Category: Podcast

Science!

Ah, do a level good science story, especially

when they justify me spitting into children’s mouths.

So there’s the opening of the podcast.

You weren’t into that.

But it gets better.

I mean, we gotta go through this whole story,

and then it gets better, and then it gets worse.

But in a fun way.

That’s what we all were here for.

We’re here for the fun science, spitting in

kids’ mouths, and you’re maybe like, “Hey, don’t spit in that baby’s mouth.”

But you actually might solve a lot of their

skin problems in the future, because bacteria,

so a Japanese university has found that bacteria

from a parent’s saliva stimulates the infant’s

immune system, leading to allergy prevention in the future.

So I, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any

amount of time, suffer greatly from allergies.

You actually have two allergy stories today.

I suffer from allergies, and that’s problematic.

I’m always on drugs.

I’m always doing stuff to try to take care of my allergies, allergies, allergies.

When I produce this podcast, one of the issues

is I sniff, cough, and make gurgly sounds.

Those are bad.

If my mom had been a good mom and spitting my

mouth as a baby, maybe I wouldn’t have those problems.

If the parent, it’s not as gross as spitting in

the kids’ mouth, because there’s no scientific

study that would work, because in your survey,

if you said, “Did you spit in your kids’

mouth, everyone would put no even if they did.”

So the actual science will stop with the spitting in the mouth joke.

Big pause, so you can wonder if it’s really a joke.

If you shared eating utensils, so I take a

bite off my chopsticks since we’re in Japan,

and I take those chopsticks and I feed my

child, and I feed myself, and I feed my child, a 48% drop in skin issues.

If… Now this is actually almost as gross as spitting the…

So this is the one I was in trouble.

If the parent primes a pacifier by putting it

in their mouth, and then puts it in the baby’s

mouth, 65% drop in skin issues and allergies.

I never would have thought to put my baby’s

pacifier in my mouth, primarily because it was

in my baby’s mouth, and I’m like, “It’s gross and wet.

I’m not going to put that in my mouth.”

Perhaps it would have stimulated me.

There is an issue though.

You got to be careful.

You can’t do this for too long because there

is bacteria in an adult’s mouth that will stimulate cavities.

So, you have to… You can do it while the baby…

They really want you to do it while the baby has no teeth.

Once the baby has teeth come in, you kind of

have to stop because then you’re at risking

an increase in cavities, which is like a bacteria

that can get into the gums and into the teeth that cause problems later.

So if we’re being 100% serious, it is good

to eat food with my chopsticks and then feed my baby with those chopsticks.

It is okay to prime a pacifier which I probably

wouldn’t do anyway, so it just feels like a bit too much.

Another gross piece of science that I know is

that it’s actually not a bad thing for kids

to pick their nose and eat it because it’s

a very safe way of introducing small amounts

of bacteria into the stomach, which stimulates the immune system the same way.

So the scientists were actually quite smart

because they weren’t saying like, “We’re never

going to make picking your nose and eating it socially acceptable.”

But we could teach kids that if they’re on their own

and it’s private and they do it, it’s not a bad thing.

And that might be… A lot of science I learn is gross stuff that

we should be doing to improve our lives.

But our social mores have put us in a position where it’s not a good thing to do.

So that’s where we end up.

You don’t do the things that actually might benefit us in the future.

You can’t tell me book aren’t readers having a minute advantage.

Jade, I’m sorry to have to tell you this,

but those little booger kids, they don’t die.

They don’t get sick.

Have you ever noticed the kids, the really

gross kids, the dirty kids, the kids who like scoop eat?

Oh, that’s the worst one.

They get… It’s the up, down, in.

That’s a smooth motion of someone who’s picked their nose their whole life.

Those kids never get sick.

Like all the clean kids were very fragile.

All the Japanese kids who wash their hands all

the time, they all have lots of allergy issues.

The kids who play in dirt eat their boogers

and like spit up in the air and catch it, they never get sick.

So I’m sorry to have to tell you this.

Not only does science say it, my non-scientific

study of disgusting children also proves it

because when I’m teaching kids classes, the gross kids always show up.

Now part of my brain goes, that’s because the

parents want them out of the house, but the

other part of my brain goes, it’s because they never get sick.

They never get to disease.

They’re nothing ever goes wrong in there.

And they glide through life with this gross lifestyle, harder than the rest of us.

So if I’ve been a grosser kid, I might not

be suffering from the allergies I suffer with right now.

Second allergy story.

Japan wants to have the pollen count in 30 years.

So when I’m 81, I’ll probably be dead by then.

When I’m 81, Japan will have got its pollen policies under control.

Never too late to start eating those, I guess.

Never too late.

Well because it has to be during the developmental part of your life.

So now if I start eating my boogers, because I just

put in the chat, never too late to start eating your boogers, I guess.

It is.

Because if I start doing it now, it won’t

stimulate my immune system and its development.

So now it is too late to start eating my boogers.

Now I’m just gross.

If I did it when I was a kid, there would be

sort of an evolutionary advantage of stimulating

my system and growing it into a stronger system.

Now it’s all set.

I’m useless.

I’m dying.

I’m old.

I’m going to crash.

The burning is going to hurt more when I crash and burn.

It hurts already.

Trees.

After World War II, everything in Japan was burnt.

Japanese season allergies hit different.

It’s like a freight train that’s correct.

That is exactly the story I’m doing now.

The end of World War II, all the trees were

cut down because they needed to rebuild stuff

and then they’re like, “Oh shit, we don’t have trees.”

We need something that grows fast and Hardy and they got cedar trees and imported them.

That’s always a problem.

Importing a non-indigenous plant or animal to a country, but that’s always a problem.

So, what do we end up with?

Cedar trees.

Non-native to Japan.

50% of Tokyo, I’ve said this a billion times.

50% of Tokyo is allergic to cedar.

I suffer from dust, pollen, everything.

The thing that pisses me off, dust is inside my house.

I’m allergic to that.

I go outside, I’m allergic to pollen.

I’m allergic to inside and outside.

I really wish I’d eaten a lot more boogers when I was a kid.

So they’re like, “Okay, this is gone beyond some people have allergies.

50% of Tokyo is less productive for part of the year.

They’re spending tons of money on allergy medicine.

I mean, there’s a good point.

I’m now on, I guess, version two of my allergy medicine and it’s way better.

Now I can take it without water.

It’s funny because the guy’s like, “Oh, it’s a new version.

You don’t need to take it with water anymore.

It’ll just dissolve in your mouth.”

I’m like, “Of my problems, swallowing a pill is on very low on the list.”

But they’re going to start to cut down all those cedar trees.

There are 4.31 million hectares that they want

to replace with less pollen producing trees.

So just in the next 30 years, they’re going to

be just like tearing down all the cedar trees they can and I cannot wait.

I would volunteer at this point to assist because I’m sure the cedar is bad for me.

I mean, I’m allergic to rice, pollen as well.

My body’s useless.

I’m just allergic to everything.

This is why I don’t go outside.

That’s a lot of wood.

That’s what she said.

Fuck.

Yeah, rice pollen is a thing.

So I’m allergic to rice.

I’m allergic to pollen and rice pollen is pretty heavy seasonally in Japan.

So that hits me pretty hard.

But we’re off allergies and spinning in baby’s mouths.

Yeah, the plant.

But of course, I live in the countryside.

No, no, no, the grain is good.

I eat rice just food.

I don’t really seem to have any allergies to.

There is a game weirdly personal.

Sweet and sour pork.

I ate for years and years and years and years

and then suddenly sweet and sour pork two hours later I will vomit.

I think it’s the bamboo.

So what I don’t want to do is actually test to find out what is making me throw up.

But it seems like I can eat pork.

I can eat pineapples.

Is it the sauce?

And then in the ones I usually get, it has like bamboo shoots.

And I think maybe I might be allergic to bamboo shoots in a really violent way.

I don’t know.

No, no, no.

Kishita’s son.

Kishita, Prime Minister of Japan, has a son.

Total nepo baby.

And that’s a phrase I’ve never used until today.

I’ve been reading on the Internet about actors and stuff.

Johnny Depp has a daughter and everyone’s calling her nepo baby.

I don’t know.

She’s talented and not.

I mean, let’s face it.

If you want it, I have always wanted to write books and be creative and stuff.

I have no connections.

I remember writing a book and then finding

out you need like a literary agent and I just don’t know how to get one.

So I’m like, okay, well, I’m in the Internet age at this point.

I’m just going to put stuff on the Internet.

But I’m not jealous of nepo babies.

I just, I just like, I honestly think if I had the opportunity, I would take it.

So I’m not.

Yeah, I don’t condemn them for being nepo babies.

Prime Minister, I don’t know if that’s a different situation.

I feel like Kishita’s son getting a leg up in politics.

This Japan, Japan is very sort of legacy oriented.

Anyways, they went to Paris like last year and

then he was told to go around and take pictures.

And he took official pictures and tourist photos

at the same time, which I actually thought was just an efficient way to do things.

And they got angry at him for taking personal

photos while he was supposed to be doing like professional work.

I thought that was a bit bullshit.

He then got in trouble for having a party at

the Prime Minister’s residence with relatives at New Year’s.

And he was thinking so, so like it was pandemic time still.

So like it’s been downgraded since then.

This was back in December.

He shouldn’t be having parties and gatherings and stuff.

It was family came to the Prime Minister’s residence.

I’m sure they were all vaccinated.

I’m sure they were all actually safe.

No one seems to have got coronavirus.

If they did it the right way, I personally don’t have problem with it.

He’s been fired though because of this.

So he’s going to not get any retirement allowance

and he’s not going to get a bonus this year.

I guess if you get it fired, you don’t get your bonus.

But then of course we read CEO stories.

They get fired and make still get their bonus.

I thought a bonus was supposed to be because you did a good job.

It does seem that in reality, if you’re in a certain

tier of position, you get a bonus because you exist.

Not because you did a good job because you got fired.

I don’t think you should get a bonus.

There have been several Card theft stories over the last few months.

I haven’t been doing them because they don’t say much.

It’s like people break into a card collecting store.

They steal a bunch of cards.

It’s not a very interesting story.

In this case, it’s not better.

It’s nerd stuff.

So this is a 25 year old.

He breaks into a store.

He causes 2.2 million yen worth of damage.

He stole 74 rare cards and 20,000 yen cash.

That’s a secondary crime of opportunity.

Which I’m like, if you’re going to commit a

crime, crimes of opportunities might as well why not?

You’re going to get in trouble and get in trouble.

He was caught and he was told he sold the cards

already and he is admitted to other theft.

It just got me thinking about nerd crime might

be the way to describe it because you have

to be a nerd to know the value of the cards.

If you put me in a Pokemon store and said

steal the most valuable cards, oh, it’s 20,000 yen of cash out of the till.

Maybe I wasn’t clear.

He stole rare cards which would probably be worth a million yen or more.

He just was like, oh, there’s the till.

I’ll take 20,000 yen because it’s there.

So that maybe I wasn’t clear about that.

The 20,000 yen was icing on top of the Pokemon cake.

I was, yeah, yeah, nerd crimes.

If you put me a non Pokemon fan, now that is not me disparaging Pokemon.

I was just sort of too old when it became popular.

So I kind of missed Pokemon.

I missed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I missed, you know, there’s the stuff that you like has a lot to do with your age.

So I missed Pokemon.

So I’m not saying it’s bad or anything.

But if you put me in the store with the cards,

I would stand there and go, I just assume

the ones that have the most, like the shiny

ones, they are the rarest, which may or may not be true.

I don’t know because there’s misprints and stuff like that.

So a misprint of a regular card, I wouldn’t know that was rare.

I’d walk right past it.

So there’s a certain, I don’t equate nerdiness

with crime, but it does seem like that might

be a wave of the future where you are an

expert because this is like art theft, right?

So art thieves have to know about art and it kind of makes it a very exciting crime.

Nerd stuff.

So like, oh, there’s, I know that this store has that a rare thing.

I wanted to store in just my eye, it glinted on the corner of my eye and I saw it.

That might be a wave of crime in the future.

Cyber crime, I agree, but cyber crime is different

because I’m equating nerd theft of physical

items with art theft because you would have to

be a level of nerd to understand the quality

of what you’re stealing in the first place, which is akin to old sk-so I basically what

I’m saying is I’m waiting for a movie or a TV show about like the best nerd thief, it

probably be an anime, and he steals the rarest

card from like a, it’s, you know, it’s a laser

protected system and he does sort of like down from the ceiling and stuff like that.

I just think that that might be something

that could be capitalized in the near future,

as these nerds, you might want to not want to

do Pokemon cards, but it could be collector cards.

I guess in the anime you would make up your own card system and then in that system you

have the rarest card and that’s the one he goes after.

Something like that.

I just, I see an opportunities for someone to make a franchise about something.

In the tradition of art thief movies, the heist

movies, you could do one that was incredibly

nerd oriented, which I think might be interesting.

This is fraudulent obstruction of business by

calling a cram school 12,206 times in 10 days.

So this guy, retired guy, clearly or unemployed.

Actually, what was his age?

I didn’t write down his age.

I think he was in his 60s.

He seems to be retired.

I think if you have the, I wouldn’t have the

time in a day to call, because if it’s 12,000

times over 10 days, it’s 1,200 times a day if

we’re just going to do straight up averages.

He called a cram school 12,206 times in 10 days.

He, the lady, of course, who runs the cram

school calls the police and says, I got this guy he’s like making harassment calls.

Please stop him.

The guy admits he made the calls, but says, this is the bit I like the most.

I did not intend to interfere with the school’s work.

If you call any place a thousand times, the claim that you

did not intend to interfere does not have any feet to it.

I can’t believe that.

There is the question, maybe in his warped

brain, he actually believes what he’s saying.

I would always like to dig down into this stuff.

He believes it.

Then you have to ask the question, what did you

think would happen by calling a place 12,000 times a day?

I want to do the math, but I don’t want to do it right now.

How many times an hour would he call if he

was awake for like, if he did over a 10 hour period or something like that?

I’m not going to do it right now.

I did not intend to interfere with the school’s work, but clearly you did.

Unless he is so like warped, he doesn’t realize

that calling a place a thousand times a day is going to interfere with the work.

It sounds like a really small cram school

because they say the woman, there’s a woman who

owns it, she probably has a couple teachers.

This is like a private independent entity.

There’s probably like five people work there.

One of them has to work the phone.

Or in a lot of cases, these little cram schools

like whoever’s available answers the phone,

which means you’re taking one person’s actual

job of teaching kids away from them while

they just answer your phone calls over and over again.

The reason is the best part.

Oh man, Jade, that’s awesome.

75 calls an hour.

In 60 minutes in an hour, he’s calling once a minute.

That’s ridiculous, amazing.

Thank you for that though.

I was going to do the math before and then I forgot.

This guy had been hit by a car.

And he said, I wanted to contact a man who was driving the car.

I thought he worked at the cram school.

Turns out he didn’t.

So at that point, he’s getting arrested for

harassing a group of people who were unenvolved

with the thing he was probably upset about.

And you know what, this is the bit.

My first thought was he’s not going to apologize.

He’s going to think he did nothing wrong.

He’s like, well then I’ll just stop calling them.

And that somehow is good enough.

But yeah, that, I don’t know, somehow that

story, that final element really pissed me off.

Because I was like, you know that guy doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

He’s trying to make them a thousand times a day every day for more than a week.

