F You Doritos

So I’ve been following the Gassy story and if I’m being really honest I’m

losing interest in it.

I’m losing interest in it because he’s not doing anything.

There has been an interesting development.

So Gassy said, as I said last week, I would follow up if something happened.

It kind of happened.

Gassy is not, he’s losing my attention.

Let’s put it that way.

Gassy said he would come back to Japan and apologize as per the rules if you

don’t attend for X amount of time in the government.

Now he’s decided he’s not coming back

to Japan and he’s not going to apologize.

The statement he made was a little confusing because he said it was too

early and his safety

was not guaranteed.

Now the reason he doesn’t want to come back

to Japan is because he thinks if he comes

back to Japan he might get arrested or murdered because his YouTube channel,

the reason

he got famous, was exposing celebrity scandals and some politicians.

So he’s actually saying some politicians want to come back to Japan just so

that he can be assassinated.

I think Gassy might be holding himself to a higher…

I actually don’t know because Gassy is a famous Japanese YouTuber and I’ve

never followed

any Japanese YouTube.

So I don’t know how big he is in Japan.

What I did find out though.

So they’re saying he doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested because

lawmakers have immunity during diet sessions.

Which essentially is saying a lawmaker could commit a murder during a diet

session and they could not be arrested

until after that diet session was finished.

Diet… Weirdly I shouldn’t have to explain this.

The Japanese government is called a diet.

It’s not like they.

That’s even a dumb joke if I make it.

I regretted as soon as I started.

I’m actually even finding I’m regretting

a lot of things as I start saying though.

I guess it’s just modern society.

But this actually… That is a very weird rule though.

Like you can do crimes.

You can commit crimes.

And you can’t be arrested during when the government is active.

Which is pretty often.

Nah, I’m a little torn on that one.

Anyways.

Gassie is now facing exposure from the government.

Which I think I could have predicted.

I said like my initial…

The reason I was interested in this story initially was because Gassie was

governing from abroad.

It wasn’t who he was that made me interested in him.

It was the fact that he was doing something

that really hadn’t been done before.

He was going to live in Dubai and govern Japan from Dubai which seems

completely possible to me.

And I was interested in how successful it was.

I didn’t realize even when it was introduced

that he was a controversial person.

But the reason he lives in Dubai is so

that he can’t be extradited back to Japan.

So you can see there’s a whole other layer of stuff that I didn’t actually

know about.

The governing was actually the secondary issue.

So he’s now facing expulsion from the government.

The leader of the NHK party, the party he’s a member of, which is a single

platform party.

They just want to abolish the NHK.

To take responsibility for this he’s going to step down.

I don’t know.

The leader of the party didn’t do anything.

Gassie was voted in.

He was voted in on their platform.

So I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.

Maybe putting him in that position, he’s taking responsibility for that.

This isn’t interesting.

Also side note of Japanese politics.

I don’t know if I agree with this or not.

But they quit every time something goes wrong.

Japan went through a five, ten year period where they had seven, eight prime

ministers because it was every three months to six months.

There would be a new prime minister and something that would go wrong and

they’d quit taking responsibility for it.

But then they never actually fixed any of the problems.

They’re just like, I take responsibility, I quit.

I’m out.

So it seems like kind of a cop out.

I think you should have to stay fixed the problem and then you quit after

the problem’s fixed.

Unless people want you out, I don’t know.

The problem with politics is there’s always going to be like 50% of the

people want you out

anyways.

So maybe it’s just a good excuse to bail.

The fallout from this is very weird to me.

They’re going to change the name of the NHK party.

So it’s not going to be a single platform party anymore or it is and they’re

just changing the name to Say Jika.

Say Jika?

Am I writing so bad?

No it’s Say Jika Joshi, Yon Juhachi Pati.

So the Say Jika is the female, Say Jika Joshi is female politicians, 48

party.

And I was like, why, why 48 is this like the AKB 48?

Is this is what they do now?

