Ninja News Japan Quiz

He touched you Wagyu beef has a problem.

You’ve probably heard of Wagyu
beef, it’s very expensive beef.

I actually had an
experience over the golden

week vacation of eating very, very expensive
food and it does not agree with me.

I am just too low class for that.

So the thing is about Japanese
expensive food always has a lot of fat.

And that was problematic because I
don’t eat a lot of food with a lot of fat.

So the fat kind of did a number on me.

So I actually realized I don’t
enjoy a lot of expensive food.

He touched you Wagyu beef has a problem.

It’s not the problem that I
don’t like fatty, fatty food.

But Wagyu beef does tend to have a lot
of like marbled, has a lot of fat in it.

Not my thing.

But that’s not the problem.

The problem isn’t my
preference, the problem isn’t

my preference, the problem isn’t my
preference, the problem is a different problem.

The problem with touchy
Wagyu beef and the

kanji, the Chinese characters they
use for that, young people can’t read it.

It’s an expensive item.

It’s based on its brand.

It’s based on its name.

But if young people can’t read
the name, what happens then?

So kanji, the Chinese characters,
people in their 20s, 57% cannot read.

He touchy Wagyu, 43% of
people in their 30s could not read.

He touchy Wagyu.

And he got older, he got better.

So 33% in their 40s couldn’t read it,
35% in their 50s, and 22% in their 60s.

So the kanji maybe
was more common in the

past, or maybe people
were better at reading kanji.

A lot of people are saying just like smart
phones are making it harder for people to

write like, I was of
the age where I learned

cursive in school, I don’t
think kids learn that anymore.

And in fact, I think
typing might be a more

valuable skill, but you still should
learn how to write with a pen and stuff.

But kids just can’t do stuff.

And it’s not, I don’t
think this is, again, this

is not a judgment, this
is not a negative thing.

This is like the world changes.

But people typing
everything out on their phone

means they’re never
actually writing the kanji.

They just pick the appropriate
kanji for the word the writing.

So they don’t learn how to write it.

And then in some cases,
they don’t learn how

to read it properly,
because they just assume

that the computer or the phone
or whatever is telling them right.

I actually had a student
who couldn’t type,

because they only used their phone,
they typed everything out on their phone.

So when they had to type something out
on a keyboard, it was really hard for them.

So they gave me the keyboard
and I typed down what they said.

And they were shocked at how fast I
could type it was like an amazing thing.

Just like I was shocked at how fast they
could type with two thumbs on their phone.

But again, it’s just what you grow up with.

You grow up with touch pads.

You learn to use touch
pads really effectively.

The Hitachi kanji is used different ways.

Iberaki Iberaki is a prefecture
within it used to be called Hitachi.

It’s very confusing.

So as I was reading this, I
got more and more confused

and I realized why I
gave up on studying kanji.

So I speak Japanese at
a, I would say intermediate

level would be generous, but an intermediate
level I can do conversations and stuff.

But I am essentially illiterate.

And I’m illiterate because
when I started studying

kanji, I was like, I’m
too old to be studying.

I don’t want to study anymore.

And I give up.

And I kind of just gave up on
it, which is not the right attitude.

But you do get tired of studying
when you’re old and I am old.

So Iberaki is the prefecture.

It used to be called Hitachi.

The kanji has been used different ways.

It is therefore very confusing for people.

And that’s why the
younger people now, they

haven’t grown up with
history or the understanding.

So they understand it less than
those people in their 60s, 22%.

It was actually to be 88%
could read it 22% still couldn’t.

So it’s still confusing
to that group that we

would assume actually grew
up with this more logically.

It’s used different
ways, which means some

places like Hitachi
Nakasidi, they’ve decided

to just do away with
the kanji altogether.

And when they write the name of
their city, they just use Hitagana.

Hitagana is the base
phonetic version of Japanese.

And it shows that the
use of kanji, even in

modern Japan, is a
confusing and difficult thing.

Again, sort of just justifying
the fact that I quit studying.

It’ll be interesting to
see how language now

evolves in Japan, like where this
is going to take us in the future.

Are they going to use less kanji or are
they going to adopt other things or they can

do start using English alphabet, even
for Japanese words, that kind of stuff.

It’ll be interesting to
see where this goes

because as young people
grow up finding it harder

and harder to read
kanji, is kanji the way

you want to go forward
or do they want to sort

of double down and force
more people to learn kanji?

I actually think doubling
down is very much a

Japanese way of dealing
with this sort of issue.

Sister cities are great.

I mean, it’s a cultural
exchange between

your places and you do class trips,
your high school is going to go somewhere.

They’re going to go to this place
and then you can go back down.

It’s wonderful class.

I think sister cities are great.

Cultural exchange is great.

It also will involve politicians
and older politicians.

And if you’ve ventured
to an engineer’s

Japan before, you kind of
know where this is going.

When I say the words
old politician, there

was a government meeting
and it was the mayor

and the government people
from Dubo City in Australia.

Dubo?

I’m not sure how to say D-U-B-B-O-Dubo.

I’m going to say double.

It’s so Australian to
make it a word like double.

There’s a city called double.

It’s the sister city.

They’re over the visiting.

They’re like, let’s have an after party.

There’s a 71 year old deputy
speaker and he’s doing some karaoke.

Now, I’m trying to work on a
new segment, a new thing to do.

I’m not just going to
just tell you the story.

I was like, ah, you know what we should do?

Just make a quiz.

You’ve listened to an
engineer’s Japan in the past.

You know the kind of
things that we end up

coming up, the kind
of things we talk about.

Three options before I give you the answer.

I haven’t figured out a way to do this.

I would like to get maybe
a listener or someone

to talk while we do this at the same time,
but we’ll work that out in the future.

This is still the sort of testing phase.

Three options.

What did the deputy speaker do to the mayor
of Dubo’s daughter while singing karaoke?

Option number one, he
did a lap dance while singing.

Option number two, he
started to strip off his clothes.

Number three, he held the
mic up to her private parts.

So now I would need
like some thinking music.

Please have submitted your answers by now.

So again, this is where I don’t, I
kind of maybe need a little interaction.

I need someone have
someone on like the line

and do the quiz with
them so they can guess.

But if you guessed number three,
ding, ding, ding, ding, you are correct.

Now they didn’t explain it very
carefully, like very thoroughly.

So I don’t know if he was serenading her
vagina, or if he was holding the microphone

up in the hopes that
he would start singing.

All we know is that he
while singing got very

close to her private
parts, which is gross.

I mean, that’s I think that’s a
fair statement we can make.

That is gross.

He therefore, again, apologized.

He said, I’m ashamed
that I could not respond

appropriately on the spot
or apologize the same day.

