(upbeat music)
- The Toyota Hi-Locks, it’s a pickup truck.
Big cars, pickup trucks and
whatnot are not very popular
in Japan because honestly,
there’s no place to park them.
Pick up trucks and stuff, you
get these like micro pickup trucks
which look really weird at first, but then
you realize they’re incredibly efficient.
You can park them, they don’t
have super powerful engines.
It is sort of an opposite
philosophy of the North
American biggest, most
powerful vehicle is better.
It’s almost like they want
something that’s more reasonable.
My attitude has certainly changed.
When I was young, before I lived in Japan,
I was probably more into
muscle car type things.
I like muscle cars.
Now, I never had enough money to buy
a muscle car or to maintain a muscle car.
What I had, my first car, was awesome.
It was a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle.
and people would make fun of
it, but man, I’ll tell you one thing.
Girls love that car.
I think it’s because it
was not overcomitating.
It was cute and girls sort
of felt safe with a guy who
was willing to drive around
in a Volkswagen Beetle.
The fact that I just made myself sound
creepy, if you have to say girls felt safe,
that means there’s an element of you
that it almost feels like duplicitous,
but we’re not trying to
make me look bad today.
So there was an ad that
was banned in the UK
for the Toyota Highlox, because it showed,
like every pickup truck ad ever shows it
driving through the dirt and
fields and splashing through a river.
That was that splashing
through a river part
was actually the bit that caused trouble.
The driving through a
river promotes a disregard
for their impact on nature
and the environment.
Toyota responded to this by
saying no reasonable viewer
would understand the ads
as encouraging irresponsible
driving or promotion of
environmental damage.
The thing is, there’s only two
kinds of people who would buy
a big pickup truck in modern society.
And that is people who are unreasonable,
who have no regard for
the environmental impact.
Because if you’re buying a pickup truck,
I would say you care less
about the environment.
One of the things I was looking for
when I bought a new car quite recently
was I wanted at least a hybrid.
I would have preferred electric,
but I wanted at least a hybrid.
Now I understand there are differences
in the impact on the environment,
but the overall, I thought
hybrid was at least a good way
to go, use less gas,
use a little bit of
electricity, you know
all that kind of stuff.
It made sense.
People who are buying big pickup trucks,
now because I last time I
went to visit family in Canada,
there were tons of pickup
trucks everywhere I went.
And they were all in immaculate condition,
which meant they were not off-roading.
They were not, yeah, these were not people
who were using pickup trucks
for any pickup truck stuff.
They weren’t picking
up anything, they weren’t
putting stuff in the back,
they weren’t off-roading.
So you could say in that way
they do care about the environment
’cause they’re not doing the
off-roading, driving through a river,
and we’re showing disregard
for the environmental impact.
But at the same time,
they don’t care about the environment
’cause they’re buying this
giant gas guzzling pickup truck.
So there’s a confused message there.
If you’re producing a pickup
truck, I actually think it’s
difficult for you to say you
care about the environment.
Pick up trucks have a place in the world.
I don’t know why I’m so torn.
The pickup truck has
now become like a really,
you know, a hot point issue for me.
because pickup trucks serve a purpose.
You put stuff in the back, you haul
things, you move things, pick up trucks.
I think they’re really good.
But I think the problem
I have is most people
don’t use pickup
trucks for pickup trucks.
They just drive around
and they’re just big-ass cars.
They’re convenient in a way
that you can put stuff in the back.
I think, I think if you
drive a pickup truck and
like for a business or
something, I’m okay with it.
I think if you drive a pickup
truck is just your daily driver,
I think in that case,
you’re kind of a bad person.
I don’t want to disparage people too much.
But I saw a lot of pickup trucks that
looked like they had never hauled anything
and then I was like, what’s the point?
You’re paying way more
for that giant engine in
the gas and you’re not
getting anything out of it.
Maybe that’s it.
You’re not getting anything
out of all that extra money
you’ve paid in all the extra gas you use.
That’s my issue with pickup trucks.
Okay, good.
I’ve come to a resolution.
If you use a pickup truck for work, okay.
