(upbeat music)
Two private arrest
YouTubers were arrested,
which I believe is
the definition of irony.
Private arrest YouTubers,
these are people who,
we’ve done an extraordinary
couple of these guys in the past.
And what they would generally
do is try to find someone
committing a crime, and then
tackle them and make a really
dramatic arrest, or they
would berate them and stuff.
But then of course, that
relies on you, happenstance
coming across a crime,
particularly a hard thing to do.
So what you need to do then is start
manufacturing crimes that you can then catch.
So they would generally
try to do predators and stuff.
We had the guy who was last week or
two weeks ago, who was like luring people,
pretending to be like a high
school girl on some kind of app,
and then when they
would arrive, he’d be like,
you’re a bad person,
give me 300,000 yen.
That’s not the same.
‘Cause he’s just trying
to extort people for money.
This is, I want to arrest
you for the content.
I want to tackle you to the
ground, and hopefully wrestle in fight,
because that’s actually
probably what they’re looking for,
’cause that’s really
traumatic YouTube viewing.
And then I still have
the moral high ground,
and then they take them to the
police box and get them arrested.
They pretended to be a
woman, so these are two guys.
They pretended to be a woman online and
asked a man to bring them methamphetamines.
So you can see there’s a
couple of problems there.
This is, yeah, again,
I’m sort of in this
place where I’m like,
how do I contact a lawyer
who’d be willing to talk
to me about these issues?
‘Cause I want to know what
aspects of this are illegal.
So there’s pretending to be someone
online seems like a low level fraud.
Asking for methamphetamines
seems like an illegal act in itself.
Yeah, they haven’t bought them or anything.
They’re just like, hey,
bring them to this place.
But soliciting drugs is
probably a crime in Japan.
Drug crimes are very serious in Japan,
so you got to take every
aspect of it very seriously.
Lying to the guy, I think
is probably the crime,
but that’s again, pretending
to be a woman in stuff online.
This is maybe a form of entrapment,
or maybe that’s just a solicitation.
Me guessing is not the right answer.
I need, I’m trying to find some
lawyers, a Japanese lawyer,
who’d be willing to spend
a couple hours with me
talking about different
aspects of crime in Japan.
Because I want the details.
And I think you want the details too.
We all want the details.
So this soliciting drugs
is actually against the law.
So they committed a crime
to get a guy to come to a place
so they could arrest him for
the crime of him having drugs
and turn him into the
police, but they had to commit
a crime to make that
happen in the first place.
So the question then is how much
do you get punished for a solicitation?
Well, one guy is getting 10 months.
The other guy is
getting one year and four
months, but both are
received suspended sentences.
So basically, the judge is like,
okay, you’ve committed a crime.
We’re not going to send you to jail.
You’re not getting in trouble yet.
You got three years if you
don’t commit another crime.
So basically, they’re YouTube
channel where they actually commit
these minor crimes to catch
these guys making bigger crimes.
Has to go on high eight, it has to stop.
Because if they do
this again, then they’re
actually going to prison
for basically a year each.
Their statement was
we had no intention of an
innocent, we had no
intention of inciting the crime.
[MUSIC]
April 2023, then Prime Minister
Kashita is making a speech.
It’s a stump speech.
I’m going to be really honest.
I don’t 100% know what a stump speech is.
I should have looked that up before,
but then I forgot because I
was busy setting up other stuff.
It’s a national holiday, which
meant there were people
in the house today instead
of this being my day off.
You don’t care about any of that.
I was rushed.
You’ll actually, if you watched the YouTube
video, you can tell how much time I have
because if I have more
time, the editing’s better
and you get like the
scroll or along the bottom
with extra jokes, whereas if I have no time,
it’s just like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
No actual additions to the viewing
pleasure of the YouTube channel.
If you’re listening online, it
sounds probably exactly the same.
If you’re listening to
the podcast, the audio.
If you’re listening to the audio version,
it probably sounds exactly the same.
So there’s about 100 people at a warehouse.
This is like a man of
the people kind of speech,
which immediately
throws up red flags for me.
Because that’s super fake.
But whatever, that’s politics.
Politics is super fake.
Prime Minister is making
a speech to these people.
Guy Hux, a pipe bomb, into the middle
of the crowd, aimed at the Prime Minister.