And if they are, that’s such a dumb thing.

So they’re going to try.

So and is it all going to be only women politicians?

I don’t know.

This little tack at the end has taken the story in a different direction.

So Gassi I no longer care about.

We’ll just put that out there.

He’s going to get expelled from being a government, the leader of their

party stepping down.

And they’ve made it the name, they’re going to change the name of the party

to this like girl group sounding party of female politicians.

Is it therefore only going to be female politicians?

This is now the more interesting part.

Are they going to use this gimmick to move their party forward?

Or is this like a real platform they’re going to have?

I don’t know.

I’m going to look into the Say Jika Joshi Yon Juhachi Pati.

I don’t know if they say 48.

I think it’s AKB 48.

I don’t know if they say AKB Yon Juhachi.

But that’s irrelevant.

Because I’ve only ever read it.

I haven’t actually heard anyone say a lot of the research I do for Ninja

Ninja Japan is just articles.

So I read them.

Sometimes the name, I don’t know if you say 48 or Yon Juhachi.

Anyways, it’s irrelevant.

What we have now is the formation of a new party which might be really

interesting or might be really stupid.

We can’t tell until the party actually does something.

So I will try to look into when they change the name.

Will their policies change with it?

Is this a new party?

Or is this just some kind of like gimmick to try to keep them in some sort

of relevance so they don’t all lose their positions?

I don’t know.

All we do know is Gassie has been a massive waste of time.

Nine social media influencers.

Social media influencers.

So I do this.

I do podcasts.

Even if popularity is relative, even if I

got like massive, I don’t think I would ever

call myself an influencer.

And then if I did Instagram and Instagram, it’s a different mindset.

I’m old.

So that might be part of it.

But the idea of the social media influencer is very ethereal to me.

I don’t really know what it is despite the fact that there are like them all

around all the time.

I maybe it’s because I have never been

influenced in this way by social media.

I have been influenced.

Everyone gets influenced by stuff around them.

But social media influencers do not have a significant impact on me.

So I don’t consider them influential.

Might be the issue I’m actually having.

There were nine social media influencers, all women in their 30s.

They failed to declare nearly 300 million in taxes for up to six years.

This was one to 30 million for each person.

And they are now being hit with 85 million yen in back taxes.

You’re not escaping the government.

This was all mainly from affiliate marketing.

So they would go on their Instagram or their TikTok or something.

They’d be like, “Oh, here’s my new lipstick that I would like.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I’ll show you how to put it on.

Maybe something to do like a makeup tutorial, let’s say.”

And then to be like, “This makeup is really good.

You should buy it.”

That’s affiliate marketing.

They were paid for that.

That means you got to get taxed for it.

I did actually find out if you make more than 200,000 yen from any sort of

like secondary income.

So let’s say I have my main job, I’m a teacher.

And I make my main salary and that’s taxed.

And let’s say I do an engine in Japan.

People donate money or people give me money or I do affiliate marketing.

If that exceeds 200,000 yen, I have to start paying taxes on it.

I have to make sure I pay taxes on it.

Getting under that, maybe if I don’t declare taxes, it’s not going to make a

big deal out of it because the taxes would be quite small.

But it’s 200,000 yen for the year.

So that’s important.

So if I made like 200,000 yen a month,

that’s going to be X amount, well, times 12.

So 2,400,000 yen for the year, that would

be significant and I would have to pay taxes

on that.

But if I make 10,000, I don’t know what

would, let’s say 20,000 yen a month, that

would be sort of more close on the borderline.

I have to be really careful.

I would probably have to declare taxes on that, even though it’s like 20,000

yen, like it’s 200 bucks.

So I get $200 from an affiliate marketing.

Doritos, if you’re out there, I would take 20,000 yen a month to market your

product, which is a product I believe in, the Doritos chip.

Only the original flavor, none of this

like cool ranch, any of that other shit.

You have nacho cheese, not boom in nacho cheese, whatever fucking stupid

name you come out with.