If you use a pickup truck for your
daily driver, you’re kind of a douche.
But the irresponsible environmental damage,
only unreasonable people
who don’t use pickup trucks
for pickup truck purposes
would buy a truck.
or they would never go off road anyways.
So then they do carry out the environment.
You can see there’s a dichotomy
here that doesn’t make any sense.
This is an interesting
thing about advertising.
In his news pen, in the past,
I think it’s a couple of years ago now,
we covered the story of the gulp
sound in beer commercials was banned.
So when I came to Japan, a beer commercial
was, guy does athletics of some sort,
meets friend sweats profusely,
both pour out an icy, icy cold beer.
And then they chugged
the beer as hard as they can.
And they would make what in
Japan, Japanese is called Gukun.
They would do that as they chugged
the beer as hard as they could.
In Japan, they said that is
encouraging, sort of binge drinking.
It’s not healthy.
So they banned gulping beer.
So if you come to Japan
now, you see a beer commercial.
You will see people pour it out.
Maybe admire it, look at it, look
at the head of the beer for a bit.
They will, then take a sip.
They will not gulp it down.
And that’s because of sort
of a health and safety thing.
Is that good or bad?
Ah yeah, I mean, I come from Canada
where I don’t think they really,
I think alcohol and tobacco commercials
are basically illegal now.
So, I mean, I don’t think
you need to advertise beer.
I think people just buy beer anyways.
There was a guy sent
me a message somewhere.
And he said he likes
the, he likes the podcast,
but the transition sound is
too loud and it’s too often.
And it’s just in between every story.
The irony being, I once
took out the transition
sound and then
immediately got messages
to put the transition sound back in.
So the transition sound is in there.
Too loud was interesting.
And just yesterday or last
week an Apple review came up
and he said, I like it,
transition sound is too loud.
I have it set.
My desktop is minus 30 decibels
compared to my actual microphone.
So if it’s too loud, I
actually, I was making fun
of that, but I apologize
if it’s too loud for you.
I’ll play with it in editing, but
at the same time, come on man.
Yeah, it’s quieter than my voice.
I think maybe it’s just ’cause
it’s a shock to the system.
Anyways, undeclared
income of wealthy people.
Mm, rich people have become
a more common news issue.
And this is bad for them because it means
people are starting to pay more
and more attention to rich people.
The undeclared income of
the wealthy hit a record high
of 98 billion yen in
Japan, which is up 16%.
That is about $657 million in undeclared
taxes should be going to the government.
Japanese taxes, very high, not gonna lie.
It can be tough, but
again, hospitals, services,
all these things are
paid for, so that’s good.
So that’s where your money goes.
Rich people need to do
better because what they
actually need more than
anything else is less scrutiny.
They need less people
noticing that their rich
and have lots of money
and are abusing the system.
So you should pay your taxes.
I’m not even saying from a moral
standpoint, you should pay your taxes.
I’m saying you should pay your
taxes so that you get less scrutiny.
‘Cause now the government’s looking at
you going, you haven’t paid 98 billion yen.
That’s my 98 billion yen.
I think maybe it’s time to
pay up you’re 98 billion yen.
And then if you pay late, there’s
penalties and fees and stuff.
So you actually end up paying more.
So I actually believe rich people should
pay, it’s one of the things they should do.
Pay your taxes.
This has mainly been
boosted by overseas profits.
So these are like capital
gains because of the weekend.
So basically, if you have
investments overseas
and they’re paying
out in American dollars,
those American dollars
compared to the Japanese yen,
much more valuable right
now than in other times.
So you’re getting more money
from your investments overseas.
There have been 637,800 cases,
which makes me feel really bad
’cause that means there are
637,800 rich people and me.
And I’m not one of those rich people.
And if I was rich, I can honestly
say, I would pay my taxes.
I can’t say I would do it right.
I’d buy I’d hire to kill them.
I wouldn’t be opposed to paying taxes.
I think paying taxes is a good thing
because in Japan, you do get your services.
I think in other countries
where you pay taxes
and don’t really get anything
back for it, that’s a separate issue.