It doesn’t go off.
There’s like some smoke and
stuff, but basically it doesn’t go off.
If even a small explosion had happened,
dozens and dozens of people
would have been hurt and or killed.
So this was not just attempted murder.
This was attempted
mass murder of his sorts.
He had tracked the Prime
Minister’s movements that day.
So he lived in another city.
He’s like the Prime Minister’s
going here to make the speech.
She’s making this appearance.
I followed him on Instagram or something.
So he shows up to the place
where he’s making a speech.
So it is intent.
There is intent for him to throw this thing
that could explode at the
Prime Minister at the time.
The defense lawyer says
he wasn’t aware of the power
of the bomb, the bomb
that he built himself at home.
So this was an interesting defense.
Because he’s basically saying
this guy wanted to attract
attention to like electoral
issues, things like that.
But so he built a bomb at home.
And in the defense lawyer
saying he didn’t know
how powerful this bomb
could potentially be.
So he should not be charged with murder.
He should not be charged
with attempted murder.
He should not be charged
with the same sort of severity.
The thing is, if I was the
judge or the prosecuting
attorney, I would immediately
go, he built the bomb.
So like he had instructions, he must have,
I’m going to go ahead
and guess he got it online.
So he goes online, he gets
instructions, how to build a bomb.
That’s going to include information of
how powerful the bomb is going to be.
Like this bomb could blow up a house.
This bomb could blow up a car.
This bomb could, you know,
give someone some ringing ears,
but not actually injure
anybody in any significant way.
That information is probably included in
the recipe for the bomb, is all I’m saying.
Since it didn’t go off, this
is attempted, whatever.
Probably attempted murder,
primarily of the Prime Minister.
But because you did it towards the
Prime Minister, it’s actually more serious.
Now, this is a legal quirk.
Because if you throw on
a pipe bomb at a regular
person, you’re going to
get X amount of years.
If you throw a pipe bomb at the Prime
Minister, you’re going to get way more.
No, people are supposed to be
viewed equally in the eyes of the law.
I think that’s pretty fair, but at the
same time, this is a political statement.
So now it becomes, is it
an act of terrorism or not?
So you can see that’s how
they’re actually twisting it.
The prosecuting attorney
is asking for 15 years.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
January, 2024, there was
a school board meeting.
The vice chairman of the
board was making statements
and a student objected towards these
statements during the meeting publicly.
So the vice chairman
got really upset about this.
I would really love to know what the
statements were and what the objection was.
Like what were they actually talking about?
That’s not in any of the news stories.
I found about four versions of this story.
Not one of them actually
says what the statement was
that was objected to or
what the objection was.
Which is I think–
because if you’re in high
school, you’re a teenager
standing up and objecting
to this statement of an
adult is a very hard thing to do.
It’s big.
So I’d like to know what
it was that they were
talking about that would
have said everybody off.
This enraged the vice chair.
And he demanded through a teacher,
which is a very cowardly way to do it.
He demanded a letter of apology.
But he didn’t go to the student
said, what you did was wrong.
You should write a letter of apology to me.
He went to a teacher and said, tell
that student to write a letter of apology.
And I was like, ah, this is the kind
of power dynamic these people have.
Like it’s like, I have power, but I’m
actually scared to confront people.
So they’re cowards.
I think that’s actually it.
So he told someone to
go get a letter of apology.
If the student– so the
school tells a student,
if the student does not write this
letter of apology, they will be expelled.
So the student capitulates.
I mean, no reason to get expelled.
This is like the third year of high school.
So there’s getting expelled now is going
to ruin your university
opportunities, things like that.
Your future education, if you want
to continue education, it’s not worth it.
Rights the letter of apology.
But this kid, the kid who’s
brave enough to stand up
and object in a meaningful of
adults, is not going to back down.
Like you already have a
taste of what this person is like.
And I really like them whoever they are.
June 2024, she files a criminal complaint
that she was coerced into writing a
letter of apology by the school board.
So she didn’t be like, let’s
argue this back and forth.
She’s like, you forced me to do something.
That’s coercion.
Corision is illegal in Japan.
She goes to the cops and she says, I was
coerced into writing a letter of apology.
I was threatened that if I didn’t write
this letter of apology, I would be expelled.
That’s against the law in Japan.
They’re like, hmm.
