(clock ticking)
I don’t know, I was very busy today.
My son graduated junior high school,
so I went to his high school graduation.
Normally I record this in the morning, it’s now the afternoon.
I don’t know if that’s gonna make it more
rushed or more rambly or maybe better.
I don’t know.
I did prep my notes though.
We are good on the notes.
We’re good on the information.
Oh my God, high school graduations in Japan are dower.
It was, everyone marched in like a funeral procession.
They all sat down and then everyone had
to get up and like, they gave little speech
and then everyone was called by name to
stand up and it was just, there was no joy,
no clapping, no like, woo, nothing.
It was just painful to watch.
And then half an hour in, I had to pee.
So for the hour remaining, probably more,
probably an hour and a half, I was just pent up.
I was like, I hope there’s over and there.
It was speech after speech after speech.
The mayor of the city came, that was kinda cool.
Mayor of the city came and he gave a speech.
Some guy came up and talked about baseball which seemed really unrelated.
Then a teacher got up and started to
cry and then all the kids like shuffled out
like they were being taken to prison.
They were like, okay, that’s cool, it’s over now.
And then they’re like, oh now we’re gonna
show a video and have another speech.
So I got up during the video and went and peed.
It was absolutely ridiculous though.
So that was more than half my day gone already.
That said, we’re here for the news.
That’s my personal Japanese update.
I know people do wanna, they wanna get
a little something about my life in there.
Sometimes they find that the human relations aspect
of the podcast which I think is important.
If you’re watching the video, Dave has a new bed.
You can see his little face stuck in the corner.
I moved the camera to make sure you get that little face
just right there in the corner.
Gassy, we’ve followed the Gassy story.
Nothing is really happening and it keeps popping up
every week like an update on Gassy.
I’m always like, should I talk about it?
But Gassy is a YouTuber in Japan.
Well, actually not in Japan.
He’s a YouTuber about Japan, from Japan.
And he like broke celebrity scandals.
Now currently he lives in Dubai.
He decided to run for government.
He runs on the NHK party, which is actually the anti-NHK platform party.
It’s a single policy party.
Like they have one thing they wanna
do and this is essentially abolish the NHK.
Which I’m not against.
I just don’t think it’s worth having a whole party on for.
Gassy, when you become a policy maker
and assemblyman or whatever, you have to show up.
Now he’s like, I can show up virtually.
And at the time I was like, yeah, he was voted in by the people.
They knew he lived in Dubai.
They knew he would have to attend virtually.
He’d have to vote virtually.
But we’re living in that kind of time now where that’s acceptable.
What’s the big deal?
They have a rule you have to show up in person to vote every now and then.
And then Gassy’s like the problem is
because I’ve pissed off so many celebrities
and some politicians, if I show up in Japan, I’m gonna get arrested.
Now he has agreed and they said, well, if you don’t show up in Japan,
you’re gonna lose your job as an assemblyman.
So he’s agreed to come to Japan and apologize.
So there’s nothing really has happened right now.
But I’m giving an update for anyone who has followed along this story.
After he shows up, if he gets arrested, if something bad happens,
I’m going to follow up on that story.
If nothing happens, I might mention it and move on.
Because then it’s been a whole bunch of harafer nothing.
I was very, very interested in this
because he was voted in under a very certain set of conditions
and the government is saying that’s not acceptable.
His first proposal should be you should be able to govern remotely.
Because I actually think we’ve gone to a stage
in the world where you don’t have to be
physically present to do most jobs like this.
Like if it’s a policy job, if it’s an opinion oriented thing,
where it’s things where you brainstorm
and give ideas or write code, you don’t need to show up.
If you got to pick something up and move it somewhere else,
if you have to dig something, construction,
you got to show up for those jobs.
But if you are designing, computerizing
stuff, you don’t need to be present in person
to do those things.
And again, government, I think as long as you have
all the information, you’re doing things properly.
It’s actually should be fine.
But that’s a question of should they change the rule now?
This being Japan, they absolutely do not want to change the rule.
And I think they’re looking for a way to just get rid of Gasey.
So we’ve talked about Japan changing its defense policies
and the changing defense policies has been primarily like.
We need counter-strike capabilities,
but their version of defense is North Korea
to shoot something at us.
We should be able to shoot the thing that
shot the thing at us in the first place.
And they’ve made a step towards that.
So they’ve increased the budget.
They said they were gonna take it from
cigarette companies and corporate taxes.
So it wouldn’t affect the average person,
although inflation has gone up a lot.
I’m wondering if that is maybe related to this.
Policy change that requires billions and billions of yen.
Japan plans to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles.
Kishita didn’t mention how much they cost per missile.