But like I spent time in the
hospital, I’d use medicine.
I got my money’s worth
already out of the taxes I paid.
An average of 33.67 million yen
is undeclared in these 637,800 cases.
Now, I’ve said before,
the average salary in
Japan is about 4 million yen.
So this, they are annually not declaring
10 times the annual
salary of a person in Japan.
That’s how much they’re
hoarding these rich people.
Total back taxes and penalties.
136.8 billion yen.
What’s ironic?
If we’re gonna talk about
free markets and capitalism,
late stage capitalism again
is become its own issue.
I think a lot of people don’t realize
what they use their
taxes, like what taxes go to.
So if all these rich people
have paid their taxes,
all that would be like
society would be better.
I don’t think rich people understand that
making society better is better for them
because their members of society.
I think I did a Seamick Beyond this
where the real problem with rich people
is they think they’re
separate from society.
And they don’t realize that it is society
that’s essentially propping them up.
And so if society collapses,
they collapse with it.
Maybe more slowly, but
overall they collapse with it.
But yes, Japanese government is looking out
for the rich people as
in their coming for you.
Four people age 16 to 22.
So I don’t know, it was 16, 17, 18, 22.
I don’t know.
Why did that get stuck in my head?
This is a problem with doing a
news program is, again, not scripted.
I forget what company
came up with a teleprompter
that you can stick over your webcam.
I actually thought that was really cool,
but then I was like, I don’t script my show.
But it’s because I don’t
know if it’s good or bad.
Mid-sentence, I’ll have a thought.
And I don’t know if that
makes the show better or worse.
I think a lot of people enjoy the tangents,
but sometimes the
tangents are so nonsensical.
Four people were arrested between 16 and
22 and I’m suddenly, what are their ages?
Yes, the late teens, 16, 17, 18, 22.
You can see my brain
didn’t even go 16, 18, 20, 22,
which would have been a nice even spread.
I did the first ones and
then jumped to the end.
There is a psychological
study that could be done.
Take this podcast, all
freaking eight million episodes,
take seeming be all
100,000 episodes of that.
Stick them all together,
put it in an AI or something.
It will come out with
a psychological profile
that will predict all the
dumb shit I’m gonna say
and how my stupid brain works.
I think I might brain now, I have so much
content from this and streaming and stuff.
Stick that all in a
computer and it’ll be like,
oh, we can not only predict
what Peter’s gonna do,
we can actually tell you about
every step of his life from no one.
There are enough data points,
that’s what I might actually say.
Unless I get hit in the head, see, here’s
the tangent, we’re on the tangent now.
So you have behaviors, I have behaviors,
those are all basically
governed by the chemicals
in your brain, it is
predictable to a degree.
So here we go, you take all the information
from all the news, news,
Japan, all the seeming
bees, all the streams,
stick them in a computer,
it could do a predictive
algorithm of who I am as a person
and what I’m gonna say.
Then you crank me in the
head ones and it’s all thrown off.
Maybe that’s free will.
Free will is the ability to
alter the chemical balance
in your brain, artificially or physically.
And then like a computer couldn’t
predict what you would do anymore.
I guess we need a whole
new set of data points,
I guess, but then we get back into
determinism if you understood the injury.
So again, I’m just taking a conch
to the head as the basic one.
If you understood the injury, you
could make a new set of predictions.
I’ve just gone in a circle.
Determinism always kind
of wins out in that argument
because you can always
come up with more data points
to be more predictive in the future.
That’s not the story we’re talking about.
It’s kind of the opposite for young youths,
have been arrested.
They were arrested for
selling cough medicine.
The problem with the
prediction is radical thoughts,
new data, resulting in new methods
of thought, life events, et cetera.
- Yeah, it’s data points,
I think it’s actually,
because there are events
outside of my control
that impact me, or maybe I impacted them,
I impact the world at large,
but that’s just more data.
I think this is basically the
argument for determinism
is with all the data, then
everything gets plotted out
anyways, but then any data set you have is
incomplete because we’re not capable yet.
It would be so boring though.
