Happy Online

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

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

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

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

should just be the
thing I do now, just give

up on all the new
shit, all the talkie talkie

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

oriented only fans, burpee
fans, my new website.

Update, last week we
talked about the assembly

member who was
calling for female sanitary

products to be made
available in city hall

for free, like toilet
paper was her comparison

in an eye, and introduced
Japan as a company,

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

people, what the people
need should be in there,

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

came back with a
response and they said they

pulled other municipalities,
so this is their

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

this is just what people
think, what people

think is cheaper for
us is really the answer,

they are not going to
place female sanitary

products free in the
bathroom, because of the

risk of theft and the
cost was too high, or

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

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

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

dispense it, I think
if you threw a small

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

think anyone would
actually complain about that,

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

but if you really want
to justify the cost or

the price or something
100 yen for something

that’s apparently
necessary is fine, the thing

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

because we did have
the same story last week

of the woman came
into a convenience store,

where a bunch of free
condiments for, I think

condiments isn’t the
right word, whenever

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

so the sugar and the
creamers and stuff, she

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

her backpack and left,
and she was arrested

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

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

you probably should
be just as worried about

theft of toilet paper,
and if you’re going

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

why are you getting so
strict about sanitary pads?

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

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

greed of the capitalist
system, I don’t

know, it just seems
like a really lame set of

reasons and or excuses
to not do something,

that is pretty easy and
fairly convenient and

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

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

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

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

He realized he had a
gun with him in a country

that really doesn’t
like guns, and he turned

himself in, he turned
himself in, he turned the

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

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

That was handled
correctly, so of course now

we have another week,
therefore we must have

another gun story, because
stories seem to come

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

the streamer being
a nuisance trend is all

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

of those stories, there
was a Russian streamer

who went into an
onsen and cut her hair

and put on her makeup
and everyone was really

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

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

Russian streamer was
walking along the street

and like videoed a
pedestrian guy, which is

technically illegal,
you’re not allowed to film

people without their
consent in Japan, and they

got into a tussle, but
those are now at this

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

big enough or whatever to
make it worthwhile to cover.

Another man, another
American, therefore

another gun, a 35 year
old man, his suitcase

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

object in his suitcase,
so of course they

opened it up to look
at it and they found a

gun in there, then they
found dozens of rounds

of ammunition and then
he had shoes in a box

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

so he was trying to
bring in a gun, ammunition

and a knife into Japan,
all of those things

are heavily heavily
controlled in Japan, his

decision, his excuse,
his justification for

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

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

your plan, what you’re
telling the police is

my plan was to shoot
up my plan was to shoot

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

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

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

realize it was there,
I got into the country,

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

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

is a much more serious
concern, he had no

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

There was a question
like, “How did these two

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

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

actually departures,
so both of these guns

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

So if someone in Japan
tried to do the same

thing, maybe more
likely to get caught, I bet

there would be less
guns being, you know, a

secreted out of Japan
versus secreted into Japan.

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

country, it’s probably
easier in almost every

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

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

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

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

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

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

YouTuber, which is the
same thing as a streamer,

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

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

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

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

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

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

THC tablets into Japan for
the 2025 Osaka marathon.

Most people would claim
ignorance, but he went

on a podcast earlier
and he actually talked

about how he brings like
THC gummies with him

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

If I could get something
similar in Japan for

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

probably would start taking
something similar myself.

I would do pretty
much anything to lessen

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

He went on a podcast
and then he said he

knows he brings them
into most countries, most

countries see them and
they don’t do anything,

but he knew they
were illegal in Japan,

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

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

He left America, he
mailed them to maybe the

hotel he was going to
stay at or some place

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

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

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

I’ve actually read
tons of stories where

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

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

then in possession of
illegal drugs, you’re not

necessarily going to get
arrested for trafficking

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

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

his YouTube channel
for the last two months,

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

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

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

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

sees all drugs as
equivolently, equally bad,

it was a trying to
make a harder word out

of a relatively simple
word, that was a weird

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

and joined my company
to work for my company

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

to check if that
medication is available,

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

of people come have
to work for a couple of

weeks or a month and
then realize they can’t

get the medication
they need that they’ve

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

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

So that is something,
should you intend to go

to another country and
you are on medication,

legal medication in
your country, you should

check if that medication
is legal and available

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

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

Evangelion, 3.0 plus
1.0 thrice upon a time

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

anime, I actually
quite enjoy anime as a

general art form but
the titles are ridiculous,

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

but they get the
most obscure titles, it’s

almost silly, a real
train station in Shizuoka

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

name, your name the
movie happens in partially

in a real city in Japan
and Gifu and so I

actually went out and
they actually had part

of the tourism thing
was like if you stand

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

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

bridge over the train
and you wait till this

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

exact picture from the
movie, that’s actually

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

for tourism in a small
town in Japan, this

place in Shizuoka has
the same kind of thing,

we want to improve,
we want to encourage

tourism, we want people
to come to this place,

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

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

it happens, so what
happens in the anime is a

big spear spike thing
hits that train station

and they made one
of those, it’s actually

quite small, when I
heard about it, it sounded

like it was really
impressive, it’s actually

quite small, they put
one there and then

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

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

The problem has arisen,
you’re only supposed

to approach this thing
on a guided tour because

this is still an active
train station, so

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

want someone
inhibiting the trains or the

other passengers or
other stuff, so they want

to do this in an
organized way, tourists, I

would actually put
money on, they don’t want

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

expecting tourism to
increase, that also could

lead to interruptions
in the train line, which

is the last thing they
want to have happen.

This story popped up
like four or five times

in my timeline of
news stories, and I was

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

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

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

of the 30 countries,
according to this online

survey, the happiest
countries in the world

where the people with
the countries with the

happiest citizens, Mexico
is number three at 82%,

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

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

So Japan’s in the bottom
tier of these countries

that say they’re
unhappy, and I actually

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

just asking people
in an online survey, so

maybe people who are
perpetually online doing

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

person, although I did
just talk about burnout

at the beginning of the
episode, if you asked

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

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

Like I think the people
who do online surveys

would statistically be
less happy than people

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

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

I’d be like, yeah, I’m pretty happy.

I mean, my life goes pretty good.

I got very few problems, really.

All my problems are
like self-manufactured,

and that’s sort of a
self-fulfilling prophecy

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

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

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

Is that the problem?

Is that like Buddha
would say, the thing

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

Is it comparing myself to others?

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

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

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

And the question
wasn’t is because you’re

always online, and that
has been shown almost

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

64% said because of
their economic situation.

I can kind of understand
this, Japan is a very

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

People always want more money.

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

64% of the unhappy people
in Japan on this online

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

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

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

So that’s my problem with surveys.

You have to talk about
sample size, you have

to talk about like
what the situation is.

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

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

going to get more people
who are generally unhappy.

64% because of economics.

I think that’s true.

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

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

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

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

Maybe they feel like
life doesn’t have meaning

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

But the reason so many
of these online people

who did this survey were
unhappy were because

they don’t feel like
their life has meaning.

I think that’s terrible.

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

of people said the
quality of life was good.

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

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

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

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

Okay, there’s a town called Modioca.

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

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

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

They were kind of doing
shows and entertaining

and they would work
in hotels and stuff.

This was a big draw.

Right now they’re down to like two.

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

to train new people to
become geisha to take

their place so we can
rebuild the tradition.

This sounds like a really good idea.

So what went wrong?

Well, let’s put it out there.

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

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

And then someone in the
audience probably a reporter went,

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

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

There’s a weird honesty
there because he’s

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

So we should do our best
to appeal to those men

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

And that’s advertising
like advertising

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

They put on attractive
people, they might be

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

Someone of course had
to pull it back because

there’s a certain
backlash that comes with.

Geisha bring out men, obviously
men like younger women.

A committee supervisor
tried to pull it back

by saying, not
necessarily apologizing that

it is a physically
demanding job and therefore

younger people would
be able to handle it better.

43 year old man.

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

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

Then we have this guy,
a post office employee.

So he hasn’t hit our
50 year old threshold

that I’ve been putting
on for the really creepy

behavior in Japan,
but I think working in

the stress of the post
office maybe has added

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

that threshold because
he is certainly in the weird

creepy old dude committee
group that I have created.

He was arrested for
sending an envelope with

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

Oh gosh, even saying
this sentence is gross.

And it’s I want to
do the psychological

breakdown of how did you
get to a point where you

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

I’m going to put it in an envelope.

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

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

Like the woman wasn’t
going to be horrified.

She’s like, who sent me this?

This is exciting.

Like there’s no positive.

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

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

He was arrested for intimidation
and obstruction of business.

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

Welcome back to the
obstruction of business counter.

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

So this isn’t a singular incident.

So this isn’t a singular instance.

He admits in his
statement, this has happened

multiple times by
using an S which makes

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

I would like an explanation
of how that works,

but I did not intend to
obstruct business operations.

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

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

you would think that
isn’t going to obstruct

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

And that is not going
to get a reaction that

is going to obstruct
business operations.

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

But I think the second
charge is very, very

reasonable in this case,
often I think obstruction

of business is a catch
all to just arrest, but

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

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

How do they catch them?

And it’s not even ironic DNA analysis.

They have the DNA.

They analyze the DNA
and then they must have

had some of his other
DNA on record somehow

because they tracked
it back to him real quick.

He got arrested when
they searched his home.

They found two more envelopes at his home.

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

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

The fact that this is
just stuff that’s laying

around your house,
apparently there have

been a dozen similar incidents
across different post offices.

They are trying to find
out if they are connected.

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

I don’t this.

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

I think I need a break.

I realized I was reading all
the symptoms of burnout.

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

Do the right thing

It seems like, again,
I think nerdy people

stream and nerdy people
love Japan, so nerdy

streamers come to Japan,
and they seem to think

the way to get attention
is to do dumbshitting.

Now these are two very
big streamers, so that

already is like why
do you need to behave

this way, you can just do normal
shit and your fans would eat it up.

This isn’t like a Johnny
Somali level stuff

where they’re trying
to get in trouble, I think

these guys were just
basically ignorant and

then behaving, so
mitzkiff, I don’t actually

know if I’m saying
that right, I’ve seen it,

he’s big enough, I’ve
seen him, so that’s

actually it, like if you are a streamer and
I kind of know your name, you must be huge,

and Tokyo Simms who I’ve seen on TikTok
and stuff, they have come under fire.

How bad is it?

Yeah, I don’t know, I’m a little torn, and
I think I’m torn because I think what they

did was bad, but then the response was bad,
and so if they had done something bad and

the response was good, I
think they just forget about it.

Because of the way
they handled it, it became

news, so it was
primarily mitzkiff because

he’s the bigger streamer, they were out in
Tokyo, and they’re like ah, what we’ll do

is have a good time,
and I’m going to go ahead

and guess there were
some alcohol involved,

and they’re out with
the cherry trees, this is

cherry blossom season,
it’s a very important

time people sit out
under the cherry blossoms

and they drink, and they
have a good time, and

it’s a very important
part of Japanese culture.

They have predictions as to when the cherry
blossoms will come out, they have guides on

the best places to
go, like this is a big

deal in Japan, they’re
out, again, I’m going

to go ahead and give them the benefit of
the doubt and say that alcohol, they were

inebriated and that
impacted the logic circuits

in their brain, and
they thought ah, let’s

show off how strong we are, I’m going to
jump up and grab some branches and do some

chin-ups, and then
it’s like, well, if you’ve

done that, I have to
take a step further,

I’m going to jump up,
grab some branches, and

then swing my legs up
so that I do sort of a flip.

So, the immediate title
of one of the articles

I read was Miskiff
and Tokyo Sims doing

flips on Japanese cherry trees,
draws fire, whatever the title was.

It seemed weird because I
was like, doing flips on it, but

they’re hanging off it and then
trying to flip their way off it.

The conversation is did they intend to be
disrespectful, and I think they did not, if

I’m going to be given
the benefit of the doubt

because they were just
like doing stuff to have fun.

I don’t think they really realized what
they were doing, but then, of course, people

were like, that’s disrespectful, you
shouldn’t do that, and how do they handle it?

Well, the way they tried to handle this
was they just tried to delete the video.

So they were trying to pretend
that this never happened.

And then, of course,
people saved those clips.

They were on vods or what.

I assume there’s a
group of people out there

who just like download
everything someone

who’s vaguely popular does
so they can get them in trouble

later if they try to delete to
hide something, didn’t work out.

So people started
immediately re uploading

the videos that they were trying to
hide, try to suppress, try to delete.

Shibuya Kahu came on
and she gave her opinion.

She is also a big
streamer being based in

Tokyo, being Japanese
who speaks English and

having a background that has
made her popular in certain circles.

She garners a lot of attention immediately
and she has said, this was disrespectful.

You should not have done this.

Now, she’s saying, if you want
to flex your muscles to show

how much testosterone you
have, go touch your own wood.

Now that’s perfect.

I mean, I don’t think you
could phrase it better.

It’s like if you want to behave this
way, just go take care of yourself.

Mitzkiv took personal offense at this.

Now this was a bad move.

He sent some angry
messages to her on Discord,

which he then
immediately tried to delete.

Of course, she
screenshotted them because

she’s a very smart
woman and then she used

that to show like this
is how they’re behaving.

He’s I think what’s actually happened
here is he didn’t intend to be disrespect

But they tried to be edgy and then everyone
came back and said, like, don’t be edgy.

That’s not cool.

And then he’s like, okay, I’ll
just pretend this didn’t happen.

But then it comes out.

And then someone who
else is famous comes

out and says, the way
you behave was poorly.

And he’s like, why are you
calling more attention to this?

Why are you giving me a hard time?

This isn’t fair.

But he hasn’t owned up to it.

Now.

Are you shooting on him?

Because he sent me a personal message.

Yeah.

Shooting on me.

Yes.

That’s fine.

And it’s over me.

Me.

Me.

You’re like three.

Yeah.

So I’m like, OK.

So you can meet the actual effects you bow.

I was like, I was shocked.

I was shocked.

And he actually deleted that
comment later on from like a discord.

Now, but of course I screenshot it.

That’s evidence.

Yeah.

You shouldn’t be calm.

I hope to meet you.

It’s the best.

Oh, thank you.

Well, you were one of the best.

Yeah.

It’s like so disappointing.

I got super disappointed.

I saw like, you know, he didn’t
know what they didn’t know.

I mean, I was just not about
this one guy, they didn’t know.

You know, of course,
they can always excuse it.

I was going to, you know, help them have
the opportunity to explain themselves, even

to the Japanese community
and English community.

And they were like, oh,
yeah, reverb response, reverb.

And there were three me in three sentences.

And there was no
period in sentence that

really, you know, my OCD
is just like freaked out.

Now I have the Johnny Somali counts on me.

You don’t realize what you’ve done to me.

Please leave me alone.

And then she said, what
the fuck, what did I say?

It’s not about you.

Because this is not about him.

It’s about behavior.

It’s about people coming to Japan.

It’s about being respectful.

Of course, after that,
he realized he’s caught.

So once you’re
caught, then you have to

issue the apology to
show how mature you are.

And if you had just
done this initially,

instead of all this
other bullshit, like trying

to delete the videos, just to own up to
it and not trying to call people out, like,

why are you calling
attention to this on me?

I think this actually would
have gone away really quickly.

Mitzkiff issued a response
saying the moment

I was informed by a
friend on the severity

of the situation, I immediately deleted
the post and regretted my decision.

I think the reality is he was told,
this is going to get you in trouble.

This makes you look bad.

So he deleted it
and it’s not, I think he

regretted his decision
to do it because it got

him in trouble because
it wasn’t going to get

him the kind of attention that he’s
trying to garner as a popular streamer.

I’ve grown a lot here as a person.

I bet that’s debatable.

I mean, for being really honest,
I bet that in itself is debatable.

People like this don’t grow.

I think you’re living
in a bubble and in

that bubble, it is very difficult
to actually grow as a person.

You need people telling
you you’re a piece of shit.

You need people guiding
you to be a better person.

You need to have be
in a situation where you

can be taught and be open to being
taught to actually grow as a person.

I think that’s something that
people and bubbles don’t do.

It’s like the Hitler argument, everything
always goes to Elon Musk right now, but my

feeling is like Elon Musk is
not going to learn anything.

He’s just going to get worse because
he’s being a richest man in the world.

He lives in a situation
where everyone around

him will tell him what he’s
doing is good and great.

Whenever he hits any
sort of adversity, he

really struggles because he doesn’t
know what that’s like anymore.

This is the same thing on a smaller scale.

He’s a popular streamer.

He’s surrounded himself
with people who are

going to encourage him to
do the stuff to get the views.

I’m not going to realize
it’s bad because if anyone

telling him, dude, you’re
fucking idiot, don’t do that.

He’s not going to have someone who slapped
him in the back of the head and say, don’t

climb the fucking tree
because that’s going

to disrespect the culture that
you’re residing in at the moment.

Anyways, back to his apology.

I’ve grown a lot here as a person.

I’ve made so many
friends that I truly value

and have experienced
so much of the Japanese

culture that has changed
my life for the better.

Maybe I do not want to
promote my actions as proper.

They were wrong and should
have been seen as such.

So you should have
said that immediately, like

right away, not sent
other people like messages

like, hey, why are you giving
me a hard time over this thing?

Why are you drawing attention to me?

He advised his viewers
who may be considering

a trip to Japan not
to repeat his mistakes.

Cherry blossoms are sacred to the Japanese
culture and are extremely delicate.

I’m okay with the criticism
and understand it was Rome.

So that’s all debatable.

If you’ve listened and
introduced Japan for

any length of time, you
have heard a thousand

apologies and you’ve
heard me analyze a

thousand apologies as what
is sincere about them are not.

I think this is exactly the same.

I think the only thing he’s
unhappy about is that he got caught.

The only thing he’s unhappy
about is that he’s in trouble

and that’s the only reason
he would change his behavior.

But there is always
the opportunity that this

actually does have an impact
and they always do something.

What you’ve seen is a multitude of
streamers come to Asia, come to Japan.

There was that dude
in the Philippines who

just got arrested,
Johnny Somalis in court in

South Korea and they come here and behave
badly because they think they can get away

with it and now that
they’re not getting away

with it and now that
people are now getting

a little stricter saying like, look,
this behavior is unacceptable.

We’re going to call you out on it.

They get upset and
then they apologize

because they realize they’re
not going to get away with it.

Yeah, kuzah numbers in Japan have dropped
below 20,000 people for the first time.

So this year at the end of 2024, there
were 18,800 Yakuza members arrests.

There were 8,249 arrests last year.

That’s down 1300 because
there’s less people to arrest.

The numbers are interesting.

So the Yamaguchi Gumi, which is the
biggest Yakuza organization in Japan.

They are down 500 to 6,900 members.

The Sumiyoshi Kai is
down 300 members to 3,200.

The Inagawa Kai is down 100
members to 2,800 members.

This has been a constant decline from 1963
and the reason this is happening is because

the organized nature
of the Yakuza, any

organized crime really, is
such that they’re easy to track.

I think that is going to be the biggest
problem because the police know who you are.

They know who your associates are.

They know what kind of stuff you do.

They followed your whole
life as you’ve become a Yakuza.

Of course, it’s not going to last forever.

So they lost their power.

My complaint over the
last couple of years of

covering any Yakuza
related story is the absolute

loss of glamour that the Yakuza lifestyle
seems to have because I remember the 80s.

In the 80s, every bad
guy organization was

the Yakuza and they
were like international.

They were gun smuggling, human trafficking.

They were doing drugs.

They were just
everything was on the table

and these were like
super rich dudes and they

had like hundreds of men
who would gun fight for them.

Now all the stories were
like, they stole 10 cell phones.

The last one I did was
they blocked off a street

and tried to charge the
local 10,000 yen to use it.

Like these are not the
glamorous Yakuza of yesterday.

The ones that sort of would
have captured my imagination.

They seem like sadder,
older organizations just

clamoring for anything
they have left over.

What’s actually
sprouted up in their place

though from organized
crimes disorganized crime.

So it’s these groups
that are loosely affiliated.

They meet online.

They try to recruit members online.

They’ll organize for
one job and then rob

someone and then
disappear, spreading out,

going finding another
job, that kind of thing.

So it seems like disorganized crime is
actually replacing organized crime in Japan.

From September, 2028, gas
pedals in Japan, I used to just

for a moment, we got to
stop calling them gas pedals.

If all cars go electric, which is one of
the predictions is that eventually all cars

will go electric, they’re
not going to be gas,

but you’ll have to use
the term accelerator

because it’s not going
to be a gas pedal anymore.

But anyways, gas pedals in Japan will have
mandatory safety devices attached to them.

This is because of the
elderly drivers accidents,

which have been increasing,
where they accidentally

push the accelerator
and drive into a building

or a group of people,
this actually happened

last week, elderly drivers
outnumber gun deaths.

Of course, elderly driver
accidents outnumber

gun deaths because there
are so few guns in Japan.

So if you want to know if gun control is
a good thing, that’s a great stat to have

that your old drivers are
killing more people than guns.

Now they’re looking
at accidents with old

people and like, “Well, how
can we reduce these numbers?

So they’re going to put
a safety device on the

gas pedal that means
if there is an obstacle

that is one meter to
1.5 meter ahead, the

speed will be kept to
below eight kilometers.

So it means if you jam the accelerator and
there’s someone standing one meter in front

of your car, it will not increase
to over eight kilometers an hour.

This will lead to some very
amusing slow motion accidents.

Because if you don’t
run out of the way in the

car in time, let’s say
it’s an electric car.

It’s dead silent.

It’s creeping towards it.

It’s going to nudge
you sort of gently and I

actually still, if it was another
old person, they might fall under it.

There might still be accidents
with this, but at least this will

reduce the amount of actual
injuries that occur because of this.

There was a fan of an AVEX idol and
he said, “I’m going to come to your event.

” He sent an email saying, “Go
die,” and then, “This isn’t just a threat.

I’m going to come kill you.

” So basically he was saying, “I’m
going to kill you if you have these events.

I’m going to show up these events.

This is not a threat.

I’m really going to do it.

” He was very easily
caught and arrested.

She had to cancel three events.

So because she was
worried that this guy was

actually going to show
up and do something,

she actually canceled two events
in Osaka and won somewhere else.

This then becomes obstruction of business,
which is something that I had a counter for

and then won away
because we weren’t getting

any obstruction of
business ones anymore,

but thankfully they’re
back because that is

an engineer’s depend
mainstay, the obstruction

of business as an excuse to arrest
anybody for anything and threats.

The threats is a separate charge.

