(upbeat music) So it is 2025.
We have a new year, a new song.
Thank you to Jesse, Jayce Thomas
who made that new theme song for me.
This is an original theme song.
This is something that
I’ve wanted for a while.
I’ve gone to a couple of, so
there’s a whole epic story behind it.
I think I did it in a
C-McB where I did a thing
for work and I got a guy
to make a rap song for me.
I’ll Fiverr and then I wanted, oh, I
want a new theme song for C-McB.
Because I don’t want to find out that
that music is being used somewhere else.
Because it’s not really
than my song for my show.
So I had one for C-McB and
then for another whole year,
I was like, I kind of need
a song for an engineer’s
Japan, an engineer’s
Japan needs its own song.
I was gonna go on Fiverr
but then I realized like,
if I’m gonna give money
to someone I don’t know,
I should first give money
to someone I do know.
Jesse, Jesse Thomas, he’s done albums.
You can find out Spotify.
He’s done music for video games.
And now he’s done a theme
song for an engineer’s Japan.
Thank you, Jesse, for this amazing
new theme song for an engineer’s Japan.
Chef’s Kiss.
For those of you
listening to the only audio
version that sound
was the chef’s kiss me.
Don’t need to explain it.
I think you know what a chef’s kiss is.
Let’s get to the news.
(upbeat music)
So a new theme song, new transition beat.
Very happy about that as well.
This is an update to
C-McB episode 109 murder
in Japan three, how
to raise a murderer.
So I was thinking because I’ve
done this, I did an experiment.
I did some very serious,
dark, true crime murder
stories on C-McB
experiment to do I say it well.
Can I tell the story well?
Can I be sensitive enough to it?
And ’cause I mean, the whole
C-McB and engineer’s Japan vibe
is me talking and it’s often
very light and very flippant.
These are heavy topics.
I don’t want to treat them too casually.
But at the same time, I do
want to make them entertaining.
So I did three episodes of C-McB
just doing murder stories in
Japan, feeling at how I do it.
So I actually think that
last one I might release
this week as a bonus
and engineer’s Japan.
But if you want to know what’s going on,
C-McB is essentially where
I’m going to be experimenting
with different formats and
different things and different ideas.
Just random stuff.
And then the engineer’s Japan has a format,
but I think now I’ve gotten
comfortable with the idea
of how to present a
very serious murder story.
When the engineer’s Japan started,
I had to rule no murder ’cause
I can’t really make fun of it.
But there’s an update to the story.
So later this week, I will
release the full episode
from C-McB explaining the
whole case as it is up to now.
This is the story of a woman
who tracked down a guy,
brought him to a love
hotel and decapitated him.
And now the mother and father are
being arrested for aiding this crime.
The father has bled not guilty in his
role in his daughter’s beheading of a man.
So full episode C-McB episode 109.
But when you listen to
that episode, you’ll have a full
understanding of how
complicit he is in this crime.
He bought the saw, the saw
that was used in the beheading.
He bought the suitcase
that the body was put in.
He drove her to the place
to help stalk the victim.
So the murderer and the victim
knew each other in this case.
But she was hunting for him.
She was looking for him.
She’s like, let’s go to this club.
Let’s go to this place.
I know he hangs out here.
The father was the one driving her around.
He drove her from the crime scene home.
He also helped by simulating the murder.
So she tied him up, BDSM style.
She covered his eyes with
a blindfold and stuff like that.
And then she practiced the
action of slitting his throat.
She practiced the action of stabbing him.
She would say, how does this feel like?
How do you feel now?
She did her research by
watching horror movies.
So she watched something in a horror movie
and then she wanted
to try it out real life.
Sort of a dry run with her father.
Her father was complicit in this.
He helped her practice.
He helped her essentially train for this.
He helped her get to and from the crime.
He is about as complicit as someone gets.
He’s claiming he’s not guilty because
he didn’t actually know what was going on.
