Inconsiderate Podcast

Last week we did a story about a guy, a ramen shop owner, who called the police and said he’d

been robbed at the end of the day of a certain amount of money, and then it turns out he had

not been robbed. He’d set this up himself, and I thought that’s sort of a weird one -off story,

which is why it attracted my interest. Then two weeks later we have a multitude of stories.

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It’s almost, I’m wondering if it’s copycats, but then the news that we get is usually like a couple

weeks after the initial crime. Like one of the stories is from the end of February, it’s now

basically the middle of April. Is it a copycat? Because I’m pretty sure the people who are doing

the same thing didn’t read the news. And then also why would you copycat a crime that didn’t work?

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That’s actually a really interesting aspect of this because I’m seeing a bunch of these stories

all of a sudden. So we have a 54…

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Let’s get started. We have a 50 year old…

We have a 54 year old civil servant who bound his own hands and feet to mimic being robbed. He said

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two men pointed something like a knife at him after he left home and they stole 800 ,000 yen that

he had on him. He was driven away and found seven hours later, but they could not find any suspects.

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He claimed that both suspects were in their 30s and 40s. God damn, I’m having a rough start.

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He claimed that both suspects were in their 30s, 175 milli… God damn it.

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Let’s start again.

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He claimed both…

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He claimed both suspects were in their 30s, 175 centimeters tall. They wore dark clothes and hats

and masks. So this is the first problem is if that’s the description, this is kind of like the

vague description they did last week. You can’t find that person. So you’re giving them a description

but no actual details. So a description of no actual details means they’re just making it so

that this is really hard to find the people that they’re looking for. 175 meters… 175… 175

centimeters is sort of the average height of a Japanese person. No facial features because

they’re wearing masks and wearing all black. That’s a lot of people every single day.

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He was arrested for obstructing police operations and they currently don’t know why he do it. So

this is it. Like do you get the money back? If you’ve had the money stolen from you,

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I guess maybe they might have insurance of some sort. That might be the only way to get out of

this. I’m trying to think where the profit is in this. So for the ramen guy, his store probably had

robbery insurance of some sort. So maybe he could get money that way. But this guy, if it’s like his

personal funds, that isn’t insured. So it’s not like you’re actually going to get it back.

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A 24 -year -old woman claimed someone broke into her house and stole her wallet, but there were no signs of a

break -in. So there’s your first problem is if you’re going to fake a crime, you have to actually

fake the details of a crime. Now, maybe you don’t know what those are, which is again, our guy from

the ramen restaurant last night was like searching on chat GPT on his phone, like how to fake a robbery.

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This woman didn’t even put that much effort into it. She just called the police and said she’d been

robbed. Someone broke into her house, but there was no signs of forced entry into her house. So then

the police found the wallet that she claimed had been stolen. So not only did she not fake the crime

properly, the thing that was supposed to be stolen, she didn’t even like get rid of it or hide it or do

anything with it. So the police found it while they were searching her place. A 31 -year -old claimed he

was attacked, slashed with something like a box cutter, knives being difficult. Knives are illegal to

carry in Japan. So box cutters are not, which is why if you watch a Japanese movie, you’ll actually see

people attacking each other with box cutters fairly often because that’s an easy weapon to get a hold

of in Japan. If you want to turn it into a weapon, he claimed he was slashed with something like a box

cutter, but he had inflicted the wounds himself. Then a 37 -year -old man, this was from February 27th,

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ran into a police station and said he had been threatened with a gun. It’s a very rare thing to be

threatened with in Japan because guns are so hard to get a hold of. They took an envelope with 260 ,000 yen

cash in it. He said the attackers appeared to be foreign because they said, give me money.

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Security camera footage found no such individuals on the streets anywhere in the area. They couldn’t

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legitimately find anyone who even came close to the description he gave. There were no foreigners.

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Interesting side note, the number of crimes by foreigners in Japan has actually been going down

while the number of foreigners in Japan has been going up. So that’s an interesting ratio that has been

changing. So more people who are coming to Japan, but those people are committing less crimes overall.

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I do have a weird question. It’s like, what do you get out of this? So for the people who are,

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you know, pretending to be robbed, if they have robbery insurance, I guess they get money back.

So they’re trying to steal money. I kind of understand that one, but the people who are doing

it personally, what do they get out of it? Are they getting any sort of media attention? Are they,

they, but okay, I kind of said this last time, put a little work into it. You know, plan your crime

properly. If you’re going to say someone broke into your house, you got to make it look like

someone broke into your house. But with the amount of surveillance cameras in the world today,

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it is very unlikely you’re going to get away with it because every one of these has been busted by

the cops going, finding security footage in the area and not finding the suspect and then asking

them some hard questions and they’re not able to answer the questions and then they get caught.

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There was a survey done and it was the 10 most annoying things foreign tourists do on Japanese

trains. Now, so after going through this list, I thought I would go through my list of the 10 most

annoying things Japanese people do on trains. So number 10, coughing, sneezing without consideration.

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I actually think that’s pretty fair. Number nine, leaving trash behind. Japanese people are very

weirded out by garbage left on a chair where they’re supposed to sit. They don’t actually want to touch it.

I kind of get that. Number eight, other. Don’t know what that is, but any other stuff, I guess, fell into the

category of number eight. I guess nonspecifics that didn’t fit into the entire list. Number seven, sitting in

priority seats. Number six, bad manners when boarding or getting off. Number five, standing near the door

without moving. I think number six and number five are actually the exact same thing. So bad manners when

boarding or getting off, blocking the way. I think that’s what they’re trying to say. Number four, strong sense.

Number three, sitting style that encroaches others. I think they’re talking about man spreading more

than anything else. Number two, carrying and placement of luggage or bags and umbrellas. And

number one, noisy conversations and messing about. Now, if you’d like to know my top 10 list of things

Japanese people do that annoy me when I’m on the train, number 10 is coughing and sneezing without

consideration. Number nine is leaving behind trash. It’s very annoying. Number eight, it’s kind of a general

catch -all. Other is the one I put on my list. Number seven, sitting in priority seats when they’re not

supposed to or not getting up and offering their seats to other people. Number six, bad manners when

boarding or getting off the train. Number five, standing near the door without moving. Number four,

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strong sense. But I’m not talking about perfumes. I’m talking about strong personal body sense.

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Number three, sitting style that encroaches on others or blocking out space so that other people

can’t sit next to you. Probably the thing that annoys me the most is when someone, there’s two

seats and you sit on the outside so people can’t get on the inside or you put your bag there to block

other people from sitting down. Number two, carrying and placement of luggage bags or umbrellas. And

number one, noisy conversations and messing about. You know, Japanese people can complain about foreigners,

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but Japanese people also have to take a look at their own behavior before making those sort of

complaints. I have had kids. And so I understand that kids are frustrating and very difficult to deal

with. And punishing them can be difficult for finding a balance between being strict and, you know,

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those moments when you’re supposed to be kind. It’s always interesting, TV shows. They always know

when they’re supposed to get really tough with the kids and ground them. And then when they’re supposed

to like sort of be gentle and forgiving and that kind of stuff. It’s always difficult to tell.

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For me in movies, it’s always the leave me behind moment in movies. So you have the guy falls and he goes,

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leave me behind, you go without me. And then how do they know when leaving them behind is the right

thing to do or stopping and then like heroically saving them is the right thing to do? Because

there’s no criteria. It’s just a decision. Now in the movies, it’s always the right decision,

but I would like to see sooner or later sometime where the hero decides to like run away and leave

the person to die. And then they find out, well, that was totally the wrong thing to do. I could have

saved that guy like 10 times over. Or they like go to save the person when they’re not supposed to,

and they both die as a result. I mean, any of those scenarios I would like to see played out,

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this is a lower stakes version of that. When to know how to punish your kid and how harshly,

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but I, I tried to be strict and yet kind and understanding as often as I could. Some other

people maybe haven’t found that balance. And that’s how they end up on an episode of Ninja News Japan.

A mother and her boyfriend drove their eight -year -old child to the mountains and left him

there to discipline him. So this is like when people dump dogs or other animals, they drive

them out into the forest or the mountains, they let them out and then they just drive away.

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I cannot think of a more traumatizing thing you could do to a child than just dump them in the

mountains and act like you’re going to leave them there forever. The boy had better sense than I

would in that situation. He is eight years old. He sought help at a nearby camping facility,

which was one kilometer walk away. So he figured out, I guess, to follow a road. He followed it for

a kilometer. He found a camping place, the place where they probably reserve camping spots. He walked

in. He said, you know, I’m, my parents just dumped me in the mountains. Can you help me? The people,

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of course, can. They called the police. They called 110. The mother and boyfriend went back.

Uh, I think I didn’t write it down, but I think it was like 20 minutes later. They went back to go

get the kid. So they didn’t intend to abandon him there. But the problem is they did leave him there

with the kid, not knowing they were going to come back. So the kid had to start taking care of himself,

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which he did right away. He did the smart thing. He didn’t just stand there and cry.

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Uh, then when they got back, he was gone. So then they called 110 as well and said, Hey,

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we, uh, have sort of lost our kid, but I’m betting the kid actually was pretty honest about his story

with the people who like found him the first place at the camping thing. And he said to them,

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you know, my parents dumped me here. So the police know who they’re looking for. They call the police,

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the police show up, the parent and her boyfriend have now been arrested. So it’s almost like

discipline went two ways in that one. Not only was the child disciplined, but the parents are also

disciplined. I would like to see the parents very severely disciplined, just like the kid was.

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A viral video sort of hit the Japanese Twitter X, those kinds of things of a child tourist on the

Shibuya crossing. So the Shibuya crossing is that very famous crossing. It’s like five,

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six lanes, all cross and people, there’s a huge crowd of people go through the middle.

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You’ve seen it in a bunch of movies. It’s a pretty dramatic thing. I actually haven’t visited

because I don’t care for crowds, but that’s kind of the whole point of going there.

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We regularly get stories of YouTubers and stuff messing about in the middle of Shibuya crossing

because they’re blocking people. This one, you have a little girl. I think she’s from Taiwan is

one of the stories said there were a lot of stories about this and sort of the facts are a bit mixed up.

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The video is pretty clear. This is a very small girl, maybe eight, nine years old, super excited to

be at Shibuya crossing. Someone’s filming her. She’s sort of dancing around. She’s not really being in

anyone’s way and she’s not really in anyone’s way. A person walks up, clearly beelines towards the kid

and then shoulder checks the kid and knocks them over. There was no technical injury in this case,

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but I went to bengoshi .com where they had a discussion about this. Like what is the actual

charge? There was no injury. That is assault, a physical force towards another person. And that

can get you two years in prison and up to a 300 ,000 yen fine. If the child had fallen and injured

themselves, that would be assault and injury, which can be 15 years in prison and a half million yen

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fine. They were saying like, is it self -defense because the little kid got in the way? Which,

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okay, in the video, the kid did not get in the way. The woman went out of her way to check the kid

and knock them over. But, you know, the person is going to claim the kid was in the way with self -defense.

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Self -defense could only be claimed if it was unavoidable and clear. It was unavoidable and there was

nothing else you could do. Now, it should be a crossing. You can slow down. You can take a step to the side.

You can turn. There are a lot of things you can do to avoid this. Therefore, it was not self -defense

that would not hold up in court. If they find this woman, she would be guilty of assault without

injury because I’m assuming the kid just bounced because kids bounce. And therefore, if found guilty

and arrested, she could get two years in prison and a 300 ,000 yen fine. Don’t go knocking little

kids over. There is a sort of this weird thing that incel dudes in Japan do where they walk around

stations. They try to find people usually on their phone and they shoulder check them so they can say

that person wasn’t paying attention. And then the incel dudes will knock just generally into any

woman in their way and then claim they were in the way. And if they turn around and argue, what

they’re hoping is they’re too scared to actually like fight back. And this is how sort of they get

their jollies. In a good society, we don’t shoulder check anybody. One Piece is the best -selling

manga of all time with over 600 million copies sold. Now, they’ve got like a thousand manga, like comic

books out. So I don’t know how many of those are that or the compilation manga or anything, but it

doesn’t matter. It’s clearly the best -selling comic in all of history, which is really cool.