He gets two charges this
way because he caused

her to lose money to
interrupt her business

of putting on concerts
because of the threats.

That’s one charge.

The second charge is actually
threatening her with death.

When he was arrested, he
said, “I thought she was cute.

” And it’s just one
of those things where

he’s like, “Well, you’re
clearly not very…

You don’t got a lot of rizzes, I
think what the kids say nowadays.

If you think that the
way to get someone’s

attention when you think
they’re acute is to say, “Go die.

He did say further, “I wanted
her to know how hurt I was.

” Now they don’t explain
how or why he was hurt.

He may have gotten to this
point where he was deluded.

He had followed her so long, he’d
sent her messages or something.

She probably ignored them because
she doesn’t manage her own social media.

He got angry because he wasn’t getting
the attention he thought he deserved.

This is all speculation,
but it also fits

into a very natural pattern of behavior
that happens with these kind of people.

They create the parasocial relationship
in their head with this person.

They’ve never actually met her talk to.

They think they’re now owed something.

They start to get hurt because they’re not
getting the attention back because of what

their beliefs which are
very one sided because

the other person
doesn’t know they exist.

Then they lose the
plot and they go threaten

people with death and
then they get arrested.

Cocaine use has
significantly increased in

Japan which is a big
surprise to me because we

only ever hear about
marijuana really because

marijuana is still considered
one of the worst drugs ever.

All the drugs in Japan
are considered the same.

In North America, like
marijuana is not that bad.

Cocaine and heroin are much worse.

They have different classifications
for the different drugs.

This in Japan is not the case.

All drugs are bad.

All drugs are exactly the same.

Any drug you have that
is not legal is terrible.

The increase of cocaine
in Japan is a surprise

to me only because
it’s got to be super

expensive, but what the
police said was very interesting.

There were 231.8 kilograms seized last year
that’s five times more than previous years.

586 arrests for cocaine related crimes.

So this could be like
selling cocaine, getting

cocaine, possession
of cocaine, trafficking

cocaine, anything that
have like connected

to it, 586 arrests for cocaine
related crimes last year.

That’s up from 214 so
it’s more than doubled.

Seven times more arrests
over the last 10 years.

The National Police Association said
many people use it as a fashion statement.

So they’re not saying people
are using cocaine to get

high so much as they’re
using cocaine to look cool.

73 year old American
man came to Japan and

accidentally his statement was, “I
accidentally put a gun in my luggage.

” Now, I cannot think of a more American
statement than I accidentally packed a gun.

How many guns do you have around you where
you are, you know, packing your t-shirts

and you’re under wearing your bag and a gun
just drops in off the shelf because let’s

face it, there’s guns
everywhere around your house.

It seems to me, okay, so you want to
talk about responsible gun ownership.

If you accidentally pack a gun,
you’re not a responsible gun owner.

That’s actually to me
one of the number one,

like you can’t say
you’re responsible gun

over and accidentally do
anything with a gun, like

an accidental discharge, you’re
not a responsible gun owner.

I’m accidentally putting
one in your bag and

taking it with you to another
country, not a responsible gun owner.

I accidentally put the gun in my luggage
when traveling to Japan and three bullets.

It’s a very small gun.

It’s a little revolver.

Maybe it only can hold three bullets.

It seemed like one of those ones you would
put in your sock if in a police movie.

He decided the best course of action
would be to throw away the bullets.

The bullets were
found at a port terminal

and the police, because
one of the problems,

okay, so this is the actual problem is
a lot of garbage is burnable in Japan.

So if you put bullets
in burnable garbage and

that goes into the
facility, it might actually

go off when it’s heated because it’s being
burned and shoot someone, it could be weeks

later, but this is
actually a real possibility

of like a CSI style
murder where they try

to figure out how this guy in this facility
got killed and it turns out it’s from

a bullet that was in
the incinerator and

then they have to find out
where that garbage came from.

That’s actually a pretty good
episode that I just wrote there.

So he realized while he was
already in Japan, which actually

means he managed to get into
Japan with a bag with a gun in it.

Now he was on
cruises and stuff, so I’m

actually thinking maybe
because they spend time

on the boat and
they’ve kind of checked

everything before the
boat or maybe they check

when they get on the boat, they don’t check
so closely when they get off the boat.

So that’s my suspicion.

I don’t know if that’s
true, that cannot be

confirmed, but it seems
like the most logical

thing because it seems
like if they x-rated

the bag and there’s a
gun-shaped thing in it,

the Japanese police would absolutely check
that bag, he kind of does the right thing.

He says I was thinking
where to declare it

and then because he
wanted to make sure that

he didn’t get
misinterpreted, he wanted to

make sure they had
sort of the English skills.

He didn’t want to like come in and say I
have a gun and then get arrested himself.

So he went from Kobe
to Osaka, this is again,

he’s spending days
in Japan with this gun

in his bag and he goes
and declares it to the police.

Now unlike Mitzkif
from our first story, this

is the right thing, so
he’s made a mistake.

He’s brought a gun in
Japan, he knows guns

are illegal in Japan, so he’s
like I need to tell someone.

Now he took a couple
of days and that could

be a little like is this
okay, have you done

the right thing, but he’s like I
just don’t want to make it worse.

So I’m thinking he
has the right intention,

he goes to the police,
he says I have a gun,

I’d like to turn the
gun in, he turns the

gun in, he sells them,
I had bullets, I threw

the bullets away here,
the police go to that

place, luckily the
bullets are still in that

garbage can and they
recover the bullets.

Then everyone’s like this
is going to be a terrible thing.

I actually was like
okay, he went to the

police, he told him he
made a mistake, he made

it very clear, he did
everything in a relatively

safe, throwing the bullets
away was a bad idea.

But he brought the gun to them and he made
sure that he like they understood, he had

no negative intentions,
he didn’t plan to shoot

anybody, he just
accidentally packed a gun,

which again, the most
American thing you could

do in the world is
accidentally pack a gun.

He plays later, charges are dropped.

And I think this is
because the police, the

prosecutors are like
look, he made a mistake,

he did a bad thing, but
he immediately owned

up to it, he brought
us the gun, he’s not

trying to make any trouble, I think this
is fair, we’re just going to let him go.

He probably just left
the country the next

day, which again is
almost the exact opposite

of how Mitzkiff handled his issue where he
did a bad thing, tried to scrub it, tried

to make sure no one
knew about it, called

people out for calling
him out on it and then

apologized afterwards,
if he had just immediately

owned up to it like
this American who had

made a mistake, charges
dropped and you’re on your way.

27 year old assembly
member called for menstrual

products to be made
available in public restrooms.

And I as a non menstruating
person, think this is fine.

If you need that, I
think she made available

to you, I think she was
calling for them to be free.

I could understand if
you wanted to charge

like 100 yen, you have to put
it in the machine to pop one out.

But I actually think my taxes
are going to this, if women

need it in the bathrooms
to make it free, I’m on board.

So there you go, that’s how that’s
that’s an engineer’s Japan stance on that.

Someone else on the
other hand took issue

with this, with women
having things they need

being made available to
them and they sent 8,000

threatening emails,
including death threats.

Now the very weird thing was, they sent one
every minute between 8 p.m. Friday to 350

p.m. Monday, which
would imply that these

death threats were
automated because no one, no

individual is going to
stay up for three days

straight and sending
an email every minute.

So some sort of AI
had to write the program.

He had some kind of
script to send out the

email and he just set
it to go every minute.

I won because if you
look at the statements

that I read, it was, it
was 8,000 threatening

emails, including death
threats, which meant

not all the emails
were exactly the same.

So yeah, I’m thinking
AI wrote a bunch of

emails and then he had a script to just
send the emails every minute on the minute.

So this assembly member
actually posted this

on X and the statement was, I was caught
off guard by my period and was in trouble.

There were no sanitary napkins
in the rest room of City Hall.

I hope pads can be
provided like toilet paper.

That is the thing that set off someone
to declare that this person should die.

And I can’t fathom why
this was so offensive.

I actually believe
it’s just the fact that

someone mentioned menstruation publicly
and wasn’t like deeply a grossed out by it.

I don’t know.

I actually don’t know what was
so deeply offensive this person.

So this, there’s not been
any talk of an arrest yet.

So I am very interested
in the arrest and the

statement of the person
as to why this statement

was so offensive to them in the first place
because honestly, that statement itself was

I had a problem, went to the toilet,
the things I needed weren’t available.

I think they should maybe
be available in the future.

Certainly in City Hall,
if you have employees,

so like assembly
members who are both male

and female, they
should have all the things

they need to take care of themselves
at their place of work at City Hall.

It’s a public building, so it
should be provided for the public.

That makes a lot of sense.

I really, really am interested to see what
this person’s justification was for sending

8,000 threatening
emails because someone

thought they should have someone
should have the stuff they needed.

My sentence just fell
apart at the end because

someone said they would like
the city to provide for them?

I don’t know.

I just have to finish one
more sentence than I’m done.

And then I’m going to, I’m
going to play Rob Wilkoff.

Dave heard his leg this morning and
it has meant I am kind of distracted.

So he’s able to, he
was, he fell over, he

wasn’t able to use his
back leg, freaks me out.

It was like easily the per thing person
I spend the most time with in my life.

So they really had a
surprisingly large impact on me.

And it’s, it’s just
resting in the back of my

head and made it really hard for me
to formulate a sentence, apparently.

Women should have sanitary
pads in the bathrooms.

I think that is just a pretty
fair and easy statement to make.

It’s a, it’s a pretty fair stance to
take in more, the, see I can’t do it.

I’m not even trying to
say anything like offensive.

I’m saying like, chicks
should have what they need.

What’s the most misogynistic
way I can say that,

you know, chicks should
have the shit they need.

It’s like the, the redneck who says
like liberal things, there’s a meme.

It’s not, they don’t do it anymore.

I actually really enjoyed that one.

It’s the redneck saying like really liberal
stuff in the most rednecky way possible.

He’s on the bed over there,
he’s been lying down all day.

I gave him like a one
hour massage on his leg.

So I think he’s fine.

He’s able to put his foot down again.

But I mean, okay, last
sentence, last sentence.

I would like to know what was so
deeply offensive about this statement.

Was it menstruation or was it the fact
that the city should provide sanitary pads?

Because then you could
complain about your tax

dollars, which I think you
could take a stance on,

it’d be pretty hard to justify.

But I think that would
be more justified than be

offended by the fact
that 50% of the population

actually has this thing they
have to deal with every month.

[MUSIC]

Angry with a Beautiful Face

(upbeat music)

Last month, there was the
hug event for BTS members.

They had a woman, 50 year old Japanese
woman, went for the hug, it’s a paid event.

I looked into it, it was
basically there’s a BTS member

on stage, you walk up
to him, you say hello,

you have this like really
cursory hug, it’s really very fake.

And then you move on and you’re thrilled

that you got the opportunity
to touch a BTS member.

I assume.

This 50 year old Japanese
woman decided to take advantage

of her opportunity and she kissed
the BTS member on the neck.

Now this went viral in
Korea and South Korea.

Because of the reaction
the young man made facially.

So his face went viral,
’cause he kinda went,

’cause this woman
kissed him, which is not

the reaction you want
when you kiss somebody.

Like if I kiss somebody and then
they went, “Oh, that’d be pretty hurt.

” This is sexual assault though.

So I have, I’m torn with the
issue of your priming people.

So you have a thing for this guy.

You’ve paid money to
get into physical contact

with this guy, you’re
going to hug this guy,

he’s going to hug you, and of
course this is gonna happen.

I don’t wanna blame the victim.

Like true, if a man
kissed an idol on the

neck, I would be probably
far more incensed.

So this is showing some
of my very normative biases.

But I don’t think you
should be hugging people.

All these handshake events, the
hug events, all this kind of stuff.

I’m not really pro, this physical contact,
especially selling the physical contact.

That actually I think maybe
is what makes it worse.

Anyways, this is sexual assault.

Now in Korea, you can submit a claim
to the police even if you weren’t involved.

So if people saw it, they saw it online.

So all these people started submitting
these complaints to the police.

They’re like, please arrest this woman.

She committed sexual
assault on this member of BTS.

Let’s go.

The woman probably didn’t know she
was in trouble until she got back to Japan.

I’m betting she went to Korea
for the concert for that event.

Maybe stayed a day or two and then was out.

She was probably gone before the
police even opened the investigation.

Statement by the South
Korean police is that

if a suspect remains overseas
for two or more months,

it is impossible to investigate,
which is not impossible, it’s just hard.

Like you can’t go to
Japan if you’re a Korean

police officer and try
to investigate them.

But I’m betting this was a fairly low
priority for the South Korean police anyways.

Like, yeah, it’s pretty awful.

The guy, the BTS guy,
he didn’t put in the claim.

The other people did.

They’re like, we’d probably,
they’re on the lookout for.

They’ve probably flagged her passport.

She might not be able
to re-enter South Korea.

I mean, if I’m being really honest, that
might be the biggest fallout from this.

She’s not actually allowed
to go back to South Korea.

If she does try to go back to South
Korea, she might be arrested on the spot.

But they didn’t even like look for her.

They asked for her to turn herself in.

I think realistically, they probably
would have made her apologize.

I don’t know if that’s okay or not, okay.

I’m really torn.

I don’t like these events.

I don’t like this, like
the concepts, I guess.

I feel like you shouldn’t be doing this.

I don’t think it’s worse
when it’s the teenage girl

idols and the creepy dudes
who hand-shaken stuff.

That’s just really off-putting.

I essentially just disapprove.

You need better security for these things.

And you shouldn’t be setting
them up like this in the first place.

(upbeat music)

Another update, Sukiya.

The mouse laden miso
soup of last week’s story.

So it was a couple of
months ago this happened.

But it didn’t get released until later.

And everyone freaked out fair enough.

I mean, there was a
mouse found in miso soup.

I did like the transition
’cause originally it was mouse

and then it transitioned
to rat very quickly.

It may have been a rat, I don’t know.

But that’s the whole point is
just watching the news cycle

try to make more drama in the story
so that more people will click on it.

So more clickbaity.

So if it’s like mouse is in your miso’s bed

or rat in your miso’s way worse.

So let’s change it to rat.

Things like that.

I noticed things like that because I read
multiple versions of the same story now.

So I can see where the authors are adding

elements or dramaticizing it
so that they can get more clicks.

Well, they’ve had an unfortunate
follow up to their story.

This week, a cockroach
was found in some food.

They didn’t say what
food they were trying to,

maybe a little more vague on it or maybe,
so basically someone found a cockroach left

and then called and
complained about the restaurant.

And the company’s
like, we can’t survive this.

We gotta get this taken care of right away.

So they’re shutting down all the
stores and then doing like a deep clean

or trying to make sure
that there’s no rats,

no cockroach is nothing
in the restaurants.

Basically, every restaurant
was gonna be closed for one

day for a check, except for
the ones in shopping malls.

Now it’s not that those ones are cleaner.

I, you know, shopping mall food
is gonna be the cleanest food ever.

Now it’s the reality
is that they can’t close

the store for the shopping
mall, but they could.

But the reality is something
could come from the KFC

and X-Dore and crawl into
your food and it wouldn’t

really be Suki as fault but
Suki would still get blamed.

Or vice versa, Suki is a rodent and roach
problem might crawl into the KFC next door

and your new chicken nugget is special.

Please don’t think about that
while you’re eating junk food.

I hope you’re not eating
that kind of food right now

while I’m saying this because you may have
ruined your meal and I apologize for that.

But the reality is every time you put
something in your mouth, you are taking a risk.

The Imperial household is going
to launch a YouTube channel.

Last year, they started an Instagram
where they were posting thirst traps.

It was like the Empress and
booty shorts and the Emperor,

you know, with a shirt off
doing dead lifts, that kind of stuff.

It was, it’s awesome.

I mean, if you haven’t looked at it,
you should absolutely go check out

the Imperial household of Japan’s Instagram
page and just, just, you know, get horny.

This year, they’ve decided
that that wasn’t enough.

The income from that isn’t enough for them.

They have more media in them.

They are going to start a YouTube channel.

The YouTube channel is going
to include press conferences.

Nature walks around the palace.

And I’m assuming pranks galore.

That’s right.

It’s going to be the Emperor
pulling down the Empress’s pants.

It’s going to be putting flower
in the Empress’s blow dryer.

So when she blows her head at all, it
gets all turns white on, it’s crazy stuff.

There’s a prince in there somewhere.

I don’t know what he’s going to
do, but I’m looking forward to it

because press conferences
sound really boring

and nature walks around
the Imperial Palace.

That’s very nice, but I don’t
imagine myself watching it

until we get some
pranks, just a prank, bro.

This week, because this story includes AI,

it just dominated the headlines
for the last like three days.

So deep A, I open AI.

The names of all the AI’s are very similar.

So anyways, Chachi
BT is what it’s actually is.

Started doing image.

So we have other image
and things where it’s

like you type in your
image you want it to make.

It makes the image, it’s really cool.

And it ruins the lives
of artists everywhere.

Well, open AI couldn’t be left in
the dust, couldn’t be left behind.

They created an image generator.

And one of the styles you
can do is a jibbly style image.

And this apparently has
overwhelmed the servers.

Like the guy who runs it,
Mr. Open AI, chat, Mr. GPT.

He said Tim Apple, I actually
probably have his name

written down and then I
now am refusing to say it.

And even if I could remember
it right now, I would not say it.

He was saying that there
were so many people generating

jibbly style pieces
of art, that it was like

melting their servers,
melting their CPU.

So they actually were
going to put a limit on it.

They were going to make
sure that people didn’t go crazy.

But that means this is
now flooded the internet.

Now, this is taken on because
me asaki, the guy who created

essentially the very noticeable
jibbly style of art, he hates AI.

They keep cutting to a clip where
he’s talking about how disgusting AI is.

But that’s actually out
of context a little bit.

So there’s this clip that
goes around with this

because he’s like, oh,
this lacks humanity.

And I would rather die
than see this and stuff.

These guys were doing
a presentation for him.

And they had an AI basically take a
structure and try to learn how to walk.

So it was walking in this
really awkward, creepy way.

And they were saying
like, if for your animation,

you could use animation like
this for the monsters and whatnot.

And then he got really offended.

And he actually was relating
it to a friend of his who

has physical difficulties of some
sort and who isn’t able to walk.

And he’s like, I wonder how
he would feel if he felt saw this.

I wonder, like, and
then he actually took it

off in his very honestly
unrelated direction.

But they’re taking that out of context.

So it’s kind of related, but it’s sort of,

I don’t know, I wouldn’t say
tangential, but more like parallel.

What he’s talking about is parallel

to what they’re actually
talking about in these news

stories, but they take
the clip and they put it in.

So this is sort of your media awareness.

I’m sure me as Aki actually hates the
idea of AI and art and things like that.

But the clip they’re showing
of him getting really angry

at these poor guys who
are really uncomfortable,

who are just presenting some
technology they had created.

This is about five, six years
ago before the whole AI boom.

That’s not actually
what he’s talking about.

He’s talking about this thing
you’ve made is like grotesque.

And I don’t think it has
any place in this sort

of the hopeful animation art style that I
try to create when I’m making my stories.

So that’s something to be aware
of if you read one of those stories,

not from an engineer’s Japan,
where they’re not going to

give you that excellent piece
of background information.

Yeah, the CEO of OpenAI,
he changed his profile pick

to a jibbly style version of his own face,
which is showing that even he’s like aware

of the actual distinct
style that’s being created.

Now the problem is the
argument about AI in the first place.

How did OpenAI learn
to make jibbly style art,

if it did not take jibbly
style art and learn

from it directly, which
is copyright violation?

This is kind of the problem
they’ve been talking about.

Like so clearly jibbly art
has been fed into this open AI.

Open AI is taking it and learned from it.

That’s okay.

What they’re supposed to do, but they didn’t
pay jibbly for the art that they used.

They didn’t ask if it was
okay to use this version.

They just went ahead and did it.

This is going to probably be a lawsuit.

Like if anyone’s going to sue
them, jibbly probably could do it

and could probably do it
successfully because I don’t know

if they’ve copy written the
style, but it is very distinct.

And it is every movie they
do has the very similar style.

Miyazaki is also quite famously a hardass.

So when they took, uh, I
forget what movie it was,

one of the older ones,
Mononoke, maybe they took one

of the jibbly movies and they
were going to release it in America

and Harvey Weinstein wanted to
cut it down to make it a little shorter.

He’s like, you know, all this is like
stupid emotion shit that you got in there.

Let’s cut some of that
out, make it a shorter movie.

It’ll grade it’ll fit better into
sort of the slots for the movies.

We maybe show more movies during the day.

It was that kind of like fiscal version
of movie making that Harvey Weinstein

would be on the side
of Miyazaki sent him a

samurai sword with a
single note that said no cuts.

And that is kind of a
threat that I will stab

you with a sword if you
try to cut up my movie.

So he is a bit of a hardass.

And again, he was just looking at a
technical presentation from some guys

and he went in them about how
inhumane it was and he was really awful.

He was actually really
awful to them because

he could’ve just said
this isn’t really for me.

I don’t really like this.

It doesn’t really apply
to what I would like

to do with my company
or my art and move on.

He didn’t.

He like reamed them
for how gross it was and

everyone was very uncomfortable in the
room and it was weirdly quite fun to watch.

Auto thefts are on the rise for
the third year in the row in Japan.

So in 2024 there were 6,080
auto thefts that’s up 318 from 2023.

Most of these cars do
not get like resold in Japan.

This is actually one of the more interesting
things I found about car theft in Japan

is what they do is they take the car and
they put it on a boat and they’ll take it

to like Vietnam or Cambodia or some
other country and they’ll resell the car

or they’ll break it down
into parts and then ship

it off to another country
and then rebuild it.

And the most popular car is to steal.

Like you would think
it was fancy luxury cars

mostly but actually it’s
like mini vans and stuff

more utilitarian things
because again they’re

going to sort of these
developing nations

and they want to sell them stuff they can
use so a mini van is far, far more useful

in a third world country than like a sports
car when you’re on dirt roads all the time

and what you really
need to do is transport

people to a worksite
or something like that.

Most of the thefts quite
sensibly are around Tokyo

and one of the biggest
problems is the technology

they’re using they’re
saying in three minutes

they now have this
basically car remote hacker

and it can like unlock
your car and start the

engine then they can
drive it away with that.

They can then you know copy the
key or remake the key or something.

So basically it’s all being
done with computers now.

It’s not like a cool guy
runs up and he jacks

the window and then
gets in the car and like

rubs two wires together
and starts the car.