He like, I think they were partying.

He didn’t figure out what
he did, I guess, because

they were drinking and
stuff until the next day.

And he’s like, Oh, I’m sorry.

I waited so long.

I was trying my best
to make it into a party.

It’s an interesting
statement because when I

want to make something into a party, I
want to get, you know, everyone involved.

I want to get people doing stuff.

I don’t immediately
gravitate to someone’s

groin and start singing to it
or trying to get it to sing to me.

That’s not my first instinct.

I have not thrown any
blockbusters of parties,

though, if we’re being honest, like my
parties are very sedate and maybe that’s it.

Maybe I don’t do enough crotch
singing to really get the party started.

So I’m waiting for some rapper to come out
with a song about getting the party started

by crotch singing either from the crotch
or to the crotch either way works for me.

He’s sorry for the discomfort he caused.

Nobody from the, nobody
from double has responded.

So this guy is apologized, he’s put that
statement out there and no one apologized.

Apparently there is a
picture of the mayor’s

daughter looking
incredibly uncomfortable,

which is very appropriate when a 71
year old man starts singing at your crotch.

There’s a restaurant
called Tamate Baco and

this is not the only
one, an open last month

in Shibuya and it’s an all-you-can-eat
seafood buffet kind of thing.

So it’s a tabihodai.

So basically tabihodai,
hodai is all-you-can

and then tabay is eat and then there’s
no mihodai, which is all-you-can-drink.

And you go, you pay
a set amount of money,

you can eat for an hour and you
just order as much as you want.

You have to eat it all within the hour.

That kind of thing.

It’s pretty normal.

The way the article
presented it is that they

have decided that foreign tourists should
be charged more than Japanese people.

So if you want to go for lunch just on a
regular day, if you’re Japanese, it’s 5,478

yen and if you are a
foreigner, it is 6,578 yen.

So basically 1,100 yen more.

Friday being a more
popular day, so like Friday

dinner, that’s going to be
the most expensive time.

If you are a Japanese
person, it’s 7,678 yen.

If you’re a foreigner, it’s 8,778 yen.

So again, 1,100 yen more
for not being Japanese.

The interesting way
they worked around this

was they said the
higher price is the actual

official price and then if you’re
Japanese, you get a discount of 1,100 yen.

So it’s not that they’re
charging foreigners

more, it’s that they’re
actually charging

Japanese people less,
which was an interesting

way to try to get
around the racism or

the discrimination that they’re
actually putting out there.

The discount counts for
Japanese people and residents.

So very technically,
if I went into this

restaurant and I ordered
this meal and I could

show them my residence card,
I should get the lower price.

So is it biased then?

That’s the interesting thing.

The justification for
this is the yen is very

weak, so Japanese
people, their money isn’t

going as far, where
foreigners are coming

in, they’re getting more yen for their
money, so they should be charged more because

they’re not paying
taxes and things like that.

It’s a very thin argument.

The governor said
foreign travelers are

Japan’s guests, which
I think is a pretty fair

statement to make and therefore they shouldn’t
be taken advantage of, they shouldn’t

be charged more, they
shouldn’t be treated in this way.

I was interested though, because if I went,
would I get asked if I was a resident or

not where they just
assumed that I’m a foreigner

because, you know,
very foreign looking

in Japan and would they just
then charge me the higher price?

I don’t know.

It’s an interesting question.

I don’t tend to find out because I actually
don’t think this is a nice practice.

I think you just choose
a price and you make

that the price and
you charge the price.

So there’s a guy who dresses up in a black
suit and he puts on sunglasses and he goes

out into the street,
so again, this could be

another opportunity for our
quiz, so let’s try out our quiz again.

There are three options.

What do you think he does?

He dresses up in a
black suit and sunglasses,

so he’s trying to look
pretty cool while he does it.

So number one, option number
one, is he a Batman-like vigilante.

He goes out and delivers vigilante justice.

Number two, he’s going out and obstructing
traffic on his bicycle or number three, he

rides his bicycle and he grabs
women as he rolls down the street.

So we need again a clip,
some music, some thinking time.

If you guessed number
two, which I would be

surprised if you did,
because I think if you’ve,

again, you’re watching
the engineer’s Japan,

you’re listening to
the engineer’s Japan,

you’re thinking, is it going to be
the butt grabbing on the bicycle?

No, he rides out and
what he does is he rides

in the middle of traffic and he
swerves into oncoming traffic.

Now, this is to freak out the drivers,
to play a little chicken, to risk it.

No one really knows why.

He swerves into oncoming traffic
and they’re saying to annoy drivers.

He was arrested and they
suspect he is responsible

for 42 similar incidences
they’re investigating now.

He has claimed that he is not this
person, he denies all the accusations.

There is film of him doing this weaving in
an out of traffic, which I will put up in

the corner if you watch the YouTube video.

The police have given
a nickname, and I think

criminals with nicknames is
always a very interesting thing.

Police have named him
the pop-up cyclist because

he comes out into
traffic and then weaves

into traffic, popping
in and out of traffic,

popping up out of nowhere, I
guess they didn’t call him disc-spring.

Very bad man ask.

That’s where I got the first
sort of option from the back men

vigilante because he just sort
of disappears into the night.

They searched his
apartment and that’s where

they found the same black suit
and sunglasses he wears in the video.

Which I think makes him a pretty
much guilty, it’s a really chan reversal.

So the last like three weeks I’ve talked
about in any chan and I’ve actually thought

like I think we’ve done enough
until she goes to or gets out of prison.

There’s not really much
more to say about any chan.

I just again I find her fascinating
because she has a work ethic.

She just applied it to
crime whereas if she’d

applying the same
work ethic to something

else I think she would
have been really successful.

She clearly was able to do stuff.

This is a guy who she was taking,
she was a sugar baby at TV chan.

So she was doing sort of compensated
dating and then frauding men of money.

This is a guy who is
defrauding sugar babies.

So I’m calling it the atiti chan reversal.

This guy swindles women who
are looking to become sugar baby.

So he meets people
online and he says hey, if

you meet me I’ll give you
200,000 yen for a date.

That’s actually pretty good.

Like that’s half a month to a
month salary for some people.

So he connects with them on a
matching app and then he says I’m a vet.

And it was an
interesting choice because

apparently being a vet is
very successful because

you work with animals and
no he works with animals

but also you’re a doctor
so it’s very appealing.

So you have the appeal
of being a doctor but also

someone who works with
animals all at the same time.

That seems to be a very attractive profession
and so he shows that very carefully.

He says let’s meet at the
zoo, the zoo where I work.

So they meet at the zoo and then he
walks around he says you know what?

