(upbeat music)
Last week we talked about a scam.
It was elementary school
students and they scam their
classmate who had access
to his New Year’s money.
He had collected New
Year’s money over, I
assume years, had access
to about a million yen.
And that million yen,
he then bought trinkets.
His friends brought to school and said
they would increase in value and stuff.
He bought a token from a tour at
Nugoya Port or something like that.
And these are 500 yen just stamped things.
He bought a Canadian $10 bill,
which they said would go up in value,
which is just absolutely
not truly Canadian a comedy.
The Canadian economy doesn’t work that way.
A kind of understand a kid getting taken.
His classmates would
be able to convince him
and he’s trying to
impress them and stuff.
But then there is a secondary question,
why did this kid have
access to a million yen?
So my children’s New Year’s
money goes into a bank account.
They could get it, but
it would be a process.
They wouldn’t just be taking it all out and
giving it away willy-nilly for trinkets.
Then you become an adult and
you have access to your own money.
And that’s where people
really can get scammed.
And so this week a woman in her 50s,
she was on Instagram, great place to be.
Now he’s looking at the beautiful
pictures that people put there.
So on Instagram, directly
she receives a message.
Someone slid into her
DMs, which is quite nice.
And the message said hello from
the International Space Station.
Now scams can be very convincing.
One that comes from an
astronaut is more problematic for me.
So if I was on Instagram and
someone sent me a message
that said hello from
the International Space
Station, my first
question would actually be,
why are you sending
messages from the International
Space Station via Instagram
to someone you don’t know?
Like I would actually ask that question.
Not because I think he’s trying to scam me.
It’d just be like, why are you doing this?
Clearly you have other
avenues of communication.
You have work to do.
You have other things that need to be done.
I mean, you should not
be wasting your time.
Especially with a random person.
Like if we knew each other, if I knew an
astronaut and someone pretended to be
that astronaut who sent
me a message, I might
be convinced, but I
don’t know any astronauts.
So if an astronaut sends me a message,
I would be immediately suspicious.
This poor woman was not.
They got more messages.
They started, they were
in contact for a while.
And then the astronaut
said, the contract
for the internet I use
on earth has expired.
So I want your assistance.
I need money to pay this bill.
You can see again, this
is where I’m always like,
“Wait a minute, why would you
need a stranger to take care of that?”
If you can send a message to someone,
you can send a message to a family member.
Let’s say that would be appropriate.
You can send a message to the space agency.
You are on the International Space Station.
I’m sure has access to the internet.
That’s how your community game with me now.
So why don’t you use that internet?
There’s a lot of things you could,
that would already, again,
a lot of red flags right there.
And it’s not even that I have
let my earthly internet expire
as the problem is, why are you
asking a stranger to take care of it?
You have co-workers.
You have a space agency behind you.
You have family.
And this is known because this is
someone impersonating an actual astronaut.
What was his name?
His name was Satoshi Furukawa.
So he’s just like a Japanese astronaut.
So it’s not like we don’t
know about this person.
If you want to look them up on the internet,
you could go to his Wikipedia page.
You could go look about them on
like JAXA, the Japanese space agency.
You can actually figure out
you could call JAXA on his behalf
and say, hey, I got an Instagram
DM from one of your astronauts
who’s saying he wants
his internet hooked up.
OK, then we get into these sort
of science fiction element of this.
And he says, I have
discovered an asteroid containing
important elements, and I
need your help in transporting it.
So now you’re vital to his space mission.
And so I have sympathy.
I have a lot of sympathy.
But this is one of those scams where it’s
like the ridiculousness of the nature
of the situation makes itself apparent.
But then I’m like, oh, I
guess if you’re caught up
in the moment and this is
a chance to feel important.
This is a chance to feel like you’re
part of an international space mission.
This is like every movie you’ve ever seen
where like then nobody becomes special.
Like maybe that’s what
they’re actually praying upon.
And that actually weirdly in
a moment gave me a lot more
sympathy for the person who
had sent over 900,000 yen in total.
When the supposed astronaut
asked for planetary shipping
fees, if this had just been
reversed, I would be OK with it.
She sent the money and then got suspicious.
If she got suspicious and
then went to the police,
and the police said send the money
and we’ll track it down or something, sure.
