Tag: Sukiya

(upbeat music)

Last week we talked about
the sewer cover, manhole

cover trading cards that
were being scalped online.

And it shows the depth to
which Japan has a culture,

that collecting culture, the
pokemon, all this kind of stuff.

It’s just deeply embedded in the culture

that you make cards,
you do these kind of things.

And they’re actually relatively successful,

but it turns out you can
do it with almost anything

because there’s a town that is
decided to make Odysan trading cards.

Now, Odysan, they
translate as middle-aged man.

I translate as old man,

but that really just depends on
your definition of middle-aged.

To me, middle-aged is gonna be in your 40s

because you’re probably
only gonna live to your 80s.

I think a lot of people extend
middle-aged into like the 50s and 60s.

Now you’re old, just give it up.

I have guys, guys, I know.

They’re in their late 30s and 40s and stuff

and they’re trying to
still claim to be cool.

I’m sorry, man, you’re not cool.

If you’re over 30, you’re not cool.

That’s just how it is
and they’re trying so hard.

It’s like, now let that
part of your life go.

You’re not cool anymore.

The interesting part, so you can get
like, Odysan farmer, Odysan fireman,

Odysan police officer,
Odysan, soba noodle shop chef.

The interesting part is within this
community, those are real people.

Now, most of these guys are retired.

So again, pushing the definition of
middle-aged, as far as I’m concerned,

if you’re in your 60s, 70s, and 80s,
you’re not middle-aged, I’m sorry.

I guess in Japan, if
you intend to live to 120,

60 could technically be
middle-aged, but I don’t buy it.

The cards are real people.

So there is a retired fire chief
who lives in the community.

You can get his cars and
these kids are trading the cards

and they’re like, look, I have
police chief Odysan autographed,

and he’s showing it off to his friends,
which is in a weird way, kind of cool,

because I always think
like, if you can meet the

real people who do the
thing, that is kind of cool.

So if you could meet, you collect the cards
and you get this really powerful cards,

and then you meet that
guy, you meet that Odysan,

in real life, that actually
is pretty interesting.

This was created by a
community center, and it’s

like these guys, they
donate to the community,

so like they retired, I think
it was a retired fire chief.

He like drives older people
around or maybe a retired cop.

He like gives back to the
community and now that he’s retired,

he drives people who can’t
drive their cars anymore.

So he’ll like essentially an
old person taxy service for free,

’cause he keeps him out, he
helps other people, he’s helping

his community, and so they
wanted to kind of pay it back,

and they made these cards,
they make 40 cards a day.

No, they make 50 cards a day.

A complete set of cards is 40 cards.

So if you get all 40,
you have a complete set,

and they might make more and more cards, it
just actually gets more and more popular.

But kids are showing an interest, and
they’re going by the community center,

they’re kind of talking to people,
they’re seeing older people,

they’re interacting with
them in a positive way.

So this is actually like a huge success.

They are hand cut by staff.

So you have staff members at this community
center who are making these cards,

I guess printing them out and cutting
them all day, I can hope not every day,

regularly to make at least
one set of cards every day.

Three cards costs 100 yen.

Six cards costs 500 yen, but
you get one prism finish card.

I have no idea what that means,

but I’m assuming it’s special
like a holographic version,

or a laminated version,
or something like that.

(upbeat music)

Fetishists cried out all in
one voice, with sadness and

pain and dismay, as the
world has now taken a shift,

although really the real
world doesn’t cater to

them as much as they’d
like, from this April,

police officers, female
police officers specifically,

will not have the
option to wear skirts.

Now, in real life, female police officers
in Japan have not been wearing skirts

for a very long time, or at
least very few of them do,

because if you’re out in
the street, you’re out in

patrol, you actually have
to chase someone down.

The skirt is not the most
functional piece of clothing.

So, they’re not gonna
have to wear skirts anymore,

because they’re not
gonna be skirts available.

And my first thought
was like it’s the fetish guys,

like the guys who collect uniforms,
there’s a lot of uniform fetishness.

This is in Japan, and they’re
all based around uniforms,

it’s like the stewardess uniform, the
schoolgirl uniform, the police officer uniform.

You’ll see Halloween
costumes as police officer,

and it’s an incredibly short
skirt and handcuffs in a hat.

And that’s about it.

I guess everything in
Halloween is just slutty version.

You’re still gonna be able to have that.

You’re just in real life,
there will be no equivalency,

because the cops are
all gonna be wearing pants.

This summer, they’ve introduced a
new breathable polo option for the shirt.

We’ve seen a lot of changes to
how police act in our treated in Japan.

