All
right, now we got to wait for the cough
to subside. I woke up this morning with
a bit of a cough. And of course, like
everyone who gets a cough, my hope is
that I end up with a grally, sexy voice.
But I think really what’s going to
happen is I’m going to get about 30
minutes in and then my voice is going to
get all squeaky and maybe start coughing
a lot, which I I don’t want that for you
to listen to. So, I’m going to do my
best and power through. I was thinking
of skipping today, but I Well, you get
all the personal updates. My on the
computer basically just died on the
weekend. I had to get rid of the old
operating system and then get in a new
operating system and it was very
stressful and I almost bought a new
computer which might have solved my
problems but also not because most of my
problems are emotional.
Anyways, what you’re here for, what I’m
here for, what everyone’s here for is
the Japanese news.
Japanese man scheduled a tweet.
uh
I’m dead and go would be the translation
of it. Uh this is very memeoriented
uh speech.
The would be his death rattle and then
he said I’m dead and then the go which
is a very Japanese meme. Uh there was uh
a baseball player Rodrigo some Dominigo.
So and he embarrassed himself. So this
is almost like you add this to the end
of words when you’re embarrassed. So
he’s basically saying I died. I’m a
little embarrassed about dying or how I
died. And the fact that I’m dead is also
a little embarrassing in itself. So that
is the tweet. In 2023, this guy was 20
years old and he was diagnosed with a
very rare form of cancer. His profile
said, “I like cute girls. I also have
cancer.” So, he was maintaining a sense
of humor about it, which I think we can
all appreciate how hard that must be to
do. So, there is a very bittersweet tone
to all the jokes he’s making about
having cancer and dying. And he still
likes cute girls because he’s a
20-year-old guy.
He scheduled the tweet every day. So,
basically, if he died, he wouldn’t be
able to reschedule the tweet and then
the tweet would go out. So when it went
out,
all these people noticed, but it started
garnering a massive amount of attention
online. And it turns out it set off a
series of people donating usually with
something like
uh here’s my donation go or my
condolences and go and things like that
in reference to this tweet. And they’re
saying 30 to 40,000 donations came in as
a result of this tweet. So it is tragic
that this young man died at a very early
age unfairly of a very rare cancer. Uh
he maintained a sense of humor about it
but it was inspirational enough to
people on the internet. The other meme
like this is the positive side of meme
culture. Other people got the meme, they
joined in on the meme. They got his
feelings right away and they said, you
know, this guy did this. I could donate
some money. And it set off this massive
donations and people want to say thank
you. And honestly, I wish I could do
something as positive with my life.
Bear attacks have been a massive issue
in Japan. Like way more so than I would
have thought. Like when they started
talking about bears coming down from the
mountains into the towns in northern
Japan, that’s a lot. Uh bears are scary.
I grew up in Canada. We learned how to
defend ourselves from bears in the very
realistic way of don’t get involved with
bears. Uh you when I used to walk my dog
in the forest, I used to have put a bell
on the dog and have a bell on me so the
bear would hear the bell and avoid you.
They’re telling kids when they walk home
from school, get a plastic water bottle
and like scrunch it as you walk. And
this is again, you grow up in different
places. I have a friend who grew up in
Florida and he learned about, you know,
being safe from gators. You run
serpentine because gators are very fast
in a straight line, but they’re very bad
at their turns. So basically they must
have like uh stock engine with uh they
haven’t lowered for the turning ratio. I
should have actually thought about that
joke and gotten some words right before
I started it. But there is the rhyme. If
it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown,
stand your ground. And if it’s white,
say good night. So if it’s black, fight
back. So black bears do what’s called a
false charge. So if you when they come
at you, if you kind of like go like
you’re about to fight them, they’ll
often just turn around and run away
saying like, “Oh man, I thought this was
going to be easy and it’s not easy.” If
they charge you and you run away,
they’re like, “Oh well, this worked
out.” So they’re actually just testing
to see if you’ll fight back. Brown bears
are uh stand your ground. So if it’s
brown, stand your ground. And so you
what you want to do is that’s when you
stand, you make yourself big, you make
lots of noise, and you try to scare away
the bear. Uh, basically the bear isn’t
scared of you, but it’s like, nah, that
thing’s way too much trouble to kill and
eat, so I’m just gonna go find something
easier to kill and eat because bears are
fundamentally lazy. I understand bears.
Like, I understand the need and the
desire of bears to want to do the
minimum amount of work because that’s
how I’ve lived my entire life. Uh, if
it’s white, say good night because a
polar bear will just kill you for fun.
Uh, they might not, but it’s completely
up to the polar bear. There’s nothing
you can do to stop it is basically the
idea.
So remember that rhyme. But the problem
is these bears are coming down from the
mountains. They’re hungry. In a previous
episode of Ninja News Japan, I actually
talked about something that I didn’t
know. Farmland used to be a barrier. So
it used to be mountains, sort of forest,
farmland, and then cities. But because
young people are abandoning farming as a
trade, they these there’s a lot of empty
farms. There is now no more cushion. So
the bears come down. There’s no farms.
There’s like emptyow fields. So they
just walk into the city. So there’s no
sort of barrier or transition zone to
keep the bears out of the cities. Now
there are not enough beach nuts.
Basically, apparently in Japan, all the
bears are eating nuts. And if there’s
not enough nuts from the trees and
around the area where they live, they
don’t have enough to get, you know, fat
for the winter. So they start coming
into the city. So this is the problem
that the the crop of nuts that they eat
wasn’t enough this year. So they’re
working their way downs in the city.
This is sounds funny until you realize
13 people have died this year in bear
encounters. Like there’s two 300 people
have been injured but there have been 13
deaths. So this is a very serious thing
like people are dying on a regular basis
whereas before like two years ago zero
there would have been zero bear deaths
in that year. The self-defense force has
offered logistical help because legally
the self-defense force is not allowed to
shoot bears. So this was an interesting
thing. It came up maybe last year, the
year before Ishiba, the previous prime
minister when he was a minister, brought
up the issue of whether you could employ
the self-defense force in Japan against
Godzilla. And it’s because you’re
allowed to employ the self-defense force
for an invading army. Uh, but Godzilla
isn’t an invading army. So, there’s a
couple of movies where Godzilla is
controlled by like aliens. That’s an
invading army. You could use the SDF in
that case. But if it’s just a natural
event, you’re not supposed to be able to
use the SDF. So you have to work your
way around that. So in this case,
they’re offering logistical help and
they don’t have weaponry that would
actually kill a bear. Like that all the
weapons they have designed for the
self-defense force in Japan are for
suppressing fire. So I’m sure it could
still kill you, but that’s not actually
the intent of the weapons that they tend
to carry. So you need the hunters to
kill the bears. and they’re trying to
put in this special emergency rule that
police can carry a gun that would allow
them to also kill bears because they
can’t use the SDF to do it. But the SDF
can come in and help lay traps. They can
do logistics. They can do it like lend
their intelligence to the locals while
they take care of it. Which is a very
interesting problem because they’re
doing this properly. It’s not like Trump
in America who’s just like, I’m going to
roll the National Guard into Portland
cuz I want to. In Japan, it actually
makes more sense. We have literally
people dying. We have literally uh
animals that need to be trapped and
relocated or shot and killed in the
worst case scenarios. They still won’t
do it because legally they’re not
supposed to be able to do that. Uh the U
the SDF can be used for defense
operations. So again, invasion from
another country. Uh public security,
which this is kind of public security,
disaster relief, and civil support. So
in this case, they’re actually offering
civil support. Uh GEU, a different
prefecture a little farther south. in
order to deter bears from entering GEU
have now employed drones that will fly
along the border the northern border of
Gefue and they are making dog barking
noises to scare away the bears. So that
is a interesting technological use of uh
to to try to deter them from coming here
which I find very interesting. Uh
they’re trying to stop the bears by
making it seem like there’s dogs around
but the problem is if you live in one of
those areas and a drone’s flying around
making barking noises all night that’s
problematic in itself. So, I don’t know
if it’s honestly the ideal solution, but
it is better. I don’t actually want the
bears to get shot. I would love if they
were trapped and relocated. I think that
is kind of the more humane way to do it
because they don’t want to come into
town and hurt people. They just like are
surprised, the person surprised, the
bear does what a bear does. It attacks
the thing when it’s surprised. One of
the issues that’s come up on the
internet because the internet is a
cesspool is people have been using AI to
make fake bear videos. So, they’ll have
a fake bear walk through a town and then
they’ll say and then they’ll post it
online going like, “There’s a bear in
this city right now.” And that’s
problematic because people in that city
will now panic. Uh there’s people making
baby bear videos where the bear comes up
and is super friendly, basically just
behaving like a dog, and they hug it and
they can pet it and stuff, but that’s
teaching people that it’s safe to
approach bears, which they don’t want to
do. So, the government’s actually going
to crack down on this version of AI. In
the last episode of Ninja News Japan, I
talked about Japan’s laws on deep fakes
and deep fake porn and stuff like that.
They haven’t actually caught up to the
reality of people making it. So, that’s
problematic. But this is a different
problem. This is a public security,
public health, public safety issue.
They’re going to need rules about that.
It turns out there is already a rule
though that if you do something that
encourages risky behavior or panic,
that’s already illegal in Japan and you
may face prosecution.
Uh, what I read this morning just before
I started Ninja News Japan was that
delivery drivers in northern areas of
Japan where there are bears are delaying
deliveries because they don’t want to
take the chance of running into a bear
by accident.
There’s a new drink in Japan called
water
tokosi which is special water,
functional water. The way it was
translated was functional water, but
when I looked it up, it actually just
said special water, which is a very
Japanese way of naming something. I
think it’s just special stuff. Uh, and
what’s special about this water? Well,
it has hoopas. Uh, h ma. And the idea is
for people who sit at their desks all
day, you get this sort of gut. I
actually have a little bit of one even
though I do exercise pretty regularly.
And it says that if a regular intake of
this kind of water with hoopas will I
guess the hompala loompas go into your
stomach. They redistribute the fat. So,
it doesn’t say this was a very
interesting sort of thing that I
noticed. It didn’t say it gets rid of
the fat or helps you process the fat
faster or something like that. It helps
redistribute the fat. So maybe you got a
little gut, but you’re actually thin
everywhere else, which is something that
happens to people. If it redistributes
that fat equally all over your body,
you’re actually going to look way better
overall. So I’m actually doing running
an experiment. So this month, the month
of November, I am drinking one Tokosi
bottle, which is 600 milliliters, 150
yen, every single day. They have done
testing and it says that if you drink
this regularly, now they don’t say what
regularly is. They don’t say how much it
is. So, I’m doing one bottle a day every
day, but it is supposed to redistribute
the fat around your body. Uh, it comes
from
it comes from a brand from rice included
in this water. I think it’s fermented.
And I It’s one of those things like in
Japan, everything comes from a fermented
bean. All the like health benefits
fermented beans. all this like magic
cures. Fermented beans. Like I’m going
bald. I could probably rub fermented
beans on my head and Japanese people
would say that’s going to make your hair
grow back. I don’t believe it. I don’t
think this is really going to do
anything. I made a mistake of I’m
dieting at the same time as I’m drinking
this water. So, I’m not 100% sure. Like
I could lose the fat in my front because
of the water or I could lo fat in the
front because I’m basically being more
careful about my diet. Again, I don’t
know if it’s going to work. Uh, if you
see me at the end of this month and I
look much more spelt or my clothes are
fitting a little better, maybe it’s the
Humpas, maybe the Humpa Lumpas have done
their job.
Nintendo, the owner of Pokemon, has been
suing Powell World for about 6 months
now. I think it might even be longer
than that. Uh, because Pow World
basically ripped off all the mechanics
of a Pokemon game. So, you want to go,
you collect a monster, use that monster
to fight and do stuff and build it up.
and they decided to make it a little
funnier. They have like depressed ones
and they have ones with weird special
abilities and the evolutions are very
odd. But what Nintendo is suing over is
the actual mechanics of how they capture
the Pokemon, the monsters in Powell
World. And that has been dealt a
significant blow because the Japan
patent office just rejected the monster
capture mechanic as not being original.
