anime – NinjaNewsJapan

Sudden Serial Killer Story

(upbeat music)

Halloween is soon upon us.

And the party, well, it’s mostly people
getting drunk and slutty costumes.

But the party does happen,
and it usually happens

in Shinjuku and Shibuya, and then they’re
like, last year going, hey, two years ago,

you guys like flipped over
a car and set shit on fire.

So, mmm, the mayor said, Shibuya
will be closed on Halloween this year.

And so, they’ve imposed a ban on drinking.

So, on around Shibuya Station,

you’re not allowed to drink
in public on Halloween night.

And in Shinjuku, you’re not allowed
to drink on Halloween night anymore.

And this is a big shift,
’cause this was a big party.

Obviously, a lot of people come
here a lot of money is made.

So, what is the big problem?

The big problem is
they just trash the place.

The mayor of Shinjuku
said, leaving trash behind is

not the behavior of an
educated, rational person.

Educated, rational people
drink and do dumb things.

And that’s just true across the board.

I don’t know if there’s any sort
of real argument to be made there.

Rational, educated
people make bad decisions.

That’s just the fact.

He is basically calling
anyone who came to Shinjuku

or Shibuya to party on
Halloween night degenerate,

which I don’t think
that’s really cool.

Like, it gets out of hand.

You want to stop it?

You could address that as the issue, but
then calling people names, come on, man.

But then there’s the
other side of it as well.

And it’s something that I as a
foreign person living in Japan.

I think about other foreign people
living in Japan and how they represent me.

And the drinking in public
has always been of an issue.

‘Cause I come from a country
where drinking in public is not allowed.

You’re not allowed
just to walk around

downtown and get on
the train and drink a beer.

Foreign people come to Japan.

They find out you are
allowed to drink in public.

You’re allowed to walk around downtown.

You’re allowed to get on
a train and drink a beer.

So they do it.

They do it constantly.

They’re not taking into account.

Is it socially acceptable?

Are they making themselves look bad?

Are they behaving well?

So drinking in public isn’t the issue.

It’s abusing the
ability to drink in public.

That is the issue for me.

So I do, like I have friends
and they finish work Friday night.

They grab a beer from a convenience store.

They get on the train on the
way home and they drink their beer.

No one else is doing that on the train.

People drink beer on the shinkansen.

That’s almost like a
tradition at this point.

People don’t get on a local train

and start drinking unless
you’re like a 70-year-old

man who’s got a bit of
another issue going on.

So I look at that and I
go, OK, what is socially

acceptable is also
still sort of a rule.

And then if you push the
boundaries and you go too far,

then you get actual rules put into
place like in Shibuya in Shinjuku.

And that’s where I’m like,
I’m kind of on both sides.

I think if the rules and the
laws say you should be allowed

to drink in public, you should
be allowed to drink in public.

But if you’re going to trash a place,
they’re going to make a rule and stop you.

But also don’t shit on mostly
20-year-olds who are drinking

for the first time and
just having a good time on

Halloween because that’s
what people do on Halloween.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Dove, the beauty company.

I actually only know them from soap.

I’m sure they do much, much more than soap.

My beauty routine essentially includes
washing my face and moisturizing.

And now, because I have a
beer at the moment, beer to oil.

I’ve done several advertisements
for the beer to oil I bought recently.

And I’m not getting anything for it.

I just keep picking it up
because the box is not my desk.

And then doing an impromptu
ad, which I’m going to stop.

If you want to pay me
to do beer toil ads, I will.

But I think I’ve got to get it a bit too.

So Dove, they want to
promote beauty standards.

But then they’re also trying to break
down the walls of beauty standards.

This is a hard thing for a company to do.

There’s a fine line.

And then the reason I’m talking
about them is because they

kind of missed the line
altogether on this one.

They put out an ad to say that
there’s no standard to what is attractive.

And they’re trying to
say, like, beauty standards.

They’re a false narrative.

It’s something society
makes and imposes on you.

You’re beautiful the way you are.

That’s a pretty good message.

And then they went and listed a
whole bunch of beauty standards.

Now, I didn’t know most of
these beauty standards existed.

So now that I do know,
I’m more aware of them.

If I was, let’s say, a
self-conscious teenager

and saw a whole bunch of beauty
standards I didn’t know about.

And then I could start measuring myself

in new and more difficult and more difficult
to attain ways, well, that would suck.

And that’s why people got upset.

But let’s just go into the beauty standards
I learned because that’s the fun part.

In Japanese, it’s called SPAY 110.

So it’s the height minus weight
ratio is the standard for being thin.

So I am 183, maybe 184 centimeters.

I am 90 kilos.

So if I take my height and minus my weight,
that is what I should be weight wise.

I actually don’t really
understand that one.

There’s a formula there
somewhere that I’m not quite getting.

I bet there’s a remainder.

And that’s how either how many kilos I
need to lose or how many I need to be.

I’m not sure.

I would need someone to come
in and explain the formula to me.

But it’s height minus weight equals thin.

Gen 2, Mijigai.

This is the groove
between the nose and the

upper lip determines
how cute something is.

So it’s basically how
the space on your face,

like if it’s too
squished, it’s not cute.

If it’s too far away, it’s not cute.

So this is like the perfect
amount between your nose

and your lip to make sure
that you are attractive.

This is sort of the symmetrical face idea.

Like there’s going to
be certain measurements.

If I was a modeling
agency place, I’m sure I

would actually know
all this and think all this.

And then there would be times I’d be like,

well, that person’s a
beautiful and unique way

and I would have higher
that model, that kind of thing.

But I can understand these are actual
things that some people take very seriously.

There’s the line connecting
the nose in your chin in profile.

So my chin should not jut out too far.

And my chin should not be too far in.

Or my nose should not be too far out.

My nose should not be too flat
for me to have an attractive profile.

Therefore that’s going to
make me more attractive.

So now I can go in the
mirror and sort of look to

the side and try to
decide, is my nose too big?

Is my chin too big or something like that?

The interesting thing
now that we’re actually

talking about this,
these beauty standards.

And this is Dove, the beauty company.

They sell soap and makeup and stuff.

None of their products would
actually help with any of these.

So they could say
like, oh, is your skin dry?

Use our soap.

It’ll make it more beautiful and moist.

We don’t care about the shape of the skin.

It’s on the shape of the face.

We don’t care about the shape of the face

that your skin is on because you’re
beautiful, but you want to have healthy skin.

They could do that.

We have makeup.

It will take care of blemishes or
hide blemishes or things like that.

Once they get into all the
symmetry of the human face,

you’re now talking about plastic
surgery, if you want to fix it.

And now that you’ve put it in people’s
heads, they might actually want to fix it.

So this is again where they’ve gone wrong.

The thigh gap, adi, so thigh gap is
actually just English and adi means have.

So do you have a thigh gap?