He seems very proud
of the zoo while they’re

talking you know
what but a lot of people

know me around you so let’s just
get out of here and they go to a hotel.

After talking for
about two hours, I don’t

know if that’s at the hotel or
later because again the story jumps.

The story actually
said go to a hotel which

would imply they go and
have intimate relations

but then they immediately jumps
to after talking for two hours.

So I don’t know I would not go
to a hotel to talk for two hours.

I would go somewhere else if we were just
going to talk but he talks about his family

and his love of boxing
and then he looks

very serious and he says
I’ve left my wallet at home.

Could you give me 20,000 yen for tickets
so that I can buy tickets for boxing?

And the woman has been promised 200,000 yen
so 20,000 yen on top of that to get paid

back is not very much
so they go to the ATM

they get 20,000 yen
they give to the guy and

then he says like
great I’m going to go buy

tickets I’ll see you
again for a second date.

I’ll you know the Japanese version of Venmo
you the money so it’ll probably be like

a line or pay pay or
something like that and I’ll pay

you back and then they
never hear from them again.

So he’s not doing the
scale of Viti Chiang

but he’s working on low
numbers of money but

large numbers of
women so trying to get a

little bit of money out
of everybody as opposed

to just getting two or three whales
and getting money out of them.

The woman never heard
from them again and

then she tried to contact
the zoo and the zoo

says there is no such person here but we’ve
had similar calls which made the woman very

suspicious so she called up the police
and said I believe I’ve been defrauded.

Now if 20,000 yen he
was banking on 20,000 yen

not being very much money
and the embarrassment

of them saying I want
to be a sugar baby to

be enough to get them to
stop from contacting the police.

So this lady was like no I’m contacting the
zoo and the zoo I maybe she actually liked

them because she
actually came out in her

part of the interview she was actually
saying she was quite embarrassed about being

defrauded this way but
it’s just like those men

I have sympathy for who were
defrauded millions of yen by Viti Chiang.

So I feel kind of bad for her.

He says he’s met about 50
women this way so again if you got

20,000 yen from each of them
that’s pretty fair some of the money.

After the rest he said
sorry you know I feel

bad for taking advantage
of these women.

He’s actually not a vet.

He’s actually a day
laborer and then he said

this was a bit that actually
kind of really struck me.

I have always disliked
animals so the construction

of him being a vet was
a very conscious choice.

I don’t like actually
like animals but women

will like a man who
likes animals so I’m

going to pretend to be
a man who likes animals

so much so that it’s
become my profession

and that will appeal to women
and apparently it was successful.

He was given two years,
six months in prison

but it’s been suspended
for four years so

if he doesn’t commit any more
crimes he will be Scott free.

There again did not mention
giving back any of the money.

I actually am now very interested in how
much and how do they give back to the money

of these women do they give back the money
of these women because this is one of those

weird things where
the fraud it’s done

voluntarily and again this
case it’s a very small sum.

So is it worth suing over like if you sue
the guy for 20,000 yen you’re going to pay

probably a lawyer more than
20,000 yen just to follow that suit.

Leena Chaunay on
the other hand she took

millions so getting a
lawyer and suing her would

make perfect sense because you want to get
all your money back but I actually bet it’s

all gone because she
gave it all to host and

she doesn’t have any
money so they’ll just

be like if she ever
works they’ll be docking

her pay for years or something I
have no idea what’s going to happen.

Again her situation the consequences of
what she’s done are the interesting thing is

it’s just going to take a decade
to find out what actually happens.

So maybe Ninja News
Japan ends at some point

because I just you
know run out of content

or run out of time or
whatever but I promise

you in nine to ten
years I’m going to come

back if we leave these chaun pops up again
if I’m still alive and give you the ending

of that story like what has she done what’s
happened since then because I’m interested

in it and I don’t think I’m
ever going to let this go

but it seems like being a
sugar baby or sugar daddy.

There’s a lot of
fraud involved so it’s

probably not going to
work out the way you want

it to so I would say
take all that initiative

take all that effort and put
it towards something else.

I’m thinking of a
suggestion to make right

now that would be
really positive and helpful

for the world and I
can’t think of any I

really can’t I don’t
do what I’m doing right

now this is previous no
money whatsoever but

I haven’t committed
fraud at least I’m not

making money honestly and that
is the Ninja News Japan mission.

[Music]

(upbeat music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Not Worth Fighting Over

(upbeat music)

All right, so golden week is over, but,

that means now I have
to reorganize my schedule

and just gonna get
everything back on track.

So we had a really busy time at work
and then family came over golden week

and now things maybe have finally settled
down to the way they’re supposed to be.

But here we are, in Japan,
with the news, for you.

Excellent, really chance.

She just does not go away.

She is in the news
constantly because she

thought, oh, she’d been
sentenced to prison.

She’s gonna go to prison.

Of course, she did the
smartest thing she could do.

She appealed.

She’s like, I don’t wanna go to prison.

Let’s appeal the sends.

I didn’t like the way they
talked about the fraud.

So the way the fraud
was mentioned in the

article was she induced
affection from three men.

So she committed fraud by
getting three men to fall in love

or I actually had a conversation
with this about my student.

I had a conversation
about this with my students.

And I found it very interesting that
they were all very dismissive of the men.

They were all like, all these guys,
they should have known better.

They should not have
fallen in love with her.

They should have known
what they were getting into.

And I was like, I know you
understand, like she’s picking.

She probably did mass
messages to hook the lonely men.

And those lonely men are suddenly convinced
that this is their dream girl in that.

They’re in love with her and she’s in
love with them and it’s all gonna work out.

And I have a lot of sympathy for the
men because she was choosing older men

who basically now probably have less
opportunities for relationships than this.

This really young, fairly
attractive girl comes in.

She falls in love with them.

She’s saying all the
things they wanna hear.

I mean, this was her guide.

Her guide was on the things you need to
say to keep them hooked, to give you money.

I read some excerpts
from it in an old episode.

It was very interesting
because she was right.

She was like, you don’t just
immediately ask for money.

That’s suspicious.

You have to like defer and
say like, “Oh, I got big problems.

” And then they go,
“Oh, what’s the problem?

” You go, “Oh, no, I don’t
wanna burden you with it.

” And then you try to defer and defer and
defer until they force you to tell them.

And then you go, “I owe
money or my friend owes money

“or money needs to be
owed and I need money.

” And then they
go, “I’ll offer to you.

” You go, “No, no, no, I
don’t wanna take it from.

” But then they’re more generous because
they’re like, “Here’s my opportunity

“to show this person how much I love
them “and support them and help them.

” And the thing is,
she’s playing on that idea

of if she refuses again
and again and again.