Now, there’s lots of games that use
catch this thing, use a capture system,
but they were trying to say this is our
system. We have the patent. We’re the
ones who invented it. Anyone else is
ripping us off. Now, here’s the thing.
If you go back to the beginning of
Pokemon, there were other games doing
the exact same thing, and they actually
copied them. So, nothing in Pokemon to
me is actually original. And that’s not
a terrible thing because obviously
Pokemon did it well. But when you start
suing someone else for ripping off the
thing that you ripped off, I actually am
like, “Hey, maybe you’ve overstepped a
little bit. Maybe you don’t really know
what you’re doing.” Uh, some of the
references to other games that are doing
something similar like the Monster
Capture, they said Monster Hunter, Ark,
Kenti Collection, Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go
is actually made by a different company
than Nintendo. So technically, Pokemon
Go would be guilty of ripping off the
systems that are used in Pokemon, which
is a very interesting problem to have
because if you successfully sue POW
World, you could then actually go after
Pokemon Go and successfully win. But
they’re saying because these are used
systems are used in other games, in
other systems, that it’s not really
original. It’s not your mechanic. Uh,
and that actually means they might not
win their lawsuit.
Super Senti series. Super Sententi
series. Super Sententi series has been
going for 50 years. So I’m 53 right now
as of recording of this podcast, which
means I was three years old when the
first uh Power Rangers is how you would
probably know it show was started in
Japan. And every year they swap out with
new characters, new people, a new team,
a new theme. Like my kid went through
the same process where he like fell in
love with the bug one. I actually really
wish it wasn’t the bug one. They had
bugs and trains and trucks and all these
other things that kids, little primarily
little boys is the target audience, but
things that they like and that gets
integrated into the suit and their
powers and whatnot. But the originals
were just like the real basic five
colors, the fivecolor team and they’re
all different people and they all have
different problems. Uh Jade has just put
in, damn, you’re as old as I was when I
had my first crush, the pink ranger. You
see, here’s the thing.
Being me who I am, I was into the yellow
ranger. And the yellow ranger when they
turned into the Japanese part was a suit
was actually a spelt young man which
gave me very confused feelings when I
was a teen in watching Power Rangers.
But I watched Power Rangers. I was
really too old for it. I just thought it
was really interesting that how they’d
cut a Japanese TV show into the American
actors. But Triny
had a thing for Triny. I had a
girlfriend at the time and she was a
little disturbed by that.
But it’s coming to an end next year
which is actually really sad. Any show
that lasts 50 years is kind of an
institution. Basically, everyone in
Japan has grown up with some version of
Power Rangers in their life, the Super
Senti. The sales of all the extra stuff
is waning, which is showing a lack of
interest in the series. And that’s
probably where they make all their
money. Like the show itself has always
been really cheap. And they actually
kind of never brought it up a level in
quality because
that’s how they made their money. They
made this cheap show and then they sold
all the stuff and all the stuff sold and
that made them all the money they made
to make more shows. That’s how it lasted
50 years. It was a solid plan. People
are buying less and less. The last
series is called number one sentuger
gauer. I don’t know how to say that.
It’s G O Z Yu G- Raziger. They always
choose really weird names. Sometimes
they come from like German or something
else. I’m probably saying this not
butchering it just in English,
butchering it in multiple versions of
the languages. Uh is going to finish
next year. It’s going to be the last
one, but I guess if you’re gonna end
your show, doing it on the 50-year mark
is pretty solid.
Heroins is a group of idol groups. So,
that’s already like an inception of idol
groups. So, you have heroins is made up
of smaller bands that probably come
together to be a super band every now
and then, much like our previous store
story Super Senti. Um, run by a company
called Imaginate. Now, Heroins Ken Qus,
I think that’s the name of the band. Uh,
there’s a 17-year-old member who has
been let go because of severe
contractual violations, but they didn’t
give any details. So, they went on
Twitter. They said, “Here we have this
17-year-old girl. Uh, we’re cutting her.
She’s she’s broken her contract.” Now,
they posted just this on Twitter. She’s
not going to be part of our band
anymore. Now, everyone’s trying to
figure out why is she getting fired.
Well, she’s getting fired because she
posted a picture of the snacks she had
when she was going to a movie. Now, in
the clear plastic cup cover of her Coke,
uh, you could see a reflection of a male
figure. And then fans immediately
deduced that that male figure must be
her boyfriend. She was going on a date.
You’re not supposed to go dating when
you’re in one of these idol bands.
You’re not supposed to have a
relationship or a life outside of the
band. You’re supposed to say stay
weirdly available for the fans to live
this fantasy like they could have you in
their life. and that’s all part of the
contract, but it isn’t because it was
made illegal. So, they’re not allowed to
say that anymore, but they are still
able to like find another reason to fire
you. So, they think because she was seen
in public with a boy, but again, the
fans are so creepy, they’re like zooming
in on the reflection of her cup to see
who she’s with, they fired her for that.
That’s the assumption. Now, we don’t
know if that’s actually true, but I’m
betting it’s actually true because once
it came out that she probably has a
boyfriend, 17-year-old girl meets a guy,
she’s going to go on dates with the guy.
I think that’s really normal for
17-year-old kids to do. I have no
problem with it. But I’m not a freaky
freaky idol fan. Freaky freaky idol fans
want to keep this idea that their idol
is pure and waiting for them in some
way, which is how you end up with these
really weird parasocial relationships
between the idols and the fans where
they’re not allowed to have a life
outside of the group. A lot of people
were like, they should have just lied
and said like it was her bodyguard, it
was her manager, it was her brother or
someone else because no one else
actually knows who this guy is. But I
saw the picture of the reflection. It
was really hard to see. So you couldn’t
make out who it was. So they could have
said, “Yeah, she went to a movie with
her brother. She went to a movie with
her manager and then just covered up
that way.” But they do have these rules
and they’re trying to say that these the
government’s saying like you can’t tell
people they’re not allowed to have
relationships anymore. You’re not
allowed to put that in the contract, but
they can still not put it in the
contract. tell them they can’t do it and
then if they do it, fire them, which is
what exactly seems to have happened to
this poor young woman who just wanted to
sing songs and have a life.
So, we have our new prime minister,
Takahuchi, and I am still really torn as
to whether I’m on board or not because
she said a lot of stuff that I disagree
with. She she doesn’t want to maintain
the work life balance that’s already
been established in Japan. She actually
wants to make it worse instead of making
it better, which I am very pro- work
life balance because I think the people
in Japan work unnecessarily long hours.
I don’t think they’re more productive. I
don’t think this is actually the
solution. And it again, baby problem,
all that other stuff goes into it as
well. I’ve said this a million times. I
don’t really want to say it anymore.
When she was on the campaign trail, she
said it she wanted to revise the public
servant renumeration law and cut cabinet
members salaries, including her own. And
one of her first things she’s going to
do is cut her own salary and then cut
the salaries of all the cabinet members
that work for her. And so she’s not your
So there’s lawmakers in Japan and then
there’s cabinet members and they
actually have different renumeration
package packages. Cabinet members often
get a lot of bonuses and extras because
you know they travel and they do extra
stuff. She’s saying cut all that out.
You get your pay and nothing else.
There’s no bonuses. There’s no benefits.
Lawmakers and cabinet members should
make the same amount of money including
herself. I have a lot of respect for
that. She’s actually made a promise.
She’s keeping the promise. And the
promise is technically hurting her and
the people who work for her, but that
means we’re spending less money,
taxpayer money, on the people who are in
power. I’m really on board with that.
So, I’m really torn. This might be a
case where this is like a real life
situation where she has good points and
bad points. I’m just hoping at the end
of the day she has more good points and
we get to see more of those later.
Uh DL site is a kind of spicy little
website that I’ve mentioned before. Uh I
mentioned before in a previous episode
when we were talking about Mastercard
and Visa trying to do what would be
called financial censorship. So
basically, if you run a website that
does uh specific documentaries about the
reproductive cycles of humans, uh you
would not be able to use credit cards,
Mastercard or Visa on your sites because
they’ll say like we don’t want to
promote that. Our advertisers don’t want
to be connected to that. So you can’t
use your card discard system unless you
get rid of all the porn. This site, DL
site, wanted to resist these censorship
efforts, which I okay, I think if you
want to look at it, you should be
allowed to look at it. It’s just that
simple. So, I don’t think there should
be a lot of censorship as long as
everyone involved is consenting. Like,
if they’re consenting adults, they want
to do it. They can do it. Uh, I don’t
agree with manipulation.
That’s a lot harder. It’s a much grayer
zone. So, they they have decided, okay,
we’re not going to use Visa Mastercard
because they want to censor us. So, what
we’re going to do is create our own
essentially internet coin that you can
use. So, you can buy credits and you can
use those credits towards actually
buying content on that website. They
have just come out with a Twitter clone.
So, it’s called Pomu and Pomu is
basically a Twitter feed and it’s a
friendly secret hangout for otaku. Now,
it’s not really secret because they just
advertised it, but they’re trying to
integrate like a social service, so a a
social website into their other
services. And of course, you can use
their coin on both. Now, this has been a
very friendly website to people who make
a certain kind of art. art depicting
maybe,
how can I say in the most gentle terms,
uh, the human form. It does have a nice
thing though, one feature. So, up in the
top right corner, it has a little
button, and it’s a little button where
you can toggle R18, which is restricted
to 18-year-olds and not. So, you can
basically have a safe for work and not
safe for work button, you can turn on
and off. Apparently, when you turn off
the not the safe for work button and
turn it on to not safe for work, the
feed changes dramatically. But again, if
that’s what you want to look at and
everyone’s consenting, I’m on board with
it. I think you should be allowed to do
that. Apparently, the website has
already been flooded with, and I put
this in quotation marks, art, and I’m
sure there is a lot of art. Uh, you can
register with a Vivian ID, which is part
of their alternate payment solution. Uh,
they’re creating a whole sort of corner
of the internet that isn’t ruled by
censorship, isn’t ruled by Visa,
Mastercard, or this financial
censorship. And while I probably won’t
spend a lot of time on that website, I
am all for it existing.
78-year-old man had an obsession with a
woman in her 20s.
And I I just I worry that I’m going to
be that 78-year-old man. I’m in my 50s.
I’ve held it together so far, but I’ve
done so many stories about men in their
mid50s who just lost their and just
started doing weird weird stuff. I’m
like, is it an inevitability? Am I going
to be that guy? Maybe I make it through
my 50s and it happens to me in my 60s,
but it looks like this dude in his 70s,
late 70s, exactly the same issue. He’s
known her for about two years, and he
says he developed feelings for her. He
was already arrested for breaking into
her home and stealing perfume. So, that
shows the weird level of obsession that
this guy already has. He had done this.
He’d been arrested for it. He got in
trouble for it, but he still had these
feelings for her. So, how does he
express his feelings? But let’s say
let’s say age gap isn’t the problem.
Let’s say that he does have a chance.
You have to show your sincere and honest
love for someone. What is the one thing
you can do that will generally have them
change their opinion about you, make you
think you’re a better person? He set her
car on fire. And then when he was
arrested, he said, “I’m dissatisfied
with being arrested.” Which is a very,
very entitled old Japanese man thing to
say. I have just set a woman’s car on
fire because I find her attractive and
she’s not returning my affection despite
the 50year age gap, which should be
enough to explain why she’s not as into
you as you think she should be. I mean,
let’s say I’m in a situation like that.
I look at someone way younger than me
and I find them attractive. I’d be like,
my first thought is they will not find
me attractive. They would have to come
with a sign that says, “Chunk beef
chest, I find you attractive.” and that
it’ be like,
“But are they telling the truth?” So
that self-doubt is actually a benefit
when you get into these older years
where you could be doing really weird,
dangerous stuff and just letting the
obsessive aspects of your life take
over. Because this guy, he’s 78, I’m
assuming retired, has a lot of free
time. He’s just sitting around
obsessing. And that’s where this has
gone wrong. Totally. But then when he
gets arrested to complain about the fact
he got arrested because he set a woman’s
car on fire. I’m dissatisfied with being
arrested. I think he should not be
allowed out anymore.