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What is the One Piece is the primary question. It’s what the pirates are all going after, like the

original One Piece. What is the One Piece? And this is like Lost. Like people claim that the writers of

Lost didn’t know what the actual conclusion was, what the island was. A bunch of people said,

it’s purgatory. And then the writers of Lost were like, no, it isn’t, but we know it is. And then

it turned out to be purgatory anyways, because they, I actually think they didn’t know what it

was when they started. They just hoped they were going to write their way out of it. Or they knew

it was purgatory. When people like figured it out, they were like, oh, but we can’t let them know that.

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The question is, does the author of One Piece know what the One Piece is? He’s saying, yes, it is.

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He wrote it down on a piece of paper and they released a video to celebrate the thousands,

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thousands. They were celebrating One Piece being the best -selling manga of all time.

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He writes down on a piece of paper what the One Piece is. Then he tears it in half and he puts

the half the paper into a special glass orb. And then there’s a scene of a boat going out to the

ocean and then dropping that glass orb overboard so that, you know, there is an actual treasure at the

bottom of the ocean that you could find that tells you what the One Piece is. That is technically in

this real world, the One Piece. This is actually really cool and creative and smart and I quite

like it. And it is where he dropped it. He says it’s going to be 651 meters down and people with way

too much money are already talking about how to figure out how to go dive down to it with, I guess,

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a submersible, get it, bring it back so they can claim they have solved the mystery of the One Piece

or found the One Piece or something like that. But I mean, as far as, you know, advertising stunts go,

this one didn’t seem to hurt anybody and it’s kind of interesting and cool and I’m glad he’s did it.

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There’s a cram school in Japan. Since we’re kind of talking animation and comics and things like that,

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all the teachers are VTubers. It’s called Luminaris Online Juku. So Juku is what kids do to study to get

ready for their exams. It’s a really stressful system in Japan. We’re hitting exam season right now. We’re

actually probably coming to the end of it. Kids are all stressed out. They’re doing exams.

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It’s a tough life. I do not actually think this is the best way to do it, but my opinion on this

matter is irrelevant. Kids find it hard to pay attention. So what’s something you could do to

get them to pay attention? Well, find something they like and they like VTubers. Will they listen

to VTubers when they talk about math? I don’t know, but if it’s going to help, I’m all for it.

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This is the kind of thing that seems stupid at first, but if it helps kids pay attention and listen,

I am down with it. Do whatever you can. I think education in manga form, education in comics,

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education in animation, whatever you can do to get kids to pay attention and learn is worthwhile.

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The courses you can take at Luminaris are math, physics, English, chemistry, world history,

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Japanese history, geography. It is $63, the equivalent, so about 7 ,000 yen a course a month.

So I think, I assume you would only do once a week or something, or maybe you would go more often,

but for each course, you can go for a month for 60, for 7 ,000 yen, and then you could probably take

multiples. You’d be paying, you know, multiples of that. I didn’t get a good sense of whether it was

only online, like pre -recorded things, but if they’re VTubers, I assume those are teachers.

They’re on the other side of the computer screen. You study, you ask them questions, you get response

in the VTuber voice and whatnot, and that, if it clicks for you, man, I mean anything to help kids out

and education in modern society. Yes, please.

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A man was pulled over. A man does a… So there were two stories. One was he rear -ended,

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one was a head -on crash, but it seems more stories said the head -on. So there was a head -on crash

with another car, and the cops show up like they’re supposed to. A man is standing outside his smashed

up car, drinking a chew high in front of the police. Now, the belief is that he was drinking the chew high,

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and he could say he started drinking the chew high after the crash, maybe because he was so stressed out

from the crash. And then the cops would be like, well, you were driving drunk. He’s like, no, no,

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you’re going to, of course, find alcohol in my system now because I was just drinking a chew high,

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but I wasn’t drinking a chew high when I was driving. I wasn’t drunk when I was driving.

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That was post -crash. The police, of course, say, hey, this seems really suspicious. We think maybe

you were drunk driving and not waiting until after the crash to drink the chew high. So the man takes the

rest the remainder of the chew high and pours it over the head of the police officer because that’s

a really sober thing to do. Then when he’s arrested, I mean, that’s also assault of a police officer.

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So you’re going to get in trouble for that. Even if you were sober while you crashed the car,

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crashing the car is probably already a problem. Claiming you were not drunk. I’m betting they have

a way to figure out if you were or not, but drinking at the scene of a crime, probably still

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somehow they could get you in trouble. Public intoxication or something like that.

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Pouring it on the police officer is assault of a police officer. Even again, like previously,

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no injury. It’s still assault. When he was arrested, he says, I didn’t pour it on him.

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It just happened. So like the police officer hit the man’s elbow. The chew high went up in the air

and poured on his head. I don’t know. I don’t believe any of it. I think the man was drunk and

his drunk mind, he was like, I have come up with a scheme to get out of the junk drunk driving charge.

Even if I have crashed my car into another car. A 44 year old man has been charged with causing the

death of a 32 year old woman by making her drink 32 shots of tequila. So I’m sure it was a challenge

or a bet or something like that. 32 shots is a lot, but it’s also very abstract. So I actually went and did

the math of what is two 32 shots of tequila. And so I asked the internet, which is of course, what the

best way to get all information, how many shots in a bottle of tequila. So 750 milliliters of tequila

will work out to 16 to 17 shots. She drank two bottles of tequila in 90 minutes. So I’m assuming it

was like almost like a chug challenge. Like you do it, stop, talk for 10 seconds, take a breath, do it

again, 90 minutes. Cause 32 shots in 90 minutes is one every couple of minutes. So it’s every five

minutes she’s downing a shot. And then she of course dies from alcohol poisoning. Uh, it’s true.

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I encouraged her to drink, but I didn’t have any sexual intent. So of course what the man is saying

that he did have sexual intent. Uh, he’s got her drunk and he was intending to take her to a hotel.

He was actually on the way to the hotel when she sort of collapsed. And then he realized he had done

something wrong. He’d gone too far. He calls the police. He calls an ambulance. Uh, they come up,

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they’re like, you got this woman drunk. You got her blackout drunk. You were taking to a hotel to

take advantage of her. He’s like, Oh yeah, I got her to drink, but I had no ill intent by taking her to

this hotel, which we’ve had this conversation. How many times there is only one reason to go to a love

hotel. And that is to try to do something untoward to another person, hopefully consensually, but in this

case, clearly not. I actually said I should end episodes on an upbeat note. And I, by pushing all

the heavy, heavy stories to the end, so they get heavier as they go along. I can’t do that. I can’t

talk my way out of this one. I hope he gets charged with murder, not manslaughter, not accidental murder

or something else, something lower. He intended to get her drunk. He intended to get her to drink as

much as humanly possible. He intended for this to happen for her to black out. And if someone’s

blackout drunk, you are one step away from killing them anyways. So I hope he gets charged with the

full charge you could get, which would be murder. Although I know the Japanese system is far too lenient

on this kind of stuff. And they’re going to say like, she did willfully drink it, even though he

encouraged her to, but man, people got to get charged for this stuff.

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So I hope you enjoyed it.

Authoritarian PSA

There’s a place called, oh, first of all, already messed up my plan.

Last week there was supposed to be an episode.

I got sick.

My voice was not ready for it.

If I had tried to push through, it would have been a lot of hacking and coughing and really

awful stuff.

So I didn’t do an episode last week.

I’m hoping to make up, I’m basically just shifting the whole schedule now on into the

future from now.

So it’s going to be this week and then two weeks from now.

Does it make a difference?

I don’t think so.

I think we’re all right.

I think everyone’s fine.

There’s a place called Fujiyoshida.

It’s a town in Japan and it has a very nice view of Mount Fuji.

Now, a very nice view of Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms and you combine that, that’s pretty

awesome.

And if you’re into Instagram, that’s Instagram -omatic, fantastic.

Well, that’s the problem.

This city is canceling its annual cherry blossom viewing festival this year because there are

too many tourists.

We actually did this story last year because of the insane thing that tourists were doing

in this town, which I actually found inconceivable.

But then I realized like, nah, man, like people do dumb stuff.

This is a really small town.

So the problem is it’s not really designed to handle a lot of tourists.

So people are coming.

The parks are full.

People are going out into the street and taking pictures.

It’s dangerous.

That kind of stuff is the initial problem.

But they were littering.

Now, a lot of people who come to Japan, they don’t realize that Japan doesn’t provide a lot

of garbage cans.

You’re expected to carry your garbage with you back to your domicile or wherever you

came from and then dispose of your garbage yourself.

And garbage disposal in Japan is a whole other story in itself because, you know, it has to

be separated.

Some of it has to be cleaned.

It has to be organized.

It has to be organized.

If you’re living in a city, old ladies who have nothing else to do will come and check

your garbage to make sure it’s right and then like reprimand you if it’s not quite right.

Tourists are littering.

They were entering private homes.

I don’t know if they were entering private homes just like walking in.

But there’s also part of me that goes, yeah, I’m betting there are some tourists who just

like walked into someone’s house, like a sliding door and they just slid it open.

Maybe the door wasn’t locked.

So they just walked in and they were using their facilities or they were knocking on people’s

doors and asking to use the facilities would be very annoying if you don’t want strangers

to come in and poop in your house.

So what’s the weird expectation here?

The city isn’t prepared to like overhaul all the facilities, the public facilities to

make it enough for essentially a two week period in the year.

So cherry blossom season is very short.

All these tourists come for this two weeks and then the rest of the year they’re not there.

So it’s not worth fiscally.

It’s not worth actually paying for improving the facilities for tourism.

This is a form of over tourism causing an issue.

Now, of course, you come to my house, you say, hey, can I poop in your house?

My answer is honestly, probably no.

Most of the time we’re like, I don’t know you go away or leave me alone.

Or why are you knocking on my door?

I’m actually trying to do something.

It’s disruptive and that is problematic in itself.

So what do they do?

Well, I got to poop real bad.

So I’m just going to go in your backyard and poop.

So they were finding human feces, you know, not exactly public areas, but like on people’s

private property, maybe in public areas as well.

People have to poop.

They do have to poop though.

And so the city, because it’s a very small city, has not created the facilities because

this two week period is the only time they get this amount of tourism.

And the amount of tourism they get is 10 ,000 people a day.

In a city like Tokyo or Osaka, 10 ,000 people a day.

That’s just a drop in the bucket.

That’s nothing.

But in a small town that probably only has about 50, 60 ,000 residents, 10 ,000 people a

day is a massive influx of people.

They just don’t have the facilities to take care of these people.

The city still expects to see a lot of visitors because of the Instagram.

And so what they’re saying is like, we’re not having festivals.

We’re not actually inviting people to our city to see cherry blossoms, to sit at cherry

blossoms, to have a cherry blossom festival.

But because this place has gotten so popular on Instagram, we know people are still going to

come.

They’re still going to want to take their pictures.

They’re still going to like interrupt the road, but at least it will be less because there’s

less organized invitation and participation in the actual events.

Tokyo police released a video warning young people to be cautious about cocaine use.

I’m an older dude.

And I understand that the way to communicate with young people would not be for me to make

a video.

So if I made an Inja News Japan episode and it was targeted at young people, I would immediately

sit down and go, problem number one, you have an old guy sitting in the chair talking to young

people.

And it would feel like I’m talking down to them.

Like I’m talking to a younger group of people in some way.

This is even worse because this is a group of police officers who are already sort of authoritarian.

They haven’t, you know, earned the trust or faith of young people.

And then they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll just make a video and we’ll tell young people not

to do cocaine.

And then guess what?

They’re just not going to use cocaine anymore.

It’s just going to be like solving that problem.

There’s never been a government video or a video by an authoritarian of any sort that

has actually been successful.