I like to believe in
free will because just
determinism is boring because
determinant takes away,
like I can just do whatever I
want because it doesn’t matter.
Free will implies that things matter.
I think it’s why people stick to
and hold on to free will so much.
Anyways, these
youths, their free will has
been impacted by the
Japanese legal system.
They were arrested for selling cough
medicine over the counter cough medicine.
There’s a current trend of young people
overdosing on over the counter drugs.
I just, that’s weird to me.
I don’t know if you guys
heard the last one from
last week where the guy
came in, someone dropped in,
it was like a rando dropped in and said stop
yapping and then I gave him a few shots.
I was giving everyone
like two or three chances
to like change tack, but
yeah, no, it didn’t work out.
Of course, once they start getting
on a path, people just stick to the path.
It’s predetermined, it’s
almost predetermined.
No, I knew that they were not going
to change their thinking in their path,
but I let them continue down that
path knowing they would get banned.
It’s determinism.
Anyways, kids are, I assume
shoplifting over the counter drugs.
They had 40 pills that
normally sell for 2,400 yen.
They were selling them
at 1,000 yen, so again, being
a profit that implies that
those are probably stolen.
And these kids are overdosing.
They basically just like take
so many cough medicine drugs.
They go like comatose in the street.
And that’s like a thing.
I mean, I have never done drugs illegally.
I’ve never overdosed on cough medicine.
I may have come closer
overdosing on allergy medicine.
I had a rough morning.
That’s why I started the
podcast so late ’cause I needed to
make sure I could breathe
before I could actually do this.
I took everything in my drawer,
but I didn’t overdose.
Bootain was big when I was a teen.
When I was a teen, it was Lysol.
They spray Lysol, which is an oven cleaner
into a bag and then they
would huff it out of the bag.
I don’t know if that still
happens, but man, oven cleaner.
As soon as you say oven cleaner,
I’m like, well, that can’t be good for you.
Young people in drugs, I don’t know.
Maybe I’m an old man.
I’m like, don’t do them.
Don’t do drugs.
It’s that a strong statement to make.
I know young people listen to me.
So that’s why I don’t really
wanna give a strong opinion
on the drug situation,
but I mean, they’re better.
Anyways, I don’t think
any kids are listening
to this podcast and
then paying attention
to my opinion on drugs,
but I honestly feel like.
you could do better than cough medicine.
I distinctly remember stupid
people holding their breath
and doing chest
compressions to hallucinate.
So there was a trend for a while,
and it was kids would
cut off the carotid
arteries, which is how
we choke people in judo.
You cut off the carotid
arteries and make themselves
go unconscious, and they’d say
there was a high, but I’ve been
choked unconscious and I did
not feel a high when it happened.
I do remember the tunnel vision, and then
everything kind of goes black and white
and turns into tunnel vision
and then you just go to sleep.
I once was choked
unconscious in a practice,
and I woke up, and
my waking thought was,
monster trucks were cool.
And then I started to get
more oxygen into my brain,
and then I went, no, they’re not,
which makes me feel that
people who like monster trucks
are not getting enough
oxygen to their brain.
Okayama is bringing back
the naked man festival.
It’s for the first time in four
years, so COVID happened,
they have these, this festival every
year, naked dudes come together.
It’s hard to just gloss
over the naked dude part,
but Okayama has one, there’s
actually one out, I live close to Nagoya.
There is one in Konomia, Konomia temple.
They have a naked man festival.
I used to live out there, so the parade
of the naked men would go near my house.
Now they aren’t naked naked, they are
wearing the traditional Japanese underwear.
I think it’s Fundoshi, I
think I got that word wrong.
Anyways, I haven’t studied my
Japanese words for underwear.
I’ve been to the, yes,
like I said, I lived out there.
If you are into naked men,
it’s great, but these are
not sexy naked men, they’re
just regular naked men.
So I’m a regular man,
so if I take off my
clothes, you would not
be particularly impressed.
You would be like, wow, he’s white.
If the lights all go out, follow
that bright ghost over there.
So the naked man festival in
Konomia is they have a lucky man.
