Tag: survey

Defiling Fame

(upbeat music)

But weird bunch of stories this week.

I don’t know why.

It is the beginning of summer vacation,

so I may or may not
have an episode next week.

It depends how busy it is around the house,

but I can tell you honestly
it is so frickin’ hot in Japan.

No one wants to go outside,
no one wants to do anything.

I think it’s going to
be very much a holiday

of everyone just staying inside
watching TV, doing nothing the entire time.

What, that’s just some information, just
to just, you know, the world as it goes.

Japan, it’s here, where is
where we’re here to talk about?

We’re here to talk about Japan.

Japan’s rice inventory has
dropped to 1.56 million tons in June.

Japan has a rice inventory,
it has a bunch of rice

that they keep, like in
warehouses they keep stock.

Weirdly the very first thing
I thought like rice is staple,

it’s important to have a lot of rice if
you’re going to live in a country like Japan.

Canada has the maple syrup, and
there was a big heist where they stole like

three or four tank or
trucks full of maple syrup,

and there’s a lot of
questions and thoughts

going when you hear
about that, like, why?

I think it was the main one.

20% less rice compared to last year.

So last year in June, they
had 20% more than the 1.

56 million tons that
they have right now.

If it declines any further,
there may be price hikes,

annual demand within
Japan for rice has dropped as

people’s diets have changed
and a shrinking population.

So you have less people, you’re going
to need less food to feed those people.

In a way, not a terrible thing.

There’s been an increase in
the price of bread and noodles,

so a lot of people are now
taking bread and noodles

out of their diets, which they may have
had more in before and eating more rice.

But that, in addition to tourists,

so it’s been a big tourism boom,
probably the last three months,

we’ve talked about tourism
tourism tourism, people coming,

the problems they caused,
the problems of local people,

all that kind of stuff has been happening
over and over and again in Japan.

They want to eat Japanese food.

You want to come to Japan?

Japan is famous for food.

I mean, it’s famous for a lot of
stuff, but food’s pretty high on that list.

If you’re going to make your top 10 list,

I’m going to guarantee
foods can be the top five.

That food’s going to include rice.

So this tourism boom is feeding
the amount of rice that gets eaten.

So right now, the
forecast is actually saying

that demand will increase, but
production’s going to go down.

So it’s this interesting problem,

because the population
isn’t going to be buying rice

because they’re changing
their diet, but they might start

buying rice again, but
there’s a shrinking population.

So it’s really confusing as to whether or
not Japan, the country, or Japanese people,

are going to be eating or
buying more rice, but they’re

going to need more rice if this
tourism boom keeps happening,

and all the problems that
come with the tourism boom.

So it’s like everything
has a double-edged sword.

Everything is just problematic, and that
seems to be what it’s like to just live.

There are drain grates.

So Japan, I live in a small town.

Small towns in Japan do not have
sidewalks, and it’s very off-putting.

You’re all told to do tangent right away.

Problem is, I walk to the train station.

It takes about 15 minutes.

I don’t complain about the
walk, the walk’s quite nice.

Good way to wake you up
in the morning, to be honest.

The roads are very small.

It’s a small town.

There are no sidewalks.

So I am walking on the side of
the road, almost in the gutter.

Gudders aren’t the same here.

They tend to be just
like, yeah, well, gutters,

but they’re covered
over with cement blocks,

and then every now
and then they’ll have a

great where the rain
can drain down into it.

Almost lost my words there.

I walk on those, and
because if I walk on the

road, the old people
who live in the area,

again, Japan, Grand
population, most people are old,

they’ve been driving those
roads for 50 years, let’s say.

They know those roads, and that’s true.

They’ll say like, I know this
road like the back of my hand.

They don’t know if someone’s
on the road that they’re driving.

So they drive like they know the road,

but they’re not actually
paying as close attention

to whether or not
someone is on the road.

So I almost get hit by a car regularly.

Like I would say once a month, I almost
get hit by a car if I’m not being careful.

I certainly have to be
more careful than the drivers

who are actually driving
around the roads with me.

They’re so small, it’s
very easy to get hit.

So that’s just give you
a sense of the setup

of the roads in a lot
of places in Japan.

Once you get into
the cities, it’s different,

but you get these towns, which is a
lot of Japan that suburbs and stuff.

No sidewalks has these like gutter
systems, and they have greats on top.

Now, I didn’t think about this,

but greats are made of metal and
people steal the greats to sell them.

There’s a city called Tuchiki,

and what they’ve done is the
local governments had enough.

They need to take
action, they need to do

something to stop
people stealing and great.

So they decided that the
best way to stop people stealing

these greats would be to
paint them white and red

so they were in sort
of a strawberry pattern.

It’s actually neat.

If you look at it on an angle, you can
see the strawberry really, really well.

They chose the strawberry
because Tuchiki in

this area is famous
for growing strawberries.

This is one of the things
about also living in Japan.

Every town has to be famous for something,

even though the fact that
no one’s ever heard of it

means it’s not actually
famous, but if you say,

oh, this is my town,
this is this town I visited,

it’s famous for is going to
be probably the next sense

of the Japanese person’s mouth
who’s talking to you about it.

What they actually mean is
that stuff is produced there.

It doesn’t actually
mean it’s famous for it.

So I’ve had that conversation I gave up.

There’s a lot of things that I realized

that I will not be changing
Japanese culture anytime soon.

So this town is famous for this thing.

As a statement, it defiles what fame means.

Defile is way too strong or weird.

But it’s like you’re actually demonstrating

that you’re not using
the word famous correctly.

And just saying it’s hot
when it’s hot out constantly.

I’ve given up on that.

And I really, you know,
some deep down inside

me, my body goes, no,
man, you can stop them.

They say, that’s it, that’s
me, that’s me, that’s me.

That’s me, it’s fucking constant.

And I know it’s hot because I’m in the
fucking same weather as you are, okay.

You can see how annoyed, how quickly I get.

I think it’s ’cause I come from Canada.

