Grossing Podcast

I bought   a bicycle   about two   months ago   in Japan   has gotten  very   serious about  his bike’s  little

rules all   of a   sudden so   I don’t   know if   it was   I did   it I   don’t think   I’m that   famous or   popular

yet uh   what has   happened though  is they  haven’t   really changed  the rules  they’re just  going to 

enforce them   and they’ve   introduced fines  for bicycle  violations   so it’s   called the   blue ticket

system and   I think   it’s just   a different   kind of   ticket specific  for bicycles  so if  you use  your

phone while  riding your  bicycle   it’s a   12 000   yen fine   that’s the  biggest   one if   you run   a red   light

if you   don’t come   to a   complete stop  if you  like zip  past   pedestrians on  the   sidewalk and  stuff

if you   cause trouble  you’re   going to   get in   trouble and   you’re going   to get   a fine   you get   one of   these

blue tickets  I mean  I think  it’s   actually pretty   reasonable I  bought a  helmet I  know not  every

prefecture in  Japan   actually has  helmet   laws but   I bought   a helmet   not because  I was  worried   about

safety but  more because  I was  like I  don’t want  the cops  to stop  me and  give me  a hard  time   about

not wearing  a helmet  what they  want to  do then  is   promote this  and   advertise this  and make  sure

people know   what’s going  on now  you’re in  Japan   what is   the best   way to   introduce information  to

the citizens  of Japan  you make  a mini  anime and  you put  it on  the internet  it’s called  forever   safety

doki doki   cycling doki  doki is  the uh  your   heartbeat doki  doki doki  doki it’s  a youtube  video and  they

got the   dragon ball   z voice   actor to   play three  different   roles all   sexy cops   basically this  is

supposed to  be   like one  of   those visual  novels   and I  think   if it   was a  game   you would  choose   like which 

cop you  end   up dating  but   it’s just  sort   of giving  the   premise she  rides   her bicycle  she   commits a  crime

sexy cop  stops   her and  has   a talk  with   her about  how   you shouldn’t  be   committing crime  baby   you

should be  making   love to  me   and then  she   goes and   commits a  different   crime different  sexy   cop shows 

up and  then   gives her  a   little talk  about   how she  shouldn’t   be committing  crime   she should  be   spending

time with  him   again I’m  not   against this  I   think laws  should   be enforced  and   I think  if   you want  to

find people  for   breaking laws  there   are two  issues   that have  come   up the  first   one is  single   mothers

who maybe  don’t   have multiple  modes   of transportation  they   might just  have   a bicycle 

and if  you   have more  than   one kid  you   got to   put a  kid   on the  back   and a  kid   in the  front   that’s

illegal so  now   there’s these  poor   women who  want   to get  their   kids to  say   daycare or  school   so that 

they can  go   to work  or   something and  they’re   not legally  allowed   to get  them   there on  their   bicycle

which is  a   very common  way   of transporting  children   in Japan  if   you are  a   mom but   it’s also   brought up  a

secondary issue  of if  you’re   going to  be   fining people  for   breaking rules  you   have to  make

accommodations for  people so  they   don’t have  to   break the  rules   so this  is   leading people  in   Japan

to demand  sort   of bicycle  lanes   and I   will tell  you   I am  quite   happy to  ride   on the  sidewalk   in Japan 

I’m careful  I’m   not going  to   go too  fast   I’m not  going   to scare  pedestrians   I would  be   absolutely

terrified to  ride   on the  road   along with  traffic   because Japanese  drivers   at least  the   area the  area   I

live in   is famous  for   really bad  drivers   and they  scare   me I  walk   from my  house   to my  train   station

and I  would   say once  a   month I  almost   get hit  by a  car   and I  almost   get hit  by   a car  because

these are  people   who lived  in   this area  for a  long   time their  whole   life maybe  60 70  years

and they’re  like I  know   these roads  and   they’re barreling  down   the roads  they   do know  the   roads

they know  the   turns they  know   the bumps  they   know all  these   little things  about   them but  they   don’t know 

if someone’s  standing on  them   around a  corner   and they  take   corners and  they   just barrel  down   these roads 

it’s terrifying  I   would say  once   a month  I   come close  to   dying because  old   people are  just

overconfident in  their   driving abilities  in the  roads   on a  bicycle   along with  traffic   yeah I  just

I don’t  I   don’t trust  them   a bicycle  lane   would be  minimum   I actually  would   prefer a  larger   sidewalk

so I  could   ride on  the   sidewalk away  from   the cars  I’m   just too  scared   of the  cars   there was  a   list

published of  the   most profitable  media   franchises of  all   time at  the   time of   publishing because 

GTA 6  is   going to   come out  I   don’t know  if   that’s going  to   be included  it   wasn’t video  games

specifically like  a   specific thing  it   was sort  of   a all  -encompassing   thing because  we have  12   the top  12

number two  it   was just  surprising   how many  of   these are  actually   Japanese properties  so the  number   12

was Dragon  Ball   now Dragon  Ball   I assume  includes   the cartoon  the   video games  merch   other cards  whatever

everything else  they’ve   made that’s  connected   to Dragon  Ball   to get  it to  this   level number  11   was Wizarding  World

which is  a   Harry Potter  Wizarding   Wizarding World  sounds very  specific I  guess   they produce  Harry   Potter stuff 

or is  that   the actual   Harry Potter  amusement   park I’m  not   100 %  sure   number 10  is   Jump Comics  so   that’s going  to be 

Jump Comics  the   base comic  where   they produce  the   content the  animes   that spin  off   those or  copy   them

the merchandise  that   then is  expanded   from that  universe   so you  can   see how  they   have multiple 

properties within  the   umbrella of  Jump   Comics number  nine   Marvel I  mean   that’s pretty  much   given

number eight  Disney   Princess so  I   don’t know  I   guess that’s  all   the princesses  included   in one  thing

I guess  I’m   not 100  % sure  because if  it’s   just Marvel  I   guess it’s  every   Marvel property  included

number seven  I was  actually   very surprised  by this  it’s   Anpanman Anpanman  is   a Japanese  superhero   for little 

little kids  he’s   been around  for   like 50  years   maybe longer  I   hate him  I   hate everything  about   him I  think

he teaches  kids   really bad  lessons   I don’t  think   this is  the   kind of  show   you want  to   show your  children   I

banned it  in   my household  my   kids were  not   really allowed  to   watch Anpanman  and   I was  very   against Anpanman  from   the

beginning because  his   solution to  every   problem is  to   punch biking  biking   man is  his   uh nemesis  his

his his  opponent   in all  these   stories uh  he’s   doing something  nice   um uh   biking man  wants   to destroy   it

or he’s  building   something vice  versa   and they’re  always at  odds   functionally what  the   show is  is

Anpanman goes  around   and helps   people and  then   biking man’s  well   I want  some   of that  too   so I  I’m   just

gonna go  take   it and  really   if Anpanman  oh   and then  Anpanman   punches him  in   the face  and   that’s it 

end of  the   story but  if   Anpanman just  gave   biking man  some   of the  food   like he’s  giving   everybody else 

he runs  into   problem solved  so   his kindness  extends   to everyone  except   biking man  and   that seems  to be 

the core  issue   I do  not   not a  fan   of Anpanman  it   teaches kids  to   punch their  problems   which I  disagree

with number  six   Mario which  I   think would  be   Nintendo but  I   guess it’s  the   Mario franchise 

specifically this  is   what I  would   like a  little   bit of  explanation   as to  what   is included  in this 

because to  me   Mario would   be part   of Nintendo  Nintendo   therefore would  be   number five  or   lower

because they  also   include other  things   but number  six   sorry number  five was  Star   Wars number  four

Mickey Mouse  number   three Winnie  the   Pooh I’m  surprised   Winnie the  Pooh   was that  high   it’s been  around

forever but  I’m   surprised it’s  as   large as  it   is number   two also  very   surprised by  this one  Hello   Kitty

and number  one   not a  big   surprise Pokemon  that   list of  12   items six  half of  the   top 12  are

Japanese franchises  so   I I  think   the reason  I   wanted to  go   over this  list   is because  half   of the  top   12

franchises media  and   enterprises in  the   world are  all   Japanese which  was   a bigger  surprise   than I  thought   I was  like   oh there’s  gonna be  a couple  I   didn’t think 

Hello Kitty  was   gonna be  as   high as  it   was I  didn’t   think Anpanman  was   gonna be  as   high as  it   was because  we’re   talking about  the   world but  having

half of   the top  12   franchises come  from   the same  country   is pretty  impressive   a man  in   his 70s  was   defrauded of   320 million  yen   including

cash gold  bars   gold coins  in a  row   in a  romance   and investment  scam   and I  feel   really bad  because

he’s in  his   70s which  would   lead me  to   believe if  he’s   falling for  this   kind of  scam   he’s very  lonely

he’s probably  very   bored he  has a  lot   of money  but   he’s not  doing   anything with  it   so

yeah I  feel   bad because  it’s   it’s that  isolation   of maybe   age that  has   made helped  him   fall into  this   trap because  he   just wants  to   have something  happening   in his  life

he gave  21   gold bars  and   16 gold  coins   total side  story   here I  have   no idea  where   to buy  gold   bars or  gold   coins and  if   I had  gold   bars or  gold   coins I  would   have no  idea   what to  do   with them 

it’s one  of   those things  where   like

conceptually it  seems   like oh  yeah   you have  gold   bars and  they’re   valuable but  if you  don’t   know how  to   sell them  they’re   not valuable  anymore   I don’t  know   what to  do   with a  gold   bar I   don’t know  how   to get  a   good good  price

and 23   million yen  in   cash he  made   10 payments  over   a variety  of   times so  a   combination

he was  on   his phone  or   computer and  he   clicked on  an   internet ad  and   he started  talking   online line  is   the messaging  system   that’s really  really famous  in   Japan

to a  woman   named Sato  now we  would   have to  put   woman in  quotes   because we  don’t   know if  it   was really  woman

this being  the   internet my  base   assumption creepy  dude   but the  creepy   dude is  leading   him on  he’s   sort of   catfishing him 

and this  70   year old  man   has ended  up   developing feelings  for   her because  he   enjoyed the  conversations

he enjoyed  the   attention again  it   sort of  leads   me to  believe   he was  very   lonely and  isolated   and which  is   a big  problem

she introduced  him   to an   AI investment  system   and he  then   downloaded a  fake   app that  displayed   profits

so basically  he   would put  money   into this  system   and then  it   would change  would   grow he  would   get more  money   every time 

and he  was like  wow   this is  amazing   but it  was   just like  a   gift that  someone   had produced  or   I don’t  know   if it  was   being

manipulated in  real   time or  what   or it  was   just updated  irregularly   or it  was   just like  an   AI app  that

will just  like   let’s just  keep the  number   going up  but it  was   fake it  was   not connected  to   anything real

they then  convinced   him that  it   would be  better   if a   representative came  to   collect the  gold   personally

and they’re  saying   he could  get   three billion  yen   in profit  if   they gave  him   x amount  of   gold

it would  require   a service  fee   so if  you   gave him  the   gold plus  a   little bit  of   cash then  we’ll   put

that in  you’ll   get this  massive   payout a  little   while later  when   he was   unable to   withdraw any  of

his returns  that’s   when he  got   suspicious so  he   went and  he   was on  the   app and  he’s   like you   know what 

I have  millions   of yen  in   here I  just give  them a  lot   of money  it’s   time for  me to  withdraw   a little

money because  I got  to   buy something  I   got to  pay   for something  or   I got   to like  fix   up something  in

the house  couldn’t   withdraw any  money   and that’s  when it  became   a realization  that   yes this  is   a

scam he  went   to the  police   honestly there’s  not   much the  police   can do  about   it which  is   really sad 

this is  an   ongoing problem  in   Japan a  lot of  the scams  are   targeting older  people   and they’re 

more easily  manipulated   because they  want   to have  this   interaction they  want   to be   entertained they 

want to  have   connection with  humanity   and and  that   is the  bit   they’re exploiting  which   makes it  you   know

extra gross  I   made a   quiz for  this   but okay  I   had a  really   bad night  last   night I  got   home from  work

I went  to   bed I   don’t think  anyone   in my  family   taking Dave  out   so I  went   to bed   Dave sleeps  next

to me  Dave   wouldn’t go  to sleep  he   was up  every   hour or  so   making noise  so I  didn’t   sleep very  well