But she sent the money
and she’s like, wait a minute.
What’s planetary shipping?
And because he’s on the
international space station,
couldn’t they just put it
on one of the shuttles that’s
bringing food up or bringing
food down or bringing
astronauts up or
bringing astronauts down?
Because they’re going anyway.
So just put the incredibly
important and special
element he’s discovered
in space on one of those.
Now there may be a lot more story here
that he convinced her that it had to
be kept secret or something like that.
But when you have to
pay planetary shipping,
which obviously is
going to be expensive,
then you realize maybe
the scam has gone too far.
So she went to the
police, calls the police,
and she says Satoshi Fukawa
has been communicating with me.
I’m a little suspicious because he’s
asking me for planetary shipping fees.
How much are they usually?
And then the police are
like, unfortunately, Satoshi
Fukawa has already returned to
Earth, whoever you’re speaking to
is not on the international space
station and has been scamming you.
And I don’t want to make fun of her too
much, but I kind of want to make fun of her.
Because it just involves
astronauts in space.
And it is such a– this is such
a perfect fiction, I think is what.
Why, again, I oscillate between, oh
my god, this is the funniest thing, too.
I feel so much sympathy for
this poor lady who got scammed.
We have to have something in place.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now, police are actually
trying to do a good
thing with AI in Japan,
which is pretty cool.
They want to have AI
recognize fishing websites.
So these are sites that try to
look like financial institutions,
and they try to get your passwords
and login information for your bank.
And then from there, they
might be able to log into
your bank and get access
to your accounts and stuff.
Currently, the system
is based off reporting.
So I get a suspicious
email, and I click a link that I
shouldn’t click, and
the website looks off, or
something feels off, or I
think I’ve been scammed.
I have to go to the police and report it.
One of the issues with being scammed
is that people are
embarrassed, that they got
scammed, and they’re
less likely to report.
So the number of reports of getting scammed
is actually way less
than the actual scam rate.
This is why people who get scammed,
we really shouldn’t shame them.
That’s actually the exact opposite of
what I kind of just did in the first story.
So this is– I’m part of the problem.
Because if they feel embarrassed,
they might not report it.
But they just got tricked.
I now feel that I did the thing.
I just– if it wasn’t
an astronaut, maybe I
wouldn’t have even
done the story, though.
It’s because it was space
and astronauts and stuff.
Interplanetary shipping
fees was a great phrase.
I just– maybe I just wanted
to say that on the podcast.
So they need ways to gather the information
without relying on people reporting it.
So there’s organizations,
like financial
institutions, they’ll
report websites they find.
And they will find– last
year, they found 490,000 cases.
And this was reported by antivirus software
and this sort of group
of financial institutions.
Now, last year, in total, it was
1.2 million reports of fishing.
So you can assume that
numbers got to be plus 2 million,
like attempts, not even success or
anything, but just attempts at fishing.
So this is a 21 times increase from 2019.
Weird choice.
I don’t know.
I guess they’re trying to
go for dramatic numbers.
But what they want to
do is find it is get an AI.
And the AI is just going
to troll the internet,
troll these emails,
troll this other stuff,
recognize the fishing
websites, and then automatically
report that to the police
so they can shut it down.
And that is maybe one
of the best use cases of AI
I have heard so far because it’s
actually helping people not get ripped off.
Oh, no, see, as soon as I talk
about this stuff, then I have thoughts.
And my thought is they’re
going to have AI create the AI,
create the fishing websites
to be more efficient.
And when an AI shuts one down, another AI
automatically just rebuilds a new website.
So it becomes like a
cycle that just never stops.
There were the World Cup Qualifiers.
And in the Asian area, in Asia,
Japan has to play North Korea.
So they decided to do the game.
I don’t know how these decisions are made.
This is FIFA or something.
The game is going to
be done in North Korea.
Now North Korea and Japan
have very hostile political relations.
So the Japanese government
says, hey, Japanese
citizens, who are really
excited about soccer.
Soccer is a very popular sport in Japan.
Don’t go to North Korea.
Don’t go to North Korea to watch this game.
Don’t try to get– I mean,
they have to get a visa.
I’m pretty sure North
Korea wouldn’t be
giving Japanese people
visas to go in anyways.
That’s a totally separate issue.