Two teens were arrested, 17 and 18 year
olds, for a fishing scam. Every episode
of the last like five, six months has
had a scam story involved in Engineers
Japan because it is just it’s taking
over the country. uh they found people
online and they would say, “I’m looking
for a companion to go to an idol
concert.” So, they’re targeting a very
specific group that has uh money to
spend on things like idol concerts.
Uh they said, “Let’s talk about how to
pay for the tickets. I’ll get the
tickets. Uh I’ll send you one yen on our
like uh payment system so you can get
like it’s a real address. It’s legit.”
And then you put the money in to this
fake website. and they put the money
into the fake website and that’s how it
collected their credit card information
and then the teens could take the credit
card information and then drain their
bank accounts from one account they
drained 500,000 yen. So the 17-year-old
would transfer the money from their
account to the other kid’s account
uh and they seem to have got this is not
a confirmed number but at least 13
million yen in total. So this was a very
very successful scam. The thing is
they’ve used a lot of AI tools to create
the website. So they created a website
that looks real. They’ve created used
the tools to make stuff that makes it so
that they can collect the information
and it’s made it very easy because they
can basically just go into AI. I bet
you’re not allowed to say I want to make
a fishing site, but you could say I want
to make a site that looks like this that
has this aspect and it just builds it
for you and then you just post it on the
internet and then now that it’s been
shut down, they can go make another one
in a few minutes because they have AI do
it for them. The 17-year-old is the
better criminal. I’ll be very honest. He
said, “I don’t remember the incident.”
So, he’s just saying, “I ignorance. I
don’t know. You have to do your job as a
police officer and prove the crime. I’m
not going to help you with that.” The
18-year-old, not as good a criminal. He
admitted fault right away.
85year-old man grabs another guy and
tries to stab him who’s 65 years old.
So, he’s the younger person in this
because he had been sent to take money
from him. Except that guy was actually
just going to work. So, the old dude,
86-y old, knocks over the 65year-old and
tries to stab him a couple times. So,
the guy ends up with his hand up. So, he
gets some minor defensive wounds. Uh, an
offduty cop happened to be jogging in
the morning doing his morning workout.
He saw this and intervened. Turns out
the guy had a kitchen knife in his right
hand as he was attacking the 65-year-old
and two more knives in his left hand.
So, he had again hit this weird paranoid
level. He he had hit this weird paranoia
just kind of like our previous old guy
story where he’s like all up in his head
and he’s now thinks that’s reality where
the reality is no one’s coming to take
your money but he is so locked in that
this guy’s coming to take my money he
brought three knives with him. I don’t
know how you’re holding two knives in
one hand like is it one blade out of
each one? Is it like just two so that if
you drop the hand that drop the knife
that in your in your dominant hand you
can just swap out really quick? He
clearly walked out of his house that
morning wanting to stab stab somebody
for something and then had this weird
paranoia. So the police arrested him.
He’s not made any comment other than he
thought that that man was sent to take
money from him. So like some kind of
fishing scam. But that guy was just
walking to work that day and he got
attacked by a knife. So luckily no one
was really hurt. He got again a couple
cuts on his hands and stuff, but nothing
that was like life-threatening or
particularly dangerous. He’s going to
heal from that just fine. No problem.
the mental trauma. I mean, you get
tackled by an 86 year old and you have
to fend him off because he has multiple
knives in his two hands. That is a scary
way uh to live. And be careful out there
of everyone, especially old Japanese
men.
Tag: pokemon
Confessions of Vandalism
(upbeat music)
It’s pretty common that old
people struggle with new technology.
And people like to make
fun of that, but you have
to think in the days to
come, you will get old.
And in the days when you get old, are
you going to struggle with technology?
And the answer is yes.
I try to keep up with technology, but
I’ve also already seen that in some ways,
I’ve fallen off like there’s
some things I know about.
And then there are huge swaths of
technology that I don’t understand at all.
I used to think of myself
as fairly tech savvy.
Now I’m functional.
So I’m assuming in the next decade
or two, I’m going to be struggling.
I mean, you have to imagine when
I talk to my grandkids and I’m like,
why in my eyes does my
neural link show that it’s the
time in Greenwich Meridian,
instead of local time.
And my grandkids are like, oh my God,
grandpa, you’re so dumb, you’re so useless.
You don’t even know how to reset
your neural link with the extra net,
because the Internet
is not a thing anymore.
It’s all external.
That we’re all connected to all the time.
And I had my USB in my
neck installed backwards,
making it always very awkward
to put the USB in my neck.
And that’s what’s coming.
And so I’m just trying
to stay abreast of
technology so that I can
not be a complete idiot.
Now because I enjoy technology,
I’m hoping it lasts longer.
Like I play the video games, I make
the podcast, I like to learn things.
If I can just keep that spirit
alive, all at least no stuff.
I maybe I don’t, not proficient,
but I will understand things.
And that’s kind of the most important part.
A lot of older people in Japan, and
that’s most people, for being honest,
they don’t want to apply
for the My Number Card.
My Number Card is basically
a social security card of sorts.
It’s not because you already have
one of those if you’re Japanese.
It’s a different card.
The government wants
to unify its information.
So your health card.
So if I go to the
hospital or I go to a clinic,
I have to bring my
national health card.
I use that to get my national rates.
I’m like, I don’t want to
pay full price for medicine.
I want to get my whatever
percentage I’m supposed to get.
So socialized medicine in Japan, very good.
I can get medicine at reasonable rates.
It’s cheaper to go to the
doctor and get medicine,
and then go to like the proper pharmacist
than it is to buy over the counter drugs.
So if I buy allergy medicine,
something I buy every year,
I can get 30, 40 days worth of
allergy medicine for about 1,000 yen.
If I buy over the counter,
it’s going to be like
10, 15 days for more
than that, probably 1,500.
The reason older people don’t
want to apply for the My Number
Card is they find it difficult
to remember the password.
And so this is it when you create this
card, you have to create a password.
And if you forget it, that could
cause you problems down the line.
So you know what, I
just don’t want to do it.
I just don’t want to create
the card in the first place.
I’m not obligated to.
The government really wants
everyone to have a My Number Card.
From November, you can
choose not to set a password.
Now, as I said, I’m not
a technological expert,
but I do have a base proficiency with
technology, and I do follow the news a lot.
I can see absolutely
no problems with having
a password unprotected
information connected to your knife.
I have to, how do I, how do you phrase it?
I can see no problem with having
your national health insurance
and other personal information
non-password protected.
Now, they’re saying that if there’s no
password, you won’t be able to do stuff.
You won’t be able to use the stuff online,
which these old people
wouldn’t be doing anyways.
But a lot of that in the
news, Japan is scams.
And those scams prey upon old people.
And so if we know the old people have cards
that are unprotected, there’s got
to be a way to abuse that system.
And that is going to be, I
was literally my first thought,
not that I was coming up
with a scheme to abuse them,
but my first thought was
someone’s going to find cards
without passwords and
then try to find a way
to abuse the system to either
get medicine they could resell
or get medicine at such
a discount or something.
It’s scams, that’s what they do.
I’m waiting for this to
go through in November
and then January, the
story start coming out
of old people losing
a bunch of money or
something via the my
number card with no password.
Recently, one of the
problems is the people in charge
of my number were
investigated as some of the cards
were registered with
other people’s personal
information like
they’re addressing stuff.
So that with the password
is already showing, there’s
already problems and mistakes
with the my number card system.
Then a lot of stories recently
about the PokΓ©mon thefts.
And PokΓ©mon cards have become
a common target for thieves.
Stories get broken into
last week, we did the
guy who got scammed,
but like reseller, website.
And the guy who resoled
the stuff had filled real boxes
with juice boxes and I
made like a very extended
joke about just using
the word box too much.
It’s very well done considering
it’s not scripted, very well done.
I think she’ll go back
and listen to that one.
A company executive
sold five fake PokΓ©mon
cards at a second hand
store for 283,000 yen.
They were specifically from
a Tokyo Art Museum event,
which actually shows the
level of PokΓ©mon in Japan that
you, they have PokΓ©mon
events with national museums.
Like that’s, I guess they
would have other events,
but it’s just, it shows the
level of PokΓ©mon in society
when they have like
art exhibits for PokΓ©mon.
It like not just a
museum, like a local one.
Oh, that’s neat.
This is like Tokyo Art Museum.
That’s a big deal.
The owner said these seemed
off, maybe the quality of the paper,
they were little grainy,
something like that.
So he called the police
and he got the police.
The police got the PokΓ©mon
company to send out someone to
appraise the cards, which is a
whole world I was unaware of.
There are people who work
for PokΓ©mon, who’s, I don’t know
about singular job, but
probably primary job is to be able
to appraise the reality
and value of PokΓ©mon cards.
Because of the rarity of
the cards, some of these
cards are selling for 100,000
yen, maybe even upwards.
So you can make a lot of money if
you can get the rare, rare, rare cards.
The suspect was then contacted because
the appraiser for the PokΓ©mon company,
said these were not real,
these were counterfeit cards.
He claims he didn’t know
they were counterfeit
and the police are
still investigating.
I’m interested where this ends up,
because either he
committed a crime and got
caught, or he legitimately
bought these cards,
thinking they were real,
and he got screwed over.
So Japan, Korea, the United States, there,
working together, they’re
trying to work together more.
I’m very happy about South Korea
and Japan working together more,
because I really think these two countries,
I know they have a very hard history,
but I think together they would
be a force to be reckoned with.
And values-wise, they
actually both countries
have very, what I
consider positive values.
And the United States,
sort of that backing of the
United States is making them
more stable in the economy.
We will get better in this.
I just think it’s a good stuff.
A lot of this actually comes down to China,
keeps trying to exert pressure
and create tension in Asia.
So Japan, South Korea
and the United States,
we’re talking to like, hey,
China’s all very up-body.
Maybe we added together
and take care of stuff.
We share information and stuff like that.
And everyone’s like, yeah, this is great.
Except China’s like, hey, that’s not cool.
So recently there was
a summit of some sort.
I actually stopped carrying so many
summers, the G7 summit, all these summers.
I don’t really care anymore.
This Chinese ambassador
guy comes out and he goes,
no matter how blonde you die your
hair, how sharp you shape your nose.
You can never become
a European or American.
You can never be a Westerner.
You must know where your roots lie.
So he’s, oh, I mean, further.
Japan and South Korea
should work with China
to prosper together and revitalize East
Asia, revitalize Asia and benefit the world.
Weirdly, none of them
have taken this seriously.
South Korea and Japan have not
taken this call to their roots seriously.
And it might be because China
keeps more exclusionary attitude.
When it comes to every other instance,
they have flown airplanes
over Japanese airspace.
They have taken like aircraft carriers
and sailed them really close to Japan,
like just right out of
legal limits and stuff.
They’re always banging
heads with everyone in Asia
and then here they
are saying like, hey,
man, why don’t you guys
want to work with us?
And it’s like, dude, you keep
kind of kind of the blow is up.
There have been stories
in Indonesia, Japan of
Chinese diplomats and
high level politicians,
basically threatening
to wipe everyone else
in Asia off the map on
more than one occasion.
They aren’t taking it
primarily this seriously
because of the nature
of China towards Taiwan.
Taiwan is an independent
nation, it’s part of China.
Nobody knows.
Taiwanese people, they think they’re
independent and they want to keep it that way.
That’s not working out for them.
North Korea, very supported by China.
Japan and South Korea may all sort
of have their issues in North Korea.
North Korea keeps shooting missiles
over Japan if you want to be specific.
And there’s the abduction issues.
There was a bunch of
people, this is sort of history.
North Korea abducted a
bunch of Japanese nationals
and South Korean nationals and
brought them back to North Korea
and they haven’t returned
them and no one knows
if they’re alive or dead
and it’s a big problem.
