Oh, here I am with my buddy Dave, looking like heroes, coming for you.
Oh, he’s too short.
Oh, he laid down.
Okay, if he lays down, he’s in good shape.
I know that.
So, I just got to get a little closer to the mic, aim him off so that he doesn’t get crushed under the desk.
He’s a little, little puppy dog.
Little dog, little, little dog.
We’re men, we’re doing manly things, we’re reporting news.
What was wrong?
Let’s go.
We have an update on the two men who entered the, well, okay.
The two men were involved.
One man dressed up in a big blue suit with a red Bitcoin head, I guess it was,
and entered into the monkey enclosure at a park where Punch the monkey, the very famous monkey, resides.
All the monkeys ran away, so they got no sort of interaction with him and the monkeys.
Again, I think that was a good thing for him.
I don’t think he realizes how dangerous even small monkeys are.
But they were promptly arrested.
It was two men from America.
And it was very interesting because what is the punishment for entering a place?
Because it’s trespassing.
But zoos are open places.
And is the zoo got a responsibility to make it harder to climb in?
I don’t think so because they have that big, deep area.
Climbing in was not easy, especially in a stupid suit.
Like a character costume, essentially.
They were arrested for obstruction of zoo business.
So it’s obstruction of business.
But zoo business specifically.
Monkey business?
Didn’t make that joke, but I suppose I should have made that joke.
They sought a fine without a trial.
And then the men just decided it was worth paying.
They had to pay 300 ,000 yen each.
Much from entering the monkey enclosure.
Was it worth it?
This was the question.
So was the amount of media attention they got more than 600 ,000 yen?
Because it was each.
So it was 600 ,000 yen total, 300 ,000 yen each.
Did you make enough money in your crypto scheme on your garbage coin?
Okay, I don’t know if we want to talk about crypto for a bit.
I, when crypto was relatively new to me, was a while ago.
And it seemed like it was before a scam.
It was when Bitcoin Cash was coming up as a big one, as an offshoot of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin had turned into an investment.
Bitcoin Cash was going to be the thing you used if you wanted to actually buy something.
Because there were huge wait times with Bitcoin.
And often the cost, the fees of using Bitcoin was as much as the thing you were buying if you were buying something small.
Bitcoin Cash, there was a fee, but it was pennies.
And I thought, okay, this is going to be, this is going to do it.
This is going to be the future of money.
This is going to be how we’re doing things.
And then it all just became scams.
Like just all of it.
And I was really disappointed because it’s like there was an opportunity to make a financial system that was equitable.
And in a way we could actually spend money on the internet and share money and send money back and forth without fees, without the involvement of banks.
Like I could send money directly to other people with like pennies as the fee instead of, you know, dollars.
Or I think my bank, it’s like 40 bucks minimum if I want to transfer money.
Like that’s actually a bit ridiculous considering they’re just, they’re not even pressing buttons on a computer anymore.
It’s happening automatically.
They just have to every now and then check it.
Why are they getting that much money for it?
Because it’s a financial institution.
But with technology the way it is now, with the internet, with phones, with all the things we have, we could just send money to each other.
I now use PayPay, but of course that is limited by country.
So I can only send so much to people on PayPay at a time.
Just, I’m disappointed in the internet.
I’m disappointed in the scammers.
I’m disappointed that they took something that could have really revolutionized money and fucked it.
That’s, that’s really the truth of it.
These guys, I’m assuming scammers.
I mean, now if I hear Bitcoin, anything related to blockchain, my first thought is just scam.
You’re not going to get anything out of it.
They’re just going to try to take money and there’s no, not enough oversight, no one to actually go to if things go wrong.
So you get screwed.
So honestly, real advice.
If you didn’t get rich already, stay away from crypto.
That’s the whole song.
I don’t want to do that.
That’s it.
That’s it.
Okay.
So it’s, it’s keyed up now.
Let’s just do it right.
A mayor for Ninja City.
So this is Iga.
It is famous for the place where ninjas came from.
I went there with my mother.
I took my mother there when she came to visit.
We went to see a ninja show.