He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

And his excuse was I’m trying to get in touch with the guy who hit me with a car.

Didn’t actually know.

I thought he worked there, but he didn’t.

So I guess that’s it.

It’s that attitude.

You’ve seen that attitude a lot on the Internet.

And yeah, I really actually hope he gets punished quite severely.

Three 18-year-olds.

So as soon as you say that, you know like, oh, they’re making good decisions.

I’m trying to think when was the age when I made the worst decisions?

I think it was 16, maybe 15-16 because I was

at that age where I’m trying really hard to

be cool and tough and strong in adult and I’m not.

And I don’t have any money and I’m just

trying to get into trouble for trouble’s sake.

I think by the time I was 18, I’d actually kind of even doubt.

That’s me personally.

I know lots of people now who are in the 30s

and 40s still don’t seem to make good life

decisions, but that’s this whole separate issue.

It’s a whole separate podcast I really want to produce.

So 3 18-year-olds are sitting around and then like, our friend got arrested.

And we’ve watched too much anime.

I’m not sure.

We need revenge on the police.

So already, you know, you can see it’s going wrong already.

Like you don’t get revenge on the police.

That’s not how revenge works and it’s not how the police works.

So we’re going to get some fireworks.

We’re going to get some fire extinguisher.

We’re going to cause some trouble.

We’re going to get revenge on the police.

So they start shooting fireworks at the police station.

They start to spray the fire extinguisher around.

At least they are if the fireworks have accidentally

started a fire capable of putting it out.

And by spraying it around randomly, just as

likely to have put out a fire they’ve started.

So there is a weird safety element here that I quite like.

They then smash a window on the police station

and throw the fire extinguisher out the door

and they said causing a significant amount of damage.

The cops, the problem I saw, yeah, is that

around a police station, there are usually cops.

So if you wanted to get revenge by doing vandalism,

you’ve actually chosen the wrong place because the cops are going to be there.

And the cops are then going to be able to

catch you because the cops have like shields and sticks and guns.

They don’t tend to use the guns in Japan.

The shields and sticks they’re pretty good with.

They do have this weird pool tool and it’s got

like, it’s like a fork without a middle time.

And what they do is have two cops approach

someone from different sides, opposite sides,

and then they catch them in the middle and then they can’t move.

So if you’re like a violent criminal with a

knife, they get this like thing and they poke

you with it and the other guy poke you with

it and then they hit, it’s around your waist and you can’t move anymore.

And then some cops will come up behind you and try to disarm you.

We’re probably just thump you with a stick until you drop the knife.

But they’re very safety oriented here because they don’t deal with a lot of guns.

It’s interesting.

It’s an interesting thing.

So the three 18 year old youths were promptly

arrested because the cops were like, hey, those guys are smashing up our station.

Maybe we should arrest them for it.

They were arrested for forcible obstruction of business, which is amazing.

Oh, the last story.

I didn’t tell us.

So I now have just realized only today after

doing story after story and story of obstruction

of business, there are different kinds in different levels.

So there last story was fraudulent obstruction of business.

This is forcible obstruction of business.

But I mean bad plan all around.

You’re not actually getting revenge.

So now these three kids have been arrested.

So if they have three friends exponentially,

so that’s nine more people, they’re going to

sit around and go, we need to get revenge on the police.

And they get arrested.

And exponentially goes out and then they’re

going to end up with everyone in Japan trying

to get revenge on the police if these kids

are popular enough, which luckily they’re not.

All right, last story for today.

There’s a political meeting and it’s about promoting gender equality.

So you know it goes bad.

There is no way a story that starts with a political

meeting about gender equality is in the news

and it’s a good story or someone says something reasonable.

If it’s on the news Japan, I don’t do reasonable stories.

I do stories that I find funny or interesting in some way.

So I’m only interested in Japanese men making

political gaffes because it’s funny and it’s

because it hasn’t changed as much as they try to change.

It hasn’t changed.

They just have this group.

The thing is this, the politician who made

these comments, or he’s going to get in trouble or it’s like in his 30s.

So in my head I’m like, should know better.

I understand.

I’m not saying it’s acceptable.

I understand the 70, 80 year olds saying shit that’s just out of wack with society.

They’ve lived in their own political bubble.

They don’t understand that the world has changed.

They think things should work the way they want them to work.

So at that point, you’re not changing your mind.

You can pretend to.

That would be the best you could hope for.

You’re not 70, 80 years old and changing the way you think about things.

Women, equality, LGBTQ stuff.

Asset.

I’m 50.

I am flexible.

I don’t think the way I’m thinking now changes much to the point where I die.

I think I’m kind of set.

I have had changes.

I’ve noticed that for me, certainly from my 40s, exposure changed my opinion.

So I’m not resistant to change.

That’s maybe something I could say.

I might not have thought about stuff, but as

I became more exposed to ideas and stuff, my opinion would change on those things.

So I’m still open.

But yeah, I think 20 years from now, you talk to me the way I think is set.

I don’t think it’s going to be changing much after that.

Luckily, I’m relatively liberal all-round.

I’m a Canadian.

I mean, we’re open, happy people.

You want to live your life, you live your life.

I live my life.

I live my life.

We get along.

I appreciate the differences in you and me.

Oh, we’re great.

That is actually one of the benefits of growing up where I didn’t get it.

It was a very liberal place.

I’ve been able to travel around the world and

appreciate things and make fun of shit like this.

Okay.

So the actual statement.

So they’re having a meeting about gender equality.

And he says, this guy, he’s talking.

We need to go to those who are not interested in the topic of gender equality.

Like construction workers.

It’s like, okay, you know, not the most beautiful way to phrase it.

But still, I think you need to co-opt the people who are not on board.

That’s actually going after people who agree with you is almost pointless.

You need to start bringing in people who aren’t on board.

So I’m like, I don’t think the way he’s saying

it is sensitive or smart, but the core sentiment is correct.

So this actually puts his second statement

into some question if you want to take him at face value.

So then he says to a female colleague who’s in her 50s.

I’m going to give you some advice, lady.

Your video, so she obviously makes political videos.

She makes speeches and stuff and she tries to

get attention to her, the causes she promotes.

Your videos will get more views if you wear a school uniform when you speak.

Remember he’s trying to promote gender equality.

So school uniforms in Japan, I know you already know.

They are fetishized in Japan.

Jesus going, no, in the chat, yes.

So he gets called out.

Dude, telling an adult woman to wear a school

uniform to get attention isn’t really the coolest thing anyone’s ever said.

And he’s like, what?

Me?

Not promoting gender equality.

I don’t, I’m on the committee or I’m here doing the work.

So he says he tries to clarify a statement now.

So I’m a tiny, tiny bit torn because of the indelicate way he made his first statement.

But the sentiment being correct makes me think that he is indelicate in his speech,

but maybe there is the right idea in there somewhere.

But so he says, I meant that if she, she,

okay, I meant that she would attract attention if she did something eccentric.

So if he had said my prestigious female colleague, I have a recommendation for you.

If you did some eccentric things in your videos, they would garner more attention.

I bet that would have been acceptable.

Now she might say like eccentric, like what?

And then he could have done the like, I’ll

put on a school uniform and everyone would be like, ew, gross.

So I am a little torn.

I think he’s dumb, 100%.

Most politicians are, let’s be honest.

I think his core concept is correct.

If you do eccentric things, you will get more attention on the Internet.

But that maybe isn’t appropriate for the forum he’s talking about.

I think politicians doing eccentric things

to get attention isn’t really good politics.

I could do more eccentric things.

I do that right now.

I wear hats a lot in my videos, my podcast.

Maybe the baseball hat isn’t eccentric enough.

Let’s switch it to the Colonel’s hat.

And I’m going to take a more authoritarian stance in my videos from now on.

I maybe even put on like a jacket.

And let’s do it.

Let’s be, I’m going to take a more right wing stance.

This is it.

So this is what I could do.

Oh, I’ve just come up with sort of a new concept.

We could have right wing Peter, where’s the Colonel hat?

And left wing Peter, where’s the racist Irish hat?

I mean, let’s do it.

So now I could be like, you know, talking honestly

like a Canadian who has liberal values and ideals.

And you know, I think people should be left to their own devices.

And I think making gender equality statements

indelicately is probably means you’re a bad politician.

The woman should be more sexualized so that she can get more attention.

I just went into like a partial accent.

Didn’t plan the accent.

So I didn’t really know where I was going.

I think I think the right wing Colonel might

be a reoccurring character in Indonesia.

So Jade, I think you’re the only one watching.

This gets more, more, the podcast is a podcast.

It doesn’t get any views.

This might be how I get attention on the Internet.

It’s creating the right wing character that I’ve always shied away from.

The problem is do I get swallowed up by the

character and the character becomes who I really am.

And I really start believing my own bullshit.

Because that is the risk we play when we

play at who we maybe truly are on the inside.

(upbeat music).

It’s gonna be a short one.

May has already started out to be a bit of a bust.

I have to go to Canada next week, so there

will be no news in Japan next week, maybe

even for the next two weeks, because I’m

gonna get back on Monday night, I record on

Tuesdays, just so everyone knows what’s going on.

Ah, that’s life, life is tough.

Sometimes.

10 million yen.

10 million yen was founded a recycling center in Sapporo.

So recycling center, I’m assuming it’s just like general garbage, things

that can be recycled, so glass and stuff.

I am wondering what it was in.

It sounds like it was just wrapped up in something else.

There’s a three month deadline for claiming the lost money.

So the police were actually looking for an owner.

At May 1st, so beginning of this month, the

money became the city of Sapporo ‘s money.

Over the course of the three months, 16 people tried to claim the money.

Now this is the bit I was interested in.

So I would love an extra 10 million yen.

Like just pass that over here, 10 million yen.

It’s not gonna totally change my life, but it would make it better for at

least a little while I’d have a lot, you know, I’d pay off all the bills.

Great.

Ah, so I understand the instinct to try to claim the money.

What we got work up of like reasons why people would claim the money.

Because you’ll be interesting to me like what kind of things the police

would ask, questions and stuff to confirm that this is your money.

So 16 people called up the Sapporo police and said, “Yeah, that’s my 10

million yen.”

One, the first one I really enjoyed was I went shopping as I walked in a

parking lot.

I dropped the 10 million yen that was wrapped in newspaper.

Why?

My question is please officers, why are you walking around with 10 million

yen wrapped in newspaper?

Now this is not as weird as it may sound at first.

When I bought a house, technically bought a house.

I haven’t paid off the house yet because I have a mortgage.

So when I attempted to start buying a house, which ends up being a multi-

year process because

of it mortgage, if we paid a massive down

payment in cash, we got, I mean, paying more

at the beginning is better because it means your mortgage is lower overall.

And also we got like a discount essentially by giving them a massive amount

of accounts.

We went to the bank and they wanted cash, which as a Western person feels

very shady, but

in Japan it’s very normal.

They don’t do checks and things like that.

So we went to the bank.

If I remember correctly, we took a 19

million yen, my wife and I pulled our money.

Had a stack of money as big as my head.

So I don’t know.

It was, it was, how do you measure ahead?

The height is bottom to top.

So I guess it’s width from the back of my head to the front of my head.

So I actually have a picture somewhere of me laying on the ground with 19

million yen stacked next to my head.

It’s the same, a sum width is my head.

This is the closest I’m going to get to a

wrap video where I’m like showing off how much

money I have on my bands as it were.

But like I knew I would never have that much money in my hand again or at

least I assumed.

I mean, I guess I’m not dead yet, but the likelihood of me having more than

19 million yen in my possession at one time is very unlikely.

You took it to the construction company, the place that it built the house.

They had that machine that, machine that counts the money.

When the point was I did actually carry that 19 million with me.

I put it in a bag, in a brown paper bag and then put it in like a backpack

and then held the backpack like I hugged it like a fragile child.

Because if I dropped this money somehow, I was not going to financially

recover for years

and years and years and years.

And we wouldn’t be able to be living in the house I live in now.

So the explanation I was walking in a parking lot and I dropped 10 million

yen wrapped in newspaper.

Rapt in newspaper is sound suspicious, but I put mine in a paper bag.

I didn’t want to put it in something

else that would make it more suspicious .

So I actually wrapped it up in something

non suspicious and put it in my backpack.

Then again, I was I was hugging this

like it could be taken from me in a moment.

The second explanation was I put 10 million

yen in my closet and now I can’t find it.

I might have thrown it out, which is the same sort of thing.

It’s like I’ve got 10 million yen.

I put it in the closet.

I cleaned out my closet, maybe forgot that

the 10 million yen was there and it ended

up at the recycling center.

That one is slightly more reasonable.

Again, because Japan has still got a strange relationship with money.

There’s still a lot of people who believe in cash.

They don’t actually want to put money in the bank.

Banks, I think most banks now don’t really offer anything significant in the

way of interest anyways.

The cash sitting in your closet is kind of more liquid.

It’s more available.

So a lot of people think about it that way.

A lot of old people in Japan keep cash in their house.

17, I think was the biggest amount of money found 42.5 million yen was found

in the garbage

in good amount.

Their suspicion is that a man died.

His house was demolished and as they took

all the stuff out of his house either before

or after.

It just ended up in the garbage.

This older man had just kept that money in his house.

This is what I’m saying.

There is a different relationship to money than we would have in the West.

The explanation for this is that there are older people who hide their cash.

So let’s say I’m older.

I have my 42 million yen.

I open up a speaker for my stereo and I stick

it in the speaker or I hide it somewhere.

I’m not going to tell where it is because

that’s the whole point of hiding it.

But then I die.

It’s not like you usually prepare for your death in this way.

So you don’t tell anyone where your money is so they don’t know.

So they start throwing out your old stuff.

They’re not going to think like, oh, I should open up these speakers.

And check for money.

Yeah.

It puts you in a weird position.

Let’s say I have my father in law or my parents in law.

They die.

Should I start breaking down all their stuff

to see if they’ve hidden any money in the

house?

It seems weirdly mercenary at this.

But at the same time, of course, I don’t want to throw out 42 million yen

that could benefit my family or someone

else in the family who maybe deserves it.

It suddenly felt like crypto to me.

They’ve just stored it somewhere else where no one else can get it because I

have a tiny amount of cryptocurrency.

I was big into cryptocurrency and then it really started to turn out like it

wasn’t going to get used the way they were promising it.

It became like an investment thing and not like something you use where for

me, the idea of Internet money, something you use was really appealing.

So I have like basically left over money

in crypto and then the price all tanked.

So it wasn’t really worth, you know, going back to it the moment.

If it seems like it’s going to take off again, maybe I’ll look at it again,

but I really

want it to be something you can use, not something that just sits there and

it becomes like an investment opportunity

that may or may not hold value over time.

But that means I have like a USB stick

with, let’s say, a 500 bucks crypto on it.

If I die, that’s gone.

If that had been like where I was storing my money, if I was taking my

savings, putting

in crypto and I die, you’re not going to break the security to get in there.

It’s got like whatever, 15, 20 word pass codes that you have to find and

know the right order and stuff.

Yeah.

So this is similar.

It’s the old version and the new version is almost the same thing.

Anyways, no one convinced the police it was there 10 million yen.

The police have reverted the money to the city.

And so that’s it.

We did a story a little while ago that if

you, someone turns in the money, you have to

give them an award, like a reward, a thank you.

It was between, I think it was five and 20% of the value, which means the

person who found

this, if someone had claimed it, they would have got as a minimum five

percent of the money they were supposed to have found 10 million yen.

