(upbeat music)
Japan’s having a lot
of issues with tourists,
and it’s over tourism, but at
the same time, the problem is
Japan really wants people to come
to Japan and spend their money.
The weak yen is actually making it
so that people can
come here and spend a lot
more money, which is
good for the economy.
They are finding, though, that again,
these cultural issues
tend to crop up regularly,
and so now cities are
starting to make some changes.
Shibuya, probably famous
for being a party place.
They banned drinking at Halloween,
so you weren’t allowed to drink in public.
A lot of people, when they
come to Japan, most places
they come from, you’re
not allowed to drink in public.
I’m Canadian.
You’re not allowed to just walk
down the street and drink alcohol.
In Japan, that is technically legal.
That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable,
like it doesn’t mean you
should be doing it all the time.
I have found when I first came, and
when other foreigners first come to Japan,
they’re like, “It’s legal,
therefore it’s acceptable,
“therefore I can
do it all the time.
” So they have like a drink
on the train, they have a drink
on the walk home, they’re
having drinking constantly outside.
It is fun and exciting.
Japanese people tend to have
limits, like, “Okay, we’re going
to have a picnic, “we’ll have
some drinks with our picnic.
“We’re taking the shinkansen.
“It’s appropriate to drink
a beer on the shinkansen.
“That’s kind of like
a tradition almost.
” So you run into,
yes, it is legal to drink
in public, but is it
socially acceptable?
And the foreign people come here and they’re
basing their decisions on what is legal,
not necessarily what
is socially acceptable.
Not massive problems until,
of course, it gets out of hand.
Shibuya drinking in public,
it’s gotten way out of hand.
2019, they did a small-scale
version on Halloween,
because the previous year
there was basically a riot.
They, I think, pushed over a car, set
a car on fire, don’t remember exactly,
but they damaged property, they
smashed some windows and stuff.
It just went way too far.
This wasn’t foreigners, though.
Like foreigners were certainly included,
but this was 90% Japanese people.
So at first, it was just Halloween.
Then it was Halloween and New Year’s.
And now they’ve decided it’s not going
to be just Halloween and New Year’s.
It’s going to be all year round.
They’re making a larger
punishment area, so basically all of
Shibuya, it sounds like you will
not be allowed to drink in public.
So what happens?
Japan has a very interesting
way of dealing with laws.
There’s no official punishment for getting
caught drinking in public in Shibuya,
because you haven’t
changed the national law.
It’s just been prohibited locally.
So if a police officer approaches you
and you have like a can of
beer and drinking the can of beer,
he’s going to ask you to have the beer and
he’s going to pour it out in the street.
This is actually what happened.
I remember this, I was a teenager,
and if we went downtown
in Ottawa for Canada today,
you could see a stream of alcohol, like
combined alcohol, just running down the road.
‘Cause the cops would
basically walk around, find people,
usually underage people or
teenagers and stuff, drinking, they
would take the drinks, they
would just pour it out of the street.
They didn’t issue fines,
no one got arrested.
They’re just like, look,
you’re not allowed to do that.
Losing the alcohol you brought with
you was probably punishment enough.
It’s not even all day, it’s
technically only in night.
So it’s between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Which means if you really
want to push the limits
of what’s acceptable with
this rule, you could go and
have lunch drinks in Shibuya
and get wrecked in public.
I don’t know if that’s what you want to do.
If you want to be one of those people,
so now I’m expecting
honestly a live streamer to go
and get super drunk
in the middle of Shibuya
in the middle of the day
and then when the police
approach I’m going to
ask him, what’s going on?
He says like this is legal,
you can’t stop me, ha ha.
I’ve found the loophole and
then they’re going to get you
for a public disturbance
or obstruction of business.
I mean, they just go for the
classic obstruction of business.
But what they’re actually
doing by not making
a punishment, they’re testing out
like how effective this is going to be.
Do we need to make punishments?
Because if this works, people,
you just walk up and be like,
hey, you know how to
drink, please give me a drink,
I’ll pour it out in the
street, thanks on your way.
If that’s enough, they’re
not going to make it anymore.
But if it isn’t, then
they’ll start doing fines.
Then they’ll start doing jail time.
Then they’ll start increasing
punishments over time.
And that’s how Japan
tries to find a balance
between the rules
they’re making and reality.
So they’re hoping that they
don’t have to do anything.
They’re hoping that, okay,
here’s a rule, follow the rule.