If you don’t have a thigh gap, you’re fat.

I mean, that’s kind of
what they’re trying to say.

Even though I think for a lot of people,
it’s just not natural to have a thigh gap.

The two gun men, six centimeter.

So this is under your eyes to your lips.

It measures should be six centimeters.

This is again, it’s an idea
of how big your face is.

And so in Asia, Japan particularly, a
small face is considered more attractive.

So I have big features or a big face.

That’s not attractive in Asia.

Now, there’s beauty standards
that are different all around the world.

So that’s something to take into account.

The beauty standards
they’re talking about

in this ad are the
Japanese beauty standards.

Japan beauty standards very much geared
towards youth, geared towards cuteness,

and that’s not going to be
the same in other countries.

But again, now that I’ve actually
started reading this out loud,

I didn’t think about this
when I was running it down.

None of the beauty standards they’re talking
about could be taking care of product.

These are only things you could
take care of with plastic surgery.

If you were self conscious
about it, which now they’ve

put it in your head, maybe
they’re more self conscious.

There was a massive
backlash online, of course.

For highlighting beauty
standards while claiming not to,

which made me feel bad for the
girl in the ad, because she’s up there.

They stuck her face on it.

They’re looking at her face and going,
this doesn’t match the beauty standard.

This doesn’t match the beauty standard.

This doesn’t match.

They’re basically, in a backhanded
way, calling the girl really unattractive.

I’m a sweet and sweet and die.
I’m sweet and that’s awesome.
Like the beauty party, I don’t know.
It would not compare myself to him.
I would not be my first choice.
See, I wouldn’t either, but I’ve spent
many, many years here on the internet,

and every time I say I’m Swedish,
that’s the one thing that they do.

I mean, you might have gotten credit.

He’s successful.

I mean, as much as I mean,
I might not like his content,

I might not like what he
does, but he is successful.

So it’s really hard to argue with that.

Yeah, and I get that, I get that.
I just got a bit miffed
that he got to Japan

before me, and now it’s
mainstream to like Japan.

I’m sad about that.

In America and Canada, I’m from Canada.

In American Canada, it’s
like I wanna be weaboos

and guys who think that getting chicks
in Asia is gonna be easier and stuff.

It’s almost a cliche is the problem.

Dude, it’s gone so full circle here

that guys that used to
beat me up for liking anime

are now asking me for
anime recommendations.

Yeah, no, I totally believe that.

I hope I’m just going to believe that.

That’s what I’m saying.
What is your favorite anime?

‘Cause we have to judge
how much of a nerd you are.

What a shitty way
to start a conversation.
Well, it may be like Code
Geas or like guilty crumb.
Okay, I’ve heard of those.

So I think I’ve watched guilty.

I don’t think I’ve seen a Code Geas, like
I’ve heard of them, I haven’t watched them.

I’ve watched classic.

I’ve watched really, really old stuff

and then every now and
then someone will recommend

something and I’ll dip
in and dip out again.

‘Cause Ghost in the
Shell was probably the

one that got me hooked
on anime as a concept.

‘Cause it wasn’t dumb kid formulaic stuff.

‘Cause all this stuff I’ve seen before,

that was really just formulaic,
same 20 minutes over and over again.

So I was like, oh, this is a quick age.

What age were you?
Oh, yeah, see, this
is it, I’m really old.

So this was like in the 80s
and you’d go into rental shops,

like the Asian ones and they
would have VHS cassettes

and some of them were dubbed
and some of them were subbed

and you didn’t know and they were clearly
like stolen or copied off something else.

Like I, that for me was a super exciting
time because when I moved to Vancouver,

I lived in Vancouver has a
really big Asian population.

They had these like
Chinese video rental places

and that’s where I started
watching Kung Fu movies regularly

and then they had the Asian
section with anime and stuff.

So that, for me, that was
a really, it was pre-internet.

So it was really exploratory and like, oh
man, like I never seen anything like this

and there was no one,
you didn’t talk to anyone

about it ’cause no one
else had heard of it either.

So yeah, I remember the first couple of
anime and I was like, oh, this is just weird.

I didn’t get it.

And then I saw a bunch that were like,
oh, this is just a, it’s like Sailor Moon,

it’s just a formula, just like
every other kid’s cartoon.

And then we got to, ghost
in the show, I was like,

oh my god, this is like an
adult, full-on, complicated

story with like depth
and morals and stuff.

So I was really excited at that
point and that’s what got me into it.

Okay, I guess yeah, you like an OG
boomer seen the stuff back in the day.
Yeah, yeah.
And for sure, I
think like a ghost in the

show is like a true
classic, the somewhat,

or I think every boomer anime guy I talk
to there, they’re really into that one.

I don’t know, we’ll have to be a boomer.
Okay, no, I guess
we’re not a boomer, right?
I don’t know, because
I would be Gen X

technically, but because
I’m Gen X, I was care.

So if you want to call
me a boomer, that’s fine,

you want to call me
something else, it’s fine.

No, no, no, I just viewed you as like a,

the cool old guy doing
a, doing a cool podcast.

Cool stuff, very cool, I like this.
I actually find it really funny ’cause I
did read a thing about the generations

and their attitudes and I was really
annoyed how accurate Gen X was for me.

Really?
Oh God, ’cause you think I’m an individual,
I’m not influenced by my surroundings

or my generation and
stuff, because I’m unique.

And then it’s like my attitude
towards work, 100% accurate,

my attitude towards like
time off and family and stuff,

100% accurate, my
attitude towards discipline.

I was like, God, Dan, they got
me nailed down on that one.

It was a bit sad, ’cause I
am just a product of my time,

which, I mean, you can’t
get away from it, everyone is.

That is very fair.
I think my first
interaction with like anime

was just like my brother,
like a pirating stuff

on the internet and
so I think I got into it

like maybe around, I was like six
years old, around like 2004 or five-ish.

What were you watching at six years old?
That’s really interesting.

I was watching Shaman King, like subbed.

Yeah, yeah.
I was like my first
anime that I got into.

And it’s also like, ’cause I think they,
this is really odd, but for some reason,

they started selling like
Shonen Jump here in Sweden.

And they didn’t like, that
was like, I don’t know, maybe

for a couple of months and
then they just discontinued it.

But like I found that and I was
like, wow, this is pretty cool, man.

And then, you know, I got into
my brother, got into the Shaman

King and I was like, I read
that manga, that’s pretty cool.

And then I just kept rewatching that.

I could barely read English at the time,
but I would keep rewatching that stuff.

So I think it was in Finland, they
put Dragon Ball on TV like a kid’s time.

And it was just
subtitled, it wasn’t dubbed.

So they said the literacy of
kids went way up because all

the kids wanted to know what
was happening in Dragon Ball.