In fact, I actually bet in some way it encourages people to actually do the thing you’re telling

them what to do.

I was a rebellious youth.

Like there’s no reason.

This was actually interesting because there’s no reason for me to have been rebellious or

angry in any way.

But I was a very angry young man and I was like a middle class white dude.

I had every advantage the universe could give anyone and I was angry about it, which is

now that I think about it really sad and weird.

Like what was I angry about?

I don’t know.

I was a punk rock kid.

Just maybe hormones.

I actually think that might be the answer.

It was hormones more than anything else.

But if you told me, like if the DARE program or something came to my school, I bet that

afternoon I’d be like, I kind of want to try some drugs.

So the police in Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have put out a video saying, don’t do

cocaine.

Be careful of cocaine use because it’s a powder and it’s very easy to spill.

They have testimonies from people who have used it, who then said it was awesome.

Okay.

I’ve never done cocaine.

I can honestly say I’ve never done an illegal drug.

I’ve done way too many painkillers.

I’ve abused lots of drugs, cough medicine, my jam.

But I’ve never done an illegal drug just because when I was at that age when you would experiment,

I was doing very serious judo and I would have to do a p -test every now and then.

And I didn’t want to get caught with any sort of drug, marijuana, cocaine or anything else

in my system just in case it would actually get me in trouble with the sports I was dedicating

my life to, which provided me with nothing because there are no famous people who do

judo.

This has never led anyone to anything.

The people I do know who’ve done cocaine who say like, it’s pretty nice.

Like it’s super fun.

Makes you feel good.

Now, I’m not saying you should do it.

I think cocaine is bad because it’s addictive.

It’s not the doing cocaine is the problem.

It’s the addiction.

And then the cost that comes with that addiction that you should be aware of.

I stopped drinking caffeine because I realized I was addicted to caffeine.

If I didn’t have a Coke or I don’t drink coffee, but if I didn’t have like a Coke or something

with caffeine in it, by lunchtime, I would start getting the caffeine headache.

So I actually cut caffeine out of my life altogether because I just don’t like the idea of addiction.

If you’re drinking it and you’re happy with it, sure.

I’m not going to, I’m just about to promote cocaine.

I’m doing the opposite.

Well, maybe this is it.

Maybe if this old dude says you should do cocaine, the youth out there will hear the

message and go, well, I’m not doing cocaine because that old creepy man told me to do cocaine.

It took about a month or maybe a little more before I actually like settled down into like

feeling normal without having any caffeine in my life.

I still drink Coke, but it’s caffeine free, sugar free, calorie zero Coke.

So it’s basically all fun free.

Joy free Coke is exactly what I have.

But at the same time, I’m just trying to like not die as quickly.

The video from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has testimonies from people who’ve used cocaine.

And the thing is cocaine seizures have been up 1 .5 times from last year.

Now it’s still not very much.

Cocaine is not a particularly popular drug in Japan because it’s so hard to get drugs in Japan.

And because therefore it will be so expensive.

He said, one of the testimonies message is very persuasive.

I’m convinced if people, if young people watch the video, they will never do drugs.

I don’t think they understand how effective videos are actually are.

I don’t think they realize that old people telling you not to do drugs is not a particularly

effective tactic.

Technique?

Technique?

Technique?

A 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant called 110.

110 is the 911 in Japan.

It’s actually important to know if you ever plan on traveling to Japan, you don’t dial 911.

110, that’ll get you.

Ambulance, police, whatever you need.

They’re probably only going to speak Japanese, but if you just start screaming, they’ll get the message.

This 36 -year -old manager of a ramen restaurant said he had been robbed at knife point.

He was jumped as he was closing up and they had taken 670 ,000 yen from him.

Oh no.

That’s a terrible thing.

The police start to investigate.

They take this very seriously.

They start doing CSI kind of stuff.

They get surveillance videos and then they find no one fitting the description is on any

surveillance video in the area, which is very unusual.

If you listen to the Indian News Japan consistently, you will realize that most crimes are solved

by the police just going to areas around the crime, getting surveillance videos and watching

those videos and going, hey, there’s that guy.

Now let’s follow him home.

And then they show up at his house.

No one fitting the description that the manager gave showed up on any surveillance videos anywhere.

It makes me wonder what kind of description he gave.

Because like if I was going to describe a criminal in Japan, I’m going to go 5 ’10”,

black hair, slim build.

I mean, that’s it, right?

Like I’ve just described it.

When I lived in Korea, there was like a serial killer.

An announcement went out on the news about the serial killer and they said he’s 5 ‘9″,

black hair, slim build, something like that.

And I was like, dude, I’ve seen that guy like 7 ,000 times today in Seoul.

How is that a description?

So the police started looking deeper and they got on the manager’s smartphone.

So you know it’s already a problem.

The manager had searched staged robbery victim.

Now that’s a problem.

You should not, I guess if you’re going to commit a crime, the first thing you should do is clear

your cash history, clear your cookies, erase your computer, throw away your smartphone.

I don’t know because I bet they could still recover all that stuff.

But searching for a staged robbery victim and other similar searches, I guess just different

like word order and stuff.

And then they arrested him, sat him down and said like, did you stage a robbery?

Did you claim to have been robbed?

And then it turns out you weren’t.

You just like done this to yourself.

He broke immediately.

So this is one where you’ve got to commit.

If you’re going to do the bit, if you’re going to stage a robbery, you’ve got to commit

to the robbery more than anything else.

His injuries came from punching himself in the face several times.

And he was arrested for making a false emergency call.

I actually think this should be bigger than just a false emergency call because it seems

like a lot more happened than like he’s wasted police time.

He’s interfered with police business.

He’s done a lot more than just make a false phone call.

But that’s all they’re charging him with for now.

53 year old idol fan who was famed for spending massive amounts of money up to 30 million

yen a year.

And let me be clear.

I’ve said this many times.

I got to make it like just like a little sound clip.

The average salary in Japan is between four and five million yen a year.

So let’s just say 4 .5 million yen, the average salary of the average person in Japan.

This guy’s spending 30 million yen.

So six, seven times that amount every single year on AKB48 merch and goods and stuff and

underground idols.

And he’s spending another 5 million yen on underground idols exclusively.

So he’s spending 35 to 40 million yen a year.

So again, the equivalent of like 10 years salary for most people on idol events, idol goods,

idol items.

Okay.

So AKB48, I have never been a fan.

It’s not my kind of music.

Not judging people who like it.

If you like it, that’s fine.

But I do not like how manipulative the system is.

So if you want to vote and they have an election, so you’re going to choose, there’s like, again,

a whole gaggle of women.

They need to choose a leader every year or every couple of years.

What they do is they have like a show and then you vote for who you think is the leader.

Sounds very fair, very honest.

That’s fine.

Except that’s not how it works.

To get a ticket to vote, you have to buy a CD.

So a story from, God, it’s like five, six years ago was people buying hundreds of CDs

so they get hundreds of voting tickets so they could vote for their favorite idol and then

taking those CDs and just dumping them in the forest.

So it was the garbage dumping became the story.

But then they kind of glossed over the whole fact that this guy just spent thousands of

dollars on CDs so he could just get the voting tickets so he could vote for the idol he favored.

Now, here’s the thing.

If I was the leader of the AKB48, I guess the thing is the whole point of that is to

inflate sales to make it seem like they were selling more CDs than they were.

But realistically, you should just sell them the tickets so you don’t actually have the

environmental waste or make it digital or something like that.

That way, these guys who want to spend massive amounts of money on their favorite idol can do

so without that sort of negative impact.

But I guess they were just trying to increase, inflate CD sales.

He sold a vacant apartment owned by his family.

So his family was renting out an apartment.

It was vacant at the time.

And so he sold it so he could get more money to buy more stuff to support his favorite idol

to win the AKB48 election.

He goes to multiple shows a week and he says he spends at least 10 ,000 yen per visit on photos.

So if you go to any sort of event in Japan, you can pay extra money and get like a little

Polaroid of you with the famous person.

I went when I first came to Japan, we went to Nagoya’s oldest strip club, which was famed

to be the oldest strip club in Japan and maybe had the oldest strippers.

And we got a picture taken with one of the older strippers, which was a very weird experience.

I don’t think I should be really going into it.

He’s spending 200 ,000 to 300 ,000 yen every single month, which again is a normal salary

in Japan on idol events.

He’s also famous because he was sick.

He had a coronary event, maybe a stroke.

He left the hospital before the doctors told him he was allowed to because he didn’t want

to miss a show.

And then he was banned from the hospital.

He wasn’t allowed to come back to the hospital because he refused to do what the doctor said.

So like the problem is if you don’t follow our instructions, you could go out and die and

then we’re going to be responsible.

So you’re not allowed to get health care from us anymore, which is insane.

If you think about it, he has no wife, no kids, no savings, no regrets is actually the

interview thing that said he plans to continue his idol events, his idol support until he dies.

And he’s actually very happy.

He says he’s happier supporting living this unique lifestyle than he would be if he’d followed

the more traditional lifestyle of a wife, kids, house, all that other stuff.

Don’t know how I feel about it because he clearly has, we need an intervention because

this is an addiction three times a week.

So now the question is, how much does he spend?

Because a percentage of your salary going to your hobby, which idol events could be your

hobby is acceptable.

A certain amount of my salary goes to equipment and videos and computers and video games and

stuff like that.

I certainly can’t judge someone else for doing spending money on their hobby, but the percentage

has to be a reasonable percentage.

I think that’s it.

So once the percentage becomes unreasonable, there’s a point where it becomes an addiction,

that addiction we’re talking about, maybe they need an intervention.

But yeah, if he’s spending a reasonable amount, I’m sure he’s happy.

This guy’s happy.

And he says he’s happy spending all his money on idol events as opposed to saving it so that

he doesn’t have to work.

He works part -time job.

But the thing is, there’s clearly a ton of money there already.

And that’s the bit that pisses me off.

Just give me some of that money.

Dude, I’m poor.

At this point, comparatively speaking, I’m poor compared to you.

A 57 -year -old man.

It’s these 50 -year -olds.

That’s the bit that always strikes me is these guys are all in the same age range as me.

A 57 -year -old man was arrested.

He turned a phone into the police and he demanded a 5 ,000 yen reward.

So basically, if you find a lost item, you can turn it into the cops.

And you don’t necessarily get a reward, but you can kind of ask for one.

You can put some pressure on people.

Most people will give you something in return as a thank you.

That’s not unusual.

But he had a whole scheme going because he said,

it is my right to receive payment for turning in someone else’s lost goods.

The problem is, I think you can already guess, wasn’t that the goods were lost.

It’s that he stole them so that he could turn them into the police.

So then he could then collect the reward.

So he went to a restaurant.

He was at the same restaurant as a man.

He picked up the guy’s phone and then went and turned it into the police.

The police then call the man and say, hey, did they call him?

He can’t call him.

He’s on his phone.

Wait a minute.

I guess the man went to the police to ask about his phone.

And they said, yes, we have your phone.

But then he recognized the guy who took his phone from the restaurant.

So they must have met face to face.

And he was recognizable enough that they actually met in the police station.

This is maybe the problem was that crossover.

Because you’ve seen me in the restaurant.

Now you see me face to face.

Therefore, you know that I was actually in the room when you lost your phone,

which makes everything suspicious.

He turned in lost items more than 60 times.

And in those 60 times, now the police are seeing a pattern.

And they started saying, hey, maybe these items aren’t lost.

Maybe you’re stealing them and turning them in so you can collect the reward.

And that is a problem.

And it’s called fraud.

And you’re getting arrested.

This is really horrible.

Bullying in Japan.

So Japan is known as a very peaceful country.

And there’s not a lot of crime, comparatively speaking.

There’s a lot of fraud and stuff like that.

But again, a lot is relative.

There’s a lot less than other countries.

It’s a safe country overall.

Bullying in Japan has been a constant issue.

The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve heard about bullying, how it’s getting worse,

all these other issues.

