Duel Podcast

(upbeat music)

Getting hardest is the hardest part.

A little bit of getting
hardest is the farthest part.

Yep, that’s where we’re starting today.

Getting started is the hardest part.

I need vocal warmups.

Getting started is the hardest part.

Getting hearted is the smartest fart.

All right, with that, let’s get started.

Let’s actually make that the beginning.

That’ll be the beginning of the episode.

Me trying to say a single sentence and not
getting 20%, 30% of the words even close.

This is a follow up to a previous story.

We had a story that was a guy
and he was making noise in his house.

Now this is actually a story that
comes up every couple years in Japan.

Sort of neighbor harassment kind of issues.

It becomes very difficult ’cause the
cops don’t really want to get involved

’cause this is not necessarily
domestic but it’s very similar.

It’s like a dispute between neighbors.

You guys should just
work it out yourselves.

That’s what they want to say.

This man would walk up and down the
streets and other people would be there

and he would shout, “Come
out if you have a problem.

” And so he’s
standing on the street,

shouting at your house, saying,
“Come out if you have a problem.

” If you came out and you said, “I have a
problem with you shouting at my house,”

he would then say, “I’m
just muttering to myself.

Why are you talking to me?

” Idiot.

And then as you walk down the
street, he would go, “Shut up, idiot.

” So that’s the kind
of level of intercourse.

The level of intercourse.

The level of discourse.

I guess the level of intercourse
is still technically acceptable

but I think it’s come to
have a different meaning

than that word of just
interacting with each other.

Take that sentence again.

This is the level of discourse
we can expect from this man.

He tended to start playing nationalistic

military style music at very
high volume starting around 6 a.m.

So I wake up around seven.

This would be the next door to my house.

6 a.m.

This very military
style, almost march style

music that’s very
nationalistic in Japan.

He was playing that as loud as he
could to try to disrupt the neighbors.

So there’s a question of
what do you hope to achieve?

It’s not like all your neighbors
are gonna move away.

So I always have the what do you wanna
achieve question in the back of my mind?

Who are you going after?

What do you think the
result of this is gonna be?

I guess he thinks he
can annoy people enough

that they’ll move away
and then he’ll just have

like a surrounding area of
houses that are just empty

and sort of a circle around him
as their conference of his town.

But of course that’s not
really what’s gonna happen.

They start calling the police.

The police don’t do much.

So the news comes out
because they hear about this guy.

MBS is a new station.

They find him and they
speak to him directly.

He said that he’s trying to raise awareness

of police not cracking
down on traffic violations

and him shouting and playing
music and being disruptive

is a form of protest, which
is a very interesting take

on what he’s doing ’cause
he’s never at any point

during the shouting actually talked
about traffic violations or the police.

He’s never at any point done
anything other than call people stupid.

So somehow calling
people stupid is supposed

to raise awareness
of traffic violations.

So I think we can see that’s
just like a cover he came up with

in the moment when the
news came to speak to him.

He doesn’t actually own this house.

This is a house owned by a
relative where he stays now.

They don’t say whether he’s paying rent.

They don’t say what kind
of arrangement they have.

But legally this is not his
house but he has lived there

and people who live in places
have a certain amount of rights.

Because of the complaints,
because of the constant complaints,

the landlord, his relative is
decided to kick him out of the house.

The guy of course doesn’t want to leave.

He gets him formally evicted and
he has to go to Complaints Court.

The lower court actually dismissed
this case, which is very interesting.

‘Cause this guy owns the house.

He’s saying, I don’t want this
guy living in my house anymore.

And the court’s like, nah,
you gotta let him live there.

So I don’t know if this is
because of rental agreement.

Kind of dispute or if this is because
he’s letting them live there for free.

And they’re like, well, now
this is his place of residence.

You can’t just kick him out like that.

But then it goes to the Osaka higher
court and they overturned the lower courts.

So the first decision was overturned
and they’re saying, get the fuck down.

They are saying he
violated the usage agreement

by making it a base
for nuisance behavior.

So they’re saying because the
agreement is you live in this house.

Now living in this house doesn’t
include harassing your neighbors.

So once you start harassing your neighbors
and you create sort of a base of operations

for a harassment campaign,
that’s outside of the agreement

you’ve made with your relative
who’s letting you rent the house.

So you now have to vacate the house.

No timeline on how one has to vacate now.

And no one North
America is usually 30 days.

Japan can be quite strict.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s
kicked out in a week or two.

I am going to try to follow
up to see if he’s kicked out.

But now this is going to be off the record.

So where he moves to next is
going to be private information.

I think that’s going
to be very hard to find.

Prime Minister Ashiba is in Guunma.

And I think there’s some
advice you’d be given

to just Japanese politicians,
like just don’t make comments.

Don’t lean into any stereotypes.

Don’t make comments about women or groups
or anything because you always mess it up.

I think because there are stereotypes,

politicians think it’s OK to play into
those stereotypes and make these comments.

When the fact is, because it’s a
stereotype, people can get angry about it.

And that’ll ruin your reputation.

And this is what they’re trying to protect.

And it’s a very common story.

And it’s always these guys.

Ashiba hasn’t made that many.

He’s done some gross stuff.

I do remember, like early in his career,

he took a whole only
galleon shoved it in his mouth.

And that was really gross to look at.

But overall, he himself has been
very gaffery comparatively speaking.

He’s still got a bunch.

And this is the problem
because gaffery in Japan

means you’ve only made
one or two, not zero.

They do.

The old Japanese men, I need to stay away
from any comments about women in general.

So he was in Guunma.

Now Guunma has a stereotype that the women

are the strength, the foundation,
the leader of the family.

So Guunma women are strong women.

And this is supposed to come from
back when Guunma primarily produce silk.

And they sort of led the
business, I think, because it was silk.

So it was sort of a female oriented thing.

I don’t even know if that’s true.

Again, this is the stereotype.

And this is where the stereotype came from.

I don’t know how much
of that is actually true.

But maybe they were sort of generally
business leaders in these communities.

So they took on a harder stance compared

to the traditional image
of a Japanese woman.

He’s at a meeting with
local business leader.

So I’m going to go ahead
and guess that most of the

local business leaders
were also old Japanese men.

So he’s in his comfort zone.

He’s like, I can say what I want.

These guys are cool.

Totally forgets that there’s media
there, paying attention to what’s going on.

He said when he’s in Guunma, he feels that
Guunma is a place with many scary people.

I sort of cringe at women
because of their strong image.

So I think saying that I cringe at women

because they’re so strong
isn’t the best political

statement you can make
because every statement

the prime minister makes
is a political statement.

Of course, a lot of people
are like, why did you say that?

That’s a really awful thing to say.

Why are you saying you
cringe at women in Guunma?

That’s pretty.

He’s playing into the stereotype,

probably trying to appease
the Guunma men who are

all like, ho, ho, ho, yes,
our women are strong.

We are hand-pecked men, ho, ho, ho.

This is like playing
into the stereotype of

all Irish people are
alcoholic, which is true.

So of course, the next
day he gets confronted

about this statement
that he cringes in front

of Guunma women
because they’re so strong

and he tries to clarify his
statement by saying, I meant women

are very strong-willed and
supportive of local communities.

I think if I was going to
analyze the two statements,

I cringe in front of Guunma
women because they’re

so strong doesn’t feel
like the same statement as,

women are strong-willed and
supportive of local communities.

So he’s got the right idea.

He’s trying to turn this into like, their
strength is the pillar of the community.

If he had stuck with
that from the beginning,

I don’t think there
would be any problem.

Be like, you know there’s a stereotype
that women in Guunma are strong

and I think they are
the pillar that holds

up this whole community
and I commend them.

That’s the statement that
wouldn’t have gotten him in trouble.

He’s like, using the
stereotype to make a

compliment but he’s like,
no, I see a Guunma woman

and I like cringe down and
become the smallest I can

because I am afraid
she’s going to beat me up.

Just don’t say it.

(upbeat music)

It was a very interesting event
I learned about this weekend.

It was an event designed
to help middle aged men

so people in their forties and fifties
to take better selfies for dating apps.

And I was like, God damn.

That actually is really useful.

So as a man in my fifties
myself, if you said, hey, chung

with beef chest, take a
good selfie, it wouldn’t happen.

I would take the selfie but it
would be just be completely wrong.

Like the atmosphere,
the feeling, the actual,

how to use the camera, all
wrong, all together, all the time.

This event was held for eight
single men in their forties and fifties.

And some of the advice they were given.

So this was a really good advice for me.

It was don’t use yellow
light ’cause that’ll make

you look washed out and
sort of sickly and awful.

I actually use a lot of
yellow light in my room

when I’m streaming and it’s
dark and I have my light on.

It’s yellow to try to
create a soft atmosphere

but at least in that
case, I’m just a little image

down in the corner and
so it wasn’t really impact

and I’m not really going for sex
appeal if I’m being really honest.

When we’re doing Ninja
News Japan or streaming

or anything else, I
think that’s very evident.

But that is good advice.

You shouldn’t use yellow lighting.

I did learn that if you use red lighting,

you don’t see blemishes because
blemishes on human skin tend to be reddish.

So if you use red
lighting, it flushes it out

and you just look like you
have perfect skin all the time.

So I might actually
start going for red lighting

in my room when I
actually start recording.

Men of that age don’t tend to smile much

which means their smiles
are weird and unnatural.

So when they take a picture of
themselves, they don’t have a good smile.

So that’s actually a really good advice.

So I guess you have to learn how to smile.

I actually don’t know if I could
do it naturally in a selfie myself.

Use the outer camera, not the inner camera,
like not like the actual selfie camera.

If you’re watching YouTube video, might
notice a quality change from last weeks

where I switch from the
webcam to my cell phone camera.

So I’ve actually hooked my cell
phone camera up to my computer

to act as my webcam just to
see if there was a difference.

Primarily inspired by this story and
I was just trying stuff out last week.

So if you notice the quality difference
and it makes you happy, well, great.

‘Cause I might be just
going forward with this.

I did notice like a resolution improvement.

That’s not necessarily an improvement
on the picture that you’re actually seeing.

Sometimes some of us could actually use

a little bit of fuzz and
distance and lower pick.

Maybe a little more
pixelization would go a long way.

And the best piece of
advice that I really enjoyed

was undo one more button,
just to look a little more casual.

And it seemed like they had
their buttons up all the way

or maybe just the top
button undone and their shirts

looked a little wrinkly
and they were a little tight.

And they were like,
just loosen that up, baby.

Just show your casual
guy out to have a good time.

And maybe those ladies
start flocking to you.

This was organized by an app for middle-aged
people and it makes perfect sense.

And I think that’s
actually a really good idea.

It’s too bad, it’s only eight.

I think this kind of information maybe
throw it out there on the internet.

You’d actually probably
get more traction that way.

(upbeat music)

Eight people were arrested for
running a fake fortune telling site.

Now the site was real and
the fortune telling wasn’t real.

So why is this one being attacked?

Because I get a horoscope
and stuff where I see like, I’ll

go on TikTok and it’ll give
me like tarot card readings.

We’ll just come up randomly.

And if you actually watch one,
’cause I did watch one out of interest,

it meant like the next week all I got was
tarot card readings every like fifth video,

which I do not want because
I do not believe in tarot card.

I just was interested in what it
would say about today or this week.

So I compare statistically reality.

Did it happen? It did not.

I did enjoy the video.

That was nice.

What is wrong with this
website in these eight people

that they actually ended
up getting arrested for it?

Well, it turns out they had basically

scammed 10 people out of at
least 50 million yen, probably more.

And the fortunes were incredibly specific

and real and aimed at sort
of keeping you locked in.

So they would have fortunes like
you will definitely win the lottery today.

Now, if I said you will have
the lottery in your future

and then you go by lottery
tickets, that’s fairly true.

It’s innocuous.

It’s not actually saying like
you have to buy a lottery ticket.

They were locking in with
like two day, this will happen.

And so that’s fraud.

That’s lying to people.

And that’s the problem with this service.

It was the specificity of the claims

and the fact that they could
basically be proven unreal in

a couple of seconds, but they
were demanding money for it.

So if you got money and
you spent more money,

you get more fortunes
and I bet those fortunes

have actually got better depending on
how much money you actually sent them.

With repeated attempts
to get money from people.

So they actually received 350
payments from one person alone.

So this means they’ve been taking money,

you know, week after week from
the same people, that becomes fraud.

That becomes a scam because you’re
not delivering on any other promises.

You’re not actually delivering
on anything you claim to be doing.

So in 2024, there were
12,170 arrests of foreign people.

This is the largest number
of arrests in the last 15 years.

So I actually do have a
question of what happened in

2009 to be getting more
arrests than they have now.

But this means more and
more foreigners being arrested

right now they have a
thing where if you get

arrested in your foreigner,
they try to get someone

and interpret her in to actually
do translation services for you.

So let’s say I get arrested
and I don’t speak any Japanese.

And my Japanese isn’t actually
good enough to defend myself.

I would want interpreter with me.

The police ask me questions.

The interpreter is there.

I speak to the interpreter.

They respond to the police officer.

That service is there for
people who don’t speak Japanese,

but they don’t have enough interpreters.

And with more people becoming sort of
residents in Japan from more countries,

it means they’re actually
more languages to interpret.

They essentially cannot
promise having an interpreter,

an in-person interpreter
available during questioning.

