(upbeat music)
I’m gonna be honest, this is
the second start of this podcast
and it’s the second start,
because it’s a long weekend in
Japan, and it’s hot, and I
don’t go outside when it’s hot,
because it’s too bright, and
I’m too white, and I get sunburns,
so I stay inside and I stay inside
and I’m bored, and I drink at lunch,
so I’m gonna try to get
everything nice and balanced out.
I’ve already done a couple of starts
of the podcast, and they’ve all failed,
because when I’ve had a
couple cocktails, I talk too fast,
and then my brain is
moving faster than my mouth.
I think this might be a pretty common
issue, so it’s something to be aware of.
Should something similar happen to you?
The goal here is for me to just slow down.
It’s almost gonna be a
little more as Murray today,
because what I really, really
want more than anything else
is for you to have a beautiful week,
with the sound of my voice in your ear,
as I give you some news from
Japan that may be inspiring
or disappointing or who
knows, news is all over the place.
They had elections very recently, and
these elections, a group called Sensato,
has taken a couple of seats, and this was
a group that I think it was 2020 or 2021.
They came to organize as a group, and
since then have actually started taking on
a very right wing kind of stance,
a very conservative stance,
their motto, their slogan, is
Japan first, which I find very funny,
because instead of coming
up with their own slogan,
what they’ve done is taken
the Maga slogan of America first,
and said, “Let’s just
do the same thing only.
” It’s Japan first.
We’re showing everyone our politics, which
is good, ’cause you actually want to know
what kind of fascists you’re dealing
with when you deal with politics,
but at the same time, if
you’re going to put Japan first,
you should probably say in Japanese,
so it’s not Japan first, it’s Nihon fossil.
So that’s really stupid, because
you should say it all in Japanese.
So what they’ve done is try
to push politics to the right,
and actually because they got
a lot of attention online there,
actually started to get a
lot of votes, and this is called
some concern that Japan
might be moving more right-wing,
more to the right side
of the political spectrum,
and something that I read is that
as the Japanese yen gets weaker,
it politics gets more conservative,
which sort of makes sense,
because you know you’re
worried about your income, you’re
worried about the GDP, you’re
worried about your country.
So you’re going to turn to more conservative
politics, but then at the same time,
those conservative isolationist
politics actually tend to
isolate your country, which
actually pushes the GDP down.
It actually tends to make
your economy weaker,
and then you get
into this vicious cycle
if it gets weaker, more
right-wing, weaker, more right-wing.
The current leadership in Japan
wants to bring in foreign people
to fill roles that need
to be fooled, and they’re
talking like nurses,
healthcare, these kind of things.
These are very important
to the current leadership,
because we don’t have enough
Japanese people to fill all these roles.
So let’s fill them up with
people from other countries.
We’re not necessarily going
to make them Japanese,
we’re not going to integrate them properly,
but we need people to do the work,
so let’s have some people
come in and do the work.
Well, this party is like
Japan first, baby, no way.
So we don’t want foreigners coming in.
And the thing is, one
of the things they did
was spread some lies to try
to get their message apart.
So they wanted to end
welfare support for foreigners,
but the problem is if you’re a foreigner
in Japan, you can’t collect welfare.
The only way a non-Japanese
citizen could collect
welfare in Japan is if they
were a permanent resident.
So I have come to Japan.
I’ve lived here for 25 years.
I have a family, and I
became a permanent resident.
What does that mean?
That means I don’t have to renew my visa.
I can stay in Japan because they
don’t want me to leave my family.
They want me to stay here and work
and support my family and pay into taxes.
And so since I’m paying into the taxes,
should something befall me or my family,
and we need welfare, I
should get those services.
It’s one of those very
simple, logical things
where if I pay into it, I should
get paid out when I need it.
There is an alternative
where you have foreigners
coming to work in Japan,
and they don’t have to pay
into the social systems because then they
don’t get access to the social systems.
I actually would be okay with that.
I think it’s a bad idea.
But I would actually be okay with that
if you’re going to like, don’t collect the
money, and then you don’t get any money.
But then I would have more
money in my bank to take
care of myself and my family
should the situation arise.
