(upbeat music)
So after the summer break,
or holiday, we’re back at it.
Very excited to be here.
It’s weird ’cause I read two
weeks worth of news instead of one.
Okay, there’s also so many
else you have to do with.
The last couple of episodes I have
because I bought a second
desk and I rearranged my room.
And somehow by rearranging
my room, I created a small echo.
So the last couple of episodes
haven’t sounded as good to me.
I’m assuming people noticed
or didn’t care or anything,
but I have not been
satisfied with the quality.
So I do plan to move
stuff around my room again.
And I’ve also bought a new microphone.
It’s not the microphones problem.
I don’t wanna disparage this
microphone that I actually love very much.
The first solution though,
the easiest solution
is to lean in closer to the microphone
and speak a little more quietly.
Therefore, reducing the ability
of the sound to echo off the room.
So if it sounds like
trying to be sexy, I am.
Because I’m always trying to be sexy
’cause we’re all always trying to be sexy.
That’s just something to
keep in mind is sexy to sell.
So the video will suffer because I will
be less animated, but the audio podcast,
this is going to be a new, sensual
experience for an engineer’s Japan.
And then when I get my new
mic, I’m gonna test that out.
It’s gonna be very exciting because
obviously I’m doing podcasting.
I like all this stuff.
I like the tech stuff.
I like to play with the things.
But what I’m really looking forward to
is just sitting really far back from the
microphone and screaming my head off
instead of whispering like
I’m trying to seduce your ears.
Which I am.
I’m trying to seduce your ears.
I just want you to know that.
I have gone a little quieter
than I intended, but once
you get started on this
path, it’s a slippery slope.
Like I can’t go deeper.
I don’t have a really deep voice,
but I do speak softly quite well.
So one of my voice gets soft like this.
I just wanted to know, it’s
like a fondue for your ears.
A sensual soaking the
inner ear in melted chocolate.
Fucking discord.
Of course, I didn’t turn it off.
All right, let me do that.
Okay, there we go.
Discord has been muted.
No one can make fun of me for that again.
So let’s get started.
I can’t whisper.
I want to speak low, but then as soon as
I start going low, I go into like too much.
And I start whispering.
I should just start the show.
I really should just start the show.
But I kind of don’t want to start the show.
When I take breaks,
I actually takes me a
weirdly long amount of
time to get back into it.
And now that I’ve discovered that I
have sort of a problem with my audio setup,
that I need to fix, I’m
now kind of nervous
about recording because
I wanted to sound good.
This is essentially, I
know I put it on YouTube,
but it’s essentially an audio
podcast and the audio podcast.
More than anything else,
I wanted to sound good.
So you can see every time I like slow down,
I start speaking more
softly, more wispy and it just,
it gets, again, that
fondue for your, your holes.
Okay, we’re gonna get
started with the news.
So let me do a transition sound and then
we’ll get started with our first story.
Welcome to NPR and NJ and NJ NPR.
I’ve completely, I should
put some candles on, turn all
the lights out, close the
blinds, put on some candles.
Let me whisper the news.
Forget the news.
It’s just you and me talk.
It’s just you and me.
I’ll just whisper in your ear
things that maybe you need
to hear like, I’m probably
the same age as your dad.
And I’m proud of you.
I, I like who you’ve become as a person.
I support you and your efforts
and I think the things you
do to try to make yourself in
the world around you better.
I think those are valuable.
Now let’s get to some weird Japanese news.
(phone ringing)
All right, I’m gonna try
to not whisper that much.
It is going to be hard
because I actually never sit
at the microphone.
The pop filter is right in
my face and the
microphone, I’ve angled it up.
I’ve tried to do everything
I can to avoid buying a new
microphone and I just like, fuck it, I’ll
go buy the stupidly expensive microphone
that’s supposed to take
care of that goes for you.
Now that I’ve bought
it, I have massive buyers
regret, even though I
haven’t even received it yet
because I feel like I could just
do some bad, I have whatever.
We’re not gonna talk about it anymore.
A 31 year old man calls the police.
And he says, “I figure it’s gone.”
Not my physical figure,
like honestly my figure
left like 20 years ago,
but my figure is gone.
What he means is his,
his, a toy, a figurine.
You’ll notice if you’re watching the video.
I suppose I shouldn’t like address
stuff that you can see in the video.
Oh, look, anyways.