It doesn’t feel like a scam anymore

because they’re trying to
force her to take the money.

Anyways, that was in her
book that she sold online,

which is actually what got
her in trouble in the end.

I didn’t know this part.

She was also as part of her case.

She had failed to declare
40 million yen in income.

And again, the average salary in
Japan is four to five million yen.

So she’s talking like 10
years of an average salary.

She had not declared an income.

I assume that was in one year.

God, man, see, and this is it.

It’s the fiscal, I get
on this bit every time

because I’m like, she had so
much money available to her.

They’re not actually going
to make her give it back.

Or are they, I’m not
sure, that’s the thing.

She could have hidden a lot of that money

and once she got out of
prison actually been okay

or set up a new life or
something, she didn’t do it.

She filed her appeal on May 1st.

Today is May 7th.

This is when the story came out.

She’s finding ways to keep
herself in the news, which at

least is interesting because
I don’t know why it eats on.

I think the level of her scam, her ability,

and in the fact that
she worked really hard.

And then came to this
point where she got caught

and the whole collapse,
like that rise and

fall is the bit I’m
finding most interesting.

So I really want to see
where does she end up?

Does she end up going to prison?

How much time does she do?

What’s the punishment?

How far does it go?

And then I actually want to know
what happens when she gets out.

Like, does she rebuild her life or does
prison make her like more of a scammer?

Because, you know, there is the idea that
prison is supposed to rehabilitate people,

but I think we all know the reality that
it doesn’t really do that in most cases.

So where is she going
to end up after this case?

That is the bit I’m most interested in.

I’m unfortunately going to
have to wait a decade to find out.

Biden gave a speech.

And in that speech,
she said Japan, China,

Russia, and India are
xenophobic countries.

And Japan was like, what?

Well, why are you picking on me?

Why are you putting, you’re lumping me in
with these other guys, China and Russia?

There’s bad guys.

India, it’s been neutral.

It could flip the floor
back and forth on India.

Like, we work with them,
we sometimes we don’t.

But China and Russia,
you know, don’t do that.

And so they were very upset.

And his reasoning was Biden’s
reasoning was, Japan, China,

Russia, and India don’t want
immigrants, which is true.

Like I actually don’t know as much
about China and Russia and India.

India, I don’t think wants immigrants
because they’ve got a billion people already.

Maybe that’s enough people.

China, similar situation.

Also, I would say xenophobic
for political reasons.

Russia has its own issues.

I don’t claim to know anything
about those countries in any real way.

But Japan, I have lived
here for a long time.

I claim to know something
about the country.

And I would say xenophobia
is still a fairly accurate thing.

They don’t want a lot of foreigners
coming in and changing Japan as a country.

The Japanese embassy protested,
but also they didn’t change their policy.

They still don’t want immigrants.

So this is maybe the bit
that I find most interesting is,

is Biden has essentially
said something that’s true.

And then Japan’s been like, well,
that doesn’t make us look good.

You shouldn’t say that.

And then you should
apologize, but then it’s still true.

What Biden was actually
talking about was how immigrants

to America actually helped fuel
the economic growth of the country.

And immigration is a good thing.

And we should promote immigration.

And people should immigrate to countries.

And build those countries up Japan.

Billion times now, we’ve said
suffering and population decline.

I think some immigration actually
do the country a bit of good.

They are still resistant.

And apparently that’s not xenophobia.

That’s something else completely, which

has maybe a completely
different name that I don’t know.

I don’t know what else you would call it.

24-year-old attacked his
57-year-old father with a wooden sword.

And this is– we go through these trends.

I said in the last episode, we
do go through trends in news.

And so we had a trend of crossbows.

And then those crossbows
were actually made illegal in Japan.

Weirdly, near my train
station, I actually found a poster

that looked quite old, giving
information about crossbows.

I guess how you’re not
supposed to have them.

That’s interesting.

I’ll throw that up on the
Instagram after this episode.

If this happens a few more times,

they’re actually going to be like,
have wooden sword rules going to place.

They’re going to have wooden
sword ownership laws put in.

Because that’s what Japan does.

Like guns are illegal.

And then they’re like
bows and arrows are illegal.

Swords are illegal.

Crossbows, people started using those.

Crossbows are now illegal.

So wooden swords, man, if you go ape on
those, I bet they make wooden swords illegal.

It’s not legal to carry a knife
with you unless you have–

can explain why you’re carrying
that knife from 0.8 to 0.B.

So this is a classic.

I’ve actually talked about
this a bunch of times.

But it’s something people know.

You wouldn’t actually be allowed
to carry a Swiss army knife.

When I was back in Canada, I
used to carry a Swiss army knife

with me all the time, just
to my bag or something,

has a screwdriver, other stuff fairly
useful, randomly throughout the day.

If I could not– if I
would stop by the police

and they said, why do you
have the Swiss army knife?

And I couldn’t give
them a reason, a specific

reason, then that is
illegal for me to carry.

So if I was carrying a fish-gutting knife

and I was going fishing,
that would be illegal.

If I had a fish-gutting knife and I
was going to work, that would be illegal.

That’s– there’s a certain
level of interpretation

that comes with the
rules in Japan, which is a

very interesting thing,
but also very important.

And no, who’s interpreting those rules,

the guy who might be very angry at
you at the moment, who is a police officer.

His father was sitting in a chair
and just started beating them.

He was arrested.

They are still looking into the reason why.

But the only reason this
story caught my attention

is when he was being arrested, he
said, perhaps, I went a little too far.

And I think, yeah, once
you pick up a wooden sword

and start hitting another
human being with it,

I think, maybe, yeah,
you went a little too far.

There was a guy who owns an izakaya.

And is a guy who owns– it’s a bar.

That’s food.

And often, they’re
very small and very local.

It’s a very authentic Japanese experience.

Foreigners really enjoy
enjoying the izakaya’s.

They, of course, do
have trouble with English,

because not every
Japanese person to be English.

The reason a lot of
people like me have jobs

is because we come to
Japan and teach English.

And the reason we teach
English is because the education

system in Japan is so
poor at teaching English.

So really, the whole reason
I am able to live in Japan

is because the Japanese education system
has failed so miserably at teaching English.

This bar owner went and had some trouble.

He had a white couple of what he said.

Come in and asked for an English menu.

And he said, no, we
don’t have one of those.

And then, basically,
he said it was really

troublesome to have this
foreign couple in his bar.

He went online.

He decided to complain online,
which is always the best idea.

I mean, if you’re going to complain,

you really want to go on
the internet and complain,

because that’s going to
make everything better.

He said, I’d learn
English if I came to an

English-speaking country,
which I bet is not true.

I bet if you went to either of that,

or he’s actually just
saying, I would not travel.