Yeah, ’cause you have to learn to read

at the speed of the
TV, like you can’t flip

back and check stuff
again, you gotta keep up.

So you gotta learn to read fast.

I thought that was a
really cool way of doing it,

like getting a literacy up by
showing kids stuff that’s fun.

I just remember, that’s
like one note I wrote down,

’cause I’m like, I’ve
seen that so many times

they keep saying this, or like,
sort of sort of, and stuff like that.

You do learn a lot
of like, really standard

Japanese phrases, which
is actually really good.

You just gotta be really careful
because the way they talk comes, like,

I didn’t learn about rudeness
and the little different levels

of politeness in Japan
until honestly too late.

I learned, I came to
Japan, and I started living

here in 2001, and I
went to two judo clubs.

That’s why I came to
Japan was to practice judo.

And the guys I was hanging out
with, they were all really rough dudes,

and they talked like
gangsters, and I didn’t know that.

So I’m copying them, ’cause
I’m learning all my phrases

from them, and then I would
go into my Japanese class,

and I would just start
talking about the new phrases

and they’d be like, “Oh, dude,
no, no, no, no, no, stop that.

” And I was like, “Oh, okay,
okay, I gotta learn to differentiate.

” But I am afraid to talk to people on the
phone in case I slip into my yakuza talk.

Oh, wow, you just like,
“You learned yakuza go first.

” – Basically, I learned
the tough guy talk, yes.

I wouldn’t go as far as yakuza,
but it’s clearly like these dudes.

They are tough dudes, and
they’re trying to emulate that.

So they talk like those guys, yeah,

and they talk like a tough
guy, and it fit what I was doing,

so it made sense, but then I’m in
an office, and it’s not right anymore.

You can’t answer the phone
and be like, “Oh, no, he’s in a door.

” And then they’re like,
“Oh, fuck, who’s this guy?

” – What do you call her?

Oh, my, oh, my.

When actually, I don’t know, she knows.
Yes, my Japanese friend,
he speaks Swedish and

stuff, but he roasted the
shit out of my Japanese.

He was like, “This is
trash, we of anime Japanese,

that can’t be why you’re
pronouncing it like that.

It is good to learn
in that early, though.

You don’t want to learn
that after it’s been embedded,

and you can’t change it anymore,
’cause it’s the only way you know.

” ‘Cause I had a friend
who came here, and he was

very popular with girls,
but not like in a sexy way.

He was just very comfortable around women,
and so a lot of girls became his friends,

and so he had lots of friends,
and he started talking like them,

and so he would talk to other guys, and
they’re like, “Why do you talk like a woman?

” And it’s less now
than it used to be,

but it used to be really
clear differentiation

in the word choices,
how you said stuff,

and he always chose the
female way of speaking.

And it was like, “Dude,
you can’t stop that.

” You know, he
sounded like a girl.

I tried to shadow my
friend who speaks Korean

with her Korean friend, and then
she was like, “You can’t do that.

“You’re trying to sound
like a cute girl in Korean.

” I’m like, “Okay, but… “

Maybe I am a cute girl.
Maybe that’s what I identify as.

Why are you limiting me?

Yeah, why can’t I have
that more next question?
Maybe I want to be a cute girl, see?
I don’t know them otherwise.
All right, we’re gonna start a quiz.
Yeah.
So, I give you just
an intro to the story,

and then I’m gonna
give you four choices,

and then you can ask me
questions about the choices,

so I’m gonna try to lie my way through so
that I can try to make all the four choices

sound convincing, then you have
to just guess which one is correct.

So we have a guy who’s 49 years old, and
he has been arrested for calling the police

over 1,000 times and
remaining completely silent.

So, why do you think he
remained completely silent?

So there are four choices.

A, I was waiting them to
ask me what my problem was.

B, making silent calls, comes the mind.

C, I had to pretend to work, or D,

I was testing if they could
track my phone like on TV.

So you can ask me some questions.

I’ll try to make the story sound good,
and then you have to guess which one.

I’m trying to think, I’m
waiting for them to ask

me a question, or the last
one, which one was that?

The last one was I was testing to see

if they could track my
phone like they do on TV.

‘Cause on TV, it’s always
like, keep them on the

phone for 30 seconds,
and we’ll track where he is.

I found out in reality,
like even modern times,

if they’re technically
tracking the phone,

it has to take like five, 10 minutes minimum,
like it’s probably like half an hour,

right, I mean cell phones,
they use just triangulation.

It’s a whole different thing.

But, you know, if you’re
using a phone phone,

actually it’s very difficult
to put a phone line.

Yeah, I guess.

I just read this thing, it’s
like apparently really hard

to track a phone if you’re
just trying to track a phone.

It’s not like the movies.

So he did it from August
30th to September 17th.

He made 1,301 calls that they’ve recorded,
and he did sometimes up to 183 calls a day.

So he was doing not a lot else.

Day, wow, this guy did not have a life.

He woke up, he started calling the police,

they’d answer the phone,
he’d go silent, they’d hang up,

he’d call back, maybe take a
lunch break, but he’s working

like a full shift of just
calling the police all day.

It’s insane, I don’t, there’s
a whole mentality here

of what’s going on, but
that’s why, like for me,

the reasoning for most of these stories is
the most interesting part, like the crime,

whatever they commit,
sure, people commit crimes.

Why?

And then the weird ones like
this one, like why would you bother

to call the police, like get a, play
a video game, do something else.

That’s the bit I don’t understand.

You could find some really simple hobby

that would take the
place of calling the police

and remaining silent,
like it’s not even prank

calling or giving them
like false information.

If it’s that many a day, maybe
it’s not, it’s not the tracking thing.

Okay. I feel like he would have given
off earlier if it, that were the case.

That is some very good
reasoning on your part

because it is not D, it is not because
he was testing so he could track it.

Okay, that’s this one.

All right, so you’re down to three options,

waiting for them to ask
me, making silent calls

calms the mind and I
had to pretend to work.

Then I’m like, I’m thinking
it’s calms the mind.

Maybe it is calms the mind.

‘Cause like, if somebody
is to commit to doing

this stuff about like
a hundred times a day,

then I can only imagine that
in some really wicked version

of reality, that’s like, I don’t
know, I guess this guy is very

depressed and anxious or bad
times mental health situation.

It just brings you some sort of peace.

Yeah, yeah, this is like his
way of breaking the loop.

I mean, I find that that’s the most,

I had to be the most reasonable
explanation to doing this.

‘Cause like, otherwise
it’s just like this plane.

I mean, it is kind of insane, but I could
kind of see why someone would say that.

It’s the sheer volume is insane.

And then, like it’s almost
like I can understand

prank calling the
police more than silence

because prank calling is
a form of entertainment.

Even if it’s dumb, it’s like,
okay, some people enjoy that.

That’s how we get like
prank videos on the internet.

But yeah, I kind of agree with you.