And then we went into the ninja village under Iga Castle.
And there were ninjas that walked around, showed the tours and everything.
They showed you how like the secret doors and panels and work.
It was quite fun.
There was a little fighting show.
And it was pretty well done.
I mean, those guys probably do it like five, ten times a day.
So it was like vigorous.
Then you got to throw throwing stars.
And if you got three in the target, you got a t -shirt.
Go ahead and brag a little bit.
I want a t -shirt.
I got all three in the target.
I’m not going to say center, bullseyes, but hit the target and that’s all that mattered.
And I want a t -shirt that was too small for me, which I expected.
There is one other time I’ve actually gone out of my way to win a t -shirt.
I was at a izakaya, which is like a bar.
And I was with a friend.
And they had a special Jack Daniels had introduced apple whiskey or something.
Like Jack Daniels was getting desperate for non -whiskey drinkers to start drinking whiskey.
So they started flavoring all their whiskeys.
And it was fine.
Like I drank it.
I tried it just to see what it was like.
And then they gave me this ticket.
And the ticket said, you know, they have a box and you pull the ticket out.
And it says if you win or not.
If you win, you got this bright green Jack Daniels apple whiskey t -shirt.
And I said, do you?
So I just asked the waitress, is there a winning ticket in that box?
Because if there is, I’m going to keep drinking until I win.
She was like, what?
I was like, yeah, yeah.
So basically, if you can promise me there’s an actual winning ticket in there,
you keep bringing me whiskey after whiskey after whiskey until I win.
Because that is when I’m going to stop drinking and I will not stop drinking until then.
I don’t care how much it costs.
This was about winning.
I got real drunk that night.
I don’t remember how many I had.
It was a lot, especially for one person drinking by the, well, I was with a friend,
but I was drinking the whiskeys.
I won the t -shirt.
I was, it was very celebratory.
And then of course it was a medium instead of, I need like an extra large.
And so they were like, clearly didn’t want to like piss me off because I had asked if
you could win and they told the truth.
You can win.
It just came down to, do we, I didn’t ask, do you have the right size?
So that was maybe a mistake on my side.
I might’ve given up if I knew the t -shirt wouldn’t fit.
But again, this was about winning, not about actually winning.
The prize wasn’t the important part.
The winning was the important part.
So I won the t -shirt.
I gave it to a friend.
My understanding is he wore it once.
Cool.
It got used.
I hope it didn’t just get thrown away after that.
It was a nice t -shirt.
I would have worn it if I actually had one in my size.
No one wants to see me wearing a tight t -shirt.
At least not right now.
Give me a couple of years of exercise and maybe, maybe then it would be okay, but it’s
not okay right now.
This has very little to do with the story we’re talking about.
The mayor of this Ega town, let me just pull it up.
The mayor of this town, let me check it is Ega.
Because they just said Ninja City.
Oh, okay.
It was Ega.
I was right.
He, a magazine came out.
And this is how all these scandals break in Japan.
Is a magazine takes pictures of you as you go in and out of an apartment with someone
you’re not supposed to go in and out of an apartment with or a love hotel or something
like that.
This mayor was meeting another politician from Tsu City, which is a nearby city.
And they were going into an apartment together.
And they would stay there for time.
And they would come out.
Now, it’s funny because the article I was reading, the title was Ninja City Mayor Says
illicit meetings with female politicians were strictly political.
So he came and he had a press conference.
He’s married with two kids.
So this is a really big deal because he might end up getting divorced.
He said, even though the location functioned in office, I reflect with regret that it was
inappropriate for the two of us to meet in an apartment that is generally considered
a living space.
So there’s an apartment building.
Maybe he owns the apartment inside and he uses it as an office or it’s owned by someone
like a work share company.
And then you can use it as an office.
But it’s set up like an apartment and apartments have this particular room.
And it’s the room where the magic happens.
And that’s the kitchen in my house.
Inamori confessed with the rendezvous took place mostly at night, adding suspicion to what
everyone was saying, adding during the longest times we were there for five or six hours.