So I’ll be interested to see
why he did not do anything
directly connected to the
actual physical action in the crime.
He did everything leading up to it.
And he did everything helping cover it up.
So I’m really interested
to see, where does the
Japanese court system
land on this kind of story?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The Prime Minister, Prime Minister Ishiba.
He is apparently a heavy smoker.
I didn’t know any of this.
I don’t look into the prime ministers.
I don’t actually take a great deal
of interest in the prime ministers.
Much like the Japanese populace at large,
he’s finding being prime minister difficult
because he doesn’t have
time to take breaks to smoke.
So he admits that he only
gets several cigarettes a day.
He actually didn’t admit this.
I guess it was sort of his assistance.
And the people who work
with him, they’re saying
like, this dude was like
a couple packs a day.
He’s down to only a few cigarettes a day.
In a weird way, actually good for you.
But I’m sure that’s
because of the added stress
of being prime minister means
you don’t get these breaks
and those breaks might
be what he needs to survive.
He told Parliament
he will need a little time
to quit smoking, which
I found very interesting
because he’s saying to the
government that I essentially
promised to you the
government that I will quit smoking.
But is that something that
the prime minister has to do?
I remember Obama was a
smoker and he had to hide it
from everybody and it was
like a really shameful thing.
I was like, but as long
as he’s just smoking,
which is perfectly illegal,
what is the actual problem?
I guess they want to see the president
as someone who doesn’t do anything bad,
which of course we all
know was very unrealistic.
Once the prime minister of
Japan said that if he had to choose
between drinking and smoking,
he would definitely quit drinking.
So between drinking and
smoking, he would choose
smoking every time because
he loves smoking so much.
His wife is a non-smoker, so
in the prime minister’s house,
there is no smoking and in every government
building, smoking has been banned.
So this is a guy who has
to, during his prime ministerial
duties, find a corner
where he’s allowed to smoke
and then take a quick puff
and then head back to work
and he’s finding that really difficult
and is really causing a strain on him.
And I actually think
if that’s your biggest
problem being prime
minister isn’t that hard.
So a guy woke up and he’s
like, “I want to have a good day.
” So I’m going to hang out on my balcony,
which I actually think is really nice.
Japanese balconies don’t get used enough.
Japanese balconies tend to be
used primarily for hanging laundry,
which is too bad because I
have a balcony outside my house.
And if we put some table
on the chairs out there,
it’d be very nice to spend
sort of spring autumn evenings.
This guy had sort of a similar feeling
to mine only that I would go out there,
or maybe have a
cocktail, maybe drink
something, maybe just
read, maybe have some tea.
Who knows?
I’m just going to relax.
That’s what it’s all about.
This guy decided to add a little more
stress into his and other people’s lives.
He might be claiming that
this was to reduce his stress.
That is a pretty common defense
for negative actions in Japan.
But he decided that
the best thing he could
do was to hang out his
second story balcony.
And then when someone
walked by, throw a knife at him.
The knife landed four to five meters in
front of the man, who he threw the knife at.
So the victim, so
nothing actually happened.
But the victim stood there.
Basically, you’re walking down the street
and then a knife comes
flying from a building in lands.
Four to five meters in
front of you, so first of all,
we’re all very lucky that this guy
was not like a movie ninja kind of thing
where he’s throwing and
actually hitting anything.
He threw it, missed
about his belly as good.
He was technically anticipating,
’cause you know when you’re
trying to shoot something,
you don’t shoot at them, you shoot in
front of them so where they’re going to be.
He overcompensated and threw too far.
So that you’re walking
down the street one day.
And then just a knife
sort of clangs in front
of you about four
meters in front of you.
What do you do?
Well, you look up and you see the balcony
where the guy’s standing,
probably looking back at you.
And I just think of the awkward
moment where you sort of lock eyes.
And he’s like, the question, the unsaid
question “Did you just throw a knife at me?
” And that guy’s eyes are saying,
“Yeah, I just threw a knife at you.
