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