And on top of the 12,000 arrests, there
were 9,500 crimes with non-arrest outcomes,

which means people were
taken in questions and spoken to,

but they weren’t actually arrested,
but they needed interpreters as well.

So going forward,
interpreting may be off-site

so they might do it through a phone call,
via voice chat, via some sort of service,

like line, online, so a video
call, something like that.

There are currently 4,200 police in Japan
who speak another language, proficiently.

So proficiently enough to be able to switch
languages and actually speak to them.

I’m gonna go ahead and bet a
majority of those are actually English,

but there’s gonna be a lot of them to speak
Korean or Chinese or something like that.

As an English speaker, I
wouldn’t want the policeman who

wants to arrest me actually
doing the interpretation.

So I wouldn’t want the guy who wants
to close this case as quickly as possible,

actually doing the interpretation
for me as the suspected party,

because I feel like there’s
might be a bias there.

There are 9,600 civilian
interpreters if needed.

And this is gonna be starting July 1st.

So these people, I guess they’re on call.

So like you just hang around,

maybe you work from home
situation where you’re on call,

and then the police
call you and they’re

like, hey, now can you
jump into this meeting?

Can you jump into this video call and
actually do the interpretation for the police?

Because maybe you have someone from Nepal

who’s been arrested and you need a
Nepalese speaker to do the interpretation.

You’re not maybe have
one in your small city.

So in the small city I live in, maybe
there are no people from Nepal

who can actually do
interpretation services.

So they’re gonna have to call someone
in Tokyo, Osaka, one of the other cities,

and have them actually
do it via video call.

(upbeat music)

Four people were arrested
for selling mammoth tusks.

The biggest problem with that being

since mammoths have been extinct for a
really long time, they’re not mammoth tusks.

So it would have been one interesting
thing like, hey, I’m selling mammoth tusks.

And you and take a moment and go, where
did you get these mammoths tusks from?

Might be the first question.

This of course was a scam.

This was to avoid ivory restrictions
and sales, which is a very real thing.

Selling ivory is not
that evil, not that evil.

There’s a weird 40 in slip
’cause I actually think it is evil.

Selling ivory is not legal.

There are a lot of sort
of things that you have to

take into account before
you can sell ivory in Japan.

It’s a violation of the
misleading labeling of goods.

So because they’re
selling ivory, but labeling

as mammoth tusks, that
is what makes it illegal.

Not the fact that they’re selling
illegal ivory, that is a secondary charge

that’s probably going to come out when they
discover what they were actually selling,

when they actually discover
where the ivory actually came from.

There is an international
ban on ivory trade.

So the fact that they’re
actually selling ivory

and calling it mammoth tusks,
that’s gonna be two crimes.

But they have to like open the door
with the fraud mammoth tusks thing

and then go, hey, where
did you get this ivory?

You were labeling as mammoth tusks.

And then, of course, they’re gonna find out

they’re gonna be in
trouble for that as well.

In Japan, you could
sell legally obtained

tusks certified by a
state backed organization.

So I’m assuming state backed
means a Japanese state backed,

which mammoth tusks
do not have an organization

in the state that’s going
to like certify that it’s a

real mammoth tusks, again,
because that’s not a thing.

So these people were just
trying to get around the sale.

So it means they’re actually
buying from an illegal source.

There’s no oversight, which means this
is going to be huge charges, big problems.

Don’t buy mammoth tusks online.

(upbeat music)

I mean, honestly, don’t buy
mammoth tusks in person either.

Just a little secondary note that
came into my head after I said that.

There was a kick streamer
called Zokun Zokun, and

he was arrested for
prefectural nuisance disorder.

So basically he’s running around
making a nuisance of himself.

What’s he doing?

Well, he’s a kick streamer.

That’s already one of the first problems,

because all the nuisance
steamers got kicked off Twitch.

They all moved to
kick where it’s a little

more freeform, and
they’re getting in trouble.

So Johnny Smolley was a kick streamer.

That guy went to the
Philippines was a kick streamer.

All these sort of nuisance
streamers have gone to kick.

I have dual streaming on Twitch and
kick, but I am not a nuisance streamer,

at least I hope I’m not annoying
you, or anyone else in my community.

I’m certainly not going outside
shouting things at people

and playing male tourist music
at six o’clock in the morning.

What he did to break the nuisance law

was run around with women’s
underwear on his head.

Now, the thing is on television,
this would be Pete comedy.

So he’s seeing this.

There’s a character, a manga character,
and he wears underwear on his head.

I’m not gonna get into that.

But a Japanese comedian on TV
wearing women’s underwear on his

face, on his head, that I see
would be seen as really funny.

I guess it’s because you
have the option of turning it off.

So if I’m walking down the street

and someone runs up to me
with underwear on their head,

I can’t just turn the channel
and then not see it anymore.

I have to see that, so
it’s being forced on me.

In real life, that’s why it
becomes nuisance streaming.

Viewers contacted the
police and because they could

tell where he was, they
could identify the location,

they could actually send
the police to where he was.

So I think it’s one of those interesting
things where if you’re streaming to people

and those people are ranting you out,
you either haven’t found the right audience

or you’re not doing a very
good job with your streaming.

There were some defenders who kind of
had the same logic of what I had is like,

if someone did this on TV,
if a famous comedian did

this on TV, they would
actually be lauded as hilarious.

What is the problem with this guy doing it?

Because he’s actually not
doing anything particularly illegal.

He’s just annoying people, but I’m
actually kind of in favor of nuisance laws

because these nuisance
streamers are getting so out of hand.

(upbeat music)

This is back from May 26th,

but I missed the story and I
actually was really interested.

We’ve actually done a dueling story before.

So Japan has a long history of samurai.

The samurai has have duels and that’s
why cowboy movies and samurai movies

have those great standoffs,
’cause everyone loves a duel.

Well, these two saitama women, 19 and
16 year old, so women is actually generous.

These are kids.

These two saitama kids were
arrested for dueling on May 26th.

Now they’re both from
different gangs and the

different gangs, they’ve
one called the other one out.

She said like, come meet
me here, she summoned her.

It’s like, meet me here
and we’re gonna duke it out.

We’re gonna fight.

And then we’re gonna have a fist fight.

So I guess they had clean
rules, no knives, no other objects,

nothing, we’re just gonna like
duke it out, old fashioned style.

They didn’t bring swords so
it wasn’t like a samurai duel.

Between eight, 30 and
nine, there were witnesses.

I guess they did this in a
parking lot or something.

Witnesses to the duel, so
they’re like calling the police,

going like, hey, we got two
gang looking chicks out here.

They seem to be like either getting
ready or beating each other up right now.

So maybe the cops should get out here.

Cops show up pretty
quick, they get arrested.

Both admitted to the charges of dueling.

Now why is this dueling a not just assault

or fighting in the street or public nuisance
like every other story we’ve had today?

It’s because it was organized.

And this was the point
I brought up the last

time this came up in
the introduced Japan,

was the organizational
element is what makes it a duel,

not just like an assault or a
fight or actually a lesser charge.

Because dueling is a more serious
charge than just fighting or assault.

Because of that organization factor because
of that forethought that went into it.

Now the police wanted dueling charge

because anyone involved in
organizing the duel is also guilty.

So if I organize it to, so I call
one girl on behalf of the other girl,

I am now involved in the
duel and I can be charged.

If other people show up and
they like stand in a circle around it

because they know it’s
duel, they know it’s going on.

They can all be charged with the duel.

So the police are
actually looking for a way

to extend the crime, to catch
more members of this gang,

to maybe either break
up the gang or give them a

little pressure so they
maybe rethink the gang life.

Isn’t the way they want to live?

But at the same time,
duels are still really cool.

[MUSIC]

(electronic music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Predictive Podcast

[music]

A man goes into a temple and he walks
up there is a scroll hanging from a temple.

I’m already like “You gotta
be cautious with scrolls.

” I mean that’s
just a straight up.

All the moves I’ve seen, man, scrolls.

You gotta be careful around those things.
Those dangerous materials.

This one is called “silk
ghost figure in light colors.

” Again already, you don’t
steal the scroll with a ghost

title because that is the
scroll that has a curse in it.

He’s going to steal
that scroll, run out, and

be cursed forever
in like horrible things.

This is the beginning of a horror
movie, a Japanese horror movie.

I guarantee if I put a little
effort into it, I could have

gone and found a horror
movie where the beginning was.

He stole this scroll
and then was cursed and

haunted and ghost
came after him and stuff.

Or the only other reason to steal a
scroll is because it’s part of a quest.

So you have to like lift a curse or
fight someone or something like that.

To end something, you
need this scroll to take it

to fight a ghost or destroy
a ghost or something.

Scrolls are bad news. That’s all I know.
Media has taught me one thing.

Scrolls are bad news.
Don’t mess with scrolls.

Hopefully he’s not a
situation where the scroll

is necessary for him
to get like lift a curse.

He decided he needed this scroll more than
anything else. He goes into the temple.

He steals the scroll.
He takes the scroll and he runs away.

The chief priest runs him
down and gets the scroll back.

Now, that in itself, like
again, so in my head,

that’s a Kung Fu fight
happening right there.

The chief priest jumps
up, uses some like, I don’t

know, ninja magic, temple
magic, ancient magic.

I don’t know, something
flies through the air.

There’s lots of robes
going, that’s gotta happen.

And then he’s like
kicked to the back of

the head, knocks the
scroll out of his hand.

He just cares about the scroll.
He doesn’t care about the fight.

But the guy’s like,
no, I gotta fight.

There’s Kung Fu fight happens.
That’s the story in my head.

What seems more realistic is like
he just grabbed him, held onto him.

Someone called the cops,
cops showed up, he was arrested.

He never really explained why
he needed to steal the scroll.

The head priest, the chief
priest, said pretty cool thing.

He’s like, I hope people
don’t steal scrolls.

I would prefer he just comes
and looks at it and enjoys it,

like all the other tourists
and stuff, because it’s free.

So clearly the only reason
he could steal it is because

of a curse and that man
has now doomed to go to hell.

Our minister of farming last week.
This is an update to last week’s story.

Last week he made a
comment that he had so many

supporters and so much love
and people loved him so much.

He was so great and everyone thought
he was awesome. He never had to buy rice.

Rice prices in Japan are
hitting an all-time high.

So that’s maybe a tad
insensitive thing to say.

You don’t as the guy responsible
for rice and rice prices sort of related.

You don’t go around talking about
how I get all my rice free. You peons.

You little people, you have to
pay for your rice, sucks for you.

Now again, he was saying this to
another bunch of rich people and they all

thought it was like, Ha Ha Funny,
but then of course the coming gets out.

Then he goes out. He’s
like, I went on social media.

That’s what I realized
how angry people were.

This is kind of, you know, I
don’t get it. Like why is everyone

so upset that I’m getting my
rice free because I’m so awesome.

He checked social media and realized how
infuriated people were. That was May 20th.

There was another
sort of side bit.

He actually in his apology,
the order’s out already.

He had to apologize.
In his apology, he said

that his wife had
already admonished him.

This was something
that I had heard before

but never connected.
It never clicked to me.

And what he’s doing is
diminishing the importance

of the actual outrage
that he’s feeling.

My wife has already complained
that I’m a piece of shit.

You know, that should be enough.

And it’s also like the hand-pecked
husband kind of stereotype.

I’m like, I’m getting this at home and all.
It’s my life is so hard.

And it’s actually diminishing the
complaint that people have at mass.

Which I didn’t realize until I read
another article that was pointing out.

This is sort of a trope at this point.
They talk about it being show at Arrow.

These people who kind of were raised
in that period adopted this attitude.

And this is part of their
apologies, which makes

it feel less sincere to
Japanese people now.

Coming from outside the culture,
I didn’t know that element of it.

So reading about it was
very interesting because

I expect there will
still be a few apologies.

And they go, “Wow, I went home. Why wife
told me off? Man, I’m really hard done by.

” I didn’t know that was
like a stereotype or a thing.

But it actually takes away
from the sincerity of the apology.

So his apology wasn’t even
sincere when he was doing it.

Which I, again, as a not
in Japanese person, didn’t

realize when I was
reading the apology stuff.

He checks social media. He realized
how infuriated people were. He apologizes.

And then on May 21st, he quits.

Now he was going to get fired.

The Prime Minister was
going to tell him to step down.

He was trying to keep everything in place.

The problem is that the ruling party right
now, their approval ratings really low.

So he’s like a scandal of
any type is going to sink us.

Here’s a short message to Americans.

Imagine a politician making a joke
about rice prices or never paying for rice

and actually losing his job because it is
deemed as irresponsible for the politician.

Just imagine that world.
That could be your world if

you had held people accountable
for the things they say.

I’m not talking about anyone in particular.
I’m not taking a political stance.

But it shows sort of the difference in
the different systems where in Japan,

an off-handed comment can get you to the
point where you lose your position in power

because of the scandal
because people are angry at you.

The same day, May 21st,
a new minister is named.

You got to have a minister or a farming.

So one gets fired.
You got to bring another win in.

They choose the former
Prime Minister, Koi Zumi Sun.

Who’s not like, he’s
not just like his first job.

He’s actually been a
minister of the environment,

which leads up to
the joke that actually

happened on the internet
when he was chosen.

The minister, Koi
Zumi, is famous for

introducing the two
yen price for plastic bags.

So if you get a bag, at a convenience
store, you have to pay at least two yen.

A lot of places to have a small
bag is two yen. Big bag is five yen.