No one gets in trouble,
nothing happens, that’s great.
But realistically speaking, people are
going to immediately try to push the limits.
As we’re going to hear in
our gubernatorial election
section later on, which is just people
trying to push the limits across the board.
Welcome to the quiz.
Yes, I need to get some no-pass.
My concern is I know that you
have paid attention to the news.
So you may have read that
this is actually something
I haven’t thought
about is I have to, like,
check that my participants have not pre-read
the news that I’m going to talk about.
But there was a thing called
the Ninja certification exam.
Have you heard about that?
Has it a Ninja new certification?
No, completely unrelated.
I am planning on suing.
No, I haven’t heard of the
Ninja certification exam.
And just to put your
mind at ease, I often read
the headline and don’t
actually read the details.
I waited on the podcast.
Honestly, that’s even better, because
then we can talk about the details.
So there’s a thing it’s called
the Ninja certification exam.
It’s a written test.
There are three levels that
cover history and ninjitsu.
So I’m assuming the history of
ninjitsu is not just history in general.
And then ninjitsu, which I
don’t know, like how to disappear
in a cloud of smoke, I’m not
actually sure what that entails.
I haven’t been allowed
to take the exam yet.
The question is, what could
you do to earn extra points
at the lowest level,
the lowest level ninjas
or want to be ninjas could do
something to earn extra points?
There are three options, OK?
A, hit a target with a shoot again.
A B, cosplays a ninja.
Or C, cast a spell using kuji kiri, which
is those Naruto hand gesture things.
Do you know what I mean?
No.
Oh, like the– Yeah,
yeah, exactly that.
You were just doing rings,
but it’s usually like pointy
fingers and then curl
your fingers in a monkey.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of
that stuff, a lot of that stuff.
So you could hit a
target with a shoot again,
you could cosplays a ninja, or you
could cast a spell to get extra points.
What do you think they did to give the
lowest level potential ninjas extra points?
You can ask questions, we can have a chat.
Yeah, what kind of spells
are we talking about?
Well, it’s like a joke spell.
So it’s you cast a spell on
the examiner for extra points.
So it’s, again, even like
cosplay and even hitting a target
with a shoot again,
they’re all kind of jokes.
Right, OK.
And this– is this ninja school– is
it just for– is that a two-ish thing?
Like a wee– My belief, because
the article was a little weird,
because it said they
had the exam, but didn’t
actually technically
say what the exam for.
But I know in like Iga,
there’s the ninja village.
And they have tour guides
who dress up as ninja.
I went to visit it.
And they have like the female ninja,
whereas a bright pink uniform,
which I was like, that’s not hiding at all.
But they have like a ninja show.
And then Iga Castle has
like a ninja house they’ve
built that shows like the
hidden passages and stuff.
So there are tourist opportunities.
And I know some towns that
like claim to have the origins
of ninja or the area, they’ll
have like shows and tourist bits.
So I think that’s what it was for, because
you have to be able to explain stuff.
Right, OK.
So it’s training to be
sort of a tour guide.
My initial sort of thought was
it would be hitting the target.
Hitting the target would shoot again.
That was my initial thought.
Because I thought I’ve been to Iga as well.
And they dragged me in another
gadget out of the audience.
Like, oh, these, you know, these
gadgets won’t be scared of taking part.
And I had to throw a thing at a thing.
Yeah.
So did you hit it?
No, no, way more important.
Forget the quiz.
How did you do it?
Oh, good.
Because at Iga Castle, I went there too.
I took my mom and you got
three shots with the shooting can.
If you hit the bullseye, you got a t-shirt.
So it was actually surprisingly hard.
I got the t-shirt.
It was a medium.
But I didn’t complain.
I was happy to win a free t-shirt.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I did it.
And I stuck in the thing in the target.
That’s pretty good.
The guy said that was so goy.
Sorry, I should not mean I could
potentially be the training ninja.
Well, you could take the test at least.
The written test.
Of course, it’s a written test.
It being Japan, there’s
always a written test.
There’s always a written test.
Yeah.
Cosplay is an ninja.
Cos, that’s just that’s just
putting on a ninja costume.
Yes, it’s a super Japanese
thing to do, though.
So it is, but is that worth extra points?
It seems like he’s just giving
someone three points at that for that.
There’s no actual skill or
anything involved, is there?
I personally think
that’s the lamest option.
So I’m going to, I’m going
to, no, it’s definitely not that.