Now it’s a very nerdy
doing on a laptop or

something and he unlocks
the car from a distance

using Wi-Fi and then
they get in and they drive

away and again they’re
driving it to a port

and this is in Aichi
this middle part of Japan

where the Toyota city is which was
actually created by Toyota the company.

There’s a lot of car
thefts there because

being a port city they
can actually steal the

car get it into a boat
really quick and then

get it out of the port and
on its way to its destination.

I don’t know how many
cars they put on a boat

but I’m assuming it’s a
lot which is this is like work.

Apparently in IT there are a lot
of luxury cars on the road which

is the ones they can sell to
China and other places like that.

So while I was saying
that isn’t the primary

target it is still a
target there are still

people who want to buy
expensive stolen cars and 2024 44.

1% of the cars were
not found or recovered.

So basically because
they’re being shipped out

to other countries
because they’re disappearing

from the country the
police aren’t able to

find them and again
they’re probably gone that

night or the next day like gone from the
country you will never see your car again.

So if you’re in Japan you
have a car please be careful.

We’ve covered a lot of
arrests on the Indonesia

pan we covered a lot of crimes and we’ve
covered a lot of like what you would call

almost meaningless crimes or
petty crimes or things like that.

This is an interesting one
because this woman was arrested

for taking 160 free items
from a convenience store.

So she basically walked into a convenience
store there’s the self-serve coffee machine

so you usually go to the clerk and you buy
a cup you take that cup and then you would

go to the machine you fill up the coffee
and you take like your creamer you put that

in and pay some sugar whatever
you like you put it in there.

That all those sort of condiment
style things those are free.

She walked in she didn’t buy coffee she had
a backpack she just started taking those

things and filling up her backpack so sugar
and creamers and everything else the like

cup syrup stuff which is I guess
sugar but not sugar I don’t know

I don’t drink coffee so none
of this is really familiar to me.

The total cost of the
160 item stolen was 345

yen so we’re talking
about like three dollars

maybe total but and again it’s the moral is
kind of the issue do you just let this go.

So this clerk went
over and he’s like oh all

the creamers and
sugars and stuff are gone

but we haven’t sold
that much coffee so they

checked the video
camera and they’re like

oh there’s that woman
with a backpack she just

stole it all to be let
it go so they called

the police I don’t know
how enthusiastic they

were like yeah this
lady just stole a bunch

of free stuff that’s not
actually okay they went

and found her picked her
up and she got arrested.

Japanese politicians
are weird now normally I

talk about the old men
normally I talk about

the old men politicians
who say something

gross and when I read
the first half of this

story my mind was oh this is going to be
an older Japanese politician he’s going to

be like in the 70s he’s
really gross he’s out

of touch and then it
turns out it’s a woman

talking to another woman which really sort
of turned it the element so my expectations

were under mine which
is a good thing I guess

so I guess women can
just be just as weird

and creepy as men
which equality I suppose

on March 24th they had
a house of counselors

committee on education
we’re meeting and

they were trying to
how to calculate teachers

over time this is very
important teachers in

Japan do a lot of unpaid
overtime they have breaks

that are unpaid they
do like school activities

as sometimes unpaid and they’re like you
know these people are working fifty sixty

seventy hours a week
but they’re only getting

paid thirty forty hours that’s not right we
have to calculate overtime what counts as

work and not work is
it volunteer should we

expect people to
volunteer stuff it’s a very

important thing Japan
doesn’t have enough teachers

so you need to make
teaching more appealing

and paying them for all
their hours is probably

going to be step one
to making more appealing

counselor stood up said
made some statements

and was very angry and
then another one replied

with I can clearly
understand that committee

member Kita has gotten angry with a truly
beautiful face which is weird I mean it’s

just a weird thing to
say like what does that

have to do with the other bit and why are
you saying it and so again my first thought

was seventy year old
creepy man saying that

like a thirty year old
forty year old counselor

member is beautiful
in his old creepy way

trying to put her down
but trying to compliment

her at the same time because he’s socially
unaware not capable something like that not

turns out this is
essentially an equal and

then it the question
of why like the old men

saying it I can’t understand the group in
a different time they grew up when saying

gross stuff was acceptable they never grew
out of that they never understood the world

has changed but this
is not that this is like

someone who is an
equivalency saying this

is weird creepy thing to
them and then of course

there was a media
protest the the kita said

like hey what is my
face after do it why are

you talking about my
body is inappropriate

of course later there
was the very standard

apology it’s weird cuz
when you call someone

beautiful do you
retract the statement do

you like cuz that’s the
classic Japanese one

as I retract my statement
but I yeah you know

I retract my statement
she’s not beautiful

like what do I say it
that so it’s really weird

I was very standard apology like I shouldn’t
know said that it was inappropriate I’m

sorry for the stress I
caused blah blah blah

when asked about her
intent which is again

the only thing I wanted
answered the response

was there were there was not much intention
which again begs the question of if there

wasn’t much intention why
did you do it in the first place

it just does that head right resting
next to the microphone this guy okay

Podcaster Trading Cards

(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)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

Murder in Japan 4

(upbeat music)

Okay, so we did a previous
episode of Murder in Japan where

we talked about the girl who
essentially used her family.

She had full control over
her family and their situation.

And she basically forced her father to
drive her to a place where she found a guy,

got him to a love hotel,
killed him into Capitated him,

put his head into a suitcase
and brought him home.

The dad basically knew this happened.

So the mother and the father
are both on trial for murder.

Or at least connected to the murder.

I forget the word.

I just started this, complicit,
complicit in the murder.

But so the father was,
the psychology behind

this is actually the
biggest part of the story.

He helped her practice the murder.

So he let her tie him up and then sat there

and then she practiced splitting
his throat like she’d seen in movies.

She watched the terrifying and
then some other horror movies

to get sort of like where she
should cut or how she should do it.

And then she practiced with her dad

and then she got her dad to drive her to
the place where she knew this guy would be

and then got him to go
to a love hotel with her.

And then she murdered him.

So the question is, how
complicit is the father?

‘Cause he kind of knew
this was gonna happen.

And he said he actually was
praying that it wouldn’t happen.

But he did assist in
almost every aspect of it.

He was found guilty of
abandonment and mutilation

of a corpse, which
comes with a one year,

four month prison sentence that
has been suspended for four years.

So if he doesn’t do anything
wrong over the next four years,

he’s actually not gonna
get punished at all.

Now, I think his home life and everything,

there’s a lot of punishment
going on there anyways.

They were both, the mother and the father

were completely subservient
to the murderer in this case.

And it is absolutely terrifying.

But as these cases are finished, I
think it’s good to follow up to see

like how complicit they
were, how much trouble

do they get into, what
is the actual punishment?

It’s interesting to see those facts.

(upbeat music)

The second update was
for a story of two girls

who bullied another girl and basically, it’s
hard to tell whether they pushed her off

or bridge or she jumped,
but they forced her to do it.

Now, what happened
was this girl took a picture

of a group and one of
the bullies was in the group

and she said after that
was posted on social media,

said I didn’t give you permission
to post that on social media.

So I’m now gonna cause
you an immense amount

of terror and pain
over the next two days.

So her and her friends were bullying her,

torturing her, pushing her around,
beating her up, that kind of stuff.

And over the course of two days,

this accumulated with
them being on a bridge

out in the countryside
’cause they said like,

come out to this place, if you apologize,
we’ll stop and we’ll just let it all go.

So if she sees an opportunity
to get this to stop, she goes out.

They’re like, sit on
the edge of this bridge.

So climb up on the railing.

She’s sitting there and then she fell.

Now, it’s unclear as to whether she was
pushed or fell or just slipped or whatever.

But she was up there
because these two girls.

It seems like she was pushed.

So this is murder.

This is not attempted murder.

It’s not, the girls involved have basically
admitted that they pushed her off.

But there’s no actual
visible evidence of that.

The admission is pretty clear.

Prosecutors asked for 25
years in prison, the judge gave 23.

So bullying someone for
two days and then pushing

them off a bridge,
23-year prison sentence.

The girl is in her 20s.

She’s not gonna get out of
prison until she’s in her 40s.

The crime was extremely
cruel and malicious.

They showed no respect for the victim’s life
and integrity, which is absolutely true.

I mean, if you’re bullying someone for
two days and then push them off a bridge,

you’re not showing a lot
of respect for the person.

This is the more interesting
aspect of this case

is that the girl, she was only about 19
at a time, the bully, was 19 at the time,

and she was having a relationship
with a married police officer,

which cast a lot of aspersions as
to what was going on with this case.

It seems like that cop
tried to bury this case.

He was in a financial division of some sort

and he had this murder
case moved to their group

and then basically tried to suppress it.

So there’s a whole other aspect of this
case that was going on at the same time,

but at the end of the day, she got
caught, the other bully got caught.

She’s still on trial, so that
actually hasn’t been determined yet.

And the police officer has been fired,
but we don’t know he’s actually been

arrested or punished.

That’s the case, I actually,
I’m more interested in,

because this guy clearly was trying to
help this girl get away from with murder,

which actually would be a crime in itself.

I assume, but I don’t know
enough about Japanese law.

I gotta find a Japanese lawyer

who will just talk to
me for a couple of days,

so I can ask a whole bunch of questions,

because as we do these
stories over and over again,

I end up getting more and more sort of
detailed questions, but I’m on the lookout.

I don’t know how to find or track one down,
but if you, anyone knows a Japanese lawyer

who’ll be willing to talk
to you and introduce

Japan for like an hour,
every couple of months,

man, I would love to do that.

It does sound like the plot to a movie.

It actually sounds, it’s
one of those ones where

the movie, you’d be like,
well, that’s a bit much.

Like a lot of stuff in it, it’s like
almost like too much to be realistic.

So this is a story about a
murder that happened last week,

and the shocking element
more than anything

else, is that this woman
was live streaming,

her walk around the Yamanote line.

So there’s this very famous train line
in Tokyo that basically goes into loop.

People will ride it, get
off, take a little walk,

they’ll go to the next
station, they’ll write it for a bit.

It’s kind of a cool tourist thing to do.

A lot of Japanese people do it.

If you’re into trains, you
really know what this is.

It’s a very famous loop around Tokyo.

She was walking on one of the side streets.

There was no one else there.

She was streaming to about
6,000 people when a man came out

and started stabbing
her with a hunting knife.

He stabbed her for a full
minute up to 30 or 40 times.

Now, they always say
how many times they were

actually stabbed, but
it just shows the intent.

I think that more than anything else,

when they start talking
about like she was stabbed

30 times, it shows that
his intent was to kill her.

Because of course, when he was arrested,

he said I did not intend to kill her.

Because he doesn’t want
to be arrested for a murder,

he wants to be arrested for manslaughter,
which is a much lighter sentence.

When he was arrested and they asked
him, why did he murder this woman?

He said he had lent her
more than 2 million yen.

It seems like 2.5 million yen.

He had asked for it back and
she refused to give it to him.

So this was an act of revenge.

I saw the preview of a stream where
Sato went on foot around the Yamanote line.

So he said I saw her on stream.

I saw she was in Tokyo.

So what had actually happened
is she announced that tomorrow,

I’m going to go around the Yamanote line.

He was living in different
cities like tomorrow.

I’m going to go to Tokyo, find
one of those stations where she is

by watching her stream
hunter down and kill her.

When she was on the ground, a witness said
that he was aiming his phone at her face,

and they claim that he
said are you dead yet?

So this actually is
immediately counter to what

he said, what he
didn’t intend to kill her.

If he stabbed her that many times
and then the last words he said

to her corpse at this point
probably is are you dead yet?

Which I’m assuming the
stream was still running.

Because when she got
attacked, she dropped the phone.

It’s hard to say whether or not
they could actually still see it,

but they could certainly
hear what was going on.

And it seems like the last thing he
said to her was are you dead yet?

Then the police showed up very quickly.

He just put up his hands
and just immediately gave up

on immediately admitted
to being her attacker.

So because this is
such a high profile case,

we got the background of
the guys situation with her.

We got a lot of information
about the background of the victim,

and then we got sort of the
aftermath of what’s happening.

He saw her stream first in 2021.

So she was out streaming,
doing live streaming 2021.

In August 2022, he started
visiting bars where she worked.

So he had created that relationship.

So he’s like I’ve watched
this girl on stream.

He’s probably very attracted to her.

She was 18 at the time. He was in his 30s.

He was 38 and he said
I want to meet this girl.

I’ve watched her on stream.

I feel like I have a connection to her.

If I meet her in real life, you know
what was really going on in his head.

He’s like I actually already love her

and probably has convinced himself
that she actually already loves him.

He goes to the bars where she works.

Now she works at Cabaret bars.

She works at the kind
of bars where the girls

are paid to make you
think that they like you.

A Cabaret bar is where you go
and you sit down and you drink

and you buy drinks and you pay at thousands
and thousands of dollars for champagne.

And the more money you spend, the
more time you can spend with the girls.

So for the girls’ profits, she wants
you to stay there as long as possible.

So she wants you to fall in love with her.

This is the sort of weird
parasitic relationship

of the whole host club
Cabaret club system.

Where you’re manipulating
people to fall in love with you.

So they’ll give you money.

Now this goes back to last
year when I was obsessed

with the leading gen story
where she was scamming

guys online, trying to get
them to give her money.

This is to me only one step away.

Now I think because it’s a Cabaret
club, you should know going in

that the girls don’t actually like you.

They get money from like a
percentage of the money you spend.

So they’re trying to get you to
spend as much money as possible.

But he fogged by the love,

probably also fogged by the idea that
he’d spent so much time with her online

that he knew her that she
wouldn’t be treating him that way.

He’d convince himself to this.

She said she needed money.

She needed money for living expenses.

She needed, she has the
loans she had to work out.

She was having a lot of problems.

He took out two loans of a million
yen each and gave them to her.

So they found bank transfers and stuff.

She said she was going to go back.

She was going to pay you
back as soon as she could.

She’s also making claims
that she’s making tons

of money streaming,
which is probably not true.

There is a certain amount of
duplicity here on both sides.

Now I’m not going to imply that
she deserved to be killed because she

absolutely did not.
She probably deserved to be arrested.

She probably deserved to have her funds
taken away from her and given to the guy.

He sued her in 2023 and at
that time the judge said, yeah,

she should have to pay back the
2.5 million yen that she took from you.

You have proof of how
much money you’ve given her.

It’s all pretty clear she
should pay you back.

Then she disappears.

Now the problem with
disappearing and making

your primary source
of income or your life

streaming is that the
situation where you say,

“Tomorrow I’m going to go
around this yamanote line in Tokyo,”

means that the people who watch
you know where you’re going to be.

So you can’t really disappear
if you want to be a streamer.

That is falling in line
with a lot of the stuff

that’s actually happened
over the last two weeks

where really famous streamers
have had people break into their house.

They’ve been attacked on the street.

Live streaming seems to have
suddenly become more dangerous

because these, I think we’re
being honest, it’s primarily women,

attractive women.

These guys follow them online.

They’ve given money.

They feel like they have a connection.

They feel like you owe them something.

Then they start hunting
for you on the streets.

I don’t think any live
streamer who’s a female

should be going out without some
form of security, like someone with them.

They could stay off stream, but I think
they should actually have someone there.

But of course then you
can have to pay that guy.

And this woman, the victim here,
was clearly not good with money.

Now she does have a tragic backstory,
like there’s no good aspect of this.

She clearly did not
intend to pay the guy back.

People are terrible at
not doxing themselves.

That is true.

Like I know if you collected,
I never leave my house,

but I know if you went
through back all my podcasts

and all my streams
and all this other stuff,

you could figure out
probably exactly where I live.

Or at least you would know like the
city you would know this other stuff.

I mentioned to go a lot of times
because I don’t live in Nagoya,

but I bet you could
piece together a lot of

information about me if
you actually wanted to.

I’m lucky in that no one is interested
in a 50 year old man in that kind of way.

I’m not going to have to worry about
that sort of parasocial relationship.

She never intended to pay him back.

And so again, she deserves
to be punished for that.

But when you actually hear about
her life, there’s a lot of sympathy there.

The thing is, online, the
sympathy wavered back and forth.

This woman was killed.

She was murdered on the street.

I saw a vlogger show one shot
of the outside of their window.

And I immediately knew
which building in Chicago.

It’s the only window which is lucky.

And there’s usually just a judo suit there.

There’s a story way back in this guy.

Oh, wow, there was this guy who took a
picture from Instagram of some woman,

so I assume a woman
he found very attractive.

He found in the background some
stuff and then a reflection in her eye.

And with that information, he found
a way to triangulate where she was.

And that meant, since she was, you know,

the post was probably
like getting off work, going

home, that meant it was
close to where she lived.

That’s how she found out where she lived.

Essentially the reflection in her eye
is how she found out where she lived.

And when I read that
story, I was like, if you use

that power for good, he
could help so many people.

But of course, it’s just
all awful, selfish stuff.

The victim here had a pretty tough life.

I mean, that’s just, I think, fair to say.

The mother of the victim was an
alcoholic and she left the girl on her own

when she was a child
to take care of herself.

And we’re implying from when she was, like,
just two, three, four, five years old.

She was already on her own.

Her mom’s already an alcoholic.

She’s already trying to,
like, having a tough life.

She started working at a cabaret
as soon as she became an adult.

And that actually probably
means before she became an adult.

Before it was legal for her to
work there, she actually started

working in a cabaret, which
is where you start drinking.

So at a very young age, she starts
drinking a lot regularly with the customers

to keep them buying stuff
so that she makes money.

The mother would come into
the cabaret where she works,

drink all evening, and then say, my
daughter will pay for it and then left.

So her mother, even after her
daughter starts making money,

starts supporting herself, is already
created this situation where it’s like,

well, I’m going to put more on her
because she’s making money now.

Now we’re both kind of living
this sort of very tragic lifestyle.

She has a baby, but
she’s a really hard drinker.

And so she neglected her child and
then pretty much in the same way.

She would leave her
daughter in daycare and

go out drinking and
then not come back like,

staff at the cabaret, a place where
that is designed to abuse customers,

would say you need to go
get your kid, but she’s drunk.

So she would show up drunk to get her kid.

The state then eventually
took her child away from her.

This made her break down.

She then sort of does
a left turn and says like,

okay, I’m going to still
keep working at bars.

We’re going to start streaming
because streaming seems

like a good way for people
to be able to make money.

I’m assuming if she’s working at cabaret
clubs, she is conventionally attractive.

She’s attractive in some way.

That’s going to get you a
lot of traction on a stream.

She’s like, I’m going to put this together.

One of the things her friends said
about her was she was a hard worker.

So all these negatives you
can talk about, she was lying.

She lied to people.

She was now alcoholic.

She was willing to put in the work.

So that’s how she built up an audience
of 6,000 people watching her per stream.

The problem is because of the
sentiment of these crimes in the past,

like the these each,
where she was scamming

men, this seems like
she was in the same line.

She was just taking money from guys.

No intention of giving it back,
seeing it was perfectly acceptable.

If they give me the money, that’s fine.

That has actually created a
lot of online hate towards her

and a lot of sympathy for the guy
who actually committed the murder.

Now, the guy had
did a lot right against

giving her money was
probably not a good idea,

but then suing her to get it
back probably was the right idea.

Going through the legal
means to get your money back.

When she disappeared, I always run into
the problem of he was able to find her.

That means he could point the police
to her and actually catch her that way.

So instead of getting a knife
and going and hunting her down,

he should have called
the police and said, hey,

this person who owes me 2.5
million yen, I sued her for it in court.

She owes it to me.
She’s on the street right now.

I would like you to go get her.

And then like, I don’t
know, again, garnish her

ways, wages put
something on her, arrest her.

I don’t know something to push her
to pay me back before you jump to the,

I’m going to get a knife
and hunt her down myself.

Because he was able
to do it, he was able to

point the authorities
in the right direction.

And I think that’s where all
sympathy for him goes away.

Because of course, 2.5
million yen is a lot of money.

I’m sure he wasn’t rich.

He had to borrow money
to be able to give it to her.

He still don’t need to
kill someone for that.

So this was streamed live.

He said the reason he did the attack was so
that people would know about the situation,

so that people would know that she
was, she had stolen money from him.

But then as soon as he was arrested,

the first words out of his mouth
were, I did not intend to kill her.

So I am going to follow on this case.

Devil’s advocate, he told the
police and they wouldn’t actually.

Okay, if he had told the police, I think
that might have been because again,

I read 20 versions of
this story to make sure

I got all the little
subtleties back and forth

because I want to be
able to say what’s true.

And what’s true is going to be the
consistent throughs lines of all the stories.

I don’t know, no one
mentioned him calling the police.

So I think if he had done it,
one of the multitude of stories,

especially when they started
looking into his and her backgrounds,

like we got more background information
on this from Tokyo reporter and on the

the same Japan than any
other murder you’ll actually read.

Like now that this is
kind of what I do on my

day off is just collect
stories and read stories.

I know how much
information I’m usually going

to get and it’s usually
not very much because I

want all the information so that it’s
because that’s the more interesting part.

Like how did we end up in this situation?

Because the first story
is just guy comes out of

nowhere and kills woman
while she’s live streaming.

Then you find out they
had a history and then

you find out that she
was manipulating him,

then you find out that
like he had this idea

that they had a relationship
that did not exist.

Then your attitude goes
back and forth, but then I

never want to just end up
with a conclusion of who’s

right and wrong because there’s
still probably information I don’t know.

The internet being the
internet, all these like

in the cell guys are
taking this anti-female

stance and saying like she
manipulated him, she deserved it.

There’s guys jumping on
the memorials that were

put down like the flowers
where she was murdered.

There’s some people have put out memorials.

There’s guys like kicking
it over and jumping on

and stuff just being as
awful as they possibly can.

Because they have this
negative view towards

women because of the whole in-cell
community is just decided to band together.

She’s not completely innocent but
she did not deserve what happened.

But the guy absolutely
could have taken steps

because she was streaming because it
was right there out in front of everybody.

It was not too hard to find where she was.

She said, “I’m going to be
going around the Yamanote line.”

He could have called the police and said,
“Hey, this person owes me 2.5 million yen.

He’s going around the
Yamanote line tomorrow.

Could you please pick her up and
try to get someone money back?

” And that would have been a way better
resolution than what actually happened.

Basically, I’m just going
to keep following the story.

So in six months or another
year because of course,

justice system views
very slow in every country.

I will come up with follow-up, just like
I did at the beginning of this episode,

where it was the
follow-ups to the father of

the woman who committed
the murder in Hokkaido.

And the two bullies, one
has been convicted and

the other one is still
the trial is ongoing.