Now I’m going to give our Ninja Village Mayor a little bit of credit because five or six
hours is not a short amount of time to be doing politics, if you know what I mean.
Despite the prolonged late night sessions in the apartment, Inamori vehemently denied any
physical relationship, claiming that other individuals were occasionally present.
That’s just a menage a trois or something else.
And it was for political support or to seek or give advice to one another.
There was no unchaste acts, he insisted.
The magazine report also highlighted a trail of intimate messaging exchanges between the
pair.
So they somehow got a hold of their line messages or Instagram messages or however they were communicating
and says they were like political in nature if we’re going to be using our brand new idiom,
I guess.
When grilled by reporters about the text, the mayor provided a convenient excuse.
The messages have all been deleted.
So he’s the magazine saying we saw them but didn’t seem to have them.
He’s saying, well, I don’t have them anymore.
They were deleted.
So what are you going to do?
When a reporter asked why he deleted his line message history, Inamori became defensive,
said it’s not about who I was talking to.
I just delete things after a certain period of time.
So I didn’t keep them.
Okay.
I’m going to be honest.
I delete all messages.
I’m of the inbox zero school of thought.
So my emails, I try to get my emails down to zero on a regular basis.
If I finished a conversation thread on anything, I delete that thread.
I don’t like having threads just sitting there.
You could say that’s suspicious or something.
That’s fine if you believe that.
I just don’t like having messages sitting around.
It really bothers me.
So it’s just like a quirk more than anything else.
And I’m trying to cover my political tracks.
Desecrating the flag in Japan has not been a crime.
So you could burn it.
You could cut it up.
You could walk on it.
You could do even grosser things that I was about to say to it.
And there was nothing anyone could do.
It was your right, freedom of speech to trash the flag of Japan.
Because you live in a free country.
It’s actually one of those things.
America claims to be the freest country in the world, but you get in a lot of trouble for trashing the flag.
Well, Japan has been moving more conservative, more right -wing.
And they’ve decided to introduce a bill to make desecrating the flag illegal.
So this is a bill that’s been proposed.
It hasn’t actually gone through yet.
So if you really want to desecrate a flag, you better get on that pretty quick.
The opposition parties say that this infringes on freedom of expression.
So like if a person wants to do this, they should have the freedom to express themselves.
Again, politically, not like the last story sexually, I guess.
But if you want to desecrate the flag sexually, politically, you can right now.
But you wouldn’t be able to if this bill goes through.
A person who publicly damages, removes, or defiles the flag in a way that arouses strong feeling of disgust or discomfort in others
is the wording they used in the bill.
Now, the thing is, that is very, very open to interpretation.
Like, if it makes me feel disgusted, it’s illegal.
If it makes me feel a lot of discomfort, it’s illegal.
So that could be like, I sneezed in the direction of flag,
and then a person who hates my guts was made very uncomfortable by that.
Now I’m getting fines or going to jail.
That seems like too much.
Which they’re proposing two years in prison or a 200 ,000 yen fine or both.
Those are up twos.
So I could just get like a slap on the wrist and say, don’t do it again.
Chuck my beef chest.
Or I could get two years in prison.
This applies to live streams or videos posted online.
So even if I was not in Japan, if I took a Japanese flag and I desecrated the flag and I posted it online,
and I came to Japan, I could get in trouble.
I could get arrested for that.
So that means like Korean people.
And again, Korea and Japan have a long storied history, and it’s all pretty negative.
People might want to display some of their anger towards Japan by desecrating the flag or setting it on fire or something like that.
And at the moment, again, that is a valid political expression.
If this bill goes through, you could come to Japan and then spend two years in prison.
There are exceptions.
So they did think about this pretty thoroughly.
Writing on a flag to support an athlete.
So if there’s like a Japanese, in my case, it would be a judo guy that I really like, and I take a Japanese flag and I write his name on it,
or he signs it or something like that at a sporting event, and I’m using that to support that Japanese athlete.
It doesn’t say specifically Japanese.
So weirdly, I could take a Japanese flag, write a Canadian athlete’s name on it, or have him sign it, and that would still be legal.