These are for counter-strike capabilities
and they have a range of 1,600 kilometers.
And what I wanted to do was get a map
up and actually measure 1,600 kilometers.
So we could see what Japan would be able to hit.
Now far away is Pyongyang from Tokyo.
Tokyo.
Oh, it is 1,281 kilometers.
So the 1,600 kilometer strike zone
fits the North Korean capital squarely in the middle.
I may, if I can get some time, actually follow up on this next week.
And then for people who are on the video,
I can throw a picture up on the video
to show what they technically could hit.
If something shot at them from this place,
it would have to be in this 1,600 kilometer ring.
What they could hit back.
And then for the audio listeners,
I could actually mention a few sort of distinct places.
But Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea,
I bet would be the main focus of what they’re looking at
and talking about defending from.
That sentence making any sense?
I, whatever.
(phone ringing)
So last year, do I have the dates?
And last year, they said they were gonna look
for some new astronaut candidates in Japan.
And I was like, I should apply for that.
Ha, ha, ha.
I actually would just like to go through
the exams and the training, not actually.
I don’t really, like I would love to go to space,
but I think doing the training to go to
space would be actually just as much fun
even if you didn’t get to go to space.
And then I found out they were taken,
the guy that my thought was, I’m too old.
So they’re not gonna take me.
And I’m not Japanese, but actually, maybe.
Turns out one of the guys they took was 46.
He’s only a couple years younger than me.
They had applicants up to like 72.
So I may have had a shot.
I think me not being Japanese actually would have been the biggest concern.
They have selected two astronaut candidates
from the pool that they had that applied.
One is a world bank employee.
And the second is a surgeon.
Now the 28 year old surgeon, female, is very impressive.
Just being a surgeon, 28.
I mean, the having of a giant has very little to do with that.
Unless you’re in Japan, where as we had the scandal last year,
where the women’s scores were knocked down.
So if you, my theory at the time then, was that every female doctor
was actually superior to every male doctor.
Because you had to get, if you got a male got 100% on a test,
and a female got 100% on the test, the female
actually had to get like 120 on the test
because they systematically brought those scores down.
So I only wanted female doctors after I read about that.
So like they made it sound like, this is unfair.
And I’m like, yes it is, but also it makes me think that every woman
is a better doctor in Japan than every man.
Jade is putting the chat, “I wish I could go to space I do too.”
That’s actually why I’ve been so deep following this story.
As they are anyways, mm-hmm.
Okay, I don’t know if I want to give full credit or not.
My dog, two years ago I got real sick.
I was in hospital for a month.
My doctor, he was weird, but he was a very
good doctor because he kind of giggled.
And in bedside manner, I don’t know if they actually train that,
but one of the things you don’t want your doctor to do is giggle ever.
And I was, I was in really bad shape.
So when he giggled it was very off-putting.
Anyways, we’re talking about astronauts.
This lady, 28, she’s a surgeon, she’s awesome.
Like she’s just straight up, she’s awesome.
The guy, 46, he’s a world bank employee.
I was like, what are they gonna go to the moon and do some accounting?
I was a little down on that.
But then one of my, I’m like one of
my, I’m like basically an English teacher.
So if they’re gonna take a world bank employee,
like a finance guy, still skills don’t relate.
Maybe they’re gonna take me, I’m a good communicator.
I could play that up.
So that actually made me think I did miss my opportunity
because they weren’t looking for pure, feasible, usable skills in space.
Like a surgeon, you get hurt, a surgeon can help you.
You go up into space, this guy could not, he could fix your finances.
I don’t know what that means.
So it means they were taking people
where the skills they had were not directly applicable
to going to space, which means that actually meant
I did have a chance because my skill set,
has nothing to do with space.
But then if this guy can go, maybe I can go.
So now I just roll that around on my head and go,
I think I missed my chance to go to space.
They are going to do two years of training.
The man is 46, he’s the oldest applicant.
He’s the oldest person they’ve accepted into the program.
And the lady is the third woman they’ve accepted into the program.
One of the goals they have is to put the first woman on the moon.
So we’ve had women in space.
We’ve had men on the moon.
We haven’t had a woman on the moon.
So Japan’s like, oh, here’s an opportunity.
We could put the first woman on the moon.
I think this lady, perfect choice.
I mean, I’m jealous that she’s going at all,
but if she’s gonna go, let’s support her to go all the way.
I wanna see her go to the moon and be the first woman standing on the moon.
I think that’s awesome.
The available age of current astronauts is an average of 52 to 53 years old.
So the average age of an astronaut in
Japan is already two years older than me.
And they retire at 60.
They actually force in retirement.