On the shelf next to
me, I do have a tatikoma.
Tatikoma has a robot from
the Ghost and the Shell series.
It’s one of my favorite characters.
And so I have a figurine.
I don’t have a lot of figurines.
I don’t collect a lot, but I understand
it has great value to other people.
It’s not the sort of thing
that is valuable to me.
If someone took the
time to steal my tatikoma,
I probably would not call
the police, if I’m being honest.
Turns out, a former coworker and living
girlfriend was the one who took his figure.
She said she stole and
sold the figure from money,
which shows that she didn’t
really understand what she’s seeing.
One of the things I think is
important if you’re gonna be
a thief is that you understand the
value of the thing that you’re stealing.
I had this conversation, many episodes ago,
where I was talking
about like people stealing
Pokémon cards where you would
need to know which cards are valuable.
So it’s like the unarmed thief thing.
And this was I was doing an equivalency
of people who steal Pokémon cards.
This is the next version of art theft
because you need to have
a deep understanding of it
to know its value, to know
that it’s worth stealing.
And if you do that, well, then
you’re in really good shape.
But if you don’t, you’re
gonna end up like this girl
who stole a sorta from
Kingdom Hearts, the video game.
I’ve never played it, so
it’s a little obscure for me.
stole a sorta figure and was
managed to get 4,000 yen for it.
So I don’t consider 4,000
yen worth going to prison over.
I should probably won’t go to prison.
And being his girlfriend, do you
think he’s gonna forgive or let it go?
This is something that’s
come up multiple times
where a nerd has married
or engaged in a relationship
with a non-nerd who doesn’t respect how
much they value the stuff that they have.
Like they’re collectibles and things.
So they don’t understand
what they’re doing.
There is a couple of
instances I’ve read online
of, you know, a woman
is angry at her husband.
She goes in and smashes the
case where all his figures are.
And I don’t think in those
cases they actually understand
what they’re doing because
to them it’s a stupid toy.
They’re angry at their husband
still plays with stupid toys.
So they smash the stupid toys.
And you’ve read stories on
the Internet where it’s like,
if you want to date me
you have to stop playing
video games and stuff,
which is pretty unreasonable
if you really think about
it because you’re saying
you have something you love if you love
me then you will stop loving that thing.
So I just found this interesting
that this woman stole something.
I don’t think she understands
because she stole it.
And again, you have to kind of say
your motive, or the reason for stealing.
It’s part of the police report.
And she said for
basically living expenses or
entertainers basically
just spending money.
But 4,000 yen, again, the really
bad math is like 40 to 50 bucks.
You’re not going to have that
much fun on 50 bucks anymore.
You’re not going to be
going out and doing it.
You’re gonna get a really nice dinner
for 50 bucks somewhere in Japan.
But even then you’re not
talking about like high class stuff.
You’re just getting like a
really good mid-range meal.
So I think a couple of
mistakes have been made.
She wants you to have
to study what she’s stealing
before she steals it to, don’t
steal your boyfriend and stuff.
That’s not cool.
The Deputy Mayor of Tokyo.
This leads to an
interesting set of problems
when communicating to your
team at work on messaging apps.
So my work co-workers and I use Slack.
I think a lot of companies do.
Microsoft Teams is the one
that’s actually using this story.
There is a feeling that what you’re
saying in there is sort of private.
And that’s not true.
Now I’ve made the mistake
more than once of clicking
on the name of the
person I was thinking about
to talk about that
person to someone else.
So because I was thinking of person A,
and I wanted to talk to
person B about person A.
What I did was I clicked person A’s name
and started typing and they saw
it and it’s embarrassing and stuff.
But it’s also whatever.
You know what I think.
I’m not particularly shy about
sharing my opinion in real life anyways.
So you probably knew if we’re being really
honest, but that’s a different issue.
So this sense of privacy
comes with a problem in that
you feel that you can say
whatever you want on this platform
because it’s not public, but
you’re saying it to a group of people.
Now, do you have the full loyalty and
understanding of the people you’re speaking to?
I have now realized that there are
things you should not just write down.
This is very much related to the Ninja
News Japan Advice for Criminal Section,
which is now something
I should actually title.
Come up with a secondary theme song,
Ninja News Japan Advice for Criminals.
It’s not criminals, but you
don’t want to pay portrayal.
You don’t want to say negative
things about people and write it down.
You want that to be ethereal.