This is Japan.

If I went to an English-speaking
country, I’d speak

English, make the effort
to speak Japanese in Japan.

If that’s a hassle, bring an interpreter.

It’s one of those things
where he’s not wrong,

but he’s also not
right, because if you’re

running a bar, your bar
runs on customer service,

you should be trying to accommodate
as many customers as possible.

This is a case where if you had someone

with a fairly good smartphone
or a laptop or something,

you could actually just have them speak
into it, and it could do the auto-translate.

So I think we’ve now
hit a level of technology

where you’re not having deep
political conversations with customers.

It’s like, hey, what do you want to drink?

Hey, have you enjoyed your stay in Japan?

How is things?

How are things?

Do you want anything else?

Stuff like that.

These are not really hard
phrases for someone to learn.

So you went on, which of course, because he
goes on, you know, again, very good idea.

Indigenous Japanese might not know
this, but if you go to another country,

speaking that country’s
language is taken for granted.

Like back in the day in
Barcelona, you couldn’t not only

get away with English, you
couldn’t speak Spanish either.

Everyone’s both Catalan.

Can stupid Japanese
people finally stop with this?

We lost the war mentality?

Now, that is giving me a lot
of insight into this gentleman’s

politics when he uses the
we lost the war mentality?

Because it’s something
that right wingers say

that, you know, we
should stop sort of cow

towing to other countries
and bending our back.

Because yes, we lost the
war, but we lost the war

with so long ago, we could
still be proud of ourselves

and live up and, you know, be proud
of being Japanese, that kind of stuff.

This had some trouble.

He ended up closing his
restaurant for a short period of time.

The threads taught posts generated
over 65,000 likes and 10,000 retweets.

So that is showing you that
there is a large segment of Japan

that is on board with
this kind of attitude.

Or the retweets could just be sharing,

but the 65,000 likes, I
think it’s actually clear.

They’re saying they
actually like this as a concept.

This doesn’t seem like something
worth fighting over a question mark.

I’ve been rescued myself,
I’ve been rescued myself

going overseas and finding
an English menu available.

You don’t have to know English,
but currently it’s the spreading.

It’s spreading at the, let me start again.

This doesn’t seem like
something to worth fighting over.

This doesn’t seem like
something worth fighting over.

It’s a question mark is actually
putting it hard for me to say.

This doesn’t seem like
something worth fighting over.

That’s a statement, not a question.

I’ve been rescued myself going
overseas to find an English menu available.

You don’t have to know English,

but currently it’s spreading
as the words lingua franca.

And knowing it brings big benefits
for both companies and individuals.

So they’re saying that, yes, while
you don’t have to learn English,

it’s kind of like what
I’m saying, making small

accommodations in English
will actually help your business.

Another poster concurred
saying it’s been spirited

to reply the way the
shopkeeper did 10 years ago

when I asked foreigners what
they thought of Japanese people.

They uniformly say they’re pretty gentle.

I probably mean they kind.

But now I’m hearing
some say they’re so cold.

I guess the over capacity of tourists.

The over capacity of tourists is
a very recent phenomenon though.

So that’s really just a
post-COVID phenomenon.

So that is one why question
the veracity of that statement

only because this clearly
has to be a trend over time

for people to be changing their
opinions not just a very recent thing.

Although they could just be
talking to very recent tourists.

On the 21st, so the last month,
they were temporarily closing the store

due to mental and physical
stress from the controversy.

But of course, they did not
back down from their stance.

In their closure message
they said, I don’t know when

we’re opening again, but it’ll
be a bar that doesn’t depend

on the also precious white
personages who can’t read Japanese.

So this guy is decided to take a stand

and that stand is, I don’t
want foreigners in my bar.

They goes on, this is very good article.

This is from Unseen Japan,
which is a very good website.

So if you are interested in Japanese stuff,

Unseen Japan by J.
Allen, he actually goes on,

he does the article, which I
read most of it to you just now.

Then he goes on to go
further with our tourists

driving out the regulars, walk-ins or
challenge, strategies for handling the influx,

and then it gives you
some other stuff to read.

It’s a very good website.

I would highly recommend
it if you have the time

you could subscribe there
and enjoy some Unseen Japan

because they do have
very similar feeling

news to what we do
here at Ninja Ninja Japan.

Lawyers, everyone knows.

Lawyers is very lovable, fun-loving people.

But the bar association
thinks that you know what?

People don’t think people
love lawyers as much

as they could, so let’s
do something about that.

So they decided to make
some cute mascots and logos

to offset the image that lawyers
are strict and unapproachable.

I actually, if I wanted a lawyer, I
would want my lawyer to be fairly strict

and fairly unapproachable because I would
want him to be that way in the courtroom.

They’ve created a
character called Ben Tota.

Tora is tiger and Ben is the
kanji in Bengoshi, which is lawyer.

So on the top of his forehead is a
kanji, sort of built into the stripes.

It’s actually very subtle, it’s quite good.

So it’s a cute tiger character who is
supposed to soften the image of lawyers.

Tigers famously cute
and approachable animals

that everyone would think of as
first of you, say cute and approachable.

Everyone goes, oh yeah, you know, tigers.

It is a very cute-looking tiger.

500 designs were submitted from
the public and other organizations.

So basically, this is actually,
this kind of put me off the lawyer.

‘Cause companies
do this, they do like an

open call for designs,
but and they pick one.

But what they’re actually
getting is free samples and

they can pick the sample of
like best and reward that one.

But those other people
have still done the work.

And those other people don’t get paid.

There was another character in the article,

which is a big purple dog
with weird leaves on its head

and a symbol for lawyers on it,
which I did not understand at all.

So there were some pretty
like out there design choices.

I think the tiger was the
best one, probably of the

ones I saw, but I only saw
a few and of the ones I saw.

I don’t see how this is actually gonna,

like if you have a very
strict serious looking lawyer

having this mascot in
the same vicinity as him

is not going to make him
seem more cuddly and friendly.

I think, I don’t know.

Or maybe they’ll just make
it like we can talk to lawyers

and they can hold the
plushie of the tiger next

to them and be like, you
know, don’t talk to me.

Talk to, what was this name?

Ben Tota, talk to Ben
Tota and tell him your issues

and then I will go to court
and fight on your behalf.

Kyoto district legal affairs bureau staff,

another very strict
sounding group of people.

So we got a group of
lawyers and then these guys

who are the district legal affairs
bureau for the city of Kyoto.

So they’re gonna be pretty serious stuff.

There was a manager in his 50s

and he grabbed one of his
subordinates in his 20s by the chest.

I don’t know what that means.

