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We talked about Ironhead,
a Chinese streamer,
and he went to a place
called Yaskuni Shrine,
a very controversial shrine because it is
where essentially work criminals have been
entombed or at least their
spirit is supposed to rise there.
It’s dedicated to the
people who died in wars
in some ways that’s
just people who were
drafted and had to go
to war and had no choice.
In other instances it was people who
were maybe a little more aggressive.
These are the nicest way to put it.
Countries like China
and South Korea, they
have severe issues
with the idea of honoring
people who invaded and did
terrible things in their country.
It’s a very complicated issue.
As an article came out
and it said, “Ironhead
has no intention to
turn himself in,” which
is an interesting title because
did anyone think he was going to?
A guy who comes to
another country to pee on
a shrine, a religious
building, did they think
that was the type of
person who is suddenly
going to have some
sort of conscience in that
I maybe have done the wrong thing, should
go back and make some sort of retribution?
I did not even consider
the fact as a concept
that he would come back
and actually turn himself in.
There are some quotes, though, and
the quotes from him are pretty good.
The reason is simple.
I don’t want Japan
to discharge nuclear
contaminated water, and
that is my ultimate goal.
I do have some
criticisms of his style of
protest because this is
actually my problem with
protesting often in
general, is that it doesn’t
seem to be like it’s
actually going to be
effective towards getting the results.
You are unhappy that
Japan had the Fukushima
power plant issues,
the meltdown, and they
are releasing irradiated
water into the ocean.
That is something to be upset about.
You don’t like it.
I understand that.
You want them to stop.
I don’t think going
around and peeing on
things is going to convince anyone
that what they’re doing should change.
I don’t think that’s the way it’s going
to actually affect or impact change.
I don’t think anyone in Japan is going to
rise up in support because if you actually
wanted change within Japan, you would need
to get the Japanese people on your side to
agree with you to then
affect or impact change.
Pying on things is
not going to have the
effect on the Japanese sensibilities
that you might be expecting to.
I think his expectation
was he’s going to
go back to China and
everyone would be like,
dude, you peed on that
thing that was awesome
and he didn’t really
expect anything to change.
I think this is like a false front.
He wanted to be
something to be upset about.
He found something to
be upset about so that
he could go and have an
excuse to pee on Yasakuni Shrine.
You should be the ones to reflect first.
Turning myself in is out of the question.
Again, like I said, I actually
thought that from the beginning.
I never thought it was a question.
I actually in this one instance, at least
share the same mentality as Ironhead.
He did not think about turning himself in.
He was never thinking
about turning himself in.
He wasn’t even
considering it until probably
someone else asked him so that he could say
no so that they could write this article.
Not a surprise.
He has not been questioned
by public security in China.
So he went back to China.
There’s no extradition treaty, obviously.
The relationship between China
and Japan isn’t good enough for that.
He got a certain amount
of fame online for this act.
The police saw it.
And you know what?
He went to another country
that we don’t particularly like.
And he peed on a thing
we really, really don’t like.
We’re not particularly upset about that.
So not a big surprise that
nothing came of that story.
So this whole story that I saw reposted
multiple times is a massive nothing burger.
So this is something I do a lot is I do a
story and then I hit the transition sound.
And then I think of one more thought.
I don’t know if I
should do the one more
thought and then move
on to the next story or
then then I should just
eliminate the transition sound.
The transition sound is supposed to be just
like a like, okay, we’ve ended that story.
We’ve started the next story.
A woman edited images of
characters from a popular
smartphone game and then
posted those images online.
This did not sound like anything to me.
Maybe this whole episode is
me talking about nothing burgers.
I mean, I have taken
images from video games
and characters and
stuff and edited them
trying to bake a joke probably
and then posted them online.
It is such a common occurrence.
I didn’t think there would
be an issue of it for it.
She was angry about the
treatment of her favorite characters.
She has a favorite character in this
game and apparently they’ve done her dirty.
