Awwest Wawwent

(upbeat music)

  • So do you remember Sugar Baby, Lili Chan?

She was almost in obsession
with this podcast for quite a

while because she had one
of the more interesting stories.

Not only was she
scamming men out of tons of

money, she was also
actually proactive enough.

She wrote a book on how to scam
men and sold that on the internet.

That actually ended up being
her downfall because the people

she sold the book to didn’t
really follow the steps of the way

they were supposed to and
they ended up saying like,

“Oh, well, I shouldn’t take responsibility
for the fact that I scam this guy.

I got this book from this other chick.

You should blame her.

” And that was her downfall.

She made a million bucks
easy off these three guys

that she scammed,
the three sort of big fish

that she caught the whales as
the mobile industry would call them.

She had a million bucks
and she spent most of that

on hosts, so she would go to
host clubs and spend all her money.

She was arrested and
has just been prosecuted.

So her sentences come down.

Prosecutors wanted 13 years
in prison and a 12 million yen fine.

No, she had 155 million yen from her scam.

So I was actually thinking like proactively

if she had kept the money,
saved the money, put the

money away, hid the
money or something like that.

When she gets out of prison,
if she paid the 12 million

yen fine, she’d still
actually have 100 million yen,

pretty good nest egg
to set yourself up with.

I’m not saying again, crime pays,

but it certainly doesn’t pay if
you don’t save any of the money.

I guess I get a sort of
sensible fiscal responsibility

for criminals is not really
what I should be talking about.

The judge said this was
an especially heinous crime

because she encouraged other
people to commit the same crime.

So she’s like, I’m scamming people,

I’ll teach you how to scam people, we’ll
scam more people, everyone will get scammed.

It’s great.

And he’s like, well,
that’s actually pretty evil.

If you think about it,
what you’re doing is

trying to teach people
how to break the law.

The final sentence was
an eight million yen fine

and nine years in prison.

So she’s 25, she’s gonna get
out of prison when she’s 34.

I don’t know what kind of job
prospects she’ll have at that time

because she certainly won’t
have a hundred million yen

sitting waiting for her because
she spent it all on hosts.

And I’m sure those hosts in nine years

are not gonna put a
great deal of effort into

supporting her back the
way she supported them.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Dita,

but it is sort of an
interesting case of

watching someone really
reap what they’ve sewn.

Their own inability to think forward has
really come to roost for her in this case.

So I’ll set a calendar date and
see if I can follow up in nine years

when she gets out of prison, we can
see how sugar baby Dita is actually doing.

Today’s stories are all
about crimes and courts

and crimes and courts
and crimes and courts.

I’m trying to, if you listen to last week
episodes, you know I have family in town.

So I am carving out this time to make sure
that I don’t lose any sort of momentum.

I missed a couple of weeks.

I don’t wanna lose a month.

I’m just forcing myself to do it.

So I just want you to know that
I’m here dedicating myself to you.

I’m actually neglecting my
family that’s in town right now

just so I can record
this episode super quick.

So the courts are coming correct in Japan.

Nine years in prison for scamming dudes,

that’s pretty solid sentence
and the 12 million yen fine.

I mean, yeah, that’s a lot of money.

The operator of a pirate
mango website has been fined 1.

7 billion yen that he has to
pay to three separate publishers.

So he had this website, it was the biggest
manga pirating website in the world.

It was accessed 500 and some
million times or something like that.

And so they had calculated how much money

the publishers would
have lost by not selling

books to the people
who were on that website.

Now we know that’s
not actually how it works,

but I guess if you’re going to
create a punishment for pirating,

this is a fairly sensible,
logistic to base it on.

This is the largest fine of its kind.

So this is a first in history,
which is why it became interesting.

The actual story
itself, guy sets up pirate

website, guy gets arrested,
guy has to pay big fine.

That kind of writes itself.

You don’t really need to say much about it.

The morality of pirating,
it’s here or there.

It’s up to you.

I mean, I’m not going
to judge people for it.

I live in Japan, so I can’t
get a lot of the Western media.

I want streaming services
are super expensive.

I understand why people pirate.

I really do.

Also, I understand paying for stuff.

Because if I had the money, I
would pay for everything generously.

But that’s not always the case.

The defendant told reporters that
he was unconvinced to buy the ruling.

So the judge is like you owe 1.

7 billion yen to these three
publishers because of ABC.

And he’s like, no, I don’t
know if that’s correct.

I don’t think you get to be
unconvinced by the ruling.

This was a more interesting aspect of this.

We had the mayor of Guinan,
who got booted out and had to quit.

And his apology was like, I
don’t– I did sexually harass a

whole bunch of ladies, but I
don’t really know what I’m being.

What I’m in trouble for.

I don’t really know
what I’m apologizing for.

Like, did I do anything wrong?

And I was like, yes, you
sexually harassed people.

He’s like, yeah, but did I?

And they’re like, yes, you did.

This guy’s like, yeah,
pirate, it’s some mange.

Has that hurt anybody?

And they’re like, yes, the
companies that make the mange.

And he’s like, yeah,
but should I pay a fine?

They’re like, yes, 1.7 billion yen.

He’s like, really is that how much?

It’s an interesting set
of mental gymnastics.

Because at this point,
he’s still basically saying

he’s not responsible
for the actions he took.

But he also said he has no
regrets setting up the website.

But I think after you pay the 1.7 billion
yen, you might have a regret or two.

75-year-old man is taking a walk in a park.

Very nice thing for a
75-year-old man to do.

There’s some kids
playing soccer in the park.

Very nice thing for the kids to do.

Park is a shared space.

Everyone should have a good time there.

I think old people should enjoy the park.

I think young people should enjoy the park.

I walk Dave in the park.

I enjoy my park near my house.

So parks are a great place.

The old man, the 75-year-old man, walks up
to the kids, he goes, is this your trash?

See, see some trash on the ground.

Is this your trash?

Because it’s going to say no.

Now, you know this is not
the end of the conversation.

And it’s because you know
old people, you know kids.

And you know how this interaction goes.

But at the same time, it’s
a surprise how far it goes.

There’s the logic that kids employ, which
I enjoy very much in this conversation.

So is this your trash?

No.

And then the 75-year-old
man says, even if it isn’t,

if you see trash on the ground, you should
pick it up and then throw it in the bin.

Now, I knew, without
even reading the next part,

what the kid said in response,
I knew because I bet it

was the thing I would have
said as a child to an old person

giving me instructions who
has no real authority of over me.

This is one of the interesting
aspects of authority.

People’s authority over you,
often is perceived, not real.

And when you realize that, you can
decide if you give the authority or not.

So these kids are saying the
75-year-old man’s telling them what to do.

And they’re like, well, I
don’t know who you are.

I have no respect for you.

You have an earned my respect.

So I’m going to respond in the
most reasonable way possible.

He says, you see trash on the ground.

You should pick it up and throw it away.

And they say it to him, why don’t
you just pick it up and throw it away?

Now, the reason this story is maybe it’s

an industry panel is because of the
next set of actions that has occurred.

And the gentleman
who’s 75 years old thinks,

well, what’s the most
reasonable response?

They’ve actually presented
me with a logic problem.

I have said, if people,
in this case specifically,

you children, see trash
on the ground, your moral

responsibilities to pick it
up and throw it in the trash.

You should throw it away.

I’ve told them to do that.

And they’ve said, why
don’t you lead by example?

Why don’t you yourself,
instead of bothering us,

pick up the trash and
throw it in the garbage?

And he’s now got a moral conundrum.

Does he bend to the will of the children
and demonstrate that he’s telling the truth,

that pick up the trash and throwing
it in the garbage and showing them?

That is not what he chose to do.

Does he berate them?

He does he tell them
like, respect your elders

and this kind of stuff,
that is all, again, conceptual.

It’s not real.

Like, the respect your elders thing,
I don’t give a lot of credence to that,

because for all I know, my
elders are all like evil people.

So you don’t want to respect them.

You’ve got to know who
they are, but you’ve got to

know who someone is
before you show them respect.

I think that’s fair.

So he does the only final thing when he’s
been caught in a logic trap by a child.

He hauls off and punches an
elementary school girl in the face.

And I’m laughing
because the girl’s not hurt.

I mean, I’m sure it hurt, but 75 year
old dude, he’s not swinging hard anymore.

One of the girl’s friends has a smartphone
because these are modern children.

Calls the police and says, this is dude,
just like cranked my friend in the face.

Please come arrest him.

He gets arrested and he says, well,
I didn’t punch any one of the face.

I did warn them.

Did you warn them though?

Because the sort of transcript of this
conversation has no warning involved in it.

It’s just, here is a moral
quandary I present you with.

And the children were
like, well, the moral

quandary is just as
much yours as it is ours.

Why don’t you demonstrate
how to alleviate the

moral issue through an
example of your own behavior?

And then it’s when he decided to just
punch a girl on the face, a little girl.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that.

It actually reminds me
of a bunch of stories

when I was like a teenager and
adults were really rude to me.

And I kept thinking like, I
actually now feel like I shouldn’t

respect adults, which is an
interesting place to live in.

And it’s probably the
basis for my disregard

of any authority whatsoever
from now until I die.

OK, there was a new scam out in Japan.

So the metropolitan Tokyo police are–

that’s the metropolitan
police department anyways,

the MPD, the metropolitan
police department.

This is the cops in Tokyo.

They’re actually trying to
warn people of this new scam

that is emerged in itself,
again, quite interesting.

You get a phone call.

And the phone call is
like, hey, I’m a police man.

And I’m telling you that
there’s a warrant for your arrest.

And you go, oh no, there’s
a warrant for my arrest.

I don’t want to be arrested.

Certainly not.

I don’t think I’ve done anything that
would justify a warrant for my arrest.

And so what they do is say,
well, let’s confirm that this is you.

And there is a warrant for your arrest.

A West.

There is a warrant for your arrest.

Go to this website.

Now, here’s the trick.

It’s not a real website.

And the person you’re
noting to, the person

you’re talking to, not
a real police officer.

So they sent you to this fake website.

And you have to put in a certain amount
of information to get into the website.

Because it’s going to
search for your details.

You have to give a certain
amount of details so it can search.

From those details, it
builds a fake arrest warrant.

Just like it generates one on the fly.

And then presents it to
you as a real arrest warrant.

Now, you can get rid
of this arrest warrant.

You can pay just a fine.

So you can just pay the fine.

And then the arrest warrant will go away.

That seems like a
pretty good deal if you

don’t want to have an
arrest on your record.

Then you will get a second
phone call, a phone call,

from a four mentioned,
not real police officer.

And he’ll say like, do
you want to pay the fine?

Or do you want to come in and get arrested?

But they do tell you that you can pay
money and you can have the warrant removed.

The most suspicious part, this
actually kind of makes sense.

Our cop calls you and says
there’s a warrant for your arrest.

And then you go to a website.

And then you go to that website.

And then you see an arrest warrant.

It pretty much confirms
a lot of the suspicions

that you have that this might
be actual factual information.

The interesting part to me
and the most suspicious part,

the part where it would fall apart, is
they send you the website via social media.

They don’t send it to
your like an email account.

And I’m guessing because
maybe that could be backtraced.

So they’d be like on Twitter or
Instagram or some other social

media website, they
will send you the link on

that so that then you
can access the website.

So there’s something suspicious there.

The cops using social
media to contact you and talk

to you on official business
seem suspect in itself.

So that to me would be the big red flag.

But it’s actually pretty small, if you
think the overall of what’s happened.

You’ve gotten a phone call.

You’re being sent to a website.

You put in your information.

That information confirms that
what the phone call said is true.

It all looks very official.

And then you get a follow up phone call

just saying you can pay certain
amount of money and this will go away.

I think it’d be pretty
easy to fall for that scam.

So that’s actually pretty
well put together scam.

They’re trying to warn people
which I think is pretty good.

Sometimes they ask for your bank details.

So if they get your bank details,

they’re actually going to try to
drain your bank account as well.

So if you live in Japan,
you get a phone call.

The best part about
being a foreign Japan is I

think I’ve actually
received scam phone calls.

And they try to talk to you,
but then I just keep talking

to them in English because
usually they’re speaking in Japanese.

It’s honestly just too hard for me.

So I’m like, I’m sorry.

I don’t understand.

I don’t say that in Japanese anymore.

I only speak in English on the phone.

And that really puts them off
because it’s like they can’t scam me.

If I can’t understand what they’re saying,

they can’t scam me if they
can’t convince me of anything.

And they can’t convince me of
anything because they cannot talk to me.

So this actually is
really a big advertisement

for English education in Japan because
you really want to scam more people.

You’ve got to learn multiple languages.

27 year old man was arrested
on suspicion of assault.

Now I do love in every article.

They never say he was arrested for assault.

They always say suspicion
because he hasn’t been convicted yet.

So the details of this were what makes
the suspicion of assault quite funny.

So that’s 7 p.m. a delivery company guy.

He just goes into the police station.

He walks around for a bit and he walks
up to a sergeant and the guy’s 41 year old

sergeant and the sergeant
looks quite pleasantly.

I’m going to pretend to
assume I have no idea.

Maybe he was very brusque.

When I went to the DMV in Japan,
they were very rude to me at first.

And then I was not a
problem and they actually

turned around and
were very nice to me.

So they needed that
like initial, they had an

initial bruscaness that I
managed to wear down,

which was quite good.

He said, “What can I do for you?

” So I see that phrase and I’m like,
“Oh, you know, do you need help?

Can I help you?

” The man, the delivery driver, he comes
in and goes, “I don’t know, I don’t know.

” And then he punches
the policeman in the face.

He was arrested on the
spot and then questioned.

The interesting aspect
of this, as I said, is

he’s been arrested
for suspicion of assault.

Despite the fact
he assaulted a police

officer and a police station,
it’s going to be on video.

Like, I’m sure it’s on video.

There is no suspicion there.

Unless of course the
police officer is like,

“This is a misunderstanding
and then the

person decides not to
prosecute or let him go,”

because then he’s not
being arrested for assault.

So I guess suspicion does make sense.

I’m now going full circle
and convince myself

that we should say suspicion until it’s
concluded, which is actually the case.

That’s what they’re doing in Japan.

But the news article is
I would say, like, here’s

a mountain of evidence
we suspect he did the thing.

While being questioned, he
said, “I’m sorry for doing that.”

And that in itself is not a big surprise
because I bet he is sorry for punching the

policeman in the face and
getting arrested right away.

Next week is Golden Week.

It’s going to be like 50/50
getting episode out, but I’m again.

I’m going to make
notes and then if I can

sit down and just carve
out half an hour, I’m

going to record at least one
or two podcasts next week.

So I will be trying.

I just want you to know again that I’m,
I don’t know, I’m trying to not give up.

Is that it?

I know if I took a month off of
you really hard to get started again.

So even this short episode is worth doing.

I think all this is just going to
get cut and I’ll just do the ends all.

Yeah, I’m just trying to get
my fucking life back together.

I realized what I do
is I feel like I have, we

had this super busy time at work
and I couldn’t do the things I wanted.

And then as soon as
that ended, my family

came and that takes
up all your personal time.

And I realized what I’m feeling
is I’ve lost control of my life.

I don’t get to do the
things I want to do because

I have to sacrifice
that for other things.

And it leaves you
in this weird position

where it’s like, I just want to
have control over my own life.

And I think this is what,
you know, why people

want to be rich is because it’s not
because like they’re greedy or anything.

It’s just they want to have
control over their time and their life.

And that is certainly where I am right now.

We’re all Sato

(upbeat music)

  • What was a one week break
    ended up being a two week break.

The first week was just work.

And then I had no days off,
but then I actually got sick.

So I took a day off.

Then, second week I
come back, I got my day

off, but then we’re
having hosting issues.

I’ve dealt with hosting issues before.

So if you’re listening to this on
the podcast, capture of your choice,

well then my preparations
have all been successful.

If not, then you’re not hearing
what I’m saying right now.

It’s just a void that I exist in, and
the noise I make signifies nothing.

But the noise I make signifies
nothing on a normal day.

So I guess everything
just worked out anyways.

But we’re back now.

A forewarning, my
mother is coming to Japan.

So I don’t know how much free time I’m
gonna have ’cause I might be doing that.

So I might actually, like this month,
looks like it might just be a bust.

I’m gonna try my best.

I’ve actually had these breaks and stuff.

The problem with taking a break

is actually very hard to
come back and get back into it.

And that’s what I’m trying to do.

So I wanna make sure I don’t
lose the momentum that I have

created by starting this and
we’re at 300 episodes and whatnot.

And it would be a shame to
lose momentum at that point.

So let’s get into the Japanese
news about two weeks.

I’ve chosen just a crème de la crème,
the Japanese news for you to deliver today.

Yugiko, it’s a card game.

I’ve never been into it.

I’ve never been into the card games.

There’s a lot of things I don’t, yeah.

I’m even, like I play video games.

I’m even actually quite picky about them
as a whole bunch of games I will not play.

I essentially don’t play side-scrollers.

I don’t know why.

I think I’m just missed too many
generations of consoles and stuff.

This is about stuff I’m like,
well, that’s not what I want.

So I only wanna, ooh.

Yugiko is not my thing.

I’m not saying I’m against it.

You like Yugiko?

You go, gi.

The Yugiko Championships in Japan,
though, doesn’t allow foreign residents,

which is a very interesting little note
because the championships for their country,

you’re trying to find the
best player in the country.

And of course, you do kind of
want them to be from that country.

You have to have a Japanese address.

Why?

I have a Japanese address.

But entry is restricted
to Japanese nationality.

Now I have permanent residents
in Japan, which means I can

live in Japan from now until
I unfortunately pass away.

Any day now.

I shouldn’t bring up my own mortality.

Not at the start.

I should bring up my own mortality.

More towards the end of the episode.

But by this rule, I could not enter.

So despite the fact I’ve lived
in Japan for 20 years now,

and I may live in Japan for 20, 30
years more before my untimely death.

Untimely, I guess if I get
20, 30 more years, I’m flying.

70s, 80s, that’s about right.

I couldn’t enter this.

I’ve lived more of my life in Japan
than I have in any other country,

which is an interesting
thing to think about.

‘Cause I’m still not considered Japanese.

I’m never going to be considered Japanese.

I didn’t want to give up my passport
because I didn’t want to lose the value

of the Canadian passport
and the same for my children.

I didn’t want my children
to not have access

to Canada as a country where they could
maybe work or move to her in the future.

So I wanted them to
have Canadian citizenship.

Just trying to keep the options open.

So this rule seems particularly strict.

So someone who’s lived in
Japan for a very, very long time,

so decades, they cannot enter
the Hugo Championships in Japan.

There’s a lot of
speculation as to the reason,

but like I can
understand you don’t want

someone who comes here
short term on a holiday,

wins the Japanese championship
and then just moves on.

‘Cause they’re not really
at the Japanese champion,

they’re not representing
Japan as a country.

But taking it to a point
where you are restricting it

to like again, someone like myself,
who is in the Hugo has lived in Japan,

is dedicated to living
Japan for X money years.

It would make sense if
they were allowed to enter.

I think the reason this became an issue

is just clearly someone had to
think about it to make the rule.

So if you haven’t thought about it,

you just be like, oh, you
know, you have to live in Japan.

You have to have a Japanese address.

And that would just be it.

So they actually want no, but you
actually have to be a Japanese citizen.

You have to have like residency
beyond just permanent residence.

You have to be a Japanese citizen to enter.

So someone actually had that thought.

And that’s right.

It kind of became like,
is this racist or not?

I don’t think it’s racist.

I don’t like to jump to racism right away,

even though it’s just a lot
of racist stuff in the world.

I’m not just talking about Japan.

It’s just like everywhere in
the world has its own issue.

So I’m a little torn as
to how I feel about this.

Because it’s something
you don’t care about.

That doesn’t mean other
people don’t care about it.

So it’s still just a viable
thing to care about.

I wish you care about others.

There you go.

That’s my message for
the you, you go community.

I don’t care about you,
you go, but I care about you.

Aha.

It’s nice.

This is a new, a new chunkly beef chest.

The new, more positive, loving, kind.

I’m running out of words because
I’ve never used them before.

Anyways, you go players.

I’m sorry if you are
not a Japanese citizen.

You want to enter the championship.

You can’t, I’m sure there’s
other things you can do.

I think just enjoy you, you go for what it
is, which is a game I do not understand.

A man, so since we’re on like, so
that’s actually like super nerd news.

Okay, since we’re on super nerd news.

A man was caught modifying
switch cartridges memory.

He was basically hacking
the switch to create

custom Pokemon characters
that he then sold online.

So I’m assuming he put in like
the cartridge, hacked the system.

He was creating rare characters
and then selling them online.

Between 2022 and 2023, he was
selling them for up to 13,000 yen each.

But the police believe that he probably
made millions and millions of yen off this.

So this is one of those things
where it’s a rare character.

You’re playing your Pokemon,
you want the rare character.

You can’t find it, it’s rare.

So suddenly you feel like, oh, you know,

maybe I just pay for it, get it
into my game and off we go.

This breaks the unfair
competition prevention act

in Japan, which is related
to corporate espionage.

So basically because this
guy’s hacking a system,

he’s creating, he is
conducting a form of corporate

espionage where he’s
going into the system,

learning about the system,
creating things based off an IT,

IP, based off a series of, I lost
that sentence at the end there.

Based off an IP, learning the
inner workings of the system,

and then manipulating them
to create his own product,

which he’s then selling
illegally without licensing.

That’s probably better.

So he was arrested.

I do want the final tally, the
number of how much this guy made.

I’m always shocked at how
much money these guys make,

because it is always
way more than I expect.

But these communities are
strong and they have money.

The you could go community,
the Pokemon community.

These are communities that spend an
inordinate amount of cash on their hobbies.

I spend a lot of money in my hobbies.

But once I’ve bought everything,
so let’s say Judo’s my hobby.

I buy the Judo soon.

I bought a super expensive one.

I don’t buy them again and again and again.

And I certainly I can buy
modified ones and stuff.

Podcasting, is it this
point in my life a hobby?

I paid way too much money for a microphone,
but it is a really good microphone.

I mean, the voice you’re hearing
right now isn’t my real voice.

My voice is incredibly high pitched.

Dogs just react negatively
to move everywhere I go.

My laugh is atrocious.

That’s actually true.

I don’t like my laugh.

It’s, I kind of get this like high pitched
sonic boom of a laugh sometimes.

It’s almost like a hiccup.

Luckily, very few people make me laugh.

That’s so sad.

Ah, I’ve gone from positive chunk of
beef test to sad chunk of beef test.

This was, I don’t know how I am.

Brain power, people got it and then
sometimes they seem to abuse it.

So, by 2531, so this is now the year 2024.

So, in basically 500 years, if the Japanese
marriage surname convention isn’t changed.

Everyone in Japan will
have the last name Sato.

So, Sato, it would be like
the Japanese version of Smith.

Sato is the most common last name in Japan.

In 2023, Sato was 1.5%
of all the people in Japan.

So it is a name you’re
going to run up against.

And then books and stuff when they use
one to use like a, like a Smith character.

They’ll call them Mr. Sato.

So it’s just like, let’s just
call them Sato and then

everyone will be like, it’s
an every man kind of name.

Between 2022 and 2023, there
was a 1.0083% increase in Sato’s.

So the number of Sato’s
in Japan is increasing.

That’s incrementally,
but over the course

of time, that of course,
it’s extrapolation.

I’m using the wrong word.

See, this is the problem
we’re taking to work two

week break is like some
of my big words are gone.

My $5 words are all gone now.

It’s not extrapolation.

It’s an X. God damn it.

Cumulative, it’s cumulative.

Oh, this is going to bug me.

I’m not going to be able
to move on from the story.

Goddammit.

Anyways, we’re just going to move on.

I know I’m going to, this
word’s going to pop into my

head during the last story,
the dirty story of the day.

It’s a rough episode already.

And I apologize, but it’s because
again, two weeks off, very busy weeks.

Life gets in the way.

I’m dealing with back end issues.

I’m trying to deal with work.

I got stress.

If you listen to see me be the last one,
you get to hear the horror story of my eye.

That’s not getting better.

So there’s a lot going on.

I’m trying to just get
my life back in order.

And you know what?

I got some messages.

I got some messages from people and
they were asking where the podcasts went.

And I was really happy
to get the message

because they’re just
like, hey, what’s going on?

Appreciate the podcast.

Appreciate you.

And I appreciate those messages.

Let’s be clear about that right now.

I fucking tangents.

Okay, no, we’re going.

We’re going with the
tangent famous people die.

I’m not a famous person.

We’re not talking about me,
but the famous people die.

And then when they die,
there’s this outpouring of like

thoughts and art and other
things to commemorate their life.

And that’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not saying that shouldn’t happen.

But often my first thought is, I bet
that person would have appreciated

that while they were alive, that
outpouring of love and support.

So if you have a favorite artist
right now, this is, I’m serious.

If you have a favorite artist, someone
who’s made a song that you really love,

someone who’s created something that you
really like, an author has written a book,

you got some artwork
about it, put it out there

and dedicated to them,
send them a message.

Just do all the things you would do after
they died and it had an impact on you.

So let’s just sit down
and go, like, who’s

someone who died that
would have an impact on me?

I’d like that.

I’d want to show the world
that they meant a lot to me.

Do it right now.

Don’t wait until they die.

That’s all I’m saying because
I like realized I should do that.

And it was too late.

So like my favorite author was already
dead by the time I had this realization.

I was like, man, I really
wish I could have just like,

even if it doesn’t see it,
put it out there on the world.

And I don’t think I have
a favorite artist as such.

Man, yeah.

Because even the little messages I get,
like, hey, hope the podcast comes back soon.

Hope you’re okay, that kind of stuff.

I meant a lot.

Like that is incredibly motivating.

It makes you feel like people
appreciate what you do.

Anyways, satos, too many satos by 2446,
half the population will be named sato.

No, this whole, this stats
thing, I enjoyed the stats.

I was just like, this seems to
be like a massive waste of time.

If the population decline
in Japan continues.

So the last 13 years has been
a population decline in Japan.

If it continues at the same rate by 3,310,
there will only be 22 people left in Japan.

Ignax has put in the chat
that the beard is gorgeous.

The oil that I have got
right now is very good.

It’s the most cliche manly,
it’s, I think it’s actually

called mountaineer and it
has like a lumberjack on it.

I’ve started sculpting.

So I got the sideburns
are down and I’m trying to

keep this even because
this is where it goes out.

And then it’s a little
thicker here and a little

thicker here and I got
the stuff down to the bone.

I’m trying to decide.

So I’ve realized my mustache naturally
does that old British racist curly thing.

So let me close to the camera.

So if I do this, my
beard does that, like my

mustache literally goes
down and then we’ll go up.