That kind of stuff.
Pretty sensible thing for

the minister of the
environment to introduce,

because the minister
environment is trying to reduce the

amount of plastic people
using what’s to encourage people

to bring their own bags.
So you charge for the plastic bags.

As soon as this guy was announced, Koi Zumi
was announced as the new farming minister,

a trending joke happened in Japan, and it
was charge for rice bags started to trend.

So everyone started saying, “Oh,
great. This guy’s in charge of rice.

Now I’m going to have to pay two
yen for the bag. The rice comes in.

” That started trending
almost immediately because

the entire country started
making the same joke.

Some would say this is a good move. Some
would say it’s not because he was sewing.

Again, he was taking his job seriously
as the minister in the environment.

But at the same time, it’s another rich
dude in Japan, politics is a legacy game.

So it’s families, have
politicians, and their kids go into

politics, and they get into
these roles, and they do this.

There’s probably an expectation
that this guy, because he

was son, he was the son of
the previous prime minister.

He’s going to aim to be prime minister
someday. It’s like a form of nepotism.

But yeah, it’s
like a family job.

And that’s a very Japanese
thing to do is have just family jobs.

I don’t know how I
feel about this guy.

Hopefully he does try
to take this seriously.

He’s actually said
his goal is to get a five

kilogram bag of rice
from the government.

Price at 2000 yen, which should
impact the price of all the other rice.

So if you can get
government rice at 2000

yen, foreign rice should
be around 2000 yen.

Other Japanese rice
should be around 2000 yen.

So he’s got a clear
number in his head that

he’s put out there
that he wants to aim for.

And they’re releasing the government rice.

So I don’t know if he’s
doing it or the other guy did

it and just shouldn’t
have said the thing he said.

It just shows how
seriously people take

statements that the
Japanese politicians make.

Which again, I think could be a
model in some other countries.

This is from the discord.

There is the chunk of beef chest
discord, which is open for anyone to join.

If you would like to find the link, you can
go to link tree slash chunk of beef chest.

And you’ll find a link to the
discord where you can join.

It’s still in its early stages.

You’ll find a lot of my stuff there.

But then people are now starting to
drop in stories for me to check out.

Which I really appreciate.

I really just want people to know that,
you know, any efforts into this podcast.

I want to pay those back 10 fold and make
sure they get the attention they deserve.

Or at least we could just interact.

I do want to bring guests back on.

I want to bring quizzes back on
just honestly, last couple of months.

Really hard to organize anything.

There is a manga from back in 1999
that predicted the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The earthquake.

Not the actual specifics of the disaster.

But it said there’s going to be an
earthquake in that month in March in 2011.

I do have a problem.

I don’t really believe
in predictions and stuff.

I had my palm red before I came to
Japan because I was going to leave.

Now I didn’t give the lady any hints.

So she were in my palm.

She said you’re going
to work with your hands.

I do not work with my hands.

She said you’re going to move west.

I moved east.

I mean, it was almost as
if she was 100% correct.

So if she had just said
the opposite of everything

she said, it would have
all been kind of right.

So that’s one of those things where
she did her cold reading completely wrong.

Or she just like her assessment
of me was completely wrong.

So all her predictions were wrong.

I enjoy predictions.

I don’t believe them.

So I read a horoscope.

If one comes up conveniently,
I will do some palm reading.

If it’s easy.

I don’t take it very seriously.

I had my palm red when I was in Korea.

And she said I’m going to die when I’m 72.

And I looked at her and
I went, is it going to hurt?

And then she went, I started laughing.

It was like super old lady.

She’s dead now.

And she started laughing.

And she goes like, I can’t tell that.

And actually that gave a
little more credence to her

prediction by saying like,
this is what I can predict.

This is what I can predict.

I kind of like was like, took it
almost a little more seriously.

And that might be why that
prediction sort of stuck in my head.

So in my head, when I hit 70,
I’m going to start doing drugs.

It’s just all the drugs I want
because I’m going to be dead by 72.

So I’m not like wasting my life
or using my body by doing drugs.

Probably end up on an international pan.

Anyways, in 1999, there was a
manger release called the Future I saw.

And this was the author was
having dreams, revelatory dreams.

Did I just make up a word?

Prevalatory?

Prevalatory.

Predictive dreams is the word
I probably should have used.

I just went through a whole
new English phase just there.

And in that, she started
making a story about a character

who has predictive dreams
and interpredictive dreams.

She’s trying to deal with
like, do I take this seriously?

Is this real? Do I tell anybody? Do I?

Sort of the real things that
would happen if you had predictive

dreams and the things you dream
actually started to come true.

One of those was in March 2011.

There was going to be a disaster.

She updated it and she said the
real disaster will come in July 2025.

Next month, no, in two
months from the release of

this podcast, there’s
going to be the real disaster.

Making, I guess, Fukushima
seemed like it wasn’t the real disaster.

It’s not super specific,
but it sells books.

So in the books she
claims that the South Sea

of Japan will boil,
causing a megatsunami.

So she’s talking about there’s
going to be an underwater fault.

It will open up and that
sort of that lava, that

stuff from inside is
going to boil the water.

But it’s going to be so violent,
it’s going to cause another tsunami.

It’s going to be three times
stronger than the Tohoku earthquake.

Now, I don’t think that’s
how earthquakes work.

I don’t think they can predict it.

Scientists don’t have
the level of technology

where they can actually
predict earthquakes.

But people do take it seriously.

So some people have
started canceling their plans to

come to Japan, mostly tourists
from China and Hong Kong.

They have access to this manga.

They take what is said in
this manga seriously because it

successfully predicted that
there would be an event in 2011.

They’re also taking it seriously
that it’s going to be an event in 2025.

So they’re canceling their trips.

And because of that, it actually
was reported on the news.

It’s probably how most of
those people have seen it.

But in Vietnam and Thailand,
social media has picked this up.

And they’ve started spreading it around.

So tourists from Vietnam and Thailand have
started canceling their trips to Japan.

So people are staying away.

The actual social media
message in Thailand and Vietnam

at this time is to stay away
from Japan in July 2025.

So it’s actually having
a real world effect.

It’ll be very interesting to see if
anything actually happens in July 2025.

Because predictions are great.

Like I could sit here and just do a
thing where I make a ton of predictions.

And one of those is right.

Everyone’s going to take it
really seriously, even though all

the other predictions that I
made that didn’t happen are right.

Like I could be like there’s going
to be an earthquake in this month.

There’s going to be
earthquake in this year.

It’s going to be like, ooh, if
one of those things happened,

they’ll start taking the
other stuff really seriously.

When I came to Japan,
it was 2001 and I joined

the company and they
had like a all staff meeting.

And in the all staff meeting,
this old guy comes up.

He goes, there’s been
an earthquake in Osaka.

There’s been an earthquake in Tokyo.

That means the next
earthquake is going to happen

in Nagoya, which is
not how fault lines work.

It’s not how earthquakes work.

They don’t do like a
tour of different regions.

They don’t like do it evenly.

You could have 20 earthquakes in
Tokyo and zero earthquakes in Nagoya.

I think the percentage of an
earthquake in Nagoya happening

maybe would go up over time
because it hasn’t had an earthquake.

But it’s not going to do
like an equitable system

to make sure that every
region gets hit equally.

So I was like, that seems really weird.

And I was sitting at the back of the room.

I didn’t know how these things were run.

I was sitting in front of the windows.

And then he says, all you people
sitting in the back by the windows.

You’re all dead because I
guess the windows shatter

and like cut all our
heads off or something.

But then my first thought to that
was, why did you put chairs here then?

Like why did you put chairs
into place where people

if there is an earthquake
are all going to die?

That seems like really
irresponsible of you, the leader

of this actual sort of
safety seminar you’re giving,

which was actually just like a
whole bunch of scare tactics.

It was not honestly a very pleasant
way to be introduced to Japan.

This story actually also
came from the discord service.

So thank you for posting
in the discord server.

49 year old man was arrested for
coercion of an electronic store clerk.

So what happens?

He goes and buys it hair clippers.

I have hair clippers.

I just shaved my head down really short.

I sometimes use them on my beard.

He calls and say, these
clippers aren’t working.

I’m really angry about it.

And you sold me these clippers.

So I need you to bring me a
replacement set of clippers.

And the clerk being a
Japanese guy who’s really

like takes customer
service really seriously.

He goes, yeah, okay.

I’m going to get a new set of clippers.

I’m going to bring him to your
house and will swap him out.

And then you don’t
even have to do anything.

You can just like get back to shaving
your head or whatever you were doing.

So that sort of shows the
level of customer service

this guy was getting
because of his complaint.

The clerk shows up at
his house and this guy,

the customer starts showing him his tattoos
to show him that he is part of the Akuzo.

So he’s a really scary guy.

So you better do what I say or I
might even like beat you up or kill you.

That’s actually the implication.

If I started ripping my
shirt off and showing

you my tattoos, the
message is pretty clear.

I’m part of the mafia.

You better do what I say.

Keep me satisfied or this
is going to end badly for you.

The guy had already brought
the new clippers to his house.

So I don’t know what kind of thing
he actually wanted from the guy.

So what he does is says I want
the traditional Japanese apology.

So you’ve got to get down on your
knees and then that’s suddenly not enough.

Probably because the
guy was going to do it.

So the guy says,
let’s prove that these

clippers work and you
shave your head because

a very traditional way of apologizing
in Japan is to shave your head.

There was actually an idol really
early on in the new Japan days.

She had a boyfriend and a lot of the contracts
and sort of the understanding is that

they don’t get boyfriends, they
stay purer, they don’t have sex.

It’s actually written into their
contracts that they won’t date.

So she had broken this rule, this rule that
she would keep herself purer for her fans.

So to apologize for having gone on a date,
she shaved her head and then she went on

to the internet to apologize to her fans.

So this is like a
long-standing Japanese thing.

It’s just, I’m not supposed
to show how, show your

contrition to your audience
or the fans or whatever.

So he’s taken on this
like, oh this guy’s actually

scared of me, he’s
going to do what I say.

So he says, I want you to shave your head.

So he shaves the right side of his head
and then the guy I guess was satisfied,

he cleans up his hair
and then he goes back

to the store and
immediately calls the police.

Because what had just
happened was called coercion.

So the guy threatened
him, told him he had to do a

thing, coerced him into
doing it, calls the police.

This guy’s arrested the original
clippers that he was complaining about.

When police picked them up,
found out that they actually worked.

So this whole thing didn’t need to happen.

I’m betting he thought they were
either battery powered or rechargeable

or something and he hadn’t plugged
them in or hadn’t charged them.

And so they didn’t work.

But when the police tried them out,
the original clippers actually worked.

So this whole thing was
completely unnecessary.

This guy’s going to jail.

They referred to him in the
newspapers as unemployed.

Now, there’s two possibilities here.

One, he’s got really scary tattoos
and he’s not part of the Yakuza.

Because Yakuza, Mafia members actually have
to register themselves with the police,

which is I find mind bogglingly
weird, but it is part of the process.

So if you are a Yakuza or Mafia
member, you’re going to be registered with

the police and that’s how they’re
going to refer to you in the newspaper.

The newspaper didn’t refer
to him as a Mafia member.

They referred to him as unemployed,
which would imply that he’s not registered.

But he could still be a
criminal and unregistered

one, which to me
makes a lot of sense.

And then be one of these sort of
newer dark groups that aren’t as organized.

So he is a criminal, but he’s not a
member of a criminal organization

as the traditional idea of
having all your Yakuza tattoos.

He’s more sort of one of these new
loose groups that sort of change and meld

and different members come and go
over time as they do different crimes.

But it seems like he’s not maybe the
Mafia member he was making himself

out to be in the original sort of
threat of showing office tattoos.

A 42-year-old Chinese
exchange student was stalking

a woman named Haruna
Kojima, who was also an idol.

She’s a former idol, I think she was
in AKB-48, and then she went solo.

So she was still really popular.

She was in Shibuya, and this guy
managed to stalk her and track her down.

He grabbed her arm and she fell down.

And that is assault.

That was back in October 2024.

His court case is ongoing now.

So we know why he did it
and was he threatening her?

Was he attacking her?

What kind of stalking was this?

In court he stated, “I loved her
and wanted to see her every day.

When I saw her I got
excited and grabbed her

arm thinking I would
confess my feelings.

” He had already been
warned to stay away from her.

So he said, “I thought it
was a misunderstanding.

I believe if I told her my feelings
directly she might give me a chance.

” And that is the weird
scary parasocial thing

that’s going on on
the internet right now.

So this actually happened
last year in October.

But now we’re seeing
he’s giving the idea

like I thought I had a
relationship with her.

I thought I had confessed to her.

This is a 42 year old man.

Like she’s only in her late 20s, early 30s.

She’s may very well not
be interested in this age gap.

She doesn’t know him so she’s
not going to have any feelings for him.

This is one of the weird
things of the one-sided

internet version of
parasocial relationships.

I, when I came to Japan,
worked for like a little

website and I didn’t
interview with a cosplayer.

And then of course I
naturally started following her.

And then after a while I got all these
like insights and she kind of would

like knew my name if she like streamed
and I would like type something in.

She’d be like, “Hey buddy.

” And then I felt like I was
more close to her than I was.

And she had no idea who I was.

She did that interview, forgot who
I was and moved on with her life,

saw that this name that showed up
in her streams and stuff was regular.

So she started to remember the name.

If I met her on the street, she’d be
absolutely terrified like who’s this guy?

And I’m like, “I know you.