He only eats pickles for a week,
he shaves his entire body of all hair,
and then his goal is to get
from the temple to another spot.
The crowd’s goal is to touch him.
So they actually have like other
people like distract the crowd.
They’s like, oh, the
lucky man’s over there.
Like they’ll have like strategies
to try to get him there safely.
People have died doing this in the past.
The one in Okayama, I got a
little bit of information on it.
The main event is the
battle for the sacred stick,
which makes me think, clearly
this was invented by men.
Literally on Reddit yesterday,
I saw a post of a man saying,
look at this stick I found.
It’s to be a weirdly man
thing to be into sticks,
because I grew up with
this stick as a sword
and playing with sticks, and
then playing sticks with my dogs,
and sticks actually were
very seminal in my life.
So yeah, coming up with a sacred ceremony,
yes, it’s the battle for the sacred stick.
The man who gets the sacred
stick is the lucky man for the year.
So it sounds like what
they do is they have
the crowd, they just
drop the stick into it,
and those guys literally
go to battle over the stick.
They’re all drunk, they’re
spraying water and sake on them.
They’re just making it insane as possible.
These are something I would
watch and I would never participate in.
I have never participated
in the naked man thing.
Out by my place, when I lived close
to the Konomia one, we did watch it.
If you like tattoos, a lot
of like lower level, yeah,
kuza groups, they will come out, and
you get to see some really nice tattoos.
So I actually was more into it for the
tattoos than the actual naked men stuff.
I’ll be really honest, I’m
just not in naked men
as much as I used to, man, they are
always fights, because they’re all drunk.
I’m not into other naked men.
I’m into myself being
naked, I do enjoy being naked.
There is a group called natural,
and it’s a scouting group that
approaches women on the street
to join essentially the sex industry.
They start you out with
like, come and work at
this bar and then they
try to get you into dead
or get you into trouble or
get you addicted to drugs
and then they try to get you
into porn and stuff like that.
But with a thousand plus members,
so you’ll see guys doing this,
you’ll see guys like recruiting
for bars and stuff on the street
at big stations and all around Japan.
They are gross guys and most
people just run away from them.
I don’t, I guess it’s statistically.
They’re just trying, they’re
just every single person
who walks by, they’re like,
oh, you know, you’re beautiful.
You can make a lot of money
doing this, but I don’t know.
I’ve always thought it was really gross.
But natural has a thousand plus members
and therefore their activities,
which are often illegal.
So getting people like into debt,
get pushing them into, pressuring them
into the sex industry, sex
trade and such, is illegal.
Their activities are
handled by the anti-cram,
anti-organized crime
division of the police.
So it’s not like a Yakuza organization,
but the organization is so big.
It’s treated like a mafia family.
So what happened is a member of natural,
broke internal rules, don’t
know what the rules were.
They didn’t get into those
details, which is too bad.
And he was confined into a room.
And so this is kidnapping.
You are allowed to leave
a room any time you want.
This was an interesting
thing where it was a company
and the company was like, you have to sign
this note that says you did a bad thing
and you can’t leave this room until you do.
Whereas if you say I can’t leave a room,
if you physically try to, so maybe I get up
and try to walk out and they stand in front
of the door, that’s kidnapping in Japan.
I probably most places.
You should be allowed to leave
where you are at any point at any time.
If you don’t feel safe, that’s
even in the higher level.
I’m a big dude.
I know I could walk out of room if I want,
but if I commit violence on
someone else now, I’m the bad guy.
So if I was in that situation really,
I should just call the police and say,
look, they’re essentially
saying I can’t leave, can I leave?
Probably when you start
calling the cops to let you go.
But these guys are essentially
a criminal organization.
It works differently.
So this guy broke in some internal rule.
Two other members, some other
members held this guy in a room.
He wasn’t happy about it.
He was kicked out of
the group where he quit
the group, but then
he went to the police.
Then later, because these guys are geniuses,
he quit the group and he sued them.
Two members called to pressure him to
accept a settlement, which is also illegal.
It’s the form of intimidation.
This is something I actually think a
criminal organization should take note of.