So I could either sculpt
that or I’ve been pushing it

down because I actually
think that looks pretentious.

There’s like hipsters and stuff.

They do that on purpose.

I always thought that was like something.

Yes, like Captain Hook, I
always thought that was

something that people
did, like a style thing.

I didn’t realize that it happened
naturally to some people.

So I have, I think the hairs under here are
thick enough that they push these ones up.

So they start to go like that.

And I realized if I just twirled
it, it would stay that way.

So I’m trying to decide if I want to just
gently shave this down to keep it down.

But I don’t want to have
like thin thick, thin thick.

It has to be sort of even. So
like the sides there, the short

side burn and then get down
under there was pretty good.

I’ve been sculpted.

I put more work into
my beard than any other

aspect of my appearance
because it’s easy and fun.

And then I realized that’s the bit.

Like I can, I can comb it and
stuff for that what I was saying now.

All right.

I don’t know how far
I’m going to go this time.

I usually go pretty
far and then just shave

the whole thing because
people like freak out.

I do find beards, there’s a whole community that
considers beards important and they consider beards to be

like essentially the primary aspect of their personality
and like your man, not a man if you have a beard.

I don’t get that because it’s hair.

It’s just hair on your face, man.

You’re not doing anything.

Some people are genetically
blessed with lots of hair.

Some people are not.

What the fuck?

Like what the fuck is going
on there where you think

like a beard is an
important aspect of a person.

When my plan, we recently at work had an all staff meeting and
my plan, I wasn’t able to execute it was to start the meeting

with a beard and then while the other manager’s speeches
was happening, go to the bathroom and just shave completely.

So get a razor and then just
like a quick shave with a razor

blade and then come back and
pretend nothing had happened.

I just timing wise it didn’t work out but
I think I might do that maybe next year.

If I have to do that,
if I have to do that like

presentation again, I
think that would be funny.

If we do it on zoom, it’s possible
because I can disappear and come back.

If we just had a big
electric just, I could get

all the big stuff off and
shave in five minutes.

No, I could do that.

Anyways, that’s all going
to get cut so there’s the

cut point and we’re going
to go back to the Sato story.

It’s a population declined to continue
as it is right now at the same rate.

In 3,310, the year, 3,310, there
will be only 22 people left in Japan.

These stats are
interesting because they’re

extrapolations of numbers
that are currently happening.

They don’t take into
account any other options.

So Japan is a closed system
and if that closed system

remains the same, it
basically succumbs to entropy.

So everyone will be named
Sato and everyone dies off.

Applying this much effort to
these statistics seemed kind of

pointless to me because if everyone’s
named Sato in 500 years, do we care?

The population of the decline
in Japan, yes, it’s significant.

It could be fixed by a multitude of things.

Now, Ninja Ninja Japan
has prophesies, proselytized

many times that the
problem is the work-life

balance in Japan, Japan
companies and people aren’t.

They spend too much time at work.

Work has become too important and
family has lost sort of the primary place.

I don’t think that’s just Japan.

That’s lots of countries.

Population decline in a lot
of countries is going down.

Population decline in
many countries is happening.

I have the simplest
solution to both problems.

Everyone being named Sato
and the population decline.

That is introduced
more foreigners to Japan.

More foreigners to Japan would
mean more variations in names.

Introducing more foreigners to Japan would
be more relationships and more babies.

And that’s it.

That actually solves the problem.

I can tell you the person
conducting this set

of statistical analyses
did not even come close

to considering the
idea that we would dilute

the population of
Japan with foreign blood.

But that actually, at this moment, if this
is your real concern, like you’re not going

to fix the culture, you’re not going to fix
the work-life balance that I would complain

about, the introduction of more foreigners
to Japan would solve this problem.

And they would not accept it.

There is the governor of Shizuoka.

And he’s out.

He’s giving a speech.

He got some new incumbents and some new
people who are joining the civil service.

And he decided to make
a speech to welcome

them, which is a very
nice thing for him to do.

He said, “Civil servants,
being an inducted

into their pre-factual government are
smart, unlike those who sell vegetables.

” Now, the speech
actually had more.

He’s like, unlike people
who do like manual

labor, take care of
animals or sell vegetables.

But the vegetable ones was the first one
he said, and I think that’s why it stopped.

My first thought was, I bet this guy could
not grow a vegetable to save his life.

I bet if you gave him
all the equipment and all

the stuff to do, he could
not grow a vegetable.

I don’t like the insulting of other
jobs because they seem beneath you.

I do, of course, do it.

I have my biases, but I
look at mechanics and

I think there is someone
with a set of skills

that I have never and
probably will never have.

I have my set of skills.

They have their set of skills.

I think there is a
certain amount of respect

I have for people having skills,
even if it is like a manual labor job.

I couldn’t build a house.

I couldn’t wire a building for electricity
and not set the whole thing on fire.

So I personally appreciate they
have a set of abilities that I don’t have.

I think tradesmen generally
actually are very smart.

I do subscribe to the idea that
there are different kinds of intelligence.

There’s like the book smart.

There’s sort of social intelligence.

There’s a natural intelligence.

There’s like the con man intelligence,
the ability to like to lie and manipulate.

So there is going to be
like essentially a labor

intelligence, like working
with your hands, making things.

You’re just naturally good at that.

There’s athletic intelligence.

People are just naturally understand
athletics, be it physical or mental game.

And there are people who are not book smart,
who are way smarter than other things.

There’s people who
are just naturally logical

and they should not
be disrespected because

they have a different education
from other people and stuff.

But that’s what this guy’s doing.

So yeah, when I read
that sentence, my first

thought was this guy
couldn’t grow vegetables

or raise a cow or do
manual labor to save his life.

So when the zombie
apocalypse comes, the

governor of Shizwoka
is useless and would die.

The interesting thing to me
was later on, in the same speech,

he said, you know, it’s
important to watch your language.

So this is more of a
do as I say, not as I do.

I’m going to make statements,
just whatever I think in the moment.

This is again my problem
with like the old man, Japanese.

I can say whatever I want and it should
be fine, but you have to be careful idea.

So he’s telling these
people who are joining

the civil service, you have
to be careful what you say.

You have to be honest.

You have to be truthful.

You have to be careful
and care about other people,

except for, you know, those fucking vegetable
sellers who are just dumb as bricks.

This is not his first time
letting the bad thoughts out or

the, the immediate thoughts
without censorship or anything.

He made a couple of gaps in the past.

And so because of this, he’s now had
to step down his governor of Shizwoka.

And again, as a politician, the vegetable
grower vote, I bet that’s actually a pretty

big vote because farmers in
Japan are a pretty, pretty big thing.

The cow vote, I know cows don’t vote, but
the cow grower vote, the ranchers vote, the

laborers vote, those
are all valuable votes.

So as a politician, you might
actually want to pander a little bit.

I don’t know.

This is it.

These guys get to this
level of disassociation

where they think
people are going to vote

for me, even if I don’t or even if I make
it very clear, I disdain their existence.

I know he didn’t go
that far, but he was like

one step away from you guys are
smart because you’re doing the thing I did.

People who didn’t
do what I did, they’re

idiots, but then you don’t want
everyone working the civil service.

That’s nothing gets done then.

Third thought I had.

So you can see this is great.

This is how my sort of intelligence level,
imagine if an American politician was held

to this standard in
this day and age, like if

Trump, because he
insulted a person, had to

end up stepping down, how
different American politics would be.

And I don’t think Japanese
politics are particularly good.

They got to has its
own issues, but it is

way better than what’s
happening in America.

I haven’t been involved in Canadian politics
in a long time, but it’s similar stuff.

They’re going for
more grandiose, more

bombastic, more
in-your-face stuff, Japan’s still

holding on to like if
you don’t show the

fundamental level of
respect, you don’t deserve

to be in your position and they
will kick you out, which I quite like.

Since we’re talking
about politicians, we

had from a couple
episodes ago, our man, the

mayor of Guinan, who had 99 sexual
assault cases brought up against him.

All in one go, that’s
got to be a tough day.

He had to resign.

And he actually, at
first, was like, I don’t

resign, then he kind of started saying
like, I resign and then he apologized.

But in his apology set, I don’t
really get what I’m apologizing for.

He actually said, like, you know, it
was a different time when I grew up.

It’s like, yeah, but
now it’s not that time.

So maybe you have
to adjust, which again,

this older man mentality, this
dude was 74, is not going to change.

And that’s why these guys
should not be in politics anymore.

The karma, the irony,
I don’t know what

would you want to use, the
beauty, the shadon Freud.

He’s been replaced by a woman.

I’m so happy about that.

The new mayor of
Guinan is a woman and she

is the first female mayor
of that city in all of history.

I think this might be the bit that
would really like stick it in this crawl.

More people came out for this election
than in a couple of decades at least.

I didn’t get, it didn’t
get too far back into,

but clearly over the last few years, this
was more people came out to vote and they

basically came out to
vote to say, fuck that

guy, specifically, and we’re going to vote
for a woman because this guy’s so gross.

And I’m actually really
proud of the people

of Guinan holding
people to standards again.

I’m actually finding,
again, there’s aspects

of Japan that deserve
criticism, their aspects

of every country
that deserve criticism.

This is holding people to account, seems to
be something that still happens in Japan to

a degree more so than
in a lot of other countries.

So I’m very interested
in this because Nissan,

the car company, massive company, they
had signed contracts with subcontractors.

And then after the
contract went through

and they’d like done all the work
and stuff, they reduced the payments.

Now this is actually
illegal, what the

government, there was a watchdog
organization that warned them.

And then there’s like
the Japanese equivalent

of the FTC, they decided since
you committed essentially a crime.

Now there’s no single
person can get arrested

for a crime by a company that’s actually
one of the big problems with companies.

Companies commit crimes
and then no individual

gets punished, which
means no one gets punished.

So the government in Japan is decided
we’re going to punish the company.

They took away the
tax breaks they had in

place because they’d given
them tax breaks to raise salaries.

They’re like, you have to maintain those
salaries, but you’re losing the tax breaks.

So they actually have to pay the same
salaries, but they’re losing that extra money.

They were getting from the
government to boost those.

And once you’ve been taken off this list,
you can’t be relisted for at least a year.

So for at least a year, they’re going to be
paying employees and subsidiary companies

and all these things
more money out of their

own pockets and not getting
nothing from the government.

So they’re not getting
like bailout or help

anymore because they decided
to try to cheat the system.

And I think that is
awesome and more company

should be held
accountable the same way.

All right, it’s our last story, which means
it’s creepy, creepy 50 year old man time.

It’s my people.

And I know that’s what a
lot of people come here for.

It’s the very last story with
the creepy, creepy old man.

Sometimes something doesn’t happen.

Well, let’s just say it’s
three o’clock in the morning.

You’re a police officer
and you’re driving around

a little patrol car, you
know, it’s quite a night.

That’s what’s going on.

You see a man ride by in a bicycle.

This man has decided to
emulate Winnie the Pooh.

So he’s got a shirt and no
pants on when I mean no pants.

I mean, nothing’s covering the down bottom.

So this guy’s Winnie, Winnie
the Poohing, his bicycle.

So you’re like, well, that is in
Japan at least in decent exposure.

So we’re going to arrest him.

So you arrest him.

And we’re going to search a person now.

They don’t have to search his pockets.

I assume because he only has a
shirt on, but it does have a smartphone.

They did not say where the
smartphone was being kept.

I really was interested in that.

It might be one of those ones that hooks to
your bicycle because he wasn’t a bicycle.

On his smartphone, they found a picture
of his butt on a faucet from a park.

So it seems like he was
essentially bedying himself.

I didn’t see the picture.

They didn’t release it.

I wouldn’t have wanted to.

I do like to have the, I
would have looked at it.

I wouldn’t have looked
at it because I wanted to.

I would have looked
at it for the story so

that I could have given you
an account of what happened.

So you don’t have to look at it.

It sounds like he was bedying
himself with a public faucet.

Now, public faucets in
Japan have drinkable water.

So people stick, like
kids mostly stick their

face under it and turn it on and
they’ll drink it in the summertime.

So sticking your butt
on that is rude, at least.

I mean, it’s a health hazard.

There’s a whole bunch of other things.

When he was arrested, he said, I
did it because I was sexually aroused.

I used binoculars to make sure
no one was around beforehand.

Again, I’m seeing a certain amount of irony
in that statement because he’s like, I went

to the faucet and I wanted to stick
my butt on it because that turned me on.

So I got binoculars out
and I checked that no one

was around me in the park
because he’s very careful.

And then when no one’s
around, he did it and

they took a picture of it,
and he introduced a pen.

Again, we give tons of
free advice to criminals.

And one of the first ones
is it don’t take pictures of it.

Don’t take pictures of
you committing a crime.

Do not.

I mean, don’t commit the crimes.

That’s step one, but if
you’re going to commit

a crime, don’t
photograph it as evidence

for the police to use later because the
police only had them on a decent exposure.

They didn’t have
them on like butt crack

faucet time, which I don’t
know what crime that is yet.

I would actually go
with public health hazard.

That’s where I would start looking.

I’m sure there’s
indecency in all these other

things, but now he’s just getting
like a double indecency charge.

I would want to have
like multiple charges and

multiple venues so
that to ensure that this

is taken more seriously,
unless butt crack

faucet time is a crime
in Japan, which I don’t

know if that’s on the books, but I
mean, at this point, let’s put it on there.

Just to be safe, like add that
law to the books, I support this.

I’m on board.

So the guys demonstrating
when he butt crack faucet

time, he was really careful
that no one would see him.

And then he decided to win.

He is poo the way home.

Winnie his poo.

He decided to win.

Winnie his poo sounds like
the butt crack faucet time.

And he thought poo
is when you go with a

shirt and no pants on
when you try to go home.

So after he we need his poo,
he decided to win the poo home.

If he was that careful
with the binoculars and

stuff, he think he
would have been sensible

enough to put his
pants back on because if

he’d put his pants back on, he wouldn’t
have been caught by the police for indecent

exposure, which would
have led to them finding

the picture of him
committing the initial crime.

I think some people have
said that king shaming

is bad and I think in
many cases that might

be true, but sometimes it
might actually be necessary.

[MUSIC]

Sore Losers

(upbeat music)

Last week we talked about a scam.

It was elementary school
students and they scam their

classmate who had access
to his New Year’s money.

He had collected New
Year’s money over, I

assume years, had access
to about a million yen.

And that million yen,
he then bought trinkets.

His friends brought to school and said
they would increase in value and stuff.

He bought a token from a tour at
Nugoya Port or something like that.

And these are 500 yen just stamped things.

He bought a Canadian $10 bill,
which they said would go up in value,

which is just absolutely
not truly Canadian a comedy.

The Canadian economy doesn’t work that way.

A kind of understand a kid getting taken.

His classmates would
be able to convince him

and he’s trying to
impress them and stuff.

But then there is a secondary question,

why did this kid have
access to a million yen?

So my children’s New Year’s
money goes into a bank account.

They could get it, but
it would be a process.

They wouldn’t just be taking it all out and
giving it away willy-nilly for trinkets.

Then you become an adult and
you have access to your own money.

And that’s where people
really can get scammed.

And so this week a woman in her 50s,
she was on Instagram, great place to be.

Now he’s looking at the beautiful
pictures that people put there.

So on Instagram, directly
she receives a message.

Someone slid into her
DMs, which is quite nice.

And the message said hello from
the International Space Station.

Now scams can be very convincing.

One that comes from an
astronaut is more problematic for me.

So if I was on Instagram and
someone sent me a message

that said hello from
the International Space

Station, my first
question would actually be,

why are you sending
messages from the International

Space Station via Instagram
to someone you don’t know?

Like I would actually ask that question.

Not because I think he’s trying to scam me.

It’d just be like, why are you doing this?

Clearly you have other
avenues of communication.

You have work to do.

You have other things that need to be done.

I mean, you should not
be wasting your time.

Especially with a random person.

Like if we knew each other, if I knew an
astronaut and someone pretended to be

that astronaut who sent
me a message, I might

be convinced, but I
don’t know any astronauts.

So if an astronaut sends me a message,
I would be immediately suspicious.

This poor woman was not.

They got more messages.

They started, they were
in contact for a while.

And then the astronaut
said, the contract

for the internet I use
on earth has expired.

So I want your assistance.

I need money to pay this bill.

You can see again, this
is where I’m always like,

“Wait a minute, why would you
need a stranger to take care of that?”

If you can send a message to someone,
you can send a message to a family member.

Let’s say that would be appropriate.

You can send a message to the space agency.

You are on the International Space Station.

I’m sure has access to the internet.

That’s how your community game with me now.

So why don’t you use that internet?

There’s a lot of things you could,

that would already, again,
a lot of red flags right there.

And it’s not even that I have
let my earthly internet expire

as the problem is, why are you
asking a stranger to take care of it?

You have co-workers.

You have a space agency behind you.

You have family.

And this is known because this is
someone impersonating an actual astronaut.

What was his name?

His name was Satoshi Furukawa.

So he’s just like a Japanese astronaut.

So it’s not like we don’t
know about this person.

If you want to look them up on the internet,
you could go to his Wikipedia page.

You could go look about them on
like JAXA, the Japanese space agency.

You can actually figure out
you could call JAXA on his behalf

and say, hey, I got an Instagram
DM from one of your astronauts

who’s saying he wants
his internet hooked up.

OK, then we get into these sort
of science fiction element of this.

And he says, I have
discovered an asteroid containing

important elements, and I
need your help in transporting it.

So now you’re vital to his space mission.

And so I have sympathy.

I have a lot of sympathy.

But this is one of those scams where it’s

like the ridiculousness of the nature
of the situation makes itself apparent.

But then I’m like, oh, I
guess if you’re caught up

in the moment and this is
a chance to feel important.

This is a chance to feel like you’re
part of an international space mission.

This is like every movie you’ve ever seen
where like then nobody becomes special.

Like maybe that’s what
they’re actually praying upon.

And that actually weirdly in
a moment gave me a lot more

sympathy for the person who
had sent over 900,000 yen in total.

When the supposed astronaut
asked for planetary shipping

fees, if this had just been
reversed, I would be OK with it.

She sent the money and then got suspicious.

If she got suspicious and
then went to the police,

and the police said send the money
and we’ll track it down or something, sure.

But she sent the money
and she’s like, wait a minute.

What’s planetary shipping?

And because he’s on the
international space station,

couldn’t they just put it
on one of the shuttles that’s

bringing food up or bringing
food down or bringing

astronauts up or
bringing astronauts down?

Because they’re going anyway.

So just put the incredibly
important and special

element he’s discovered
in space on one of those.

Now there may be a lot more story here

that he convinced her that it had to
be kept secret or something like that.

But when you have to
pay planetary shipping,

which obviously is
going to be expensive,

then you realize maybe
the scam has gone too far.

So she went to the
police, calls the police,

and she says Satoshi Fukawa
has been communicating with me.

I’m a little suspicious because he’s
asking me for planetary shipping fees.

How much are they usually?

And then the police are
like, unfortunately, Satoshi

Fukawa has already returned to
Earth, whoever you’re speaking to

is not on the international space
station and has been scamming you.

And I don’t want to make fun of her too
much, but I kind of want to make fun of her.

Because it just involves
astronauts in space.

And it is such a– this is such
a perfect fiction, I think is what.

Why, again, I oscillate between, oh
my god, this is the funniest thing, too.

I feel so much sympathy for
this poor lady who got scammed.

We have to have something in place.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Now, police are actually
trying to do a good

thing with AI in Japan,
which is pretty cool.

They want to have AI
recognize fishing websites.

So these are sites that try to
look like financial institutions,

and they try to get your passwords
and login information for your bank.

And then from there, they
might be able to log into

your bank and get access
to your accounts and stuff.

Currently, the system
is based off reporting.

So I get a suspicious
email, and I click a link that I

shouldn’t click, and
the website looks off, or

something feels off, or I
think I’ve been scammed.

I have to go to the police and report it.

One of the issues with being scammed

is that people are
embarrassed, that they got

scammed, and they’re
less likely to report.

So the number of reports of getting scammed

is actually way less
than the actual scam rate.

This is why people who get scammed,
we really shouldn’t shame them.

That’s actually the exact opposite of
what I kind of just did in the first story.

So this is– I’m part of the problem.

Because if they feel embarrassed,
they might not report it.

But they just got tricked.

I now feel that I did the thing.

I just– if it wasn’t
an astronaut, maybe I

wouldn’t have even
done the story, though.

It’s because it was space
and astronauts and stuff.

Interplanetary shipping
fees was a great phrase.

I just– maybe I just wanted
to say that on the podcast.

So they need ways to gather the information
without relying on people reporting it.

So there’s organizations,
like financial

institutions, they’ll
report websites they find.

And they will find– last
year, they found 490,000 cases.

And this was reported by antivirus software

and this sort of group
of financial institutions.

Now, last year, in total, it was
1.2 million reports of fishing.

So you can assume that
numbers got to be plus 2 million,

like attempts, not even success or
anything, but just attempts at fishing.

So this is a 21 times increase from 2019.

Weird choice.

I don’t know.

I guess they’re trying to
go for dramatic numbers.

But what they want to
do is find it is get an AI.

And the AI is just going
to troll the internet,

troll these emails,
troll this other stuff,

recognize the fishing
websites, and then automatically

report that to the police
so they can shut it down.

And that is maybe one
of the best use cases of AI

I have heard so far because it’s
actually helping people not get ripped off.

Oh, no, see, as soon as I talk
about this stuff, then I have thoughts.

And my thought is they’re
going to have AI create the AI,

create the fishing websites
to be more efficient.

And when an AI shuts one down, another AI
automatically just rebuilds a new website.

So it becomes like a
cycle that just never stops.

There were the World Cup Qualifiers.

And in the Asian area, in Asia,
Japan has to play North Korea.

So they decided to do the game.

I don’t know how these decisions are made.

This is FIFA or something.

The game is going to
be done in North Korea.

Now North Korea and Japan
have very hostile political relations.

So the Japanese government
says, hey, Japanese

citizens, who are really
excited about soccer.

Soccer is a very popular sport in Japan.

Don’t go to North Korea.

Don’t go to North Korea to watch this game.

Don’t try to get– I mean,
they have to get a visa.

I’m pretty sure North
Korea wouldn’t be

giving Japanese people
visas to go in anyways.

That’s a totally separate issue.

But the government just came out
and said, don’t try to go to North Korea.

I think that’s a fair statement to make.

The relationship between
Japan and North Korea

is so contentious that
it would be dangerous

for a Japanese citizen
to enter the country.

So they have the soccer game.

So the soccer players go, and they

have some people with them,
sort of handlers and stuff.

They play their game.

And Japan scores a goal
in the first 90 seconds.

Yeah, Japan.

Then nothing happens
for the rest of the game.

So two hours are assumed.

I don’t know how long a
soccer game is like 90 minutes.

No scores are done for the rest
of the game, because it’s soccer.

So of course, there are no more goals.

I understand the
reality in that the tension

would build as they get closer
and closer to the end of the game

and have to score one goal to just
become even and extend the game.

But I don’t really enjoy soccer.

So for me, that just sounds
mindnumbingly painful.

It’s just low scoring, zero scoring games,

essentially what I’m
saying is fuck you, soccer.

North Korea, in North Korea, loses a soccer
game in front of a stadium of people.

Now North Korea has, in the past,

reported that they have won
all the Olympic gold medals.

If you actually watch
North Korean state media,

they have just straight
out and said, North Korea

has won every game in the
Olympics and stuff like that.

China’s number two, and
America hasn’t won nothing.

So they just like, it’s just a blatant lie.

But when you have a stadium
of people, watch your team lose.

You can’t really lie to the same degree.

It’s much harder.

So they need a solution,
’cause they can’t lose again.

They’re actually supposed to play two games

and they can’t lose again,
so they need to end this game.

So they do what North Korea does best.

They say, we are concerned
about a second game.

Oh, we are canceling the second game

because we are worried about a
malignant infectious disease in Japan.

I think that malignant infectious
disease might be winning.

Again, I’m not a big fan of soccer,

so I’m not wicked supportive of
Japanese soccer or anything like that.

I don’t actually care about sports or who
wins and stuff, but I do think it’s funny.

I think it’s funny that we
didn’t win the first game,

so we’re gonna cancel the
second game and we’re gonna say

that it’s because you foreigners
are diseased, which is a lot.

Since we’re talking about soccer, there was
a student and he has Peruvian background.

He’s got a mixed heritage, yes.

And so that in Japan makes you stand out.

He was late for a club activity
and the coaches made him apologize

and when he apologized, they
started making derogatory statements.

They said, “Peruvians can apologize, huh?”

Which doesn’t sound
bad translated into English,

but the reality is how you say it in
Japanese is more insulting than what you say.

Or it’s not what you say in Japanese,
it’s how you say it, it becomes the insult.

So when we translate
a lot of Japanese insults

in English, it sounds
just like a statement,

but it’s the
statement of like, “I’m

talking down to you,”
is the important part.

Another coach giving
guidance on his attitude,

so sort of giving him guidance about
life says, “You’ll end being a murderer,”

and then makes a stabbing
gesture to one of his

teammates, like you’re
gonna kill your teammate.

I guess, maybe the kid got frustrated,

like I’m just guessing
’cause they only fill in

all the details, but the
kid’s frustrated or angry

or having difficulties like
hormonal ’cause he’s a teenager.

I mean, who knows?

Because if you are who you
are, you’re going to end up

being a murderer, which
is pretty awful thing to say.

The interesting thing is the guy
who made the murder statement

had been disciplined in 2019
for threats and slapping a student,

but then was removed from
soccer coaching and then returned.

So the question to me is
why are these guys returning?

This is not the first time we’ve done
a coach, abuses kids, gets taken out,

and then put back in and
starts abusing kids again.

Story.

Once you have smacked a kid,
I think you shouldn’t be allowed

around kids anymore so you
can continue to smack them.

Japan, I don’t know,
maybe they keep track of it.

They don’t keep track of it.

It’s a bit insane.

They did 100 member surveys.

All these kids who’ve been in the soccer
clubs over the last couple of years in 2023,

and all the coaches receive voluntary
suspensions, which is pretty ridiculous.

I don’t know why do these
people go into kids’ stuff

if they clearly are easily
frustrated with kids?

We’ve had the teachers
who are smacking kids

because the kids are
talking back to them.

I understand that frustration.

I’ve never had a kid.

We got these guys who become coaches.

Coaching is primarily working with kids
and they seem to have a problem with kids.

These may be more lean
towards the just word,

just racist dudes because
you’re not Japanese kid.

I’m going to judge you differently kind of
thing, but even then, why are you there?

Don’t, like, go find your Puritan group.

I don’t know.