I’ll follow-up with those
as often as I can and

keep this series going
because this is essentially

an extra episode, an
extra series, murder in

Japan, where we just
go through the facts.

I don’t want to make
too many strong opinions,

but the interesting part
for me is how this system

works and how much
information you don’t get

before people form a
judgment and then how

more information changes
your opinion back and forth.

But I still think we
can always end up with,

we shouldn’t really
be committing murder.

[MUSIC]

Diamonding my Banana

(upbeat music)

So I didn’t have an episode last week.

It took last week off.

Life just sort of happened.

It was nothing of a particular, it
was just a bunch of little things.

And then I realized I’m just not
organized enough to put on an episode.

So today’s episode
might be a little longer.

A lot of people in the past
have told me that the 20, 30

minute mark is actually to the
sweet spot for a news podcast.

Because they get a bunch of news stories.

It’s the length of their commute,

their train ride, or their
drive into work or something.

So it seems like a lot of people
listen to this stuff on the train.

This one’s gonna be longer
’cause it’s got eight stories.

I usually cap out around six.

Just a restaurant, closed for two days,

after 33 customers became
ill due to food poisoning.

That’s pretty bad.

Five of the seven employees
tested positive for notovirus.

Now, I’ve heard notovirus.

I thought it was a flu.

So maybe it is a flu.

And they got their flu
particles all over the food.

And that made all the people sick.

But I feel like they wouldn’t
call it food poisoning then.

So maybe it’s notovirus and food poisoning

like salmonella or
ill-prepared food or something.

Clearly there’s a cleanliness issue here.

That I think maybe is the
underscore of either point

like whether it was
notovirus or food poisoning.

This is a dirty, dirty place
and you do not wanna eat there.

That would be my feeling.

If I’ve heard that a restaurant had 33
people get sick, I might not go there to eat.

I’m just being really honest.

So they shut down for three days.

And the government’s like scrub your stuff.

Clean everything, get these dirty, dirty
employees out and let them get better.

And then you can reopen.

They reopen three days later.

23 people get sick from
food poisoning immediately.

11 had notovirus.

So I should have, this is
one of those things where

I was like, I meant to
look up what notovirus is.

Clearly it’s something
that’s spread through touch.

The staff who were sick
before either they got better

and pass it on to
other staff or just they

didn’t get better and
came back and kept working.

I would actually put money on.

This is not in the story.

I would put money on
the people who had the

notovirus were the
ones actually cleaning.

So they would clean something,
touch it immediately afterwards.

And there you have your
new blossom of notovirus.

So when they reopened the restaurant, it
was just there germinating, waiting to go.

And oh my God, please be
careful when you go to eat.

(upbeat music)

First in Japan, the birth
rate is a constant new story

because it’s a thing that needs to be
fixed because they don’t know how to fix.

And there’s now been
some really weird stuff

that I’ve experienced
in my own personal life.

But we’ll get the story out first.

Burst in 2024, 729,880.

That is down 37%, the 37%,
that is down 37,643 from 2023.

So that’s a 5% drop in
one year, that’s really bad.

We’re looking at less than 700,000
babies in 2025 if this trend continues.

So there might be something that happens.

Maybe I get out and they’re in the world.

And I have, oh God, I was in a pharmacy.

And they had a drink for men to
become vigorous called diamond banana.

I really wanted to buy it.

Just to see primarily what it tastes like.

I wasn’t planning on having
any sexual escapades that day.

So I was a little torn ’cause
A, it was stupid expensive.

It was like 3,000 yen, it was like 25, $30.

B, I’m assuming it’s just a placebo,
but if it works, would I just be

turgid for the entire day
with no release schedule?

That’s maybe the issue I was running into.

I did look at the ingredients list.

It had soup on, which is soft shell turtle.

It had cobra extract.

And I don’t know if that’s the
venom or the blood of the cobra.

It had scorpion.

It had skeleton.

So I’m assuming seal bones ground up

and put in it or maybe some
shark or something like that.

And I was like, I bet those are all like

traditional Chinese remedies
for the male issue at hand.

But I bet it’s also a placebo.

So my thinking, what
these actually drinks are.

So this I actually think Ninja Ninja Japan

might be expanding its
product line into a drink.

And you put in a whole bunch
of just stuff that sounds manly.

Like when you say it has cobra venom in it

or cobra extract or shark fin muscle
bone, you’re like, oh, man, that’s manly.

And you put that in my body.

And I get more manly as a result.

This is a placebo.

But you want the placebo
to have an indicator at work.

So I was actually betting like these things

have a ton of caffeine
or a ton of nicotine.

So you drink it and then 10 minutes
later, you’re like, oh, I feel good.

I feel ready to go.

And then you’re like,
that drink is working.

It is diamond in my banana.

And now I am diamond banana.

And then that placebo
effect is exacerbated by that.

So it’s just like increased tenfold
because you do feel something.

And you’re like, this is working.

Now mentally, I think it is working.

Therefore, it works.

And I think that might be the
secret to these energy drinks.

And I have read a placebo study.

And it said the more expensive
the pain killer, the better it works.

But it doesn’t– like it could
have the exact same stuff in it.

It could just be like 600
milligrams of acetaminophen.

Cost like the no name brand
is going to be like 1,000 yen.

Let’s say that.

And then the acetaminophen,
buffering, dx, extra

fast, powerful, you
know, that’s 2,000 yen.

It works twice as fast.

The exact same contents doesn’t matter

because your brain’s like if it costs
more money, then it must be more effective.

And it does work that way because
that’s how placebo is working.

People talk about like, oh,
it’s just a placebo effect.

I’m like, if it works,
like if I feel less pain

faster, I’m willing to
pay the extra money.

Like, I don’t care if it’s real or placebo.

If diamond banana works because it’s
all in my head, because maybe that’s it.

Maybe the problem I’m having is in my head,

like when Spider-Man
couldn’t shoot his webs.

Maybe I just need to believe– and
this is the catalyst that makes me believe.

Now, it would be expensive
to drink that on a regular basis,

but I’m at a age where
that’s not a problem anymore.

I am totally off the baby
train, just what I should be on.

Ishiva, the current Prime
Minister, he made comments.

That was a wicked tangent.

His comments was, there
are less opportunities

for women to meet and get
married, which I actually agree with.

This is one of the few times
I’ve agreed with prime ministers

on the baby issue, because
usually they’re saying,

can we find a government mandated
solution to the baby issue and the answers?

No.

Because you can’t
make people do this stuff.

You need them to want to do it.

The way they want to do it is
if they have free time to meet

and fall in love and form a relationship,
they need to have enough money to live.

Those are the two fundamentals
for people making babies.

I’m not going to get into
any of the other subtleties.

You need to have enough money to survive.

You need enough time to actually
make and take care of a baby.

So you need a massive shift in
just the work culture in Japan.

Then went on to say, the
government shouldn’t interfere

with people’s values,
which again, I agree with.

The government shouldn’t be
telling people how to live their lives.

So that’s a good attitude.

But then he said, can the government
create opportunities to meet?

And I actually think, you
know, that’s not a terrible thing.

They’ve had like
government-sponsored dating parties.

I don’t know how successful they were.

They never sounded to
be particularly successful.

They had one where they
were like ladies from the city.

You could come meet like basically farmers.

That might be a good thing.

Again, I don’t know
how successful that was.

I don’t know how attractive it is going
from Tokyo living in the countryside.

But what he’s basically
suggesting we bring back Omiyai.

Now, when you say arranged marriage,

you think like Game of Thrones,
I’m going to take my daughter.

And then I will choose a
guy and they’ll get married.

They’ll have no saying it.

Omiyai is not quite the same.

It’s arranged marriage, but
through like a marriage broker.

So like, let’s say I want to get married.

I go to this person.

They have like a catalog.

And we go through the
catalog and we have attributes.

And we have a discussion.

Then we meet.

And then we decide if we like each other.

Now, we both know
we’re looking for marriage.

That’s the whole point
of the Omiyai system.

So at least that’s all on the table.

I actually know a couple of people I’ve
met whose parents met through Omiyai.

And they actually say they’re really happy.

And this was a really good way to meet.

So there’s clearly, I don’t
know, cultural elements

or opinions or things
like that will come into it.

But it does seem that overall
a good Omiyai is very good.

I’m assuming, again, we
don’t have stats on it.

But Ishiba thinks this
might be the one one way

to step forward is like,
look, people aren’t meeting.

Here’s an organized way
to get people to meet.

Maybe we should be encouraging
that as opposed to Tinder,

which I think maybe people’s
attitudes on Tinder might be different.

The marriage rates is lower
among temporary workers.

So either we need to raise rates for those
workers or just let them quit their jobs.

Make a situation where someone gets
paid enough that they can quit their jobs.

But in a slight amount of good news,

this is the second year in a
row that marriages have gone up.

It’s gone 2.2% up since last year.

That is attributed primarily to COVID.

So people weren’t out and
meeting and being able to do stuff.

So they weren’t hanging out.

They weren’t getting married.

Or they were like, let’s defer our marriage

until after the pandemic
has kind of finished.

We had a new group of
people join our company.

And one of them actually
brought up the breeding visa now.

We were in a professional environment.

So they didn’t say that.

Yeah, they went like, yeah, and now they
got those visas for young, single people.

And I was like, oh, that’s not a thing.

So this is internet information.

It’s really interesting because the idea

that they’re going to bring in young people
to hook up and breed and make babies.

And then I assume, since
they’re not really like staying,

they would just be
abandoning those children.

So they become like state
sponsored children or something.

Like that plan doesn’t
sound very thought out.

It’s also the exact opposite of
what Japanese people would want.

Japanese people don’t want a ton of foreigners
coming over and making foreign babies.

Because they will always
hold on to that core idea

that these are not pure,
true Japanese babies.

Like I, as a foreign person,
have talked to a class of students.

And they’ve been like, oh,
yeah, we don’t want that.

And I was like, you realize
you’re saying to me, a foreigner,

who’s come to Japan and had two kids in
Japan that this is not the solution you want.

Like that is not the way it should go.

But they’re thinking of
just Japan not being Japan

anymore, which is not
really the way countries work.

But you’re also not going
to change anybody’s mind.

That said, in April 2023, an oral
abortion pill was approved in Japan.

Now, this is very new.

And you can think
2025, they’re now just

getting plan B, which
is basically what this is.

It was, this is the difference now.

They actually had it before,
but now it’s over the counter.

You don’t need to go to a, I guess you’d

do a prescription or a
pharmacist or something.

This was just talking
about, it’s been introduced.

It’s easier to get.

And now you can use
it, Japan, when I arrived

in 2001, had essentially
this abortion cabal.

And it’s a very weird thing to think about.

But there was an abortion industry,

and they charged huge
amounts of money for abortions.

So they didn’t want
safer, faster things brought

in, because they would
lose all the money.

So these abortion
doctors were telling the

government that abortion
pills were not safe,

so that they wouldn’t come
in and cut into their profits.

And then it was, you can
get the abortion pill, but

you have to go visit the
doctor so he gets his cut.

Then it was kind of okay,

’cause then the doctor was
still making some money off this.

Now this is taking it a notch.

It’s making it more accessible.

So I’m assuming you just have to go to
the pharmacy and talk to a pharmacist.

The last year it was used
1,440 times, as opposed to the

120,000 abortions that were
performed in Japan last year.

It’s good up to nine weeks,
and it’s safer than surgeries.

This is one of the big problems
is, if you have multiple surgeries,

it might actually impact
your ability to have a baby

down the line, whereas this
is a much safer alternative.

Last year, abortions rose
for the first time in 22 years.

I don’t know what that says about
the culture or country or anything.

You’ll have to interpret that
information your own way.

(upbeat music)

A Japanese company is
selling optical lattice clocks.

They are, what are they?

That’s actually the interest.

I only found this story interesting,
’cause I really like watches and stuff,

and I found that all the young people who
come to Japan now, they don’t have watches.

And it makes perfect sense.

You have a phone, the phone
tells you the time, it’s your alarm.

It does everything you needed to do.

Why would you buy a watch?

Watch is now, would just
be a fashion accessory.

But I grew up thinking watches
were cool, so I like watches.

You can actually see one
on my desk just over there.

I found it interesting that they’re making
this incredibly expensive accurate clock.

This will be accurate.

It will lose less than one
second over 10 billion years.

Which, actually my immediate thought
was like how long do the parts last?

Like the parts aren’t
gonna last 10 billion years.

So I don’t think that’s true.

I think something in the
machine is going to give after the

first million years and then it’s
gonna lose accuracy and time.

I guess you would be able
to maintain it or something.

It looks like a mini fridge.

And it is 109 centimeters tall.

They, their plan is to sell 10 units
over three years at 500 million yen a unit.

So they want to make $3.3 million off this.

And it’s like what is the purpose

of a mini fridge that tells
time to that level of accuracy?

Well, this is designed for
monitoring the movement

of the Earth’s crust
and like volcanic activity.

So we’re talking like you
set up this clock somewhere.

I guess you check where
your tectonic plate is.

And then you can see how long, how far
it shifts over a certain amount of time.

And then you can extrapolate where
that tectonic plate is actually going.

It seems like this is measuring
time on a cosmic scale kind of thing.

Like we’re not gonna be
around to see the results

of these experiments
or whatever, but they are

or someone else is whoever inherits
the clock that costs five million yen.

I won’t be getting one because I
actually do prefer just a wristwatch.

(upbeat music)

Mr.
Pan has a lot of like collectible culture.

One of my first experience
of this was my son

when he was little wanted to go to
like all the stations on a certain route.

And then you would get off on the station,

you had a piece of
paper, like a little booklet.

And then you could get
a stamp at that station

and he could prove you
had done the whole route.

And if you did the whole route,
you got a special stamp at the end.

This is not an uncommon thing.

Manhole covers in Japan in
certain cities are quite artistic.

So like they have, I
remember they’ve done some

anime ones and they’ve
got a lot of attention.

They’ve done some like
ones for the city or the style.

So they have a lot of
stylized manhole covers.

These people would go and
take pictures of, no problem.

These got so popular that
they started making trading cards

with pictures of the manhole cover or
maybe just the manhole covers art on them.

And then you can basically get
them from different municipalities.

So you would go to a town
and I guess go to the city hall

and say I would like a
manhole cover card, please.

I don’t know, the story that I was
reading didn’t tell you how to get them.

That actually was a bit I
was very interested about.

But you’re gonna have to go to
the town, find the place, get the card.

The card is free.

But because it’s a
collectible, there are a limited

amount of different cards or
maybe some are harder to get.

The government saying
we want to promote local

attractions and awareness
of sewer infrastructure.

And I was like, okay, the first part I get,

we want to like, oh, this is
where this one piece cartoon

where the artist was born
or this is where it’s based

or something like that,
that makes perfect sense.

But are you really raising
awareness of sewer infrastructure?

I think they just care
about the cards and the

pretty pictures and stuff
of the castle and whatnot.

I don’t think people are
looking at the card going,

man, the intricate maze that
sits beneath me when I poop.

That is a thing of wonder that
I should appreciate more often.

Although I just did it now.

So I guess it did kind of work.

It’s supposed to be one person.

So like I show up at the
city hall downtown, let’s

say in my town and I say,
can I have the sewer card?

And they’re like, hey, yeah, thanks, buddy.

Here’s your sewer card.

Now I’m not supposed to
be able to get another one.

I would collect them all, to be honest.

I wouldn’t.

I just wouldn’t be
willing to put the effort in.

That’s really the issue.

It’s not that I’m opposed
to collecting stuff.

I just have no interest in
going to a place to get them.

I bet if I went with
you, like if we went

together, if I went with
friends, I would enjoy it.

But just by myself, no, I’ve never
been that into collecting, I guess.

But they found that some
people are disguising themselves

so they can get multiple copies of a
single card and then sell them online.

So then I go outside into
my car, take off my hat,

shave my beard, go back
in, hey, I’m a new guy.

Can I have the card?

I get another card.

Then I put on a different jacket,
a wig or something like that.

And I come in, I try to
get multiple cards that way.

We do, of course, then have how
much these cards are worth online.

The Osaka Castle Manhole
Cover Card is worth 6,100 years.

There is a 10 card set for Mount Fuji.

So I would bet you have
to go around Mount Fuji,

go to different places
you can collect 10 cards.

That set of 10 cards is 88,000 yen online.

The Okazaki Castle is
selling for 100,000 yen.

That’s like 700 bucks with the
current exchange as it is right now.

For a single card with Okazaki Castle.

So they didn’t explain why
the Okazaki Castle’s card is

so much rarer, so much more
expensive than anything else.

Well, this is, Jay’s point is
actually perfect accurate.

You are, this is robbery, this
is scandalous because these

are supposed to be free for
people who put in the effort.

They just don’t want to have people sit at
home and just order them off the internet

and get them because then you didn’t
go to the place, you didn’t do the thing.

You didn’t see the town that
you’re supposed to be promoting.

This is scalping and scalping
has become a real issue.

Everything that is collectible is
getting scalped and then these now,

municipal governments are
like, what do we do about it?

Well, the excessive reselling
is going to end the campaign.

So the governments are now so angry
that they’re selling this stuff online.

I don’t know if they’re angry that they’re
selling online or they’re selling online

and they’re not getting
a cut of the action.

But anyways, I actually think
this is a little arch-ultruist.

They’re like saying, oh,
we’re trying to give this out

for free and then people are
taking them, making a profit.

That’s not really right
in the right spirit of it.

We’re going to shut down the campaigns.

But then I thought, oh, what’s actually
going to happen is that’s going to increase

the value because now
you can’t get them anymore.

So if you have that Okazaki Castle card
that is worth 100,000 yen, when they end the

campaigns altogether,
I bet that doubles are

triples in price and now
I might go scalps stuff.

Ah, there’s been a lot
of streamer stories lately.

The streamer story
that actually I was a little

aware of doesn’t really
apply to Japan anymore

is that Johnny Somali
is on trial in Korea.

So he came to Japan,
did a lot of dumb stuff here.

He got arrested, held
him for like a month or

something, then they
let him go and I think

basically he’s not allowed
back in the country.

His visa’s been marked or
his passport has been marked.

Other people and then he went to Israel and
then he went to Korea and now he’s caused

so much trouble in Korea that they’re
actually talking about prison times.

So he’s been charged and found
guilty on two or three charges.

They’re doing one or two more,
but these are all cumulative.

So now he’s essentially a repeat offender
and they’re looking for real jail time.

I’m very interested
in how that plays out,

just unfortunately does
not fit into the format

of Ninja News, Japan
and what we do here.

But there are other
streamers and other streamers

have been like, hey, Johnny Somali
built up an audience by being an asshole.

I can be an asshole, I might
even be really good asshole.

There’s a guy, Ice Poseidon and Action
Man, they have been going around Japan.

They’re not doing the same
degree of offensive stuff there.

Like there was one
where they were purposely

smoking cigarettes
on a non-smoking car.

They are right now going
around some islands so they’re

going on the ferry and they
were denied entry of the ferry.

Now their sort of way of doing
stuff is they just almost like Trump.

They just immediately start
denying any of the stuff that you’ve

actually seen them do because
they’re streaming everything.

So they’ll go somewhere, behave badly, get
called out for it and go, I didn’t do that.

That wasn’t me.

And that’s if that was some
sort of convincing argument.

This Coast Guard guy wasn’t having it.

See, he spoke English and
that’s already already the first one.

So they go, they’re going
to get on a second ferry.

So they’ve already
caused problems on the

first ferry probably and
filmed it and streamed to live.

And the Coast Guard
guy comes out and he says,

unfortunately, even
though you’ve already

bought this ferry ticket,
you cannot get on the ferry

today because the ferry
owner has decided and refused.

So that’s it.

This is like the guy who owns the
ferry, he doesn’t want you on his boat.

So you’re not getting on his boat.

They turn around and go, why?

Like as if this is an
unreasonable thing, he

says, because they
acknowledge you have already

done a lot of troublesome
activities in Japan.

So basically, we’ve seen the
way you’re behaving in Japan.

We’ve seen the stuff you’re doing.

We don’t want that nonsense on our boat.

So you’re not allowed on our boat.

The group then denies
they’ve done anything wrong.

So of course, even
though they’ve live

streamed, and these
guys obviously have picked

up on the live stream
somehow, like maybe

someone has said, hey,
these guys are traveling

on your ferries, maybe
check this internet stuff out,

the record of them
behaving like dickheads online.

They’ve seen it because the guy said,
like, we’ve seen that you’ve done this.

We don’t want any part of it.

The Coast Guard, so they say,
oh, we haven’t done anything.

He says, many people have watched.

So he’s like, it’s not like you’re being
convincing by saying we didn’t do it.

You’ve broadcasted it on the internet.

So people have seen you do it.

So this denial means nothing.

Then one of them goes, he got lied to.

It’s fake.

I’m going to start with
this whole fake news thing.

He’s really infected the language.

I think I’ve never heard the
word fake as much as I do now.

And then says, wouldn’t we be
in jail if we did something wrong?

Now, there’s doing something wrong
and then there’s committing a crime.

Now, they might brush up against each other,
but there’s not always the same thing.

You’re not going to get arrested and put
in jail for smoking in a non-smoking car.

You’re going to get told not to do it.

Maybe you’ll get kicked off the
ferry or the train or whatever.

But the Coast Guard dude’s not buying
it and he just doesn’t let them board.

He’s not having the argument.

And I think that’s
always the thing is the

streamers want you to
have the arguments so they

can use their sort of circular logic to get
you stuck in a loop where hopefully they’ll

just be like, eventually
he’ll give up where

this guy’s just like, look, I said, no,
I don’t care what you have to say.

I’ve seen you do it.

The answer’s no, you’re done.

The interpreter then tries to talk to
them and get them to let them on board.

Because again, this
interpreter, he might not

be one of the news
and streamers, which is

how they’re referred to in Japanese,
but he is getting paid by them.

So he wants them to keep going and making
their content so he can keep getting paid.

He tries to talk to
the Coast Guard guy in

Japanese and then he
comes back and he says, they

said because of things on YouTube and
whatnot, we’re not going to win this battle.

So they’re like,
because we’ve seen what

you’re doing, because
we’ve seen clips of how

you’re behaving in Japan,
you’re not allowed on

our ferry and you’re
not going to win because

it’s again, the company, the management
company can decide to refuse to serve you.

I’m think what we’re seeing now is a
shift in the culture in Japan towards these

news and see Johnnie
Somalis is the one who

set it off, like you’re always
people who doing dick moves.

I don’t know.

One of the Paul’s Jake
Paul Logan Paul, he

went to that, that
forest and found the dead

body and thought it
was a really good idea to

stand next to it and film and make
like light heart of jokes and stuff.