We have a connection.”

It was really quick for me to like take a
moment and go, “She doesn’t know who I am.

She doesn’t know anything about me.

We’re not friends.

” And I had to remember, I
had to like remind myself of that.

So I didn’t like go to the depths these
other guys are doing because I didn’t

allow myself to because I had that reality
check available in my conscious mind.

These guys don’t have
that filter or that step.

And that’s where these
kind of like, “I believe that if

I confess to her she will
love me back things happen.

” It’s actually really terrifying because
we’ve had a bunch of stories in America of

streamers who are like going out and people
are like chasing them and following them down.

And like, honestly getting angry that
they’re not reciprocating their feelings.

It’s actually one of the scariest parts.

Luckily, I don’t have to
worry about any of this.

TikTok prankster.

I could honestly just end the story there.

You could fill in the blanks
and probably be fairly accurate.

It’s just the specifics of how he was
being an asshole is actually the story.

But the fact that he was an asshole
to someone who didn’t deserve it

is so common now, I don’t actually
feel the need to say anything more.

May 19th, he goes to a gas station
and he goes to the gas station and he

says, “I don’t know how to like unlock
the cap of my car to get the gas in.

Can you show me how
to do it or do it for me?

” He gets the girl, the
gas station attendant

to get in his car and
then he locks the doors.

Now, I don’t know if there
was some sort of mechanism

he had in so that he
could keep her in there.

He managed to keep her in the car for
two minutes straight, so just enough time

to be absolutely terrified that something
really bad is about to happen to you.

Two minutes locked in someone
else’s car has to feel like forever.

Like that’s just the honest to goodness
truth that this woman was probably

absolutely terrified that she was
going to be taking away and killed.

He started recording, so
kept her in, he started making

jokes and then like, “Aha,
you’re locked in my car.

” That kind of bullshit. He was
arrested because this is not kidnapping

but confining someone, I guess
confining someone is a form of kidnapping.

Like not allowing their freedom of movement is a form of
kidnapping because there have been stories that I’ve done in the

past where it was like you’re working at a company and then
they lock the door and they tell you’re not allowed to leave.

That falls under kidnapping laws.

If that ever happens to you,
like you’re in a situation where

like someone is keeping you
from leaving, that’s kidnapping.

That’s the lot falls
under in Japan anyways.

I guess it’s like confinement,
that kind of situation.

But he was arrested and he said he did not intend to
confine the woman despite the fact he’s the one who

locked the door, the capture in the car, which is
absolutely means he confined her in that car on purpose.

And I just hope these guys start getting
punched enough that it’s enough to actually

scare other people away from doing the
same bullshit because this is so tiring.

Man walks into the temple, there’s
lots of temples all over Japan,

beautiful places, great places, I
fucking don’t know, I’m not a tourist guy.

Go fuck yourself.

That’s not how to start.

Okay.

Single Podcast Tax

(upbeat music)

They are doing some kind
of construction next door.

So I set this up, I was gonna
go super early in the morning,

I was gonna ton done
today, and then they started

putting up scaffolding
right outside my window.

I’m not angry about it, these
guys got under their paychecks,

and the people next
door have to have the

right to fix their house
if something’s wrong.

Just, it was one of those things where you
have all your plans for the day laid out,

and then it’s just like,
good done, good done.

And I was like, okay, better day
than the minister of farming in Japan.

I guess the Japan farm
minister was giving a speech,

and he said that he has
never had to buy a rice

because people give him
so much rice, his supporters,

people who think, who
agree with him politically,

everyone loves him so
much they give him rice.

Now, rice prices in Japan
have hit an all-time high.

So you might think, hey, it
might be a little bit insensitive

for the guy who’s almost
in charge of rice prices

to talk about how he
gets all his rice for free

to a bunch of people who
have to pay for their own rice.

This is the case of an
out-of-touch rich guy

talking to another bunch
of out-of-touch rich people

who probably thought the
idea of him getting all his rice

for free was awesome, especially
in this time of very high rice prices.

So, you know, the poor people,
he said he gets so much rice

from gifts and from
supporters, he could sell it.

Now, that made people
angry, he came out again,

and he said, hmm, I’m
sorry, I may have misspoken.

I may have exaggerated to please the crowd.

So this is, again, rich poll
talking to other rich polls,

being told, and his
audience finds it really funny,

the problem is outside those
doors, other people actually

hear the things he says
and think, what an asshole.

Then he got in trouble with his wife.

I just got scolded by my
wife because, of course,

in real life, someone in
his household does buy rice.

So, when they run low, she goes out
and buys rice and comes back more.

He calls him up, he’s
like, what are you saying?

You absolute moron.

So he gets in trouble from his wife.

He does his apology.

The prime minister calls him in
and says, dude, what the fuck?

I mean, that is just the short,
I mean, of course, summarizing

paraphrasing, but he’s like,
what the fuck are you doing?

You’re the guy in charge of rice in
the country that eats mostly rice.

It’s like the staple of
everyone in this country

and the rice prices have
gone through the roof.

We have this store of rice that we are
releasing to try to keep the rice prices low.

The rice he’s prices to keep those lowly.

And he goes out again, the
prime minister apologizes,

and this is actually a point of
respect for the prime minister.

He says, I chose this guy,
I put him in charge of this.

He said something stupid that’s
just as much as my fault as it is his.

I’m not saying it’s the
prime minister’s fault,

but him taking responsibility
for the guy in his cabinet.

I think that’s a pretty smart move.

His approval rating is very low.

So it’s really hard for
him to make a mistake

anyways, but he’s earned
one point up from me.

I still don’t really know
how I feel about him.

From being really honest,
Japanese prime ministers,

I’ve never had a particularly
strong feeling about any of them.

So the prime minister apologizes, and then
this guy goes out and he has to apologize.

Again, he says, I retract my
comments and fully apologize.

And I would just like to say,
you are a rich piece of meat.

And I retract my statement and apologize.

(upbeat music)

This is actually quite scary.

A 25 year old has developed
dropping head syndrome.

You know, I see people
on their phones all the time.

I’m one of them.

I actually started
suffering slight neck pain.

I think because I was looking at my
phone too much, because I was on the train,

and I have a very long
train ride, very long commute.

I watch movies, TV shows on my phone.

So I’m looking down at my phone.

I noticed I was starting getting a
stiff neck of sore neck regularly.

And I was like, I have to fix this.

I have to sit up straight.

I have to hold my phone
up or something like that.

I have to change my behavior so
that I’m not looking down at my phone.

I’ve gotten on my kids about it.

It’s much harder with
kids ’cause they don’t,

you know, right now
they’re bouncing back.

But again, this kid, 25 years
old, he’s already developed this.

But this started in high school.

He was getting bullied.

He stayed home and he spent all
his time on his phone playing games.

So he was sitting
hunched over all the time.

He developed a large
lump in the back of his neck.

Now this is probably
torn tissue healing itself,

stretching out and then trying to heal and
getting into this big lump mass of flesh.

But then it became difficult
for him to lift his head up

because he’d actually kind
of like the ligaments had

stretched out too much and
he’d done damage to the vertebrae.

But because his head was forced downward,

he was finding it really
hard to swallow food.

So he started losing an
immense amount of weight.

He goes to doctors.

They at first try to
do exercises and stuff.

That doesn’t work.

They put a brace on his neck.

That doesn’t work ’cause it makes it.

He’s just saying like, my neck’s gone numb.

I just don’t feel anything anymore.

So then they had to do surgery.

They had to remove part of his vertebrae
and stick rods and screws in place.

He can now hold his neck up without pain.

I’m sure this is going to
cause problems in the future,

but for anyone out there
who’s spending a lot of time

on their phone or knows
someone who spends a lot of time

on their phone, in this
hunched up position.

This might actually be worth mentioning.

I think it might be one of those scare
stories because this is incredibly rare.

It’s an extreme case, but it
is a real thing that can happen

if you start experiencing
net pain, if you start

experiencing net pain,
please take care of yourself.

(upbeat music)

Very recently on the internet news.

I guess yeah, this is internet news.

This isn’t news.

Internet news is its own thing.

You’ve probably seen an article that says,
“We now know why orange cats are orange.

” And I, when I read that headline, my first
thought was like, well, it’s their DNA.

Like I just, I’m not even a scientist and
I know it’s their DNA, it’s a chromosome,

something, something
in there makes a orange.

I don’t need to do any
research to find that out.

Turns out I was right.

Without even reading the article,

a Japanese group has figured
out why calico cats are calico.

And let me tell you, before I even read
the article, I was like, it’s in their DNA.

Yeah, the DNA is making them that color,

those shades of color, it’s
things that are turned on

or turned off that make
them different from other cats.

120 years ago though, this was the
actual interesting part, 120 years ago.

People started noticing that
almost all calico cats are female.

So you’ll hear the statement,
all calico cats are female.

That is for the most part true.

There’s no point getting
an argument about it.

It’s like in the 90% it’s very high
percentage of calico cats are female cats.

It is not 100%, nature
doesn’t do 100% like the way

we would like it to to
win internet arguments.

Or I guess if someone makes
that statement, then you can pull

the technically correct so that
you can always like one up them.

So nature’s sort of on
the technically correct side.

60 years ago, they found that there were
two X chromosomes that were inactive.

To me that, again, it
was put on the path of,

oh, I know what you’re
talking about, it’s in their DNA.

We don’t really need, this isn’t news.

Then, of course, they
came out, it’s a specific gene.

A Japanese team found that the actual
thing is the ARHGAP36 on the X chromosome

and that is what makes
calico cats calamicious.

(upbeat music)

Californication.

Cala.

Because I was swearing
so much in the last one,

I think I might have gotten into a
little bit of swear mode in my head.

I have decided going
forward to censor my swears

just because I think it sounds
funnier when I put in censorship.

I mean, that’s literally
not because it’s gonna

be better for YouTube
or better for stuff.

It might be, I don’t know, but I think
it’s funnier when you censor swears.

I’ve been listening to different
podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff,

and I actually think I find it
funnier when they censor the swear.

‘Cause I know what the swear it is,
but I don’t know, it’s entertainment.

Two 16 year old girls have been arrested.

Whew, usually on Engineers Japan,
this would be like a lot, it’s not.

It is the food terrorism, which I actually,

it seems to have gone away,
it seems to have been done.

We had the guy doing stuff on the
Kaiten sushi, the conveyor belt sushi.

We had people like eating from the ginger
stuff that is shared at the Gudon places.

This is the reason I
don’t go to Gudon places,

is ’cause they have all
this stuff out in its shared,

and then you get idiots and gross
people who think it’s funny to do this.

These two girls took
a shared picture of tea,

so they’ll basically
have a big thing of tea

on the table and you pour
a glass and you drink it.

That’s how civilized human beings do it.

It gets shared around
maybe about a couple people.

I go to a round in place on occasion.

It has water and a big
jug, and then you’re at a

bar, and there’s about
two or three on the bar.

You grab it, you pour yourself
some water, you drink the water.

It’s shared amongst multiple people.

These girls thought,
“Haha, wouldn’t it be funny?

” If we filmed ourselves
drinking directly from the jug,

they did that, posted on social
media, and were immediately arrested.

(upbeat music)

Last week, I talked about the
guy who climbed up Mount Fuji,

had to be rescued, left
his cell phone up there,

went back up Mount Fuji and had
to be rescued again on his way down.

I did say, do these people have to pay

for the cost of the
rescue, because it’s a

helicopter, and I know
helicopters are expensive.

Something I learned,
and this was 20 years ago,

so the volume of money
we’re talking about has changed,

it was 300 an hour, it was $300 an
hour to rent a helicopter for a movie.

So that includes wait time,
spin up time, flying around,

waiting, get your shot and
then landed and all that stuff.

So 300 bucks an hour, I
don’t think that includes

fuel, that’s just
renting the helicopter.

So helicopters are crazy expensive.

When people are rescued from
Mount Fuji, they use a helicopter.

So this became interesting for two reasons.

One, I learned what you
do and don’t have to pay for,

and then I learned that
the mayor of the area,

the mayor of a town that is responsible for
these rescues has similar feelings to me.

A UK couple, one wearing a
long sleeve shirt and shorts,

and the other wearing a
short sleeve shirt and pants,

decided they were gonna hike up
Mount Fuji, and they, of course, I guess,

I think it’s because Mount
Fuji itself is accessible,

and this gives people the wrong impression
of how easy it is to climb up Mount Fuji.

And there are trails, and
you just walk up the trails,

and I think for the first part,
probably maybe the first 1,000 meters,

you’re not terrible if
you plan to go back down.

If you’re gonna go all
the way up to the top,

the 3,000 meter mark
or however high you can

go, the highest way
station you can stop at,

you need multiple, like you
need hot and cold weather gear,

you need boots, you need
like stuff to keep you warm,

you need food, you might
even need oxygen people,

they have like way stations
where you can get oxygen.

That kind of stuff is necessary,
because it’s not that easy.

This UK couple clearly didn’t look into
it, they’re wearing their spring clothing,

and they go up the mountain
immediately getting trouble,

because it’s too cold
for them to make it all

the way to the top or
come back down again.

So they call helicopter is dispatched, the
helicopter rescues them, takes them off.

I hope they’re not hurt, they
got stuck at 1,750 meters,

and they couldn’t find any shelter, so
they called emergency services in Japan,

that’s 110, and they sent a
helicopter to go rescue them.

The mayor wants people who get rescued on
the mountain to have to pay for the rescue.