I’m a little lost on that one because it’s
like, how do these stories keep happening

when it’s so obvious that
there’s a problem there?

When the problem could be solved by, just
don’t get into that job in the first place.

So these coaches cause
people a lot of stress.

They feel a lot of stress.

Now, all right, we’ve
got a 24-year-old guy.

Takes a can of kerosene
into the mountain forest,

and he dows several trees in
kerosene and then lights them on fire.

He gets arrested and he
does the most classic excuse

for a Japanese person who’s done something
wrong, and he says, I was stressed out.

And lighting fires relieves
tension, which I struggle with.

I mean, has he tried stretching?

Maybe there’s this,
has he tried stretching?

There are degrees of stress
and ways to deal with it.

So I’m not going to say drink alcohol,
but I would say comparatively speaking,

if you had to drink alcohol to relieve
your stress or light a forest on fire,

I might actually say
drinking is your better option.

I would say before that,
maybe go get a massage,

maybe start stretching to a
little yoga, something like that.

I think there are stages you should go
through before you jump to burn down a forest.

Now, I found it interesting
that his statement wasn’t lighting

this fire or, you know, I lit
a fire and it relieved tension.

He said that lighting fires relieves
tension, as in he’s done this in the past.

So the police are now
investigating several

suspicious fires in forests
in the surrounding area.

So I’m guessing this is lucky.

This happened in February,
which is a very wet season in Japan.

So if it’s not snowing, it’s
probably raining, that kind of stuff.

So that probably kept the forest fire
from getting out of control, but oh my God.

I’ve done this story before.

The classic Japanese
excuse, I’ve committed a crime.

Why did you commit the crime?

Stress from work or just stress?

But now you’re getting arrested.

That is created more stress in your life.

So there is a maybe a
moment where you’ve

committed the crime
and it feels slightly better.

But then there’s the stress
of am I gonna get caught?

Are the police gonna catch on?

Am I gonna get reported?

Like I actually think that
would be more stressful.

I think committing a crime
and getting away from it

might be just as much stress
as getting stress from work.

And then if you’re
already working and you

commit a crime, now you
have to think about both.

I have stress from work
where I go to my job every day

and I have the stress of
worrying about whether or not

I’m gonna get caught for
the crime I’ve committed.

That’s a lot of stress.

And then how do you relieve that stress?

You go like more forest fires.

The more forest fires you light,
the more like you are to get caught.

This is the criminal paradox.

If you are successful in a
crime and you commit the

crime again, multiple times
each time you commit it,

you’re more likely to make
mistakes or get caught

or have something go
wrong and then you go to jail.

So your stress should
actually go up the more

successful you are in
crime, which is interesting.

But it doesn’t seem to work that way.

And so now the guy is going
to get stressed out in prison.

Alright, so last week we
did the LDP, how to party,

and in that party they’re
like, some go-go girls came out

and the politicians put
money in their mouth

and then the girls took the
money out of their mouth.

And there were some other
pictures that showed up

and it was them sticking it in
their bikini bottoms and stuff.

Pretty gross stuff for a group
that is supposed to be like

moving towards more
egalitarian and wants

to be more open and
inviting and that stuff.

This was to me very 80s
bubble era Japanese behavior,

but the guys who
organized the parties were

full on in their prime
in the 70s and 80s.

So they mentally had not moved on to like,

hey, maybe women who
come to this party will like it.

I almost guarantee no women
showed up to that party.

Maybe some of the young men
don’t have the same sensibilities

we do, that’s actually showed up many
times when we’ve talked about stories.

These really gross old men don’t understand

that other men maybe don’t
think the same way as them.

Which is interesting issue,
because we had that mayor

who committed like a
hundred sexual assaults at work.

Like he was patent
bottoms and touching boobs

and sexually harassing
everybody around him.

His cohort, the deputy mayor
was like, dude, you gotta stop.

And he was like, yeah, if
you’ve listened to that episode,

you’ll just go back and
listen to that whole like

two minutes of me doing
like gross creepy laughing.

He didn’t think the other guy was serious.

And like, this is literally
your peer telling you,

you gotta stop or you’re getting in trouble
and then he got in trouble and he’s like,

well, I still don’t
understand what I did wrong.

So there’s been another
scandalous come out with the L.D.B.

party because these
people are these people.

They can’t help but do what they do.

I found it funny that it
was the L.D.P. Federation

youth bureau and four of
these guys organized a party

and they go to the party and
there are people taking pictures.

And that to me was one of the issues.

Like I talk about a lot of crimes and
stuff and I’m like don’t film your crimes,

but you can’t commit crimes where
other people are taking pictures either.

So a magazine came out
with pictures of this party.

Great.

So what is the picture of?

It’s a man in a mask, rope
tied, wearing underwear

and the bureau chief wearing an
AKB idol costume with a microphone.

So clearly on stage, doing
some sort of announcement

in, sort of, I’m going
to go ahead and assume

a school girl uniform
of some sort in front of,

I don’t know if it’s an L.D.P.
guy or a model or someone else

but someone tied up
behind them basically naked.

And this is cool.

This is like high level
politicians who are aware

of implications and
optics and how things go.

When questioned, he said it’s just a bar.

It’s not an SNM club and then he resigned.

The thing is, the sign
above the bar was like, we

have, was it turtle binding,
which is a form of SNM.

So they clearly put on SNM shows
and he’s like, no, no, no, no, no.

That clearly branded
SNM bar isn’t an SNM bar.

It’s just a bar and even
if it wasn’t an SNM bar,

that doesn’t mean you
have to do the SNM stuff.

It doesn’t mean you have to
like dress up like a school girl

and get on stage with a
microphone is to hard of participating.

That’s just ridiculous, I quit.

So this actually led to a whole
bunch of serious questions.

The last party, the one with the
go-go dancers, was not publicly funded.

This was, everyone chipped
in, they paid for their own way.

So technically not as bad.

This one though, it’s supposed
to be 5,000 yen per person

for entry and this time they
charge 2,000 yen per person.

And the same day as the
party and assembly member

received 100,000 yen of
public funds from an activity

fund and the activity funds
are how they get around this.

The activity fund is money for events.

So that isn’t really
regulated the same way.

So they don’t necessarily
check out the event as far

as like, oh, we’re gonna
have dinner with the LDP guys.

Okay, here’s your 50,000 yen, whatever.

This is 100,000 yen to go to the SNM bar.

And so this has put another sort of strike,

the LDP rating, approval
rating is at an all-time low.

It’s like below 20%,
which is Japanese politics.

It’s never above 50, but if you’re
below 20, you’ve really, really kicked it.

And Qashita is just struggling,
’cause how is he supposed

to say like, we wanna do
good things, we’re good people,

and then these scandals
keep coming up again and again.

And now using public money.

The public money part
is going to be the part

that actually kills them because this
has happened before in different areas.

And Japan is like, you
do your dirty stuff, sure.

But don’t use my money
to do your dirty stuff.

When you take my money
to do your dirty stuff,

I don’t want you to
be a politician anymore.

(upbeat music)

  • Sure, man, you could ask.

I’m finished that story, go
ahead and ask questions.

You’re more than welcome to ask questions.

I’m gonna wait for a second though, ’cause
I was just about to start a second story.

Unless you’re trying to sell me
something, then I’m gonna get furious.

What do I think if someone
join a secret society?

That question is unclear
because what is the secret society?

So like there’s several secret societies

that sort of conspiracy theories
go out about like the Freemasons.

But the Freemasons are
primarily a charitable organization

if you take what they say
is because they’re secretive

about what they do that leads to
conspiracy theories and suspicion.

There are religious groups,
there’s things like that.

So secret society is such
a broad term that doesn’t

actually give me any information
to answer your question.

So the nature of the secret
society is the important part.

If it’s a secret society that’s
supposed to be good, trying

to do good in the world, why
would I have a problem with that?

Because you wanna keep it secret is fine.

If it’s a secret society that
wants to harm people, then it’s bad.

It’s not a very interesting
answer, I’m sorry,

but the truth is realistically speaking,
whether it’s secret or not is irrelevant,

the important part is
the intent of the society

Podcast Harassment

[music] Harassment.

The breadth and variety of
harassment I have discovered on

Engineers Japan doing all these
stories over the last few years,

has been impressive, and yet I keep finding
new ones, new ones that I didn’t think

about or didn’t know about, and as some
are justified, some are not. I mean, I’m

basically working on podcast harassment
right now, where it’s either would be a guy

who has a podcast, tells you about his
podcast all the time, or podcasts are just

annoying you. I think it would be the guy,
because it has to be a person that harasses you.

Harassment has to come from
someone and lead to something else, so it

would have to be, yeah, that guy who
has a podcast, who’s constantly telling

about his podcast, trying to take you to
check out my last podcast. I try not to be

that guy, but it happens, because sometimes
we’ll talk about something, let’s say, in

my office, and it’ll be something I did
talk about on the podcast, and I want to

either say the same thing, but I want to,
like, if you’ve already heard the podcast,

I don’t want to tell you it again,
because you know my thoughts and ideas.

But then I worry I bring it up too often,
but I think the fact that I worry that I

bring it too often, I think the fact that
I bring it up too often, which is a fact,

shows that I’m probably not bringing
it up too often. I hope that’s my goal.

My hope, my desire, is to not bring things
up too often when it comes to the process.

I don’t want to be one of
those podcast guys, when I am

absolutely definitely one
of those podcast guys.

Lots of stories this
week, thematically.

I was drawn after I did a couple
of harassment stories in my notes.

I was drawn towards
the harassment.

Pretty good. There’s
some other stories,

but harassment is our
main theme for today.

I normally, for people who
are viewing on the internet,

try to keep the notes
a bit farther away, so

it’s under the camera,
so I’m actually usually

holding it like right
here. I’m half blind now.

I don’t want to get
into my personal issues,

but if I hold my notes
too far away, not only is my

handwriting messy, I just
can’t see them anymore.

So you’re going to see
a lot of me reading the

notes whether relatively
up close to my face.

It is the sad development
of the constant degradation

of the human body, which I
am experiencing in real time.

I’m okay with it though. You know
what’s shitty though, the worst part.

So right now, my
right eye, it’s fuzzy.

And if you want the
story, I’m going to tell that

story in the Seeming
Bee, so if you want the

actual story, which has
some honestly traumatic

elements, you can listen to that episode
that’s going to come out after this one.

But I, it’s not, I’m blind.
I’m fuzzier than normal.

So my eyes are already
garbage. I’ve been wearing

glasses since I was 16,
but my left eye basically

can’t focus right now.
So what it’s doing is

my right eye can’t focus.
My left eye is now doing

all the heavy lifting.
I’m pretty sure that’s

what was happening before
anyways. But as a result,

everything’s a little
fuzzier and I actually

would be easier if I just
had a patch and couldn’t

see. Like that, I actually
would be better visually.

Like if I just had this eye closed and it
was just reading or doing normal stuff,

it’s actually clearer
than having this eye open.

But I’m pretty
sure that’s also bad.

There’s no good thing here.
There are no good things here.

Dave is here.
Dave’s a good thing.

Dave is sleeping my lap.
He’s been very annoying today.

I think I’ve started this
a half hour later than

I normally would have because Dave
would not leave me alone. Harassment.

It’s, it’s, pet harassment.
I’m going to be trying to

frame everything in
some kind of harassment.

Some of the harassment
I’ve learned about there

was a maternity harassment.
So you’re having a baby.

You want to go
on maternity leave.

So they harass you. You get
pregnant and they harass you to quit.

There’s men going
on paternity leave.

They harass you not to take the paternity
leave that you are legally obligated to.

But we’re going to get
some interesting ones today.

The first one and this
is again, this was new.

So I do enjoy new things
in direct power harassment.

And so this, what is
it? It’s actually the kind

of the first question.
What is indirect power

harassment? This is when
you’re forced to watch

verbally abusive behavior
towards a subordinate

which causes you
emotional distress.

So basically you’re in
an office. Most Japanese

offices are open concept. I
work in an open concept office.

I fucking hate it.

I understand the idea
of the concept office.

I don’t think the
reality matches the idea.

I think the idea is that we’re
supposed to be like collaborating

and working together.
But really what happens is

I’m trying to get some
work and the dude behind

me is having a conversation
on his phone and his

voice is way too loud
when he’s on the phone.

The people are in the table,
the desk across from me

are having a different
conversation and they’re

speaking in normal tones. But
that’s just now cross volume.

There’s a dude in the far corner and he’s
decided that this is the perfect time to

open an incredibly crunchy
plastic bag where he’s

going to pull out Sembe
and eat the Sembe as loud

as humanly possible,
eating with his mouth

open, filling the office
with a smell of shrimp,

this powdered shrimp, I
also hate, honestly makes

me feel sick, and then some
there’s some drama somewhere else.

That’s the reality of
the open concept office.

I think the second
part is the open

concept office means that your
boss can see everybody in one go.

So it’s not like a micro-managing thing,
but it’s kind of like if I can see you,

you can’t be fucking
around too much.

If I was going to fuck
around, I would just get up and

relieve the office and
look busy. The interesting

thing, if you’re working
on an open concept

office and you are constantly
in meeting rooms and

conference rooms and
stuff, they think you’re but

this is not advice. Although
you could take it as advice.

If you are constantly
in meeting rooms,

watching YouTube videos
or TikTok or working on your

novel, other people will
see you in that room at

a computer writing,
working. You’re a busy guy.

I’m not saying anyone
has ever done that, but

there’s if you walk around
with paper in your hand

or a notebook and you
walk with determination,

people think you’re busy.
People thinking you’re

busy is more important
than actually being busy.

As long as you get you
or all your work done,

all that extra time
that could be like filled

time, what the fuck
am I talking about?

This guy worked at a
company. It was a government

inspection agency and
he said it was painful

to feel complicit. So
he basically, he’s working

on an office, his boss is
standing behind him with

these bosses subordinate
and his boss is just reaming

this guy and he’s sitting
there in silence and he

says that complicity
caused him pain because he’s

like, I didn’t stand up
for him. I just sat there

and that caused me
emotional distress.

April 2021, he said he
witnessed daily abuse.

The boss was calling
this subordinate a rotten

human and he said he
should give his salary back

because he doesn’t
do any real work.

And then he said like you
should quit or it would be faster,

you should just go hug a
female passerby or expose

yourself below the belt
and get caught by the police.

There’s a couple
of interesting things.

These are very, these
are Japanese insults.

So Japanese insults,
they don’t tend to actually

say anything like that you
would consider directly offensive.

It’s how you talk to
people, not what you say.

So him saying
like you should give

your salary back. I mean,
that’s that’s a lot of pressure.

You’re a rotten human being.

That’s insulting, but not
terrible. But this last one is

like, let’s expedite, expedite
your removal from the company.

Just go commit sexual harassment

and then we’ll be done with
each other and get arrested.

It does lead you to his interesting point
is if you’re the guy sitting in the chair,

what do you do? Do you
stand up for the guy or

do you just like accept
it? So this guy basically

he’s saying, I just sat
there and that caused me

stress that indirect
harassment caused me enough

stress that I’m suing
this government agency.

He filled in a report in
December and by January,

the harassment stopped.
So actually, this guy

who’s making this claim,
he took action and he

didn’t like step in
because I think stepping in

just puts you in the
target. So that’s actually

probably not actually
the best way to house.

He sent in a report. There
was an investigation in

the harassment stopped.
So this boss got in trouble,

but what happens to you?
Well, his evaluation that

year, which was normally
an A, which I assume is

the best, went down to a
B and he says this was an

unfair evaluation and
it’s because he put in

this report to stop the
harassment and everyone’s

going, no, no, no,
no, that’s a fair, fair

evaluation of your work
and your efforts and stuff.

So he’s in a tough spot
and he says, look, he

was treating this indirect
harassment caused me stress.

I had to report it
and then because of

that report, I got a lower
evaluation, that lower

evaluation, of course means
less of a bonus or whatever.

I’m losing money.
So the government

court case isn’t finished
yet, but it is interesting

because I think there
are some valid points

here because it’s not
when you like scream at an

employee in an open office thing, it’s not
just the employee that has to take it on.

It’s the other people like
they get that stress, they get

that sort of reflected
stress. And what do I do

and how do I handle this?
That is all problematic.

So indirect stress, I actually
think there is a validity to it.

I don’t know, I think the problem is like
two people could have an argument, like a

legitimate argument, a
disagreement, whatever,

and then I’m in the
room, do I then claim that

that is indirect harassment because it
caused me stress because I heard them argue.

So then you could see where
it could be taken sort of out of

context, but I think this
case when you get down

to the details because
this guy filed a report

and then it came back on him
and directly everything was in direct.

That’s a very Japanese
way to handle stuff.

It was all indirect.
The boss couldn’t

harass him anymore, but he can
mark him down on his evaluation.

He says this is all unfair.

I think this might be a legitimate
case. I started, I read that title.

I was like, there’s no
way that’s a real thing.

You just got to like buck up and

stuff that happens to another people
you ought to ignore it. And I was like, no,

I work in an open concept
office. I want to murder

half the people in that
room half of the time.

It says 25% murder rate. I
guess if I was successful,

I don’t really want
to hurt anybody.

I just want silence working in the
same place for as long as I have.

I now notice the
quirks of other people

so much that the very
innocuous things set me

off. I’ve always hated
the open concept office.

I don’t think cubicles
are better because I

work with a team and I should
be able to work with my team.

I don’t necessarily think
we deserve an office.

So there is an interesting problem because
for me, the cross chatter, the noise and

stuff, I’m sensitive to it,
I guess. It really bugs me.

I find it very hard to
concentrate. And then we’re

also in a situation where
if I stick on headphones,

I’ll get in trouble. Like
if I stick on just my

noise counseling headphones,
not even listening to

music, they would probably
complain about that.

But in, I’m interested to
see where this case goes.

I’m pretty sure he’s
going to win something.

I don’t think he’s
going to get that much.

The problem is, does
he have to go back to his

office? He wasn’t his
50s. So he might be like

changing sections or retiring
soon or something like that.

I don’t know. But it’s a very tough
position to be in it. It gave me a lot to

think about because I
started out thinking like

indirect harassment. That
sounds like some just wuss stuff.

And then when I actually got the deals,
I’m like, no, because he actually felt he

had to take action and
write a report and then

was kind of punished for it. I do think
this might be legit. More harassment.

This, I think we all
know this. We’ve seen it.

It’s basically Karen’s. They’re
calling it customer harassment.

And I think we’ve
all experienced this

via the internet. So this
experience was not a surprise.

I don’t think this
is a new thing.

But this was about companies
being like, we have to

set up guidelines when
people come into our

stores as customers
and act as at like assholes.

How do we deal with
them? So a lot of them

are like, well, you get
the manager and stuff.

But these are, these are,
okay, we have to define

it. And that’s actually
was the bit to me that was

most interesting is how
do you actually go about

defining what constitutes
harassment? Because

also it’s all conceptual
and about feelings and stuff.

So that makes it a
little more difficult.

It’s essentially
customers losing their shit.

They did a survey in 2017
of 50,000 people. That’s

a pretty good sample size. These were
all people who worked in customer service.

70% said they had
experienced some form of the

following harassment,
most of it being verbal.

So it’s people just
talking, shouting, getting

super angry at some
customer service person.

And this is always bugged
me. I did customer service,

but I had a very positive
experience overall.

I’ve mentioned this before
when I was university.

I sold dog food in
a dog food store.

We didn’t keep dogs. We just sold food.
So dog food cat food, other kinds of food.

People would come in, people with pets,
people would bring in their dogs mostly,

and they were super
chill. You give their dog a

snack, a cookie, and the
owner was really happy.

Everyone who came in, 99% of the people
was super chill. I didn’t have any of these

care and experiences that
you see on the internet.

But I think the dog
food selling industry,

it’s a different customer
base. And as long as

you treat their animals well,
they’re super happy about it.

In Japan, it got to
like people throwing

money at the person and
them crying as they pick it up.

That was one of the
stories that was in there.

And there were several demands that people
get down on their knees to apologize.

Like the bowing sort of you’ve
seen in a movie, bowing to the

emperor, seza, kneeling
bow. I’m sorry, put

your head on the ground kind
of thing, which is demeaning.

It’s supposed to be
and not something

that a customer service
person should have to do.

Because as we all know
deep down in our hearts,

that minimum wage
employee has no power.

They’re doing as they
are told, they’ve been

told what they can and
cannot do and it’s mostly can’t.

And you’re angry at them and you’re
angry at them because you’re not getting

instantaneous
satisfaction for anything.

And you think, oh,
Japan’s very polite society,

Japan’s a very great
place. It’s got its fair

share of shitty people
and those shitty people,

it turns out are a specific demographic.
One that if you’ve watched an industry

in Japan before, you will know what
is coming next. There was a statement,

“Someone grabbed me by the
collar and threatened to kill me.

” So that’s problematic.
The 2020 survey

found that men are
75% of the offender.

So I think in the west,
because of the internet primarily,

we have an image of the
Karen. It’s an older female

who is trying to assert
her power in the world.

In Japan, I think it’s an older
Japanese man, 75% and over 40.

So it’s 40 plus where
most of the people

I think it’s different.
I think they’re trying

to hold on to the power
of they’ve gotten so

entitled because now
they are an older man and

the hierarchy of the
world has built around them

in such a way and
respect and whatnot.

So at any time, they can fly
off the handle and they think

they should just
be forgiven it for it.

They should they think they
should just be forgiven for it

because I’m an older
man and everyone should

respect me and do what I
want and make me happy.

That is the the
patriarchy in action.

90% of the people who do this
kind of behavior are over 40,

75% of total are men.
So not a surprise to me

that older Japanese men
are acting like shit when

they get pissed off.
Because yeah, they have

been raised in a society
where they get to this

point where they think
everyone should do what

they want if they
don’t do it instantly.

They think that’s a problem. I think
some people need some ass cakings.

It’s the final harassment
for today, which is very nice.

A GSDF member, so
a ground self-defense

force member, a member
of the Japanese military.

He was forced to write a 10,000 character
paper reflecting on his self as a penalty.

This was interesting. So he’s
in the military and they’re like

you’ve done something bad.
I kind of want to hold back

on what the bad bit is.
You’ve done something bad.

I want you to reflect on
that. So I’m going to make

you write an essay like
a child in high school.

That is your punishment.
He joined the military in 1986.

This incident happened in 2017.

So if he joined when
he was 20, this incident

actually happened.
He would have been 51

when the incident happened.
The commander was angry

that he had gained
weight. So this guy who was

51 years old in the
ground self-defense force.

His commander was angry at
him because he gained some weight.

I don’t know what
they didn’t say

how much weight. He might have
been a chubby guy, might not be.

This guy claims
they were trying to

get him to quit. He had a
bum leg probably because

he was in the military
and did activities and got

hurt and that hurt never
really healed properly.

I as someone who’s done
judo my whole life have

several injuries that
never really healed properly.

So he’s got a bum leg.
His room was on the

fifth floor with no
elevator. So he had to take

five flights of stairs
every single day up and

down to get to his room.
And they knew he had a

bum leg and they put
them there anyways.

And then they’re like, hey,
you got a bum leg, clearly,

you’re not going to
be able to exercise as

much as you used to
when you were 20, you 50,

one year old piece
of shit. You fat fuck.

So I’m going to make you
write an essay. They wouldn’t let

him leave until he’d
finished the essay.

So he had to work on
this for nine hours straight.

They wouldn’t let
him go to sleep.

And he’s saying like this
was all just different kinds of

harassment to try
to get him to quit.

The government argued
that this was a legitimate order

despite the fact that
like they’re just nigh him

sleeping stuff and they
know he’s got a bum leg

and they’re doing
all this other crap.

He’s suing them for 1.5 million
yen. The court has been like,

absolutely, this is
power harassment.

You know he’s got a
bum leg. He’s 51 years old.

He’s with a bum leg, which
means yes, he’s going to gain some

weight because he can’t
exercise like he used to.

He’s not a 20 year old recruit anymore.
You guys have put him on the fifth floor.

Fuck you guys.
1.5 million yen to him, please.

Shouldn’t you be able to leave the
JSTF after a set number of years?

I mean, you should be
able to leave, but I think

this guy was he probably
done X amount of years

and wanted to stay because
he wanted his pension.

I don’t know. I don’t
know this system because

it’s not the same as
the military in America or

other countries. So
he could have retired.

Yes, but I bet he was
wanted to stay and this has

been his whole life.
Like this was clearly

if he’d been there for 31
years, this was his first job.

I bet to a degree
for most of that,

he liked being in the
ground self defense force.

And he wanted to hit
where he was getting, he’s 51.

He’s like X 65 is
going to be retirement.

He’s going to hit
that retirement age.

And then he’s going
to get a bigger pension.

And then I bet these
commanders like you,

I don’t like you. You’re not like as active
as the other 20 year olds running around.

He probably hasn’t
gotten to this highest level.

Again, and my mind
keeps going back probably

because he was injured.
He couldn’t just do stuff.

So he got a desk job and
he worked as a desk job.

Maybe he was competent.
Maybe not. I don’t know.

They wanted him out.
The thing is weird to me is

the pension set by
the government it’s paid

for by taxpayer money. It doesn’t negatively
impact these the commander of the base.

It doesn’t make him look bad
if this guy hits retirement age.

That’s the weird part to
me. The only reason the

commander of the base
would have done this is

because he did not like this
guy. And that is power harassment.

That is it. Like I’m
in a position of power.

I don’t like you. So I’m going to make
your life worse. He could have quit. Yes.

At 51, though, in Japan,
you’re probably not

getting a different job.
So unless he’s ready and

financially capable
of retiring, because 1.

5 million yen, because we
use the M word, the million,

sounds like a lot. If you
put that into American

money, that’d be about
$10,000. That’s money,

but it’s not life
changing money.

It is pretty shit. I think the
more I read into it and the

more sympathetic I came
to be towards this guy.

Because I bet he was,
again, that fifth floor bit,

that’s one of those little
like just every single day.

He’s got a bad
knee list to run him

down, run him down, run
him down. And that’s years

and years and years.
He lives in that dormitory.

So I don’t know how
much money he has, but

$10,000 while it is a
significant sum of money,

it’s not going to be enough to retire for
the next, let’s say, 20 years of your life.

You’re not living
off that for 20 years.

Prime Minister Kishita, he is pissed.
So they wanted to have a party.

What is it? The LDP, the liberal democratic
party. They have all the junior members,

they’re like, “Hey guys,
welcome to the democratic party.

” You guys are
awesome. We’re all going to

get together, have a
little party. Some of those

are going to dip out,
but you have a good time.

Then, so all these
young junior members of

the LDP are having
drinks this, like I assume,

fancy hotel, curtain
goes up, what happens? A

bunch of go-go dancers
come out in their underwear,

and then the party gets started.