You want that to be in the atmosphere.
So you’ve said it, but then no
one can prove that you said it.
That’s the important part.
‘Cause what could happen in what
happened to the Deputy Mayor of Tokyo?
Is he decided it would
be perfectly acceptable
to call someone who works
for a different group, a pig.
He did a play on words on their last name.
So he called an assembly
member, a pig multiple times.
A copy of the team’s chest, with
someone screenshotted that chat,
printed it out and sent
it to the home of the
assembly workers, assembly
members, co-worker.
So what happened is someone who
didn’t like the Deputy Mayor of Tokyo.
And this is again, the first issue
is, if you’re gonna say shitty things,
you have to make sure
everyone agrees with you before
you say it, finding out
afterwards is a problem.
So this is like any sort of racist person.
You really need to test the
waters and find out if the person
you’re speaking to is also
racist before you say racist stuff.
If you wanna do it with
sexism, anything like that,
any sort of negative aspect
that you wanna present
into the world, you have to make sure
that the people you’re speaking to agree.
And then even then,
they might be putting up
a face that they agree
so they can catch you.
So you gotta be really careful,
going back to my original point.
Don’t write anything down.
So someone screenshotted,
printed out, and mailed it to snail mail.
The copy of this chat to the
Assembly Member’s coworker,
a press conference was held by the victim
and said, you know, be really good idea.
If we looked at all the
Deputy Mayor’s postings.
So basically saying, like, if let’s
see what kind of shit this guy has said
about how many people there
are in the world and how awful he is,
and let’s just get that
out in the open right now.
So I think honestly, it’s kinda awesome.
The Deputy Mayor offered to apologize
and then offered to make a face-to-face
apology in person to the offended party.
The offended party declined, saying
it’s because of a scheduling issue,
but I am betting it
had a lot more to do
with, I don’t want to
stand in front of a man
who has called me a pig
and accept his apology
because the problem
with apologies primarily
is there is an expectation that you
accept them, even if you don’t want to.
And I bet she doesn’t
want to because the guy
called her a pig but I bet
it’s because he is a pig.
So this did not end there.
He called the Assembly
Group, a group of idiots.
He also posted her home
address in the team’s chat.
That to me, he’s now
doxing her to a group so they
could maybe take initiative
and go ahead and do stuff.
That is problematic,
’cause that is a step above.
Calling someone a pig is bad.
I’ve called people names.
I’m sure people have called me names.
If I found out someone called me a name,
I don’t think I would actually
end up taking it that personally.
We all get angry, we all get annoyed,
we all want to throw some stuff out there.
I think that’s healthy to a degree.
You gotta be careful, of course.
I don’t ever actually want to offend
someone, but bad moods, whatever.
Taking someone’s home address and posting
it to a group of people is a step above.
That’s not you’re in a bad mood.
That is you are trying
to actually put someone
in a situation where they
could get hurt, the deputy mayor
of Tokyo had to resign,
which is completely appropriate.
I actually think they could
have taken a little further.
This border’s on the criminal,
as far as I’m concerned.
(upbeat music)
So I’ve been involved in teaching
for most of my adult career.
I have always wanted to
find ways to engage students.
Teams, young teens, pre-teens.
They’re sort of the
most difficult to engage.
Little kids are great,
you just sing a song.
They’re happy.
You have adults.
They’re voluntarily, so
the feeling is different.
So I find adults are the easiest
and little little kids are the easiest.
That in between group there,
that toughest ones to deal with.
So finding ways to engage
with them is important.
And I tried and failed,
and I tried and succeeded.
But one of the real
ways to get young people
to engage with stuff is to bring them
sort of real life into the classroom.
They like that because it
helps them feel like adults.
So they were going to
talk in this lady’s class
about drugs and where drugs
come from, like illegal drugs.
So she thought, “Ah, you know, hi, from
my break, “I’m going to go to Columbia.
“What I’ll do is bring
back some Coca leaves.”
Coca is quite famously the plant
where the drug cocaine is refined from.
There’s already a first problem.
She’s bringing back leaves from a plant
into a country which I’m
pretty sure everyone knows
you’re not supposed to
bring plants across borders.
Like, I know it’s primarily because
of invasive species and stuff.
But like, even like lettuce,
it carry bugs and stuff.
You’re not supposed to bring stuff
like vegetables and stuff
personally across borders.
