Category: Podcast

So I’ve been following the Gassy story and if I’m being really honest I’m

losing interest in it.

I’m losing interest in it because he’s not doing anything.

There has been an interesting development.

So Gassy said, as I said last week, I would follow up if something happened.

It kind of happened.

Gassy is not, he’s losing my attention.

Let’s put it that way.

Gassy said he would come back to Japan and apologize as per the rules if you

don’t attend for X amount of time in the government.

Now he’s decided he’s not coming back

to Japan and he’s not going to apologize.

The statement he made was a little confusing because he said it was too

early and his safety

was not guaranteed.

Now the reason he doesn’t want to come back

to Japan is because he thinks if he comes

back to Japan he might get arrested or murdered because his YouTube channel,

the reason

he got famous, was exposing celebrity scandals and some politicians.

So he’s actually saying some politicians want to come back to Japan just so

that he can be assassinated.

I think Gassy might be holding himself to a higher…

I actually don’t know because Gassy is a famous Japanese YouTuber and I’ve

never followed

any Japanese YouTube.

So I don’t know how big he is in Japan.

What I did find out though.

So they’re saying he doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested because

lawmakers have immunity during diet sessions.

Which essentially is saying a lawmaker could commit a murder during a diet

session and they could not be arrested

until after that diet session was finished.

Diet… Weirdly I shouldn’t have to explain this.

The Japanese government is called a diet.

It’s not like they.

That’s even a dumb joke if I make it.

I regretted as soon as I started.

I’m actually even finding I’m regretting

a lot of things as I start saying though.

I guess it’s just modern society.

But this actually… That is a very weird rule though.

Like you can do crimes.

You can commit crimes.

And you can’t be arrested during when the government is active.

Which is pretty often.

Nah, I’m a little torn on that one.

Anyways.

Gassie is now facing exposure from the government.

Which I think I could have predicted.

I said like my initial…

The reason I was interested in this story initially was because Gassie was

governing from abroad.

It wasn’t who he was that made me interested in him.

It was the fact that he was doing something

that really hadn’t been done before.

He was going to live in Dubai and govern Japan from Dubai which seems

completely possible to me.

And I was interested in how successful it was.

I didn’t realize even when it was introduced

that he was a controversial person.

But the reason he lives in Dubai is so

that he can’t be extradited back to Japan.

So you can see there’s a whole other layer of stuff that I didn’t actually

know about.

The governing was actually the secondary issue.

So he’s now facing expulsion from the government.

The leader of the NHK party, the party he’s a member of, which is a single

platform party.

They just want to abolish the NHK.

To take responsibility for this he’s going to step down.

I don’t know.

The leader of the party didn’t do anything.

Gassie was voted in.

He was voted in on their platform.

So I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.

Maybe putting him in that position, he’s taking responsibility for that.

This isn’t interesting.

Also side note of Japanese politics.

I don’t know if I agree with this or not.

But they quit every time something goes wrong.

Japan went through a five, ten year period where they had seven, eight prime

ministers because it was every three months to six months.

There would be a new prime minister and something that would go wrong and

they’d quit taking responsibility for it.

But then they never actually fixed any of the problems.

They’re just like, I take responsibility, I quit.

I’m out.

So it seems like kind of a cop out.

I think you should have to stay fixed the problem and then you quit after

the problem’s fixed.

Unless people want you out, I don’t know.

The problem with politics is there’s always going to be like 50% of the

people want you out

anyways.

So maybe it’s just a good excuse to bail.

The fallout from this is very weird to me.

They’re going to change the name of the NHK party.

So it’s not going to be a single platform party anymore or it is and they’re

just changing the name to Say Jika.

Say Jika?

Am I writing so bad?

No it’s Say Jika Joshi, Yon Juhachi Pati.

So the Say Jika is the female, Say Jika Joshi is female politicians, 48

party.

And I was like, why, why 48 is this like the AKB 48?

Is this is what they do now?

And if they are, that’s such a dumb thing.

So they’re going to try.

So and is it all going to be only women politicians?

I don’t know.

This little tack at the end has taken the story in a different direction.

So Gassi I no longer care about.

We’ll just put that out there.

He’s going to get expelled from being a government, the leader of their

party stepping down.

And they’ve made it the name, they’re going to change the name of the party

to this like girl group sounding party of female politicians.

Is it therefore only going to be female politicians?

This is now the more interesting part.

Are they going to use this gimmick to move their party forward?

Or is this like a real platform they’re going to have?

I don’t know.

I’m going to look into the Say Jika Joshi Yon Juhachi Pati.

I don’t know if they say 48.

I think it’s AKB 48.

I don’t know if they say AKB Yon Juhachi.

But that’s irrelevant.

Because I’ve only ever read it.

I haven’t actually heard anyone say a lot of the research I do for Ninja

Ninja Japan is just articles.

So I read them.

Sometimes the name, I don’t know if you say 48 or Yon Juhachi.

Anyways, it’s irrelevant.

What we have now is the formation of a new party which might be really

interesting or might be really stupid.

We can’t tell until the party actually does something.

So I will try to look into when they change the name.

Will their policies change with it?

Is this a new party?

Or is this just some kind of like gimmick to try to keep them in some sort

of relevance so they don’t all lose their positions?

I don’t know.

All we do know is Gassie has been a massive waste of time.

Nine social media influencers.

Social media influencers.

So I do this.

I do podcasts.

Even if popularity is relative, even if I

got like massive, I don’t think I would ever

call myself an influencer.

And then if I did Instagram and Instagram, it’s a different mindset.

I’m old.

So that might be part of it.

But the idea of the social media influencer is very ethereal to me.

I don’t really know what it is despite the fact that there are like them all

around all the time.

I maybe it’s because I have never been

influenced in this way by social media.

I have been influenced.

Everyone gets influenced by stuff around them.

But social media influencers do not have a significant impact on me.

So I don’t consider them influential.

Might be the issue I’m actually having.

There were nine social media influencers, all women in their 30s.

They failed to declare nearly 300 million in taxes for up to six years.

This was one to 30 million for each person.

And they are now being hit with 85 million yen in back taxes.

You’re not escaping the government.

This was all mainly from affiliate marketing.

So they would go on their Instagram or their TikTok or something.

They’d be like, “Oh, here’s my new lipstick that I would like.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I’ll show you how to put it on.

Maybe something to do like a makeup tutorial, let’s say.”

And then to be like, “This makeup is really good.

You should buy it.”

That’s affiliate marketing.

They were paid for that.

That means you got to get taxed for it.

I did actually find out if you make more than 200,000 yen from any sort of

like secondary income.

So let’s say I have my main job, I’m a teacher.

And I make my main salary and that’s taxed.

And let’s say I do an engine in Japan.

People donate money or people give me money or I do affiliate marketing.

If that exceeds 200,000 yen, I have to start paying taxes on it.

I have to make sure I pay taxes on it.

Getting under that, maybe if I don’t declare taxes, it’s not going to make a

big deal out of it because the taxes would be quite small.

But it’s 200,000 yen for the year.

So that’s important.

So if I made like 200,000 yen a month,

that’s going to be X amount, well, times 12.

So 2,400,000 yen for the year, that would

be significant and I would have to pay taxes

on that.

But if I make 10,000, I don’t know what

would, let’s say 20,000 yen a month, that

would be sort of more close on the borderline.

I have to be really careful.

I would probably have to declare taxes on that, even though it’s like 20,000

yen, like it’s 200 bucks.

So I get $200 from an affiliate marketing.

Doritos, if you’re out there, I would take 20,000 yen a month to market your

product, which is a product I believe in, the Doritos chip.

Only the original flavor, none of this

like cool ranch, any of that other shit.

You have nacho cheese, not boom in nacho cheese, whatever fucking stupid

name you come out with.

It’s nacho cheese, not nacho cheese only, the original stand by.

I will promote that product.

I have a certain amount of integrity.

I will take product, I will take money to promote products.

I have to at least understand that the product is good and cool ranch.

I know there’s a lot of people out there like it.

I don’t, so therefore I’m not promoting cool ranch.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

This is like a free ad for Doritos.

So fuck you Doritos.

I’m not going to even advertise you.

You offer me money now.

I will still take the money because I’m poor.

But I’m going to be grudgingly doing it.

How did that happen?

Oh, we’re talking about taxes.

I did, through a video the other day and it was about like, we were talking

about taxes.

That’s exciting.

Taxes do lead us to very interesting places

because now we’ve hit a moral spot for me.

When would I and when would I not take money?

And for the most part, I’ll take your money.

I was listening to another podcast and they were talking about like better

help and how that they’re not very good in

stitch fix and all these like things that

advertise on podcasts.

I was sort of interested in that as a concept.

And apparently every company now that’s advertising on podcasts is pretty

much a shit company.

So the stitch fix has a limited amount of clothes they can pull from and so

they’ll send you the same clothes over and over again.

So it means they actually have very limited options.

So you’re not actually looking at you and your preferences and sending you

stuff and making

you look good and being really stylish.

Your personal stylist of course has a

finite amount of time to deal with you.

So they’re just picking stuff like from boxes, like checking boxes and that

just gets thrown into your next stitch fix box and the better help people.

Okay, they don’t really want to help you that badly.

They just want to run through the system.

It’s too bad.

These are of course the birthing pains of the Internet format advertising

and companies trying

to find new ways to do things like therapy

online seems like a really good idea.

So let’s say I, let’s say I live in Japan.

I’m an English speaker.

My Japanese isn’t very good and I needed therapy.

I couldn’t go to a Japanese therapist and expect it to really work out

because I can’t express myself well to them.

I might not understand what they say to me.

So me doing therapy online would be a really good idea because I would get

an English therapist

and maybe they’re more sort of in tune with who I am as a person.

Apparently that’s not a very good system.

So better help would have to offer me a lot

of money to screw over the mental health

for another person.

Like a lot of money.

Like I could retire money.

So we know they’re not offering me that much.

I honestly don’t even know why I’m talking about this.

YouTube and Instagram influencers have been hit with back taxes.

You got to be careful with your taxes.

Don’t try to screw the government.

They will come for you as these nine influencers have found out.

There’s a rocket that Japan wants to send to space.

Talk about astronauts last week.

Well how did they get there?

They get there on the rockets.

The new rocket is the H3 rocket.

It was up in the air and it was signal to self-destruct after several.

So they had several delays.

They were having problems with the rocket.

They got the rocket up in the air and then like, ah, something’s gone wrong.

Press a button and it explodes.

This was their second attempt and this is obviously going to cause them

certain problems.

I wrote down a…

I started trying to like pre-plan jokes and

it’s so much worse because then I read them

and I go, “That’s stupid.”

So basically you’ll get stupid jokes on this podcast.

Anything I make, you’re going to get a couple of dumb jokes.

And I was like, “Oh, it would be funnier if I planned out the jokes in

advance, you know, like a proper show.”

And then I read the joke and go, “That’s

so dumb, I’m not going to say that.”

Because the H3 rocket, well there’s also the H3 podcast.

And I was going to make a connection there

and go like maybe with less time on their

podcast and more time on the rocket it

wouldn’t have had to explode in the air.

But now as soon as I read that I’m like, “Oh, that’s dumb.

Why would I say that?”

But it would be dumb if it happened spontaneously.

It would be funny if it happened spontaneously.

It’d still be dumb.

But it would be dumb and funny if it happened spontaneously when you write

it down and you think about it.

It’s not worth doing anymore.

So I kind of have given you a look into the back process of, “As I tried to

develop Ninja News Japan into a better

show because I do want to try to make small

improvements all the time.

I am trying to plan out humorous elements.

But then in the moment I’m now thinking my

own sense of humor is so shit, I don’t want

to do it.”

The rockets crashed into the water around the Philippines.

North Korea is absolutely pissed that Japan’s sort of taken their thing of

shooting rockets into the ocean.

They’re all jelly.

They’re like, “Hey dude, that’s our stuff.

We shoot rockets into the ocean.

Stop copying us.”.

The H3 rocket costs 5 billion yen.

But if you want to look at this in a positive, 5 billion yen is half the

price of the previous rocket and it has

1.3 times the satellite launch capability.

I actually didn’t understand that last part of it to be really honest.

Does that mean it can carry 1.3 more satellites?

Because a 0.3 satellite doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Or can it be used, I guess it’s 1.3 times the payload, so a satellite plus

other stuff?

Or can it be used more often?

I don’t know.

The all the goal of all the rocket systems now, all these companies that are

making things that shoot stuff into space is try to make reusable.

So what SpaceX is all about is making a reusable rocket.

Which is really cool.

Because right now, rocket goes up, rocket

comes down, you have to build a new rocket.

Very expensive.

You could use that rocket multiple times.

It becomes a cost-saving measure, even if that rocket is more expensive

initially.

It’s a bit of a kick in the nuts for the space program in Japan that their

rocket did not work.

The way they wanted it to.

And I feel bad for them because I want the Japanese astronaut space thing.

This is when I should have sounded sort of smart.

This is the benefit of scripted things.

The smart bits will sound smart because you can write in advance.

The downside is the humorous bits when you write them down sometimes don’t

feel as humorous.

I should not write out the dumb jokes.

I should write out the smart bits.

Underestimated my own abilities.

Because I think, ah, I can be smart in the moment.

I should write that down and increase the humor versus the intellect.

The reality seems to be, I’m funny in the moment if I just let it go.

Whereas I am not as smart as I think I am.

And isn’t that just the reality?

I’m completely lost today.

Our water heater may or may not have a leak.

So waiting for the water heating guy to do this.

I’m sort of a little distracted.

It’s going to cost me a ton of money.

It’s going to cost like a hundred bucks for this guy to come out and look at

it and say there is no leak.

And if there is a leak, it’s going to be fixing replacing.

I realized one of the biggest problems.

Japan doesn’t have basements because we have earthquake.

Which means like a thing like a water heater

is outside the house but space is so tight

they’ve created the sliver of space between our house and the next door

house and there’s

like a little fence making it incredibly awkward to get to the water heater.

And that’s got to cost us a ton of money.

So I’m kind of actually just thinking about my own circumstances.

So, ah, if Doritos would like to sponsor

this podcast and give me a ton of money from

my water heater, I’ll promote Cool Ranch.

I mean, I don’t know.

Cool Ranch, I was not saying I don’t like them.

They’re fine.

I would always choose the original.

The original Doritos are way better.

Basically once a year, I get a really

bad craving for Doritos original flavor.

They have a Japanese tacos flavor.

It’s just not as good.

It’s almost, it’s just not quite.

I have to go to the import store and buy the original flavor once.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I missed a number in my notes.

It’s been a tough, tough couple weeks for no real significant reason.

And that’s where I am right now.

So, mentally, I think the problem is, I want to do these podcasts.

I want to keep them consistent, but then I

keep having other sort of real life things.

This is, we don’t know who needs better help.

I just do a podcast and therapist myself.

Yeah, I think what I’ve been looking for.

So, it’s not like I’ve had any losses.

You got to pay money for this.

I got a lot of money trouble, but not like real life trouble.

How do you explain it?

We have a lot of things that are going to be expensive.

We have a lot of stuff.

Our house is like, no, what, 13, 14 years old.

Things are starting to break or need fixed and it’s all very expensive.

So, that’s just resting on my mind a lot.

We’re in no way in financial difficulties.

We’re just, I basically will not have an

entertainment budget for X amount of time.

And then yeah, the water heater broke.

It’s not broken.

It’s actually working fine.

And we check the, the, the, the, because to check for a leak, you get the

like water meter.

And you like check the number and you come

back an hour later and check the number.

Has the number changed?

If it hasn’t changed, it’s not leaking.