The silence makes it so unique.

This is actually what drew me to the story.

I’m like, what are you getting out of it?

So you’re going with B.

Yeah, yeah.
Is correct.

That is 100% correct.

He says, when he was arrested, he said,

making calls to the police and
sitting in silence calms my mind.

They suspect he was arrested.

They did track his phone number
but basically the old fashioned way

they got his phone
number and went to his cell

phone carrier and said,
who owns this phone?

So he wasn’t covering his tracks very well.

And they suspect he is also
involved in 1,300 other calls

but they haven’t,
maybe with a different

phone so they can’t
really link it to him yet.

So this guy maybe has
done like 2,500 silent phone

calls to the police just
to keep his mind calm.

Couldn’t he pick like a customer
service or something that’s not…
Yeah, that he wrote eight numbers.
Something like,
to me, the calling the

police ’cause there’s
a bunch of stories like,

I did, yeah, no, I did this
thing to relieve stress.

A lot of the violent crimes in Japan
are because they’re basically saying

’cause I’m so stressed
out or the sexual

sense are like, because
I was so stressed out

and I did this thing
that’s heinous and wrong.

And then I’m like, but you do this
thing and now you’re getting arrested.

Like, that’s pretty stressful.

Like, you may have relieved stress

in the short term through
this violent act, let’s say.

But once you get arrested,
you now have the court case.

You probably lose your job.

You might go to jail, you might get a,

like there’s so many more levels of
stress coming because of the way you act.

I guess they’re not long-term thinking.

This is again, a very common theme
for criminals on an engineer’s Japan.

I don’t pick the ones you have
a long view of committing crimes.

Yeah, very technically the second part,

the 1,300 other calls was
to emergency services.

So he wasn’t calling, he was basically,

he was probably calling, you know,
ambulance and fire and not just the police.

So yeah, he’s got clearly some issues.

I, this is, I’m always touring
’cause I feel bad for the

guy, but it’s like, ugh, you
had to find another thing.

Play video games.

Dude, just play video games.

(upbeat music)

In Saitama Junior High Schools,
you can now drink water and not die.

Which is great.

Something people don’t know, Japan
has the image of being fairly modern.

We think about computers and
robots and things coming from Japan.

My biggest complaint, consistently,

is the heating and cooling of
Japan as a country, is horrendous.

And houses and buildings and stuff,
it’s often done by air conditioning.

So there’s like a thing that blows
hot air or cold air into the room.

I open my door, all the hot
and/or cold air rushes out

of the room, and now I have to
like, wait for it to get bounced again.

If I go out into the hallway, I have a
shot coming to me, that kind of stuff.

High schools, junior high schools,
often have no heating or cooling at all.

So in the summer, they open the window,

which in my opinion, actually
probably makes it worse.

In the winter, they just close the window

and then they’ll open it
every hour to change the air,

which is one of those phrases
that you learn to despise

if you live in Japan, because basically it’s
like, hey, the room’s nice and warm now.

Let’s open the air, circulate the air,

change the air with all
the cold air from outside.

It is often very difficult to be
comfortable, temperature wise in Japan.

So at first, the school’s made a rule.

And they said, it’s good
manners, not to drinking class.

Which is, you know, sounds very innocuous,
except it’s summertime, kids are hot,

they’re gonna die, they
need to drink water.

You can’t really stop them.

So parents, they start
for like, dude, my kid needs

to drink water, needs
to drink water regularly.

This is not cool, especially now that

summers in Japan are getting hotter
and more humid, you get dehydrated so fast.

Like, I was getting
massive headaches regularly

and I thought, oh,
you know, it’s because

it’s judo, I’ve been
hitting the head so much.

Probably not.

I started drinking a ton of water this
summer and a lot of my headaches went away.

I started doing yoga and stretching
things out and I got a lot of those pain.

I realized I just haven’t
been doing self care properly.

Drink water, stretch.

Even if you’re old and only
doing a little bit, it’s good for you.

If you’re young, not doing it, you should
start now so that it’s not hard later.

Like I had to, ’cause now
when I stretch it’s like,

oh, there are some weird sounds
that come out when I stretch.

So then the school board was like,
you know, we gotta modify this rule.

Parents aren’t happy, so we’ll change it.

So no drinking while the teacher is
talking or students are in discussion.

They’re like, dude, you’re
talking the whole time,

you’re in class and/or
the students are discussing.

So you basically change
the words of the rule,

so it sounds like
you’re allowed to drink,

but you’re still not
allowed to drink in class.

That’s not cool.

So then they changed out a third time.

They said students can
hydrate when they’re like.

There are no restrictions, which again,

we’re talking about almost fundamental
human rights, the ability to drink water.

Yeah, let the kids hydrate.

This goes back to other
stories about cops on duty

allowed being allowed to get
drinks and stuff in the summertime.

Yes, how are you supposed
to run down a criminal

serial killer if you haven’t
had water in five hours?

And that, the serial killer, I guarantee,
he’s been drinking human blood.

He’s well hydrated because
he’s got a water chaser

with that to make sure it all flushes down
and gets all the power of Satan in him.

That gives you running energy.

I don’t know where
that last part came from.

I did watch late night
with the devil, just a fairly

low budget film, but quite
interesting, quite well done.

I enjoyed it.

If you like scary movies, it is October.

Maybe we’re looking into
a police chief inspector.

No, no, a police inspector,
a police chief inspector.

That’s it.

I’m just getting the pause on that.

A police chief inspector
invited a subordinate.

They were working on
the same case to come to

the same hair salon
where he gets his haircut.

Seems very nice sort of
a nice team building thing.

I got a haircut.

You’ve maybe mentioned it.

Let’s go to the same place.

I’ll take you to it.

They’ll give you a sweet haircut.

We’re both gonna look fly as
we chase down serial killers.

Oh my God.

I linked these two stories unintentionally.

That’s amazing.

But the superior said, the chief
inspector said, hey, my buddy stylist,

I want you to kind of
circle in a line in the back

of this guy’s hair while
your cutting his hair.

‘Cause that’d be a funny prank.

And everyone’s gonna like that.

You know, I don’t have a
particularly strong feeling

about my hair, especially since
I’ve started losing most of it.

But if someone cut a circle
and a line into my head and I

hadn’t asked for that, I think
that might be a bit of an issue.

I could see someone getting very upset.

Let’s see where the story goes.

When the officer returned to
work, a co-worker pointed it out.

So he went at least a whole day.

So he got maybe cut.

Let’s say that night went home, maybe
lives by himself, no one knows it home.

He’s showering and stuff.

He doesn’t feel the circle in
line in the back of his head.

Then he goes out, so he’s on the trainee.

He goes to work.

And then one of his
co-workers like, dude, you got

a circle in line, cut in
the back of your head.

So of course he was angry.