They wanted to enact a ban on employment
in public service for foreigners.
So foreign people cannot
get a job as a civil servant.
And what does this mean?
It means you would not have foreign people
dealing with foreign issues in a city hall.
So let’s say you’re in a big city.
There’s a big foreign population.
Let’s just say Brazilians for some reason
because there’s actually
a factory near my place.
It employs a lot of Brazilians.
You might want a Brazilian speaking person,
someone who speaks Portuguese in
that city hall to deal with those people.
But this is actually interesting.
I had a student actually come to me
with the actual epitome of casual racism.
And I think he was
trying to push my buttons,
but it didn’t work
because it never worked.
He never can push my buttons
because I always know what you’re doing.
So when you know what
you’re doing, I’m going to deny
you the satisfaction of
getting the button pushed.
And he said, yeah, have
you heard this story?
There is a foreign civil servant been hired
for this city hall in some city actually.
Forget what city it was.
I was like, that’s fine.
What’s the problem?
He goes, well, Japanese
people don’t like to be
disturbed when they are
going about their duties,
the things they have
to deal with in city hall.
And I was like, well, how is this
foreign person going to disturb them?
So I just asked the questions.
Something I’ve actually
realized now getting older
is there’s no point in arguing with
people when someone has a belief.
Ask them questions until
their logic falls apart is a far
more effective strategy because
you’re not being combative.
You’re not being argumentative.
You’re not getting into the fight.
You just ask them questions.
Ask them to explain their position.
Ask them to explain their reasoning.
And from that, their own inadequacies
and their argument will come to light.
And you don’t have to actually point
them out anymore, which is very satisfying.
So this guy, he’s an old time Japanese guy.
And he was saying, yeah, Japanese
people don’t like to be disturbed.
And I was like, well, how does
a foreign worker disturb them?
Because I know the reality.
I know the answer.
The answer is he’s not Japanese.
And therefore they’re uncomfortable.
They therefore say, but
he hasn’t started the job yet.
So maybe he’s really good at it.
Maybe he’s really bad at it.
I don’t know.
So if he was really bad at his
job and couldn’t serve Japanese
people at City Hall, I would
actually be OK with him being fired
because he’s not a
good fit for the position.
But if he comes in and does a
really good job, how could that be
disturbing to people unless
they were just straight up racist?
Now he doesn’t want to say
Japanese people are racist.
He doesn’t want to say
this kind of thing out loud.
So you have to let that hang in the air.
So I just let it go for a while.
And then I just let him off
the hook and sit and moved on.
But this is the kind of casual
racism that’s really common in Japan.
And it’s not that they’re overtly foreign
people are bad or foreign people, but it’s
when a foreign person
gets any position of
authority, that is an
incredibly negative thing.
I had a conversation with
a class way, way, way back.
And we talked about how I would
be a really good police officer.
I followed the rules.
I’m physically fit.
I am a very serious person.
But I also know how to de-escalate.
Those were kind of the
attributes we described to me.
So I said, yeah, I’d be a
really good police officer.
And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You’d be a really good police officer.
And then I said, in Japan,
and they all just stopped dead
and just the heaviness of that silence
in the room was really impressive.
And it was because, like
I imagine a foreign person
doing a traffic stop and getting
out of a car and walking up
to a Japanese person in
a car and actually giving
them like a ticket or having
a conversation with them.
And they would not take it seriously.
They would think this
was like a prank show.
Because that is how inconceivable it is
to the average Japanese
person, that a foreign person
and non-Japanese person would
have authority over them in Japan.
So these city hall positions
is something similar to that.
And I actually bet this Senseido reaction,
saying we want to ban
unemployment and public services,
is a direct reaction to
that guy getting hired.
They wanted to have
stricter cultural conformity.
I have no idea what that means.
Are you going to make a rule that
you have to act like a Japanese person?
Are you going to make rules
about how people need to behave?
Because we already have public
rules about noise and stuff like that.
So if you disturb people in public,
they’re all already rules in place.
So are you going to go further that
you have to act like a Japanese person?
Are they going to provide etiquette
classes, these kind of things?