So I was like, as soon as they said,
she brought Coca leaves to Japan.
I wasn’t thinking,
“Oh, she’s going to go
back “and break bad
and start making cocaine.”
Which she wasn’t.
But I was like, she must
know that this is not okay.
Just on a like, don’t bring
plants into countries, kind of issue.
She brought the Coca leaves from
a trip to Columbia, back to Japan.
She brought them into the classroom and she
was doing a lesson about drug precursors.
So essentially where drugs come from.
And then she did a how-to
on how to refine the leaf
into the actual cocaine
and got like a 99% purity
and then had everyone
take a bolt off the ground
and just that class rocked
for the rest of the day
for about 20 minutes and
then they all came down.
No, that isn’t what happened.
She actually did though.
She was trying to engage the students.
So I weirdly appreciate
what she was trying to do.
The problem is she did it.
So she was like,
“Hey, I’m going to bring
these leaves “from
another country to Japan.”
Of course, turns out the Coca leaf
is illegal to possess an
illegal to import into Japan.
So she’s in trouble.
She claims she didn’t know.
Now most of the time
on the engineer’s Japan,
a criminal will do
something and then claim
they don’t remember or
they don’t know and I will go.
You know, that’s a good tactic to try to
delay the police but you’re guilty clearly.
I think this lady may have actually
been ignorant of what she was doing.
She’s like, “Oh, I managed
to get some of these leaves
“that are freely available
in Colombia apparently.”
I thought this would also be a controlled
substance technically in Colombia.
I got them in my bag.
No one found them brought them to Japan.
Nothing happened so
clearly it must be okay.
I bet if they asked her to
surrender them specifically
at the border, she
probably just would have.
She wanted to engage the students.
So advice to teachers.
They introduced Japan as all about
making everyone better and everything.
Advice to teachers don’t
bring products that can
be refined into illegal
drugs into your classroom.
Criminals always want to break into houses.
That’s where stuff is and criminals
want stuff more than anything.
They would rather
actually have liquid funds.
They would actually have
money but money is also
in Japan and still quite
often stored in the house.
Breaking into houses is hard though.
So one of the ways
you could do it is to trick
the person into letting
you into the house.
And this was interesting
because I had not thought
of this as a feasible
way to get into a house.
So if someone came up to
my door, knocked on the door
and said, “Hey, I’m trying to be a
chest “of an indigenous Japan fame.”
A snake has escaped.
Can I stay in your house for a bit?
I would be like, I don’t see a snake.
Why don’t you just run away?
I mean, if there’s no snake visible here
and it’s a big snake big enough to
scare you, I don’t think it’s a problem.
I think if you just keep moving, you
will be safe and fine from the snake.
I would not let them in my house.
Other people are kinder than I am.
I’m not even gonna say gullible.
I’m just gonna say
straight up kinder than me.
So what happens there is
they let you into the house.
Now somehow this guy found 3.7 million yen
in his ladies house stole
it and then left the house.
The police picked about based on the fact
that his car is being seen on security
footage, sitting outside the house.
So they figured out who he is.
This was four months ago.
They arrested me and said, “I can’t remember
anything that happened four months ago.”
Just great.
So they were like, “Where
were you four months ago?”
He’s like, “I don’t know.”
This is a real experience I had.
So I was as a part of my company
sued by a former employee.
And the court process, I believe it was
two years before I actually was in court.
And the man, the defending attorney,
no, no, no, we were the defendant.
So the prosecuting attorney
asked me very specific questions
about things I said on that day that I was
actually working with this other person.
I have to keep the details a little vague,
but that’s actually not
relevant to the story.
So he asked, “Did you
say this specific thing?”
And I legitimately remembered, because this
was a pretty big event in my work life,
I did actually remember, but it
seemed very justified for me to say,
I don’t remember exactly what I said two
years ago, because I think it’s unreasonable
to expect people to remember
what they were doing two years ago.
So I was half lying,
half telling the truth.
“Did I just purgery?”
I just think I just purgured myself.
I had a recollection of the
sentiment of what I said.
I did not remember that.
So I guess we’re talking about laws.
Legally, I did not lie.
Spirit of the law, I
fudged the truth a bit,
because I did remember
the spirit of what I said.
I remembered a vague sense of what I said.
I remembered the
approximation of what I said.
Did I remember the exact
sense the specific words?
No, I didn’t.