He was just being a dick.

Johnnie Somalis, I’m
actually betting saw

that and saw like I can do
that and took it to the next level.

These guys aren’t behaving that badly, but
they are trying to hit that sort of peak

of just getting as much
trouble as they can

without getting arrested, which actually
might be where his argument came from.

If we were really doing a bad thing, we
would have been arrested by now, right?

When that’s not actually the case, like
you can misbehave and not get arrested.

So they’re trying to
push the borders, but

then Japan is a culture
is now just being like,

no, we don’t want this
in culture in our country.

We don’t want this associated with us.

We don’t want people to
come here and do this thing.

And I think that might be the next step is
either just people start acting back, like

you behave badly and then people, the
citizenry at large to start like pushing back.

And then like this
Coast Guard guys is like,

no, you’re not allowed
to travel with us

anymore and it’ll make
harder for them to move

around or this being Japan, I
actually bet they legislate it.

I bet they do like a
nuisance live streaming

act of some sort where
it now becomes illegal

to stream with showing
other people’s faces

in the background, it’s
going to be something

superstitious, it’s not going to be
like, you’re not allowed to live stream.

It’s like you’re not
allowed to live stream

and you have to get permission
from everyone to actually do it.

Japan needs to just do
what Korea did to Somali.

I agree.

I actually wish they’d put him in prison.

I wish he had gotten actual jail talk.

Just beat their ass whenever you see them.

Open season.

You’re talking about the people in Japan.

There was that like the Korean
version of the Navy seal who

like went up and decked them
and then they started calling.

The best part was they started calling the
Korean internet netizens, started calling

Johnny Somali a golden golem, which is like
someone, you kill that enemy in a game and

you drop a lot of loot
because they were

like, if you beat up
Johnny Somali, all these

people are going to
donate money to you.

So that guy got arrested for
punching Johnny Somali in the face.

The day, the next
day, like people on the

internet put him up into like five star
hotel and paid for all his food and stuff.

So I think the world is pushing back, so
it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

These guys have all pulled
it down a little bit because

I think they don’t want
to lose access to Japan.

Japan is one of these
like four nerdy people.

Japan is one of those
like dream destinations

and they know if they can come
back to Japan and film stuff here.

It’s always going to
get an audience whereas

if they get kicked
out of the country and

they can’t come back in, they’re
going to lose that sort of avenue.

Japanese couple visited
the Great Wall of China.

It’s very nice thing to do.

Go to China and visit the Great Wall.

I actually would like to go there.

I haven’t been there yet.

So that’s something I
would actually like to do.

They decided the best memory of this situation
would be for the man to pull down his

pants and his female
companion to take a picture

of his buttocks, generally
referred to as the moon.

Man, Japan could just
pull the, we don’t need

to tell you why we
arrested you for a while.

They held Johnny Somali for the 20 whatever
days and you’re not Japan’s rule is that

you can hold someone for
24 days before they’re charged.

So basically, I don’t
know if weekends can’t.

So that might just be a full
month and they did that to him.

So they held him.

Korea’s got a very interesting
thing where he’s not allowed

to leave the country but
he’s also not allowed to work.

So he has to like
basically burn through any

savings he has and then become
poor as the trials drag on and on and on.

So they’re actually just
like burning his money in

a weird way as he has
to just sit in the country.

Because I read multiple
stories, some said

record the picture, some said
take a picture, some said video.

So I’m not sure if they did a
video of the guys butt or if they

just took a picture of the guys
butt and I never saw a picture.

So I don’t know how
good this guy’s butt is.

So maybe he has a great
butt, maybe it was worth

like the same level as
the Great Wall of China.

Like if you’re going
to go to the Great Wall

of China, you’re
going to take a picture

and you’d be like, my man’s butt is
as good as the Great Wall of China.

I think both of them in the
same picture, chef’s kiss.

I think that’s what it should be.

Unfortunately, there was a cop
nearby and they were immediately

arrested for public indecency
and disturbing the peace.

They were held for two weeks.

This actually shows like my, so I do
again, all my information comes from media.

So I have very
significant biases that are

incorrect because like
my belief in the violence

in America comes from
American media, my

understanding of America as
a country comes from media.

They talk about
violence and I know the

reality is media makes
it seem like violence is

going up where the reality
is violence is going down.

We just had some people I
talked to some Americans.

I talked to I’ve just met
and they were saying

where they’re from
and once from Alabama

and I was like the only thing I know about
Alabama as a state is racism because all

my information about
Alabama comes from

movies and the only time
someone makes a movie

about Alabama is when they
want to tell a racist story.

Now I’m betting it’s
not as racist as I think

it is, but there’s still
a lot of racism there.

I’m not making those
movies, but you can see

like there’s a fine
balance between reality

and opinion and I have
to be aware of my biases.

My bias about China
in this instance would

be they’re just going to give
you the maximum sentence.

So in this case they didn’t, they’re like,
okay, you’re a young couple, you’re being

dumb, you mooned on
the Great Wall of China,

they held them for two
weeks and like probably

pressure them a lot but
they didn’t end up charging

when they’re like, please go
back to Japan and they did.

They claimed they were just doing it
as a prank and I do tend to believe that.

I think if you were
going to do like an

anti-Chinese protest or
a sentiment or something

like that, you wouldn’t just
moon on the Great Wall of China.

That seems like a very
in the moment thought.

It doesn’t seem like they sat
down or like, let’s really teach

China a lesson and show my
butt on the Great Wall of China.

So I actually believe this because yeah,
it doesn’t seem like a political statement.

Of course, China’s
anger Chinese citizens

anger towards Japan and that sort of
resentment that goes back and forth.

They were like, they should come
back and have to apologize publicly.

They should be arrested.

They should find, I mean it’s the internet.

So of course it went
off the rails really

quick about how much
punishment they deserve.

I think being held for
two weeks would be scary

enough that you would,
that’s enough punishment.

That’s basically all I want to say.

Mooning in the wrong
place, getting held

for two weeks and
then getting released, I’m

thinking that’s actually
more than enough.

Director of a nursery
school, so this is

someone who is dedicated
their life to taking care of children.

You know the fact that I’m
doing this story last and I’ve

changed sort of the tone of
my voice means it’s extra gross.

But also you can tell by the flippancy of
my voice that it’s not, you know, that bad.

This director of the
nursery school wanted to

scare the children into
doing what he wanted.

So that’s already like,
ah, not the nurturing

techniques I would employ if I
was a director of a nursery school.

I think I’m going to say
that was some confidence.

If I was director of
a nursery school, I

don’t think I would use fear as a
tool to get these kids to do what I said.

I would maybe, I mean you want
to have that in your, in your pocket.

I can scare the kids
what I need to, but overall

the methodology should be positive
reinforcement, encouragement.

Like, hey, let’s try to work together.

Let’s try to be better people.

The nursery school, my kids went to,
actually my son, I remember picking him up.

It was connected to a
Buddhist temple and so

they did some meditation
and stuff and they

were trying to get
these kids to be like,

they weren’t pushing
them into the religion.

They were like, hey,
maybe sitting and calming

down and thinking for
a minute’s good for you.

So let’s try that.

And they tried it.

They didn’t force it on the kids.

Like if the kids like
got rest of the stuff,

they’re like, okay, you’re clearly
not in the enlightened mood today.

Let’s just remove you and so
the other kids can give it a shot.

It was cool.

If I’m being really honest,
because they didn’t

push a religious
aspect on it in any real

way, they talked about
it, but they were never

like, you need to join or
you need to pay money.

There were a lot of like cool
things like that that happened.

This guy’s philosophy
obviously is very different.

Now, my thought was, if I
was, okay, let’s say I’ve gotten

to this point where I’m
like, I need to scare the kids.

I think my size, I’m a big six foot
200 pound guy, I might use that.

I might use a really loud voice, scare the
kids with how angry I can get, not actually

do anything, probably
not even be as angry

as I’m presenting, but put on a
bit of a show to scare the kids.

If you’re going to go
way off the rails, dress

up and come in and
scare the kids and dress

like a devil or a zombie or
something, really freak them out.

I think that’s way
too much, but the

psychological harm there
might be minimized by the

fact that it’s not really
no one actually gets hurt.

This guy decided, and I wish
I’d organized a quiz for this week.

I’ve been very disorganized.

That’s why I didn’t do
an episode last week.

I’m having a not rough time,
but it’s just a lot of stuff going on.

He decided to scare
the kid by peeing in his

water bottle, filling the boy’s
water bottle with urine, okay.

So let’s be really honest.

That’s not scary.

It’s just gross.

Like the kid, if they
get the water bottle,

doesn’t know there’s
pee in the water bottle.

If they drink it, they
go, this is disgusting.

I would hope they don’t think it’s pee.

They just like, this is gross.

I’m not going to drink this unless you peed
into the water bottle and then just looked

at them and went, hey, I just peed
into water bottle isn’t that scary.

So this guy’s methods
of discipline and

control don’t seem to mesh
with what his actual goal was.

So I think he’s not
trying to scare the kids.

I think he’s not trying to do
the thing he’s saying doing.

I think he’s just free who likes to pee
and stuff and be really means little kids.

He was arrested.

It’s difficult.

What do you arrest him for?

He was arrested for
destruction of property

because now the bottle
is considered unusable.

Of course, that story
got out and he lost his job.

He lost a lot more than just whatever the
fine would be for destruction of property.

But he, thankfully, he will not be
working in childcare anytime soon.

[MUSIC]

Unconsensual Podcast

(upbeat music) New theme song.

I’m drowning in theme songs.

This is so awesome.

This one was by Nigel Grover.

I will link to his sort of profile
somewhere in the show notes or whatever

so that you can check
out his music if you want.

Since I have two theme
songs for the show now,

I’m thinking of alternating
month to month or something.

I don’t really have a plan.

It was just like off I
have two and I like two.

I might as well use both.

There’s no reason to limit myself.

It would give sort of a sense of, oh,
it’s this month or that month or whatever.

But you didn’t come here for that.

We have a couple of
updates on previous

stories, which I always
really am happy about.

The updates on old stories.

We had the Tokyo election
story when it came to the poster.

So in Japan, it’s not like North America.

It’s not like other
countries where you go on

TV and it’s millions
and millions of dollars.

Basically a politician in Japan
is allowed to put up a poster.

Of course, they can put up
posters and multiple places.

The posters that are allowed
to put up are designated though.

So they basically put up a
little sign and has squares on it.

And on those squares, you can
put your political campaign poster.

Last year in the Tokyo election,

a couple of people decided,
hey, let’s abuse the system.

So the NHK party, which is
basically just the troll party

of Japan said, we’re gonna
rent out some of our space

to people who have, let’s
say non-relevant talking points.

There was someone who
posted their own Instagram.

There was someone who just said
like, I need friends and I’m lonely.

There’s someone who
posted picture of their dog,

which is ironic because if you watch
the video for an engineer’s Japan,

you will notice the portrait
of my dog up in the top.

Left corner, I don’t know
which way it actually shows up

in the video and now that
I’m staring at my screen,

but knowing it might
flip my brain just broke.

The irony of that statement, but to see,
I have not decided to take this picture

of my dog Dave and put
it on a political platform.

It’s a great portrait.

Thank you, it is a great portrait.

I am very happy with it.

And today you’re getting the Dave
sleeping under the picture of Dave.

So it’s just that whole
universe I’m building behind me.

We have the judo suit
hanging up here drying out.

There was a adult professional
who added her image.

It was slightly censored, but just so.

That seemed inappropriate.

That actually seemed to be
on the kick it off, the most.

And it turns out you can just buy this
space and put up your non-political message.

And they’re like, this is
kind of abusing the system

of the political portraiture
posters in Japan.

So they’ve decided to set
standards, regulate the posters,

which actually I’m
surprised Japan hadn’t done

already, but I guess
at this, to this point,

they hadn’t actually had anyone
try to abuse the system yet.

So now someone’s abused the system.

I’ve actually found this is Japan is
very good at being reactive in its own way.

They have a problem,
they react to the problem.

So we had gun controls very tight in Japan.

And then for about three
months, maybe four years ago,

there was a whole bunch of
crossbow attempted murders.

I don’t remember if anyone got killed, but
people were shooting crossbows each other.

Crossbows are now
illegal, knives are illegal.

They just just like, oh, you did that?

We don’t like it, illegal.

So now they’re like, you
want to put like not porn,

but almost nude women
up on political posters.

Now we’re going to regulate it.

The new rule is you must
have your name on the poster.

Now that actually seems
like a very small thing.

It actually seems like
you would do that anyways.

But if you put your name on the poster,

it means you’re not going to
be able to just like slap a poster

that has random stuff on
it and then be able to hide

from the fallout of the
poster that you created.

If you abuse the poster system,
you can be fined up to 1 million yen.

And if you promote a product, you
can also be fined up to 1 million yen.

The NHK party let their donors
post anything they wanted.

And that’s probably
where this is coming from,

because basically any poster that
goes up in the name of the NHK party,

where they’re going to have
the actual name on the poster,

they will be fined a million
yen for each infraction.

(upbeat music)

Not really a direct update, but last
week’s story about a man who got scammed

be because he had been
served a warrant by the police.

That was not a real warrant.

It was a scam and the
police were like send us money

to this bank account to prove
that you are who you say you are.

And we will drop the warrant.

He said like there’s a warrant in
your mailbox right now, he went

out to his mailbox and there
was a very official looking form

that looks like a warrant
sitting there, freaked him out.

And he started paying money to these
people who he thought were the police.

Cost him, I forget how much money.

But of course, scams that hit the news
are always millions and millions of yen.

And it’s terrible because they’re
just taking advantage of this poor guy.

Who doesn’t really understand the system?

Well, Japan is going to digitize search and
arrest warrants to speed up the process.

So basically right now,
they have to go to a judge,

get a piece of paper, get
the judge to physically sign

the piece of paper, go back, and
then they can execute the warrant.

Now this, again, is information
that people need to know.

Because the concern for
me is the digital warrant

means these scammer guys can just
start sending it out to anyone they want.

They can send it out to whoever
with the claim that this is a real warrant.

So once they get a look at
what these warrants actually

look like, yeah, I think
what’s going to happen

is once people
actually start finding out

that warrants are
digitized, these scam guys

are going to start sending out
more because it’s a lot easier

than taking a physical piece of paper and
putting someone’s mailbox is a lot of box.

Taking a piece of paper and putting it
in someone’s mailbox is a lot more work.

Although I would actually
say a lot more convincing.

If you sent me a digital
warrant from my arrest

saying I had to pay money, I
think I would probably ignore it

and I bet is a very good chance it goes
direct to spam so I never actually see it.

If I went outside and there
was an actual piece of paper

in my mailbox, I would be actually
more likely to take that seriously.

So maybe the scammers
will be continued doing

like, oh, people actually
like check their mail.

These are the people we want to abuse.

These are the old people who don’t know
that arrest warrants have been digitized.

This is all just to make it for
more efficient for the police.

I’m just seeing like connecting to
last week’s story to this week’s story.

It seems like there is the
potential for an exploitation

there and I’m just waiting
to see if that comes about.

They are also going to allow
evidence to be digitized as well.

So basically you don’t
need the physical evidence.

The picture of the evidence is
going to be fine in many cases.

This is probably mostly talking
about documents and whatnot.

(upbeat music)

South Korean police and Seoul have
asked Japanese woman to turn herself in.

After forcibly kissing gin from
BTS, this happened on March 1st.

Now there was a bunch of
stories and the as I looked

for more details, the title
of the story changed slightly

but then the actual content
seems to be exactly the same.

This is a woman in her 50s.

She went to Seoul, South Korea.

So K-pop stars are very popular.

This guy, Jin, had done his
mandatory military service

that is necessary if
you’re South Korean man.

So he got out and then he rejoins
BTS and they decided to do an event.

It’s like a welcome back event
and then this is called for 1,000 fans.

I don’t know if they were
chosen or they had to pay money.

I’m assuming they had to pay a
lot of money but it is a hug event.

And I was like, already, I
don’t know who to blame here.

I don’t fully accept
who is fully responsible.

Because you’re putting these women who are
honestly just horny as hell for these men

in a situation where
they’re allowed to hug them

and you’re getting
angry that she kissed him.

Now the forcible kiss is not
acceptable but I can see how it happened.

Maybe that’s what I want to say.

So what happened is they
were having this hug event.

So I don’t know how it’s set up.

I don’t know how it works in Japan.

They have a lot of hand-shaked hands.

Hugging 1,000 people sounds
like a terrible time for the people.

I think engaging with a thousand
strangers is already off putting enough.

Japan has hand-shake events and these are
already, I already think these are gross.

So basically you have usually
the like team pop star groups,

the idle groups and they line
up and then fans can pay money

or they have to have bought
so many CDs and then they get

tickets or whatever and they go
up and they’re allowed to shake

the girl’s hand and often say something
to them and then they move along.

99% of these guys are fine.

Again, we’re talking
about thousands of people.

So a small percentage out of a thousand
people is still a big group of people.

Imagine how chapped your hands would be.

Well, the problem is a
story and this is an old story.

This is like a decade old was it was AKB48

and these girls are like
honestly like 14, 15 years old.

This guy walks up and he shakes her hand

and he says I masturbated
to you this morning

using this hand as
they were shaking hands.

And I remember the picture of the girl.

She was disgusted and as a
father, I would have freaked out

and this is why like when my
daughter showed any interest

in like, oh, I want to
be in like the magazines

or I want to do a pop
group or whatever.

I was just like, no, absolutely not.

And it seems very restrictive and
awful but it was just me being protective

because I understand the desire
to go out and do entertainment.

I mean, I do this podcast.

I understand the desire to go out
and like share things with the world.

Like I get it, but also I
understand that for a young woman

in entertainment, everyone
around you is a leech.

Like the fans are, the producers are.

I’m just thinking everybody’s gross.

We had that thing last year with Johnny’s

where we found out
like for the last 30

years, they’ve been
abusing all the boy bands.

Like for me, it is just a rampant
aspect of pop culture in Japan

and I’m assuming other
Asian countries as well.

I mean, I’m assuming there’s forms
of abuse across all forms of media.

It’s usually I would say financial
but clearly in Japan is sexual.

So, but that was a huge tangent just ’cause
it’s something I actually remembered.

So you have this event.

This guy, he’s done his
two years military service.

So these fans are desperate and they’re
the ones who are willing to pay money

or do whatever they need to do to
become one of those chosen 1,000

and they get to go up and I assume say
something to the guy and then hug him.

Now I don’t know what
the rules are on the hug.

I actually tried to look it up
because I bet there were rules.

I bet there was like no grab and ass.

There was no like cupping heads.

There was no like
leaning and kind of stuff.

I’m gonna guess, this is not factual,

but I’m gonna guess you
were allowed to like put

your head on his chest and
he put his arms around you

and you were probably
supposed to keep your arms down.

Like I’m gonna guess that
was something like that.

Maybe not that exactly, but I’m
betting there were rules in place like that

to make sure that the women didn’t
get too excited about touching this guy.

Who is a dream come
true as far as their concern?

So this woman, she’s
in her 50s, she’s hugging

this guy, he’s in his
30s, she kisses his neck.

So her face, I’m gonna
go, that’s just again,

assumption, height wise,
she’s around neck level,

she just leaned in and
just gave him a little kiss.

I don’t know how hard it
was or how gross it was,

but the reason this came
to light is they took pictures

of his face immediately
after he had his neck kissed

unconcentrally,
non-concentrally, non-concentrally.

So he had been kissed on
the neck non-concentrally

by this woman and
then he made a face

and that face made rounds on the internet
in Korea and it became kind of a meme.

I was trying to find the
picture, but I think it’s in Korean

and I’m not able to suss
out enough to actually,

I bet I should just
try a little harder.

Maybe by the time I actually
published this, I’ll have a chance.

Now in Korea,
something I learned very

recently was Johnny
Somali being over in Korea.

You don’t actually necessarily file
complaints with the police on your own behalf.

Other people can do that for you.

So people were filing complaints on
behalf of others for Johnny Somali.

So this is something that can happen.

If I see a crime, I can go and
file a complaint amongst the crime.

So because this was a
picture that was put on the

internet and everyone saw
it, people started sending

in complaints to the police that this
woman sexually assaulted this man.

Friends of BTS filed complaints
via a government petition site.

So I don’t think they even
had to go to the police.

They just saw a picture on the internet,
swap browser windows, maybe made a new tab,

went to this other thing and
started lodging complaints.

So a thousand or a couple
thousand of them later,

the police are like, okay, let’s put out a
request for this woman to turn herself in.

She has not turned herself in,
but they did find out who she is.

She has a blog and on her blog, she wrote,

“My lips touched his
neck, his skin was very soft.

” So I’m waiting to see now
because they have her name.

If she’s returned to Japan, she’s
already gone through immigration,

but if she actually tries
to go back to Korea,

because obviously a big
BTS fan, big fan of Korea and

wants to go do these things,
she’s not going to be able to,

because she’s not going
to be able to get through

customs, because she’ll
get arrested in customs.

So it’ll be really interesting
to see if she a turns herself in,

admits her mistake or gives
into the charges that have been

laid out in front of her, or if
she just tries to hide away,

but then that denies herself the
opportunity to see BTS again in Korea.

I’m most interested to see
if this woman turns herself in,

or tries to pay the
price for what she’s done.

Three teens, so a
15-year-old, a 16-year-old and a

14-year-old, they’re all
from different prefecture.

So I was like, first, how do
these kids know each other?

Like, how do three teenagers from
different prefectures know each other?

And I realized, of course, it’s
internet gaming of some sort.

Well, it’s actually kind
of worse than that.

It was online gambling is how
these three kids met each other.

And of course, gambling is
essentially illegal in Japan.

So what kind of online gambling,
they’re not actually clear about.

But the fact that these
teens are doing online gambling

shows they’re already
sort of a criminal bent,

or they’re naughty boys,
they’re trying to do bad things.

They met through online gambling,
and between May and August last year,

used a program to try and log
in to Rakuten mobile phone lines.

Accounts. So basically Rakuten is just
one of the big mobile carriers in Japan.

And they had paid for 3.2
billion login account numbers.

So they had just on a big
database on one of their computers,

and they basically
tried to force their way

in and every account
that they could get into,

they could take over account
or try to resell that account.

They used chat TBT to
help write a program to make

their brute force login
process more effective.

So this is, you got now, kids, teens who
are using AI to help them commit crimes.

And I mean, these guys are young,

which means they haven’t even
developed their skills yet, really.

But I mean, who am I talking about?
Like 15, 16, 17 year olds.