So right now, he was actually very generous,
he actually said off season hikers.

So when it’s the main time, I guess there’s
people up there monitoring or helping,

or maybe there’s more in
place when it’s on season,

but off season, I guess you
can still just go up to trails,

he says those people
should have to pay full price.

He said they are not
listening to the warnings

and selfishly choosing to
climb during the off season.

The cost of rescue
operations is tremendous,

so shouldn’t the burden
of paying those costs be

carried up by the people
requiring off season rescues?

They have a responsibility
for the result of their actions.

I agree, this is really, really important,
the people who actually get in trouble

should actually have to pay
for the trouble they cause.

I think would actually stop people
from doing so, actually probably wouldn’t.

‘Cause again, these people aren’t thinking,

they’re gonna climb up the
mountain and get in trouble.

They’re thinking this is
gonna be a really nice hike,

we’ll get up to the top of
the mountain in like an hour,

and you know, just look
out, it’ll be a beautiful view.

Right now, rescue ease, pay
for the fuel for the helicopter.

They don’t pay for the
helicopter, or the people’s time, or

the before and after, or the
maintenance of the helicopter,

and every other other cost
that would go into a helicopter

rescue, I guess air traffic
controls also in there.

Like, there’s a lot of stuff
that I’m not even gonna be able

to think of on the fly that needs to be
paid for, for these things to be successful.

Right now, they pay for the fuel for
the helicopter to go up and go down.

I’m sure that’s still a lot of money.

It’s only a fraction of
the cost of what it must

actually cause to send a
helicopter up a mountain,

pick some people up,
and bring them back down.

Like, just the pilot’s fee has to be a lot.

So the mayor of the city
thinks that the people who get in

trouble off season, should
have to pay the full cost, I agree.

I think the people who
get in trouble on season

should have to bear a
certain amount of the burden,

because right now,
this is coming out of

taxpayer’s money, cause
this is rescue services.

It’s gonna be maybe in a
special burden on that town,

but he’s now making appeals to like,
for federal funds, this kind of stuff.

And then putting the federal
side on it, actually make the

government be like, hey, yeah,
we don’t wanna pay for this.

Maybe you, the idiot
who went out Mount Fuji

in the T-shirt, maybe
you should pay for it.

(upbeat music)

You’re planning your burglary, God damn it.

So you’re planning your burglary.

So you’re a serial burglar.

You’re the ham burglar, cause
you’re stealing ham wherever you go.

I found out that they don’t fingerprint
into DNA, like they do in the movies,

like when someone like Burgles a
house, the cops show up, they kind of go,

what was stolen and they’re
like, all right, thanks to you.

Now that’s North America.

If it seems like a serial case
in Japan, so there are like

multiple burglaries, I’m gonna
mess up this word multiple times.

There are multiple, there are
multiple burglaries in an area.

They will start taking fingerprints.

And they were very frustrated
because there was a serial

burglar burgling because I’m
having trouble with the word.

I’m gonna say it as much as I can.

Because there is a serial
burglar burglaring in an area,

they’re like, we’re gonna
actually start taking

fingerprints, but they
weren’t finding any fingerprints.

So this guy was leaving no clues.

He wasn’t leaving fingerprints,

probably wearing gloves, pretty
simple solution to that problem.

He wasn’t probably going full clean suit,
like they do when you assassinate someone,

you don’t wanna leave any hair
follicles behind or anything like that.

But he was being careful.

He was burgling with expertise.

And this is, it puts
them in a spot because

without clues, how are
they supposed to get them?

Well, then one day, the case broke.

And it broke in the best way possible.

He, being a 68 year old man,
actually took medicine regularly,

he had his medicine bag with him, he
dropped it or left it in one of the house,

he had burgled, and the
medicine bag had his name on it.

So this is always one
of the things that I think

about burglers and like
robbers and stuff like that.

There’s two problems.

One, you’re never as
careful as you think you are.

He was careful enough to wear gloves,
but you’re always gonna make a mistake.

And that’s one of the things I
always think like criminals do,

is they make more mistakes
than they think they make,

or they get overconfident and
overconfidence where it comes from.

Then the second one is
always they’re too greedy,

because you get a certain amount
of money and you should stop.

Now this guy, he was burgling residences.

So a burglar burgling residences
is only gonna make so much money,

because you might get
lucky and get one of those old

people’s houses who don’t
seem to believe in banks,

and they keep like millions and
millions of millions of yen in the house.

Like we’ve had stories
in the past 70 million yen,

150 million yen were kept in like
under the bed in a box in the house.

If you broke into my house, there
wouldn’t be much money available.

I do almost all my purchases
on my phone, so using pay pay.

My wife doesn’t keep a lot
of money around the house,

the kids don’t have any real money,
so you’re not gonna get millions of yen

from this household,
should you burgle this house.

You could get my picture of
Dave there in the background

and believe me, this would
be a John Wick situation

where I come after you and your
family and everyone you’ve ever known.

I would kill so many people, so as to
erase the memory of you from this world.

Anyone who had met you and known
you and could say your name would die,

and to the point where
you just cease to exist.

But on a more happy note, between December
2024 and February 2025, you stole 1.

3 million yen from homes, and he’s suspected
in participating in 48 other cases.

So this is again, 48 in these houses.

So we’re talking like 50, 60 houses,
he burgled over a couple of months,

’cause it’s really just
December, January, February.

But 1.3 million yen isn’t
even enough to live on.

Like you’re gonna need
four, five million yen.

Over the course of, I
guess that’s three months

a million yen, you might
be doing a mediocre salary,

but you might as well just get a job
because then you don’t risk going to jail.

And at 68 years old, I gotta say, I do
have some appreciation for the physicality

and was required for
him to be 68 years old,

get the motivation up,
go break into houses.

We had the guy last
week who got out of prison

and immediately went back
to, he’s like, I got bad legs,

I can’t work, so I’m gonna
immediately go back to crime.

Start breaking into people’s
houses and stealing stuff.

An interesting fact of
Japan having a grain society

is that Japan has a
grain society of criminals.

So you get these guys in their 60s
and 70s who are still committing crimes,

’cause at this point, the only
thing they know how to do.

(upbeat music)

So this is something that
has come to really bother me

about news and it’s one
of those things that news,

especially in Japan because it’s
so sensationalized on the internet.

One of the things of having
Western people come in,

so they’re coming from their
Western environment and the

Western internet into Japan,
where a lot of the stuff they know

or the information they have
just comes from the internet.

And so they’ll believe things
that are straight up not true.

So about two months
ago, maybe a little more,

but around that time, there
was a story going around

that they were going to make
breeding passports for Japan.

And the thing about breeding passports

is if you know anything
about the Japanese mentality,

the last thing they want
is a bunch of foreign people

coming in an interracial mixing, intermixing
intermixing with the Japanese people

because what they’re
really afraid of is diluting

their culture, Japanese people take great
pride in the uniqueness of their culture.

So the idea of just like, yeah, we’re
gonna give extra special easy passports

for people to come here and knock up
our women is just inconceivable to anyone

who’s actually lived in
Japan for any length of time.

So this information is very skewed.

And it’s like, if you
know anything about it,

you would know like that’s
completely unreasonable.

It wasn’t a real thing.

Last week, it showed up in my Discord,

it showed up on a bunch
of my feeds was this thing.

It was primarily on Reddit.

I’m sure this is on TikTok.

This video gained a
certain amount of notoriety

because she’s talking
about a single’s tax.

Now, what she’s saying isn’t factually
incorrect, but her presentation is so skewed

as to what it’s actually
doing that I found a defensive

and I think this is basically, they found
a pretty girl, stuck her on the screen.

She says some stuff,
everyone like freaks out.

And I realized a long time ago, if I
could get a pretty girl to do the host role

of Ninja News Japan, like I’ll write
it, send it to them and they say it,

and they’ll, we would
again be making millions of

dollars by now, but
because it’s a 50 year old,

kind of gross looking man, well,
you get what you get I guess.

So let’s take a listen to this and I
wanna do a quick analysis at the end

about how much I hate this
and her and everything about life.

  • In Japan, bachelorette
    tax will be introduced

from April, 2000, 26, due to the glazing
of birth rates and low population in Japan.

  • A bachelorette tax is
    not going to be introduced.

They certainly wouldn’t
introduce it like that.

That’s not how that works.

They do want to increase the birth rate.

So they want people to be
more comfortable having babies.

They want more people to have babies.

This is a real problem in Japan.

They want this to happen
and they are introducing taxes

in the future, but let’s get a
little more of this presentation.

  • Basically being single will be taxed.
  • Mummy, I would break it down.
  • I hate that, Nummy.

Her accent almost sounds fake to me.

It’s almost like she’s
probably got a bit of an accent

and she’s pushing it up so that to make
it more, to make it like more Japanese,

but she’s actually gone to a
point where it actually sounds

like ’cause it’s stronger
than most of the students

I’ve had in my time as an
English teacher in Japan,

like to the point where I’m
actually a little suspicious

of it, but anyways, the
Nummy really puts me off.

I guess that’s just, you can
make a big face at the screen.

  • Great and low population in Japan.

Basically being single will be taxed.

  • Mummy, I would break it down.

So the government’s Japan will
increase the tax to help raising a child.

  • Okay, so increasing tax to help raising
    children is not a tax on a bachelor.

That is, everyone pays those taxes.

So that’s the first thing.

Yes, you have to pay more
tax, I guess, technically,

but that’s not just
’cause you’re a bachelor,

that’s everybody that’s
called supporting society.

And that’s one of those
things that really bugs me.

If you’re a single or married, no
having children, doesn’t matter.

Everyone has to pay this tax.

  • So there you go.

It’s not a bachelor tax,
it’s not a no-kids tax,

it’s a tax for everyone,
it’s a societal tax.

So she’s already inadvertently backed,

like walked her statement
back from when she said,

it’s a bachelor tax because it’s like, look,
we need to support people who have kids

so they have more kids
or it’s easier to have kids.

And if we do this, then
people might have more kids.

This is a societal problem.

  • Like this, if you give a course,

you receive money from the
government more than before.

  • So even that, more than before.

So I have had two kids in Japan.

I received money benefits from the
government for having kids in Japan.

There’s actually lots of countries support
families with kids in different countries.

It’s not just a Japanese thing.

In my town, like you’ll
actually find different cities

are different, in my town, medicine was
free until my kids were 15 or 16 years old.

So that’s not a tax on healthy people.

That’s not a tax on adults or old people.

That’s just a tax that is given to all of
society to support raising young people.

  • Stuff like that because
    government’s gonna use that tax

to give money to the
people who have the kids.

  • Government wanna
    Japanese people to wanting kids.

So they’re introducing this battle of tax.

  • And then she’s gone right back to,
    okay, I’ve made my initial statement.

I walked it back, I actually clarified

that it’s not just a tax on
bachelors or single people.

It’s actually just a tax on everybody,

but then I can go back to my original
statement and call it a bachelor tax again,

sort of reinforcing the disingenuous
nature of my initial statement.

  • Do you think this will help
    Japanese people to make babies?
  • So the very last statement is that,
    do you have any ideas on how to do it?

If you listen to an engineer’s
Japan for any amount of time,

you’ve heard me talk
about this multiple times.

‘Cause it comes up constantly.

It is a real problem
for Japan as a country,

declining population,
we’re talking pension issues,

we’re talking medical
issues, all this kind of stuff.

This is something that Japan
as a country has to deal with.

I think governments really struggled to
find ways to make people have babies.

It’s almost like they don’t
understand how babies come about,

like ’cause it comes from
financial security and having

time to make babies, which
people do not have in Japan.

So it has nothing to do
with money in my opinion,

or at least not as much
as they think it does.

It has a lot more to do with free
time, time to have relationships,

sort of the optimistic nature of people
when they feel positive about the future,

because if you hate your life and
stuff, you probably don’t wanna have kids.

When you see internet news,
and like this is it in that little video,

she actually gave you
all factual information,

but then disingenuously
reframed it two times.

Once at the beginning and once at the end,

please be careful about your internet
information, try to get the actual information.

The only source you should
trust isn’t engineers Japan.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

Back from the break

I’m trying to find a
lawyer that I could

talk to maybe on a
regular basis to get some

actual questions
answered, like actual legal

questions, sort of the subtleties of the
legal system that maybe I don’t understand.

That’s a challenge because, of course, I
send an email from a guy named Chung with

beef chest, talking about a
podcast called Ninjevous Japan.

And serious lawyers
are like, “This is a

bunch of nonsense, I don’t
want anything to do with that.

” Oh, that is crap,
let’s let that go away.

Hello homie, I had great
joy when I came across

the channel in game
style, despite the fact

I’m streaming in podcast
and not playing a video game.

I will love to be a friend and be a help to
your channel to be the top rated and well

know and get affiliated if you don’t
mind kindly add me up on discord.

Candies 001, I will not be doing that.

That’s a bot.

Yes, it is a scam.

They have bots that just
send out the same message.

One of the words I
actually keep forgetting to

do, one of the things
I should do that I keep

forgetting to do is put
buddy as a word that

gets you banned instantly
because all the scams

go, “Hey buddy, or
what’s up buddy,” because

they don’t take the time
to check your username.

I actually think if they were smart because
a lot of them are names, they should get

the URL you’re looking
at would be like twitch

slash something chunk
with beef chest or kick

dot com slash chunk
of beef chest, they could

take that and include that in their scam
bought message and it would actually be way

more convincing but they’re lazy and they
put in like spelling mistakes and stuff.