By the chest, I would
assume the lapels of his jacket

if he was wearing a suit
jacket, but maybe he grabbed

his shirt, but grabbing by
the chest actually means,

like it sounds like he grabbed
two giant handfuls of peck.

I hope, I don’t know if that’s a sound
that peck’s make when you grab them.

So you grab those.

Actually, there’s no way it
would have been that powerful.

We knew, we know this
from the rest of the sentence

and then he started
kicking him around the

waist, which is a very
awkward way to do it.

It’s like, so tie boxing, they
grab the back your head

and they kind of like
knee you in the stomach.

This guy grabs your chest, your pecs.

Again, I think it must have
been the lapels of a jacket

and then he starts like
kicking you in the waist.

So he’s not getting a lot of leverage to
kick him very hard, which is a good thing

’cause I don’t actually
want people to get hurt,

but I’m also on the like, if you’re
gonna bother to hurt someone,

you might as well follow
through and do it right.

The reason he was grabbing this man
and doing very awkward kicks to his stomach

was that the man was discussing spoilers
from a recent manga called Oshino Ko.

I don’t read a lot of manga, so I
don’t actually know if this was good,

but apparently it’s a very plot-heavy story,
so the spoilers would be very important

to the kind of people who
actually read this comic.

The manager has been
transferred and the subordinate

reported no injuries, but
he did report it to the police.

There have been no charges yet.

When the supervisor was being
spoken to, he said, I don’t like spoilers.

Now, I personally don’t care about
spoilers, but I know other people do.

So I try not to give too many spoilers,
but the reason I don’t care about spoilers

is because I found out
there was a scientific study

that found that spoilers
don’t actually ruin

the value of entertainment of different
things, which is very interesting.

‘Cause they found what
happens when there is

information that you know,
your brain can then process

the information of the
story as it unfolds faster,

and you actually can at
times get more enjoyment

out of it, so let’s say a
very complicated story.

Having spoilers in the back of your
head actually simplifies the story,

and means you can follow
along more efficiently.

Now that isn’t a reason to
actually start spoiling things

for people, again, like I don’t
think spoilers are a big deal,

but other people do, and I
don’t wanna ruin their pleasure.

I think maybe the
internet has grown spoilers

into something that
it didn’t used to be.

So that is fair, don’t
spoil for things for people

who don’t want it spoiled for them,
but if you are the spoily in this case,

don’t grab people by the pecs
and start awkwardly needing

them in the stomach,
because that’s not any better.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Officially Ignore Them

(upbeat music)

  • So, Adeela, talked about her last week,

she got sentenced to prison,
she’s gonna go to prison.

But of course, anywhere this girl goes,

there’s fallout, there’s
destruction and terror and mayhem.

In previous stories, we
actually mentioned the reason

she didn’t have all the
money she had stolen,

fraudulently from men, scammed
out of men, is because she

was going to host clubs and
giving the money to hosts.

But, there’s a secondary crime there.

I didn’t really think about it much
at the time, but it does make sense.

One of the hosts she gave money to,

pled guilty today, of the crime
of receiving 25 million yen.

Now, giving someone 25
million yen in itself is not a crime.

But if you know that that
money is ill gotten gained,

so if you know that
the money you’re getting

is a result of a crime,
receiving it is also a crime.

So he knew, and we actually have the text
messages from some of the earlier stories.

He knew that she was getting
the money from scamming men.

They even said, like, as
long as you make money,

I make money, ha ha ha, that’s a
terrible joke, don’t ever make that joke.

But because he knew that
the 25 million yen he’d gotten

was the result of fraud, that he is now
not implicated, words are gone already.

Just dead, my brain’s
dead, I’m already gone.

It’s not complicit.

So the punishment is yet to be determined.

So this host, basically sat
around, was given a bunch of money

from Lizzie-Cha and because
he took that money and kept it.

He’s now, I don’t know if you’ll get prison
time, he’ll probably just get big fine.

I’m sure he’ll have to give the money back
or return it to the court or something.

I’m interested again
what the punishments are.

So Lizzie-Cha got
eight years in prison and I

think it was $12 million,
12 million yen fine.

But this will be a lower level crime.

It’ll be interesting to see what
kind of punishment he gets for it.

So again, last week,
we’re just having stories,

they kind of repeat
over and over again.

We get these trends of stories.

I actually don’t do this on purpose,
but you would think that, oh, maybe I look

for this kind of story,
this kind of story happens

and then I see it more
often and I pay attention to it.

That’s not the case.

But it seems like there are certain stories

that just happen in
trends or seasons almost.

Like the underwear
stealing ones always happen

in the summertime, but that’s
because that’s when people have,

you know, they can climb
on balconies and stuff.

We actually haven’t done one
of those stories in a long time.

There was one this
week, but it wasn’t very

interesting, just old guy
stole some underwear.

Who cares?

But we have the mayor who committed
99 acts of sexual harassment had to quit.

That is set off like a flurry of
other people who’ve had to resign.

So we have two mayors
in Iichi, Iichi’s a prefecture

in Japan, who had to resign on the same
day over sexual harassment accusations.

So we have the mayor
of IKEADA, he had to

quit because of sexual
harassment allegations.

But he didn’t say anything
particularly interesting.

He just kind of quit.

The mayor of Togo City,
man, I love when they talk

’cause it’s always like it
gives you a little bit of insight,

a little bit of insight into
what’s going on in their head.

So he said an independent study is found
that he was guilty of power harassment

and sexual harassment since
2018 against multiple employees.

He said things like, you should die.

And to a female employee, he
said, when will you get big boobs?

So then he, they say
like all your guilty of

this, this is a crime,
okay, you got to quit.

So he quits, he resigns.

He says, I want to apologize.

I’m ashamed that I was ignorant.

Now the dude is 57 years old.

He should have known better by
now, like if I had committed that crime,

I don’t think I would be
like ashamed I was ignorant

because it’s like, dude, I knew
I was doing something wrong.

I just thought I would get away with it.

And that’s kind of my thing.

Do these guys really think
they’re gonna get away with it?

Like what is going on in their heads where
it’s like I’m gonna keep abusing people

to the point where it
actually becomes an issue.

He’s not sorry, let’s just be honest.

He’s not sorry, he’s not ashamed.

He wants to apologize
’cause he lost his job.

That’s actually the only
thing that’s happening.

Because later on he said, in the same
apology, this is his apology speech he says,

strong guidance is
different from harassment.

So he’s not actually so
sorry as he claims to be.

He’s not actually taking responsibility
for the fact that he was ignorant.

He’s basically saying like, look,
maybe I said some strong stuff.

But what I was really doing
was guiding my employees.

So let’s take a look.

We have a couple of examples
of the statements he made.

You should die.