That’s an interesting loophole I just came up with.
I don’t know how that desecrates the flag.
But that is not what they intended.
They intended it, I’m sure, to be Japanese athletes.
If you are doing a live -action film, so I’m doing my World War II film and I want a dramatic scene, and the Japanese flag is on fire, that’s political.
That’s not, that’s an expression that’s acceptable under this.
That’s not desecration because it’s part of the mood of the movie, let’s say.
Media and manga.
Media and manga.
So it’s difficult because the live -streaming differentiation…
So if I do the exact same thing on a live stream as I did in a movie, one would be the illegal and the other wouldn’t.
It’s a very, again, difficult little loophole they try to create.
Kids’ meals, bentos, often have tiny Japanese flags in them.
So if you go to, like, a family restaurant or something, you get a kid’s meal, they’ll put a little Japanese paper flag, so it’s not, like, particularly expensive, on a toothpick, in your food.
If that gets destroyed, it’s okay.
But that shows, like, the weird levels of thought that have gone into this bill.
But, yeah, they haven’t taken on the broader scope of, this has been legal in Japan for a very long time, it’s a form of political expression, people should be allowed to do that, is that okay?
I’ve never put that much stock in a flag, so I personally think, do whatever you want to a flag.
You are expressing yourself, you’re not hurting anybody, so if you’re not actually hurting anybody by messing up a flag, I don’t really care.
I mean, go ahead and get your jollies in a political way.
I do not support having sex with a flag.
It doesn’t happen a lot, but over the years I’ve done Ninja News Japan, it has been a regular story of people finding guns that have been left behind by police in certain areas, often toilets.
It has happened again June 3rd at a convenience store in Shimonseki, Shimonseki.
A customer went into the bathroom and found a pistol, found a gun.
Well, they didn’t, though.
They found the belt hanging on a loop.
So, in a Japanese bathroom, there’s actually two hooks, a little one and a big one, and you’re supposed to put your bag on the big one, and there’s a little hook above it.
And people are like, what’s that for?
Well, it turns out what would happen is they would wait, criminals would wait for someone to go to the toilet.
And there was a hook, and you would hang your bag on the hook.
And they would wait until you were like clearly in the middle of your business, reach over the top of the stall, grab your bag, and then run away.
And because you’re mid -poop, it’s really difficult to get everything together and get after them before they escape.
So, they put a little hook on so that you can’t reach over and grab the bag that easily.
So, that’s what that’s for.
So, always put it on the second hook from the top, not the top hook, because that’s there to protect you.
But now that it’s on every bathroom in Japan, criminals know that.
So, I don’t think they do that crime anymore, because that one’s basically been solved.
That’s an interesting side note.
But on that hook in the bathroom, there was a belt, and the belt had a holster, and the holster had a gun in it.
And this person came into the bathroom and found that gun.
And I was thinking, like, what would I do?
Because you could go to the staff and tell them to call the police and have the police come get it.
I think my instinct would be to take it away so no one else can touch it.
So, like, take it, put it in my backpack or my bag, go to the police station.
But then I have to go to the police and say, hey, I have a gun in my bag.
I would like to return to you.
I have one of your guns in my bag.
And then they would ask, like, where did you get it?
And I would be like, well, it was in the bathroom.
And there would be this question of did I steal it or not?
I’m bringing it back, so maybe I didn’t steal it.
It is a dangerous thing.
I’ve never handled a gun before in a real way, so I don’t think I should be touching a gun.
So, that’s tough.
So, I think the reasonable answer is you find a gun in the toilet, don’t touch the gun,
call the police or call the staff, get them to call the police,
and then just stay by the gun and then just, like, try to keep people away from it.
Seems like the most reasonable thing.
I don’t want my fingerprints on a gun either, which is a weird thing,
because I know that gun isn’t going to be used in a crime at any time soon.
But I don’t want my fingerprints on any sort of weapon that could actually be used in a murder.
However, the police officer had been there 40 minutes before, so before someone reported the gun stolen,
or before someone reported the gun found, that gun had been sitting in the bathroom for half an hour,
which is a long time.