So she decided to get, I don’t know,
revenge to demonstrate her displeasure.
Much like the protest from the previous
story, she decided to protest the treatment
of this character in
this game that she likes.
The smartphone game
is called Ensemble Stars.
What she did was she took characters.
She had an insect to the character six
times and she posted them on X three times.
I’m assuming, you know, groups of two.
So she took two
pictures, added bugs to the
pictures, posted that
online, did it again and again.
Again, I’m still at the point
where I’m like, who cares?
She’s taken some
images of characters and
put bugs on them because
she’s unhappy of the
treatment of her favorite
character, who actually cares?
The company claimed copyright infringement.
They claimed copyright
for obstructing the
operation of the app
by editing the character
to cause discomfort and fear and greatly
damaged the image of our company’s content,
which sounds like a
massive amount of bullshit.
So basically she took
characters, added them
posted online, like
millions, I bet there’s
like tons of fan things out
there that are lavacious.
I mean, that is just what
happens with characters in Japan.
And they’re like unhappy about
it, so they had her arrested.
And I was like, I can’t,
what I’m interested
about with this story
specifically is will
this act, will a judge
actually take this seriously?
That’s the bit I’m actually most interested
in because I personally, if I was a judge,
I’d be like, so she took some images, she
put bugs on them and posted them online.
I don’t think that would
have caused the lull
of discomfort and fear
that you’re claiming.
I don’t think it inhibited your operations.
I don’t think the closest you get
is a form of copyright infringement.
But if they let other
instances go, so like
there are other people
who have like dumb stuff
to their characters and
posted online and you didn’t say
anything, I would say that’s a
precedent that you’re okay with it.
So it is no longer a case.
It’s very short, like
the intro to the story
is really just this set up,
which is every story anyways.
And then I give you three
options and we can talk about it.
Like again, like this isn’t
like a, there’s no prizes.
Okay, so you’re in the forest right now.
I am in the forest right now, yeah.
How far away are you from civilization
and still volunteering to do a quiz?
Ah, probably about ten minutes away.
Okay, so like if you
fell down, the last
thing you would hear,
it wouldn’t just be my
talking about some
purview 50 year old man.
No, that’d be pretty dramatic though,
but like, no, I’m like, I’m on the tail end
of a walk with my dog,
where I usually just listen
to things, and I get in my
car and I drive back home.
So I’m in the woods,
there’s some birds, but
I’m not that far away from
people, I just have to people.
You.
Yeah.
So where’s part of the wood?
Are you coming here in other part?
Yeah.
No, that is, well, I live
in Japan, so there’s
people everywhere you
cannot get away from
people that have the nerve
to be there all the time.
All the time.
Okay, so we have a
deputy manager in his
50s, and a discriminatory
comments to two of
his foreign subordinates,
so these are two
foreign workers working
in a Japanese place.
The manager has made
basically racist comments.
Okay, yeah, it’s, so really it’s guessing
which one of these do you think he said?
Okay, okay, hey, I’m
playing myself in the mind.
Yeah, get yourself in
the minds of a 50 year
old Japanese man who
doesn’t like foreigners,
who yet is still found himself
in charge, employing foreigners.
Okay, hey, I have a
prejudice against foreigners,
bid on the news, be foreigners
are lazy and commit crimes.
If there were no
foreigners in Japan, it would
be peaceful, okay, we’re see foreigners
smell and don’t speak Japanese properly.
I mean, I like A is
good because I like my
racism direct, and you
know, like the Japanese
people will tell you things like,
oh, you’ve gained weight, Peter.
That is actually, to
me, the most frustrating
thing about being in
Japan, because I will
get self-conscious about gaining weight and
then they immediately walk up and go, hey,
you’re fat or fat when
you were before, you gained
weight and I’m just like,
yeah, it’s bugging me.
Thank you for making your worst.
That was your holiday,
you must have eaten a lot.