I don’t know.
I think, again, they’re just saying stuff
to see what sticks to try to
stoke anti-foreign sentiment.
They claim that globalization is
the reason for Japan’s poverty.
Now, globalization is not the
reason for Japan’s poverty.
In my personal as a foreigner opinion,
it’s that the fact that
Japan has stopped innovating.
Japan has stopped actually manufacturing.
Japan has actually
stopped taking the forefront
in a lot of things
where they used to.
And so that has damaged the economy.
And I think Japan not working
with other Asian countries
like Korea and China has
actually been a big detriment
because of these like long historical
conflicts that they can’t get past.
The other countries
can’t get past them either.
This is not like a
singularly Japanese issue,
but I’ve always felt like Japan and Korea,
if they could get past the differences,
would be the economic
superpower in the world.
They claim that crime
involving foreigners is
a huge issue, but the
fact that until 2022,
there’s been a consistent
decade long drop in crime overall.
And of course, foreigners
only making up two to 3%
of the population, they’re only
making up two to 3% of the crime.
That becomes a whole issue in itself
because that’s just factually inaccurate.
But they had one of
the San Sato people say,
many of my colleagues were murdered
by the Japanese Communist Party.
This actually ended up in a lawsuit.
The Japanese Communist Party
has sued San Sato for this statement.
But they are claiming
it’s factual because
back in 1950, so this
is what they’re doing.
They’re saying something factual
and trying to make it sound
like it’s a current event.
In 1950, there were two incidences of
violence and one police officer was shot dead.
Now, the person making this comment,
the San Sato member was a police officer
and he says he still lives
in fear, which if you’re
still living in fear because
of an event back in 1950,
because I actually don’t
actually know how old he was.
So I don’t know how old he’s in now.
So back in 1950, I’m
assuming he wasn’t that old.
That is something you need to get over.
San Sato is also, of
course, an anti-vax party.
So during COVID, they were
saying the vaccine was bad for you.
You shouldn’t take the vaccine
just by the fact that I’ve had four.
And the only problems I
have is when I drink too much
and I can’t speak properly
when I try to make a podcast.
So the big surprise has
been that San Sato actually
took three or four seats
after the most recent election.
They do are involved in lawsuits.
They have actually had
hate crime accusations
because of some of the things
they’ve said in their political campaign.
But it seems like young
people are actually resonating.
They’re sort of negativity
about the world is coming back
and they’re feeding into
this right wing politics.
And it’s mostly young men
are voting for them, but that is
enough of a block that they
actually have had some success.
(upbeat music)
In connection to the San Sato
comments, there is a false post on X,
claiming that one third of households on
welfare actually go to foreign households.
All of the welfare benefits, 33%
of that actually goes to foreigners.
And they’re saying like,
why are we paying taxes
to support foreign people
who come to Japan?
And live off our taxes, that
seems really unfair and awful.
If that were the truth,
I would agree with it.
But again, if you start thinking, the foreign
population in Japan is only around 2%,
maybe 3%, that seems
almost statistically impossible
for them to be taking 33% of the
welfare benefits that are available.
So it seems like actually someone
moved to decimal more than anything else.
There are 1.65 million households on welfare
or take some sort of welfare benefit.
560,000 of those are foreign, which
would equate to 33% where the reality is.
It’s 47,317 households
that take welfare
benefits who are actually
led by a household.
Foreign household, they have
like, the way they measure
households in Japan is the head
of the household gets declared.
And that might be, so in my case,
let’s say I was declared
as the head of the
household, this would
now be a foreign household,
even despite the fact that my wife is
Japanese, my two kids are Japanese.
So 47,317 households
led by a foreign person
are getting some sort
of welfare benefits.
That is 2.9%.
So it seems like what they
did is they just took a decimal
point, shifted it to make a
more dramatic statement.
Nippon.com, which is the
website that actually published
a chart about sort of welfare
benefits being distributed.
That article has been taken out
of context and been misconstrued
and now is being used to
disseminate misinformation.
So they’ve actually taken that
article down based on the result
of this being claimed on
X and being spread around,
probably primarily because
of the San Sato people.