It’s nacho cheese, not nacho cheese only, the original stand by.

I will promote that product.

I have a certain amount of integrity.

I will take product, I will take money to promote products.

I have to at least understand that the product is good and cool ranch.

I know there’s a lot of people out there like it.

I don’t, so therefore I’m not promoting cool ranch.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

This is like a free ad for Doritos.

So fuck you Doritos.

I’m not going to even advertise you.

You offer me money now.

I will still take the money because I’m poor.

But I’m going to be grudgingly doing it.

How did that happen?

Oh, we’re talking about taxes.

I did, through a video the other day and it was about like, we were talking

about taxes.

That’s exciting.

Taxes do lead us to very interesting places

because now we’ve hit a moral spot for me.

When would I and when would I not take money?

And for the most part, I’ll take your money.

I was listening to another podcast and they were talking about like better

help and how that they’re not very good in

stitch fix and all these like things that

advertise on podcasts.

I was sort of interested in that as a concept.

And apparently every company now that’s advertising on podcasts is pretty

much a shit company.

So the stitch fix has a limited amount of clothes they can pull from and so

they’ll send you the same clothes over and over again.

So it means they actually have very limited options.

So you’re not actually looking at you and your preferences and sending you

stuff and making

you look good and being really stylish.

Your personal stylist of course has a

finite amount of time to deal with you.

So they’re just picking stuff like from boxes, like checking boxes and that

just gets thrown into your next stitch fix box and the better help people.

Okay, they don’t really want to help you that badly.

They just want to run through the system.

It’s too bad.

These are of course the birthing pains of the Internet format advertising

and companies trying

to find new ways to do things like therapy

online seems like a really good idea.

So let’s say I, let’s say I live in Japan.

I’m an English speaker.

My Japanese isn’t very good and I needed therapy.

I couldn’t go to a Japanese therapist and expect it to really work out

because I can’t express myself well to them.

I might not understand what they say to me.

So me doing therapy online would be a really good idea because I would get

an English therapist

and maybe they’re more sort of in tune with who I am as a person.

Apparently that’s not a very good system.

So better help would have to offer me a lot

of money to screw over the mental health

for another person.

Like a lot of money.

Like I could retire money.

So we know they’re not offering me that much.

I honestly don’t even know why I’m talking about this.

YouTube and Instagram influencers have been hit with back taxes.

You got to be careful with your taxes.

Don’t try to screw the government.

They will come for you as these nine influencers have found out.

There’s a rocket that Japan wants to send to space.

Talk about astronauts last week.

Well how did they get there?

They get there on the rockets.

The new rocket is the H3 rocket.

It was up in the air and it was signal to self-destruct after several.

So they had several delays.

They were having problems with the rocket.

They got the rocket up in the air and then like, ah, something’s gone wrong.

Press a button and it explodes.

This was their second attempt and this is obviously going to cause them

certain problems.

I wrote down a…

I started trying to like pre-plan jokes and

it’s so much worse because then I read them

and I go, “That’s stupid.”

So basically you’ll get stupid jokes on this podcast.

Anything I make, you’re going to get a couple of dumb jokes.

And I was like, “Oh, it would be funnier if I planned out the jokes in

advance, you know, like a proper show.”

And then I read the joke and go, “That’s

so dumb, I’m not going to say that.”

Because the H3 rocket, well there’s also the H3 podcast.

And I was going to make a connection there

and go like maybe with less time on their

podcast and more time on the rocket it

wouldn’t have had to explode in the air.

But now as soon as I read that I’m like, “Oh, that’s dumb.

Why would I say that?”

But it would be dumb if it happened spontaneously.

It would be funny if it happened spontaneously.

It’d still be dumb.

But it would be dumb and funny if it happened spontaneously when you write

it down and you think about it.

It’s not worth doing anymore.

So I kind of have given you a look into the back process of, “As I tried to

develop Ninja News Japan into a better

show because I do want to try to make small

improvements all the time.