But because it goes back to the city, maybe they don’t get anything.

I wonder if there’s a reward for the

city worker who found the 10 million yen.

I sit there and I go like, man, because I’m not rich enough to throw away 10

million.

If I found 10 million yen when I turn it in, I assume if I found that much

money, it was from someone nefarious.

It was like a yakusa, lost it or something.

So then I wouldn’t feel bad, but then I don’t know what’s the yakusa.

So it might be the situation where it was like 40 million yen.

A family member died and that family could really use it.

I would feel bad about that.

I don’t want to steal from a family.

I wouldn’t have problems stealing from yakusa.

But I think my assumption is if I find money somehow on the street of that

volume that it.

was someone doing something in the first place.

So maybe I got to readjust my attitude

and be a more honest and better person.

Probably won’t happen today though.

There’s nothing dishonest about keeping money you find.

I mean that’s technically a possibility.

The problem I’m what I actually mean is when it’s 40 million yen and I find.

it and I would

benefit from 40 million yen, but there

could be a family that has that money .

Okay wait, I have to restart my sentence.

There is a family out there who let’s say like the father died and that the

kids need more that money more than I do.

That’s all.

I’m saying there’s a relative morality there that’s a bit of an issue from.

I have a family too, but I am able to provide for my family.

So what I’m saying, there might be a family out there that cannot provide

for the family

as well.

And 50 million yen would benefit them more.

Like it would make their life better.

Whereas my family would be like icing on the cake.

So I’m just saying like I don’t want to take food out of someone’s mouth to

put icing on my cake.

Okay, you’ll do it.

Okay.

Well you wait, wait, wait.

By managing the money for me, do I get the money?

I don’t know, I’m a little concerned about this.

The guy who threw the pipe bomb at the prime minister, he just got a new

warrant served.

So he threw the pipe bomb, got arrested right away.

And then they release you.

This is, this was not really what’s happening is not that interesting.

So he’s got basically the police went to his house, they searched his house,

they found gunpowder.

And then just this week reissued a new

warrant for his arrest over the gun powder.

And this is something it’s not again, it’s not a surprise that he had gunpow

der in his house if he was making pipe bombs to throw at the prime minister.

It’s a surprise that they didn’t do it all at once.

Now what the police in Japan do is they stagger their warrants.

Now this could be seen as a form of

harassment, which I think in some cases it is.

I don’t know about this one.

One you get into pipe bomb territory, I

don’t feel too bad if the police are asking.

But there’s a system in Japan where they can arrest you.

Without charging you, they can hold you for

basically a month, I think it’s 24 days.

Then they have to let you go.

But what they do is let’s say they have three or four charges, they will.

hold you for 20

days, release you.

As you walk out the building, they will re-arrest you on the second warrant

and bring you back in, hold you for 20 days.

This was a system designed to disrupt a drug dealer’s business.

So let’s say I’m a drug dealer.

If I’m off the street for two to three months, like one month basically each

, they will disrupt

my ability to sell drugs because all my customers are going to go find

another drug dealer.

If I have a day job, I’m going to lose my day job.

So it’s very disruptive to my life.

The Japanese police do this on purpose to

extend the length of time they can basically

hold you.

It also helps them, it gives them time to build a case or whatever without

actually arresting

you because once they arrest you, they have to put the evidence forward and

they have to go to trial.

This is another reason why the Japanese conviction rate is so high is

because they’re essentially

giving themselves so much time to build the case they want to build.

I don’t think the fact that we have this guy on video throwing a pipe bomb

at the prime minister, it’s a pretty open and shut case.

I was just surprised that they dropped another warrant now, but I’m betting

it so they can

look more into his background and stuff because

this guy has still not made a statement.

A lot of the crime stories we do on the Internet is Japan.

The thing you hear about is the statement.

The statement is always immediate and to me relatively amusing because it’s

like, “Yeah, I did it.

I’m proud of it.”

Or then they go to jail.

I don’t remember because I was drunk, which

is a very common defense in Japan, which

actually doesn’t work.

Because I don’t think you not remembering it gets you off the hook.

I think I guess the idea is that if I say I don’t remember it, there’s no

point in them asking me any further questions.

I’m not helping their case at all.

I’m assuming that’s what they actually mean is I don’t remember so that you

can stop asking me questions because you keep asking me questions.

I’m just going to keep saying I don’t remember.

I’m not helping you build a case against

me, which is again the criminal’s job.

If you’ve committed crimes, your job is to not help the police arrest you.

Keep that in mind.

This guy, I just thought it was interesting

that they’re going to drop a warrant now.

A month from now, we might hear a new warrant drop for another thing.

Another thing, another thing.

Because they’ve gone through it through his house.

They now have all the things in his house

that they were, that he had illegally.

The gunpowder would have been illegal.

The pipe bombs he made would have been illegal.

That’s two charges, two warrants right there.

It also means they can get more invasive into his house.

In this case, again, I’m pretty, actually think it’s pretty justified.

He threw a pipe bomb.

He could have killed not only a prime minister

as target, but everyone around 20, 30,

innocent people.

Yeah, I’m okay with this.

It’s a weird question though.

Justice.

Very much like my feeling about taking

money that I just found on the street .

Justice should have be applied equally, but then at the same time, it’s like

, we know this guy’s guilty.

So you have to worry about whether we harass or not or keep him in jail

because they should be keeping him in jail.

What I just realized though is what my morality is fluid.

Which is bad.

When you’re talking about laws and stuff, it should be like, yes or no, it

shouldn’t be like, well, in this case, yes, in that case, no.

Maybe that’s Ignat’s idea about me keeping the money I find on the street,

finders, keepers rules.

But again, my feeling is in some cases, it would be perfectly justifiable

taking money from the Akhuzah.

I wouldn’t feel bad about that.

But if the family’s poor and I take money from them, I wouldn’t want to do

that inadvertently as the… Anyways, next story.

Upskirt photos.

We’ve talked about this a billion times in Japan.

It’s surprisingly how often cops get arrested for taking upskirt photos.

Photo voyeurism is going to be made illegal.

It’s going to be banned.

My first thought is, what?

How is upskirt photos not already illegal?

So when you take an upskirt photo, so I’m on the escalator, always happens

on escalator.

The lady in front of me is wearing a short skirt.

I take my cell phone out, I take a picture of her skirt, and I get arrested.

I wasn’t getting arrested for taking the photo.

I was getting arrested for harassing the person, which I didn’t realize.

Like I’d actually talked about the story a million times and yes, you’re

getting arrested for harassment.

But the actual taking of the photo wasn’t

the crime, which I’ve only realized now.

It’s shocking that in Japan in 2023, taking a unsolicited photo of someone’s

essentially genitalia without their permission was not illegal.

But that was the case.

This is going into a bill that’s expanding all the sexual crimes.

I have talked on a previous episode about how the definition of rape is

being expanded.

In Japan, up until very recently, it was only really rape if you could prove

you tried to defend yourself.

You could prove that you fought back.

Now we know that’s not always the case.

We know it’s not always possible.

But it also meant that if I bill Cosby to Lady, that was perfectly legal

because she didn’t fight back against it.

That’s why so many of these cases are so frustrating for women from a woman

‘s point of view.

So the definition of rape is being expanded.

So all the things I just mentioned are now going to be illegal.

Upskirt photos and other similar things are

not going to be just part of harassment to

build a case.

It’s going to be illegal in itself.

So it would be, harassment is charge one.

Upskirt photo is charge two.

If they do something else gross, that’s probably another charge.

Gruming minors will now be illegal, which was not illegal before.

I think the problem with grooming minors was the definition of grooming min

ors and the definition of minor in Japan was

actually pretty vague because you get all

the creepy dudes to point out that like the

age of consent in Japan is 13, it’s not.

It used to be.

It’s not anymore.

So just be aware of that creepy dudes listening in in Japan, which is.

probably a lot of you.

If I take an upskirt photo of a woman, which is now going to be referred to

as photo voyeurism,

I can get up to three years in prison and a three million yen fine.

In 2021, there were 5,000 arrests for upskirt photos.

But again, this was harassment or maybe those guys just got off because it

wasn’t technically illegal.

That is three times more than 2010.

And I think the rise in that crime comes down to the availability and sort

of technological level of cell phones and cell phone care.

I don’t think my obsession with older men who commit crimes is going to go

away because as I come into my golden years, I’m going to be 51 very soon.

So my is my brain going through a transition is kind of the underlying

question of every

time I do a crime story involving a 50 plus year old man, is it going to

happen to me?

There’s a concern and a piece of entertainment value because I am a

relatively moral person.

I’m not going to say good because again, the underlying theme of this whole

episode has been that my morals are fluid.

So in one instance, I would say something

is dead wrong, you should never do it.

But then change the circumstances.

I’d be like, yeah, maybe it’s okay.

I think that’s true for everybody.

But I think most people are not as honest about it.

And I struggle with what is right and wrong.

But that is all governed by the chemicals in your brain.

And the chemicals in your brain change over time.

So am I over the next three or four years going to change in such a way that

I end up in a situation.

The one that got me the most was the 50 year old man who saw a high school

girl in a shopping mall, got down on his

knees and just started licking her shoes.

Part of his brain, the chemicals in his brain was telling him that this was

a good idea.

Another part of his brain was like,

she might even like it and be like into it.

So that was always like, is that where my brain is going at some point is a

question I have.

Anyways, this 53 year old man goes into a

store and he shop lists a skirt, walks out

and they don’t catch him.

But the security guy, the guy in charge of

the security cameras, he’s checking that he

actually stole the skirt.

And so he knows the guy’s face, he knows the skirt that the guy stole.

He knows sort of the general situation.

And this is like, at this point, we’re not going to go chase him.

He’s gone.

So whatever.

The problem is the man returned later that afternoon and he was wearing the

skirt that he stole.

And again, part of me goes like, did he think he was getting away with it?

Did he think he was going to go back and steal more clothes?

Did he think no one was going to notice?

Has his brain taken him to a place where he’s so disconnected, he thinks, I

‘m going to get away with this?

Or does he actually want to be arrested?

Because there are another part of his brain that’s going like, this is going

to get you arrested, let’s go do that.

Maybe that’s what he wants.

It could be one of these situations where the guy’s been in prison in the

past.

And he’s actually now at this point in his life more comfortable in prison.

He might be a homeless person who struggles to survive and actually prison

is going to be more comfortable in the life he’s living now.

All those are terrible things.

So I don’t want to make jokes about them.

But if he was dead serious, I’m going to steal this skirt.

I’m going to put on this skirt.

They’re going to think I’m a different

person because I’m wearing different clothes.

I’m going to go back to the same store, maybe steal some more stuff or just

do some casual shopping.

I would love to know what was going on through that guy’s head.

So we have one more story, a little quick story.

It’s what Otaku think is going to happen when they have kids.

So first of all, they have to assume they’re having kids.

Otaku in Japan, it’s pretty relatively famous that they’re not.

They’re essentially in cells.

If you have kids, are you going to maintain your current time and money put

into your hobby?

This is the question that was asked.

So 82% of Otaku said if they have kids,

they would spend less time on their hobbies.

That is pretty reasonable.

You have other people in your life.

You have to spend more time on them.

You have to give up some time.

You give up time on your hobbies.

Same.

So I’m going to spend the exact same amount of time on my hobbies, 16%.

I’m going to spend even more time on my hobbies, 2%.

I think those people are deluded in getting themselves.

By adding more people into the mix, you just get less time.

That is, the people are always astounded by the fact that I can produce this

podcast and seeming to be in other things.

And they’re like, where do you find the time to like, I carve out a schedule

when people are not in the house.

Otherwise I just can’t do it.

I’m also weirdly self-conscious about doing

a podcast while other people in the house.

They just hear me talking.

They’re like, let me be downstairs.

So they don’t really hear anything.

There’s no, but I’m always like, I have a different feeling when someone

else is around.

Will you spend less, same or more money once you have kids?

84% said they would spend less money.

Again, very reasonable assumption.

You have to take your sum of your money and spend it on these humans you

have produced.

I’m going to spend the same amount of money.

Actually not unreasonable.

14%.

Like I put aside this much money for my hobby.

I’m going to keep that much.

And then the other money I make is going to go to the family and stuff.

I can actually see if you actually planted

it out in advance that would work out.

2% I think the same 2% as the first category.

I’m going to spend more money on my hobbies.

So they’re almost defiant that yes, I’m going to have children.

I’m going to spend more money on my hobby.

Now this was the bit that I thought maybe where it would work in.

19% said they would enjoy their hobby with their kids.

So I think maybe that 2% from the previous two surveys is saying that I’m

going to spend more time on my hobby

because I’m going to induct my children.

There was a better word.

I’m going to bring my children up in my hobby.

Therefore I’m going to spend time with them,

spend money with them on the hobby so we

can enjoy it together.

But that might be the route to take.

So that’s like I’ve met lots of families.

So I practice judo.

I’ve met literal judo families where like

every parent, child, grandparents and stuff,

they all do judo.

So they raise the kids in that environment.

I don’t think they force them to do it but there’s like this is what we do.

You can join and they get into it because it’s a family thing.

They’re saying like I’m going to grow up with anime.

Anime is going to be on TV.

I’m going to buy DVDs and stuff or Blue Rays.

The kids are going to see them.

I’ll buy more.

Maybe it will expand what I like or expand to what the kids like.

I’ll buy stuff for them.

So I’ll actually end up spending more money on the hobby.

I make gun to models.

I’m going to do that with my kids.

The kids are going to grow up making models.

We’re going to spend more time and more money on the models.

I’m not going to enjoy my hobby with my kids.

18%.

I actually understand this thinking.

I did not force my children to do judo.

Just my thing, I know judo is a very sort

of unique personality type that enjoys it.

A lot of people will not enjoy getting beat up or beating people up.

I had no problem not sharing my hobby with my kids.

If they were interested, I would have brought them in but I was never going

to force them.

I think that might be where these guys their mindset is, which is good.

Fourcing your kids into your hobby is not a good thing to do.

Either is fine, 63%, which is again, all

three of those I can kind of mentally

justify the thinking they’re going through.

I think they’re all have good points and bad points.

But yes, if you are a nerd, if you listen

to the issues you spend, you probably are.

It is worth thinking about how can I indoctrinate my children into my hobby.

Should I do that?

Do I want to do that?

Do I want to share my hobby?

I think it’s a really nice thing to do.

But I think it’s a really nice thing to do.

If they’re interested in it, I don’t think

it’s a really nice thing to do if you have

to force.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music).

(upbeat music)

• Hey fever is a consistent issue in Japan.

It affects 40% of the population in total.

It affects 50% of the people in Tokyo,

Tokyo being one of the most popular cities in the world.

I suffer from hay fever.

So this is a story that they become particularly personal, important to me.

I suffer primarily right now.

So I’m on a ton of drugs.

Actually, I only took two, not too bad,

but I have like spray that goes up my nose

and drips and things.

It sucks.

I actually came to Japan.

I didn’t have allergies for five years.

And then I developed allergies to every sort of plant in Japan.

It sucks so much.

There is a tea called Jammu tea black.

And it’s claimed it was effective for hay feverers.

And I was like, wow, I suffer from hay fever

drinking tea would be a great way to fight it off.

If it’s actually true.

We only sold on the Internet.

It was only sold on the Internet, which is why I was like,

wow, that’s probably why I didn’t find it.