China in its conflict, oh,
China Russia in its conflict
of Ukraine, China’s
kind of on Russia’s side.
And so basically the fundamental
philosophical differences
Japan and South Korea are
diametrically opposed to China.
So this call to remember your roots.
I don’t see how that’s
really going to work out.
I don’t see how you can say, hey,
look, you and I, we disagree on everything.
But we come, it’s actually
like maybe my sister and I.
So if you met me and
then you met my sister,
you would see two people
who are very different.
We are, we just, we have different values.
Now she’s not a bad person.
I hope I’m not a bad person.
I don’t want to talk about it.
And unless I got to get some
like someone to back me up.
But our fundamental philosophies about
life and how you should live life differ.
And I essentially, we just
stay away from each other.
And it works out fine.
Because she doesn’t try to impose
her lifestyle on me and vice versa.
I don’t tell her how to her live her life.
China on the other hand
is telling other Asian nations
how to live their lives and that they
should sort of succumb to China’s power.
But it would be like
going to me and saying,
you, despite the fact
you agree with everything
your sister thinks,
should align yourself
with your sister because
you come from the same family
because you come from the
same house, that kind of thing.
And that’s just not how it works out.
China then went on to declare
that the US is exaggerating
ideological differences to
so confrontation and division.
Now Japan and America have had
a very positive relationship overall.
There’s issues, of course,
there’s always going
to be issues between
two different countries.
But overall, they have a
very positive relationship.
And this sowing ideological differences
in confrontation, again, if you
go back through the vast library
of Ninja Ninja Japan stories
and just go through everyone
where China has
mentioned, I think you’re going
to see a lot of stories of
China almost purposefully
sowing confrontation and division
when they don’t even have to.
So while Baffy did a story
about a kid who had cornrows.
So one of his parents
was black, one of his
parents is Japanese,
he has kind of puffy hair.
And he was going to go to
his high school graduation.
So he said to his daddy,
he’s going to look neat.
What’s a good hairstyle?
He goes to cornrows, sort of
traditional hairstyle for our people.
So let’s do that.
So he went to a salon, got cornrows.
I have never had cornrows.
I think it’s illegal for a man of
my complexion to get cornrows.
But he went to a salon.
I do know it takes a long time.
So he put a lot of effort
into making his hair look good.
He shows up at graduation.
The teachers are like, no,
man, I don’t like that haircut.
So you don’t get to graduate today.
So when they put them
in a different room upstairs,
so when they call your name, you
don’t come downstairs, and he just left.
And then they tried to like,
well, he decided to leave.
Well, he decided to leave
because you guys stuck him
in a room and told him he wasn’t
going to be allowed to graduate.
I really like the follow up
to this story just recently.
A group of volunteers for Juneteenth
decided to have their own ceremony.
And it was better with way cooler hair.
I could get into the details.
You don’t really need–
they basically got up.
They had a graduation.
They had a whole thing going on.
And they’re like, hey, we’d
like to celebrate this kid.
He graduated from high school.
He came to the front.
He said, thank you.
I feel special.
I feel more accepted in his story.
He’s kind of made it clear that,
again, Japan is a country is changing.
You got more and more mixed kids.
Japan is a society’s less homogenous.
And progress is going
to have these hiccups,
but it is going to happen, especially
with supportive people out in the world.
So I think that is a very
nice palette cleanser,
a very nice little story about
people saying, that kid’s important.
Since we’re talking about
schools, the city of Yuruma
doesn’t want to standardize school
uniforms as abolishing schools traditions.
And let me start the whole thing again.
City of Aruma doesn’t want
to standardize school uniforms
as abolishing schools traditional uniforms
would have a negative effect on students.
But I was like, what negative effect?
Because I know school
uniforms in Japan high
school to high school
are technically different.
But for the boys, it’s a blazer.
They might be slightly different colors.
The girls do talk about
the skirts and stuff.
But if you standardize them all, there’s
not really anything you
can play about anymore.
You just need, again, like a symbol or
something to show what high school you go to.
If that’s important, the fact
that you go to high schools
enough, again, this like
tiered system of this high
school is better than
that high school and stuff.
I don’t see any value in that.
So I was like, what are
the negative effects?
And then someone else
actually quite smartly asked
the same question said, it would be
diminishing pride and their sense of belonging.
But again, they could belong to the high
school group, the high school demographic.
The reason they started talking about this
is they were talking about the differences
in price in different school uniforms.
So in 2023, there was
a 16,000 yen difference
between the highest and
lowest priced school uniform.
For boys, the expense of
the cheap end was $50,930.
Yeah, not always.
And the high end was $66,700.
So depending on what uniform you
get or what school you go to, you’re
going to spending more or less
money, these things are expensive.
And so what this is actually about
is if we can standardize the price,
we could buy and bulk, we can
make more, we can make the cheaper.
And that would help out
mid to lower income families.
Not spend a ton of money.
They have another thing
in Japan where all the kids
have to get this backpack,
this leather backpack.
It’s called land sale.
I don’t know where that name come from.
I should actually look into
that because it is interesting.
But now my kids are too old.
They don’t use them anymore.
They’re stupid.
They’re like 50, 60,000 yen.
They’re ridiculous.
Now they do use them for a long time.
So they got to be sturdy,
but– man, give me 20,000 yen.
I’ll get you a backpack
that’s going to last five years.
Girls, the low end is 70,543 yen.
And the high end is 84,838.
So if you are a boy and you get the
cheapest uniform, you get 50,000 yen.
If you’re a girl and you get the
cheapest uniform, it’s 20,000 yen more.
If you are a girl and you get the
most expensive uniform, it’s 84,000 yen.
This was justified
because they all wear vests.
They vests come with the female uniform.
And justified because of the
fabric, the high end uniform.
In another prefecture, they
standardized the uniforms,
and it brought the price
down to 6 to 8,000 yen cheaper.
So the low end, 50,000
yen uniform, you could
drop that by 6,000, even
time for like 45,000 yen.
So, again, these uniforms,
they’re important in one way,
but it’s so stupid because the importance
is constructed, and I don’t believe it.
But I went to a high school or I
wore t-shirts and jeans every day.
So maybe that was my uniform.
I don’t know.
I just don’t put value in this.
I understand.
I actually am okay with the uniform system.
I think the uniform system
should be designed to be affordable.
I like when the school
has decided to go unisex.
So everyone just got
pants in a shirt and a jacket.
And if the girls wanted skirts, that
was extra, but that was a choice.
I liked when they made them from uni-glow,
so they were like 10,000, 20,000 yen.
Because, yes, we paid
for it, but it was expensive.
And it’s soft.
OK, so the story, big international
story, is that a guy vandalized the policy.
And he put his name– I think
him and his girlfriend’s name on it.
I did like when I read
that story that his excuse
was he didn’t know the call of
see him was of historical importance.
That’s what his lawyer said.
So he did it, and he got in trouble.
He’s looking like five years in prison,
and he’s crying, going like, no,
please don’t try and make the prison.
I don’t want to go to prison.
Well, dumb shit.
Not only did you vandalize it,
you put your stupid name on it.
Well, this thing happens
all over the place.
And in Japan, pretty much every
building is a historical site of some sort.
A 17-year-old boy violated the
cultural properties protection law.
So that’s the law of, if it’s
historically important, don’t touch it.
So this is kind of like, keep
your hands to your self law.
He carved letters using his fingernails.
So he was at a temple.
And temples are made of
wood, so if you have a strong
fingernail I was looking
at mine, I couldn’t do that.
But I cut my fingernails
all the way down for
judo, so a different
story, and you don’t care.
So he was used to,
maybe at a long fingernail
or a strong fingernail, and
he started carving his name.
He carved a big J, and then he wrote Julian,
making it incredibly clear who it is.
Now, here’s an idea.
What if you’d written someone else’s name?
So you get the thrill of vandalizing
and making your Mark in a historical site.
OK, so this is something I did.
I, my first year of university,
I fucked up housing.
I didn’t get an apartment.
I thought I was going
to get campus housing,
and then it was full, and I didn’t get
it, and ended up in a lottery system.
It didn’t look like I was going to get it.
My university has a frat
system, the Greek system.
So they had frat houses.
Now, I had no intention of joining
a frat, but they had empty rooms.
And it’s better for them to
have people in those rooms
paying a little rent
than it is to have those
rooms empty and not
making any money at all.
So I ended up for my
first year of university
living in a frat house where I was not a
member of the frat, which is a really weird.
But when I say the whole sentence out loud,
I just think that is one of the
weirdest things that’s ever happened.
They did spend the entirety of the
year trying to get me to join the frat.
I was not interested at all.
And it was a very–
I mean, as far as I yet
to live with another
guy, but it was fair.
I think they pressured my
roommate to get me to join.
So it’s like, hey, Peter likes judo.
You should join the judo
club and be really close
friends with Peter, and
then he’ll join the frat.
And then we’ll get $365 a year.
Because he got to pay a dollar a
day for these guys to be your friends.
That was back when I went to university.
So it’s probably a lot more now.
So this guy joined judo.
But he– I don’t know if he
had any real interest in judo.
And so basically, he
also has a weird attitude.
And I’m now gotten into judo stories.
I explained, don’t do this
step or you’ll get thrown.
And he was looking at me like, ha, ha.
I’m going to do this step.
And then he did this step in my through.
I said, this is just going to get worse.
The more you do this one,
move, the harder the counter gets.
And he was like, ha, I got you now.
And then he did it really big.
And he did it three, four, five times.
And I got really frustrated.
Because I was trying to help him.
And so then I just threw
him super, super hard
and just ran him into the floor
and he lost his breath for a minute.
But he didn’t get hurt.
But he was shaken and put it that way.
He didn’t last very long in judo.
Again, because I don’t think he
wanted to be in there in the first place.
Anyways, I was living this frat house.
Overall, not the worst experience.
Not as bad as I certainly
thought it was going to be.
Because I thought I would live
there and look for another place to live.
And then I ended up just
riding it out for the entire year.
The guys were fine.
They didn’t have any–
it wasn’t like the movies.
Like the Greek system in
American comedy movies.
But I was on– they had a little balcony.
It was wood.
It was really cheap.
And I was standing there.
And I started very much
like this kid just scraping.
I think I had a fork or an knife.
I just took scraping into it.
I was like, oh, I should vandalize this.
Because I don’t really like
the Greek system or whatever.
And someone in the house had pissed me off.
I was like, but if I write my
name, they can track it back to me.
Because it’s my name.
If I write Chuck Me Veest on something,
I’m like, hey, I think I know who did that.
So I wrote Fuzzy
Zellwager, which is a golfer.
I don’t know anything about golf.
I’ve played golf with my uncle once.
And I’ve gone to driving rain.
I’ve gone to driving ranges a few times.
But I don’t really follow golf.
So I don’t know why this golfer’s
name was in my head at that moment.
Maybe it just seemed to connect to
the frat system for me or something.
So I vandalized their house
with the name of a famous golfer
who never had been there, figuring
that if they were like, who wrote this?
And then you can just look at it and go,
well, apparently, Fuzzy Zellwager wrote it.
And that’s my vandalization story.
And I never got in trouble or went to jail.
Because I’m smarter than the two
fucking idiots who did it elsewhere.
Dave just moved in the background.
He was in his little bed.
And it’s hot.
So he goes in the bed.
And then he goes and he
stretches out next to that big pillow.
Sometimes he lies on top of the
pillow, but he stretches out his lines.
He’s a very long dog for how small he is.
He’s got very long sexy legs.
A Podcast to Damage your Dignity
[Music]
Got a lot of politics today.
It’s actually the,
essentially the fallout from the guy who threw the pipe bomb at the prime
minister last week.
Of course, the very first thing I said was what was his actual motivation.
So the fact that he threw a pipe bomb, it didn’t go off properly, which is a
good thing,
because there was a lot of people there, and a lot of people would have got
hurt and killed.
What was his motivation for doing it?