The chief inspector
said I invited police

officer to the salon to
enliven the mood at work.

I thought we had a strong enough
relationship but the prank went too far.

The thing that bothers me
about that is not an apology.

He’s just saying like, oopsie,
kind of messed up that guy’s head

and it wasn’t as funny as
I thought it was gonna be,

which is not a very good
excuse, I actually think,

and here’s the thing,
you work with the guy.

At what point are you close
enough where I’m going to have

a circle in a line shaved
into the back of your head?

Is funny?

Like I’m gonna ruin your look for,

at least until that amount
of hair grows back is funny.

That’s not funny, that’s
like you gotta be, you gotta

really, really know someone
to know if that’s okay.

And my second thought is why
would the stylists go along with this?

Like if you are a professional hairstylist,

you, I assume, take a certain
amount of pride in your work

and then this guy comes and
said like, hey, that’s ruined this

other guy’s head, I’d be like,
ooh, that’s not a good idea.

I’m not comfortable with that, man.

He has a police chief inspector.

So maybe that gives him
some form of authority

over other people and people
that are more willing to listen to him.

But I’d be like, no, you
can prank him on your own.

I’m not gonna participate in this one.

So I think they should both get in trouble.

A principal was arrested, school principal.

As a principal was
arrested, he was running.

(gasps)

He’s our serial killer for this episode.

He was running.

The police started
getting calls on October 8th

and they said someone is
running with his lower half exposed.

Now lower half is his pee pee.

October 10th, the police
sort of up some patrols

in the area going, well, he’s
jogging with his pee pee out.

So let’s try to see if anyone just
sort of runs by is with their pee pee out.

Low and behold, they found a man running

with his shorts torn
and his lower half visible.

I do like to use lower half.

He was immediately
arrested for public indecency.

His defense was there was a
hole in my shorts a week ago.

My lower body was exposed,
but I wasn’t trying to show it.

So what he’s incidentally
doing is incriminating himself

by saying every day,
at least since last week,

if I have gone running,
I’ve gone running knowing

that my lower half, my pee pee, was out
flying in the wind as I was running around.

Side question.

Why not underwear?

Like, I know about runners, nipples, chafe,

if they wear a shirt
and they run a marathon.

But if you don’t wear underwear,
then the thing’s kind of bang around.

There are guys who do judo
with no underwear on them.

I’ve never been one of those guys.

I want to keep everything
locked up in secure.

And I don’t want any rubbing.

I don’t want to– the least amount
of jostling and movement possible.

This guy, apparently, on the other hand,
thought, free bird, let’s get it out there.

Let’s get the wind in his hair
and just make things happen.

And maybe the world
just improves a little bit.

And he was drinking
human blood that morning.

Maybe that had impacted
his capacity for thought.

A 20-year-old civic employee
was given the six-month

suspension for taking a
part-time job at a sopland.

If you are not in Japan, you
may not know what a sopland is.

Now, there are brothels
and things like that.

There are places where you can go and have
sex called love hotels paid by the hour.

Sopland is a little different.

They don’t promise you sexual intercourse.

What you do is I, as we’d get naked,

and I would lay down and then a lady would
oil me up and rub her body against me.

That’s supposed to be all that happens.

Maybe more does.

Maybe less.

I don’t know.

I’ve never gone to one.

The idea of laying down where multiple men
have laying down and being covered in oil

and then rubbed by someone I don’t
know is not appealing to me at all.

You would have to power
wash the entire place

with bleach before I would
even consider going in there.

So just to see where I’m coming from,

some people this appeals to
this does not appeal to me at all.

The woman was a civic employee.

Now, the government allows
you to take part-time jobs

with permission, but
they will not allow you

to do part-time jobs as
an adult entertainment

because they think that
makes the government look bad.

So she knew that.

So she didn’t ask, I mean, make sense.

What was happening,
there’s two possibilities here.

One, she was at work and
she was falling asleep at work.

She was tired because she
was working during the day

as a civic engineer, a
civic employee, sorry.

She was working during
the day as a civic employee.

And then at night, she
was doing the so-plant.

So maybe her performance at work
was waning and people got suspicious.

But they claim there was an anonymous tip.

So either someone at work
was like, sums up with this lady.

I’m going to follow her
and check what she’s doing.

They follow her home.

They follow her to the so-plant where she
works and they find out what she goes in.

She comes out hours later.

Maybe they go in for a
little session themselves.

Who knows?

Or a customer at the
so-plant somehow finds out

that during the day
this is a civic employee.

Maybe they were a citizen
of the area, had seen her as a

civic employee and then
went to the so-plant that night,

kind of ratting themselves
out if we’re being really honest.

To me, if I was the citizen
and I go to a so-plant

and then I see one of the people who
served me at City Hall, let’s say, there.

She does a good job.

No complaints.

I’m not going to turn you in.

I’m not going to go to that place.

Again, we can reestablish
that a million times over.

I’m not going to that place.

But if I did and I saw someone I recognized
and they still did a good job, we’re good.

I got nothing to say.

I’m just as guilty for being
here as you are for working here.

Let’s put it that way.

So to me, someone had
to be pissed off at her.

So I’m thinking actually because
she was struggling at work

because she was so tired,
that led to some other problems

and someone started looking
into what she was doing

outside of work to find
out why she was so tired.

She was given a six months of suspension.

She decided to resign.

She claimed the reason
she took the part-time

job was because she
has a million yen in debt.

Now I was like, oh, a million yen in debt.

Yeah, you got to work
two jobs, take care of that.

The so-plans obviously
going to pay very well.

She said she did the
so-plans 70 times and made 1.

4 million yen.

I was like, whoa, I might
be working at a so-plant.

70 times and I can make a million yen.

I don’t know what the hours
are like or how long they are.

Obviously, you’re working late at
night because she was tired all day.

So that was a whole
different set of problems.

But she accumulated the
debt from shopping for clothes.

So that’s actually where
my sympathy drops off

because you drove yourself
into debt through shopping.

Took a job, you knew you
weren’t supposed to take.

It paid very well.

You paid off your debt.

You kept doing it because she
had a million yen in debt and made 1.

4 million yen does seem like
she was going to keep going.

Probably so she could
make money to keep shopping.

Her initial job was suffering.

Yeah, I’m actually on board with
her getting a six-month suspension.

If not more, she decided to resign instead,

which I think everyone’s probably
satisfied with that as a result.

(upbeat music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Environmental Harassment

I have one cold hand. That must mean the circulation to one hand is not as good as the other. It is my right hand. Which I guess is... is your heart on your left side? I think so. So the hand that is furthest from my heart being colder sort of makes sense, but doesn't really. As I've started the last few episodes, I know you don't care. I know I just have to start... So the stumbling that's happening right now is me formulating my beginning, which I should do before I press go. But then at the same time, isn't this the reality? That sort of... the difference between a proper news show and what you would want in the podcasting world is that sort of raw reality of knowing that the presenter of the news has one cold hand and is trying to figure out why. 