I go around, I buy all the strange drinks that come out in Japan.

Pepsi for years and years and years

every year would release a strange flavor.

Quite recently, Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola had a collaboration.

They made Jack Coke in a can.

I had that.

It was pretty good.

As soon as I finished it, I knew there

was a problem because I already felt dry.

And one can of Coke, essentially one drink.

They must put something in it.

There is a whiskey soda in a can that I tried.

Halfway through that drink I had a headache.

The next day after the Jack and Coke, I felt really dry.

Took some aspirin, drank a ton of water.

I was okay.

But if I’d had like four, normally in a drinking session,

I’m gonna have four or five drinks.

I’m not getting wasted anymore.

I’m not going crazy.

But at the same time, I’m a big dude.

I got to drink a lot to have an impact and effect.

If I drank four or five of those,

I would have had one of the worst hangovers in my life.

That’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about Jammu T Black.

Jammu T Black is effective for a lot of things because it contains steroids.

So Jammu T Black would get my chest press up another 20 kilos.

It would probably make me feel real good all the time.

But one of the side effects of steroids

continued usage is it will worsen infections.

So basically if you drank this tea, let’s

say every day because you have hay fever,

then you get an infection of some sort.

You get an infection, something like that.

Your body would be less capable of fighting

off the infection, which is ridiculous.

That is putting people’s lives at risk and they did not disclose it,

which is probably why it was only available on the Internet.

That is not just borderline illegal.

There’s a lot of problems with having your product,

any product, not just tea, have steroids in it

and not declaring that properly to users.

And the side effect is potential life-threatening death.

So that’s a big deal.

They’re being looked into.

They’re probably not gonna be able to sell

their product online any, which is good.

(upbeat music)

Kishita, the Prime Minister of Japan.

He came out and he said in a meeting that hay fever

is a national problem that troubles many people.

But he didn’t just say that.

He said we need proposals on how to fix it

because they’re saying 40% of the whole

population in Japan suffers from hay fever

and that has a huge economic impact.

Maybe he spoke slightly out of turn.

And the thing is he was talking to a cabinet,

so in the government, and he said we need proposals to solve this problem.

But basically what he did was accidentally elevate it

in status from something we’re talking about

to something we actually need like an action task plan on.

So I think Kishita is actually elevated the severity

of the issue so that the government actually

is now going to focus resources on it,

which I actually think is a good thing.

When it affects 50% of your population, and it really does.

I mean, we’re talking about drug money,

we’re talking about productivity at work.

This is something it should be dealt with seriously.

The thing is it’s hay fever, so people don’t take hay fever very seriously.

Some of the proposals that came out of this just initial conversation were,

they’re going to thin out the cedar trees.

Now the reason cedar trees are in Japan

at all, so at the end of World War II,

there was the bombing of Japan.

There was also every piece of wood was cut down to use in the war effort.

Once World War II was finished, they said we need trees,

we need wood as fast as possible,

we need something that grows fast and

grows very easily, so they got cedar trees,

imported them from other countries and planted them in Japan.

So it’s actually a non-native species in Japan,

and they think that is one of the main reasons why

it’s had such a great impact on allergies in Japan.

‘Cause it’s not native to the country, people grow up with it, it affects.

Again, I developed an allergy through it later in life,

so maybe it’s one of those things that just develops allergies,

but cedar trees produce tons of pollen, so

they think that might be part of the issue.

So one of the first things they’re going to do

is let’s thin out the current number of cedar trees

in Japan and plant some other trees that don’t have as much pollen.

And then the other thing is like coming up with better drugs and stuff.

My allergy medicine, I don’t know if anyone would care

about this, recently was upgraded to a new,

you can swallow it without water, which was weird

’cause I was like one of the least problems I have

during allergy season is drinking water

’cause they drink tons of water anyways.

But yeah, hopefully they do start coming

up with some solutions, it’s not just me.

It is millions and millions of people in

Japan suffer from these allergy issues,

and it’s millions and millions of people who would love a solution.

I would love to not be on drugs all the time.

(upbeat music)

Since we’re talking about Kishida, just a few days ago,

someone took a pipe bomb and chucked it at the Prime Minister.

It is a weirdly terrifying story.

Last year, not too long ago, Prime Minister, former Prime Minister Abe

was assassinated with a homemade shotgun.

Guns are not a significant issue in Japan.

You can’t buy them.

This former military dude made a gun, made a shotgun,

took it out and shot the former Prime Minister.

So this is on people’s minds.

This is an issue.

You have Kishida standing, doing a speech.

He turns around, he looks at the background,

and then you can see a pipe bomb, a silver

bomb, come over and land in front of him.

One of the security guard kicks the bomb away,

opens this like briefcase looking thing,

and it’s actually a ballistic shield.

He holds that in front of the Prime Minister, and then pushes him away.

The first one doesn’t go off properly.

It makes a big noise in lots of smoke.

The guy who has the bomb, it’s tackled by a fisherman,

he’s doing this around the speech was happening around dogs.

That fisherman is now a national hero, ’cause he took out this guy.

The suspect had a second one.

He also was carrying a knife.

He was pushed to the ground by the fisherman and then arrested.

The suspect so far has refused to talk, so we don’t know why he did.

It is a weird way to get attention,

because we don’t know why he’s done it yet.

The fisherman was one of the funnier bits to me, only because he said,

“I did judo in elementary school, but the dude was like 50.”

So he’s the same age to me.

I’ve done judo for 40 years, so yes, I could say that judo

was an applicable skill that I have.

I think he was just a really tough fisherman.

I don’t think the judo he practiced when he was like seven,

had any sort of impact on his abilities now.

But truth be told, he saw some action.

He didn’t run away.

He jumped in and like took down a dude.

I mean, yeah, it deserves to be a national hero.

I was trying to find that video.

I actually saw the video, but I lost it.

It’s the problem with getting so many videos up at the same time.

This is safe.

The concern is that the secret service, the security details, the bodyguards

for the prime minister and such.

In Japan, have primarily been trained to defend against knives.

And they think they need to sort of upgrade their skills.

So they have the security guys who were

dealing with Abe during that assassination.

They didn’t really know what to do.

They had that briefcase thing.

They had one of those, but it was way too late

and obviously the former prime minister died.

You see the same deal.

This guy was on it though.

The security guy, the security guard, had the briefcase open.

And the idea is that if something explodes or someone shoots,

it’s ballistic so it’ll hit that.

And it covers most, it’s about, I don’t

know, four feet when it’s fully open.

So it’s covering essentially the major parts your body, hopefully.

And I got to say the security dude was on it.

The fisherman though, he took out the guy, which is pretty cool.

It is a question though, is this where political protest is gonna go

in Japan in the future?

Are they going to try to assassinate these guys

to the point where essentially what’s gonna happen

is these guys aren’t going to feel comfortable going out in public,

which is too bad because up until the Abe assassination,

Japanese politicians walked out in crowds among people,

they had security details with them, but there was no fear.

And now the fact simply is that there is going to be fear

which sucks because it’s going to change the political nature of Japan.

Two men were arrested.

So we had the Sushi terrorism.

So the people who were like unconverible Sushi,

they were licking their fingers and touching the Sushi.

We had a guy take the soy sauce and drink directly from it.

People being gross, filming it, putting it on the Internet for cloud.

All those people got in trouble, all those people got arrested.

It is shocking to me that anyone is going to do something similar.

We can’t change it.

It has to be changed from Sushi terrorism.

Last week I talked about a guy at a Gudon place,

Yoshinoya, and what he did was Gudon is a bowl of rice

with beef on the top, shredded beef.

He was taking the ginger that is shared,

a condiment, and then sticking his chopsticks

in and pretending to eat a ton of it.

But his chopsticks have been in his mouth.

So he was arrested.

Everyone is getting arrested for this.

It’s ridiculous.

So the fact that people are still doing it,

filming it and putting it on the Internet is terrifying.

Two men were arrested for using toothpicks,

putting them back in the toothpick holder,

complaining to the staff, making them replace the toothpick holder,

and then doing it again.

So they’re basically just like trying to say to the staff

that, oh, I use this toothpick, has used toothpicks in it, it’s disgusting.

Go get me a new one, they bring a new one,

they would do the same thing again and again.

They filmed it.

It blew up online.

I mean, why at that point, you know you’re gonna get caught.

The problem is, you wanna make this video.

You want it to blow up.

It blows up.

The police see it.

They have your face and everything, I assume you’re account.

The police come get you, you’re arrested.

The only way you can get away with this is if your video for Cloud fails.

So the fact is you’re committing a low key crime.

If it gets popular on the Internet, you’re gonna get arrested.

You commit a low key crime.

It doesn’t get popular.

You don’t achieve your purpose, your

primary purpose being to get popular online.

That’s sort of this weird catch 22.

If you’re successful, you get arrested.

If you’re not successful, nothing happens.

But you don’t get the love that you’re looking for on the Internet.

And it isn’t love, it’s all hate.

Everyone in Japan finds this disgusting.

They were found pretty quickly.

The restaurant filed a report.

The restaurant actually didn’t want to press charges

until the video went viral last week.

So this actually happened like a couple months ago.

When the video went viral, you’re going

to damage the reputation of our restaurant.

So we want you to be arrested.

They were brought up on fraudulent obstruction of business charges.

(bell dings)

We put a ding in there for the… I don’t know, man.

I don’t know what you think you’re gonna achieve by this.

I understand youthful practical jokes and being dumb when you’re a teenager.

Both these guys were in their 30s.

As far as I’m concerned, fines aren’t enough.

Send them to prison.

That would actually send a message.

I don’t know what that message would be.

Don’t be a dumb ass.

(bell dings)

• Japanese, in Japan, everything’s taken

away seriously, like sports and stuff.

And that’s the ridiculous part, maybe first of all.

The level of seriousness in high school sports is off the charts.

It is why people quit sports after high school.

My daughter, I think I’ve told the story before.

She was doing gymnastics as a kid.

She really enjoyed it.

And then we got to a point where she was

getting sort of like junior high school.

And the place she went said, she either

has to come every single day to gymnastics

and do it like she’s gonna go to the Olympics or something.

She was never gonna go to the Olympics.

We were just putting her in it, so she would have something fun to do.

She has to come every day or she has to quit.

And we’re like, well, we can’t bring her every day.

Both I and my wife work.

We cannot do the thing you’re asking us to do.

So like, okay, she has to quit.

So my daughter, who was enjoying gymnastics,

had to quit gymnastics because she wasn’t ready

or capable of dating her whole life to gymnastics.

She’s fucking ridiculous.

There was no sort of like, let’s have fun class

in kids gymnastics after a certain point.

You either had to do this like dead seriously

like you were gonna do nothing else, but you had to quit.

So we quit.

And now my daughter doesn’t do anything.

I’m trying to get it into something else like hip hop classes or something,

where it’s like designed to be fun,

but even then, I’ve gone by these open competitions

in like malls and stuff where it’s like

little girls doing hip hop, dead seriously.

You know they’re going every day.

I’m wondering if there is even such a

thing as doing sports for fun in Japan.

A former pro baseball player was a coach of a high school baseball team.

Okay, so that’s really good for the baseball team.

They got this guy.

He was a pro.

He knows baseball.

He’s gonna train you and coach you.

It’s gonna be awesome.

He kicked a player in the butt.

That doesn’t sound too bad.

The next sentence though, he hit the same

player in the head with a baseball bat.

There was no way he could have hit him that hard,

but he is hitting a kid in the head with a baseball bat.

Maybe the kid had a helmet on.

I don’t know.

All I do know is if you hit my kid with a baseball bat,

I would be showing up at the school

and I’d be like, let’s get two bats and work this out.

Like there’s one simple way.

I’m not calling the cops.

You and me, baseball bats, you wanna throw down, let’s throw down.

You’re not hitting kids with baseball bats and getting away.

He was fired.

His statement was, his playing wasn’t satisfactory.

Just to show you how serious it is,

that this is not like an isolated incident.

A different school, there was a running coach.

In February, he slapped a student in the face and gave him a bloody nose.

It just, when that came to light, ’cause

the kid came home with a bloody nose,

there was discovered to be three more cases.

And the coach said, I’m sorry.

Of course, as I’ve said many times before,

the retroactive, I’m sorry, doesn’t mean anything,

because you’re only sorry you got caught.

If you hadn’t been caught, if you hadn’t been told he was doing a bad thing,

he wouldn’t have had like a self-revelation of,

perhaps I’m treating these people too

harshly, because they may be in high school,

but they are still people.

So he resigned.

This is again, how fucking serious it is.

But the parents said, we don’t want you to quit.

You can stay if you promise to not hit the kids anymore.

And the reason was that school had entered

the nationals 43 times, which actually means

they got to a certain level with this school’s expectations

or they were going to the nationals almost

every year, and they’ve won it five times.

So because they were winning, these parents were willing to forgive

that this man abused their kids.

And as long as he didn’t hit them further,

they were saying, it’s okay, you can stay

and be coach of this school, which I’m sorry again,

hit my kid once, you and me are gonna go for it.

I mean, that’s simple.

If my son or my daughter came home today and said, my whatever coach hit me,

I would go to the school and be like, let’s have a conversation,

a private conversation that Jim Nazium just you and me.

You can choose the weapons, but we’re gonna do this.

There’s no way that I would let that pass.

And if that guy got fired, no, I’m not.

I don’t want him back.

He hit my kid.

It’s fucking disgusting.

(upbeat music)

82 year old man.

So I love it.

I love old men.

I’m an old man myself.

I’m approaching super old age, but right now I’m just old.

I haven’t hit like grumpy old man yet, but I’m pretty close.

Maybe my last story though, I’m like,

I’m ready to throw down with anyone who touches my kids.

That’s ’cause there’s still kids and they can’t really defend themselves.

Once they get to, you know, oh my son, he’s like five, 10, five, 11 now.

He’s like 15 years old.

He’s pretty much gonna be 6162 probably when he fishes growing.

He’s gonna be huge.

I guess he never has to worry about it.

He’s gonna be a big dude.

You gotta remember we’re in Japan

where the average height is shorter than other countries.

Anyways, no, we’re relevant.

82 year old man.

He’s driving along, not wearing a seatbelt.

As old men are want to do, the police pull him over.

And as you pull someone over, he goes, let me see you drive his license.

And he is unable to produce one because he had his driver’s license revoked

when he was 20, which is over 60 years ago.

And he’s been driving ever since.

So he was arrested on the spot, of course, for driving without a license.

They can’t compound it, driving without a license for 60 years.

It’s funny that driving without a license is one charge,

not a charge, sort of for every year you’ve driven without a license.

The interesting part was he drove well enough

over the last 60 years that no one noticed.

So if he’d just, like every other crime, kept it on the down low.

If he’d worn a seatbelt and followed all

the rules, he wouldn’t have got pulled over.

He wouldn’t have had the police ask for his

license and he wouldn’t have had to admit

that he doesn’t have one for the last 60

years and he wouldn’t have been arrested.

So if you’re gonna commit a low-key crime

that people won’t notice unless you show off, don’t show off.

It’s actually very similar to our first story

where the only reason those guys are being arrested

is because they got viral on the Internet.

They got the clout they were looking for.

That brought the police’s attention.

If you’re going to commit crimes, ingenues

Japan criminal advice for this week,

don’t draw attention to yourself,

don’t do the things that will draw police’s attention.