Like, someone else could have come along, not as morally upright, taken the gun,
put it in their bag, walked away.
Now they got free gun, which is illegal.
But, I mean, if you’re going to steal a gun, you’re going to probably do something bad with the gun.
And, eh, scary.
The police then made a statement.
The guy who lost the gun, he admitted it right away.
They were like, hey, buddy, you got your gun on you?
And then he was like, ooh, boys, no I don’t.
So Toshi got in trouble.
He admitted to it right away.
The police, they say the same thing every time.
We’re going to do training.
We’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
We’re going to educate our police officers.
It’s a series of excuses.
It doesn’t actually change anything.
The people who make these kind of mistakes, they’re always going to make these mistakes.
If you said, streamer breaks into a school, I would think it was a guy breaking into the school.
Because of the Ninja News Japan stories, he’s either stealing stuff to satisfy his weird sexual desires.
Or, he’s gone in and he’s like filming a ghost movie, pretending that there’s ghosts in this school.
My base assumption though, if you say streamer breaks into, is a guy.
So I was very surprised.
This is a quality in action.
I would also think they were young.
A 41 -year -old woman was streaming herself as she broke into an elementary school at night and streamed herself walking around the dark hall.
So to me, that is going for a horror vibe.
That is going for something that is that kind of feeling.
Oh, I hit that.
Dave, oh God, everything just went wrong.
Now, here’s the thing about streaming yourself committing crimes.
And the rest of the story should be self -evident.
If you stream yourself breaking into something and people are watching you do it,
one of those people can call the police and they will show up to the place you’re streaming from.
Because they can actually look at the stream and go,
Hey, either she’s going to say the name of the school or we’re going to figure out where that school is.
Or we’re going to figure out where she is from the stream or something.
And the police are then going to show up there.
They do have people who are professional investigators.
That is literally their job.
That’s what they do.
Some of them are very good at it.
Like we hear stories about them finding people like this all the time.
This is not a big surprise that she was caught fairly quickly.
One of the people watching her stream became concerned and said like,
Hey, this is not right.
You shouldn’t be breaking into elementary schools.
She admitted to the crime of trespassing.
She was arrested.
The police are trying to figure out how she got into the school because it seems like she didn’t break anything,
which is good because it means she didn’t break anything.
But that also means that maybe she has a key or something, which is a little weird in itself.
I mean, I like streaming.
I would probably do more in life streaming if I had more data on my phone or something.
But it’s also not worth it.
Like I would like to stream judo sessions.
I actually think that would be really interesting for people to watch.
I would like to stream, you know, just going to restaurants and stuff sometimes.
But it also doesn’t seem worth it.
But I absolutely would not be streaming myself committing crimes if I was committing crimes.
So let’s say you run a roadside assistance company.
So you show up to the woman who has claimed that her car is broken down.
And then as you show up, four people step out of the darkness and they throw you into a car,
force you into a car, and you’re held there for five hours.
They are threatening you saying, I’m going to kill you and I’ll chop you to pieces with a chainsaw,
which is very specific and very graphic.
And I would actually, as the victim, be looking for a chainsaw.
Like, can you actually follow through on that one?
They managed to get 70 ,000 yen from him.
And so with five people, that’s 14 ,000 yen each.
So again, as far as the payout for the crime and the risk you’re taking for the amount of prison time you might get
for assault charges, this kidnapping, threatening people, all that stuff, those are all individual crimes.
14 ,000 yen is not worth it.
Like 14 ,000 yen is a really nice dinner.
It’s a night out at eight and Izekiah if you’re just going crazy.
It’s probably like bar hopping for a whole evening.
It’s not a lot of money.
Like it’s, you know, okay, you’ve got a good couple of hours, but that’s all you’re really getting out of 14 ,000 yen.
It’s two video games maybe.
They then let him go, which is weirdly a problem because if you let someone go,
the first thing they’re going to do is call the cops.
And the biggest problem here is two of those guys used to work for him.
So he pretty much recognized them right away.