Now, he has not admitted to a motivation, but they’ve looked into his
background and come up with some interesting facts.
He had filed a lawsuit last year for mental distress after he was unable to
file for candidacy for the House of Counselor’s election.
So he wanted to be a politician.
He was unable to file to be a politician,
and was so upset about that, said it was
mental distress, and then he tried to sue them.
This is where we get to learn some of the requirements to be a politician.
You actually have to be 30 years old. That’s, I guess, fair.
I actually don’t think age should be part of it.
I mean, I think if your teenager goes up there and no one wants to,
a teenager to be their counselor or governor or anything,
then you won’t vote for them.
I don’t, I actually don’t necessarily, this is a good personal opinion.
I don’t necessarily agree with an age requirement.
I think it would make sense if you were over 30,
have a little life experience, maybe done some work,
but I don’t think that should be a requirement.
I actually think there should be a end point,
a retirement age for becoming governor,
because right now in America, I was noticing the prime minute.
It was just how Canadian I am.
The president, he’s in his 70s and Trump is in his 70s,
and all the guys are trying to be president in our own their 70s.
I think that might be too old.
I mean, they talk about, you know, Trump being feeble and stuff,
but I think when you have a mandatory retirement age for work,
being 60 or 65 or something like that,
that should also be the retirement age for service in public office.
I think a certain amount of youthful vitality is important.
So this is why Obama was good.
He was a young president, Justin Trudeau,
even if you don’t agree with the politics, he’s a vibrant leader,
which is, I think, important.
So the must be at least 30 years old, I disagree with that,
but I think they should have an upper limit
of how old you can be to be president,
or public office.
And this is actually the more important part.
You have to pay 3 million yen.
So if you want to run for office in Japan,
you have to put a deposit of 3 million yen.
The man’s claim was that this violates
the constitutional guarantee of equality.
And I sort of agree with that as a philosophy.
If you have to pay 3 million yen to run for office,
then only people with 3 million extra yen can run for office.
In which case, if you are of, you know, strict means,
if you’re poor, you’re not allowed to run for office, which is unfair.
I don’t know what the 3 million, it says deposit.
So maybe you get it back if you fail, I’m not sure.
But it seems interesting that I actually agree with kind of his claim.
He also submitted a letter opposing Abe State funeral.
Now I was actually against the State
funeral when I found out how much it cost.
I wasn’t against the State funeral because Abe was a prime minister.
He, whether you agree or not with his politics, he did work for the country.
And what he believed was the best way.
Whether or not you agreed with Abe’s politics,
he was doing what he thought was best for the country.
He was a state official for a very long time.
So I didn’t have a problem with the State funeral.
And then I found out how much they cost.
And I was like, the taxpayer shouldn’t be paying that much.
Abe in the government want to want a State funeral.
So he submitted a letter opposing Abe State funeral because it was forced
through and not Democratic.
So my problem with the State funeral was how much they cost because the
taxpayer shouldn’t be
footing that bill. The government wants to do that. They should find some
other source.
The family should pay for it. Donation, something like that.
Off you go.
He’s saying that the people didn’t get to vote on the State funeral.
And therefore it wasn’t Democratic. And that made him upset.
He is a failed politician.
And I think the thing is, so he wanted democracy and he says he wants to be
a politician and he
wanted things to be done right. But he’s also failed in his ideals because a
great politician or
whatnot, they would not use a pipe bomb to push their ideas through. So that
‘s the unfortunate
reality is this man has failed in two ways. He’s failed as a politician and
he’s also failed
to live up to his own ideals as what he claims a politician should be.
So since there was a pipe bomb thrown and last year Prime Minister Abe was
assassinated,
campaign speeches will only happen indoors now. So they’re not, they used to
do, this is actually
what I thought was quite sad about this whole thing. They had politicians
with the Prime Minister
very high level people out walking amongst the people, talking to people in
crowds and they were
all safe. It was all good. The secret service in Japan were primarily
trained to stop knife attacks,
which is why the home made shotgun actually worked and why the pipe bomb,
like it got really close
to the Prime Minister. The guy, the security guy I saw in the video, he
actually did his job properly.
But you know, also it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. So now
they’ve decided like we’ve
had one politician murdered another one attacked. We can’t keep going like
this. They want to create
a controlled environment for these sort of speeches. So they’re all going to
be happening indoors.
now. There will be metal detectors and every all the bags we get checked
before he can come in.
Street speeches will still happen. So what happens in Japan is these vans go
around and then they
stop and then they stand on top of the Van and they get a microphone with
these loud speakers
and they give a speech from the top of the Van. Those will still happen but.
they’re going to have a
sheet of bulletproof glass up in front of them. So I guess that’s not too
much of a difference because
the guy standing up there, he was quite far away anyways. You weren’t going
to get that close to him.
The bulletproof glass isn’t going to be much of a change, but it is sad that
we’ve had to actually
do that in a country where again a year ago, Abe, the prime minister,
whatever they were walking
around in crowds of people shaking their hands and like talking to people
and just being in and
amongst the people was really nice. They’re going to enforce like a 20 meter
space away from the Van
to make it just that much harder to get sort of leave you want to throw a
pipe bomb let’s say.
It’s going to you’re going to have to be able to throw at least 20 meters to
get your job done.
But it’s I’m a bit disappointed that’s had to happen because it’s like this.
violence is changing the
nature of politics in Japan, which is too
bad. Now on to more honestly more in the
news, Japan style news and the LDP official, so the liberal Democratic party
official. He’s up,
talking up one of his co-workers. There’s
sort of campaigns going on right now.
And he says, “Oh, I’m talking about my friend and then I start talking about
his wife and then the
rival, the rival of his friend as a woman.” He says, “I’m glad she’s not
really pretty either.”.
So he’s basically saying like, “Here’s my friend, his wife is hot, his.
competition, she’s not hot.”
So vote for my friend. He’s obviously a better person because he’s got the
hotter wife. This of course.
sexist and it’s going to piss people off. So the complaint was that his
comments damaged her dignity.
He later retracted his statement. So he made the remark and then the guy was
interviewing him and they.
said like, “Did you mean to insult her dignity? Did you mean that she was
unattractive?” He said, “No,
I totally do her.” But of course that’s not what he said. That’s actually
what I wish he said. I
wish he actually doubled down on it. He retracted his statement and he said,
“I said it inadvertently.
I retract everything. I apologize for offending the dignity of both.” So he
‘s talking about both the
rival and the man’s wife. But then he said, “Come on, she’s got a bit of a
hog face.” I just sat there going
like, “Okay, I’ve talked about this so many times. I actually think I have
to stop talking about it.”
Retracting statements. It’s not like the thing he said goes away because of
it. The apology means
nothing. I don’t get how this is acceptable. There’s almost no fallout and
no responsibility for the
dumb shit politician say. But it happens all the time and they say the dumb
shit. You just don’t
comment on people’s looks. And yet, when I think back to Trump, that’s his
whole deal. It’s commenting
on people’s appearance and their attitudes and what they’re like. So maybe
just politics have changed.
Certainly, Trump has changed the landscape of politics in America. But has.
it had an impact over
here? Because, no, because again, like five years ago, I was still doing the
Ninja News Japan.
And they were all saying racist stuff. So I guess they’ve just shifted. They
don’t say the racist stuff
out loud like they used to. They still get away with misogyny. And they’re
going to get away with that.
But now people are calling them out from misogyny. So I guess that’s going
to be on the chopping block
next. Politicians in Japan, they’re being held to a much higher standard.
Like the stuff Trump says,
he would not be able to get away with it in Japan. Like it just would not
fly. He would not be a.
successful politician. There is a group that supposed to promote gender
equality. And they had a
poster. And it was up about consent. And it had the first picture. And the
guy’s like, “Mm, she’s
into me.” And then the second picture was her going, “Ooh, I’m not into him
.” And it was about,
you know, you have to get consent before you start to do stuff to other
people. The problem is that
promotes the gender stereotype that a) men are the aggressors. Men are not
capable of reading
the signals of women. They don’t understand women. And that they are always
at fault in these sort
of sexual relations. It doesn’t suggest that the woman should get consent
from the man. It only
suggested that the man should get consent from the woman. So that is
promoting gender stereotypes.
In a group that is supposed to be promoting gender equality, they should.
know better. So the people
started complaining. So they took down the poster. And then they started
saying, “Oh, not only does it
promote gender stereotypes, it also has copied the art style of another
artist.” So they took
all the posters down. The company,
the group, the gender equality group said.
, “We apologize
publicly, so there’s your public apology.”
But then they blamed the printing company.
Not to actually take responsibility for you shit. That’s not cool. The
artist who is sort of the
one being, you know, copied in this case said that the apology and taking
down the posters is enough.
I don’t know. It’s weird that gender equality
in Japan still means gender stereotypes.
just that men should behave better.
But again, that is the gender stereotype.
that is being promoted.
Yeah, it’s almost like people don’t know what gender equality is. This is
Japan. I would say when
it comes to gender equality, LGBT rights and stuff like that, Japan is
decades behind other countries,
Western countries. Like just even the equal rights men and women still aren
‘t there. Because I mean,
that guy just got away with saying that this other politician had a hog
phase. I’ve never seen a
picture of either of them, so I can’t really comment. It’s that low-key mis
ogyny that is just a
part of Japanese culture. And people, I think they come to Japan and they
have weird expectations
of what it’s going to be like. And I don’t think they realize, there’s a
whole generation that’s
still in charge that has not changed their thinking from the 1960s. And it’s
going to take another
generation or two before it goes away. There’s a man called “Boys Over
Flowers.” I’d never heard of it.
And then I found out it has the highest circulation comic series for girls
by a single author. It’s in
the Guinness Book of World Records. But then I was like, that is a very
specific. This is one of the
things about world records. It’s how specific the world records are. So the
highest circulation of
a comic series, that’s good. Four girls, okay, you’ve now just split out at
least two so that you
split it in half. So there should be the highest circulation comic series
for boys by a single author.
That one sort of makes sense. Because if it’s
a team, it wouldn’t have the same impact.
So I was like, because it’s a world
record, I could publish a comic series for.
white 50-year-old men with beards and get 100 people to buy it. And that
would probably be the
highest circulation comic series for white 50-year-old men with beards by a
single author. Maybe that could
get in the Guinness Book of World Records. Because that is how you finesse
world records sometimes. It’s
actually get something so specific. No one else is attempted to try it yet.
But then I saw she has.
59.4 million copies of her comic in circulation. Those are physical comics.
So like if you had a
comic on like an ebook or something, that would encounter. And I was like 54
, 59.4 million copies is a
lot. It just says physical copies published. It doesn’t say bought. So could
I do a self-run of 60 million.
comics of a series that I have written for girls by me and beat that record
if I didn’t sell any?
The very interesting question because technically I think I could beat the
world record. Since we’re talking
about world records, I have the number one highest rated karaoke version of
House of Pain’s Jump
Around in Japan. So we have a switch and my daughter wanted to do karaoke
and they have a thing,
a company called Joy Sound. And they do karaoke machines. And so they have
an app where you can do
karaoke through the switch. So her and her friends came over and did it and
they were on it. Me to do
an English song and I was like, this is going to be really bad. I only know
the words to like three
songs. And one of them is jump around. That came out when I was like in my
20s. So I did it. I got like
69% or something like that. And then it goes number one in Japan. I had this
like big fanfare and
everyone was super excited. And I was like, oh wait, I’m the only person in
Japan to have ever attempted
this song. That’s how I got the world record. Are the the national record.
Now back, way, way back,
I was the, I was doing video game reviews and an app came out and it was.
called poop ride. So it was
P-O-O-P-R-I-D-E. So either it was poo, P-O-O, Pride, P-R-I-D-E or poop, P-O-
O-P, ride, R-I-D-E. And it was this.
little game where you had poop and you slid it along the floor and you had
to get it enough power to
touch the line. But you didn’t want to go over the line. So whoever got to
the closest to the line one.
