Happy Online

I just had lunch, I’m
not afraid I’m going

to burp, I’m no I’m
going to burp, so I just

wait for a second and get that out before
we actually start doing the news, I should

do a burp ASMR, I
should just do that, that

should just be the
thing I do now, just give

up on all the new
shit, all the talkie talkie

shit, no video games, just sit here and
burp, I should do an only fans, a burping

oriented only fans, burpee
fans, my new website.

Update, last week we
talked about the assembly

member who was
calling for female sanitary

products to be made
available in city hall

for free, like toilet
paper was her comparison

in an eye, and introduced
Japan as a company,

we supported that position, we think people
need stuff, it’s city hall, it’s for the

people, what the people
need should be in there,

women or people, it’s not a hard stance to
take, let’s put it that way, the city hall

came back with a
response and they said they

pulled other municipalities,
so this is their

way of saying this isn’t our idea, this
isn’t our feeling, this isn’t what we think,

this is just what people
think, what people

think is cheaper for
us is really the answer,

they are not going to
place female sanitary

products free in the
bathroom, because of the

risk of theft and the
cost was too high, or

the cost could be too
high, now risk of theft,

I think in my episode last week I said they
could put it in a machine that dispenses

it, I think one of my first suggestions was
they could put it in a machine that would

dispense it, I think
if you threw a small

tertiary price of 100
yen or something, I don’t

think anyone would
actually complain about that,

I do actually think
it’s better if it’s free,

but if you really want
to justify the cost or

the price or something
100 yen for something

that’s apparently
necessary is fine, the thing

is theft, is it free and
is that theft question,

because we did have
the same story last week

of the woman came
into a convenience store,

where a bunch of free
condiments for, I think

condiments isn’t the
right word, whenever

I say that I get stuck,
the stuff for coffee,

so the sugar and the
creamers and stuff, she

went in, grabbed a
bunch of those, put it in

her backpack and left,
and she was arrested

for theft, the risk of theft though, I mean
that was my initial thing was like put it

in a box that dispenses them, and if you’re
worried about theft of sanitary pads,

you probably should
be just as worried about

theft of toilet paper,
and if you’re going

to get strict with toilet paper, and you’re
not getting strict with toilet paper, so

why are you getting so
strict about sanitary pads?

It’s just, it’s one of
those sort of indefensible

positions that the city hall is taken,
probably just to save money, but the inherent

greed of the capitalist
system, I don’t

know, it just seems
like a really lame set of

reasons and or excuses
to not do something,

that is pretty easy and
fairly convenient and

would make a certain segment
of the population’s life a lot easier.

So last week we had
the story for me, it was

one of the bigger stories of the week was
the American who accidentally packed a gun

and came to Japan,
now he did the right thing.

He realized he had a
gun with him in a country

that really doesn’t
like guns, and he turned

himself in, he turned
himself in, he turned the

gun in, he handed
everything over, he didn’t

cause any trouble, prosecutors dropped
the charges and let him go on his way.

That was handled
correctly, so of course now

we have another week,
therefore we must have

another gun story, because
stories seem to come

in little trends, this is
something I’ve noticed,

the streamer being
a nuisance trend is all

over the place, actually
I’m not doing a couple

of those stories, there
was a Russian streamer

who went into an
onsen and cut her hair

and put on her makeup
and everyone was really

grossed out, and
then I don’t know if it’s

the same, I think it’s
a different streamer,

Russian streamer was
walking along the street

and like videoed a
pedestrian guy, which is

technically illegal,
you’re not allowed to film

people without their
consent in Japan, and they

got into a tussle, but
those are now at this

point just repetitive, there’s nothing new
to those stories, or those streamers aren’t

big enough or whatever to
make it worthwhile to cover.

Another man, another
American, therefore

another gun, a 35 year
old man, his suitcase

was being x-rayed and
they found a gun-shaped

object in his suitcase,
so of course they

opened it up to look
at it and they found a

gun in there, then they
found dozens of rounds

of ammunition and then
he had shoes in a box

and in the shoes, there
was a knife in a case,

so he was trying to
bring in a gun, ammunition

and a knife into Japan,
all of those things

are heavily heavily
controlled in Japan, his

decision, his excuse,
his justification for

this was I decided to go to Japan while the
world expo was being held, I don’t think

that’s a justification for bringing a knife
a gun and ammunition into a country, unless

your plan, what you’re
telling the police is

my plan was to shoot
up my plan was to shoot

up the expo and then stab
anyone who was left over.

This is not a justification, it’s not like
the other guy, he said, “Oh, I, you know,

I packed my bag, it
was in my bag, I didn’t

realize it was there,
I got into the country,

I realized it was
there, so I turned it in.”