Mask mandates are in the news a little bit. Japan has relaxed its mask guidelines. So before it was basically wear a mask everywhere. And in Japan, it wasn't a strange thing for people to wear masks. So there was a huge compliance rate right off the start. It was not a political issue. It was not about freedom or anything like that. It was just like, you know what? There's a disease. Wearing masks makes it go less fast. It's not as communicable. Yeah, we'll wear a mask. There were a few people who didn't. We'll hear about them in a minute. They've relaxed the guidelines. So basically, if you're out in the open and you stand far away from people, you don't have to wear a mask. I stopped wearing a mask while walking Dave. And again, because I'm out in the countryside, there's no one around. I basically walk past some people, but we don't talk. We don't stop. So I figure that is pretty safe. A big city like Tokyo, if I was walking around there, I'd probably wear a mask because there's just going to be people everywhere all the time. Once I get on the train, mask on. Once I'm at work, my work is kind of mandatory, which is fine. 

I don't argue with it. They want to keep everyone who's within that building safe. But they've relaxed guidelines. And then they did a survey, and 18% didn't know there were guidelines. So 18% of the people surveyed, it was like a thousand people. 18% of the people were like, what? I was just doing sort of like what everyone else was doing. I didn't know the government had actually said what's a good idea and what's a bad idea. So that's how clued in people are. You would assume actually that those are the people who don't wear masks, the people who don't pay attention. But what they're really doing is just succumbing to social pressure. And again, it's not a political issue in Japan. 

It's like, this is good for you. It's safe. People have been wearing masks during allergy season and cold and flu season for years and years and years, certainly since I came to Japan 20 years ago. So wearing a mask during a global pandemic probably wasn't even a thought. So 18% though didn't even realize the government had said what you should and should not do. 40% know that there are guidelines but don't know the details. So yeah, I know the government put out guidelines, but I'm not going to look them up or anything. I'm not going to find out what they are. So off we go. I'm going to wear a mask. So again, most people are wearing a mask anyways. That's hitting a majority of the guidelines because the guidelines are just saying where and when.

 I am in that 40% because even though I know there are mask guidelines, I didn't bother looking it up. Even after looking at this story, I didn't go and look up the guidelines. So I actually right now, in all sincerity, cannot tell you specifically what the guidelines are. I know they did say like, if you're walking around outside, you don't have to wear a mask. Which a lot of people do. Good on them for doing what they think is going to keep them safe. 72% of people in Japan surveyed, well again, this is a thousand people, which I think is not a big enough sample size to talk about the entire population of Japan. 72% of the people surveyed said, drop the mask entirely. Like the pandemic's finished, we're done. This is a reckless attitude as far as I'm concerned because we are in this mass fluctuation of cases. We're seeing cases daily and it goes from a couple thousand to a hundred thousand down to a couple thousand. 

It's just massive. Clearly there are enough variants, there's enough disparity in the types that some aren't having a big impact where others are making you really, really sick. You got to be really careful. So I don't think we should be dropping the mask yet. I think in public places, when it's crowded, so the train and probably in your office, you should still be wearing a mask just for safety. And you should keep wearing the mask until Corona is not a big enough issue, but that's what? We're in year three. This might be their attitude. It's just here, it's part of our lives now. We can't avoid it. 

So why even bother? But that's the bothering is the part that might actually make it go away. That's actually my concern is that if you stop wearing the mask and it spreads around more, we get more variants, more mutations, and it just gets worse and worse and worse. So there were 68 trainee Buddhist monks. So they go to a temple. This is kind of like their exam. I don't know what a Buddhist exam would be like. It'd be like they give you a blank piece of paper and then you hand it back in with nothing on it. And that's a past test. I just had that idea now. It's pretty funny. In Kyoto, they were doing temple training, which includes chanting and listening to lectures and a lot of stuff I would not want to do, which is why I didn't end up in the priesthood in any form. 

I guess monkhood in this case. One got a fever on December 6th and they took a PCR test and he was negative, but they sent him home and then he showed up positive the next day. That's exactly what happened to me. The evening I thought I had COVID, I took a test and it was negative. I woke up the next morning, took the same test, not the exact same test because that would already be used. I took a home test and it said positive. They all did testing. All 68 trainee monks did testing before this retreat training sessions began and they were all negative. By December 8th, more than 30 of them, so more than half the trainee monks had got COVID, which would imply to me that they were not wearing masks while chanting and other things and they were eating together and they were sleeping in the same room. Of course they got it. 

I don't think they deserved to be punished. They thought they were safe. They seemed to be following all the guidelines. They did social distancing and stuff and they put the futons they were sleeping on farther apart, but it wasn't enough. I'm wondering if they wore masks, but at the end of the day, Buddha didn't protect them, but maybe that's, I'm trying to come up with an idiom or a treatise in the moment and it's not going to happen. Buddha protects those who wear their own masks from the dangers of communicable diseases. It didn't really roll off the tongue like I was hoping it would. This is an update. There was a man who, it's like a year ago, maybe even more, he was sort of an anti-masker and he got on a peach flight and he refused to wear his mask and the pilot got basically so pissed and all the passengers, they had an unscheduled stop. This hits our obstruction of business. 

I'm going to put the counter up there in the corner in post so people watching live on Twitch will not see it. From now on, we're going to have an obstruction of business counter every time we have an obstruction of business arrest. It doesn't mean that they get convicted, but if we get that arrest, we're going to put the counter up there. This is the first one and it's good because this is a guy who's been on Ninja Nunchukan at least three or four times because he is a constant entity. He stopped the peach flight. I know he refused to wear a mask in a restaurant. He got into a fight with his staff and he's sort of an anti-masker and he's clearly making these issues to try to get media attention or he's just a dick. It's actually hard to tell at this point. He was arrested for obstruction of business. His trial has ended. 

He's been found guilty of obstruction of business and injuring a flight attendant. Now there was a scuffle. Injure might be a bit generous from what I read, but you could … it's still assault. Even if you don't really hurt the person, you can still assault them. There's probably just a Japanese way of saying assault. I actually haven't looked at enough of the laws to know. I guess they don't. They're not going to use the same verb use. They're not going to use the same words even for the same crimes as other countries when you translate them. You're going to translate it more directly so you have an understanding of what the actual crime is. 

Injuring a flight attendant probably just grabbed her or pushed them or something because there were no reports of the earlier stories of someone going to hospital or anything serious. It couldn't have been that bad. I mean you knock someone over though, that's assault. The most interesting part, as is always the case, is what is the punishment for not wearing a mask and having an entire airplane land unscheduled and it's 100% your fault because you're just being a doofus. It's two years imprisonment, but that is suspended for four years. Basically he will not have to go to prison if he can stay out of trouble for four years, but if he gets in trouble in any way over the next four years, he's going to have to go and do two years of prison. That's going to be hanging over his head. 

