Tag: overtourism

There’s a place called, oh, first of all, already messed up my plan.

Last week there was supposed to be an episode.

I got sick.

My voice was not ready for it.

If I had tried to push through, it would have been a lot of hacking and coughing and really

awful stuff.

So I didn’t do an episode last week.

I’m hoping to make up, I’m basically just shifting the whole schedule now on into the

future from now.

So it’s going to be this week and then two weeks from now.

Does it make a difference?

I don’t think so.

I think we’re all right.

I think everyone’s fine.

There’s a place called Fujiyoshida.

It’s a town in Japan and it has a very nice view of Mount Fuji.

Now, a very nice view of Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms and you combine that, that’s pretty

awesome.

And if you’re into Instagram, that’s Instagram -omatic, fantastic.

Well, that’s the problem.

This city is canceling its annual cherry blossom viewing festival this year because there are

too many tourists.

We actually did this story last year because of the insane thing that tourists were doing

in this town, which I actually found inconceivable.

But then I realized like, nah, man, like people do dumb stuff.

This is a really small town.

So the problem is it’s not really designed to handle a lot of tourists.

So people are coming.

The parks are full.

People are going out into the street and taking pictures.

It’s dangerous.

That kind of stuff is the initial problem.

But they were littering.

Now, a lot of people who come to Japan, they don’t realize that Japan doesn’t provide a lot

of garbage cans.

You’re expected to carry your garbage with you back to your domicile or wherever you

came from and then dispose of your garbage yourself.

And garbage disposal in Japan is a whole other story in itself because, you know, it has to

be separated.

Some of it has to be cleaned.

It has to be organized.

It has to be organized.

If you’re living in a city, old ladies who have nothing else to do will come and check

your garbage to make sure it’s right and then like reprimand you if it’s not quite right.

Tourists are littering.

They were entering private homes.

I don’t know if they were entering private homes just like walking in.

But there’s also part of me that goes, yeah, I’m betting there are some tourists who just

like walked into someone’s house, like a sliding door and they just slid it open.

Maybe the door wasn’t locked.

So they just walked in and they were using their facilities or they were knocking on people’s

doors and asking to use the facilities would be very annoying if you don’t want strangers

to come in and poop in your house.

So what’s the weird expectation here?

The city isn’t prepared to like overhaul all the facilities, the public facilities to

make it enough for essentially a two week period in the year.

So cherry blossom season is very short.

All these tourists come for this two weeks and then the rest of the year they’re not there.

So it’s not worth fiscally.

It’s not worth actually paying for improving the facilities for tourism.

This is a form of over tourism causing an issue.

Now, of course, you come to my house, you say, hey, can I poop in your house?

My answer is honestly, probably no.

Most of the time we’re like, I don’t know you go away or leave me alone.

Or why are you knocking on my door?

I’m actually trying to do something.

It’s disruptive and that is problematic in itself.

So what do they do?

Well, I got to poop real bad.

So I’m just going to go in your backyard and poop.

So they were finding human feces, you know, not exactly public areas, but like on people’s

private property, maybe in public areas as well.

People have to poop.

They do have to poop though.

And so the city, because it’s a very small city, has not created the facilities because

this two week period is the only time they get this amount of tourism.

And the amount of tourism they get is 10 ,000 people a day.

In a city like Tokyo or Osaka, 10 ,000 people a day.

That’s just a drop in the bucket.

That’s nothing.

But in a small town that probably only has about 50, 60 ,000 residents, 10 ,000 people a

day is a massive influx of people.

They just don’t have the facilities to take care of these people.

The city still expects to see a lot of visitors because of the Instagram.

And so what they’re saying is like, we’re not having festivals.

We’re not actually inviting people to our city to see cherry blossoms, to sit at cherry

blossoms, to have a cherry blossom festival.

But because this place has gotten so popular on Instagram, we know people are still going to

come.

They’re still going to want to take their pictures.

They’re still going to like interrupt the road, but at least it will be less because there’s

less organized invitation and participation in the actual events.

Tokyo police released a video warning young people to be cautious about cocaine use.

I’m an older dude.

And I understand that the way to communicate with young people would not be for me to make

a video.