And if you walked out of the snow, out
of the minus 20 degrees snow in Canada,

and then you’re like,
hey, it’s cold outside.

Everyone would think, you’re a moron.

Because yeah, we know it’s cold.

It’s freaking minus 20 degrees outside.

Anyways, the painted
strawberries on these

grates that are along
the side of the road.

So I was like, how bad is this problem?

Well, in 2022, there were 25
great stolen in six different cases.

So just six different cases of theft

where in those six thefts,
25 greats were stolen.

In 2023, there were 25
cases where 40 greats were

stolen and so far into
like up to June in 2024,

there have been 11 cases
already with 23 greats stolen.

So this is actually a problem.

This is a really regular problem.

So the problem is if
these grates go missing,

that means when I
personally am walking along

the side of this road,
and I step in one of those,

I’m gonna fall into that
little area underneath,

the drain underneath,
and I could hurt my foot,

I could hurt my shin, I could
fall over, I could break a leg.

Cars also have to, when two cars go along
together, one has to get out of the way.

They probably both
have to get out of the way

because the roads are
that small sometimes.

This means that one of
the cars driving to the side,

the wheel could then go
down there, damage the car.

So this is actually a significant
and very real safety issue.

They decided that painting
the grates would make

them unfit to be sold,
which, in his new Japan,

has adopted a bit of a
philosophy of giving advice

to criminals or helping
criminals out in that.

I shouldn’t, but it’s
because I go into the

criminal mind when I
start doing these stories.

And my first thought is, would it?

So it’s a metal grade, and
you’re selling the metal,

which I assume is going to be
melted down to make something else.

So the metal itself has value.

So they’ve painted the metal, how
hard is it to strip the paint off metal?

And I was like, you
could use like a sand

blaster and have it done
in a couple of seconds.

Like I’m sure you could sand
blast that paint off really quick.

You could just melt it down.

I’m sure the impurities of the paint

would be minuscule compared
to the actual quality of the iron

or whatever they’re using
the steel of these grates.

So the value doesn’t seem
to have actually changed.

So like the fact that it’s been painted
might make it just more appealing,

you would be able to
tell where it came from.

Like, oh, this is one
of these tochi grates.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Like I don’t know if it’s a
higher quality or lower quality.

You might be more likely to get caught

because like we can tell
this great has been stolen.

Is something that
police could lay on you if

you had one of those
greats in your possession.

But when they said
it makes it unfit to be

sold, I was like, I
don’t think that’s true.

And then I did try to transfer my thought
process over to the buyer of the great.

And he’s like buying stolen grates,
but he didn’t know they were stolen.

I mean, that seems almost impossible.

And then he’s like, hey, wait a minute.

This great has a strawberry painted on it.

You’ve been stealing
these, not making them

yourself at home and
then selling them to us.

And there’s a logical fault in the
statement from the local government.

But I hope it works.

I don’t want these like small
municipalities to have to pay for grates.

I’m sure they’re stupidly expensive.

When you look at anything that’s along the
streets, they’re always crazy expensive.

Like street lights, intersection
lights, they are all crazy expensive.

You go look up the prices in your city

or in cities around the
world, millions of dollars

for just a very small
area of just lighting.

And then these automatic
lights and the systems

and stuff are all
crazy, crazy, expensive.

Just thinking that, you know, maybe
if I’m going to be talking to your thing,

I don’t want to know,
start slurring and whatnot.

I should actually have done
podcasts while intoxicated in the past.

And it had entertaining results.

And I don’t think you’d want
to listen to that every time.

But it has been funny when it’s happened.

I want theme music.

I want– I want like
a– the Ninja Ninja Pips.

Like a quiz show.

Oh, I’ll see like my theme music.

Well, no, no, I can’t have
an individual guest music.

Because then I would
have– I guess I could.

I couldn’t make it.

That’s– the problem with music
in me is I don’t have the talent.

That’s why I have to pay
people to make music that I like.

I mean, no offense.

No offense.

No, no, I haven’t taken any yet.

I know.

But if you were to
just, like, just snatch a

son down from the
interwebs to put it on here,

I don’t think anyone is coming
to check you’re copyright.

Oh, it’s not– that’s
actually not the problem.

It’s the automated systems.

They catch it.

So like, I actually do stay
away from copyrighted music

and stuff, because I’m
doing that movie channel.

And it gets doomed regularly.

And I have to then send it
a letter to, I guess, YouTube.

I think it actually goes to
them, the copyright holder,

to say, like, this is– because
I’m doing reaction videos,

because I’ve transformed it, and
I have to do like fair use and stuff.

I do that like every second or third video.

Like, the automatic system is amazing.

Really, it catching stuff.

Are you talking computers?

Yeah, so, like, it’s not like
any person’s coming for me.

The algorithm is just waiting for you.

OK, anyway, so the quiz.

Dada, dada, dada, dada,
dada, that’s McDonald’s.

McDonald’s is going to come for me.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Oh, that’s quite good.

I’ll take that.

So this is summertime in Japan.

It’s very hot.

That’s where it’s there.

Maybe the important– so
Japanese schools often have pools

and they’ll have swimming
classes, so all the kids can swim.

It’s part of gym class.

Oh, god.

You know that.

Oh, god, no.

What do you mean, you’re art?

What do you mean, oh, god, no.

We haven’t even started yet.

But school and swimming pools and a quiz.

Yeah, no, because the quiz
is always some horrible stuff.

So the premise now is, how
can I make the premise sound

innocent, knowing that
it’s going to be awful?

Two girls were four minutes
late for swimming class.

Now, you’ve had students
who are late for class.

You’ve been late for class yourself?

That’s probably, what kind of punishments

I basically teachers
like don’t do it again?

Yeah, that’s four minutes.

People are late sometimes.

If it’s not a regular occurrence, you just

tell them, please be careful
about the about your time

management in future,
and you keep it pushing.

Yep, good.

No, that’s very reasonable response.

OK, so you know that’s not how this went.

So the students were four
minutes late for swimming class.

