(upbeat music)
With the declining, man, right off,
that’s, I did a good first start and then
messed up to say, okay, let’s try again.
With the decolon, fuck!
Declining, declining, declining.
I need to do some mouth warmups.
Declining.
With the declining population in Japan,
recruiting for pretty
much anything is difficult.
So companies are
having difficulty recruiting.
Things like the military,
let’s say, there are less
people to recruit from,
so numbers are going down.
And the military, honestly,
for a lot of people, not the
most attractive option, it’s
self-defense force in Japan,
has decided to try to increase recruitment
by relaxing some of the standards.
And this is one of the slippery slopes,
because when you get so
desperate to need people
and you start accepting
people with hippie haircuts,
which is like, mm, there
are other other way.
So they’ve decided to
relax hairstyle regulations.
So I guess so you can
look good on the battlefield.
So as I run across the battlefield,
like I do in COD, guns aiming at nothing,
because I’m just shooting
randomly in the air,
you can see my golden
locks fly out behind me.
They’re trying to attract younger people.
And what they’ve decided is that
women don’t have to have short hairs.
So they had to have
very, very short haircuts,
like still just like above
the ear kind of haircuts.
Men don’t need to have buzz cuts anymore.
So women, the hair must be tied back, and
it cannot obstruct the wearing of a helmet,
and it cannot touch your shoulders.
So it’s not long hair, but it is longer.
And then men, they said, “There
is an athletic standard for men.
” And the thing is, I don’t know what the
athletic standard is when it comes to hair.
I assume by that they actually
just mean short-ish all around.
The thing is, an athletic
haircut where I come
from in Canada, would
be the hockey mullet.
So short in the front and long in the back,
that would be very much what I would
associate with a certain kind of athlete.
And I don’t think that is
what the Japanese military
is really going for.
They have tried anime in the past,
but we’re not going to see any anime
wife who’s on the battlefield, because
you are not allowed to die your hair.
So that’s actually,
again, the sensible rule,
because remember, all those
stories from the last couple of years
about high schools and whatnot,
saying you had to have black hair.
The rule wasn’t that you
shouldn’t die your hair.
The rule was that you
had to have black hair
with the base assumption
that every Japanese kid
is born with black hair, and
then these mixed kids come in.
And they have dark brown, light brown hair,
and they were being
forced to die their hair black,
because the rule
wasn’t, don’t die your hair.
The rule was, you have to have black hair.
They’re being more sensible.
They’re saying don’t die your hair.
So if you have naturally brown hair,
the military is more than
happy to welcome you,
which is a step forward,
I think that’s pretty nice.
You can only die gray hair,
which I thought was interesting.
So they’re saying as men, women get older,
they get gray hair, you’re allowed
to cover that up, if you want.
Otherwise you have
to have natural hair.
So we’re not going to
see any bright pink hair,
main character,
syndrome stuff on the
battlefield, at least with
the SDF any time soon.
They have also tried anime in the past,
which takes us deftly into our next story.
There is a, the reformed church,
which is also trying to recruit people,
and they’re doing
something very interesting,
which we’re going to take
a moment and listen to.
They’re trying to teach Calvinism.
They decided to go on the internet
and say the best way to teach Calvinism.
I honestly did not take the time
to look up Calvinism.
Calvinism, I do have a coworker
who I’m sure would be more
than happy to tell me about it,
but I’m sure they also would not have
connected Calvinism to anime ASMR.
So they are reciting psalms,
or if you read it like I do psalms
with sort of a weird
Japanese character voice,
sort of whispering in
your ear at the same time.
So luckily for you, I
have a little bit of that.
What are we looking at?
We are looking at…
(speaking in foreign language)
Okay, the Japanese is too
hard for me to understand,
but I think she’s reading
Psalm 103, colon two.
And I mean, we could just
do it together for a while.
If I could read the Japanese fast
enough, I can sort of read the Japanese,
but no, I’m gonna be able to
keep up with a native speaker.
So I don’t know, when
you would listen to this,
I guess this is you turn this on,
you go to bed and you get
that tingly failing in your ear.
And then, join the church.
All right, there are three and
a half minutes more of that.
We don’t need to listen to anymore.
Just another weird thing, combination,
Japan, anime, recruitment, to try to get
those nerds, I guess, to come to church.
The military, actually, it
was two years ago, I believe,
actually, it was using
anime posters to try to
attract a certain segment
to join the SDF as well.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
I mean, most of the military now,
at this point, is probably computers.
It’s drones, it’s computers,
it’s logistics and stuff.