Now because I was doing video game reviews, I got the earliest version of it
on release day,
had to play it for a few hours, leveled up really fast, actually came up
with some strategies for it,
wrote my article. And then as I put the app down, I checked the rankings. I
was number one in the world.
So I have held both a national Japanese record and a world record. I’ve
never gone back to poop ride
to see if that record has been broken. I do believe Mr. Warm Hands purpose
fully went onto.
the Joy Sound app and with his kids and did jump around and I do believe he
beat my score. He may be
the number one in Japan now. But I held that record for years, mid-pandemic.
So at least two years now,
I’ve had the record for I should go back and do it again because I wasn’t
even trying. Imagine if I drop.
So the Osaka court had to pay $375,000 yen. That’s like $3,000, $4,000 to a
former inmate and his attorney
because they wouldn’t allow him to wear sunglasses while he was in a
detention facility and in prison.
So at first I thought this was a Yakuza guy who and they wear sunglasses.
They just wear sunglasses
all the time. I actually have a friend who married into a family that was
sort of extended family
was all the Yakuza and they said at the wedding, one side of the room was
all wearing sunglasses the whole
time. So this is a Yakuza thing. So that’s what I thought when I read the
article of the title and then
I went read the actual thing and I was like, “Oh, it’s actually quite
different.” So this guy usually wears
light purple glasses because of a light sensitivity. There’s actually a
really famous comedian
in Japan and he wore sunglasses all the time. His name is Tamori I think.
And it’s because he had
light sensitivity to his eye. So he wore sunglasses all the time because the
lights on the TV.
shows were too bright for his eye. It’s an actually constant pain. Now they
said you’re not aware
of loud to wear glasses in prison. So they wouldn’t let his wear his glasses
but that actually means
he wasn’t able to read documents and the light was so harsh like it would
cause some physical pain
and it made everything like he was told to do much harder because he wasn’t
allowed to wear it.
This wasn’t just like because he wanted to look cool. This was essentially
prescription.
medically necessary glasses. He had to carry out his sentence without
corrective lenses as the.
way he was phrased. The detention house says you can have shades that allow
up to 25 percent
blockage. In prison, colorless glasses are only allowed if there’s a medical
reason. But it seems
like this guy had a medical reason but they didn’t allow him to wear his
glasses in prison because
they thought oh this guy wants to be cool just like my assumption. We’re
going to say no but they’re
actually like violating sort of fundamental human rights. So you got to pay
up. 4000 bucks though.
So you think about like a lot of the stories where people sue each other.
The numbers are very small.
In America, something like this would be massive. It’s because Japan is just
not as litigious. And one
of the reasons are not as litigious is because the awards are so much
smaller than in America. I bet in
America if I went to prison and they said Peter is not allowed to wear his
corrective lens. So I’m
essentially blind the whole time I’m in prison making everything more
difficult. I bet I could sue them
and I get millions of dollars. In Japan, 4000 bucks shared out with my
attorney. I mean sometimes
you got wonder if it’s even worth it. But I think a lot of times in Japan
you sue them for the moral issue.
Not so much for the money. So there’s a new Pokemon show. Now I don’t follow
Pokemon. I do remember all
the conversations about you have like a 12 year old boy who never goes to
school who goes around
battling animals. And it was a lot of memes actually when I was in my
university and later day.
Because people were talking about the lifestyle of a Pokemon master. Zero
education beyond elementary
school basically. There was a lot of jokes online and I enjoyed them because
conceptually it was
quite interesting. The new hero it’s called Liko. Liko joins the school
which apparently Ash did
and then just never showed up like went to school and then was like well I’m
going to go be Pokemon
master. Bye. And then took off for the rest of his life. Liko joins the
school but then takes lessons
remotely which I found very interesting because they’ve really updated it so
they do have the child hero
who’s going to go around and do their adventures with their Pokemon. But.
actually still technically
get education. The only thing I can think is a problem is how many hours a
day are they expected to do.
these lessons remotely. How much are they going to show without online. But
they’re actually using a
tablet again updating the technology of Pokemon. They’re they’re they’re
they’re going to wonder
if they’re going to how much they’re going to actually bother with this
showing them actually doing
this. But one of the comments I really enjoyed was I hope Liko has an
unlimited data plan because
of course they’re not going to be hanging around somewhere where there’s Wi-
Fi all the time. It’s
a bit ridiculous. But I do like that they’re showing the kids like yeah even
our Pokemon heroes they.
still have to go to school. Okay so this is a new kind of harassment. So
Japan has a billion kinds of
harassment. So there was Seku Harada which is sexual harassment. There was
Paohara. Paohara harassment.
They’re actually using the English and then condensing it into a Japanese.
Then I learned about
I forget it was Akahara which is Akachana so that means baby. Maybe I might
have that one wrong. But
anyways there’s essentially maternity harassment. So you get pregnant and
then you’re pushed out of.
your company. I found a new one through an article today called Owa Harada
and Owa Di is finished. So
Owa Harada is finishing harassment and this has to do with recent graduates
looking for jobs. So they do
kind of graduate recruitment. All the companies every year when the students
graduate they do recruitment.
cycles. And they try to get new employees. In Japan again having fewer and
fewer young people they
need the competition for companies to get more young people to join their
company is part of keeping
their company alive. The competition is quite serious. Owa Harada. Owa Har.
Ada. What Owa Harada is. It’s
really hard to switch between English and Japanese like in one word. Is you
‘ve come and interviewed with
our company. We want you to stop. That’s the Owa Di part looking at other
companies. But we want
you to make a promise to stop looking for other companies. But that is
essentially saying to the
graduate recruit person looking for a job that we want you to limit your
options and only join our
company. We want you to stop looking because what if you find a better deal
if you find a better deal
you might take that job and not our job. So they try to get them to sign
letters of acceptance saying
like here’s a letter that says I will accept the proposed job that not the
actual job. So they’re
saying we’re not going to give you a contract right now to sign. We want you
to sign this letter that
says you’re not going to look for other jobs and then later down the line we
‘ll give you a contract
which is bullshit. If you’re not signing a contract it doesn’t mean anything
because they could say
we’re going to pay you millions dollars and then the contracts get slid
across the table. It’s got five
bucks on it. But you haven’t been looking for any other jobs where you could
have also got paid
millions dollars really unfair. They also require them to attend company
social gatherings and what
they’ve done is tried to make enough of these company social gatherings that
it’s difficult for you
to go out and find other jobs. So the government’s asking companies to stop
this. Now asking isn’t a
very strong thing but there was a survey done in 2021.10% of the students
said the experienced
“awada, awada hara.” Okay I’m getting it. “awada hara.” And then 10% oh 64%
of the 10% say they ended their
job search because of awada hara. 42.3% had received demands to provide a
letter of acceptance. So almost
half the people who went out to do recruitment said like really quickly they
were like “sign this
letter saying you’re going to accept a job from us and stop looking for
other jobs.” 11.6% were
harassed persistently. Some cases say they were physically barred from
leaving when they declined
an offer. So they’re like “here we want you to work for our company.” So you
know I’m not into this.
I’m going to go now and they like lock the door and say you can’t leave
until you accept our offer.
Which is of course no way legally going to hold up but they might actually
cause you problems
if you actually like end up signing something to just get out of there. I
would say if you’re ever in
a situation where someone just like you’re at work and then your boss locks
the door and says you
can’t leave until you do something. What you do is just call the police and
you say like I would
like to leave this office and they are not letting me. When the police show
up because that’s kidnapping.
I mean a lot of people don’t think about it but what they’re doing is saying
like you are not physically
able to go where you want under some sort of dress or threat. That’s
kidnapping. It’s illegal in
every Western country, every like sort
of Western legal system I know of. So.
just call the cops and
say like “Hi I’m in this room in this building. I would like to leave and
they’re not letting me leave.”.
You probably could just put this phone
on speakerphone and they’re going to like
have to let you go. Then you could probably sue them afterwards. The most
interesting part of this
though is that there is an article 627 of the civil code. It says even if
you sign a letter of acceptance
you can back out. So even if these companies force you to sign a letter
saying you’re going to accept
the job with their company. Legally you can back out at any time and that
letter doesn’t mean anything.
I find it interesting more though that because this is such a common problem
that it’s actually written
into the civil code. So this has happened so much in the past and they’ve
had so many sort of legal
issues I assume that they just wrote into the civil code that these letters
don’t mean anything and
that you can just back out. You don’t
have to take a job you don’t want to take.
There was a man caught on camera by a passerby who sent OG SONS photo. So OG
SON is an old man in
Japanese. And what this guy does is he takes the short shorts that girls
wear they’re called bloomers.
He takes the short shorts they wear and he wears them around the station and
this guy has a Twitter
account and he’s really proud of this. He wears like Lea Tards. He’s
actually I’m going to say a pretty
fit old dude. Someone took a picture of this guy sent it to his mom and said
oh my god look what I
can see at the station. This woman posted it on the Internet and she said my
younger son sent this.
photo to me saying there was an OG SON wearing bloomers at the station. I
didn’t believe him until he
sent this photo. It’s real. It’s just sick. And then she put pictures over
his face because you can’t
publish other people’s pictures in Japan without getting in trouble and
posted the picture with what
she tweeted on the Internet. The man himself shows up to her Twitter account
and says don’t censor
my face. So this dude he’s not only doing something that’s kind of weird. He
‘s super proud of it which
I love. And then it turns out his whole Twitter account is just full of
these kind of photo. I don’t
know why but this guy is doing the thing that makes him happy. Yes it would
creep me out but at the same
time I’m sure stuff that I like creeps out other people. I know like the jud
o I do. A lot of people
disagree with fighting and like beating the shit out of other people but I.
love it. And yeah
if people said stop I wouldn’t stop. There was a couple comments and one was
three cheers to this man’s
confidence and I got to admit he is super confident. You can really sense
the sort of strong willpower
from the bloomers ojisa. I mean he’s been doing this for nearly 10 years now
. He also says some philosophical
things or tasteful things sometimes on his Twitter. Just don’t actually
commit a crime please.
I’ve seen the man’s Twitter before. He’s actually quite intellectual and
well spoken which makes his
bloomers obsession even weirder which is so true because he’s not an idiot.
He’s not a dumb guy.
He just he knows what makes him happy and he’s living that lifestyle which
again I kind of had a certain
amount of appreciation for. And then the very last comment which I did enjoy
this is what makes Japan.
Japan and that’s a good thing.