This guy’s like, “I packed my bag, I packed
my gun and I was going to the expo, so this

is a much more serious
concern, he had no

intention of showing anybody,
telling anybody we’re turning it in.

There was a question
like, “How did these two

guns get into Japan, a country
was such strict gun control?

And it turns out, the people who are more
responsible for checking bags and stuff are

actually departures,
so both of these guns

got through the departures in
America, not the partures in Japan.

So if someone in Japan
tried to do the same

thing, maybe more
likely to get caught, I bet

there would be less
guns being, you know, a

secreted out of Japan
versus secreted into Japan.

You’re not going to buy a gun here or get a
gun here and then try to take it to another

country, it’s probably
easier in almost every

other country to get a gun
if that’s really your intent.

But this guy sounds like his intent was to
bring a gun into Japan and go to expo, and

I don’t know if his was for self-defense,
he didn’t say that, he didn’t say if he was

like angry at a certain
pavilion, he didn’t say

that, he just said, “Oh, I brought
a gun because I’m going to expo.”

Just mentioned that I wasn’t going to talk
about streamers, and then I actually have a

YouTuber, which is the
same thing as a streamer,

let’s face it, a streamer
who does marathons,

which is why I’ve never heard of him
because why I don’t understand marathons.

I understand people doing them, I don’t
understand watching them in like two, three

hours long, it’s people
running the whole time, I mean, I

only want to see the last two
minutes if I want to see that.

This guy has a YouTube channel, it’s fairly
popular, he’s been arrested for smuggling

THC tablets into Japan for
the 2025 Osaka marathon.

Most people would claim
ignorance, but he went

on a podcast earlier
and he actually talked

about how he brings like
THC gummies with him

everywhere he goes, it’s probably
to relax, it’s probably for pain.

If I could get something
similar in Japan for

all my years of judo, I have lots of joint
pain, I hear that helps a lot, I actually

probably would start taking
something similar myself.

I would do pretty
much anything to lessen

the amount of pain I have without
just doing drug drugs drugs all the time.

He went on a podcast
and then he said he

knows he brings them
into most countries, most

countries see them and
they don’t do anything,

but he knew they
were illegal in Japan,

so he tried to get around this, he didn’t
put them in his luggage, he actually tried

to mail them to himself,
so he left, I assume America.

He left America, he
mailed them to maybe the

hotel he was going to
stay at or some place

he was going to stay at, he then took the
trip so he wasn’t carrying them with him.

So he’s trying to get around the system, so
he’s not going to carry the illegal drugs

with him, he’s going
to mail them to himself,

I’ve actually read
tons of stories where

what they do is they let the mail go to its
destination and that’s how they find you

and that’s how they arrest you because
once you receive the illegal drugs, you are

then in possession of
illegal drugs, you’re not

necessarily going to get
arrested for trafficking

illegal drugs, but you are going
to get in trouble just the same.

So he’s been caught,
no one seen anything on

his YouTube channel
for the last two months,

so I don’t know if
he’s been arrested and

being held, I don’t know if he’s been
deported and just sent back to America.

We don’t really know,
honestly, we don’t

really care, don’t bring
drugs to Japan, Japan

sees all drugs as
equivolently, equally bad,

it was a trying to
make a harder word out

of a relatively simple
word, that was a weird

instinct I had just now, there’s actually
been instances of people who come to Japan

and joined my company
to work for my company

and they have medication that they’re taking
back home and they didn’t take the time

to check if that
medication is available,

never mind legal in
Japan, we’ve had a couple

of people come have
to work for a couple of

weeks or a month and
then realize they can’t

get the medication
they need that they’ve

been on for let’s say
years or months in Japan

and then they have to
basically pack up and go home.

So that is something,
should you intend to go

to another country and
you are on medication,

legal medication in
your country, you should

check if that medication
is legal and available

in the country you’re
going to and let’s

face it, an illegal
drug, don’t even bother.

Evangelion, 3.0 plus
1.0 thrice upon a time

Jesus, these titles, I
mean I’m not biased against

anime, I actually
quite enjoy anime as a

general art form but
the titles are ridiculous,

Evangelion is the worst, they get the most,
I guess the story can be relatively obscure

but they get the
most obscure titles, it’s

almost silly, a real
train station in Shizuoka

is in the anime and
they did this, was it your

name, your name the
movie happens in partially

in a real city in Japan
and Gifu and so I

actually went out and
they actually had part

of the tourism thing
was like if you stand

here and take a picture
in this direction, it’s

this scene from the
movie, if you’re on this

bridge over the train
and you wait till this

time the trains will
go through, it’ll be the

exact picture from the
movie, that’s actually

really cool stuff and they’re like you can
go here and see this and it’s really good

for tourism in a small
town in Japan, this

place in Shizuoka has
the same kind of thing,

we want to improve,
we want to encourage

tourism, we want people
to come to this place,

we don’t care if their anime nerds, anime
nerds have the same money as everyone else

in Japan, we’ll take your money, so they
took one of the big spear spike things that

it happens, so what
happens in the anime is a

big spear spike thing
hits that train station

and they made one
of those, it’s actually

quite small, when I
heard about it, it sounded

like it was really
impressive, it’s actually

quite small, they put
one there and then

there’s a train that kind of rotates in the
background and you can take a picture with

both the train and the spear to
show that you’re in the right place.