” Kind of sorry I missed.
I don’t know how I feel right now.
And so the man pulls out his cell phone
very slowly and dials the police and says,
“Hey, I have just been a
victim of attempted murder,
“very clumsy, very lame, attempted murder,
“but attempted murder just the same.
” So the police show
up and arrest this guy.
He hasn’t said why he has done this yet.
I’m going to go ahead and bet
that he didn’t have a reason.
He just gave in to his darker instincts.
He just let those intrusive
thoughts sort of come
through and through
the knife without thinking.
(upbeat music)
Japan has 2,820 homeless people.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare
has done a survey, which is interim.
So my first feeling was 2,820 homeless
people in the entire country of Japan.
They didn’t actually survey Ishikawa
because they had suffered
from the earthquakes and stuff.
So they were like, we can’t honestly
don’t, we don’t know if these are people
who don’t have homes or their homes
have been destroyed and something.
So it didn’t really, it
wasn’t really applicable.
But overall, Japan has about
less than 3,000 homeless people,
which seems like a
very little small number,
but this sure is, let me get on my little
soapbox and be a pundit for a minute.
You know, this is like
social welfare, health care.
All these things are taken
care of people with, honestly,
maybe not a lot of
money, have found a way to
survive and not be
homeless at the same time.
That’s actually a very good thing.
It sort of like speaks
to these social programs.
Anyways, the Ministry of
Health and Welfare did a survey.
40% of the 2,820 homeless people surveyed
said they were satisfied with
their current living conditions.
Part of the survey was
where these people are staying.
So 25.2% live in city parks.
So they’re city parks, they set
up a tent or something like that.
They do a little sort of thing, village.
I should have looked at this one
more carefully from my language.
25.2% live in city parks.
So they usually set up tents
or coverings in city parks.
And they’re almost in a little community.
23.8% live along the side of roads.
So I’m not, I’m assuming not in
ditches, but maybe under bridges
and stuff like that where they
have a certain amount of cover.
22.6% prick them.
22.6% live along rivers.
So very similar to living alongside roads.
Maybe they live close to
bridges or under bridges
to get some cover and then
set up some kind of shelter.
6.2% live around train stations.
Which has got to be a lot
harder because you’re not really
allowed to to loiter or stay
around train stations at night.
So that might be where the
police sort of push you along.
You have to move along.
That’s why that number is a lot lower.
But basically city parks
and along major thoroughfares
are where almost all the
homeless people in Japan live.
34.4% of the homeless
people in Japan are 70 or older.
So these are people who
have hit retirement age
for whatever reason do
not have a home to live in.
But 40% of those people are saying they’re
satisfied with their living conditions.
Like the tent I live
in under this bridge
along this river, I’m
actually fine with that.
Which was a little shocking
because you think about it.
But then also you’re living your life.
There’s been a couple
of video games and stuff
where they do like
talk to homeless people.
I guess that’s not real.
They’re just talking about
like the freedom they have.
They’re outside the system.
Yeah, I don’t know
what to think about that.
That’s actually the biggest
issue because I’m looking at this
from someone who has never
actually interacted with these people.
So my opinions of what’s
going on there is based on media
and that’s an unreliable
source of information.
So I shouldn’t make any judgments.
This is a good way to think about
things for the rest of your life.
Is should I make this judgment or not?
No, I don’t actually have
any accurate information.
The rest of the information, we got 2,575.
So that is almost all of them are men.
172 are women and 73 of
them were gender indeterminate.
Primarily because they were
wearing like winter coverings,
like so much clothes that there was, it
wasn’t obvious to tell what their gender was.
It’s not that they wouldn’t reveal it.
It’s just the, I guess the
person didn’t want to ask,
are you a man or a woman
or how do you identify?
Well, Saka had the
most homeless people at
856 Tokyo with second,
which is a big surprise
because there’s a massive amount of
the population of Japan lives in Tokyo.