You need people who are
more than happy to sit in a chair,
10 to 12 hours a day and get
paid to mess around on a computer.
This is the right demographic for it.
And then they get to call themselves
soldiers and pretend they’re in an anime
where they’re like fighting cyber stuff,
which they might actually be, I don’t know.
I mean, that actually may
work out for you in the future.
The host club of crackdowns
continue, which is good,
’cause I was, everything I’ve heard about
host clubs is make me like, just wonder.
I just wonder, every time the
story comes up, I just wonder.
Is it that good?
Like, is it the men sort of
fawning over you, that good?
I’ll fawn over you for a much lower price.
Let’s put it that way.
You throw 20 bucks my way.
I will fawn for a little bit.
Anyways, there’s a little bit of fallout.
So again, these are because
this is a recent development.
This means these are
going to be the first time
charges are put towards
host clubs in this way.
So one club was suspended
for charging huge fees.
That’s kind of like a
constant that everyone
knows is going on, but
was never punished before.
I guess it was one of
those things where like,
the police are like, you
know where you’re going.
You know they use manipulation tactics.
You know they’re going
to try to jack up the price.
You’re in for it.
That’s up to you.
But now they’re like, no,
it’s gotten too far because
once you’re in so much
debt, they try to force you
into the sex trade of some
sort to pay off your debt.
And that’s maybe going too
far for the police in Japan.
I guess massive debt wasn’t
enough, all that it should have been.
So one was suspended
for charging huge fees.
And a second was suspended
for admitting a minor.
These were all, all the charges are
going to be related to inflated debt.
One club apparently stopped a
woman from leaving until she drank more.
So the way they actually
create the inflated price
that you owe is to get you super drunk.
And then by like, hey, let’s buy a bottle.
That bottle, you know, a 2000
bottle yen bottle of champagne.
Let’s charge them a million yen for it.
They get you drunk and they
don’t ever put out the prices.
This is again a common scam in Japan.
If you come to Japan and
you go into a restaurant,
you go into a bar and there are no
prices listed, you should just leave.
And if they try to get you to stay, what
they’re trying to do is get you to buy stuff
without telling you the price
and then they’ll hand you
an inflated thing and then say like, if
you don’t pay it, we’ll call the police.
The thing is, the police are actually,
they know what’s going
on but there is nothing
they can actually like,
they can’t defend you.
You actually still have to
pay the bill because in a way
because you drank there,
not knowing the price.
That’s your fault and the
police actually have to enforce it.
You have to pay that bill.
So that’s only you, you
should be aware of it.
If you’re a tourist and
you’re coming to Japan,
it’s but Japan’s reopened, it’s borders.
Tourists, I think it’s up
six fold from what it was
this time last year, which makes
sense because COVID’s not gone.
Apparently, I was reading a
story, I didn’t write it down.
I wasn’t going to do it for
Ninja Ninja Japan this week.
They’re saying we’re in our
10th wave of coronavirus.
But now, immunity is very high.
The vaccine is rolled out.
So it’s more like people
are just getting long colds.
So not particularly violent,
like people were dying before.
Now people catch a cold
and it just sort of lasts,
like cold lasts like two,
three days, let’s say.
This lasts like a week plus.
So they’re actually saying
that we’re in our 10th wave.
This is people aren’t noticing
as much because they just
think like, whoo, it’s cold
season and I got a cold.
So this woman, they
stopped her from leaving.
I said, you have to drink more,
which that is, I would say kidnapping.
Once you stop someone from
leaving a place they want to leave from,
that is actually kidnapping, uh, then
they made her take out 850,000 yen
from an ATM to pay off the debt
that she just racked up from them,
keeping her in the place in the host
club so that she could drink more.
So they basically made her stay drink
more to rack up a bill and they made her
go pay the bill.
If these punishments go through,
this is going to be the first of
their kind in Japan and I really do.
I think the host club system,
scam, whatever you want to call it.
It’s one of the grossest things they
have and I would really like to see.
I don’t have a problem
with what’s happening.
Like you want to go and
pay someone to talk to you.
I personally wouldn’t do that.
But if that’s, if you’re
comfortable with it, that’s okay.
Just make it a fair business.
That’s, that’s the only thing I would say.
Just make it a fair business off we go.
But that’s apparently not good enough.
You have to rip people off.
And that’s where they always,
it’s where everything goes wrong.
It’s why we need regulations.
Don’t get me going on regulations.
I know, I know everyone out there
is listening to this is like, oh, Peter,
do some SMR about regulations,
but the regulations you would
put into place on corporations.
I know, I know that that
might be my new podcast.
