(upbeat music)
So this is not episode 300.
And it’s not episode 300 because I know at
some point I’ve either doubled up episodes
or I’ve missed a number I’ve made a
mistake because that’s just who I am.
I have most likely made a
mistake in my numbering system.
At some point I’ve changed
websites, I’ve moved hosts and stuff.
So there’s no way this is accurate.
But very technically, this is
going to be labeled as episode 300.
So whoo, whoo, whoo,
whoo, whoo, whoo.
Something like that
needs to happen right now.
That’s happened.
We can move on because
numbers are arbitrary.
I mean, they just happen
as long as I keep doing this.
The number will continue to go up.
But you are listening to Ninja News Japan.
The world’s number to Japanese
news podcast, which is still a weird thing.
Because again, the labeling
of that is very specific.
It’s like having to get
his book a world record
for something that no
one’s ever tried before.
If you get really specific,
you can be number one.
And that’s important to keep in
mind so that my head doesn’t get big.
We don’t have to worry
about that because I knock
myself down more than
probably anybody else ever will.
But let’s get to the
news in Japan like Ninja.
We seek out the news.
I’ve no 300 episodes and I’m just
trying to make the title make sense.
So news Japan, yes, Ninja News
Japan, we did it ’cause it sounded good.
That was really the only
reason I came to that decision.
Ninja News Japan has
news, has Japan in the title.
Off we go, everyone knows what it’s about.
The Ninja part, well, just
add another syllable basically.
That makes it sound better.
Dut, dut, dut, dut,
dut, dut, dut, dut, dut.
Ninja News Japan.
So Japan as a country is going to update
the English spelling of Japanese words.
So when they use Romangi,
Romangi is the English alphabet,
so ABCD, they have a
system for the spelling.
The problem is the system
they’ve been using up till now,
if you read it phonetically
as an English-speaking
person, you don’t
make the right sounds.
So that is called the Kunre Shiki rules,
and they’re going to be
changing to the Hepburn rules.
I didn’t have a chance to look
into what the Hepburn rules are,
but they are far, far more similar
to the way if I said a Japanese word,
the way you would just naturally
spell it out if you tried to spell it out.
So currently, the prefecture of Aichi.
If you spell it using
the Kunre Shiki rules,
the old rules, you
would spell it A-I-T-I.
Now, A is a native English
speaker would say A-T.
That’s what I would read
if I saw that on paper.
It is going to be shifted to the Hepburn
rules which would spell it as A-I-C-H-I-I-T,
which is more phonetically
similar to what the Japanese say,
and it means if I read it as an
English speaker, off a piece of paper,
I will be more likely
to say the right sounds.
The other one is Shibuya,
so very famous places.
I’ll just give you an example of what
the rule change would actually mean.
Currently, in official documents,
it spelled S-I-B-U-Y-A.
Sibuya, where it should be S-H-I-B-U-Y-A.
Official documents use this old system,
but basically everyone else in the country
uses the Hepburn rules, the
more modern version of the rules.
That sounds better.
It sounds more like what
Japanese people say.
It sounds more like
what foreigners would say.
It’s a very weird system.
It’s almost like one of those things
where someone decided on a set of rules.
This is very Japanese thing to me.
They decided on a set
of rules and because
they set the rules,
they just didn’t change it.
They just kept it going for years.
Even though it’s clearly wrong,
clearly doesn’t work very well.
We’re sticking to the rules ’cause we
made those rules and those are the rules.
And you have to follow
the rules, that’s the rules.
Signage will be updated.
Government documents are gonna be updated.
Everything’s gonna start
using these new rules.
Let’s say you’re an assembly member
and you have a political
party that comes to you
and they want to ban
sexy photo shoots at pools.
Now, these are basically public
pools so everyone gets to use them.
So you can understand
the sexy bathing suits,
which hardly cover anything at all.
The lavacious posing
might get some people up.
Like I didn’t mean it that way.
I meant get people like
get their backup like a cat,
like they’re angry, but
I want to get people up
as sort of a double on
tundra unintentional there.
Please enjoy the
unintended double on tundras,
which I apparently do
a lot more than I think.
I think the way I speak now is
just naturally Dubla on tundra.
So you do it.
I’m gonna ban sexy photo
shoots in public pools
and then from there,
it’s gonna be awesome.
We’re gonna have like a safe, healthy
environment for people to go swimming.
Now I’m gonna go home.
I’m gonna do what I like to do.