I am trying to plan out humorous elements.

But then in the moment I’m now thinking my

own sense of humor is so shit, I don’t want

to do it.”

The rockets crashed into the water around the Philippines.

North Korea is absolutely pissed that Japan’s sort of taken their thing of

shooting rockets into the ocean.

They’re all jelly.

They’re like, “Hey dude, that’s our stuff.

We shoot rockets into the ocean.

Stop copying us.”.

The H3 rocket costs 5 billion yen.

But if you want to look at this in a positive, 5 billion yen is half the

price of the previous rocket and it has

1.3 times the satellite launch capability.

I actually didn’t understand that last part of it to be really honest.

Does that mean it can carry 1.3 more satellites?

Because a 0.3 satellite doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Or can it be used, I guess it’s 1.3 times the payload, so a satellite plus

other stuff?

Or can it be used more often?

I don’t know.

The all the goal of all the rocket systems now, all these companies that are

making things that shoot stuff into space is try to make reusable.

So what SpaceX is all about is making a reusable rocket.

Which is really cool.

Because right now, rocket goes up, rocket

comes down, you have to build a new rocket.

Very expensive.

You could use that rocket multiple times.

It becomes a cost-saving measure, even if that rocket is more expensive

initially.

It’s a bit of a kick in the nuts for the space program in Japan that their

rocket did not work.

The way they wanted it to.

And I feel bad for them because I want the Japanese astronaut space thing.

This is when I should have sounded sort of smart.

This is the benefit of scripted things.

The smart bits will sound smart because you can write in advance.

The downside is the humorous bits when you write them down sometimes don’t

feel as humorous.

I should not write out the dumb jokes.

I should write out the smart bits.

Underestimated my own abilities.

Because I think, ah, I can be smart in the moment.

I should write that down and increase the humor versus the intellect.

The reality seems to be, I’m funny in the moment if I just let it go.

Whereas I am not as smart as I think I am.

And isn’t that just the reality?

I’m completely lost today.

Our water heater may or may not have a leak.

So waiting for the water heating guy to do this.

I’m sort of a little distracted.

It’s going to cost me a ton of money.

It’s going to cost like a hundred bucks for this guy to come out and look at

it and say there is no leak.

And if there is a leak, it’s going to be fixing replacing.

I realized one of the biggest problems.

Japan doesn’t have basements because we have earthquake.

Which means like a thing like a water heater

is outside the house but space is so tight

they’ve created the sliver of space between our house and the next door

house and there’s

like a little fence making it incredibly awkward to get to the water heater.

And that’s got to cost us a ton of money.

So I’m kind of actually just thinking about my own circumstances.

So, ah, if Doritos would like to sponsor

this podcast and give me a ton of money from

my water heater, I’ll promote Cool Ranch.

I mean, I don’t know.

Cool Ranch, I was not saying I don’t like them.

They’re fine.

I would always choose the original.

The original Doritos are way better.

Basically once a year, I get a really

bad craving for Doritos original flavor.

They have a Japanese tacos flavor.

It’s just not as good.

It’s almost, it’s just not quite.

I have to go to the import store and buy the original flavor once.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I missed a number in my notes.

It’s been a tough, tough couple weeks for no real significant reason.

And that’s where I am right now.

So, mentally, I think the problem is, I want to do these podcasts.

I want to keep them consistent, but then I

keep having other sort of real life things.

This is, we don’t know who needs better help.

I just do a podcast and therapist myself.

Yeah, I think what I’ve been looking for.

So, it’s not like I’ve had any losses.

You got to pay money for this.

I got a lot of money trouble, but not like real life trouble.

How do you explain it?

We have a lot of things that are going to be expensive.

We have a lot of stuff.

Our house is like, no, what, 13, 14 years old.

Things are starting to break or need fixed and it’s all very expensive.

So, that’s just resting on my mind a lot.

We’re in no way in financial difficulties.

We’re just, I basically will not have an

entertainment budget for X amount of time.