Corporal SMR regulatory systems.
Uh, they’ve decided to stop
running snack carts on shinkansen.
So if you go on the shinkansen now,
the bullet train, what happens is lady
still very sexist is you shouldn’t I
don’t think I’ve ever seen a man do it.
So I think it’s pretty fair to say a lady.
A lady comes down to card and she’s like,
do you want to buy an overpriced chocolate?
Do you want to buy an overpriced tea?
Do you want to buy something that you should
have bought before you go on the train?
Everyone just buy stuff
and brings it on the train.
So those things are not
profitable, but it isn’t in train service.
I think way back, probably when
they weren’t ripping people off,
people probably bought from
it and it was maybe a good deal.
I don’t know.
I’ve never bought anything from it.
I always buy snacks and bring it on the
train if I ever have to go on the train.
So these carts, there’s a
lot of train fans in Japan.
So these carts, what are
they going to do with them?
Well, they’re going to
put them up for sale.
And if you want one, you have to
enter a lottery to be able to bid on the
carts, they’re going to
be 50 carts and they’re
going to sell them
for 100,000 yen each.
Now, I don’t know if there’s
bidding involved in that.
I think they’re just going to sell 50.
So I think the lottery,
there are going to be 50
winners and you each get,
have to pay 100,000 yen.
You have to be able to pick it
up yourself by the end of February.
So this is all happening very quickly.
We hope quote from the
representative of the shinkansen.
We hope they will be
put to good use and not
used for some weird
sex thing in a movie.
Some of that was added on by me.
There’s someone out
there, completely innocent,
who’s building his own
inside of a shinkansen
in his house and he’s weird
and he’s got too much money.
I can’t judge that.
I have my nerd stuff in my room.
I’m not as bad primarily because I’m poor.
I think if I had a lot of money, I
would buy a lot of stupid stuff.
And I’m a fan of something different.
So it’s hard for me to judge.
But there is another segment that’s going
to be like, let’s recreate a shinkansen
and then make an adult
video and then have
the girl push it down and then have
some sort of encounter with a passenger.
I could totally see that being a
video and then they could say,
this is an authentic shinkansen cart
and somehow that’s a selling point.
Why did my brain go there first?
Because I do an engineer’s Japan and
I’ve now deep into Japan’s psychology
when they have like, let’s add a
little authenticity to something.
They will absolutely go for it.
Once you win the lottery
and you pay 100,000 yen,
they will be no cleaning or
repairs done before the sale.
So the condition they
are in on that last day
of service is the
condition you will get it in.
I think not cleaning it is
a problem again because
of the fanciful, weird
people out in the world.
I think you should just clean it up.
Repairs, yeah, let them repair themselves.
I’m sure these are the kind of people
who would really enjoy repairing it.
And as part of the contract of
winning the lottery, you cannot resell it.
So I can’t win the lottery 10 times by 10
cards and then resell them on the internet.
Then if I do that, I’m
going to get in trouble.
That blue city, they got
some youth baseball going on.
As most cities do baseballs, I
think the most popular sport in Japan.
So hey, what’s funny, probably
the most famous baseball player.
So famous, I’ve heard of him.
I don’t watch baseball.
I do not follow sports.
So he has to be super, super famous.
I think he, I don’t think I know.
He just did the like $700 billion
contract over X amount of years.
So he’s like the number one baseball
player in the world for the moment.
So that means he’s super popular.
He’s Japanese and therefore
very popular in Japan.
He has donated 60,000
baseball gloves to 20,000 schools.
What they did is the
city collects the gloves
and then they’re supposed to
distribute them to the different schools.
The mayor of Bepu city
said, you know what, more
valuable to the world
is I took these gloves
and I didn’t give them to kids.
If I put them on display
for everyone to see.
And he said this was to make
children and citizens happy.
Because as we all know, kids love
not touching or playing with things.
They love to go up to a glass
case and just look at stuff.
So that was clearly
a weird little selfish
thing that the mayor of Bepu did
immediately got pushed back on.
It’s like, Otani is
donated these gloves so
that kids will get excited
about baseball and
play baseball and maybe
grow up and be professional
baseball players or at least foster
their love of the sport that he loves.
And you probably a baseball fan
are like, I don’t want to give it to kids.
I want to keep it from itself.
So I’m going to put in a glass case.
No, I can touch it.
It’s my glove.
Some people don’t grow
up and the mayor of Bepu
seems to have been one
of those people who didn’t
realize that not giving
stuff to kids that was
intended to be given
to kids is a bad idea.
So he some other districts,
cities, did display the gloves as well.