You can’t keep going, which I understand.
So it means next time they go for
applicants, it’d be like two years from now.
I’m gonna be 52.
And then if I get it, I would be 54.
So I think I’ve actually missed my opportunity to go to space.
So let’s face it, I’m gonna take my dreams.
I’m gonna put them on this woman.
I’m gonna take her dream and I’m gonna inflate them.
If she succeeds, I succeed.
And that’s what I want.
I want her to go to space.
I want her to land on the moon.
And I want her to be the first woman on the moon.
And in a way, I will have gone to space.
And I will have been to the moon.
And I will also have been the first woman on the moon.
(upbeat music)
The baby decline.
God damn it.
This is really downer.
This year, or last year, 2022, they had less than 800,000 babies.
That is the seventh consecutive drop in the number of babies in Japan.
It is down 5.1%.
In 2017, because of the trends, they predicted that this would happen,
the less than 800,000 number would happen in 2033.
So we are a decade ahead in the number of babies dropped.
Not physically dropped.
The numbers of babies born down.
I guess they’re always kind of born down.
Gravity takes place.
The number of babies not born.
The numbers of baby born is the lowest number consecutively.
But they predicted that less than 800,000
was going to happen in 2033, 10 years later.
COVID contributed, financial issues
contributed, all these things contributed.
Last week, we did the story on what the government official saying
that the problem, the low birth rate is
because of Japan’s weak romantic power,
which I agree with, except I don’t think you can define
romantic ability or romantic power.
So that’s a little bit problematic.
They said there are many factors, including financial and security
and less social encounters.
And the less social encounters because of the pandemic
is absolutely true, because people are meeting less people.
The number of deaths was 1,582,033.
That is up 129,744.
And this got Elon Musk to prompt a comment
that if this keeps going, Japan will disappear.
So Elon Musk has a fundamental understanding of math
and numbers that go up and numbers that go down.
So he is a genius.
I said I’m going to say, thank you for this.
He solved the problem.
He said if this keeps happening, Japan will disappear.
We don’t need to worry about it anymore.
Elon fixed it.
I mean, we’re done, right?
This is interesting.
So Kishida got in trouble, the prime minister of Japan got in trouble.
Japan’s ban on the same sex marriage is not discriminatory.
Is what he said.
And this is sparks and criticism.
I think it is a very fair statement to say,
it sparked criticism and it deserves some examination.
Kishida came out and said, I have never stated, I’m against it.
Which I would like to break down that sentence.
So first of all, what is discriminatory is the first thing.
And I would say discrimination is when you take a group
and you apply a set of rules to them, that is unfair.
And what we’re looking at is marriage and what is a definite marriage.
And definition is probably the issue because
in Japan it’s defined as a man and woman.
Actually, maybe I wrote it down.
Okay, no, I didn’t write it down.
It is stated somewhere that a marriage in Japan
is actually sort of a cis traditional heteronormative male, female union.
Whereas I’ve always thought marriage is financial if we’re being honest.
Like you do it because of love, but you’re really what you’re doing it
as far as the government is concerned,
is for tax purposes to bind your taxes,
to take your two estates and put them together
so that if I get sick or my wife gets sick,
you know, they have access and back and forth,
that union has very little to do a gender.
It’s all as far as I’m concerned, finances.
When it comes to the government, when you
come to a religious ceremony or a ceremony
or anything like that, that’s all about
love and the union of two people and stuff.
But as far as the government concerned, this is about taxes and money.
And so I don’t see how a man and a woman,
a man and a man, a woman and a woman
makes any difference when you’re talking about binding your finances.
So that’s again my view.
What I was interested in though is Kishita
said, I have never stated, I’m against it.
I’ve never said out loud, I have never spoken the words, I am an against it.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t against it.
I personally have never stated that I’m against fucking penguins.
I am, let’s just put that out there right now.
But because I never said, I’m against fucking penguins,
doesn’t actually mean I am or I’m not.
That just actually means I might be really pro fucking penguins.
But I know it’s socially unacceptable
to say it, so I’ve never said it out loud.
So coming out and saying that I have never
stated that I am against fucking penguins,
doesn’t mean I am or I’m not.
So you actually have to come out and say it.
This is actually the problem with politicians.
What I want to do is make statements.
I do always, as many times in an English New Japan,
I’ve talked about a politician making a statement
that offends people and then they retract that statement.
And I’ve always felt like that doesn’t actually
do or mean anything because the thought is still in their head.
He’s saying I’ve never said, I’m a discriminatory piece of shit,
but that doesn’t mean he isn’t.
Jay has now put it in apparently a quote by a very famous man,
I have never said I’m against fucking penguins, which is true.