You sure looked
after it, yeah, okay, so I
can see the on the
news racism, but it doesn’t
feel like the way that I would be
used to being told by Japanese people.
I’m going to go with B, B.
B foreigners are lazy
and commit crimes and
there are, if there were no foreigners
in Japan, it would be peaceful.
Correct.
There has been a
widespread bias amongst the
right wing in Japan that it’s only
foreigners that commit crimes.
There was a guy who tried to say that
Japanese people don’t have the gene that lends
you towards criminality,
which is not a thing.
I feel like I’ve
absorbed some of these
articles to happen, maybe that’s
what’s biasing my answer here.
Yeah, so like everyone who’s coming on
to the quiz has listened to an engineer’s
Japan, and so they’ve
heard it, but I actually
think the skill I’m bringing to it is I’m
making all very realistic sounding answers.
You definitely have
because I feel like maybe
I’ve heard some
variation of all of them.
Yeah, okay, so the answer
you are incorrect, I’m sorry.
The answer was, hey, I have
a prejudice against foreigners.
He just straight up came
out and said, you know
what, you guys, everyone who’s
not Japanese, don’t like them.
Okay, so there’s a second
part, a mini second part to this.
This is a government agency, so he
was punished, but he was not fired.
What do you think his punishment was?
There’s no options.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Can I ask what’s this agency in charge of?
I didn’t write it down, I
actually don’t remember.
Okay.
I maybe they didn’t
say, they actually might
not have said because
they don’t want like
pushback from the public and like
people being shitty towards them.
So it actually maybe I did, it’s
not that I didn’t write it down.
Maybe they didn’t say, they just said,
government employee, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
Okay, so applying
what I know of Japan, it
basically implies fire anybody
and less is pretty egregious.
You have to like, people to get fired.
I remember the old Konami story, where
they made like developers into janitors.
Yes.
Just get them to quit.
Yes.
It would be fair enough
of what he said to
foreigners to actually
do too much about it.
So I actually think
one of the problems is
they would be like, hey,
he was just telling the truth.
Like there was nothing
bad about what he did
because he was just
telling you how he felt
and should he not be
allowed to express his feelings?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I can either see him
being one not allowed to
manage foreigners or being given more
foreigners to manage to increase his activity.
Okay.
So I’ll give you this hint.
It’s neither of those, but he also
wasn’t removed from his position.
So he’s still in charge of the foreigners.
He was in charge of before.
So he didn’t lose his job with
him made, didn’t lose his job.
Did he have to go to a foreigner
or sent to the Ebony court?
No, they don’t do that here.
I don’t think there would
be one because who’d run it?
The other old racist
man would be like, you
know, we all know that foreign people
are bad, but we have to pretend we don’t.
Like that would be the
version of a sensitivity training.
Totally, like what
you said is wrong, but
it’s not actually, we
kind of agree with you,
but we had to have this meeting anyway.
Yeah.
I don’t know, aren’t that my feeling
is he didn’t get punished at all?
Oh, he did, though.
He got a three month, 10% pay cut.
Are you?
Wow.
That’s actually pretty severe.
It, it isn’t, I mean, because
he’s going back to the next day.
So he’s just been told you’re not going
to get 10% of your pay for three months.
And then he goes back the next day into
the same room with the same foreign guys.
Unless they got him
clearly blame them for it.
For it.
Yeah.
It’s, yeah, it’s your fault I
got caught saying something.
Yeah.
You probably ratted
me out and you are a
foreigner, so it’s correct
for me not to like you.
Yes, this is why, oh, this is
why I don’t like foreigners,
because they do stuff like lose
me 10% of my pay for three months.
Okay, I’m not doing
very well on this place.
Well, it’s all just open
to open for the future.
There’s a new addition to the
swords and firearms bill in Japan.
So Japan has a thing called
the sword and fireman’s act.
And that is controlling weapons.
So at first, it’s interesting because
we don’t only think of gun control.
We don’t think of sword
control, but there are
still lots of swords
in Japan as a country.