So you would think a
massive amount of the
population of homeless
people also live in Tokyo.
That’s not the case.
They only have 624.
17.5% said they wanted to
find a job and get an apartment.
And 12% said they wanted
to find an apartment
and use welfare and then
find some kind of light work
to sustain themselves for
the rest of their life in Japan.
It was interesting that
40% of the homeless people
in Japan surveyed, which
was apparently a majority
of the homeless people in Japan were still
satisfied with their living conditions.
I would love to know
why they were satisfied.
Like what was it about their life?
This story is broken my brain.
I would like to talk to some of the
people and find out why how their life is.
‘Cause maybe that’s the bit I’m actually
missing is maybe they’re living okay.
Maybe they have minimal
means or minimal desires.
And that’s why it’s okay.
Whereas I don’t live that life.
I have to have a PlayStation.
(upbeat music)
A 58 year old doctor.
We have a couple of doctor stories.
A 58 year old doctor.
It seems in these late 50s is when
the doctors really lose their shit.
A 58 year old doctor
missed a call for a flight.
So you wanted to get a
flight from one city to another.
It was called like please board now.
He missed it.
He walks up to the front.
He says it was never called,
which is a very doctor thing to say.
Like not I missed the call.
Is there any way he can get on board
or get on the next flight or something?
He claims he was never called.
So he goes to the front desk where
he was supposed to catch his flight.
He starts berating the
person working there.
So the ground staff that’s
actually working there.
Of course has no control over
whether or not he heard it or showed up.
You know it was called ’cause it’s probably
an automated system for part of it.
And then it’s like, hey,
last call, get on the airplane.
He slaps the staff twice
completely unhinged.
Like why you think slapping
someone a service person
is going to be in any way
beneficial to your situation.
He probably said like
get me on another plane.
They’re like, we can’t do that right now.
(whooshing)
Didn’t get exactly what
I wanted right away.
I’m a 58 year old man.
Do what I say or you get slapped.
He was, therefore, immediately arrested.
(upbeat music)
A 59 year old doctor.
So this is my point.
So I always talk about
like every now and then
the themes come through,
the themes come through.
It’s not intentional on my part.
Like I start looking for 50 year
old doctor slapping people’s stories.
It’s just like suddenly in
my feed of news stories
that I collect, there are multiple
doctors and the word slap come up.
And I’m like, oh, well, I’m
going to stick those together
and see if there’s like a trend
over the next couple of weeks.
59 year old doctor was on the train.
So he’s standing on the train and there’s a
man seated around him who was coughing.
So he dealt with it.
And of course, you know,
doctors take the Hippocratic oath.
I will do no harm.
He wants to deal with it.
He’s thought like back to
like all my bedside manner
and I became a doctor because
I care so deeply for humanity.
He took that and through
all that out the window
and said, if you
cough again, I’ll kill you.
And to just put it like an exclamation
point on that, he pulled out an ice pick.
The man he was threatening.
So he said like if you cough one more time,
I’ll kill you and point
it a nice pick at him.
The man he was threatening through sitting
down was a member of the Japanese military
at self defense force who then
in that in quotes detained him.
So I’m assuming just grabbed the ice pick
and then threw him to the ground,
held him until the police arrived
and then said, this dude just pulled
an ice pick out, threatened to kill me.
Please deal with that.
The man, the doctor.
So they get highly
educated person who has, you
know, we tend to esteem
doctors as being smart.
But the more I see about
the way doctors behave,
at least in Japan, I think a lot of
them, they might be good doctors.
So that doesn’t mean they actually
understand the rest of the world.
The God complex maybe
comes into play here like, I can do
whatever I want, but you
can’t go threaten military dudes
and then expect to just like
walk away with no problems.
No claim that he was
hurt, but he was detained.
So again, this is an athletic person
who’s in the military versus a doctor
who probably walks around and
tells people to do stuff all the time.
Police arrived, he was arrested.
He admits to taking out the
ice pick, but to nothing else.