Last year or two years ago,
they were allowed to drink on duty,

which you would think
is a really normal thing

to be able to do, but
they’re out in the hot sun

in the summer in Japan,
and they couldn’t get drinks

because they thought
that looked unprofessional.

So, what they had to do was
go back to the police station,

change their clothes, playing clothes, go
to the convenience store, buy some drinks,

go back to the police
station, change their clothes,

and then go back out and
do what they were doing.

Stupid.

Because what’s wrong
with having a police officer

come into a convenience store
and buy a drink and actually

drink it, because it is a
billion degrees outside.

We’ve just had a sudden spring.

Like, we could go last time I filmed,
I was probably wearing a sweater.

I am barely keeping up.

I have to probably take
off my light jacket off soon

and just be wearing a
t-shirt that’s so warm today.

And then next week,
it’s gonna be cold again.

It’s just flipping back and forth.

But it’s nice that they’re
starting to treat police

officers, not like machines,
but more like people.

The thing I didn’t know,
which was really interesting,

is they used to have
gender-based insignia.

So for their rank on their uniforms,

you would have like a sergeant
and insignia for a male sergeant,

and this insignia for a female sergeant,
were actually different insignias,

which I found very, very strange,
’cause the rank is the same.

It’s a weird thing.

So I practiced judo.

I think I’ve made that
clear many, many times.

In judo, there’s the belt system.

So we just talk about the black belt.

A female judoka, person who
practiced judo, who has a black belt.

The black belt actually has a stripe
on it, a white stripe through the middle.

To designate their woman despite
the fact that it doesn’t really matter.

I always found that weird, but
I’ve actually noticed in recent years,

a lot of the girls are just
wearing a regular black belt.

I have no complaints.

I think it’s a rank.

It has nothing to do with gender.

So why it would be differentiated.

It didn’t make sense
to me in the first place.

• There’s gonna be someone yelling
  about how their taxes are going to them

to be policing and not buying
water or tea or whatever.

• Unfortunately.
• This was in Japan.

This was a propriety thing.

Like people who are
working should not be

hanging out of a
convenience store and drinking.

So I think the negative
impression was coming from

the idea that maybe the
cops were slacking off.

Not that they didn’t deserve tea or water.

It was that they weren’t working.

But you can’t be chasing
criminals all day every

day just because that’s
not how that works.

So I think you do have a point.

There is gonna be a small segment of people

who just complain and
they’re gonna complain

that these guys are
allowed to have drinks.

But I think the majority… This
actually was spawned like four years ago.

It was a picture that went
around, went viral in Japan.

And it was either too Canadian
or too American police officers.

And they both had like Starbucks
and they were drinking out in sunglasses,

hanging out with people and just talking
like doing essentially community work.

Not necessarily running down a
criminal all the time like they do on TV.

Doing the actual job
of being a police officer.

These guys, it’s sparkly like is this okay?

Is this allowed?

They’re working.

They shouldn’t be doing this.

And a lot of people
are like, dude, it’s hot.

They’re having like drinks.

They’re just staying hydrated.

They’re drinking coffee ’cause
they’ve been working for eight hours.

Whatever, the back and
forth was very interesting.

And I actually think that viral post
sort of impacted the Japanese mentality

to be like these are human beings
who need water in the summertime.

So I think you’re
right, but hopefully not…

In a weird way, I’m hoping you’re not right

because people realize that these are
actually human beings who need liquids.

(upbeat music)

Sashima City Shrine.

So Sashima City is on Sashima Island
and you may have heard of Sashima Island

if you’ve actually played the video game,
go Sashima or you’re in the video games.

It was very popular and
it brought a lot of tours

to this area ’cause people wanted to see
the place where the video game took place.

That’s kind of cool.

You get tourism off a video game.

They didn’t spend any money
for this like free advertising.

That’s pretty cool.

But it has also caused problems where
we have a lot of nuisance streamers.

We have the overtourism, a lot
of issues with tourism in Japan.

Sashima Island is not excluded from that

just because it was made
popular by a video game.

They released a statement
on their Instagram.

A foreign tourist committed a severe
and unforgivable act of disrespect.

Now they don’t say what the act was.

I found six versions of the story.

All of them had the statement
and not what they actually did.

There was some supposition.

Sashima Shrine has not had
an easy time with the tourism.

It’s easy to judge both ways though.

I know the tourists are bad, but
I think Sashima might not be him.

I think that Sushima staff at the
shrine might not be handling it very well.

They’ve had problems with people
yelling and getting violent with the staff.

They’ve had disruptive behavior,

which I guess yelling and getting violent
with the staff is pretty disruptive.