It doesn’t seem to be leaking, but there is water coming up from under it.

Maybe that’s just condensation?

I don’t know, man.

Anyways, I’m going to pay like 70 bucks,

100 bucks for some dude to come out and look

at it.

I’m hoping I’m spending 70 dollars for this guy to say that it’s fine.

The story I was going to do before my brain

got in the way is that there was a lawyer

and he was an anti-sexual harassment campaigner.

He was trying to stop sexual harassment.

Given the title, a lawyer who campaigns against sexual harassment, what do

you think he was

accused of?

I do enjoy irony.

I enjoy police committing crimes and getting caught, especially if they’re

really stupid crimes.

I enjoy lawyers getting in trouble for not knowing the law.

This was a sexual or anti-sexual harassment campaigner.

Of course, he’s been accused of sexual harassment.

He represented an actress against the stage director back in 2017, which

actually showed

that he knew that the woman he was about to attempt to sexually harass was

litigious.

She was not going to just shy away and fade into the background and keep her

mouth shut because of the embarrassment.

He knew because he represented her, he knew she would step up and make the

claim and sue the person.

He’s like, “Perfect.

I will sexually harass that person.”

He represented her back in 2017.

They worked together several times and then he kept trying to call her and

get her come over and he coerced her and

he touched her inappropriately and all this

other stuff.

It sounds like he pressured her into actually having sex.

She wants 11 million yen and damages and she said, “I wish to demand he not

work as a lawyer.

for the rest of his life,” which is if he

is representing people in sexual harassment

cases and he is a sexual harassment dude, I think that’s fair.

So basically she’s saying she wants some deep art.

I don’t know if they use the bar at the same

terms in Japanese, but since I’m translating.

even English, I guess it does make sense.

She wants some deep art so that he can’t be a lawyer.

He might think it’s time to switch sides and become a defensive turn, which

is a really awful thought, but it would make sense.

There was a survey given to people and it’s the question of, “Have you given

up on marriage?”

It was broken into men and women.

Men in their 20s, 64% said, “No, I have not given up on marriage.”.

So there’s a 30% let’s say.

I just round off the numbers.

25, 30% are saying, “I still, I have, I

think marriage is not going to work out.

I’ve given up my 20s, I’ve already given up.”

55% switches in their 30s, 55% yes, I have given up.

So I’m trying to do the majorities.

And then people in their 40s who are not married, they say 71% yes, men in

their 40s have given up on marriage.

Women in their 20s already 54% have said yes, I’ve given up on marriage.

Men has this weird idea that you have to get married before your 25, which

is really young.

It used to be normal.

Again, teenagers used to get married and have babies and stuff.

But in Japan, they have this idea like a woman should be married by 25.

And it’s culturally still prevalent.

It’s not like it’s forced or, and I think people understand, you’re like 26,

27, 28, you’re

not married, whatever.

But it’s still there and it’s still part of the cultural zeitgeist, which is

a problem.

Women in their 30s, 52%, so it actually went down by 2%.

So it was 54 if you’re in your 20s, 52 in your 30s.

So 2% of the women between 20 and 30 change their mind.

I mean, I know this doesn’t really work that way.

It’s because it’s right now in their 30s.

They have not given up on marriage.

So 52% yes, I’ve given up on marriage,

but it’s actually the number dipped down.

And then when they hit their 40s, 70% said

yes, I’ve given up on marriage completely.

Some of the reasons for men, it takes time, money and effort to find a

partner, a Tokyo male, 27 years old.

That is true.

And we have over the last like four episodes or five episodes talked about

the declining birth rate.

I have prostilatized many times about my beliefs that Japan and society

needs to change.

It’s work, life, balance, culture if they

want the population to increase at all, but.

that is talking about a complete cultural shift in thinking, which is

probably not going to be possible in a single generation.

It’s going to take multiple generations.

And the danger there is there aren’t going

to be any generation numbers to pick up the

slack in the future.

So even if you make the changes, it might not be successful.

Because I don’t have confidence in my appearance was a man 39 years old

because I don’t feel

qualified enough to get married and a man

39 years old because I want to make the most

of my time alone.

A man 39 years old, which is interesting.

So there were some of them were like, I’m not good looking enough, I’m not

confident in myself, I can’t get married.

So I’ve given up.

There’s other guys like, I just want to be alone.

I want to have my time.

The next one I thought was very interesting because there’s no guarantee.

that I’ll be happy.

But he’s saying that if I get married, I have to be guaranteed happiness.

But that actually implies that you don’t have to put the work in.

So I actually think he’s a little, he

slightly misunderstands what marriage is.

Man 43, I don’t see the benefits.

Man 43, I simply don’t have any connections.

Man 47, my income is too low, which in Japan,

when they talk about marriage, the women

will initially talk about income before happiness and then before love.

I think a lot of people in a lot of other

cultures, they’re not so honest about it.

But a lot of women what they’re looking for is a certain level of comfort

and security.

And they are not shy about it.

So they want, I want a man who makes that amount.

The problem is there’s unrealistic expectations.

The average Japanese salary is between four and five million yen.

And then if you serve a woman, this is

way, I could probably find it, but it’s way

way back.

How much do you want your partner to make?

And they were like eight, nine, 10 million yen.

So the average man was just off the table at that point.

Some of the women’s reasons for giving

up on marriage are pretty interesting.

I did enjoy a female 28 said because there’s not a single advantage to

getting married.

So she’s, she’s really decided that there are no benefits at all.

Now there are tax breaks and stuff, but again, I think that might be not

what she’s talking about.

I got tired of it after my parents objected for the first time.

A female who’s 30.

So she came close to getting married.

Maybe a guy proposed to her, her parents objected and then she’s like, I’m

not doing this again.

Which is very interesting.

There’s a very clear story, singular history there.

I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to marry.

Female 34 years old.

I think that is a very good reason not to get married because if you don’t

want to marry them, that kind of goes back

to the no guarantee of happiness of the

previous.

This guy, but I can’t count on the other person to make me happy.

I have to make myself happy.

I think that is a very legitimate reason because the other party is never

enthusiastic.

39 years old female.

So basically the she’s saying that men don’t want to get married and that is

dampered my desire to get married because

I want someone who’s excited to marry me.

I think that is also pretty fair because I want to work woman 41 because

marriage isn’t everything in today’s world.

Female 41.

So those two women are saying marriage

is just not as relevant as it used to be.

I want to work.

I want to have my own life because I lost the desire to re-marry after

getting divorced.

Female 47.

So basically she had a bad experience.

It doesn’t want to do it again.

100% think that’s a legitimate reason.

I mean, any reason not to get married is

legitimate because what you’re doing, yeah.

If you’re not confident in the idea of

getting married, you who not get married.

It does sounds like that overall Japan is a culture.

People are not confident in getting married, which is again sort of leading

to the population to decline in several

other problems that they have in Japan.

I have put a stop to underwear theft stories only because they are not

interesting anymore.

So this isn’t about the underwear theft.

It is leading into the story.

It is the story of the level of commitment that laundromat owners seem to

have to saving their clients close.

So this is not the first story.

In fact, this one is better than the last one.

So it follows the same steps.

There’s a young, in this case, a 27 year

old man goes into a laundromat around 1230.

He stands looking into the like a trundle thing, the dryer probably.

He reaches in and grabs some underwear and he starts to take off.

The owner goes outside and he starts stopping.

He’s like, “You can’t.

That’s someone else’s stuff.

You’re stealing.”

The guy makes his excuses.

He’s like, “No, it’s cool, man.

Just let me go.”

He says, “I’ll give you money.”

He actually tries to bribe the guy.

He says, “I’ll give you money if you let me go.

I don’t want this to go to court.

Just let me go.

Just let me go.”

The guy’s like, “No, we’re not having it.

You stole from these people.

You don’t deserve to go.”

The guy sort of does a little football back

and forth, gets into his car and starts

to drive away.

The laundromat owner stands in front of the car.

The car does not stop.

It’s not going very fast.

He jumps onto the hood of the car thinking that this guy won’t, you know, he

will stop.

The previous story, the guy drove for a really long time, went quite fast.

The laundromat owner fell off the car and hit his head.

He was in hospital.

The guy was not up for a panty theft.

He was up for attempted murder and panty theft.

In this case, the laundromat owner was not hurt, which is great.

But I think the jumping on the hood of the car is a level of dedication that

I would not

have expected from a laundromat owner over a couple of pieces of underwear.

I would actually say there were cameras all outside that building.

Take a picture of the license plate, send it to the police.

Don’t jump on the hood of the car.

I don’t think that level of bravery is expected.

I was about to say required, but I guess it required.

That level of bravery is not expected for the laundromat owner.

I think maybe if someone’s stealing laundry, get your phone out, take a

picture of the license plate of the car and call it a night.

I think that’s enough.

Ghibli Park.

Ghibli?

Ghibli?

I forget.

I think it’s Ghibli.

I don’t want to have someone send me a

message telling me I said it wrong regardless.

Ghibli Park.

In Iichi, prefecture in Japan, they created

a park and it’s all the Ghibli movies.

So it’s Totoro.

Oh, I don’t know once.

There’s a bunch of others.

I actually have never seen.

But you know, people go there, you go there

with your kids, you see they have statues.

They have the house from my neighbor, Totoro and stuff like that.

It’s Ghibli.

It’s all very innocent.

There’s a lot of sort of purity of feeling that goes along with everything.

Kiki’s delivery service.

Spirited away.

All these main characters from these movies are represented there.

So of course, people are gross.

I don’t know what you expect with Otaku and

Nerds and stuff who sexualize everything.

People have been taking pictures of

themselves or their friends next to a statue.

So of course, some nerdy gross dudes, they grab the booby of the statue.

And then a lot of the characters have sort of flowy dresses so they’ve been

taking upskirt photos of the statues.

This is really pissed off the governor of Iichi.

So the park has a policy to not comment.

And I think that’s actually a good idea because what they’re actually doing

is saying let’s

not bring attention to this because if we bring attention to this, what’s

going to happen

is more gross nerdy Otaku guys are going to come and keep doing that thing.

So we’re not going to talk about it.

The Iichi governor on the other hand, he’s like, nah, my prefecture put up

34 billion yen.

of money to build this park so that people could have a good time.

I’m pissed.

So he’s like, it’s extraordinarily malicious.

It’s like the Sushi restaurant.

So we’ve done Sushi teto a couple times.

I’ve kind of eased off that story.

It may be close to destruction of property.

It’s not.

I mean, they’re touching statues that are out in public.

They’re not destroying anything.

But he’s just trying to say, like, I need

to find a crime that I can charge these guys

with.

They’re going to try to take severe measures against the people if they can

be identified.

So basically you post your picture on social media of you being

inappropriate with one of the statues in Ghibli Park.

This guy wants to send the cops after you, which I don’t know how that’s

going to work out

or not, but I am interested to see if there’s any arrests or any fallout.

I bet this story just goes away.

I bet people just ease off because they’re like,

but then there is the other, the flip side.

of that where maybe people will like, oh, well, now that it’s challenged, I

want to take

it to the next level, which is very much the

attitude of a lot of people out, especially.

on the Internet.

So if you go to Ghibli Park as a tourist, I would say do not try to hump the

statues because

you actually might have some fairly high level government officials coming.

after you.

[Music].

(clock ticking)

I don’t know, I was very busy today.

My son graduated junior high school,

so I went to his high school graduation.

Normally I record this in the morning, it’s now the afternoon.

I don’t know if that’s gonna make it more

rushed or more rambly or maybe better.

I don’t know.

I did prep my notes though.

We are good on the notes.

We’re good on the information.

Oh my God, high school graduations in Japan are dower.

It was, everyone marched in like a funeral procession.

They all sat down and then everyone had

to get up and like, they gave little speech

and then everyone was called by name to

stand up and it was just, there was no joy,

no clapping, no like, woo, nothing.

It was just painful to watch.

And then half an hour in, I had to pee.

So for the hour remaining, probably more,

probably an hour and a half, I was just pent up.

I was like, I hope there’s over and there.

It was speech after speech after speech.

The mayor of the city came, that was kinda cool.

Mayor of the city came and he gave a speech.

Some guy came up and talked about baseball which seemed really unrelated.

Then a teacher got up and started to

cry and then all the kids like shuffled out

like they were being taken to prison.

They were like, okay, that’s cool, it’s over now.

And then they’re like, oh now we’re gonna

show a video and have another speech.

So I got up during the video and went and peed.

It was absolutely ridiculous though.

So that was more than half my day gone already.

That said, we’re here for the news.

That’s my personal Japanese update.

I know people do wanna, they wanna get

a little something about my life in there.

Sometimes they find that the human relations aspect

of the podcast which I think is important.

If you’re watching the video, Dave has a new bed.

You can see his little face stuck in the corner.

I moved the camera to make sure you get that little face

just right there in the corner.

Gassy, we’ve followed the Gassy story.

Nothing is really happening and it keeps popping up

every week like an update on Gassy.

I’m always like, should I talk about it?

But Gassy is a YouTuber in Japan.

Well, actually not in Japan.

He’s a YouTuber about Japan, from Japan.

And he like broke celebrity scandals.

Now currently he lives in Dubai.

He decided to run for government.

He runs on the NHK party, which is actually the anti-NHK platform party.

It’s a single policy party.

Like they have one thing they wanna

do and this is essentially abolish the NHK.

Which I’m not against.

I just don’t think it’s worth having a whole party on for.

Gassy, when you become a policy maker

and assemblyman or whatever, you have to show up.

Now he’s like, I can show up virtually.

And at the time I was like, yeah, he was voted in by the people.

They knew he lived in Dubai.

They knew he would have to attend virtually.

He’d have to vote virtually.

But we’re living in that kind of time now where that’s acceptable.

What’s the big deal?

They have a rule you have to show up in person to vote every now and then.

And then Gassy’s like the problem is

because I’ve pissed off so many celebrities

and some politicians, if I show up in Japan, I’m gonna get arrested.

Now he has agreed and they said, well, if you don’t show up in Japan,

you’re gonna lose your job as an assemblyman.

So he’s agreed to come to Japan and apologize.

So there’s nothing really has happened right now.

But I’m giving an update for anyone who has followed along this story.

After he shows up, if he gets arrested, if something bad happens,

I’m going to follow up on that story.

If nothing happens, I might mention it and move on.

Because then it’s been a whole bunch of harafer nothing.

I was very, very interested in this

because he was voted in under a very certain set of conditions

and the government is saying that’s not acceptable.

His first proposal should be you should be able to govern remotely.

Because I actually think we’ve gone to a stage

in the world where you don’t have to be

physically present to do most jobs like this.

Like if it’s a policy job, if it’s an opinion oriented thing,

where it’s things where you brainstorm

and give ideas or write code, you don’t need to show up.

If you got to pick something up and move it somewhere else,

if you have to dig something, construction,

you got to show up for those jobs.

But if you are designing, computerizing

stuff, you don’t need to be present in person

to do those things.

And again, government, I think as long as you have

all the information, you’re doing things properly.

It’s actually should be fine.

But that’s a question of should they change the rule now?

This being Japan, they absolutely do not want to change the rule.

And I think they’re looking for a way to just get rid of Gasey.

So we’ve talked about Japan changing its defense policies

and the changing defense policies has been primarily like.

We need counter-strike capabilities,

but their version of defense is North Korea

to shoot something at us.

We should be able to shoot the thing that

shot the thing at us in the first place.

And they’ve made a step towards that.

So they’ve increased the budget.

They said they were gonna take it from

cigarette companies and corporate taxes.

So it wouldn’t affect the average person,

although inflation has gone up a lot.

I’m wondering if that is maybe related to this.

Policy change that requires billions and billions of yen.