There are still people who
make swords professionally.
Swords are commonly available.
And so they have the
sword and firearms act,
which is weapon control
because a couple of
years ago, it was
crossbows were added into it.
So it’s actually illegal
to own my crossbow.
You have to get a license for that now.
They have added to that encouraging
illegal gun ownership control.
So it’s not just having a gun
or selling a gun or making a gun.
They’re saying if you
encourage people to have
a legal weapon, that
also going to be punished.
And what they’re
actually aiming for, this
is the interesting bit, what they’re actually
aiming for because it’s like if I walk
around the street and go, hey,
you should get an illegal gun.
Hey, you should get an illegal gun.
That technically would fall under this.
I would get in trouble for that.
What they want to do
is put a ban on things
that explain how to
make guns or encouraging
others to sell guns or telling
people how to do things with guns.
And they’re targeting YouTube videos and
things like that because two years ago, the
Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe,
was killed with a homemade shotgun.
So this guy went online.
He learned how to make the gun online.
He learned how to make
the gun powder online.
He built it all and then he went and he
found the Prime Minister and he shot him.
The former Prime Minister and he shot him.
So they’re like, if you
can learn this stuff
online and it leads you to gun ownership,
we should also punish the people who are
encouraging people to
create illegal weapons.
So they’ve made it again.
Japanese laws are very weird.
They’re always very broad.
So encouraging is a very open
to interpret interpretation term.
If you are encouraging
people to have own or make
an illegal weapon, you
will also be punished.
The punishment could be one year
in prison and up to 300,000 yen fine.
You have probably heard of Bandai Namco.
They make Gundam models.
So those plastic models that people
put together, very exciting piece of work.
I actually think they’re look really cool.
I don’t have the patience to make them.
They come in.
They have like specialty
ones and giant boxes,
but like anything, scarcity
makes them valuable.
And scarcity making
something valuable means
that scalpers are
going to try to buy them
all and then resell them
on the black market.
They released mighty strike
freedom Gundam gun plot.
So I’m going to have
to find an image of that.
I don’t follow Gundam enough to know
what mighty strike freedom Gundam is.
I’m assuming he’s a big robot.
The galper saw an
opportunity and they bought
a whole bunch of these
and then Bandai Namco
saw an opportunity and
they released a whole
bunch more essentially undercutting
the value in the black market.
So these people, these
scalpers, they bought
a whole bunch of them
and then the company
released a whole bunch more so
that everyone else could buy them.
So there’s no need for them to buy them
on the black market from these scalpers.
So these scalpers can’t overcharge you.
They can’t.
Well, they’ve lost
a bunch of potential
money because there’s
the money they invested
into actually buying
the Gundam and then the
money, the potential profits they
lost by not being able to resell them.
An upset scalper took
to the internet and he
wrote a little treaty
and it goes like this.
I’m going to read the whole thing to you
because it’s really entertaining to read.
From mighty strike
freedom, which we oppose
increasing available
stock of, is there really
a need to sell them
at convenience stores.
So sometimes even
convenience stores in Japan
are different from convenience
stores in other places.
They sell kind of everything.
Like you can get like home stuff you need.
You can get food.
You can get meals.
You can get ingredients from meals.
You need something.
There’s actually a
very good chance you’re
going to get it at a
Japanese convenience store.
They also sell toys and sometimes
they sell specialty items like this.
It was such a devastating event that
we had to begin an emergency meeting.
So this is a meeting of scalpers, an
emergency meeting despite attending a seminar.
So there’s some sort
of seminar with talking
about how to scalp better or
more efficiently or work together.
Like we had to stop that and have an
emergency meeting about mighty strike freedom.
Now that the meeting is over, I’m
pissed and I might use some foul language.
At first, the cost was 2,970 yen and
they expected profit price was 6,800 yen.
So they’re saying that you
want to buy one of these things.
It costs 3,000 yen and they were
planning to sell it for 6 to 7,000 yen.