The shrine will no
longer allow visitors at all.

So the only people who
can go into this shrine

are local parishioners,
so people who live in

the city, or people who
are shinto worshippers.

Now that’s a very difficult thing to check
because it’s not like you carry a card

or have some identification to
indicate that you are a shinto worshipper.

You are not allowed to take any photos

and there will be no live
streaming on the temple grounds.

So this is pretty strict.

Now these guys have gotten
pretty strict in the past.

Back in 2020, they banned foreigners,

but then they eased up
when that post went viral.

So we’re not allowed any foreigners
to join our, to come visit our shrine.

But then everyone’s
like, that’s actually biased,

it’s racist, it’s against the launch of
pen, it’s illegal to do that kind of thing.

So if you’re gonna ban people,

you can’t ban just foreigners,
but is their point of view

was it’s just the foreigners are coming
to visit here who are causing trouble.

In 2024, they banned Koreans,

which I would say is
even worse than just

banning foreigners as
a broad kind of thing.

They banned Koreans after a group of them
smoked and spit and ridiculed the staff.

So they had a bad experience of Koreans,

they’re just like no more
Koreans are allowed on our shrine.

So whatever happened recently
is just another version of this.

And they’re like, maybe
we wanna ban this group,

they seem to be really quick with the ban
hammer, which I’m kind of on board with.

Like if people are gonna cause
trouble, don’t let those people in.

But then of course, because
it’s sort of open to the public,

anything you do is
considered racism or a bias,

which is true, and so
you’re not allowed to do that.

So they’re just like, you
know what, no more visitors.

You have to either be a shinto
worshipper or a local to come in and visit.

I don’t know, I don’t know
what happened to set them off

this badly, but they
seem to have been set off

a bunch of times in the
past and set up different bans,

which makes me think maybe
they overreact is very hard to tell.

The thing is the other
side of this is in 2021,

there was a typhoon and
knocked over a Tory gate,

those big red, very sort
of iconic gates in Japan.

Games fans of the video game
go to Shishima and soccer punch

the company that made
the video game race $260,000

to rebuild the Tory
gate and parts of the

shrine that were damaged
during the typhoon.

So they’ve kind of gotten
positive stuff from this video

game coming out and making
their island kind of a point

to visit, but they’ve also had now we’re
having all the trouble with the tourism.

I wanna know specifically
what was actually done,

so I can judge whether
or not they’re overreacting,

but it seems like the
staff and the people there

aren’t really big fans of
interacting with people anyways,

don’t know how to manage crowds,
don’t know how to manage tourists,

and so them just blocking it off
probably is just better for everybody.

(upbeat music)

We get lots of stories
about power harassment.

Actually again, I get a story
and it happens again and again

and again and after a
while I’ll ease off on it

because there’s nothing to say about it,
but when it comes to power harassment

and the variety of
harassment they have in Japan,

it’s always interesting
to see what actually

constitutes the definition
of power harassment.

So this was a section chief was
glaring at subordinates during meetings.

So basically they couldn’t
explain themselves very well

or they weren’t doing
as good a job as he

would have hoped and
he was glaring at them.

So just staring at them displeased.

Not apparently, I guess power
harassment isn’t a single thing.

So that’s any one of
these harassment that you

break down into, it’s
like different pieces.

Each piece doesn’t seem that bad.

So like a guy staring at
me because he doesn’t like

how good my explanation
is, that doesn’t seem too bad.

I mean that just seems like
all my bosses pissed at me

because I’m not doing
my job to his satisfaction.

They did put slamming his desk.

So I don’t know what that means.

Like taking the drawer
and slamming it shut,

slamming the top of the desk
with his hands, something like that.

He was hit with a
temporary pay cut of 10% now.

His defense was, I have a loud voice

and a Hakata accent dialect and
that may have made it sound harsh.

So importantly, like I don’t know
enough about the different dialects.

So the Hakata dialect apparently
sounds very harsh in the Japanese ear.

So he’s saying that the way
I talk my subordinates or the

people who work with me,
they’re taking it the wrong way.

But the bid I find interesting, this
is actually doing an international pan

and dealing with these kind
of statements and defenses

has made me realize what people do
naturally and it’s a diversionary tactic.

So they’re saying you
were glaring at people,

you were slamming stuff,
you were shouting at them.

These are all power harassment.

He’s saying, I have a naturally loud voice

and I speak in a dialect, which
means you’re misinterpreting it.

But your way of speaking does
not impact slamming the desk.

You’re glaring at people has nothing to
do with your accent, that kind of stuff.