They didn’t get in trouble
because the idea was
we’re going to hold them until
they’re ready to be shipped.
So basically, we’re not, we’re
going to put these in a box.
They’re going to get shipped.
Let’s say next month
or the beginning of the
new academic year
or something like that.
Until then, we’ll put them on display.
And yes, everyone can
look at the gloves that
have probably been
touched by Shohei Otani
himself, the magical
fingers of the man himself.
And then everyone looks
at and goes, ooh, glass case.
Look at those gloves.
And then when it was time to give them to
the kids, actually give them to the kids.
Kids.
Mayor of Bepu?
Now, in my gloves, they
want to keep my gloves.
They’re not going to give my
gloves to anybody under my gloves.
Fucking child.
This is interesting.
It’s not really something I can make any.
I can’t make fun of this.
In the 1970s, there
was a series of bombings.
And this was, this was the
East Asia anti-Japan armed front.
And what they would do is targeting
companies that operated overseas.
And so they were
protesting Japan’s exploitation
of other countries
pre-World War II,
where they were like
literally enslaving other
people and stuff and
occupying other countries.
And they were seeing
that the current expansion
after World War II in the
70s and 80s, particularly,
was another form of this expansion.
So they were like, we should stop this.
We shouldn’t exploit others.
So let’s blow them up.
Always the solution.
And a man has been wanted since 1975.
What he did was he put a bomb
outside of a building and it went off,
and a little bunch of shit up.
A man entered the hospital
suffering from terminal cancer.
He has been hidden
for the last 50 years and
paying for cancer
treatments out of pocket
because if he used his
actual idea or anything,
he would link him
back to that bombing.
So he’s basically been in
hiding for 50 years and surviving.
He’s been working at a building firm.
So that’s a bit vague.
He may have been doing construction.
He may have been doing architecture
or some variety of work therein.
So he’s had a job.
He’s been working for the last 50 years.
He’s been in hiding.
He hasn’t used his health care card.
He hasn’t used any of his
official idea for anything.
So the police wouldn’t find him.
And he’s lived for the last 50 years.
He enters into hospital because his
cancer has just gotten to this stage
where he has to be in hospital.
And this is sort of hospice almost.
He’s it’s terminal.
He’s not going to survive.
That means sooner or
later they have to get his ID.
So they get his ID and they find
out and they contact the police.
The police come and talk to him.
And then the story comes out
yesterday that he dies in hospital.
So I’m a bit torn.
Is this like in a way
he hid successfully for
the entirety of his life
and escape the police.
But the police sort of caught
up with him at the very end.
I don’t know. It’s a weird story
because how do you feel about that?
Like he committed a crime.
I kind of have respect for
someone who can hide for 50 years.
So much of an engineer’s depend is someone
doing something and getting caught that day
because they videoed it
and put it on the internet.
And then he got this guy and
I would say a proper criminal.
He was a freedom fighter in his mind.
And this is always sort of one
of the dichotomies of people doing
acts for political reasons as they see
themselves differently than just criminals.
They see themselves as the rebels.
They see themselves
as the uprising, the
revolution that’s going
to change the world.
So he saw himself as a revolutionary.
So he didn’t feel like what
he was doing was a crime.
He thought he needed
to do this to change the
course of Japan and
the world in the future.
I have respect for the ideology.
I do not think you should blow shit up.
I don’t think you should blow people up.
I’m not even a big fan of blowing
stuff up unless it’s in a video game.
Love blowing stuff up in video games.
The difference there.
Yeah, you’re knowing the
difference between real
life and video games
makes a big difference.
But he found a job, worked for 50 years.
I mean, they didn’t
actually say he retired,
which makes me think
he was doing construction
because he can do construction
just up into the last days.
And then was caught.
Police came and spoke to them.
Apparently he was quite open
with them, but then he died.
And then, case closed.
Going from that guy
to this guy for Fox eight.
A boy filmed himself licking the lid
of a water pitcher at a rabbit shop.
This is not interesting anymore.
The people who are
getting caught licking stuff
or eating stuff and making
communal stuff grows.
The reason I, a rabbit
shop, a ramen, ramen shop,
a ramen, a shop where
that sells bowls of ramen,
my mouth is a little dry.
So I might not be enunciating as
well as I could or I’m talking too fast.
People tell me I talked
to slow in the office.
So that might be the
I try to speak a little
faster when I do the
news need to use to pay.
He filmed himself
licking the lid of a water
pitcher at a ramen shop
and then putting it back.
And the internet, of course,
immediately saw this and went, “Abshit.