This seems a little not clear
as to what the legalities are.
But they kicked it up the road.
Some investigators did– they’re
like, hey, we got some time, I guess.
Japan is a very low crime society,
which is why maybe stuff
like this gets more attention.
They started investigating.
So that means the police went to the
school, the police go and talk to the staff,
and they start talking to people,
and they start doing an investigation.
So the police show
up, the school then goes
to the kid and says,
please drop the charges.
And then she’s like, nah, you guys
did something that I consider wrong.
I’m not dropping the charges, screw you.
I mean, no one’s going to jail over this,
but there might be like, fines and stuff.
So then she was expelled.
She was expelled for
disruption of school order.
So her drop in the cops on this
school board is disrupting school order.
And now, so this is the interesting part.
The teachers say that this
student never disrupted school order
that the younger students
looked up to the student.
They came to her for help.
She was a very positive
influence within the school.
So this statement that
she disrupted school
order clearly is only
implicit to the power order
of the upper echelons of
the school hierarchy system.
So the teachers disputed this.
And some of them said, I was shocked
when I found out she’d been expelled.
I was shocked when I found
out the school had gone this far.
The principal then
acknowledged the expulsion.
So of course, newspaper
start coming around the school
and being like, do you
want to make a statement?
He’s like, yes, we expelled the student.
We expelled the student for
the disruption to the school order.
They go, what specifically did the
student do to disrupt school order?
And the principal was
either unable and unable,
was either unable or
unwilling to comment on that.
When they started asking about for more
details, he basically shut it all down.
That’s already showing
that you’re on shaky ground.
If you’re not willing or
able to defend your position
on the things you’ve
done as a person in power,
you know you’ve either abused
that power or done the wrong thing.
Two days later, a lot of attention.
So again, news story start coming up.
So the expulsion was then withdrawn.
Now, this is actually at this point,
’cause this is again, now
we’re getting to like a year later.
She’s actually finished high school,
but she says, I don’t want
an expulsion on my record.
So I need you to remove
that to expunge the expulsion.
There’s a great sentence.
It went to court and the court
recommended a settlement and
the school’s like, okay, we’re
gonna remove the expulsion.
I don’t know if money
passed back and forth.
They didn’t give any details of the
settlement ’cause that’s a private thing.
But as far as I’m concerned,
this kid stood up to the power
structure of the school and
won and that is fricking awesome
’cause I wish I was able
to do that when I was a kid.
(upbeat music)
So if you go to a convenience store in
Japan, now they haven’t been made illegal,
but basically the government
said like, don’t give out plastic bags.
We actually kind of wanna
get rid of plastic bags.
If you want a plastic
bag, they charge you two
yen or five yen, depending
on how big the bag is.
They have self checkout machines.
So I can get my drink
right now is chai milk tea.
I think I drank too much yesterday.
Maybe that’s why I have a
bit of an upset tummy today.
Chai milk tea, maybe my chocolate
fudge and then only giddy and stuff.
And then I go up to the
front and I can beep it out
and then I take my barcode off my
phone and I hold that up and I pay for it.
And then I can walk out.
If I want a bag, I’m
supposed to take the bag.
The bag has a barcode on it.
I’m supposed to put that up to the screen
and it will charge me two
yen or five yen or three yen.
Whatever.
It’s a nominal sum to just
encourage you to not use plastic bags.
Now I often have a messenger
bag that is around my shoulder.
So I just throw everything
in my messenger bag.
I don’t use plastic bags
as much as possible.
I think this is fair.
This is a very Canadian thing of me to do
is to just not use
resources if at all possible.
48 year old British
man had a different idea.
Now he’s a tourist.
So maybe he didn’t know.
So it depends how much forgiveness you
want to give to him but he’s a colonizer.
So no one wants to
forgive the British empire.
I think that might be part of it.
This British man, he’s
a tourist in Hokkaido.
He uses the self checkout.
He gets his stuff and then as he left,
he grabs a three yen bag
and starts walking away.
So there is a question of did he know
he was supposed to pay for that or not?
Did he know how to pay for it or not?
Because they are just hanging
next to the self checkout thing.
I could actually see you assuming
that you just take it and go.
That it’s just like a free service.
If you didn’t know about Japanese
culture or the rules and stuff,
I’m actually slightly
forgiving of that aspect.