Those are the ones who are
really good with computers.

They’re the best ones with computers.

It seems like one kid
was the mastermind and

the other two were kind
of the computer guys.

One kid, the main, the ringleader was like,
I did this to get clout on social media.

I wanted people on social
media to know that I had got

X amount of phone numbers and lines and
accounts, and I was selling to other people.

So this was for internet fame.

The other two kids.

15 year olds are trashed with computers.

Depends on the kids though.

I actually understand what you’re saying.

Because the average kid isn’t
learning programming and stuff.

They’re just in taking like a TikTok.

So they know how to use
TikTok interface really well.

So if I don’t know how to do
something on let’s say a TikTok program,

I asked my kids and they
just find it instinctually.

They know how interfaces
work slightly better than I do.

But yeah, if you’re talking
about actual programming,

the average kid is garbage because
they’re not actually engaging with it.

They don’t have to figure anything
out because all that’s done for them.

But the kid who is into it, he’s
amazing at it, which is a bit freaky.

So I agree with what
you’re saying to a degree.

Interesting development
in my job because I meet

a lot of sort of younger
people who are just

out of university and
they come to Japan.

And I’ve realized, and it’s not, I
don’t think it’s a criticism of them.

None of them have watches anymore
because they all use their phone.

And it’s just, I was like, of course,
why would you have watches now?

Because you ask them,
do you have a watch

because they need to
use a watch when they’re

like keeping time and whatnot because we
don’t want people using their cell phones

because it looks like you’re waiting
for a phone call or it’s kind of rude.

It has sort of like a negative feeling
for the average Japanese person.

If you want people using
their cell phones as a timepiece.

But the average person,
younger person, let’s

say in their mid 20s,
has never had a watch.

And it’s never going to have a
watch unless you force them to.

And I was like, ah, of course not, which
is a little freaky, but, and then I’m old.

And of course, having said
that, I am a bit of a watch fan.

I have about seven or eight watches.

This is the one my most
recent one that I wear the most.

It’s an analog watch.

It has complications
and all that other stuff.

But they’ll borrow
my watch the one I’m

wearing for whatever they’re doing
so they can, you know, do their work.

And then they just look at it and you
can tell they can’t tell what time it is.

Like they don’t know
what they’re looking at.

And then because mine are always
so complicated with multiple dials.

Like this one has the three
dials that has a second hand.

It has a timer and stuff like that.

They have no idea what they’re looking at.

And it’s just too many things on the watch.

But I actually like all the complications.

I like all that extra stuff to make
the watches more appealing to me.

It’s a nice watch.

That’s actually, it is a very nice watch.

Thank you.

It’s the T-So C-Star.

And the reason I like it, it’s
got the Pepsi sort of style dial,

which is actually a Rolex thing, but
it’s just how people refer to it now.

It has, it’s a mechanical watch.

So, you know, it does the
move it around and it’ll, it’ll wind.

But it has a 72 hour power save.

So it means if I don’t
wear this for the weekend,

it still runs, so you don’t
have to wear it every single day.

That to me was the big selling feature.

But anyways, back to these kids.

They made 7.5 million
yen in crypto selling these,

these, uh, phone lines,
these phone accounts.

The 15 year old said he wanted
to gain attention in social media.

And the other two said they wanted money.

We’ve done multiple stories
about how prisoners are treated.

We had a guy who was being
held by the police hadn’t been

fully arrested yet, but he
was being held in Japan again.

They can hold you for up to a
month without actually charging you.

And this guy’s lawyer gave him
a t-shirt and the teacher said,

“I am not answering
any questions.

” And the police took that t-shirt
away saying it was dangerous.

And then the lawyers like, look,
the words are not dangerous.

I just wanted to really remind my client
that he was just answering your questions.

And there was a lot
of back and forth there.

People being held by the police
in Japan are not treated well.

Now, you could take a very hard line
and say, well, they’re suspected criminals.

Why would we treat them well?

But this is the case where they’re supposed
to be innocent until proven guilty.

So you should treat them
with a certain amount of respect.

Maybe you have the idea
that prison is punishment.

Then yes, absolutely go
ape-shit on them when

they’re in prison because
they’ve been proven guilty.

I don’t necessarily believe that.

I personally think there is
still the big question of prison

being rehabilitation and/or
punishment because it can’t be both.

But that’s a whole other thing.

I can tell you that in
Japan, prison is punishment.

It’s not designed to rehabilitate you.

It’s not designed to make you better.

It is punishment.

Prison, they don’t use heaters.

They don’t use cooler.

So the summer’s hot
and the winter’s freezing.

My understanding is they don’t
give you enough food and stuff.

It sounds like going to jail in
Japan is a pretty awful thing.

They’ve had another problem.

They had a guy and he was in prison.

So he has been proven guilty.

He is in prison and he asked
his friend to bring him some books.

These were tattoo
designs in a coloring book.

And what he wanted to
do was just look at the

designs because he was very interested in
design and images before he was arrested.

They don’t actually say
what he was arrested for.

He had it taken away and the police took
this coloring book away because they said

the desire to look at
these designs promoted

anti-social behavior
because criminals in Japan

have tattoos and if you
admire the tattoos then

you will learn to admire
the criminals and that

is anti-social behavior and
we don’t want that in our prison.

But viewing original
designs of tattoos which

symbolize anti-social groups could
foster admiration for such organizations.

The tattoo book he was looking at had birds
and unicorns and was very fashion-oriented.

So there is the yakuza tattoo.

The yakuza tattoo, the
cliche one would be a big

dragon or a big demon on your back
covers your whole back that whole thing.

There is a style of tattoo that
is connected with the yakuza.

I’ve played a lot of the
yakuza video games and

everyone has a unique and
very beautiful tattoo in it.

They always rip
off their shirt in an

impossible way which
I’ve always really enjoyed.

But they always rip off
their shirt so you can see the

big tattoo it’s a big reveal
what tattoo they have.

A gold koi?

Yes, that’s one of the main character.

Kiritu’s friends actually had a koi.

I think it was in Qwami
but I want to get into that.

I’m going to get into which
character has what tattoo in that game.

But there are set of cliches but
there is certainly a style connected to it.

I can guarantee at
this point that there has

never been a yakuza who
came out with a unicorn’s

tattoo which honestly I
think would be awesome

if you got a unicorn
tattoo in the style of the

yakuza tattoos like coming out of a big
wave a big unicorn would be awesome.

But again birds tattoos
these are no normal things.

They are ripping their
shirts because it’s always

a button down that
gets thrown to the right.

I know it’s too much I love it.

Sometimes they rip off their entire jacket
and shirt and stuff all at the same time.

I just think they’re so
strong that they just

rip off everything that’s on their body
because they’re awesome men and I love them.

The point is these were not yakuza tattoos.

These were fashion oriented tattoos and
his desire was to study this while he was

in prison and then no no
it is not breakaway clothes.

They are so physically strong their
hands are so powerful they just rip it off.

If I can’t do it right now with my
jacket because I am not that strong.

I am not the yakuza
video game level strong.

I refuse to accept what you’ve just said.

They are ripping clothes that
were made by tailors yesterday.

This other tangent I’ve
always wanted to do this.

I think I saw the thing
on this on the internet.

I’ve always wanted to
wear a suit and then go and

do some wrestling and fighting
and see how the suit holds up.

I do an MMA match with
a suit on because you

know you see John Wick
and stuff and they have

their magic suits that
are bulletproof and stuff

but how would a suit
actually hold up in a real

fight is a very interesting
question and so like

an MMA fight where
people are actually wearing

normal clothes and fighting
to see how the clothes

hold up not necessarily
the winner loser or

the fight would be really interesting to
me but now we’ve gotten off on a tangent.

This is this guy.

A well tailored suit
would hold up pretty well.

Stop it you’re going
to kill me because I

really want to talk about that
as well but I go to the podcast.

A t-shirt would rip.

It depends on the quality t-shirt.

I have a t-shirt.

Fuck you.

I have a t-shirt in my closet
that is like double thickness.

I actually don’t think I could rip it.

I think a normal t-shirt I actually
physically am strong enough to rip.

I know like Hulk Hogan you know
big fan of everything he’s ever done.

He pre-rips it so he
can pull it off because the

collar is the hard part
so you have to cut the

collar a bit but I have
a t-shirt and I didn’t

know it was industrial
strength when I got it but

anyways the coloring book he
bought was not yakuza tattoos.

It was fashion, stylish,
different styles, different

pictures so that he
could get sort of a broad

range so that he when
he was released from

prison his goal was to
become a tattoo artist.

He thought oh here’s something
that I’m interested in design art.

I could do this.

I could do art on bodies.

It would be really cool.

He has no intent to
actually like support

these organizations
that they’re talking about.

So this is another case
where the police will

just saw something
they don’t like tattoos so

they’ve decided to like extrapolate from
the tattoos something of their own morality

and now they’re saying
like this is maybe a

human right violation
because you’re basically

denying this guy the
ability to study to do

something to improve
himself once he leaves prison.

Two people go to a
ramen shop great they go to

a very top rated ramen
shop that’s even better.

They apparently didn’t
have a great experience and

I think it was one of
those things where if you

go to a top rated ramen
shop your expectations

are much higher so if it doesn’t meet
your expectations that it’s going to you’re

going to give like a
particularly low score.

So since you have
these high expectations if

you don’t have the
awesome experience that you

expect you’re going to
give it a really low score.

The owner of the ramen
restaurant saw the reviews

and seems to have had a
very interesting reaction.

He went to social media
and he said I saw your

post and you seem a bit
weird. So that’s already

like not a great way to
start your counter argument

to the people who have
given you a bad review.

We try not to treat people like
you as customers so it’s fine.

So he’s saying like I don’t
care if you don’t come back your

piece of shit anyways but you
should probably avoid eating out.

Someday someone
like you will get screwed.

I don’t care. Just come
correct. Just come directly.

I’ll deal with you. So
that’s a veiled thread.

Now he hasn’t said I’m going
to beat you up or anything

but he’s already implying
like if you come back

to my restaurant I
personally am going to take

care of you in the sort
of the traditional take

you out kind of way. But
then he continues to make

it really clear. We run a
planned business so if you

get in our way we’ll get
in the way of yours too.

He’s like you cause me trouble.
I’m going to cause you trouble.

The only thing he
can do is come back

he continued and he said like
basically I want to kill this guy.

The only thing he can do is come back eat
again and write a good review with a photo.

So he’s saying like if
you want to make up for

this if you don’t want
me to track you down and

kill you you need to come
back you need to come

back give a good review
take a picture add that

to your review and then maybe I’ll for
you but otherwise I will not forgive you.

Not even for the safety of his
family. If he does that he’ll be

killed right away. This
kid is so scared he’ll

really do it so he’d better
just come back and eat.

So this is he’s kind
of flip flopping back and

forth and what he wants.
He’s basically saying

don’t go out to eat. I
don’t care you’re about

your opinion but at the
same time you should

come back eat the food again
and give us a really good review.

I’ll kill you but I’m
not going to kill you.

I’ll forgive you but
I won’t forgive you.

The guy clearly
has just lost it.

The owner asked social
media users to give him

any information they had
on the two men who left

negative reviews offering
them 100,000 yen if

they had useful knowledge
for their whereabouts.

I’m pretty sure
everything the owner of the

restaurant just said is
illegal. I don’t think you’re

allowed to threaten
people’s lives.

I’m pretty sure that we’ve
actually done that story before.

I’m pretty sure you’re
not allowed to offer money

to track people down.
I think that’s going to

be some form of harassment
or stalking or something like that.

I think maybe just
maybe the owner of

this restaurant has made a bit of a
mistake and maybe crossed some lines.

So now we have our last
story of the day and our

last story of the day is of
course an older gentleman

doing something absolutely
insane because that’s

apparently what older
gentleman do in Japan.

A man 61 so he’s passed our 50 year old
threshold for crazy behavior so he’s really

I guess maybe
just a late bloomer.

He decided it would be a
really good idea to throw

burning paper through
the window of an apartment

building so he had two
things of papery set on

fire and he threw
them into an apartment.

It says through a window
which I have to assume was

open but it’s also winter
time so I’m a little torn on that.

I was trying to find more information
to see like when this actually happened.

I know it was June 9th.
I actually did find when it

happened because I do
sort of do my job sometimes.

June 9th 2024 he walked
by a house in apartment

building and he threw
two burning papers so I’m

assuming balldups set
on fire. They didn’t get

into specifics of that and
threw them into the house.

So I’m going to guess
that the window was open.

I don’t actually know
that for sure but they

say through the window
the only way that would

really work was there
was no it’s actually weird

that there was no like
mesh on the window to keep

bugs out but maybe
he broke that first.

There’s a lot of scant details
to the first part of the story.

What we do know is
he threw burning stuff

into an apartment building.
Would you be surprised

that he ended up
accidently setting the entire

apartment building on fire.
Nine units were destroyed.

A 48 year old woman on
the second floor actually

died as a result of
oxygen asphyxiation.

He set the fire because he
had feelings for a female resident.

Now his plan was
he was going to set

the fire and then rescue
the female resident that he

was attracted to. But he
set the fire and then the

fire got into hand really
fast and he says the

fire was bigger than I
anticipated and I couldn’t

handle it so he ran
away. There are so many

problems with this but
to me the biggest one with

his plan not with like
again committing these

kind of crimes and arson
and whatnot and actually

killing someone is that the
woman he wanted to save

was not even home. So
his plan was based on I’m

going to set a fire and
then when this woman is

in trouble I’m going to
save this woman and then

she’s going to see me as a
hero and then fall in love with me.

He didn’t take the time to check if
she was home first before he set the fire.

So now he’s being arrested
for arson and murder

and I just got to wonder how he got to this
point in his life where he thought this

was actually going to work out.

Warrant Scam

(upbeat music)

Survey was done about work.

A lot of surveys about
work, a lot of people work.

Pretty much everybody works, socks.

Only the most interesting part
of the current work situation

is the change in attitude,
specifically in Japan.

Japan is known as a very
hard working work culture.

They work the long hours.

You have to stay later than your boss.

There’s a lot of rules and stuff
that go with working in Japan.

This is changing.

And I’ve said that there’s
going to be really big

changes in Japan over
the next two generations.

Because the generation that’s coming up
now that’s going to be replacing the bosses

and replacing the politicians and stuff,
they have a wildly different attitude.

And the generation that
follows them that sees that there

can be change, I think is
going to make massive changes.

Currently, only 20% of workers
say they want to become managers.

So 20% of people in a company who just work
like office, staff, different positions,

most of them, 80% don’t
want to become managers.

They don’t want that responsibility.

They don’t want to move up in the company.

They want to do this because
they think it’s more important

to maintain a good home work life
balance as in prioritizing the home part.

The quality of their
personal life is now just

more important than
their actual work life.

They were working to
live and not living to work,

which is the exact opposite of the
post-war Japanese attitude towards work.

It was about work work work.

And this is we’re going to rebuild Japan.

They rebuilt Japan.

They had the bubble.

They had the 80s when Japan was super rich.

And everyone was throwing money around

and they thought, oh,
this is going to last forever.

It didn’t.

Then they went into a recession.

There were sessions
been like 30, 40 years now.

And they’re slowly clawing their way out,

but they’re also not because Japan’s not
state competitive, declining birth rate.

All these other issues
come into play later.

But right now, what younger
people and people who are not

in managerial positions
are prioritizing is

themselves, which is a very
interesting shift in Japan.

They did find that management
style drastically impacted

whether or not people
wanted to become managers.

So if, of course, everyone
prefers if your manager is

trying to create a positive
team working team building

atmosphere, they’re trying to
make it a good place to work.

They’re trying to make you happy.

They’re trying to make
work a good place to be,

which is exactly what
these people are saying.

Like I’m working.

It’s not the most important thing in
my life, but I’ll do it because I have to.

But if I can work in a place
that’s nice, I’ll be extra happy.

That’s even better.

We did the story it was
last week about the company

that let you take mornings off if you
were hung over and let you drink at work.

And like basically like we
pay minimum wage, we pay shit.

And we have almost zero turnover
because people love working here.

So money has become less the priority

and more I want to happy
life has become a much

bigger priority for the
average Japanese person.

That story from last week about the company

that pays really low
wages and lets you drink

at work is a unique
entity in the world.

But this, most people don’t
want to become managers.

They don’t have that
sort of ambition anymore.

That shows a whole mental shift of
most of the people who live in Japan.

If you have a good boss though, so the 20%
who did say they want to become managers,

a lot of them said the reason
they wanted to become a managers

because they had a good boss
and that boss treated them well

and they would like to
then move up into that

position and maybe do
that for someone else.

(upbeat music)

Man’s in a food court.

He’s having lunch of course with his lunch.

I’m gonna go ahead and assume
this is an old Japanese man.

Just from the next
sentence, he was smoking.

So Japan like most countries
are making most areas smoke-free.

If you’re in a big city, if
you’re in a company or

something, there’s basically
no smoking areas left.

When I came to Japan, smoking
was still pretty common on the streets.

It’s now a lot of streets
are actually making it.

Like you can be fine for
smoking on the streets.

A lot of buildings had a
smoking room or a smoking area

that was enclosed and
man, they were disgusting.

They’re getting used less and less.

So smoking is becoming less common,

which again, this is why I think
this might be an older dude.

Of course, because he’s
in a mall, public place,

no smoking, staff walk up to him
and say, “Hey, please, don’t smoke.

“Could you put
out your cigarette?

” That kind of thing.

He decides the most appropriate
response to that request.

Very reasonable request
is this is where I do a quiz.

If I had done any sort of
prep, which I have not done,

February’s been a shambles for me.

I was gonna be just put
that out there right now.

Maybe I should put a personal
report at the end of the episode.

So if you actually want
to know about my life

and complain to whatnot,
you could listen to after the

end song, but I’m trying
to keep it out of the show.

It’s just weird ’cause it rolls
around in my head as I’m talking.

It’s actually easier to get it out
than to just pretend it’s not there.

But you know, pretending it’s not
there is how men deal with problems.

So let’s just keep doing that.

Staff ask him to stop.

So he pulls out a gun
and points it to the staff.

Now, here’s a question.

Guns are pretty hard to come by in Japan.

That is true.

This gentleman had a gun-shaped lighter.

So he thought, ah, I have a thing
that looks like a gun on my pocket.

He pulls out a gun and points it to the
staff and tells them to leave him alone.

The staff then sort of
does leave him alone.

They certainly do leave.

They of course immediately
go and call the police.

Having a gun pointed at you in
Japan is gonna be particularly weird

because you’ve probably
never seen a gun before.

Like I’ve seen in Japan guns on the
holsters of police officers on occasion.

Like most cops don’t actually carry guns.

Some of them do.

So it’s an unusual thing to see.

This, of course, then led to the police
showing up and he was arrested immediately.

He did do the smart thing in remain silent.

So if we’re gonna give
our criminal advice section,

he followed the advice that had
been given in previous episodes.

He did not talk to the police.

He just stayed silent and
it turns out he was drunk.

There have been a spate of heists,

crimes involving food.

I know there was an egg heist in America.

I actually wanna look into that.

There was the really famous
maple syrup heist in Canada.

Like a tanker truck of
maple syrup was taken away

and disappeared, probably
just taken into Vermont

and then sold as Vermont
maple syrup, that kind of stuff.

There was a high egg
heist recently and I wanted

to look into that story
but have been very busy.

In Japan, this is not a heist per se
but it kind of fell into the same thing.

Like food now is becoming
a valuable commodity

and people are stealing or committing
crimes based around food more often.

Three people were arrested
because they had 240 million

yen’s worth of Wagyu beef bound for
Cambodia that they rerouted to Hong Kong.

So that is 30 tons of frozen
beef that was supposed

to go to Cambodia is what
they wrote on all the forms.

When it got out to see,
they took a left turn.

Let’s see if we put down my left turn.

Maybe I’ll do like a 380.

I immediately actually started
looking at a map of my brain

and to see which way you
would actually have to turn

if you were heading towards Cambodia
and then turned to go to Hong Kong.

30 tons of frozen beef sent
that they put on the forms

was gonna go to Cambodia,
they rerouted it to Hong Kong.

Why did they do this?

Because the inspections
for beef going to Cambodia

are lower and more lenient
than those going to Hong Kong.

So they could save money on inspections
and send them meat to Hong Kong.

So this was essentially
going to be not only

Wagyu beef, it was going
to be a legal Wagyu beef,

which I would actually
guess is particularly delicious.

And that got me into the
sort of the scam frame of mind.

So I really, I found this
one very interesting.

We’ve actually mentioned this before in a
previous episode, the arrest warrant scam.

There are a lot of scams
targeting older people in Japan

using technology and stuff that
they don’t understand they’re

not comfortable with and this
causes them a lot of trouble

because it’s harder to see a
scam if it comes from a source

and you don’t know it well
enough to know it’s a scam.

I mean, that’s how what they do.

They prey on people who don’t know stuff.

So this is one that has come to
the forefront in the last little while.

It used to be, they have
the Japanese famous

for it was Ore Sagi,
Sagi, Sagi, Ore Ore Sagi.

I forget what it is.

Ore is me and Sagi is like, I’m
in trouble, help me kind of thing.

But the ideas they would
call up and just call up random

numbers and go, oh my
God, I’m in trouble, I need help.

Can you help me?

And they might throw in a
grandma or a grandpa in there

if a man or woman
answers that kind of thing.

And then there’s older person thinks

that their grandchild is in
trouble and needs money.

They would go direct to the ATM
and transfer money, that kind of thing.

Hoping that they set them into such a panic

that they start behaving
and acting on defensive

their grandchildren without
actually thinking it through.

So that was a scam.

I heard about it, man.

It was going on for years.

This is a new version
of that where you’re in

trouble and you need to
pay money to get out of it.

So that’s already the first thing.

If you are being approached
by someone and they’re saying,

you have to pay money
to get out of trouble.

That’s actually never how you get out
of trouble when it comes to legal systems.

You never give someone
money and make it go away.

You always have to go through a
process and then like a finance issued

and then a ticket is
issued or that kind of thing.

If you have an arrest
warrant, which is what this is,

this is the arrest warrant scam, you don’t
just pay the money and make it go away.

You have to go to court.

You have to talk to the police.

You have to go to the police
station and that kind of thing.

So this guy gets a call.

He’s about 70 years old and on
the phone, he says, I’m a police officer

and your phone number
has been used in a crime.

We’re going to suspend
its use in two hours.

Now, actually the first step
would be to wait two hours

and see if they actually
suspend its service.

If they don’t, these people’s clearly
don’t have the power they say they are.