Since he asked me if I
said something specific,
a negative answer
to that was not a lie.
So I did not purgure myself.
Excellent.
This means Japan, you
don’t swear on a Bible.
‘Cause I watched a lot of court stuff.
Used to watch a law and order and stuff.
And they go to court
and you swear on a Bible.
And I’m not religious, so that
always seemed weird to me.
But then I know I’m in a different country.
And you don’t swear on a Bible,
they just go like, hey, tell
the truth and you go, yep.
Swearing doesn’t mean anything.
Anyways, this guy, I actually think it
was the result isn’t that interesting.
It was the fact that he used
this very, to me, not very
convincing story to actually
get into someone’s house.
But he did it successfully.
And it seems like he did it multiple times.
And then also there’s this,
keeping 3.7 million yen in your house.
I currently have 10,000 yen, it’s
like a hundred bucks in my wallet.
That is all the money I keep in the house
because I generally use digital payments,
which means the best you
could do is steal my phone
and you need my fingerprint
to access anything on my phone.
So your snake story won’t work and I
don’t have any money for you to steal.
So don’t target me.
Don’t target anyone, stop stealing stuff.
So there’s a lot of games
I’ve played in my youth.
Here’s my moment to
try to appeal to the youth
and talk about games
that they’re clearly playing
’cause they’re in the news,
games I’ve never played.
Honestly, do not want to experience.
So there were three friends.
They’re out for an evening of cocktails
over, I assume the summer break.
I actually didn’t write
down the exact dates.
And they’d been imbibing,
so they were loose, let’s say.
What happened was they started a
game and in front of a crowd of people,
the two friends started taking turns
punching the one friend in the stomach.
This led to a point where the one friend
collapsed unconscious and
was then taken to hospital.
The two friends were arrested.
When the friend regained
consciousness, he
said, oh no, no, no, they
weren’t assaulting me.
We were playing a game of gut punches.
This is a game.
I practice judo.
If you’ve listened to an engineer’s
Japan for any amount of time,
you know that I spend
significant portion of my
life doing very awful
things to my body for fun.
This is not something
I’m a professional at.
It’s a hobby.
It’s a very important part of my life.
But, and it causes me
immense amount of pain.
So I did it last night, walk up this
morning, took a 10 minute ice bath.
I know ice bath has become kind of a trend
for, you know, douchebag, sports bros.
But, honestly, if you are
feeling pain all over your body,
and ice bath is a
pretty, pretty nice thing.
So if you do any sort of significant sports
that cause you pain, I’m not
gonna get into the ice bath.
You should look it up and
probably take it seriously.
You don’t need to do what they do,
like all the extreme stuff,
like 30% ice, 60% water,
and you sit in there for
two minutes and almost die.
I put cold water in a
bathtub and then throw in
some ice that melts
probably before I even get in.
And it’s cold, it’s not freezing.
Again, cause I’m not working at
a level where I would need that.
But the relief it has brought
to me has been significant.
I have some friends who’ve tried it.
They all have a very positive things.
I’m not gonna go ice bath bro on you.
Let’s start talking about that.
But, what I’m saying is I’ve done a lot
of damage to my body on purpose for fun.
I would never consider
playing a game of gut punches.
Back in 2015, there was
a jewelry heist in Japan.
Three men, I actually talked
about this not too long ago
because one of the men at the
time of the crime was underage,
but now that they’ve actually found them
and are prosecuting them, he is an adult.
I was very interested if
he’s being tried as an adult.
This may never come to pass.
They were talking about
extraditing them from
the UK where they live
to Japan to face trial.
Normally in this situation,
they just have the country
they’re in, prosecute on
the other countries that have.
But they want to extradite them to Japan.
They’re only dealing with,
there’s three people involved.
They’re only doing one at a time.
They are currently the UK
saying they will not extradite
the suspect to Japan because
of Japan’s human rights issues.
So people who are held in Japan
by the police, they get abused.
They’ve had multiple deaths in
Japanese holding cells for immigrants.
So people who are like their
visas of run out or their illegal
immigrants and stuff, they
get thrown in these holding cells.
They don’t get fed properly
or taken care of properly.
They’re talking about
human rights violations now.
The concern is that the
suspect may be in the hospital
the suspect may be made
to confess under duress.
And then Japan argues
back that the police interviews
are all recorded except for the
ones where the recording doesn’t work
and the person accidentally punches
himself to death, which has happened.