So he’s saying, yes, I was on the train.
No, I did not tell the
man to stop coughing.
No, did I did not threaten to murder him.
I just took out my ice pick
to admire it for a little while.
As you do, when you’re
on the train, you’re bored.
You have time.
You take out your ice pick, you admire
the sharp edge, the long sort of shaft.
You sort of stroke a little bit.
This is what people do on the train.
That was about to get way worse.
I’ll just stop right there.
So I think he’s actually
undermined his own argument
by the very fact that he admitted
that, hey, he has been carrying
an ice pick with him, because
who carries an ice pick with him?
Doctors certainly not.
If he had a syringe or
a scalpel in his pocket,
while that would still be
a little weird and shaky
and like, he could say, oh,
yes, I had this scalpel at work.
I put a cover on it or
something, and I just put it
into my pocket and then
forgot it was in my pocket.
Still probably not
believable, but far more likely
than I’m a doctor at a
hospital or I’m a doctor at home,
and I put an ice pick in my
pocket just to hang out and be cool.
And then I got in the train and while I
was on the train, I was just like bored.
So I was like, hmm, let’s take a look
at the ice pick that I’m carrying with me.
Obviously, he did threaten this guy.
He did threaten him with the ice pick.
I think if you don’t say anything, let’s
take away the verbal threat of murder.
If you and I were standing
on a train and I took out
the ice pick and I just
like held it or pointed
out you, that is
inherently threatening.
So I think his, even his counter
argument that he didn’t say anything,
still the underlying feeling
there is guy was coughing.
You were clearly annoyed.
You took out a nice pick.
There is an unspoken threat, and
that is what he should be arrested for
because it’s exactly the
same as saying it out loud.
(upbeat music)
54 year old man.
How were 50 year old?
I’m 52.
And I’m like, again, I’ve said this before.
We went through a whole
summer of 50 plus year
old man doing the
weirdest sexual crimes ever.
Now it’s 50 year old
man just being unhinged.
Like that’s the, we seem
to have shifted from, it’s a
sex thing to just like, I’m
an angry, violent old man.
This guy wasn’t angry
or violent, but he still was
expressing those tendencies
is how I feel about it.
54 year old man had a hobby.
That’s a good thing for a 50 year old man.
You’re only a few more
years before you go bananas.
I’m looking forward to saying it.
Also true.
I mean, this is, this is now my concern.
I’m now conscious of my behavior.
Is my behavior going
to just like click off I go?
Now I’m like, is it a weird sex crime?
I’m assuming I would lean towards violence.
Having practiced judo my whole life.
Violence would be my more natural tendency.
I’m wondering when and
where it’s gonna happen.
The train is a hide stress situation.
It’s always when you’re in your worst mood.
You get on the train, but it’s
also like when you’re happy.
So you are on the train for your peaks
and troughs, your valleys, not troughs.
But like you know what I mean?
Like if you’re in your worst
moment, you probably still have
to get on the train and go home
and then someone annoys you.
I can see that happening.
But I so far my hobby is in
sitting this room and make content,
and which is the movie reviews
and podcasts and stuff like that.
It’s very hard for me to
hurt someone else from here.
And I think that might be the key to me not
getting arrested between now and sort of,
these guys all seem to be,
it seems to be in their 50s.
So it seems like past
60, it happens a lot less.
So if I can get through
the next eight to 10 years
in this room, basically never leaving,
I think I’m not gonna get arrested.
But let’s get on to our 54 year old man.
He has a hobby.
I have a hobby and that takes up my timing.
It means I don’t get into
trouble with other things.
This guy chose the wrong hobby.
I think that’s what we’re
really gonna learn from this.
My hobby is make content
people don’t like the content.
Maybe people do like the content.
That’s fine.
No one gets hurt either way.
He likes building things he
likes working with his hands.
Very admirable.
I think it’s really cool when
someone can build something
from scratch and he’s decided,
“Well, I’m technically skilled.