This teacher said, like, what happened?

And the student says, it took
a long time to walk to the pool.

So the pool is about 50
meters away from the school.

But I’m assuming they have to, like,
change and go through things and so on.

So I don’t really know this,
the layout of the school.

What do you think the
punishment of the students was?

What do you think?

How do you think the
teacher punished the students?

So here are your four choices.

A, they had to swim laps
until failure, until exhaustion.

B, they had to stand on the
side of the pool on the sun.

C, the teacher insulted the
student’s appearance in a bathing suit.

Or D, the teacher made all the
students walk back to the school

and back again in the hot
sun to, like, check the time.

So again, now as you change
it, please ask questions.

I don’t want to get– I don’t
want to make a assumption.

So I’m going to ask, is the
teacher a man or a woman?

It was not disclosed, but it
seems like it was a woman.

OK.

Because I read it in
Japanese, and the Japanese

is technically gender
neutral when they use sun.

So it’s hard to– Is
this a new teacher?

I don’t think so.

I think this was a fairly
experienced teacher.

I actually think the teachers
who do the shitty stuff

are the experienced teachers, because
they feel like they can get away with it.

I think a new teacher
would be more careful.

Like, they might punish the student,

but they might be like, I
don’t want to get fired today.

Yeah, they would do the thing to extreme,

because the old school
teachers are the whole watch.

Yeah, all the stories, the
punishment stories and stuff,

has always been like
these old school teachers

have been doing it
forever, which I assume

means they’ve been
abusing children forever.

Or yeah, they’ve been getting
more and more bold with their abuse.

Yeah, my Japanese is so bad.

My camera just went out focused.

That’s all right, that’s all right.

No, I can’t use the video if
the camera is not in focus.

Come on, come back.

Come back.

It sounds like a backwater’s
place, so they’re old-fashioned.

It’s a small town.

It is not a big city, yeah.

Thanks, Sue.

So I’m going to– old-fashioned people
are kind of hardcore compared to– Yep.

So I’m going to, I’m
going to recheck to be.

You’re going to reject standing the sun.

That’s super hardcore.

No, it’s not.

OK.

I mean, you’re from Canada, right?

I’m from Canada.

Yeah, you think the sun is hardcore.

That’s not hardcore.

No, no, no, that’s just a sun.

So in Canada, we don’t worry
about the sun as much as the cold.

So all the– yeah, I remember in middle
school, I went to Emily Carr Middle School.

You don’t know who Emily Carr is.

She’s a very famous Canadian artist.

And we had to recess where
we would have to go outside

for like 40 minutes or
something on an hour.

And it would be like minus 20 regularly.

That’s child abuse.

Yeah, but they were
like, no, you’re Canadian.

Go outside and play.

And we did.

It was– like, now that I think about it,
I’m like, you can’t send kids out in that.

But yeah, every day.

February, February, where I lived almost
every single day was minus 10 would be warm.

Minus 2015, 20 would be normal.

So a cold day, minus 25.

Then then– OK, well then, I think

we can’t understand each other because
like, maybe– yeah, you’re extreme cold.

You know, it’s bare.

It’s livable to you.

I am from the heatwork
experience right now.

This is my home heat.

Jesus Christ, man.

I can send aside this
heat all day long, literally.

I might be unhappy,
but I’d be like, you know,

I didn’t play games with
you outside in a seat.

I’m unhappy, but yeah.

So standing, standing
beside a pool, our country.

No, they’ll be fine.

They’ll be fine.

I’ll be fine, OK.

That’s not enough.

All right.

Oh, women are hateful.

OK.

That’s a statement.

Old women are hateful.

I get a book quotes in that.

That’ll make a t-shirt.

We’ll make a t– we’ll have a– we
need to use Japan merch coming out.

Old women are hateful.

Old women are hateful.

They are though.

So they wouldn’t sell–
they wouldn’t sell younger,

pressure, you know, percure,
you know, women’s appearance.

So I’m going to keep staying there.

Body shaming is so normalized in Japan.

So much so.

Did I tell you about– did I
tell you about my elevator ride?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We’re the old man.

She’s like, I got it.

Old man literally touched
my belly and called me fat.

And I was so close to
punching me in the face.

Hey.

Like, I mean, your own medication now.

Yeah, man.

That’s rough.

Rolling by, rolling by, it’s home.

One brick wrapped in a towel.

It’s embarrassing on fire.

Wow.

I mean, if you didn’t
see it, I didn’t see it.

You planned it out.

I mean, I have years of paying to me.

Call me hateful.

How about that?

I’ll take it.

There’s another t-shirt.

That’s the back.

The front is old women are hateful.

And the back is Tommy’s hateful.

I don’t buy that today.

That’s a good shirt, actually.

So yeah, the old ladies would insult you.

Welcome back and forth in
the hot heat to understand time.

But also, that’s the same thing.

It’s standing in the heat.

D is out.

So you’re between A and C now?

Yes.

Swimming laps into the exhaustion.

And then teachers solstice appears.

A is so reasonable.

Like, like, if you’re a hardcore teacher,
he’s like, you know, you’re always late.

So I’m going to make
you fucking learn today.

You swim laps until you’re fucking
tired and you fucking understand.

That is that while extreme is reasonable.

And you had a swimming pool.

So like, you know, it all pans out.

I think that is the most sensible one.

Our red laps is being
swimming laps or running laps.

It’s the same thing.

So that’s too reasonable.

It’s the– OK, C, insult
to the students’ parents.

She went hard.

Incorrect.

It was D, the teacher made all 40 students
walk to the school and back barefoot

and 21 students ended up
having burns on their feet.

Oh, I’m sorry.

I don’t think you mentioned that all
the other kids were impacted by this.

I don’t know.

I said all the kids had to walk.

I did say that.

I didn’t say the burn part.

That’s a bit of a giveaway.

It’s too many people.

Yeah, all the– so the
teachers– these two

kids show up late, four
minutes late for class.

And the teachers like, all you guys suck.