(upbeat music)
Since we’re talking politics, let’s
keep it in politics for a little while.
Ishiba, the current prime minister.
He has decided to promote
a group to coordinate
with the government to focus on crime
by foreigners, which seems really weird.
Because again, I’ve
done international Japan
now, I don’t know, it’s
been like eight years.
I’ve read a lot of news.
And I don’t tend to mention
if the Japanese in foreign,
but I can tell you that the
majority of the crimes in Japan,
that at least the news
documents are by Japanese people.
When it is done by a foreign person, they
always make special case to mention it.
They never actually say like, here is
a crime done by a Japanese person.
It’s always here is a crime done by
a foreign person and that’s a big deal.
He said, “We will promote
various policies comprehensively
to realize an orderly
symbiotic society with
foreigners centered
on the control tower.
” Which is one of the more dystopian
statements I’ve heard in a long time.
A lot of the recent election
stuff has felt very dystopian.
A lot of the Japanese party
have very dystopian names.
A lot of the Japanese politics.
It seems to be taking on this
very dystopian sounding pro,
but actually being awful tone more than
anything else, which I’m finding very weird.
It’s putting me in a very
negative mind space, I guess,
because I’m really not sure of the future
of Japan if this sort of politics picks up.
Because the current political,
what this is actually saying,
so the reason I’m doing
this story is that Senseido
has pushed in, they’ve
actually gotten a couple seats
in government and now you can see the
government, the current policies, they’re like,
let’s push farther that
way, even if that’s not
really our foundation so
that we can get those votes.
Because that’s what this is all about.
More than anything
else, is getting attention,
getting votes, and if
hating on foreigners
actually gets you the votes,
that’s what politicians are gonna do.
(upbeat music)
It’s our last politics story.
I’m sure that’s enough for most
people, if I’m being really honest.
‘Cause she bought, who
used to be the prime minister.
He was the prime minister
for about three years.
He has decided to take a
very hard stance on something,
and say, “Ironic for someone
who used to be the PM
“to take a hard
stance on something.
” And it’s because when he
was PM, he could have done it.
This is a very, to me, a very Trump thing.
People talk about what Trump’s doing now,
but he actually never did half the
stuff he said he was gonna do in the past.
So people should be
holding him to a standard like,
while you were president, you could have
done A, B, and C, like the healthcare thing.
They completely have forgotten that.
For his whole first campaign was like,
we’re gonna get rid of
healthcare and replace healthcare.
He’s in his second term, and
he still hasn’t done anything on it.
They’ve actually seem
to have forgotten about
it completely and
moved on to immigrants.
This is not so different.
So while he was Prime Minister, he
could have actually had an impact on this,
but he’s decided to
take on the credit card
censorship for adult
and problematic content.
So you have like the
Japanese version of OnlyFans,
the Japanese version of the
video games with sexy content.
One of the problems you
run into, if you run a platform
that runs these kind of
things, is that MasterCard,
Visa, all these large
credit card companies,
they’re like, “We don’t wanna
have our brand connected
“to your brand, so we don’t wanna
have “our credit cards done for OnlyFans.
“We don’t have our
credit card done for Fenty,
“or Abima, or any of these other websites,
“where you can get some sexy content.
” They’re saying this is
sort of a financial version
of censorship, because
most people have a Visa
or a MasterCard or something like that, and
not being able to use it on these sites,
actually diminishes
the ability of these sites
to make money, which means those sites are
like, “Well, let’s push aside that content
“to keep the credit
card companies happening
“so that we can keep this system in
place “so that we can make more money.
” Toshiba claims that this is urgently
needed online, which is, again, very weird,
because you could have actually tried
to take it online while it was in power.
This is interesting
because this is a stance
you have to take about freedom
and pornography and stuff,
and the stuff that, so
freedom has all the good stuff.
You can do happy things,
you can do friendly things,
but then freedom also includes
all the dark and gross stuff,
like if you wanna look at
dirty things on the internet,
you should be allowed to look
at dirty things on the internet.