“I know how to make things.
“I’m going to make weapons
that are illegal in Japan.
” And that’s the first problem.
He was arrested because
he had a fully functional pen
that shot a gun that was
lethal to a human being.
So it had enough capacity or
power that you could shoot the
pen at a person and it would
most likely kill that person.
The police got an anonymous tip.
And as I said in our last episode, if
you’re gonna do illegal weird bad things,
you have to keep the
people around you happy.
So you can’t be off putting
in weird and unpleasant
if you’re going to commit
crimes or do bad things.
Because the anonymous tips are the ones
that are getting these
people in trouble lately.
These anonymous tips to
government lines or the police and
stuff are the ones that are
getting these guys arrested.
So this guy, I don’t know.
He had been making
these things for a while.
We will see in a minute because
of the volume of stuff he had.
No one said anything.
So he must have pissed
someone off at some point.
And that person
decided to call the police
anonymous tip and then
they show up at his house.
And they’re like, “Hey,
do you have a gun pen?
” He’s like, “Sure I do.
” And he holds it up
and shows it to him.
I don’t know if that’s how it happened.
They didn’t actually
say how he was arrested.
He actually had a YouTube channel where
he was showing off the things he’d made.
Like the anti-tank gun he built himself.
No, it’s a bit of his exaggeration.
It is a replica of a World
War II anti-tank gun.
It has a big shield and a big cannon.
It actually has wheels and it’s like
connects to, has like a trailer hitch.
So it connects to a truck or
something else to get it around.
It looks exactly like a miniature
version of an anti-tank thing,
but when I say miniature, I
mean like a one to four scale.
So it would go up to
like my shins or my hip.
That’s what it’s very hard to see
’cause I’m just watching on video.
But he was using an indoor and
he was shooting Rubik’s Cube.
So it was essentially a really
big, powerful, compressed air gun.
But if you put something sharp in there,
you have a gun that could kill a human
being, which is, again, illegal in Japan.
So he had his YouTube channel
where he’s showing this off,
shooting a stack of Rubik’s Cubes, which
doesn’t seem very threatening until again,
you take those extra steps to what could
he do if he modified this even further.
The police come in search of his house.
They find his workshop
where he has 90 other firearms.
Now, most of these look like guns,
but I’m assuming they’re actually air guns
’cause he said 16 of these weapons
violate the firearm control law.
So he’s probably got things that look
like real guns that are not real guns.
They’re like air guns or they
make noise or something like that.
He’s got other things he’s
made himself or he’s taken the
air guns and modified them
so they shoot actual stuff.
Maybe not just pellets
or something like that.
But because he was
making these things himself,
he’s also in violation of the
weapon manufacturing law.
- Oh, one, don’t do crime.
Rule two, don’t talk about
our failure self doing a crime.
Rule three, don’t post about
said crimes on the internet.
Fully agree with.
Your dude did break all three.
The problem is these guys do this.
They think, ah, wouldn’t it be cool for
everyone to see the gun I made at home?
I’m gonna film it and put it on
YouTube and be really popular.
And then someone’s gonna say, it
actually could have been someone
who didn’t know him, who
wasn’t annoyed with him.
We just saw, here’s a Japanese
dude making a cannon at home.
I think this is wrong and called a police.
But again, don’t film it.
When we went through the hole, it
was like all the harassment streamers
and they were filming themselves
and then they all got arrested.
That was always like, dude, if you weren’t,
like if you’re harassing people, that’s
bad, but filming it and putting it online,
that’s just guaranteed
you’re gonna get arrested.
But because he was building these,
he’s also in violation of the
weapon manufacturing law,
which I’m actually betting is more
serious than just having like, possessing,
is bad, manufacturing is worse.
This is like trafficking drugs is bad,
producing and trafficking drugs is worse.
When he was arrested,
he said, I should have
thrown it away if I had
known this would happen.
Which I guess all I can say is correct.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)