Japan plans to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles.

Kishita didn’t mention how much they cost per missile.

These are for counter-strike capabilities

and they have a range of 1,600 kilometers.

And what I wanted to do was get a map

up and actually measure 1,600 kilometers.

So we could see what Japan would be able to hit.

Now far away is Pyongyang from Tokyo.

Tokyo.

Oh, it is 1,281 kilometers.

So the 1,600 kilometer strike zone

fits the North Korean capital squarely in the middle.

I may, if I can get some time, actually follow up on this next week.

And then for people who are on the video,

I can throw a picture up on the video

to show what they technically could hit.

If something shot at them from this place,

it would have to be in this 1,600 kilometer ring.

What they could hit back.

And then for the audio listeners,

I could actually mention a few sort of distinct places.

But Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea,

I bet would be the main focus of what they’re looking at

and talking about defending from.

That sentence making any sense?

I, whatever.

(phone ringing)

So last year, do I have the dates?

And last year, they said they were gonna look

for some new astronaut candidates in Japan.

And I was like, I should apply for that.

Ha, ha, ha.

I actually would just like to go through

the exams and the training, not actually.

I don’t really, like I would love to go to space,

but I think doing the training to go to

space would be actually just as much fun

even if you didn’t get to go to space.

And then I found out they were taken,

the guy that my thought was, I’m too old.

So they’re not gonna take me.

And I’m not Japanese, but actually, maybe.

Turns out one of the guys they took was 46.

He’s only a couple years younger than me.

They had applicants up to like 72.

So I may have had a shot.

I think me not being Japanese actually would have been the biggest concern.

They have selected two astronaut candidates

from the pool that they had that applied.

One is a world bank employee.

And the second is a surgeon.

Now the 28 year old surgeon, female, is very impressive.

Just being a surgeon, 28.

I mean, the having of a giant has very little to do with that.

Unless you’re in Japan, where as we had the scandal last year,

where the women’s scores were knocked down.

So if you, my theory at the time then, was that every female doctor

was actually superior to every male doctor.

Because you had to get, if you got a male got 100% on a test,

and a female got 100% on the test, the female

actually had to get like 120 on the test

because they systematically brought those scores down.

So I only wanted female doctors after I read about that.

So like they made it sound like, this is unfair.

And I’m like, yes it is, but also it makes me think that every woman

is a better doctor in Japan than every man.

Jade is putting the chat, “I wish I could go to space I do too.”

That’s actually why I’ve been so deep following this story.

As they are anyways, mm-hmm.

Okay, I don’t know if I want to give full credit or not.

My dog, two years ago I got real sick.

I was in hospital for a month.

My doctor, he was weird, but he was a very

good doctor because he kind of giggled.

And in bedside manner, I don’t know if they actually train that,

but one of the things you don’t want your doctor to do is giggle ever.

And I was, I was in really bad shape.

So when he giggled it was very off-putting.

Anyways, we’re talking about astronauts.

This lady, 28, she’s a surgeon, she’s awesome.

Like she’s just straight up, she’s awesome.

The guy, 46, he’s a world bank employee.

I was like, what are they gonna go to the moon and do some accounting?

I was a little down on that.

But then one of my, I’m like one of

my, I’m like basically an English teacher.

So if they’re gonna take a world bank employee,

like a finance guy, still skills don’t relate.

Maybe they’re gonna take me, I’m a good communicator.

I could play that up.

So that actually made me think I did miss my opportunity

because they weren’t looking for pure, feasible, usable skills in space.

Like a surgeon, you get hurt, a surgeon can help you.

You go up into space, this guy could not, he could fix your finances.

I don’t know what that means.

So it means they were taking people

where the skills they had were not directly applicable

to going to space, which means that actually meant

I did have a chance because my skill set,

has nothing to do with space.

But then if this guy can go, maybe I can go.

So now I just roll that around on my head and go,

I think I missed my chance to go to space.

They are going to do two years of training.

The man is 46, he’s the oldest applicant.

He’s the oldest person they’ve accepted into the program.

And the lady is the third woman they’ve accepted into the program.

One of the goals they have is to put the first woman on the moon.

So we’ve had women in space.

We’ve had men on the moon.

We haven’t had a woman on the moon.

So Japan’s like, oh, here’s an opportunity.

We could put the first woman on the moon.

I think this lady, perfect choice.

I mean, I’m jealous that she’s going at all,

but if she’s gonna go, let’s support her to go all the way.

I wanna see her go to the moon and be the first woman standing on the moon.

I think that’s awesome.

The available age of current astronauts is an average of 52 to 53 years old.

So the average age of an astronaut in

Japan is already two years older than me.

And they retire at 60.

They actually force in retirement.

You can’t keep going, which I understand.

So it means next time they go for

applicants, it’d be like two years from now.

I’m gonna be 52.

And then if I get it, I would be 54.

So I think I’ve actually missed my opportunity to go to space.

So let’s face it, I’m gonna take my dreams.

I’m gonna put them on this woman.

I’m gonna take her dream and I’m gonna inflate them.

If she succeeds, I succeed.

And that’s what I want.

I want her to go to space.

I want her to land on the moon.

And I want her to be the first woman on the moon.

And in a way, I will have gone to space.

And I will have been to the moon.

And I will also have been the first woman on the moon.

(upbeat music)

The baby decline.

God damn it.

This is really downer.

This year, or last year, 2022, they had less than 800,000 babies.

That is the seventh consecutive drop in the number of babies in Japan.

It is down 5.1%.

In 2017, because of the trends, they predicted that this would happen,

the less than 800,000 number would happen in 2033.

So we are a decade ahead in the number of babies dropped.

Not physically dropped.

The numbers of babies born down.

I guess they’re always kind of born down.

Gravity takes place.

The number of babies not born.

The numbers of baby born is the lowest number consecutively.

But they predicted that less than 800,000

was going to happen in 2033, 10 years later.

COVID contributed, financial issues

contributed, all these things contributed.

Last week, we did the story on what the government official saying

that the problem, the low birth rate is

because of Japan’s weak romantic power,

which I agree with, except I don’t think you can define

romantic ability or romantic power.

So that’s a little bit problematic.

They said there are many factors, including financial and security

and less social encounters.

And the less social encounters because of the pandemic

is absolutely true, because people are meeting less people.

The number of deaths was 1,582,033.

That is up 129,744.

And this got Elon Musk to prompt a comment

that if this keeps going, Japan will disappear.

So Elon Musk has a fundamental understanding of math

and numbers that go up and numbers that go down.

So he is a genius.

I said I’m going to say, thank you for this.

He solved the problem.

He said if this keeps happening, Japan will disappear.

We don’t need to worry about it anymore.

Elon fixed it.

I mean, we’re done, right?

This is interesting.

So Kishida got in trouble, the prime minister of Japan got in trouble.

Japan’s ban on the same sex marriage is not discriminatory.

Is what he said.

And this is sparks and criticism.

I think it is a very fair statement to say,

it sparked criticism and it deserves some examination.

Kishida came out and said, I have never stated, I’m against it.

Which I would like to break down that sentence.

So first of all, what is discriminatory is the first thing.

And I would say discrimination is when you take a group

and you apply a set of rules to them, that is unfair.

And what we’re looking at is marriage and what is a definite marriage.

And definition is probably the issue because

in Japan it’s defined as a man and woman.

Actually, maybe I wrote it down.

Okay, no, I didn’t write it down.

It is stated somewhere that a marriage in Japan

is actually sort of a cis traditional heteronormative male, female union.

Whereas I’ve always thought marriage is financial if we’re being honest.

Like you do it because of love, but you’re really what you’re doing it

as far as the government is concerned,

is for tax purposes to bind your taxes,

to take your two estates and put them together

so that if I get sick or my wife gets sick,

you know, they have access and back and forth,

that union has very little to do a gender.

It’s all as far as I’m concerned, finances.

When it comes to the government, when you

come to a religious ceremony or a ceremony

or anything like that, that’s all about

love and the union of two people and stuff.

But as far as the government concerned, this is about taxes and money.

And so I don’t see how a man and a woman,

a man and a man, a woman and a woman

makes any difference when you’re talking about binding your finances.

So that’s again my view.

What I was interested in though is Kishita

said, I have never stated, I’m against it.

I’ve never said out loud, I have never spoken the words, I am an against it.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t against it.

I personally have never stated that I’m against fucking penguins.

I am, let’s just put that out there right now.

But because I never said, I’m against fucking penguins,

doesn’t actually mean I am or I’m not.

That just actually means I might be really pro fucking penguins.

But I know it’s socially unacceptable

to say it, so I’ve never said it out loud.

So coming out and saying that I have never

stated that I am against fucking penguins,

doesn’t mean I am or I’m not.

So you actually have to come out and say it.

This is actually the problem with politicians.

What I want to do is make statements.

I do always, as many times in an English New Japan,

I’ve talked about a politician making a statement

that offends people and then they retract that statement.

And I’ve always felt like that doesn’t actually

do or mean anything because the thought is still in their head.

He’s saying I’ve never said, I’m a discriminatory piece of shit,

but that doesn’t mean he isn’t.

Jay has now put it in apparently a quote by a very famous man,

I have never said I’m against fucking penguins, which is true.

Up until this podcast, the entirety of my life, I never made that statement.

So you could have tried to make the claim.

He is pro, you could have tried to make the claim.

He is against.

It is unsure, everyone is unsure until I actually make a statement.

But stating that I’ve never stated it doesn’t mean anything.

And that’s the bit I actually really enjoyed more than anything else.

Japan is the only G7 nation member

that doesn’t have anti-discrimination laws.

So this will be an interesting one going forward

because there are small groups like in, like there’s a prefecture,

and not prefecture, an area in Tokyo, a ward, I think it’s Shibuya,

and they allow same-sex unions, but that isn’t seen as universally accepted.

So what does that mean?

You could actually get married in this place.

I guess as long as you don’t leave that

place, you can have your same-sex marriage.

It’s very difficult to understand

because what is the point of having one area in a city

where it’s okay and the rest of the city is not okay?

As soon as I leave that area, are we not married anymore?

It’s gonna cause legal complications down the line,

but at least it’s showing that there is a place in Japan

that is thinking forward to thinking that

this is acceptable, that this is the future.

And if two people want to bind their lives

together, maybe you should just let them.

(phone ringing)

72-year-old teacher, so this guy’s been teaching a hopefully a long time.

He wanted to show that there are useful bacteria, common in daily life.

Teach the kids about your gut health and that kind of stuff.

So he mixed some yogurt and milk, and he

took it home and he put it in the fridge.

And then he brought it back to school

the next day, this milk yogurt mixture,

and he gave it to six students.

Two had a headache and nausea and had to go eat taking it to the hospital.

One went to see a doctor after they got home from school.

And two of the, oh, and two staff vomited when they got home.

So I think what we’ve actually learned is

you shouldn’t drink milk yogurt combinations

created by your teacher and brought into school.

It’s funny ’cause here’s the thing, the

reality is, you have this guy, he’s a teacher

and he wants to do something really practical

and show students something and really teach them.

And this is the kind of stuff we want teachers to do.

And then he just totally duffs it.

He takes it and he makes all the kids sick.

Actually, it sounds like only three of the kids, three out of six got six.

So this is a 50% shot rate.

Two staff got six or two staff should, just I don’t know, homemade stuff,

you probably should not be drinking.

I mean, that’s just the short version.

Don’t drink stuff that some dude has made at home.

(phone ringing)

All right, so our last two stories, I’m going to get a drink of water first.

Oh, that’s old man hot water right there.

Not hot water that came from an old man.

I can’t, I really feel like I always have to be very clear.

That is an old man drink.

Old men tend to drink things like hot water.

I’ve really taken a hot water and my golden ears.

What was that sound?

Which one?

You mean the slurping?

Swallowing and then, we can break that up into, you can make a beat.

(claps)

Oh, good lord.

Okay, we got two stories about people having trouble at work.

I bet it was the swallow.

This microphone, I actually was having a

conversation on Reddit about microphones.

This microphone, oh, the, mm, I mean,

that’s the sound of pure satisfaction of an old man.

That is an old man.

See, I don’t get gratification the way you young, young folk do.

I don’t, I don’t, I don’t cut into this sexual gratification.

I don’t, I don’t believe in these, these, these drugs

and the alcohol and the, the jazz cigarettes.

I like the purity of flushing out my colon with some piping hot water.

(groans).

Ah, I can’t remember where I heard jazz

cigarettes recently and really enjoyed it.

Anyway, we got two guys who got trouble at work

and I really enjoy people getting a trouble at work.

A city employee was fired for getting 1.54 million in overtime pay.

Dude, I have an end of my story.

It’s such a nightmare.

I suppose I could tell, I’ve told it on the loss of podcasts

which is now essentially the fun podcast.

So I’m gonna hit this story soon, really.

I, forget why.

Oh, I was gonna have the camera shove down my butt

and I had to go to the doctor to do it

and they wanted me, my voice just got a little quieter

’cause I’m talking about my butt.

So they gave me this stuff to drink.

It was like a two liter jug and I got about halfway through

and then I started throwing up and we called the hospital

and I say like, I’m drinking this stuff

but I can’t keep it down, it’s just something about it.

And then the lady on the other end goes,

but it’s the mild stuff and we’re like,

that’s relevant if I’m throwing it up, I’m throwing it up.

So they’re like, okay, we’ll come in and we’ll take care of it

and we’ll take care of it as already an issue.

So we go up and then she gets this like,

it was basically a little bigger than this.

It was like one of those 500 milliliter cans of Pepsi

but it was full of like water and saline solution

or something, she goes, I’m gonna put this up your butt.

Not the thing it had a tube and I was like,

ah, that’s never going on my butt and she’s like,

no, no, it will, I’m like, I’m not like,

I’m on your side on this one but I’ve just never put

anything on my butt before so that volume

is probably not gonna go up my butt successfully.

And then she’s like, okay, well,

I’ve done this a million times, I’m the experienced nurse,

I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna shove this up your butt.

And I was like, all right, you know, I am rooting for you on this one.

She has me rolling on my side, me arguing with her,

I don’t think was really what she was used to.

So she put on the lube, ironically not gently,

the lube is supposed to make that kind of thing better.

She just, and I got in, and she was like,

woo, and then she kind of went up and started doing it

and we got most of the way down and then it started like,

eh, it wasn’t all going up and I was

like, mm, I’m not gonna say I told you so

’cause I don’t really know how to say that in Japanese

but I think my face says it all,

that in weird discomfort ’cause I’ve never done this before.

So then they’re like, okay, well, we have

as much water up your butt as we can.

So you go over and you know, poop it out.

And I was like, great, where?

‘Cause I assume right here right now is how it’s gonna happen.

And so I’d actually, I kind of forgot

to say, I had to put on a diaper before.

The thing is the diaper in Japan, you either

have like tiny people size or sumo size,

there’s no in between.

So I had sumo size diapers on, Ignatius

put in the trick is to clench really hard,

believe me, we’re getting to that part of the story.

So then I’m like, okay, well, I’ve pulled up my not summarize size,

my sumo size diapers, where do I go to the toilet?

‘Cause I actually assumed it was not in the diaper.

And she’s like, yeah, across the hall,

there’s a bathroom, so go in there and go in.

I was like, okay, great.

So I’m clenching as hard as I can.

I have my giant diaper on.

My wife is sitting outside, she sees me walk out

and I’m like literally going, should I pull up my shorts?

This is summertime.

Over my giant samurai, not samurai.

Over my giant sumo diaper, where should I just go through my diaper?

Both equally embarrassing.

Like I’m just feeling humiliated.

This time, masculated, it’s great.

She starts laughing her ass off.