And they got these young
politicians putting thousand

yen notes in their
mouth and holding it out

to the dancers and the
dancers taking it from

their mouth with their
mouth. So you know what

kind of party it was. Now,
this doesn’t really have

the optics that the LDP
really wants to be putting

out in the world.
Japan is suffering from a

lot of like, “Hey, maybe
our patriarchy bullshit

isn’t cool anymore,
maybe we got to stop that,

maybe we got to be
inclusive, maybe we got to

good people, we got
to stop fucking around.

” Back to the old men
issue. We got these old men

who grew up in the
60s, 70s, and 80s who are

still running stuff and
they don’t understand

the world has changed.
And so they’re still doing

dumb shit, like, “Hey,
let’s have a party where

people can take pictures
and have go-go dancers come

out, have them party
with the junior members

where people can take
pictures.” And you know,

that’s not going to get
out and cause us any

problems because we’re
all men having a good time.

So Kishida, the prime minister, gets up and
is like, “Guys, what the fuck? Seriously?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?”
So the two guys who organized the party,

they had to resign.
They were out already.

So two guys who already
lost their jobs over this,

he’s actual statement.
He didn’t stand up and say,

“What the fuck guys?” I
would be a great politician

in that I would literally
stand up and go like,

“Guys, what the fuck?
What are you doing?”

What he said in no way
is this consistent with

the diversity the cabinet
aims for. So he’s like,

we’re trying to be
inclusive. We’re trying to

show that we are
equitable, that we care about

all the people of society, that
we don’t treat people poorly.

So objectifying
women is really just

not on the docket here. You
guys got to chill this shit out.

And since these old
dudes with money,

they don’t think they’re going
to get in trouble for anything.

They don’t think they
do anything wrong.

Guys had to sit down.
They had to sit down and

have a meeting to
organize this party like,

“Hey, two, three, 70-year-old,
60-year-old Japanese

men sitting in a conference
room like we got these

young guys out here. We want to
have like a welcome party for them.

” And then these old dudes are like, “Hey,
you know be awesome for a welcome party?”

Because let’s not even
take into account that at

this time, female
politicians, junior members

might not just all be dudes.
Because back when they

started, it was only
dudes. So they’re like

not in their brain. They
can’t even comprehend

that there might be women included in this
and this might be off-putting for them.

You don’t be a great party.
Back in my day in the 80s.

We had these ladies come
out and they were wearing

like basically nothing.
It was awesome.

They did a little “no,
no, no, no, no, no” for you.

And then we put money in our mouth
and it’s good money over our mouth.

And I was incredibly sexually
frustrated for like days afterwards.

The image is bad. Again,
two guys lost their job.

I’m just to imagine that
meeting that at the end of the

meeting, they’re all like
high-fiving each other

with what this great
plan they came out with.

And then when that first
picture hit the internet,

my god, the surprise
that like, whoa, people

are unhappy about this?
This thing that we did,

the way our government
has run, the only saving

grace of this is they
didn’t use taxpayer money.

This was actually all privately funded. So
at least the taxpayers didn’t put the bill,

which has been a
problem in the past.

All right, since we’re just
sort of talking about sexy,

sexy stuff, there was a
couple of surveys done

about the sexless nature
of Japanese relationships

and so we’re talking
about the birth rate is

incredibly low in Japan.
The step before birth rate

is the sex rate and that’s
something people are

not generally comfortable
talking about, but it is known now.

A lot of young
people are just losing

interest in relationships. So a lot of
young men aren’t going after relationships.

A lot of young people are
not getting into relationships.

A lot of young people are
staying virgins later into life.

This is all problematic because it means
those relationships are not developing.

They don’t know what they’re
doing. They don’t form solid

relationships and that’s why
they don’t have marriages,

marriage rates, also dropping.
There were two surveys done.

So this is why the
numbers don’t match up.

It’s interesting. They did not give the
number of the sample size, which could skew

things very wildly one
way or the other, but 48.

3% of married couples
do it zero times a month.

That’s it. So you’re married
and you just do not have

sex. This is a 16.4%
increase in the last 20 years.

So there’s always
couples. Maybe they’re

not particularly passionate.
They don’t have sex often.

They get a little
older. They decide that

it’s not really worth it.
It’s too much mental stress,

something like that.
There is an understandable

amount of people who
just don’t have sexual

relationships with their partner.
But nearly half is an amazing.

Oh, Dave’s making very
cute sounds down on my lap.

Oh, Scruffy. Oh, USA.

Really? Sexless. Okay, whatever.
Dave, you, Scruffy is not mad, Dave.

This is Dave. He is on
my lap 90% of the time.

Oh, he’s just stretched
his sexy legs out.

Check this out. Oh, you
get a little leg action there.

Okay, young people
don’t get married, but they

have sex all the time.
Once they get married,

Yeah, that’s weird. Okay,
you ask. Because it means

when you’re young, you
are a sexually active person,

getting married
should not inhibit that.

I could understand it the
number going down, like go

ahead from every day to
once a week or something.

Sure, that’s a significant decline, but
still, you’re doing it. I find it weird.

If I’m attracted to someone
being physical with them,

increases that attraction to me.

But anyways, let’s get back
onto the surveys. This is a very

survey heavy podcast
in general. So if you like

your surveys, this is
the place to come 13.

9% do it once a month. So
you have 48.3% or never doing

it all stick on top of that 13.9%
or only doing it once a month.

So that is 50 60% of people are
doing it less than twice a month. 24.

3% of men say their partner
has no response to them.

So basically they try to
get romantic or maybe they

don’t even know how anymore
because it’s been so long.

And their partner does
not respond positively

to their advances. 12% of the
men say they lack motivation.

So they’re too tired from work.

They come home. They
see their wife and like, I don’t

even want to right now
whether she wants to or not.

It seems like in these
sexless marriages, both

parties are in the
same situation where the

the men’s like, I don’t
have the motivation.

The women’s like, well,
neither do I. So there we are.

22.6% of women say
that it is mendoxy.

So mendoxy is the japanese
for troublesome or a hassle.

It is annoying. There’s a
couple of ways you can

interpret mendoxy, but
mendoxy is always negative.

There’s no good mendoxy.
It’s troublesome, too

much work, a hassle. So
like homework is mendoxy.

I don’t want to do
it. It’s too much work.

Living your life for a company
is mendoxy. It’s troublesome.

I don’t want to do it.
So they’re saying having

sex with their partner,
22.6% of women are saying

that is mendoxy. It’s
too much of a hassle to

actually have sex with
them. 20.8% say they’re too

tired from work. So that
there is 40% of women,

20% are saying it’s just
I don’t like it anymore.

It’s just too much work
and the other 20% are

saying I’m too tired.
And my argument about

the birth rate in Japan, I many times on an
engineer’s pan have directly linked that to

the work-life balance
culture in Japan because

they don’t have energy to
do things other than work.

They put all their
energy to work.

It means you don’t have
these other relationships.

These other aspects of
your life. A different survey

was done in 2024
and found that 64.

2% of married couples were
sexless. So that’s one survey saying

48.3% about 50%. The
next one is saying 64.2%.

So that is shockingly different.
That is a shocking number

because now we’re getting
65% of people who are

married just don’t have
sex. And that is normally

considered an important
part of relationship.

But to me, there’s the
other side of it where the

cheating culture in
Japan is so almost blatant

because love hotels exist.
Love hotels they claim

are because we
live in family units.

You got young people
who live with their families.

They can’t just have
sex in their apartment.

So they go to a love
hotel with their partner.

But realistically, that would
not sustain an industry.

So it’s got to be
married people having sex

with other married
people for the most part.

It’s that’s a bit shocking.
12.9% of students

who went to universities
abroad are sexless.

Compared to 53.4% of graduates
from Japanese universities are sexless.

So there is an
exposure to foreign

cultures that actually
increases maybe your drive

or understanding or
desire to have sex.

So it seems like having
experiences outside of Japan

broadens your view, which
also includes your view

of sexuality, which is
a very interesting note

and another sort of
commentary on where Japan is

struggling because if
Japan wants to fix anything,

it’s going to have to
fix its birth rate because

otherwise Japan just
isn’t going to exist anymore.

Mayors Gone Wild

(upbeat music)

So this is not episode 300.

And it’s not episode 300 because I know at
some point I’ve either doubled up episodes

or I’ve missed a number I’ve made a
mistake because that’s just who I am.

I have most likely made a
mistake in my numbering system.

At some point I’ve changed
websites, I’ve moved hosts and stuff.

So there’s no way this is accurate.

But very technically, this is
going to be labeled as episode 300.

So whoo, whoo, whoo,
whoo, whoo, whoo.

Something like that
needs to happen right now.

That’s happened.

We can move on because
numbers are arbitrary.

I mean, they just happen
as long as I keep doing this.

The number will continue to go up.

But you are listening to Ninja News Japan.

The world’s number to Japanese
news podcast, which is still a weird thing.

Because again, the labeling
of that is very specific.

It’s like having to get
his book a world record

for something that no
one’s ever tried before.

If you get really specific,
you can be number one.

And that’s important to keep in
mind so that my head doesn’t get big.

We don’t have to worry
about that because I knock

myself down more than
probably anybody else ever will.

But let’s get to the
news in Japan like Ninja.

We seek out the news.

I’ve no 300 episodes and I’m just
trying to make the title make sense.

So news Japan, yes, Ninja News
Japan, we did it ’cause it sounded good.

That was really the only
reason I came to that decision.

Ninja News Japan has
news, has Japan in the title.

Off we go, everyone knows what it’s about.

The Ninja part, well, just
add another syllable basically.

That makes it sound better.

Dut, dut, dut, dut,
dut, dut, dut, dut, dut.

Ninja News Japan.

So Japan as a country is going to update

the English spelling of Japanese words.

So when they use Romangi,
Romangi is the English alphabet,

so ABCD, they have a
system for the spelling.

The problem is the system
they’ve been using up till now,

if you read it phonetically
as an English-speaking

person, you don’t
make the right sounds.

So that is called the Kunre Shiki rules,

and they’re going to be
changing to the Hepburn rules.

I didn’t have a chance to look
into what the Hepburn rules are,

but they are far, far more similar
to the way if I said a Japanese word,

the way you would just naturally
spell it out if you tried to spell it out.

So currently, the prefecture of Aichi.

If you spell it using
the Kunre Shiki rules,

the old rules, you
would spell it A-I-T-I.

Now, A is a native English
speaker would say A-T.

That’s what I would read
if I saw that on paper.

It is going to be shifted to the Hepburn
rules which would spell it as A-I-C-H-I-I-T,

which is more phonetically
similar to what the Japanese say,

and it means if I read it as an
English speaker, off a piece of paper,

I will be more likely
to say the right sounds.

The other one is Shibuya,
so very famous places.

I’ll just give you an example of what
the rule change would actually mean.

Currently, in official documents,
it spelled S-I-B-U-Y-A.

Sibuya, where it should be S-H-I-B-U-Y-A.

Official documents use this old system,
but basically everyone else in the country

uses the Hepburn rules, the
more modern version of the rules.

That sounds better.

It sounds more like what
Japanese people say.

It sounds more like
what foreigners would say.

It’s a very weird system.

It’s almost like one of those things
where someone decided on a set of rules.

This is very Japanese thing to me.

They decided on a set
of rules and because

they set the rules,
they just didn’t change it.

They just kept it going for years.

Even though it’s clearly wrong,
clearly doesn’t work very well.

We’re sticking to the rules ’cause we
made those rules and those are the rules.

And you have to follow
the rules, that’s the rules.

Signage will be updated.

Government documents are gonna be updated.

Everything’s gonna start
using these new rules.

Let’s say you’re an assembly member

and you have a political
party that comes to you

and they want to ban
sexy photo shoots at pools.

Now, these are basically public
pools so everyone gets to use them.

So you can understand
the sexy bathing suits,

which hardly cover anything at all.

The lavacious posing
might get some people up.

Like I didn’t mean it that way.

I meant get people like
get their backup like a cat,

like they’re angry, but
I want to get people up

as sort of a double on
tundra unintentional there.

Please enjoy the
unintended double on tundras,

which I apparently do
a lot more than I think.

I think the way I speak now is
just naturally Dubla on tundra.

So you do it.

I’m gonna ban sexy photo
shoots in public pools

and then from there,
it’s gonna be awesome.

We’re gonna have like a safe, healthy
environment for people to go swimming.

Now I’m gonna go home.

I’m gonna do what I like to do.

And what I like to do is go home

and take sexy pictures of
an acquaintance that I have

and post them to public
bulletin board on the internet.

Bullets and boards, internet bulletin
boards are already sort of an outdated thing

and to me are the remnant of the
creepiest aspects of the internet.

‘Cause when you talk about
bulletin boards, I only think of fortune.

I think of those kind of places.

And that’s where all the worst
bits of the internet sort of coagulate.

I don’t know if that’s the right
word, but you know what I mean?

Like they gather and they sort of simmer

and they kind of fester
together in these places.

bulletin boards, I don’t know
what these pictures look like.

They were sexual in nature.

They may have just been sexy poses,

but it wasn’t his place to
really put them on the internet.

So you’ve basically taken, but this is a
classic, is you’ve taken a moral stance

in your political
life and then in your

personal life, you go and
do the exact opposite.

So you’re like, I’m
against sexy photo shoots,

but I’m very pro sexy
photos going on the internet

so much so that I’m
going to do it myself.

The hypocrisy is
enough that there was an

independent investigation,
what are you gonna do?

You decide to quit.

So this assembly member just quit saying
they’ve lost the public trust 100% yes,

but also you’ve demonstrated
you don’t believe the

things you’re actually
putting for in politics.

And this is an interesting question.

I’m a politician.

I’m supposed to represent the people.

Now my beliefs are obviously why
those people put me into this position,

but also let’s say the majority of people
have an opinion I personally disagree with.

Should I do that thing?

So that’s always an interesting
question because a true

politicians’ opinions would
not be their own opinions.

It would be the opinions of
the people they represent.

So if the people they
represent want something,

you could do it, but
then maybe I am my

personal life, leave a
completely opposite life.

I don’t think that should be as big
a problem if you’re honest about it.

If you’re like, hey, I really
like sexy photos so much

so that I post sexy photos
on internet bulletin boards,

but the people have said they don’t
want sexy photo shoots at public pools.

I’m gonna shut that down.

If you were honest about it and direct,
I think there wouldn’t be a problem,

but the fact is you’re
trying to hide this shadow

life that you have and
pretend you disapprove

of sexy photo shoots when
you really are one step away

from participating in some factor, you’re
promoting at least sexy photo shoots.

Or the alternative, politicians
should just stay off the internet.

(electronic music)

Okay, remember last week
we talked about 99 Guinan.

So Guinan’s the city,
the mayor of the city.

He got in trouble for sexual harassment.

99 cases.

I focused on the fact that he had
physically touched women’s boobs and butts.

Boobs and butts was kind of like the
moving phrase throughout that story.

It actually sparked a
different conversation in Japan,

which is very interesting to me

because in Japan they started talking
about is head pads, sexual harassment.

So any touch that is
unwelcome, I think probably is a

form of sexual harassment
because the touch is unwelcome.

You shouldn’t be touching people.

Don’t touch people.

That’s actually pretty safe.

At work, do not touch people.

And if you do that, you’re
gonna be pretty safe.

So don’t touch anyone.

So the head pad is supposed to be innocent,
but it is certainly demeaning in some way.

This came up the mayor of
Guinan said in our generation.

Now this is something he actually said in
his own defense last time, his generation.

So he’s basically trying
to say that in my time

it was acceptable, you could sexually harass
everybody and everyone was cool with it.

He was told by a person of a similar
age of his generation, not to do it.

And he laughed it off
and then he can go back

to last week’s episode and
catch some of the ASMR

of me going, ha ha ha, hey
buddy, that kind of stuff.

He said in our generation, it was common

to pat the head of children
who did well or works hard.

Now the operative word in that sense,

I believe is children because
this is from an adult to a child.

So if I am an adult patting
another adult’s head,

I am clearly demeaning
them even though I might

be trying to imply
they’ve done a good job.

But I think for him, because
he’s such a gross human being

and no mistake, he is a
very gross human being.

I think for him, the actual thing is
that he’s trying to push boundaries.

He’s trying to say like,
does she react negatively

to me touching her head if she doesn’t
then I’m going to go for something else.

He didn’t interpret the
signals correctly anyways

and always went ahead
and did whatever he wanted.

That’s why he has 99 sexual
harassment cases on him.

But it was interesting, the focus
of the Japanese internet was,

here’s a gray area and
most people were like,

no, basically you shouldn’t
be touching anybody

at work, which I
fundamentally agree with.

I don’t think you should
be touching people at work.

There’s a different mayor.

The mayor, so we went
through a massive trend

on the engineers’ pan
for like an entire year.

It was people, men, 50 years plus doing
just the most insane, gross, sexual things.

And that was their final story of the day.

Seems like the last little while,
the mayors have caught fire.

I’m assuming they’re all
over it, and they’re plus 50s.

But the fact that
they’re all, it’s a mayor

group makes it kind
of interesting in itself.

Different mayor was also
accused of sexual harassment.

He had department and division heads

walk out of the room
where he was about to speak.

So what they’re having,
they’re having like a meeting

of the mayor, staff,
initially three questions

were directed to the deputy mayor.

So everyone’s kind of ignoring him.

The fourth question asked
the mayor about a policy issue.

Seven people got up
and left because they’re

like, we don’t like
what this guy’s done.

He shouldn’t be mayor.

We’re not going to even listen to him.

We’re going to pretend he doesn’t exist.

So you got the cold shoulder from everyone.

The mayor, I like to enjoy this.

This is one of those like desperation moves

where in the moment you’re
like, this is going to work.

This is going to be the golden ticket and
it gets me out of this trouble that I’m in.

And I’m going to play the victim.

The mayor claims he is a
victim of harassment harassment,

which is a new one I
had never heard before.

So I love new phrases being coined.

Harassment harassment is brand new to me.

I don’t think it’s a thing.

So he’s basically saying
because I have been accused

of sexual harassment or
harassment or power harassment

or any kind of harassment
that now people seem

to think it’s acceptable to harass
me back and treat me poorly.

So the underlying message
he’s actually saying is like,

even if I have committed harassment,
you should still treat me nicely.

You should still be nice to me.

Because if you’re saying
it’s not nice to harass

people, then you should
not harass me back.

So he’s actually saying this is a
very much cake and eat it to situation.

I should be able to harass people
but people should still be nice to me.

And the fact that people
are not being nice to me

because I harass people is unacceptable,
which is not a load of bullshit.

It’s a very politics
oriented way of thinking,

but I’m betting he thought
in the moment he’s like,

ah, if I claim to be harassed by the people
who accused me of harassing, therefore,

those two things, they’re
negatives, they cancel each other out.

There is no more harassment.

He’s claiming that harassment harassment
is subordinates harassing their supervisors

because they now consider it acceptable,
which again, this is the load of bullshit

coming out of a politician’s
mouth, not a big surprise.

Student of an elementary school,
this is a massive story this week.

Because the numbers are so big,
one it actually gets to the end of this.

Student of an elementary
school, so we’re talking little kids.

He was scammed out of 930,000 yen,
so almost a million yen by a classmate

who sold him medals and bank notes, saying
they would increase in value over time.

So when you go to a lot of tourist places
in Japan, you can have a little medal made.

Usually 500 yen, it’ll
stamp it and spit it out,

and the kid had one of those.

He’s like, I’ll sell you this gold coin,
which will increase in value over time,

and the kid agreed to it.

He said I have a bank note made of plastic.

It also will increase in value over time.

It was a Canadian, I think, $10 note.

And he was selling this
to these kids the coin

he sold, which cost
500 yen for 360,000 yen.

And there were eight
transactions over time in the school

where the kid was buying
stuff from these classmates.

The classmates were essentially
bullying him at first for being poor.

And he said I have a million yen

from what he’s done has saved up his new
year’s money for years and years and years.

He accumulated a million yen.

The mistake there is he had
access to it so that he could do this.

He’d given 900,000 yen away.

He went to his dad, he said,
you know, it must have broken.

He went to his dad, and he
said, I’ve given all my classmates,

all this money, I think
they’re taking advantage of me,

I don’t think this stuff is worth anything.

The father calls to the police,
the police contact the parents.

He’s gotten apologies and 250,000 yen back,

but 250,000 yen is
essentially just a quarter of the

money he’s lost that
those other kids still have.

I, as a parent, have no idea
what I’ve done in this situation.

Like, I certainly would have
given all the kids money back.

No question.

It’s just how do you punish
your kids for scamming other kids?

Like, it’s one of those
things like bullying and stuff.

When it happens, it’s
almost like it’s inconceivable

that it happened.

That’s the weird part to me.

But yeah, you gotta be careful.

Because kids, I guess
if they learn to scam,

what happened to me, I
put myself in this situation.

I was in grade six or
seven in this other kid.

His name was Kirk.

He said to me that he
could sell me a butterfly knife.

Butterflies knives are illegal in Canada.

But he said he could get me one if
I gave him, I think it was five or $10.

So that was like a big chunk
of change for a kid in grade six.

But I really wanted a butterfly.

It’s so lucky I didn’t get this.

‘Cause there are only two results
of me having a butterfly knife.

It would have been me
practicing and cutting

off a finger or me
actually stabbing someone

because I lost my temper
because I was such a wild child.

So he took the $10 and he said,

I’ll give it to you next week
and then the next week went by

and then another week went
by and I went, hey Kirk, you

know, you took money from
me to give me a butterfly knife.

You better give me my money
back or the butterfly knife.

And he was just looking at
me like, what are you gonna do?

I can’t go to my parents or the teachers

and tell them that I attempted to buy
an illegal weapon and give them money.

So I had to just suck up that loss.

And I still to this day,
how many years later?

It looked like 40 years later,
still remember the frustration

and pain and the sense of
loss that I’d gotten myself into.

There’s nothing I could do about it.

So I mean, kudos to Kirk for getting me
in that situation and taking me for that.

But you know, also I didn’t
fall for that scam twice.

But yeah, man, I still
want that butterfly knife.

Guillain is an area of
what’s famous for geisha.

And people have like a image
of geisha from anime and movies

and stuff because in those
they make them very sexual.

Geisha traditionally are entertainers.

They’ll tell stories, they
will play musical instruments,

they’ll perform for you, they’ll do dances.

It’s kind of, it’s just entertainment.

These sex stuff came from
the guys wanting to have sex

with this person who was
a very engaging personality.

And they’re very charming,
it’s kind of their job.

So there’s, it’s sort
of like a dual play here

where they’re not prostitutes,
but if you can get into

a right situation, maybe
they’ll have sex with you

and then that involves you
spending a lot of time with them.

You spend a lot of time with them.

That’s going to cost a lot of money.

Is this prostitution, whatever.

You can go into that for a long time.

We’re not going to get
into that too deeply today.

But the average geisha walking
around Kyoto is not a prostitute.

Let’s just put that out there right now.

They are doing a job and
that job is to learn and study

different arts and then perform
those arts on behalf of customers.

Tourists seem to think
that they’re like paid

employees of the city
that can basically be abused.

So they have people will just grab
them and start taking pictures with them.

They don’t ask if it’s
okay to take pictures first.

I mean, these are private individuals.

You shouldn’t be just
taking pictures of them.

They don’t ask, they just run
up and take a picture together.

Sometimes they’ll grab them and pull them
into a position, which is assault in Japan.

So you can’t do that.

The geisha are complaining.

The city is like, we don’t know what to do.

There’s these small alleys.

And that’s where the geisha work in.

They come out of there
and people are going in there

and it puts them in this
very uncomfortable situation.

So they’re actually going to ban tourists

from being able to go
down into those little alleys

where the geisha study
and work and learn and stuff.

Is this going to happen from April?

And the city representative
said, we don’t want to do this,

but we are desperate.

So there’ve been some complaints.

One of the geisha said, like, she
was grabbed while walking down

the street and actually tore
her hormonal commandos.

Real ones are super expensive.

They’re like literally millions
of yen to buy a commando.

Lately, Japan’s been very
concerned about overtourism

and they’ve been putting
on sort of restrictions.

Since COVID restrictions were lifted,

Japan is now putting other
restrictions on tourism.

So now I think you have to pay 2,000 yen

if you want to climb up Mount
Fuji because too many people

were climbing up and they
weren’t taking care of their garbage.

So like, we have to pay people
to literally pick up garbage.

Well, we’re not going to absorb that cost.

The tourists can absorb that cost.

They can pay to go up the mountain.

These, again, private
individual citizens in

Japan walking around
the city don’t feel safe

because foreign people feel like perfectly
comfortable walking up and grabbing them.

That can’t happen anymore.

The city’s actually going to put,

they haven’t explained like what
the punishment is going to be.

They’re going to put up signs saying like,

this is tourists are not
allowed to walk down here,

but how do you enforce
that in a free society?

It’s actually the problem.

There might be fines, something like that.

But it will give at least
the gaitia some recourse

because they say, you’re
not supposed to be here.

I can now call the police
and have you removed.

Maybe that kind of thing.

But it’s a little sad because this is just

means like people are coming
to Japan and not behaving well.

We’ve done a lot of stories
on people not behaving well.

So they should do one where
they bend the mares of cities

because those guys apparently
are the grossest people in Japan.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

99 problems and I am all of them

(upbeat music)

  • It needs to use Japan.

We love our surveys, we love our stats.

And sometimes it makes me wonder like,

how do you come up with
an idea for your survey?

Like, where’s your brain at?

Because they did a survey on whose
poop smell are you worried about more?

So are you more worried about when you go
into the toilet and you make a poop smell?

You’re worried about
that being very stinky?

Or are you more worried about other people’s
poop smell maybe lingering in the toilet

when you go in after them or maybe even,
you know, it’s a side-by-side situation?

54.8% of people in Japan.

This is a 400% survey, 50% men, 50% women.

54.8% were concerned about their own smell

and 20 to 40 year-old
men were sort of the most,

I don’t know what
you would say, serious,

concerned, I concerned
about their own smell.

They answered that they were
always concerned with their own smell.

71.8% of people were bothered
by the smell when entering a toilet.

Now, I agree, bothered by the smell,

but also it’s in necessities,
like people are in their poop.

So if a place is gonna smell, I’ve
always had this thing about fart.

So you’re in a public toilet.

If you’re a man, you’re
in a urinal, let’s say,

and part of the process is
sometimes you have to fart.

And farts are saunarous, they are, and
they announce their presence sometimes.

So is it socially acceptable to fart loudly

in a public toilet when
someone else is there?

Because I see, okay, my feeling is,

it would be acceptable to
fart and everyone laughs.

