It’s gonna be a short one.
May has already started out to be a bit of a bust.
I have to go to Canada next week, so there
will be no news in Japan next week, maybe
even for the next two weeks, because I’m
gonna get back on Monday night, I record on
Tuesdays, just so everyone knows what’s going on.
Ah, that’s life, life is tough.
Sometimes.
10 million yen.
10 million yen was founded a recycling center in Sapporo.
So recycling center, I’m assuming it’s just like general garbage, things
that can be recycled, so glass and stuff.
I am wondering what it was in.
It sounds like it was just wrapped up in something else.
There’s a three month deadline for claiming the lost money.
So the police were actually looking for an owner.
At May 1st, so beginning of this month, the
money became the city of Sapporo ‘s money.
Over the course of the three months, 16 people tried to claim the money.
Now this is the bit I was interested in.
So I would love an extra 10 million yen.
Like just pass that over here, 10 million yen.
It’s not gonna totally change my life, but it would make it better for at
least a little while I’d have a lot, you know, I’d pay off all the bills.
Great.
Ah, so I understand the instinct to try to claim the money.
What we got work up of like reasons why people would claim the money.
Because you’ll be interesting to me like what kind of things the police
would ask, questions and stuff to confirm that this is your money.
So 16 people called up the Sapporo police and said, “Yeah, that’s my 10
million yen.”
One, the first one I really enjoyed was I went shopping as I walked in a
parking lot.
I dropped the 10 million yen that was wrapped in newspaper.
Why?
My question is please officers, why are you walking around with 10 million
yen wrapped in newspaper?
Now this is not as weird as it may sound at first.
When I bought a house, technically bought a house.
I haven’t paid off the house yet because I have a mortgage.
So when I attempted to start buying a house, which ends up being a multi-
year process because
of it mortgage, if we paid a massive down
payment in cash, we got, I mean, paying more
at the beginning is better because it means your mortgage is lower overall.
And also we got like a discount essentially by giving them a massive amount
of accounts.
We went to the bank and they wanted cash, which as a Western person feels
very shady, but
in Japan it’s very normal.
They don’t do checks and things like that.
So we went to the bank.
If I remember correctly, we took a 19
million yen, my wife and I pulled our money.
Had a stack of money as big as my head.
So I don’t know.
It was, it was, how do you measure ahead?
The height is bottom to top.
So I guess it’s width from the back of my head to the front of my head.
So I actually have a picture somewhere of me laying on the ground with 19
million yen stacked next to my head.
It’s the same, a sum width is my head.
This is the closest I’m going to get to a
wrap video where I’m like showing off how much
money I have on my bands as it were.
But like I knew I would never have that much money in my hand again or at
least I assumed.
I mean, I guess I’m not dead yet, but the likelihood of me having more than
19 million yen in my possession at one time is very unlikely.
You took it to the construction company, the place that it built the house.
They had that machine that, machine that counts the money.
When the point was I did actually carry that 19 million with me.
I put it in a bag, in a brown paper bag and then put it in like a backpack
and then held the backpack like I hugged it like a fragile child.
Because if I dropped this money somehow, I was not going to financially
recover for years
and years and years and years.
And we wouldn’t be able to be living in the house I live in now.
So the explanation I was walking in a parking lot and I dropped 10 million
yen wrapped in newspaper.
Rapt in newspaper is sound suspicious, but I put mine in a paper bag.
I didn’t want to put it in something
else that would make it more suspicious .
So I actually wrapped it up in something
non suspicious and put it in my backpack.
Then again, I was I was hugging this
like it could be taken from me in a moment.
The second explanation was I put 10 million
yen in my closet and now I can’t find it.
I might have thrown it out, which is the same sort of thing.
It’s like I’ve got 10 million yen.
I put it in the closet.
I cleaned out my closet, maybe forgot that
the 10 million yen was there and it ended
up at the recycling center.
That one is slightly more reasonable.
Again, because Japan has still got a strange relationship with money.
There’s still a lot of people who believe in cash.
They don’t actually want to put money in the bank.
Banks, I think most banks now don’t really offer anything significant in the
way of interest anyways.
The cash sitting in your closet is kind of more liquid.
It’s more available.
So a lot of people think about it that way.
A lot of old people in Japan keep cash in their house.
17, I think was the biggest amount of money found 42.5 million yen was found
in the garbage
in good amount.