So they’ve made a series of like claims,

like you did ABCD and
he goes, yeah, but I do J

and that’s why everyone is misinterpreting
what I’m doing is power harassment.

So that’s something to keep in line
when you actually maybe get into a conflict

with another person when
you are talking about a thing,

they will start talking about something
else and try to ease themselves away.

Like I don’t, I do this and so
therefore you’re misinterpreting it

but you’re actually not
talking about the thing.

Stay on target, stay on point.

That’s how you win an argument.

And when people
start deflecting like this,

you know they’ve
already lost the argument.

If all you have to do is say like a statement,
I’ve actually made a bunch of times,

maybe not a statement,
but it’s like I say

something, the person
defends himself and I go,

notice how you didn’t
answer the question I asked

or you didn’t deal with
the topic I brought up?

And that’s because what
they’re doing is some sort of

diversionary tactic to try
to get out of the argument.

He berated his employee
by hitting the desk with a pen.

So I guess it’s getting,
hitting it with a pen.

I, how hard is that I don’t know?

(upbeat music)

There was a traffic stop.

A guy had driven a car
into a traffic light pole.

So I’m, he’s either on his
phone and distracted or drunk.

That’s the only reason
you drive into a pole

is because you’re not
actually looking at the road.

So he was distracted.

The police show up.

They start questioning the man.

The man says, I don’t care anymore.

Any punches is the policeman in the head.

I don’t know why.

That story has no
details or anything to it.

I just think it’s funny.

This guy declaring, I don’t care anymore.

And then punches the policeman and gets
arrested because yeah, he had to open drunk.

I’m gonna cut that story out.

That was not useful.

(upbeat music)

Sukiya is one of those very popular
chain restaurants that I will not go to.

Not, it’s not particularly bad.

I just, if I’m gonna spend money on food,
I want to get good food and it’s just fine.

It’s not even, I just never would care.

There’s a lot of foreign
people come to Japan

and they like to go to the chain restaurants
like Koko, Ichiba and Sukiya and stuff.

And I actually never
have enjoyed any of those.

‘Cause it’s like, if
you’re gonna go out to

four food, go out for
at least mediocre food.

This is like lower than that.

I’m very pretentious when it comes to food.

Unintentionally, I don’t
see if myself is a very

pretentious person overall,
but it seems like I’m very mid.

I think mid has become an insult,

whereas my view is like there’s high-end,
mid and low, and I’m always gonna go mid.

I actually don’t like high-end food either.

Like if you said, let’s go to this really
expensive Michelin Star Restaurant.

I’d be like, yeah, really?

We could go somewhere a
little cheaper that’d be more fun.

You say, let’s go to this place
that serves garbage in a bowl.

I’d be like, yeah, could we just go to like
a mid place instead of that’d be better?

So I have my biases and
at least I’m aware of them.

My coworkers do make fun of it, though,
because I will not go to certain restaurants.

On January 21st, so
back in January 21st, they

Sukiya served miso soup
and it had a mouse in it.

Now, I, again, multiple stories, some
stories said mouse, some stories said rat.

Now, my image of rats
is that they’re very large.

So I think this was a
mouse and it turns out

the mouse had crawled
into one of the bowls.

So they have stacks of like miso
bowls, these little wooden bowls usually,

and then they grab one, fill it up with
soup, and then serve it to the customer.

A mouse had gone into that
and died, and then the staff

picked it up without checking
poured the miso soup in.

Obviously, couldn’t see the mouse
anymore and served it to the customer.

Now, here’s the thing.

When they switched it from mouse to rat,
that’s to make the story more dramatic.

It’s more click-baity, I think.

But I think it was a rat to be too heavy.

Like, you picked that up,
you’d feel there was something

already in there, so it
had to be really small

and really light, which makes
me think it was a mouse.

So that’s, again, I have no
proof one way or the other,

but I think if you put
a rat in a little tiny,

very light wooden bowl, you’d be
able to feel the weight of a rat in there.

They served it to a customer.

The customer, of course, went,
dude, there’s a mouse in my soup.

I don’t want this.

This is disgusting.

They closed that restaurant for two days.

Didn’t inspection
tried to find if there any

gaps or holes where
the animals could get in.

They tried to see if there
was an infestation somewhere.

They were given a clean bill of health.

It seems like a one-off kind
of random thing and off they go.

What made people angry
wasn’t so much, I guess it was,

but wasn’t so much that there
was a mouse served in the miso soup.

It’s that they did kind
of try to keep it quiet.

They didn’t announce it on their website.

They wasn’t part of the news.

They didn’t get out.

Then they made a statement
on their website very quietly

that there was an object
in a miso soup bowl.