I get  up   in the  morning   my son’s  taking   my lunch  I got  really   like I  was   furious it’s  unreasonable

he saw  food   that was  wrapped   up for  lunch   he took  it   for lunch  when I  think   about it  logically   it’s

fine but  in   the moment  emotionally   I was  like   he stole  my   lunch like  a   bully um  so   I was  in   a bad  mood

but I’m  getting   it back  together   again it’s  one   of those  things   it’s moods  emotions   they’re just 

something you  have   to learn   to control  yourself   there’s not  much   you can  do   about it  but

I forgot  to   set up  someone   to talk  to   me to  do   the quiz  that   I’d set  up I  was   doing quizzes  for   a

while and  they   were really  good   and then  I   got really  busy   and I  just   wasn’t having   that forethought 

to organize  someone   to join  me   for a  quiz   I would  I   enjoyed doing  that   I want   to do   it again  if   you

listen to  an   introduced pen  and   you would  like   to participate  in a  quiz you  can   send me  an   email

at chuckmabeefchest  at   gmail .com  or   you can  send   me a  voice   message at  speakpipe  .com slash  chuckmabeefchest

and I  will   arrange a  time   we can  have   a discord  call   or a  zoom   call and  you   can answer  some   goofy

questions we  can   have a   talk about  where   you’re from  and   what you  know   about Japan  what   you like 

about Japan  the   conversation is  the   best part  I   had a  really   great conversation  before   we talked  for

like 40  or   50 minutes  and   I only  took   10 minutes  because   the quiz  part   and put  it in  on the  stuff

that was  relevant   to Japan  but   had a  really   great conversation  about   where that  person   was from 

really really  enjoyed it  if   you would  like   to have  a   similar conversation  I   would love  to   have you  as a 

guest on  the   show but  I’ll   include the  quiz   and you  can   kind of  try   to guess  the

answer and  then   we can  move   on so   9 p  .m.   this should  be   a crossing  the   famous should  be a  crossing

I talked  about   it last  time   or the  time   before where  some   lady had  like   veered right  and   like

body checked  a   little girl  onto   the road  it   was really  awful   a man  in   his 50s  walks   out into  the

street and  he   puts a   piece of  cardboard   down he  pours   a liquid  on   it and  here’s   the quiz  a   starts

rolling in  it   b starts  removing   his clothes  c   sets it  on   fire or   d walks  away   and people  start   to slip 

on it  that   was a  pretty   good quiz  if   you didn’t  know   the story  uh   it would  be really  hard   to guess 

because as  soon   as I  say   50 year  old   man and  you’re   a fan  in   English news  Japan   you’ve been  listening   for

a while  you   know it  should   be something  weird   and sexual   but in   this case  it   wasn’t it  was   c is  the

correct answer  he   sets it  on   fire you  know   what happened  after   that it  was   actually quite  a   large

flame so  the   liquid he  poured   on it   probably kerosene  or   something like  that   it seemed  like

it wasn’t  gasoline   gasoline tends  to   go up  very   violently this  went   up quickly  he   walks away  police

show up  and   they douse  it   with fire  but   kerosene or  whatever   liquid he   used doesn’t  mix   with the 

water so  that   actually just  spreads   the flames  out   and then   other cops  out   puts more  water   on it 

spreading the  flames   even further  so   in my   view everyone’s  kind   of failing  at   the job  because

there was  something   written on  the   cardboard but  because he  threw   it down  and   set it  on   fire

no one  could   actually see  what   was written  on   it which  means   you’re failing  you   had a  message   you

want to  deliver and  you’re   failing at  delivering   your message  the   police come  they   want to  put   out

the fire  and   they end  up   spreading the  fire   they failed  at   their job  then 30  minutes   later the  man

turns himself  in to  the   police and  they   think something  was   written on  the   cardboard now  the   next

day we  found   out something  was   written on  the   cardboard because  this   guy’s x  account   was found 

and they  showed   that he  made   preparations it  was   like uh  something  .com i   think it  was   his name  .com

and then  it   said japan  has   been taken  over   now we  have   to assume  logically   speaking he’s  talking   about

foreign people  have   taken over  japan   we don’t  know   because his  sentence   isn’t actually  complete   enough so 

japan has  been   taken over  could   be aliens  it   could be  foreign   people it  could   be uh 

capitalism who  knows   but i  think   if you’re  going   to do  your   manifesto you  can   do a  single   like a 

manifesto in  one   or two  sentences   it has  to   be a  complete   sentence with  a   full idea  you   can’t just 

say something’s  happened   you have  to   say who   and the   why so  foreigners   have taken  over   japan good 

maybe the  problem   or maybe  he   was being  smart   because saying  that   might actually  be   hate speech 

whereas you  just   say japan  has   been taken  over   and you’re  vague   about it  it’s   not technically  hate

speech because  you’re   not attacking  any   group or  individual   or anything  like   that that  actually

might be  what   happened here  maybe   he’s smarter  than   i’m giving  him   credit for  he’s a  50   year old 

man i  don’t   give 50  year   old men  in   interviews japan  stories   any credit  at   all because  i   just

immediately default  to   creepy old  dude   creeping doing  creepy   old dude  things   we do   know that  he’s   a

member of  san   seto san  seto   is the  right   wing political  group   in japan  that   is trying  to   basically

say foreigners  out   we don’t  want   foreigners here  we   want to  go   back to  traditional   japanese values 

make japan  a   great gate  make   japan great  again   all those  kind   of things  are   included in  the   san seto 

message it’s  pretty   predictable this  guy   being a  part of  that turned  out   to be  also   a bit  of   a

surprise because  his   job is  hip  -hop teach  a   teacher at  a   hip -hop  academy   now the  only   reason that 

surprised me  because   if you  appreciate   hip -hop  there’s   a certain  segment   or population  that   would be 

given sort  of i  would   say more  credit   for the  creation   and the  dissemination   of hip  -hop   maybe at 

this point   it could  be   like k  -pop   other stuff  they   all use  hip  -hop elements  but   if you  like   hip -hop  i

think you  have   to appreciate  a   certain element  of   the population  so   him being  embracing   that cultural 

aspect of  the   world and  then   rejecting   foreigners in  japan   seems very  contradictory   to me  so   how can  you

go around  saying   you want  traditional   japan traditional  japanese   stuff but  you   also want  to

do hip  -hop   and you  listen   to urban  music   it might  be   the most  white   way i  can   say that  but   you know 

what i  mean   like it’s  it’s   like there’s  a   dichotomy going  on   there where  he’s   like got  this   international

flavor to  the   thing he  does   but he’s  also   got these  very   conservative   views but  that   also might  just

because he’s  15   he’s been  hitting   the head  too   much in  his   life and  he’s   gone slightly  insane

because it  seems   like every  japanese   man at  50   has gone  slightly   insane a  44   year old  junior   high

school teacher  was   arrested for  uh   groping this  is   chika uh  groping   a woman  on   the train 

uh now  that   in itself  is   not much  of   a story  uh   we see  this   kind of  story   all the  time   but often  the

guy gets  away   because it’s  very   hard to  prove   only recently  do   i know  like   i’m not   even sure  if   they

have cameras  on   all the  trains   but i  knew   like most  of   the trains  i   took didn’t  have   cameras on 

them and  i   it was  one   of those  things   i wanted  to   i would  have   been a  proponent   for i’d  be   like you 

got to  put   cameras on  the   trains so  you   can catch  these   people so  they   can actually  get   in trouble 

because they  would   do like  grabbing   ladies all  over   the place  uh   they would  go   on the  internet   and get 

a whole  bunch   of these  creepy   dudes together  and   they would  all   like crowd  around   a woman  at   the

same time  like   it’s terrifying  stuff   that they’re  organizing   this into  like   a little  wolf   packs of 

perversion in  this   case there  is   a silver  lining   to the  story   because the  woman   he molested  was   an

undercover cop  so   it’s a  lot   harder to  say   anything or  do   anything when  the   person is  a   personal

authority in  your   society   identified   herself as  a   police officer  said   you’re under  arrest   for

molestation i  have   no recollection  of   pressing my  crotch   against the  woman   so it  turns   out my  image

is the  creepy   dude sidles  up   to a  woman   and either  pushes   his body  against   her or  like   touches her 

with his  hands   it seems  like   this guy  bent   his knees  at   an awkward  angle   and tried  to   push his  crotch

up into  the   woman’s butt  so   you got  to   imagine it’s  really   hard to  imagine   just this  is   the problem  with

this being  an   audio format  i   would stand  up   and show  you   on the  video   but there’s  no   point i  99   of the 

people who  listen   to ningenew  japan   they listen  in   audio format  so   he’s doing  a   partial squat  into

the woman  standing   in front  of   him i  would   really like  to   know how  busy   the train  was   because if  it

was empty  this   would look  particularly   weird but  it’s   also i  don’t   know i  do   always end  up   in the 

position of  like   what did  he   expect to  happen   did he  expect   her to  go   like oh  i   like this  this   is fun 

i mean  in   pornography   that is  what   would happen  that’s   what   pornography   would teach  you   is like  you

you push  yourself   into the  woman   and she’s  like   oh this  is   nice and  then   you know  something   happens

uh the  woman   the police  officer   is part  of   the anti  -groping   patrol so  maybe   cameras are  good   i

think anti  -groping   patrols even  better   uh this  happened   at 8  25   in the  morning   i mean  it’s   i’m

never horny  at   8 25  in   the morning  because   i just  it   takes me  a   long time  to   get started  like   i’m not 

going to  be   creepy and  horny   until after  10   o ‘clock  i   think that’s  pretty   much fair  and   i don’t  drink

coffee so  it   takes i  have   to you  know   get warmed  up   naturally uh  for   seven minutes  so   this is  a   seven

minute semi  -squat   i mean  okay   we’re gonna  give   everyone credit  for   when they  do   something   that’s

pretty   impressive he  did   a seven  minute   squat he  bent   his knees  to   push against  her   and he  probably

thought if  he   didn’t use  his   hands he  might   get out  of   it so  there   might be  a   secondary   implication

of like  he   has his  hand   holding on  to   the ring  up   for balance  and   he’s not  touching   her with  his

hand maybe  he   has his  hand   in the  pocket   and then  if   he rolls  with   the train  he   bumps into  her   and he 

could say  it   was accidental  it   was my  supposition   there’s no  nothing   to actually  say   that’s what 

actually what  he   was thinking  she   followed him  off   the train  he   was arrested  and   i would  like   to see 

a lot  more   arrests like  this   because i  actually   think it’s  funny   kumamoto city  worker   so he  was   in

the in  the   local government  he’s   suspended for  four   months uh  because   he spent  93   hours watching  porn   at

work and  manga   but i  think   the porn  might   be the  more   important thing  uh   he also  would   be at  home

and download  videos   or images  off   the internet  put   them on  a   usb and  then   bring that  to   work put  the   usb

into his  computer   at work  and   then watch  that   at work  so   i don’t  know   if he  was   so obsessed  he   was

watching at  home   and work  or   if he  was   like curating  a   selection from  home   to bring  to   work so  he   would

have a  better   more productive  day   he had  his   pay cut  in   2018 for  browsing   non -work  work   he had  his   pay

cut in  2018   for browsing  non  -work related  sites   the excuse  is   the excuse  i   now basically  there   is one 

all -encompassing  excuse   for any  sort   of negative  behavior   in japan  he   said work  related   stress and 

lack of  ethical   considerations   there was  a   blurring of  personal   and   professional   life but  if   you’ve

already been  caught   for something  and   you’ve already  got   in trouble  for   something and  then   you do  it   more

and i  think   av is   more noticeable  so   your co  -workers   are going  to   notice you’re  looking   at this  your

co -workers  are   going to  be   uncomfortable   by this  that’s   really you’re  going   to get  caught   and you’re  going

to get  in   trouble i  think   if my  whole   thing about  um   doing stuff  at   work that  you’re   not supposed  to   do

is you  can’t   inconvenience   anyone else  a   lot of  the   stories we  do   in japan  about   people in  the

government   specifically   getting in  trouble   for stuff  doing   stuff at  work   that they’re  not   supposed

to do  is   because someone  reports   them and  that   someone who  reports   them is  probably   in my  view   been

inconvenienced   by them  or   disgusted by  like   so maybe  they’re   very anti  -pornography   they would  be