But I’ve noticed that
when I’m in a public toilet

and someone else is in the public
toilet with me, I don’t want to fart.

I don’t want to announce to the world

that I have bodily functions.

And this is kind of what
the survey is looking into.

It’s like, these are things we
have to do, you have to poop.

I just wanna get that message out there,
you have to poop, you have no choice.

59.3% said they held the poop as long as
possible, they tried not to poop in public.

54% of women were not
comfortable pooping at all

in public if possible.

So they would try to never poop in public.

38.1% of men don’t wanna sit on
the toilet seat while they’re out.

Now my thought when I saw this survey was
like, how would you come to the conclusion?

Or how would you have the
idea to conduct this survey?

I wouldn’t be like, of
all the things we need

to survey in the world, of
all the ideas and thoughts

that exist in the world.

Which one do we wanna explore the most?

We wanna explore, are you
concerned about your poop smell?

Are you concerned about pooping?

How does poop, again, it’s a necessity.

It’s a thing, maybe this is
something we should talk about more.

But it turns out that this
is a pharmaceutical company

and they produce a pill and the pill
will reduce the smell of your poop.

Now I wouldn’t
pay money for that.

But if you are one of the 54.

8% of people who are always
concerned with the smell of your poop.

And I’m assuming in
public, ’cause I get at home,

I would turn the fan on
and not really think about it.

You could buy this product.

So it was really just like a
survey to get open the door

towards a conversation
towards a sales pitch.

Which is not disingenuous,
but it kind of puts a little bit

like, “Ah, of course,
on it at the end.

” This is a first time event.

So that’s why it’s exciting.

The actual crime and stuff
is not the particular injury.

There’s an interesting aspect to it.

Well, let’s get into the story.

China gives three people
suspended prison sentences

for one, running what is considered to be
the largest Japanese anime piracy website.

It was accessed 300
million times over two years.

We’ve shut down last year.

There’s a group called Koda.

And they basically
gathered all the information.

They brought it to the Chinese government.

They said, “These are the
people that’s prosecuted them.

” And the Chinese
government did.

There’s a lot of back and forth sort
of hate between China and Japan.

And so these stories
where they work together,

I find that kind of
inspiring ’cause it means

that yes, there is an
ability to move forward.

And then there is a lot of ripping on China

’cause, you know,
copyright law is privacy law.

These things don’t exist in China
is sort of a general stereotype.

But this shows that they will
take copyright laws seriously.

They will do things essentially
if you make it easy for them.

The Koda group brought all the
information to the Chinese prosecutors.

I don’t know who exactly.

The interesting part to
me was the punishment

was suspended sentences.

So that means there’s essentially
on probation for X amount of years.

China, in my mind, when it prosecutes,
when it finds you guilty of a crime,

is not a kind gentle
country to be prosecuted in.

Like the punishments are harsh.

So when I heard suspended
sentence, I was like,

Ha, ’cause suspended
sentence really means like,

okay, you’re on probation
for X money years.

If you don’t get in trouble for those
X money years, nothing happens.

The other point was, 37 million
yen was made in advertising

from the website.

No penalties were brought to them.

They don’t have to pay any
money back to the copyright holders.

They had to shut down the website.

They essentially are in a
position where if they don’t get

into trouble, they get to
just keep the 37 million yen.

And I was like, ah, you
know, for this to really be an

effective punishment, you gotta
take that money away from them.

So it was three people to
cite on or into other people.

They were all arrested,
they were all found guilty.

And then nothing happened.

So that sort of put me on the other side.

I was like, hey, this is great.

China’s taking Japanese copyright seriously

and stopping this piracy site.

But then suddenly it’s
like, but also they’re not.

So I was a little torn.

I don’t know where I land on that.

But it is the first time this
prosecution has actually happened.

It’s the first time code has been involved.

It’s the first time these.

Yeah, I don’t know how I feel at all.

It sounds good.

And then it seems like they did nothing.

It sounds like they
like almost lip service.

And I guess that is never
going to be satisfying.

There was a teacher
at a junior high school.

And if you know anything about
kids, especially to a certain age,

kids in junior high school, they’re
still have that youthful meanness

that little kids have that
almost sometimes they’re mean.

They don’t even intend to be.

Like they’ll point out your
physical flaws or something.

Not really intending to
hurt your feelings, but then it

really strikes home because
it really hurts your feelings.

Junior high school kids
have now gotten a certain

verbal acuity that
those little kids don’t.

So they can like fine tune the
pain they cause to other people.

I would say junior high
school is pretty hardcore.

And anywhere, I’m not talking about Japan.

I’m talking about anywhere.

And we know that kids
can be straight up mean.

Several students had been
making fun of a teacher,

mainly of his body, his physical self,

by referring to him by an
anime character’s name.

They don’t say which anime character because
that would actually increase the insult.

I should this guy’s picture ever
show up on TV or something.

So let’s just as an example say Totoro.

So that would imply that
he was large, roundish, maybe

had that kind of face, or
they called him one punch man

because he’d been losing his hair.

They made it very clear
in all the stories I read.

There were multiple stories

that this was about
his sort of physicality.

So it was about a shape.

So this might be more similar
to when people call Gigi Pang,

Winnie the Pooh.

And he doesn’t like it.

So he tries to shut that down.

It gets to him.

And that’s the problem.

Like that’s actually the problem.

If you’re gonna be a junior high school
teacher, you can’t let this stuff get to you.

So let’s give you an example.

A real life example from my own experience.

I was teaching about 12,
13 year old girls in this class.

It was like my second year in Japan.

And I had at that point
started to lose my hair.

I had what you would might
call a severe widow’s peak.

Let’s just give you a
sense of the physicality

for if you’re listening
to the audio version.

There’s a reason I wear hats all the time.

It’s ’cause I’m not proud of my hair.

So this grow walks up to the board.

It just goes, you are M.

I was like, I don’t know what that means.

And being a teacher, I was like, I
wanna understand what you’re saying.

I care about what you’re saying.

What you’re saying means something to me.

I wanna like foster the
relationship between the two of us.

So she goes up to the
whiteboard and she puts an M

on the whiteboard and she goes, you are M.

I’m like, I still don’t understand.

And then she draws a little eye underneath

under each widow’s peak
and a nose and a mouth.

She says, you are M.

Now, she thought ’cause
she was being a really mean,

13 year old girl that
she was gonna tear away

’cause like men are obviously very
self-conscious about losing their hair.

This is a very hurtful thing.

I’m doing, I’m gonna break him.

I started laughing, I
started laughing so hard

because I just came
out of left field for me.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

I was like, that was a wicked insult.

Good job young lady.

And that actually kind of broke her.

She didn’t, ’cause she didn’t
get the reaction she wanted.

I actually was like
really impressed

by the work she put into
it that she was kind of like

deflated, didn’t show
up to class very much.

After that, if I’m being honest.

So these students were referring to
this teacher by an anime character name.

So I’m gonna go with Totoro,
even though I don’t know

that’s the name, but it
just, it gives you sense,

like, hey, they’re going, hey,
Totoro Sensei, Totoro Sensei.

Ha ha ha, Totoro Sensei.

And then two years,
dudes like, had enough.

She grabs the student by the waist
and then throws him to the ground.

Now, there have been multiple
stories with varying amounts of details.

Another story I read said, grabbed
the kid by the shirt, shoved him

and punched him in the torso and head.

Now, the kid had some bruising.

And they say it took a week to heal.

He didn’t, like he wasn’t
like hospitalized or anything.

But this is an adult Totoro Sensei’s
man beating up a high school kid.

And it turns out May 2023,
he put his student in a headlock.

Now, one story said us student.

Another story I read said the same student.

So he’d actually, this is the second time,
potentially he’s attacked this student.

He apologized, he
says, look, I just lost it.

And I beat up a little kid.

And he got a one ton, no, no.

And he got a one-tenth
pay cut for three months.

I, again, this is another story, I’m torn.

You have a teacher
whose, the kid’s words got

to him so much he
physically assaulted a kid.

I feel sympathy on both sides.

I feel sympathy for the teacher
because he had to put up with this

and obviously drove
him to what is essentially

a breaking point.

But the reality is he attacked a kid.

Personally, I think when you grab a kid

and throw him through a
ground, you lose your job.

I’ve done teaching for
years and years and years.

And as per example, my
story, I’ve dealt with these kids.

You can’t let it get to you.

You have to look at it as, wow, did
the kid do a good job insulting you?

Did they do a good job?

Have they really done some creativity?

Have they created?

Have they learned how to
use their words appropriately?

This might be what you need to foster.

Jade is just put in the chat.

Kids need to learn the fuck around
and find out method sometimes.

And I agree with that
if you’re not a teacher.

So if this exact same
event had happened with

neighbors, I wouldn’t be
as upset with the neighbor.

So like they were calling
the neighbor torto, torto,

torto, torto, torto, torto,
and then the neighbor

just grabs a kid and throws him to the
ground and be like, pff, kid deserved it.

Don’t mess with adults.

But because it’s a
teacher and a teaching role.

But yeah, don’t assault your students, yes.

You are essentially
putting yourself in a position

where you’re going to be in close
contact with these kids every day.

They’re going to try
to get under your skin.

That’s the bit you, as a
teacher should know this.

And if you know they’re going to try to
get under skin, you can’t let them do it.

Because that’s what real success is,

is they come at you
again and again and again.

Like waves off of, okay, I’m not.

It’s like the thing there’s
an erosion metaphor

in there if I do that
waves on a cliff.

It doesn’t work out because
the waves always win.

Essentially, this guy probably doesn’t
have the temperament to be a teacher.

If calling you torto, torto,
torto, over and over again

is going to get you to the
point where you actually

assault children, you
shouldn’t be a teacher.

Yes, if it’s a different
situation, rec that child.

If I was in a different situation
and I was like out in a park

and some kids started harassing
me and like I, I could see it happening.

But the thing is, it did
take this man years to

break, but he did break
and that’s the problem.

So I honestly don’t believe
you should be a teacher anymore.

(upbeat music)

Anyo’s chairman, we
did a story on the Anyo’s,

there’s chairman, CEO and president.

They have all three and
like just make sure they’re

going like, isn’t that
all this the same job?

Is the CEO not the
president, is the president,

not the chairman, are these not?

Or is it just like dudes
circle chirken each other

at the C suite of a company?

Anyo’s is an oil company
and the last tirade I went on

about Anyo’s is how
gross oil companies are.

And how gross men are,
especially old executives.

Anyo’s decides to come
through and it’s just like,

let’s just prove this
again and again and again.

The Anyo’s chairman was
fired over sexual harassment.

Last December, the president
was fired for sexual harassment.

And in 2022, the CEO was fired.

Oh, forced to step down
for sexual harassment.

My company has like five presidents.

company has like five presidents.

I understand president of
something, like president of technology.

So the CEO of technology or not CEO,
because that’s a chief executive officer.

But the CTO, the chief technology officer.

Oh, sicky horror.

The position joke was good then.

I didn’t even do that on
purpose from being honest.

There was a joke I did an
unintentional joke a couple weeks ago.

But someone actually came up and
was like, that joke was really good.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

But I just took the compliment.

I think it’s because now I’m just
talking about these things in this way.

The jokes are built
in unintentionally.

But I haven’t think I
want to script them out.

But my actual thing last time
was oil executives are gross people.

And they get away with raping the earth.

And why would this not translate into them?

It’s actually harassing people
around them and thinking it’s fine.

Anyos needs to hire a non-pervert.

And that I would turn the company around.

And they’re not going to
do it because it’s the people

hiring these guys, putting
these guys into the position.

It’s other guys like that,
putting them into the position.

That said, just wait for the next story.

Okay, the mayor of
Guinin is a city in Gifu.

And he has announced his resignation.

There was an accusation
made and the accusation was

that he was sexually harassing staff.

And an independent inquiry happened.

And the mayor, the results
came out in the mayor quit.

They found 99 instances of the
mayor sexually harassing staff.

So that’s 99 different people,
not 99 sexual harassment cases.

Because I could harass someone 99 times.

And it would be the same person.

So they would technically be one case.

He did it like napalm, carpet bombing,
the entire office, city hall, whatever.

Because he didn’t limit it to staff.

He actually sexually
harassed counselors and

other people in fairly
important positions.

And so the inquiry
recommended the mayor quit.

He did.

The 99 instances of the
mayor included touching

boobs and butts, which
could be indecent assault.

So it’s not just sexual harassment.

He flashed the whole office.

I understand.

No, it was physical.

He’s touching people.

He’s he’s he’s doing little
squeezes every now and then.

It’s what I do to Dave all
the time, but Dave likes it.

I just opened myself up to
some big problems right there.

So they did a survey of the staff
mail in female and 80% of the staff

reported being either
sexually harassed or bullied

so power harassment
by the mayor of Guinin.

So then of course he quits and then
he has to apologize because it’s Japan.

You always have to apologize.

I love this dude’s apology because
you can tell he’s not sorry, you know.

He said in his apology,
there are parts where I am not

convinced of the grounds for
the sexual harassment claims.

Like all the claims seem to
come from like just women.

I don’t know what this means.

So the funny part to me is by
saying that he’s not convinced of the

grounds for the sexual harassment claims is
he’s saying that all 99 claims are false.

Is he saying that some
are false and some are true?

Because he’s apologizing, but then
also saying, but I don’t really believe

that this was sexual harassment that
I don’t really think I did anything wrong.

So I’m quitting because you
guys are all like pussy bitches.

But you know, this is further reinforced.

He had been chided by the deputy mayor.

So the deputy mayor comes to go, hey,
mayor, maybe stop touching the boobies

and butts of all the staff, like
maybe maybe don’t do that.

And he’s when his response
was, we are of the same generation.

So I laughed it off.

So the deputy mayor is like, hey, mayor,
maybe don’t touch the staff’s boobies.

And he’s like, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get what you really saying.

Yeah.

And then he’s probably like, hey,
don’t say sexual things to the staff.

Don’t touch their butts.

And he’s like, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They might even get said like, hey,
maybe don’t, but try to bully the staff.

But they like it.

Okay.

This is an interesting thing.

Ignat’s just put into the chat,
but they like it from his perspective.

I’ve always found this very interesting.

I bet if you did a lie detector
test with this man and said,

did the staff appreciate your advances?

He would say, yes, and
it would come out as true.

I know lie detector tests are not
actually reliable, but yeah, I’m saying

conceptually that he
believes what he’s saying.

And he believes what he’s doing.

And there’s no way you
can convince them otherwise.

He had someone again
of the same generation.

So a guy similar age similar status saying
to him, Hey, what you’re doing is too much.

And he’s just like, yeah, buddy.

Yeah, we’re doing it.

That’s not how Japanese
men behave, but that is now my

mental interpretation of the
conversation is, uh, hey, Kevin.

Kevin is the mayor of Guinea. Hey, Kevin.

Maybe you could ease back on the,
the, what I see is sexual harassment.

And then Kevin here’s where
I goes, yeah, that’s my ASMR.

I’m just going to cut all those like
fake laughing clips and put them together.

Make that’s my new ASMR podcast.

It’s just the mayor of Guinea and laughing.

Um, a new podcast coming to the chunk
of view test pod network of podcasts soon.

[MUSIC]

Big Tuna

(upbeat music)

Okay, in chunk of beef
chest, we have beef nation.

That’s all the people who
like chunk of beef chest.

An individual would be a chunk.

And I was like, oh, how do I
refer to a fan of Ninja News Japan?

And I was like, it’s
actually really obvious.

It’s a ninja.

A news ninja? I don’t know.

I think just Ninja is
not descriptive enough.

It’s not clear that you’re talking
about a fan of a certain thing.

I’m attempting to do
this so that I can appeal

to you directly because
my eye is still messed up.

And I’m finding it very
difficult to look at screens

and read and podcasting is
very much using the computer,

which is primarily a large screen and
reading my notes already a problem.

As you’ve seen in the
last 190 some episodes

that I do not take the time
to write properly, clearly,

cleanly, so that I can
read my own handwriting.

We’ve had that issue multiple times.

Fuck, I’m not happy about this at all.

(upbeat music)

It’s over at Seamik B, the podcast.

We got chunk of beef chest, beef nation.

And a fan of that is called a chunk.

And I was like, oh, we need a name for
someone who’s a fan of Ninja News Japan.

The honestly much
bigger of the two podcasts.

And I was like, well, I
mean, you could just say

a ninja, but it’s actually
not very descriptive.

And it’s just the way I
could address the audience

directly to make appeals
like I’m about to today,

’cause today’s episode very
likely is going to have some issues

because I still am
functionally blind in one eye.

So not only do I make poor notes,

it’s hard for me to look at
screens for an extended period

and since I can’t see very well
my notes that are already messy,

I mean, we’ve hit that issue multiple times
where I can’t read my own handwriting.

I’m so dedicated to all the
little news ninjas out there

that I was gonna skip this
week and not put out an

episode and I was like,
no, no, I’m gonna do it.

It might be shorter and it might be
shit, but they’re used to that by now.

That might be the only
way I can start this is

it’s pre-excusing a lower-quality problem
now is that if this is a good episode.

So it’s October, 2023 and
you’re out in Yokohama,

you’re drinking and you do
what everyone does when they

go out drinking, you’re like,
I’m gonna livestream this.

‘Cause everyone wants to see
my drunk ass out in the world,

real life IRL streaming.

Never actually been a
big fan of IRL streaming,

probably just ’cause I’ve
never tried it, never done it.

I don’t think I do anything
interesting enough to stream live,

but he fell asleep on the train.

So this guy’s live streaming
himself, he falls asleep on the train.

Then a gentleman sees an opportunity
to take advantage of the situation.

So he does what he does
and he steals the man’s

wallet and phone
while it is still streaming.

They then leap into a car
where there are two other people,

those two other people accomplices.

I did learn some
interesting Japanese today.

They start having a conversation,

the whole conversation is
being broadcast live on stream.

I was immediately thinking like, there’s
two people talking, do I do voices?

I hadn’t decided yet.

Thief, hello, good work.

I just got a tuna with
a set of mobile phones.

Tuna is slang for
stealing from drunk people,

I guess ’cause they’re
just flopped out on

the, on the bench or
on the seat of the train.

So if they’re passed
out drunk, thieves refer

to them as two in us,
which I learned that.

I was really happy to learn that.

So if I want to pretend to be a thief,

I now can use a cup a
little bit like, you know,

jargon that’s applicable
to the industry I’ve chosen.

The theft is a bank debit card.

And I heard that if it’s
attached to a phone,

you can figure out the pin.

This is a very thief way of thinking,

like I heard that if you have
A and B, you can figure it out.

Other people may be us not so much
because we’re having the conversation

if we knew how to do it,
we’d already be doing it.

So later, they meet at a hotel
and the live stream is continuing

and they discuss the
contents of the wallet.

And so the accomplice says,
well, there are a lot of money.

And he says, there’s hardly any money.

But if I tried buying, but I tried buying,

of course, IQOS is, I’m pretty sure that’s
doing a vaping gesture on the stream.

I know, I know if you
took away the sound,

it would have looked like something else,

but that’s because it’s
your dirty mind, not my.

I, of course, is I believe a
tobacco product or a vape.

They’re a little like charger
things that you can buy

at a convenience store, I don’t smoke.

I know they’re for smoking.

I don’t smoke, so I don’t actually
know what they are specifically.

But I tried buying an
IQOS, IQOS, IQOS, IQOS,

IQOS at a convenience store
with this cash card and it worked.

And then they picked up the smartphone.

This lot, it says something
about making a report.

And then the live stream abruptly ended.

So I hope you enjoy my
first foray into voice acting.

That was thief number one and accomplice.

Who is a couple steps away from goofy.

But here’s the problem.

At least in this case, unlike
many of the other cases

we’ve talked about in the last few weeks,
the live streaming, it was unintentional.

They didn’t intentionally broadcast
their crimes on the internet.

Whereas actually 90% of the
crimes we’ve been talking about

lately have actually
been purposely broadcast

to try to get internet fame
and led to arrests or fines

or any of the number of other things.

So these guys are just average criminals.

They didn’t know it was streaming.

The phone was on.

I mean, what are you going to do?

You just, that’s the situation.

So they were arrested.

I am interested
in, am I? I’m not.

I mean, they were arrested.

They deserve it.

That’s pretty much it right there.

See, I’m on the way here.

Wrong transition.

That is because I can’t
see that far away right now.

Since you’re talking about
streaming, there was a teacher who

thought, you know what, I,
you know, I teach full time.

It’s my full time job, but I
have a dream, a big dream.

I actually kind of relate to this.

I have a big dream.

I want to be a streamer and
I want to quit my teaching job

in just a stream full
time and do wacky antics.

I don’t know.

He was streaming while he was working.

So he was in the teacher staff room.

He would turn on a stream
and then stream himself working.

I assume just doing like admin
work, which does not seem

like a very interesting
stream to me, but I fall into this

old category where I want to see people
do stuff or talk about interesting things.

And then I see what gets popular.

People sleeping.

People eating massive amounts of food.

Like I found that
fascinating for a day or two.

But then after that, I
was like, I don’t really need

to see people just eating
massive amount of food.

I don’t, I don’t see the
appeal in it more than once.

The TikTok NPC thing,
did not get it at all.

Like I understood it as an
oddity, something I would see once.

I couldn’t see myself watching
it for an extended period.

Watching a teacher in a staff room
do his work seems really boring to me.

The problem is the live stream
was also picking up ongoing

conversations around
the teacher, which those

people hadn’t agreed
to have this on stream.

So there’s some privacy issues there.

He also was streaming the athletic field.

Now, they’re not saying if
anyone was on it, but that could

be super creepy because it
could be like, oh, I’m going to

stream the underage people
running around the field.

Maybe my intent is not
sexual, but then the people

who look at that stuff
might turn it sexual.

And that’s always the problem.

Like you might intend
it in an innocent way.

Here’s an interesting
slice of life day in a

Japanese high school
or junior high school.

I actually didn’t say it probably
didn’t one of the articles.

So I didn’t write it down.

Anyways, this is a school.

These are kids.

They should not be filmed
without their permission.

You shouldn’t be filming kids
and throwing it up on the internet.

The reason he was
streaming at the school was to

increase his streaming time
to gain some service perks.

So I stream on Twitch and you
get so many hours and then they’ll

let you keep your vod
longer or something like that.

Basically, if you show
a commitment to the

platform, the platform
will give you certain perks.

This is just people who stream
ones or twice and then just give up.

Don’t, you know, you
don’t give any sort of

storage space to them
for any length of time.

I get it.

The reason I related to this is
because I also tend to stream

in my free time.

But I never thought like would anyone
want to watch me at my desk working?

I don’t see that.

This is maybe my biggest
problem like Instagram.

I don’t look at something and
think I should take a picture of

that and post it on Instagram.

So my Instagram is basically empty.

I don’t look at a lot of things
in real life and go, this would be

of interest to other people
when, of course, that is often the

content that is super
interesting to other people.

So I need guidance.

So if you have something you would
like to see in Japan, let me know.

I probably will forget to do it
because that’s how I live my life.

What happened to this teacher
was students found live streams

reported to the school.

He received a 10% pay cut.

So he didn’t lose his job.

And I guess I think that’s pretty fair.

I don’t, it doesn’t sound like he was
doing anything malicious or creepier weird.

He wanted to boost his
amount of time streamed.

And then just was like,
well, I’ll have to take

it with me to the
places and I go the place.

I go all day, every day is work.

So I’ll have to stream from work.

It was pretty selfish.

But it didn’t seem like he
was intending to hurt anyone.

So I think I think a 10%
pay cut is pretty fair.

Still so close to being super creepy.

We have talked about part time terrorism.

I learned that the phrase a few
weeks ago, because we talked about

food terrorism for a long
time, that there’s also part time

terrorism as kids at part time
jobs last week was the kid who

picked his nose and
wiped it in the pizza dough.

And then the domino swap team
came down on that store, like the

rage of Odin turns out
there’s insurance for that.

This is another whole other
aspect of the world that I’m

interested in, things
you can get insurance for.

I’m very interested in contracts
and contract negotiations,

primarily famous people who
have like interest in contracts or

things in their contracts that a
normal human being like me would

not have or even consider
insurance, things you can ensure is

another subject that I find
vaguely interesting, because you

can ensure that, oh, that’s
weird, I immediately reminds me of

like things you can get blessed in Japan.

So like if you build a house,
you can have a priest come

to bless your house, that
seems pretty obvious, you

can take things to the
temple and get them blessed.

So I had a child took the child
to the temple and they wave

the leaf over his head.

Great.

You know, it’s just for
me, not being religious.

It was a fun, interesting
cultural experience.

Then the guy, the priest, not
just the guy, the priest goes

and he starts wiggling
the leaves over a van.

And I’m like, what is he doing?

He’s blessing the van.

Oh, he’s blessing the van, what are
you just asking him to bless anything?

They’re like, I mean, basically,
yeah, you pay the, the, the

temple money, the priest is
going to bless whatever you want.

And my first thought was like,
could I get my PlayStation blessed?

Like have him wiggle the,
the, the, the leaves over the

PlayStation and be like headshot,
headshot, headshot, something like that.

And basically it turns out if I gave
them the money, they would bless it.

So now we could run
a scientific experiment.

We could have two play stations.

One that has been blessed
and one that has not an alternate.

I think a fairest would be week to week.

So one week you play on the
blessed PlayStation, the second

week you play on the cursed
place, PlayStation, PlayStation,

and back and forth.

And then track the statistics
of each one and see if your

performance improves
on the blessed PlayStation.

Very interesting concept I just
had, uh, should I have enough money

to a pay for a blessing
and a second PlayStation.

And I have enough time to
make that worthwhile study.

I will do it.

Uh, you can send your
contributions to science.

If you want, please
don’t send money for that.

Cause if you sent me
enough money to buy a second

PlayStation, I wouldn’t
buy a second PlayStation.

I buy something else.

And then I would feel
like I’m ripping you off.

And the last thing I want, the
ninja news is, do you need a name?

I need a name for, for people
who watch nineties news Japan.

The little ninjas, little
ninjas was a video game.

I really enjoyed it was a kid’s game.

And once you’d played it
and you knew everything you’d

finished in like six hours,
I played a multiple time.

It was super fun.

You played as a very
small ninja, ergo the title.

Anyways, talking about
insurance, the part time.

Terrorism that goes on.

So these kids, they get bored
at their convenience store job.

It’s two o’clock in the morning.

They’re making dominoes pizza dough.

They get bored.

They start doing dumb teenage stuff.

I absolutely would have
fallen into this category.

I worked in dog food and university.

I can tell you that I’ve probably
eaten every type of dog food that was

available in just to
see what it tasted like.

I did not do anything
particularly bad, but

it’s hard to mess with
dog food in a fun way.