Hurt Everyone Equally
- Remember that 23 year old who I was very upset with who was going to sail around the world? 23 years old has a job at a company that’s going to take six months off from his job of that company to go on a boat that he’s going to sail around the world in?π 00:00:00.000–00:00:21.360
- I maybe cursed him too strongly because he has given up his plan to sail around the world, which I’m not sad about. I’m not happy about it. Like I don’t want people to not achieve their dreams, but I was so annoyedπ 00:00:21.360–00:00:34.963
- at 23 years old. I was still in university and I couldn’t take six months off anything to just dick around So he basically His plan to sail around the world he left and then immediately got caught in a storm on November 12thπ 00:00:35.843–00:00:55.643
- And then returned back There were problems with the self-steering system and the power generation system system. So he needed to come back, figure this stuff out. And he wants to try again next year. So how do I feel? Because part of me thinks if you have a self-steering systemπ 00:00:55.643–00:01:18.897
- and you’re not really sailing around the world by yourself, I don’t know because you got to sleep. So what do you do? I actually never thought about it before. Before we had like automatic systems that could steerπ 00:01:18.897–00:01:32.377
- the boat for you, which probably wasn’t that long ago. People sailed around the world. I guess back then you couldn’t do it by yourself. You had to do it in like at least pairs. So one person slept while the other one sailed the boat.π 00:01:32.356–00:01:45.116
- Yeah, it’s a weird thing. And it’s one of those problems that’s a super rich person problem. Because you have to have enough money to buy a boat. You have to have enough money to take six months off work to sail your boat.π 00:01:45.116–00:02:02.396
- with self-steering navigation systems. I couldn’t afford the self-steering navigation system. Never mind the boat that it goes on. Yeah, I’m weirdly bitter about this. People’s success and abilities and being rich and stuff,π 00:02:02.457–00:02:19.337
- usually nothing. I think maybe the combination of being so young and being able to do this is what’s pissing me off because I was never afforded any similar opportunity. in any way. I started working at like 14, I mean nine if you consider deliveringπ 00:02:19.337–00:02:42.151
- papers but we could skip by that like 1415 I started working summer jobs and I never was not in school. I wasn’t very particularly studious so maybe that counts. But I worked. I was, man, and I’m not gonna get into my work history butπ 00:02:42.151–00:03:02.131
- I’m trying to think of the longest amount of time I have had. off and it’s got to be capped out at two weeks. I don’t think I’ve been unemployed while I looked for jobs and stuff. I don’t think that counts.π 00:03:02.131–00:03:17.280
- It’s certainly not in the same vein as I’m going to take time off and sail around the world. So I mean I don’t want him to not sail around the world but I do want to bitch about it. That’s it. That’s where we are.π 00:03:17.280–00:03:32.560
- I’m not angry at him and I don’t want him to fail, but I do want to be able to whine as much as I am. And next year, when we revisit this topic, because I will be following his career with great interest and vile vinegar, malice, I’ll complain about it again next year.π 00:03:32.560–00:03:58.423
- So look forward to that. Okay, I have a set of stories. And at the end of those two stories, I have a- very sort of disturbing conclusion. There’s the two parties called the Constitutional Democratic Party.π 00:03:58.423–00:04:13.106
- I love the Japanese political party names. They’re all very dystopian future. The Constitutional Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party want a law that bans donations made to organizations under the influence of brainwashing.π 00:04:13.106–00:04:32.346
- Even the phrasing is already like sci-fi. So I kinda like that. The ruling party wants the law that says religious organizations and corporations have to take care not to solicit donations under certain conditions.π 00:04:32.346–00:04:52.528
- Now, this is Japan and Japanese laws, as I’ve probably mentioned many, many times, are often purposely vague. But this is on purpose, in this case, because what they’re saying is like, you can’t putπ 00:04:52.528–00:05:05.168
- a ban on people being brainwashed. making responsibility. So you have to punish the company. But then the problem comes up, how do you prove someone is brainwashed? Because if you walk into that person and go, didπ 00:05:05.168–00:05:17.753
- this religious organization brainwash you, they will say, no, that’s part of the brainwashing. And in that moment, they believe it maybe years later, uh, when they’ve been deprogrammed, they will change their mind and say, yes, I was brainwashed back then. This would beπ 00:05:17.753–00:05:35.233
- like being on drugs. When you’re on drugs, there’s actually often a very good chance that you don’t. you’re on drugs. Like, so I take let’s say medication and the medication changes the chemistry in myπ 00:05:35.233–00:05:45.798
- brain and I am happier or more angry or something. If you said is that the medication, there might be a good chance I say no. That’s just my mood today. But then later on I go, oh, that was really different from what I’m normally like. That was clearly the medication having an impact.π 00:05:45.798–00:06:00.198
- Brainwashing falls into the same category. You can’t rely on the person to take responsibility for their actions in this case. So the state of mind is difficult. proof. This is aimed at the unification church. They have had a lot of things come out overπ 00:06:00.918–00:06:18.036
- the last while. We have their influence in politics. We have accusations of brainwashing and the very sort of cult-like way they run their their group is coming to light and they’re saying like we have to cut them off. So we need laws in place to do that. They’re notπ 00:06:18.036–00:06:36.396
- targeting them but they’re saying religious organizations are included along with corporations. But corporations don’t brainwash you like a religious organization like. That’s the first story is about the introduction of a new law.π 00:06:36.396–00:06:50.961
- Japanese government is probing the unification church specifically. What they want to do is remove their religious corporation status, therefore losing their tax exemption status. This is very interesting because they’ve got to this point where they’ve caused so muchπ 00:06:50.961–00:07:09.121
- trouble in Japan that this religious organization is going to lose their tax exemption status. Which is what keeps religious organizations afloat. most of the time. The government wants to come and look at their books, which is probablyπ 00:07:09.121–00:07:26.007
- the scariest thing for them to do. In conjunction with the previous law, they can say how were these donations made? What was the situation? If they kept that law vague, they can apply that law to this probe. Now they can start shutting them down.π 00:07:26.007–00:07:41.747
- Kishida, he’s very cautious about the probe. But his approval rate has took a huge hit recently. He’s down to like 33% now. He’s worried about basically the right to freedom of religion in Japan. You Japan’s very serious about the Constitution and its freedoms.π 00:07:41.747–00:08:01.079
- This came out during the pandemic when freedom of movement is part of the Constitution, but how can you then put people in lockdown? So that was one of the problems he faced with when he took over as Prime Minister.π 00:08:01.079–00:08:14.219
- But there are currently 22 civil cases going on against the unification church. So action has to be taken. So there’s a law and it’s the right to question law. So the right to question a religious organization.π 00:08:14.219–00:08:45.099
- Organization law and it was introduced after the 1995 AWM attack. So if you’re very young, you might not know. AWM was an occult and what they did, if you look up on the internet, the SARREN gas attack. There’s probably only be one result and it’s these people releasedπ 00:08:26.795–00:08:42.915
- this gas on the Tokyo subway and it killed some people but it had like long-term effects on many people who were on the train, the SARREN gas. And it was one of the most deadly attacks in Japan. It was like a terrorist attack.π 00:08:42.915–00:08:58.475
- founder, the the on leader, their leadership, I think in total was put in prison. Some of them were executed. It was a big change in shift in some of the freedoms available to religious organizations in Japan.π 00:08:58.646–00:09:12.526
- Those laws that were put into place then are now being applied to the unification church. Some of the things that have come out is followers without kids are encouraged to adopt kids from other followers.π 00:09:12.526–00:09:28.786
- But they’ve been doing this internally. So they’ve actually been breaking a law because you need prefectural So you’d state permission For adoption, but they’ve just been like oh you don’t have kidsπ 00:09:29.763–00:09:41.003
- You have two kids give one of your kids to this couple and they do it and they don’t report it to anybody That’s against the law in Japan 750 kids have been moved or adopted since 1981 So all of that is happening and it’s all coming out nowπ 00:09:41.003–00:09:59.163
- because of these probes and the problems with the unification church and donations and taxes and money and all this other stuff. It’s all a very complicated web of things to examine. Now the disturbing conclusionπ 00:09:59.811–00:10:14.811
- that I mentioned earlier when I started is that this is all started because of the assassination of Abbe. And Abbe was assassinated by a man who made a homemade shotgun and he was angry that the unification churchπ 00:10:14.811–00:10:30.811
- had basically screwed over his life by indoctrinating his mother. The thing is… Again, the disturbing element of this is what that guy wanted was focused, brought to the unification church. He assassinated Abbe, Abbe was not actually part of the unification church.π 00:10:30.811–00:10:51.410
- He did give a speech. And his grandfather was apparently the guy who brought the unification church into Japan. So there was a relationship there, but he wasn’t like a member. And so the guy was looking for a high level unification church member to assassinate sawπ 00:10:51.410–00:11:06.870
- Abbe’s a target of opportunity and took it and killed him. But that has been what has brought all this attention about the unification church to the media. In a very awful and dark way, he was successful. So he’s likeπ 00:11:06.870–00:11:25.345
- I’m gonna assassinate someone and bring the unification church to the forefront and everyone’s gonna look at it and that is exactly what’s happened. And it sets a very scary precedent for anyone who wants something brought toπ 00:11:25.345–00:11:37.005
- media’s attention. I don’t know if it would be, I don’t know how you express it properly. The problem going forward is if it happens a again and again and again, each time it happens, it’s going to lose impact.π 00:11:37.005–00:11:51.089
- So the fact that this was the first one, very impactful. The second, the third, the fourth, it will actually have less impact. So then you have to get more creative in your way of bringing attention to a problem.π 00:11:51.089–00:12:02.209
- Certainly violence is not the way we would prefer it done. I think that’s pretty fair across the board. But it was a conclusion after looking like they’re putting laws into place, they’re examiningπ 00:12:02.209–00:12:13.089
- them, they’re going to take away their tax exam status. They’re looking at things that have happened since the 80s in this organization. That’s a lot that’s happened and it’s all happened because this guy assassinated thatπ 00:12:13.089–00:12:23.972
- bay. Since we’re talking about taxes, I mean, this is, this is why you come to a podcast to have those deep tax oriented conversations because everyone loves shooting the shit about taxes. It’s weird the stuff I get interested in because I actually, you know, in the political realmπ 00:12:23.972–00:12:42.972
- and very interested in how taxes work and you hear about taxes in other countries, you hear about like you’re like, anyways, I come from a socialist democracy. I do have a buddy. leave in socialism to a degree where I am very oriented towards high taxes, high services,π 00:12:42.972–00:13:00.143
- but you have to get the services for the high taxes. The problem is when you pay high taxes and you get no service back. Japan, the Japan National Tax Agency has said that this year, 83.9 billion yen has been an undeclared taxable income has happened. Basically richπ 00:13:00.143–00:13:19.003
- people have been trying to hide their money with the current default. deflation of the yen The money isn’t worth as much. They’re trying to keep as much as they can to themselves and keep it hidden away from the governmentπ 00:13:19.003–00:13:32.673
- This is 72% up and it’s the highest number since 2009 So 83.9 billion yen in taxable income that has been undeclared 72% higher than previous years there are now currently 2,227 cases of the Japan National Tax Agency looking inπ 00:13:33.353–00:13:55.513
- to people’s finances. This is primarily Japanese rich people making investments overseas and then not declaring the money they make off those investments. So if I make an investment, let’s just say,π 00:13:55.511–00:14:08.271
- I just buy a stock market, which is a broad band of stocks. And it’s all American. So I invest in the American stock market, not the Asian one. It goes up. So the yen goes down and the dollar goes up.π 00:14:10.351–00:14:25.311
- And then because all my money is now in the. American stock market in dollars, I’ve made a ton of money if I pull that money out. I’m supposed to declare that income. And basically these rich people who have the ability to do that are not because the moneyπ 00:14:25.311–00:14:38.482
- still sort of floating out there in the stock market. But that means this taxable income isn’t coming back into the tax system, which means, you know, services suffer because they’re not getting the money they’re supposed to get.π 00:14:38.482–00:14:54.042
- And when they say tax the rich, there is a burden there and I think it should happen. Japan is trying to tax the rich fairly. I don’t think again they’re going out of their way to like hurt anybody but taxπ 00:14:54.042–00:15:07.216
- people try to hide the rich people try to hide their money the tax people are trying to get that money back. They’re not trying to get more. This does happen probably in every country. Something I think it was Sweden. Sweden’s punishmentsπ 00:15:07.216–00:15:20.616