Bullying in Japan is next level.

This may, I actually think this might be part of the consequences of a peaceful society.

It was actually one of the thoughts I had.

Because you have this society where you don’t really have to worry about crime and stuff,

but you want to feel powerful.

So you start imposing your will on other people.

That’s how bullying happens.

There was a trading card store.

So I’m thinking a Pokemon trading card store.

But probably trading card store means they trade any kind of collectible cards.

So it’s going to be baseball cards, Pokemon cards, other nerd game cards, Magic the Gathering,

all that other stuff.

The owner was arrested for a separate crime.

But when you get arrested, they take your phone away and they start looking through your

phone.

And that’s how they discover other crimes.

And a lot of crimes seem to be discovered by the police looking at your phone.

And the police can look at your phone.

Again, this isn’t American TV stuff.

They don’t need warrants and stuff.

They actually have full access to anything.

They’re like, this is suspicious.

I want to look at it.

They don’t need a warrant.

They can just start looking at stuff.

So you got to be careful.

If you get stopped by the police in Japan, they have the full right to go through all

your possessions on your body without like a warrant or a reason.

They’re just like, you look interesting.

I would like to look in your bag now.

They can do that.

So again, different countries, different rules.

You got to know that when you come to the country, because it is a risk you run into.

Because if you refuse, you can be arrested right there.

And then for refusing, you’re not even like done anything wrong, but you can be arrested

for interfering with police business, which the police business is, I want to look in

your bag.

But they found videos on this guy’s smartphone, the owner of the trading card store.

And it was them, him and two of his coworkers abusing a fourth coworker who had been working

there for about three or four months.

And it was just, again, when I start getting into the actual details, it’s just horrendous.

They started shaving the person’s hair with clippers.

I mean, I do that to myself, but if it’s non -consensual, that’s a problem.

They were wrapping aluminum foil around his genitals and touching them to an outlet to

shock him.

I would not have thought of that.

This was the other part of bullying that I always come across is they are creative.

I would never have come up with the idea of like, oh, I’m going to bully this person.

I would think of, I will punch them.

I, you know, the fundamentals, the basics, stick to the basics, maybe push them around,

knock them with your shoulder.

If I was going to bully, it’d be very boring, uh, American TV show kind of bullying, knock

their books out of their hand, that kind of stuff.

Would never do that though, because why, why bully someone else doesn’t actually make sense.

Wrapping someone’s testicles, genitals with aluminum foil and then shocking them.

That is work.

And maybe that’s it.

I’m too lazy to be a bully.

I would never bully anyone because I wouldn’t want to make that much extra work in my life.

Uh, they sprayed alcohol on his legs and then set the alcohol on fire.

They mixed the owner’s fecal matter with instant food and made him eat it.

Now I obviously disapprove of all this behavior.

I think this is disgusting.

Uh, but again, we go back to the criminal part.

Don’t video it.

But these guys now, people now, they have to video everything because they have to have

evidence that they did this.

This is like serial killers taking like a trophy or a token of everyone they’ve killed.

And that’s the thing that gets them caught.

This is the exact same thing.

They’re bullying this guy and they want to feel powerful.

So they want to video it.

So they have the video of them abusing this other human being to prove that they can do

that.

But what ends up happening is then the police actually arrest you for some kind of fraud.

I actually forget what the actual crime was, but then they find this.

This is worse.

Like the fraud is bad, but this sort of consistent abuse of another person, because each one of

these things becomes another charge of assault or battery or something like that.

Another charge of abuse.

That’s like six, seven, eight, nine more charges, because you know, the three, four things I’ve

done right now, they’ve done those multiple times.

Each one is abuse.

The, uh, claim was that they were punishing him for making mistakes at work, but absolutely

there’s no way any of that is acceptable.

I hope they get an amazing amount of jail time.

I’m going to try to follow up and find out how much jail time they can get.

For each action, uh, that might be tough, but hopefully we can find out how much punishment

you actually get for this kind of behavior, this kind of bullying at work.

The Chinese Japanese chilling of relations has been ongoing.

Ninja News Japan has brought you reports multiple times of all the things that have happened.

Uh, China’s reaction has been to try to stop anything Japanese oriented happening.

The problem is there is still a large contingent of anime fans in China.

Detective Conan cosplay, uh, has been banned.

So they have anime events and at those anime events, you are no longer allowed to dress up

as Detective Conan.

Now, three cosplayers at a separate event dressed up as Death Note characters.

Now we all know Death Note.

We know that you have the notebook.

If you open the notebook that says Death Note on it and you write a name in the book, I

think it’s seven days later, that person dies.

Well, there was a tweet that showed the three cosplayers, all dressed as Death Note characters,

opened a Death Note book and wrote Sanai Takaichi, which is the name of the current Japanese

prime minister in their book.

This has been promoted in China, but then obviously people in Japan are complaining about it.

Because you’re saying you want the prime minister of Japan to die.

So this is a very weird situation.

The bit that I actually found interesting is they’re using a Japanese anime to make a political complaint

about a Japanese prime minister who they are claiming is anti -Chinese.

So using, are you supporting Japanese anime and making a political statement?

Or are you pro -Chinese and anti -Japanese by wearing the Japanese cosplay and then putting

the prime minister’s name in the Death Note?

If you have an opinion, I would actually like to hear what you think.

You can send an email to chunkofbeefchest at gmail .com.

Or you can send us a voice message to speakpipe .com slash chunkofbeefchest.

And we will talk about it in a later episode.

So you’re out.

It’s one o ‘clock, maybe 1 .30, two o ‘clock in the morning.

You’re having a good time.

Your phone goes off.

That’s always bad.

Your phone doesn’t, you don’t want your phone to go off at one o ‘clock in the morning.

And the message you get is come home, which is very weird because you live alone.

So coming home seems like a weird thing for someone to tell you.

You know what it makes, it sounds like someone has broken into your apartment.

And that person wants you to come back to your apartment where they are.

And then you don’t go home right away because why would you?

So the next thing they send is another text that says,

there is no way to save the parakeets except to come home.

So someone has broken into your house.

You have parakeets as pets.

And they are threatening to kill the parakeets if you don’t come home.

And then you get another message that says, if you apologize over the phone now,

I’ll spare the parakeets.

Now, what are you apologizing for?

You don’t know because you don’t seem to know this person who seems to have broken into your house

and is threatening the lives of your parakeets, but has your phone number.

So this must be some sort of distant social relationship.

I would assume a coworker or something like that.

This person getting these messages did the most reasonable thing and called the cops.

And the cops showed up at the house because that’s who, of course, you’re going to call.

And that is the weirdest form of harassment I’ve seen.

Like, if I was, I don’t know, like, are you threatening them?

Because, yeah, I’m really stuck on this one.

I don’t know where to go with it.

I value animals’ lives.

I have my associate Dave in the background.

Threatening someone’s pet is just crossing a massive line.

But why is this guy trying to get the girl to come back?

He’s trying to get the girl to come back because he’s obviously attracted to her.

And then he’s so socially inept that this is his version of game.

And his game is so bad, he’s like, I will threaten her parakeets

and she’ll come back and talk to me and then fall in love.

Like, is that what’s going through these, like, psychos’ heads

when they make these kind of threats?

Like, when they lose it, when they realize, like,

she is not attracted to me.

And they cross this line.

What’s going on in their heads is a very interesting question

because I don’t understand.

I don’t know.

I hope he gets arrested.

I do hope all the parakeets survived.

It was done in plural.

The sad part, the scary part, is the police never said that the parakeets were safe,

which I think in a normal news story they would say that.

So I think at least one parakeet did not make it.

So I don’t know what the punishment is for animal abuse in Japan,

but I hope it’s pretty severe.

I didn’t finish my notes.

that’s a little iets.

Aww.

The cool thing is crazy.

I’ll watch the books as well.