And then yeah, the water heater broke.

It’s not broken.

It’s actually working fine.

And we check the, the, the, the, because to check for a leak, you get the

like water meter.

And you like check the number and you come

back an hour later and check the number.

Has the number changed?

If it hasn’t changed, it’s not leaking.

It doesn’t seem to be leaking, but there is water coming up from under it.

Maybe that’s just condensation?

I don’t know, man.

Anyways, I’m going to pay like 70 bucks,

100 bucks for some dude to come out and look

at it.

I’m hoping I’m spending 70 dollars for this guy to say that it’s fine.

The story I was going to do before my brain

got in the way is that there was a lawyer

and he was an anti-sexual harassment campaigner.

He was trying to stop sexual harassment.

Given the title, a lawyer who campaigns against sexual harassment, what do

you think he was

accused of?

I do enjoy irony.

I enjoy police committing crimes and getting caught, especially if they’re

really stupid crimes.

I enjoy lawyers getting in trouble for not knowing the law.

This was a sexual or anti-sexual harassment campaigner.

Of course, he’s been accused of sexual harassment.

He represented an actress against the stage director back in 2017, which

actually showed

that he knew that the woman he was about to attempt to sexually harass was

litigious.

She was not going to just shy away and fade into the background and keep her

mouth shut because of the embarrassment.

He knew because he represented her, he knew she would step up and make the

claim and sue the person.

He’s like, “Perfect.

I will sexually harass that person.”

He represented her back in 2017.

They worked together several times and then he kept trying to call her and

get her come over and he coerced her and

he touched her inappropriately and all this

other stuff.

It sounds like he pressured her into actually having sex.

She wants 11 million yen and damages and she said, “I wish to demand he not

work as a lawyer.

for the rest of his life,” which is if he

is representing people in sexual harassment

cases and he is a sexual harassment dude, I think that’s fair.

So basically she’s saying she wants some deep art.

I don’t know if they use the bar at the same

terms in Japanese, but since I’m translating.

even English, I guess it does make sense.

She wants some deep art so that he can’t be a lawyer.

He might think it’s time to switch sides and become a defensive turn, which

is a really awful thought, but it would make sense.

There was a survey given to people and it’s the question of, “Have you given

up on marriage?”

It was broken into men and women.

Men in their 20s, 64% said, “No, I have not given up on marriage.”.

So there’s a 30% let’s say.

I just round off the numbers.

25, 30% are saying, “I still, I have, I

think marriage is not going to work out.

I’ve given up my 20s, I’ve already given up.”

55% switches in their 30s, 55% yes, I have given up.

So I’m trying to do the majorities.

And then people in their 40s who are not married, they say 71% yes, men in

their 40s have given up on marriage.

Women in their 20s already 54% have said yes, I’ve given up on marriage.

Men has this weird idea that you have to get married before your 25, which

is really young.

It used to be normal.

Again, teenagers used to get married and have babies and stuff.

But in Japan, they have this idea like a woman should be married by 25.

And it’s culturally still prevalent.

It’s not like it’s forced or, and I think people understand, you’re like 26,

27, 28, you’re

not married, whatever.

But it’s still there and it’s still part of the cultural zeitgeist, which is

a problem.

Women in their 30s, 52%, so it actually went down by 2%.

So it was 54 if you’re in your 20s, 52 in your 30s.

So 2% of the women between 20 and 30 change their mind.

I mean, I know this doesn’t really work that way.

It’s because it’s right now in their 30s.

They have not given up on marriage.

So 52% yes, I’ve given up on marriage,

but it’s actually the number dipped down.

And then when they hit their 40s, 70% said

yes, I’ve given up on marriage completely.

Some of the reasons for men, it takes time, money and effort to find a

partner, a Tokyo male, 27 years old.

That is true.

And we have over the last like four episodes or five episodes talked about

the declining birth rate.

I have prostilatized many times about my beliefs that Japan and society

needs to change.