Up until this podcast, the entirety of my life, I never made that statement.
So you could have tried to make the claim.
He is pro, you could have tried to make the claim.
He is against.
It is unsure, everyone is unsure until I actually make a statement.
But stating that I’ve never stated it doesn’t mean anything.
And that’s the bit I actually really enjoyed more than anything else.
Japan is the only G7 nation member
that doesn’t have anti-discrimination laws.
So this will be an interesting one going forward
because there are small groups like in, like there’s a prefecture,
and not prefecture, an area in Tokyo, a ward, I think it’s Shibuya,
and they allow same-sex unions, but that isn’t seen as universally accepted.
So what does that mean?
You could actually get married in this place.
I guess as long as you don’t leave that
place, you can have your same-sex marriage.
It’s very difficult to understand
because what is the point of having one area in a city
where it’s okay and the rest of the city is not okay?
As soon as I leave that area, are we not married anymore?
It’s gonna cause legal complications down the line,
but at least it’s showing that there is a place in Japan
that is thinking forward to thinking that
this is acceptable, that this is the future.
And if two people want to bind their lives
together, maybe you should just let them.
(phone ringing)
72-year-old teacher, so this guy’s been teaching a hopefully a long time.
He wanted to show that there are useful bacteria, common in daily life.
Teach the kids about your gut health and that kind of stuff.
So he mixed some yogurt and milk, and he
took it home and he put it in the fridge.
And then he brought it back to school
the next day, this milk yogurt mixture,
and he gave it to six students.
Two had a headache and nausea and had to go eat taking it to the hospital.
One went to see a doctor after they got home from school.
And two of the, oh, and two staff vomited when they got home.
So I think what we’ve actually learned is
you shouldn’t drink milk yogurt combinations
created by your teacher and brought into school.
It’s funny ’cause here’s the thing, the
reality is, you have this guy, he’s a teacher
and he wants to do something really practical
and show students something and really teach them.
And this is the kind of stuff we want teachers to do.
And then he just totally duffs it.
He takes it and he makes all the kids sick.
Actually, it sounds like only three of the kids, three out of six got six.
So this is a 50% shot rate.
Two staff got six or two staff should, just I don’t know, homemade stuff,
you probably should not be drinking.
I mean, that’s just the short version.
Don’t drink stuff that some dude has made at home.
(phone ringing)
All right, so our last two stories, I’m going to get a drink of water first.
Oh, that’s old man hot water right there.
Not hot water that came from an old man.
I can’t, I really feel like I always have to be very clear.
That is an old man drink.
Old men tend to drink things like hot water.
I’ve really taken a hot water and my golden ears.
What was that sound?
Which one?
You mean the slurping?
Swallowing and then, we can break that up into, you can make a beat.
(claps)
Oh, good lord.
Okay, we got two stories about people having trouble at work.
I bet it was the swallow.
This microphone, I actually was having a
conversation on Reddit about microphones.
This microphone, oh, the, mm, I mean,
that’s the sound of pure satisfaction of an old man.
That is an old man.
See, I don’t get gratification the way you young, young folk do.
I don’t, I don’t, I don’t cut into this sexual gratification.
I don’t, I don’t believe in these, these, these drugs
and the alcohol and the, the jazz cigarettes.
I like the purity of flushing out my colon with some piping hot water.
(groans).
Ah, I can’t remember where I heard jazz
cigarettes recently and really enjoyed it.
Anyway, we got two guys who got trouble at work
and I really enjoy people getting a trouble at work.
A city employee was fired for getting 1.54 million in overtime pay.
Dude, I have an end of my story.
It’s such a nightmare.
I suppose I could tell, I’ve told it on the loss of podcasts
which is now essentially the fun podcast.
So I’m gonna hit this story soon, really.
I, forget why.
Oh, I was gonna have the camera shove down my butt
and I had to go to the doctor to do it
and they wanted me, my voice just got a little quieter
’cause I’m talking about my butt.
So they gave me this stuff to drink.
It was like a two liter jug and I got about halfway through
and then I started throwing up and we called the hospital
and I say like, I’m drinking this stuff
but I can’t keep it down, it’s just something about it.
And then the lady on the other end goes,
but it’s the mild stuff and we’re like,
that’s relevant if I’m throwing it up, I’m throwing it up.
So they’re like, okay, we’ll come in and we’ll take care of it
and we’ll take care of it as already an issue.
So we go up and then she gets this like,
it was basically a little bigger than this.
It was like one of those 500 milliliter cans of Pepsi
but it was full of like water and saline solution
or something, she goes, I’m gonna put this up your butt.