HMPA Loompa

All
right, now we got to wait for the cough
to subside. I woke up this morning with
a bit of a cough. And of course, like
everyone who gets a cough, my hope is
that I end up with a grally, sexy voice.
But I think really what’s going to
happen is I’m going to get about 30
minutes in and then my voice is going to
get all squeaky and maybe start coughing
a lot, which I I don’t want that for you
to listen to. So, I’m going to do my
best and power through. I was thinking
of skipping today, but I Well, you get
all the personal updates. My on the
computer basically just died on the
weekend. I had to get rid of the old
operating system and then get in a new
operating system and it was very
stressful and I almost bought a new
computer which might have solved my
problems but also not because most of my
problems are emotional.
Anyways, what you’re here for, what I’m
here for, what everyone’s here for is
the Japanese news.
Japanese man scheduled a tweet.
uh
I’m dead and go would be the translation
of it. Uh this is very memeoriented
uh speech.
The would be his death rattle and then
he said I’m dead and then the go which
is a very Japanese meme. Uh there was uh
a baseball player Rodrigo some Dominigo.
So and he embarrassed himself. So this
is almost like you add this to the end
of words when you’re embarrassed. So
he’s basically saying I died. I’m a
little embarrassed about dying or how I
died. And the fact that I’m dead is also
a little embarrassing in itself. So that
is the tweet. In 2023, this guy was 20
years old and he was diagnosed with a
very rare form of cancer. His profile
said, “I like cute girls. I also have
cancer.” So, he was maintaining a sense
of humor about it, which I think we can
all appreciate how hard that must be to
do. So, there is a very bittersweet tone
to all the jokes he’s making about
having cancer and dying. And he still
likes cute girls because he’s a
20-year-old guy.
He scheduled the tweet every day. So,
basically, if he died, he wouldn’t be
able to reschedule the tweet and then
the tweet would go out. So when it went
out,
all these people noticed, but it started
garnering a massive amount of attention
online. And it turns out it set off a
series of people donating usually with
something like
uh here’s my donation go or my
condolences and go and things like that
in reference to this tweet. And they’re
saying 30 to 40,000 donations came in as
a result of this tweet. So it is tragic
that this young man died at a very early
age unfairly of a very rare cancer. Uh
he maintained a sense of humor about it
but it was inspirational enough to
people on the internet. The other meme
like this is the positive side of meme
culture. Other people got the meme, they
joined in on the meme. They got his
feelings right away and they said, you
know, this guy did this. I could donate
some money. And it set off this massive
donations and people want to say thank
you. And honestly, I wish I could do
something as positive with my life.
Bear attacks have been a massive issue
in Japan. Like way more so than I would
have thought. Like when they started
talking about bears coming down from the
mountains into the towns in northern
Japan, that’s a lot. Uh bears are scary.
I grew up in Canada. We learned how to
defend ourselves from bears in the very
realistic way of don’t get involved with
bears. Uh you when I used to walk my dog
in the forest, I used to have put a bell
on the dog and have a bell on me so the
bear would hear the bell and avoid you.
They’re telling kids when they walk home
from school, get a plastic water bottle
and like scrunch it as you walk. And
this is again, you grow up in different
places. I have a friend who grew up in
Florida and he learned about, you know,
being safe from gators. You run
serpentine because gators are very fast
in a straight line, but they’re very bad
at their turns. So basically they must
have like uh stock engine with uh they
haven’t lowered for the turning ratio. I
should have actually thought about that
joke and gotten some words right before
I started it. But there is the rhyme. If
it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown,
stand your ground. And if it’s white,
say good night. So if it’s black, fight
back. So black bears do what’s called a
false charge. So if you when they come
at you, if you kind of like go like
you’re about to fight them, they’ll
often just turn around and run away
saying like, “Oh man, I thought this was
going to be easy and it’s not easy.” If
they charge you and you run away,
they’re like, “Oh well, this worked
out.” So they’re actually just testing
to see if you’ll fight back. Brown bears
are uh stand your ground. So if it’s
brown, stand your ground. And so you
what you want to do is that’s when you
stand, you make yourself big, you make
lots of noise, and you try to scare away
the bear. Uh, basically the bear isn’t
scared of you, but it’s like, nah, that
thing’s way too much trouble to kill and
eat, so I’m just gonna go find something
easier to kill and eat because bears are
fundamentally lazy. I understand bears.
Like, I understand the need and the
desire of bears to want to do the
minimum amount of work because that’s
how I’ve lived my entire life. Uh, if
it’s white, say good night because a
polar bear will just kill you for fun.
Uh, they might not, but it’s completely
up to the polar bear. There’s nothing
you can do to stop it is basically the
idea.
So remember that rhyme. But the problem
is these bears are coming down from the
mountains. They’re hungry. In a previous
episode of Ninja News Japan, I actually
talked about something that I didn’t
know. Farmland used to be a barrier. So
it used to be mountains, sort of forest,
farmland, and then cities. But because
young people are abandoning farming as a
trade, they these there’s a lot of empty
farms. There is now no more cushion. So
the bears come down. There’s no farms.
There’s like emptyow fields. So they
just walk into the city. So there’s no
sort of barrier or transition zone to
keep the bears out of the cities. Now
there are not enough beach nuts.
Basically, apparently in Japan, all the
bears are eating nuts. And if there’s
not enough nuts from the trees and
around the area where they live, they
don’t have enough to get, you know, fat
for the winter. So they start coming
into the city. So this is the problem
that the the crop of nuts that they eat
wasn’t enough this year. So they’re
working their way downs in the city.
This is sounds funny until you realize
13 people have died this year in bear
encounters. Like there’s two 300 people
have been injured but there have been 13
deaths. So this is a very serious thing
like people are dying on a regular basis
whereas before like two years ago zero
there would have been zero bear deaths
in that year. The self-defense force has
offered logistical help because legally
the self-defense force is not allowed to
shoot bears. So this was an interesting
thing. It came up maybe last year, the
year before Ishiba, the previous prime
minister when he was a minister, brought
up the issue of whether you could employ
the self-defense force in Japan against
Godzilla. And it’s because you’re
allowed to employ the self-defense force
for an invading army. Uh, but Godzilla
isn’t an invading army. So, there’s a
couple of movies where Godzilla is
controlled by like aliens. That’s an
invading army. You could use the SDF in
that case. But if it’s just a natural
event, you’re not supposed to be able to
use the SDF. So you have to work your
way around that. So in this case,
they’re offering logistical help and
they don’t have weaponry that would
actually kill a bear. Like that all the
weapons they have designed for the
self-defense force in Japan are for
suppressing fire. So I’m sure it could
still kill you, but that’s not actually
the intent of the weapons that they tend
to carry. So you need the hunters to
kill the bears. and they’re trying to
put in this special emergency rule that
police can carry a gun that would allow
them to also kill bears because they
can’t use the SDF to do it. But the SDF
can come in and help lay traps. They can
do logistics. They can do it like lend
their intelligence to the locals while
they take care of it. Which is a very
interesting problem because they’re
doing this properly. It’s not like Trump
in America who’s just like, I’m going to
roll the National Guard into Portland
cuz I want to. In Japan, it actually
makes more sense. We have literally
people dying. We have literally uh
animals that need to be trapped and
relocated or shot and killed in the
worst case scenarios. They still won’t
do it because legally they’re not
supposed to be able to do that. Uh the U
the SDF can be used for defense
operations. So again, invasion from
another country. Uh public security,
which this is kind of public security,
disaster relief, and civil support. So
in this case, they’re actually offering
civil support. Uh GEU, a different
prefecture a little farther south. in
order to deter bears from entering GEU
have now employed drones that will fly
along the border the northern border of
Gefue and they are making dog barking
noises to scare away the bears. So that
is a interesting technological use of uh
to to try to deter them from coming here
which I find very interesting. Uh
they’re trying to stop the bears by
making it seem like there’s dogs around
but the problem is if you live in one of
those areas and a drone’s flying around
making barking noises all night that’s
problematic in itself. So, I don’t know
if it’s honestly the ideal solution, but
it is better. I don’t actually want the
bears to get shot. I would love if they
were trapped and relocated. I think that
is kind of the more humane way to do it
because they don’t want to come into
town and hurt people. They just like are
surprised, the person surprised, the
bear does what a bear does. It attacks
the thing when it’s surprised. One of
the issues that’s come up on the
internet because the internet is a
cesspool is people have been using AI to
make fake bear videos. So, they’ll have
a fake bear walk through a town and then
they’ll say and then they’ll post it
online going like, “There’s a bear in
this city right now.” And that’s
problematic because people in that city
will now panic. Uh there’s people making
baby bear videos where the bear comes up
and is super friendly, basically just
behaving like a dog, and they hug it and
they can pet it and stuff, but that’s
teaching people that it’s safe to
approach bears, which they don’t want to
do. So, the government’s actually going
to crack down on this version of AI. In
the last episode of Ninja News Japan, I
talked about Japan’s laws on deep fakes
and deep fake porn and stuff like that.
They haven’t actually caught up to the
reality of people making it. So, that’s
problematic. But this is a different
problem. This is a public security,
public health, public safety issue.
They’re going to need rules about that.
It turns out there is already a rule
though that if you do something that
encourages risky behavior or panic,
that’s already illegal in Japan and you
may face prosecution.
Uh, what I read this morning just before
I started Ninja News Japan was that
delivery drivers in northern areas of
Japan where there are bears are delaying
deliveries because they don’t want to
take the chance of running into a bear
by accident.
There’s a new drink in Japan called
water
tokosi which is special water,
functional water. The way it was
translated was functional water, but
when I looked it up, it actually just
said special water, which is a very
Japanese way of naming something. I
think it’s just special stuff. Uh, and
what’s special about this water? Well,
it has hoopas. Uh, h ma. And the idea is
for people who sit at their desks all
day, you get this sort of gut. I
actually have a little bit of one even
though I do exercise pretty regularly.
And it says that if a regular intake of
this kind of water with hoopas will I
guess the hompala loompas go into your
stomach. They redistribute the fat. So,
it doesn’t say this was a very
interesting sort of thing that I
noticed. It didn’t say it gets rid of
the fat or helps you process the fat
faster or something like that. It helps
redistribute the fat. So maybe you got a
little gut, but you’re actually thin
everywhere else, which is something that
happens to people. If it redistributes
that fat equally all over your body,
you’re actually going to look way better
overall. So I’m actually doing running
an experiment. So this month, the month
of November, I am drinking one Tokosi
bottle, which is 600 milliliters, 150
yen, every single day. They have done
testing and it says that if you drink
this regularly, now they don’t say what
regularly is. They don’t say how much it
is. So, I’m doing one bottle a day every
day, but it is supposed to redistribute
the fat around your body. Uh, it comes
from
it comes from a brand from rice included
in this water. I think it’s fermented.
And I It’s one of those things like in
Japan, everything comes from a fermented
bean. All the like health benefits
fermented beans. all this like magic
cures. Fermented beans. Like I’m going
bald. I could probably rub fermented
beans on my head and Japanese people
would say that’s going to make your hair
grow back. I don’t believe it. I don’t
think this is really going to do
anything. I made a mistake of I’m
dieting at the same time as I’m drinking
this water. So, I’m not 100% sure. Like
I could lose the fat in my front because
of the water or I could lo fat in the
front because I’m basically being more
careful about my diet. Again, I don’t
know if it’s going to work. Uh, if you
see me at the end of this month and I
look much more spelt or my clothes are
fitting a little better, maybe it’s the
Humpas, maybe the Humpa Lumpas have done
their job.
Nintendo, the owner of Pokemon, has been
suing Powell World for about 6 months
now. I think it might even be longer
than that. Uh, because Pow World
basically ripped off all the mechanics
of a Pokemon game. So, you want to go,
you collect a monster, use that monster
to fight and do stuff and build it up.
and they decided to make it a little
funnier. They have like depressed ones
and they have ones with weird special
abilities and the evolutions are very
odd. But what Nintendo is suing over is
the actual mechanics of how they capture
the Pokemon, the monsters in Powell
World. And that has been dealt a
significant blow because the Japan
patent office just rejected the monster
capture mechanic as not being original.
Now, there’s lots of games that use
catch this thing, use a capture system,
but they were trying to say this is our
system. We have the patent. We’re the
ones who invented it. Anyone else is
ripping us off. Now, here’s the thing.
If you go back to the beginning of
Pokemon, there were other games doing
the exact same thing, and they actually
copied them. So, nothing in Pokemon to
me is actually original. And that’s not
a terrible thing because obviously
Pokemon did it well. But when you start
suing someone else for ripping off the
thing that you ripped off, I actually am
like, “Hey, maybe you’ve overstepped a
little bit. Maybe you don’t really know
what you’re doing.” Uh, some of the
references to other games that are doing
something similar like the Monster
Capture, they said Monster Hunter, Ark,
Kenti Collection, Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go
is actually made by a different company
than Nintendo. So technically, Pokemon
Go would be guilty of ripping off the
systems that are used in Pokemon, which
is a very interesting problem to have
because if you successfully sue POW
World, you could then actually go after
Pokemon Go and successfully win. But
they’re saying because these are used
systems are used in other games, in
other systems, that it’s not really
original. It’s not your mechanic. Uh,
and that actually means they might not
win their lawsuit.
Super Senti series. Super Sententi
series. Super Sententi series has been
going for 50 years. So I’m 53 right now
as of recording of this podcast, which
means I was three years old when the
first uh Power Rangers is how you would
probably know it show was started in
Japan. And every year they swap out with
new characters, new people, a new team,
a new theme. Like my kid went through
the same process where he like fell in
love with the bug one. I actually really
wish it wasn’t the bug one. They had
bugs and trains and trucks and all these
other things that kids, little primarily
little boys is the target audience, but