She’s just like, at this point just go.

It doesn’t make a difference.

I go to the toilet, it’s occupied.

And I’ll just let that sit with you, just like it sat with me.

Only there was a lot more pressure on me as I stood kind of doing the like,

it’s like the little kid I have to pee dance,

but it was I have to poop out a cola bottle

of liquid with giant sumo diapers on.

Clenching as hard as I can, ’cause I really don’t wanna poop in my diaper.

And I think this is a preview of what life has in store for me.

Now it’s now back to people gotten trouble at work

and didn’t have problems at hospitals.

A city employee was fired for getting 1.54 million yen in overtime.

The thing is they were not actually doing the overtime.

This is Japan, what he was doing, he was getting the overtime form,

waiting till his boss left, going into

his desk and getting the little stamp,

and then approving his own overtime, and putting it in.

What they found was they could see him leave.

This was the problem with not having invisibility powers.

They could see him come and go.

They realized he wasn’t coming and going

when his time sheet said he was coming and going.

The boss didn’t remember approving so much OT

and then they sat down, figured it out and he got fired.

So I get my problem with crime and stealing stuff.

It’s just the plan seems so poorly thought out.

You’re gonna take your boss’s stamp, you’re gonna do overtime.

You could do a little bit.

I bet you could do an hour or two every month and not get caught.

But when you get to the 1.54 million yen Mark,

you’re going to realize that everything is, you’re gonna get caught.

(clock ticking)

An employee was told to wear a mask.

This was a very normal thing because this was last December

and masks sort of mandates by governments is still in place.

As a country, Japan doesn’t have mask mandates

but it’s sort of a social pressure thing and people are doing it.

Companies do.

So your company’s telling you government absolutely does.

If you work for the government, you have to wear a mask.

This guy clearly did not like wearing a mask.

He was reminded mid-December, so around December 15th,

please wear your mask and he got pissed and

it sort of stewed and he just sat there.

On the 20th, he decided to delete files on

a shared server related to tax collections.

And I was like, “Did he get revenge by saving a bunch of people taxes?”

I know it probably isn’t that simple

’cause they’ll just find the taxes they’re missing and go get them.

These tax agencies don’t mess around.

They always find you.

But it showed to me the attitude of what was going on.

This is a very disgruntled employee

and you know he’s particularly disgruntled

when all of a sudden mid-January, you

get to evaluation period in most companies.

He went to his section chief and he said,

“Consider yourself dead if my evaluation is poor.”

You know what, his evaluation wasn’t poor, he was fired.

And that, I think, is appropriate.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[Music].

(upbeat music)

Spy balloons, balloons, bubbles, pop news.

Spy balloon news, goddamn.

All right, spy balloon news.

China has said that the spy balloons are not their balloons in Japan.

The government has said if we have a balloon

in our airspace, we’re gonna shoot it down.

We’re gonna pop that balloon.

Then China said, don’t attack China’s stuff.

And we’re like, hey, you just said it

has not your balloon, so if we blow it up,

it’s not as cool, man.

Clearly, people don’t realize the contradictions we’re making.

But I’ve been following a very weird story.

A giant metal orb has washed up on the shore of Japan.

It’s a 1.5 meter metal ball has washed up on a beach

and resident discovered it on a morning walk and called the police.

‘Cause now we have so much circular oriented,

terrifying news.

It must be a spy device.

Another person rolled up and said, “It’s been there for like a month.

“I tried to push it back in the water.

“It was too heavy.

“Is it a UFO?

“No.

“Is it a spy balloon?

“No, ’cause it’s metal, so it’s not gonna float.

“Is it a gorilla egg?

“A Godzilla egg is one of the ideas.

“Is it some people were speculating “that it was a Godzilla egg?”.

And then some people were very worried that it was a mine.

World War II bombs.

World War II mines still show up in Japan.

Like they were excavating to build a new

building and they found an unexploded bomb.

This has happened like recently in like the last year.

Turns out they, so the police show up.

They’re all real stressed out about this.

They show up and they’re like, “What is this metal ball?”

And they X-ray it and it’s hollow.

So it’s just like a magic metal ball.

No, it’s not.

It’s just a boy.

A buoy, if you wanna be very technical.

This of course, has gotten everyone all freaked out

because anything now that is circular and just not accounted for,

basically it was a buoy from the ocean, it got free and it floated around.

That’s it.

That was an entire week’s worth of news.

that people did not seem to logically think through.

But further, balloon-oriented news.

Japan has a commercial space viewing tiny bubble.

And so what they have is this little bubble.

It’s also 1.5 meters in diameter.

It’s actually the same size as the ball

from the previous story, which is a little coincidental.

I don’t know because it’s not.

It is coincidental.

Basically it’s a little ball.

They’re gonna connect to a balloon

and fly you up into space so that you can view space.

You’re not gonna leave the atmosphere,

but you’re gonna get into, I believe, the stratosphere.

So when you look out, you’re actually gonna see the earth.

You can see the curvature of the earth.

This will, I actually wanna get flat

earthers into this bubble and bring them up

and then see what they say when they come back down.

But you’ll be able to see, sorry, Dave’s on my lap.

You’ll actually be able to see space.

So this is the kind of thing I is like a science fiction fan

and really into, I would really love to do this.

It’s safe, economical and gentle for people.

It has two seats, one for a pilot and one for a passenger.

Its airtight cabin can go up 25 kilometers.

It’s the balloon’s gonna be powered by helium.

So you’re gonna be able to float up into the sky,

gently float back down as the idea.

This is gonna cost 24 million yet at first.

Now the plan is to bring it down.

And the guy said, two several million yet.

The average salary in Japan is four to five million yet a year,

which means for the normal person, this is unavailable.

This is going to be half a year salary to be able to fly up into space.

Now if it gets really popular and really common, maybe it does get cheaper.

The thing is, so this is a 1.5 meter diameter.

I am 1.84 centimeters tall.

I don’t believe this is designed from my comfort.

I think this ball has been designed for by Japanese people,

kind of for Japanese people.

I don’t think they’re taking size into account for other people.

I just look so tiny.

And then my thought is, it’s a ball suspended by a balloon

and it goes up and there’s a problem with the balloon.

I assume it has parachutes?

I don’t know, man, it’s terrifying.

I don’t think I’m ready for this.

Even if it is like, as they say, perfectly safe.

And very gentle, ’cause you’re gonna float up

and float back down.

I don’t know.

I just, for me, it was too scary.

I don’t think I’ll be doing it.

(clock ticking)

There was a year bookmaker and they did some surveys

and they found that 40% of kids want their pictures photoshopped.

So we didn’t have Photoshop when I was in high school,

which makes me think, what do we do?

What do we do?

But 80% of parents don’t want their kids pictures photoshopped.

Which means there’s 20% to do.

I guess 40% who want their pictures photoshopped is not.

That’s the minority.

60% don’t care.

But what they’re actually saying is most pictures

in the yearbook, like sort of not planned,

just out in the wild photos from your school year.

All the kids are gonna be wearing masks.

You’re not gonna be able to see their faces.

So I’m wondering what they’re saying is,

I’d like my face photoshopped onto my own face

so that you don’t have a picture of me wearing a mask.

‘Cause over the pandemic, every sort of photo.

of kids that would go into a yearbook

has actually had all their masks on.

Which is kind of sad.

It’s something I hadn’t thought about.

That’s actually why I found this story interesting.

‘Cause it’s kind of sad that these kids,

most of their memories are going to be with a mask.

Which is pretty crap.

But your books are kind of becoming a thing of the past.

80% of students use social media for memorable moments.

So what they’re saying is, they take pictures of them and their friends,

they stick it on social media.

The problem with social media is it’s designed.

for you to be adding to it, adding to it, adding to it.

My wife, my family, they take thousands of pictures

and they don’t do any organization of them.

They’re just like reams and reams of pictures.

And when you ask someone to show you a picture,

they always take like five minutes to find it.

So Booty Scratcher 4 just says, “I have a three year old son

“that I’d hate to make him cover his face in photos.”

Yeah, and when he gets older and goes to school,

he’s, I guess, maybe in the next couple of years,

’cause the mandate for masks in Japan is going away in March.

Which means you don’t have to wear a mask.

But thing is, I’m thinking about pandemic kids.

The kids who have just spent the last three years.

My daughter’s 13, she has spent three years.

And three years of your life when you’re 13

is a significant portion of your life wearing a mask all day every day.

She’s actually gotten very used to not showing her face.

And I think she might prefer to wear a mask

’cause she’s self-conscious about it now.

So we have this whole generation of

kids now who grew up during the pandemic.

We have what I’m essentially calling pandemic babies.

Kids who were like three or four when the pandemic started.

And they spent one or two years essentially an isolation with no interaction

or physical contact.

When we get those, like, I work at an English teaching school,

when those kids get any sort of physical contact, they get super excited.

Because they just haven’t been, you

know, they don’t wrestle, they don’t touch,

they don’t like high five,

they don’t do any of that anymore.

So any physical contact to them is super, super exciting

and encouraging.

Yeah, I’m thinking there’s gonna be this generation of kids

it just has a very different way of thinking about human interactions.

And with the stories of Japan’s declining birth rate

and stuff, actually, it’s one of the stories coming up later.

Like, their whole world is gonna be different.

Oh, my heater.

Sorry.

Oh, sorry Dave.

Dave freaked out when I had to press the button.

All right, all right.

No, Dave’s not gonna sit down again.

You’re gonna go down.

I have to make a decision now.

We have to pause the podcast so that Dave can decide

if he’s gonna sit down again or get down.

I cannot do the podcast with Dave’s just standing on me.

This is something I’ve realized.

I have to now put my entire life on pause.

Dave is, yes, Dave is adorable,

but Dave is also a huge pain in the ass

’cause Dave often doesn’t make good decisions.

Look at the camera.

That’s he, nothing.

Dave is an independent king in the world.

and takes commands from no one.

All right, what he does like those getting his head scratched.

Look at that.

Oh, okay.

All right, Dave.

I have tried to play Elden Ring with Dave and I can play the game.

I cannot fight a boss.

I cannot fight a boss with Dave standing on me.

It’s too hard.

All right.

Buddy, the whole point in me doing this is I can get it done.

So I’m gonna have to.

Ah, are you keeping him or her unneutered on purpose?

Like, so you can have babies or is this just like,

’cause it’s a young dog.

What, Dave just went mad?

I’m afraid I’m choking him.

But he didn’t react so.

We’ll do a little scratch break and then I’ll get on to the next story.

Okay, still too young for that.

That makes sense.

We got Dave, Dave was already like five when we got him.

He’s got like an epic backstory.

His origin story is awesome.

All right, Dave, though, you gotta get down.

Nah, I mean, it’s worth doing.

You don’t wanna have accidental babies.

That’s actually gonna be the worst thing.

Okay, Dave, can you get down?

You sit in front of the heater.

All right.

Now he just stands here.

He just stands here pushing against my chest.

I think it’s ’cause it’s warm, but then we were so settled.

What about,

good?

Now he’s gonna walk around and piss me off.

All right, now I gotta get, I gotta do the podcast.

We got people in the world who wanna know about Japanese news.

Where were we?

80% of students use social media from memorable moments,

which I actually find kind of sad

because to me, social media seems almost impermanent.

60% of the kids use Instagram, 58% use line.

Line is a messaging service that’s in Asia.

It’s not necessarily popular in North America.

It’s a good service, but it’s one of those ones where they have everything.

I think all the meshes in service, I

think all the services now are the same.

They all have photo sharing, they all have messaging,

they all have different kinds of things.

Twitter and TikTok was 13.5%.

Yeah, there’s a whole generation of kids growing up now

that the pandemic has affected the way.

they see their own face because they’ve

spent all their public time with a mask on.

So what point do you like?

They’re gonna have to almost force them to not wear masks

so they get used to not wearing a mask

when they’re hanging out with each other

because a lot of kids are actually saying that they’ll wear a mask,

they’ll actually be more comfortable out in public

with a mask on them when they’re mask off,

which is a whole different sort of way of thinking for me.

There’s been another rush on products in Japan.

So I gotta get the name out.

Ryu Kaku-San is a herbal candy.

And apparently this happened a couple weeks ago

with a Pavaron-Pavaron cold medicine.

So basically there’s some kind of medicine

in Japan and there’s a rumor in China

that this is really effective against coronavirus

and then Chinese people come to Japan and they buy it all.

It’s not, it’s like cold medicine

so it will help with a cough, it’ll help with symptoms

but it doesn’t actually prevent coronavirus.

But the way it’s being sold on social media in China.

is that it actually will defend or help against coronavirus

so they buy it all because they’re also terrified of coronavirus.

They’ve just stopped the like zero COVID policy in China

which actually means they’ve gone through

a little burst of coronavirus.

So this has happened again this week.

I’m gonna have to get rid of the dog if I want to run a successful podcast.

That is what I’ve learned.

That is the only thing I’ve learned from this experience

is that if you have family or an animal or anything,

they will absolutely interrupt you when you try to run a podcast.

I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of episodes

and the only problems I’ve had have been my children, my wife and the dog.

Yes, we’re great friends.

Can you just stop?

Go to sleep.

Okay, yeah, you wanna go out, go out there.

Okay, go.

You?

I can keep them out, he’ll be back in like two minutes.

(swooshing)

So Ryukakusan, herbal throat candy and Ryukakusan,

it actually sounds like a moving street fighter.

Ryukakusan, throat refreshing tablets.

These are herbal remedies.

So of course they’re not going to stop coronavirus.

They’re designed for coughs and sore throats.

And even the manufacturer says these are not medicine.

It’s just like a candy that helps soothe your throat.

But a rumor’s gone around in China

that this is going to stop coronavirus.

So Chinese people will come to Japan

and they’re actually buying it all up.

It’s good in that, you know, this company’s making a ton of money,

but it’s bad in that, you know, Japanese

people can’t get their throat candy.

I am a foreign resident in Japan.

I’m a permanent resident because I’m married and I have kids.

So they gave me a permanent visa.

That’s actually interesting.

‘Cause a lot of people like it’s hard to get, I don’t want citizenship.

I don’t wanna lose my Canadian passport or my British passport.

Whereas Japan, you can’t have dual citizenship.

So I would not actually want to become Japanese,

which some people like kind of want to do.

But because I’m a permanent resident of Japan,

but not Japanese, therefore I cannot vote.

So it has come up, should, this comes up almost every couple of years.

Should foreign residents be allowed to vote?

Not vote for like prime minister and stuff, but vote in like referendums.

So basically I pay taxes,

but as a permanent resident, I pay taxes,

I work here, I pay income tax, all this other stuff.

So do I get to vote in anything?

The answer is no.

In the government, only 16% of assembly

members even wanna have the conversation.

So not only do Japanese people, government-wise,

wanna have foreign people have their input,

only 16% even wanna have the conversation.

You can assume that 16% is the ones that actually think

that foreign people who live in Japan should have a say.

Everyone else, the 74%, or is it 84?

Yeah, 84% don’t even wanna have the conversation.

Because it gets to a point where it’s like,

well, if they pay taxes and they live here

and they do all the stuff they’re supposed to do,

shouldn’t they have a say in how society is run,

whereas their actual feeling is no.

But then they have to come out and say no, which makes them look racist,

and you can’t look racist anymore.

There was one I came to Japan.

It was perfectly acceptable to just come out and say,

I don’t believe foreign people should have

basic human rights in Japan because they’re not Japanese.

So it should be Japanese first, four and a second.

Now society has shifted enough that that’s

not acceptable for a politician to say.

So a bunch of politicians have gotten in

trouble for saying vaguely racist things,

and then going like, what, it’s just foreigners?