disgusted by  this   behavior that  is   where you  have   to you  have   to make  sure   everyone around  you   is

at least  ambivalent   it would  be   better if  they   were satisfied  with   you as  a   co -worker  but   at least 

ambivalent they  don’t   care about  you   or what  you   do and  then   you have  some   boundaries you  can   push but 

if you  push   too far  past   those   boundaries   you’re going  to   get in  trouble   and if  you   piss off  your

co -workers  you’re   absolutely   going to  get   in trouble  so   at least  buy   your co  -workers   lunch or  something

i don’t  know   what would  balance   the scales  in   this instance  but   this guy  clearly   just was  in   his own 

world and  his   own world  was   just full  of   naked ladies  youtuber   nana has  a   fan page  from   500 yen  a

month this  will   include diary  and   illustration so  if   you’re a  fan   of this  vtuber   you can  you   know see 

her fake  diary   entries i  don’t   know if  they’re   real or  fake   but i’m  just   going to  assume   if you’re  doing

a vtubing  thing   you’re creating  a   character that  creator   that character  has   a diary  and   in that 

diary you  you   make up  stuff   that happens  every   day uh  but   there are  different   tiers like  patreon   and

stuff there  are   always   different tiers  for   subscriptions   the cheapest  one   is 500  yen   the

most expensive  is   100 000  yen   a month  and   it’s called  the   idle girlfriend  plan   you get  one  -on -one 

calls i  don’t   know if  they’re   video calls  or   just phone  calls   with nana  you   get exclusive  gaming

sessions so  you   can play  video   games with  nana   and currently  there   is only  one   slot available  so

to make  it   rare they’ve  made   just one  slot   so one  person   can become  nana’s   fake boyfriend  who’s   paying

for it  uh   this they  are   considering adding  more   slots because  of   course there  are   a certain  amount

of people  who   are interested  in   it once  one   person sort  of   opens that  door   and one  person   does it 

other people  are   more likely  to   do it  other   people are  more   likely to  do   the same  thing   or spend  the

same amount  of   money because  they   see it  as   a viable  option   the only  problem   was like  if   i was

paying 100  000   yen for  the   girlfriend   experience i  would   want my  girlfriend   to be  sort   of exclusive 

so once  i   found out  she   was getting  100   000 from  someone   else like  i   understand the  money   situation

she needs  to   make her  money   i’d be  like   no but  you’re   not really  my   girlfriend   anymore you’re  just

everyone’s   girlfriend and  i’d   be a  little   sad and  i   guess that’s  when   she could  up   the price 

so you  could   get it  to   a certain  point   where okay  five   other guys  want   to have  the   girlfriend

experience if  you’re   willing to  pay   six million  six   hundred thousand  yen   then you  get   exclusivity

because you’re  paying   for the  slots   those guys  would   have taken  and   maybe she  could   spend more  time

doing it  and   i’m wondering  now   if it’s  a   team or  other   people who  just   make it  all   seem

like it’s  exclusive   uh this  is   a waste  of   money please  don’t   do this 

a senior  female   manager has  gotten   in trouble  for   sexual harassment  and   this is  just   so refreshing 

in news  japan   we have  so   many 50  year   old men  who   have this  just   story that  i’ve   now actually 

it’s become  a   blasé thing  a   woman in  her   50s has  been   reprimanded she  dressed   up this  was   like sort 

of an  event   a party  for   her division  and   a couple  other   divisions that  were   close to  hers   uh in  the

government she  dressed   up as   myaku myaku  which   is the  very   weird virus  looking   mascot from  expo

uh there  will   be it’s  like   a ring  a   red ring  with   multiple   eyeballs it  is   very off  -putting

she was  dressed   up as  that   at the  company   party oh  this   wasn’t government  this   was a  company   party

there were  30   employees from  multiple   divisions she  made   a male  subordinate   put on  a   costume like  a

skin -tight  costume   with bells  and   strings now  there   was a  certain   area emphasized  uh   you could  say   the

string might  have   been more  like   a bow  and   it was  a   certain area  and   then the  bells   were placed  very

specifically so  that   it would  look   like a  certain   thing then  she   directed other  employees   to go  up   and

worship his  lower   abdomen uh  that   people didn’t  want   to uh  but   they felt  uncomfortable   they felt  forced

a department  director   was also  recommended   for not  stopping   her so  he   was in  the   room he  saw   her doing 

this and  he   didn’t get  up   and stop  her   so he’s  also   gotten in  trouble   but she  did   this and  i   again

what is  going   on in  your   head that  you   think this  is   a good  idea   i’m going  to   dress up  one   of my 

co -workers  i’m   going to  make   them i’m  going   to make  other   co -workers  come   up and  worship   his crotch  area

that has  now   been dressed  up   with like  string   and ribbons  and   bells to  emphasize   it uh  and   this is 

team building  i   don’t know  so   maybe we’re  going   to have  a   ninja news  japan   meetup a  party   and at  that

party we’ll  do   something   similar and  we’ll   see if  we   all feel  more   connected or  really   grossed out 

and i  can   tell you  which   one if  i’m   wearing the  costume   i can  tell   you which  one   it’s going  to   be you

Sweet Potato Podcast

We have an update from two weeks ago. We had the guy who was drinking at a bar with a woman,

and he started getting her really drunk. And clearly, purposefully, he had her drink 32 shots.

And if I remember correctly, it was in a 90 -minute or a two -hour period. It was way

too short a time to be drinking that much. And I thought, like, 32 shots is a lot,

but how much is that? Because I have no idea. So I went and did the rough math, and it turns out

it’s two bottles of tequila. So he had this woman drink two bottles of tequila, and then when she

was getting sort of blackout drunk, he was dragging her essentially to a love hotel. Now, he claimed

when he was arrested that he was taking her to a love hotel so that he could take care of her,

where I think we all know the reality of what he was doing. He was getting her blackout drunk,

and he was fully intending to take advantage of the situation. He called the police because he

realized something’s gone terribly wrong. This woman is in a lot of trouble. So as a result

of this forced drinking, now the thing is, I don’t know how to say it. He forced her to drink,

but he didn’t force her to drink. He got her drunk, and then once she got so drunk,

she, of course, was more susceptible to drinking more. And she drank so much,

she actually died a few days later. I said at the end of the story that it’s clear what he was

intending to do. This was planned out. And as far as I was concerned, this was murder. Maybe not,

you know, first degree murder. I don’t actually know the Japanese system and what kinds of murder

they have in Japan, because I know America, North America has manslaughter, third, second,

and first degree murder. So manslaughter is essentially by accident. Third degree murder would

be in an act of passion, so not planned out. Second degree murder would be sort of premeditated,

and then first degree murder is like you’ve set up the whole situation. This was planned well in

advance. It was clear you had full intent to do the thing. He had a plan, which is why I think it

should certainly be something greater than manslaughter, probably second degree murder,

because he planned to get her that drunk. He didn’t realize he was going to kill her,

but he did plan to get her that drunk. And I said it would be a really good thing if he gets

severely punished. Now in Japan, a lot of these crimes, a lot of these guys, they kind of get away with it

because Japan’s very light on these crimes, but it seems to be taking small steps forward because

this man was given 14 years in prison. And the judge said it was because it was very clear that

he fully intended to rape this woman. But since he clearly intended to do this, this was all planned,

and so he should get severely punished. Prosecutors were asking for 16 years, so the judge didn’t give

him the full sentence, but he gave him a pretty good amount. It is very possible that you have heard of

Punch the Monkey. I have not talked about Punch the Monkey on Ninja News Japan because Punch the Monkey,

little monkey, very cute. Yeah, great. But not much of a story there. People love tragic little animals.

Punch the Monkey was rejected by his mother. And so the group, the family, the clan, I don’t know what

you call a pack of monkeys anymore. The group of monkeys had kind of rejected him. He was getting

a lot of sympathy for him. Fair enough. He’s a cute little monkey. It turns out last week, Punch got a

girlfriend. He was seen hanging out with a female Makau Monkey, just like nuzzling each other and taking

care of each other. And then one of the adult monkeys is actually sort of taking him under her

wing. So he’s actually getting some affection. Now, I did see a thing on the internet saying like,

Makau Monkeys are very strong. And if they wanted to actually hurt or kill Punch, they would have.

So they’re not doing as much as they could. If they wanted to hurt him, like really, really hurt him,

he would have been hurt. So they’re actually saying like, yes, this is social integration.

This is problematic. It’s tough. But they’re not actually like rejecting him to the point where he’s

actually in danger. But that’s all irrelevant because of course, with popularity on the internet

comes scams. And it’s just a very natural sort of one, two things. So Punch the Monkey got popular.

Therefore, people are like, how can I, as someone not related to this, take advantage of Punch the

Monkey and his popularity? And maybe I could make some money off it. Well, fake Instagram accounts

popped up. Fake X accounts popped up. Fake lots of accounts popped up. And they’re trying to get money,

basically. So the first one that came up was Instagram. And it was the care. He claimed to be

the caretaker of Punch. He says, I am the devoted caretaker of Punch. Here are pictures of Punch and me.

And it was all just recycled images from maybe the zoo or the news or things like that so that you

could actually get some pictures up there. Quickly increased to 80 ,000 followers. And there was a link.

And if you click the link, it was a link requesting donations to Punch, which was going to go directly to

this non -Punch related person who was then fully taking advantage of Punch. And then,

the first two stories may be very sad about people. Like a monkey can’t even be happy

without someone trying to take advantage of it. Can’t try. It’s bullshit.

Leave Punch alone. Don’t try to capitalize on Punch. Just leave the little monkey alone. He’s had a hard

time. The zoo is saying like, we’re not setting up this kind of account. If you want to donate,

you can donate to the zoo. That money goes as much to Punch as it does to every other animal in the zoo.

But we will never put up like a fundraising thing for a person. The implication of the Instagram

account was like, if this person, the caretaker got enough money, they were going to take Punch

out of the zoo and like raise them at home, which seems worse. Like monkeys should be raised with

monkeys. I had another question. I was reading all these stories and I was reading stories about Punch.

And I kind of had a sudden thought. I was like, why would you open a zoo? It seems like a weird

thing to open. Like just sitting around and be like, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to

get animals that don’t belong in this climate and I’m going to bring them here. I’m going to,

it’s going to be really hard to take care of them, but I’m going to do that. Like I understand

devotion to animals and I understand science and things like that, but zoos, the more I think about

zoos seem like a really bad idea and not particularly beneficial. Like I guess, uh,

safari parks would, it would be better where the animals can roam around and stuff.

I went to the Nagoya zoo once and it had, uh, timber wolves and Nagoya in the summer,

like every day is like 32, 35, maybe 40 degrees. That’s really normal in the summertime. And it’s

super, super humid. I as a Canadian think I’m going to die constantly in the summer in Japan.

Timber wolves were not having a better time than me. They didn’t belong in this climate. They didn’t

belong any, any of these places. Just absolutely do not take timber wolves out of the mountains of

Canada and bring them to the hottest, one of the hottest summers in the world and just leave them

out. Cause they were just lying on the ground like, Oh my God, I’m going to die. I wish I was dead.

It was that kind of thing. I felt so bad for those timber wolves. A 63 year old, uh, government

employee submitted a time off request. Very normal thing to submit. You want to take some time off.

It’s your right as an employee, certainly as one of the government of Japan. Uh, he wanted more than

100 days off to take a cruise. So you can see where the issue is. This guy’s like, Hey, I want to take

off a big chunk of the year, like one third of the year so that I can go on a cruise that goes around

the world. Uh, his supervisor apparently seems to have lost his mind over this. The supervisor

verbally warmed him a super, his supervisor verbally warned him twice, issued two written warnings and

advised him to quit twice. So he’s had at least six meetings where his supervisor is like, no, I don’t

want you to take a hundred days off. No, you’re not taking a hundred days off. Here’s a written piece

of paper that says, do not take 100 days off. And I I’m telling you, it would be better if you quit

than to take a hundred days off. Do not take a hundred days off. This guy’s like, you know what

I’m going to do? Go take a hundred days off. He said this man, I will not submit a resignation letter.