We apologize.

We’re going to make sure
that never happens again.

We’re going to train the staff better.

All the standard corporate things you have
to say in Japan when there’s a problem.

The main complaint
online is that they didn’t say

anything for at least two
months before it got out.

It seemed like they tried to
brush over it, which I’m sorry,

if I was on the corporate side,
that’s probably exactly what I would do.

I don’t want people to
find out that there was

a mouse in the soup
that we served to anybody.

That’s going to kill your business.

So I get it, even if it’s
not completely honest,

I kind of understand
what happened there.

(upbeat music)

The university professor
previously was forced to quit

because of a sexual
misconduct with a student.

Now, they were found to be laying
down, which was a very weird way to put it.

So I’m assuming not
actually having sex, but laying

down together in one of
the labs in the university.

So maybe laying down
and hugging, laying down

and just like taking
a nap, I don’t know.

I think if they were having sex, they
would have been more clear about it.

So they were very specific
about laying down in the lab,

’cause I saw about three
versions of this story.

The teacher was forced
to quit because of course,

this teacher’s a inappropriate conduct
between a teacher and a student.

So I actually think that
was pretty reasonable.

Then they found out later, the
teacher had tried to defend themselves

by saying, well, I was
actually being blackmailed.

The student had said,
you have to do these things

that I want you to do,
or I will send messages

to the administration
and I will get you fired.

So basically, you do
sexual misconduct with me,

or I’m going to accuse
you of sexual misconduct.

So he was in a situation
where like rocking

a hard place, ’cause
what are you gonna do?

There’s no options.

What the student actually did?

This was very weird, to be honest.

So the student had
blackmailed the professor

and made a contract,
and the contract included,

you have to hug and lie
together with me once a month.

So once every month you
have to lay down with me

in the lab, ’cause this is
where this all was happening.

So once a month, once a month, okay, I’m,
the weird part on my side is I was like,

that’s not very often,
like just lay down together

and hug once a month,
maybe, I don’t know,

then go on a date
outdoors every two months.

Now this was in writing,
and then the student

made the teacher sign it, so
that, which is essentially saying,

I am going to black, if
you don’t do these things,

I’m going to blackmail you,
here’s a contract, please sign it.

So that was the weird part of this,
is that the teacher actually, in a way,

had the proof that they
were being blackmailed

from the beginning
when they had a contract,

a physical piece of
paper they had to sign.

I’m wondering though,
if the student took the

contract back, or how
they found the contract.

But the contract came out
that had these stipulations

of hugging and laying
together and going on a date

very few months, and again, a date
every two months is not very often.

I would, I would honestly,
okay, if I was going to

bother blackmailing someone,
I’d get something out of it.

I’d be like, every
single week, we go on a

date, or every two weeks,
depends how much time.

It’s a university professor, they
got weekends off, they got money.

And then laying in the
place, I wouldn’t want

to do it in the lab,
or go somewhere else.

Or maybe that’s what got the
student off, was doing it in the laboratory

where they’re not supposed to
do it, the risk of getting caught.

The professor tried to break it off,

has text messages where I sent to the student
like, I don’t want to do this anymore,

I think this is inappropriate,
I think this is wrong.

The student then returned
with, be my slave forever.

So that shows you kind of
the difference in psychology

they have going on with this student
who is blackmailing the teacher.

Again, through commit
sexual misconduct with

me, or I will accuse you
of sexual misconduct.

The professor, they haven’t said that,

whether or not the
professor’s gonna get their job

back, because I actually
think if the professor

could have had a little
more of a backbone in

this one, I’m actually
gone to the administration

and said, this student’s
trying to blackmailing.

Here’s the contract they tried to make,
and they wanted me to sign, which I sign,

but it’s not of course
not legally, you can’t

legally, I have lost the
word, not legally applicable.

We got to the last story
of my brain to shut off.

It’s just done.

No, it’s not legally enforceable.

I’m legally binding, thank you the show.

So we got two appropriate ones.

My brain just kicked in right as
you were typing that I assume.

It’s not legally binding,
it’s not legally enforceable.

This contract to force me
to commit sexual misconduct.

He could have taken that to
the administration who said,

this student’s trying to
do this, let’s put a camera

into prove it, if you want more
proof, we could actually do it.

Because we know the student wants to
do this laying down thing in the classroom.

We could have the student come in and say,
I don’t want to lay down the student then,

we’ll say something inappropriate, like
you have to, you’re my slave, whatever.

But yeah, that last
message, be my slave forever.

We don’t know if the
teacher’s gonna get their

job back, but they are
getting their unpaid wages.

(upbeat music)

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