But the government just came out
and said, don’t try to go to North Korea.
I think that’s a fair statement to make.
The relationship between
Japan and North Korea
is so contentious that
it would be dangerous
for a Japanese citizen
to enter the country.
So they have the soccer game.
So the soccer players go, and they
have some people with them,
sort of handlers and stuff.
They play their game.
And Japan scores a goal
in the first 90 seconds.
Yeah, Japan.
Then nothing happens
for the rest of the game.
So two hours are assumed.
I don’t know how long a
soccer game is like 90 minutes.
No scores are done for the rest
of the game, because it’s soccer.
So of course, there are no more goals.
I understand the
reality in that the tension
would build as they get closer
and closer to the end of the game
and have to score one goal to just
become even and extend the game.
But I don’t really enjoy soccer.
So for me, that just sounds
mindnumbingly painful.
It’s just low scoring, zero scoring games,
essentially what I’m
saying is fuck you, soccer.
North Korea, in North Korea, loses a soccer
game in front of a stadium of people.
Now North Korea has, in the past,
reported that they have won
all the Olympic gold medals.
If you actually watch
North Korean state media,
they have just straight
out and said, North Korea
has won every game in the
Olympics and stuff like that.
China’s number two, and
America hasn’t won nothing.
So they just like, it’s just a blatant lie.
But when you have a stadium
of people, watch your team lose.
You can’t really lie to the same degree.
It’s much harder.
So they need a solution,
’cause they can’t lose again.
They’re actually supposed to play two games
and they can’t lose again,
so they need to end this game.
So they do what North Korea does best.
They say, we are concerned
about a second game.
Oh, we are canceling the second game
because we are worried about a
malignant infectious disease in Japan.
I think that malignant infectious
disease might be winning.
Again, I’m not a big fan of soccer,
so I’m not wicked supportive of
Japanese soccer or anything like that.
I don’t actually care about sports or who
wins and stuff, but I do think it’s funny.
I think it’s funny that we
didn’t win the first game,
so we’re gonna cancel the
second game and we’re gonna say
that it’s because you foreigners
are diseased, which is a lot.
Since we’re talking about soccer, there was
a student and he has Peruvian background.
He’s got a mixed heritage, yes.
And so that in Japan makes you stand out.
He was late for a club activity
and the coaches made him apologize
and when he apologized, they
started making derogatory statements.
They said, “Peruvians can apologize, huh?”
Which doesn’t sound
bad translated into English,
but the reality is how you say it in
Japanese is more insulting than what you say.
Or it’s not what you say in Japanese,
it’s how you say it, it becomes the insult.
So when we translate
a lot of Japanese insults
in English, it sounds
just like a statement,
but it’s the
statement of like, “I’m
talking down to you,”
is the important part.
Another coach giving
guidance on his attitude,
so sort of giving him guidance about
life says, “You’ll end being a murderer,”
and then makes a stabbing
gesture to one of his
teammates, like you’re
gonna kill your teammate.
I guess, maybe the kid got frustrated,
like I’m just guessing
’cause they only fill in
all the details, but the
kid’s frustrated or angry
or having difficulties like
hormonal ’cause he’s a teenager.
I mean, who knows?
Because if you are who you
are, you’re going to end up
being a murderer, which
is pretty awful thing to say.
The interesting thing is the guy
who made the murder statement
had been disciplined in 2019
for threats and slapping a student,
but then was removed from
soccer coaching and then returned.
So the question to me is
why are these guys returning?
This is not the first time we’ve done
a coach, abuses kids, gets taken out,
and then put back in and
starts abusing kids again.
Story.
Once you have smacked a kid,
I think you shouldn’t be allowed
around kids anymore so you
can continue to smack them.
Japan, I don’t know,
maybe they keep track of it.
They don’t keep track of it.
It’s a bit insane.
They did 100 member surveys.
All these kids who’ve been in the soccer
clubs over the last couple of years in 2023,
and all the coaches receive voluntary
suspensions, which is pretty ridiculous.
I don’t know why do these
people go into kids’ stuff
if they clearly are easily
frustrated with kids?
We’ve had the teachers
who are smacking kids
because the kids are
talking back to them.
I understand that frustration.
I’ve never had a kid.
We got these guys who become coaches.