So he didn’t have to like, you know, oh no, police have to track down five figures who are, you know, indescribable because it was dark and I was scared.
Nope.
He’d be like, no, it was Toshi and his friend Toshi.
And the two Toshis came and kidnapped me with three other guys.
And I’m pretty sure if you catch Toshi, he’s going to break because he’s a little wuss.
He threatened to chop me up with a chainsaw, but we all know Toshi doesn’t have a chainsaw.
He doesn’t have chainsaw money.
All he has right now is 14 ,000 yen.
And what kind of chainsaw are you going to get for 14 ,000 yen?
Not much.
They were all arrested.
Two were former employees at the company.
Uh, not a well thought out plan.
The best part of thinking was they got him to come to them instead of them going to him.
They didn’t know he had any money on him.
70 ,000 yen is a lot.
I carry at most 20 ,000 yen unless I’m going out for something specific.
And that’s like emergency money in case I have to take a taxi really far.
Uh, so all you’re going to get off me if you rob me this way would be taxi money.
This is my favorite criminal of the month.
Uh, maybe I should do, yeah.
Chunk with beef chest, favorite criminal of the moment.
We can have a little word and they’re like, he’s my favorite criminal until a new criminal
comes along and replaces him.
That’d be fun.
I would kind of have a little theme song to go for that.
I don’t have the talent to make that.
But if you, if you would like to make a theme song for, uh, C McBee’s Ninja News Japan,
a favorite criminal of the moment, I think, I think that’s actually pretty good.
This is a 78 year old serial burglar.
Uh, he was caught and arrested.
And he said his weak back and legs dictated his choice of target.
So it’s sad, but it’s also like coming for all of us.
I already have like knee issues and stuff, but I’m still doing judo.
So I’m just waiting for like a catastrophic day to ruin my judo career and end it completely.
Or I am being more careful.
I’m trying to make everything stronger, but it’s just time comes for us all.
There’s nothing we can do about it.
He was arrested for a house break -in and then linked to 17 more break -ins and attempts
between September and January.
He went to four different cities.
So he was like doing the work.
He was going to different cities.
Uh, he would go to different houses, different neighborhoods.
He wasn’t doing like a pattern, I assume.
And he, he made 600 ,000 yen from four different cities.
But that’s September to January.
That’s not enough money.
Again, you got to look at the payout.
600 ,000 yen over four or five months isn’t enough money to be really living and to be
maintaining this lifestyle.
He chose targets that were close to the JR station.
So that’s Japan rail, uh, because walking is hard.
So he didn’t want to walk too far from the station to the house.
He was going to burgle.
Uh, he wanted to be able to get back without like straining his legs too much.
Apartments.
If he tried to break into apartment, he only did the ones on the ground floor because he
didn’t want to have to walk up and downstairs.
My legs and back are weak.
So I couldn’t go to the second floor.
Uh, basically his methodology was to smash windows with rocks nearby.
So he didn’t like bring any equipment with him.
He would find a rock, find a window, smash it, and then get into the house that way,
which would imply a certain amount of climbing, which you think with a bad back and knees,
that would actually be really hard to do.
But at least then once you’re in, when you leave, you go out the front door.
Uh, he has been burgling since his teens, which I felt very bad about because it means he was,
he sort of robbed some houses and stuff when he was a teenager, wasn’t really successful
at getting a job or being rehabilitated.
This is where like the system kind of failed him because we talk about sending people to
jail.
It’s punishment, but punishment versus rehabilitation.
Jail isn’t rehabilitating anyone.
It’s not helping anyone actually change their life.
So this is the only thing he knew how to do.
He did it his whole life.
I mean, relatively successful as in he lived his whole life, but never made enough money
to actually like live or stop actually doing this.
Like we just saw, he just did months of work and he was getting like a hundred thousand
yen a month, which is not enough to even like maintain an apartment and eat and stuff,
which is really, really sad.
But I kind of have some respect for that.
78 years old.
He was still like playing the game.
He was still doing it, which is, yeah, it’s kind of what I want to do.
Not with burgling.
I want to do judo into my seventies and then just die.