So if I made an Inja News Japan episode and it was targeted at young people, I would immediately

sit down and go, problem number one, you have an old guy sitting in the chair talking to young

people.

And it would feel like I’m talking down to them.

Like I’m talking to a younger group of people in some way.

This is even worse because this is a group of police officers who are already sort of authoritarian.

They haven’t, you know, earned the trust or faith of young people.

And then they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll just make a video and we’ll tell young people not

to do cocaine.

And then guess what?

They’re just not going to use cocaine anymore.

It’s just going to be like solving that problem.

There’s never been a government video or a video by an authoritarian of any sort that

has actually been successful.

In fact, I actually bet in some way it encourages people to actually do the thing you’re telling

them what to do.

I was a rebellious youth.

Like there’s no reason.

This was actually interesting because there’s no reason for me to have been rebellious or

angry in any way.

But I was a very angry young man and I was like a middle class white dude.

I had every advantage the universe could give anyone and I was angry about it, which is

now that I think about it really sad and weird.

Like what was I angry about?

I don’t know.

I was a punk rock kid.

Just maybe hormones.

I actually think that might be the answer.

It was hormones more than anything else.

But if you told me, like if the DARE program or something came to my school, I bet that

afternoon I’d be like, I kind of want to try some drugs.

So the police in Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have put out a video saying, don’t do

cocaine.

Be careful of cocaine use because it’s a powder and it’s very easy to spill.

They have testimonies from people who have used it, who then said it was awesome.

Okay.

I’ve never done cocaine.

I can honestly say I’ve never done an illegal drug.

I’ve done way too many painkillers.

I’ve abused lots of drugs, cough medicine, my jam.

But I’ve never done an illegal drug just because when I was at that age when you would experiment,

I was doing very serious judo and I would have to do a p -test every now and then.

And I didn’t want to get caught with any sort of drug, marijuana, cocaine or anything else

in my system just in case it would actually get me in trouble with the sports I was dedicating

my life to, which provided me with nothing because there are no famous people who do

judo.

This has never led anyone to anything.

The people I do know who’ve done cocaine who say like, it’s pretty nice.

Like it’s super fun.

Makes you feel good.

Now, I’m not saying you should do it.

I think cocaine is bad because it’s addictive.

It’s not the doing cocaine is the problem.

It’s the addiction.

And then the cost that comes with that addiction that you should be aware of.

I stopped drinking caffeine because I realized I was addicted to caffeine.

If I didn’t have a Coke or I don’t drink coffee, but if I didn’t have like a Coke or something

with caffeine in it, by lunchtime, I would start getting the caffeine headache.

So I actually cut caffeine out of my life altogether because I just don’t like the idea of addiction.

If you’re drinking it and you’re happy with it, sure.

I’m not going to, I’m just about to promote cocaine.

I’m doing the opposite.

Well, maybe this is it.

Maybe if this old dude says you should do cocaine, the youth out there will hear the

message and go, well, I’m not doing cocaine because that old creepy man told me to do cocaine.

It took about a month or maybe a little more before I actually like settled down into like

feeling normal without having any caffeine in my life.

I still drink Coke, but it’s caffeine free, sugar free, calorie zero Coke.

So it’s basically all fun free.

Joy free Coke is exactly what I have.

But at the same time, I’m just trying to like not die as quickly.

The video from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has testimonies from people who’ve used cocaine.

And the thing is cocaine seizures have been up 1 .5 times from last year.

Now it’s still not very much.

Cocaine is not a particularly popular drug in Japan because it’s so hard to get drugs in Japan.

And because therefore it will be so expensive.

He said, one of the testimonies message is very persuasive.

I’m convinced if people, if young people watch the video, they will never do drugs.

I don’t think they understand how effective videos are actually are.

I don’t think they realize that old people telling you not to do drugs is not a particularly

effective tactic.

Technique?

Technique?

Technique?

A 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant called 110.

110 is the 911 in Japan.

It’s actually important to know if you ever plan on traveling to Japan, you don’t dial 911.

110, that’ll get you.

Ambulance, police, whatever you need.

They’re probably only going to speak Japanese, but if you just start screaming, they’ll get the message.