And what I like to do is go home
and take sexy pictures of
an acquaintance that I have
and post them to public
bulletin board on the internet.
Bullets and boards, internet bulletin
boards are already sort of an outdated thing
and to me are the remnant of the
creepiest aspects of the internet.
‘Cause when you talk about
bulletin boards, I only think of fortune.
I think of those kind of places.
And that’s where all the worst
bits of the internet sort of coagulate.
I don’t know if that’s the right
word, but you know what I mean?
Like they gather and they sort of simmer
and they kind of fester
together in these places.
bulletin boards, I don’t know
what these pictures look like.
They were sexual in nature.
They may have just been sexy poses,
but it wasn’t his place to
really put them on the internet.
So you’ve basically taken, but this is a
classic, is you’ve taken a moral stance
in your political
life and then in your
personal life, you go and
do the exact opposite.
So you’re like, I’m
against sexy photo shoots,
but I’m very pro sexy
photos going on the internet
so much so that I’m
going to do it myself.
The hypocrisy is
enough that there was an
independent investigation,
what are you gonna do?
You decide to quit.
So this assembly member just quit saying
they’ve lost the public trust 100% yes,
but also you’ve demonstrated
you don’t believe the
things you’re actually
putting for in politics.
And this is an interesting question.
I’m a politician.
I’m supposed to represent the people.
Now my beliefs are obviously why
those people put me into this position,
but also let’s say the majority of people
have an opinion I personally disagree with.
Should I do that thing?
So that’s always an interesting
question because a true
politicians’ opinions would
not be their own opinions.
It would be the opinions of
the people they represent.
So if the people they
represent want something,
you could do it, but
then maybe I am my
personal life, leave a
completely opposite life.
I don’t think that should be as big
a problem if you’re honest about it.
If you’re like, hey, I really
like sexy photos so much
so that I post sexy photos
on internet bulletin boards,
but the people have said they don’t
want sexy photo shoots at public pools.
I’m gonna shut that down.
If you were honest about it and direct,
I think there wouldn’t be a problem,
but the fact is you’re
trying to hide this shadow
life that you have and
pretend you disapprove
of sexy photo shoots when
you really are one step away
from participating in some factor, you’re
promoting at least sexy photo shoots.
Or the alternative, politicians
should just stay off the internet.
(electronic music)
Okay, remember last week
we talked about 99 Guinan.
So Guinan’s the city,
the mayor of the city.
He got in trouble for sexual harassment.
99 cases.
I focused on the fact that he had
physically touched women’s boobs and butts.
Boobs and butts was kind of like the
moving phrase throughout that story.
It actually sparked a
different conversation in Japan,
which is very interesting to me
because in Japan they started talking
about is head pads, sexual harassment.
So any touch that is
unwelcome, I think probably is a
form of sexual harassment
because the touch is unwelcome.
You shouldn’t be touching people.
Don’t touch people.
That’s actually pretty safe.
At work, do not touch people.
And if you do that, you’re
gonna be pretty safe.
So don’t touch anyone.
So the head pad is supposed to be innocent,
but it is certainly demeaning in some way.
This came up the mayor of
Guinan said in our generation.
Now this is something he actually said in
his own defense last time, his generation.
So he’s basically trying
to say that in my time
it was acceptable, you could sexually harass
everybody and everyone was cool with it.
He was told by a person of a similar
age of his generation, not to do it.
And he laughed it off
and then he can go back
to last week’s episode and
catch some of the ASMR
of me going, ha ha ha, hey
buddy, that kind of stuff.
He said in our generation, it was common
to pat the head of children
who did well or works hard.
Now the operative word in that sense,
I believe is children because
this is from an adult to a child.
So if I am an adult patting
another adult’s head,
I am clearly demeaning
them even though I might
be trying to imply
they’ve done a good job.
But I think for him, because
he’s such a gross human being
and no mistake, he is a
very gross human being.
I think for him, the actual thing is
that he’s trying to push boundaries.
He’s trying to say like,
does she react negatively
to me touching her head if she doesn’t
then I’m going to go for something else.
He didn’t interpret the
signals correctly anyways
and always went ahead
and did whatever he wanted.
That’s why he has 99 sexual
harassment cases on him.
But it was interesting, the focus
of the Japanese internet was,
here’s a gray area and
most people were like,
no, basically you shouldn’t
be touching anybody
at work, which I
fundamentally agree with.
I don’t think you should
be touching people at work.
There’s a different mayor.