And then went on his holiday. He’s like, yeah, you can fire me if you want to fire me for taking a

hundred days off. But the fact that you want me to quit actually tells me you probably can’t fire me for

this, which means I can take my time off and there’s very little you could do about it. And

we all love to kind of stick into supervisors. Those supervisors comes up like, that’s what you

get, man, because I don’t care about you. I’m taking my cruise around the world. He went to 10

countries, including Singapore, South Africa, and the United States. So you can see like he was kind

of doing like a Southern hemisphere tour around the world. That’s pretty cool. He had a four day work

week. So this is a man who, when he hit 60, retired and was hired on essentially part

time. But four days a week is like very, you know, it’s more than just part time, but he’s

got a four day work week. So he has a four day work weeks taking that into account. He

has accrued vacation days. So in total, when he returned, he had taken 109 days off in total,

but it only missed 14 days of work. So the question then is, can you actually fire someone

for missing 14 days of work? Now in America, where it’s like at will kind of stuff, you could

probably fire him for sneezing at the wrong time. In Japan, you have very strong labor laws. So you

can’t just fire people. You need to be able to prove things and justify it. It’s actually very

difficult to fire an employee who has had multiple contracts. This guy has been working at this

government agency for 20 years, making him a long -term employee, making him very difficult to

fire. And so they’ve decided that he’s going to finish out his contract this year. But when it gets to

the renewal, so when you get past 65 and you’re rehired in this kind of situation as a retiree,

you get a one -year contract that gets renewed every year. They have decided to not renew his

next contract after this fiscal year. The man, when they spoke to him said, these are the facts

and I do not intend to dispute them. So he’s like, yeah, I took a hundred days off because I wanted

to take a hundred days off. They want to fire me for that. They want to not hire me back.

Man, I’m retired anyways. I don’t care. Trump wants Japan to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz.

And I mean, this is, he wants everyone to take care of this problem that he’s created.

The Japanese prime minister, Takeiichi, just recently went to America and spoke to the

president. He made that really weird Pearl Harbor joke, which I don’t think was a joke because it

wasn’t funny. I don’t think he gets what humor is. The people who defend him who say he’s making

jokes. I’m like, I don’t think you guys get jokes. He’s not, he’s just saying offensive things.

That’s not a joke. That’s not humor, but I don’t know what to do about that.

The problem really is the Japanese prime minister is bound by rules. So it seems like America

with Trump in charge has done away with the rule of law. So he, Trump just does what he wants. He

started this war without Congress’s approval. That would never happen in Japan. And that is one

of the things I like about Japan. It’s just previous story where we had like, there are legal rail

guards on how you can and can’t fire people. And there’s protection for workers’ rights. And that’s

why people can keep jobs even when they have a disagreement with their boss or something like

that. Those are good for society because it means that people just average people don’t get abused as

much, which is a good thing. Abusing the military is a very similar situation. You have Trump. He’s

start taking troops, airplanes, whatever, sent them to the Middle East. And he’s just like

killing kids by blowing up schools. I do like the way they claimed that they didn’t blow up the

school with the missile that they own that probably no other country has. Certainly not one in that

region. When Takeuchi comes, she would actually have to get permission. She couldn’t just like move

ahead without the permission of the government. She couldn’t actually like, she would have to get a

vote to actually make something like this happen. If she wanted to send, let’s say, destroyers to the

Strait of Hormuz and actually like aid in America’s efforts, which she, I would bet deep down inside,

doesn’t want to do. Because while America and Iran have a very negative relationship,

Iran and Japan actually have a relatively positive relationship because they buy a lot of oil in

Japan from Iran directly. So they’re good customers and they don’t want to mess up that relationship.

Some Japanese oil tankers have been allowed to go through the Strait of Hormuz, whereas American

tankers would not be able to go. And again, that is the soft power that Japan is trying to build.

A lot of Asian countries are now, strong Asian countries are trying to compete in soft power

politics. So China is doing a lot of like rebuilding of infrastructure in Africa. Japan goes around,

does a lot of humanitarian and aid projects because when you get to a situation like this,

they’re like, oh yeah, we’re going to blow up any American tanker that comes through. We’re trying

to get America’s oil. And then they’re like, oh, but those Japanese guys, they were really nice to

us before. We’re going to let them go because they’re cool. And that’s what soft power is. When you get to a

situation like this, you have the ability to sort of deal with the political difficulties of having

two of your associates fighting. Takeji was noncommittal and said, no decision has been

made on whether to send any destroyers, which is basically the closest thing to saying we are not

going to send any destroyers. The other interesting part is this is also the same government that actually

took real time to discuss the legality of should the self -defense force in Japan be sent in should

a Godzilla -like occurrence happen, like incident. So if Godzilla came up, are we legally allowed to

use the self -defense force was an actual discussion they had. Now that’s hypothetical. It’s just for fun,

but they were actually saying like the real legalities of it because the self -defense force can only be

deployed against an invading attacker, someone with intent. And as Godzilla does not represent a nation,

he is not attacking in that way. So legally the self -defense force should not be deployed.

But if you take in a different way of thinking and see Godzilla as a natural phenomenon,

the self -defense force, the self -defense force can be deployed to actually, you know, support and

fight back against, you don’t really fight back against tsunamis and tornadoes and storms and stuff.

But in this case, you would actually, you could legally justify it by saying that Godzilla is an

act of nature. But the fact that they had that kind of conversation defining the legalities of this

completely irrelevant situation shows how seriously they take the actual issues of legality, which again

is one of the reasons why Japan is at this moment a better country than America.

Train delays happen in Japan all the time. It’s very frustrating. I actually had the

trains on the route I take to go into work reduced, which is very frustrating because sometimes I have

late shifts and then they’ve actually, some of the routes, they only have two trains an hour.

And it’s just, it’s just killing me because I either have to show up super early or just on time.

And I don’t like that. I like to have a little buffer, but of course I don’t want to go in 30 minutes,

40 minutes early just because it’s the only way I can ensure I catch a train.

Train delays though are usually storms, weather. The trains do stop a lot. Like you get heavy rain

and the trains will stop. It’s very frustrating. 7 .30 at night, a 56 year old man was frustrated.

A 56 year old. Again, we hit this number. All these stories, it’s 50 year old dudes. 50 year old

dudes are losing it. I’m in my 50s and I’m thinking, I’m waiting for the day. I just lose it. And I think

my behavior is okay. And I’m just doing something absolutely insane. And then I have to sit down at this

desk and then do a story about myself. That would be super interesting. Like talking about

how I did something because I’m an insane 50 year old man. He was frustrated that the train was delayed

and to express his frustration, he didn’t, you know, send a message because that’s not going to do

anything. He didn’t do a protest or anything. He did what any sensible person would do. He took an

exacto knife and started slashing the chair he was sitting on because damaging the chair is of course

going to make the train go faster and get you home on time. He was arrested and then stated,

I’ve done it 50 to 60 times. Now, Ninja News Japan, very famous for giving criminals advice. But if you

are arrested by the police on a charge of one thing, do not then turn around to the police and

start bragging about how many more times you’ve done this. Because it turns out there have been 300

incidences of chairs being slashed on the train, the seats of the train being slashed. So this guy

just claimed that he alone has committed 17 % of all the vandalisms on trains when it comes to seat

slashing. Because he admitted it, they’re going to take that as fact. Like maybe he’s exaggerated the

number, maybe not. We don’t know. But at the end of the day, the police will be like, well,

you’ve admitted to 50 to 60. So let’s take you with the low number 50. And now you’re going to get 50

charges instead of one. Keep your mouth shut. But this is again, sort of the issue with these 50

year old dudes is they’re never, they think anything they say is okay. They’ve just got this mindset

that what they can do no wrong. So they’re always running their mouth and saying stuff they shouldn’t

say and getting themselves in more trouble. And I think we need collars on every 50 year old man in

the world that we can just start zapping them when they sort of get out of hand.

So there’s a 12 year old kid, and he’s hanging out. And he is a mutual friend who is also friends with

a 22 year old member of the Marine Self -Defense Force. He works on a submarine. And he tells this

acquaintance, hey, you can park your motorcycle here. And then the motorcycle gets removed by the police

because you’re not allowed to park it there. So at two, between 1 .30 and two in the morning, the 22 year old

Marine Self -Defense man goes to the kid and says, I want you to go to an ATM and get 300 ,000 yen out.

That’s like a month’s salary. Get 300 ,000 yen out and give it to me as sort of compensation for the

motorcycle being taken. Not his motorcycle, by the way, this other person’s motorcycle. And then I had

this weird thought when I was reading it, like, what is this kid, 12 year old kid doing out at 1 .30 in the

morning in a park, having an altercation with an adult? Like, he should be at home in bed and not out at 1 .30

in the morning. There seems to be some parenting issues going on. But the kid doesn’t seem to have

actually done anything wrong. He was just, he said something and that something turned out to not be true.

I think that’s still on the adults in the picture. The guy who has the motorcycle clearly is old enough

to have a driving license. This guy’s 22 years old. They’re technically adults, even though they’re

clearly not acting like adults. So he says to the kid, give me 300 ,000 yen. Also, my boss is a Yakuza.

So if you tell the police about this, we will burn down your house and kill your parents. So that’s

very threatening. The kid does a very sensible thing. He goes to his dad and says, hey, this guy

says I need to give him 300 ,000 yen or he’ll burn down our house because he’s a Yakuza. So the dad does

the very sensible thing of calling the police and the man’s arrested. When the man was arrested,

he said, I don’t remember clearly, but I think I did say something threatening, which again, my man,

dude, don’t say that. Go like, I’ve never spoken to this kid. I’ve never said any threatening to this

kid. There’s no record of what you did and didn’t say. So don’t admit you said something threatening.

Just say, oh no, he must’ve misinterpreted what I was saying. He’s a little kid. He’s out at one

o ‘clock in the morning. Maybe we could like turn the, uh, reframe it that way. Like, why is this kid out

here? And maybe I’m going to get off when I get charged with my 50 year old crime. I think I’m

going to be able to get off by just not saying any of the things I’ve learned that these guys have

said. He absolutely thought he was the main character. He absolutely thought he could just

say whatever you want and get away with it. He thought he could get a 12 year old to give him

300 ,000 yen. There’s a very good chance that 12 year olds don’t have 300 ,000 yen. They might not even

have a bank account yet. Uh, you get like Christmas money and stuff, but he might be one of those kids

who just spends it and doesn’t have a penny to his name. I don’t know what you’re thinking.

A 17 year old girl posted on social media saying she was looking for papakatsu. Papakatsu

is the, I was about to say Japanese tradition. It’s not. It’s when it’s, it’s called compensated

dating. It’s like, I’m old, creepy man and I pay a young woman money and she will go on a date with

me. And that date does include certain expectations is maybe the nicest way to say it of what will

happen. This girl posted, you give me a hundred thousand yen. We’ll go to a hotel together.

And I think again, the implications there are all you need to know. That is papakatsu.

This 36 year old guy says, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s meet and then do things. And then they did

and they met and they did things. Uh, but then he didn’t pay the money, which puts the woman,

the girl puts the girl in a weird situation because she’s had the transactional part, but she hasn’t

actually gotten paid for her services. So she goes to the police and tells them I was not paid

by this man. Uh, the man was arrested. He admitted to it violating the child prostitution law. Uh, but

then there was no mention of what happened to the girl. And I’m assuming because she’s underage,

she was not punished at all. Maybe warned. Maybe they told her parents, maybe something like that.

But 17 is like almost an adult. So it’s weird for her to get away with it. So I actually,

I kind of want to know, like, I don’t know what I think should happen here.

Like, should the girl be punished? Maybe that’s something for the listeners. So send in,

do you believe there should be punishment for the girl? Maybe counseling. All the girls who do this

seem to be just in it for the money. They, they, they don’t actually care about the relationships.

They just want money and they find this is the easiest way to get money. Yeah. Re -educated. So

counseling therapy. I agree. I don’t think she should be like punished, punished, but I think

there is a big problem there. And this is a really common phenomenon in Japan. Compensated dating is a

really common thing. And it actually, again, takes people down some really sort of dark alleys of life.

And if we could turn that around, that would be really beneficial.

Money really is tight, even for kids.