But they are trying to put you into
a position where you start to panic.

He thought, oh, maybe my phone
number was part of a data breach

or something like that
and online scam and they’ve

taken my phone number
and they’ve used it in a crime.

And so now he’s starting to
feel like, oh man, maybe I will be

implicated in this even though
I haven’t done anything wrong.

Then they tell him an account
was opened in your name

in the Bank of Columbia in
Canada, which is not a real bank.

And you have received
10% from money laundering,

which makes you an
accomplice in this crime.

Now, he doesn’t know if
he’s actually received 10%

and that 10% may not be going
into his personal bank account.

But he’s hearing this
story, his phone number,

he’s getting the 10% he’s now a part
implicit in part of a crime implicated.

He’s now implicated in a crime.

He’s starting to panic even more.

The arrest warrant has
been delivered to you already.

So he goes out to his mailbox
and there’s an envelope in there

and in it has a very official looking
document that is an arrest warrant.

Now, as you’ve watched on television,

arrest warrants don’t
tend to be delivered by mail.

They tend to be delivered
by police officers who show up.

And the reason is most
arrest warrants are for criminals.

And criminals don’t tend
to get pieces of paper

and go, ha, this says I
need to turn myself in.

I better go turn myself in.

They go, ha, the police are looking for me.

I better head to ground now and hide
out so they can’t actually catch me.

So arrest warrants are delivered in a very
specific way for a very specific reason.

Of course, this older
gentleman doesn’t know this.

For all, he knows this is
how arrest warrants are given.

Because for all, he knows this is
how arrest warrants are delivered

because he’s not a criminal and he
doesn’t know how criminal things work.

He doesn’t know how arrest warrants work.

It said it was from the
Tokyo District Court.

The numbers he was getting
the calls from all had a plus one.

So they are out international numbers.

So he asked, why are the police calling me?

The Japanese police calling
me from international numbers.

And the police officer,
the defect detective

on the other side said,
we don’t use regular

numbers because this is
a top secret investigation.

In fact, you shouldn’t tell any other
police officers or financial institutions

because there may be
people working with them

on the criminal side
in those institutions.

So if you tell anybody,
then you’re going to

be implicated and they
might come after you.

So now they’re trying to show,
we’re trying to help you out, buddy.

We’re trying to make sure that
you don’t actually get in trouble

for this implicated 10%
money laundering you just did.

So don’t tell anyone, we will save you.

Then they tell him to prove his innocence,

he can transfer money to
a financial services agency.

And they’ll use that to confirm
the bank accounts and stuff.

And in that way, he can prove
his innocence and not actually end

up going to jail, not have to
worry about the arrest warrant.

A woman took over the phone.

So this is like a team of people
who are working on this scam.

And she tells him to go to the ATM.

She stays on the phone with him

and she walks him through
the steps of transfer money.

There’s a limit to only sending
200,000 yen a day from ATM in Japan.

And this is for this reason.

So many scams try to get you to empty out
your bank account as quickly as possible.

They try to put a limit on it.

So you can only transfer
so much money every day for,

again, this is sort of a
defensive against scams.

They badgered him to
transfer every single day.

They tried to get him to take money out

and then go to the counter
and transfer it that way.

So trying to do it different ways.

He’s got to get more money out.

And again, he’s in a panic.

It took him a few days before he’s like,
is this how police are going to talk to me?

Is this how, because they
are now on the side of like,

oh, you need to prove your
innocence or prove your innocence,

they wouldn’t be treating
me like a criminal anymore.

And so it took about a
week and he started to

realize, I don’t think
these are police anymore.

By that time, they
had already taken 3.

7 million yen from the guy.

Now they didn’t interview
with him and he was, of course,

very defeated and very
embarrassed and it’s a terrible thing.

But he said, I want, like,
I don’t watch the news.

I don’t watch a lot of TV.

I just, I’m retired.

I read a lot of books.

I’m sort of disconnected
from society in this way.

I didn’t know what this was real.

And there are other
people in similar situations.

I want them to know so
that they don’t get scammed.

And I think this is shining
the light on the scam

is one of the best things you
can do because it hopefully

will save someone else
from suffering the same fate.

Dating apps.

I’m of the generation before dating apps.

So I never have really used one, certainly.

I’ve never used one successfully.

I don’t think I would
be good at dating apps.

I can honestly say that.

Like I, I’m pretty good at
talking to people in real life.

Once I get comfortable,
now that I’m certainly not

trying to impress anybody, it’s actually
very easy for me to talk to anyone anytime.

I’m probably way more
charming now that I’m not trying,

trying back within when I
was younger and actually trying

way too hard and probably
looking like a huge idiot about it.

Dating apps were not my thing.

I’m certain I would
have been really bad at it.

This guy was meeting girls on dating apps.

And his thing was like, hey, why
don’t we train at my private gym?

That sounds pretty cool.

Give a private gym.

It means you’re pretty well off.

That’s pretty attractive.

I don’t know what the pictures are like.

Let’s just assume he looked
pretty good in his pictures.

Girls were saying like, OK, yeah,
let’s go train at your private gym now.

I’m going to go into dad mode
for a minute and go first date.

The word private should
not be involved in there.

It should only be a very public thing.

And as soon as he says, let’s go to my
private gym, I was like that suspicious.

That’s already very, very suspicious to me.

I don’t– I’m not
happy about that.

I don’t want anyone
to go to a private place

on their first date because
you don’t know this guy.

And that’s all it really comes down to.

Do a couple public dates.

Go get some ice cream.

I know it’s the opposite of
training, but it is certainly fun.

Go to a public gym.

That’s fine.

Do not go to a man’s claimed private gym.

When they would meet, he
would actually take them to a hotel.

I assume they mean a love hotel.

Now, second point.

I do not want a victim blame.

But if you look at a love hotel,
you are going to immediately

recognize that this does
not contain a private gym.

Do not go into that
building with the man who’s

clearly now lying to
you about this situation.

Like, hey, let’s go into my private gym
that just happens to be in this love hotel.

I’ll get us a room.

Rooms are usually done relatively
randomly on a computer or something.

Not that I would know.

I don’t know anything about a love hotel.

But you now know something’s up.

You now know he’s not being forthright.

You now know he’s not being honest.

You should now bail as soon as you can.

Just run away.

Then he took him to the love hotel.

He would say you’re my type and basically
trying to force himself himself on them.

One woman escaped.

Sometimes victim blaming is OK.

No, no.

Because it’s only a
not OK in this situation.

There is– OK.

If I can deal with that
statement, because I’m taking

information from the news, I’m
not getting all the information.

So I don’t know how
charming, how impressive.

We don’t even really know.

It said hotel.

It might have been a proper hotel
and it looked better, something like that.

I don’t know anything about it.

So I don’t want a victim
blame because that

actually takes me to the
territory of assumption.

And once I start assuming, that’s when I’m
going to make some incorrect statements.

If I knew all the information,
sometimes it is OK to victim blame.

I think I could agree with that.

But you need to have
all the information first.

We do have a lot of
dumb people in the world,

and they deserve to be blamed for
the things that go wrong in their life.

But if your date says,
let’s go to a private

gym and then takes
you to a public love hotel.

That’s sevens of it.

It’s diplomatic answer.

I try to be very honest
and engineers Japan.

And I try to give factual
information more than anything else.

And when I make assumptions
and stuff, I do try to say.

But yeah, it is diplomatic.

Because again, I don’t know.

Maybe it was convincing is the problem.

Like whenever we talk about
scams, it’s the same thing.

We talk about scams.

And it’s always like,
how did you believe that?

But the previous story, the whole point

was to set that guy into a
panic so he wouldn’t be thinking.

Scams are designed by people to create a
situation where you’re not thinking clearly.

And then you don’t
realize afterwards and

afterwards, yeah, it
is terribly embarrassing

to realize you just got scammed
out of a whole bunch of money.

He would say you’re my type.

And then he threw them on the bed.

One girl struggled and got away.

She went down the emergency
exit and called the police.

And he got arrested.

Last story, creepy, creepy guy.

He goes into a cafe locker room.

And he gets one of the staff
members’ keys and he copies the key.

And then he breaks into the woman’s house
and he goes through her underwear drawer.

Now you would think this is just
a regular underwear theft story.

I actually don’t do those very often anymore
because we did so many at the beginning.

It’s now just become
a repetition of this guy

steals a lot of underwear, which has nothing
interesting, I can say about it anymore.

This guy gets arrested when he’s arrested.

He goes, I didn’t intend
to steal the underwear.

I just wanted to know
what kind of underwear

she was wearing as if
that was somehow less

creepy than the actual
stealing of the underwear.

I think at any point, once
you’ve gone into someone’s house,

the level of creepiness,
what your intent is,

suddenly does not assuage how
awful everything you’re actually doing is.

I didn’t intend to steal.

I just wanted to know what
kind of underwear she wore.

He’d enter her, entered her
house or apartment 10 times.

Now, was he going in and
stealing underwear every time?

No, what he said was the room was very
clean and sunny and it was very comfortable.

So he’s actually just like to sit there.

So he basically was breaking
into this woman’s house

and just sitting there having
like a peaceful afternoon

apparently it would stay for like two
hours and watch like music shows on TV.

I just relax in this woman’s
house, which I actually

find almost creepier than
stealing the underwear.

I don’t know why.

It’s like someone coming and
just making themself at home

is so violating to the
sanctity of your home, I guess.

When the police arrested him, they
found he had 10 copies of other keys.

So they’re actually wondering
if maybe he’s been just

like moving around from house to house.

Has he actually been
sleeping in these houses?

These different things.

But they do know he’s been
getting keys, copying the keys

and spending a lot of time
in other people’s houses.

Please be careful.

Get 20 locks and put
them on your doors, please.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Serial Squisher

(upbeat music)

This is a short one.

I thought I had my life
all organized, got sick

last week and that
deleted just an entire day.

And then of course there’s the
recuperation recovery time to get over it.

And then just suddenly it’s a
new week and you’re supposed to

be doing stuff again and you
haven’t done as much as you thought

you were gonna do and
I’m not gonna complain.

You don’t come here for that.

You come here for news about Japan
and that’s what I’m gonna deliver to you.

But again, I got the benefit of me
having gotten sick even just a little bit.

It’s that little rasp that
comes with the voice.

For those very few people I
know who have listened to this

when they go to sleep
because they’re just like,

I guess the monotone boring kind of things
I talk about and there’s no surprises here.

It’s all love.

You get that voice
for a day or two in 20

minutes, 30 minutes
as I just, you know what?

We’re switching to an ASMR podcast and
I’m just gonna talk about the new picture

in the background of my dog
Dave dressed up as a general.

I’m some kind of renaissance thing.

I don’t actually know what time
period that’s supposed to be.

You can’t see it if you’re
listening to the audio version.

So you just have to close
your eyes and imagine Dave.

Do you know what kind of dog Dave is?

Doesn’t matter.

He’s, you know, your dog of your dreams.

February 10th.

This was just one of those ones.

There’s, there’s regularly
we get the stories

of people getting arrested
over incredibly small crimes

or sums of money or
stuff because they escalate.

I don’t know if this
woman actually escalated,

which means I don’t
know if I fully agree

with her getting arrested
for this beyond just trying

to teach her a lesson that
she shouldn’t be doing this thing.

It seems like there’s a
lot of background here.

February 10th, a woman
goes into a convenience store.

Not a particularly weird thing to do.

What happens all the time?

Dozens of our stories start with
people going into convenience stores.

Millions of people going to
convenience stores every day.

And you don’t hear a word
about it because nothing happens

because they don’t do
something weird or stupid.

She was arrested for
destruction or property.

Now, the property she
destroyed was a single bun.

So what she did, she
picked up a pack of four buns

and she took one and she squeezed
it flat with her thumb and finger.

And, but because
the bread didn’t sort of

refluff, the owner of the
convenience store said,

I can’t resell this,
therefore you have to pay

for it or it’s a damaged
property or something.

The woman left the store so he
called the police and he had arrested.

The buns in total cost 181 yen.

So this is one of those things where it is.

Is it worth ruining your
life over a 200 yen crime?

Because you do have to involve the police.

You have to deal with the police.

There is a crime there.

No matter how small it is.

She claims I only pressed
it lightly in my hand

to see if it was firm, but he’s
saying it was squished flat.

Like you couldn’t squish it anymore.

This apparently was
not the first occurrence.

So that’s where my opinion
sort of starts to change.

Like, okay, I’ve probably
picked up a product in a grocery

store or something and maybe
squeezed it too hard by accident.

Now, I’ve never done it on purpose.

I can honestly say
that, but I probably have

ruined a couple products
by accident once or twice.

Maybe I drop something.

I’m sure something like that has
happened and I would apologize for it.

And if you want me to pay
for it, I’d probably just pay for it.

But it’s not consistent behavior.

This woman seems to come
into this convenience store

on a regular basis and squish
something and then walk out.

Maybe she buys something else, but
she’s got a thing for squishing bread.

Because this was not the first occurrence,

the owner was on the
lookout for the serial

squisher so that he
could have them arrested.

And have them arrested,
he did this woman again.

So we only have proof of
one crime worth 181 yen.

But we can assume she’s sort of a serial.

We can see that there’s
a pattern of behavior here.

She might not have realized
she was destroying the property.

So there is sort of a defense there that
she didn’t maybe realize what she was doing.

But that being said,

maybe it’s better to just
not squish anything at all.

(upbeat music)

There’s a company called
Trust Ring Company in Osaka.

And they paint crap.

I mean, it’s just let’s just be straight.

They paint crap.

They paint up just slightly
above minimum wage.

And they do that, but
they’ve had zero turnover in

the last three years, which
seems almost impossible.

‘Cause even like good minimum wage drops,

the ones where you maybe like gas station
attendant where you just take money.

Like you don’t actually
have to fill up gas or anything.

You just sit in that little booth.

That probably has higher turnover.

Like you probably have people
leave more than every three years.

So why are they able to keep their staff?

It’s because of this weirdly,
this unusual benefits package.

And their benefit package
includes coming in late because

you’re hungover as a valid
excuse for coming in late.

So I go out and I’m drinking.

And I say, you know what?

I don’t feel good.

I’m still a little hungover.

I’m gonna sleep till
about 10, 11 o’clock today.

Then I’m gonna go in
and start work at noon.

I can call up the office and say,
“I’m taking my hangover leave.

” And the company’s gonna go,
“All right, please do that. Go ahead.

” They also allow
you to drink at work.

So they have beer on tap.

They offer other drinks,
which means you can be

at the office working
and having a drinker too.

And if you get too much during
the day or continue into the evening

and then you have a hangover
the next morning, you can take

a little extra time off or shift
your schedule later that day

and come in and start
the process all over again.

This is created.

Job satisfaction for the
people who work there.

The people who work there clearly,
they’re not there for the money.

They’re there because this is
a good environment to work in.

They’re there because they enjoy drinking.

They’re there because they’re
drinking as an acceptable behavior.

They’re there because
people do not give them

a hard time for going
out on Friday night

or Sunday night or whatever
day would impact their work week.

They can go out and do what they
want and their company is understanding.

So this weirdly demonstrates that
money is not the deciding factor.

‘Cause I have something to argue against.

Like you wanna keep
people, you gotta pay them.

But if you have, pay them
a ton of money and have a

really terrible work environment,
people are gonna leave.

If you pay them less money
but make it a great place to work,

a place where really they’re
happy to be where they

enjoy being every day,
they’re actually gonna stay.

The company says they are striving
to make a positive work environment.

They clearly understand
the people who work there.

They clearly understand
that giving them a certain

amount of flexibility will lead to them
having more satisfaction and staying longer.

And then they don’t even have to pay
them more than just above minimum wage.

(upbeat music)

There seems to be a second wave of news and
streamers that have descended upon Japan.

They’re not making as big
a splash as Johnny Smalley.

Johnny Smalley has now moved
to Korea where he got in trouble.

And now he’s being held in perpetuity.

Who knows how long
he’s gonna be held there?

In perpetuity, he’s not the right word.

He’s in limbo, essentially.

They’ve taken away his passport
so he can’t leave the country.

So I’ve still been following that story

but I haven’t been talking
about it on an individual pen

because this would be Ninja
News career or something like that.

It’s a different country.

So it kind of doesn’t
fit except that it would

be a follow-up on a
story I’ve done in the past.

He’s gone.

So we’re not really worried about him.

In Hokkaido, there seems to
be a group or a whole bunch

of different sort of people
who follow in the same vein.

I wouldn’t say as bad, but they
spend their time getting drunk,

being loud, being difficult,
causing trouble for local people.

In Hokkaido, I don’t know
why Hokkaido specifically.

It is the winter.

So Hokkaido’s a kind of magical place.

It’s a very winter place.

They’ve got lots of
snow, that kind of stuff.

They’re probably going
there for events and stuff.

And that’s where they’re going
to get drunk and cause trouble.

Well, it seems they’ve gone
to a point where they are in

conflict with each other because
an Australian streamer who is 32

hit an Indian streamer who is 38 with a
selfie stick and apparently multiple times.

The police are looking into the history.

I can almost guarantee if
there’s multiple streamers

in an area and they’re
trying to create drama

and their nuisance streamers,
they’ve caused problems for each other

or they’ve worked together
and then had a falling out

or something like that,
there is some history there.

And it’s going to be well documented
because they stream everything they do.

The Indian streamer had cuts to his face.

The Australian streamer
defended himself by saying,

“I didn’t hit him
with a stick, it’s a lie.

” The interesting part I
do like about these defenses

is because, again, I’m
sitting outside of this.

I have no sort of, I have
no sort of stake in it.

So it’s very easy for me to
pick apart the statements.

He says, “I didn’t
hit him with a stick.

” That doesn’t mean
he didn’t hit him.

He means he didn’t hit him with a stick.

And he didn’t say, “I didn’t
hit him with a selfie stick.

” ‘Cause a selfie stick,
he might in his mind say,

“A stick in a selfie stick
or two different things.

” And he’s being
semantic about it.

It’s a lie.

It’s a lie he hit him with a stick,

but it isn’t a lie he
hit him and it might not

be a lie that he would
have a selfie stick.

He might have just hit him.

Might as a straight up punch the guy

and the guy is actually, “I
wonder if hitting someone

with a closed fist or hitting someone with
a thing, like a stick, if that’s worse.

” I’m sure it’s
probably just assault,

but assault with a weapon
can actually be worse.

I don’t know about that as far
as Japanese, the law is concerned.

The article I read said both
had disputes in the past,

but didn’t get into the
specifics of what they were.

I am honestly confused as to
why news and streamers exist.

Japan is going to very
soon just lock it down.

They’re gonna be like, “If
you’re streaming in public

“or we’re gonna make
streaming in public illegal,

“or if you’re streaming in public
and you cause a disturbance,

“that’s just gonna be immediate
crime, “you just get deported right away.

” There have had enough
experiences where they’re starting

to handle this and see it regularly, and
once it becomes a big enough nuisance,

Japan just makes a law about
it and closes it off altogether.

So then in no longer becomes an option,

and then Japan will be closed
two streamers in the future.

(upbeat music)

A 43 year old man, a little
younger than our 50s losing

your mind theme of the
last few months, to be honest,

broke into a club room and stole
a variety of dance team uniforms.

He did this on two evenings,
a January 4th and 5th.

He broke into the club room.

So a lot of Japanese clubs
have their own room in a school.

That’s where you keep your stuff.

So you have like, the Judo
team might have a changing room.

Doug and I certainly gonna
have to tell me dojo area,

but they might have their own
place where they keep your stuff.

Judo guys, I mean, it’s just Judo students,
so they probably just hang them up.

Something with equipment.

If you have an American football team,

they’re gonna have a place
to store their equipment.

If you have a volleyball team, they’re
gonna have a place where they keep the balls

and then the net when it’s
not out and that kind of stuff.

The dance team’s gonna have
a place where it’s essentially

again another change room with lockers
and stuff where they keep their uniforms.

They might not be locked
though, ’cause the room is locked.

One morning, they came and discovered
a broken window in the club room.

The man was the rest, they
didn’t say how they found him.

I don’t know if there was
a lot of security footage

or something, but they
figured out who it was.

They arrested him.

He said, “There is no doubt I stole
them, but I did not break the window.

” Which again, led me to
believe like, is there a question

of is breaking the window
making your crime worse?

Like, you’re being arrested for theft.

You’re all clearly
entered is not breaking the

window enough of a
difference to the actual crime.

Like, there’s a lot of
people when they get

arrested for murder
in Japan, they go like,

I did not intend to kill
because that intense might

will change how much
the punishment would be.

But in this case, I’m wondering if
that would make any difference at all.

Like, someone else broke the window.

I used that opportunity to
get in and steal these uniforms.

Police then, of course, searched his house.

And when they went to his house,
they found, what would you expect?

More uniforms.

And our last story, and
therefore our grossest story

of the day, that had to make us very sure.

When I did want to get an episode out,

I’m trying to be consistent,
at least about releasing

episodes just so that I don’t lose
the habit of doing it every week.

I’m trying to reorganize
so much stuff right now.

It’s a bit insane.

You don’t want to hear about it.

I keep forgetting that people
don’t want to hear about it.

They just want the news.

I used to hate channels
that would come on and

be like, hey, I haven’t
posted for so long.

Here’s why.

And then they don’t
post anything ever again.

I get it.

Your life has changed
or something’s happened.

Yeah, you don’t want the updates.

You just either want the contents or not.

I got to get that straight in my head.

It’s because I feel bad about not
doing everything I wanted to do.

And then I feel like I’ve let
you down the viewer or listener.

And I haven’t because
you get in an episode.

Screw you for being so selfish.

You should care about me a little more.

See how quickly you can turn that around
if you’re actually like follow the logic.

A senior stock exchange official.

So he’s in his 60s.

So he’s beyond our 50s
range for losing your mind.

So maybe he was holding it in for the whole
time, which is how he lost it this time.

He was arrested for attempting
to take up skirt photos

of two 17-year-old girls sitting
across from him on the train.

So he’s sitting on a bench.

They’re sitting on a bench
on the other side of the train.

They’re facing each other.

He’s like, ah, they’re school girls.

Probably wearing high school uniforms.

They’re skirts.

I’m going to assume we’re pretty short.

So that’s how he thought.

I’ll maybe I’ll be able to get an
up skirt photo of these two ladies.

I don’t know why, man.

This is the bit that got me the most.

He used a tablet.

So a lot of these guys, when they

do up skirt photos, they
have these tiny, tiny cameras.