The mayor, so we went
through a massive trend
on the engineers’ pan
for like an entire year.
It was people, men, 50 years plus doing
just the most insane, gross, sexual things.
And that was their final story of the day.
Seems like the last little while,
the mayors have caught fire.
I’m assuming they’re all
over it, and they’re plus 50s.
But the fact that
they’re all, it’s a mayor
group makes it kind
of interesting in itself.
Different mayor was also
accused of sexual harassment.
He had department and division heads
walk out of the room
where he was about to speak.
So what they’re having,
they’re having like a meeting
of the mayor, staff,
initially three questions
were directed to the deputy mayor.
So everyone’s kind of ignoring him.
The fourth question asked
the mayor about a policy issue.
Seven people got up
and left because they’re
like, we don’t like
what this guy’s done.
He shouldn’t be mayor.
We’re not going to even listen to him.
We’re going to pretend he doesn’t exist.
So you got the cold shoulder from everyone.
The mayor, I like to enjoy this.
This is one of those like desperation moves
where in the moment you’re
like, this is going to work.
This is going to be the golden ticket and
it gets me out of this trouble that I’m in.
And I’m going to play the victim.
The mayor claims he is a
victim of harassment harassment,
which is a new one I
had never heard before.
So I love new phrases being coined.
Harassment harassment is brand new to me.
I don’t think it’s a thing.
So he’s basically saying
because I have been accused
of sexual harassment or
harassment or power harassment
or any kind of harassment
that now people seem
to think it’s acceptable to harass
me back and treat me poorly.
So the underlying message
he’s actually saying is like,
even if I have committed harassment,
you should still treat me nicely.
You should still be nice to me.
Because if you’re saying
it’s not nice to harass
people, then you should
not harass me back.
So he’s actually saying this is a
very much cake and eat it to situation.
I should be able to harass people
but people should still be nice to me.
And the fact that people
are not being nice to me
because I harass people is unacceptable,
which is not a load of bullshit.
It’s a very politics
oriented way of thinking,
but I’m betting he thought
in the moment he’s like,
ah, if I claim to be harassed by the people
who accused me of harassing, therefore,
those two things, they’re
negatives, they cancel each other out.
There is no more harassment.
He’s claiming that harassment harassment
is subordinates harassing their supervisors
because they now consider it acceptable,
which again, this is the load of bullshit
coming out of a politician’s
mouth, not a big surprise.
Student of an elementary school,
this is a massive story this week.
Because the numbers are so big,
one it actually gets to the end of this.
Student of an elementary
school, so we’re talking little kids.
He was scammed out of 930,000 yen,
so almost a million yen by a classmate
who sold him medals and bank notes, saying
they would increase in value over time.
So when you go to a lot of tourist places
in Japan, you can have a little medal made.
Usually 500 yen, it’ll
stamp it and spit it out,
and the kid had one of those.
He’s like, I’ll sell you this gold coin,
which will increase in value over time,
and the kid agreed to it.
He said I have a bank note made of plastic.
It also will increase in value over time.
It was a Canadian, I think, $10 note.
And he was selling this
to these kids the coin
he sold, which cost
500 yen for 360,000 yen.
And there were eight
transactions over time in the school
where the kid was buying
stuff from these classmates.
The classmates were essentially
bullying him at first for being poor.
And he said I have a million yen
from what he’s done has saved up his new
year’s money for years and years and years.
He accumulated a million yen.
The mistake there is he had
access to it so that he could do this.
He’d given 900,000 yen away.
He went to his dad, he said,
you know, it must have broken.
He went to his dad, and he
said, I’ve given all my classmates,
all this money, I think
they’re taking advantage of me,
I don’t think this stuff is worth anything.
The father calls to the police,
the police contact the parents.
He’s gotten apologies and 250,000 yen back,
but 250,000 yen is
essentially just a quarter of the
money he’s lost that
those other kids still have.
I, as a parent, have no idea
what I’ve done in this situation.
Like, I certainly would have
given all the kids money back.
No question.
It’s just how do you punish
your kids for scamming other kids?
Like, it’s one of those
things like bullying and stuff.
When it happens, it’s
almost like it’s inconceivable
that it happened.
That’s the weird part to me.
But yeah, you gotta be careful.
Because kids, I guess
if they learn to scam,
what happened to me, I
put myself in this situation.
I was in grade six or
seven in this other kid.
His name was Kirk.
He said to me that he
could sell me a butterfly knife.
Butterflies knives are illegal in Canada.