I don’t, I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but I got some respect for being that
old and still, still hustling.
How about that?
But I feel bad for him because he had to live that life.
Arashi is a boy band.
I mean, it’s hard to say boy band when the guys are all like in their fifties.
They’ve been a boy band for like 30, 40 years.
They have TV shows and stuff.
Any boy band in Japan that gets popular, you do tours and stuff and then you get a TV show
and then every member gets their own TV show.
And then there’s like a million things.
And you see these guys on TV all the time.
Whether they’re good or not, it’s irrelevant.
People love them.
I’m not judging them.
I’m not a fan of Arashi.
I actually never listened to their music, so I can’t really make a fair judgment, but
they decided to call it quits as a boy band, which again, weird to say when the guys are
all in their forties and fifties, they had 15 final performances and a farewell tour that
generated 137 .5 billion yen in revenue.
So I think that’s like everything like hotels and the cities and people going to restaurants
and stuff all surrounding this concert.
It’s pretty impressive.
So even though I don’t necessarily care about boy bands or this kind of music, the fact
that they’re generating that much money for people around them is pretty cool.
But it sparked an interesting set of questions.
Now, we’ve had this in different contexts before.
And it’s people who are like super nerdy about something and their spouse kind of ruins it
for them.
Is that grounds for divorce?
So now they’re talking about Arashi divorce.
So a woman, there are a couple of cases of this online and people are like, is this a
valid reason for divorce?
And of course, we went to Bengoshi .com, which is lawyer .com in Japanese, and they were giving
us the feedback as to whether or not this is a reasonable reason for divorce, because
we’ve had this in different contexts, which I’ll give after in a second.
A woman whose husband cut off the live stream.
So she wasn’t able to go to the concert.
She said, like, at least I can stream it online and I can watch it.
She said her husband had been grumpy all day and told her to wear headphones and don’t
play the sound really loud.
She said he turned off the TV while she was bathing the child.
So she took the kid into another room, started bathing him, but was still listening to him.
And then he turned it off to interrupt her viewing.
The woman got really angry towards her husband saying, Arashi’s last concert isn’t just a hobby,
it’s life itself.
And I can understand, like, after this, there is no more opportunity.
So maybe the concerts aren’t a big deal to me.
I don’t care about the concerts, but this is the last one.
And if my partner wanted to watch that, absolutely, I would try to make it.
I would try to, like, help him.
I would watch the kid.
I would maybe make some food and, like, you just stay in front of the TV or the computer
or however you’re watching the stream and enjoy this.
Because after this, I’m never going to have to, like, watch one of these again.
So I’m actually, if I make this a good experience for her, maybe she doesn’t have to actually,
like, feel like she missed out and it’ll be better for both of us.
Another woman revealed she couldn’t watch the concert in real time because her husband
prioritized watching the soccer match.
We do have, like, World Cup soccer going on at the moment.
She said the atmosphere was tense throughout the rest of the evening because she wants
to watch her thing.
He wants to watch his thing.
No one wants to give up ground.
He’s saying his is important.
But there’s going to be other World Cups.
There’s going to be other soccer games that week.
This is the last Arashi concert.
I actually can see, even though, again, I do not care about this.
I can see why someone else would.
So don’t take it away from someone else.
It’s kind of my feeling.
Some posts lamented that despite having obtained prior permission to watch the live stream,
so they talked to their partner and said, like, I want to watch this.
And they’re like, yeah.
When they actually went to go watch it, their husbands tried to go out at a last minute
or complained about housework and meal preparations, making them feel like they were pathetic for
watching Odyssey in a worse mood.
So kind of just ruining it for them by being needy husbands who can’t do anything for themselves,
which I think is one of the more pathetic aspects of men as possible.
It’s like, oh, especially Japan’s still in this world where it’s like women need to make
all the food and women need to clean the house.
Women need to take care of everything.
That’s still that old sort of patriarchy kind of view.
Still exists in a lot of marriages in Japan.
Don’t get carried away.
I’ll turn it off.
And kicking.