Get out of the pool.

I don’t know if they’re in the pool yet.

But let’s say get out of the pool.

Walk back to the school and walk
back here and see if it takes four minutes.

And so they made all
them– but they’re all barefoot.

And it’s probably tarmac.

It’s probably black, like
parking lot or something.

Half the students, at
least half the students,

had burns on their feet
by the end of this process.

And had to go like the school nurse.

The next day, a parent called to school
saying, like, why is my child’s foot burned?

And I’m not even one of
the kids who was late, right?

So the kid who didn’t do
anything has burned feet.

The school pulled the wheel, make
sure there’s not a reoccurrence.

But I actually hate that one
because if you get in trouble

for making kids walk back and
forth, you’re not going to do it again.

So it’s already not going to reoccur.

You’re going to find some
new and creative weight

to punish them next time
because you’re an asshole.

The teacher apologized, but
has not– I don’t know, man.

I would have made the
teacher walk the same path.

On a hot day, take your
shoes off, walk with them.

I would post live the
fucking teacher accidentally.

Yeah, this is it.

Like, I don’t get what’s going
on in your brain at that point.

I guess it’s just like,
what are you thinking?

It’s like they don’t understand.

It’s 34, 35 degrees outside.

And the parking lot is black.

So it is like literally the hottest thing.

So I have– I walked Dave.

I got to think about
like, oh, he’s essentially

barefoot on the road if
we’re walking on the road.

No, it’s– if some of
the kids are in the pool,

there would be, you
know, soft and tender.

And yeah, no, like, moisturized
and ready to give you a burn.

Extra ready for the birds.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So I was never punished that badly.

I think, again, this is sort
of the weird extremities

of Japan, come to light in these news
stories that people don’t know about that.

With all the polite culture and stuff,

there is this like
underlying strictness that is

just off the chain with
some of these teachers.

And it’s like, god damn.

56% of 17 to 19-year-olds have
no interest in the imperial family.

That’s kind of the headline.

And in my head, I was like, 56%.

Seems kind of low.

I can’t imagine 17 to 19-year-olds care
at all about the royal family in any bit.

So they did a survey.

And they did a survey and
there were 1,000 respondents.

And they did this survey because the
voting age in Japan has been lowered.

It’s gone from 20 to 18.

And this means the opinions
of 18, 19, 20-year-olds

is now sort of more
important because they

can vote and influence elections
and whatnot if they get out and vote.

So what they care about is
something we need to know.

I actually think it’d be important
to know what everyone cares

about, but that’s an
opinion for another day.

One of the questions was, do
you care about the imperial family?

And it was, yes, somewhat,
yes, somewhat, no and no.

So the actual numbers were 9.8% said
yes, which again, seems very high to me.

Oh, sorry.

34.5% said somewhat, yes,
which if they had a completely

neutral option, that’s
where mine would be like,

I don’t not care like
if they do something

interesting, I’d be
interested in hearing about it.

But on an average day, I do not think about
the imperial family or any royal family.

I do come from Canada where
they don’t have a royal family,

but we do have the queen
on our money or used to.

I don’t know.

I think changing to the
king, I can’t believe they are.

Southern momentary lapse of thought, as I
think about something completely different.

28.8% said somewhat no and 26.9% said no.

And that became, and that
came to 55.7% said they have little

to no interest in the
imperial family, which is,

again, I thought going to
be a much bigger number.

I was thinking 70, 80% would say no.

And then the somewhat
no’s would be like 10% and then

everyone left over was
going to be on the yes side.

They followed up with another
question to the people who said no.

And they said, how could we increase
your interest in the imperial family?

And then I, again, first
question for me was, why?

Like, why do I need to care
about the imperial family?

Why is the imperial family important?

Prove them as being
important to me in some way.

And I will then show interest.

It doesn’t go the other way.

Like what can we make them do
to make you interested in them?

No, they have to do something interesting.

And then I’ll be interested in them.

48.1% of those respondents.

So this is again, 50%
of the previous survey.

So now we’re down to like
500 people said, I don’t know.

Perfect answer.

How can you make the imperial
family more interesting to me?

I don’t know because that’s
not my problem and I don’t care.

27.1% said, have a member of the royal
family close to my age, post on social media.

I was like, OK, I mean, that’s, again,

they could do TikTok challenges
and have the royal family.

But again, they were
actually very specific.

Have someone close to my age.

So I don’t want to see the emperor
doing TikTok dance challenges.

I want to see a team, a late team
doing TikTok dance challenges,

who just happens to be a
member of the royal family,

which I’m actually betting
they’re not allowed to do.

26% said the royal couple
could post on social media.

So maybe they do want to see the
emperor doing TikTok dance as I don’t know.

That’s a lot of people already.

I found it very, very weird
because I personally, at this point,

I think I’ve said it before,
you just get rid of them.

They don’t do anything.

There’s no benefit.

I understand that it’s a
nice idea, but it’s antiquated.

And I have no desire to follow up on it.

When he ate your old was arrested,
and he was arrested for shooting a BB gun

at people waiting at
a nearby train station.

So he basically had an apartment building,

an apartment building
overlooked a train line,

and he could see the train station
so people standing on the platform.

The platform was about 40
meters away from his balcony.

So I’m assuming that’s
not an angle and stuff.

He was arrested.

There were, uh, he hit at
least two or three people.

Uh, there was someone
who got hit in the

shoulder and then
someone got hit in the leg.

They said there were no injuries.

I bet it’s stung, but again,
yes, at the end of the day.

It’s not like they have to
go to the hospital or anything.

It doesn’t seem like
anyone got hit in the head.

So I don’t know if he was going for
headshots or it was just really bad shot.

80 BBs were discovered on
the platform over two days.

So either a lot of people didn’t
report it or maybe didn’t even notice,

because maybe he got hit
and just thought it was like a

bug or something and then
just didn’t notice what happened.

These couldn’t have been that powerful.

I got, when I was a little
kid, I was like nine or 10.

I was walking, it was like evening.