This 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant said he had been robbed at knife point.

He was jumped as he was closing up and they had taken 670 ,000 yen from him.

Oh no.

That’s a terrible thing.

The police start to investigate.

They take this very seriously.

They start doing CSI kind of stuff.

They get surveillance videos and then they find no one fitting the description is on any

surveillance video in the area, which is very unusual.

If you listen to the Indian News Japan consistently, you will realize that most crimes are solved

by the police just going to areas around the crime, getting surveillance videos and watching

those videos and going, hey, there’s that guy.

Now let’s follow him home.

And then they show up at his house.

No one fitting the description that the manager gave showed up on any surveillance videos anywhere.

It makes me wonder what kind of description he gave.

Because like if I was going to describe a criminal in Japan, I’m going to go 5 ’10”,

black hair, slim build.

I mean, that’s it, right?

Like I’ve just described it.

When I lived in Korea, there was like a serial killer.

An announcement went out on the news about the serial killer and they said he’s 5 ‘9″,

black hair, slim build, something like that.

And I was like, dude, I’ve seen that guy like 7 ,000 times today in Seoul.

How is that a description?

So the police started looking deeper and they got on the manager’s smartphone.

So you know it’s already a problem.

The manager had searched staged robbery victim.

Now that’s a problem.

You should not, I guess if you’re going to commit a crime, the first thing you should do is clear

your cash history, clear your cookies, erase your computer, throw away your smartphone.

I don’t know because I bet they could still recover all that stuff.

But searching for a staged robbery victim and other similar searches, I guess just different

like word order and stuff.

And then they arrested him, sat him down and said like, did you stage a robbery?

Did you claim to have been robbed?

And then it turns out you weren’t.

You just like done this to yourself.

He broke immediately.

So this is one where you’ve got to commit.

If you’re going to do the bit, if you’re going to stage a robbery, you’ve got to commit

to the robbery more than anything else.

His injuries came from punching himself in the face several times.

And he was arrested for making a false emergency call.

I actually think this should be bigger than just a false emergency call because it seems

like a lot more happened than like he’s wasted police time.

He’s interfered with police business.

He’s done a lot more than just make a false phone call.

But that’s all they’re charging him with for now.

53 year old idol fan who was famed for spending massive amounts of money up to 30 million

yen a year.

And let me be clear.

I’ve said this many times.

I got to make it like just like a little sound clip.

The average salary in Japan is between four and five million yen a year.

So let’s just say 4 .5 million yen, the average salary of the average person in Japan.

This guy’s spending 30 million yen.

So six, seven times that amount every single year on AKB48 merch and goods and stuff and

underground idols.

And he’s spending another 5 million yen on underground idols exclusively.

So he’s spending 35 to 40 million yen a year.

So again, the equivalent of like 10 years salary for most people on idol events, idol goods,

idol items.

Okay.

So AKB48, I have never been a fan.

It’s not my kind of music.

Not judging people who like it.

If you like it, that’s fine.

But I do not like how manipulative the system is.

So if you want to vote and they have an election, so you’re going to choose, there’s like, again,

a whole gaggle of women.

They need to choose a leader every year or every couple of years.

What they do is they have like a show and then you vote for who you think is the leader.

Sounds very fair, very honest.

That’s fine.

Except that’s not how it works.

To get a ticket to vote, you have to buy a CD.

So a story from, God, it’s like five, six years ago was people buying hundreds of CDs

so they get hundreds of voting tickets so they could vote for their favorite idol and then

taking those CDs and just dumping them in the forest.

So it was the garbage dumping became the story.

But then they kind of glossed over the whole fact that this guy just spent thousands of

dollars on CDs so he could just get the voting tickets so he could vote for the idol he favored.

Now, here’s the thing.

If I was the leader of the AKB48, I guess the thing is the whole point of that is to

inflate sales to make it seem like they were selling more CDs than they were.

But realistically, you should just sell them the tickets so you don’t actually have the

environmental waste or make it digital or something like that.

That way, these guys who want to spend massive amounts of money on their favorite idol can do

so without that sort of negative impact.

But I guess they were just trying to increase, inflate CD sales.