It’s work, life, balance, culture if they

want the population to increase at all, but.

that is talking about a complete cultural shift in thinking, which is

probably not going to be possible in a single generation.

It’s going to take multiple generations.

And the danger there is there aren’t going

to be any generation numbers to pick up the

slack in the future.

So even if you make the changes, it might not be successful.

Because I don’t have confidence in my appearance was a man 39 years old

because I don’t feel

qualified enough to get married and a man

39 years old because I want to make the most

of my time alone.

A man 39 years old, which is interesting.

So there were some of them were like, I’m not good looking enough, I’m not

confident in myself, I can’t get married.

So I’ve given up.

There’s other guys like, I just want to be alone.

I want to have my time.

The next one I thought was very interesting because there’s no guarantee.

that I’ll be happy.

But he’s saying that if I get married, I have to be guaranteed happiness.

But that actually implies that you don’t have to put the work in.

So I actually think he’s a little, he

slightly misunderstands what marriage is.

Man 43, I don’t see the benefits.

Man 43, I simply don’t have any connections.

Man 47, my income is too low, which in Japan,

when they talk about marriage, the women

will initially talk about income before happiness and then before love.

I think a lot of people in a lot of other

cultures, they’re not so honest about it.

But a lot of women what they’re looking for is a certain level of comfort

and security.

And they are not shy about it.

So they want, I want a man who makes that amount.

The problem is there’s unrealistic expectations.

The average Japanese salary is between four and five million yen.

And then if you serve a woman, this is

way, I could probably find it, but it’s way

way back.

How much do you want your partner to make?

And they were like eight, nine, 10 million yen.

So the average man was just off the table at that point.

Some of the women’s reasons for giving

up on marriage are pretty interesting.

I did enjoy a female 28 said because there’s not a single advantage to

getting married.

So she’s, she’s really decided that there are no benefits at all.

Now there are tax breaks and stuff, but again, I think that might be not

what she’s talking about.

I got tired of it after my parents objected for the first time.

A female who’s 30.

So she came close to getting married.

Maybe a guy proposed to her, her parents objected and then she’s like, I’m

not doing this again.

Which is very interesting.

There’s a very clear story, singular history there.

I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to marry.

Female 34 years old.

I think that is a very good reason not to get married because if you don’t

want to marry them, that kind of goes back

to the no guarantee of happiness of the

previous.

This guy, but I can’t count on the other person to make me happy.

I have to make myself happy.

I think that is a very legitimate reason because the other party is never

enthusiastic.

39 years old female.

So basically the she’s saying that men don’t want to get married and that is

dampered my desire to get married because

I want someone who’s excited to marry me.

I think that is also pretty fair because I want to work woman 41 because

marriage isn’t everything in today’s world.

Female 41.

So those two women are saying marriage

is just not as relevant as it used to be.

I want to work.

I want to have my own life because I lost the desire to re-marry after

getting divorced.

Female 47.

So basically she had a bad experience.

It doesn’t want to do it again.

100% think that’s a legitimate reason.

I mean, any reason not to get married is

legitimate because what you’re doing, yeah.

If you’re not confident in the idea of

getting married, you who not get married.

It does sounds like that overall Japan is a culture.

People are not confident in getting married, which is again sort of leading

to the population to decline in several

other problems that they have in Japan.

I have put a stop to underwear theft stories only because they are not

interesting anymore.

So this isn’t about the underwear theft.

It is leading into the story.

It is the story of the level of commitment that laundromat owners seem to

have to saving their clients close.

So this is not the first story.

In fact, this one is better than the last one.

So it follows the same steps.

There’s a young, in this case, a 27 year

old man goes into a laundromat around 1230.

He stands looking into the like a trundle thing, the dryer probably.

He reaches in and grabs some underwear and he starts to take off.

The owner goes outside and he starts stopping.

He’s like, “You can’t.

That’s someone else’s stuff.

You’re stealing.”

The guy makes his excuses.