And then back when I
was at that age, we weren’t

videoing everything
and streaming it online.

And so there was far less
incentive for me to do stuff.

The worst thing I would do is probably
like lay out and make a bed of 40 kilogram

dog food things and
just lie down for a bit.

But I was young.

So I had a lot of energy.

So I actually spent a lot of time reading.

It was a great job.

I got to honestly say selling dog
food because customer service sucks.

Selling dog food.

I mean, basically people
bring their dogs into the store.

Give the dog a cookie.

The dogs really happy.

The owners that really
happy their dog is happy.

Their way more chill to deal with,
it was very rare to have a high,

strong, worked up dog food
owner dog food, a dog owner

come in and buy dog food
and like give you a hard time.

So that’s something just in my mind.

I was like, yeah, you know, of the
customer service jobs is probably best.

So it didn’t mean we had zero problems,
but I would say compared to like any

other industry customer service way,
way fewer because you could just pay off

the dog and the owner was happy.

And you’re, I mean, again, you’re getting a
ton of this stuff for free from the companies.

They want you to
promote their cookie.

So you’re getting out
that cookie that week.

So what you can get insured.

So you have a part time employee,
they mess around on the job.

You can have the insurance
that will cover the reputate.

Oh, it’s called reputation
expense insurance.

And it was started in April 2019.

So this has been going
on for like five years now.

It covers the cost of crisis
management consulting.

So they actually offer a secondary
service where they help you try to figure

out how to fix the issue.

So there was the story I remember the most.

I don’t know why and it was the kid.

It was in the summertime.

He opened up the thing that
has all the ice cream he got in.

And then I assume another his friend of
the other employee closed it and took a

picture of it as he was like
comfortably resting in the ice cream thing.

And then the one from
last week where the kid

picked his nose and
put it in the pizza dough.

How do you fix that?

It covers the cost of lawyers because you’re
going to have to like sue the family or

sue the kid or have lawyers to protect
yourself and have everyone’s got a lawyer up

the removal of online postings.

And I actually realize like
that’s going to be the hard part

because once these things
go viral, they go like spread out.

You need like a team
sending out DCMA things,

uh, just trying to like
quell it as hard as they can.

So that’s going to be a
whole team working on that.

And then help in the apology
press conference because of

course in Japan, even when
you were technically the victim.

So I like again, no big love for
companies that an engineer is Japan.

But companies can be the victim.

And in this case, it’s the
employees messing around.

They’re making the company
look bad, but the company

still has to apologize
because this is Japan.

So you have to stand up and say
like, sorry for the trouble we caused.

We’re going to train our employees better.

We’re going to make sure
this doesn’t happen again.

A reputation is hurt
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I’ve seen a billion apologies.

It’s essentially a script, but you have to
follow the script if you work for a big company.

They had 20,000 customers in 2023.

So that means 20,000 companies
have reputation insurance in 2023.

And with these things hitting the
news more, more often and much bigger.

Because like you got shows like the
engineer, Japan, who like, this is our

bread and butter, this is the stuff we
enjoy because this is the weird news.

This is going to become
a bigger and bigger thing.

I’m going to help propagate it.

So really, the insurance kickbacks should
come back to me so that I keep promoting this.

I think I’m very money focused today.

It’s a bit capitalistic.

I apologize.

The future technology has been a
very technology oriented episode today

with live streaming and
the insurance being basic.

Again, it’s part of viral videos.

Japan’s pushes itself towards the future.

It has certainly has an image.

I mean, there was a story that
I’m not doing this week about them.

Government agencies putting
away floppy disks forever.

They’re actually mandating that
you can’t use floppy disks anymore.

There are entire generations of people
who’ve never even seen a floppy disk.

So that is how weirdly
backwards Japan can be.

And yet also it tends to be at
the forefront of a lot of technology.

There was a city that wanted
to set up a drone delivery system.

That drone delivery system failed because
they had zero orders for the last year.

Now, their idea was I’m, I’m unable
to leave my house for some reason.

So I’ll call this office.

It’s kind of like a main train station.

They’ll have someone go
out going to the local shopping

area, load all those
shopping things onto a drone.

The drone will go to a designated area.

That was my first thought.

This is the problem.

They’re not bringing it to your house.

So if I can’t leave my house, the drone
system doesn’t help me because I still

have to leave my house to go to
the designated delivery area, which I’m

assuming is basically an open field, which
might be really far away from my house.

So the whole convenient aspect of a
drone delivering to you cannot happen

because of safety issues, the
drone is going to have to be massive.

Because let’s say it’s I buy a 40 kilogram
bag of dog food has going to have to be

able to carry that X
amount of kilometers away.

It’s not going to be able
to land outside my house.

Maybe the drones too big.

Maybe it would impede traffic.

Who knows what’s going to happen there?

So since it could only go from point
A to point B, it is then less viable

system for the actual
convenience and purpose of it.

So they had zero orders, which once
I learned about the system, I was like,

of course they did because I’m going
to go with the person who actually

brings it to my door, which is the
whole point of trying to get something

delivered is, is it too bad?

I don’t know if it’s too bad.

All the money that was going to the
drone delivery system is now going to go

to electric vehicle van delivery
systems, which I’m on board with.

I do, I know that there are
everything has its problems.

So like the nickel mining and
stuff in the lithium that goes

into batteries is not thing,
but again, it’s transitional.

It’s important to take steps
to try to improve things.

And I think electric vehicles is a
very good step in the right direction.

So let’s keep going with that.

So I’m glad the money is going
towards deliveries that’ll actually work.

And, yeah, of course, if I
have to leave my house to

go to the drone, I might
as well just go shopping.

It’s not a creepy, creepy story,
but it’s out of touch politicians.

I did have an idea.

So I was thinking about doing,
I did a series for a little while.

It wasn’t a series.

It was like every now and then I
would do international politics, but

like as high school students.

So it would be like Kim Jong-un,
Kim Jong-il, one of the Kim Jongs,

talking to president of a country
and they’re back and forth.

And I was, I was affecting sort of
what I would consider as essentially

Californian valley girl accents.

So it really snied towards each other.

But I was like, you know, it
would be really interesting.

It would be do international
politics as a kids show.

So like the actual countries
are represented by characters.

You get in trouble because if you did
Winnie the Pooh for Xi Jinping in China,

he didn’t like that very much.

But I was like, if you want
to, one of the problems as

international politics so
complicated, we need to simplify it.

The best way to simplify things is
to do it like you’re talking to kids.

It relevant to what I
was just talking about.

It was just a thought that happened to
enter my head at this moment in this time.

There were, there was a government
sort of conference and they were talking

about ways to tackle the
gender inequality in Japan.

And this is a big thing.

It’s actually a very big problem in Japan.

Gender inequality and pay
and everything is still very real.

They might say it’s
not real in other places.

I don’t know whether that’s true or
not because I don’t know statistics.

But in Japan, man and
woman does the same job.

There’s a very good chance the man
is getting paid more than the woman.

Miei is a prefecture in
Japan is not is eighth in the

country for city employees
getting paid if you’re a man.

It’s 24th for city employees getting
paid if you’re a woman, which implies

that the man is getting two, three times
more money for doing the exact same

job as a woman in Miei, which is
problematic because that’s exactly what

they’re talking about
saying we need to fix.

The mayor of one of the cities in Miei
had his own opinions about how to fix the

gender inequality problem and his idea
was to start a campaign and that campaign

would be live rich by marrying
a high earning man from Miei.

Now, you can, if you were, let’s
say one of the more female oriented

members of this conference, see some
of the core issues with that as tackling

gender inequality. One of the other
people there was like, it sounds like

you’re saying that women should rely
on men and he’s saying, well, what would

happen is with the population decline,
women from other prefectures would come to

Miei, they would marry a man in
Miei and have more babies and then the

population would go up and Miei would
be a better place and that’s a quality,

right? So I think I think the actual
core issue here more than anything else.

I don’t think this guy actually knows
what gender inequality is and I don’t

think he knew what the problems were.
So he just started saying stuff that was

going on in his head and he was trying
to make Miei sound good. So he tried to

make it sound good by like, hey, the
men in Miei make a lot of money, not

realizing what he’s saying is women
in Miei do not make a lot of money.

So if you want to be a happy woman, marry
for money, not love. So marry a man from

Miei, it’s just, it’s a tragedy in his
inability to understand what was actually

going on around him in the moment
at the time. And that is politics.

I mean, that’s it right there. A lot of
the, in seeming to be the last couple of

episodes, I’ve done a couple of Senate
hearings. And one thing I’ve noticed is

they constantly seem to not actually
talk about the issue that’s on the

docket, the thing they’re supposed
to be talking about in that day.

The last one I did was the president of
TikTok who as a person, I find him quite

interesting. I think I quite like him. I
don’t know him well enough to actually know.

He may be really evil. And that’s
part of the charm of evil people.

So you gotta be careful. But it was
about his social media dangerous for kids.

I think core element, you could probably
say yes. But they kept asking him if he

was communist and if he was Chinese, which
has nothing to do with protecting children.

I guess I could twist that. This is
where my brain starts to do the work.

You could twist that so you were
protecting children from communism.

And that is why I host my own podcast.

[Music]

There’s probably rat feces on that

(upbeat music)

Update, ginger guy, so we
are deep in food terrorism.

And it doesn’t seem to be stopping.

The fact that people are getting arrested,

the fact that people are
being sued by companies,

the fact that there has
not been a popular outcome,

’cause what I mean by popular is, of
course, people are filming these things,

they’re getting on the
internet, and the only reason you

put stuff on the internet is
’cause you want to be popular.

That’s, you know, social
points is what you’re going for.

You maybe get it for a little bit,

but then it disappears
when you end up going to

prison, which is what
happened to the ginger guy.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was
a guy in a beef bowl, restaurant,

and they have communal ginger,

and he was eating the ginger
right out of the ginger bowl,

and he was like putting his
dirty chopsticks back in it.

They filmed it, they put
it on the internet, internet

goes crazy, he gets in
trouble, he gets arrested.

Okay.

The question was, for me, always, what
is the actual punishment for these crimes?

Kids in Japan basically don’t go to jail.

So now that it’s an
adult, he could actually get

punished, he’s actually
responsible for his actions.

The problem was, this guy was arrested

on multiple counts, and
they were all stuck together.

So he got two years and four months
and had to pay a 200,000 yen fine,

but those charges
included growing marijuana

for personal use or
distribution, drug offenses.

He got arrested for growing
marijuana to drug offense.

That is way, way more serious than
eating ginger out of a communal thing.

So that’s a problem, because
how much of the punishment

is growing marijuana, which
is an incredibly serious crime

in Japan, and how much of it
is for weird public harassment,

chasing internet clout, just being gross.

I mean, that’s what we’re talking about.

My guess is that the two years as
for growing marijuana, the four months

is tacked on for the ginger crime.

Maybe even the 200,000
yen, the interesting part.

This was the more interesting part to me,

which is why this became a
worthwhile follow up to the story.

The guy who filmed his friend eating
the ginger was fined 300,000 yen.

So I think that is a fair
view of the punishment.

So I think jail time for doing
something gross in public is a lot.

A fine seems appropriate.

The fine can be very big.

I think big fines are good
things, but it’s very hard.

I’m not a judge and Japanese law is
a bit hard to work your way through.

It’s got a lot of rules and stuff.

It has a lot of considerations
that I will not understand.

But filming someone
committing the food terrorism,

which is what this has been
dubbed, is a 300,000 yen fine.

So I think that’s actually
showing you how seriously

they are taking it because the
companies now are going to follow up.

Now that they have a guilty charge,
they know that this guy is guilty.

If they take him to court and they
sue him, they have a much better case.

And I think interestingly,

the punishing the cameraman
to me is an interesting tactic

because you are punishing not
the person committing the crime.

You’re punishing the person who videoed
the crime, who essentially made it popular.

So what you’re kind of doing is like,
okay, these guys want to do gross things.

Something I’ve said on Indonesia
pan, probably a thousand times now,

to the point where it’s
almost not worth repeating,

but I have to because
it flows into the thoughts

that we have is,

don’t film it and put on the internet.

Now, the crimes still may occur, and
there still may be these things happening.

But if the popularity that momentary fame

is taken away from this sushi terrorism

from the food terrorism that’s happening,

there’s going to be
less incentive to do it.

So if you punish the people
who are filming it and they’re like,

well dude, I’m not going to film that,
I’m not going to put it on the internet,

then there’s less incentives
for you to do it in the first place.

And I think that’s an interesting way

to maybe do attack this
issue is attack the goal,

because the goal is
to cloud the popularity.

If you can take that away, so the people
like it do it, I don’t want to film this,

I don’t want to spend 300,000
yen to film a 30 second TikTok

of you eating stuff that
you shouldn’t be eating.

That in itself is pretty interesting,
take on how to get a handle on this,

’cause this is a thing that’s
not going away, that said.

It happened like immediately right
after, it’s almost like the crime happens,

the punishment comes out and then like a
week later, it’s teenagers, mostly, right?

This guy, this guy who was just arrested,

it was in his 20s, he was an adult.

But mostly it’s teenagers
and there’s a whole thing

I learned here, so let’s
get to the second story.

I don’t want to do a transition sound.

(upbeat music)

Completely unnecessary, it’s
just to help me stay organized.

This is the second story, but it is the
exact same thing, it is the food terrorism.

And I didn’t know this had been
going on for as long as it had.

I learned about it, the main
instance was sushi terrorism,

but it was probably because
it became such a big story,

because sushi row, the Kaiten sushi
restaurant, sued like a 15 year old kid’s mom,

I forget it was like a billion
yen, it was some ridiculous

number, but they were
just out to prove a point.

But kids are kids, I
have trouble remembering

when I was a teenager, I know I was stupid.

I was stupid into my mid 20s.

Easy, maybe even late,
what am I talking about?

I might be dumb now
and just not realize it.

That’s the problem with being dumb.

These kids, I guess
they’re not reading the

news, they don’t know
these things are happening.

I don’t know, or they do and they
think they’re gonna get away with it.

That’s a very youthful
bravado kind of thing,

but there’s a dominoes, and Amagasaki,

and a worker at two o’clock
in the morning with his friend,

they’re goofing around, he’s needing dough.

And they’re talking back and
forth, and he picks his nose,

and he wipes it on
the dough, and he carps

needing it, and they
laugh and laugh and laugh.

They filmed it.

Now, these are not intended
to go on the internet, apparently.

These are intended to
be shared among friends,

but share among friends, and
then one of the friends is like,

“Hey, this will get
me internet clout.

” The only logical
thing for me to do

would be to post it on the
internet, it gets super famous.

Dominoes reacted so quickly.

So this dough that it had snot wiped on it,

was still in the fermentation
process, it wasn’t actually finished.

They found the restaurant,
they found the dough,

they disposed of it, they
closed the restaurant,

they sanitized the entire place
before 24 hours was even done.

So this thing hit the
internet, it started to

gain, just the smallest
Iodo of popularity,

and Dominoes was like in crackdown mode.

They probably have the Dominoes SWAT team.

You know how they get their
pizza to you in 30 minutes?

They’re gonna get to the store
where the food terrorism happens in 10.

I mean, that seems like
what’s really gonna happen.

I am now imagining there’s
the Dominoes headquarters.

It’s got all these monitors everywhere,

and then an alarm goes
off, and they just dispatch

the Dominoes sanitization SWAT team to go.

And those kids are fired.

I mean, again, I don’t know
about criminal charges.

They are talking.

Dominoes didn’t mention that
criminal charges are possible,

but criminal charges,
as I said in the last bit,

criminal charges towards teenagers
in Japan doesn’t really do that much.

So we know that no one ate that pizza.

Now, if you’ve eaten fast food,
there’s the logic part of my brain,

and then there’s the
emotional part of my brain.

The logic part of my brain is saying
that if the snot was in the dough,

and the dough was
cooked at a billion degrees,

or whatever it is, to make pizza
dough, nothing’s gonna survive in that.

It wouldn’t actually be that bad.

So logically speaking, no
harm would come to you

because it was pre before it was cooked.

Doing it after it was
cooked is somehow grosser

because you’re eating
the actual bodily fluid

that came out of the person.

But once you cook it, it’s all dead.

The emotional part of me
responds like everyone else does.

It’s like, I do not want to eat snot pizza.

So what I learned
from looking at several

articles, and soda news
24, big Japanese website,

they actually did a
little bit of a breakdown.

So this actually goes back to 2013.

It’s like a decade ago,
and they have bakatur.

So it’s bakah, which means stupid, and ter,

which is Twitter, so bakah,
Twitter, so stupid, Twitter.

And it’s filming yourself doing
dumb things and putting it on Twitter.

Twitter was 2013, the
biggest website in Japan.

And they’re also
calling it Baito-terrorism.

Baito is Japanese for part-time job.

So Baito-terrorism, so
we have food terrorism,

Baito-terrorism, but
this all seems to evolved

from bakatur, and it’s kids
filming dumb shit at work.

And I just remember
seeing this pre-pandemic,

and it was a part-time kid
in a community store at night,

and it was super hot, and he got in the
cooler where they keep the ice cream.

You just lay on top of the ice cream.

Very technically, all the
ice cream in there was in

packages, and he was
wearing his clothes and whatnot.

So nothing actually touched
anything, but it is gross conceptually.

Again, the logic part of
my brain kicks in and goes,

well, you know there’s probably
a ton of rat poop on that anyways,

because it was all in transit at
some point, and rats are everywhere.

You should wipe the top of a drink can
or bottle before you put it to your mouth,

if you’re ever gonna drink straight
out of the bottle, that kind of stuff.

‘Cause there probably is rat feces on it.

That’s your ninja new
Japan, thought for today.

There’s probably rat feces on it.

And I think I just came
up with a new t-shirt.

I mean, the chocolate
beef chest, Academy

of Martial Arts t-shirt,
it’s a best seller.

Everyone loves it, who gets it.

But you know, I need
to expand my repertoire.

Maybe I need to take more
of my classic phrases and turn

them into t-shirts like,
there’s probably rat feces on it.

And just say that.

Just something you just
keep in mind at all the time.

It’s probably rat feces on it.

So the trend seems to
have really hit in 2013.

So kids saw other kids doing stupid shit

in their part-time jobs, and
they would do something similar,

but there was a trend that had
happened in January and February,

and there are theories, it’s why.

So there were some nice
theories on Soto News 24.

I don’t wanna like
just steal their content.

So this isn’t my idea, but
it was pretty interesting

because January,
February is when you’ve hit

sort of the stressful
exam time in Japan.

So maybe this is a weird way of
kids trying to alleviate their stress,

where they’ve just hit this
point of stress where they’re

just the brain shuts down,
they start doing stupid stuff.

I don’t know, it’s interesting though,

there is a trend of an
increase of kids doing dumb shit

at their part-time jobs
in January, February.

So if you have a theory,
I mean, I’d love to hear it,

send an email to
chunkandbeefchest@gmail.

com or speakpipe.com/chunkandbeefchest
and tell me your

thoughts on why you think
teens in January and February

do dumb shit at their part-time jobs.

There’s a street vendor in Asakusa.

He’s been out in the street for 15 years,

selling soda, they
call rumnay, it’s like a

very, very sugary
ginger ale, I guess, soda.

I don’t like it, it’s
actually too sweet for me.

I like sweet things and
it’s too sweet for me.

The thing is, this is also
a member of the Yanayah

Yakuza family and apparently a
fairly high-ranking member of that.

So there’s a lot of
questions they’re already.

My image of Yakuza comes from the Yakuza
video game series more than anything else.

It used to be Yakuza movies
and then the Yakuza video

game series took over in my
mind as to how Yakuza’s live their

life, basically you don’t open a
door, you only kick open doors.

There was someone else
came out on the same street

where he was selling his
sodas and it was a guy dressed

as a ninja and he was giving
out flyers for a ninja experience.

Now, let me tell you, I went
to Iga Castle and I took my

mom when she visited
Japan and they had Iga is

famously were ninjas or
supposed to come from.

I learned that ninjas always
sleep on their left side to be

able to protect their heart,
which weirdly makes sense, but

also doesn’t make any sense
at all because if your head’s

exposed and you’re lying
down, I’m not going to

attack your heart, I’m
going to attack your head.

But still, they slept on the
left sides and they didn’t wear

black, they wore navy blue because
that blends in better in the evening night.

There was also a thing where
you got throwing stars and you

threw it at a target and
hit the target three times.

You want a t-shirt?
Now, let me tell you, you’re good friend,

showing a beef chest.
He threw those three throwing stars and he

hit that target three times and he
won that t-shirt and it was too small.

That is the second
t-shirt I’ve wanted to

pay. They don’t have big boy sizes
in Japan. That’s pretty much a given.

I was at a bar with a
friend and they had a

thing and it was this Apple Jack Daniels.
Maybe it was Apple

whiskey of some sort,
which is already pretty bad.

But if you bought one, you got a
lottery ticket. You pulled it out of

this like box and if you got
the thing, you want to add

Jack Daniels, Apple, whiskey
t-shirt and something in my

brain clicked because I bought
one. I actually was being stressed.

What does this taste
like? It wasn’t bad.

Again, too sweet, weirdly.
Then I said to the waitress the

next time she came to the
table, I said, can you promise me

there really is a winning card in that box.
She said, yes, we

have three t-shirts in the
back right now that I know of,

there are probably more.
So I said, fine. Please continue to

bring me drinks until I win. I don’t
remember how many drinks I had.

It was a lot. Like we’re
in excess of six to seven

easily because I was drunk,
like real drunk, like proper drunk.

And I won the t-shirt and it
was a very nice t-shirt and it was

also way too small.
That’s two t-shirts I’ve

taken the time to win in Japan
and two t-shirts that I’ve won

that are too small.
Not what we’re talking about.

What I am saying though is you
have the opportunity to go to the ninja

experience in Ega
Castle. You should do it.

My mom really enjoyed the ninja castle
experience. You go through this little house,

has ninja doors and stuff.
I’m doing like tourist services for Ega

man.
Ega may be want to drop a coin this way.

Just putting that out there as well.
I don’t really do free advertising.

And then they put on a little show.
So you go through the house and they show

you like the trick floors and
the trick this and the trick that.

And then they do a little show with some
guys who do some martial arts and stuff,

which was quite fun. My mother
really enjoyed it. I actually really got

talking to the guy next to me who
actually worked for like a news company.

We had a really great chat about
like would this be good TV or not.

The irony being that he clearly
thought this was not going to be good TV,

but he was going to film it anyways,
which does directly express my

feeling of most Japanese television.
So we’re back on the street.

We got this guy. He’s dressed
like a ninja and he’s giving out

flyers for a ninja experience.
We got this Yakuza. It’s been selling

ginger ale for 15 years on the street. No
one can figure out why I’m supposed to be

a high level Yakuza. The quality of
Yakuza and the drama there and has

dropped significantly is this if this is
how these guys are spending their days.

15 years on the street selling soda
is not the life I would imagine for a

high level Yakuza. It’s not sitting in
like gold cars with like three women

draped off you who loathe you,
but you know they’re too afraid to

get away from you that kind of thing.
You know movie stuff.

I actually would prefer a honest and loving
relationship. Just want to put that out there.

Chocolate beef chest
of an engineer’s Japan.

He’s not into a press of relationships.
He’s into a open, honest,

mutual relationships. Don’t know
where I am right now. I’ll be honest.

The Yakuza walks up to him and he does
a very very Yakuza thing. He says if you’re

gonna give out flyers on my street,
you’re gonna have to give me 10,000

yen a month or get the fuck out.
No one really knows what happened.

If the guy actually paid any money
and stuff, eventually the intimidation

tactics, the extortion
got back to the police.

The police come out
and arrest this guy.

The reason that this blew up on
the internet in Japan was that he was

calling the Ninja Ninja Kun. Kun is
what you would call like, so if I was a

teacher and I go into a classroom
and I talk to the kids, there’s you

probably no Chan, so like Lucy
Chan would be Lucy as a young girl.

Kun is for boys. She calls him
Ninja Kun. So he’s talking like this

lower status person in society, which was
pretty funny, but the guy is in his 60s,

so probably the guy who was the
ninja dress up as the ninja was actually

probably younger, fair enough. On February
8th, he was arrested for extortion,

which is a very Yakuza thing to be arrested
for. So I’m very, I’m happy that that’s

at least consistent
with my image of Yakuza.

His defense was I
was just giving him a

warning because he was being impolite.
Now that to me is Yakuza code for,

I told him to give me money or I’d break
his bones, but also it’s also a pretty

weak defense. Like you shouldn’t really
be telling other people how to live their

lives, and I bet the 10,000 yen, if
you want to stay on this street, was

something that came out of your mouth.
But that’s again, that’s a bias on my part,

and I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t
want to like sully his reputation.

Problem is, if you remember last week,
we talked about Yakuza apartments,

so was the guy who was on the poster.
Next to the guy who had died,

who had had people have been looking for
him since the 70s. That guy in the poster

was found at a Yakuza apartment.
Yakuza on apartments. Now the police have,

since they’ve arrested this guy, they
have a reason to go into where he lives,

which may be one of these apartments
or maybe a house, and then get information

about other places, Yakuza. So if he’s a
high-level guy, he has information about

other Yakuza stuff
that leads to the cops

on this sort of network
they can go through,

which could cause a huge amount of
problems for that Yakuza family over 10,000

yen from a ninja they just
could have just left alone.

I suppose I do this all the time. I finish
the story, I hit the transition sound,

and then I have a thought while
the transition sound goes on.

That isn’t how crime things.

Crime isn’t thinking, this
isn’t worth 10,000 yen.

Crime is thinking,
this is 10,000

yen I could get for doing
nothing, which is what extortion is.

It’s getting money for nothing.

Yeah, I don’t think
like a criminal.

That’s maybe the problem.
Maybe why I haven’t, you know,

really, my criminal
empire hasn’t really taken

off is I just don’t
think like a criminal.

I don’t think like, hey, let’s
abuse the people around

me and get money for
nothing and cheat and lie.

God, maybe I have
not done this right.

Is that how I ended up
podcasting? A 64-year-old woman

had been making fake
designer brand bags for the

last few years by hand. So
she had started her own shop.

She was making bags
of her own design.

And they weren’t selling very
well. She saw some news and

she saw some really popular
bags. And some were similar enough.

She’s like, I think
I could make that.

So she made it. She made
Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci.

And she would sell
them for about 3,500 yen.

And what she was doing
in some cases, she was

trying to copy the bag.
And in other cases, she was

making her own original bag
and putting like a logo on it.

I found this interesting
because I was

like, I bet her handmade
bags were of the same

if not better quality
than the actual brand bags

that people were buying. She
was only charging 3,500 yen.

Unfortunately, that is illegal.