I was walking with my
friend and then this guy was

just standing in a field
and we were over playing.

I don’t know, we’re doing our little
kids, probably just walking in a circle.

And then as we started to
leave, I heard something and then I

got hit in the back of the ear
and it was BB gun and it hurt.

Like my ear was swollen, I was crying,
my parents called the police and stuff.

There wasn’t much they could
do, we never heard about it again.

So I mean, that’s not a
great resolution of that story.

There was no CSI
investigation into the great BB

murder of this place in
Ontario when I was a kid.

But this means multiple people
have gotten hit and not reported at all.

So it couldn’t have been
the same level of sort

of power of my
experience when I was a kid.

Or maybe they’re wearing
like clothes and stuff and it

hit the clothes and just
didn’t have any real impact.

The police, of course, figured it out.
It’s not hard to figure out.

Okay. There’s someone, someone
shooting BB guns, let’s look

up in the other direction of
where the BBs were coming from.

What do we see? Oh, hey, there’s
a building with a bunch of balconies.

Let’s go start doing a little
canvassing there or maybe they

did a little stake out and they
actually saw the guy shoot some.

They actually would have been interested
in that part. How did they catch this guy?

Did they do a stake out for the BB?

Oh, man, I just, again, I kind
of come with a cool nickname.

BB King, that wasn’t bad.
That’s not good, but it’s not bad.

When they arrested him,
they went of course, search his

house and they found eight
airsoft guns and confiscated them.

So he was obviously some sort
of collector. He enjoyed airsoft.

He enjoyed these kind of guns.
He enjoyed, you know, BB guns.

Couldn’t, couldn’t control
himself. So this is one of those

things like if this continues,
if this is sort of sparks off,

these things sort of come in
trends. So if I now get like three,

four, five more stories of people
shooting other people with BB guns,

even if they’re like
non-lethal, I could see Japan

just like, okay, we’re going
to do a BB gun control.

Again, I don’t know what I’ve said. In the time
I’ve been doing the indigenous Japan, there’s

a couple of things that have become sort of
controlled that weren’t controlled before.

Crossbows was the one
that sticks out the most.

The crossbows were not a
controlled weapon system thing.

And then there were like two
or three murders over a couple

of months or attempted
murders and then they became a

controlled thing. Now you
have to be licensed and stuff.

Japan doesn’t mess around like
if you do attempted murders or

attempt to hurt other
people with stuff, they already

have like knives and stuff.
They’re already controlled.

If I’m carrying around a knife
and I don’t have a reason for

carrying right a knife, I can be
arrested for carrying that knife.

So this is one of the thing tourists
who come to Japan, I used to carry a

pocket knife. You just carry a Swiss
Army knife with me wherever I went.

Primarily for the screwdriver,
but if I now get caught and I

don’t actually have a reason
for carrying that Swiss Army knife,

you can technically be arrested
for that. There’s supposed to be a

size limit on the blade, but they
don’t actually take that seriously.

They’ll hold you for the
full like 20 days just to

cause your life a lot of
problems. When he was arrested,

he was asked why he did
this and he said to the police,

“I wanted to shoot people
and see their reaction.

” The reaction couldn’t
have been that big because no

one seems to have been
significantly injured enough to

like go to the
hospital or report this.

A lot of people don’t seem
to have reported it at all.

So the reaction couldn’t have
been that big, so was it worth

getting arrested for? And he
got all his guns confiscated and I

Gonna go ahead and bet
those were expensive guns.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Lost Dream Jobs

Okay, so we got almost the end of the Gassi saga.

So I keep saying I don’t want to talk about

Gassi anymore, but then something happens

that makes it vaguely interesting.

This time it’s pretty interesting.

And so the only final part will be if he

ever ends up back in Japan and actually has

like an interaction with the police.

So Gassi has been expelled from the government.

This is the first time this has happened in the last 72 years.

There were 236 votes cast, 235 people voted to get rid of Gassi.

The only holdout was a fellow party member,

which is pretty sad when you got like one

person who’s like standing up for you.

Then as soon as Gassi was expelled, the police went and started like putting

out warrants for his arrest.

The accusation is that he has swindled people

out of money claiming he could introduce

people to BTS.

So he’s running this kind of like weird, fame adjacent scam saying if you

give me X-Money Yen, I will introduce you to BTS.

On Thursday last week, police secured an arrest warrant for intimidating and

defaming celebrities.

So in a weird way, he was actually right.

He said, “I don’t want to come back to Japan because the police are going to

arrest me.”

We found out that if you are a member of the government and the government

is in session,

you actually can’t be arrested, which

I’m finding to be a very weird, weird rule.

Because government members… Check just

as if I call them bathrooms or washrooms.

I call them bathrooms.

I don’t know why, but yeah, I call them bathrooms.

In Japan, this is totally going to be off topic from the podcast.

In Japan, the toilets and the bathroom are separate rooms.

So in the West, when I had apartments and stuff, you would have like a

bathtub and a sink in a toilet all in one room.

I think that’s really, really normal.

That’s your bathroom.

In Japan, you have an actual room for just the bath and it’s got a shower

and the best part is you can spray water everywhere.

The whole room is the shower room.

Then in a separate room to that is a sink.

So that’s where you brush your teeth and stuff.

Then there’s a separate room that’s just a toilet.

In Japan, it makes way more sense to say toilet than bathroom because they

would actually different places in the house.

That’s a very valuable question though.

Do you call bathrooms washrooms?

I’ve said washrooms.

I think you say washrooms when you’re trying to be like more polite maybe.

So we found out that if you’re in the government, you cannot be arrested.

So as soon as the session was finished, as soon as the diet session was

finished, Gassy was going to get arrested.

So he was actually right.

And this was the most interesting bit to me is that he was right about what

he was saying.

They have confiscated his passport,

but they haven’t actually confiscated it.

They just nullified it because they didn’t take it away from it because they

didn’t see him.

And then they put him on the international wanted list.