Okay. So that’s off topic before I start this story. Uh, it is, and it isn’t. The thing is they

primarily do this to buy luxury goods. And in this story, I didn’t actually mention it,

but she said she wanted the money to go to underground idol concerts. So she wanted to

basically support bands that she liked. So she would go to the concert, pay for the concert,

and then buying goods supports the band. And this is why she was doing this compensated

dating. Yeah. So like you want a new phone, you want a bag. I mean, a lot of this is about fashion

stuff. You want clothes, you go on compensated dating. They do again, like the guys, I don’t

know if she’s actually going to get a hundred thousand yen, but they agree to that kind of

number. What happened to part time? Uh, again, these kids that, how much money are you going to make

it a part -time job at, uh, at seven 11, let’s say it’s not going to be a hundred thousand yen

in a two hour period. It’s that kind of problem because the money’s there and the creepy old men

are there and they’re the ones who have money. I mean, that’s actually, I think the scariest part

is the creepy old dudes who have money. Speaking of creepy old dudes, stalking cases have been a

record high in 2025 and 2000, they introduced the anti -stalking laws in Japan. So before that,

before 2000, if you had a stalker, there was no law actually saying that was a problem,

but they’ve actually found it was a problem. It was growing. So they created this law in

two, 2024, there were 205 cases in 2025. There were 1 ,546 cases. Uh, tasers would be illegal.

That’s actually one of the problems. And so this, this massive increase in stalking cases is actually

showing, uh, mace. I believe there’s basically anything that’s designed to hurt another person

has significant legal restrictions in Japan. I can’t tell you the law off the top of my head.

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to walk around with mace. You’re not really supposed to walk around

with anything that dangerous to other people. A couple of times I’ve said on the show, you’re not

allowed to walk around with a knife unless you have a purpose. So if I have a knife with me for,

let’s say, uh, fish gutting, I would have to be going fishing or going to a restaurant to gut fish

to be legally allowed to carry that knife. If I just had a knife in my bag, that’s illegal. So

self -protection in Japan, isn’t a good enough reason to carry any sort of offensive weapon.

I’m a little torn on that one too. Cause I do think women need like me. I think mace, pepper spray,

women should be allowed to carry that. I think maybe let’s say men can’t, but I don’t know. Is that,

is that okay? Is that enough? It’s the creepy men I’m worried about having done this show for as long

as I have now, I’m more worried about creepy men than I am about anyone else. Uh, so my question

for the stalking increase is, so if it went from 200 to 1500, it’s a massive, massive increase,

like multiples, exponential increase. Is it, are there more stalkers or is it people are more comfortable

reporting stalkers? And I actually think it was a combination. I bet because of social media

and the way people can form parasocial relationships with people and they think they know each other,

they are, there is probably more stalking cases and technology is making it easier to stalk people.

But also I think because the anti -stalking laws are now getting more media attention,

people are more comfortable going to the police and, you know, trying to get people to stop stalking

them. Uh, illegal entries into home, which is connected to anti -stalking laws, went from 428 to 2 ,171.

Restraining orders top 3000 for the first time, uh, last year they went, or 2024, there were 622,

2025, there were 3037. So again, I think this is a combination of it’s happening more, but people

are also fighting back more, which is good. And not using the legal system this way is the way it’s

supposed to be used. In 2024, oh, this is totally unrelated. It was just another number that threw out

there. In 2024, they introduced a law that you’re not allowed to ride your bicycle drunk.

23 licenses were suspended for cycling drunk. And in 2025, it was 1507. I recently got a bicycle and I’m

going to be very careful about not drinking and riding my bicycle. And also I’m going to do my best

not to stalk anybody. It’s my resolution for 2026. A sweet potato van was driving with a sweet potato van

driver. Uh, and what a sweet potato van is, is a van. It’s like a food truck in the back has a thing

that cooks the sweet potatoes. So you can basically, they drive around towns really slowly and they play

a song. It’s like, Hey, come out and buy your sweet potato. Come out and buy. I don’t know what the song

is. Uh, I was just going to do a sweet potato song for you a little bit, but it’s just going to get

worse. So they drive around town. There’s a little jingly bell. Come out, buy your sweet potatoes,

come get some sweet potatoes. People come out, truck stops and they get the sweet potato. It’s

nice and hot because it’s being cooked in the back. They’ll have like a festival. They’ll stop at the

festival, cook the sweet potatoes right in front of you. Great sweet potatoes. Everyone loves a sweet

potato. They’re sweet. Unfortunately, that means there’s like a heating element in the back of the

truck. And this sweet potato truck was driving around and the back caught on fire. Now it was,

it seemed like it started on the highway. So I’m actually wondering if the wind increased the heat

and started the fire. And then because they were driving, the fire picked up. We have amazing video

of this sweet potato truck barreling through the city because the driver was like, well,

I got to do something. I can’t just like let my sweet potato van burn. And he drove as fast as he

could to the nearest fire station. And in that fire station, he was able to park the firemen. Hey,

this is what we do. They came out to put the fire right away. Now the back of the truck is actually

ruined and all the sweet potatoes are gone, but no one got hurt. So I’m trying to decide if that was

the right thing to do. The fire department said, what you have to do is pull over, get out of the

van and try to make sure everything’s safe. But if you’re in a city and that fire somehow spreads to

the houses, you can actually start like a multiple house fire. So did he do the right thing? Did he do

the wrong thing? I don’t know. So there’s now two questions I would like listeners to respond to.

And this one is, do you think the sweet potato driver did the right thing? Driving the van on fire,

massive flames to the fire station, or should he have pulled off and then called emergency services

and have them come to him?

Inconsiderate Podcast

Last week we did a story about a guy, a ramen shop owner, who called the police and said he’d

been robbed at the end of the day of a certain amount of money, and then it turns out he had

not been robbed. He’d set this up himself, and I thought that’s sort of a weird one -off story,

which is why it attracted my interest. Then two weeks later we have a multitude of stories.

No speech

It’s almost, I’m wondering if it’s copycats, but then the news that we get is usually like a couple

weeks after the initial crime. Like one of the stories is from the end of February, it’s now

basically the middle of April. Is it a copycat? Because I’m pretty sure the people who are doing

the same thing didn’t read the news. And then also why would you copycat a crime that didn’t work?

No speech

That’s actually a really interesting aspect of this because I’m seeing a bunch of these stories

all of a sudden. So we have a 54…

No speech

Let’s get started. We have a 50 year old…

We have a 54 year old civil servant who bound his own hands and feet to mimic being robbed. He said

No speech

two men pointed something like a knife at him after he left home and they stole 800 ,000 yen that

he had on him. He was driven away and found seven hours later, but they could not find any suspects.

No speech

He claimed that both suspects were in their 30s and 40s. God damn, I’m having a rough start.

No speech

He claimed that both suspects were in their 30s, 175 milli… God damn it.

No speech

Let’s start again.

No speech

He claimed both…

No speech

He claimed both suspects were in their 30s, 175 centimeters tall. They wore dark clothes and hats

and masks. So this is the first problem is if that’s the description, this is kind of like the

vague description they did last week. You can’t find that person. So you’re giving them a description

but no actual details. So a description of no actual details means they’re just making it so

that this is really hard to find the people that they’re looking for. 175 meters… 175… 175

centimeters is sort of the average height of a Japanese person. No facial features because

they’re wearing masks and wearing all black. That’s a lot of people every single day.

No speech

He was arrested for obstructing police operations and they currently don’t know why he do it. So

this is it. Like do you get the money back? If you’ve had the money stolen from you,

No speech

I guess maybe they might have insurance of some sort. That might be the only way to get out of

this. I’m trying to think where the profit is in this. So for the ramen guy, his store probably had

robbery insurance of some sort. So maybe he could get money that way. But this guy, if it’s like his

personal funds, that isn’t insured. So it’s not like you’re actually going to get it back.

No speech

A 24 -year -old woman claimed someone broke into her house and stole her wallet, but there were no signs of a

break -in. So there’s your first problem is if you’re going to fake a crime, you have to actually

fake the details of a crime. Now, maybe you don’t know what those are, which is again, our guy from

the ramen restaurant last night was like searching on chat GPT on his phone, like how to fake a robbery.

No speech

This woman didn’t even put that much effort into it. She just called the police and said she’d been

robbed. Someone broke into her house, but there was no signs of forced entry into her house. So then

the police found the wallet that she claimed had been stolen. So not only did she not fake the crime

properly, the thing that was supposed to be stolen, she didn’t even like get rid of it or hide it or do

anything with it. So the police found it while they were searching her place. A 31 -year -old claimed he

was attacked, slashed with something like a box cutter, knives being difficult. Knives are illegal to

carry in Japan. So box cutters are not, which is why if you watch a Japanese movie, you’ll actually see

people attacking each other with box cutters fairly often because that’s an easy weapon to get a hold

of in Japan. If you want to turn it into a weapon, he claimed he was slashed with something like a box

cutter, but he had inflicted the wounds himself. Then a 37 -year -old man, this was from February 27th,

No speech

ran into a police station and said he had been threatened with a gun. It’s a very rare thing to be

threatened with in Japan because guns are so hard to get a hold of. They took an envelope with 260 ,000 yen

cash in it. He said the attackers appeared to be foreign because they said, give me money.

No speech

Security camera footage found no such individuals on the streets anywhere in the area. They couldn’t

No speech

legitimately find anyone who even came close to the description he gave. There were no foreigners.

No speech

Interesting side note, the number of crimes by foreigners in Japan has actually been going down

while the number of foreigners in Japan has been going up. So that’s an interesting ratio that has been

changing. So more people who are coming to Japan, but those people are committing less crimes overall.

No speech

I do have a weird question. It’s like, what do you get out of this? So for the people who are,

No speech

you know, pretending to be robbed, if they have robbery insurance, I guess they get money back.

So they’re trying to steal money. I kind of understand that one, but the people who are doing

it personally, what do they get out of it? Are they getting any sort of media attention? Are they,

they, but okay, I kind of said this last time, put a little work into it. You know, plan your crime

properly. If you’re going to say someone broke into your house, you got to make it look like

someone broke into your house. But with the amount of surveillance cameras in the world today,

No speech

it is very unlikely you’re going to get away with it because every one of these has been busted by

the cops going, finding security footage in the area and not finding the suspect and then asking

them some hard questions and they’re not able to answer the questions and then they get caught.

No speech

There was a survey done and it was the 10 most annoying things foreign tourists do on Japanese

trains. Now, so after going through this list, I thought I would go through my list of the 10 most

annoying things Japanese people do on trains. So number 10, coughing, sneezing without consideration.

No speech

I actually think that’s pretty fair. Number nine, leaving trash behind. Japanese people are very

weirded out by garbage left on a chair where they’re supposed to sit. They don’t actually want to touch it.

I kind of get that. Number eight, other. Don’t know what that is, but any other stuff, I guess, fell into the

category of number eight. I guess nonspecifics that didn’t fit into the entire list. Number seven, sitting in

priority seats. Number six, bad manners when boarding or getting off. Number five, standing near the door

without moving. I think number six and number five are actually the exact same thing. So bad manners when

boarding or getting off, blocking the way. I think that’s what they’re trying to say. Number four, strong sense.

Number three, sitting style that encroaches others. I think they’re talking about man spreading more

than anything else. Number two, carrying and placement of luggage or bags and umbrellas. And

number one, noisy conversations and messing about. Now, if you’d like to know my top 10 list of things

Japanese people do that annoy me when I’m on the train, number 10 is coughing and sneezing without

consideration. Number nine is leaving behind trash. It’s very annoying. Number eight, it’s kind of a general

catch -all. Other is the one I put on my list. Number seven, sitting in priority seats when they’re not

supposed to or not getting up and offering their seats to other people. Number six, bad manners when

boarding or getting off the train. Number five, standing near the door without moving. Number four,

No speech

strong sense. But I’m not talking about perfumes. I’m talking about strong personal body sense.

No speech

Number three, sitting style that encroaches on others or blocking out space so that other people

can’t sit next to you. Probably the thing that annoys me the most is when someone, there’s two

seats and you sit on the outside so people can’t get on the inside or you put your bag there to block

other people from sitting down. Number two, carrying and placement of luggage bags or umbrellas. And

number one, noisy conversations and messing about. You know, Japanese people can complain about foreigners,

No speech

but Japanese people also have to take a look at their own behavior before making those sort of

complaints. I have had kids. And so I understand that kids are frustrating and very difficult to deal

with. And punishing them can be difficult for finding a balance between being strict and, you know,

No speech

those moments when you’re supposed to be kind. It’s always interesting, TV shows. They always know

when they’re supposed to get really tough with the kids and ground them. And then when they’re supposed

to like sort of be gentle and forgiving and that kind of stuff. It’s always difficult to tell.