Cos it’s just, cos you
would have to show you
they’ll have to wear an ninja
costume to be in the ninja school.
You already went.
So, yeah, you’re getting
three points just to turn up.
It’s just going to be the hand
gesture or the target thing.
This is some heavy
thinking we got going on.
Yes.
Straticizing.
So I was dragged down
the crowd and got to do it.
And there’s no, no lower
level than ninja than me.
Yes.
And the book… I hope it’s not
insulting that I agree that quickly, man.
I’m wearing black.
Yeah.
But the hand gesture
thing does take a bit
of coordination and thoughts and
studying to learn how to do the hand moves.
I, as a joke, tried to learn
some of the hand moves.
There are 81 hand symbols
and nine primary ones.
So if you learn the nine primary
ones, there’s combinations.
And just as a joke, I tried to learn
one or two, so I could do it to kids.
And I honestly couldn’t do it.
My fingers are not nimble enough.
So that sounds like
it’s higher level than…
I felt like that was actually kind of hard.
Which makes me think back
to my gut reaction of the target.
But then again, Japan is a safety country.
Are they going to let
basic trainees do that?
I’m going to start hucking stuff around.
I’m going to go with
my initial gut reaction,
while I’ve hit in the target
with a shooting camp.
Where is this?
Right.
You are incorrect.
It is B.
It is the lamest one.
If you cosplay doesn’t ninja, you got
extra points on your ninja written exam.
So there’s all these potential
tour guides sat in a thing, in
a classroom somewhere, taking
a written exam dressed as ninjas.
Yeah.
I mean, if they put the effort in, it would
be weird to me if you were going to go for
that exam to not put
that effort in, though.
But it was also only the low level ones.
I guess there’s an
expectation that the
higher level ones are
doing, because there
are three levels,
which I would like an ex.
This is the problem with some
of this news, is there’s only so
much explanation that goes
into these sort of fluff stories.
But if you pass the exam, you get
a scroll and the title, “Cocan Ninja.
” Nice.
So you get to call yourself “Cocan
Ninja” for the rest of your life, I assume.
Surely.
Well, unless they have
the test on a different
day, or it’s not in
the actual ninja, ninja,
ninja series stuff area, it’s
in that kind of office building.
There was a picture, and
it looked like a classroom.
Right.
So I bet it’s just like
a tourist office, and
they have like a conference room, and
they throw them in the conference room.
That would be my guess.
There is an extra point, though,
so you can try to make up for it.
How many participants, middle of that?
How many participants do you
believe participated in the ninja exam?
It would include all three levels.
Are all three levels all written?
What they were talking
about is the answer is yes.
It was an exam.
There were three levels
of the written exam.
Thank you.
How many, so how many sought the test?
How many, so all one big group, how many
people do you think were in that group?
I’m going to say 47.
47.
How did you came to that note?
How did you come to that number?
Well, I think it’s Japan-wide.
It is Japan-wide.
Twoism is booming, so
there’s probably a need
for people dressed as ninjas,
plastic ninja stars around.
Yep.
I agree with all that.
So there’s probably already quite a lot of
ninjas who are already trained, and I know
that a company that
I used to work for
usually brought in around
100 teachers a year.
Mm-hmm.
So I’m going to say
half of half of that about.
That’s what that was my thinking.
It is 124.
Ah, I thought a lot
of ninjas had a whole
clan of ninjas, but they
might not hold past though.
That is true.
We don’t get the failure rate.
I was trying to look
up for any sort of
results, but once they’ve written
their piece, they can move on.
So I didn’t get how
many actual ninjas passed
the exam, because we have
no idea if it’s a hard exam or not.
When they say history, it
would be pretty easy to fail the
history part if you didn’t
take history very seriously.
And then in Jitsu part, who
knows what they’re asking on that?
Yeah.
And, yeah, Kenji might
have turned up and he
might have forgotten his ninja
costume, and he didn’t eat it.
Yeah, he didn’t get those extra points.
He was always two points shy,
and then he didn’t wear his costume.
You know, if you’re
going to be a ninja,
you’re going to need to get over the
shyness of wearing a ninja outfit, I think.
Well, once you’re a real ninja,
no one will ever see you again.
That’s true.
I figured the high
level for extra points,
you have to turn in your exam
without anyone seeing you.
Haha, yeah.
It just appears.
I don’t want you to come from.
Yeah, yeah.