Their suspicion is that a man died.
His house was demolished and as they took
all the stuff out of his house either before
or after.
It just ended up in the garbage.
This older man had just kept that money in his house.
This is what I’m saying.
There is a different relationship to money than we would have in the West.
The explanation for this is that there are older people who hide their cash.
So let’s say I’m older.
I have my 42 million yen.
I open up a speaker for my stereo and I stick
it in the speaker or I hide it somewhere.
I’m not going to tell where it is because
that’s the whole point of hiding it.
But then I die.
It’s not like you usually prepare for your death in this way.
So you don’t tell anyone where your money is so they don’t know.
So they start throwing out your old stuff.
They’re not going to think like, oh, I should open up these speakers.
And check for money.
Yeah.
It puts you in a weird position.
Let’s say I have my father in law or my parents in law.
They die.
Should I start breaking down all their stuff
to see if they’ve hidden any money in the
house?
It seems weirdly mercenary at this.
But at the same time, of course, I don’t want to throw out 42 million yen
that could benefit my family or someone
else in the family who maybe deserves it.
It suddenly felt like crypto to me.
They’ve just stored it somewhere else where no one else can get it because I
have a tiny amount of cryptocurrency.
I was big into cryptocurrency and then it really started to turn out like it
wasn’t going to get used the way they were promising it.
It became like an investment thing and not like something you use where for
me, the idea of Internet money, something you use was really appealing.
So I have like basically left over money
in crypto and then the price all tanked.
So it wasn’t really worth, you know, going back to it the moment.
If it seems like it’s going to take off again, maybe I’ll look at it again,
but I really
want it to be something you can use, not something that just sits there and
it becomes like an investment opportunity
that may or may not hold value over time.
But that means I have like a USB stick
with, let’s say, a 500 bucks crypto on it.
If I die, that’s gone.
If that had been like where I was storing my money, if I was taking my
savings, putting
in crypto and I die, you’re not going to break the security to get in there.
It’s got like whatever, 15, 20 word pass codes that you have to find and
know the right order and stuff.
Yeah.
So this is similar.
It’s the old version and the new version is almost the same thing.
Anyways, no one convinced the police it was there 10 million yen.
The police have reverted the money to the city.
And so that’s it.
We did a story a little while ago that if
you, someone turns in the money, you have to
give them an award, like a reward, a thank you.
It was between, I think it was five and 20% of the value, which means the
person who found
this, if someone had claimed it, they would have got as a minimum five
percent of the money they were supposed to have found 10 million yen.
But because it goes back to the city, maybe they don’t get anything.
I wonder if there’s a reward for the
city worker who found the 10 million yen.
I sit there and I go like, man, because I’m not rich enough to throw away 10
million.
If I found 10 million yen when I turn it in, I assume if I found that much
money, it was from someone nefarious.
It was like a yakusa, lost it or something.
So then I wouldn’t feel bad, but then I don’t know what’s the yakusa.
So it might be the situation where it was like 40 million yen.
A family member died and that family could really use it.
I would feel bad about that.
I don’t want to steal from a family.
I wouldn’t have problems stealing from yakusa.
But I think my assumption is if I find money somehow on the street of that
volume that it.
was someone doing something in the first place.
So maybe I got to readjust my attitude
and be a more honest and better person.
Probably won’t happen today though.
There’s nothing dishonest about keeping money you find.
I mean that’s technically a possibility.
The problem I’m what I actually mean is when it’s 40 million yen and I find.
it and I would
benefit from 40 million yen, but there
could be a family that has that money .
Okay wait, I have to restart my sentence.
There is a family out there who let’s say like the father died and that the
kids need more that money more than I do.
That’s all.
I’m saying there’s a relative morality there that’s a bit of an issue from.
I have a family too, but I am able to provide for my family.
So what I’m saying, there might be a family out there that cannot provide
for the family
as well.
And 50 million yen would benefit them more.
Like it would make their life better.
Whereas my family would be like icing on the cake.
So I’m just saying like I don’t want to take food out of someone’s mouth to
put icing on my cake.
Okay, you’ll do it.
Okay.
Well you wait, wait, wait.
By managing the money for me, do I get the money?
I don’t know, I’m a little concerned about this.
The guy who threw the pipe bomb at the prime minister, he just got a new
warrant served.
So he threw the pipe bomb, got arrested right away.