things that they like and that gets
integrated into the suit and their
powers and whatnot. But the originals
were just like the real basic five
colors, the fivecolor team and they’re
all different people and they all have
different problems. Uh Jade has just put
in, damn, you’re as old as I was when I
had my first crush, the pink ranger. You
see, here’s the thing.
Being me who I am, I was into the yellow
ranger. And the yellow ranger when they
turned into the Japanese part was a suit
was actually a spelt young man which
gave me very confused feelings when I
was a teen in watching Power Rangers.
But I watched Power Rangers. I was
really too old for it. I just thought it
was really interesting that how they’d
cut a Japanese TV show into the American
actors. But Triny
had a thing for Triny. I had a
girlfriend at the time and she was a
little disturbed by that.
But it’s coming to an end next year
which is actually really sad. Any show
that lasts 50 years is kind of an
institution. Basically, everyone in
Japan has grown up with some version of
Power Rangers in their life, the Super
Senti. The sales of all the extra stuff
is waning, which is showing a lack of
interest in the series. And that’s
probably where they make all their
money. Like the show itself has always
been really cheap. And they actually
kind of never brought it up a level in
quality because
that’s how they made their money. They
made this cheap show and then they sold
all the stuff and all the stuff sold and
that made them all the money they made
to make more shows. That’s how it lasted
50 years. It was a solid plan. People
are buying less and less. The last
series is called number one sentuger
gauer. I don’t know how to say that.
It’s G O Z Yu G- Raziger. They always
choose really weird names. Sometimes
they come from like German or something
else. I’m probably saying this not
butchering it just in English,
butchering it in multiple versions of
the languages. Uh is going to finish
next year. It’s going to be the last
one, but I guess if you’re gonna end
your show, doing it on the 50-year mark
is pretty solid.
Heroins is a group of idol groups. So,
that’s already like an inception of idol
groups. So, you have heroins is made up
of smaller bands that probably come
together to be a super band every now
and then, much like our previous store
story Super Senti. Um, run by a company
called Imaginate. Now, Heroins Ken Qus,
I think that’s the name of the band. Uh,
there’s a 17-year-old member who has
been let go because of severe
contractual violations, but they didn’t
give any details. So, they went on
Twitter. They said, “Here we have this
17-year-old girl. Uh, we’re cutting her.
She’s she’s broken her contract.” Now,
they posted just this on Twitter. She’s
not going to be part of our band
anymore. Now, everyone’s trying to
figure out why is she getting fired.
Well, she’s getting fired because she
posted a picture of the snacks she had
when she was going to a movie. Now, in
the clear plastic cup cover of her Coke,
uh, you could see a reflection of a male
figure. And then fans immediately
deduced that that male figure must be
her boyfriend. She was going on a date.
You’re not supposed to go dating when
you’re in one of these idol bands.
You’re not supposed to have a
relationship or a life outside of the
band. You’re supposed to say stay
weirdly available for the fans to live
this fantasy like they could have you in
their life. and that’s all part of the
contract, but it isn’t because it was
made illegal. So, they’re not allowed to
say that anymore, but they are still
able to like find another reason to fire
you. So, they think because she was seen
in public with a boy, but again, the
fans are so creepy, they’re like zooming
in on the reflection of her cup to see
who she’s with, they fired her for that.
That’s the assumption. Now, we don’t
know if that’s actually true, but I’m
betting it’s actually true because once
it came out that she probably has a
boyfriend, 17-year-old girl meets a guy,
she’s going to go on dates with the guy.
I think that’s really normal for
17-year-old kids to do. I have no
problem with it. But I’m not a freaky
freaky idol fan. Freaky freaky idol fans
want to keep this idea that their idol
is pure and waiting for them in some
way, which is how you end up with these
really weird parasocial relationships
between the idols and the fans where
they’re not allowed to have a life
outside of the group. A lot of people
were like, they should have just lied
and said like it was her bodyguard, it
was her manager, it was her brother or
someone else because no one else
actually knows who this guy is. But I
saw the picture of the reflection. It
was really hard to see. So you couldn’t
make out who it was. So they could have
said, “Yeah, she went to a movie with
her brother. She went to a movie with
her manager and then just covered up
that way.” But they do have these rules
and they’re trying to say that these the
government’s saying like you can’t tell
people they’re not allowed to have
relationships anymore. You’re not
allowed to put that in the contract, but
they can still not put it in the
contract. tell them they can’t do it and
then if they do it, fire them, which is
what exactly seems to have happened to
this poor young woman who just wanted to
sing songs and have a life.
So, we have our new prime minister,
Takahuchi, and I am still really torn as
to whether I’m on board or not because
she said a lot of stuff that I disagree
with. She she doesn’t want to maintain
the work life balance that’s already
been established in Japan. She actually
wants to make it worse instead of making
it better, which I am very pro- work
life balance because I think the people
in Japan work unnecessarily long hours.
I don’t think they’re more productive. I
don’t think this is actually the
solution. And it again, baby problem,
all that other stuff goes into it as
well. I’ve said this a million times. I
don’t really want to say it anymore.
When she was on the campaign trail, she
said it she wanted to revise the public
servant renumeration law and cut cabinet
members salaries, including her own. And
one of her first things she’s going to
do is cut her own salary and then cut
the salaries of all the cabinet members
that work for her. And so she’s not your
So there’s lawmakers in Japan and then
there’s cabinet members and they
actually have different renumeration
package packages. Cabinet members often
get a lot of bonuses and extras because
you know they travel and they do extra
stuff. She’s saying cut all that out.
You get your pay and nothing else.
There’s no bonuses. There’s no benefits.
Lawmakers and cabinet members should
make the same amount of money including
herself. I have a lot of respect for
that. She’s actually made a promise.
She’s keeping the promise. And the
promise is technically hurting her and
the people who work for her, but that
means we’re spending less money,
taxpayer money, on the people who are in
power. I’m really on board with that.
So, I’m really torn. This might be a
case where this is like a real life
situation where she has good points and
bad points. I’m just hoping at the end
of the day she has more good points and
we get to see more of those later.
Uh DL site is a kind of spicy little
website that I’ve mentioned before. Uh I
mentioned before in a previous episode
when we were talking about Mastercard
and Visa trying to do what would be
called financial censorship. So
basically, if you run a website that
does uh specific documentaries about the
reproductive cycles of humans, uh you
would not be able to use credit cards,
Mastercard or Visa on your sites because
they’ll say like we don’t want to
promote that. Our advertisers don’t want
to be connected to that. So you can’t
use your card discard system unless you
get rid of all the porn. This site, DL
site, wanted to resist these censorship
efforts, which I okay, I think if you
want to look at it, you should be
allowed to look at it. It’s just that
simple. So, I don’t think there should
be a lot of censorship as long as
everyone involved is consenting. Like,
if they’re consenting adults, they want
to do it. They can do it. Uh, I don’t
agree with manipulation.
That’s a lot harder. It’s a much grayer
zone. So, they they have decided, okay,
we’re not going to use Visa Mastercard
because they want to censor us. So, what
we’re going to do is create our own
essentially internet coin that you can
use. So, you can buy credits and you can
use those credits towards actually
buying content on that website. They
have just come out with a Twitter clone.
So, it’s called Pomu and Pomu is
basically a Twitter feed and it’s a
friendly secret hangout for otaku. Now,
it’s not really secret because they just
advertised it, but they’re trying to
integrate like a social service, so a a
social website into their other
services. And of course, you can use
their coin on both. Now, this has been a
very friendly website to people who make
a certain kind of art. art depicting
maybe,
how can I say in the most gentle terms,
uh, the human form. It does have a nice
thing though, one feature. So, up in the
top right corner, it has a little
button, and it’s a little button where
you can toggle R18, which is restricted
to 18-year-olds and not. So, you can
basically have a safe for work and not
safe for work button, you can turn on
and off. Apparently, when you turn off
the not the safe for work button and
turn it on to not safe for work, the
feed changes dramatically. But again, if
that’s what you want to look at and
everyone’s consenting, I’m on board with
it. I think you should be allowed to do
that. Apparently, the website has
already been flooded with, and I put
this in quotation marks, art, and I’m
sure there is a lot of art. Uh, you can
register with a Vivian ID, which is part
of their alternate payment solution. Uh,
they’re creating a whole sort of corner
of the internet that isn’t ruled by
censorship, isn’t ruled by Visa,
Mastercard, or this financial
censorship. And while I probably won’t
spend a lot of time on that website, I
am all for it existing.
78-year-old man had an obsession with a
woman in her 20s.
And I I just I worry that I’m going to
be that 78-year-old man. I’m in my 50s.
I’ve held it together so far, but I’ve
done so many stories about men in their
mid50s who just lost their and just
started doing weird weird stuff. I’m
like, is it an inevitability? Am I going
to be that guy? Maybe I make it through
my 50s and it happens to me in my 60s,
but it looks like this dude in his 70s,
late 70s, exactly the same issue. He’s
known her for about two years, and he
says he developed feelings for her. He
was already arrested for breaking into
her home and stealing perfume. So, that
shows the weird level of obsession that
this guy already has. He had done this.
He’d been arrested for it. He got in
trouble for it, but he still had these
feelings for her. So, how does he
express his feelings? But let’s say
let’s say age gap isn’t the problem.
Let’s say that he does have a chance.
You have to show your sincere and honest
love for someone. What is the one thing
you can do that will generally have them
change their opinion about you, make you
think you’re a better person? He set her
car on fire. And then when he was
arrested, he said, “I’m dissatisfied
with being arrested.” Which is a very,
very entitled old Japanese man thing to
say. I have just set a woman’s car on
fire because I find her attractive and
she’s not returning my affection despite
the 50year age gap, which should be
enough to explain why she’s not as into
you as you think she should be. I mean,
let’s say I’m in a situation like that.
I look at someone way younger than me
and I find them attractive. I’d be like,
my first thought is they will not find
me attractive. They would have to come
with a sign that says, “Chunk beef
chest, I find you attractive.” and that
it’ be like,
“But are they telling the truth?” So
that self-doubt is actually a benefit
when you get into these older years
where you could be doing really weird,
dangerous stuff and just letting the
obsessive aspects of your life take
over. Because this guy, he’s 78, I’m
assuming retired, has a lot of free
time. He’s just sitting around
obsessing. And that’s where this has
gone wrong. Totally. But then when he
gets arrested to complain about the fact
he got arrested because he set a woman’s
car on fire. I’m dissatisfied with being
arrested. I think he should not be
allowed out anymore.
Two teens were arrested, 17 and 18 year
olds, for a fishing scam. Every episode
of the last like five, six months has
had a scam story involved in Engineers
Japan because it is just it’s taking
over the country. uh they found people
online and they would say, “I’m looking
for a companion to go to an idol
concert.” So, they’re targeting a very
specific group that has uh money to
spend on things like idol concerts.
Uh they said, “Let’s talk about how to
pay for the tickets. I’ll get the
tickets. Uh I’ll send you one yen on our
like uh payment system so you can get
like it’s a real address. It’s legit.”
And then you put the money in to this
fake website. and they put the money
into the fake website and that’s how it
collected their credit card information
and then the teens could take the credit
card information and then drain their
bank accounts from one account they
drained 500,000 yen. So the 17-year-old
would transfer the money from their
account to the other kid’s account
uh and they seem to have got this is not
a confirmed number but at least 13
million yen in total. So this was a very
very successful scam. The thing is
they’ve used a lot of AI tools to create
the website. So they created a website
that looks real. They’ve created used
the tools to make stuff that makes it so
that they can collect the information
and it’s made it very easy because they
can basically just go into AI. I bet
you’re not allowed to say I want to make
a fishing site, but you could say I want
to make a site that looks like this that
has this aspect and it just builds it
for you and then you just post it on the
internet and then now that it’s been
shut down, they can go make another one
in a few minutes because they have AI do
it for them. The 17-year-old is the
better criminal. I’ll be very honest. He
said, “I don’t remember the incident.”
So, he’s just saying, “I ignorance. I
don’t know. You have to do your job as a
police officer and prove the crime. I’m
not going to help you with that.” The
18-year-old, not as good a criminal. He
admitted fault right away.
85year-old man grabs another guy and
tries to stab him who’s 65 years old.
So, he’s the younger person in this
because he had been sent to take money
from him. Except that guy was actually
just going to work. So, the old dude,
86-y old, knocks over the 65year-old and
tries to stab him a couple times. So,
the guy ends up with his hand up. So, he
gets some minor defensive wounds. Uh, an
offduty cop happened to be jogging in
the morning doing his morning workout.
He saw this and intervened. Turns out
the guy had a kitchen knife in his right
hand as he was attacking the 65-year-old
and two more knives in his left hand.
So, he had again hit this weird paranoid
level. He he had hit this weird paranoia
just kind of like our previous old guy
story where he’s like all up in his head
and he’s now thinks that’s reality where
the reality is no one’s coming to take
your money but he is so locked in that
this guy’s coming to take my money he
brought three knives with him. I don’t
know how you’re holding two knives in
one hand like is it one blade out of
each one? Is it like just two so that if
you drop the hand that drop the knife
that in your in your dominant hand you
can just swap out really quick? He
clearly walked out of his house that
morning wanting to stab stab somebody
for something and then had this weird
paranoia. So the police arrested him.
He’s not made any comment other than he
thought that that man was sent to take
money from him. So like some kind of
fishing scam. But that guy was just
walking to work that day and he got
attacked by a knife. So luckily no one
was really hurt. He got again a couple
cuts on his hands and stuff, but nothing
that was like life-threatening or
particularly dangerous. He’s going to
heal from that just fine. No problem.
the mental trauma. I mean, you get
tackled by an 86 year old and you have
to fend him off because he has multiple
knives in his two hands. That is a scary
way uh to live. And be careful out there
of everyone, especially old Japanese
men.