And so me, as a politician,
standing up and saying that
to people becomes very
difficult because that’s a very
easily affected political platform, because
people say, “Oh, you’re a gross pervert.
“You’re, you love porn
and things like that.
” And when you’re actually
advocating for his freedom,
but then it gets turned into
your advocating for pornography,
so you know you’re just
a dirty weird pornography,
and then people don’t wanna
vote for you, because they
don’t wanna be associated
with the dirty pornography.
I think this is why he’s doing it
now, because now he’s in power,
he can actually say that the
people in power should do it.
He’s saying that he has an
idea of how to solve this problem,
but he won’t actually have to solve it,
because all he has to do is propose it.
They’ll say no, and
he’ll go, “Look, I tried.
“I stood up for my people,
the weird pornography people,
“and the powers
that be, all said no.
” (upbeat music)
So I’ve learned about a
new kind of harassment.
We’ve learned about so,
so many kinds of harassment
on Ninja Ninja Japan doing this
over the years and years and years.
Just the volume of different
kinds of harassment are incredible.
This is gray zone harassment,
and gray zone harassment is
when it’s not harassment per se,
but it’s things that primarily older
people do to make you uncomfortable.
And so this is something
that I’m actually worried now
that I might be doing
this and not even realize it.
So they did a survey, and
some of the things that came up
in the gray zone of harassment
was talking about the good old days.
And so for old people in Japan,
the ’80s were the good old days.
That was the bubble.
That’s when everyone had tons of money.
It’s when Japan was a
powerhouse of the economy.
It’s when they were the
best country in the world.
This is something that old people sort of
focus on, like when Japan used to be good.
This is, again, sort of very mega
idea of like, make America great again.
This would be make Japan great
again, make it like the ’80s again.
But the question they never bring
up is what were we doing in the ’80s?
It was so different from
what we’re doing now.
And does what we did
in the ’80s actually work
now, because I bet the
answer is actually no.
So talking about the
good old days is a problem.
Size, tongue clicking, ignoring greetings,
and forced participation
in drinking parties.
So size, so like I’m talking,
and then the older person goes,
that’s probably a bit too
much, but a tongue clicking thing.
Get a little bit of that in there.
And then you say hello to
this person who you’re supposed
to be working with, and they
just ignore you completely.
First participation
in drinking has been a
common issue for at
least the last five years.
COVID actually brought to the forefront,
because a lot of people were
saying, because of COVID,
I don’t have to go out drinking,
and I’m a lot happier because of it.
And so since post COVID,
people are far, far less likely
to go out drinking with
their co-workers, ’cause they
can make excuses, and
it’s now no longer the norm.
Whereas these old people want to bring back
the old norms, and that’s one
of the problems we run into.
Comments based on past customs.
Now this is a little unclear,
but again, we used to
do it this way, so you
should do it that way now.
This is a very Japanese
sentiment in my opinion,
is this way is old, so
you’re like fax machines.
I like getting it faxed
so I can stamp the piece
of paper, so I can fax
it back to my co-worker,
doing it all digitally, I
don’t like that anymore.
That kind of comment
really frustrates young people
who have to be working
with these old people.
Personal values and prejudices,
coercion to answer private questions.
Yeah, I mean, how many
stories on an engineer’s Japan
have we done, where
it’s an old Japanese dude,
saying something really gross or sexist,
misogynistic, or racist, because he’s old,
because he grew up in a
time when that was acceptable,
and he hasn’t, his brain hasn’t updated
to realize that’s not acceptable anymore.
The coercion for answer
private questions is like,
well, I want to know
about your private life
because my life is so boring and
empty now, and you don’t want to tell me,
and I think that’s offensive, so now
we have this sort of point of conflict.
This has led people to
consider quitting their jobs,
and it turns out that drinking with
colleagues is the worst offender.
So the thing that drives young
employees away from companies
the most is being forced to go
out and drink with their coworkers.
If you want to do it
voluntarily, that’s fine.
If you want to make a create
a happy atmosphere, that’s fine.
But forcing people to do it, I
think just as soon as you say,
we’re forcing people
to go out and do stuff.
You’re already like losing a lot of people.
That’s always going to create a
certain amount of what happiness.