The problem has arisen,
you’re only supposed

to approach this thing
on a guided tour because

this is still an active
train station, so

they don’t want to
risk injuries, they don’t

want someone
inhibiting the trains or the

other passengers or
other stuff, so they want

to do this in an
organized way, tourists, I

would actually put
money on, they don’t want

to pay the tour fee, so they just
want to roll in whenever they can.

People have been trespassing to take photos,
originally I thought it was going to be

like they’re sneaking at night, it’s just
like people in a station, they see this big

anime spear, they’re like I’m going to go
over there and take a picture with a big

anime spear, which actually makes perfect
sense, so they want to put up more signs

and more stuff because they’re just about
to do another Evangelion campaign, I think

in the next five or
six days, and they’re

expecting tourism to
increase, that also could

lead to interruptions
in the train line, which

is the last thing they
want to have happen.

This story popped up
like four or five times

in my timeline of
news stories, and I was

a bit like I don’t
really want to do this

story, Japan, there’s
an online poll and 60%

of Japanese respondents said they were very
or rather happy, which puts them 27th out

of the 30 countries,
according to this online

survey, the happiest
countries in the world

where the people with
the countries with the

happiest citizens, Mexico
is number three at 82%,

the Netherlands is number two at
86%, and India is number one at 88%.

The least happy countries are South Korea
at 50%, Turkey at 49%, and Hungary at 45%.

So Japan’s in the bottom
tier of these countries

that say they’re
unhappy, and I actually

had a moment where
I was like, well, you are

just asking people
in an online survey, so

maybe people who are
perpetually online doing

surveys are not very happy people, because
if you asked me, I’m a relatively happy

person, although I did
just talk about burnout

at the beginning of the
episode, if you asked

me, I would say
overall, I’m quite happy,

but that’s probably because I don’t
spend my time doing online surveys.

Like I think the people
who do online surveys

would statistically be
less happy than people

who don’t do online surveys, that
might be actually something to look into.

Like if you call me on the street and you
said, are you happy, chunk of beef chest?

I’d be like, yeah, I’m pretty happy.

I mean, my life goes pretty good.

I got very few problems, really.

All my problems are
like self-manufactured,

and that’s sort of a
self-fulfilling prophecy

of failure, something like that, but I mean,
if I actually step back and take a look

at my life, my life is pretty awesome,
and how can I complain about it?

And so there is sort of a weird
thing, like I’m happy, but I want more.

Is that the problem?

Is that like Buddha
would say, the thing

that makes me unhappy is
my ambition for more in my life?

Is it comparing myself to others?

Which you shouldn’t do because,
you know, that’s the thief of happiness.

We’ve all heard that saying,
and I think that’s very true.

When they were saying, why
are you unhappy Japanese people?

And the question
wasn’t is because you’re

always online, and that
has been shown almost

proven to make you less happy
if you were perpetually online.

64% said because of
their economic situation.

I can kind of understand
this, Japan is a very

monetary-driven
society, it’s status-driven.

People always want more money.

I think that’s true of a
lot of capitalist societies.

64% of the unhappy people
in Japan on this online

survey, which is, again, they
didn’t say how many people.

So how many people are actually
being surveyed as a problem?

How many people are unhappy is a
percentage of that small group of people?

So that’s my problem with surveys.

You have to talk about
sample size, you have

to talk about like
what the situation is.

If you sample size a similar group of
people, you should expect a similar answer.

I think if you’re
perpetually online, you’re

going to get more people
who are generally unhappy.

64% because of economics.

I think that’s true.

Japan’s been relatively
stagnant for a very long time.

27% said life does not have
meaning, which is a really sad thing.

They’re saying, I actually think
those two would be combined.

Maybe they feel like money
is their way out of this.

Maybe they feel like
life doesn’t have meaning

if they’re not making more
money and stuff like that.

But the reason so many
of these online people

who did this survey were
unhappy were because

they don’t feel like
their life has meaning.

I think that’s terrible.

But if you want to talk
about the top end, 13%

of people said the
quality of life was good.