I don’t think you should
learn how to run a criminal
empire based off what
you’ve seen on television.
You know on TV, when they have the
big bad guy, and there’s all his minions,
and they wanna show how bad
the bad guy has any shoots a
guy for talking back to him,
or something like really petty.
If I was in that group, I’d be like,
okay, he just killed
that guy for no reason.
I’m gonna get out of here.
So next opportunity I get
to leave, I’m gonna leave.
And they’d be like, oh no,
you’re too scared to leave.
No, I’m not too scared to leave.
I would just be out.
I would be like, okay, well,
I’m gonna take a company car
and a company gun, ’cause
that’s the kind of stuff you get
when you work for an evil
organization, and I’m out.
So these guys, I think
criminal organizations
weirdly need to take better
care of their employees.
Because locking him in a room
is going to make him angry at you.
If he’s angry at you, he’s
more likely to get revenge.
He’s gonna get revenge
by doing a legal process,
which puts the police
on his side, a bigger gang.
Now you’re in more trouble, ’cause
now you’re dealing with him and the police,
instead of just dealing with
him, whereas if you sat down and
said you broke a rule, let’s
have a reasonable conversation.
Let’s try to deal with this like adults.
Problem solved.
But now they gotta do
like the TV and movie stuff,
where it’s like, I’m a
big tough guy, I’m gonna
scare you, but, they’re
all big tough guys.
And this guy’s like, no, you know what?
I quit, and I’m gonna go to the cops,
and you’re gonna try and intimidate me.
I’m gonna get you for that too.
So I’m actually hoping
natural gets in trouble,
and it has a lot of
problems because of this,
because I don’t like
what they do anyways.
So a 23 year old police officer,
and I always enjoy the 23 year old,
the young police officers,
’cause they had training,
which makes me think
they should do better.
He was arrested for climbing onto
the balcony of a private residence.
So already like all the
levels of creeper right there.
A woman saw him on her balcony,
she had a friend with her,
and so the friend restrained him.
The cop was off duty,
and he seems to have found
a vacant apartment, gone into the
apartment, climbed out on the balcony,
climbed onto the
woman’s balcony, and then
they were arrested in
him and they said, why?
Now, this is the last story of the day.
So you think, oh, creepy,
he’s gonna steal underwear,
he’s voyeur or something
like that, he claims.
Now, I’m assuming one
of those is actually true,
but in his defense, what
he said was pretty amazing.
It was, I dropped parts of a plastic model
and entered the place
to try and pick them up.
So he’s gone so far the other
way, it’s almost weird and freaky.
Like he’s gone so far, like, oh no, no, no,
I’m not a creepy dude as
in I’m stealing underwear.
I’m like such an otaku that I dropped,
I broke into apartment to play with my
plastic toys, dropped someone to her balcony,
so I had to climb down and get them because
they’re so important and valuable to me.
I found that to be just one of
the weirdest stories of the week.
(upbeat music)
Dave’s just wrecked down here.
I love how he sleeps
with one paw on the desk.
I don’t know why.
So this is how I do the podcast.
I actually have thought I tried once,
but then he moved to do
the podcast with Dave Cam,
’cause that is way more
attractive than my face.
Oh, I’m getting a little twitch of his eye,
and then you get my notes on the desk.
You can see how professional I am,
pen in hand, oh, I’ve done that story, ooh.
But we can just sit here and
watch Dave leano sleep and twitch.
Now it’s really hard for me to get up
though, ’cause he’s sleeping quite peacefully
and always takes him
a while to settle down.
He’s actually got, this
paw is in front of his face,
and this one’s up on the table,
and it’s kind of covering his eye.
Yeah, he’s warm now, ’cause
he’s got the bed all around him.
I feel a really bad waking him up,
but I mean, he does sleep 80% of
his life, so I’m sure he’ll catch up.
But it’s just nice for me,
’cause he’s all quiet and settled.
Mm-hmm.
I’ve just sit here in silence,
probably get like eight million viewers.
Everyone, everyone loves Dave
Cam more than anything else.
Ah.