Golden Crotch

Shoutout to Lone Listeners [00:00:16]

I don’t check the stats on this podcast very often because, honestly, you get obsessed with the numbers going up or down, and it makes you feel really happy or sad. But I was interested, I was just looking through the numbers and it was showing me where people are from. The ones I find most interesting, it’s when it’s like a single person from a place is listening. So you think of an entire country, and in that entire country, there’s one person who’s listening to Ninja News Japan. So if you are from Oslo and you are listening to this podcast, you are the only person in Oslo listening to Ninja News Japan. And I personally would like to say thank you, single person in Oslo, for listening to Ninja News Japan. Because that’s kind of cool. You’re there, I’m here, talking about Japan, having a good time. I love you. I don’t know what your feelings are about me, but if you want to let me know, that’s fine.

There is one person in Paraíba, Brazil who listens to Ninja News Japan. Now, last month they only listened to one episode, but that was enough. I mean, I got the one number from you and I’m like, hey, I don’t speak Portuguese, but if you’re listening to the podcast, I assume you speak English. If you don’t, this is a very weird sleep aid you have going on. But, drink one for me.

And the final one I wanted to reach out to, there are two people in Punjab who are listening to Ninja News Japan. And I would like to say, hey, I enjoy you and I hope you can continue to enjoy me. I hope I make my enjoyment possible for you. I don’t know what I’m saying right now. But what I really want to say is thank you, Oslo, Paraíba, and Punjab for taking the time to listen to the podcast. I think that’s really cool. If you’re in a country where there’s a whole bunch of people listening, meh. That’s such a mean thing to say. But it’s kind of neat. All I want to say is thank you for listening. It’s just one of those things where it’s places, cities, countries I haven’t thought about people listening to this podcast that are. It is the beauty of podcasting. The beauty of podcasting is you are sending out your message to the world and someone in Oslo is picking it up. Someone in Paraíba in Brazil is picking it up. Someone in Punjab is picking it up, and I think that’s kind of cool. I just want to take a moment and say, I would love for a single listener in every country. More than a mass of people listening in one place, I think it would be extra funny if it was just one person in every country listened. That’d still be like, what, there’s 300 countries, 300 listeners? Not bad.

Fukuoka Assembly Members’ Gold Pins [00:03:00]

Fukuoka assembly members used to wear 18-karat gold pins. Now, this is something that if you come to Japan, you’ll notice maybe that guys wear suits, and on the suits, they’ll have a lapel pin, a little usually circle, something like that. And it’s the company they work for. And those can be made of brass, but the high-level ones, expensive, rich companies, they make them out of gold. Well, assembly members in the government, they made theirs out of gold because they’re fancy people. You get them for being a lifetime employee, you get them for being on a certain contract type that says you’re dedicated to this. You get it for passing the bar exam and being a lawyer, that kind of stuff. Any sort of membership will have this kind of thing.

I’m going to be really honest, the first time I knew about them, I learned about them was actually after I’d come to Japan, and it wasn’t from living in Japan and seeing people wear them, it was from the Yakuza games. No, it was Judgment, Lost Judgment. That video game, they make a very special “I’m a lawyer” move where he like flips over his jacket and you can see the pin to prove that he’s a lawyer and not just a private investigator. And that was the first time I really like looked at them and tried to find out what they were. So I’d lived in the country for a long time, seen them before and just like, ah, it’s a pin you get for the company you work at, who cares? No, it’s kind of a bigger deal than that because it represents that you are dedicated to that company in some way.

Gold has hit an all-time high, not just in Japan, everywhere. So in 2018, a single gold badge, this little pin that you put on your lapel, 32,400 yen. That is way too much money for a pin. Like I’m just going to be really honest, like you could make it out of a way cheaper material, it would look just as good. In 2022, because the price of gold had gone up, and 2022 was the last time they made them, it was 66,000 yen per badge. That’s a PlayStation. So they’re wearing a PlayStation in just that little pin on their chest, which is really dumb. The next time they have to make the pin is going to be two years from now. The assumption is the price of gold is going to go up between now and then, which will make it even more expensive. How many pins do you have to actually make? You have to make one for every member and old members and things like that, like people who are still connected to it, maybe alumni, that kind of thing. That means the pins are going to cost 30 million yen total. So you’re not buying, it’s not like 66,000 yen is one pin, that’s one pin per person and there’s lots of people who are in the assembly. So 30 million yen, and they’re like, we’ve now hit a point where we can’t make them solid gold, that doesn’t make sense. So we’re going to go from solid gold to plated gold and it will bring the price from 30 million yen down to 2 million yen, which is very sensible. This is actually responsible government. This is guys going like, yeah, we’re big fancy people who do a big fancy job, but at the end of the day, we’re using taxpayer money to pay for these little badges. These little badges, they don’t need to be pure gold. They can be plated, they could be gold-coated of some sort. 30 million yen is silly, let’s bring that down to 2 million yen. It’s a way sensible thing. It shows that there are actually some sensible politicians out there.

Japan vs. OpenAI [00:06:10]

Japan versus OpenAI. Now, this has happened already because it had OpenAI had that whole trend basically last year where it was like, you put in a picture and our AI will turn it into Ghibli-style art. Ghibli-style art, the style cannot really be copyrighted so clearly. So you can copyright an art style, and so Ghibli has basically done that since then, which is probably why that trend went away. But, Japan versus OpenAI. Now last year, there was a big trend of you take your picture and you put it in OpenAI and it will change it into Ghibli-style art. Now that Ghibli-style art, that art style is technically copyrighted, but it’s very hard to prove because it’s hard to copyright a style. You can copyright characters, you can copyright images, you can copyright, you know, I have done copyright on this thing, but style becomes a much harder thing to copyright. So that’s kind of where this was a little in a legal gray zone.

The Japanese government’s been like, no, you guys are going too far because what you’re actually doing is taking away from Japan. Japan’s art, this is a piece of Japan that you’re ripping off. So they’re talking about mainly manga and anime, and they don’t want OpenAI to be able to replicate manga and anime. Sam Altman has said that OpenAI has a huge debt to the remarkable creative output of Japan. So basically saying that, oh, we took all the stuff Japan made, we stole all that, put it in our AI, and now we’re able to replicate all that stuff. We owe them a huge debt, one we have no intention of paying. Like we’re not giving anybody any money from that country that produced all the stuff that we can make really cool stuff with now. The Liberal Democratic Party has said that this is a serious legal and political problem, as in they as a country are now going to go after OpenAI if they keep doing this. Article 16 of the AI Promotion Act says they can demand disclosure of Sora 2 specifications. So basically they’re saying, if you keep ripping off our artwork, we’re going to force you to let us look at the specifications, the internal workings of your AI, and then we can rip that off. So basically, you rip us off, we’re going to politically force you to let us rip you off, and then what happens? What’s going on, buddy? And I actually think that’s a very interesting tactic to take. We’re not going to sue you for money, we’re going to sue you for your technology and then have access to your technology, and then Japan will be able to make a technology that will maybe outdo OpenAI or something else. But OpenAI wants to be the one and only, and they can’t be that if they get sued by Japan the country, and then Japan the country’s like, you now have to, if you want to function within our borders, let us look at your specifications.

Japan’s New Prime Minister on Work-Life Balance [00:09:20]

Japan recently got a new prime minister, and it’s a lady-type prime minister. Woo! Now, at first, I was kind of excited about having a female prime minister, and then I realized like she is way more conservative than most other people. So I actually think that our new lady prime minister might be bad for ladies. It’s a very interesting predicament to be in because I want to support women, but I want to support women who support women, not women who will end up oppressing other women. It’s a weird spot because I don’t know enough about her politics. I only know the most shallow version that I get from the news. And this is an interesting thing that I know that the new prime minister, Takaichi, is very conservative. And one of the first things she said is, “I will throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance.'” And then immediately said, “We should relax limits on overtime.” So right now, the limit on overtime legally is 45 hours a month or 360 hours a year. There’s a cap. And she’s like, let’s remove that cap. And she said, “On the premise of maintaining physical and mental health and respecting employee choice.” As in, employees should decide if they want to ruin their mental health. Employees should decide if they want to work themselves to death. And the thing is, this is a country that is already working itself to death. And I don’t think there’s the benefit from it. So like, people in Japan work massive amounts of hours. People in Japan work themselves to death, but they don’t actually produce the wealth that they claim to be producing. Japan as an economy has not been growing, and obviously this amount of work hasn’t been doing it. And then you have the baby population issue with a declining population and not making enough babies. And I think, as a non-expert, that that is directly correlated to the fact that people work themselves to death.

When she said, “I will throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance,'” I don’t think she meant for the country. I think she was trying to say like, I am going to work so hard for the country that I am not going to consider work-life balance a thing. I am only going to work. I’m going to work the LDP like a workhorse, is one of the phrases she said. The next day, with a big smile, she says, “I encourage everyone to have value, a work-life balance.” So, I think there is sort of a misinterpretation. So she was saying, “I’m going to work my team to death to try to make this a better country.” But she wasn’t saying that for the whole country, but then she turned around and said, “I want to have a proposition that we remove the cap we’ve already put on work-life balance.” So it’s very unclear what she actually means. I think what she’s saying is, yes, I’m a conservative politician, I want companies to exploit the worker. This is what a lot of politicians think, and I think we should be honest about it. And that’s her premise and that’s her platform, and if you support that, okay. I don’t support that. I actually think there should be caps on how much people work because people work themselves to death and that creates all the problems that you have in the modern Japanese society. But, she didn’t, when she made the statement, “I’m going to throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance,'” I don’t think she actually meant everybody. I think she meant for herself. I think she was saying, “I’m going to work super hard.” And this is one of the problems with the misinterpretations and back and forth of modern media and one of the problems you should be aware of it. So when you read stuff about politicians and what politicians say, you need the context of what they’re talking about. But then also look at their policies, and her policies actually support the negative thing she just said. So where are we now? I still don’t know. I pretty much don’t like her, let’s put it that way.

Sexual Harassment Case Involving “-chan” Honorific [00:12:46]

That said, I don’t really like any politician most of the time. This is a story that just hit my feed over and over and over again. And it was a company employee harassed a younger coworker by using the honorific “-chan.” So, I think you know if you’re into Japan in any way, you know about, you know, “Ah, Mariko-chan,” and it’s a nice way to talk to a girl. And it’s usually young girls. So when you have kids, you have “-chan” is girls, “-kun” is boys. So I would be Chunk of Beef Chest-kun, and then my the girl my age, I could refer to as “-chan.” As the children, it’s all very innocent. Now, when you start dating, you often refer to your partner as “-chan.” So I have my girlfriend, and I would go, “Girlfriend-chan,” and she would be like, “Oh, he’s using this like cutesy way of talking to me, and that’s really nice.” It can happen from older people to younger people, but it takes on a slightly creepier feeling because you’ve, you’re not talking adult to child anymore or superior to like a lower, inferior person. You are talking to someone who is fundamentally an equal because you’re both working at the same company and you’re both like adults who are working. But it’s because you go through that phase in your teens and 20s and 30s where you refer to your sexual partners as something-chan, that is the issue because it changes the tone of that word.

The feed said that this guy got sued for using this and this was sexual harassment. Now, that alone legally is not enough to constitute sexual harassment. Now, because of what I just said, it can have a sexual tone, it cannot have a sexual tone. So his defense would be like, “I meant it in an innocent way. I wasn’t saying anything else. I was trying to be familiar. I apologize,” end of story. Now that’s, of course, you need the more details. So there’s a great website called Bengo4.com. Bengo4 means lawyer, and it’s lawyers talk about political issues. I’ve actually only been able to get into this website recently and actually find some of the details. They were talking about this. What makes this sexual harassment? Sued for sexual harassment because he referred to girl plus “-chan” is a great headline because that’s going to catch a lot of attention. But it’s of course not, that by itself is not enough. So what else did he say to constitute this being sexual harassment? Well, he said, “You have such a great figure, while I’m so skinny.” So, commenting on someone’s physical appearance in that way is, could be constituted sexual harassment because it depends on how it makes the other person feel. You might think you’re complimenting someone and they are made uncomfortable by it, that is sexual harassment. That’s actually pretty clear-cut. He also said, “I can see your underwear.” Now, we don’t know how what he meant by this, like you’re wearing white clothes and black underwear, I can see your underwear through your clothes. I can see the outline of your underwear, your unsightly panty lines, that kind of stuff. How this is said is also could be or could not be sexual harassment. Like, “I can see your underwear” might be actually like, “Hey, just to let you know, I can see your underwear, maybe you want to be more careful next time.” That could be good advice or helpful. But I think combination “-chan” plus “your figure” plus “I can see your underwear” is clearly a pattern of sexual harassment. So that sets up the pattern, that makes it sexual harassment, that’s what makes him guilty.