So when they talk to the other percentage

that didn’t even wanna have the conversation, 50%,

56% said, I can’t say why we shouldn’t have the debate.

Because if the second part that they don’t say,

’cause if I say what I think, I’m gonna sound racist.

24% say they don’t think we should pursue it further,

’cause this is already a settled thing, why should we talk about change?

And that’s an interesting position for a politician to take

that we should not even consider change.

And about 2% of the Japanese population in Japan right now is not Japanese.

So when I came to Japan, it was 1% of the population was non-Japanese.

That’s actually mostly Chinese and Korean people.

They come here for work and whatnot.

There’s a lot of Filipinos as well

in the healthcare sector.

But it’s doubled, I mean, 1 to 2% is not very much,

but it has actually doubled in the time up in Japan.

This is a civil rights issue.

And then the people who are arguing for it

are saying like, this is about, you know,

you’re right to have your voice heard in society.

This is about civil rights.

But again, the average Japanese person

doesn’t consider a foreign person as having a civil rights.

as a reasonable request.

‘Cause if you want that, you should go back where it came from.

(upbeat music)

Talked about low-key racism in Japan a few times.

I actually wanna have a conversation with

one of my other friends who lives in Japan.

about it like our experiences.

‘Cause I’ve never had that many direct racist experiences

but low-key in society, it’s just there bubbling under all the time.

We have a couple of exciting arrests.

This is a thing called specialized fraud,

which is a thing I’d never heard of before.

And it’s where you gain someone’s trust using remote means.

So basically that you either contact

them on the Internet or on the telephone.

This was interesting to me because it was different

from just fraud where you just go out

and straight lighten people to their face.

You gain their trust first and then you sort of have like a whole,

it’s more like a calm I think, is specialized fraud.

But this was a 15 year old girl called up an old lady

who was in her 70s impersonating a municipal employee

saying, “You have a government refund coming.

We need to make a new bank card for you.

So we’re gonna have a representative show up at your house

and they will help you make a new card.”

And then using that, we can get you your refund.

So then the 15 year old dressed up in a suit

went to the old lady’s house, got her original bank card

at an ATM information, went to the bank and withdrew half a million yen.

The police are looking at this as like a

ring, but I’m wondering, ’cause this is not

so the information they gave.

When you’re not of legal adult age, the

police don’t release any information about you

because you’re under age.

But also in Japan there’s almost no punishment.

So she’s gonna get a slap on the wrist.

She’s gonna get introuble, but she’s actually not gonna go to prison.

She’s not gonna be punished properly because she’s a minor.

And I’m thinking maybe there’s a ring of people

who are now kind of recruiting underage people

to commit these crimes because they don’t get punished

the same way as if let’s say I as an adult did it,

I would go to prison for X amount of years.

And that might be like a new style crime

because you now have the stratification of society

where you have really, really old people,

which is a majority of the people in Japan.

You have young people who are facing limited

options and what they can do for work.

Turning to a life of crime while you’re

under age, actually because of the leniency

of the Japanese criminal system is not a bad idea.

I hate that I do this so regularly on Ninja News Japan.

I give good criminal advice, but it’s

’cause I think about it in a logical way.

And if you’re gonna commit a crime in Japan,

you should absolutely do it while you’re under age

’cause you basically won’t be punished.

And then when you turn to an adult,

that gets expunished, your record doesn’t exist anymore.

(phone ringing)

I enjoyed this one weirdly.

A man was arrested because at a company

party, so they had some kind of like,

let’s say a New Year’s party or something like that.

A woman got up from the table,

so this is probably like one of those ones where you sit on the floor.

She got up and she went to get some more food or something.

A man reached over, grabbed the back of her

pants and pulled them down to her knees.

Now she was of course embarrassed.

She, the man started laughing.

All the other men at the table started laughing.

And I was like, what is the crime here?

Because it’s clearly actually,

you should not be like ripping off other people’s clothes,

but of course them being a group of men who were probably drunk at the time,

they all thought it was hilarious.

The man is being brought up on sexual assault charges.

And I’m really glad she pursued this because this is, again,

when I talk about low-key racism in Japan as a society,

low-key sexism is right on its heels.

Like as much progress as they may have made, it’s not very much overall.

The man’s defense though is a classic Japanese man’s defense.

It’s, I didn’t do it.

I was drunk and I don’t remember.

Now those are actually conflicting statements.

I was drunk and I don’t remember conflicts with I didn’t do it.

Because if I was drunk and I don’t remember,

that means there is just as much chance

that I did it as I didn’t.

I don’t remember, isn’t complicit with being drunk.

I know they often go together,

but I think what’s actually happened is he remembers doing it.

He remembers getting the big laugh

and everyone thinking he’s awesome for about two minutes

and then he remembers the police showing up

and telling him he’s sexually assaulted a coworker.

It’s gross.

It’s gross behavior, but of course in

the moment, everyone thinks it’s hilarious.

But at a company function, there’s no way he should get away with that.

His boss should have actually torn him a new one

and I bet his boss was sitting there laughing with everyone else.

I was wondering though if there could be a secondary charge.

because it’s not sexual harassment if they all sit there and laugh.

So maybe officially the police would struggle to do anything with that,

but the company could actually come down pretty hard

on anyone who found that amusing, which would be interesting.

I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

(phone ringing)

One of the bigger stories this week, just the last couple days.

This is Ryokan.

Ryokan is an old-style Japanese hotel.

They are often connected with hot Springs.

Now, I knew that hot Springs overall were not actually pumped in

from a real hot spring going through a volcano and stuff.

I knew it was like, “Go through machines,” and whatnot.

But I didn’t think about this.

So the Ryokan has only been changing its hot spring water twice a year,

which means that essential bath water gets pumped in,

gets pumped out, goes through a heater, gets pumped in again.

And I always thought, “Ah, you sort of think,

“it’s hot enough, it’s gonna kill anything in the water.”

But that is obviously not the case, otherwise it wouldn’t be a news story.

Legionella is a bacteria, and it was 33,700 times the legal limit.

in the water at this Ryokan, which means you are bathing in bacteria soup

if you get in that.

And this is actually really put me off.

the hot Springs, because what assurance do I have?

They say, since 2019, they’ve been telling everyone,

“Oh, we changed the water regularly, it’s clean.”

We put the proper amount of chlorine in it.

They haven’t.

So they haven’t been changing the water, and

they haven’t been putting in the chlorine

to kill everything.

They have been accused of lying.

They came out with an apology.

I think it’s really, really hurt.

Last week on “Injoon-Japan,” we had the creepy, gross men

who would go up in a mountain and get a telephoto lens

and video women bathing in public baths.

This, now you have a combination.

Not only could I be naked in public and someone actually videos me,

but I could be bathing my body in a bacteria soup,

which now has made something I really enjoyed.

I really used to enjoy going to public baths.

One of my most positive experiences in Japan

was getting a private hotel with a bath on the balcony.

So it was called a hot spring, but I know it was just a bath.

And now I might not want to do that again.

And it’s so gross, but it is also just the reality

of shared bathing.

That place is probably gonna get shut down.

I can’t see anyone going there again in the future.

(phone ringing)

Japanese study on the climate impact of cow-burps.

Now I mentally thought, “Ah, cow-burps,

“I mean, you mean farting’s bad, burping’s bad.”

But this is just cows, this is nothing.

Turns out that one cow can equal 1.7 cars.

So the cow, the methane they produce through burping and farting,

could be a major cause of global warming,

’cause we all eat a lot of meat.

And so they’re trying to find some way to offset

the climate impact of the methane that cows produce.

So they’re designing stomach sensors.

And they put these sensors into the cows.

They’re gonna use AI to monitor methane emissions made by cows.

And the goal is to cut cow methane emissions by 80% by 2050, which is great.

I didn’t think about any of this.

I didn’t realize any of it.

So this is actually all new information to me.

How they come up with this solution is amazing.

Cashew nut shells mixed into cow feed

produces a healthy acid in the stomach and not methane.

So basically if they take cow feed and mix in cashew shells,

the cows are not going to be burping and farting methane.

They’re going to be producing this acid in the stomach,

which helps them digest the grass better,

which means it that alone just mixing in cashew shells, not even the nuts.

So you got to have a company that produces cashews.

They shell them, sell the nuts, and then sell or give the nuts

to farmers and they’re essentially solving climate change,

or at least the impact that cows have on it, which is shocking.

And it’s this combination of science and technology

and innovation that on something that I didn’t even know

was a problem and they’re already fixing it.

I love science.

I love the stuff they do and I want to support them

anywhere I can. So good on you cow scientists.

The kids are, look, last story and it’s low birth rates.

And we’ve done this a button million times.

And I have always known what the solution is.

But of course, politicians can’t admit what the real problem is.

so they can’t figure out what the real solution is.

This is almost the opposite of the previous story,

where I know the problem and the solution,

they just don’t see it the same way.

An assemblyman gave a speech and he said,

the reason we have low birth rates in Japan

is Japanese have low romantic ability.

Now my first thing is how do you define romantic ability?

Because that phrase doesn’t seem to mean anything.

So he’s asked for an analysis of Japan’s low romantic ability.

So how do you measure it first of all?

What is it?

It’s problem number one.

Problem number two is how do you measure romantic ability?

He wants surveys and then there’ve been some other surveys

we talked about like problems with relationships.

And people have responded, I don’t have confidence

and I can’t get along with the opposite sex.

The reason you would have low romantic ability

is because you do not interact with the opposite sex enough.

Now I have held true that the Japanese education system,

Johnny Bravo called it mojo, that is absolutely 100% correct.

But Japan needs more mojo.

But where does mojo come from?

This is actually, you’ve actually hit on the point.

Mojo comes from interacting with people.

Not even the opposite sex, just getting the skills,

the natural skills to interact with other

people in a positive and friendly way.

And that applies to both men and women,

regardless of your sexual orientation.

If I interact with a lot of men, I’m gonna know how to interact with men.

If I interact with a lot of women, I’m

gonna know how to interact with women.

But core problem is that they’re people.

Japanese school education and then work culture is set up

that you actually have very little time,

socially to interact with other people,

and in a natural way.

So I remember my high school.

I was a terrible student.

I didn’t get my shit together until the very last year

of high school when I actually realized

if I don’t get good scores, I’m not going to university.

My son is currently finishing his.

high school exams.

And so he’s gonna graduate from junior high school,

do these exams and that’s gonna decide

what high school he goes to.

And that’s gonna decide what university goes to,

which will essentially decide the path of his future.

He’s 15 years old.

He doesn’t interact with girls because he’s studying all the time.

So I’m, now my son, he’s my son, so he’s

got a certain sort of, he’s got it going on.

But for a normal kid,

because you’ve never interacted with the

opposite sex or people you find attractive,

you don’t know how to interact with them.

So when you hit your 17, 18, 19, 20,

when you would be dating pretty seriously,

you don’t know how to do it, which means approaching women is hard.

‘Cause you have to go through the like, I

have to approach women and get rejected,

I have to learn how to do it.

That is, I guess, your romantic ability.

So the low romantic ability for me

comes from that the system designed through

education, the system designed for work,

makes it so that the average Japanese person.

does not interact with people in a social way.

Therefore, it never learns the social skills.

So they’re gonna be talking about dating,

meeting people and this romantic ability.

He’s what he’s saying is that, again, just like Johnny Bravo called it mojo,

Japanese people don’t have mojo, but you’re not gonna have a class

where you teach mojo successfully.

You have to have people spend free time interacting with each other,

which means we have to get, work-life balance has to be rebalanced in Japan.

Education system has to rebalance in Japan.

So that people in Japan have time to be people in Japan

and hang out with other people in Japan,

and not learn how to date from a class or the Internet or something,

which as we’ve probably all learned is not where you do it.

Weirdly enough, here I am on the Internet

telling people what they need to do.

But what I’m actually saying is,

don’t learn how to date from a podcast like mine.

Don’t learn how to date from a course you

took that’s sponsored by the government.

Learn how to date by actually hanging out with people.

I’m not even saying date, really.

I’m saying hang out with other people,

hang out with women, hang out with men,

hang out with mixed groups.

Just learn how to manage those social interactions.

But Japanese school is set up so that you have to study

and then after you go to school, you

have to go to Juku, which is cram school.

You go to Juku, you get home at 10 o’clock, you go to bed.

You’re probably studying before you go to

bed and then you get up and do it all again.

You’re not being a kid.

And then in high school, you’re not being a high school,

a teenager.

And then when you get to university, you got a couple of free years.

That’s usually when relations have happened.

But now I’m so awkward ’cause I’ve never done it before.

I can’t get a good relationship.

So I give up, then where do I end up?

I get a job that has me working 500 hours a week.

Yeah, of course the birth rate’s going down.

You need people to go out and be people and have lives and stuff.

And that is the sun’s shiny note we’re ending Ninja News Japan on.

But Japanese government needs to listen to my podcast.

Pay attention to what I’m saying.

We need to revamp the entire system.

I know that seems overwhelming, but it would be a new boon to Japan

if we could actually get it right.

So actually there is a glimmer of positivity

in there in the end because what I’m saying is,

it can be fixed and it actually wouldn’t take that much.

(electronic music)

(upbeat music).

(upbeat music)

Kida Kida names.

Okay, so what is Kida Kida?

If I’m gonna use any Japanese, I figure I have to explain it.

Kida Kida is sparkly or shiny or something like that.

So I’m assuming like when you collect Pokemon,

there’s Kida Kida Pokemon and special shiny Pokemon.

A Kida Kida name is therefore an unusual name.

They have rules in place about what names you can use for children.

Primarily comes down to the kanji.

Kanji is the Chinese characters.

So I wanna name my child.

There’s essentially an approved list of names that I can use.

I can’t call my kid demon.

I can’t use offensive or derogatory words.

That’s always been in place.

There have been over the last few years.

I remember some of students that I have

making a presentation about Kida Kida names.

And it was a lot of stuff from anime.

So it was like some kids name Pikachu,

some kids name Naruto, some kids name like Luffy, that kind of stuff.

So these were anime fans who decided that their anime

fandom was so important that they would

actually name their child after anime.

The Japanese government’s like, “Mm, we’re not cool with this anymore.”

Because they are saying that these kind

of weird or fancy names are bad for kids.

So they wanna make some new rules.

Basically names that make other people

uncomfortable are not going to be okay.

So if you wanna name your kid Pikachu or not like an anime character,

when you meet that person in real life.

So hello, my name is Peter.

The other one goes, “Hello, my name is Pikachu.”

I go, “Oh, fuck, that’s weird.”

That name might not be approved by the government.

You cannot use names that are easily confused by the kanji reading.

So basically you have different ways

Chinese characters can be read in Japanese.

And so you can play with those sounds.

So I’ll choose this one and this one.

And I’ll use this sound in this sound.

It’s very complicated actually.

So I can make a sound that means the

opposite of the words you’re looking at.

That’s not okay.

So let’s say I want, my name is Peter.

When I came to Japan, of course one of the first things

I wanna know is how do you write Peter in Japanese?

So they use katakana, which is a phonetic sound in Japanese.

So my name is Pita, which is fine, it’s pretty close.

But then not really understanding the system,

I’m like, well, what kanji would be used for Peter?

Peter doesn’t mean anything in Japanese.

So there is no kanji, there is no Chinese character that would relate to it.

So my students, you know, they were just having fun.

They’re like, ah, well, the P, there’s this like this character,

kind of makes a P sound if you use it this way.

And this one is Ta, so you can use that.

And it was devil T and I was like, oh, that sounds awesome.

But you couldn’t use devil.

If you actually wanted to register this name,

you couldn’t use the devil part of that,

as part of my name.