But he said he could get me one if
I gave him, I think it was five or $10.
So that was like a big chunk
of change for a kid in grade six.
But I really wanted a butterfly.
It’s so lucky I didn’t get this.
‘Cause there are only two results
of me having a butterfly knife.
It would have been me
practicing and cutting
off a finger or me
actually stabbing someone
because I lost my temper
because I was such a wild child.
So he took the $10 and he said,
I’ll give it to you next week
and then the next week went by
and then another week went
by and I went, hey Kirk, you
know, you took money from
me to give me a butterfly knife.
You better give me my money
back or the butterfly knife.
And he was just looking at
me like, what are you gonna do?
I can’t go to my parents or the teachers
and tell them that I attempted to buy
an illegal weapon and give them money.
So I had to just suck up that loss.
And I still to this day,
how many years later?
It looked like 40 years later,
still remember the frustration
and pain and the sense of
loss that I’d gotten myself into.
There’s nothing I could do about it.
So I mean, kudos to Kirk for getting me
in that situation and taking me for that.
But you know, also I didn’t
fall for that scam twice.
But yeah, man, I still
want that butterfly knife.
Guillain is an area of
what’s famous for geisha.
And people have like a image
of geisha from anime and movies
and stuff because in those
they make them very sexual.
Geisha traditionally are entertainers.
They’ll tell stories, they
will play musical instruments,
they’ll perform for you, they’ll do dances.
It’s kind of, it’s just entertainment.
These sex stuff came from
the guys wanting to have sex
with this person who was
a very engaging personality.
And they’re very charming,
it’s kind of their job.
So there’s, it’s sort
of like a dual play here
where they’re not prostitutes,
but if you can get into
a right situation, maybe
they’ll have sex with you
and then that involves you
spending a lot of time with them.
You spend a lot of time with them.
That’s going to cost a lot of money.
Is this prostitution, whatever.
You can go into that for a long time.
We’re not going to get
into that too deeply today.
But the average geisha walking
around Kyoto is not a prostitute.
Let’s just put that out there right now.
They are doing a job and
that job is to learn and study
different arts and then perform
those arts on behalf of customers.
Tourists seem to think
that they’re like paid
employees of the city
that can basically be abused.
So they have people will just grab
them and start taking pictures with them.
They don’t ask if it’s
okay to take pictures first.
I mean, these are private individuals.
You shouldn’t be just
taking pictures of them.
They don’t ask, they just run
up and take a picture together.
Sometimes they’ll grab them and pull them
into a position, which is assault in Japan.
So you can’t do that.
The geisha are complaining.
The city is like, we don’t know what to do.
There’s these small alleys.
And that’s where the geisha work in.
They come out of there
and people are going in there
and it puts them in this
very uncomfortable situation.
So they’re actually going to ban tourists
from being able to go
down into those little alleys
where the geisha study
and work and learn and stuff.
Is this going to happen from April?
And the city representative
said, we don’t want to do this,
but we are desperate.
So there’ve been some complaints.
One of the geisha said, like, she
was grabbed while walking down
the street and actually tore
her hormonal commandos.
Real ones are super expensive.
They’re like literally millions
of yen to buy a commando.
Lately, Japan’s been very
concerned about overtourism
and they’ve been putting
on sort of restrictions.
Since COVID restrictions were lifted,
Japan is now putting other
restrictions on tourism.
So now I think you have to pay 2,000 yen
if you want to climb up Mount
Fuji because too many people
were climbing up and they
weren’t taking care of their garbage.
So like, we have to pay people
to literally pick up garbage.
Well, we’re not going to absorb that cost.
The tourists can absorb that cost.
They can pay to go up the mountain.
These, again, private
individual citizens in
Japan walking around
the city don’t feel safe
because foreign people feel like perfectly
comfortable walking up and grabbing them.
That can’t happen anymore.
The city’s actually going to put,
they haven’t explained like what
the punishment is going to be.
They’re going to put up signs saying like,
this is tourists are not
allowed to walk down here,
but how do you enforce
that in a free society?
It’s actually the problem.
There might be fines, something like that.
But it will give at least
the gaitia some recourse
because they say, you’re
not supposed to be here.
I can now call the police
and have you removed.
Maybe that kind of thing.
But it’s a little sad because this is just
means like people are coming
to Japan and not behaving well.
We’ve done a lot of stories
on people not behaving well.
So they should do one where
they bend the mares of cities
because those guys apparently
are the grossest people in Japan.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
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