You’ve got to manage to
get to back home through
an elaborate underground tunnel
system without anyone knowing?
Without anyone knowing.
Yeah.
I was like, I wonder if
other countries have
like like there’s a
like the Italy has like
a little Roman region air school,
because all those places need.
They need people to dress up.
Yeah.
Because Canada has
Edmonton, Edmonton has
this like rodeo festivals, one
of the biggest things in Canada.
So they got to have people
dressed up as cowboys.
Now, in that area,
people dress up as
cowboys anyways, but I’m
assuming there’s no actual exam.
Japan to me is a
very like, let’s make a
paper exam for it,
because I think in Calgary
stampede, which is
what this festival is
called, they’re getting
actual people who
work with cows, like
they’re actual cowboys.
I did judo in Canada, I
came here and I wanted
to do some tests here
to get a higher level.
There’s a paper test in Japan.
There’s no paper testing, Canada, you go
out and you do fights and you do like this
like presentation thing
of showing how to do
something really, really
well, and then they grade you.
In Japan, you do those two things and you
sit for a paper test, which is all Japanese
and really hard old kunji, which
I couldn’t read, so I gave up.
What’s this?
There’s always a test.
It’s always a paper
test, it’s such a Japanese
thing to do, taking a sport
and making a paper test.
I’ve had students in
the past, they wanted
to be tour guides, take
like a world heritage
site test, yeah, but
you’re going to be talking
about in Japan, why do you need to learn
about the Taj Mahal, maybe they can do
comparisons, they go,
here’s our castle, it’s like
the Taj Mahal of Japan,
which is what they
would do in Japan, they’d always
be comparing it to something else.
Look at this Edo
wall, it’s just like the
great wall of China,
it’s a really good wall.
All right, well thank you
for your participation,
your participation in the
test, we’ll count that up.
I actually have to start keeping track of
success and failure rate of this, but yeah,
thank you for your help, no
problem, thank you, all right.
Being about tourists, he made
you castle, fairly famous castle.
Last year had 1.48 million visitors, so
that’s a lot of people, and they make a lot
of money, because all those people
pay money to go see the castle.
450,000 of those people
were foreign tourists,
now I didn’t take time
to do the statistics,
and it was like a million
Japanese people and
half a million foreigners, that’s
going to do very rough math.
The current entry fee to the
castle is 1,000 yen for everybody.
The mayor is suggesting
that foreigners only
pay 3,000 yen for
entry, and a lot of people
are saying, why would you
charge foreigners more?
This is one of the
issues that’s going on
restaurant, some
restaurants are deciding to
charge foreign people
more, we did a story
previously where if you
were a foreign person, there
was a foreign menu
with a foreign price, and
then a local menu with a local price, and
it’s divisive, because is it acceptable to
force someone who isn’t Japanese to
pay more money for the exact same service?
The mayor’s justifying
this suggestion by
saying he’s comparing
it to the Louvre or spots
in Egypt, so the Louvre
apparently, if you’re
local, it’s free, and if you’re
foreign, you have to pay.
I don’t know about
Egypt, but I’m assuming,
again, foreigners have
to pay a certain amount
of money to go see
things in Egypt, whereas
maybe locals pay a Louvre fee, similar
to what he suggested for his major castle.
He’s also justifying
it by saying they need
money for maintenance, but there is a concern
that it may turn off foreigners, so if
foreigners find out they
pay more money for this
attraction where locals pay
the same amount of money,
well then I’m not going
to go to that attraction.
It’ll actually take away potentially half
a million visitors a year, so is it worth
increasing their price
for less people to show
up, and maybe less
making less money overall.
It’s very hard to tell.
It will be interesting to see, A, do they
go through with it, because they’re just in
the discussion phase
now, or B, do other
places start taking on
this model where then
any tourist who comes
to Japan suddenly is
paying more for everything, as opposed to
paying the same price everyone else pays.
And then I’m in the Union situation
where I’m a resident of Japan.
What do they do with me?
Because I’m a white guy,
do I have to pay more?
Because I live in Japan, I live in Japan
for a long time, do I pay the Japanese fee?
How do you know the difference?
I do have a residential card.
So I have a identification that says I live
in Japan, I live in Japan for a long time.
That probably would
be enough to get me to
the local rate, but I could see myself
getting annoyed that they even suggested.
Even though again, quite
obviously, I am not Japanese.
We’re going to talk about bears.