So the example that I read, I think this was sort of news,

said like if you want to use Chinese characters

that make the sounds micaru as a Michael, that’s not okay.

Because it’s very easily misreaded because

the Chinese characters have set sounds.

And that’s not how they’re normally used.

Dave’s being an asshole today.

Here you go.

One.

I’m trying to record a show of millions of people are going to watch.

And you’re just being a dick and ruining it.

So get the fuck out or sit down and shut up.

Those are your choices.

I’m going to put you out and then you’re

going to come on and come back, right?

Give me a flood, boy.

Dave thought I was going to follow on.

He’s probably really upset right now.

I’m going to have to wait.

He’s going to want to come back in.

Realize like having a dog that has been very coddled.

It’s very much like having a toddler.

It’s never going to grow out of being a toddler.

Okay, so that’s got to be the edit point.

Fuck, as soon as I get started.

Then come back in.

Sit down and shut up.

Come on.

(door opens)

It’s a lot easier for me to do C-McB with Dave on my lap

because most of that just comes out on my head.

The engineer’s Japan, I actually want to get quotes right and stuff.

I need my notes.

But whatever.

Okay, another edit point, but that’s just one bigger edit point.

(sighs)

So basically in Japan, you’re going to have to pick

from a list of kanji and there are sort of set readings

that you’re going to have to use

or those names will not be registered by the government.

That still means there’s thousands and thousands of names to choose from.

So over the next year, if this rule goes into place, the heads of family.

So when you have a house or a family and stuff,

you have to register the head of the household.

The head of the family is going to have to report

the family name so I’d have to write down

all the kanji, all the Chinese characters

that are used and how they are read.

And if I’ve messed around too much, those will not be registered.

So basically what they’re saying is, if I

don’t report my family’s names accurately

over the next year,

the government’s going to assign, so

I’d let’s say, so I’ve already had kids.

I’ve already chosen the Chinese characters for my kids.

Those have been registered.

What they actually want you to do is send

in how those are read to the government.

If you don’t do it within the next year,

the government will assign the reading to the name.

So you could actually have the government naming your children

if you don’t take sort of the initiative and actually report it yourself.

That’s an interesting problem.

So maybe my kid’s three years old, four years old.

He’s learned his name.

And then the government’s like, that’s not how you read those kanji.

That’s not how you read those Chinese characters.

You are going to have to call your child this other name

from now on because that’s how it’s properly read

because you didn’t register it properly

or you tried to play with the system.

There is no system that humanity is involved in

where they don’t try to like push the boundaries

or bend the rules to see if they can get away with it.

That’s just sort of human nature.

Japanese government, when it comes to names, they’re not messing around.

They are honestly just like, no, we’re locking it down.

You gotta do it this way.

If you don’t do it this way, we’re going to tell you your own child’s name.

(phone ringing)

Couple weeks ago, we talked about a Shogi player.

The Shogi player was not wearing his mask properly.

Basically he had his mask over his mouth, but his nose was sticking out.

That’s something that people who don’t really

like masks do to kind of gain the system

because they can technically say, I’m wearing

a mask because I have it over my face.

But my nose is sticking out, which of course

defeats the purpose of wearing a mask.

I think we all know that.

Who knew that Shogi players would be pedantic,

which kind of the phrase that runs through my head

every time I hit this kind of story?

He left the tournament.

He was actually booted out of the tournament

for not wearing his mask properly.

He said he would file a legal complaint.

He had three consecutive disqualifications

for not wearing a mask properly while playing Shogi.

And now he’s received a three-month suspension.

So this professional Shogi player, I mean, once you get disqualified twice,

you should realize they’re not messing around.

You’re going to get disqualified again, you do it again.

He did it again.

He again, sort of like the previous story, what are the rules?

Let’s push the boundaries.

Let’s see how much trouble I can get

into before I actually get into trouble.

He claims that the temporary coronavirus rules

do not say you must not expose your nose and even if you expose your nose,

oh, this is his quote.

So like, sorry, I’m kind of messed that up.

His quote is that the rules do not say you must not expose your nose.

And even if you expose your nose, there will not be any droplets

as you are not talking during the match.

The ruling is absurd.

So he’s saying that the rules don’t specifically say

that the mask must cover your nose.

Therefore, he can wear a mask that does not cover his nose.

This is again, spirit of the law versus letter of the law.

The letter of the law says you must wear a mask.

It does not say how you have to wear a mask

so I could put it on the top of my head.

Oh, I’m wearing a mask.

We saw a lot of this in America when the anti-maskers

were going around trying to like make fun of people wearing masks.

There were people wearing like lace masks

that had gigantic holes in them obviously doing nothing.

They called them face diapers.

I remember all that.

This guy’s obviously in the same genre of person, I guess.

But he is again talking about suing them, but I think that’s not gonna,

I don’t think he realizes like, this is not an argument he can win.

The rules said wear a mask.

They, the governing body of Shogi is going to decide

what is appropriate when it comes to wearing a mask.

You gotta wear a mask.

Weirdly, I am not surprised that Shogi players are kind of dicks.

I don’t know what that says about me or about Shogi players,

but again, to me, chess players, being pedantic and annoying seems on brand.

Is that me, a bad person? I wonder.

I wonder if what I’ve done is stereotyped chess players.

Jade is putting them in, nah, they’re dicks.

Which, okay, at least I am not alone in my

feeling about essentially pedantic people.

Okay, so we’ve also in every country now had a balloon story.

So spy balloon.

So America had found a spy balloon.

It was floating around, they shot it down.

Now it’s come out that there’s a whole bunch

that have floated around America in the past.

The same things happened in Japan.

We’ve seen spy balloons.

This has led to a couple of interesting statements by China.

China denies the balloons in Japanese airspace, we’re Chinese.

So they’re saying, yes, maybe you saw some balloons,

but they were not Chinese balloons.

Therefore, you should not be angry.

Japan said, like, look, we find stuff in our airspace.

We should be able to shoot it down.

So they’re actually now talking about what should they do?

We find a balloon in our airspace.

Are we gonna shoot it down?

How do we shoot it down?

You know, what’s the best way to shoot it down?

They have to get permission from the government

and that permission then has to get also

relate to the Japanese self-defense force.

But they’re saying basically, if there is an object

in our airspace and we can shoot it down safely,

we think we’re gonna start shooting it down pretty safely.

Like, they don’t want it to crash into like a town

or something and actually hurt somebody.

China then says, we are opposed to attacks against China without proof.

Now, they just previously said, it’s not a Chinese balloon.

Maybe it’s a North Korean balloon.

Maybe it’s a balloon from another country.

And Japan’s like, we’re gonna shoot it down.

They’re like, well, you would stop attacking China.

And they’re like, wait a minute, if it’s

not a Chinese balloon and we shoot it down,

we’re not really attacking China, are we?

So there’s a little dichotomy.

I don’t know if that’s really the right word.

There’s a logical fallacy happening in

the Chinese side of the arguments of this.

As in, it’s not a Chinese balloon,

but we really don’t think you should be attacking China by shooting it down.

So how is shooting down, let’s say,

Korean North Korean-Bulled Spi-Bulling down

an attack on China?

So it’s interesting that again, they don’t see any problem with saying

sort of contradictory statements.

Then they demanded that Japan stop following US propaganda.

Because of course, the Americans are saying

that the balloons that are floating around

are Chinese as well.

I’m assuming at this point they know whether it is or not.

(clock ticking)

From this point forward, we’ve done all the actual good news.

Almost everything else, you see, they’re violent or gross.

So this is your warning going forward, maybe a trigger warning.

It’s people beating each other up and gross men.

It’s all men.

I, okay, you wanna talk about sexism.

I, what I try to do with my notes is,

go from least amount of poop in sexual assault.

To most amount of poop in sexual assault.

That’s kind of the logic I use.

So I use all the stories we’ve just done

are relatively clean international politics.

And now it gets violent and dirty.

It’s either when people come here for or where they should stop the podcast.

But let’s go.

So I got two robbery stories.

There was a man robbed a convenience store.

He got 50,000 yen, let’s say like 500 bucks to do the quick math.

So I mean, that’s actually pretty good haul for convenience store robbery,

but also not really worth it in my opinion.

He then went around to three other convenience stores in a 700 meter radius,

which actually just really tells you how

many convenience stores they’re out in Japan.

And tried to Rob them.

All those people refused.

And he didn’t get anything else.

In one of the stores, he went to a different store during his crime spree.

And tried to pay his phone bill, but then didn’t have money or something.

When he was arrested, he said the reason he robbed these stores

is ’cause he was in a bad mood.

He, the literal translation I got from

the Internet was he was in a foul mood,

so he robbed convenience stores.

Now that is an interesting way to do some sort of anger management.

Because I guess it’s not anger management.

It’s just expressing your anger.

There was a second man, completely different story.

Went to the convenience store, he wanted to go to the toilet.

And someone else went into the toilet first and took too long.

The man comes out of the toilet, goes outside,

the dude cranks him in the face two or three times.

So he beats him up.

The guy’s wallet falls out, so he steals his wallet.

When he was arrested, he said, he didn’t

beat up the man in order to steal his money.

He beat up the man because he took too long to toilet.

And again, I tend to like look at these

stories and go like, let’s look at the logic.

Which is worse?

Is it worse to beat someone up to steal from them?

Or is it worse to beat someone up because

they just took too long in the toilet

and you were annoyed?

I feel like beating someone up for their

money is actually less worse because,

yes, it’s all evil and terrible, but it has a purpose, it has a reason,

whereas beating someone up because they took too long in the toilet

actually has no reason.

Like that’s how I feel about it.

Like there was no logic behind that.

You’re just like, ah, that guy annoying me so I beat the shit out of him.

Yes, so Jade is put in the chat.

I beat him up and happened to take his wallet because it was on the ground,

is what his defense is.

I’m wondering if maybe there is a secondary crime.

Like beating someone up is a crime,

but beating someone up and stealing from them is worse

because we’re actually found that many

times in the past in the Indian use Japan,

where they tried to say, I did A, but I did not do B.

So like, I stabbed him but I wasn’t trying to murder him

so that I get assault charges, not murder charges.

That kind of stuff happens a lot.

I’m wondering if this guy knows the law enough to know

that I beat him up is actually not as bad

as I beat him up and tried to steal from him.

So maybe he’s telling the truth.

Maybe he’s just trying to offset the actual charges he’s going to be given.

(clock ticking)

I feel gross.

I’ve done so many, this is like 200 some episodes in the Indian use Japan.

I have done so many sort of dudes being gross, sexually.

It’s such a common story in Japan.

I’ve actually started to like not wanna do them,

but then it is the bit that people find interesting

is just how many weird sex stories there are.

So these two are kind of together.

There was a Kyoto man who was arrested recently

and over 12 years he made a 150 million yen.

That’s $1.1 million.

And he claims this is how he made his living

and the way he made his living was between, well for the last 12 years,

he was taking upskirt videos and uploading them online.

So he was going up escalators.

He basically put a smartphone in the front of his bag.

So probably on the inside and cut a little hole

where the camera is and then he would hold it

so that he could take videos of the woman

standing in front of him on the escalator

and take those videos and then post them online for money.

And he made $90,000 a year.

Between 2021 and 2022, they now have him filming 112 different women.

So he’s been arrested because of the anti-newsense ordinance

because filming up people skirts is a nuisance.

I actually think that should be escalated to sexual assault.

I think that’s actually what he should do.

And they’ve given him a much stricter sense.

This year volume of it is what is disgusting.

I guess once is not any worse than 3, 4, 500 times.

But yeah, no, I’m stuck in a loop.

Is there one worse?

No, they’re both bad.

You shouldn’t do it at all.

Anyways, we all kind of agree.

You should not do it at all.

It’s the thing that he made that much money off.

He made a million dollars.

No, it was over 12 years.

But his salary annually is bigger than my salary

doing on his work, which kind of bothers me.

But I think the bit I’m confused by is like,

porn is free on the Internet and upskirt

videos as good as they may be are not good.

I guess my point is you can kind of see

whatever you want on the Internet for free.

Why are people paying this guy?

How did he make 1.1 million dollars?

Maybe 10 years ago, it was more of a unique thing.

But I’m guessing they’re not paying for the video itself.

They’re paying for the invasion of

the person, which is why this is so gross.

Because again, the upskirt video is not going to show you

very much, it’s not going to be particularly sexual.

What they’re paying for is the woman to

be violated, which is how gross men are.

So, J.D. is putting in the exclusivity and the fact that they don’t know

didn’t want it done exactly.

So that’s kind of exactly what I’m saying.

It’s the violation of the person is the thrill is what they’re paying for.

And I guess maybe again, it’s so confusing to me

’cause I’m like, it’s not a very good video,

but I am not into the concept or the idea

of violating another person for sexual pleasure.

But of course, in Japan, that’s kind of a thing.

Voyeurism is a thing and that takes us into our next story.

I’ll do the sound.

‘Cause it is a new story.

16 men were arrested for filming over 10,000 women

in hot Springs across Japan over the last 30 years.

So I don’t know how this thing came about.

They didn’t give us the background, but these guys basically, this one guy,

20, 30 years ago, he’s like, I like to look at ladies bathing.

That’s sort of a trope in Japan.

And it’s actually very hard to do.

So what they would do is they’d go up on mountains

’cause a lot of the hot Springs are in mountains.

They’d go up in the mountains and get

telephoto lenses and video or them from there.

And then they’d have little weird parties

where they would show each other the videos

and what they would do is cut them together.

So this was almost like a video editing skills group.

And they would put in like little dirty comments

and stuff which I assume get off the other

guys who were watching the videos with you.

The ring leader started about 20 years

ago, he connected with 100 other voyeurers

and all 16 men have been arrested.

And he 16 men include doctors, a doctor from Tokyo,

company executives, local government officials.

So yeah, they would get expensive telephoto lens,

have little porn parties and watch them together.

I assume in Jerk each other off, I’m not sure.

The resorts are very concerned about this because this story gets out.

They’ve already been hit by hard by corona.

They’re not getting enough a lot of people coming because of corona.

And now there’s the second layer of women might not feel safe

going into the hot spring when if it’s open air.

‘Cause one of the appeals, the hot spring is that

it’s out in the open, you’re kind of in nature.

They put a fence up but you can then still

enjoy nature outside but you’re in the hot spring.

It’s really nice.

They’re gonna have to put like essentially a dome

over it or something which is really sad.

Because I love going to the hot spring

and I’ve never tried to look over the fence

into the women’s side which again, it’s sort

of a Japanese trope and like kids do it.

But these guys have just ruined that for everyone.

And the thing, this sad thing is, they’ve kind of ruined bathing cultures

of big deal in Japan and I really enjoyed it.

I have tattoos so I can’t go to a hot spring.

So I always went to private hot Springs

and what the ones I really, really like

is you go to a hotel.

It has a bath on the balcony.

So in the middle of winter you get on the balcony,

you get in the bath, you’re sitting in the super cold,

looking out over like the seascape or mountains or something like that.

It’s really, really nice.

But knowing someone was maybe videoing me would ruin that experience.

And I wouldn’t do it again.

These women have a right to not feel safe.

It sucks.

It sucks to take that away from other people.

And again, okay, this actually just

shows how my mind works pornographically.

And I’m like, in the quality of the video is not very good.

I’m all about video quality.

Which is really gross on my part.

But at least I’m like, everyone consenting,

get some good lighting, some makeup in there,

make sure everyone’s blemishes are taken care of, do some post production.

That’s my version of a good video.

I’m like these janky, these janky like

handheld videos just wouldn’t do it for me.

I want that, James put in, you want that 8K.

8K might be too much.