In addition, a woman who supported Arashi for over 20 years since their junior days explained
her husband played loud music on his smartphone and repeatedly made disparaging remarks about
Arashi during the live stream.
When she protested, he yelled at her, don’t get carried away and I’ll turn it off.
And even physically assaulted her by kicking her in front of their children.
Absolutely grounds for divorce.
Like the shouting and the sounds and stuff, maybe not so much, but when you step over into
physical violence, divorce that guy.
That guy’s not going to be doing you any good.
And he’s just going to get worse from now on if he gets away with it.
On social media, many people expressed empathy saying things like, it was the same for me.
It’s painful when someone deliberately ruined something you’ve been looking forward to.
And I understand why someone wanted a divorce because of Arashi.
I actually do understand these feelings because you’re saying this is special.
I want to do this.
And instead of supporting you, and again, it’s the last one.
You’re not going to have to do this ever again.
Maybe she has to do it with a different boy band later or something, but functionally,
you never have to do this again.
Just make it a nice event for them.
Help them out.
Make them popcorn.
Get them drinks.
If they want something, go to the store and get them ice cream.
Could a spouse’s actions of interfering with such an important time or intentionally displaying
a bad attitude be considered moral harassment under the law?
This is where we actually get into the real legal question of this.
Is this a fair reason to divorce someone?
So lawyer Tomoe Terabayashi was asked, interfering with live stream viewing is moral harassment.
Do the actions experienced by the female Arashi fans constitute moral harassment under the law?
Moral harassment is defined as psychological violence or harassment that damages another
person’s character and dignity through words and actions causing emotional distress.
Furthermore, Oshikatsu fandom activities are rooted in the feeling of cherishing one’s Oshi,
like your favorite idol, your favorite group, as an important part of your life and lifestyle.
So this goes beyond just like I like Arashi.
I consider Arashi part of my life.
Therefore, even if prior consent was given, if a spouse displays a bad attitude towards
a live performance that a fan was looking forward to, causing them distress or interferes
with the viewing of the live stream, it can be considered an act that damages the spouse’s
dignity and causes emotional distress through words and actions and can be evaluated as moral
harassment.
So actions that interfere with spouse’s fan activities could be grounds for divorce if they
continue.
So essentially, if you do it once, it might be like, well, he was just in a bad mood.
It was just bad timing.
Something bad happened that day.
But if it happens more than once, it’s now a pattern.
It’s now abuse psychologically.
Moral harassment, in a sense, psychological violence can be considered a form of domestic
violence.
Therefore, it may fall under serious grounds that make it difficult to continue the marriage,
as defined in Article 770 of the Civil Code, which stipulates the grounds in divorce court.
While such actions might not constitute serious grounds that make it difficult to continue
the marriage if they occur only once, repeated instances can be considered as persistent psychological
violence.
Therefore, in a case like this, it is highly likely that it would not only be grounds for
divorce, but also subject to a claim for compensation.
Just as you have things you cherish, your spouse also has things they cherish.
Interfering or ridiculing such enjoyment can lead to a breakdown of marriage.
Many people need to recognize this.
And the reason I said this has kind of happened before is we’ve had like, it’s usually like
a nerdy guy gets married and he has like, let’s say, a figure collection.
So I have my nerdy stuff behind me, but not like figures.
And then the wife gets angry at the man for something or he spent too much money on the
figures.
So she goes and smashes the figures.
Or you have a hobby like Lego or trains and you spend a lot of time building them and
they get jealous or frustrated.
So they smash that.
That is emotional violence under this stipulation.
So it is grounds for divorce.
And a lot of people, when they see it online, actually recognize it as such.
And just be nice to your partner.
I mean, I understand your partner might have things that you think are really stupid or
don’t like.
And like I said, like if it’s the last one, help them out.
Buy them ice cream.
If they want, if they drink, buy them some beer.
Get them popcorn.
I mean, make them happy.
And you know what’s going to happen is they’ll probably end up making you happy.
And that is your very sound relationship advice from Ninja News Japan, which is a great
step away from giving advice to criminals on how to be better criminals.
Thank you.
Thank you.