He sold a vacant apartment owned by his family.

So his family was renting out an apartment.

It was vacant at the time.

And so he sold it so he could get more money to buy more stuff to support his favorite idol

to win the AKB48 election.

He goes to multiple shows a week and he says he spends at least 10 ,000 yen per visit on photos.

So if you go to any sort of event in Japan, you can pay extra money and get like a little

Polaroid of you with the famous person.

I went when I first came to Japan, we went to Nagoya’s oldest strip club, which was famed

to be the oldest strip club in Japan and maybe had the oldest strippers.

And we got a picture taken with one of the older strippers, which was a very weird experience.

I don’t think I should be really going into it.

He’s spending 200 ,000 to 300 ,000 yen every single month, which again is a normal salary

in Japan on idol events.

He’s also famous because he was sick.

He had a coronary event, maybe a stroke.

He left the hospital before the doctors told him he was allowed to because he didn’t want

to miss a show.

And then he was banned from the hospital.

He wasn’t allowed to come back to the hospital because he refused to do what the doctor said.

So like the problem is if you don’t follow our instructions, you could go out and die and

then we’re going to be responsible.

So you’re not allowed to get health care from us anymore, which is insane.

If you think about it, he has no wife, no kids, no savings, no regrets is actually the

interview thing that said he plans to continue his idol events, his idol support until he dies.

And he’s actually very happy.

He says he’s happier supporting living this unique lifestyle than he would be if he’d followed

the more traditional lifestyle of a wife, kids, house, all that other stuff.

Don’t know how I feel about it because he clearly has, we need an intervention because

this is an addiction three times a week.

So now the question is, how much does he spend?

Because a percentage of your salary going to your hobby, which idol events could be your

hobby is acceptable.

A certain amount of my salary goes to equipment and videos and computers and video games and

stuff like that.

I certainly can’t judge someone else for doing spending money on their hobby, but the percentage

has to be a reasonable percentage.

I think that’s it.

So once the percentage becomes unreasonable, there’s a point where it becomes an addiction,

that addiction we’re talking about, maybe they need an intervention.

But yeah, if he’s spending a reasonable amount, I’m sure he’s happy.

This guy’s happy.

And he says he’s happy spending all his money on idol events as opposed to saving it so that

he doesn’t have to work.

He works part -time job.

But the thing is, there’s clearly a ton of money there already.

And that’s the bit that pisses me off.

Just give me some of that money.

Dude, I’m poor.

At this point, comparatively speaking, I’m poor compared to you.

A 57 -year -old man.

It’s these 50 -year -olds.

That’s the bit that always strikes me is these guys are all in the same age range as me.

A 57 -year -old man was arrested.

He turned a phone into the police and he demanded a 5 ,000 yen reward.

So basically, if you find a lost item, you can turn it into the cops.

And you don’t necessarily get a reward, but you can kind of ask for one.

You can put some pressure on people.

Most people will give you something in return as a thank you.

That’s not unusual.

But he had a whole scheme going because he said,

it is my right to receive payment for turning in someone else’s lost goods.

The problem is, I think you can already guess, wasn’t that the goods were lost.

It’s that he stole them so that he could turn them into the police.

So then he could then collect the reward.

So he went to a restaurant.

He was at the same restaurant as a man.

He picked up the guy’s phone and then went and turned it into the police.

The police then call the man and say, hey, did they call him?

He can’t call him.

He’s on his phone.

Wait a minute.

I guess the man went to the police to ask about his phone.

And they said, yes, we have your phone.

But then he recognized the guy who took his phone from the restaurant.

So they must have met face to face.

And he was recognizable enough that they actually met in the police station.

This is maybe the problem was that crossover.

Because you’ve seen me in the restaurant.

Now you see me face to face.

Therefore, you know that I was actually in the room when you lost your phone,

which makes everything suspicious.

He turned in lost items more than 60 times.

And in those 60 times, now the police are seeing a pattern.

And they started saying, hey, maybe these items aren’t lost.

Maybe you’re stealing them and turning them in so you can collect the reward.

And that is a problem.

And it’s called fraud.

And you’re getting arrested.

This is really horrible.