That's interesting because this personality type six months out is going to forget the threat I think of going to prison. I can't guarantee it, but I have an image in my head of this kind of person and they're not the kind of person that backs down even when they know they're going to get in trouble, even when they know they can't win because somewhere deep inside they think they can still win, which is not the case because now if you get in any trouble for anything, so like littering, he now has to do two years in prison. It'll be interesting over the next two years, or I guess four years if Ninja Nudes Japan lasts that long. It'll be interesting over the next three, four years to see if he shows up again, getting in trouble and ending up in prison. 

A Japanese robotics company is developing spider-like robots. They're actually very cute. When I heard spider robots, I went to a cyberpunk, scary looking, all metallic, chrome on the outside with spiky feet crawling around pipes and stuff. These are very cute little red ones with nice little legs. They looked a lot like toys I played with when I was a kid, like wind-up toys. This is to maintain the Japanese sewer infrastructure. Japanese sewer pipes, I saw a thing where the guy said they have to be replaced basically every 50 years. A lot of the infrastructure in big cities and stuff is getting to that point. It's very expensive, so they want to know where the most important things to fix would be. They basically created these little spider robots that will go down into the pipes, and it has a camera on the front, and they go look around. 

I don't know if it's automatic. I think right now it's being controlled like a drone, but it shoots... I guess they could be autonomous because they just need to go through pipes, and I just need to, as the end user, need to look at the pipes and review them. But whatever. If you want to look it up, it's called the SPD-1, and it is so cute. It's mainly for inspection purposes. They're going to have these little robots crawling around the pipes in the sewers in Japan. They used to have wheels, so they were even cuter, looked like tiny trucks, but the wheels would get stuck in, I assume, poop. They switched it out to legs that they could pull out of sludge and then walk over sticky materials and stuff more easily. That's why they end up looking like spiders. They went with eight legs, so they just mimicked a spider, which is kind of interesting. 

The robot revolution. We tend to think of it as being humans create intelligent robots, and we oppress them, if you go through all the science fiction stories. Then they rise up when one or two of them starts to understand that this is wrong and unfair and has its first feelings and whatnot. But I think us literally pooping on them directly could be the actual instigation for a robot uprising because I bet when they realize what's happening that they're being pooped on, they want to put a stop to that as soon as possible. Criminal cases in Japan are at their lowest since World War II. You might think, well, chunk of beef chest. Criminal cases are kind of the bread and butter of Ninja News Japan. Why are you happy about that? Because I am happy about that because I don't want crime. I'm actually happy about it because that means lesser crimes, less important crimes get more media attention. One of the things I've said about Japan, we get all the panty theft stories. 

In a country like America, you would have two things happen at the same time. Japan steals 150 panties and a mass shooting in a school. On the news though, you're only going to get the mass shooting in the school. They're not going to talk about the panty guy. Japan being such a safe country with such a low crime rate, those panty stories, the weird stories, the odd stories are the ones that get media attention, which means they come to my attention, which means I can talk about those things. I'm not talking about school shootings. This is supposed to be a relatively uplifting podcast in that we look at pretty dark stuff, but we make fun of it. We look at politics. We make fun of it. It's that concept. This is great because I actually think lesser, weirder stories will get more media attention, which means I get to spend more time talking about them. 

In 2021, it was down 7.5% from the previous year to 568,104 cases. This is the 19th consecutive year of decrease of crime in Japan. Cyber crime and child abuse on the other hand is on the increase, and that is being attributed to primarily the pandemic and lockdown and people spending weirdly more time with their kids, so they're more abusive towards the kids. If you already have an abusive relationship and then you're together more, you end up being more abusive. Cyber crime, kind of obvious. Everyone's on computers. If everyone's on computers, you're going to get more cyber crime. There's more opportunities there. 70% of the cases that go in front of the courts are theft of some sort. 30% is sort of like violent crimes and other crimes. Most of it is just theft, which is again, is good because theft most of the time is, it's not victimless, but it means people aren't getting physically hurt, which is again, I don't want anyone to actually get hurt. Re-offenders remain high. 

8.6% of people who have committed a crime re-offend in Japan, which is down 0.5%, but it's one of those things where does the criminal system rehabilitate? Does it stop you from re-offending? It looks like the answer is like a 50-50, and then reference to our man in the previous story, is he going to re-offend? Whereas I'm putting money on the 50% that says yes. Always bet on re-offending. That's a passenger 57 reference for anyone who's under 40 years old. So Japan loves its anime, and if you're listening to this podcast, probably you're into anime too. You're into Japanese stuff. You wouldn't come here accidentally and just listen to Japanese news if you didn't have an interest in Japan. Japan loves its anime, so a lot of advertising is combined with anime to appeal to a broad spectrum of society. There's been a couple that are specifically aimed towards otaku. I know the SDF did one with an anime girl. It was like, you like anime girls, join the army. Not really a consistent message. And then a couple years ago, there's Uzaki Toa Sobitai. I forget the name. 

It's Uzaki-chan. She's got very big boobs as a character. The poster they put her on was for a blood drive, and they're saying like otaku, people who don't normally give blood should come and give blood, and they were using this character to appeal to them. And there was some controversy because she has big boobs. I don't know if it was a feminist organization or just a couple of feminists, but they said that this was environmental harassment. So I can't walk around the city, the subway, and not see these sexualized representations of women in anime, and it's offensive to me, and I want to take it down. Which I understand the argument. I don't know if I agree with it or not. I saw the posters. Those posters to me were relatively innocent. The counter argument though that I really enjoyed, because I wouldn't be able to make it, was a group of women who have big boobs who say, well, having big boobs isn't inherently sexualized because I have big boobs, and the only reason it's sexualized is because you are sexualizing it. 

So I feel like I want representation. I want women shaped like me in advertising. So now you have a feminist saying that this is sexualized and it's disgusting and it's offensive. And then you have a woman with the same body type saying that is offensive to me because that's my body type. It's natural. I can't go, you know, how much control over it do I have, but this is my shape. And the only reason it's sexualized is because you make it sexualized. It was very interesting. Because then does the feminist turn around and go, I do not support these women in their bodies? It's a very weird circle. It didn't really get resolved because the advertising campaign ended. So all those posters came down. It's come up again. Oh, I didn't write down what ads. Anyway, it's from, I saw the ads. They were, I would actually say more so because they had girls bending over and you could see there. It's not underwear, but it's short shorts underneath like jackets and stuff. So there was a certainly a sexual element to it. 