I don’t want to zoom in on anything.

I’ve never liked the get right in their

view for pornography and see the pores.

Yes, I would like to say, I like high definition.

I want to be able to really fully understand what’s going on.

I feel gross now for me, even though

I’m hopefully not saying anything that bad.

I think consent is the actually thing that makes it good for me,

is everyone’s having a good time.

Okay, our last story.

And of course that means it’s the grossest one.

There was a teen girl comes back to her bicycle

and finds that someone has pooped on her bicycle seat.

And then weirdly they found the guy really quickly.

So I assume again there was video of the guy

that he was still in the area, they found the guy.

She’s a teenager, he’s 28 years old and they arrest him for vandalism.

Hoping that girl doesn’t use her poop seat

anymore, but they arrest him for vandalism

and they say like why did you poop on this girl seat?

And he said it was because he liked her.

There is a very weird segment of society

that does not know how wooing works.

So the I liked her was a series of steps in his head.

to say how do I show her I like her?

Ah well, I will show her my most intimate moment

and present her with my own fecal matter

by pooping on the seat of her bicycle,

which is fucking horrendous really.

But it’s such an alien way of thinking.

And again, Japan’s gotten to this place where there’s so many people.

One of the surveys we did a couple weeks

ago is like, young people aren’t dating,

they’re not having relationships.

And I’m thinking maybe this is part of it.

Like people don’t know how to approach other people anymore.

They don’t know how to have human relationships.

So maybe they learn this weird stuff from the Internet

or they just got into this weird extreme

in their head where like, I know what she’ll like.

She’ll like my poop.

Now that’s the mental issues going on with the character involved.

There’s a physical one as well because

the poop wasn’t carried to the bicycle.

It wasn’t smeared on the bicycle.

It was deposited on the bicycle seat.

So if you think about a bicycle seat, even just an average, what’s gonna be,

we’ll have to say like three, four feet high.

He had to get up above that, pull down his pants.

This all has to be balanced.

Target the seat.

And then freely poop onto the seat while balancing.

This is like acrobatic stuff.

If you said to me right now, Peter,

there’s a bicycle I want you to poop on it on the seat.

And I want you to hit it.

I don’t think I could.

So what happens now is terrifying.

Jade is put in, I’m so quickly I pooped on her seat.

That is accurate.

And Botman says looking good chunk.

I think you’re probably looking at Dave right now.

My buddy.

Yeah, the last part, we’ve done a couple poop stories.

Ninja Ninja Japan was actually conceived from a very complicated poop story.

And this one is sort of follows the same

thing because the crime itself is terrible

and awful and disgusting.

I’m okay with that.

The physics involved, I find fascinating,

but they don’t tell you where the bicycle was.

So was it next to offense?

Did he balance on the fence and then poop on the bicycle?

Did he balance on the bicycle?

And then poop on the bicycle seat?

These are questions that we will never get answers to.

But my mind reels at the possibilities

of how physically capable this man must have been to poop on a bicycle seat

and yet how mentally incapable he was to realize

that that would not help the women find him attractive.

So you have maybe a balance of powers.

He is physically, weirdly capable, but mentally, incredibly deficient.

And that maybe is the problem with just modern society

is the people who have one ability.

They seem to be completely lacking in others.

I don’t know how to fix it if I’m being really honest.

Weirdly, my first thought was everyone should do judo.

‘Cause that’s what’s helped me balance out my life.

Maybe it’ll work for everyone else. I doubt it.

(upbeat music)

This is my solution to almost every problem is, you should just do judo.

I mean, that fixes all your problems.

It balances out your sort of aggressiveness.

It’ll balance out.

You learn Patience.

You learn that you can win and lose.

You have to Patience and never give up.

I do have one more story, but it’s just for video.

And it was just this poster.

I saw this poster.

Now this poster is an anti-terrorism poster

that’s gone up around, I believe, Tokyo.

And it just says, no terrorism, we need your will to eradicate terrorism.

And then it has a very attractive woman just standing staring at you.

So I’m wondering, who is this is aimed at?

Is this aimed at me?

Because I find women attractive.

Is this aimed at me?

And because she’s pretty, I’m going to stop terrorism?

Or is this aimed at terrorists?

Like, if you do terrorism, you’re gonna make this pretty lady sad.

Down at the bottom says, thank you for cooperation to understanding

of our police activity.

So basically they’re saying in this area,

maybe there are more an increased police presence or something like that.

Please don’t mind the police because this pretty lady needs to be kept safe.

I’m just confused as to the message this is supposed to actually said.

Japan, basically any topic, any issue

is handled with just sticking a pretty girl’s face on it.

As a cis man, I’m all for it, I’m good.

This is what I want.

Pretty girl faces everywhere I go.

But I want to say effectiveness,

I don’t think they’ve really hit what they’re aiming for.

[Music]

Anyone who’s watching the video
may notice there’s a new addition, a small

space heater in my room.

And that’s
because my electricity bill has doubled.

It seems like this is actually
having to do a lot of people.

We know prices have
gone up, but doubled is a bit of a shock.

Last year in December, for
my house, I spent 15,000 yen.

It’s like 150 bucks.

Okay, it’s a house.

So it’s going to use a lot of
energy and there’s going to be a lot of

leakage and stuff.

And it’s not going to be super-energy
efficient because we have windows.

So that was fine.

We used less electricity this
December and paid 30,000 yen,

which is a shock when that bill comes.

So that cut into all that, of course, this
month came out of my entertainment budget.

We basically have to re-jigger our
finances to make sure we can pay all our

bills and stuff.

We’re not in any trouble or anything.

It’s a big shock because
everything’s gone up by 4%.

I’ve noticed that
electricity doubling is a lot.

So now we have caracene heaters, which is
a very common way to heat a room in Japan.

So caracene is cheaper than electricity.

My associate Dave, he usually
sits in the corner of the bed in his bed.

That has been vacated.

His little bed has been put on
the ground so he can sit right in front of

the heater because Dave absorbs heat.

But at 4 o’clock in the morning,
he usually wakes up and gets really close

to my chest when we’re sleeping.

It’s very cute.

He generates a ton
of heat and it’s super nice.

But we’re not here for that.
I’m also in pain.

You’re not here to hear about this either.

I just have to
get all the personal stuff out of the way.

You’ll notice I’m sort of sitting like in
my arm is in a sling even though it isn’t.

Maybe I’m pledging allegiance to something.

I’m not, I have no allegiances.

I hurt my shoulder and judo yesterday.

I woke up
with a hangover but it’s not a hangover.

Hangover is really just a dehydration from
alcohol over consumption.

I was dehydrated from judo.
I drank water, ton of water last night.

Usually I would wake up in the middle
of the night and drink some more water

because I have a headache.

I would just walk up with a headache.
It’s basically a hangover headache.

It’s basically gone already.

I spent the
entirety of this morning drinking water.

I have some with me here
to keep my voice from being too gross.

I have to work today.

I thought I’ll get up, I’ll record
right away and edit right away and maybe

I can still get this up today.

I don’t
know if I have an enemy to be honest.

I’m pushing through. This is very
much a concerted effort on my part to get

this week’s ninja news Japan out.

I was just
going to skip and wait until next week.

Consider I’m just read or play
video games or something but you know what?

People really want to know
what’s going on with tropicana.

Tropicana in Japan last year in September.

I actually did this on ninja news Japan.

They had a melon drink and on the
label it said 100% whole fruit melon taste.

Written if I remember correctly in English.

Now that was a slightly deceptive
practice because it wasn’t.

When you see 100% on a
fruit drink you think fruit juice.

You don’t actually check the thing.

It actually had 2% melon juice.

98% was apple banana and grape juice.

So it’s still all juice.

There was a lot of juice in there.
It just wasn’t melon juice.

Melons are incredibly expensive in Japan.

So a 100%
melon juice drink would be like $5-10.

It’d be like going to Starbucks.

Oh god, sorry, just move
my fucking shoulder.

This might happen several times throughout
the podcast where I move and make

a small pain sound.

Oh fuck me.

Oh Jesus, I’m pushing it. It’s a bad idea.

Who?

Don’t, when you injure
yourself, don’t push on it.

And you’re probably going Peter, why?

Why did you push on it?

It’s kind of like I’m a
deep massage technique.

It hurts but that
feels better when you stop.

I guess any pain if you inflict on yourself
when you stop technically feels better.

But back to tropicana.

This is going to be the podcast.

It’s going to be me talking about
the pain I’m experiencing in the moment

and the news story flipping back and forth.

I will not be doing a lot of editing again
because I’m going to try to get

this out today.

The company then had to
redesign the package.

They were told by the
consumer affairs like this is deceptive.

They had a melon on it.

It was blocking out.

You could still see the apple banana and
grape.

It was basically blocking out.

So they were basically lying to
consumers trying to imply that it was 100%

melon juice.

So the company had to redesign the package.

And then the
Japan consumer affairs apply to fine of.

And this is why it’s
recent because just recent this week.

19,150,000 yen in violation
of the act against unjustifiable premiums.

That’s not what they’re in violation of.

And misleading representation which is
what they’re in violation of.

They calculate this.

This was maybe to
me the more interesting part.

This punishment was a calculation
of 3% of sales of whatever product has

violated this rule.

So basically if I make a product
and I put that product out and that product

violates this rule.

The way this is calculated is 3% of sales
of whatever the like the bogus product is.

So they’ve calculated all the sales.

The product.

I don’t know if it’s the profits.

It gets just sales.

So their profits aren’t going to be 100%.

So they’re taking 3% of sales
which is going to really read their profit

margin might be small.

It might be 5%, 10%.

I know it’s not.

Most products probably is 25% to 50%.

Profit margin.

Maybe that’s the stores.

I don’t know.

But I know 3% is a proper hit.

I mean that’s actually them doing
some real damage to the company in the

hopes that they can force them.

Cause them enough pain
so they don’t do it again.

I kind of liked this story.

So you know in america there’s
if you go on Twitter or something like that

and you look at like people who work at
convenience stores or sandwich shops

and stuff.

And they’re like, here’s
what we threw out today.

I went to my manager and said
can we donate this to a homeless shelter?

And they’re like no
corporate policy is that we throw it away.

And it was like Walmart or costco
or one of these big companies actually had

a guard by the garbage.

So that people wouldn’t steal
their garbage so that they could you know

sustain themselves off the stuff
that they were going to throw away and fill

up a landfill with.

Lawson is a convenience
store chain in Japan.

And they’re I don’t know if
you call famous but they have a lot of deep

fried chicken available.

American gas stations have
rolling hot dogs that I would never eat.

But apparently they’re not that bad.

There’s a couple people for some
reason I was reading on the Internet the

other day on Reddit or something.

A couple people liked them is because
they worked there and they knew how

fresh they actually were and
how long they actually put them out for.

Lawson donates chicken to children’s food
charity that are past the cell by date.

Now that sounds bad.

Now we know cell by
dates tend to be generous.

You throw it out before it really goes bad.

But this is something that has to be
deep fried and cooked so what do they do?

They deep fry it they put it on the shelf.

If it doesn’t get sold by the
cell by date they freeze it send it to the

children’s charity where it can
be defrosted and then sort of re-fried kind

of quickly.

And so and be pretty good.

So it really just comes down
to what is that cell by date?

How long does it sit out for?
The cell by date for the chicken at Lawson.

The carage specifically so carage is
like a ball of chicken that they deep fry.

And they’re quite good.
It’s a very common food item in Japan.

The carage cell by date is six hours.

So that’s when you realize the cell
because we think of cell by date as days

or weeks or whatever.

This is done in hour. So they deep fry
it they put it on that little shelf.

If it doesn’t sell in six hours they take
it off the shelf and they flash freeze it.

And then at the end of the
day that frozen chicken is going to go to a

children’s cafeteria so the
children can have something.

I mean not the most nutritious
food in the world but I can tell you the

chicken is good.

Being deep fried isn’t the worst
but I can tell you it’s better than some of

the alternatives of garbage food
that you might get in the same situation.

So I again I like the idea that food isn’t
being wasted.

I’ve always thought like I’m not
going to stop buying it so that I can go

stand by your garbage.

And I certainly wouldn’t be
angry about the idea of you taking food and

giving it to children who need food.

So good on your Lawson.
I’m very happy for you.

I’m very happy with you.
I’m very happy with you. I’m happy.

Except for my shoulder fuck.

We have an ongoing debate between
Japan and China. It’s really just China

debating a very one-sided thing.

So there’s been a recent outbreak. They
stopped with their zero covid policies.

What they were doing
was like one case of covid in a factory.

We’re going to lock everyone in
that factory until they all die or they all

get past it.

There was one it was like an
Ikea and it was like this flood of people

trying to get out of
the Ikea before they locked the doors.

And so it’s pretty scary.

They’ve stopped that
policy which is actually meant

that people are intermixing,
people are walking around.

So now they’re having their
first massive wave of covid.

South Korea and Japan are like oh shit.

So what we should do is have anyone
traveling from China to south Korea or

south Japan.

Do a covid test.

Last week was talking about I had
to do a covid test to come back to Japan

from Canada.

So this didn’t seem unreasonable to me.
The Chinese government on the other

hand saw this as being racist
and discriminatory and very, very unfair.

China recently said we’re
going to open China to tour groups from 20

countries from February 6th.

So we’re going to try to re-encourage
tourism to reinvigorate that industry.

They gave sort of a
side-eyed Japan and went but not you.

And not you south Korea. Screw
you if you’re testing people so they don’t

have covid and bring it into your country.

Which I actually thought is
this is very short-sighted.

Japanese and South Korean tourists
spend a lot of money when they go on

holiday, when they go places.

You’re just screwing yourself.

So I don’t consider the you have
to take a covid test 48 hours before you

travel to be offensive.

You could say it’s discriminatory because
it’s being applied to China

but it’s being applied to China
because they’ve had an outbreak of covid.

This takes US to the
second part of this story.

China also imposed
on Japan, america, south Korea, travelers.

Because you can still go there.
You can get like other visas and stuff. You

can still go there.

You have to take a nucleic acid test.
Now I didn’t look into it.

I wanted to look into it. Again,
because I have to work today. I didn’t

really have much time
to do any extra research.

Is it more
invasive or more difficult or whatever?

It’s a more severe test than
just your standard covid test. I assume.

And they said we’re going to continue
forcing Japanese, American and south

Koreans to take this nucleic acid test
until their discriminatory practices cease.

So basically they’re saying you’ve
discriminated against US. So we’re going

to discriminate against
you and until you stop your

discriminatory practices,
we’re going to discriminate.

They see no hypocrisy in what they’re
saying. This is just tit for test stuff.

But the statement they came out,
they said, you should base your rules on

science, not politics.

But science would tell you if a
country is having an outbreak of covid, you

should test the people from that
country before you allow them into your

country as tourists.

That would actually be pretty
solid science.

Science
often involves testing things.

China is saying that these countries, so
Japan and south Korea and stuff,

they’re making political responses to the
situation, not scientific ones.

I would disagree. And the
thing is their response to all this is not

scientific. It’s incredibly political
based. It’s very emotional almost.

And I think maybe my
respect for the China, how do I say it?

The Chinese government, because
it’s the same thing all the time. This has

been my thing with dictatorships
in the Chinese communist party and stuff.

They make a statement and then they
do the exact opposite of the thing they’re

saying other people should do.
And that they don’t understand the problem

.

And they’ll tell you what to do
and then they’ll do the opposite of that.

So this is, I guess it’s just the
hypocrisy. And it’s hard to formulate into

words that sound like anything
other than stop being hypocritical.

But yeah, saying you should base
your decisions on science, which I think

they, I mean, it’s not scientific, but you
find out this country has lots of covid.