They also did a survey
of the people who had
caused the gray harassment,
and they all believed
that their questions,
their personal probing,
their attitudes were all
well-intentioned, and they couldn’t
really see the problem, which is
again, the problem with being old.
(upbeat music)
The Japanese government
wants people to use generative AI.
I don’t know why.
I’ve actually been on like a
really negative thing with AI.
I think it’s because
when AI was introduced
as a concept, so let’s
go back like six years.
It wasn’t still like a thing you could
just do yet, so it was still conceptual.
And they said AI is going
to fix climate change.
AI is going to fix food disparity.
So we’re gonna redistribute food
so that everyone has enough food.
AI is going to create medicines.
They’re designed specifically
for you and your ailments.
So I’ll be able to get
medicine that deals with me,
personally in my
physiology and all that stuff.
And I haven’t seen any of that.
Since AI has been introduced,
what they’ve done has been like,
hey, let’s try to get
put writers out of work.
Movie studios want to
like take writers’ work,
put them into a big
engine and then produce
movie scripts without
actually paying anyone.
They get it in perpetuity.
I read a thing during the strike, during
the actor’s strike, I think, last year.
One of the content points
was, if you’re a background
actor, so you’re just
like an extra in a movie,
they want to have licensing
of your face and perpetuity,
which means if you get famous,
but then move to a different company,
let’s say I am in the
background of a Netflix movie.
And then I move over
and I start to get bigger
roles and I become a
leading man at Universal.
Netflix still owns my face so that
they can create AI versions of me
and make movies with that with
my face, my personality, my voice,
which has now become really popular over
at Universal Films because they own my face
in perpetuity, which means forever, which
means they can make movies based on me
and my IP forever and I
don’t get any money for it.
And I can see that as being a big problem.
And then it’s all the art
stuff, like all the jibbly art,
like the fact that jibbly taking a picture
that I have taken and making it jibbly art
and that’s increasing
climate change is to me
about his disgusting
’cause jibbly is one of those
like pro-nature balance
kind of stories all the time.
And it’s always about trying to do
the best and AI is just doing the worst
’cause they’re really
just let’s not do all the
science stuff, let’s just
take art away from humanity.
I mean, I was playing with AI to
try to get this podcast in Japanese
and it did my voice, I
didn’t actually ask it to and it
cloned my voice and started
having me speak in Japanese.
And it was like, well, the next step would
be the AI making the podcast altogether,
like taking all the 300 episodes from
previously, taking what commentary I make,
creating a new version of
that, grabbing some news
stories and just making
it and then what do I do?
Because I might still be making the
news Japan but it’s gonna have better SEO,
it’s gonna have better promotion,
it’s gonna have better everything,
if all that stuff is
automated and I don’t do it.
Now, someone else who’s used
AI is getting money off this podcast
that I can’t make money off of
’cause I’m not good enough at it.
It turns out that 26.7% of people in Japan
have touched AI, doesn’t
mean they use it regularly,
it means they’ve tried it once
or twice, decided they don’t,
like I don’t use it on a regular basis,
I might try it every now and then
to see what kind of results it gives,
but AI is not a part of my life yet.
I have used voice to
text, which is a kind of
AI, but I actually
think it’s not really AI
because it’s not doing
any thinking or processing,
it’s just like, “Let’s take these
sounds “and turn them into text
“so that I may not
have a text document.
” So if you go to the
website, anengineersJapan.
com, you can actually
see this episode
and then see the script
that goes along with it.
I honestly don’t barely
even check it, so I don’t know
how accurate it is, but it
was just one of those things.
I thought, “Oh, it’d be good
to have that on the internet.
“Should someone
actually wanna see it?
” So only 26% of people in Japan
have actually even touched AI.
It’s 81.2% in China, 68.
8% in the US, and
59.2% in Germany.
So they’re saying they
want Japanese people,
the government is saying they
want Japanese people to use AI more,
but they’re not saying in what
way or how that’s gonna actually
be valuable to you or how
it’s actually gonna benefit you.