And then they release you.
This is, this was not really what’s happening is not that interesting.
So he’s got basically the police went to his house, they searched his house,
they found gunpowder.
And then just this week reissued a new
warrant for his arrest over the gun powder.
And this is something it’s not again, it’s not a surprise that he had gunpow
der in his house if he was making pipe bombs to throw at the prime minister.
It’s a surprise that they didn’t do it all at once.
Now what the police in Japan do is they stagger their warrants.
Now this could be seen as a form of
harassment, which I think in some cases it is.
I don’t know about this one.
One you get into pipe bomb territory, I
don’t feel too bad if the police are asking.
But there’s a system in Japan where they can arrest you.
Without charging you, they can hold you for
basically a month, I think it’s 24 days.
Then they have to let you go.
But what they do is let’s say they have three or four charges, they will.
hold you for 20
days, release you.
As you walk out the building, they will re-arrest you on the second warrant
and bring you back in, hold you for 20 days.
This was a system designed to disrupt a drug dealer’s business.
So let’s say I’m a drug dealer.
If I’m off the street for two to three months, like one month basically each
, they will disrupt
my ability to sell drugs because all my customers are going to go find
another drug dealer.
If I have a day job, I’m going to lose my day job.
So it’s very disruptive to my life.
The Japanese police do this on purpose to
extend the length of time they can basically
hold you.
It also helps them, it gives them time to build a case or whatever without
actually arresting
you because once they arrest you, they have to put the evidence forward and
they have to go to trial.
This is another reason why the Japanese conviction rate is so high is
because they’re essentially
giving themselves so much time to build the case they want to build.
I don’t think the fact that we have this guy on video throwing a pipe bomb
at the prime minister, it’s a pretty open and shut case.
I was just surprised that they dropped another warrant now, but I’m betting
it so they can
look more into his background and stuff because
this guy has still not made a statement.
A lot of the crime stories we do on the Internet is Japan.
The thing you hear about is the statement.
The statement is always immediate and to me relatively amusing because it’s
like, “Yeah, I did it.
I’m proud of it.”
Or then they go to jail.
I don’t remember because I was drunk, which
is a very common defense in Japan, which
actually doesn’t work.
Because I don’t think you not remembering it gets you off the hook.
I think I guess the idea is that if I say I don’t remember it, there’s no
point in them asking me any further questions.
I’m not helping their case at all.
I’m assuming that’s what they actually mean is I don’t remember so that you
can stop asking me questions because you keep asking me questions.
I’m just going to keep saying I don’t remember.
I’m not helping you build a case against
me, which is again the criminal’s job.
If you’ve committed crimes, your job is to not help the police arrest you.
Keep that in mind.
This guy, I just thought it was interesting
that they’re going to drop a warrant now.
A month from now, we might hear a new warrant drop for another thing.
Another thing, another thing.
Because they’ve gone through it through his house.
They now have all the things in his house
that they were, that he had illegally.
The gunpowder would have been illegal.
The pipe bombs he made would have been illegal.
That’s two charges, two warrants right there.
It also means they can get more invasive into his house.
In this case, again, I’m pretty, actually think it’s pretty justified.
He threw a pipe bomb.
He could have killed not only a prime minister
as target, but everyone around 20, 30,
innocent people.
Yeah, I’m okay with this.
It’s a weird question though.
Justice.
Very much like my feeling about taking
money that I just found on the street .
Justice should have be applied equally, but then at the same time, it’s like
, we know this guy’s guilty.
So you have to worry about whether we harass or not or keep him in jail
because they should be keeping him in jail.
What I just realized though is what my morality is fluid.
Which is bad.
When you’re talking about laws and stuff, it should be like, yes or no, it
shouldn’t be like, well, in this case, yes, in that case, no.
Maybe that’s Ignat’s idea about me keeping the money I find on the street,
finders, keepers rules.
But again, my feeling is in some cases, it would be perfectly justifiable
taking money from the Akhuzah.
I wouldn’t feel bad about that.
But if the family’s poor and I take money from them, I wouldn’t want to do
that inadvertently as the… Anyways, next story.
Upskirt photos.
We’ve talked about this a billion times in Japan.
It’s surprisingly how often cops get arrested for taking upskirt photos.
Photo voyeurism is going to be made illegal.
It’s going to be banned.
My first thought is, what?
How is upskirt photos not already illegal?