And I’m like, yeah, I
bet that’s, again, of

the people on the internet, an online survey
is going to reveal a certain segment of

people that’s going to lead
to a certain type of answer.

I think that’s a big skew as to actual
answer you’re supposed to be getting.

Okay, there’s a town called Modioca.

And the head of the chamber of
commerce was making a speech.

And he’s like, we have a geisha tradition
in Modioca, and we want to keep that going.

Everyone’s like, yeah, so at their peak,
they had a hundred geisha who were working.

They were kind of doing
shows and entertaining

and they would work
in hotels and stuff.

This was a big draw.

Right now they’re down to like two.

So they only have two geisha left in the
city and they’re like, we want these geisha

to train new people to
become geisha to take

their place so we can
rebuild the tradition.

This sounds like a really good idea.

So what went wrong?

Well, let’s put it out there.

This was a dude saying it and the problem
is the dude was being a little too honest.

So they said they wanted applicants
between the ages of 18 to 25.

And then someone in the
audience probably a reporter went,

why do you want applicants
only within the rage of 18 to 25?

And he said, geisha, bring out men,
obviously men like young women.

There’s a weird honesty
there because he’s

saying, look, this is something that
appeals to dudes and dudes like young women.

So we should do our best
to appeal to those men

because that’s where
we’re going to get our money.

And that’s advertising
like advertising

doesn’t put on average or
ugly looking people for a reason.

They put on attractive
people, they might be

young or older, but they have
chosen specifically attractive people.

Someone of course had
to pull it back because

there’s a certain
backlash that comes with.

Geisha bring out men, obviously
men like younger women.

A committee supervisor
tried to pull it back

by saying, not
necessarily apologizing that

it is a physically
demanding job and therefore

younger people would
be able to handle it better.

43 year old man.

So you can see near the we’re at the tail
end of the episode because we had a man

he’s being gross in his own way, but I
think he was just thinking commercially.

Then we have this guy,
a post office employee.

So he hasn’t hit our
50 year old threshold

that I’ve been putting
on for the really creepy

behavior in Japan,
but I think working in

the stress of the post
office maybe has added

to the stress of his life and maybe added
that extra 10 years we need to get him past

that threshold because
he is certainly in the weird

creepy old dude committee
group that I have created.

He was arrested for
sending an envelope with

used condoms to a female
staff at a different post office.

Oh gosh, even saying
this sentence is gross.

And it’s I want to
do the psychological

breakdown of how did you
get to a point where you

woke up in the morning, you’re
like, I’m going to do this thing.

I’m going to put it in an envelope.

I’m going to send it to this lady
who works at another post office.

And that’s a good thing or like, what
did he think the results were going to be?

Like the woman wasn’t
going to be horrified.

She’s like, who sent me this?

This is exciting.

Like there’s no positive.

So it must be the bullying
aspect of this, the inciting a

negative feeling of this is
actually the appeal for the person.

He was arrested for intimidation
and obstruction of business.

It’s been a while since we had a
true obstruction of business charge.

Welcome back to the
obstruction of business counter.

The statement was I sent the
envelopes and I say envelopes.

So this isn’t a singular incident.

So this isn’t a singular instance.

He admits in his
statement, this has happened

multiple times by
using an S which makes

it even grocers on how I sent the
envelopes to satisfy my sexual desire.

I would like an explanation
of how that works,

but I did not intend to
obstruct business operations.

And I don’t know if
you work at a post office

and you are sending what is essentially a
what envelope to another post office, how

you would think that
isn’t going to obstruct

business operations, how that
person is going to receive it at work.

And that is not going
to get a reaction that

is going to obstruct
business operations.

So I think he’s just trying to
get his two charges down to one.

But I think the second
charge is very, very

reasonable in this case,
often I think obstruction

of business is a catch
all to just arrest, but

it’s just a catch all to arrest anybody
for everything and is often abused.

But I think in this case,
it absolutely is justifiable.

How do they catch them?

And it’s not even ironic DNA analysis.

They have the DNA.

They analyze the DNA
and then they must have

had some of his other
DNA on record somehow

because they tracked
it back to him real quick.

He got arrested when
they searched his home.

They found two more envelopes at his home.

So I guess pre-prepared envelopes, which
means I don’t know how long those had been

stewing or fermenting in the
corner, which is also really, really bad.

The fact that this is
just stuff that’s laying

around your house,
apparently there have

been a dozen similar incidents
across different post offices.

They are trying to find
out if they are connected.

I’m pretty sure the
DNA is going to match up.

I don’t this.

I don’t think this takes a Sherlock
Holmes level of investigation.

I think I need a break.

I realized I was reading all
the symptoms of burnout.

I actually have all of
them, which is a bad thing.