very standard

apology it’s weird cuz
when you call someone

beautiful do you
retract the statement do

you like cuz that’s the
classic Japanese one

as I retract my statement
but I yeah you know

I retract my statement
she’s not beautiful

like what do I say it
that so it’s really weird

I was very standard apology like I shouldn’t
know said that it was inappropriate I’m

sorry for the stress I
caused blah blah blah

when asked about her
intent which is again

the only thing I wanted
answered the response

was there were there was not much intention
which again begs the question of if there

wasn’t much intention why
did you do it in the first place

it just does that head right resting
next to the microphone this guy okay

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)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

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.