We should test those people. I wouldn’t
call that scientific, but it’s sensible.

But if you want to talk to scientists and
say, hey, we have people coming

from other countries into our country.

And this set of countries has covid.
What should we do? The scientists are

going to say you should test those people.

Because if they don’t have
covid, it’s fine. If they do have covid, we

should quarantine them. Maybe
they don’t understand what science is.

Again, it’s not, it has nothing
to do with reality. That maybe is what i’m

trying to struggle with.

North Korea and China, a lot of
times they make statements and it doesn’t

have anything to do with the real world.

It seems to me like a very emotional
response. And I guess that’s what you

can get away with when you
have a basic dictatorship.

Last week I talked about wage increases.
Everything’s gone up 4% inflation

and it’s going to go up again a
little more or more products in the future.

So basically, everyone in Japan
has just lost 4% of their salary if their

salary does not increase.

So the government’s like, hey,
companies, please increase your salaries. A

bunch of big companies have said,
yep, we’ll do what the government says.

But then this week it came out 70% of
small to mid-sized firms have no plan

to raise wages.

And I would bet it’s not because
they’re malicious. I bet it’s because they

can’t. We’ve all
gone through this pandemic together.

Company profits are not going to be high.
Where is this money coming from to

pay these people if you don’t
pass on increased prices?

But if you do increase prices,
which most companies are, then that money

should go to the worker.

I guess this is again my very socialist
idea of an increase inflation should

not line the coffers of the rich leaders.

It should support the working class
so that they can compete with inflation.

Whereas companies don’t think that way.

Companies think in profits. I actually read
an article and it was an American thing.

And the guy said he’s been waiting for
a big jump in inflation so he can

raise prices and he’ll make tons of money.

Which
implies I have no intent to even

consider the idea of
paying my workers more.

So 70% of small to mid-sized
firms have no plan to raise wages.

Small to mid-sized firms make up 99%
of the companies in Japan.

So yes, these big companies like
Toyota, they will probably raise wages of

their main companies.

But a lot of the stuff they actually
do is working with Toyota subsidiaries.

They are going to be
small to mid-sized firms.

Those companies are not raising their
wages. And again, I think because they

can’t right now.

They might be able to maybe one sort
of the economy settles and they’ve got

this new price structure.

They could then, but the problem is by
that time they’re like, well, i’m

making more money.

Why would I raise the wages
of the worker and lose money in my pocket?

And this is kind of like a working class,
ruling class kind of problem.

But one of the, a couple of
things I’ve learned about economics is the

strongest countries economically.

All the money is in the middle class.
And it’s because if you have all the

money focused in a small group
of billionaires, which is sort of what’s

happening in america.

When the economy has a problem when
it changes, they actually, because it’s

a small group, cannot spend
enough to fix the economy.

Like if I’m a billionaire and I
buy stuff, I’m really buying like even if I

buy like a supercars and yachts,
that doesn’t impact the economy the way it

would be if millions
of people started spending more on food.

So like if I have enough money, I
might buy higher quality food, I might buy

more food, I sort of
buy a lot more chocolate.

So it’s the flexibility the economy
depends on the middle class being strong.

So you actually want to get your poverty
group up into the lower middle class.

So they have money to spend so that
they start spending money because a

small group at the top who has all the
money actually can’t spend fast enough.

That’s the problem. Like that’s the
issue with the economy and having like a

small group of billionaires have all the
money because it means when there’s

like a downturn, there is no middle
class to support the economy anymore.

And you rich can’t spend enough or enough
variation to actually fix it.

So really we shouldn’t have billionaires
because billionaires it’s not that

they don’t want to they can’t
fix the economy. They don’t see a problem

because they’re going to be fine.

But when the world
collapses around them, I guess they move.

Ah fuck, I just want to get my drink.
My shoulder is ridiculous.

It’s probably going to be fine by tomorrow.
I accept I’m old. It’s probably

never going to be fine again.

God, I’m a sold hot water. It tastes great.

Okay.

Anyways, that’s chocolate beef
tests, little Ted talk about the economy.

It’s very socialist sounding but
it’s actually because socialists, republics

and whatnot tend to
do better during economic downturns.

So the government is going to have a
debate going to they’ve actually been

talking about this for a long time.

They’re going to have a proper
debate about the low birth rate in Japan.

My guess is it’s
going to be a bunch of old

Japanese men in a
room talking about work.

And they have some good ideas but okay so
really they’re going to have a good time.

So you have to have
like koshita, the prime minister of Japan.

He has his son stand up and say, okay,
how do we get some d’s and some v’s?

You know what I’m saying?

Everyone else is like,
yeah, yeah, we know what you’re saying.

They start talking about economic support
for houses with children. Money is good.

But that’s after you have the kid.

So support is important because it helps
people with kids support their children.

It might make having children
more attractive to families and whatnot.

But that doesn’t get people
fucking, which is the core issue here.

How do we get more people to fuck
and have a baby and then like have that

baby come out and they take care of it?

And so that’s their issue is
always they actually tend to focus on the

economic aspects of it.

And I’m not saying that’s not important.
That’s actually incredibly important.

They should do as much as possible
to support women especially because it

has to be women who want
to work and have a family.

So like flexible work hours, work
times maybe like half shifts for jobs and

you have two higher two women to do it.

So one in the morning, one
in the afternoon so they can like swap off.

All that kind of thing flex
hours are really important.

But that doesn’t get a d in a v.

So where does the d come from?

And it’s the work, man.

Where do Japanese penises come
from is a phrase I didn’t think I was going

to be saying today.

The d is in the man. It’s not in the man.

If you don’t understand physiology,
you would know it’s not inside the man.

But well, if I had a touch pad
thing, I would draw a human male right now

and explain where the penis is but I don’t.

So you’re not going to get that.

The d is connected to the man and the
work culture in Japan has the man at

work 90% of the time.

And I’ve said fairly regularly
that this work life balance, this work

culture in Japan is the core
issue that they do not want to deal with

because that is what
sustaining the economy or so they think.

The economy in the world has changed.

And I know there’s a lot of
people who go to work, like I know a lot of

Japanese businessmen and they’re
like you can’t leave until the boss leaves.

But that means if you’re done
your work for the day, you just sit there

until the boss leaves.

You’re getting
paid, you’re probably salary.

You’re surfing the Internet,
you’re looking like you’re working.

And then the boss leaves you can leave.

That’s Japanese work culture. 408 00:22:28,000 –> 00:-22:-10,-280 and it’s very
problematic because it means my life is work, my life is not 409 00:-22:-10,-280

–> 00:-22:-4,-200 family and my life is not time with my partner, which is
how you end up with 410 00:-22:-4,-200 –> 00:22:42,000 some ds and some v’s.

So where does the d come from?

It actually comes from being available and energetic. 413 00:22:52,000 –> 00:-21:-46,-570 no time off
means you have no energy. A lot of Japanese businessmen you talk 414 00:-21:-46,-570 –> 00:22:58,000

to, let me go like what do you do on your day off? 415 00:22:58,000 –> 00:-21:-41,-950 basically I
sleep the whole day because I’m so tired from the entire work 416 00:-21:-41,-950 –> 00:23:03,000 week.

So you need energy and that requires sort of recharge time. 418 00:23:08,000 –> 00:-21:-31,-790 you need free time so you can spend time with a
partner and form an actual 419 00:-21:-31,-790 –> 00:23:14,000 connection with them. 420 00:23:14,000 –> 00:-21:-26,-290 so that the v wants

the d in it so that you want to put the d in the v 421 00:-21:-26,-290 –> 00:23:20,000 because you have an actual relationship. 422 00:23:20,000
–> 00:-21:-16,-970 so much so that you actually want to produce a new baby which may have a d 423 00:-21:-16,-970 –> 00:23:28,000 or a v.

I think maybe
I’ve stretched this premise to its limit.

So I believe that it should be wages and time off. 426 00:23:37,000 –> 00:-20:-59,-550 I think the best way to increase the birth rate would be to essentially go 427 00:-20:-59,-550 –> 00:23:46,000 to a four day work
week. 428 00:23:46,000 –> 00:-20:-55,-710 if you want to work these long hours during the day that’s fine but a four 429 00:-20:-55,-710 –> 00:-20:-51,-610 day work week with the same salary, no salary drop, which

means people would 430 00:-20:-51,-610 –> 00:23:57,000 be very happy to take that day off. 431 00:23:57,000 –> 00:-20:-42,-910 and then they’d actually spend some time with their family in a invigorated 432 00:-20:-42,-910
–> 00:24:04,000 state which is very important for the d. 433 00:24:04,000 –> 00:-20:-35,-710 now they might pay attention to their partner which is very important for 434 00:-20:-35,-710 –> 00:24:09,000 the v.

And then you might get more babies. 436 00:24:11,000
–> 00:-20:-27,-350 it’s a long term prospect

though. It’s not something that’s going to happen 437
00:-20:-27,-350 –> 00:24:17,000 quickly or over it.

But they’ve been struggling
with this for years.

The population decline in Japan has been constant.
440 00:24:22,000 –> 00:-20:-16,-790 and it’s in

the news constantly and they keep trying to figure
out what to 441 00:-20:-16,-790 –> 00:24:28,000 do.

And it’s basically they’re just like well give more money to families. 443 00:24:30,000 –> 00:-20:-11,-950 I’m
like but you’re not the problem is you’re not making the family in the 444 00:-20:-11,-950 –> 00:24:33,000 first

place. 445 00:24:33,000 –> 00:-20:-7,-600 if you’re not making the family in the first place giving those families
446 00:-20:-7,-600 –> 00:24:40,000 more money isn’t going to solve the problem of not enough d’s in not enough.

These in not enough v’s.

Last or we have no
creepy guy story this week.

I should maybe make a sad sound for that last one. It’s rare. 450 00:24:55,000 –> 00:-19:-45,-780 I think maybe the ones that happened this week I just did
not find 451 00:-19:-45,-780 –> 00:25:00,000 interesting enough. 452 00:25:00,000 –> 00:-19:-40,-330 but we are talking about covid last or they’re saying

in spring they’re 453 00:-19:-40,-330 –> 00:25:06,000 going to downgrade covid to flu status. 454 00:25:06,000 –> 00:-19:-34,-310 so right now it’s a class
two virus or sickness and it’s going to be brought 455 00:-19:-34,-310 –> 00:25:15,000 down to class five because the death rate has dropped significantly.

Which means you’re not going to have to wear masks indoors. 457 00:25:19,000 –> 00:-19:-22,-730 you already
don’t have to wear masks outdoors. So essentially you don’t have 458 00:-19:-22,-730 –> 00:25:22,000

to wear masks. 459 00:25:22,000 –> 00:-19:-18,-960 and I was talking to some of my coworkers and
stuff and I was like well are 460 00:-19:-18,-960 –> 00:25:27,000 you going to stop and I was like.

Personally I’m going to wear a mask on the train for sure. 462 00:25:30,000
–> 00:-19:-9,-470 just probably in perpetuity probably from most

of the time from now on all 463 00:-19:-9,-470 –> 00:25:40,000 wear
mask on the train unless covid just becomes a non entity after a while.

Because viruses do often tend to die out. They tend to just sort of stop. 465 00:25:47,000 –> 00:-18:-53,-170 probably if I was like downtown or something I might wear a mask when i’m 466 00:-18:-53,-170 –> 00:25:54,000 walking around in our office it’ll be on and off. 467 00:25:54,000 –> 00:-18:-46,-550 I’ll keep one with me. We do have a lot of coworkers who cough
a lot and i’m 468 00:-18:-46,-550 –> 00:26:00,000 not confident that they’re not sick. 469 00:26:00,000 –> 00:-18:-40,-780 so I would probably wear it then I’m going to wear a mask during allergy 470 00:-18:-40,-780 –> 00:26:05,000 season probably all day. 471 00:26:05,000 –> 00:-18:-36,-330 it’s just good. I’ve actually gotten to the point where now it’s good

that 472 00:-18:-36,-330 –> 00:-18:-33,-710 if we don’t have to wear a mask and I choose to wear a mask it’s not going 473 00:-18:-33,-710 –> 00:26:12,000 to like be a thing. 474 00:26:12,000 –> 00:-18:-27,-300 I think before if I wore a mask before the pandemic because it was common in 475 00:-18:-27,-300 –> 00:-18:-24,-800 Japan it’s common in Asia to wear a
mask during allergy season or when you 476 00:-18:-24,-800 –> 00:26:20,000 have a cold. 477 00:26:20,000 –> 00:-18:-21,-560 but it would have been like what’s wrong with you what’s going on to just 478 00:-18:-21,-560 –> 00:-18:-17,-300 now it’s just going to be like he’s got allergies or someone around him 479 00:-18:-17,-300 –> 00:26:28,000 maybe coughed once.

So he’s wearing a mask to be safe. 481 00:26:30,000 –> 00:-18:-9,-970 so I actually like that because it’s become now more of a choice without any 482 00:-18:-9,-970 –> 00:-18:-6,-810 stigma attached to it at all and I don’t have to explain it because I hate 483 00:-18:-6,-810 –> 00:26:40,000 explaining why I’m wearing
stuff. 484 00:26:40,000 –> 00:-17:-59,-350 I hate explaining my choices because they’re my choices just leave me alone. 485 00:-17:-59,-350 –> 00:26:47,000 that’s actually my feeling about a lot of stuff. 486 00:26:47,000 –> 00:-17:-53,-750 the problem is when you actually look at the facts we’re sort of in our 487

00:-17:-53,-750 –> 00:-17:-49,-330 eighth wave in Japan it’s it’s really up and down the numbers are really 488 00:-17:-49,-330 –> 00:26:56,000 really up and down every day. 489 00:26:56,000 –> 00:-17:-43,-450 but we are having a record number of daily deaths and that’s maybe from 490 00:-17:-43,-450 –> 00:27:03,000
actually the last wave seven. 491 00:27:03,000 –> 00:-17:-38,-620 it’s people have had covid for a long time and their bodies just giving out 492 00:-17:-38,-620 –> 00:27:07,000 might be a lot of older people. 493 00:27:07,000 –> 00:-17:-33,000 they didn’t get into the demographics or statistics but technically speaking

we are now in a record
number of deaths for covid.

What a horrible way to end a podcast.

Optimistically so I want to end on a positive note if I can. 497
00:27:24,000 –> 00:-17:-15,-440 if we don’t have to wear a mask I

plan to grow a beard again which some 498 00:-17:-15,-440 –>
00:27:33,000 members of the community have said my beard is amazing.

Some don’t like it. 500 00:27:34,000 –> 00:-17:-6,-350 the people I what I found is it’s
very divisive. People who like the beard 501 00:-17:-6,-350 –> 00:27:40,000 absolutely

adore the beard. 502 00:27:40,000 –> 00:-16:-59,-590 the thing is the best thing ever. People
who don’t like the beard absolutely 503 00:-16:-59,-590 –> 00:27:45,000 hate the beard.

But that strong positive reaction is enough for me to want to grow. 505 00:27:50,000 –> 00:-16:-50,-920 I usually before I would grow a beard every winter
and then shave it off and 506 00:-16:-50,-920 –> 00:27:55,000 then growing you another beard. 507 00:27:55,000 –> 00:-16:-45,-600 it’s been a couple of

years because the mask when I found I was wearing the 508 00:-16:-45,-600 –> 00:28:01,000 mask the beard didn’t work out so well. 509 00:28:01,000 –>
00:-16:-33,-160 so yeah the positive aspect of covid being downgraded is that your friend, 510 00:-16:-33,-160 –> 00:28:15,000 Chuck mcviv-test, may grow a beard.

[Music].