I found out they put
in spelling mistakes on

purpose so that they
want because what they

want are people who aren’t going
to look into the message too closely.

They want people who
are naive, who are just

excited by the prospect of becoming famous
so they can then take some of their money.

I, they suffer from the fact that I
don’t care if I actually ever get famous.

Well, no, it’s a bot.

So it’s just like any channel that
goes live, it hits it with a message.

They should wait 10 minutes because again,
I’m not having even started yet and they’re

like, “Oh, I just came across your
stream and you’re so good at what you do.

” And I’m like, “Dude, I
haven’t even started yet.

” Even if I was playing
a game, it would have

been seconds after I got started on
the game for them to send their message.

I’m going to start this whole
thing again and go through my plan.

That was a bit messy anyways.

Ok, so I’ve come back from a Tuesday break.

It was only, Golden Week was only an actual
week for me, but it was a full week because

of my days off and the
holidays, the way they lined up.

So it was a two weeks,
if you listen to Ninja

Ninja Japan week to
week, it was actually

one week holiday for
me, but we are back and

I’m very happy to be
back and I’m feeling

refreshed and invigorated and I actually
do want a podcast again, which is good.

I wanted to get back to the podcast.

I have come to semblance of a plan.

My plan right now is
going forward for the

next little while at
least, is do three weeks

of Ninja New Japan and
one week Seamick Bee.

Because I want to keep
Ninja Ninja Japan going,

it’s a new show as
good as a weekly show,

but I want to bring Seamick Bee
back and I’m finding it’s really difficult.

I really only have two
days when I can do stuff.

I have Monday before
I go to work because I

go to work quite late
and then I have Tuesday,

which seems to be the whole day, that’s my
podcasting day, Monday I’m doing slightly

different projects and then I have
one day a week to do podcasts.

I used to try to do
Seamick Bee and Ninja Ninja

Japan in the same day and I
would honestly get burned out.

Maybe if I get super excited or have a
bunch of ideas, I might try to record extra

long a couple days,
but it seems like for

longevity, for long-term
sustainability, three

weeks Ninja Ninja Japan, one week Seamick
Bee might be the way we’re going for it.

If we hit a five Tuesday month, I guess,
I didn’t even, I just thought of that now.

I guess it just, it
doesn’t matter, it’s a

pattern of three, one,
three, one, it doesn’t

matter how many weeks
there are in a month.

I’m not looking at the months that way,
glad to be back after the golden week break.

Let’s get to the news
that is happening in Japan.

We did this story.

We covered this.

It was a couple months ago.

There was a BTS
member that he had just

gotten out of his two-year
mandatory military service.

He decided to hold, I
guess his agency, not him.

They decided to hold a hug event for fans.

I found that already to be a bit weird,
because to me, what you’re doing is priming

about, so all these
ladies are horny for them.

I mean, that’s why they’re there.

That’s to me the first indicator.

It’s the first thing you know, like these
ladies are horny for this guy and they’re

like, let’s set up a situation
where you pay a certain

amount of money, you come
on and you get to hug the guy.

I watched a video of it and
they do this very cursory hug.

It’s just like arms are
round and then he pats

you on the back and
then a lot of the ladies

bowed and then went away
because they were saying, thank you.

That was it.

I’m like, this is
hundreds and hundreds of

women and they’re excited to
get into contact with this guy.

It turns out two people, the story,
the original story was just one person.

It turns out two people during their hug
decided to take their shot and kissed him.

One was a 50 year old
Japanese woman who kissed

him on the neck and then
ran away and left the country.

We don’t know if she fled the country.

I don’t want to like cause dispersions
or cast dispersions on anyone.

But she probably just
went there for that

event and then flew
back to Japan, didn’t even

know she caused a problem
until she was looking at the

news, probably maybe
listen to an individual’s Japan.

Hey, if he kissed me on the neck, what
am I saying, that’s never going to happen.

I’m never going to do a hug
event for an individual’s Japan fans.

I’m sorry.

I might, should I ever get
big enough to do an event?

Yes, but it will not involve a hugging.

I can promise you that, although I
am open to being hugged for money.

The Korean police,
so I did a follow up on

this story where the
Korean police are like,

look, they’ve gone back home,
they’ve gone back to Japan.

We can’t open a case and
continue investigating a case.

It’s too difficult because
we’re not going to go to Japan

and hunt this lady down for
this crime of kissing a beating.

Now it’s sexual assault.

If we’re going to be
really technical, this

lady committed sexual
assault on this famous person.

He didn’t press charges.

In Korea, they have
an interesting system

where if I see a crime,
I can report that crime

and it gets taken just as seriously
as if the victim reported the crime.

And this is what’s
actually happened with

Johnny Somalie in his
time in Korea where people

aren’t directly reporting
him, but people who

are watching his stream
watching them commit

crimes are calling the police and
then ratting him out to the police.

And then it is now a case on the
docket that they have to take seriously.

So the police did
take it seriously, but

they’re like, you know what,
this lady went back to Japan.

We’re not going to spend the
resources to try to find her.

We’re not going to ask Japan to
extradite her or any of these other things.

We’re just going to
call it case closed for

the moment or actually
just like a cold case.

Then it turns out just before the hot week,
golden week called it ended, she went back

to Korea and turned
herself into the police.

So the police have taken her and
handed her over to prosecutors.

So she could have
just stayed in Japan and

just I actually think I
was doing sort of the

suppositions like the what situation would
be like like you’ve committed this crime.

She it was unknowingly, she thought because
I’m hugging this guy, kiss him on the neck.

He’s not going to be that upset.

He we don’t know how he felt about it.

He looked like they had
pictures of him on the internet.

He was kind of grossed out about it because
he got kissed and he wasn’t ready for it.

But he didn’t press charges so he’s not
as upset about this as are the fans who I’m

assuming wish they
had gotten their kiss and

not this lady or grossed out that this lady
kissed their man or something like that.

I totally just lost my train of thought.

She could have just stayed in Japan
and it would have been case closed.

She would have gotten any trouble.

But should she ever travel back to Korea, I
get her passport would probably be flagged

as having like an open case against her
and then she would probably get in trouble.

So she I think she was getting ahead of it.

She’s like, I know that
there is problems coming.

She’s a big fan of BTS and
these may be Korean pop stars.

So she wants to be
able to go back to Korea.

So she went back to
Korea to turn herself into

probably just get rid
of this mess to clean

this up, to get it
fixed so that she could

have freedom to travel
to Korea again in the

future would be my
supposition and it’s actually

a pretty sensible move
because prosecutors

are going to be like, look,
this lady could have run.

She could have stayed away.

She could have gotten away
with the crime but she’s come back.

I’m betting what they ask for as apology.

She apologizes and then
they just like let it go.

That would be my guess
because they’re going

to be much softer on
someone who took the

time to fly back to a
country to turn themselves in.

Now there is a second case open that
I didn’t know about until this came up.

The second case is the exact same thing.

Hug event, lady kisses the guy,
sexual assault, people report it.

That person is whereabouts
unknown so that case is still open.

So they didn’t actually
say because they don’t

know in this case they
knew it was a Japanese lady.

In this case they don’t
actually know or they

haven’t said is it a
Korean lady Japanese

lady or who are there hunting down but the
manhunt should be crazy for this one and

they’re just going to
like nail them to the wall.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
which is referred to as Meti in Japan has

released a cautionary
statement that AI spoofing

a voice actors is an
infringement of rights

under the Unfair
Competition Prevention Act.

So what does that mean?

AI is very new thing, laws
haven’t necessarily caught up to AI.

So people are like oh
I can like spoof things,

copy things, use AI
to make art that looks

the same and I won’t get in any trouble and
actually at the moment you kind of won’t

and you kind of won’t
because there’s no actual

law in place other than
copyright infringement

which isn’t as broad
as that and there could

be arguments that
this isn’t the same thing

as just in the same style or something
like that or it’s just the same sound.

So there’s a lot of IP gray
zone going on right now with AI.

But in Japan they’re like you know
what let’s make a couple things clear.

Meti has gone on and
said if you take AI and

copy a voice actors voice
that is IP infringement

you will get prosecuted under
copyright laws which I think is great.

I’m not a big fan of the idea of AI.

The thing about AI is
what we were promised.

The AI promise was
it’s going to work on

climate change, it’s
going to work on solving

problems, it’s going
to work on making work

easier or faster or more
convenient or better

for everybody so that we just won’t have
to work as much and what it’s actually done

is like hey you like making art we’re going
to steal and or copy that art so that we’re

going to push you out of the industry that
you want to make because you love art so go

fuck yourself and I
think that might be the

basic feeling that is
making everyone so angry

at AI because why are
you wasting time making

art with AI why are
you wasting time creating

spoofing voice actors
or deepfakes or anything

else with AI when
what you could actually

be doing is solving real problems that exist
in the world that we were promised that

would be solved with
AI that they’re not

being promised and I
think that’s why I have

such a negative reaction
to AI right now it’s

because you’re not
doing the thing you said

you were going to do which was actually
make the world better for me and my kids to

live in instead what
you’re doing is stealing

art from people and
spoofing voice actors

voices so that you can make your stuff so
they wanted to give us some examples many

give gave some examples using AI voices
to sing songs that the original voice actor

was not involved in
so like I want to get

the voice actor for
Dragon Ball the main guy

Goku and I want him to sing back in black
by AC DC or a Britney Spears song or an XG

song or something like that I could do that
with AI that’s now illegal that’s just so

they just you know
right out there you’re

breaking the law you’re
doing IP infringement

if you want to take an AI voice and use
it in something like an alarm clock I guess

navigation systems things like that the
one they said was alarm clock so it’s like

your alarm clock will
now use the voice you

said it to so I want it
to be Darth Vader I want

it to be my favorite
anime character I want

it to be someone else
I’ve used AI to create

that voice and it will say hey good morning
Chuck with beef chest it’s time to get up

you’re a very handsome man it’s time for
your daily affirmation weekly you should

do that I could read
the daily affirmation

weekly to you in the
voice of my choosing James

Earl Jones so any
of these products that

use AI to spoof a voice
are now very clearly

in Japan I mean this is
only many only has power

in Japan but it will
happen to other countries

but it means if they
do it in other countries

and use like anime they’re focused very
much on voice actors because that’s still a

very big industry here
but if they use a voice

actor and they spoof it with AI in another
country that will cause problems if there’s

any sort of interaction
if they can get

their hands on you
they’re going to prosecute

let’s just make that clear
right now and I actually

agree because maybe
take that AI processing

power and put it more
towards fixing global

climate change or the
economy or making me rich

or something a music
producer I mean I assume

music producers make
I don’t know there’s

got to be like low level music producers
and high level music producers but when you

think of people who
produce things you think

of people who have
money this music producer

saved for ten years
to buy the Ferrari of his

dreams the 458 spider
the base price so without

all the like the good
stuff is two hundred

and forty nine thousand
dollars I did a little

bit of math and that is twelve point five
times my car or four hundred and fifteen

place station five I
just try to find things

that I could relate
to so I have a car it’s

very small car it’s
a hybrid it was about

three million yen it you
could buy twelve and

a half of my cars
for the price of one of

his cars or the
PlayStation five it was sixty

thousand yen when it
was released you can buy

four hundred and
eighteen PS five so I guess

you could link them all together and have
a big really powerful computer I’ve seen

them do that with like the PlayStation three
went through a phase where everyone was

linking PlayStation
three’s to use the

processing power but I
don’t remember it being

that special I guess I
never used it the right

way so this guy seems
for ten years to buy

the car of his dreams which I have a lot of
respect for because it means he had to like

you know really buckle down and save money
it shows that he was making money it was

an important plot point in the movie chappy
it was also in the movie person of interest

when which is basically like a almost batman
when they had lost their bat cave which

was really just the guys apartment they
went down into the subway and they set up a

a bunch of ps5s to be
their super computer that

is the only insta a
ps3s they set up a bunch

of ps3s to be their super computer and that
is for some reason stuck with me for years

like person of interest
was not a particularly

impactful show in my life but for some
reason I remember that I think it was because