So they were going to make
about 3 to 4,000 yen profit.
After the release of the product was
confirmed, many members of my reselling seminar
class worked together with some
even managing to obtain over 20 boxes.
So that’s 20 times
3,000 yen is what the
investment they put into these, hoping
to sell them and get twice that back.
Our members have quite a good
amount of available stock in total.
This is what happened
with the PlayStation 5.
You couldn’t buy a PlayStation 5
because all the scalper started to buy it.
In Japan, what they
did is they set up
lotteries, a store would
get so many, you had to
enter a lottery, you
could enter again and
again and again and then you would win
lottery and get your PlayStation or not.
Now they’re available, but back when it was
scarce, they were trying to stop scammers
or scalpers so you could only buy one
at a time and you had to enter a lottery.
It became quite a bit of work.
We planned out a scalping tour
to Odaiba on the date of release.
So the day this thing was coming out, they
were like, we’re going to as a group, go to
this stores and buy them all and
even managed to beat the lottery.
So again, that’s the
lottery I just mentioned.
And some members were even planning trips
around the expected profit from scalping.
So they’re saying these
guys plan to buy so
many and then sell them
and make so much money.
They plan to trip
based on that potential
profit from the selling,
reselling these toys.
When you think about
how we paid expensive
participation in
transportation costs, increasing
stock just as destroy
resellers is too much, isn’t it?
So they’re saying like
we had to pay travel
expenses, we had to, you
know, maybe stay overnight.
So we had to play hotel, we had to
travel, we had to do all these things.
It cost me money to prepare
to steal from other people, don’t
you think it’s unfair that I
didn’t get to steal from anyone?
There are people from the countryside
who booked hotels just to come to Odaiba.
Imagine Gumpla being something that
anyone can buy whenever they want.
I actually would imagine that to be honest.
I don’t see why there is scarcity.
Even sold in convenience stores.
Do you think the children will
value Gumpla when it happens?
So he’s trying to
say like if it becomes
readily available, then
people won’t value it
as much, but that’s the problem because the
only way he makes money off it is if people
value it and that becomes because
the, the created scarcity of the product.
You want it, but you can’t buy it.
There’s low stock and
that’s why it is enticing.
So he’s saying that
scalpers make products
more attractive and
more exciting for people
to buy to, it’ll make it be
better for the company.
Even us setting the
high price isn’t just
because we want to make more
money, although of course it is.
It’s set so that kids
can’t buy it with their
pocket money and
that parents can instead
buy, instead buy it for
them, leading to a parent
child communication, helping quash
parental neglect and making children smile.
This is where it became suspicious as if to
not, this was might have just been satire.
Because your kids have to
ask the parents for money.
The parents have to
talk to their kids and that’s
going to stop them
neglecting their children.
Doesn’t sound like
even something someone
who was angry about
losing profits would say.
That’s why we were forced to
sell the gun plot at such a high price.
We were doing this for a noble
cause is what they were trying to say.
There are also some
resellers whose career
didn’t work out or were forced
out due to power harassment.
So they’re talking
about like they had a
job and they were
having trouble at work and
then this reselling became their new job so
they could escape this negative situation.
Despite betting on a
chance to turn things around
as a reseller, are you really going
to even waste that investment?
How the heck should they survive?
The end is a bit grandiose, which
is why the end seems suspiciously
like this might not be a
sincere call to justify reselling.
But it is interesting the way the
companies in Japan have handled reselling.
Like I said, the PlayStation, they ran
lottery almost every store had a lottery.
You couldn’t just walk
into a store and buy it.
You had to register, you had to like enter
the lottery regularly and then you got one.
I got one and then my wife
and I got one at the same time.
So I actually bought one and I
was able to get one for my friend.
I didn’t resell it.
I sold it to him for the exact price.
Not anymore.
Nothing less because I wanted
him to actually have his PlayStation.
It’s interesting what Ben and I
Namco have done in this situation.