The clerk chases him down.
So he goes outside and
he starts walking away.
The clerk comes out and this
is very Japanese thing to do.
If you like over pay or
something and there’s change
and you don’t pick it
up like it’s three yen,
they will run down the street and be
like, “We have to give you three yen.
” It’s just a very important
aspect of Japanese culture.
You’ll get chased down for
incredibly small sums of money.
He chases down the tourist and he says,
“Look, you gotta pay
three yen for the plastic bag.
” You just took.
Now he’s probably speaking Japanese.
Maybe the British dude doesn’t understand.
But he’s like,
“Give me three yen.
” Let’s just say that.
He’s like three yen, three yen, three yen.
And we all know three yen
is not worth anything, really.
It’s not worth certainly a conflict.
The British man then decides
that the most reasonable
solution to this is to
punch the clerk in the face.
Now, you could say he did not commit
theft because of misunderstanding.
So again, I could be
very forgiving of that.
He took a three yen bag.
He didn’t know he was stealing,
but he was actually stealing.
But I think we all know that
punching someone in the face
is not a viable solution
to a three yen problem.
Of course, the police are called.
Assulting people is
not acceptable in Japan.
It’s not really acceptable anywhere,
but it’s a pretty big deal in Japan.
You get arrested for that pretty quickly.
When he was explaining things to the
police, I assume through a translator.
He said, “My hand may have
struck his face as I pushed him aside.
” So he’s saying that the
clerk was coming towards him.
He pushed him away and
that maybe while doing that,
he slapped him in the face or hit him
in the face, that this was not a punch.
Now, the problem is
that if you lay hands
on another person,
that is assault in Japan.
If you push someone,
that is assault in Japan.
So basically he’s saying I
haven’t assaulted him by
punching him in the face, but
then inadvertently admitted,
I have assaulted him by
pushing him in the first place.
So if my hand hit him, that’s
actually irrelevant at this point.
So should you come to Japan and you’re in
a convenience store and you see some bags,
if you accidentally steal one of those
bags and the clerk comes running after you,
just give him to Yen, just
give him three Yen, whatever
he asks for, just give
him the Yen he asks for.
Say, “Sorry, I move on.
” Do not punch him in the face.
(upbeat music)
Yeshiba is the current prime minister
of Japan and he met with Trump.
And of course, when you
meet Trump, when you meet
a president, you probably
give him a president.
There’s a lot of present
giving between countries
and there’s been some
really weird ones in the past.
I believe that Obama gave Queen
Elizabeth like a bag of CTs or something.
Like that feels like you didn’t
have a gift and you pulled
everything out of your car
and put it in a bag handed to her.
But I’m sure there was
more thought to it than that.
I know like there’s desks
that were made from ships that
sailed from England to Japan
as like England to America.
Like those are the kind of gifts
that other countries give America.
America’s not really
good on the gift giving part.
You know, Trump accepts gifts
and doesn’t even think about the idea
of giving gifts back,
but he has received gifts.
And when the Japanese prime minister comes
to America and meets with the president,
he’s gonna give him a gift.
That’s a very Japanese thing to do.
Gift giving is a big part
of Japanese culture.
If you don’t know that, you should
know that before you spend any time here
because you’re either going to be giving
or receiving gifts on a regular basis.
So what did he give him?
He gave him a golden samurai helmet.
So this is because of the
popularity of the recent
show, Shogun, because
it won Emmys and stuff.
He’s like, ah, this is a popular thing.
Americans like this.
Let’s give him a samurai
helmet and it’s gonna be gold.
And I was like, actually, I bet
Trump is really happy about that.
Trump seems to be one of those
guys who thinks gold’s awesome.
Anything in gold is awesome.
And he’s currying favor with Trump.
Because let’s face it,
since Trump is the president,
you do have to deal with
him for the next four years.
It would be the best tactical
decision to appeal to his base desires.
So giving him gold, paying that
homage is probably the best route.
Because the trade things he’s doing right
now, he might actually softly be like,
“Well, that guy gave me this
sweet Japanese samurai helmet.
“Why do I wanna
impose tariffs on him?
” Yeah.
So I actually think this
is a very smart political
move on the Prime
Minister of Japan’s part.
I don’t know if it’s intended that way.