So when you take an upskirt photo, so I’m on the escalator, always happens
on escalator.
The lady in front of me is wearing a short skirt.
I take my cell phone out, I take a picture of her skirt, and I get arrested.
I wasn’t getting arrested for taking the photo.
I was getting arrested for harassing the person, which I didn’t realize.
Like I’d actually talked about the story a million times and yes, you’re
getting arrested for harassment.
But the actual taking of the photo wasn’t
the crime, which I’ve only realized now.
It’s shocking that in Japan in 2023, taking a unsolicited photo of someone’s
essentially genitalia without their permission was not illegal.
But that was the case.
This is going into a bill that’s expanding all the sexual crimes.
I have talked on a previous episode about how the definition of rape is
being expanded.
In Japan, up until very recently, it was only really rape if you could prove
you tried to defend yourself.
You could prove that you fought back.
Now we know that’s not always the case.
We know it’s not always possible.
But it also meant that if I bill Cosby to Lady, that was perfectly legal
because she didn’t fight back against it.
That’s why so many of these cases are so frustrating for women from a woman
‘s point of view.
So the definition of rape is being expanded.
So all the things I just mentioned are now going to be illegal.
Upskirt photos and other similar things are
not going to be just part of harassment to
build a case.
It’s going to be illegal in itself.
So it would be, harassment is charge one.
Upskirt photo is charge two.
If they do something else gross, that’s probably another charge.
Gruming minors will now be illegal, which was not illegal before.
I think the problem with grooming minors was the definition of grooming min
ors and the definition of minor in Japan was
actually pretty vague because you get all
the creepy dudes to point out that like the
age of consent in Japan is 13, it’s not.
It used to be.
It’s not anymore.
So just be aware of that creepy dudes listening in in Japan, which is.
probably a lot of you.
If I take an upskirt photo of a woman, which is now going to be referred to
as photo voyeurism,
I can get up to three years in prison and a three million yen fine.
In 2021, there were 5,000 arrests for upskirt photos.
But again, this was harassment or maybe those guys just got off because it
wasn’t technically illegal.
That is three times more than 2010.
And I think the rise in that crime comes down to the availability and sort
of technological level of cell phones and cell phone care.
I don’t think my obsession with older men who commit crimes is going to go
away because as I come into my golden years, I’m going to be 51 very soon.
So my is my brain going through a transition is kind of the underlying
question of every
time I do a crime story involving a 50 plus year old man, is it going to
happen to me?
There’s a concern and a piece of entertainment value because I am a
relatively moral person.
I’m not going to say good because again, the underlying theme of this whole
episode has been that my morals are fluid.
So in one instance, I would say something
is dead wrong, you should never do it.
But then change the circumstances.
I’d be like, yeah, maybe it’s okay.
I think that’s true for everybody.
But I think most people are not as honest about it.
And I struggle with what is right and wrong.
But that is all governed by the chemicals in your brain.
And the chemicals in your brain change over time.
So am I over the next three or four years going to change in such a way that
I end up in a situation.
The one that got me the most was the 50 year old man who saw a high school
girl in a shopping mall, got down on his
knees and just started licking her shoes.
Part of his brain, the chemicals in his brain was telling him that this was
a good idea.
Another part of his brain was like,
she might even like it and be like into it.
So that was always like, is that where my brain is going at some point is a
question I have.
Anyways, this 53 year old man goes into a
store and he shop lists a skirt, walks out
and they don’t catch him.
But the security guy, the guy in charge of
the security cameras, he’s checking that he
actually stole the skirt.
And so he knows the guy’s face, he knows the skirt that the guy stole.
He knows sort of the general situation.
And this is like, at this point, we’re not going to go chase him.
He’s gone.
So whatever.
The problem is the man returned later that afternoon and he was wearing the
skirt that he stole.
And again, part of me goes like, did he think he was getting away with it?
Did he think he was going to go back and steal more clothes?
Did he think no one was going to notice?
Has his brain taken him to a place where he’s so disconnected, he thinks, I
‘m going to get away with this?
Or does he actually want to be arrested?
Because there are another part of his brain that’s going like, this is going
to get you arrested, let’s go do that.
Maybe that’s what he wants.
It could be one of these situations where the guy’s been in prison in the
past.
And he’s actually now at this point in his life more comfortable in prison.