Not the thing it had a tube and I was like,
ah, that’s never going on my butt and she’s like,
no, no, it will, I’m like, I’m not like,
I’m on your side on this one but I’ve just never put
anything on my butt before so that volume
is probably not gonna go up my butt successfully.
And then she’s like, okay, well,
I’ve done this a million times, I’m the experienced nurse,
I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna shove this up your butt.
And I was like, all right, you know, I am rooting for you on this one.
She has me rolling on my side, me arguing with her,
I don’t think was really what she was used to.
So she put on the lube, ironically not gently,
the lube is supposed to make that kind of thing better.
She just, and I got in, and she was like,
woo, and then she kind of went up and started doing it
and we got most of the way down and then it started like,
eh, it wasn’t all going up and I was
like, mm, I’m not gonna say I told you so
’cause I don’t really know how to say that in Japanese
but I think my face says it all,
that in weird discomfort ’cause I’ve never done this before.
So then they’re like, okay, well, we have
as much water up your butt as we can.
So you go over and you know, poop it out.
And I was like, great, where?
‘Cause I assume right here right now is how it’s gonna happen.
And so I’d actually, I kind of forgot
to say, I had to put on a diaper before.
The thing is the diaper in Japan, you either
have like tiny people size or sumo size,
there’s no in between.
So I had sumo size diapers on, Ignatius
put in the trick is to clench really hard,
believe me, we’re getting to that part of the story.
So then I’m like, okay, well, I’ve pulled up my not summarize size,
my sumo size diapers, where do I go to the toilet?
‘Cause I actually assumed it was not in the diaper.
And she’s like, yeah, across the hall,
there’s a bathroom, so go in there and go in.
I was like, okay, great.
So I’m clenching as hard as I can.
I have my giant diaper on.
My wife is sitting outside, she sees me walk out
and I’m like literally going, should I pull up my shorts?
This is summertime.
Over my giant samurai, not samurai.
Over my giant sumo diaper, where should I just go through my diaper?
Both equally embarrassing.
Like I’m just feeling humiliated.
This time, masculated, it’s great.
She starts laughing her ass off.
She’s just like, at this point just go.
It doesn’t make a difference.
I go to the toilet, it’s occupied.
And I’ll just let that sit with you, just like it sat with me.
Only there was a lot more pressure on me as I stood kind of doing the like,
it’s like the little kid I have to pee dance,
but it was I have to poop out a cola bottle
of liquid with giant sumo diapers on.
Clenching as hard as I can, ’cause I really don’t wanna poop in my diaper.
And I think this is a preview of what life has in store for me.
Now it’s now back to people gotten trouble at work
and didn’t have problems at hospitals.
A city employee was fired for getting 1.54 million yen in overtime.
The thing is they were not actually doing the overtime.
This is Japan, what he was doing, he was getting the overtime form,
waiting till his boss left, going into
his desk and getting the little stamp,
and then approving his own overtime, and putting it in.
What they found was they could see him leave.
This was the problem with not having invisibility powers.
They could see him come and go.
They realized he wasn’t coming and going
when his time sheet said he was coming and going.
The boss didn’t remember approving so much OT
and then they sat down, figured it out and he got fired.
So I get my problem with crime and stealing stuff.
It’s just the plan seems so poorly thought out.
You’re gonna take your boss’s stamp, you’re gonna do overtime.
You could do a little bit.
I bet you could do an hour or two every month and not get caught.
But when you get to the 1.54 million yen Mark,
you’re going to realize that everything is, you’re gonna get caught.
(clock ticking)
An employee was told to wear a mask.
This was a very normal thing because this was last December
and masks sort of mandates by governments is still in place.
As a country, Japan doesn’t have mask mandates
but it’s sort of a social pressure thing and people are doing it.
Companies do.
So your company’s telling you government absolutely does.
If you work for the government, you have to wear a mask.
This guy clearly did not like wearing a mask.
He was reminded mid-December, so around December 15th,
please wear your mask and he got pissed and
it sort of stewed and he just sat there.
On the 20th, he decided to delete files on
a shared server related to tax collections.
And I was like, “Did he get revenge by saving a bunch of people taxes?”
I know it probably isn’t that simple
’cause they’ll just find the taxes they’re missing and go get them.
These tax agencies don’t mess around.
They always find you.
But it showed to me the attitude of what was going on.
This is a very disgruntled employee
and you know he’s particularly disgruntled
when all of a sudden mid-January, you
get to evaluation period in most companies.
He went to his section chief and he said,
“Consider yourself dead if my evaluation is poor.”
You know what, his evaluation wasn’t poor, he was fired.
And that, I think, is appropriate.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
[Music].