That would be very strong guidance
on how to deal with yourself, I guess.

I’m just trying to decide what other
information could I extract from that?

That would actually make it seem like
he didn’t actually mean you should die.

When will you get big boobs?

Now, if you were going to
claim that was strong guidance

and not some form of sexual harassment,
you would have to explain to me

how that statement translates
into a better work performance.

Now, the thing is, again, this old dude,

you know what he’s actually
thinking is like, yeah, if you

have bigger boobs, you know,
people around you perform better.

It’s like, he’s thinking something grows.

I don’t know.

I think if you are making the apologists,

you’ve had to quit your
job, you make the apology.

I think this is not the time to go and try

to defend your actions or give an explanation
as to why it’s not really what it was.

So the dude who committed
99 cases of sexual harassment,

he tried to say like, man, I
don’t know what you guys

are also upset about,
which I think is true.

I think if you’re actually
taking like what he’s saying

at face value, I think
that is actually true.

He didn’t know what the problem was.

That’s why he thought it was okay
to sexually harass people all the time.

This guy’s in the same thing.

He thinks that you should die
and when will you get big boobs?

He doesn’t actually see that as
sexual harassment or power harassment.

He sees that as strong guidance
and how to make your life better

by appeasing him and doesn’t
understand how the world works

and really doesn’t understand why he’s
being fired in this case, yes, to resign.

He doesn’t understand
how this like third party

organization looked into
this and found him guilty.

And in his apology,
he’s standing there going

like, yeah, but you guys,
you don’t understand.

And I’m just like, I’m a direct speaker.

I tell people to truth.

Something I’ve actually always enjoyed is
when people claim they don’t filter things.

You know, like I’m a straight shooter and
I just, I call it like I see it, you know.

You, whenever those people are
talking and whenever they make that,

that’s their excuse, basically they’re
saying I say shitty things to people.

It’s always very interesting technique
is once they do that a couple of times

and you go like that was
a really awful thing to say,

well, you know, I just, I tell people
to direct truth and unfiltered truth.

I tell people what I think and what I
see, and I’m honest and you go, okay.

So let’s have some hard truths about
yourself and then see what they say.

Because people are very easy,
like that kind of personality type

always gives hard
truths about other people.

They’re never willing to give
hard truths about themselves,

which actually shows that
they’re incredibly hypocritical

because, you know, if
they call it like they see it,

they could see themselves being
jerks and then call themselves out on it.

They’re like, yeah, I was a jerk

and I apologize and I should
take responsibility for that.

Just like this guy didn’t.

Japan is having an issue.

We have the yen has
dropped significantly in value

and that is actually really good for
tourists ’cause tourists come over here,

they can spend lots more money and get
more value for the money when they convert.

This has a letter problem of over tourism.

And so that’s something
Japan is a country’s dealing with.

Tourist numbers are now back
to what they were pre-pandemic.

And in some cases,
they’re actually exceeding

what they were pre-pandemic
because the yen is so cheap.

People are like, oh, it was
a great time to go to Japan.

I can spend a lot of money
and get my money’s worth.

It’ll be really great.

This has caused problems because tourists
are not behaving like Japanese people,

which makes sense,
they’re not Japanese people.

So they don’t abide by the same rules
or they don’t see things the same way.

So one of the first things is garbage.

Now there are no garbage
cans in Japan readily available

in most places because they expect
you to take your garbage with you.

Mount Fuji, people are taking stuff.

They buy drinks and snacks and
stuff and they just throw it on the trail.

Well, Mount Fuji’s
been like, that’s terrible.

You’re gonna make Mount
Fuji all covered in garbage.

Someone has to clean it up.

So instead of just like ignoring
it or putting garbage cans,

which would overflow, what
they’ve decided to do is like,

well, we’re gonna have to
employ people to pick up garbage,

which means we will now charge 2,000
yen for you to walk up the mountain.

We did a story a month, maybe two months
ago, in Guillaume where the geisha are.

And they have these like
alleys that lead to their homes

and the places where
they train and stuff like that.

Those are private and
people were going in

there and being rude and
one of the worst things

was so they would like
grab geisha and yank

them over and like
take selfies with them.

The problem being that
these are not there for,

these are people, they’re
not there for your amusement.

So just grabbing an individual,
actually a crime in Japan.

But these alleyways and
stuff that lead to these private

residences, they’re
actually private property.

People are going down,
they’re being disrespectful.

So they block them off.

They’re basically saying like, if you
come down here, now they’re fine.

The latest one, there is this,
what is considered to be iconic

picture of Mount Fuji and
there’s a Lawson in front of it.

Lawson is a convenience store in Japan.

And you can take this picture.

This has become a very popular spot.

Tons of people are coming
here to take this picture

and people, local people are like, it’s
too much because they’re blocking traffic

because they’re not paying
attention to traffic rules

so they’re walking out to the road ’cause
they want to get them at the best picture.

There, there have been a
couple of stories of people

like across the road
climbing up onto the

adjacent building so
they can get a picture.

And they want to get pictures
without crowds in it and stuff like that.

So this city has decided
what we’re going to do

to solve this problem is
put up a giant black curtain

and block out the Lawson so you
can’t take a picture of it anymore.

So they’re like, you’ve
gone so far as to bother

the locals and cause
problems for the police

and whatnot, what we’re
going to do is you can block out

the whole thing so you can’t
take your stupid picture anymore.

How do you like that?

And I actually, I’m a little like torn
’cause it’s a very reasonable response.

I’m like, how harsh do you go on tourism?

So these people come here and
they want to have a good time.

They are going to push the
boundaries of what’s acceptable.

Is it acceptable to arrest
them when they break the rules

because they are breaking laws
and stuff again, traffic laws are laws.

But also it seems like a bit harsh but is
it also the right answer to just take away

the thing everyone wants this
picture to take away this picture.

It’s kind of the
Instagramification of tourism

where you’re not actually
going to have an experience

you’re going to get these pictures
so you can take the picture.

Maybe have a picture of you
standing in front of the community

in the store in front of
Mount Fuji, that kind of thing.

But the towns had enough and they
are doing, they’re gonna block it off.

I was actually my first
thought was like a man.

What if they did like a giant green screen?

And then you got a Mount Fuji and this
big green screen you put other stuff there.

Which would again
attract more people to do

more nonsense but maybe
you do it once a year.

Have like a little
celebration, a little festival

and come see the giant green
screen in front of Mount Fuji.

But yeah, because people
were just going buck wild,

they’re not going to be able
to take their picture anymore.

Japan still has a royal family and I
do not have a great deal of regard

for royalty, I think that’s
a pretty fair thing to say.

I don’t have a great
deal of regard for

royalty ’cause I don’t
think they do anything.