He might be a homeless person who struggles to survive and actually prison
is going to be more comfortable in the life he’s living now.
All those are terrible things.
So I don’t want to make jokes about them.
But if he was dead serious, I’m going to steal this skirt.
I’m going to put on this skirt.
They’re going to think I’m a different
person because I’m wearing different clothes.
I’m going to go back to the same store, maybe steal some more stuff or just
do some casual shopping.
I would love to know what was going on through that guy’s head.
So we have one more story, a little quick story.
It’s what Otaku think is going to happen when they have kids.
So first of all, they have to assume they’re having kids.
Otaku in Japan, it’s pretty relatively famous that they’re not.
They’re essentially in cells.
If you have kids, are you going to maintain your current time and money put
into your hobby?
This is the question that was asked.
So 82% of Otaku said if they have kids,
they would spend less time on their hobbies.
That is pretty reasonable.
You have other people in your life.
You have to spend more time on them.
You have to give up some time.
You give up time on your hobbies.
Same.
So I’m going to spend the exact same amount of time on my hobbies, 16%.
I’m going to spend even more time on my hobbies, 2%.
I think those people are deluded in getting themselves.
By adding more people into the mix, you just get less time.
That is, the people are always astounded by the fact that I can produce this
podcast and seeming to be in other things.
And they’re like, where do you find the time to like, I carve out a schedule
when people are not in the house.
Otherwise I just can’t do it.
I’m also weirdly self-conscious about doing
a podcast while other people in the house.
They just hear me talking.
They’re like, let me be downstairs.
So they don’t really hear anything.
There’s no, but I’m always like, I have a different feeling when someone
else is around.
Will you spend less, same or more money once you have kids?
84% said they would spend less money.
Again, very reasonable assumption.
You have to take your sum of your money and spend it on these humans you
have produced.
I’m going to spend the same amount of money.
Actually not unreasonable.
14%.
Like I put aside this much money for my hobby.
I’m going to keep that much.
And then the other money I make is going to go to the family and stuff.
I can actually see if you actually planted
it out in advance that would work out.
2% I think the same 2% as the first category.
I’m going to spend more money on my hobbies.
So they’re almost defiant that yes, I’m going to have children.
I’m going to spend more money on my hobby.
Now this was the bit that I thought maybe where it would work in.
19% said they would enjoy their hobby with their kids.
So I think maybe that 2% from the previous two surveys is saying that I’m
going to spend more time on my hobby
because I’m going to induct my children.
There was a better word.
I’m going to bring my children up in my hobby.
Therefore I’m going to spend time with them,
spend money with them on the hobby so we
can enjoy it together.
But that might be the route to take.
So that’s like I’ve met lots of families.
So I practice judo.
I’ve met literal judo families where like
every parent, child, grandparents and stuff,
they all do judo.
So they raise the kids in that environment.
I don’t think they force them to do it but there’s like this is what we do.
You can join and they get into it because it’s a family thing.
They’re saying like I’m going to grow up with anime.
Anime is going to be on TV.
I’m going to buy DVDs and stuff or Blue Rays.
The kids are going to see them.
I’ll buy more.
Maybe it will expand what I like or expand to what the kids like.
I’ll buy stuff for them.
So I’ll actually end up spending more money on the hobby.
I make gun to models.
I’m going to do that with my kids.
The kids are going to grow up making models.
We’re going to spend more time and more money on the models.
I’m not going to enjoy my hobby with my kids.
18%.
I actually understand this thinking.
I did not force my children to do judo.
Just my thing, I know judo is a very sort
of unique personality type that enjoys it.
A lot of people will not enjoy getting beat up or beating people up.
I had no problem not sharing my hobby with my kids.
If they were interested, I would have brought them in but I was never going
to force them.
I think that might be where these guys their mindset is, which is good.
Fourcing your kids into your hobby is not a good thing to do.
Either is fine, 63%, which is again, all
three of those I can kind of mentally
justify the thinking they’re going through.
I think they’re all have good points and bad points.
But yes, if you are a nerd, if you listen
to the issues you spend, you probably are.
It is worth thinking about how can I indoctrinate my children into my hobby.
Should I do that?
Do I want to do that?
Do I want to share my hobby?
I think it’s a really nice thing to do.
But I think it’s a really nice thing to do.
If they’re interested in it, I don’t think
it’s a really nice thing to do if you have
to force.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music).