Bears have actually cropped
up a lot in stories recently.
Bears versus Japan.
There was a town.
It’s a small town and they have
basically a Hokkaido in all these places.
They have like hunters associations.
These are the people
who legally own firearms.
They can go out and
hunt animals and that would
include bears that have
encroached on society.
So you got bears coming
into towns, you need
someone to scare away or worst
case scenario, actually kill the bear.
These are the guys you got to call.
You got to pay these guys.
Now hunting a bear,
fighting a bear essentially
is dangerous and this
town and the hunting
association closely related to that
town could not come to an agreement.
They wanted to give
them 3000 yen danger pay.
So they’re like, “Hey, we want you
to go face this very angry, hungry bear.
” I’ll give you 30 bucks.
It’s one of those
things, it’s like as dare
you’re like, “Well,
that’s not enough money.
” Like if I get mauled by the bear, 3000
yen isn’t going to do that much for me.
It’s not really worth it.
So now they’re in the weird situation where
they are not going to protect the town.
Now I guess you call
the cops, but the cops
again, they have
very small pistols and
they’re not equipped
to really take on a bear.
So that means the
bear now in this town has
free rein in a different
city in Fukui, a bear
entered a house and the woman called
the cops and she crawled out of window.
So the bear, it sounds like
came in through the front door.
Maybe the front door wasn’t
locked or the front door was left open.
It is getting close to summertime.
It’s hot.
Maybe trying to get some
air flow through whatever.
I have no idea why or how
the bear got in the house.
The woman calls the cops and
then she, she haulsed it out of window.
Pretty good move on her part.
I don’t know if she did a flip.
I don’t know why I suddenly thought that.
It’d be cool to flip
out the window as you
run away, but it’d be
even cooler to backflip.
So the cops then surround the house.
They’re on standby outside the house.
That was it.
There was no follow up.
They don’t say how long they’re on standby.
They don’t say anything happens.
So if we take this
story at face value, those
cops are still standing
outside that house.
And I guess that bear just
owns that house now, be weird.
We see our houses as safe places.
That’s kind of the whole point of a house.
Then once a bear is
come into your house and
he’s lived in your
house for maybe as long
as you have because he’s
apparently not left the house.
What happens then?
Do you feel safe in your house anymore?
Do you get like, I’m going
to lock the doors all the time?
That kind of thing?
Who knows?
Yeah, I don’t know how I’d feel.
I don’t deep sleep.
When I was a little
kid, my dad made me a
bedroom in the basement,
which was really cool.
He liked to build stuff.
I like to be slitter
apart from the family
because I was a
rebellious, weird little kid.
I was like nine years old.
But that meant my bed was sitting
under one of those little basement windows.
If you were going to
break into a house, you’d
generally go in through one of
those little basement windows.
There was one night I was in
bed and a man stepped on my head.
He came in through the window,
came down, stepped on my head.
I screamed or freaked out and he ran away.
Very technically nothing
happened, but also someone
broke into the house
and stepped on my head.
Since then, fairly
traumatic experience, I
think that’s fair to
say, I do not deep sleep.
Any sound that happens
during the night, I
will wake up and this
is like 40 years later.
And that’s it.
It’s just the rest of my life.
I’m assuming till I die, I will
be an incredibly light sleeper.
I will never know what it is to deep
sleep ever again because of that.
So I’m wondering if this woman maybe has a
similar situation with her bear experience,
or if maybe now she
just knows she’s going to
lock all the doors, how
do you be more careful?
It’s a bear.
So you’re walking along the coast.
You’re with your family.
It’s really nice.
And then your young child, your
son, slips and falls into the water.
Now it’s a six foot drop into the
water off this like coastal walkway.
That’s already a rough fall
for a kid, but he’s in the ocean.
The ocean is going pretty hard.
A 26 year old, Filipino man, just immediately
jumps in after and he saves the kid.
So they get some nets
and stuff down so they
can help him climb up
and they help the kid
climb up first and
then the man climbs up.
He saved his kid’s life.
That’s pretty awesome.
The parents wanted his
name to say thank you.
It’s very traditional like if
someone finds your wallet or
does something for you, you
send them a thank you present.
So like if you find something and turn into
the police and then the person shows up and
they get it back, they’ll
send you a thank you.
I found a wallet turned it into the cops.
I ended up getting a cake the next
week just showed up in my house.