The woman wanted to sue him for 5.5 million yen, which is a lot of money. She got 220,000 yen. So basically, again, the lawsuits in Japan are not like the lawsuits in America where lawsuits in America, they try to take you for millions and millions of dollars and you’ll get millions and millions of dollars for like all the mental anguish you’ve suffered. In Japan, it’s punitive, but to a degree that is reasonable. It’s punishment for the thing and no more. She went into a depression, she quit her job, she sued the guy. The guy had not touched her or anything, so it was only verbal, but he was the cause of the source of this pain. So he said, so the judge granted 220,000 yen. Now, the company did not stop him from saying this. So the company also got sued and they got, they had to pay 700,000 yen for not creating a safe workspace. So that’s another interesting thing that the company actually got punished more than the actual individual who was doing the sexual harassing because the company is responsible for stopping the man, punishing the man, telling the man not to do this anymore. If she had reported to it, I assume she had said something to someone, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten any money. If she had just kept this quiet, she could have sued the guy, maybe got some money, but again, you can see, not very much. But she must have reported it to a company and that the company didn’t do anything about it, so she got more money from the company.

Smuggling Gold in Underwear [00:17:30]

A former Osaka police, we got two stories about cops who should have known to stop while they were ahead. A former Osaka police officer impersonated a Kyoto police officer for a very classic scam where they call up someone, usually an older person, in this case it was a man in his 70s, and they said, “Your cards, like your debit cards, your cards that you’re using for your credit cards, have been used in fraudulent withdrawals. We are going to send a police officer to your house. He’s going to get your cards and he’s going to cut them, cut the magnetic strip so they can’t be used anymore.” So this guy pretended to be a Kyoto police officer. He knows the how you’re supposed to talk, how you’re supposed to act because he used to be an Osaka police officer. So actually, you think he’d be really good at this scam. But he made a point of saying, “I’m going to cut your cards, cut the magnetic strips so they can’t be used anymore.” And then he cut the cards in front of the 70-year-old man, but he didn’t cut the magnetic strips. And I was like, ah, he shouldn’t have drawn attention to it. He should have just said, “I’m going to cut your cards so they can’t be used anymore,” cut them and then not cut the strips. But because he drew attention to it and then didn’t do it, the 70-year-old man was like, “There’s something suspicious about this.” He called the police, found out that this guy does not work for the Kyoto police, and then the man was arrested. Now, he is a police, a former police officer, so he knows what you, I’ve complained many times about criminals in Japan who just come out and say like, “Yeah, I did it and I did this and I did all that.” You’re not being a good criminal then. You have to keep your mouth shut. So, when asked for a statement, this former Osaka police officer said, “I’ll think carefully before I speak.” Chef’s kiss, that is the perfect response. I’m not talking to the cops because I know you don’t talk to the cops. Doesn’t matter what country you’re in, do not talk to the cops. I don’t care if you’re innocent or guilty, they’re trying to pin something on you, do not help them do that.

Connected to this, an ex-Tokyo cop, his job was inspecting fire investigations. So there’s a fire, he goes there, he looks around the building, he tries to figure out, was this arson? Was this for insurance fraud? Or was this just an actual accidental fire? And he going around the house, he stole cash. Now, he did this while he was on the job. He did it eight times and he got 9 million yen because again, lots of older people in Japan, they still keep cash. Now, this is the opposite of our previous cop where our previous cop said, “I’ll think carefully before I speak.” This guy, once he was caught, decided he was just going to spill the beans everywhere. He said, “I was worried about money, and when the money appeared in front of me, I was tempted and thought, ‘If only I had the money.'” So basically, he’s going around a burnt house, he’s finding where these probably older people are keeping cash in a box, in drawers and stuff. He’s checking all the things. He’s like, “That’s a lot of money. I know someone who could use money. This guy.” And then they’re going to think the money’s been burned up in the fire, they’re going to get the insurance, they get their money back. Victimless crime, who gets hurt? Well, you do when you get arrested for stealing money. He said, “There’s a saying that goes, ‘The net of heaven is wide and loose, but nothing escapes it.’ I knew that if I kept doing this, I’d be found out someday.” Which actually is true because he kept doing it and then he was found out. But he wasn’t found out for any of those massive sums of money that he must have been stealing from houses because to get eight times and 9 million yen means like for a couple times, he was getting more than a million yen per theft. Like I don’t remember how much a million yen is in actual money, but it’s like a big sum of money. The thing is, a firefighter saw him take 1,000 yen from a pouch. We’re talking like $7 and put it in his pocket. So during the investigation, he was walking around, there was a little pouch of money, there was 1,000 yen in it, he pulled the 1,000 yen out, he put it in his pocket, a firefighter saw him and reported him for that, and that led to the investigation that got him caught for this other 9 million yen. I mean, guy, you just got to, I mean, why even go for the 1,000 yen? It’s not worth it. It’s not worth stealing 1,000 yen to get caught when you’ve already taken 9 million yen and you were home free. You just had to stop. And this is the problem with every criminal across the board, you have to know when to stop.

Smuggling Gold in Underwear [00:21:48]

As far as knowing when to stop, this is interesting. Four people were arrested for trying to smuggle 8 kg of gold, which I just said recently hit an incredible high. So that’s actually our first story was how about they’re not using gold in these little badges anymore. 8 kg of gold is worth 98.7 million yen, and they were trying to get it from Hong Kong to Japan. I think the market for selling in Japan might be better, which is trying to smuggle it in. Like you think you would, the value of gold is pretty universal, so selling it in Hong Kong makes a lot of sense. So it must be a reason to actually bring it in. It’s 8 kg, so each person had to bring 2 kg of gold. And I’m like, wow, like a 2 kg bar is probably not that big, but it’s going to be very hard to hide on your body. But what they did is they had powdered gold, so it was gold powder, and they had sewn it and filled in their underwear. So they were wearing 2 kg of gold in their underwear that they were then trying to go through security with and stuff and walk naturally. And I would just, I now want to get myself, not gold, but a pair of 2 kg underwear and see like, how do I walk that day? Is it distributed evenly? Like 2 kg is not a lot, but it’s also right around your groin area wearing as underwear is a lot. This one guy recruited three women, said they were going to get so much money and he was going to pay for tickets and stuff. They all got caught. We have a beautiful picture of the 4 kg of powdered gold, which I now know has been in underwear and around someone’s crotch, which actually makes it kind of gross, piled up and a display on a table that the police, they do this after they catch anyone with anything, they put out like a nice little display. There’s the guy who lays things out, that’s his job. But honestly, I kind of grossed out now knowing that was crotch gold.

“Stealerium” Malware [00:23:34]

You could not have a more on-the-nose name for malware than Stealerium. So, steal-er-ium. This is a thing that used to be a scam, it was like a phishing scam. You’d get an email, I got a couple of these, and it was, “Hey,” and it would have like your username or something that’s taken off some website, maybe get your real name from your email or something, and go, “I have hacked your computer and I turned on your camera while you were masturbating and looking at porn, and I have a video of you, and if you don’t want that video released, you have to get Bitcoin and send it to me or I’ll release the video.” The funny part was, if you got a video of me masturbating to porn and posted it on the internet, I would be like, okay, go ahead. Like no one cares. No one wants to see it. No one wants to see this in action. You’re not going to get any money from me. You’re not going to get any money from anyone else. You’re going to, I would actually probably tell everyone, “Hey, there’s a video of me.” This guy got a video of me and thought he was going to threaten me and put it on the internet. Everyone go look at it and maybe I could get some like internet clout out of it. You can watch the Ninja News Japan guy jerking it to weird porn. Like that wasn’t a threat to me. So you have to like have the right audience. But of course, it’s just like that was just inserting your name into an email and mass emailing millions of people hoping to get some response.

Stealerium is malware that does that actual thing. So it comes in an email with an attachment, and if you open the attachment, it can actually install malware on your computer that can turn on your camera and give the other person control as to when it turns on. When you go to an adult website, it logs your login information, which probably includes your credit card, which is what they probably really want more than anything else is your credit card information. But it can turn on the camera while you’re looking at the stuff and probably screen capture that stuff and send it back. So this thing that used to be just a phishing scam has now turned into, like inspired someone to make real malware that actually does the thing that they were threatening to do in the first place. All you have to do though is not open any attachments and you’ll actually be safe from it. But this is a real thing that’s happened that actually came from a story. So be careful on the internet.

AI Deepfake Pornography Arrest [00:25:48]

A 31-year-old company employee has been arrested for creating deepfakes porn with AI using famous women as sort of the base image. He’s been publishing them online. So he’s made 20,000 images of 262 different celebrities, and you could subscribe to his channel. I they didn’t actually say what channel it was on, like was it an OnlyFans or some Japanese version of that or just some porn site. But you could subscribe to him between $1 a month and $100 a month, and he would accept requests, I think at the higher tiers, for custom jobs. So, I don’t know if he was good at this. I didn’t actually get to see any of the porn. I’m not particularly interested if I’m being really honest. But the problem is, AI deepfake pornography is new technology, so there’s no laws actually on the books. So if he had actually followed Japanese laws and actually maybe, I don’t know about copyright laws with using someone’s image, if he had actually stuck to that, because there’s revenge porn laws, but this isn’t technically revenge porn, so he’s outside of that. He might be getting copyright issues for using a famous person’s face, but it’s very hard for a famous person to copyright their image. If an image is out on the internet and it’s like distributed everywhere and then you use it for something, it’s actually very hard for them to catch it and sue you for it. And then the actual deepfake, the porn part, if he’d followed Japanese laws, he’d actually might be safe there. But he was doing full nudity in his AI porn, which is illegal in Japan. So he’s not getting caught for the AI part, he’s not getting arrested for the deepfake part yet, because they’re actually working on laws on that right now. He’s getting arrested for making illegal porn in Japan. And then producing it and distributing it are all other laws and other rules as well. That’s all going to be a whole other thing.

But this is not a professional guy, he’s not like a tech guy. They arrested him and found out that he basically used tutorials online to get the images and put them into the AI and use the prompts and what prompts you should use to actually make the AI porn. And then he was actually making money online. He made 1.2 million yen. They didn’t really say over what period of time, but he was trying to start a business. So this might have just been the initial launch, this might have been just the first bunch. But 1.2 million yen just out of nowhere for having AI tools do a whole bunch of stuff for you, that’s free money as far as he was concerned. This has pushed up a lot of the attention for AI in Japan. This has pushed up a lot of what do we have to make rules about, what do we have to make laws about? There’s going to have to be protecting people from deepfakes. It’s going to be protecting people from having their image used in pornography. It’s going to have to be the pornography that’s produced, is that acceptable using AI? That kind of stuff. This is all stuff that’s hitting Japan now. If you remember Johnny Somali, he’s actually in trouble in Korea because they already have deepfake rules on the books. So he’s actually getting in trouble for creating a deepfake of him kissing another streamer that didn’t actually happen and distributing that on the internet. And that’s actually a big problem. That could be seven years in prison in Korea. In Japan, it’s a little bit behind, but now this kind of case, bring it to light, 262 famous people are on the other side, they’re going to have lawyers, they’re going to go after this guy. Those laws are going to come into place really soon. I’ll be really interested to see what kind of rules, punishments they make for AI deepfakes going forward in the future. You should do the opposite of what I’m doing right now and not put your face out on the internet. But I mean, again, sort of like the previous story, no one’s going to want to see this do that thing, so I think we’re okay if you’re an old dude on the internet, you’re safe from deepfake porn.