No speech

For me in movies, it’s always the leave me behind moment in movies. So you have the guy falls and he goes,

No speech

leave me behind, you go without me. And then how do they know when leaving them behind is the right

thing to do or stopping and then like heroically saving them is the right thing to do? Because

there’s no criteria. It’s just a decision. Now in the movies, it’s always the right decision,

but I would like to see sooner or later sometime where the hero decides to like run away and leave

the person to die. And then they find out, well, that was totally the wrong thing to do. I could have

saved that guy like 10 times over. Or they like go to save the person when they’re not supposed to,

and they both die as a result. I mean, any of those scenarios I would like to see played out,

No speech

this is a lower stakes version of that. When to know how to punish your kid and how harshly,

No speech

but I, I tried to be strict and yet kind and understanding as often as I could. Some other

people maybe haven’t found that balance. And that’s how they end up on an episode of Ninja News Japan.

A mother and her boyfriend drove their eight -year -old child to the mountains and left him

there to discipline him. So this is like when people dump dogs or other animals, they drive

them out into the forest or the mountains, they let them out and then they just drive away.

No speech

I cannot think of a more traumatizing thing you could do to a child than just dump them in the

mountains and act like you’re going to leave them there forever. The boy had better sense than I

would in that situation. He is eight years old. He sought help at a nearby camping facility,

which was one kilometer walk away. So he figured out, I guess, to follow a road. He followed it for

a kilometer. He found a camping place, the place where they probably reserve camping spots. He walked

in. He said, you know, I’m, my parents just dumped me in the mountains. Can you help me? The people,

No speech

of course, can. They called the police. They called 110. The mother and boyfriend went back.

Uh, I think I didn’t write it down, but I think it was like 20 minutes later. They went back to go

get the kid. So they didn’t intend to abandon him there. But the problem is they did leave him there

with the kid, not knowing they were going to come back. So the kid had to start taking care of himself,

No speech

which he did right away. He did the smart thing. He didn’t just stand there and cry.

No speech

Uh, then when they got back, he was gone. So then they called 110 as well and said, Hey,

No speech

we, uh, have sort of lost our kid, but I’m betting the kid actually was pretty honest about his story

with the people who like found him the first place at the camping thing. And he said to them,

No speech

you know, my parents dumped me here. So the police know who they’re looking for. They call the police,

No speech

the police show up, the parent and her boyfriend have now been arrested. So it’s almost like

discipline went two ways in that one. Not only was the child disciplined, but the parents are also

disciplined. I would like to see the parents very severely disciplined, just like the kid was.

No speech

A viral video sort of hit the Japanese Twitter X, those kinds of things of a child tourist on the

Shibuya crossing. So the Shibuya crossing is that very famous crossing. It’s like five,

No speech

six lanes, all cross and people, there’s a huge crowd of people go through the middle.

No speech

You’ve seen it in a bunch of movies. It’s a pretty dramatic thing. I actually haven’t visited

because I don’t care for crowds, but that’s kind of the whole point of going there.

No speech

We regularly get stories of YouTubers and stuff messing about in the middle of Shibuya crossing

because they’re blocking people. This one, you have a little girl. I think she’s from Taiwan is

one of the stories said there were a lot of stories about this and sort of the facts are a bit mixed up.

No speech

The video is pretty clear. This is a very small girl, maybe eight, nine years old, super excited to

be at Shibuya crossing. Someone’s filming her. She’s sort of dancing around. She’s not really being in

anyone’s way and she’s not really in anyone’s way. A person walks up, clearly beelines towards the kid

and then shoulder checks the kid and knocks them over. There was no technical injury in this case,

No speech

but I went to bengoshi .com where they had a discussion about this. Like what is the actual

charge? There was no injury. That is assault, a physical force towards another person. And that

can get you two years in prison and up to a 300 ,000 yen fine. If the child had fallen and injured

themselves, that would be assault and injury, which can be 15 years in prison and a half million yen

No speech

fine. They were saying like, is it self -defense because the little kid got in the way? Which,

No speech

okay, in the video, the kid did not get in the way. The woman went out of her way to check the kid

and knock them over. But, you know, the person is going to claim the kid was in the way with self -defense.

No speech

Self -defense could only be claimed if it was unavoidable and clear. It was unavoidable and there was

nothing else you could do. Now, it should be a crossing. You can slow down. You can take a step to the side.

You can turn. There are a lot of things you can do to avoid this. Therefore, it was not self -defense

that would not hold up in court. If they find this woman, she would be guilty of assault without

injury because I’m assuming the kid just bounced because kids bounce. And therefore, if found guilty

and arrested, she could get two years in prison and a 300 ,000 yen fine. Don’t go knocking little

kids over. There is a sort of this weird thing that incel dudes in Japan do where they walk around

stations. They try to find people usually on their phone and they shoulder check them so they can say

that person wasn’t paying attention. And then the incel dudes will knock just generally into any

woman in their way and then claim they were in the way. And if they turn around and argue, what

they’re hoping is they’re too scared to actually like fight back. And this is how sort of they get

their jollies. In a good society, we don’t shoulder check anybody. One Piece is the best -selling

manga of all time with over 600 million copies sold. Now, they’ve got like a thousand manga, like comic

books out. So I don’t know how many of those are that or the compilation manga or anything, but it

doesn’t matter. It’s clearly the best -selling comic in all of history, which is really cool.

No speech

What is the One Piece is the primary question. It’s what the pirates are all going after, like the

original One Piece. What is the One Piece? And this is like Lost. Like people claim that the writers of

Lost didn’t know what the actual conclusion was, what the island was. A bunch of people said,

it’s purgatory. And then the writers of Lost were like, no, it isn’t, but we know it is. And then

it turned out to be purgatory anyways, because they, I actually think they didn’t know what it

was when they started. They just hoped they were going to write their way out of it. Or they knew

it was purgatory. When people like figured it out, they were like, oh, but we can’t let them know that.

No speech

The question is, does the author of One Piece know what the One Piece is? He’s saying, yes, it is.

No speech

He wrote it down on a piece of paper and they released a video to celebrate the thousands,

No speech

thousands. They were celebrating One Piece being the best -selling manga of all time.

No speech

He writes down on a piece of paper what the One Piece is. Then he tears it in half and he puts

the half the paper into a special glass orb. And then there’s a scene of a boat going out to the

ocean and then dropping that glass orb overboard so that, you know, there is an actual treasure at the

bottom of the ocean that you could find that tells you what the One Piece is. That is technically in

this real world, the One Piece. This is actually really cool and creative and smart and I quite

like it. And it is where he dropped it. He says it’s going to be 651 meters down and people with way

too much money are already talking about how to figure out how to go dive down to it with, I guess,

No speech

a submersible, get it, bring it back so they can claim they have solved the mystery of the One Piece

or found the One Piece or something like that. But I mean, as far as, you know, advertising stunts go,

this one didn’t seem to hurt anybody and it’s kind of interesting and cool and I’m glad he’s did it.

No speech

There’s a cram school in Japan. Since we’re kind of talking animation and comics and things like that,

No speech

all the teachers are VTubers. It’s called Luminaris Online Juku. So Juku is what kids do to study to get

ready for their exams. It’s a really stressful system in Japan. We’re hitting exam season right now. We’re

actually probably coming to the end of it. Kids are all stressed out. They’re doing exams.

No speech

It’s a tough life. I do not actually think this is the best way to do it, but my opinion on this

matter is irrelevant. Kids find it hard to pay attention. So what’s something you could do to

get them to pay attention? Well, find something they like and they like VTubers. Will they listen

to VTubers when they talk about math? I don’t know, but if it’s going to help, I’m all for it.

No speech

This is the kind of thing that seems stupid at first, but if it helps kids pay attention and listen,

I am down with it. Do whatever you can. I think education in manga form, education in comics,

No speech

education in animation, whatever you can do to get kids to pay attention and learn is worthwhile.

No speech

The courses you can take at Luminaris are math, physics, English, chemistry, world history,

No speech

Japanese history, geography. It is $63, the equivalent, so about 7 ,000 yen a course a month.

So I think, I assume you would only do once a week or something, or maybe you would go more often,

but for each course, you can go for a month for 60, for 7 ,000 yen, and then you could probably take

multiples. You’d be paying, you know, multiples of that. I didn’t get a good sense of whether it was

only online, like pre -recorded things, but if they’re VTubers, I assume those are teachers.

They’re on the other side of the computer screen. You study, you ask them questions, you get response

in the VTuber voice and whatnot, and that, if it clicks for you, man, I mean anything to help kids out

and education in modern society. Yes, please.

No speech

A man was pulled over. A man does a… So there were two stories. One was he rear -ended,

No speech

one was a head -on crash, but it seems more stories said the head -on. So there was a head -on crash

with another car, and the cops show up like they’re supposed to. A man is standing outside his smashed

up car, drinking a chew high in front of the police. Now, the belief is that he was drinking the chew high,

No speech

and he could say he started drinking the chew high after the crash, maybe because he was so stressed out

from the crash. And then the cops would be like, well, you were driving drunk. He’s like, no, no,

No speech

you’re going to, of course, find alcohol in my system now because I was just drinking a chew high,

No speech

but I wasn’t drinking a chew high when I was driving. I wasn’t drunk when I was driving.

No speech

That was post -crash. The police, of course, say, hey, this seems really suspicious. We think maybe

you were drunk driving and not waiting until after the crash to drink the chew high. So the man takes the

rest the remainder of the chew high and pours it over the head of the police officer because that’s

a really sober thing to do. Then when he’s arrested, I mean, that’s also assault of a police officer.

No speech

So you’re going to get in trouble for that. Even if you were sober while you crashed the car,

No speech

crashing the car is probably already a problem. Claiming you were not drunk. I’m betting they have

a way to figure out if you were or not, but drinking at the scene of a crime, probably still

No speech

somehow they could get you in trouble. Public intoxication or something like that.

No speech

Pouring it on the police officer is assault of a police officer. Even again, like previously,

No speech

no injury. It’s still assault. When he was arrested, he says, I didn’t pour it on him.

No speech

It just happened. So like the police officer hit the man’s elbow. The chew high went up in the air

and poured on his head. I don’t know. I don’t believe any of it. I think the man was drunk and

his drunk mind, he was like, I have come up with a scheme to get out of the junk drunk driving charge.

Even if I have crashed my car into another car. A 44 year old man has been charged with causing the

death of a 32 year old woman by making her drink 32 shots of tequila. So I’m sure it was a challenge

or a bet or something like that. 32 shots is a lot, but it’s also very abstract. So I actually went and did

the math of what is two 32 shots of tequila. And so I asked the internet, which is of course, what the

best way to get all information, how many shots in a bottle of tequila. So 750 milliliters of tequila

will work out to 16 to 17 shots. She drank two bottles of tequila in 90 minutes. So I’m assuming it

was like almost like a chug challenge. Like you do it, stop, talk for 10 seconds, take a breath, do it

again, 90 minutes. Cause 32 shots in 90 minutes is one every couple of minutes. So it’s every five

minutes she’s downing a shot. And then she of course dies from alcohol poisoning. Uh, it’s true.

No speech

I encouraged her to drink, but I didn’t have any sexual intent. So of course what the man is saying

that he did have sexual intent. Uh, he’s got her drunk and he was intending to take her to a hotel.

He was actually on the way to the hotel when she sort of collapsed. And then he realized he had done

something wrong. He’d gone too far. He calls the police. He calls an ambulance. Uh, they come up,

No speech

they’re like, you got this woman drunk. You got her blackout drunk. You were taking to a hotel to

take advantage of her. He’s like, Oh yeah, I got her to drink, but I had no ill intent by taking her to

this hotel, which we’ve had this conversation. How many times there is only one reason to go to a love

hotel. And that is to try to do something untoward to another person, hopefully consensually, but in this

case, clearly not. I actually said I should end episodes on an upbeat note. And I, by pushing all

the heavy, heavy stories to the end, so they get heavier as they go along. I can’t do that. I can’t

talk my way out of this one. I hope he gets charged with murder, not manslaughter, not accidental murder

or something else, something lower. He intended to get her drunk. He intended to get her to drink as

much as humanly possible. He intended for this to happen for her to black out. And if someone’s

blackout drunk, you are one step away from killing them anyways. So I hope he gets charged with the

full charge you could get, which would be murder. Although I know the Japanese system is far too lenient

on this kind of stuff. And they’re going to say like, she did willfully drink it, even though he

encouraged her to, but man, people got to get charged for this stuff.