So this is a normal
Japanese thing to want to
say thank you in some
way, usually by sending
some, you know, it’s not cheap, but
it’s not nothing, it’s a little present.
The Filipino man said,
and this is a phrase
that he probably learned
from anime, this being
a non native Japanese
speaker, there’s already an
assumption that he’s
using this sentence because
he’s either watched
a ton of old samurai
movies or he’s really
into anime where they
say this kind of thing
translated into English.
This means I’m not important
enough for people to know my name.
So when you win the
big fight, when you save
the town, when you protect
people and they go like, who are you?
This is the phrase
you use in these sort of
old movies and in your
anime and in your manga.
I can’t say it cool,
I got to actually get
an example of an anime
character saying it so
I can copy that because
I’m sure my inflections
wrong and my spacing
of the words is wrong.
But I’ll say it one more
time, super slow so
that you can get it and
you can practice this.
No, no, no, no, no, day, why, night, okay?
So you can take that,
take some time, practice
it, coerce it to yourself,
maybe find some
examples of it on the
internet and awesome.
You can now say this
really cool thing, but
you have to do something
cool first, you can’t
just walk around
saying that, you have to
actually do something cool, this might be
the problem for most people saying doing
something cool and then
saying something cool.
Also it kind of means like study your anime
because everyone on the internet who heard
that he said this
after doing this really
cool thing was like, dude,
this is the coolest guy ever.
He’s using the lines,
he’s using the lines
properly, I, he’s representing the
humble hero, which is really cool.
I have only said two cool lines in
my life and it was totally by accident.
And so I once gave my
judo suit, both related
to judo, of course,
I once gave my judo
suit to my wife because
she was going to wash
it that night and she
said, oh my god, so
much blood and I looked at her
and said, don’t worry, it’s not mine.
That was awesome.
And again, because I didn’t intend it
to be cool, it turned out super cool.
And then once I was
doing like a meeting
with some people who
just come to Japan, and
of course judo comes up because
it’s like, what are your hobbies?
What do you do?
I do judo tatata.
Everyone goes, have you ever broken a bone?
And I looked and I said, do you
mean mine or someone else’s?
Ah, that was awesome again.
For me, it was legitimate inquiry.
Have I ever broken
one of my own bones or
have I in judo, which does have like arm
locks and stuff broken someone else’s bone?
But because again, it
was unintentionally cool.
I didn’t try to be cool.
It was actually way cooler that way.
Scandal.
No, this is the least scandalous
scandal I’ve seen in so long.
Some top Japanese skateboarders
took part in underage drinking.
I, 14, 15, 16 was a very,
very serious skateboarder.
It is basically at
that point in life, I
thought, the job I’m
going to have for the rest
of my life is going to be
professional skateboarder.
I was trying to figure out
if I could move to California.
I made a little video of myself
skateboarding that I could send to Dogtown.
No, I wasn’t that good.
Like I was, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I was very, very good
for a complete amateur,
but I was nowhere
near professional quality.
And I think by the time
you’re 15, 16 in the skateboard
world, you either have it or
you don’t and I did not have it.
I was good.
I was always going to be okay, but I
was never going to be professional.
This was during an Olympic
qualification trip to China.
And in Japan, the drinking age is
20, in China, the drinking age is 18.
So if they’re all 18 or 19, in China,
it’s perfectly legal for them to drink.
So I think this is what happened.
They didn’t give everyone’s
age because they said group.
I think they were all 18, 19,
20 year olds, skateboarders.
I guess this is it, skateboarders are
going to drink if you let them drink.
They were in a different country
where it’s legal for them to drink.
They’re like, hey, let’s
go out and legally drink.
So they went out and they legally
drank and they had a good time.
And Japan has got
this weird idea of holding
people to Japanese laws and
rules even when they leave Japan.
They have said that
if you go to a place like
Canada where marijuana
is illegal and you
smoke marijuana or take a brownie
or cookie word of it, they deliver it in.
And then you come back to
Japan, you’ve committed a crime.
They say if you go
overseas and you create
unsensored pornography,
you’ve broken a law in Japan.
And so this is it.
They have this weird idea.
And I don’t actually know
how you would prosecute this.
That might be why
these guys are just getting
trouble because they are representatives
of Japan in another country.
So they’re probably partially
funded by the government.
I don’t know how well that goes because
if you’re going for an Olympic qualifier,
you probably have
taken money from the
government, which does
mean the government does
have a little say in
how you behave or sees
you sort of like an
ambassador to your country.