Coaching is primarily working with kids
and they seem to have a problem with kids.
These may be more lean
towards the just word,
just racist dudes because
you’re not Japanese kid.
I’m going to judge you differently kind of
thing, but even then, why are you there?
Don’t, like, go find your Puritan group.
I don’t know.
I’m a little lost on that one because it’s
like, how do these stories keep happening
when it’s so obvious that
there’s a problem there?
When the problem could be solved by, just
don’t get into that job in the first place.
So these coaches cause
people a lot of stress.
They feel a lot of stress.
Now, all right, we’ve
got a 24-year-old guy.
Takes a can of kerosene
into the mountain forest,
and he dows several trees in
kerosene and then lights them on fire.
He gets arrested and he
does the most classic excuse
for a Japanese person who’s done something
wrong, and he says, I was stressed out.
And lighting fires relieves
tension, which I struggle with.
I mean, has he tried stretching?
Maybe there’s this,
has he tried stretching?
There are degrees of stress
and ways to deal with it.
So I’m not going to say drink alcohol,
but I would say comparatively speaking,
if you had to drink alcohol to relieve
your stress or light a forest on fire,
I might actually say
drinking is your better option.
I would say before that,
maybe go get a massage,
maybe start stretching to a
little yoga, something like that.
I think there are stages you should go
through before you jump to burn down a forest.
Now, I found it interesting
that his statement wasn’t lighting
this fire or, you know, I lit
a fire and it relieved tension.
He said that lighting fires relieves
tension, as in he’s done this in the past.
So the police are now
investigating several
suspicious fires in forests
in the surrounding area.
So I’m guessing this is lucky.
This happened in February,
which is a very wet season in Japan.
So if it’s not snowing, it’s
probably raining, that kind of stuff.
So that probably kept the forest fire
from getting out of control, but oh my God.
I’ve done this story before.
The classic Japanese
excuse, I’ve committed a crime.
Why did you commit the crime?
Stress from work or just stress?
But now you’re getting arrested.
That is created more stress in your life.
So there is a maybe a
moment where you’ve
committed the crime
and it feels slightly better.
But then there’s the stress
of am I gonna get caught?
Are the police gonna catch on?
Am I gonna get reported?
Like I actually think that
would be more stressful.
I think committing a crime
and getting away from it
might be just as much stress
as getting stress from work.
And then if you’re
already working and you
commit a crime, now you
have to think about both.
I have stress from work
where I go to my job every day
and I have the stress of
worrying about whether or not
I’m gonna get caught for
the crime I’ve committed.
That’s a lot of stress.
And then how do you relieve that stress?
You go like more forest fires.
The more forest fires you light,
the more like you are to get caught.
This is the criminal paradox.
If you are successful in a
crime and you commit the
crime again, multiple times
each time you commit it,
you’re more likely to make
mistakes or get caught
or have something go
wrong and then you go to jail.
So your stress should
actually go up the more
successful you are in
crime, which is interesting.
But it doesn’t seem to work that way.
And so now the guy is going
to get stressed out in prison.
Alright, so last week we
did the LDP, how to party,
and in that party they’re
like, some go-go girls came out
and the politicians put
money in their mouth
and then the girls took the
money out of their mouth.
And there were some other
pictures that showed up
and it was them sticking it in
their bikini bottoms and stuff.
Pretty gross stuff for a group
that is supposed to be like
moving towards more
egalitarian and wants
to be more open and
inviting and that stuff.
This was to me very 80s
bubble era Japanese behavior,
but the guys who
organized the parties were
full on in their prime
in the 70s and 80s.
So they mentally had not moved on to like,
hey, maybe women who
come to this party will like it.
I almost guarantee no women
showed up to that party.
Maybe some of the young men
don’t have the same sensibilities
we do, that’s actually showed up many
times when we’ve talked about stories.
These really gross old men don’t understand
that other men maybe don’t
think the same way as them.
Which is interesting issue,
because we had that mayor
who committed like a
hundred sexual assaults at work.
Like he was patent
bottoms and touching boobs
and sexually harassing
everybody around him.
His cohort, the deputy mayor
was like, dude, you gotta stop.
And he was like, yeah, if
you’ve listened to that episode,
you’ll just go back and
listen to that whole like
two minutes of me doing
like gross creepy laughing.