Bullying in Japan.

So Japan is known as a very peaceful country.

And there’s not a lot of crime, comparatively speaking.

There’s a lot of fraud and stuff like that.

But again, a lot is relative.

There’s a lot less than other countries.

It’s a safe country overall.

Bullying in Japan has been a constant issue.

The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve heard about bullying, how it’s getting worse,

all these other issues.

Bullying in Japan is next level.

This may, I actually think this might be part of the consequences of a peaceful society.

It was actually one of the thoughts I had.

Because you have this society where you don’t really have to worry about crime and stuff,

but you want to feel powerful.

So you start imposing your will on other people.

That’s how bullying happens.

There was a trading card store.

So I’m thinking a Pokemon trading card store.

But probably trading card store means they trade any kind of collectible cards.

So it’s going to be baseball cards, Pokemon cards, other nerd game cards, Magic the Gathering,

all that other stuff.

The owner was arrested for a separate crime.

But when you get arrested, they take your phone away and they start looking through your

phone.

And that’s how they discover other crimes.

And a lot of crimes seem to be discovered by the police looking at your phone.

And the police can look at your phone.

Again, this isn’t American TV stuff.

They don’t need warrants and stuff.

They actually have full access to anything.

They’re like, this is suspicious.

I want to look at it.

They don’t need a warrant.

They can just start looking at stuff.

So you got to be careful.

If you get stopped by the police in Japan, they have the full right to go through all

your possessions on your body without like a warrant or a reason.

They’re just like, you look interesting.

I would like to look in your bag now.

They can do that.

So again, different countries, different rules.

You got to know that when you come to the country, because it is a risk you run into.

Because if you refuse, you can be arrested right there.

And then for refusing, you’re not even like done anything wrong, but you can be arrested

for interfering with police business, which the police business is, I want to look in

your bag.

But they found videos on this guy’s smartphone, the owner of the trading card store.

And it was them, him and two of his coworkers abusing a fourth coworker who had been working

there for about three or four months.

And it was just, again, when I start getting into the actual details, it’s just horrendous.

They started shaving the person’s hair with clippers.

I mean, I do that to myself, but if it’s non -consensual, that’s a problem.

They were wrapping aluminum foil around his genitals and touching them to an outlet to

shock him.

I would not have thought of that.

This was the other part of bullying that I always come across is they are creative.

I would never have come up with the idea of like, oh, I’m going to bully this person.

I would think of, I will punch them.

I, you know, the fundamentals, the basics, stick to the basics, maybe push them around,

knock them with your shoulder.

If I was going to bully, it’d be very boring, uh, American TV show kind of bullying, knock

their books out of their hand, that kind of stuff.

Would never do that though, because why, why bully someone else doesn’t actually make sense.

Wrapping someone’s testicles, genitals with aluminum foil and then shocking them.

That is work.

And maybe that’s it.

I’m too lazy to be a bully.

I would never bully anyone because I wouldn’t want to make that much extra work in my life.

Uh, they sprayed alcohol on his legs and then set the alcohol on fire.

They mixed the owner’s fecal matter with instant food and made him eat it.

Now I obviously disapprove of all this behavior.

I think this is disgusting.

Uh, but again, we go back to the criminal part.

Don’t video it.

But these guys now, people now, they have to video everything because they have to have

evidence that they did this.

This is like serial killers taking like a trophy or a token of everyone they’ve killed.

And that’s the thing that gets them caught.

This is the exact same thing.

They’re bullying this guy and they want to feel powerful.

So they want to video it.

So they have the video of them abusing this other human being to prove that they can do

that.

But what ends up happening is then the police actually arrest you for some kind of fraud.

I actually forget what the actual crime was, but then they find this.

This is worse.

Like the fraud is bad, but this sort of consistent abuse of another person, because each one of

these things becomes another charge of assault or battery or something like that.

Another charge of abuse.

That’s like six, seven, eight, nine more charges, because you know, the three, four things I’ve

done right now, they’ve done those multiple times.

Each one is abuse.

The, uh, claim was that they were punishing him for making mistakes at work, but absolutely

there’s no way any of that is acceptable.

I hope they get an amazing amount of jail time.