And then again, we still have all this old
compliment of people who are in companies,
the people we just talked
about with the Grey Harassment,
who are still trying to use fax machines,
still trying to do things the old way,
still trying to do things
like they were in the 1980s
’cause that’s the time they
reminisce about the most.
How are we supposed to
get those people to use AI
except to replace them,
which actually might be better?
(upbeat music)
You come here for the crime.
And the rest of the stories are crime.
We’re out of politics now.
A Tokyo trading card shop was robbed.
A man came in and he
threatened the owner with a knife.
He took 123 items.
Now, it being Pokemon cards,
that’s gonna be a lot of cards.
He took some cash, he took
some cards, but he took 123 items.
In total, it equaled $94,000.
So the cash from the register and the cards,
and one of the stories I did previously
was the problem of me, let’s say,
going in and robbing a Pokemon store.
I wouldn’t know which
cards were the most valuable.
So I’d be like, oh, the Pikachu
is, I’ll take all the Pikachu’s.
I’m sure Pikachu’s are quite common
because it’s a popular character.
So everyone gets a Pikachu in every pack.
So it’s actually one of
the least valuable cards.
So you need to know what you’re doing.
Well, he ended up with a $94,000 haul.
Turns out the suspect was staff
at a nearby training card store.
So on the same road, in the same neighborhood,
there were two training card stores.
One went from their store to
the other store and robbed them.
They would actually have the
expertise to know which cards to steal.
So I have a little bit of respect for that.
But you don’t rob in your own neighborhood.
You don’t rob in your own neighborhood
because it’s going to
be pretty easy for people
to recognize you or catch
you or to figure it out.
If all the cards that I had stolen from my
store show up in your store down the road,
that’s gonna come to
light, and you’re gonna get
arrested, which is exactly
what happened here.
Which, it actually turns
out there’s three people.
They think the manager of the
store, probably ’cause he was fencing it
in one of the employees who actually went
and did the robbery in one other person,
which they didn’t say
how they were involved.
But I’m sure it was something similar.
I actually bet that would be
going out and scoping out the store.
(upbeat music)
The 55-year-old man was arrested
for putting stones on railway tracks.
And this is one of those things I was like,
I think I would have
done that when I was a kid.
Like I would have put
some pebbles and stuff on
and see if they get crushed
or smashed or like shoot off.
Probably I’d be dumb
enough to stand near it
and get shot in the head by a rock that’s
been shot off by a train running over it.
It was big enough that
the train actually stopped.
So he was arrested for
endangering train traffic
and obstruction of business,
obstruction of business is back, baby.
The train hit the stone and had
you to make an emergency stop.
No one was hurt on the train, ’cause emergency
stops means they hit the brakes hard.
And so people can fall over and stuff.
But it damages the train’s front guard.
Which means the prices at least at
minimum is going to have to pay for that.
So if you’re in Japan, I
mean, I cross train tracks at
least twice on the way to
the train station from my house
so that it can actually catch
the train so that I can go to work.
You know, train tracks are plentiful.
Don’t do this.
‘Cause not only are you
gonna get in trouble, you’re also
probably gonna get caught ’cause
they all have cameras around.
(upbeat music)
Another man doing another weird thing.
A man strung a rope across a road.
Basically there’s a light pole and a fence
and he wants to like put his string across.
Now, in movies, this is used to
decapitate people on motorcycles.
It’s, I’ve actually seen it
a couple of time in movies.
They put up a fishing wire or a
garot wire or something like that.
And then a guy in a motorcycle
rides by and it cuts his head off.
This case, he used a
rope, it was a bit thicker,
but it was still thin enough
to actually hurt someone,
like actually cut their
skin or something like that.
So he started setting it up.
And then someone started coming
along so he just dropped it and left.
And then so it was lying across the road.
And then a few minutes
later after everyone was gone,
he came back and he picked it up
and he strung him, showing intent.
He wasn’t like doing some random thing
and then that random thing became
an accidental attempt in murder.
This was very purposeful because
he went back to finish the job.
He started setting it up,
someone left, someone came,
he left, he came back,
he set it up to finish.
It was clearly premeditated
and then a few minutes later,
a man on a bicycle
rides over it and he hits it.