I was like but it’s a
lot of ps3s anyways

this guy has discipline
so I’m gonna go ahead

and say he’s making a
normal to good salary

but so he has to save money and saving for
ten years to get the money to buy his four

fifty eight spider
that’s a big thing and it’s

an achievement and
it’s something he should

be happy about and I don’t I don’t wish any
ill for him for I wanting to buy a really

expensive car I think
expensive cars are cool

I would never buy a
super car only because

I’m tall and a little bit
older now and they’re

really low and hard
to get into but that

actually is my reasoning I would be looking
at a G wagon only because I would find it

very easy to get in and
out of a G wagon not

because it’s necessarily
the car of my dreams

but I was like no that
would be very comfortable

for me to get in and out of so I want
the G wagon so the guy gets his car and he

starts driving around
he drives around for one

hour and it bursts into flames and I feel
so bad for him because well okay there is a

part where I do feel bad and a part where
I’m like no it must have been because what

was the cause of the fire if he got one and
it was a bit of a lemon or something went

wrong and it went
up in flames insurance

should pay for it but
I’m thinking this is a

guy who loves his big fancy new car who and
anyone who buys like a Ferrari Lamborghini

these things one of the things they love
to do is make a lot of noise with their car

and the thing you don’t
think about when you

make a lot of noise
with the car what you’re

doing is running the engine really high and
there’s a lot of fire in the engine if you

do it too much up it goes in flames if it’s
a brand new engine it actually might not be

ready for that like you have to like break
in and warm up engines before you like hit

like top rev speeds
so they don’t like

overheat and crack
because they’re not used to

those stresses yet
currently the cause is

unknown so if it was
just like a mistake in his

car burst on fire I feel really bad for him
but if he was revving the engine and being

kind of a dick but
also like this is the joy

of having this car I’m
a little torn because

it’s a little bit his fault because you
shouldn’t be a dick with a new car I can’t

imagine he wasn’t
revving the engine fairly

constantly to set his own
car on fire so a student

university student
climbed up Mount Fuji this

is a great thing to
do this is back April

twenty twenty second
and they lost the clamp

things that you put
on your shoes so they

fell off and they
basically were high enough

in the snow and stock
they couldn’t safely

descend the mountain and they didn’t have
the equipment to get anywhere so they had

to call for help so they called for help
and that’d be helicopter off they don’t say

whether the victim or the person actually
has to pay for the helicopter I’m wondering

if they do or don’t
that is actually a really

big question for me
but it’s not answered

in any of the stories because that’s not
what they focus on they focus on the second

part while he was up there being rescued
a lot of his equipment got left behind so

like the thing that the
clamp’s office boots

I’m probably backpack or something else
the problem is this university student left

their cell phone behind
so then a week later

like you know what
it’s like expensive cell

phone I bet it was like
an iPhone or something

like that they like you know what I want to
go get my iPhone so they start going back

up Mount Fuji of course they’re going back
to the place where they got stuck and what

happened is they got
stuck again so they

returned a week later
to get their cell phone

the second time they
had collapsed and someone

called rescue services it
seems to be a combination

of altitude sickness while trying to
descend the mountain so I don’t know it’s

sounds like they actually
got their cell phone

and were working their
way back down and then

the altitude sickness
kicked in and they

kind of collapsed and
someone called for them

to get help they didn’t
where they weren’t

helicopter out the second
time they had people

come up the mountain
and carry them down

people think because
Mount Fuji’s kind of open

with pass it’s actually a very easy climb
it’s not it’s a real big mountain and then

they also think because you can like just
climb up it it’s very convenient and open

and therefore shouldn’t
be a big challenge

or anything but this is
someone who suffered

from altitude sickness
because it is like three

four thousand meters they
have way stations where

you can stop and
wait and adjust to the

temperature one of the
complaints a couple years

ago where people
were going to Mount Fuji

going to climb up the
mountain and they found

women were wearing
high heels and then people

were in inappropriate
footwear for actually

what is quite a grueling hike up a mountain
that is not smooth it’s not paved it’s not

easy they have passed because people have
been walking the same paths but they’re not

easy paths for people to walk up so if you
do plan on coming to Japan and you do plan

climbing my own Fuji
which is a fine thing to

do I personally have
never climbed Mount Fuji

I’ve gone to the Mount Fuji area to sit and
look at Mount Fuji because I know once you

get on Mount Fuji what
you’re doing is looking

out at the city or
stuff it’s just not quite

as impressive Mount Fuji the mountain is
very impressive to look at I don’t feel any

desire to be on that thing looking out
when I could be at the bottom of that thing

looking up but if you
do plan to do that please

plan to take it
seriously that is a safety

message for everyone
out there from Ninja News

Japan to you a search
has begun a 67 year old

man has found out that
he was switched with

another baby at birth
they found out because

of a DNA test in 2004
back when he was 49 and

the Tokyo government
has ordered the search

for his real parents
to be found this is an

interesting thing only
because of his age he’s

had his entire life so he’s had his parents
who are not his parents who raised him as

their own I assume I don’t know whether you
had a good home life for a bad home life it

needs those parents
also had their baby so

we don’t know if this
was a one for one or if

they just took all the
babies and just mixed

all the babies together
was kind of a grab

bag of babies like here’s a baby you get
a baby oh you had a boy here’s a boy and

just off they go but once you’ve lived
the entirety of your life like he’s 49 when

they find out he’s 65
67 now when they’re

actually trying to do
something about it there’s

a very good chance
at 67 that his parents

are dead so if he finds
out that other people

are his parents he actually finds out who
those parents are what is the ultimate goal

of this because it sounds
like the government

has said let’s find his
parents they wanted

to go back to the hospital records but that
hospital where he was born was actually

shut down and all the records because it
was you know 60 years ago we’re not exactly

on computer or they were on paper and
they’ve all been destroyed or lost there’s no

actual record of who
was where and what

parents were in this
hospital at the same time

so it’s actually turning
out to be a really

hard thing to do but
my actual thought is like

is it worth it now
like maybe he’s hoping

that his actual parents
his birth parents who

did not he we did
not grow up with had a

lot of money and maybe
he should get a taste

of that that would be
the only reason because

if you’re real parents
you don’t know if

they were good or bad
people but if you know

if you’re the people
who raised you were

good or bad just appreciate it if they were
good and if they were bad maybe then it’s

worth trying to find
another family I could kind

of see that they don’t
give us his reasoning

for this happening
they actually talk about

the government has set
this in motion and part

of me is thinking
like is this a good idea

because what if the
other guy who’s 67 years

old doesn’t know that his parents aren’t
his parents and then he finds out in the

harshest way possible
when some other guy

shows up like this
could either be a tragedy

or a comedy movie in the making I just hope
that everyone is well aware that this might

not be worth it you’ve been in prison
and it’s the day you get out of prison what

do you do the day you get out of prison
it’s a very interesting question if you are

like the man in this story you go to the
horse races and you start betting on horses

now I’m my first thought
was like how much

money does this guy
have when he gets out of

prison like I’m sure
you have to do a certain

amount of work in
prison and you get paid

a nominal fee for that work so if you’ve
been in prison for a long time you’re going

to get out with some money but I’m sure
it’s not like a massive windfall they don’t

like reward you for
going to prison certainly

not in Japan so I’m
wondering how much money

he actually would have had which actually
leads us to a story he managed to spend or

lose 200,000 yen the
day after he was released

from prison so this guy
got out of prison somehow

had 200,000 yen which
is the low end of a

monthly salary in Japan
the average salary per

year is going to be
three to five million

yen so let’s just say
four million yen is an

average salary so
that’s going to be like

somewhere between 200,
300, 400,000 yen a month

somewhere in there is
going to be the average

number sorry I didn’t
actually do the math

on this but he’s making enough to survive
for a couple weeks to get himself set up in

a in a proper life I guess maybe look for
a job I don’t know he is older yes so it’s

going to be really hard for me to get a job
so once you’ve gotten out of prison taking

all the money I assume you have and spent
it or lost it on the ponies what do you do

next when you go back to the thing you know
how to do in this case what he knows how

to do is burglary which
is why he ended up

in prison in the first
place he was the next

today he was caught
in an apartment by a

resident he said to them
I just got out of prison

I have bad legs and I
can’t find work and the

resident let him go
so that’s an interesting

tactic where he’s like plays a sympathy
card japanese people in general are so nice

the guys like you’ve had a hard time yes
you just leave my apartment I won’t call

the cops on you but it must have been like
someone else like someone in the building

or someone else or
he went to some other

apartment and they
did call and they did call

the police on him so
he was getting arrested

the police suspected
him of stealing oh the

police of suspect
suspect the police suspect

him in a string of
burglaries that happened

a few days after he
was released from prison

which means he is
most likely going to go

back into prison which I
guess means he doesn’t

have to worry about
his money or getting

a job which actually in a sad way might be
what he was actually hoping for what makes

crime better I shouldn’t
be too flippin about

this there’s a hit in a
run where a guy actually

dies in this but there is the element of if
you’re going to commit a series of crimes

especially over one day like a whole bunch
of like crimes and people news stories were

calling it like a GTA style rampage that
kind of stuff but it’s because he committed

so many crimes in such
a short period of time

he was basically going
from place to place

committing different
and yet related crimes

he also did it while
naked and that may be the

bit that was the most
interesting to everyone

a man is being
investigated for hit and run

theft of a taxi and three
other incidences and

it’s actually been
added to since I actually

wrote these notes they have been trying to
put together the night it seems like this

guy comes out steals
a car he steals a car

and then he immediately
runs into two people

on motorcycles and then he drives away one
of those people actually gets hit and dies

so that’s a man
slaughter if it’s an accident

but we know that
because he’s in the process

of committing a crime
it’s going to be more

serious than that it’s going
to be some form murder

police started getting
reports of a completely

naked man with
tattoos stealing a vehicle

in saitama we do have
to know to be completely

fair and transparent
and honest that he

was wearing flip flops
so he wasn’t completely

naked he was just mostly naked and yes
he did probably have tattoos after he got

out of that immediate
and run he went and hit

another car he ended up hitting it multiple
times I’m assuming backing up hitting

it backing up hitting
it got out of that

stolen car got into the
car he had just crashed

into which had a woman and pulled the woman
out stole that car and crashed into a taxi

then he stole the taxi
which had passengers

in it which could include
then kidnapping he

then stopped at a
company stole some items

from the company got
back in the taxi crashed

that taxi outside of
a cram school tried to

break into a house
which I assume was across

the road or next door
then went into the cram

school staff started
like shouting at him

like hey naked guy with tattoos please stop
breaking into our cram school he picks up

a mug and hits a guy with the mug and then
when he was arrested they said why did you

do this and he was said to the
police it would be bad if I told you that

so you can send a message to speakpipe dot
com slash chunk of beef chest you can leave

me a voice message I will answer questions
I will have conversation topics if you’d

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chunk of beef chest to gmail dot com and
get in touch we can hang out we can talk

about Japan we can talk about you wanted to
come to Japan we can talk about things that

are good and bad
about Japan the call to

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because I keep trying to do

them like off the
cuff I have to actually

just write a little
script and do the little

script so speakpipe
dot com slash chunk of

you chest you can leave
me a voice message you

can ask me a question
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I do listen to them

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show we can talk about a story we can have
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about Japan or we can ask

I can ask you questions
about your experience

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more interactivity for this podcast

Sexy AI ladies cause problems

(upbeat music)

Okay, so last week I talked
about the Ghibli Art Style AI trend.

So OpenAI allows you
to say like I want to take

this picture and turn
it into Ghibli Style Art.

And then people are
using as profile pictures.

It kind of spread across Instagram.

All these people are like, oh
look, I made Ghibli Cartoon.

I’m so cute.

Now my point was, is
an art style copyrightable.

Because I don’t think it is.

The problem is to train
an AI on a style of art.

You would have to take the copyright in art

and feed that into the AI in order to
get the ability to reproduce the art style.

Okay, but that was a hard sentence.

So my feeling is, while they
can’t maybe sue for the art style,

they can say you clearly
have had to take copyright

and material, feed it into
your AI, and now you’re

producing this content
without our permission.

There might be something there.

People aren’t necessarily
taking my opinion too seriously

because I’m just a very tiny
podcaster in the world of the internet.

But there are other people,
artists who have some renowned

who are now taking to the
internet and saying like this is awful.

The director of one piece said that
they are in despair over this trend.

The fact that these clearly
copyright and materials

been fed into AI and that
AI is then taking that material

now is changing pictures
and that art style is going out.

And it’s being copied around the internet
and it’s really unfair because again,

you’re stealing art from
the artists who make them.

You’re stealing a style of art
that maybe someone took years

and years to develop and
learn and create themselves.

And you’re just throwing
it away in minutes.

So this led to this
actually being discussed

in the house of
brevity, but god damn it.

This led this to actually being
discussed in the house of representatives

because they were again having
the same qualms and queries

about that I do, like is
it copyright infringement

to steal a style of art when you’re
not actually stealing the art itself?

So if I make a copy of a character,
that’s copyright infringement.

If I do something that if I
draw a new original character

in the same style, is that
copyright infringement?

So this was part of their discussion.

If it is only a matter of the
style or ideas being similar,

then it would not be
considered copyright infringement.

He explained the law.

So that’s copyright law.

So if you’re not stealing
the actual thing, then it’s not

copyright infringement, even
if you do it in the same style.

However, if AI generated
content is determined

to be similar or reliant on
pre-existing copyrighted works,

then there is a possibility that it
could constitute copyright infringement.

So the use of styles and ideas is legal,
but an AI generated image were recognized

as being jibbly itself, then
it would be a violation of law.

So saying me as an artist,
I make a jibbly style image,

but I draw it myself,
as long as I’m not using

their actual characters
or properties, that’s fine.

But because AI doesn’t
have that process or thought,

they have to have taken
copyright and material

to learn from, then
there could be a violation

because they haven’t paid for that copyright
stuff to be used in the first place.

Dewey Sukarno is this lady on TV in Japan.

She’s like 70, something
years old, I hate her.

I hated her from the first time I saw her.

She just reeks of rich entitlement.

So she’s old, she’s rich.

She’s probably been rich her whole life.

She used to be really hot.

I guess she was on TV, she was famous.

She’s now famous for being old and rich.

And so of course she’s classy,
and I do that with air quotes.

She does all these like
really annoying things

that rich people do that are
really pretentious and awful.

And so everything about
her is the antithesis to me.

I hate everything that she embodies.

So I’ve always hated having her on TV.

My family used to watch
this show on Sunday nights.

She was a regular feature.

If she was on it, I would whip
out my phone or leave the room.

I found her that disgusting
to have in front of my face.

My family didn’t get it.