So I think people have a fairly positive
image of Japan as a society, as I do.
The police though is really mixed bag.
Now I know some cops.
The cops I know I like to believe.
They’re good and kind people and
would never actually do any of this stuff.
But the reality is there are regular
stories of people being held for no reason.
There’s a guy who was held for 40 days.
So he lost his job.
He lost most of his friends
on a false accusation.
And the police basically are like,
“Whoops, sorry, you can go now.”
Problem is his whole life is in shambles.
And in Japan, you can sue,
but what you get for suing them.
It’s not like enough to fix your life.
So in America, being
a very litigious country,
you get massive payouts
if the police wrong you.
That doesn’t happen in Japan.
So you get a couple thousand dollars,
but a couple thousand dollars
isn’t gonna get me my job back.
It’s not gonna fix my life.
So that’s problematic.
The other two are still waiting
in decision about extradition.
Japan, I didn’t know this.
Japan only has extradition treaties
with the US and South Korea.
So basically, if you
commit a crime in Japan
and you can get to any country
other than the US and South Korea,
it’s very likely they will not send
you back to Japan to face charges.
So my immediate thought is like,
okay, what country would I go to
that would be least likely
to send me back to Japan?
Actually better would be China.
If I committed a crime in Japan,
I can’t be giving advice like this
to Japanese criminals all the time.
But it is just the
way my brain works is
like, present a problem,
give me information,
and I start to go like, well,
what is the best solution to that?
I’ve committed a crime in Japan,
which country is least likely
to send me back to Japan?
I would at first think
it’s trying to because
they have such a
contentious relationship,
but then they might
send you back just ’cause
they don’t want you
who has a problem there.
And China is not really
big on human rights either.
So they’ll be like, ha
ha, go back and suffer.
It’s actually China might
not be the best choice.
I might have to do a survey
somewhere and see what everyone thinks.
If you commit a crime
in Japan and you’re not
going to the US, you’re
not going to South Korea,
where would you go in the hopes that you’re
least likely to be sent back to Japan?
The human’s right
issue actually brings it up.
So you need actually
a very liberal country.
So now I’m thinking my
home country of Canada,
they would not send
you back if there was
any possibility of a
human rights violation.
So I think doing years and years and years
in an introduced Japan has
led me to the conclusion that
I should start planning my big crime and
go back to Canada and not get extradited.
Some plans on the horizon I see.
So there’s a South
Korean DJ called DJ Soda.
She played a music festival in Japan.
Now DJ Soda at the end of her
sets goes down into the audience
and says hello to people
and talks to people.
And the problem is in Japan, she
was groped by both men and women.
Jaxi said the woman grabbed
her breasts the hardest
and was like most sort
of invasive with the groping
where the men like grabbed
her elbows and grabbed
her shoulders and stuff,
but they were touching her.
Now I don’t want to victim blame,
but I do want to give all the information.
So this was, I personally,
if I was that big personality,
probably would not go down
into the audience without security.
I absolutely wouldn’t do it
if I was an attractive woman.
And I’m not talking about the Japanese
audience, I’m talking about any audience.
The Internet went really weird on this one.
So you have the Japanese
Internet that’s trying to defend itself,
the Japanese Internet that’s trying to
apologize or be sympathetic to the situation.
You have the South Korean
Internet that is accusatory of Japan.
You have the South Korean Internet that
is judgmental of the way DJ Sota dresses
’cause she basically wears
short shorts on a bikini top.
And she’s a very sexual person,
but again, being a sexual person
doesn’t make it okay to
sexually assault someone.
They also had a porn star dancing on stage.
So the problem I see is
that this was a sexually
charged atmosphere and then
she went down into a crowd.
Now, I would actually
say that’s a bad idea.
Not, again, I don’t think it’s okay.
I think those people should get in trouble,
but I also think your
self-preservation needs to kick in.
This is, we got porn stars up
in bikinis dancing on the stage.
We, the audience is mostly
men and they’re mostly drunk.
I wouldn’t go down there.
As now, as a male, I still
would not go down there
because I’d be like, I don’t
believe it would be safe
to go down into a crowd of drunk people
if I have just like hyped up the crowd.
But again, I still don’t
think this is okay.
It leads me in a tough position because it
will sound like any sort of excuse I make.
We is victim blaming,
which I don’t think that’s fair.