No speech

So I hope you enjoyed it.

Authoritarian PSA

There’s a place called, oh, first of all, already messed up my plan.

Last week there was supposed to be an episode.

I got sick.

My voice was not ready for it.

If I had tried to push through, it would have been a lot of hacking and coughing and really

awful stuff.

So I didn’t do an episode last week.

I’m hoping to make up, I’m basically just shifting the whole schedule now on into the

future from now.

So it’s going to be this week and then two weeks from now.

Does it make a difference?

I don’t think so.

I think we’re all right.

I think everyone’s fine.

There’s a place called Fujiyoshida.

It’s a town in Japan and it has a very nice view of Mount Fuji.

Now, a very nice view of Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms and you combine that, that’s pretty

awesome.

And if you’re into Instagram, that’s Instagram -omatic, fantastic.

Well, that’s the problem.

This city is canceling its annual cherry blossom viewing festival this year because there are

too many tourists.

We actually did this story last year because of the insane thing that tourists were doing

in this town, which I actually found inconceivable.

But then I realized like, nah, man, like people do dumb stuff.

This is a really small town.

So the problem is it’s not really designed to handle a lot of tourists.

So people are coming.

The parks are full.

People are going out into the street and taking pictures.

It’s dangerous.

That kind of stuff is the initial problem.

But they were littering.

Now, a lot of people who come to Japan, they don’t realize that Japan doesn’t provide a lot

of garbage cans.

You’re expected to carry your garbage with you back to your domicile or wherever you

came from and then dispose of your garbage yourself.

And garbage disposal in Japan is a whole other story in itself because, you know, it has to

be separated.

Some of it has to be cleaned.

It has to be organized.

It has to be organized.

If you’re living in a city, old ladies who have nothing else to do will come and check

your garbage to make sure it’s right and then like reprimand you if it’s not quite right.

Tourists are littering.

They were entering private homes.

I don’t know if they were entering private homes just like walking in.

But there’s also part of me that goes, yeah, I’m betting there are some tourists who just

like walked into someone’s house, like a sliding door and they just slid it open.

Maybe the door wasn’t locked.

So they just walked in and they were using their facilities or they were knocking on people’s

doors and asking to use the facilities would be very annoying if you don’t want strangers

to come in and poop in your house.

So what’s the weird expectation here?

The city isn’t prepared to like overhaul all the facilities, the public facilities to

make it enough for essentially a two week period in the year.

So cherry blossom season is very short.

All these tourists come for this two weeks and then the rest of the year they’re not there.

So it’s not worth fiscally.

It’s not worth actually paying for improving the facilities for tourism.

This is a form of over tourism causing an issue.

Now, of course, you come to my house, you say, hey, can I poop in your house?

My answer is honestly, probably no.

Most of the time we’re like, I don’t know you go away or leave me alone.

Or why are you knocking on my door?

I’m actually trying to do something.

It’s disruptive and that is problematic in itself.

So what do they do?

Well, I got to poop real bad.

So I’m just going to go in your backyard and poop.

So they were finding human feces, you know, not exactly public areas, but like on people’s

private property, maybe in public areas as well.

People have to poop.

They do have to poop though.

And so the city, because it’s a very small city, has not created the facilities because

this two week period is the only time they get this amount of tourism.

And the amount of tourism they get is 10 ,000 people a day.

In a city like Tokyo or Osaka, 10 ,000 people a day.

That’s just a drop in the bucket.

That’s nothing.

But in a small town that probably only has about 50, 60 ,000 residents, 10 ,000 people a

day is a massive influx of people.

They just don’t have the facilities to take care of these people.

The city still expects to see a lot of visitors because of the Instagram.

And so what they’re saying is like, we’re not having festivals.

We’re not actually inviting people to our city to see cherry blossoms, to sit at cherry

blossoms, to have a cherry blossom festival.

But because this place has gotten so popular on Instagram, we know people are still going to

come.

They’re still going to want to take their pictures.

They’re still going to like interrupt the road, but at least it will be less because there’s

less organized invitation and participation in the actual events.

Tokyo police released a video warning young people to be cautious about cocaine use.

I’m an older dude.

And I understand that the way to communicate with young people would not be for me to make

a video.

So if I made an Inja News Japan episode and it was targeted at young people, I would immediately

sit down and go, problem number one, you have an old guy sitting in the chair talking to young

people.

And it would feel like I’m talking down to them.

Like I’m talking to a younger group of people in some way.

This is even worse because this is a group of police officers who are already sort of authoritarian.

They haven’t, you know, earned the trust or faith of young people.

And then they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll just make a video and we’ll tell young people not

to do cocaine.

And then guess what?

They’re just not going to use cocaine anymore.

It’s just going to be like solving that problem.

There’s never been a government video or a video by an authoritarian of any sort that

has actually been successful.

In fact, I actually bet in some way it encourages people to actually do the thing you’re telling

them what to do.

I was a rebellious youth.

Like there’s no reason.

This was actually interesting because there’s no reason for me to have been rebellious or

angry in any way.

But I was a very angry young man and I was like a middle class white dude.

I had every advantage the universe could give anyone and I was angry about it, which is

now that I think about it really sad and weird.

Like what was I angry about?

I don’t know.

I was a punk rock kid.

Just maybe hormones.

I actually think that might be the answer.

It was hormones more than anything else.

But if you told me, like if the DARE program or something came to my school, I bet that

afternoon I’d be like, I kind of want to try some drugs.

So the police in Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have put out a video saying, don’t do

cocaine.

Be careful of cocaine use because it’s a powder and it’s very easy to spill.

They have testimonies from people who have used it, who then said it was awesome.

Okay.

I’ve never done cocaine.

I can honestly say I’ve never done an illegal drug.

I’ve done way too many painkillers.

I’ve abused lots of drugs, cough medicine, my jam.

But I’ve never done an illegal drug just because when I was at that age when you would experiment,

I was doing very serious judo and I would have to do a p -test every now and then.

And I didn’t want to get caught with any sort of drug, marijuana, cocaine or anything else

in my system just in case it would actually get me in trouble with the sports I was dedicating

my life to, which provided me with nothing because there are no famous people who do

judo.

This has never led anyone to anything.

The people I do know who’ve done cocaine who say like, it’s pretty nice.

Like it’s super fun.

Makes you feel good.

Now, I’m not saying you should do it.

I think cocaine is bad because it’s addictive.

It’s not the doing cocaine is the problem.

It’s the addiction.

And then the cost that comes with that addiction that you should be aware of.

I stopped drinking caffeine because I realized I was addicted to caffeine.

If I didn’t have a Coke or I don’t drink coffee, but if I didn’t have like a Coke or something

with caffeine in it, by lunchtime, I would start getting the caffeine headache.

So I actually cut caffeine out of my life altogether because I just don’t like the idea of addiction.

If you’re drinking it and you’re happy with it, sure.

I’m not going to, I’m just about to promote cocaine.

I’m doing the opposite.

Well, maybe this is it.

Maybe if this old dude says you should do cocaine, the youth out there will hear the

message and go, well, I’m not doing cocaine because that old creepy man told me to do cocaine.

It took about a month or maybe a little more before I actually like settled down into like

feeling normal without having any caffeine in my life.

I still drink Coke, but it’s caffeine free, sugar free, calorie zero Coke.

So it’s basically all fun free.

Joy free Coke is exactly what I have.

But at the same time, I’m just trying to like not die as quickly.

The video from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has testimonies from people who’ve used cocaine.

And the thing is cocaine seizures have been up 1 .5 times from last year.

Now it’s still not very much.

Cocaine is not a particularly popular drug in Japan because it’s so hard to get drugs in Japan.

And because therefore it will be so expensive.

He said, one of the testimonies message is very persuasive.

I’m convinced if people, if young people watch the video, they will never do drugs.

I don’t think they understand how effective videos are actually are.

I don’t think they realize that old people telling you not to do drugs is not a particularly

effective tactic.

Technique?

Technique?

Technique?

A 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant called 110.

110 is the 911 in Japan.

It’s actually important to know if you ever plan on traveling to Japan, you don’t dial 911.

110, that’ll get you.

Ambulance, police, whatever you need.

They’re probably only going to speak Japanese, but if you just start screaming, they’ll get the message.

This 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant said he had been robbed at knife point.

He was jumped as he was closing up and they had taken 670 ,000 yen from him.

Oh no.

That’s a terrible thing.

The police start to investigate.

They take this very seriously.

They start doing CSI kind of stuff.

They get surveillance videos and then they find no one fitting the description is on any

surveillance video in the area, which is very unusual.

If you listen to the Indian News Japan consistently, you will realize that most crimes are solved

by the police just going to areas around the crime, getting surveillance videos and watching

those videos and going, hey, there’s that guy.

Now let’s follow him home.

And then they show up at his house.

No one fitting the description that the manager gave showed up on any surveillance videos anywhere.

It makes me wonder what kind of description he gave.

Because like if I was going to describe a criminal in Japan, I’m going to go 5 ’10”,

black hair, slim build.

I mean, that’s it, right?

Like I’ve just described it.

When I lived in Korea, there was like a serial killer.

An announcement went out on the news about the serial killer and they said he’s 5 ‘9″,

black hair, slim build, something like that.

And I was like, dude, I’ve seen that guy like 7 ,000 times today in Seoul.

How is that a description?

So the police started looking deeper and they got on the manager’s smartphone.

So you know it’s already a problem.

The manager had searched staged robbery victim.

Now that’s a problem.

You should not, I guess if you’re going to commit a crime, the first thing you should do is clear

your cash history, clear your cookies, erase your computer, throw away your smartphone.

I don’t know because I bet they could still recover all that stuff.

But searching for a staged robbery victim and other similar searches, I guess just different

like word order and stuff.

And then they arrested him, sat him down and said like, did you stage a robbery?

Did you claim to have been robbed?

And then it turns out you weren’t.

You just like done this to yourself.

He broke immediately.

So this is one where you’ve got to commit.

If you’re going to do the bit, if you’re going to stage a robbery, you’ve got to commit

to the robbery more than anything else.

His injuries came from punching himself in the face several times.

And he was arrested for making a false emergency call.

I actually think this should be bigger than just a false emergency call because it seems

like a lot more happened than like he’s wasted police time.

He’s interfered with police business.

He’s done a lot more than just make a false phone call.

But that’s all they’re charging him with for now.

53 year old idol fan who was famed for spending massive amounts of money up to 30 million

yen a year.

And let me be clear.

I’ve said this many times.

I got to make it like just like a little sound clip.

The average salary in Japan is between four and five million yen a year.

So let’s just say 4 .5 million yen, the average salary of the average person in Japan.

This guy’s spending 30 million yen.

So six, seven times that amount every single year on AKB48 merch and goods and stuff and

underground idols.

And he’s spending another 5 million yen on underground idols exclusively.

So he’s spending 35 to 40 million yen a year.

So again, the equivalent of like 10 years salary for most people on idol events, idol goods,

idol items.

Okay.

So AKB48, I have never been a fan.

It’s not my kind of music.

Not judging people who like it.

If you like it, that’s fine.

But I do not like how manipulative the system is.

So if you want to vote and they have an election, so you’re going to choose, there’s like, again,

a whole gaggle of women.

They need to choose a leader every year or every couple of years.

What they do is they have like a show and then you vote for who you think is the leader.

Sounds very fair, very honest.

That’s fine.

Except that’s not how it works.

To get a ticket to vote, you have to buy a CD.

So a story from, God, it’s like five, six years ago was people buying hundreds of CDs

so they get hundreds of voting tickets so they could vote for their favorite idol and then

taking those CDs and just dumping them in the forest.

So it was the garbage dumping became the story.

But then they kind of glossed over the whole fact that this guy just spent thousands of

dollars on CDs so he could just get the voting tickets so he could vote for the idol he favored.

Now, here’s the thing.

If I was the leader of the AKB48, I guess the thing is the whole point of that is to

inflate sales to make it seem like they were selling more CDs than they were.

But realistically, you should just sell them the tickets so you don’t actually have the

environmental waste or make it digital or something like that.