(upbeat music)

This is really interesting because I’m wondering what’s gonna happen.

In Japan, you turn 20, you are an adult

and they’ve actually recently lowered that to 18

but there’s still some issues going back and forth

because not everything is caught up with it.

That’s actually relevant in this story.

There’s a person who was arrested for stealing a wallet in a bar.

They were arrested and produced a mind number card

which is your social insurance number, essentially, in Japan.

The social insurance number said they were 20 years old.

They were being prosecuted and the prosecutors started to get weirded out

because whenever they were interviewing, oh no, it was the defendants.

So her lawyers started to get confused

because when they were interviewing her acquaintances,

they started getting like confused answers

that didn’t match up with her story.

They took a second look at her, turns out she’s a 17 year old,

a Thai national who spoke basically perfect Japanese.

So they didn’t even know she wasn’t Japanese.

But she was being charged as an adult

because she had been impersonating an adult.

Didn’t admit to not being an adult or the impersonation

and revealing that she was 17 years old.

The confusion here, okay, she was being arrested as an adult

which means she’s going to be tried as an adult.

In Japan, if you’re not an adult, the charge is way lower.

So if she had had copped to the fact

that she was impersonating someone else,

if she had copped to the fact that she was impersonating

someone else, she actually would have got a lower charge but more charges.

So there’s the confusion.

So if the charge was theft, theft as a minor,

is a very small thing, probably slap in the wrist, you get released.

Thiefed as an adult, you could actually go to prison.

So the question is, what would have

been the better course of action for her?

Should she have gone through and taken the

charge as an adult but kept up her persona?

Or should she have copped to, I’ve been impersonating adult and theft,

but I’m a minor and gotten maybe lower charges on both.

I actually think the better course of action,

again, we’re now getting to Ninja, New Japan, advice for criminals time,

is always take the charge as a minor because

it gets expunged when you turn an adult.

She was 17, it was actually going to be not a problem for her next year.

The fact that it came out, I don’t know if that causes

more issues, is they had to discover it on their own.

I think if you admitted it, you get a lower charge as well.

I have no idea how this is gonna play out.

Do not ever, if you have the opportunity,

take a charge as an adult because you are always

going to get off in a better situation as a minor.

(upbeat music)

Two guys return a rental car, no problem.

They called the rental agency and

said, we forgot something in the car, okay?

That happens all the time, no problem.

We’re gonna come back and get it.

Also, very common, you’ve forgotten something in the car,

you’re gonna come back and get it.

We’ll not rent out that car again, absolutely, sir.

Don’t you dare look fucking inside.

Okay, now that’s a little weird.

That’s not what people normally say

when they’ve forgotten something in a car.

So of course, the staff immediately

went and looked in the car, found the item.

It was 15 bags of weed.

They called the cops.

Cops show up before the guys who’ve rented

the car because they don’t have a car.

They probably have to take public transit to get back there.

Pops get there first and they’re arrested when they arrive at the place.

If you had done, if you just played the game normally,

said, we forgot something in the car,

we’re on our way back, we’ll pick it up and said nothing.

They may have looked at the car, but they may not have.

They may have just held the car for you.

Because you drew attention to the thing and made vague threats to the staff,

they immediately went and checked the car and found your weed.

And weed in Japan is still, every drug charge is treated equally.

So cocaine, heroin, Molly, marijuana in Japan,

it’s a drug charge, it’s all exactly the same.

So these guys are gonna be up for whatever the 15 bags are.

They just have to try to figure out

where they trying to sell it was for use on their own

because those are different charges.

Buying it and then using it’s bad,

buying it and selling it is worse, criminally in Japan.

But again, this is gonna be like a full on criminal

advice episode of Ninja News Japan.

If you are trying to hide your stash and

you misplace it, don’t draw attention to it.

(upbeat music)

This has a rule I didn’t know.

So it’d be good for people to learn

about if you’re ever gonna come to Japan.

Man found a wallet with 430,000 yen in it.

That is like $4,000.

And he turned it into the police.

Very honest, very kind of him.

And it was returned to the owner the same day.

Now, there is a lost property law that I didn’t know about.

Where the owner must pay a reward

between five and 20% of the value of the thing returned.

So he should have paid him between five and 20%

of 430,000 yen.

So honestly, if you’re gonna go on the low end, five percent of 430,000 yen,

it’s like, you know, 20,000 yen, 30,000 yen,

I know I can do the math, but it’s not that much.

If you have that much money, if you’re

carrying that much money around in your wallet,

you have a lot of money.

The guy calls him.

So the guy who found the wallet calls the owner of the wallet

and says, you know, I returned your wallet.

The guy says, I’m busy and hangs up and then refuses to take his calls.

So the man who found the wallet sued him and the settlement was 70,000 yen,

which is probably the high end of the

percentage that he would have had to pay

if he had just been nice and paid it anyways.

The man who found the wallet said, I didn’t want the money.

If he had expressed gratitude, I would have let it go.

Well, I actually believe, because if that guy was greedy,

he would have just taken money out of the wallet

in the first place before trying to get into the plea.

I actually do believe that the guy, if he

had just expressed some form of gratitude,

wouldn’t have had to pay anything at all.

My sister was in Japan.

She found a wallet, turned it into the police,

and then the next day, a cake showed up at her house.

Now that cake was at worth 5% to 10% of whatever we found.

I have no idea.

I didn’t check.

I was like, oh, we got a cake.

Let’s eat the cake and I was happy.

I’m, the cake probably was way cheaper than the amount of money inside,

probably less than the 5%.

But we didn’t care.

We got a free cake and we were having a good time.

That’s all that mattered.

The show of gratitude will overwhelm your brain

so that you don’t actually think about the value of the thing.

I had a boss who clearly did not understand this as a concept.

I had done some overtime as a volunteer thing.

I was gonna get paid for it.

I didn’t expect to get anything.

My boss came and put 500 yen on my desk.

I was in there.

My coworker comes over and goes, what are you doing?

And he says, oh, well, he was very nice.

I’m gonna give him this 500 yen coin.

And then my coworker says, you should buy him a Coke or something.

Something that he likes to drink.

And he’ll be happy about that.

You should not leave 500 yen as a coin on his desk.

And she goes, but the drink, probably

120 yen is worth less than the 500 yen.

So she doesn’t understand.

And then he’s like, but it’s the presentation, the thought that counts.

And she was really confused.

And then she went and bought the Coke and left it on my desk

with a note that said, thank you.

And I was really happy about it.

But yes, if you’d left 500 yen on my

desk, I would have been weirdly insulted.

The human mind is an interesting thing ’cause

it doesn’t work logically all the time.

Because she was working on pure logic whereas he understood the gesture,

even if it’s a cheaper gesture, the

more thoughtful, the better the gesture is.

If you ever lose something or find something in Japan, keep that in mind.

There is actually a law in place that you have to pay a reward.

Let’s say I lose 100 yen, I have to give you five yen.

(upbeat music)

So this guy shows up at a track meet

and he starts videoing the participants.

He is then arrested because there is actually rules in place

that you are not allowed to film people at these sort of track events.

What he’s trying to do, he’s a voyeur

and he’s filming girls in their tight track leggings

or short shorts or whatever they’re wearing at the time.

Sorry, the meet prohibits photography.

And this becomes, this is a common problem now in Japan

where you have athletic events where women wear bathing suits,

let’s say it’s swimming or track events are wearing really tight clothes

and then these creepy old dudes, it’s

guys 40 years old, show up at the event

and just start videoing them.

And they get their favorites

and they start following them around and it’s super creepy.

And I’m glad he got arrested.

(upbeat music)

Okay, this is gonna be a post one just for the video.

Travis Scott was recently in Japan and

what he did is he thought he was famous

as famous people often do.

And he shows up at one of these really busy crosswalks in Tokyo.

And at the crosswalk, he stood in the middle

assuming that people would recognize him.

He has his crew take a video of it.

And people like freaking out like, oh my God, Travis Scott, Travis Scott.

Like that’s really awesome.

The problem being that Travis Scott is not particularly

recognizable to Japanese people.

So this is what happened.

(upbeat music)

So like he walks up to a couple of people.

He actually walks up to the only foreign people

in the crosswalk, stares them in the face.

They ignore him and walk away probably because as far as

they’re concerned, some like weird dude

just like walked up and stuck his face in there.

Then he realizes no one here is going to recognize him.

Make sort of like an embarrassed walk away.

He does a smile and then he takes off.

(upbeat music)

So here’s the problem.

You may be super famous in America.

And you are not famous in Japan.

You may be famous in Japan, but then you

absolutely may not be famous in America.

One of the more interesting things I do is we hire

a lot of people from overseas, come to Japan.

And then we’ll talk about famous people and they will be absolutely shocked

that I don’t know who someone is.

And the thing is that person is probably not famous in Japan.

The comments in this hit that sort of weird racism area

that makes me a little uncomfortable to read them out loud.

But I’d have to know who he is before recognizing him.

I doubt anyone would recognize him unless he or as big as Michael Jackson.

So Michael Jackson is famous enough in Japan

that people would recognize him on this.

I only know that he’s collaborated with Nike.

So he’s a musician.

So people asking literally who he is

other than the fact that he’s done some fashion stuff.

He’s only popular in America.

He’s probably minor on a global scale.

That one hurts.

Foreigners aren’t noticed unless they have more of an aura and stature.

I love Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga.

But I doubt they’d be recognized with

their short stature if they were something

like Uniqlo clothing.

So what they’re saying is if like, Ariana

Grande showed up and she’s a tiny person

and she just wore normal clothes.

People in Japan wouldn’t recognize her.

I don’t know any rappers.

That’s fair.

This is the one.

All blacks have the same face, but I’m sure we all look the same to them.

I was like, at first I read that first sentence.

I was like, ooh, but then the second one, does it make it better?

I actually don’t know.

‘Cause like, I have face blindness for black

people is actually what they’re saying.

But then they don’t back it up.

They say that I assume they have face blindness for me.

I don’t know.

I was really uncomfortable reading that

one ’cause I’m like, I’m sure it’s bad,

but also because they don’t assume, they assume the same for themselves.

Is it not bad anymore?

There’s a couple of other ones.

He’s that Fortnite guy.

So that’s actually a bit of an insult.

And then the last one, the last comment.

I only know that this guy’s night shoes get flipped for ridiculous.

If you want to show up in Japan and

you want to, and you think you’re famous,

please be careful because you may not be as famous as you think you.

Now the actual end of this episode.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music).

The central government thinks that young people’s incomes

should be raised to reverse Japan’s birth rate.

Stating our traditional measures to raise the birth rate

have focused on helping people raise children and get married.

This is the minister for child-related policies.

It’s a new position that was created in Japan

because of the serious issue of the declining birth rate.

I, maybe the minister, as a new minister, is an introduced Japan.

I don’t, I wanna do it.

I told you so.

I have been complaining essentially.

that their focus on the birth rate seems to be on helping people raise kids,

not actually getting people to a position

where they want to have kids in the first place.

Like it’s great to have all these policies

to help people raise children.

It is completely pointless to have a policy to help people raise children

if they don’t have children in the first place.

So at least the government seems to be shifting

and thinking they’re starting to get the right idea.

And that is very important because that is

the shift that is going to make the change.

Now, the first thing raising incomes, yes.

If you raise incomes of people, they are more likely to have children.

But they’re still missing the core element

that I have said on Ninja News Japan a million times.

So much so that I almost was getting ready to say,

like I’m not going to talk about it anymore.

They have to give, they have to have a shift

in work culture in Japan.

So the young people, or just people in general,

have time off to form human relationships.

The work culture in Japan is designed

to keep you in the workplace and exorbitant amount of time,

so much so that it’s actually pointless

to formate, to form any sort of actual

relationship with another human being.

So more money is a step one because then if I have money, I can do stuff.

But the next step is I need to be able to have time

to do stuff with all that extra money I’m making.

So I think the government is shifting in the right direction.

The new minister for child-related policies has the right initial idea.

They need to take a step further.

The problem is the step further is work culture.

in companies in Japan.

That have you work unnecessarily long hours to no benefit

because all the people I know who do

work actually these stupid hours in Japan.

They say they don’t do anything.

They’re productive for about six hours a day.

And then after that, they don’t do anything.

This matches up with the timing of a survey

of unmarried people who are under 30.

It turned out half of those people under 30

who are not married do not want children,

primarily because of economic concerns.

So they’re basically saying, I don’t have enough money to have kids,

so why would I even think about having kids?

400 respondents, that’s actually not a massive sample size.

18 to 29, that is the appropriate age range.

49.5% say they do not want kids.

53% of men say they don’t want kids and 45.6% of women

say they don’t want kids.

This is causing great anxiety about Japan’s future.

because is there going to be a Japan?

Elon Musk made the brilliant statement

that if things keep going the way they are,

there will not be a Japan anymore.

There’s Elon Musk.

He’s such a genius he can do basic math.

If numbers go down, eventually you run out of numbers or you hit zero.

(upbeat music)

Sushi-do, there’s been in the news, we’ve talked about it many, many times

because they are the victims of the food terrorism.

There is a food terrorism story coming up soon.

But they’ve done something else that’s very interesting.

So Sushi-do isn’t just Sushi.

It’s not just, it’s kaiten Sushi conveyor belt Sushi.

You can order lots of other stuff.

You can order French fries, you can order deep fried chicken

or lots of stuff from Sushi-do.

Sushi-do will use, it’s used cooking oil

in conjunction with another company

to create sustainable jet fuel, which is pretty awesome.

There are 680 restaurants in Japan.

And from 2025 they’re going to take all the oil they use.

Maybe they’re just putting the system into place now.

All the oil they use, that’s gonna be about 900,000

liters annually, and use that to create 750,000 liters of jet fuel.

I of course don’t understand the science

or anything behind it, as I’m an English major.

So I could talk about, when I read the news story,

I could talk about the tone of the article.

and sort of the read between the lines and that kind of stuff.

The science far, far beyond me.

But it is cool to take something that’s

been used and make it into something else.

That is a very positive net for the world.

But now we’ve talked about Sushi terrorism,

we have to actually get to some Sushi terrorism.

Yoshinoya is a beef bowl place.

So basically beef bowl, it’s gudon, it’s bowl of rice

and they put some shredded meat on top of it.

That’s the short version.

It’s really, really good.

It’s great late night food, it’s great food for drunk people.

There was a viral video, you think people would have learned

after a whole bunch of people just gotten in trouble

for this stuff, of a man eating directly

from the ginger container with chopsticks.

So basically they have the bowl that it’s yours

and then on the table in front of you, there’s gonna be condiments.

And one of them is ginger, you open up a little container,

you take ginger out, you put it on your food,

you mix it up, you eat it, you’re happy.

This guy thought, ah, you know it’d be really funny

with all the news of people doing gross stuff

and getting in trouble for it, I will do a gross thing.

So September 29th, 2022, he did this.

I do have the video up, second, let’s see.

So it’s the man, he’s got the bowl on his face,

he’s eating it, he’s got his chopsticks up, he’s eating it like they do.

I would actually say in the Chinese movies, when they’re really hungry,

they’re just shoveled and I chewed into their mouth.

He’s not actually eating that much,

he’s just shoveling a few into his mouth,

but those chopsticks have been in his mouth

and then those chopsticks are going back

into the shared condiment ginger bowl in front of him.

That’s gross, I don’t want that man spit on my ginger.