She should not have been touched.
The audience should have
kept their hands to themselves.
Japan, having done as many stories
as I have on creepy people in Japan,
I do have an image of Japanese
men being kind of creepy.
So that’s problematic as well.
So is that true or is
that a bias I’ve created?
Like a confirmation bias
because I seek out those stories
for an engineer’s Japan
because they’re usually
interesting and weird
and funny and gross.
And that suits the
platform I’ve created here
where we’re talking about
interesting, weird, gross stories.
The interesting thing is this
morning, a news report on Japan today.
So I’m gonna read this
because I just got it this morning.
220 year old men surrendered to police
Monday and connection with the incident
where popular South Korean artist DJ
Sorda was allegedly groped by attendees
at a recent music event in Japan,
according to investigative sources.
So basically the police are like,
oh, the creators of the music festival,
we want to press
charges, civil and criminal
because we want to promote
the safety of our artists
who are the people who come to
this festival, we want them to feel safe.
So we’re actually pressing charges.
These two guys turned themselves in.
And they said, again, not
an excuse, but they said
they were drunk and this
really was gross to me.
They said we touched
her in a lighthearted way.
So I think what they’re trying to
say is we didn’t intend to grow per,
but you were touching
someone without permission.
So I mean, it’s the same whether
your intent was to be gross or not.
And this is the problem is something
like this depends on how it’s received.
You touch someone and
they like it, not a problem.
You touch someone and they don’t like it.
That’s sexual assault.
They’re really, it’s really
the person who’s on the
receiving end gets to
decide if this is okay or not.
And she’s decided it’s not okay.
I did read a lot about, again, the different
internets trying to lay blame elsewhere.
I don’t have an answer.
I, yeah, I think security should
have been down there, maybe.
I don’t think.
Do you remember Taylor Swift?
Went on to, she was receiving an award
and then Kanye West charges the stage
and grabs the microphone and
says like, I’m going to let you finish.
And then my only thought in
that was where was security.
Like security didn’t, you
have a guy, I know he’s famous.
He just walks on the stage
and just grabs the microphone
out of her hands just to
like take over that show.
Security should have like
pulled him off the stage.
Like just picked him up and walked him off.
And they’re probably thinking
like, oh, he’s rich and famous.
So we shouldn’t do that.
He’s an artist here tonight.
So we shouldn’t do that.
But man, I don’t think anyone
should be rushing up on anybody.
So I think security failed here.
Just like I feel like
they failed back then.
I think that might be where in my
mind, most of the blame should be.
So I think DJ Sona is absolutely
justified in being offended.
I think the fans turning themselves in was
actually probably the right thing to do.
The female fan who
she was literally the most
blame was laid on
did not turn herself in.
I bet she didn’t think
she did anything wrong
because it was a woman
touching the other woman.
We got a lot of cultural
issues all wrapped up
in that that we don’t
have time to go into today.
Because I got a couple more stories to do.
But it is interesting.
I’m interested to see where this ends up.
Because does DJ Sona go forward
with these guys getting arrested?
What happens to them and what comes
up after this would be very interesting.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is something I
didn’t know about at all.
And I’m super excited about it.
And I kind of want to try it.
And I know I end up spending
way more money than I should.
But there are online UFO catchers.
UFO catchers in Japan
is what I think they would
call crane games or claw
games in North America.
I haven’t been in North America long
enough to know what they’re called anymore.
But in Japan, it’s that big claw
comes down and you grab something.
And then, of course, it lets go halfway up.
And you go, oh, I almost got it.
You can do that online
with your smartphone.
This, I think, came about
primarily because of COVID,
because people couldn’t
go to our kids anymore.
They set up a warehouse
with these hundreds of
UFO catcher machines
and then cameras on them
so that you can control
it from your smartphones.
You pay money through the phone
and then you get a play and it picks it up.
And if you win, it picks
up the item and it drops it
and you actually win,
they’ll mail it to your house.
I don’t know why that got me going.
I assume he has the thing.
When I came to Japan, I
used to do UFO catchers.
I used to be really good at it.
And then the UFO catcher machines seem to
get like they paid out less or more scammy.
They clearly had
programmed the machines not
to give you stuff until it got
a certain amount of money.
More so than when I came.
So my skills didn’t go down.
The quality of the grab went down.
So I don’t play them anymore because
now I feel like they’re just rip off.