He didn’t think the other guy was serious.
And like, this is literally
your peer telling you,
you gotta stop or you’re getting in trouble
and then he got in trouble and he’s like,
well, I still don’t
understand what I did wrong.
So there’s been another
scandalous come out with the L.D.B.
party because these
people are these people.
They can’t help but do what they do.
I found it funny that it
was the L.D.P. Federation
youth bureau and four of
these guys organized a party
and they go to the party and
there are people taking pictures.
And that to me was one of the issues.
Like I talk about a lot of crimes and
stuff and I’m like don’t film your crimes,
but you can’t commit crimes where
other people are taking pictures either.
So a magazine came out
with pictures of this party.
Great.
So what is the picture of?
It’s a man in a mask, rope
tied, wearing underwear
and the bureau chief wearing an
AKB idol costume with a microphone.
So clearly on stage, doing
some sort of announcement
in, sort of, I’m going
to go ahead and assume
a school girl uniform
of some sort in front of,
I don’t know if it’s an L.D.P.
guy or a model or someone else
but someone tied up
behind them basically naked.
And this is cool.
This is like high level
politicians who are aware
of implications and
optics and how things go.
When questioned, he said it’s just a bar.
It’s not an SNM club and then he resigned.
The thing is, the sign
above the bar was like, we
have, was it turtle binding,
which is a form of SNM.
So they clearly put on SNM shows
and he’s like, no, no, no, no, no.
That clearly branded
SNM bar isn’t an SNM bar.
It’s just a bar and even
if it wasn’t an SNM bar,
that doesn’t mean you
have to do the SNM stuff.
It doesn’t mean you have to
like dress up like a school girl
and get on stage with a
microphone is to hard of participating.
That’s just ridiculous, I quit.
So this actually led to a whole
bunch of serious questions.
The last party, the one with the
go-go dancers, was not publicly funded.
This was, everyone chipped
in, they paid for their own way.
So technically not as bad.
This one though, it’s supposed
to be 5,000 yen per person
for entry and this time they
charge 2,000 yen per person.
And the same day as the
party and assembly member
received 100,000 yen of
public funds from an activity
fund and the activity funds
are how they get around this.
The activity fund is money for events.
So that isn’t really
regulated the same way.
So they don’t necessarily
check out the event as far
as like, oh, we’re gonna
have dinner with the LDP guys.
Okay, here’s your 50,000 yen, whatever.
This is 100,000 yen to go to the SNM bar.
And so this has put another sort of strike,
the LDP rating, approval
rating is at an all-time low.
It’s like below 20%,
which is Japanese politics.
It’s never above 50, but if you’re
below 20, you’ve really, really kicked it.
And Qashita is just struggling,
’cause how is he supposed
to say like, we wanna do
good things, we’re good people,
and then these scandals
keep coming up again and again.
And now using public money.
The public money part
is going to be the part
that actually kills them because this
has happened before in different areas.
And Japan is like, you
do your dirty stuff, sure.
But don’t use my money
to do your dirty stuff.
When you take my money
to do your dirty stuff,
I don’t want you to
be a politician anymore.
(upbeat music)
- Sure, man, you could ask.
I’m finished that story, go
ahead and ask questions.
You’re more than welcome to ask questions.
I’m gonna wait for a second though, ’cause
I was just about to start a second story.
Unless you’re trying to sell me
something, then I’m gonna get furious.
What do I think if someone
join a secret society?
That question is unclear
because what is the secret society?
So like there’s several secret societies
that sort of conspiracy theories
go out about like the Freemasons.
But the Freemasons are
primarily a charitable organization
if you take what they say
is because they’re secretive
about what they do that leads to
conspiracy theories and suspicion.
There are religious groups,
there’s things like that.
So secret society is such
a broad term that doesn’t
actually give me any information
to answer your question.
So the nature of the secret
society is the important part.
If it’s a secret society that’s
supposed to be good, trying
to do good in the world, why
would I have a problem with that?
Because you wanna keep it secret is fine.
If it’s a secret society that
wants to harm people, then it’s bad.
It’s not a very interesting
answer, I’m sorry,
but the truth is realistically speaking,
whether it’s secret or not is irrelevant,
the important part is
the intent of the society