They know people are going to buy this.
They know they’re
going to try to resell it.
They’re like, let’s say we’re
going to sell a thousand units.
What we’ll do is release 100 and after the
scalpers buy those 100, we’ll release the
other 900 and then we’ll undercut
the value but those guys have bought it.
They can’t really bring
it back in exchange
for the same price or
they could bring it back
and get their money
back but then someone
else could buy it
without having to spend
that extra money that
a scalper would expect.
That was an interesting tactic.
I don’t know if they
did it on purpose but it
does seem like this one instance
was calculated to undercut scalpers.
So this treaty that was
posted on the internet,
if it’s serious, it’s
quite funny because
of the sort of grandiose nature of
we’re trying to mend families by scalping.
But also if it’s not,
it’s actually pointing
out sort of the irony
of what do these people
think they’re actually
doing when they’re just
trying to take more
money away from relatively
normal people who are just
trying to indulge in their hobby.
Normally I saved the last
story for creepy old men
and there’s not any creepy
old men in the stories.
I didn’t do anything this week but we
have Mae Zawa, he’s a Japanese billionaire.
This guy in 2021, he
was the first person
to trap, the first Japanese person to
travel to the international space station.
He did that on his own money.
He just like, ah, I’m
going to buy a ticket on a
spaceship and go to the
international space station.
He canceled his planned
trip to orbit the moon.
He said it was somehow unfeasible.
So this guy has so much money.
He’s taking his free
time and like, I’m going
to go to the international
space station.
I have so much money.
I’m going to go
around the moon, which
probably I don’t think
anyone’s actually ever done yet.
He was participating
in the Ferrari challenge
Japan, which is a, you own a Ferrari,
you can join this is basically a race.
And he was in a bit of a crash.
None of it was life threatening and
when I heard about it, I felt nothing.
And this is kind of the
same thing that happened
to those billionaires who
went in the submarine
and in the submarine, they went and
of course it imploded and everyone died.
There was a kid on there and
everyone sort of feels something
for the, he was really relatively
innocent in this process.
But I heard this really, really famous
rich guy had crashed his car now.
I didn’t know if he was dead or
not, but I was like, I don’t care.
And I don’t care because he’s a billionaire
and he can spend his time going to the
international space
station and he could
spend his time in his
Ferrari racing around a
race track and then have a crash
and it’s still not negatively impact him.
And I think I realized
it’s because let’s make
a list of things I couldn’t afford to
do that are involved in this story.
I wish you go, I’m trying to figure,
should we go big as the smallest?
Okay, yeah, things I couldn’t
afford will go big as the smallest.
I couldn’t afford to pay
for a trip to orbit them.
I couldn’t afford a trip to go to
the international space station.
I couldn’t even afford
one of those trips
where you just leave
the atmosphere and float
for two minutes and then return
to the atmosphere of the earth.
I can’t afford a Ferrari.
I can’t afford to take my
Ferrari and put it in a car race.
I can’t afford to take my
regular car and put it into a race.
I can’t afford to take
the trip to Miyagi,
the place where the
race happens, so I could
actually even watch the rich
people race their expensive cars.
That’s how poor I am compared to this guy.
What he’s doing on
a weekend for fun, I
couldn’t even afford to do without
negatively impacting my general lifestyle.
And then this is one
of those things where
people are now starting
to turn on billionaires
because he got hurt
crashing his expensive
car in a race that was
completely frivolous.
Well, I’m sorry.
I don’t really give a fuck.
But it was national,
it was really big news
because rich guy
crashes his rich thing into
another maybe rich guy’s car and
didn’t have any life threatening injuries.
He’s going to take
time off from work and
then recover completely
and then have people
like do awesome
rehabilitation, so he’ll be fine.
Whereas I hurt my knee
five years ago and you
know, I did my best
but it’s still not 100%.
Mizama, I’m sorry man,
I feel nothing for you
and a deep down inside,
I kind of hope it hurt.
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