That way, these guys who want to spend massive amounts of money on their favorite idol can do

so without that sort of negative impact.

But I guess they were just trying to increase, inflate CD sales.

He sold a vacant apartment owned by his family.

So his family was renting out an apartment.

It was vacant at the time.

And so he sold it so he could get more money to buy more stuff to support his favorite idol

to win the AKB48 election.

He goes to multiple shows a week and he says he spends at least 10 ,000 yen per visit on photos.

So if you go to any sort of event in Japan, you can pay extra money and get like a little

Polaroid of you with the famous person.

I went when I first came to Japan, we went to Nagoya’s oldest strip club, which was famed

to be the oldest strip club in Japan and maybe had the oldest strippers.

And we got a picture taken with one of the older strippers, which was a very weird experience.

I don’t think I should be really going into it.

He’s spending 200 ,000 to 300 ,000 yen every single month, which again is a normal salary

in Japan on idol events.

He’s also famous because he was sick.

He had a coronary event, maybe a stroke.

He left the hospital before the doctors told him he was allowed to because he didn’t want

to miss a show.

And then he was banned from the hospital.

He wasn’t allowed to come back to the hospital because he refused to do what the doctor said.

So like the problem is if you don’t follow our instructions, you could go out and die and

then we’re going to be responsible.

So you’re not allowed to get health care from us anymore, which is insane.

If you think about it, he has no wife, no kids, no savings, no regrets is actually the

interview thing that said he plans to continue his idol events, his idol support until he dies.

And he’s actually very happy.

He says he’s happier supporting living this unique lifestyle than he would be if he’d followed

the more traditional lifestyle of a wife, kids, house, all that other stuff.

Don’t know how I feel about it because he clearly has, we need an intervention because

this is an addiction three times a week.

So now the question is, how much does he spend?

Because a percentage of your salary going to your hobby, which idol events could be your

hobby is acceptable.

A certain amount of my salary goes to equipment and videos and computers and video games and

stuff like that.

I certainly can’t judge someone else for doing spending money on their hobby, but the percentage

has to be a reasonable percentage.

I think that’s it.

So once the percentage becomes unreasonable, there’s a point where it becomes an addiction,

that addiction we’re talking about, maybe they need an intervention.

But yeah, if he’s spending a reasonable amount, I’m sure he’s happy.

This guy’s happy.

And he says he’s happy spending all his money on idol events as opposed to saving it so that

he doesn’t have to work.

He works part -time job.

But the thing is, there’s clearly a ton of money there already.

And that’s the bit that pisses me off.

Just give me some of that money.

Dude, I’m poor.

At this point, comparatively speaking, I’m poor compared to you.

A 57 -year -old man.

It’s these 50 -year -olds.

That’s the bit that always strikes me is these guys are all in the same age range as me.

A 57 -year -old man was arrested.

He turned a phone into the police and he demanded a 5 ,000 yen reward.

So basically, if you find a lost item, you can turn it into the cops.

And you don’t necessarily get a reward, but you can kind of ask for one.

You can put some pressure on people.

Most people will give you something in return as a thank you.

That’s not unusual.

But he had a whole scheme going because he said,

it is my right to receive payment for turning in someone else’s lost goods.

The problem is, I think you can already guess, wasn’t that the goods were lost.

It’s that he stole them so that he could turn them into the police.

So then he could then collect the reward.

So he went to a restaurant.

He was at the same restaurant as a man.

He picked up the guy’s phone and then went and turned it into the police.

The police then call the man and say, hey, did they call him?

He can’t call him.

He’s on his phone.

Wait a minute.

I guess the man went to the police to ask about his phone.

And they said, yes, we have your phone.

But then he recognized the guy who took his phone from the restaurant.

So they must have met face to face.

And he was recognizable enough that they actually met in the police station.

This is maybe the problem was that crossover.

Because you’ve seen me in the restaurant.

Now you see me face to face.

Therefore, you know that I was actually in the room when you lost your phone,

which makes everything suspicious.

He turned in lost items more than 60 times.

And in those 60 times, now the police are seeing a pattern.

And they started saying, hey, maybe these items aren’t lost.

Maybe you’re stealing them and turning them in so you can collect the reward.

And that is a problem.

And it’s called fraud.

And you’re getting arrested.

This is really horrible.

Bullying in Japan.

So Japan is known as a very peaceful country.

And there’s not a lot of crime, comparatively speaking.

There’s a lot of fraud and stuff like that.

But again, a lot is relative.

There’s a lot less than other countries.

It’s a safe country overall.

Bullying in Japan has been a constant issue.

The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve heard about bullying, how it’s getting worse,

all these other issues.

Bullying in Japan is next level.

This may, I actually think this might be part of the consequences of a peaceful society.

It was actually one of the thoughts I had.

Because you have this society where you don’t really have to worry about crime and stuff,

but you want to feel powerful.

So you start imposing your will on other people.

That’s how bullying happens.

There was a trading card store.

So I’m thinking a Pokemon trading card store.

But probably trading card store means they trade any kind of collectible cards.

So it’s going to be baseball cards, Pokemon cards, other nerd game cards, Magic the Gathering,

all that other stuff.

The owner was arrested for a separate crime.

But when you get arrested, they take your phone away and they start looking through your

phone.

And that’s how they discover other crimes.

And a lot of crimes seem to be discovered by the police looking at your phone.

And the police can look at your phone.

Again, this isn’t American TV stuff.

They don’t need warrants and stuff.

They actually have full access to anything.

They’re like, this is suspicious.

I want to look at it.

They don’t need a warrant.

They can just start looking at stuff.

So you got to be careful.

If you get stopped by the police in Japan, they have the full right to go through all

your possessions on your body without like a warrant or a reason.

They’re just like, you look interesting.

I would like to look in your bag now.

They can do that.

So again, different countries, different rules.

You got to know that when you come to the country, because it is a risk you run into.

Because if you refuse, you can be arrested right there.

And then for refusing, you’re not even like done anything wrong, but you can be arrested

for interfering with police business, which the police business is, I want to look in

your bag.

But they found videos on this guy’s smartphone, the owner of the trading card store.

And it was them, him and two of his coworkers abusing a fourth coworker who had been working

there for about three or four months.

And it was just, again, when I start getting into the actual details, it’s just horrendous.

They started shaving the person’s hair with clippers.

I mean, I do that to myself, but if it’s non -consensual, that’s a problem.

They were wrapping aluminum foil around his genitals and touching them to an outlet to

shock him.

I would not have thought of that.

This was the other part of bullying that I always come across is they are creative.

I would never have come up with the idea of like, oh, I’m going to bully this person.

I would think of, I will punch them.

I, you know, the fundamentals, the basics, stick to the basics, maybe push them around,

knock them with your shoulder.

If I was going to bully, it’d be very boring, uh, American TV show kind of bullying, knock

their books out of their hand, that kind of stuff.

Would never do that though, because why, why bully someone else doesn’t actually make sense.

Wrapping someone’s testicles, genitals with aluminum foil and then shocking them.

That is work.

And maybe that’s it.

I’m too lazy to be a bully.

I would never bully anyone because I wouldn’t want to make that much extra work in my life.

Uh, they sprayed alcohol on his legs and then set the alcohol on fire.

They mixed the owner’s fecal matter with instant food and made him eat it.

Now I obviously disapprove of all this behavior.

I think this is disgusting.

Uh, but again, we go back to the criminal part.

Don’t video it.

But these guys now, people now, they have to video everything because they have to have

evidence that they did this.

This is like serial killers taking like a trophy or a token of everyone they’ve killed.

And that’s the thing that gets them caught.

This is the exact same thing.

They’re bullying this guy and they want to feel powerful.

So they want to video it.

So they have the video of them abusing this other human being to prove that they can do

that.

But what ends up happening is then the police actually arrest you for some kind of fraud.

I actually forget what the actual crime was, but then they find this.

This is worse.

Like the fraud is bad, but this sort of consistent abuse of another person, because each one of

these things becomes another charge of assault or battery or something like that.

Another charge of abuse.

That’s like six, seven, eight, nine more charges, because you know, the three, four things I’ve

done right now, they’ve done those multiple times.

Each one is abuse.

The, uh, claim was that they were punishing him for making mistakes at work, but absolutely

there’s no way any of that is acceptable.

I hope they get an amazing amount of jail time.

I’m going to try to follow up and find out how much jail time they can get.

For each action, uh, that might be tough, but hopefully we can find out how much punishment

you actually get for this kind of behavior, this kind of bullying at work.

The Chinese Japanese chilling of relations has been ongoing.

Ninja News Japan has brought you reports multiple times of all the things that have happened.

Uh, China’s reaction has been to try to stop anything Japanese oriented happening.

The problem is there is still a large contingent of anime fans in China.

Detective Conan cosplay, uh, has been banned.

So they have anime events and at those anime events, you are no longer allowed to dress up

as Detective Conan.

Now, three cosplayers at a separate event dressed up as Death Note characters.

Now we all know Death Note.

We know that you have the notebook.

If you open the notebook that says Death Note on it and you write a name in the book, I

think it’s seven days later, that person dies.

Well, there was a tweet that showed the three cosplayers, all dressed as Death Note characters,

opened a Death Note book and wrote Sanai Takaichi, which is the name of the current Japanese

prime minister in their book.

This has been promoted in China, but then obviously people in Japan are complaining about it.

Because you’re saying you want the prime minister of Japan to die.

So this is a very weird situation.

The bit that I actually found interesting is they’re using a Japanese anime to make a political complaint

about a Japanese prime minister who they are claiming is anti -Chinese.

So using, are you supporting Japanese anime and making a political statement?

Or are you pro -Chinese and anti -Japanese by wearing the Japanese cosplay and then putting

the prime minister’s name in the Death Note?

If you have an opinion, I would actually like to hear what you think.

You can send an email to chunkofbeefchest at gmail .com.

Or you can send us a voice message to speakpipe .com slash chunkofbeefchest.

And we will talk about it in a later episode.

So you’re out.

It’s one o ‘clock, maybe 1 .30, two o ‘clock in the morning.

You’re having a good time.

Your phone goes off.

That’s always bad.

Your phone doesn’t, you don’t want your phone to go off at one o ‘clock in the morning.

And the message you get is come home, which is very weird because you live alone.

So coming home seems like a weird thing for someone to tell you.

You know what it makes, it sounds like someone has broken into your apartment.

And that person wants you to come back to your apartment where they are.

And then you don’t go home right away because why would you?

So the next thing they send is another text that says,

there is no way to save the parakeets except to come home.

So someone has broken into your house.

You have parakeets as pets.

And they are threatening to kill the parakeets if you don’t come home.

And then you get another message that says, if you apologize over the phone now,

I’ll spare the parakeets.

Now, what are you apologizing for?

You don’t know because you don’t seem to know this person who seems to have broken into your house

and is threatening the lives of your parakeets, but has your phone number.

So this must be some sort of distant social relationship.

I would assume a coworker or something like that.

This person getting these messages did the most reasonable thing and called the cops.

And the cops showed up at the house because that’s who, of course, you’re going to call.

And that is the weirdest form of harassment I’ve seen.

Like, if I was, I don’t know, like, are you threatening them?

Because, yeah, I’m really stuck on this one.

I don’t know where to go with it.

I value animals’ lives.

I have my associate Dave in the background.

Threatening someone’s pet is just crossing a massive line.

But why is this guy trying to get the girl to come back?

He’s trying to get the girl to come back because he’s obviously attracted to her.

And then he’s so socially inept that this is his version of game.

And his game is so bad, he’s like, I will threaten her parakeets

and she’ll come back and talk to me and then fall in love.

Like, is that what’s going through these, like, psychos’ heads

when they make these kind of threats?

Like, when they lose it, when they realize, like,

she is not attracted to me.

And they cross this line.

What’s going on in their heads is a very interesting question

because I don’t understand.

I don’t know.

I hope he gets arrested.

I do hope all the parakeets survived.

It was done in plural.

The sad part, the scary part, is the police never said that the parakeets were safe,

which I think in a normal news story they would say that.

So I think at least one parakeet did not make it.

So I don’t know what the punishment is for animal abuse in Japan,

but I hope it’s pretty severe.

I didn’t finish my notes.

that’s a little iets.

Aww.

The cool thing is crazy.

I’ll watch the books as well.