- are based on your income. I think it’s Sweden is one of these sort of Nordic countries. So basically if I’m driving I’m speeding and I get pulled over by a cop and I get a ticket. And I have like let’s say I have a very mediocre income. I get the average ticket. So it’s like let’s say $100π 00:15:20.616–00:15:36.678
- It’s because I was I was being a bad boy If a rich person in like a Ferrari is speeding which is far more likely because they have a Ferrari It will be measured to their income so it could be up to like thousands and thousands and thousands dollarsπ 00:15:36.678–00:15:50.718
- There was a story of like a guy you got a hundred thousand dollar Ticket because he was so rich But I mean that’s the only way to have an impact on rich people is to have the pun is so a hundred dollars for meπ 00:15:50.718–00:16:02.538
- It hurts $100 for an incredibly rich person means nothing so they can just keep speeding because they’re just going to get these $100 tickets. Their system is it has to hurt for everybody equally so the relationship has to be equal.π 00:16:02.538–00:16:16.629
- It took me to a, oh my God, taxes are so much fun because we’re talking about money now. I did read a thing and it was, so let’s say I’m walking and I drop one yet. Now if I’m going to hurry, it is not worth my time to stop pick up that one yet andπ 00:16:16.629–00:16:33.909
- So let’s say I have to catch a train. It’s not worth one yen for me to stop. So I was just like, you know what? Just let it go. I’ll drop the one yen move on What the the story I read was it was a long time ago. What is the equivalency of Jay Z?π 00:16:34.044–00:16:47.844
- What does Jay Z have to drop to? Equal me dropping one yen. So like it’s not worth his time to pick it up And I think I remember correctly the number was a hundred and eighty seven dollars So basically Jay Z he could drop a hundred and eighty seven dollars and if he’s in a rushπ 00:16:47.844–00:17:04.324
- It actually isn’t worth his time to stop and pick up a hundred and eighty seven I’m related to Japan or news, but when we get talking about money or taxes and stuff, I mean, that’s actually there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there.π 00:17:04.324–00:17:17.304
- So don’t, you know, don’t stop those tax conversations. Have fun with it. Twitter. I actually don’t want to talk about Twitter. I don’t want to talk about Elon. I’m waiting to see. I’m one of those people who’s really waiting to see.π 00:17:17.304–00:17:34.304
- Will Twitter, which in the social media landscape has been an institution, will it actually? fail because it would be really interesting to see my space. Someone was said to me the other day this would be a great opportunity for my space to comeπ 00:17:34.304–00:17:48.847
- back but Twitter my space is more equivalent to Facebook Twitter is more equivalent to something else that’s so you need something else so I think it was mastodon and hive are the two main competitors who are up and coming as Iπ 00:17:48.847–00:18:01.567
- think it was last episode I said Twitter has a massive presence in Japan and Elon Musk has taken notice and he said Elon said that all you know everyone says that Twitter is very America-centric it’s actually veryπ 00:18:01.567–00:18:13.467
- Japan-centric because roughly the same daily number of users in Japan is in the US, despite Japan having won the third the total population. So percentage-wise, a much larger significant number of people in Japan used Twitter thanπ 00:18:13.475–00:18:29.175
- in America. But in total, they’re very similar numbers because you have 76.9 million users in the US and 58.95 million users in Japan. Elon’s declaration, which is completely unreasonable. Oh, sorry.π 00:18:29.175–00:19:04.155
- that clear. That’s about one third the population of Japan uses Twitter. It’s not one third the population of America uses Twitter. So he’s so Elon statement based off this was he wants Japanese numbers and Japanese usage in everyπ 00:18:45.413–00:19:01.433
- country which I think is a very unrealistic goal. I don’t think that’s gonna happen especially because every country has their own sort of social media environment that they prefer that fits what they want. Twitter for someπ 00:19:01.433–00:19:14.933
- reason clicks with Japanese. these people, it’s not going to click with every culture around the world. And again, the company may be dead soon. Am I willing to make a prediction? I am because if I’mπ 00:19:14.933–00:19:26.347
- wrong, it does not matter. The way it’s been going, like I Facebook, I actually thought would have been dead almost completely by now. I thought Facebook would have been like my space, but it’s such a large infrastructure for so many people. That’s why it’s stillπ 00:19:26.347–00:19:45.227
- alive. That’s why it’s still going despite it’s dying. It’s just dying slower than I expected. So the death of Twitter should probably mimic that. It should be dead, but slower than you expect. Because he’s fired so much staff,π 00:19:45.227–00:19:57.945
- usage is going to become worse. And that’s what’s good. So right now you have the people who are like, I’m looking for an alternative, I don’t like Elon Musk. Then you have people who are like, the functionality has worsened.π 00:19:59.745–00:20:11.585
- I’m gonna go look for something that’s more functional. That’s gonna be the next group that bails. And then the young people coming up who are going to be, because if you have a social media company.π 00:20:11.585–00:20:39.045
- What you want more than anything else is young people. They’re going to look at something else. They’re going to look at Twitter and go look. All these people have already bailed on Twitter. Why would I start now?π 00:20:22.533–00:20:32.773
- And that’s where the company is really going to die. So it’s really, I guess we’re looking at the next generation. It’s not, I was thinking like two, three years, but it’s probably more like five, maybe six, and then Twitter will just be a wasteland.π 00:20:32.773–00:20:43.573
- It won’t be anything anymore. I could probably afford to buy it. Five mayors went to a meeting. So in Tokyo apparently they have a meeting. It’s a bunch of mayors. from all over Japan. 900 mayors of cities attended this event in Tokyo. This has actually scaled backπ 00:20:43.573–00:21:02.344
- over the last two years because of the pandemic. This year it went back to normal. So I guess the pandemic is finished, although we all know it’s not. This kind of attitude and behavior is really weird to me. Like, we got to treat the pandemic like it’s still happening to actually get rid ofπ 00:21:02.344–00:21:21.384
- it. I think the problem is now people are acting like it’s over. So it’s just going to keep going. going, unfortunately forever. A weird side issue of the pandemic is I wanted to grow a beard, but I have found that if I let my beard grow while wearing a mask, I get really badπ 00:21:21.384–00:21:38.792
- skin. So I can’t grow a beard again until we stop wearing masks. But I now I’m getting to the point where I think we are going to be wearing masks for years and years and years. I don’t feel like I’m going to ever go into work without a mask on again. I walk to theπ 00:21:38.792–00:21:55.992
- train station without a mask on because I live in the countryside, but on the train I wear a mask and then once I’m in the city again, I wear a mask. So that’s most of all day when I’m outside of the house I’m wearing a mask.π 00:21:55.992–00:22:08.280
- Anyways, five mayors went to get some food after this event in Tokyo. They all got COVID and they held brought it back to their cities because the pandemic isn’t over. I think anyone who’s listened to Ninja Nπ 00:22:08.280–00:22:19.420
- Englishphyillonia under those new laws. So this is the first arrest ever in Japan of someone taking online tests for companies. So if you want to join a company in Japan, they probably have some aptitude tests or skill tests or general knowledge tests that you take online. That’s how theyπ 00:22:19.420–00:22:48.838
- filter out some applicants. So this guy has he’s been asked, this was very specific. He’s been asked to take the tests for 300 people over the last six months. That does not mean he took the test for 300 people. He’s.π 00:22:48.838–00:23:31.618
- He’s had 300 requests. How many he’s actually done was not included in the information, so I can’t make a strong statement on that. As little research as I might do for Ninja News Japan, I do want the things I say to be relatively accurate.π 00:23:04.323–00:23:18.963
- This is the first arrest of illegal production of electromagnetic records. There’s that. Electromagnetic seems out of deal. I think you would just say digital, but whatever. So what he’s doing, he’s taking a test,π 00:23:19.963–00:23:33.883
- and that creates a record. in the system for the company, but that has been falsified. So he’s committing a kind of fraud. Arrested. I did have the secondary question of, let’s say I want this job.π 00:23:33.883–00:23:50.295
- I have my associate take the test for me, essentially the aptitude test. I go in to do the job. What happens then? Because I didn’t pass the aptitude test. I may not have the aptitude for the actual job.π 00:23:50.295–00:24:04.295
- This is a fake it until you make it kind of situation. If it’s technical knowledge that I don’t have, it’s going to be very clear that I do not have that technical knowledge. And that’s where it sort of falls apart.π 00:24:04.295–00:24:17.649
- And I think maybe they’ll figure out really quick that you didn’t pass the test. We have had a series of animal attacks. Most of the other animals, it was monkeys and stuff. We had dolphins. Now it’s gotten to be almost exclusively boars because we have two wild boar stories.π 00:24:17.649–00:24:38.649
- One, quite light, a boar was running around Nagoya sort of the outskirts of the city and there were 10 people sort of having a picnic and the boar charged at the 10 people and the cops had been out looking for the boar.π 00:24:38.512–00:24:52.952
- They’d actually heard reports of the boar doing his damage. So a cop stood in between the people and the boar that was charging drew his weapon, aimed at the boar and said, I’ll shoot you. The boar.π 00:24:52.952–00:25:38.952
- Realizing that the police officer was dead serious turned tail and ran Police officer did not discharge his weapon It was really interesting. So I’m assuming it was actually the stance in the shout that made the Borg of noteπ 00:25:09.916–00:25:25.516
- Not worth it versus him knowing what a gun was unlike us had seen a gun before But I don’t know how smart wars are they seem to be like see stuff in charge He saw something he was like odds big and it’s not backing down. I’m not charging. This isn’t worth itπ 00:25:25.516–00:25:38.556
- That seems like more realistic to me But but In Kanagawa Prefecture, Bohr comes down out of the mountains into a town, starts charging people all over town. It actually hurt two people on record.π 00:25:38.556–00:25:53.108
- Knocked a guy down, and you get knocked down in the street by a Bohr that’s like 80 kilos, that’s big. That’s, I am currently 87 kilos. I’m six foot tall, I’m 87 kilos, that’s like maybe close to 200 pounds.π 00:25:53.108–00:26:07.388
- This is a Bohr that’s one meter long, so almost half my height. And… like lengthwise, if I was lying to, that’s hard to explain. Anyways, it’s one meter long, but it has the same masses me, but I’m like all fat, it’s all muscle.π 00:26:07.388–00:26:22.915
- Yeah, that’s a big animal knocking people over. So you’re getting hurt. It got into an elementary schoolyard, like the field area. Animal control showed up, and they had these electric prods, and they were hitting it with the electric prods,π 00:26:22.915–00:26:37.235
- but it wasn’t actually doing enough to stop the bore. So this dude comes out, I had a Pokemon joke in that. is very ineffective, but I’ve already passed that moment. This is I should maybe script better? Because yeah, I had in brackets, it’s very ineffective. It’s so like electricityπ 00:26:37.235–00:26:55.736
- type. I guess the boars earth type and electricity type would be weak. I guess explaining the concept doesn’t do much what I could have just done the joke. But welcome to the life of Chung with beef chest where I have really good ideas and then explain them instead ofπ 00:26:55.736–00:27:11.536
- doing. Anyways, guy comes out. He’s part of the animal control group. He has a spear, like a full-on traditional big-tipped two-meter-long spear and he runs the bore through and he kills it. Which is like really hardcore. Normally they would use a gun. Theyπ 00:27:11.536–00:27:33.034
- would have a rifle or a shotgun and they would shoot the bore. You know it’s not particularly nice but it’s this bore is running around hurting people so I kind of see both sides. There is a point that has been brought up multiple times is no one has explained whyπ 00:27:33.034–00:27:46.194
- this guy has a spear. Now he is part of animal control. So, he would have the spear for animal control, but defies the explanation of why do you have a spear for animal control instead of a shotgun or rifle like every other animal control personπ 00:27:46.194–00:28:06.254
- would have? No answer. Because who’s going to walk up to the guy who just killed 80 kilo boar with a spear and start questioning his methods. Because it’d be like, do you want the boar out there running around?π 00:28:06.254–00:28:23.094
- Do you want the boar running around? to deal with me and the spear. Those are your choices. So it is a sad animal had to be killed, but an interesting side point is the animal is then taken to a facility cleaned and the meat
from the boar is then given to local restaurants to serve. So the guy who speared the boar could go to a restaurant and eat the boar he speared, which is I don’t know if that’s the circle of life or just what you get for being such a badass and having a spear and killing an animal with it.
Podcast Exceptionalism
Meet the frontrunner in the soon to happen #Japanese #election. That and other random stuff from the #news.
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Leave a question or comment at https://www.speakpipe.com/VelociPodcast
Ignorance is not innocence
Mori is back at it again, there are a lot of smaller crimes as people just can’t seem to figure out that getting arrested for this petty stuff isn’t really worth it.
Also, power harassment and some happy nerd news. If you are a nerd, you may want to note the names of the companies mentioned.
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Cheating Hot Chips
Some anti-vaxxers have to apologize for making a bunch of other peopel sick. Ghosen has scared executives from working in Japan. Pokemon causes a police officer to get decked, but it’s ineffective.
Dumb people ruin snacks, maybe and it’s fun watching the whole system grind to a halt.