So this got what I thought was going to be a weird little story about a guy

who was being

a politician from Dubai and is that going to work

out or not to now that he’s now an international.

criminal.

So when they see like when you watch a movie and they do interpool and they

have a list

and they have pictures of all the like

most wanted in the world, Gassy might be on

that now for realsies.

So he’s believed to have threatened three people and conducted one instance

of obstruction of business, which is Ninja News Japan’s favorite crime.

As we know, the party went from the anti-NHK

party to the politician girl’s 48 party.

They had a press conference with some of the

new members they were putting forward and

they’re all relatively attractive women.

So this is obvious their new platform and it makes it a little harder to

take them seriously as politicians.

The anti-NHK party was already a bit.

But now it’s like, oh, we’re just going to

put girls forward and see if you’ll just vote

for girls.

And since this is a real political party and with real reporters, the

reporter has asked

a couple like fairly not like hard-hitting

questions, but asking about taxes.

The lady politician they put forward goes, oh, that’s a tough question.

I’ll pass.

Getting sort of the level of quality of the politician they’re putting up.

I mean, it has nothing to do with gender.

It’s just they’re trying to use gender to get seats.

It’s dumb.

I mean, let’s face it, this whole party now is just one of the dumbest

things I think I’ve seen in Japan.

And yet weirdly, because they’re putting up a bunch of girls, it’s probably

going to work.

In 2022, so last year, 3.997 billion yen was turned into the police

lost and found in Tokyo.

Not all at once.

This is the entirety of the year.

So it could have been like 10,000 yen at the time.

3.997 billion yen, again, you do the quick math.

It’s like $4 million.

We’re actually lost and turned into the police.

So people in Japan, this is actually saying like, if you are going to drop

your wallet or

going to drop money anywhere in the world, Japan’s a pretty good place to do

it because they’re not just going to leave it there.

They’re going to pick it up and they’re

going to take us as a cops and turn it into

the cops.

We’ll try to get it back to you.

On that point, police managed to return 2.95 billion yen.

So let’s say it was $4 million, they managed to return about $3 million.

So there’s still a million dollars that essentially went missing because of

lost items.

The unclaimed money, so after the year, they hold it for an X amount of time

and then they just like, well, it’s our money now.

That claims money gets turned into the metropolitan government.

So if you lose your money in Japan, in Tokyo specifically, I guess, in this

case, and someone turns it in and

you don’t claim it, they don’t get it back.

The person who found the money doesn’t get to keep the money.

The money goes to the metropolitan government which is kind of a shaft.

I think I should get the money.

If I found the money and I’m a good person,

I turned it in and gave me the money.

I’m okay with that.

There were 3.43 million lost items turned in last year.

And that is up 21% for 2021.

Now, of course, last year we were in the throes of COVID.

It actually, the numbers have gone way down last yesterday.

They had 2,600 cases of COVID in Japan, the country.

And that is great because I used to be just one or two cities would have

that many easily.

So it’s not finished, but it has gone

way, way down, which I’m very happy about.

So this actually demonstrates the 21% increase of lost items and people

turning them into the

police means there are more people just doing stuff because you have to be

out of your house.

If you’re in your house all the time, you’re not really losing stuff and if

you do lose something in your house, it’s not getting turned into the cops.

So that’s neat because basically COVID meant there was less things lost and

less things turned into the police.

From 2015 to 2019, it was about 4 million items a year.

So Ron Track, weirdly, for pre-pandemic numbers of lost items in Tokyo for

the year, which is a good thing.

Oh, so they do this every year.

They do a survey of what kids want to be when they grow up.

And it’s always a bit shocking because of the attitude of children.

It’s always really weird because it’s Japan

and different countries because you ask a

kid where they want to be.

What did I want to be when I was a kid?

I wanted to be like space ranger.

I actually for years and years and years want to be a truck driver.

I really like trucks.

I think cowboy and cop were in there for a while.

They do this in Japan.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Boys uniformly want to be company employees.

Now last time I did this, which was last year I was making fun of because it

was like, hey little boy, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a businessman.

A businessman.

I want to be a businessman.

It’s a really weird thing to want to be because again, little kid’s concept

of businessman is not very realistic.

But junior high school and high school girls

also just wanted to be company employees.

Between elementary and middle school girls, they wanted to be manga artists,

which is pretty cool.

It’s artistic.

Scholar entered the top 10 for boys who were in high school in junior high

school and girls in high school.

I honestly don’t really know what a scholar is.

I guess that’s just like a lifetime student.

What is a scholar?

Because I think you have to be more specific.

But together young, their kids in high school and stuff, they might not

really know what scholars are.

I don’t.

I’m 50.

I have no clue what a scholar would be.

And that’s not really a job, is it?

I guess professor at university is, which is scholarly.

I’m not sure.

The comments on the Internet were interesting because some were lamenting

the lack of aspirations.

Because it’s like, when I was young, I wanted to be a rock star.

I wanted to be the number one.

I wanted to go to the Olympics.

I wanted to be the best dude in the world at something.

And they’re saying these Japanese

kids, they don’t have those kind of dreams.

They have, I want to find a good solid company and hunker down and be a

company employee for 40 years.

And then I want to retire and have no drama in my life.

And it’s not exciting and it’s not interesting.

But then a whole bunch of other people were saying, like, is it better to

have a dream that’s unattainable versus a dream that you could actually get?

So like, my real dream when I was younger was to be a writer.

I wanted to write novels.

I wanted to write books.

I wanted to do, you know, I wanted to

be like a cliche, pretentious artist type.

I wanted to write.

And I’ve always, I actually now, over the last decade or so, I actually have

done a lot of writing.

I’ve done writing.

I’ve written articles and stuff.

I did games, journalism, I did stuff like that.

Last year, I did Montana LDablo, which was a choose your own adventure,

which is something that had been in the back

of my head for years and years and years.

So I have achieved that goal, but not, of course, the way, the way you think

of it as a kid is I’m going to write books

and becoming internationally famous.

And like, people are going to want to get with me because I’m so smart and

artistic and famous.