So you can’t do that. The
police searched her shop and

they found 330
bags ready for sale.

So she just basically made a
couple bags every day, all day,

every day, I guess.
And then she was selling

him in her store. I don’t
know. The thing that struck

out to me, there’s not
really much else to say,

this lady was basically
hand making bags.

But I was like, if you can hand
make a bag, man, that’s pretty cool.

I kind of had this
weird respect for the

lady’s ability to make a
bag that was of the same

quality as a Chanel
bag, if not better.

Because she just bought,
bought the material.

She’s like, what are those made of?
She bought similar materials online.

And then made those
bags. And I’m like,

man, I wonder if
her bags were good.

That was pretty shit story. I
didn’t have anything to say about it.

I just did it again. Hit the transition
sound and then finished my fault.

It’s an interesting story, but I
didn’t have anything to say about it.

Because I should
actually, if I could

have got it early, I’m
not going to find out about

it until she gets
arrested, but I kind of want

to buy one of her bags
now and just see what the

quality of the bag. Prison
inmate was not allowed

to wear his glasses because
they were one millimeter

over the Sives limit.
And he was without his

glasses for two months.
That doesn’t sound too

bad. Not having your
glasses though. He had trouble

going up and down stairs
because he couldn’t see the stairs.

So his eye set was terrible.

And he was wearing glasses.
It sounds like they were blacked

out like basically dark
lenses. He might have had

a light sensitivity thing.
Who knows? But he was like,

he had trouble walking
around without his glasses.

And they said the the frames
were one millimeter too thick.

So I don’t know what
they meant like the arm

of the eyeglasses were too
thick or they were too big.

I’m guess the reason I try to figure out
the reasons for this. I guess the reason is

because the arm of
the glasses could be like

shaved down into a shiv
depending on what they

are minor made of plastic.
So I would do that and

just still would just
bounce off people.

I don’t think I can make it sharp
enough to actually shiv someone.

But they took away his glasses
and didn’t give him anything else.

So he’s just basically blind for
two months. The bar association

in Japan is claiming
that taking away his

glasses as a human
rights violation, which I

think is probably pretty
accurate because you’re

basically saying like,
hey, you could see, but

we’re going to take away
the thing you see with

because we’re
annoyed. And this is it.

This shows more the actual
reason why they took away his

glasses because the
prison complained, these

glasses were arousing
the curiosity of others.

So again, because he
was allowed to wear these

what sounds like
sunglasses all the time,

other people in the
prison are like, hey, why

can’t I wear sunglasses and
look cool while I’m in prison.

Hey, why does
that get those weird

glasses on? Hey, how come
my glasses are just regular

glasses and that guy
has special glasses.

And the guards had difficulty
confirming eye contact.

So because he’s wearing
darkened glasses, they

can’t tell if he’s actually
looking at them when

they’re talking to him. So he
might be being disrespectful.

We don’t know. So
I think this is where

we see the actual reason they wanted to
take away his glasses because they’re like,

I don’t think that guy’s
paying attention when I

was speaking to him. I
think he thinks he’s too cool.

I think we take away
his glasses and we

make him blind and we treat
him like ship for a couple months.

And then he’ll
learn some respect

because this is all about
respect. He was unable to

read and he could not go
up and downstairs very well.

He isn’t prison. I
don’t know what he did,

but yeah, I think if you’re
in prison and you wear

glasses, you should be
allowed to wear your glasses.

Okay, so we get to a new
porn law introduced in Japan.

And this was very
interesting because it

was stringent enough
that porn stars were out on

the streets protesting.
And they say if it goes

through the Japanese
adult videos will disappear

forever, like the
industry will just die.

I found this interesting
on a conceptual level.

Let’s say you agree with
the stars that this law

is unfair, but like I’m
not in the porn industry

and I live a very normal
life. So it would be

very difficult for me to
go out and lend my voice

to the porn industry
because then people would

then say like, well, tongue
of beef chest is big horn dog.

The rule itself was
interesting because

there’s one of the directors
started speaking up on it.

He was of course in
the public protesting,

saying like, this is my
livelihood. You’re actually

attacking my livelihood.
And he said, I think

it’s good for girls filming
for the first time, but

not for those who make
adult videos for a living.

And I actually agree. He seems like a very
reasonable guy, this director he’s talking.

He is saying it violates
the freedom of business

that is in the constitution.
The director says

it has some good points,
but too many hindrances.

So what this is designed
to do is I am going to do my

first adult video. I
sign the contract.

There has to be a one month waiting
period before we actually film the video.

So I’m sitting down with you.

We’re doing the
contract negotiation.

I say, yes, I will take this
much money and I will put

my very attractive sexual
body on screen for you,

which I know is what everyone
wants at the end of the day.

Let’s go and go, no, no, we
have to wait for one month.

So I have essentially one month to change
my mind and back out of the contract,

then after we film the video, of course,
has to go through editing and whatnot,

I doesn’t need too much
CG for me because I actually

know you’d have to like
really tone down the whites.

My bare skin would probably
blow out the cameras.

So we’re going
to have to film it in

complete darkness
and my body will light up.

It’d be like watching
luminescent jellyfish have sex

would be very similar to
the experience of having

sex with me and motion wise,
like the very I assume very floppy.

What am I doing? I’m insulting
my own sexual prowess.

It feels bad about
making fun of myself now.

So we filmed it.
We’ve edited it.

It’s ready to go. There has to be
another four-month waiting period.

And that means from the date you sign
the contract to the actual release of the

video is going to be going to
be between five to six months.

And that is also that this person
who’s doing their first video for the first

time can back out, which I
actually agree with that director.

I think if this is
your first time,

you seem very excited about it. Your
circumstances are such circumstances changing.

Like I don’t want to do this
anymore. I think having the

ability to back out
is a really good idea.

Japan also has the law
that after X amount of years,

you have to re-sign with
the star to keep the video out.

So the star like let’s say I did a porn
five years ago. And I don’t want that in

my life anymore. I don’t
renew that contract.

You have to take all that
stuff down from the internet.

Now there are going to be clips and stuff,
but basically it becomes harder to get.

And that part of my life may be
not erased, but is greatly diminished.

You’re far, far less likely to find out
that I made this porn video in the past.

So I actually think these
protections for people

starting out and for
people who’ve retired from

that industry are
a really good thing.

But I also think he is right
in that putting this much

hindrance like a six month period between
contract and final production and release

is problematic for
people who actually make

this as their livelihood.
And so they need to

continue to produce content
to be able to make the money.

The other danger
is that this goes into

place and then people
instead of doing it through

their proper channels
start to go to underground,

start to do things
illegally, start to do things,

which therefore
immediately become less safe.

I actually agree
with this director.

I think this should be in place
for first timers. I do actually

agree with that. But once
you’ve done two or three

videos, then there’s no
need to have all these

sort of roadblocks
in place. I was thinking

about like who’s going
to stand up for them,

because this is
about fair treatment.

And to stand up for porn
stars, you are then connecting

yourself with porn stars,
which no politician wants to do.

And that’s where the
problem is going to arise.

That’s a certain amount of bravery,
because we know about the proliferation of

pornographic material
on the internet.

So we know there’s more than
like three people watching it.

We know there’s a lot
of people who watch it.

We know the statistics.
So I think the fair

representation there
actually needs to happen.

But I don’t think
there’s ever going to be a

politician in place who’s
actually going to have

the balls to do it, because
it immediately puts you

on this position where,
well, if you support

porn, then you’re a dirty,
dirty person who does

dirty, dirty things,
ruins your reputation.

They’re in a really tough
spot. But I will actually

stay up because I mean
stay up. I actually follow

up on this story primarily
because I’m always

interested in new rules
and how they go into effect.

It’s funny, I love the
dirty, dirty stories,

but I never loved the
dirty, dirty aspect of them.

Like the actual
porn parts, not the

interesting part to me. It’s
the contract negotiations.

It’s the production.
It’s the rules in place.

It’s the things that
have to happen before

and after is the stuff
I actually care about.

I’m really interested in
the complicated contract

negotiations that go into
Japanese productions.

And production’s all over the world. Movie
contracts and stuff. We’re all fascinating.

You should look them up
and make yourself a more

informed person. I have
just got lost at that last part.

[Music]

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Giri Podcast

(upbeat music)

Okay, just a bit of a
pre-warning for this week.

Is normally, I have trouble reading
my notes because I write really messy.

This week, I’m gonna have
trouble reading my notes

’cause I write really messy
and my eyes all messed up.

So that’s a bad combination.

Writing messy and bad head.

(sighs)

I shouldn’t say bad head.

All right.

Couple weeks ago, we
had a kid who was licking

the lid of a shared water
pitcher in a restaurant

and posted online, just like all these
other, like again, the sushi terrace.

We’re now calling food terrists in Japan.

Couple details have come out

because he and the person
who filmed it have been arrested.

This is an interesting thing for
me, is the second part we’ll get into.

The boy is 16 years old.

So he’s not, I mean, he wasn’t
gonna do jail time anyways.

It becomes, once you get
arrested for it, it becomes sort of a

civil suit between you and the
company that owns the restaurant.

So I think it was sushi dough,
was the sushi terrace and thing.

And then that company was
suing them for a stock price drop

when that kid did some
gross stuff in the restaurant.

So that’s something to be aware of.

Like it’s not like he’s going to prison.

He could be opening
his family to a lawsuit.

I found out that this incident
happened at five, 10 in the morning.

So first of all, they’re
at a ramen restaurant.

And who’s eating ramen
at five, 10 in the morning?

Like even if you’re a night worker,

five, 10 in the morning
isn’t, it’s not ramen time.

I mean, I guess it different,
different people, different moods.

I have become a very serious, serious.

That makes it sound like I got a problem.

I’ve become a very adamant lunch drinker.

If I’m going to drink, I
want to drink at lunch time.

And then over the course of the day,

I can sober up and I’m asked
to feel a little hangover come

and I can start drinking
water and then I go to bed

and then I wake up next
morning and I feel great.

I’ve realized that night
drinking is actually the mistake.

We should all be drinking at lunch
time, day drinking, almost exclusively.

So the boy, the 16 year
old boy and his 20 year

old friend who was
videoing it, so already again,

I can see there’s a bad influence,
the older boy, videoing the younger boy,

probably encouraging
him to do the bad thing.

That’s going to be the first sort of issue

is the young guy’s going
to take the lead from

the, what I’m going to
go ahead and just assume

is a negative influence because
he ended up getting arrested.

So you’re not going to call that
a positive influence on his life.

The 16 year old is underage.

So again, probably very
little is going to happen to him

again, open to a civil lawsuit that
could affect his family or his parents.

The 20 year old though, he’s in a different
set of trouble because he’s an adult.

So he’s responsible for himself.

When arrested, the 20 year old said,
I posted the video on social media,

but I don’t remember why I
filmed it or why I uploaded it.

And let me, let me fill you in.

Not even being there, not
even knowing who you are.

You filmed it because
other people had done this

kind of stupid stuff and
gotten attention for it.

You uploaded it because
you wanted the attention.

And that’s it.

That’s the whole, it sounded
like I had a third point.

I didn’t.

Those are the only two.

You saw other people
were getting attention.

You thought, hey, maybe I can
get the same amount of attention.

So you did.

Both were arrested for our
favorite abstraction of business.

Dave’s, Dave’s gently resting his paws.

He’s been doing this lead lately.

Let’s see if I can get the video down.

He rests his paws on my arm.

And it makes me not want to move my arm,
but it means I can’t control the mouse,

which means it’s very hard
to hit the transition button.

And then, so usually, right
now, he’s only got one paw.

He’ll put on two paws, right?

And then it’s quite heavy.

He took the one paw off when I was moving.

You know, it was very nice of him.

I talked about last week
about the guy from the ’70s

who had planted a balm,
he was part of a group.

He blew up some stuff.

And he went into hiding, went
into hiding until he was 70 years old.

He stayed off the grid for the entire time,

which is really impressive,
if I’m being honest.

He didn’t use his national health insurance

until the point where
he actually got cancer

and the cancer got so far
he had to go into hospital.

And then he had to use
his national health insurance.

And then they found out who he was.

He then died like a week later.

So that was national news.

It was all over in the news.

And the picture they put
up was of his mug shot.

Now in Japan, they have
these sort of yellow posters.

And they put on like the
nine most wanted people

in Japan at the time,
or they’ll put on like,

here’s the nine most biggest
scammers or whatever.

So this guy, because
they let talk about this

guy from the ’70s, now
he’s been from the ’70s,

but they put his poster up
again and again and again,

and every time they talk about it and post
them, and there’s a picture next to it.

And it’s another guy, not another guy.

He’s also a criminal.

He’s also another guy
who’s been a criminal in hiding

the entire time, wanted for an
attempted murder back in 2020.

Turns out having his
picture on the news every day

for a couple of weeks was
enough for someone to go,

“Oh, come on, come on, I
think I know who that guy is.

“I think I’ve seen
that guy around before.

” He hangs out in that
building that’s full of yakuza.

In Japan, they actually, the yakuza
will buy a building to house the yakuza.

And the whole point is, if
you are a yakuza in hiding,

you go into one of these
apartment buildings where it’s

all other yakuza, and
they’re not gonna turn you in.

The problem with having your
face on the news every day

means if you go outside
and which you probably do,

you go outside and go for groceries and
do some other stuff, it means other people

will see your face, and
someone put it together,

put an anonymous tip
in, hey, that guy lives in

Sendai, the police arrested
him on February 1st.

So it’s an interesting thing,
just throwing the pictures

up on the news again and again and
again, was enough for people to go like,

“I actually think I
recognize that guy.

” So you think about
wanted posters not working,

but they kind of work if
you get it on national news

so that a whole bunch of people can
see it, and then, you know, nosy neighbors,

that’s not just a Japanese thing,
but it is a very big Japanese thing.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.

I was of recording, this is February 13th.

This is tomorrow is February 14th
with his traditionally Valentine’s Day.

Japan, if you are a fan of Japan, it’s
pretty fairly common knowledge now

that it’s not done in
the Western tradition.

They made their own
tradition where a woman

will give a man chocolate
on Valentine’s Day.

And then a month later, on White Day,

man are supposed to
reciprocate by giving cookies.

There is a tradition in Japan that the women
in an office give really shit chocolates

to everyone in their office,
all the guys in their office.

They don’t like them, they don’t find them
attractive, it’s just something you do.

That’s called giddy choco.

Now, giddy, giddy, giddy
is like almost, but it’s in

English, they translate
it to obligation chocolate.

And I never thought about the word,
but giddy, it kind of means like barely.

So it’s like barely
chocolate or maybe barely

affectionate chocolate
or something like that.

I actually need to go
get the etymology of that

’cause I was thinking about
it as I was writing this down

that the direct translation
while it makes perfect sense

doesn’t actually translate the words,
it translates the spirit of the phrase,

which is an interesting
aspect of translation.

When you have something
called super dragon punch

in Japanese and you’re
gonna translate to the

English, do you call it
super dragon puncher?

Do you change it to something else that
would be more sort of in the right atmosphere

or feeling of the words,
which would be interesting?

Totally relevant.

I just, I realized that giddy choco

or giddy giddy choco doesn’t
translate into obligation chocolate

would actually translate into
on essentially shit chocolate.

The practice has reached its
lowest point since this survey began.

I didn’t write down when the survey began,

which is a big failure on
my part as a journalist,

but luckily I’m not being held to journalistic
standards because I don’t get paid.

The benefit of being
an independent anything

is that you can kind of just
make up the rules as you go.

If someone accuses me of not being a
good journalist, I’ll be like, wow, pay me.

Then I might become a good journalist.

There was a 19,000 person
survey, 37.6% plan to give gifts.

That’s up 3.2%.

Usually gifts are given
to spouses or partners.

Worst reporter ever.

The cost.

Look, I mean, again,
how much have you paid?

Like, when you start throwing money my
way, then maybe you can start holding me

to some sort of standard
you imagine in your head.

Or when the advertisers
roll in, maybe whatever.

It is true, though.

Well, actually, no, it’s not.

I’m going to now suddenly
after having agreed.

What’s your Venmo?

You send me money
on paper and link in the

description of the YouTube
channel’s has my PayPal.

I actually had my first donation.

The month ago, two months
ago, it was very exciting for me.

Some guy just like dropped me 20 bucks.

I was, that’s the most money I’ve made
off any of endeavors I’ve ever had so far.

Anyways, no, I’m not the worst reporter.

See, the thing is, I actually
double check everything I say.

So if I get a story, I don’t accept it.

If it’s only one story, I
have to have two sources,

which a lot of journalists in online
sources, they don’t do that anymore.

They’ll just take it and repeat it.

And maybe even make changes to it.

There was the story of the guy who
hit the taxi driver who hit the pigeon.

And I found two sources.

And then the third source actually said,

they changed it from pigeon
to dove to try to create

that sort of more
sympathetic sound to the story,

which was an embellishment,
which made it inaccurate,

which made me realize like, okay, this
person, this writer cannot be trusted.

So as far as a trusted news source,
while I am not the investigative reporter,

when it comes to the things
I say, they are verifiable.

Better than Fox News,
which legally is entertainment.

This is not entertainment.

This is fucking news.

All right. Anyways, the average this,
this was a story about Valentine’s Day,

which is, you know, sort of one of those
light stories that has no actual meaning.

The average intended
cost of the gift is 3,238 yen,

which is down from 3,329
yen in previous years.

66.2% of people are planning to
give it to their partners or spouses.

Co-workers are down to 14.

1%, where 72% of the people surveyed
said, it is either somewhat unnecessary

or completely unnecessary to give
chocolate to your shitty stinky co-worker

who laughs too loud and
eats with his mouth open.

I’m not thinking of anyone, and specifically
who works in the office where I work,

who eats crackers every
morning that smell like shrimp,

and I’m across the fucking office, and I
can smell it and eats with his mouth open,

and he’s eating sembe,
which is like a hard cracker.

So it’s also, it’s not
only like a really noisy

food to eat, the fucking
wrapper is weirdly noisy.

It’s like the noisiest food ever invented,

and he’s the only
one in the office who’s

making any sound, and
I don’t want to kill him.

I don’t want to pick up a
chair and throw it at him.

I don’t want to push him out the window.

No one in particular.

I mean, that was just a
hypothetical that came

to mind, has no bearing
on any person in reality.

This was the interesting
part of this article, though,

was they were blaming the
reduction in wanting to give

a giddy, giddy choco to an increase
in teleworking and not inflation.

Because to me, it would
make way more sense,

like if chocolate as its
baseline gets more expensive,

it would make way more sense
that people don’t want to pay

for something that they
already see as unnecessary.

But they’re saying,
like, “Oh, people are not

as in the office, they’re
not as connected.

” It almost felt conspiratorial,

like this was one of those
weird return to office pushes,

like, “Oh, you’re losing the
connection that the office creates,”

which is, as we all know,
complete and utter bullshit.

Speaking of inflation, oh my God, I put my
stories together in the right order today.

That’s a piece of magic right there.

People are buying less
because of inflation.

I actually noticed that I buy
less overall because of inflation.

Previously, I would go
out for lunch regularly.

Now I have basically stopped.

I don’t go out for lunch.

I meal prep.

So I make burritos.

I make like 20, 30 burritos and I freeze
them and I bring them into the office.

That’s it’s cheaper and I’m not
spending money to go to restaurants.

So, and that’s inflation.

Like, I could see the price go out, go up.

I can see that going out is too expensive.

I’m not going to do it anymore.

Convenient stores in supermarkets
are also, they’re like feeling it.

They’re getting feeling hit.

So what they’re doing is creating
larger products to lure people in.

And the owner of, I think it
was, you know, incorporation,

said, because of the appearance, larger
food can provide excitement and fun.

The price cuts can’t.

And here’s, here’s the thing
from a consumer perspective.

I would rather have normal food at a
discounted price or let’s just put it this way.

One inflation is no longer an issue.

Like, inflation is capped out and you’re
like, we’re not selling enough of this.

Capitalism actually dictates
that’s when you lower the price.

I don’t want an extra large, only giddy.

I don’t want a cake
with more frosting on it.

I would just like the regular
version at a lower price.

And then you’re more likely to
get my patronage on a regular basis.

It is interesting that
these, it’s convenience

stores and supermarkets
are like, instead

of lowering the price
of our regular products,

we’re going to take some products and
make them extra big for the same price.

And I, they’re only
choosing select products.

So it’s not really like the
necessities of the things you need.

They would make a lot more money if
you just said, let’s make a regular price.

And let’s actually drop the price on regular
items and then people would keep coming

back because, hey, it’s slightly
cheaper here than somewhere else.

That is exactly what I would
think and that’s where I would go.

They’re increasing the size
of only giddy, bento boxes,

so the pre prepared lunchboxes
and a bunch of sweets.

Obviously, it’s one
of those things that

sounds like a good plan
to executives, but then

doesn’t translate into the real world
where people actually live and work.

The Japan Education Minister.

This was actually something
I learned, so that’s nice.

He said, I never received
support from the unification church.

And then next week
he’s like, okay, I kind of

received support from
the unification church.

Unification church is a big issue in Japan.

Way back.

Now, a year ago, the former
Prime Minister Abe was shot.

He was shot by a guy
who was angry at the

unification church because
the unification church

had ruined his family
because his mom had

joined and given all the
family money to the church.

And he said he wanted
to exact revenge.

Abe’s father was the
one that brought the

unification church into
Japan as an organization.

He was a politician.

He let them into the country.

He let them become an organized religion.

So it wasn’t a direct
link, but there was

supposed to be unification
church leader at this

thing where the guy showed
up and Abe was there.

The guy didn’t show up.

So he shot Abe instead.

It was like actually a
target of opportunity.

This set off a whole
thing where people are

like, well, is the unification
church taking money from people?

And then it turns out they’re
doing a lot of really weird stuff.

We’ve actually covered
that in a previous

episode, so I’m not
going to go over it again.

But what they did find
out is the unification

church does a lot of pandering
to politicians, not a big surprise.

You want to enact political power.

You got to get politicians so they
give a lot of money to politicians.

Politicians are all now scared
because now if you’ve received

money or anything from the
unification church, it looks bad.

It looks like you’ve been bought
and paid for, which you probably have.

You fucking education minister.

Turns out the thing I
didn’t know, the education

minister is also in
charge for religious

issues, which if you
are in charge of religious

issues and you’ve
taken money from the

unification church, there’s a
bit of a conflict of interest there.

That’s kind of the issue
that maybe has come up.

So he said, no, I’ve never
dealt with the unification church.

Turns out he participated
in an event hosted

by the unification church and accepted
a letter of recommendation from them.

But he says, and this
is on record, if there

happened to be photos, I think I must
have received a recommendation letter.

So I do like the initial part of that
sentence more than anything else.

If there happened to
be photos, he’s like,

basically, if you have
evidence, then it must be true.

If you don’t have evidence, then I’m going
to deny it because you don’t have evidence.

So if you have evidence, bring it
forward and then I’ll admit that I did it.

It’s a very interesting piece of logic he’s
working on because he’s basically saying,

if you can prove it,
I’ll admit it, but if you

can’t, I’m not gonna
ask a he shimblin, publish

these photos and
it’s him at the event

receiving the letter of
recommendation and being

very chummy, tell me
with the unification church.

This is coming after a
scandal in the government

where a whole bunch of
people were taking money.

I mean, again, not
particularly the surprising

scandal, but it’s actually meant because
she to the current prime minister, like his

whole cabinet is now
being called into question

and it is going to be a big problem
for him in the upcoming elections.

Crimes in Japan rose
for a second straight year

in 2023 went up 17% to
703,351 crimes recorded.

This is basically because coronavirus
restrictions have been reduced.

So all the criminals,
all the criminals were

in lockdown, which
meant it’s really hard

to commit crime if
you’re stuck in your house,

but also there’s been
a legislation change.

So the penal code has been
revised, the interpretation

of forcible intercourse has
been updated in the penal code.

And so those cases rose by 63.8%.

This sounds like there
are thousands of forcible

intercourse cases that
have suddenly happened.

What actually happened
was before they were

happening and not getting
prosecuted, now they

are being prosecuted,
so this incredible rise,

63% rise in forcible
intercourse crime means that

it’s actually being prosecuted
now where before it wasn’t.

It’s good that these are being prosecuted.

This huge rise in
numbers, though, has meant

the atmosphere, the
feeling of the average

citizen in Japan thinks that
Japan is a less safe country.

So a survey said 70% believe that Japan is
less safe than it was before, before being

a very vague term,
because yeah, during the

pandemic, when everything
was locked down, everything

was very safe because no one
was allowed to leave the house.

But getting to
actual statistics, a 4.

8% increase in fraud and
robbery, cyber scams are

up 8%, there were 19,033
cyber scams recorded last year.

It’s the most in 10
years, obviously the

internet is where these
scams are going to take

place from now on, 44.1 billion yen,
it’s up for the second year in a row.

The scams are not
just coming from within

Japan, the scams are actually
coming from all over Southeast Asia.

Gassy, we talked
about Gassy a lot, and I

talked about Gassy a lot because
he had a very interesting thing.

He was living in Dubai,
he was a YouTuber,

and what his YouTube
was like all scandals in

Japan, and then he said
he was living in Dubai

because if he came
back to Japan, they would

arrest him, and there
were people against

him, and it was like
all very conspiratorial.

And then he ran for
office, and he thought

like I can run for office
remotely, and he won,

he was running in the
government remotely,

and they’re like no, you
have to show up, he’s

like if I show up, you’re
going to arrest me,

and then they’re like
no, that’s not going

to happen, then he
showed up and got arrested,

and now the case
is actually coming to

sort of a conclusion,
essentially online intimidation.

So he was basically a cyber bully, he would
get scandals, he would get information,

and then he would like
blackmail people, or pick

people isn’t like, and he
would like harass them.

So he’s online
intimidation symbolizes the

problem of online
defamation and its extreme

maliciousness, whoo,
that’s what the judge

said, prosecutors are
looking for four years in prison.

So in a weird way,
though, this is actually

funny, because he was
talking all conspiracy,

and everyone’s like no, no, that’s not a
conspiracy, that’s not going to happen.

And then it was true, the whole time it was
true, they’re like as soon as you step foot

in this country,
you’re going to get

arrested, which is exactly
what he said would happen.

He’s being accused of
threats against actors.

I know go seems to be the main
one, who said I have been slandered.

I’ve lost contracts, and I
demand a strict punishment.

So this is actually a big thing.

Like when your name
gets dragged through the

mud in Japan, companies
will not work with you.

So he lost advertising
contracts and probably

millions and millions of yen
because of the things that Gassy said.

So Gassy having to pay
the price for that is good.

Again, I think this opens
him up once he’s found guilty.