No one else does either and again, so after all this, was it worth it?

Well, the viral video got really popular so

the police noticed so they were arrested.

Now this is technically not illegal,

but it’s being filed under interfering with store business,

which I guess is an obstruction of business charge.

So he’s probably not gonna get arrested

because it’s not illegal, like he’s been arrested,

but he’s probably not going to get prison time

or anything like that, it’s gonna be a find him some sort.

But Japan is taking this really seriously.

They take all this communal stuff is being ruined

by these viral videos and this communal nature of eating

is a big part of Japanese culture, so I think they’re really offended by it.

And that’s of course why it’s so viral on the Internet,

which is what these cloud chasers want.

I don’t think they realize though, if it gets popular enough is guaranteed,

you’re gonna get noticed and therefore

guaranteed you’re going to get arrested.

(upbeat music)

Last week on C. McBee podcast, the other podcast I do.

I talked about the congressional trials and TikTok

and the congressional trials with Google four years ago

and how they were similar and different

and what the actual point was.

They’re talking about banning TikTok in America.

There’s really no, in a country that claims

to have like freedom of choice and freedoms like that

where you can buy guns, it seems unlikely

to be able to actually ban an app.

I did say quite clearly ban it on government devices,

100% behind that because it’s not your device, it’s the government device.

If you work for a company and the company gives you a phone

and they say don’t put TikTok on it,

I am 100% on board with that and keep it ticked on.

Tick-tock on it and you get fired.

I agree.

But personally, if you say I can’t use this app

because it’s going to track my information and stuff,

well every app tracks my information, I

don’t see how Tick-tock having my information

as opposed to Google or Facebook

or any other social media website.

How is that different?

So I don’t see the benefit or the choice of actually banning TikTok.

I’m not a massive TikTok user.

I have an account and you can go to Chuck McBeath

Chess on TikTok and watch basically

it’s clips of this and some gaming clips.

But it seems counter to the nature of the American ideal

to ban an app without more proof than they

actually showed the congressional here.

So I don’t think that’s actually going to go through.

Japan has decided to ban TikTok on tick-tock

on government devices when those government devices

have confidential information on them, which I think is perfectly fair.

I think that’s actually a bit loose.

Because it’s actually saying if my company,

or if I work for the government and the government gives me

a phone and I don’t handle confidential information,

I’m actually allowed to use TikTok on my government phone.

I actually think that’s stupid.

I think you should just clear cut ban it

on government phones and you’re done.

And I actually think companies should do the same thing.

But personally, if you want to use TikTok,

I think if you understand the risks,

go ahead and use TikTok.

Currently, it is not on any government devices.

So I’m assuming they did a little inventory and check

and they said, okay, none of our government

employees have put TikTok on their phones.

We’re just gonna say don’t do it now.

Everyone’s on board.

The government doesn’t allow the use of

external services on their phones at all.

Which again, I think is a good idea.

I shouldn’t as a government employee be putting anything

for my personal entertainment, Tinder, Facebook, Instagram,

Snapchat, whatever you want.

I shouldn’t be putting any of those things on my government issued phone.

On your personal phone, honestly, none of my business,

none of the government’s business, do what you want.

It has not become a Japanese version

of the congressional trial because Japan’s

pretty reasonable about this kind of stuff.

(phone ringing)

So an idol got in trouble.

And I do enjoy idol news because it’s such a weird world.

She went to a baseball game and they have an order system

with a QR code where you scan the QR code

and then you go, you just choose what you want to buy

and then you go pick up and you go.

So I think you can already guess what happened.

She tweeted out a copy of the QR code and said,

please buy me chili shrimp under my name.

I eat a lot, so please order it so I can like pick it up.

And then I want to eat some fried rice and kanage.

Kanage is like deep fried chicken balls, not testicles, balls of chicken.

So of course, fans, we’re paying attention

to her tweets constantly, bought her a ton of food

that a whole bunch of other fans complains.

Like, this is abuse of your fandom.

This is, the fandom of idols is taken very seriously

and there’s a lot of rules and stuff.

You can’t have a boyfriend and stuff.

We’ve talked about that in the past.

You can’t, you have to like, a lot of them,

you have to maintain a certain weight.

There was an idol group that actually was complaining

about that recently that they weren’t allowed to eat the stuff.

It was unhealthy ’cause they had to maintain a weight

of like 40 kilos, despite the fact that girls were all really tall.

So it didn’t really make sense.

The management company has already made her apologize

for the trouble she caused.

I found this interesting because I stream on Twitch.

I don’t have a massive fandom on Twitch.

I’m actually streaming to Twitch right now.

So I record this podcast.

But if a girl did the same thing on Twitch,

there would be no comment because it’s almost expected.

But as soon as you have a management company behind you,

there’s a certain amount of decorum and rules that need to be put in place.

So you have to be careful of that.

I found that interesting because if she had just been independent

and she had been streaming or live streaming

that kind of thing and that was her career choice,

she would have been fine.

But because she has a management company

behind her, she has to follow certain rules.

She does something bad.

It makes the management company look bad.

This is the kind of thing.

There was the girl who was a pro gamer

and she started crapping on short men.

She got fired because essentially her

pro gaming career was linked to a company.

And as soon as she got sheety with,

keep thinking I have an earthquake,

but it’s actually just big trucks going by.

(clock ticking)

In Japan, there are things called advertising trucks.

And they’re basically just rolling billboards.

They’re trucks and then instead of actually carrying cargo,

they put a big sign on the back.

where the car is, the trailer and they light it up.

So it’s basically, you can see it.

Some of them will play music and stuff.

There’s sound laws you have to be careful of.

In Tokyo, you see a lot of these, probably more there.

I’ve seen a few around where I live and where I work.

But in Tokyo, you see a bunch of them.

And the rule is that if you want to have a rolling billboard,

one of these advertising trucks in your in Tokyo,

it has to be approved by the city.

So I can’t have like my only fans with my like,

butthole on a billboard rolling through the downtown Tokyo.

That has to be approved and they’ll be like, “Oh, here’s butthole’s gross.

We don’t want that on a billboard.”

And only fans isn’t like the appropriate thing

to advertising all that kind of stuff.

So that makes sense.

There’s a loophole though.

And they actually deem, sorry, I have to say before that,

they actually deem advertising host and host as clubs.

Kind of the same thing.

Kids shouldn’t be like being encouraged to go to host clubs.

It’s not, can really the best way, it’s not, it’s CD.

How about that?

And so you shouldn’t really be advertising CD stuff

on the streets around Tokyo where everyone can see it

because that’s not really, that’s not really cool.

But there is a loophole and the loophole is,

if your truck is not registered in Tokyo,

it doesn’t have to like follow these rules.

So I get my truck in Chiba and I register

there and I make it an advertising truck

and then I start advertising a post club in Tokyo

because it’s a Chiba truck, it doesn’t have to be registered.

So the government, the local government in Tokyo is like,

well that’s not cool because they’re still

doing the thing we don’t want them to do.

They’re advertising the stuff we don’t want them to advertise.

So what we need to do is close that loophole.

So now they’re currently talking to neighboring districts

and saying, and you make the same rules we make so it’s like cohesive.

And if everyone has the same rules,

then even if you have an advertising truck in Chiba,

you’re not going to be able to roll it into Tokyo

and advertise stuff we don’t want people to advertise.

That’s interesting.

I didn’t actually think that there would,

these are local laws in rules that I didn’t know about.

I’ve seen the advertising ones, usually it’s for,

I don’t actually know what it’s for.

It’s usually got like little anime pictures on it

but I think it’s actually a hostess club

and they’re trying to like soften what they’re doing.

It’s really hard to tell because they roll by

and I don’t pay attention that I’m like, “Huh, what was that?”

That’s how effective that advertising actually is.

(upbeat music)

A great way to get the Internet to sort of dunk on your shit

is to tell the Internet to not dunk on your shit.

That is actually a guide.

So if I said like, “Hey, please don’t say anything negative

about an engine news Japan.”

I would expect the next day to be at least one negative

comment about an engine news Japan somewhere on the Internet.

And then if that got popular,

he could actually again go viral but in a negative way for me.

Maybe I should try that.

Maybe that’s the problem is I keep like not pushing people

to say anything positive or negative.

And but if I said like, “Oh, please,

only say positive things about an engine news Japan.”

And then people would all say negative things.

It would go viral and then more people would come to the show.

I think I just found my way to get famous.

Which is pretty awesome.

The producer of the Common Rider movies.

Common Rider is one of these, it’s like Sailor Moon.

It’s a character and he is a regular person

and he transforms into a hero usually with some complicated toy

that you can sell to children.

The movies are essentially extensions of

the kids show so they’re not great movies.

They produce them probably two or three a year.

They’re not great.

I mean, I’m not shitting on them.

They’re four kids, kids enjoy them.

That’s great.

If you’re gonna talk about quality cinema or filmmaking,

these would not fall into the art category of that.

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing.

As long as it makes kids happy, that’s all you’re really looking for.

The thing is people grow up and they still love Common Rider.

So they keep talking about Common Rider and they still go to the movies.

But somehow they haven’t really stuck in their head

that because I’ve grown up, these movies should grow up with me

whereas the movies are actually servicing

a group of let’s say eight year olds

and the group of eight year olds stays the same every year.

It’s just new eight year old.

The producer of these movies, his son had a really good idea.

He said, “What I’m gonna do is I’ll go on the Internet.

I’ll tweet.”

Yeah, please refrain from posting negative comments

on social media where an unspecified number of people can see them.

So what he’s saying is don’t tweet out negative stuff

about the new movie because then people who haven’t seen.

the movie might think it’s not a good movie and then I’ll go to the movie.

So of course the immediate storm that followed

was people saying, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

A lot of these people actually weren’t shitting on the movie.

They were just shitting on the comment.

They’re like, if you basically what you’re saying is

only say positive things about this film, that’s not really fair.

You can’t tell people to not do that.

If it’s not a good film, people should know it’s not a good film.

So maybe you should focus more on making quality films.

But this isn’t even like the director

or someone involved in the movie in any real way.

This is the producer of these films, his son.

So I’m assuming that his whole lifestyle is actually

built on the fact that these franchises are successful.

He wants people to only say good things

so that his dad can make more money so that he can have more money

sent to him or whatever that relationship is.

But if you want to make stuff and put it on the Internet,

an important piece of information to keep in mind is

not tell people to not do things on the Internet

because the Internet is inherently contrary.

They will naturally do the thing.

You tell them not to do.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(upbeat music).

(upbeat music)

Student, we talked about hair a lot.

But it’s about students because it’s about school rules and hair and stuff.

And it’s weird how much play these stories get

because it just keeps happening again and again and again.

That’s kind of the issue.

When there’s sort of one resolution,

like if you are not born with naturally black hair

in Japan and the school rules you have black hair,

should those students be made to dye their hair?

It’s sort of a spirit of the law versus the

intent of the law, the letter of the law.

I’ve forgotten my idioms now.

But always, it keeps coming up because there’s always a new way

to interpret rules that surprises me.

And it’s because again, one of the problems with a lot of Japanese rules,

this is not necessarily laws.

Japanese rules is that they are purposely vague.

So there was a graduation, high school graduation was very recently.

And a student was told he couldn’t sit with his friends because of his hair.

He was made to wait on the second floor by himself.

And when they called his name, they said,

don’t come downstairs and respond to your name being called.

It’s actually really disappointing.

So he left halfway through the event.

So he’s like, well, like if I can’t participate

in the graduation, if I can’t actually do the whole thing,

that I’m supposed to do while I’m here, why stay here?

So he left.

Now what was so egregious about his hair?

He actually went to a salon the previous

day to make sure his hair was sort of tidy.

Now the school rule was that no further than your ears,

hygienic and appropriate for high school.

So no further than your ears, that’s very specific.

So it has to be shaved sort of above your ears,

which I assume would include sort of the napier neck

has to be clean and all that stuff.

We actually saw that, I think it was just last week,

with the elite high school where your bangs had to be a certain length.

They couldn’t touch your eyebrows, but naturally.

So if I push my hair down, I don’t have

enough hair to actually demonstrate with.

If I push my hair down and it touches my eyebrows, that’s too long.

Where the teachers were abusing that by pulling hair forward.

And then at that school, if your hair

was inappropriate, you could be expelled.

Hygienic, so if he washes his hair, that’s taken care of.

So it’s the appropriate leaves it open because what does that mean?

What is appropriate hair?

And he went to a salon the day before to

get his everything sort of taken care of,

so it would be appropriate.

This kid, he’s half Japanese, and his father is African-American.

So he has not an Afro per se, but his hair grows out.

And so what he thought, ah, what I’ll do is I’ll go to a salon,

I’ll take the time, and I’ll get cornrows so that it’s all tight and neat,

and therefore follows the rules, hygienic, and appropriate for school.

The teachers, of course, being Japanese

teachers, they don’t see cornrows very often.

So they’re like, well, that’s not normal,

that’s not usual, therefore that’s not appropriate for high school.

So you have to go be excluded from your graduation ceremony.

You have to go stand up in a room by yourself

and just stay there for the entirety of this ceremony.

This, like many of the rules, is like,

the kid was literally trying to follow the rules.

Their opinion differed from his, ’cause

he’s like, well, I want my hair to be neat.

I don’t wanna shave it.

He went to his father, his father looked up some cornrows.

He’s like, this is what sort of black people

do to keep their hair tight to their head

without cutting their hair.

So he did that, which is incredibly appropriate thing to do.

He actually went to his dad, he’s like that.

I wanna do this.

Went to a salon, paid probably extra.

I know cornrows take forever.

So paid extra, took all that time, and

then someone’s like, no, I don’t like it,

’cause I haven’t seen it before, therefore it’s not appropriate.

This is Cosbyter of Bruhaha.

All these rules coming to the forefront

and being exposed in his way are causing

Bruhaha’s, which is a good thing, because really we have to examine

is the rule appropriate, and what does appropriate mean?

If you can’t keep vague rules and expect people to,

attempt to follow the rule, get in trouble

for it, and then there’d be no backlash.

If you want it to be appropriate, you

have to explain what appropriate it is.

Now, I’m betting they’re gonna say anything

that isn’t just a standard Japanese haircut

with standard Japanese hair is not appropriate,

but then you run into the problem of,

there’s just too many mixed kids now.

They don’t have naturally black hair,

and they don’t have naturally straight hair

that falls on their shoulders or whatever, like Japanese kids do.

Principal had to do a press conference after that.

And he said, it’s not like the student

couldn’t attend because he had to go elsewhere,

which is almost a nonsensical statement.

He couldn’t attend because the teachers made him sit in another room.

So the teachers enforced this rule, and

it is very frustrating because Japan is now

kicking and screaming, being forced into modernity.

It’s being pulled into a modern culture that is now mixed,

and it means the rules that were just accepted and given,

’cause if everyone has the same type of hair,

these hair rules were very easy to interpret,

appropriate, but my hair doesn’t do anything,

so basically if I just show up and it’s

been cut and washed, it’s appropriate.

Now you got kids who have different hair, those rules do they apply?

Because now appropriateness is called into question.

I think we’re gonna see a bunch of

this, and then it’s gonna become a case of,

because in the previous story,

it was civil rights, human rights is what they were talking about,

and you might be like, well, human rights and haircuts,

I mean, they seem kind of far away, but no, it’s like basic dignity,

if you’re being forced to go to an educational institution

because you have to go to school.