” Now, the reason this was
interesting to me is because
the police didn’t have a
chance to get involved.
The internet took care of this.
So they found the boy’s
Twitter and Instagram.
They combed through
his Instagram and found out
he was enrolled in a
makeup school in Hokkaido.
They then contacted the
school and started talking
about like all the
gross thing this kid did.
And that he should be punished.
The school tried to hide it.
They took down as many of the
pictures as they could with this kid in it.
They said we’re doing
it to protect the other
students, basically the people
who are in the pictures with him.
But of course, what
they’re really trying to do
is just like cover up this
and hope it goes away.
It’s not going away.
The internet has decided.
The Japanese internet
has decided if you do
something publicly gross,
we’re coming for you.
So then the criticism of
the school started coming
out on the internet and the
boy was probably expelled.
So the police were never even contacted.
This kid licked something in a restaurant,
video it put it on the
internet days later, not
even like multiple,
maybe two days later he’s
been expelled from the
school he’s enrolled in.
And that shows you where
we’ve come to the Japanese
society because now
we’re at the point where
if you do something like this, it’s just
been decided it’s so morally reprehensible.
They’re just going to come after you.
The last story, trying
to mix up the last stories.
I used to do 50 year old creepy men.
Those stories have actually fallen off
recently, which speaks good for my people.
And then also maybe a little palette cleanser
at the end instead of the same stuff.
The national long bath competition
for copy bottles was held this year.
This is the 12th year in a row.
This is the first year I’ve heard about it.
I’m very interested in this.
There are five zoos
currently with copy bars.
And what they do is they choose a day, the
creepy men are more active in the spring.
Oh, they need the warm weather because
in the colder joints are sore like me.
And then they can’t do it.
They have to like, oh, I got to wait till
the spring and then I’ll get my shit to go.
Five zoos.
What they do is they monitor the copy
bottles and they choose a day and the copy
bottom that takes the
longest bath that day wins.
What do they win?
Probably nothing.
The glory.
I mean, when I did all my judo
tournaments, what did I win?
Tiny plastic trophies that I
could buy myself for like 20 bucks.
Probably not even.
They were really cheap.
I actually was talking to a guy once.
I was like, you know what you can do.
You can just go into trophy stores and
get trophies made with your neighborhood.
You don’t need to actually bother
with the competition or anything.
And then I could just
have like a rack behind
me with just hundreds
of trophies on it.
If it’s far enough away, you’re
not going to read the plaques.
That’s fine.
And then there’s other
guys like, oh, man, how
long does it take to
get a black belt in judo?
I was like, well, you
go into the store and if
you have 700 again, it
takes about eight minutes
because they have to go find the right.
They don’t check, they
don’t check if you have
a, you don’t leave me like a certificate
to buy a black belt in a martial art store.
You could go in by any color, throw it on.
There you go.
They don’t, they don’t check trophy stores
don’t check martial art stores don’t check.
You can just construct that yourself.
I don’t know why I
went on that little rant.
I was for the glory.
Truffle was a copy bar.
Local favorite to win.
Did a one hour, 50 minute
and 49 seconds soak in the bath.
But you know what?
Donut came in and said,
fuck Truffle, I am going
to make this not just a
win, but a fucking murder.
The Nagasaki Biopark
hero, donut, did a soak
of two hours, 53
minutes and 57 seconds,
blowing Truffle out of the fucking
water figuratively and literally.
This is your post credit scene if
you hang around for after the song.
You may have heard a tone of
disappointment in my voice all day today.
And the reason is last night, my
wife, my wife, she came to me and said,
“Do you have
anything in English that I
could listen to, maybe
something about news?”
I don’t know if she even
knows I do this podcast.
This was two weeks running,
two or three times ranked
the number two Japanese
news podcast in the world.
And the number one is the
actual newspaper the Manichi.
The Manichi releases a podcast every day.
So if they get
downloads, their download
numbers are going to
be way bigger than mine
because they do want every day
and people just automatically download.
I can’t compete with that.
So Ignatius just put in the chat,
did you recommend her your podcast?
No, I didn’t because
I was so hurt by the
fact that I am not 100%
sure she even knows.
I do this podcast, the number two
Japanese news podcast in English.
Hey, do you have
anything in English that I
could listen to so I
could practice my English?
Maybe it has news or current events in it.
Maybe something even
more casual than the formal
English to help me get
more natural English in there.
Do you know anything like that?
Do you know what? No, I don’t.
No, I don’t know anything like that.
I don’t even think that’s a concept of
knowing anyone’s ever done it in the world.