But that’s not actually the reality.

A working writer though, I would be happy with that job.

So this is realistically a very attainable job.

So is that a bad thing?

Like you could grow up.

Oh, wait, wait, the whole point is I failed.

I never became the famous writer that I wanted to be.

The last episode of “Seeming Be,” I actually

talked about some of my exploits into trying.

to become a writer and the sheer volume of rejection you have to go through

to not succeed in the end is pretty hard.

Yeah, a lot of other people on the Internet when they were commenting on

this article, what

they were saying was like, isn’t it better to have a dream you could

actually achieve and then achieve your dream?

Because you get that sort of sense of accomplishment, like you’ve done the

thing you set out to do,

isn’t that better than saying, I want to

be a rock star and I can’t because there’s

so few people actually end up succeeding in their desires to be famous.

So I’m a little torn because I think young people should be aspirational.

But having an element of reality in there, so maybe I want to be a musician,

but you need if you understand what a working

musician is, like you make jingles for

commercials, you

do background music for videos and stuff, understanding the reality of it

means you could

get a job doing something you like, but realistically, I think would be

pretty appealing.

Because I did games journalism and it actually was, it had really good

points and really

bad points, but I was doing, I was playing video games and I was writing

which are two things I love to do.

I would be very happy to do that for the rest of my life.

And yeah, I’m not going to be like super famous

or international or anything, but it would

be a low key constant satisfaction, which I

think is what people sort of don’t think about.

It’s like, do I want to be super, super successful or nothing or would I

like to be happy, maybe to a lesser degree forever?

So Prime Minister Kishito, we’ve talked about birth rates in Japan.

The last year they had less than 800,000 babies.

It is the lowest number of babies born in

the country in years and years and years.

I think since World War II, since they actually started keeping track.

So this is a really big problem.

Because the population of the country, it just keeps diminishing.

So you have old people dying, you have not

enough babies being born to replace them.

That’s actually bad for the economy, it’s bad for the country, it just means

your culture may disappear.

So slowly Japanese people are going extinct.

And then you’ve got foreigners like me coming in and making half babies.

Oh my God, that’s not cool.

So Kishito sat down, he said, we have a plan.

We’re going to make a plan for increasing the birth rate.

And it’s going to be assistance to employers who encourage male staff to

take child care leave.

Last year, 14% of the people who were eligible to take child care leave

actually took it.

So most men in Japan traditionally don’t

take any time off when they have a baby.

But they’re thinking, we make them or help them take more time off.

They’ll be more likely to have a baby to share that sort of burden.

More support for freelancers and self-employed workers.

So yeah, if I am self-employed and I have to take off six months to a year

to have a baby

and raise the baby for the first year, I’m

not working that entire period which makes

I have zero income for that time.

Very going to inhibit my desire to have a baby.

What I wrote in my notes and my kind of point from the beginning has been

this doesn’t help you get people making babies.

This supports people who have babies.

So what are they actually going to do to get people to actually have babies

in the first place?

Because really the problem is people, modern people, and modern society do

not find the idea of having children appealing.

Because I don’t make enough money.

I can’t support myself.

I can’t support a family.

So it’s better for me to remain single.

And this has been going around for a long time.

So what they need to do, when I’ve said this a bunch of times, I’m actually

thinking of like not talking about this as much now.

What they need to do is actually change the entire culture of Japan so that

work is not at the forefront of everyone’s lives.

And that is going to be, I think, an impossibility.

And it’s the one thing they refuse to talk about.

Because men and women need time to spend

time with each other, to date, to go out, to

form a relationship so that they can then

get involved enough to actually want to have

a baby in the first place.

And all these financial systems and stuff.

These are great after you’ve had the baby.

But you have to put people in a position where they want to get together to

have a baby in the first place.

And that is the one thing they don’t want to talk about.

Because that would mean we don’t work 12 hour days anymore.

We don’t dedicate our entire lives to the

company like Japan has since World War II.

We change contract types so that people get

more free time and deep prioritizes work,

which is 100% against the current Japanese philosophy of life and existence.

Tattoos.

So I have a couple of tattoos.

I have one on my shoulder, one on my back, but they’re very small.

And that means that I cannot go to a public pool.

I cannot go to a public onsen with my tattoos exposed.

So I just wear one of those swimming jackets, rash guard things.

And they’re covered so no one says anything.

It’s fine.

Because you can actually tell there’s

the guys walking around with rash guard on.

Like I probably has tattoo.

So a survey was done should tattoos be allowed in hot Springs.

So again, if I go into a hot spring, if it’s public, I’m actually not

allowed to go in with a tattoo on my shoulder because everyone can see it.

It basically changes by age.

So younger people are more accepting.

Older people are just 100% against it.

But 43.9% say that tattoos should be 100% banned.

If you have a tattoo, you shouldn’t be

allowed to bathe in an onsen in a hot spring.

33.7% say it should be handled case by case.

So I’m a foreigner.

I have tattoos.

And they’re very small.

That clearly shows that I am not a Yakuza, which is what this is all about.

This is all about the Yakuza showing their gang affiliation.

And I’m clearly not affiliated, certainly not with a Japanese gang.

And my tattoos are not like the full body one.

So they don’t have the same sort of impact or feeling.

And I think as soon as people see that I’m a foreigner, they’ll think, “Oh,

it’s just a fashion thing for foreigners.”

So they’re saying like, “Yeah, so if I come in and I have a tattoo, it

should be okay.”

But if a Yakuza comes in and he’s got the

full body thing, that should not be okay.

22.5% say hot Springs need to change with the times.

Which I think is actually pretty sensible.

And you know, most of the 22.4% who said that were really young people who

are probably getting tattoos themselves.

Well, this was actually, I don’t know if other people would care about this.

You can see, if you watch the video, if you watch the YouTube video, you can

see in the background I have a chin up bar.

I haven’t been using it lately because I hurt my shoulder in judo.

But it is something I’ve always, as an exercise, I’ve always enjoyed it.