He’s like, “No, it’s cool, man.

Just let me go.”

He says, “I’ll give you money.”

He actually tries to bribe the guy.

He says, “I’ll give you money if you let me go.

I don’t want this to go to court.

Just let me go.

Just let me go.”

The guy’s like, “No, we’re not having it.

You stole from these people.

You don’t deserve to go.”

The guy sort of does a little football back

and forth, gets into his car and starts

to drive away.

The laundromat owner stands in front of the car.

The car does not stop.

It’s not going very fast.

He jumps onto the hood of the car thinking that this guy won’t, you know, he

will stop.

The previous story, the guy drove for a really long time, went quite fast.

The laundromat owner fell off the car and hit his head.

He was in hospital.

The guy was not up for a panty theft.

He was up for attempted murder and panty theft.

In this case, the laundromat owner was not hurt, which is great.

But I think the jumping on the hood of the car is a level of dedication that

I would not

have expected from a laundromat owner over a couple of pieces of underwear.

I would actually say there were cameras all outside that building.

Take a picture of the license plate, send it to the police.

Don’t jump on the hood of the car.

I don’t think that level of bravery is expected.

I was about to say required, but I guess it required.

That level of bravery is not expected for the laundromat owner.

I think maybe if someone’s stealing laundry, get your phone out, take a

picture of the license plate of the car and call it a night.

I think that’s enough.

Ghibli Park.

Ghibli?

Ghibli?

I forget.

I think it’s Ghibli.

I don’t want to have someone send me a

message telling me I said it wrong regardless.

Ghibli Park.

In Iichi, prefecture in Japan, they created

a park and it’s all the Ghibli movies.

So it’s Totoro.

Oh, I don’t know once.

There’s a bunch of others.

I actually have never seen.

But you know, people go there, you go there

with your kids, you see they have statues.

They have the house from my neighbor, Totoro and stuff like that.

It’s Ghibli.

It’s all very innocent.

There’s a lot of sort of purity of feeling that goes along with everything.

Kiki’s delivery service.

Spirited away.

All these main characters from these movies are represented there.

So of course, people are gross.

I don’t know what you expect with Otaku and

Nerds and stuff who sexualize everything.

People have been taking pictures of

themselves or their friends next to a statue.

So of course, some nerdy gross dudes, they grab the booby of the statue.

And then a lot of the characters have sort of flowy dresses so they’ve been

taking upskirt photos of the statues.

This is really pissed off the governor of Iichi.

So the park has a policy to not comment.

And I think that’s actually a good idea because what they’re actually doing

is saying let’s

not bring attention to this because if we bring attention to this, what’s

going to happen

is more gross nerdy Otaku guys are going to come and keep doing that thing.

So we’re not going to talk about it.

The Iichi governor on the other hand, he’s like, nah, my prefecture put up

34 billion yen.

of money to build this park so that people could have a good time.

I’m pissed.

So he’s like, it’s extraordinarily malicious.

It’s like the Sushi restaurant.

So we’ve done Sushi teto a couple times.

I’ve kind of eased off that story.

It may be close to destruction of property.

It’s not.

I mean, they’re touching statues that are out in public.

They’re not destroying anything.

But he’s just trying to say, like, I need

to find a crime that I can charge these guys

with.

They’re going to try to take severe measures against the people if they can

be identified.

So basically you post your picture on social media of you being

inappropriate with one of the statues in Ghibli Park.

This guy wants to send the cops after you, which I don’t know how that’s

going to work out

or not, but I am interested to see if there’s any arrests or any fallout.

I bet this story just goes away.

I bet people just ease off because they’re like,

but then there is the other, the flip side.

of that where maybe people will like, oh, well, now that it’s challenged, I

want to take

it to the next level, which is very much the

attitude of a lot of people out, especially.

on the Internet.

So if you go to Ghibli Park as a tourist, I would say do not try to hump the

statues because

you actually might have some fairly high level government officials coming.

after you.

[Music].