Like, I don’t know if
he’s actually that smart,
but at least inadvertently
he’s doing a very smart thing
by currying that favor
because it’ll just be
easier to deal with Trump
for the next five years.
Like, even if you think he’s an idiot,
let’s say I was suddenly
made Prime Minister of Japan,
I am now in charge, and I think
Trump’s more on, which I absolutely do.
It would make more sense to
give him something made of gold
so that he thinks you like him, so
that he’ll just be easier to work with
for the remainder of the
four years until he disappears.
A company received an
order from the foreign ministry
and saying it was a gift
for a VIP, so the people who
made the samurai helmet
didn’t know who it was for.
That was an interesting aspect
of this that I hadn’t thought about.
Because what if you run a company
and you hate Trump and they’re
like, we want you, we want to
commission you to make a thing
that we’re going to present to
the President Trump that you hate.
Do you refuse that order?
Now, the company here is
like, we’re really happy to be
promoting our goods on the
world stage, that kind of stuff.
Again, very diplomatic answers.
He’s saying he’s very
happy that the Prime
Minister thought of this
thing and gave it to the,
gave it to the President
of the United States.
But I was like, there’s
sort of a moral issue there
because you making it is almost
a political statement in itself.
Something else, so I was
looking up some of the other gifts
the previous Prime Minister,
Kishida, when he met Trump in 2016,
he gave him a golden golf club,
which I was like, again, very good idea,
makes him not much easier to work
with because he’s an absolute child
and giving him a gold toy is really
probably the best way to deal with him.
(upbeat music)
55 year old man.
That’s it, I mean, I don’t
even finish the story.
You know, this would
be what the quiz is going.
I got to reorganize myself
and get the quizzes back on.
I’ve got to reorganize and
get a lawyer back on to ask
questions because there’s so much, so much
I want to do and so much I want to know.
But everything takes
like hours to organize.
55 year old man.
So I would do the quiz
like, did he expose himself,
did he steal something,
did he beat someone up?
55 year old man in
Hokkaido walked into a
convenience store on
November 16th and 29th, 2024.
Sounds like it’s not too bad so far.
He was wearing a jacket.
Now, I say that very specifically because
clearly he’s not wearing much heels.
He was wearing transparent
stockings and nothing else.
They were see through,
which actually, to me,
almost goes like, why are you
bothering with the stockings?
Like, if you’re going to
go in and expose yourself,
which is what he did, what, I guess the
stockings were for him, not for the viewer.
I guess the whole experience
is for him, not the viewer.
So he comes in, he’s
wearing stockings in a jacket,
he walks in, he walks around, and
then they say he exposes himself.
It makes it sound like
he took the jacket off
and just started walking around the
convenience store would just the stockings on.
But that actually wasn’t very clear.
He was arrested on January
30th two months later.
So the police in Hokkaido,
for the last two months,
they had security
footage, they had this guy,
they had his face, they
spent the next two months
hunting him down, finding
him so he could be arrested.
And I was like, man, they
didn’t give up on it though.
Because as far as crimes
go, this is very small
’cause yes, the woman,
the clerk behind the
counter, she was really
grossed out fair enough.
I would be really grossed out by it too.
This is not a pleasant experience.
But as far as crimes
are going, no one got hurt.
So you can see the police being like, yeah,
if we see him again, we’ll
pick him up, whatever,
just call us next time it
happens, that kind of thing.
They spent two months hunting for this guy.
The reason when he was arrested,
he said he did it out of curiosity.
And I’m just wondering
what that accent means.
What was the curious thing
he was trying to experience?
‘Cause he did it twice.
So the first time did
not satisfy his curiosity.
The second time, maybe
that satisfied his curiosity?
I’m not sure.
The curiosity, I’m
assuming there is some sort
of sexual element to this,
the excitement element.
What aspect of the curiosity,
the single sentence statements
when someone gets arrested
are not satisfying to me.
I want to paragraph with explanations as
to what and why they’re doing these things.
Give me all the information you can get.
This is killing me now after
having done “The Engineers
Japan” for however many
years I’ve been doing it.
They have not said what he’s been arrested.
Having said, I guess it’s
decency laws, but they haven’t
said what kind of punishment
he’s gonna get for this.
Although he has admitted to doing it.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
[BLANK_AUDIO]