They put on top of their
shoe, and it’s almost impossible

to see, or they’ll take
like their cell phone,

and they’ll try to
like on an escalator,

try to get it going up
to skirt at the right angle.

That kind of thing has
a level of subtlety to it.

This guy is on a tablet.

And I don’t think you can pull out a
tablet and aim it up someone’s skirt.

Like even if they’re sitting or standing,
subtly enough that people wouldn’t notice.

Weirdly, that’s not what
the girls say happened.

They say they heard the shutter
sound and reported to the staff.

So I’m sure they heard the
shutter sound turn around.

Saw an old man with a tablet out.

And we’re like, I think that guy
might be trying to take pictures of us.

They went and reported to the staff.

Staff called the police.

Police picked the guy up
when he gets off the train.

His defense is, I only took pictures
of their feet as if that was better.

No, I saw two versions of this story.

And this is an interesting
translation note,

because what he says is I
only took pictures of their ashi.

Ashi can be either feet or legs.

Because it’s really just the
lower limb is all it really refers to.

So the first article said feet.

And I think that writer is like, well,

I’m going to translate this to
be the creepiest version of it.

And somehow, foot fetishists are creepier
than people who take up skirt photos.

But of course, he’s probably
doing both, who knows.

Maybe he was taking picture of their feet.

Maybe he was trying to get up skirt photos.

Either way, he shouldn’t
be taking pictures of people.

I think that’s pretty much set.

The second article I read
with the same information

translated that last
sentence is translated

that last sentence as, I only
took pictures of their legs.

Still bad.

I mean, there’s, again,
not much of a defense,

but it’s interesting when
you get into translation,

when you get into articles written
from one language to another language.

There are some decisions
the translator makes

that will definitely influence
the feeling of the reader.

And it’s something to be very aware of.

Should you be reading
news from other countries

or even the news
from your own country,

that language choice,
the images that go with it,

the things those are
definitely chosen to paint a

picture for you as the person
in taking the information.

And something you should be very aware of.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Not a viable solution to a three yen problem

(upbeat music)

Two private arrest
YouTubers were arrested,

which I believe is
the definition of irony.

Private arrest YouTubers,
these are people who,

we’ve done an extraordinary
couple of these guys in the past.

And what they would generally
do is try to find someone

committing a crime, and then
tackle them and make a really

dramatic arrest, or they
would berate them and stuff.

But then of course, that
relies on you, happenstance

coming across a crime,
particularly a hard thing to do.

So what you need to do then is start
manufacturing crimes that you can then catch.

So they would generally
try to do predators and stuff.

We had the guy who was last week or
two weeks ago, who was like luring people,

pretending to be like a high
school girl on some kind of app,

and then when they
would arrive, he’d be like,

you’re a bad person,
give me 300,000 yen.

That’s not the same.

‘Cause he’s just trying
to extort people for money.

This is, I want to arrest
you for the content.

I want to tackle you to the
ground, and hopefully wrestle in fight,

because that’s actually
probably what they’re looking for,

’cause that’s really
traumatic YouTube viewing.

And then I still have
the moral high ground,

and then they take them to the
police box and get them arrested.

They pretended to be a
woman, so these are two guys.

They pretended to be a woman online and
asked a man to bring them methamphetamines.

So you can see there’s a
couple of problems there.

This is, yeah, again,
I’m sort of in this

place where I’m like,
how do I contact a lawyer

who’d be willing to talk
to me about these issues?

‘Cause I want to know what
aspects of this are illegal.

So there’s pretending to be someone
online seems like a low level fraud.

Asking for methamphetamines
seems like an illegal act in itself.

Yeah, they haven’t bought them or anything.

They’re just like, hey,
bring them to this place.

But soliciting drugs is
probably a crime in Japan.

Drug crimes are very serious in Japan,

so you got to take every
aspect of it very seriously.

Lying to the guy, I think
is probably the crime,

but that’s again, pretending
to be a woman in stuff online.

This is maybe a form of entrapment,
or maybe that’s just a solicitation.

Me guessing is not the right answer.

I need, I’m trying to find some
lawyers, a Japanese lawyer,

who’d be willing to spend
a couple hours with me

talking about different
aspects of crime in Japan.

Because I want the details.

And I think you want the details too.

We all want the details.

So this soliciting drugs
is actually against the law.

So they committed a crime
to get a guy to come to a place

so they could arrest him for
the crime of him having drugs

and turn him into the
police, but they had to commit

a crime to make that
happen in the first place.

So the question then is how much
do you get punished for a solicitation?

Well, one guy is getting 10 months.

The other guy is
getting one year and four

months, but both are
received suspended sentences.

So basically, the judge is like,
okay, you’ve committed a crime.

We’re not going to send you to jail.

You’re not getting in trouble yet.

You got three years if you
don’t commit another crime.

So basically, they’re YouTube
channel where they actually commit

these minor crimes to catch
these guys making bigger crimes.

Has to go on high eight, it has to stop.

Because if they do
this again, then they’re

actually going to prison
for basically a year each.

Their statement was
we had no intention of an

innocent, we had no
intention of inciting the crime.

[MUSIC]

April 2023, then Prime Minister
Kashita is making a speech.

It’s a stump speech.

I’m going to be really honest.

I don’t 100% know what a stump speech is.

I should have looked that up before,

but then I forgot because I
was busy setting up other stuff.

It’s a national holiday, which
meant there were people

in the house today instead
of this being my day off.

You don’t care about any of that.

I was rushed.

You’ll actually, if you watched the YouTube
video, you can tell how much time I have

because if I have more
time, the editing’s better

and you get like the
scroll or along the bottom

with extra jokes, whereas if I have no time,
it’s just like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

No actual additions to the viewing
pleasure of the YouTube channel.

If you’re listening online, it
sounds probably exactly the same.

If you’re listening to
the podcast, the audio.

If you’re listening to the audio version,
it probably sounds exactly the same.

So there’s about 100 people at a warehouse.

This is like a man of
the people kind of speech,

which immediately
throws up red flags for me.

Because that’s super fake.

But whatever, that’s politics.

Politics is super fake.

Prime Minister is making
a speech to these people.

Guy Hux, a pipe bomb, into the middle
of the crowd, aimed at the Prime Minister.

It doesn’t go off.

There’s like some smoke and
stuff, but basically it doesn’t go off.

If even a small explosion had happened,

dozens and dozens of people
would have been hurt and or killed.

So this was not just attempted murder.

This was attempted
mass murder of his sorts.

He had tracked the Prime
Minister’s movements that day.

So he lived in another city.

He’s like the Prime Minister’s
going here to make the speech.

She’s making this appearance.

I followed him on Instagram or something.

So he shows up to the place
where he’s making a speech.

So it is intent.

There is intent for him to throw this thing

that could explode at the
Prime Minister at the time.

The defense lawyer says
he wasn’t aware of the power

of the bomb, the bomb
that he built himself at home.

So this was an interesting defense.

Because he’s basically saying
this guy wanted to attract

attention to like electoral
issues, things like that.

But so he built a bomb at home.

And in the defense lawyer
saying he didn’t know

how powerful this bomb
could potentially be.

So he should not be charged with murder.

He should not be charged
with attempted murder.

He should not be charged
with the same sort of severity.

The thing is, if I was the
judge or the prosecuting

attorney, I would immediately
go, he built the bomb.

So like he had instructions, he must have,

I’m going to go ahead
and guess he got it online.

So he goes online, he gets
instructions, how to build a bomb.

That’s going to include information of
how powerful the bomb is going to be.

Like this bomb could blow up a house.

This bomb could blow up a car.

This bomb could, you know,
give someone some ringing ears,

but not actually injure
anybody in any significant way.

That information is probably included in
the recipe for the bomb, is all I’m saying.

Since it didn’t go off, this
is attempted, whatever.

Probably attempted murder,
primarily of the Prime Minister.

But because you did it towards the
Prime Minister, it’s actually more serious.

Now, this is a legal quirk.

Because if you throw on
a pipe bomb at a regular

person, you’re going to
get X amount of years.

If you throw a pipe bomb at the Prime
Minister, you’re going to get way more.

No, people are supposed to be
viewed equally in the eyes of the law.

I think that’s pretty fair, but at the
same time, this is a political statement.

So now it becomes, is it
an act of terrorism or not?

So you can see that’s how
they’re actually twisting it.

The prosecuting attorney
is asking for 15 years.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

January, 2024, there was
a school board meeting.

The vice chairman of the
board was making statements

and a student objected towards these
statements during the meeting publicly.

So the vice chairman
got really upset about this.

I would really love to know what the
statements were and what the objection was.

Like what were they actually talking about?

That’s not in any of the news stories.

I found about four versions of this story.

Not one of them actually
says what the statement was

that was objected to or
what the objection was.

Which is I think–
because if you’re in high

school, you’re a teenager
standing up and objecting

to this statement of an
adult is a very hard thing to do.

It’s big.

So I’d like to know what
it was that they were

talking about that would
have said everybody off.

This enraged the vice chair.

And he demanded through a teacher,
which is a very cowardly way to do it.

He demanded a letter of apology.

But he didn’t go to the student
said, what you did was wrong.

You should write a letter of apology to me.

He went to a teacher and said, tell
that student to write a letter of apology.

And I was like, ah, this is the kind
of power dynamic these people have.

Like it’s like, I have power, but I’m
actually scared to confront people.

So they’re cowards.

I think that’s actually it.

So he told someone to
go get a letter of apology.

If the student– so the
school tells a student,

if the student does not write this
letter of apology, they will be expelled.

So the student capitulates.

I mean, no reason to get expelled.

This is like the third year of high school.

So there’s getting expelled now is going

to ruin your university
opportunities, things like that.

Your future education, if you want
to continue education, it’s not worth it.

Rights the letter of apology.

But this kid, the kid who’s
brave enough to stand up

and object in a meaningful of
adults, is not going to back down.

Like you already have a
taste of what this person is like.

And I really like them whoever they are.

June 2024, she files a criminal complaint

that she was coerced into writing a
letter of apology by the school board.

So she didn’t be like, let’s
argue this back and forth.

She’s like, you forced me to do something.

That’s coercion.

Corision is illegal in Japan.

She goes to the cops and she says, I was
coerced into writing a letter of apology.

I was threatened that if I didn’t write
this letter of apology, I would be expelled.

That’s against the law in Japan.

They’re like, hmm.

This seems a little not clear
as to what the legalities are.

But they kicked it up the road.

Some investigators did– they’re
like, hey, we got some time, I guess.

Japan is a very low crime society,

which is why maybe stuff
like this gets more attention.

They started investigating.

So that means the police went to the
school, the police go and talk to the staff,

and they start talking to people,
and they start doing an investigation.

So the police show
up, the school then goes

to the kid and says,
please drop the charges.

And then she’s like, nah, you guys
did something that I consider wrong.

I’m not dropping the charges, screw you.

I mean, no one’s going to jail over this,
but there might be like, fines and stuff.

So then she was expelled.

She was expelled for
disruption of school order.

So her drop in the cops on this
school board is disrupting school order.

And now, so this is the interesting part.

The teachers say that this
student never disrupted school order

that the younger students
looked up to the student.

They came to her for help.

She was a very positive
influence within the school.

So this statement that
she disrupted school

order clearly is only
implicit to the power order

of the upper echelons of
the school hierarchy system.

So the teachers disputed this.

And some of them said, I was shocked
when I found out she’d been expelled.

I was shocked when I found
out the school had gone this far.

The principal then
acknowledged the expulsion.

So of course, newspaper
start coming around the school

and being like, do you
want to make a statement?

He’s like, yes, we expelled the student.

We expelled the student for
the disruption to the school order.

They go, what specifically did the
student do to disrupt school order?

And the principal was
either unable and unable,

was either unable or
unwilling to comment on that.

When they started asking about for more
details, he basically shut it all down.

That’s already showing
that you’re on shaky ground.

If you’re not willing or
able to defend your position

on the things you’ve
done as a person in power,

you know you’ve either abused
that power or done the wrong thing.

Two days later, a lot of attention.

So again, news story start coming up.

So the expulsion was then withdrawn.

Now, this is actually at this point,

’cause this is again, now
we’re getting to like a year later.

She’s actually finished high school,

but she says, I don’t want
an expulsion on my record.

So I need you to remove
that to expunge the expulsion.

There’s a great sentence.

It went to court and the court
recommended a settlement and

the school’s like, okay, we’re
gonna remove the expulsion.

I don’t know if money
passed back and forth.

They didn’t give any details of the
settlement ’cause that’s a private thing.

But as far as I’m concerned,
this kid stood up to the power

structure of the school and
won and that is fricking awesome

’cause I wish I was able
to do that when I was a kid.

(upbeat music)

So if you go to a convenience store in
Japan, now they haven’t been made illegal,

but basically the government
said like, don’t give out plastic bags.

We actually kind of wanna
get rid of plastic bags.

If you want a plastic
bag, they charge you two

yen or five yen, depending
on how big the bag is.

They have self checkout machines.

So I can get my drink
right now is chai milk tea.

I think I drank too much yesterday.

Maybe that’s why I have a
bit of an upset tummy today.

Chai milk tea, maybe my chocolate
fudge and then only giddy and stuff.

And then I go up to the
front and I can beep it out

and then I take my barcode off my
phone and I hold that up and I pay for it.

And then I can walk out.

If I want a bag, I’m
supposed to take the bag.

The bag has a barcode on it.

I’m supposed to put that up to the screen

and it will charge me two
yen or five yen or three yen.

Whatever.

It’s a nominal sum to just
encourage you to not use plastic bags.

Now I often have a messenger
bag that is around my shoulder.

So I just throw everything
in my messenger bag.

I don’t use plastic bags
as much as possible.

I think this is fair.

This is a very Canadian thing of me to do

is to just not use
resources if at all possible.

48 year old British
man had a different idea.

Now he’s a tourist.

So maybe he didn’t know.

So it depends how much forgiveness you
want to give to him but he’s a colonizer.

So no one wants to
forgive the British empire.

I think that might be part of it.

This British man, he’s
a tourist in Hokkaido.

He uses the self checkout.

He gets his stuff and then as he left,

he grabs a three yen bag
and starts walking away.

So there is a question of did he know
he was supposed to pay for that or not?

Did he know how to pay for it or not?

Because they are just hanging
next to the self checkout thing.

I could actually see you assuming
that you just take it and go.

That it’s just like a free service.

If you didn’t know about Japanese
culture or the rules and stuff,

I’m actually slightly
forgiving of that aspect.

The clerk chases him down.

So he goes outside and
he starts walking away.

The clerk comes out and this
is very Japanese thing to do.

If you like over pay or
something and there’s change

and you don’t pick it
up like it’s three yen,

they will run down the street and be
like, “We have to give you three yen.

” It’s just a very important
aspect of Japanese culture.

You’ll get chased down for
incredibly small sums of money.

He chases down the tourist and he says,

“Look, you gotta pay
three yen for the plastic bag.

” You just took.

Now he’s probably speaking Japanese.

Maybe the British dude doesn’t understand.

But he’s like,
“Give me three yen.

” Let’s just say that.

He’s like three yen, three yen, three yen.

And we all know three yen
is not worth anything, really.

It’s not worth certainly a conflict.

The British man then decides
that the most reasonable

solution to this is to
punch the clerk in the face.

Now, you could say he did not commit
theft because of misunderstanding.

So again, I could be
very forgiving of that.

He took a three yen bag.

He didn’t know he was stealing,
but he was actually stealing.

But I think we all know that
punching someone in the face

is not a viable solution
to a three yen problem.

Of course, the police are called.

Assulting people is
not acceptable in Japan.

It’s not really acceptable anywhere,
but it’s a pretty big deal in Japan.

You get arrested for that pretty quickly.

When he was explaining things to the
police, I assume through a translator.

He said, “My hand may have
struck his face as I pushed him aside.

” So he’s saying that the
clerk was coming towards him.

He pushed him away and
that maybe while doing that,

he slapped him in the face or hit him
in the face, that this was not a punch.

Now, the problem is
that if you lay hands

on another person,
that is assault in Japan.

If you push someone,
that is assault in Japan.

So basically he’s saying I
haven’t assaulted him by

punching him in the face, but
then inadvertently admitted,

I have assaulted him by
pushing him in the first place.

So if my hand hit him, that’s
actually irrelevant at this point.

So should you come to Japan and you’re in
a convenience store and you see some bags,

if you accidentally steal one of those
bags and the clerk comes running after you,

just give him to Yen, just
give him three Yen, whatever

he asks for, just give
him the Yen he asks for.

Say, “Sorry, I move on.

” Do not punch him in the face.

(upbeat music)

Yeshiba is the current prime minister
of Japan and he met with Trump.

And of course, when you
meet Trump, when you meet

a president, you probably
give him a president.

There’s a lot of present
giving between countries

and there’s been some
really weird ones in the past.

I believe that Obama gave Queen
Elizabeth like a bag of CTs or something.

Like that feels like you didn’t
have a gift and you pulled

everything out of your car
and put it in a bag handed to her.

But I’m sure there was
more thought to it than that.

I know like there’s desks
that were made from ships that

sailed from England to Japan
as like England to America.

Like those are the kind of gifts
that other countries give America.

America’s not really
good on the gift giving part.

You know, Trump accepts gifts
and doesn’t even think about the idea

of giving gifts back,
but he has received gifts.

And when the Japanese prime minister comes
to America and meets with the president,

he’s gonna give him a gift.

That’s a very Japanese thing to do.

Gift giving is a big part
of Japanese culture.

If you don’t know that, you should
know that before you spend any time here

because you’re either going to be giving
or receiving gifts on a regular basis.

So what did he give him?

He gave him a golden samurai helmet.

So this is because of the
popularity of the recent

show, Shogun, because
it won Emmys and stuff.

He’s like, ah, this is a popular thing.

Americans like this.

Let’s give him a samurai
helmet and it’s gonna be gold.

And I was like, actually, I bet
Trump is really happy about that.

Trump seems to be one of those
guys who thinks gold’s awesome.

Anything in gold is awesome.

And he’s currying favor with Trump.

Because let’s face it,
since Trump is the president,

you do have to deal with
him for the next four years.

It would be the best tactical
decision to appeal to his base desires.

So giving him gold, paying that
homage is probably the best route.

Because the trade things he’s doing right
now, he might actually softly be like,

“Well, that guy gave me this
sweet Japanese samurai helmet.

“Why do I wanna
impose tariffs on him?

” Yeah.

So I actually think this
is a very smart political

move on the Prime
Minister of Japan’s part.

I don’t know if it’s intended that way.

Like, I don’t know if
he’s actually that smart,

but at least inadvertently
he’s doing a very smart thing

by currying that favor
because it’ll just be

easier to deal with Trump
for the next five years.

Like, even if you think he’s an idiot,

let’s say I was suddenly
made Prime Minister of Japan,

I am now in charge, and I think
Trump’s more on, which I absolutely do.

It would make more sense to
give him something made of gold

so that he thinks you like him, so
that he’ll just be easier to work with

for the remainder of the
four years until he disappears.

A company received an
order from the foreign ministry

and saying it was a gift
for a VIP, so the people who

made the samurai helmet
didn’t know who it was for.

That was an interesting aspect
of this that I hadn’t thought about.

Because what if you run a company
and you hate Trump and they’re

like, we want you, we want to
commission you to make a thing

that we’re going to present to
the President Trump that you hate.

Do you refuse that order?

Now, the company here is
like, we’re really happy to be

promoting our goods on the
world stage, that kind of stuff.

Again, very diplomatic answers.

He’s saying he’s very
happy that the Prime

Minister thought of this
thing and gave it to the,

gave it to the President
of the United States.

But I was like, there’s
sort of a moral issue there

because you making it is almost
a political statement in itself.

Something else, so I was
looking up some of the other gifts

the previous Prime Minister,
Kishida, when he met Trump in 2016,

he gave him a golden golf club,
which I was like, again, very good idea,

makes him not much easier to work
with because he’s an absolute child

and giving him a gold toy is really
probably the best way to deal with him.

(upbeat music)

55 year old man.

That’s it, I mean, I don’t
even finish the story.

You know, this would
be what the quiz is going.

I got to reorganize myself
and get the quizzes back on.

I’ve got to reorganize and
get a lawyer back on to ask

questions because there’s so much, so much
I want to do and so much I want to know.

But everything takes
like hours to organize.

55 year old man.

So I would do the quiz
like, did he expose himself,

did he steal something,
did he beat someone up?

55 year old man in
Hokkaido walked into a

convenience store on
November 16th and 29th, 2024.

Sounds like it’s not too bad so far.

He was wearing a jacket.

Now, I say that very specifically because
clearly he’s not wearing much heels.

He was wearing transparent
stockings and nothing else.

They were see through,
which actually, to me,

almost goes like, why are you
bothering with the stockings?

Like, if you’re going to
go in and expose yourself,

which is what he did, what, I guess the
stockings were for him, not for the viewer.

I guess the whole experience
is for him, not the viewer.

So he comes in, he’s
wearing stockings in a jacket,

he walks in, he walks around, and
then they say he exposes himself.

It makes it sound like
he took the jacket off

and just started walking around the
convenience store would just the stockings on.

But that actually wasn’t very clear.

He was arrested on January
30th two months later.

So the police in Hokkaido,
for the last two months,

they had security
footage, they had this guy,

they had his face, they
spent the next two months

hunting him down, finding
him so he could be arrested.

And I was like, man, they
didn’t give up on it though.

Because as far as crimes
go, this is very small

’cause yes, the woman,
the clerk behind the

counter, she was really
grossed out fair enough.

I would be really grossed out by it too.

This is not a pleasant experience.

But as far as crimes
are going, no one got hurt.

So you can see the police being like, yeah,

if we see him again, we’ll
pick him up, whatever,

just call us next time it
happens, that kind of thing.

They spent two months hunting for this guy.

The reason when he was arrested,
he said he did it out of curiosity.

And I’m just wondering
what that accent means.

What was the curious thing
he was trying to experience?

‘Cause he did it twice.

So the first time did
not satisfy his curiosity.

The second time, maybe
that satisfied his curiosity?

I’m not sure.

The curiosity, I’m
assuming there is some sort

of sexual element to this,
the excitement element.

What aspect of the curiosity,
the single sentence statements

when someone gets arrested
are not satisfying to me.

I want to paragraph with explanations as
to what and why they’re doing these things.

Give me all the information you can get.

This is killing me now after
having done “The Engineers

Japan” for however many
years I’ve been doing it.

They have not said what he’s been arrested.

Having said, I guess it’s
decency laws, but they haven’t

said what kind of punishment
he’s gonna get for this.

Although he has admitted to doing it.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

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