It’s a six millimeter piece of nylon.
It didn’t actually cut him but it knocked
him off his bike and he was really hurt.
And then he gets up and he’s very
confused and he walks away, he said ouch.
But it caused him in the
actual physical damage,
he fell off his bicycle,
he got really hurt.
Now in Japan, setting up a
rope like this is attempted murder.
So he’s being arrested
for attempted murder.
The only statement he’s
made is I did not intend to kill.
But the question is,
what did you intend to do?
A six millimeter line across a road.
If someone was going fast enough,
what did you intend to have happen?
I would love that explanation.
Classic Ninja News Japan problem we’re
not actually going to get the explanation
because he’s going to go to court and
we’re never going to hear from him again.
(upbeat music)
We’ve talked about rescues amount Fuji’s
the last like three or four episodes.
The Mount Fuji trails were not open.
And so maybe there’s a reason for that.
Maybe because it’s not a good
time to be climbing up Mount Fuji.
Maybe because they’re
closed because there’s no safety
cruise because there’s
no one there to help you.
Something goes wrong.
Well, people, primarily
Americans seem to ignore that.
On June 26, bot note,
so he’d actually gone up on
July 4th but he was stayed
up there until June 26.
He’d hiked up the mountain.
This American man had hiked up the mountain
and tended to camp near the 7th station.
Now, I can’t honestly tell you
if the 7th station is very high,
I’m assuming it is because
no one else was around.
On June 26, he hiked up the mountain
and tended to camp near the top.
He intended to camp near the 7th station.
I can’t tell you if the
7th station is very high,
I’m assuming it is because
no one else was around.
On July 4th, other people
had to call emergency services
on his behalf because saying a foreign
man is calling out for help from his tent.
Somehow he’d managed
to bring up camping gear.
He’d managed to bring up sort of cold
weather clothes but he only had sandals.
Maybe the reason he
couldn’t get down is ’cause his
feet were too cold because
he had to like save his feet.
He was brought down from
the 7th to the 5th station
where police and emergency
services could take over.
He was suffering from
hypothermia because of the cold.
He had cold weather gear
but only had sandals with him.
He said he’s done this hike before.
So maybe that hike came
with the overconfidence,
which is why he felt like
he could do it this time.
The next day, July 5th,
another call at 8 p.m.
, a woman was saying I’m lost on Mount
Fuji, it’s dark and I’m very frightened.
She got lost while climbing down.
So what she actually did
is she went up one route,
sort of made a weird wrong turn on her
way down and then came down the wrong way.
But again, no one’s there to guide
you, no one’s there to help you.
The reason it’s locked or
closed or the trails are closed
is because they don’t want you
going up there because it’s not safe
and then people keep going
or because it’s not safe.
So if you learned anything, listen
to New Japan, don’t call Mount Fuji.
Like even when it’s
open, it’s not that worth it.
(upbeat music)
The last weird story of the
day, there were crane games and
from those crane games,
you could actually get toy guns.
These were called the
real gimmick mini revolvers.
Now there’s actually a whole
bunch like not just revolvers,
but the real gimmick mini revolvers
had an interesting facet to them.
If you won them, you could get
one and modify it to shoot real bullets.
So basically everything was in place, you
could load it with bullets, real bullets,
and then just actually make
a small modification to the
triggering system and would
actually shoot real bullets.
So the gun itself was
plastic, which actually
means it could get
through a metal detector.
And then if you could get real bullets
once you were through the metal detector,
you could have a real functioning
gun with the real gimmick mini revolver.
These have been recalled.
The owners have asked
people to return them.
The police have actually said this is in
violation of the gun and sword act in Japan,
which means you have until
December 31st to turn them in.
Now you didn’t know they’re
going to go ahead and assume
you didn’t know that this could be
modified into a real gun when you won it.
So you can return it by December 31st.
You will not get in trouble, but if
you do not, if you hold onto this gun,
you are now committing a
crime by after December 31st.
So they’re giving you a lot of time.
This is like six months
to like turn your gun in.
If you don’t do it, you’re committing
it a crime and having that gun is illegal.
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