I think the positioning you could justify saying it was sexual to a degree. It wasn't offensive to me, but again, maybe I just have a higher tolerance for that because I don't care that much. These specific ads that they're complaining about now are in a JR station. JR has guidelines that is not made public about advertising within their stations. This, oh, I did write it down. It was just in the middle of my notes. It's called Majong Seoul. They did a collaboration with Osaka JR, which is a Japan rail to make these posters. The guidelines for JR though has a committee and that committee is comprised of both men and women. So all those people already approved it. 

So there were women's voices and this might be part of the argument that they were making like women didn't make these posters. It was all creepy anime men, but actually women were on the group, the board, the committee that could veto the poster and they didn't. So it was therefore deemed acceptable and they're staying out there. Again, it's a campaign, so they go away pretty quickly. The people who are complaining about this, I do believe they are over sexual, like there is a sexual element. I think it's fair to admit that, but I think they are taking that mentally to an extreme that doesn't exist. So it's not like they're wrong, but they're extrapolating things that aren't there, which may be why I'm not 100% in agreement with what they're saying. 

But I think people find a fence in everything at all times because that's just the nature of some people. So this is another revisiting from someone who's appeared in News in Japan before. They said just a university student went to the sort of campus for Kodansha. Kodansha in Japan is one of the biggest publishing companies. They publish anime and books and novels and stuff. It's basically Japan's biggest publisher, so it's not just like a building. They have several buildings and a campus. This university student was standing next to a very small fire. So he had taken some paper and burned it and thrown it on the ground. This I assume was some kind of protest. I'm not 100% sure what was going on. A policeman was walking by, saw the guy, saw the fire, walked over and was like, did you light this fire? And the student basically just said yes and got arrested right away. He had on him a gas burner and an extra cartridge. 

So probably how he started the fire, he had the paper, I don't know if it was crumpled up or not, but took the gas burner and went pfft, and then it sets it on fire, off you go. It's burning. And then he just sort of put it on the ground and stood and stared at it. This is the same guy who was arrested last August, who was on NINJA News Japan, because he had taken the time to make gunpowder at home and was walking in front of the U.S. Embassy and somehow was suspicious enough that he got arrested and searched. So they found the homemade gunpowder, which is illegal to have. So he was arrested for that, but again, it was ineffectual. My whole point was gunpowder by itself isn't going to do anything to an embassy building. Gunpowder itself, you could throw at someone and if it covered them and then you somehow set them on fire, it would burn them. 

But if it was all spread out, it would suck, but it's not really going to do you any significant damage. It's like the guy is a domestic terrorist, but he's also ineffectual. My image was him throwing the gunpowder at the building and running away, not really understanding how gunpowder works. And then in this case, he wants to burn stuff to send a message, but then all he does is burn some newspaper he got on the ground, which did no damage to anything and no one was hurt. Okay, so when I get drunk, I want to play video games until I get tired, then I want to go to sleep. I do not participate in activity. I'm not one of those people who gets drunk and gets high energy. 

Maybe it's what I drink, maybe it's my physical chemistry or something, but I'm a low-key drunk. The drunker I get, the quieter I get. I'm a pretty quiet dude on a normal day, but I get more and more low-key until I'm basically, you can't tell if I'm conscious or not. The boisterous time, everyone gets it, is short before I want to sit down and just like chill out. Maybe when I was younger, I was more enthusiastic about existence. Now if I start drinking and I start to relax, I just want to sit silently and be happy. If you are Takatoshi Kitamura, who is a government official, you get drunk with your friends, you go to a high school reunion. He said he had three or four drinks and a draft beer, so maybe for him that was a lot. Three or four drinks for me is like starting. 

I don't drink beer, but that's just another drink. He gets on the train to go home after drinking with his high school reunion friends and has a really good time. Then he grabs onto the bar that the little ropes and things you hang onto for stability. You grab that and you start busting out some chin-ups. You grab that and start busting out some chin-ups because it's always the right time for fitness. There were no complaints. The train station didn't receive any complaints, but then someone had a video and I guess someone figured out that this was a relatively famous guy, as in he worked for the government. 

They posted it online and then he got in trouble. Of course, now he has to apologize. It was inappropriate, this is his apology, it was inappropriate and contrary to good manners in my position as a public figure. I sincerely apologize to the residents of the prefecture and others concerned. I'm sorry, busting out chin-ups. I'd look at someone doing that. I've seen it on the train in Japan a couple of times. Every time I've been like, what are you doing, you idiot? This is a dumb place to do that. It's not the right place. But I don't care. I bet most of the people who saw it didn't care. They're just making fun of this guy for doing chin-ups while drunk. He goes on to say, I don't remember why I did the chin-ups. I can tell you why. Upper body strength. 

You want to build that upper body strength. You want to get strong. You want to get the pecs and the shoulders and maybe some nice lats. You want to fill it out. That's why you do chin-ups. Your drunk brain was like, we got fuel, we got energy, let's work it. Let's do it hardcore. Of course, this made everyone look into his background, which actually brought up something a student had said to me, which I didn't believe. I wanted to look into it a little more, but this actually proves basically it was true. They found a 15-year-old blog post. That's how far back they went. When you get in trouble anywhere, I guess, on the Internet, they go through all your history and try to find anything wrong you've said, which is making me very concerned because I have a ton of dumb things I've said online from these podcasts and stuff. Maybe I should just start deleting old things. They went back to a 15-year-old blog post. He admitted to driving drunk, not regularly, but more than one occasion. 

Then he said, this was pre-2002 before they tightened up the rules. One of my students has said to me in a class that she has driven her... Oh, she got in a car with her friend who was drunk. I was like, oh my God, that's a big deal. She was like, oh no, back then it was legal. So pre-2002 is when they tightened it up. You go back another 10 years, it was basically okay to get drunk and drive a car in Japan. Then it got accidents and stuff and got stricter and stricter and stricter. Now it's like most countries where you cannot be drunk, you cannot drive. Anyways, back to this politician who was busting out some chin-ups, which again, offensive in a way that is annoying, but not offensive enough for me to care about. They were like, what are you going to do now? They were criticizing him over this old blog post where he said he drove drunk. 

But again, if it was legal at the time, I mean, yeah, we can judge him by our current standards, but I'm starting to think like, ah, you do have to take the timeframe into account. If something was legal and you did it and then later it became illegal and you stopped, you followed the law, it's pretty hard to be super critical of that. Anyways, he said he intends to stop drinking, which I have to say is almost an overreaction, but at the same time, probably a good idea for this guy. But now he's going to miss out on all those gains. The two-week winter vacation is coming up. I may or may not be able to make more podcasts over those two weeks. Depends how busy I am with family and things like that. There may be a Spartan in Japan over the next two weeks. There may not be. But we will be back in three weeks on a regular schedule in January, in the new year, worst case scenario. Otherwise, have a good Christmas, have a good holiday, Hanukkah, anything you celebrate, have a good new year. Take care of yourselves. Be happy. I love you so much.