Whereas before I felt
like I had an actual chance.
So I probably actually
gave them more money
before what I would win
stuff every now and then.
Whereas now I don’t win anything.
So I don’t give them anything.
So imagine a warehouse with 500
machines and over 1,500 different prizes.
It’s mostly anime stuff.
So if you’re a nerd,
this is like up your alley.
I, with my touchy coma on
myself, 100% am down for this.
DMM.com, which is a big
website in Japan that does live
streaming and stuff,
they will move the prize
to make it easier
after multiple attempts.
They actually some places do this.
So like I try to grab
this big anime sexy girl.
And I drop it like five times.
You can call this staff and go,
can you please position it better?
And they want to move it closer to
the whole or closer to or like on its side.
So it’s a little easier to pick up.
It’ll give you a fair chance.
And after you spend so much
money, you’ve kind of paid for the thing.
So it’s a fair thing to do.
So dMM.com does that.
Taito and Sega also
have these online services.
I didn’t know about any of this.
Actually, that’d be a cool
thing to actually live stream
on Twitch is set a certain
amount of money and see
how much I can win, which
would probably be zero.
Because again, I’m assuming
now I’m even like my skills
that I would have had
before they’ve gone down.
And then doing it via the Internet.
I bet that’s actually really hard.
But I’m super interested in this.
They make 20 to 30
billion yen a year on this.
This whole industry I didn’t
even know about, which I think
that to me is the most interesting
aspect of this whole thing.
OK, creepy last story, creepy last story.
This happened to me two days ago.
And so I was shocked.
I was actually on TikTok.
But it turns out on
YouTube, there was a sudden
influx of older whole
advertising on YouTube in TikTok.
And an older whole is a
machine, a suction-based machine
with vibrating capabilities
for a male individual.
So it is a machine designed
for a man to take care of himself.
Now, the one I saw, I actually
tried to send it to my friends
because it was so disturbing
and gross when I saw it,
that I wanted everyone
I knew to see it as well.
So we could talk about it.
But what it was, it was one
that was stuck on a window.
No.
If I’m going to do sort
of my private activities,
I’m not going to do
it on an open window.
But I’m betting the suction cup
actually works really well on glass.
So maybe that wasn’t on purpose, maybe not.
Then they just turn on
some of the functions.
There’s no voiceover, no sound.
It’s just this tube stuck to a window.
And it has a touch panel at the top.
And they touch it.
And you can see it go, boom, boom, boom,
where it starts to vibrate and whatnot.
And then they take a thing.
It’s not a male PPE.
They take a long stick with ridges on it.
And they start putting it in there.
Then they did an internal
view of what it looks like
on the inside and how
it’s vibrating and stuff.
And then they did some
practical special effects.
I think it might be the best way to say it.
And then the video was over.
Because it is just like a 10, 15 second ad.
I know this is not what YouTube wants to
have advertised on its Japanese website.
I know it’s not what Japanese TikTok
wants advertised on their website.
So a lot of people freaked out on Twitter.
I guess I should start
calling it X properly.
As in why am I seeing these things?
They’re all gone now, but everyone
wants to know what happened.
I’m betting YouTube and TikTok
will not let us know what happened.
My guess, my honest to
goodness guess, is that this is
part of the influence of
AI in the algorithm creation.
So AI has been like, we have men like me,
who really enjoy looking at
gross weird stuff on the Internet.
Let’s show them some gross
weird stuff in the advertising.
And maybe they’ll be more likely to buy it.
Now that’s not true, but I was absolutely
willing to share it with my friends.
I wasn’t able to share it,
which I found interesting.
So I click the share button to
get the link to send to the Discord.
So my friends could be grossed out with me.
But that didn’t work.
So I’m actually thinking
the AI kind of tripped up
and said like, there is no actual physical
thing that is disgusting in this video.
Because there’s no body
member that you see,
like you don’t even see like a human
hand, you see an object and that object
goes into another object that gesture
would be very sexualized to a human being.
But to an AI, they’re
not seeing any body parts.
They’re not seeing any,
they haven’t been programmed
to understand what
aspect of this is sexual.
So to them, it’s probably not sexual.
I think this is one
of the first failures
I’ve seen at AI trying
to moderate a system,
letting the exact stuff it’s
supposed to filter out, go through.
And that is, I guess, our future.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
[Music]
(upbeat music).