And I don’t look like everyone else is that appropriate and acceptable?

Well, I’m sorry, in a culture where we’re supposed

to be accepting of other people’s differences, which Japan does claim to be.

They really do struggle with that,

because the reality and the claims are often different.

This is gonna happen again, and it’s gonna keep coming up,

and the bit I’m enjoying most is it’s every single time

it comes up, it’s surprising me in a way.

The last week was teachers abusing the rules.

This week was just a kid with hair they’d not really dealt with before,

which goes all the way back to that

kid in Osaka who had naturally brown hair,

who was forced to dye her hair and then sued the school board.

There was one girl who had her hair Photoshopped black in the yearbook.

We’re gonna have to start maybe accepting.

Kids aren’t the same, especially as Japan’s,

honestly, as the population shrinks,

you’re gonna get more mixed kids,

’cause immigration’s going to make up the difference.

And this is the bit that the Japanese government isn’t willing to accept.

Immigrants are going to come to Japan

and fill the rules that aren’t being filled by Japanese people.

They’re going to marry Japanese people,

you’re gonna have more and more mixed kids,

which means these rules.

Now the rule itself becomes inappropriate.

(clock ticking)

I learned something.

So the Bar Association brought a case to change discrimination rules about,

prisoners being held detainees.

Up until now, so this hasn’t gone through yet,

so the rule is still technically in place,

but it’s being challenged by the Bar Association.

If you were being detained by police, so I’m being detained by police.

Before a trial, I couldn’t go buy anything.

I had basically, I could get, maybe close,

brought to me from my home, from my family,

and I could wear suit or something appropriate to a trial.

Women, on the other hand, could get skin lotion before a trial.

So basically, if you are a female being

detained, you could spend your own money

and have skin products brought to you before your trial,

so you could look best for your trial.

But that rule was not in place for men.

So this is an interesting, again, social

bias that men don’t need skincare products.

I have to moisturize every day or my skin falls off.

I am growing beard currently.

If you watch the video, you can see it’s

got some very distinguished gray in it now.

That’s a bigger patch than it was three years ago.

Last time I actually grew a beard.

So I’m interested to see how it ends up looking.

Men don’t need that, so they don’t get it.

Now, the Bar Association says this is discrimination.

Now, this came to light because a trans woman

was being detained and wanted skin toner

and moisturizer before the trial, which as

a woman, you’re supposed to be able to get.

But Japan is still really struggling with

the relationship of trans people to society.

So is it a man?

Is it a woman?

Legally, I would bet this trans woman,

and actually I don’t know, they don’t say.

But someone is like, well, that’s not a woman,

that’s a man, therefore they don’t get skin care products.

But legally a woman, therefore, should get skin care products.

But it actually brings up this other thing where, well, what if I,

to talk about beef chest of Ninja New Japan and being detained?

Why don’t I get skin care products?

So either the rule is going to be interesting

because I don’t know what the Bar Association is arguing for.

Are they arguing for everyone should be able

to get skin products before their trial?

Or nobody should get skin products before their trial?

It’s a very interesting conundrum.

It also comes into play like there is a weird financial bias.

So since I have to use my own money,

let’s say I am now allowed to buy skin

products as a man who’s being detained.

So I can buy better skin products and make myself look good.

Whereas a person who’s poor, can’t buy

skin products and they don’t look as good.

And as much as people would like to deny it,

appearance is very important in sort of the impression you give.

And it’s just, it has an impact on society.

The pretty privilege is a proven fact that the more attractive you are,

the easier your life is overall.

You get the sort of like more benefits.

You get treated better.

You get more promotions.

Being attractive has benefits.

I mean, this is why my life has just been so easy

on the whole time because people just look at me.

They see sunshine and they just want more sunshine in their life.

So I get everything I want.

But the argument could be made that if some people get skin products

and other people don’t, that’s an unfair bias when they go to trial.

So either they should argue that skincare

products are provided by the government,

which I don’t think that is a valuable use of taxpayer money.

Or you can buy skincare products,

but it has to be like a set range that everyone can afford,

which the rich people would complain about.

Donald Trump recently being indicted would be interesting

because if he couldn’t buy his clear like spray tan skin toner

stuff to make him like his oranges he is,

like when he comes out and he’s really pale like I am,

would that give him more negative or more

positive impression is actually the side.

But according to the rule, if he was being detained in Japan

because he’s been indicted, he’s not being detained.

You know what I mean?

He wouldn’t be able to get the skin thing

that he uses to make himself look orange.

So he would come out of that prison less orange than when he went in.

Which is a very interesting concept.

It’s a very interesting idea of what he would end up looking like

and would that have a positive or negative impact on his trial?

Because that’s kind of what they’re actually arguing for

is that you can’t have some people

get stuff and other people don’t get stuff.

Are they gonna make it available to everyone?

I’m actually interested to see how this plays out.

And it’s also very interesting that it’s a

trans woman that set this all in motion.

(upbeat music)

A US report on Japan’s human rights,

specifically talking about Japanese textbooks.

Now Japanese school boards choose textbooks.

This is something that happens in most countries with school curriculums.

They tend to choose textbooks that sort of ignore

or gloss over Japan’s militaristic history.

And this has been a complaint from surrounding countries.

Certainly the ones sort of, you would say,

victims to Japanese imperialism, Korea, China.

They always say like your history books are inaccurate.

They don’t represent what actually happened to people

who were under Japanese imperial rule, that kind of stuff.

And I think that’s pretty legitimate.

I think that history books should be sort of as accurate as possible.

It’s very hard to produce a book.

Video I saw the other day, I think it was on TikTok or something.

And it was basically young people didn’t recognize the swastika.

Because they’d never learned about it in school.

They didn’t know about World War II.

They didn’t know about the Nazi party.

They certainly didn’t know about Japan’s role in World War II.

And maybe this some of the things it did as a member of the exes powers.

That’s, this story comes up every year.

I suddenly this year found it very interesting

because if I remember correctly, America

maybe shouldn’t be calling out countries

for their book policies.

Because if I remember correctly,

there are certain elements within the American educational system

that are vying to band books.

And there have been several pictures posted online

of empty shelves in school libraries.

And there was another ironic story that because it can’t have sex in it.

It can’t have this in it, can’t have that in it.

So someone used those rules to get the Bible banned,

which of course this comes from the sort of Bible positive groups

people in power or legislating these rules.

Tom, a longtime listener, super fan sent in this story to me.

If you wanna send in this story, you can

send it to Chuck Me Beef Chest at tmail.com.

You can go to speakpipe.com/chunkpeakbeefchest.

You could just go on Twitter and send me a direct message on Twitter.

I may not get it right away.

I only check Twitter once or twice a week.

I don’t really engage with social media.

It’s one of the reasons why this is such a small community

is because I don’t spread it properly.

So maybe this is my call to action moment,

which is something I don’t normally do.

If you enjoyed Ninja News Japan, you know someone who enjoys the news,

you know someone who’s interested in Japan.

Please, I recommend Ninja News Japan.

You can get it on Spotify.

You can get it on your podcast catcher.

You can get it on YouTube.

It’s everywhere.

Search for Ninja News Japan.

It’ll probably come up pretty quick somewhere somehow.

I’d appreciate it.

I don’t wanna spend my time going like, like, and subscribe, actually.

That’s a joke with me and my friends.

But at the same time, I do want the podcast to grow.

So if you have someone you know who would be interested

and please give him a recommendation and I’m gonna stop that

’cause I already feel like I’ve talked too long about it.

But, Tom, appreciate the effort.

Sent me this.

It’s tax heaven 3000.

And it’s a visual novel of filling in your US taxes.

So if you live in Japan, you still have to fill in your taxes back home.

And taxes are difficult.

They’re complicated.

And you’re a nerd living in Japan.

So you’re obviously not engaging with legal documents properly

because it doesn’t hold your attention.

This, by creating it and putting it in visual novel form,

will absolutely hold your attention because

you have to get through all the steps

to create the best relationship with your wife.

The interesting thing, there’s multiple endings.

So is it like if you try to lie in your taxes, she doesn’t like you anymore

or if you don’t declare something properly, your relationship falls apart.

And if you do everything right and claim your taxes

and you have to pay money back, she’s disappointed.

But if you do everything right and you get a refund, she loves you more.

That’s the best ending.

I don’t know.

The actual issue with this is that tax

heaven 3000 has been removed from steam.

I did enjoy while I was looking into the game itself.

The quote was, “Let’s pay federal taxes

while having a romance with my wife.”

The interesting thing, I think this is a poor translation

because a romance with your wife might actually be more appropriate,

but I haven’t played the game.

So maybe I am having a romance with your wife as in someone else.

I’m the person using my taxation sexuality

to try to get your wife away from you

and into my bed, creating a new, exciting situation.

But maybe I fail, maybe that’s one of the endings.

The reason it was removed from steam

is because of course it has to ask to fill

in your taxes, very personal information.

The phrase is actually in the game, I want to know more about you,

such as your social security number.

And then of course you have to put your social security number

into the game, it’ll fill out the form for you,

which makes sense, but also can you trust this company

to keep your information private as a connection?

If you play through steam, it’s connected to the Internet.

Now because it was removed from steam,

the creator of the game said you can go to the website

and download it directly to your computer,

which would technically be safer, right?

Because you could actually let’s disconnect from the Internet

I’ll fill in, I’ll play this visual novel, it’ll fill in my taxes.

And then I can send in my taxes separately.

That seems fair, but so it seems like I

don’t want to make any statements of a fact.

It seems like the creator of this game

is not trying to gather your information

because he’s saying download the game to your PC and then play it.

Separate from the Internet is fine, it will still work.

But a lot of people who are like,

as soon as you ask for someone’s social security number,

we can’t really put a lot of faith in you

and trust you that this is all above work,

which I think is fair.

But I would say be safe.

Don’t use a visual novel to file your taxes.

I have seen my future.

So as you all know, I’ve stated many times, I’m a 50 year old man.

And we went through a sequence of weeks

where 50 year old men were doing just the absolute creepiest stuff.

There was one 50 year old dude in some reason,

this is one sticks to my head more than anything else.

And he snuck up on a girl who is just standing around looking

at books or something in a mall and just

started licking her shoes unbinoised to her.

That one, I think, just the level of

creepiness there is why it sticks out my mouth.

But I think I’ve seen my future because a man who is 54 years

old, so only like three, four years in my future,

he was arrested for repeatedly challenging

his neighbor to a one-on-one fight.

And that’s it.

I can totally see myself ending up in a situation where I

spend my free time challenging people to one-on-one fights.

So what happened is a neighbor had warned the man about the noise

his car makes back in December.

And the man– I’m assuming that the car was really loud.

And it was like one of these lights.

He’s tuned it up to make more noise.

The man did not take well to that.

He started harassing his neighbor.

The police actually went and warned him in March and said,

look, you’re doing too much.

You’re causing trouble and distress, and you’re going to get in trouble.

So they just warned him, said, like, you

got to ease off this thing, just give up.

That, of course, incensed the man and made it even worse.

Between March 12 and 13, he went to the

house 13 times, rang the bell multiple times.

So like, each time he arrived, he didn’t just ring it.

He rang it multiple multiple times.

And he left three notes in the mailbox.

Let’s fight one-on-one.

So at least he had a certain amount of

old-style, dueling respects for his neighbor.

He’s like, you got this problem?

Let’s solve it.

Mano, a mano.

The interesting thing is what would have been the resolution.

So like, we go out.

He challenges me to a fight.

I complain that his car is too noisy.

He challenges me to a fight.

I go out and I fight him, and I beat him.

Does he now have to take apart his car and make it quiet?

Or there had to be some sort of resolution.

I assume if he wins, he gets to make as much noises as he

want and gets to call me a woozy or something.

But I don’t think they ever think about the other flip side.

If I win, what do I get other than calling the police

and putting a restraining order on him for

challenging me to fights multiple times?

But I was like, if I win the fight,

this would have to be established before the fight.

If I win the fight, you have to make your car

as silent as possible, which would be actually

the most humiliating end of this situation for a man like that.

But I’m wondering, if yeah, at some point when you hit in your 50s,

there’s a flip switch in your head that flips that just sets you off.

So you either end up being super creepy or super aggressive.

And I’m really, really looking forward to see what happens to me.

If an Indian is Japan as a podcast, just suddenly goes dark one day.

You can assume the reason is because I am probably being detained

and demanding skincare products.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(upbeat music).

(upbeat music)

• Last couple weeks we have talked about

how the governor of ICHI is very upset

that people went to Ghibli Park and took pictures of themselves

grabbing the boobs of the statues of characters from Ghibli movies.

And then put themself in a position

where it looked like they were taking up skirt photos of the statues.

There was some speculation about what

those like what was actually under there,

which is maybe not where we should be going to this story.

And he was furious.

He was in a position where he’s like, I

consider this some kind of criminal act,

even though it’s probably not.

It’s not vandalism.

And he was like, I’m gonna get these guys.

Now, a mutual acquaintance of the dudes who did the acts,

did the deeds, contacted the ICHI government.

It was like, hypothetically.

If I knew some guys who went to the park

and they maybe touched some ceramic boobies

and took some ceramic up skirt photos, maybe they feel bad about it.

So anyway, we could hypothetically make this right.

What he was doing, those guys were too scared to call on their own

’cause they thought they were gonna get arrested.

So this guy calls on their behalf.

Basically then they wrote apology letters.

And the ICHI governor read those apology letters on TV.

Now then the governor said, they seem sincere in their apologies.

I, we consider the matter concluded.

So what he wanted was an apology that he could stand up and say,

like he kind of got justice and he did the thing he was gonna do

and he was gonna bring those guys to the forefront.

And he did,

I’m always a little suspicious of, oh, they really feel regret.

Because if they hadn’t been caught, would they feel regret?

So if they had come forward before the governor of ICHI,

he’d said like, I’m coming after you,

would they be feeling regret at that time?

That’s actually kind of where I am.

‘Cause it seems to me like people do crimes

or do bad things and they don’t feel any regret and then they get caught

and then they feel regret is that regret at the thing you did

or is it really just regret that you got caught and you’re in trouble

and now you don’t wanna be in trouble anymore.

I think we know the reality, which is

why I often feel like prompted apologies,

don’t mean anything.

This goes into the same section as politicians retracting statements.

But I said something, it was horrendous, it was racist, it was awful.

I’m gonna retract that statement, but in my head I’m like,

that doesn’t mean you changed the way you think.

The way you think and feel is exactly the same.

You’re just unhappy that you got in trouble.

So if you’re unhappy you got in trouble, you’re retracting your statement.

That doesn’t seem like a valid course of action to me.

So it’s almost like, what I’m saying is if you’re gonna go to Ghibli Park

and grab the boobies of a character,

you should commit to that and actually grab

the boobies of the character and be like,

I’m a ceramic booby-grabber.

I don’t know if the statues were made of ceramic, I just assumed.

I would actually not have respect for that, but I’d be like,

well at least you’ve chosen a position you live by it.

Whereas basically, oh, I got caught.

I’m gonna get in trouble.

So now I feel bad.

I don’t see that as a legitimate position.

(upbeat music)

There are a record number of foreign residents in Japan.

In 2022, there were 3 million 75,213 foreign residents

that is 11.4% more than previous years.

Just great.

It means people are coming to live in Japan

and contribute to society in a very positive way.

I think it’s there is some Japanese people might not see it that way.