And I’ve always enjoyed it because if I’m

ever hanging off a cliff, I want to be able

to pull myself up physically so that I can climb up the cliff.

So at the end of an action movie when someone’s hanging, you know, if you’re

not physically strong enough to pull yourself up, that’s when you die.

Whereas I want to be the guy who like pulls

himself up really impressively in one go.

So I’ve always enjoyed chin ups.

This guy named Kenta Adachi, he works for the Japanese Coast Guard.

He’s 35 years old.

He has taken the world record for dead hang.

So it’s like you get on the chin up bar, you hang with both hands, you just

hang there for as long as possible.

Previously, a Norwegian guy did it for 16 minutes and three seconds.

I think I maxed out once at five minutes.

So maybe with training, I could actually get it, but I’m a big dude.

So it might be harder for me.

I’m not sure.

That was back in 2020.

So Adachi came in and he’s like, I’m going to kill this record.

Oh my god, did he kill it?

Not only did he beat 16 minutes, he did one hour and 20 minutes and 41

seconds.

So he took it, took the 16, beat it by four minutes and then put another

hour on top of that, which to me seems inconceivable.

But this guy is also holding the world record for the most consecutive chin

ups, which is 651.

So he now has two world records.

I mean, very related, obviously his upper body strength is off the charts.

Either that or he’s incredibly light.

I don’t know which is, which is probably both.

He’s probably a very svelte man, but with massive shoulders and chest.

But good on him.

I mean, he didn’t just beat that record.

He absolutely destroyed it.

And I will, after this podcast, go and try

to see how long I can do a dead hang for.

I mean, there’s so much shoulder.

I’m assuming it’s only going to be like eight seconds.

A woman thinks that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

I did enjoy the word thinks.

Not there was any proof.

She just suspected her boyfriend was cheating on her.

So she calls her friend, a guy friend.

And then the guy friend comes over with two

other guy friends and they call the girl’s

boyfriend to the girl’s apartment and he shows up.

And then they threaten him with a knife.

They punch him in the face.

They handcuff him.

They say, let’s go to the bank and get some money out.

And then they take his keys and they take his Lamborghini.

That’s a lot.

Like, there’s accusations and there’s confrontational behavior.

But we think you’re cheating on our friend.

We’re going to beat you up and take all your stuff.

I think there’s only reason I found this interesting is because that’s not

going to fix it.

Like, okay, you guys need to break up.

That’s one thing.

But we’re going to steal all your stuff and

now I’m going to go to prison for years.

That is a disproportionate response to the issue at hand.

And I think maybe that’s why I found that one is interesting it is.

Also they took a guy’s Lamborghini.

There’s no way Lamborghini is a standout.

There’s no way you’re going to be driving

that around and the cops don’t figure out.

It’s the stolen Lamborghini.

Okay, and this is the last ones for all the creepy dudes who have this like,

a lot of weeb sensibilities about Japan.

Japan’s changing and all you weeb dudes may not be as welcome as you think

you are anymore.

Japan is raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 and recognizing coercion

without violence.

So since 1907, the age of consent in Japan has been 13 years old.

And it’s never in the last 20 years I’ve been in Japan.

It’s not actually been accepted like if I talk to a 13-14 year old and they

agree to do it, it’s still not okay.

So everyone kind of socially knew this wasn’t cool.

But I do remember a few sort of weird nerdy

dudes online using this as a justification

for coming and trying to hit on basically kids.

But then of course they’re the kind of people who never actually leave their

basements.

So they never actually come to Japan.

They just use it as a justification for their own perverted desires.

Baby is going to be defined by more than just violence.

So previously, if a man raped a woman and

the woman didn’t fight back, it wasn’t rape.

And it’s really disturbing.

So basically if I drugged a girl or I got a girl really, really drunk and I

got in a position

where she didn’t fight back physically,

then a court would not call that rape.

They would say that she knew she was drinking.

I could maybe say that I didn’t know there were drugs and she was accepting.

There were a lot of excuses that could come up.

And that has been now been taking into account.

So coercion without violence is now included under sort of the rape clause.

I think they might actually be changing, you know, the word rape in Japanese

is being redefined.

So violence is not the sort of defining factor of what a rape is.

So if you use alcohol drugs or power.

So if I’m in your boss and you feel like

you have to do it or if I’m in like, I’m.

really rich, dude, any sort of position where it’s like power harassment,

that is now going

to be classified as rape in Japan, which is actually a really good thing.

They’ve also started looking at other stuff like circulating images online.

So revenge porn or taking up skirt photos,

which is a really common problem in Japan.

That used to be you get in trouble, but you didn’t go to jail because it

wasn’t technically illegal.

It’s sort of like taking pictures in public,

but then there’s privacy issues in Japan.

It’s very big on privacy.

So I’m surprised this one went for as long as it did.

If I take pictures, that’s illegal, but if I circulate them online, that’s

double illegal.

So I get two illegal things in one go.

And that’s actually one of the things they’re trying to really, really crack

down on is these guys who are creepy and stuff, sharing them is maybe worse.

And at first, I was worried about Ninja News Japan because I need to get all

these news stories so I can do the content.

But now if there are more arrests, it means more creepy, weird stories will

actually come out.

Because right now, there’s a whole bunch of people they get in trouble, they

get caught by the police, but it’s not technically illegal.

So we don’t hear all the details, so we don’t actually get the story.

So now, I think we’re going to have more crimes come to the forefront, which

means more content for Ninja News Japan.

So at least for a little while, I think we’re going to be getting a lot more

really creepy dude news.

But let’s face it, if you come to listen to Ninja News Japan, that’s

probably what you’re coming to listen for.

You creepy, creepy weirdo.

[MUSIC].

NNJ 86: It should have been Yakuza

A pair oif surveys with drastically different results that make me think I want to live in the Yakuza game world, not the real Japan. It’s the loading screens that would get me.

Also, money, Toyota, an anime fan goes off the chain and the every frustrating relationship between Japan and Korea.