Like I actually am not
against having royalty.

I think again for tourism
and things like that

it actually could be
beneficial for relations

between countries,
it could be beneficial.

But overall what I see is a bunch of people

living off taxpayer money
contributing very little to nothing.

So I’m not a big royalist in any way.

So the empire, the royal family in Japan,

the emperor and stuff, I
don’t actually care about them.

90% of people, oh, one of
the problems before you

get into the actual story,
there’s not enough boys.

Population decline, issues like that.

But in this family, there just aren’t
enough direct descendants who are male

and the emperor has to
come from the paternal

side, not the maternal
side of the family.

So because they don’t have
a male heir, the end of the

empire, the emperor’s
family could be on the horizon.

And so they did a survey and they found that
90% of people support having an empress,

which I’m 100% on board with
because I don’t care about the empress.

So why would I care if it was an empress?

I actually think an empress
might be pretty cool for a while.

You know, again, try to change
some of the traditional views of Japan.

But of course, there’s a 10%
that are very, very against it.

72% of the people surveyed
said they have a sense of crisis

regarding the issue, which I
actually find hard to believe.

Because again, I don’t think
the royal family does anything.

So if the royal family doesn’t do anything,
how can you have a sense of crisis?

Like if the royal family
in Japan went away today,

I don’t think there would be any significant
change to Japanese culture or society.

Like there would be another
person you don’t talk about

who isn’t doing that much ’cause
again, they do charity working stuff.

I do, again, this is where the
benefit of royalty would come in.

If they do charity work
to help other people,

if they do work to support
the country or something.

I don’t know.

I don’t actually know ’cause I don’t
know what they do ’cause I don’t care.

So I found that number interesting.

But then I realized if
they’re doing a survey

and people are answering a
survey about the royal family,

they’re probably people who
care about the royal family.

If you gave me a survey
about the royal family,

it would be 50/50 if I
even bothered to fill it out.

I care that little.

So I bet a lot of people just didn’t
fill it out or didn’t care about it.

For the few people who
disagreed that we should only have

male heirs, what they’re
actually saying inadvertently,

they don’t realize this, is that we will
actually kill off the royal family in Japan.

‘Cause if you have no heir at all,

then the family line ends,
from the family line ends.

There’s no one to take over.

But they say that this goes
against Japanese culture.

‘Cause Japanese culture traditionally,
the heir is male, the male takes over.

That is Japanese culture.

And I agree, that is technically true.

The issue for me is, again,
they serve no purpose.

Going beyond, they serve no purpose.

We’re talking about a thing
that needs to evolve with time.

Now, if we’re talking about
traditional Japanese culture,

well, traditionally the emperor did a
bunch of stuff and was a ruler and things.

They’re not that anymore.

They need to change with the times.

And so changing with
the times, in this case,

could include, like, let’s
open it up to, essentially,

whoever’s available, they could be
the next emperor, slash emperors.

You want to talk about evolution?

The royal family recently
started an Instagram account.

I did not bother to check it out, because,
again, I do not care what they do at all.

Japan rail east.

So there’s Japan rail
east, Japan rail west,

in Meitetsu and there’s a
couple other railroad companies.

But Japan rail east, I
found it’s very interesting.

They’re like, they have the problem of
Karens and Kevin’s people who overreact.

That’s not like an American thing.

It’s universal.

There are people who
overreact wherever they go.

I’m not talking about tourists.

I’m talking about just like,
there’s Japanese people.

They behave this way to get what they want.

They freak out.

They think if they put enough
pressure on people, if they harass people,

they’re just going to give
in and get what they want.

And they’ve been doing
this their entire lives.

That’s how this sort of
Karen mentality became to the

forefront of culture, was more
and more people were doing this.

This is how they were sort
of getting what they want.

This is how they’re surviving.

Now that we recognize it, people
are starting to actually deal with it.

Well, JREs has had people,
they make unreasonable demands.

They get physical.

They demand that the staff get
down on their hands and knees

and bow apologized to them
and all this other garbage.

Stuff that reasonable people
would never ask you to do.

They did quite nicely
rephrase it as unruly customers.

They’ve come up with an official policy,

and the official policy is, if you get out
of hand, they’re just going to ignore you.

Which I love as an official policy.

So they’ll talk to you, they’ll try to
help you, they’ll try to do their best.

I’ve actually 99% of my
experiences on Japanese railways

have been positive where I’m
like, dude, I don’t know where I’m

going, I need help, and they
will do their best to help you.

I’ve only had one guy in 20
years put me on the wrong train.

I don’t necessarily think
he did it on purpose.

Either my Japanese wasn’t good enough
or he just wasn’t really paying attention.

I asked him a question and
he just pointed to the train

and I jumped on the train
and it was the wrong train.

So that I’m not chalking that
up to him, not doing a good job.

Maybe he was busy, maybe he was distracted,
maybe my Japanese was really poor.

So I’m not even saying like the one
percent that I am saying did not go well,

I’m not putting that on
the railway employee yet.

I would have to go back
and do research and stuff.

He seemed very dismissive, which is
why I put that margin of error in there.

The my experience overall
has been very positive

where I ask for help and
people do their best to help me.

So it seems like if you’re a reasonable
person, you’re gonna get the help you need.

So now, if I get out of hands,
I get on the train station,

I just start shouting at people, and I
maybe like shove people around a little bit,

start throwing my
weight, come to a big boy.

They’re just going to be like, “We’re
going to ignore you until you go away.

” And if you don’t go away,
they’re just going to call the cops.

And that’s it.

That’s their official policy.

And somehow I really enjoy
that as an official policy.

The official policy is like, if
they go too far, ignore them,

if they keep going, ’cause
that is going to set them off.

This type of person, the thing that
steps them off the most, is being ignored.

So it’s going to set them off.

They’re going to go,
“Ah, I can’t handle.

You’re not, you know,
bowing to my every whim.

Ignore them.

They’ll get out of hand, call
the cops, and get them arrested.

” So I expect an influx
of people getting arrested,

because it’s train station at JRE, is ignoring
those stories over the next few weeks.

And then it’ll start to sink in.

You’re not going to be able
to do this and get away with it.

And then they’ll kind of stop.

At JRE, they’re going to try JRE West.

They’re going to try, it may
test you the other train lines.

And then it’s going to
just filter out over there.

This is how we handle this problem.

And a lot of people are going to
get like, taken away by the police.

I don’t think you’re going to get jail time
or anything, but they’re going to like,

if you have a train to catch,
you are not catching that train.

If you have something you’ve got
to do, you’re not doing it that day.

And I think more companies adopting this

as an official policy would
not be the worst thing ever.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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.

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