They’re like, guys, she’s just an old lady

and she’s kind of funny
because she’s out of touch.

And I’m like, no, she’s out of touch

because she thinks she’s
better than everyone else.

And I find that really gross.

Dewey Suckarno was in
a restaurant in Shibuya.

And she’s been accused.

Now accused is an interesting
thing because that’s the legal term for.

She did it, but we haven’t
actually prosecuted her yet.

She’s been accused of
throwing a champagne glass.

The boosiest crime you could commit is
throwing a champagne glass at someone,

injuring someone or
attempting to injure someone

or something they
probably couldn’t even afford.

They were at an employee of her agency.

So she’s sitting at a dinner.

There are six employees of
her agency working together.

They’re talking to her.

One of her employees obviously
says something that pisses her off.

Not her employee directly, but works
for the same agency that promotes her.

So she gets pissed off.

So she does what any
reasonable human being would do.

And she throws a glass, the only glass in
front of her, which is a champagne glass.

Of course, ’cause she’s a fucking
old bitch and I hate her guts.

The reason she got angry is
because they were talking about

a political party she
has recently formed now.

I was really surprised
to hear that this lady

had formed a political
party because I didn’t think

she had sort of any political
aspirations of any value.

And then I found out what the
stated goals of her political party were.

The one young peace party.

Now, if you don’t speak
Japanese, one young’s

already a big clue as to
what kind of party this is.

One is dog.

And Jan is sort of the sounds
that dogs and cats make.

So they go one, one, and Jan and stuff.

So it’s the one, Jan, peace party.

Focused on dogs and cats
protection policies exclusively.

So this woman who feels it’s
perfectly appropriate to pick

up a champagne glass and
throw it at another human being

is so devout to the protection
of animals, dogs and cats

that she’s actually forming
a political party to do it.

The level of fucking hypocrisy
in that moment is astronomical.

She has no regard for
the safety or wellbeing

of other people because
they’re not as rich as she is.

But you know this boozy bitch has a bunch

of fucking dogs and cats,
little poodles and shit.

And like I’m saying that while I have a
poodle in my own fucking lap right now,

because I would actually
never equate the value

of the animal to another
person in a negative way

like saying, well, my boozy little poodle
is worth more than your actual human life.

I might even find them
equivalent because I hate you and

love the dog, but that’s a
different thing altogether.

The dog has proved its value to me in a
different, I think I’ve gotten off track now.

I see my own irony in this statement as
I may say this thing because I right now

have a boozy poodle sitting
in my lap, the same which if

you watch the YouTube video
has a portrait of on my wall.

But I consider human life
just as valuable as the dog.

So I have nothing
against forming a political

party that will protect
the rights of animals.

I do think I have a problem
with forming a political

party that will protect
the rights of animals

who’s leader seems
to think it’s perfectly

acceptable to hook glass
at another human being.

It’s just such a rich lady thing to do.

I’m going to protect all
the animals in the world.

I don’t really give a shit
about the human sitting

in front of me, in fact,
they can go fuck themselves

if they don’t agree
with everything I say.

I think it’s perfectly
acceptable for me to throw

shit at their faces and
maybe scar them for life.

(upbeat music)

So we had a story about an American guy

who had a gun in his
backpack and turned himself in.

We have another story of the next week,

just last week of another guy who packed
weapons saying he intended to go to expo.

Now we have a sort of third story,
it’s expo related and weapons related.

So it just seemed to fit this theme.

Expo seems to be bringing out the crazies.

I think the first guy was
just coming to Japan.

I don’t think it was necessarily for expo.

The second guy though, specifically said,
I’m going to expo and I brought my gun.

Not making clear if
there’s a relation there.

I’m still actually
following up on that

story, seeing if there
is an actual connection

between bringing the
gun if he intended to

experiment with the gun
with the crowds at expo.

But this is why expo has extra security
because this kind of stuff is happening.

There was an 80 year
old man who was arrested

for claiming they had
a bomb in his backpack.

He basically was going into expo.

And they said, they want
to do a backpack check.

So they take your
backpack, they open it up.

When they go to open his backpack,

he says to them, “Ha ha,
there’s a bomb in my backpack.

” Staff, of course, can’t
tell if he’s joking or not.

So they do the only thing that’s
perfectly reasonable for them to do.

They call security, they call the police,

they shut down everything,
they get all the people out there,

like 200 people had to be
evacuated from that area.

And then they actually had to go
through his bomb and the man was arrested.

When he was arrested, he said, “I got
excited because I’m a fan of the expo.

“I said it half-in-just, I didn’t
mean to disrupt the event.

” Now, half-in-just is already
the wrong phrase to use.

You should not be joking at
all that you’re having a bomb.

But if you’re saying your joke is that
you have a bomb, it should not be half.

There shouldn’t be
like half a bomb in there.

You’re either going to make the whole joke

or no joke at all, the problem is
no one can tell that you’re joking.

And I actually hope this guy
gets quite severely punished.

(upbeat music)

A Japanese music label has released songs
by Aki Ashido, previous hits and others.

So basically, this is one of
those like greatest hits of Aki,

all the songs that were
popular 10, 15, 20 years ago.

And they’ve decided that
we need something special.

So basically, everyone who’s
a fan already has these songs.

They don’t need another
CD with these songs.

So you have to do something to make
the people who really want to buy this CD.

So they included in the CD two nude
photos from when she was in her 20s.

The problem is she died in 2023.

So we have no idea if she
actually approved of this

or would approve of this or
has approved of this in writing.

So basically, these guys
have the rights to the CD.

They seem to have
the rights for the photos,

but they haven’t necessarily
gotten her permission

to publish them, but they’re
going to go ahead with it anyways.

Governors in the area are actually
saying that this should be canceled.

You should not be allowed to
release this without her permission,

without her statement without,
I don’t know if they do estates

like they do in North America,
without her estate’s permission.

But basically, everyone is
kind of grossed out about it.

But at the same time, you know a bunch
of people are actually going to buy it.

We’ve got a very weird AI porn-ven
diagram happening in today’s episode.

So we’ve already done one AI story.

We’re going to do, we
just did a new photo story.

Now we hit the combination.

Shui-e-shoes, Playboy magazine.

So not the Playboy magazine
you would be familiar with

from North America, where it’s just
like center folds and stuff like that.

This is more of a men’s magazine in Japan.

They do have bikini
spreads and stuff like that.

And that I actually never bought it.

So I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate.

But I know sexy girl
on the cover, sexy girls

inside, I don’t know
what they actually do.

I’ve never actually picked
one up and opened it.

On April 14th, so a couple of weeks ago,

they released an issue with Satsuki
I on the cover, I being an AI model.

This is not the first time she’s actually
been promoted or featured in the magazine.

She was first released,
’cause I can’t say like

she came to the scene or
debuted in summer of 2023.

They call her Playboy describes
her as a little sister type,

to a little sister type,
beautiful girl with a

raccoon face that
embodies every man’s ideal.

And this shows the very different
cultural way of explaining things.

So I don’t know what a raccoon face is.

I looked at the picture, I
mean, if I’m gonna be honest,

very attractive woman,
I get that she’s not

real, so it doesn’t really
do that much for me.

But she is a very ideal, pretty person,
but I didn’t see the raccoon aspects.

I assume they mean big eyes.

And small nose maybe,
maybe eats a lot of garbage.

I’m not really 100% sure what they
mean by raccoon face, raccoon faces,

clearly a type in Japanese
that I haven’t come across

’cause I haven’t spent
a lot of time talking

about women in Japanese
terms in Japanese.

Little sister type, again,
the fetishization of youth

is very set in Japan,
it’s a very common thing.

There’s not much you can say there,

we’re not getting away from
it even if you think it’s gross.

The only benefit here is they haven’t
tried to hide the fact that she was AI.

So viewer reaction is mixed.

Some people are like,
put real women in there

if you’re gonna put
real women in there.

And some people are like, oh yes, the
AI beauty ideal is the ideal of every man

because of course it can
actually achieve real ideals

and like doesn’t have
any sort of human flaws.

And we don’t actually
have to deal with people

and let’s face it, if you’re into this,
you’re not dealing with people anyways.

I don’t know how I feel about it.

I mean, my actual feeling is,
people are still buying magazines.

(upbeat music)

And then we get to
our final set of stories.

So I’ve stuck these two
together because they sort of,

again, the then diagram of overlap
is almost a circle with these two.

We’ve had the first AI
porn arrests in Japan.

And so four people were
arrested, three men and a woman.

They were arrested for the distribution
of a scene material in obscene images.

So they’ve been accused of training AI

from free internet tools
using data of women’s bodies.

That in itself is not a crime.

They said, we’re gonna take
these AI images of women we’ve

created and make posters
and you can buy those posters.

That in itself is not a crime.

They said, like the legal thing in
Japan is that if you have genitals visible,

you have to blur them out
or do a mosaic or something.

They said these posters, when you get them,

they will be censored, they will
be mosaic, they will be blurred out.

But when the posters
actually arrived, they weren’t.

So you were getting full genitalia
visualization of the AI image on the poster.

So you were getting, that’s
where the obscene part comes in.

The bit that was supposed to be censored

was not censored when you
actually received your poster.

They seemed to have
made 10 million yen last

year using selling these
AI uncensored posters.

Everything they did
before the uncensored bit

was technically legal when they actually
sent out the image that wasn’t censored.

That’s when it became illegal

and that’s when they all got
arrested and got in trouble.

Which leads me again to the
same statement as previously.

People are still buying
posters for their walls.

Like, I know it would be a
lot of work to train it yourself.

But also, you could just go on the internet

and do some printing at home
if that’s what you really wanted.

A new issue as a risen in Japan
and as the combination of AI

being used with graduation photos
and then deep faking them onto porn.

There is no national law
about deep fakes yet in Japan.

There is one into a totally prefecture.

So this seems to be where it happens.

So someone got to hold it
the data for graduation photos.

So these are very young people.

They’d be graduates of high school.

And they are taking those faces

and putting those faces in
deep faking them onto porn.

And so you have this
essentially still under age vision

of pornography being used
even though no one’s actually in it.

And then what they’re
doing is actually trying

to extort the people
saying, like, here’s a video

that I made a view,
give me extra amount of

yen and I won’t release
it on the internet.

Totori, a single prefecture
has made this a crime.

So it’s threatening, it’s extortion
and it’s using sort of revenge porn laws.

The revenge porn laws
are already in place in Japan.

So you’re not allowed to
take an image of someone

and post it on the internet to get
them in trouble or make them feel bad.

That’s already illegal.

Pretty much everywhere
in Japan, I’m pretty sure.

But this is a new version
because you’re not getting

a picture of them having
sex or images of them nude

and posting those on the internet
and threatening them that way.

You’re just taking their
face, which is almost publicly

available because of the
graduation photos and using that.

So now all these people
are basically sitting around,

A, should we continue with the
graduation book photo tradition in Japan?

B, is there any way we can protect them?

And C, if someone does this, do we have
laws in place to actually protect them?

And they are now– Totori
has now set a precedent.

So I’m betting other prefectures
will take that precedent

to be able to apply it to any instances
that happen in their actual prefectures.

Later on, so it seems
like, again, a lot of

rules are going to be
changing very quickly.

As AI becomes more common and more usable,

more laws need to be put in place to
actually protect people from the abuse of AI.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Because of the way the golden
week holiday falls this year.

So it’s going to be the next two Tuesdays,
which is when I actually record this.

Ninja News Japan is going to be
on hiatus for golden week, at least.

I’m actually thinking of
revamping all the things I do,

because I have so many
things I actually want to do.

I need to rework my schedule
so I can kind of do everything.

I do see– I want– I do Ninja News Japan.

I want to bring C, McBee back.

So I’m actually trying
to make plans to do that.

I have another side
project called Sounds Great

English, where I teach
English on the internet.

I want to do that.

I want to work on Montana, El Diablo.

I want to learn new things.

I want to stream.

I have all these things I want to do.

And I’ve just simply sort of burned
down and trying to do them all.

So I’m going to take
at least golden week off

and try to revamp my life so that I
can do everything in a manageable way.

This might be Ninja News Japan
goes down to twice a month,

or every week, but it’s
shorter, or I do a bit every week.

I have no idea what I’m going to do yet.

But I want to do all these other things
in concert with doing Ninja News Japan.

I want to work on the new– on the next–

I want to work on the next
book from Montana, El Diablo.

I want to work on video projects.

I want to work on editing game
videos so they can go up on YouTube.

I want to work on C, McBee
IMDB, so you get more videos

of me making like Mystery Science
Theater-style jokes about movies.

So I’ve overwhelmed
myself with the things I

want to do, but I do
want to do everything.

And so this is just a case
of managing my time in a way

that I get to do a little bit of
everything, maybe every week.

So I’m not saying Ninja
News Japan is going away.

In fact, what I want to do is
bring more content to the internet,

but I want to do it in a way
that doesn’t actually burn me out.

So that’s kind of where I am right now.

I’m going to see you two,
maybe three, four weeks from now,

back with the Ninja News Japan, and I
actually put money on if I’m at home all day.

I actually bet I do an Ninja News
Japan just throw it out there.

But I don’t want to promise
that and then not do it.

So we’re looking at a two week
break minimum, maybe in a little bit–

maybe even a little bit longer.

But that doesn’t mean Ninja
News Japan is going away.

It just means I’m trying to make my life
better so that I can make your life better.

With more content that you can enjoy, and
hopefully just a broader variety of topics.

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.

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