There’s also a civil suit that I and I will
go could levy towards him and probably try

to recoup some of
those funds, although I

bet Gassy’s not going to have that
much money left over after all this.

So there was a man
and he’s a fan of this ex

porn star, and she
goes live on TikTok now.

And he sends her 80,000 yen
and he says, let’s meet for tea.

Now, if you’re a cool person in Japan,
young person, this actually a pickup line.

So it sounds, let’s meet
for T sounds very innocent.

Most Japanese pickup lines and stuff do.

In Korea, what does it like,
let’s go to my house and I’ll make

you ramen is like come over and
sleep with me at my apartment.

In Japan, let’s go for tea
means like let’s go on a date.

So he sent her 80,000 yen
and like dropped a pickup line

and she’s like, well, I got a
simp on the hook, let’s go.

She replied later with
if I’m driving, so like if I

have to come meet you,
that’ll be another 150,000 yen.

And so the dude paid it.

So the dude has paid out 80,000 yen for the
initial dropping line, 150,000 yen to get

her to drive to him or to
wherever they’re going to meet.

And then she said, not
having, not being satisfied.

She said, I haven’t been
able to pay my phone bill.

So give me another 40,000
yen, which he then paid.

But then she never actually met him.

So this is 270,000 yen total this man
has spent has given to this ex porn star.

And she actually still hasn’t met him.

Then during email
conversations or it’s like

online, line is like a chat
system they use in Japan.

It’s probably the
most popular one.

She said that he started
treating her cold, he’s probably

treating her coldly because
she’s taken 270,000 yen.

And average salary in Japan is
going to be 250 to 300,000 yen.

So he’s paid the average
monthly salary just

to have a meeting with
this woman who said

she will meet him and
then she’s not doing it.

She’s like, oh, I’m angry
that he’s now cold to me.

She said she would return all the money,
but he could never contact her again.

He said fine.

And then she hasn’t returned the money.

So I’m wondering, yeah,
like where’s the legality here?

Because the money was given under
a condition, but there was no contract.

Can he take this a step further?

And now let’s face facts, he
wanted to meet a porn star.

I think we all know
what he actually wanted

to have happen, but it
seems like a good story

to end on, but there’s no conclusion
because the story hasn’t ended yet.

The story hasn’t ended yet because we don’t
know if he’s going to get his money back or

if she’s actually going
to meet him, which

is not going to meet him because she
was just trying to like scammer for money.

Is there a scam here because
he gave the money willingly?

Like if you were going
to donate money to a

podcaster, and then make
demands of the podcaster,

and then they didn’t
meet those demands.

Would he then be obligated
to give that money back?

I don’t think so, but
the fact that there was a

disingenuous agreement
made is a kind of fraud.

So with my very
shallow understanding of

Japanese legal law, I
actually bet the fact that

she said, if you give me 150,000
yen, I will come and drive to meet you.

That is an oral
contract, that’s an oral

contract and therefore he
would have some kind of civil case.

It wouldn’t be punitive.

I bet he could get his money back.

I don’t think he could actually
like get extra money from her.

Just like if you gave a podcaster money, so
let’s say 80,000 yen, if you dropped 80,000

on your favorite podcast, I mean, what
kind of demand would you make of me anyway?

It’s like take off my shirt.

The problem is I would do it.

I would take off my
shirt and it would be

disgusting because it
would blow out the camera

and you wouldn’t be able
to see anything anymore.

Would it be 80,000 yen and only, all right,
so Ignat’s is just putting the chat sing,

but you please know the
Ignat’s is not dropped any money.

So when the money gets dropped, then we
will have an oral contract if I agree to it.

That’s the problem.

That’s the bit you’re missing.

So, yes, you can say,
I request that you sing

and then I can say,
well, I want 100,000 yen

and I will sing the song of
my choice and then I will sing

and then it would be like, I’m
not satisfied with that song.

Unfortunately, then
I would have actually

fulfilled my side of the
contract and you would

just lose, you would not be
able to accuse me of fraud.

Whereas if you gave
me 100,000 yen and I

said I would sing the
song of your choice and

then I sang a different song,
that could be problematic.

But if I just didn’t sing at all, well
then, absolutely, that would be fraud.

Oh, look at Dave, look at how cute Dave is.

He sat up just for the
end of the show, oh, my

little buddy, he’s still
got his eyes half close.

The dude is like barely asleep all the
time, okay, let’s just do the end song.

That was really messy today.

I do not know what happened.

I think I just kind of
mentally am not there.

Oh, he’s actually asleep.

He’s like doing the deep breathing,
sleeping as eyes are closed.

He’s sleeping while sitting up.

I bet if I just left this on Twitch, this
would be the most popular thing I’ve ever done.

Can I get the microphone
down to his nose?

Oh, no, he’s laying down again.

Ah, that’s too bad.

ASMRegulation

(upbeat music)

With the declining, man, right off,

that’s, I did a good first start and then
messed up to say, okay, let’s try again.

With the decolon, fuck!

Declining, declining, declining.

I need to do some mouth warmups.

Declining.

With the declining population in Japan,

recruiting for pretty
much anything is difficult.

So companies are
having difficulty recruiting.

Things like the military,
let’s say, there are less

people to recruit from,
so numbers are going down.

And the military, honestly,
for a lot of people, not the

most attractive option, it’s
self-defense force in Japan,

has decided to try to increase recruitment
by relaxing some of the standards.

And this is one of the slippery slopes,

because when you get so
desperate to need people

and you start accepting
people with hippie haircuts,

which is like, mm, there
are other other way.

So they’ve decided to
relax hairstyle regulations.

So I guess so you can
look good on the battlefield.

So as I run across the battlefield,
like I do in COD, guns aiming at nothing,

because I’m just shooting
randomly in the air,

you can see my golden
locks fly out behind me.

They’re trying to attract younger people.

And what they’ve decided is that
women don’t have to have short hairs.

So they had to have
very, very short haircuts,

like still just like above
the ear kind of haircuts.

Men don’t need to have buzz cuts anymore.

So women, the hair must be tied back, and
it cannot obstruct the wearing of a helmet,

and it cannot touch your shoulders.

So it’s not long hair, but it is longer.

And then men, they said, “There
is an athletic standard for men.

” And the thing is, I don’t know what the
athletic standard is when it comes to hair.

I assume by that they actually
just mean short-ish all around.

The thing is, an athletic
haircut where I come

from in Canada, would
be the hockey mullet.

So short in the front and long in the back,

that would be very much what I would
associate with a certain kind of athlete.

And I don’t think that is
what the Japanese military

is really going for.

They have tried anime in the past,
but we’re not going to see any anime

wife who’s on the battlefield, because
you are not allowed to die your hair.

So that’s actually,
again, the sensible rule,

because remember, all those
stories from the last couple of years

about high schools and whatnot,
saying you had to have black hair.

The rule wasn’t that you
shouldn’t die your hair.

The rule was that you
had to have black hair

with the base assumption
that every Japanese kid

is born with black hair, and
then these mixed kids come in.

And they have dark brown, light brown hair,

and they were being
forced to die their hair black,

because the rule
wasn’t, don’t die your hair.

The rule was, you have to have black hair.

They’re being more sensible.

They’re saying don’t die your hair.

So if you have naturally brown hair,

the military is more than
happy to welcome you,

which is a step forward,
I think that’s pretty nice.

You can only die gray hair,

which I thought was interesting.

So they’re saying as men, women get older,

they get gray hair, you’re allowed
to cover that up, if you want.

Otherwise you have
to have natural hair.

So we’re not going to
see any bright pink hair,

main character,
syndrome stuff on the

battlefield, at least with
the SDF any time soon.

They have also tried anime in the past,
which takes us deftly into our next story.

There is a, the reformed church,
which is also trying to recruit people,

and they’re doing
something very interesting,

which we’re going to take
a moment and listen to.

They’re trying to teach Calvinism.

They decided to go on the internet
and say the best way to teach Calvinism.

I honestly did not take the time

to look up Calvinism.

Calvinism, I do have a coworker

who I’m sure would be more
than happy to tell me about it,

but I’m sure they also would not have
connected Calvinism to anime ASMR.

So they are reciting psalms,
or if you read it like I do psalms

with sort of a weird
Japanese character voice,

sort of whispering in
your ear at the same time.

So luckily for you, I
have a little bit of that.

What are we looking at?

We are looking at…
(speaking in foreign language)

Okay, the Japanese is too
hard for me to understand,

but I think she’s reading
Psalm 103, colon two.

And I mean, we could just
do it together for a while.

If I could read the Japanese fast
enough, I can sort of read the Japanese,

but no, I’m gonna be able to
keep up with a native speaker.

So I don’t know, when
you would listen to this,

I guess this is you turn this on,

you go to bed and you get
that tingly failing in your ear.

And then, join the church.

All right, there are three and
a half minutes more of that.

We don’t need to listen to anymore.

Just another weird thing, combination,

Japan, anime, recruitment, to try to get
those nerds, I guess, to come to church.

The military, actually, it
was two years ago, I believe,

actually, it was using
anime posters to try to

attract a certain segment
to join the SDF as well.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea.

I mean, most of the military now,
at this point, is probably computers.

It’s drones, it’s computers,
it’s logistics and stuff.

You need people who are
more than happy to sit in a chair,

10 to 12 hours a day and get
paid to mess around on a computer.

This is the right demographic for it.

And then they get to call themselves
soldiers and pretend they’re in an anime

where they’re like fighting cyber stuff,
which they might actually be, I don’t know.

I mean, that actually may
work out for you in the future.

The host club of crackdowns
continue, which is good,

’cause I was, everything I’ve heard about
host clubs is make me like, just wonder.

I just wonder, every time the
story comes up, I just wonder.

Is it that good?

Like, is it the men sort of
fawning over you, that good?

I’ll fawn over you for a much lower price.

Let’s put it that way.

You throw 20 bucks my way.

I will fawn for a little bit.

Anyways, there’s a little bit of fallout.

So again, these are because
this is a recent development.

This means these are
going to be the first time

charges are put towards
host clubs in this way.

So one club was suspended
for charging huge fees.

That’s kind of like a
constant that everyone

knows is going on, but
was never punished before.

I guess it was one of
those things where like,

the police are like, you
know where you’re going.

You know they use manipulation tactics.

You know they’re going
to try to jack up the price.

You’re in for it.

That’s up to you.

But now they’re like, no,
it’s gotten too far because

once you’re in so much
debt, they try to force you

into the sex trade of some
sort to pay off your debt.

And that’s maybe going too
far for the police in Japan.

I guess massive debt wasn’t
enough, all that it should have been.

So one was suspended
for charging huge fees.

And a second was suspended
for admitting a minor.

These were all, all the charges are
going to be related to inflated debt.

One club apparently stopped a
woman from leaving until she drank more.

So the way they actually
create the inflated price

that you owe is to get you super drunk.

And then by like, hey, let’s buy a bottle.

That bottle, you know, a 2000
bottle yen bottle of champagne.

Let’s charge them a million yen for it.

They get you drunk and they
don’t ever put out the prices.

This is again a common scam in Japan.

If you come to Japan and
you go into a restaurant,

you go into a bar and there are no
prices listed, you should just leave.

And if they try to get you to stay, what
they’re trying to do is get you to buy stuff

without telling you the price
and then they’ll hand you

an inflated thing and then say like, if
you don’t pay it, we’ll call the police.

The thing is, the police are actually,

they know what’s going
on but there is nothing

they can actually like,
they can’t defend you.

You actually still have to
pay the bill because in a way

because you drank there,
not knowing the price.

That’s your fault and the
police actually have to enforce it.

You have to pay that bill.

So that’s only you, you
should be aware of it.

If you’re a tourist and
you’re coming to Japan,

it’s but Japan’s reopened, it’s borders.

Tourists, I think it’s up
six fold from what it was

this time last year, which makes
sense because COVID’s not gone.

Apparently, I was reading a
story, I didn’t write it down.

I wasn’t going to do it for
Ninja Ninja Japan this week.

They’re saying we’re in our
10th wave of coronavirus.

But now, immunity is very high.
The vaccine is rolled out.

So it’s more like people
are just getting long colds.

So not particularly violent,
like people were dying before.

Now people catch a cold
and it just sort of lasts,

like cold lasts like two,
three days, let’s say.

This lasts like a week plus.

So they’re actually saying
that we’re in our 10th wave.

This is people aren’t noticing
as much because they just

think like, whoo, it’s cold
season and I got a cold.

So this woman, they
stopped her from leaving.

I said, you have to drink more,
which that is, I would say kidnapping.

Once you stop someone from
leaving a place they want to leave from,

that is actually kidnapping, uh, then
they made her take out 850,000 yen

from an ATM to pay off the debt
that she just racked up from them,

keeping her in the place in the host
club so that she could drink more.

So they basically made her stay drink
more to rack up a bill and they made her

go pay the bill.
If these punishments go through,

this is going to be the first of
their kind in Japan and I really do.

I think the host club system,
scam, whatever you want to call it.

It’s one of the grossest things they
have and I would really like to see.

I don’t have a problem
with what’s happening.

Like you want to go and
pay someone to talk to you.

I personally wouldn’t do that.

But if that’s, if you’re
comfortable with it, that’s okay.

Just make it a fair business.

That’s, that’s the only thing I would say.

Just make it a fair business off we go.

But that’s apparently not good enough.

You have to rip people off.

And that’s where they always,
it’s where everything goes wrong.

It’s why we need regulations.

Don’t get me going on regulations.

I know, I know everyone out there
is listening to this is like, oh, Peter,

do some SMR about regulations,

but the regulations you would
put into place on corporations.

I know, I know that that
might be my new podcast.

Corporal SMR regulatory systems.

Uh, they’ve decided to stop
running snack carts on shinkansen.

So if you go on the shinkansen now,
the bullet train, what happens is lady

still very sexist is you shouldn’t I
don’t think I’ve ever seen a man do it.

So I think it’s pretty fair to say a lady.

A lady comes down to card and she’s like,
do you want to buy an overpriced chocolate?

Do you want to buy an overpriced tea?

Do you want to buy something that you should
have bought before you go on the train?

Everyone just buy stuff
and brings it on the train.

So those things are not
profitable, but it isn’t in train service.

I think way back, probably when
they weren’t ripping people off,

people probably bought from
it and it was maybe a good deal.

I don’t know.

I’ve never bought anything from it.

I always buy snacks and bring it on the
train if I ever have to go on the train.

So these carts, there’s a
lot of train fans in Japan.

So these carts, what are
they going to do with them?

Well, they’re going to
put them up for sale.

And if you want one, you have to
enter a lottery to be able to bid on the

carts, they’re going to
be 50 carts and they’re

going to sell them
for 100,000 yen each.

Now, I don’t know if there’s
bidding involved in that.

I think they’re just going to sell 50.

So I think the lottery,
there are going to be 50

winners and you each get,
have to pay 100,000 yen.

You have to be able to pick it
up yourself by the end of February.

So this is all happening very quickly.

We hope quote from the
representative of the shinkansen.

We hope they will be
put to good use and not

used for some weird
sex thing in a movie.

Some of that was added on by me.

There’s someone out
there, completely innocent,

who’s building his own
inside of a shinkansen

in his house and he’s weird
and he’s got too much money.

I can’t judge that.

I have my nerd stuff in my room.

I’m not as bad primarily because I’m poor.

I think if I had a lot of money, I
would buy a lot of stupid stuff.

And I’m a fan of something different.

So it’s hard for me to judge.

But there is another segment that’s going
to be like, let’s recreate a shinkansen

and then make an adult
video and then have

the girl push it down and then have
some sort of encounter with a passenger.

I could totally see that being a
video and then they could say,

this is an authentic shinkansen cart
and somehow that’s a selling point.

Why did my brain go there first?

Because I do an engineer’s Japan and
I’ve now deep into Japan’s psychology

when they have like, let’s add a
little authenticity to something.

They will absolutely go for it.

Once you win the lottery
and you pay 100,000 yen,

they will be no cleaning or
repairs done before the sale.

So the condition they
are in on that last day

of service is the
condition you will get it in.

I think not cleaning it is
a problem again because

of the fanciful, weird
people out in the world.

I think you should just clean it up.

Repairs, yeah, let them repair themselves.

I’m sure these are the kind of people
who would really enjoy repairing it.

And as part of the contract of
winning the lottery, you cannot resell it.

So I can’t win the lottery 10 times by 10
cards and then resell them on the internet.

Then if I do that, I’m
going to get in trouble.

That blue city, they got
some youth baseball going on.

As most cities do baseballs, I
think the most popular sport in Japan.

So hey, what’s funny, probably
the most famous baseball player.

So famous, I’ve heard of him.

I don’t watch baseball.

I do not follow sports.

So he has to be super, super famous.

I think he, I don’t think I know.

He just did the like $700 billion
contract over X amount of years.

So he’s like the number one baseball
player in the world for the moment.

So that means he’s super popular.

He’s Japanese and therefore
very popular in Japan.

He has donated 60,000
baseball gloves to 20,000 schools.

What they did is the
city collects the gloves

and then they’re supposed to
distribute them to the different schools.

The mayor of Bepu city
said, you know what, more

valuable to the world
is I took these gloves

and I didn’t give them to kids.

If I put them on display
for everyone to see.

And he said this was to make
children and citizens happy.

Because as we all know, kids love
not touching or playing with things.

They love to go up to a glass
case and just look at stuff.

So that was clearly
a weird little selfish

thing that the mayor of Bepu did
immediately got pushed back on.

It’s like, Otani is
donated these gloves so

that kids will get excited
about baseball and

play baseball and maybe
grow up and be professional

baseball players or at least foster
their love of the sport that he loves.

And you probably a baseball fan
are like, I don’t want to give it to kids.

I want to keep it from itself.

So I’m going to put in a glass case.

No, I can touch it.

It’s my glove.

Some people don’t grow
up and the mayor of Bepu

seems to have been one
of those people who didn’t

realize that not giving
stuff to kids that was

intended to be given
to kids is a bad idea.

So he some other districts,
cities, did display the gloves as well.

They didn’t get in trouble
because the idea was

we’re going to hold them until
they’re ready to be shipped.

So basically, we’re not, we’re
going to put these in a box.

They’re going to get shipped.

Let’s say next month
or the beginning of the

new academic year
or something like that.

Until then, we’ll put them on display.

And yes, everyone can
look at the gloves that

have probably been
touched by Shohei Otani

himself, the magical
fingers of the man himself.

And then everyone looks
at and goes, ooh, glass case.

Look at those gloves.

And then when it was time to give them to
the kids, actually give them to the kids.

Kids.

Mayor of Bepu?

Now, in my gloves, they
want to keep my gloves.

They’re not going to give my
gloves to anybody under my gloves.

Fucking child.

This is interesting.

It’s not really something I can make any.

I can’t make fun of this.

In the 1970s, there
was a series of bombings.

And this was, this was the
East Asia anti-Japan armed front.

And what they would do is targeting
companies that operated overseas.

And so they were
protesting Japan’s exploitation

of other countries
pre-World War II,

where they were like
literally enslaving other

people and stuff and
occupying other countries.

And they were seeing
that the current expansion

after World War II in the
70s and 80s, particularly,

was another form of this expansion.

So they were like, we should stop this.

We shouldn’t exploit others.

So let’s blow them up.

Always the solution.

And a man has been wanted since 1975.

What he did was he put a bomb
outside of a building and it went off,

and a little bunch of shit up.

A man entered the hospital
suffering from terminal cancer.

He has been hidden
for the last 50 years and

paying for cancer
treatments out of pocket

because if he used his
actual idea or anything,

he would link him
back to that bombing.

So he’s basically been in
hiding for 50 years and surviving.

He’s been working at a building firm.

So that’s a bit vague.

He may have been doing construction.

He may have been doing architecture
or some variety of work therein.

So he’s had a job.

He’s been working for the last 50 years.

He’s been in hiding.

He hasn’t used his health care card.

He hasn’t used any of his
official idea for anything.

So the police wouldn’t find him.

And he’s lived for the last 50 years.

He enters into hospital because his
cancer has just gotten to this stage

where he has to be in hospital.

And this is sort of hospice almost.

He’s it’s terminal.

He’s not going to survive.

That means sooner or
later they have to get his ID.

So they get his ID and they find
out and they contact the police.

The police come and talk to him.

And then the story comes out
yesterday that he dies in hospital.

So I’m a bit torn.

Is this like in a way
he hid successfully for

the entirety of his life
and escape the police.

But the police sort of caught
up with him at the very end.

I don’t know. It’s a weird story
because how do you feel about that?

Like he committed a crime.

I kind of have respect for
someone who can hide for 50 years.

So much of an engineer’s depend is someone
doing something and getting caught that day

because they videoed it
and put it on the internet.

And then he got this guy and
I would say a proper criminal.

He was a freedom fighter in his mind.

And this is always sort of one
of the dichotomies of people doing

acts for political reasons as they see
themselves differently than just criminals.

They see themselves as the rebels.

They see themselves
as the uprising, the

revolution that’s going
to change the world.

So he saw himself as a revolutionary.

So he didn’t feel like what
he was doing was a crime.

He thought he needed
to do this to change the

course of Japan and
the world in the future.

I have respect for the ideology.

I do not think you should blow shit up.

I don’t think you should blow people up.

I’m not even a big fan of blowing
stuff up unless it’s in a video game.

Love blowing stuff up in video games.

The difference there.

Yeah, you’re knowing the
difference between real

life and video games
makes a big difference.

But he found a job, worked for 50 years.

I mean, they didn’t
actually say he retired,

which makes me think
he was doing construction

because he can do construction
just up into the last days.

And then was caught.

Police came and spoke to them.

Apparently he was quite open
with them, but then he died.

And then, case closed.

Going from that guy
to this guy for Fox eight.

A boy filmed himself licking the lid
of a water pitcher at a rabbit shop.

This is not interesting anymore.

The people who are
getting caught licking stuff

or eating stuff and making
communal stuff grows.

The reason I, a rabbit
shop, a ramen, ramen shop,

a ramen, a shop where
that sells bowls of ramen,

my mouth is a little dry.

So I might not be enunciating as
well as I could or I’m talking too fast.

People tell me I talked
to slow in the office.

So that might be the
I try to speak a little

faster when I do the
news need to use to pay.

He filmed himself
licking the lid of a water

pitcher at a ramen shop
and then putting it back.

And the internet, of course,
immediately saw this and went, “Abshit.

” Now, the reason this was
interesting to me is because

the police didn’t have a
chance to get involved.

The internet took care of this.

So they found the boy’s
Twitter and Instagram.

They combed through
his Instagram and found out

he was enrolled in a
makeup school in Hokkaido.

They then contacted the
school and started talking

about like all the
gross thing this kid did.

And that he should be punished.

The school tried to hide it.

They took down as many of the
pictures as they could with this kid in it.

They said we’re doing
it to protect the other

students, basically the people
who are in the pictures with him.

But of course, what
they’re really trying to do

is just like cover up this
and hope it goes away.

It’s not going away.

The internet has decided.

The Japanese internet
has decided if you do

something publicly gross,
we’re coming for you.

So then the criticism of
the school started coming

out on the internet and the
boy was probably expelled.

So the police were never even contacted.

This kid licked something in a restaurant,

video it put it on the
internet days later, not

even like multiple,
maybe two days later he’s

been expelled from the
school he’s enrolled in.

And that shows you where
we’ve come to the Japanese

society because now
we’re at the point where

if you do something like this, it’s just
been decided it’s so morally reprehensible.

They’re just going to come after you.

The last story, trying
to mix up the last stories.

I used to do 50 year old creepy men.

Those stories have actually fallen off
recently, which speaks good for my people.

And then also maybe a little palette cleanser
at the end instead of the same stuff.

The national long bath competition
for copy bottles was held this year.

This is the 12th year in a row.

This is the first year I’ve heard about it.

I’m very interested in this.

There are five zoos
currently with copy bars.

And what they do is they choose a day, the
creepy men are more active in the spring.

Oh, they need the warm weather because
in the colder joints are sore like me.

And then they can’t do it.

They have to like, oh, I got to wait till
the spring and then I’ll get my shit to go.

Five zoos.

What they do is they monitor the copy
bottles and they choose a day and the copy

bottom that takes the
longest bath that day wins.

What do they win?

Probably nothing.

The glory.

I mean, when I did all my judo
tournaments, what did I win?

Tiny plastic trophies that I
could buy myself for like 20 bucks.

Probably not even.

They were really cheap.

I actually was talking to a guy once.

I was like, you know what you can do.

You can just go into trophy stores and
get trophies made with your neighborhood.

You don’t need to actually bother
with the competition or anything.

And then I could just
have like a rack behind

me with just hundreds
of trophies on it.

If it’s far enough away, you’re
not going to read the plaques.

That’s fine.

And then there’s other
guys like, oh, man, how

long does it take to
get a black belt in judo?

I was like, well, you
go into the store and if

you have 700 again, it
takes about eight minutes

because they have to go find the right.

They don’t check, they
don’t check if you have

a, you don’t leave me like a certificate
to buy a black belt in a martial art store.

You could go in by any color, throw it on.

There you go.

They don’t, they don’t check trophy stores
don’t check martial art stores don’t check.

You can just construct that yourself.

I don’t know why I
went on that little rant.

I was for the glory.

Truffle was a copy bar.

Local favorite to win.

Did a one hour, 50 minute
and 49 seconds soak in the bath.

But you know what?

Donut came in and said,
fuck Truffle, I am going

to make this not just a
win, but a fucking murder.

The Nagasaki Biopark
hero, donut, did a soak

of two hours, 53
minutes and 57 seconds,

blowing Truffle out of the fucking
water figuratively and literally.

This is your post credit scene if
you hang around for after the song.

You may have heard a tone of
disappointment in my voice all day today.

And the reason is last night, my
wife, my wife, she came to me and said,

“Do you have
anything in English that I

could listen to, maybe
something about news?”

I don’t know if she even
knows I do this podcast.

This was two weeks running,
two or three times ranked

the number two Japanese
news podcast in the world.

And the number one is the
actual newspaper the Manichi.

The Manichi releases a podcast every day.

So if they get
downloads, their download

numbers are going to
be way bigger than mine

because they do want every day
and people just automatically download.

I can’t compete with that.

So Ignatius just put in the chat,
did you recommend her your podcast?

No, I didn’t because
I was so hurt by the

fact that I am not 100%
sure she even knows.

I do this podcast, the number two
Japanese news podcast in English.

Hey, do you have
anything in English that I

could listen to so I
could practice my English?

Maybe it has news or current events in it.

Maybe something even
more casual than the formal

English to help me get
more natural English in there.

Do you know anything like that?

Do you know what? No, I don’t.

No, I don’t know anything like that.

I don’t even think that’s a concept of
knowing anyone’s ever done it in the world.