I’m going to try to follow up and find out how much jail time they can get.

For each action, uh, that might be tough, but hopefully we can find out how much punishment

you actually get for this kind of behavior, this kind of bullying at work.

The Chinese Japanese chilling of relations has been ongoing.

Ninja News Japan has brought you reports multiple times of all the things that have happened.

Uh, China’s reaction has been to try to stop anything Japanese oriented happening.

The problem is there is still a large contingent of anime fans in China.

Detective Conan cosplay, uh, has been banned.

So they have anime events and at those anime events, you are no longer allowed to dress up

as Detective Conan.

Now, three cosplayers at a separate event dressed up as Death Note characters.

Now we all know Death Note.

We know that you have the notebook.

If you open the notebook that says Death Note on it and you write a name in the book, I

think it’s seven days later, that person dies.

Well, there was a tweet that showed the three cosplayers, all dressed as Death Note characters,

opened a Death Note book and wrote Sanai Takaichi, which is the name of the current Japanese

prime minister in their book.

This has been promoted in China, but then obviously people in Japan are complaining about it.

Because you’re saying you want the prime minister of Japan to die.

So this is a very weird situation.

The bit that I actually found interesting is they’re using a Japanese anime to make a political complaint

about a Japanese prime minister who they are claiming is anti -Chinese.

So using, are you supporting Japanese anime and making a political statement?

Or are you pro -Chinese and anti -Japanese by wearing the Japanese cosplay and then putting

the prime minister’s name in the Death Note?

If you have an opinion, I would actually like to hear what you think.

You can send an email to chunkofbeefchest at gmail .com.

Or you can send us a voice message to speakpipe .com slash chunkofbeefchest.

And we will talk about it in a later episode.

So you’re out.

It’s one o ‘clock, maybe 1 .30, two o ‘clock in the morning.

You’re having a good time.

Your phone goes off.

That’s always bad.

Your phone doesn’t, you don’t want your phone to go off at one o ‘clock in the morning.

And the message you get is come home, which is very weird because you live alone.

So coming home seems like a weird thing for someone to tell you.

You know what it makes, it sounds like someone has broken into your apartment.

And that person wants you to come back to your apartment where they are.

And then you don’t go home right away because why would you?

So the next thing they send is another text that says,

there is no way to save the parakeets except to come home.

So someone has broken into your house.

You have parakeets as pets.

And they are threatening to kill the parakeets if you don’t come home.

And then you get another message that says, if you apologize over the phone now,

I’ll spare the parakeets.

Now, what are you apologizing for?

You don’t know because you don’t seem to know this person who seems to have broken into your house

and is threatening the lives of your parakeets, but has your phone number.

So this must be some sort of distant social relationship.

I would assume a coworker or something like that.

This person getting these messages did the most reasonable thing and called the cops.

And the cops showed up at the house because that’s who, of course, you’re going to call.

And that is the weirdest form of harassment I’ve seen.

Like, if I was, I don’t know, like, are you threatening them?

Because, yeah, I’m really stuck on this one.

I don’t know where to go with it.

I value animals’ lives.

I have my associate Dave in the background.

Threatening someone’s pet is just crossing a massive line.

But why is this guy trying to get the girl to come back?

He’s trying to get the girl to come back because he’s obviously attracted to her.

And then he’s so socially inept that this is his version of game.

And his game is so bad, he’s like, I will threaten her parakeets

and she’ll come back and talk to me and then fall in love.

Like, is that what’s going through these, like, psychos’ heads

when they make these kind of threats?

Like, when they lose it, when they realize, like,

she is not attracted to me.

And they cross this line.

What’s going on in their heads is a very interesting question

because I don’t understand.

I don’t know.

I hope he gets arrested.

I do hope all the parakeets survived.

It was done in plural.

The sad part, the scary part, is the police never said that the parakeets were safe,

which I think in a normal news story they would say that.

So I think at least one parakeet did not make it.

So I don’t know what the punishment is for animal abuse in Japan,

but I hope it’s pretty severe.

I didn’t finish my notes.

that’s a little iets.

Aww.

The cool thing is crazy.

I’ll watch the books as well.