They see it more as a cultural invasion maybe.

I don’t know.

Most of these foreign residents come from

China, then Vietnam and then South Korea.

Most of them are coming here from manufacturing jobs

or working with companies and whatnot,

exporting and importing stuff like that.

Great.

They have non-refugees.

So people who have come from a situation,

they’re not refugees, but they’ve been allowed to stay.

That number went up from 128 to 202.

I was interested in these statistics.

Actual refugees went from 1,180 to 1,760.

Now that is, I’ve always thought the number of refugees

that Japan takes on is really, really small.

Japan is maybe not a first, first world country like this.

I have to wait to see what Dave does.

He might want to sit on me.

He might want to get on the bed.

I think he’s going for bed.

Bed’s more comfortable.

He’s like Dave Settle.

Well, look at that butt.

Oh yeah.

Torken.

He’s gonna have to like wreck my bed.

Then he’s gonna get in his bed and go to sleep.

Or he’s just gonna like flat out take his much space on the bed as possible.

Let’s get out of the way.

Enjoy the show.

(humming)

Gotta get your face in there.

I don’t put a lot effort into making my bed, but I do make my bed.

Dave, when he gets on, cannot accept that.

He has to like pull every, oh, we stretched out like that.

That was long legs.

Sexy.

He’s not gonna be in camera when I turn my chair around.

I’m just too bad.

(humming)

Oh, that’s okay.

(laughing)

I’m gonna turn my chair around, I’m just too bad.

Oh, that’s okay.

(humming)

(humming)

It’s alright, ’cause when I turn my chair on,

you can’t see Dave, it just looks like I didn’t make my bed.

(humming).

Oh, we can just continue the story from where we left off.

Dave, man, just… He’s gotta mess up my bed and his bed.

And then people have come on the stream and actually said,

like, you don’t make your bed.

I make my bed.

Dave unmakes my bed.

There’s a difference.

You just staring at me?

You just, you don’t know what to do?

(laughing)

If I bring him over here, he’s gonna be in, he doesn’t sit down or anything.

He always stands on me.

Getting your bed.

I’m not continuing the show until he settles down.

This happens like every time.

The number of refugees in Japan.

(laughing)

It’s weird to transition from watching the dog get settled too.

How many refugees are in Japan?

The number of refugees in Japan went from

1,188 to 1,760, which is not many refugees.

Japan is a first world country.

It is a fairly rich nation.

I know it’s been in a recession for like 30 years.

And it’s not the richest country in the world.

It’s like, I think I actually dropped to fourth.

But it could take on a lot more refugees.

And I think Japan is a country what they

wanna do is actually send stuff overseas.

So you stay in your country and will help you.

Because they are nice people.

I mean, one of the benefits of Japan is a country.

They are very kind and generous.

But they don’t really want the foreigners to come here

where it actually might be safer.

There is still a lot of tension about how many foreigners live in Japan.

And the fact that it’s gone up 11.4% from last year, or 2021 to 2022,

is a point and issue for some Japanese people.

It is the highest number of refugees since the program was begun in 1982.

So I guess that’s an improvement.

I would like to see, depending on step forward and take on more refugees.

But I think it would just be, it would be

beneficial to the country just to have more,

a more mixed culture.

(clock ticking)

Since we’re talking about numbers, sort

of talking about crime on a regular basis,

the number of Yakusa have fallen below 10,000 in 2022.

This is just sort of like general crime

stats for the year, for last year, for 2022.

There were nine shootings and four deaths in Japan in the entire year.

So I’m betting in the time it took me to say that

there were more than nine shootings in

America and more than four deaths from guns.

In the entire year.

So when they talk about, when they have

one, have the argument about gun control

and gun control doesn’t work,

and the good guys would go on some bad guys would go on some.

There is the issue in America that they already have so many guns in play.

But, Japan is an example of tight gun control.

Nine shootings in total for the entire year and four deaths from shootings.

One of those deaths being the former prime minister,

who the guy who had a homemade shotgun ran up behind him and shot him.

It’s actually surprising that that

shotgun worked if I’m being really honest.

321 handguns were confiscated, that’s 26 more than 2021.

People who are linked to the Yakusa, not necessarily Yakusa themselves,

22,400, that’s 1700 down.

So the number of Yakusa are down,

therefore the number of people linked to the Yakusa are down,

which means organized crime is down overall.

There were 2,141 drug investigations,

that doesn’t actually mean all those people were guilty

or they found drugs every time.

There were 1,424 cases of fraud investigated,

and 1,142 cases of bodily injury,

which I would assume just people beating each other up, investigated.

There were 9,548 foreigners investigated, which is down 1,129.

When they have a crime in Japan, it involves a foreign person.

The country they come from, or the fact that it’s a foreigner,

is put front and center.

It’s given Japanese people a false impression

that foreigners commit more crime proportionally than anyone else,

whereas they are 2% of the population overall,

and they commit proportionately less crime overall in Japan.

But it’s sort of the same bias that maybe I have about America.

So the number of American shootings and how dangerous America is,

I have a strong bias from that, because when I watch the news,

it’s school shooting, school shootings,

downtown shooting, shooting shooting shooting.

In my head, America, the country is no longer a safe place,

where I’m sure the reality is very different,

but that’s actually shown in one of the sort of media biases

you have to be aware of when you’re watching

the news and all this kind of stuff.

There is an elite boys high school, and so the high schools have regulations

about how you can have your hair done, all schools do in Japan.

There are only tales and above the shoulders and stuff like that.

This boys high school only has a single hairstyle you can have,

but it has to have the sort of the nape of your neck is trimmed,

it has to be above the ears, and then if you pull your bangs down naturally,

it can’t touch your eyebrows.

Now there have been claims of human rights violations

based off this hairstyle, not the hairstyle itself,

but the inspections that the teachers do.

Because once you put a rule in place,

the inspections to make sure those rules were being followed.

The rule, the government has decided, it’s not unconstitutional.

So schools can have rules about haircuts because you apply to schools,

so you know those rules before you go in,

so it’s not unconstitutional to have a rule about dress code.

But the students are claiming it’s a black school rule.

So a black rule in Japan is a rule that’s

violating some sort of right that you have.

Now they’ve looked at Article 13 of the Constitution,

the guarantee of individual rights,

so they’re saying that the rule doesn’t violate Article 13.

The monthly hair inspections though,

they, if you fail that inspection, can result in expulsion.

They’re saying that’s going too far,

and then some of the teachers use this

rule to intimidate or bully the students.

So basically saying, “I can make it seem like your hair is out of order,

and therefore I can have you expelled.”

So they’re using that holding that over, because it’s so easy to say like,

“This day the hair touched his eyebrow,

or this day that the hair was too long on the side of his head.”

So he can be expelled for that.

So they’re using that rule to bully the students.

Teachers have actually gone and cut hair of students during inspections,

so they’ll grab the hair and then cut it.

And then some have pulled the hair forward on their heads

so that it forcibly touches the eyebrow,

so that they would fail the inspection.

So basically that is the violation of human rights.

But they shouldn’t be grabbing kids, they shouldn’t be cutting their hair,

they shouldn’t be forcing them into a situation where they might be expelled

from the school that they’ve applied to.

And this is now being reviewed by lawyers.

And the school has not responded, which is I think very suspicious,

because that would imply to me the school knew this was going on.

They knew what was happening, and they weren’t doing anything about it.

They were allowing the teachers to bully the schools,

which probably is a violation of, I

don’t know if I would call it human rights,

but you do have the right to bottle the autonomy.

You have the right to not be touched and have your hair cut forcibly.

And certainly you should not have a school rule used to bully children.

[Bell ringing]

I really enjoy this, I don’t know why,

it’s not a particularly exciting story.

An Osaka employee got a 10% salary cut for six months,

and has been told to return 1.44 million yen for smoking on the clock.

And I think it’s as a non-smoker,

I was always kind of like my friends or my co-workers who were smokers.

They could go out during their shift in smoke.

So in my company, we have an open office.

And the smokers used to, I don’t know if anyone in the office really smokes,

certainly not on the clock if they do, they probably smoke on their breaks.

We had this guy who was in another section,

and he would go out every hour and take a

smoke break, it would be about 10 minutes.

So in a six hour period, he would take almost an hour off,

standing outside in the balcony, smoking.

Now I, as a non-smoker, wasn’t able to do that.

And I sometimes wanted to take a break.

And so one time I went out and I just stood on the balcony,

and he said to me, he literally looked at me and goes, “What are you doing?”

I’m like, “Well, I’m just taking a 10 minute break.”

So you don’t get breaks.

Because at that time, I had a compressed shift.

So it was like a six hour shift.

So in that shift time, there were no breaks.

But he was on the same contract type.

So he actually shouldn’t have been taking breaks either.

So somehow, standing on the balcony, smoking was acceptable.

But standing on the balcony doing nothing

for the same amount of time wasn’t .

And he was like the HR guy.

So he actually was like the guy who tried to enforce the rules.

So the next day, he went out and he took one of his smoke breaks.

And I grabbed his sandwich and I stood on the balcony.

He goes, “What are you doing?”

Like really aggressively.

And I looked at him and I said, “I’m smoking.”

And I just started eating my sandwich.

And we stared at each other for a really long time.

And he knew that there wasn’t really anything to do about it.

Because either he had to bring me in an officially complaint

that I was taking 10 minutes I shouldn’t take.

But then I was doing it on the exact same 10 minutes he was taking.

Or you would have to stop smoking.

That was a point of annoyance for me.

He was a nice guy otherwise.

I think he wanted his smoke time to be private time.

And I think he wanted to get his hour of paid smoking time every day.

But this guy in the Osaka company, I don’t know how they figured this.

They must have extrapolated.

There’s no way they kept track of this.

They say he smoked 4,512 times over 14.5 years.

And then I was like, “Oh, I’m going to do the math on that.”

Using the 10 minute time period to figure out how much time he spent smoking

on the clock.

They already did it.

They said he smoked for 355 hours and 19 minutes while on duty.

So I’m wondering if they went and got like CCTV or something.

They figured out when he left his desk

and then just calculated all that time.

I wonder how many days that is.

I’m going to figure that out right now.

235 divided by 24 is 13 days.

So basically one day a year he was smoking and getting paid for it.

Like one 24 hour period, one full day smoking on the clock.

So what was happening?

How this actually came to be an issue?

Is that he and a coworker were taking 10 minute smoke bait breaks regularly.

They got an anonymous tip.

And so you know what they were doing was like I was annoyed that my coworker

was smoking and getting an hour off every day where I wasn’t.

And my coworker was smart enough to when I started you know, challenging him

on it be like,

“I don’t want to ruin my smoke time so

I’m actually not going to make an issue.

I’m just going to let Peter stand on the balcony and eat a sandwich.”

So I didn’t give an anonymous tip to his boss.

Whereas these guys probably were dicks about it.

We’re taking time off.

You can’t take time off because you don’t smoke.

His supervisor gave them a warning.

Like you got to stop smoking on the clock.

But then they ignored that and still smoked.

And I bet that’s why they got in trouble.

I bet their supervisor was like, “I tried

to tell you you’re going to get in trouble.”

This is a great piece of Ninja News Japan advice for anyone who’s got a job

anywhere in the world.

Has nothing to do with Japan.

But if you’re messing around on the clock

and someone else challenges you on it,

you got to make that person happy somehow

so that they don’t get you in trouble.

If your supervisor comes and warns you that you got to stop,

you should actually stop because the supervisor isn’t warning you because

they care about you.

They’re warning you because they’re going to end up getting in trouble or

being responsible if you keep doing it.

So they’re not doing you a favor.

They’re just covering their own ass.

If they’re covering their own ass, you actually want to help them do that.

So your supervisor likes you so you don’t get in trouble.

It has nothing to do with right and wrong.

It has everything to do with do people like you and what you do.

I didn’t care that my coworker smoked.

I just was like, he’s taking six, ten minute breaks a day.

I want one or two and he was like after

realizing what was happening was like,

I’m actually okay with either taking 20 minutes if I’m getting an hour.

I’m not going to complain about that and he immediately stopped complaining.

So there was no issue going forward.

If you’re in a similar situation, you got to take a minute and think,

am I screwing around on the clock but do I keep the people around me happy?

That’s maybe the most important element that people sort of forget.

Talk about not making people happy.

A guy in the city I work in, Nagoya, 50 year old dude, so same ages me.

So this is like really resonated with like, would I do this?

Because this guy’s got a very similar sort of life situation.

Although he lives in a dormitory, so I don’t know what that’s like.

He was arrested because he was caught dumping 30 plastic bottles of urine

so the garbage can at work.

So he wasn’t even pouring them in the toilet.

He was just taking a full bottle, like a Coke bottle.

A pet bottle is like those plastic bottles that Coke comes in.

And just hucking them in the garbage.

Now, why did he have that?

Because he was filling them up at home.

He was filling them up at home because he said it was too troublesome.

His home again is a dormitory.

And so it has a shared bathroom.

It was a hassle to go to the shared bathroom,

so I’m betting it was down the hallway.

But that meant he was collecting these 30 plastic bottles of pee.

And then decided it was easier to carry

them to work and dispose of them there

than to carry them, I assume, again down the hallway to the toilet

and throw them in the toilet or just dispose of them around his house.

Maybe he didn’t want them around his house

like he would get in trouble for that.

So I bet the trash can that he was throwing them in was a public trash can.

The 30 bottles, the website I got this information from,

Woodwave, if you use the smaller 350-millimeter bottles,

was 13.6 kilograms of urine, so 30 pounds of pee that he put those bottles

I assume into a backpack or a bag or something,

and then lugged that to the office to

dispose of them, and it was ridiculous.

When he was arrested, he said, “There is no mistake that I threw away

plastic bottles filled with my own urine.”

And that’s when he revealed his motivation was it was too much of a hassle,

it was too troublesome, to go to the shared bathroom in my dormitory.

These are, it’s a violation of Japan’s waste disposal law.

You can’t just take tons of pee and poo and just throw them wherever you

want in this country.

Which is a good thing. That’s a law I support.

And that actually weirdly relates to our previous story,

because taking a ton of pee and throwing it away in public isn’t going to

keep the people around you happy.

And that’s how you end up causing trouble for yourself and getting arrested.

So I guess the solution is don’t do that.

[Music]

Chat asked why didn’t he throw them

away at a con beanie or a public trash can?

No, I, okay.

N-T-B-T show. That’s excellent name.

It’s nittipit show. I don’t know how to, I’m going to have to come up with a

pronunciation.

I would end up just saying N-T-B or N-T.

It sounds like he was using a public, but I mean,

if he went to the con beanie or train station waste baskets,

I bet you’re getting just as much if not more?

I’m not sure. I assume that if you threw it out at the convenience store,

you would get in just as much trouble.

This guy didn’t seem like a deep thinker. How about that? He, sorry.

He was, I bet going to a secondary location,

so he’s going from home to work to home.

I bet in his mind going, because it’s too troublesome to go to the toilet.

It’s too troublesome to do anything.

I bet in his mind anything beyond the basic minimum,

I have to go from A to B is too much.

This is all extrapolation just from reading that one little article.

But I bet his idea of doing anything extra is too much work, is the problem.

So having a minor deviation from his way to work to a different place

where he could anonymously throw away the urine bottles,

I bet in his mind that was too much.

I don’t know, because I don’t have any more information

information and the stuff I’ve already given.

But I’m betting that’s the case.