You have to behave
better that kind of thing.
One of the skateboarders
themselves were
reprimanded the coach was,
which I think is pretty fair.
He didn’t get fired.
He didn’t get in trouble in any real way.
They’re like, dude, you got
to control your skateboarders.
You’re probably looking at them going like
these are like 19 year old adults overseas.
They’re taking care of themselves.
I don’t know really what you want me to do.
So I think reprimanding
the coach, having
him say like you should have
kept these guys inside and stuff.
I think that’s fair.
As long as he doesn’t get into any actual
trouble because again, no law was the way
he was presented when I saw it in Japanese
news was like a crime has been committed.
Like they’ve broken the law, which they
actually very technically had not done.
And you know, technically
right is the best kind of right.
I cannot hear the voices out there.
When I was a skateboarder
and I was 14, 15
years old, did I ever
under age drink, never.
It’s actually funny.
I talked to Canadians, I’m like, how old
are you when you had your first drink?
It seems like 13, 14 is really normal.
I had one beer.
I don’t like beer.
I don’t do acquired tastes.
I had one beer when I was like 15 years
old or 14 years old and I didn’t like it.
And I was like, nope, never had beer again.
So that’s actually probably a good thing.
If I had it later, I might have liked
it and then be a beer drinker now.
And it was, we’re on
to the gubernatorial
election news and this
is actually quite a lot.
And aid to the current
Tokyo governor, Yudical
Koike, claims that
she faked her degree.
How do you become the
governor of a prefecture?
And they don’t know if you’ve
actually got a degree or not.
So now there’s this
big thing out there like
this is someone who worked for
her who claims she faked her degree.
The claim is that she did not
graduate from the University of Cairo.
Koike and response said
she’s unhappy at the allegation.
She says she will continue to list
herself as a graduate of Cairo University.
Now, I looked at that sentence.
I’ve done a lot of political
stories on the Engineers Japan.
I look very carefully
at what they’re actually
saying because that’s
the more interesting thing.
How they say it.
What they’re saying is the important part.
In this case, she has
not denied the allegation.
She said I will continue to list myself
as a graduate of the University of Cairo.
That doesn’t mean she actually got her
degree or could prove she has her degree
from the University of Cairo, which is
a very interesting, very small distinction.
Another interesting thing
she’s done lately is on x.com.
She started posting
short videos of her
explaining her policies,
but it’s not actually her.
It’s actually an AI
version of her moving her
mouth and face and then speaking her
policies within AI version of her voice.
And that is an interesting
thing because now
these videos of her
explaining things can
be generated by her staff and put on
the internet like she’s talking to you.
And a lot of people, again,
this is very mixed feelings.
AI is a big issue right now
generating a lot of mixed feelings.
Should she be doing it personally?
Is this good enough?
Is AI a threat?
And she’s saying, look, we have
these technologies at our hand.
We should use technologies
that are available to us.
I’m using this technology to
get my policies out into the world.
And then of course,
the first set of comments
under her videos are,
did you have AI generate
your degree from the
University of Cairo?
Which is awesome.
In Tokyo, it’s gotten very specific
and this is primarily about poster.
So in Japan, most of
your election knowledge,
most of my an actual
election knowledge
comes from the American system, which
is all blasting ads and news and stuff.
America dominates the news
cycle even in other countries.
So a lot of what I
understand of politics is
influenced by heavily
by the American system.
The Canadian system honestly
very similar, but way more low key.
There’s a lot of TV advertising stuff.
Japan has very strict rules.
You can’t really do the same thing.
There’s a couple of weeks
where you can get out
on top of a truck and then speak into
a microphone and shout it out that way.
You can’t just plaster
posters or ads everywhere.
There is actually a set like
big board and then you as
someone running in the race
can put your poster on that board.
It’s very weird the first time you see it
and 99% of these posters are nondescript.
It’s some very Japanese
looking businessman,
thumbs up in the camera and just
looking forward with a very awkward smile.
Sometimes they’ve got some
kind of like hook and like I used to
play soccer so he’s holding a
soccer ball, something like that.
So they’re trying to
put as much personality
as they can into a very
awkward photo shoot.
This system has been hijacked in Tokyo.
56 people have entered
and they can put up posters.
They’re mostly politicians, but 19 of
the 56 places are from the NHK party.
Now this is not the actual NHK party.
They used to be called the anti NHK party
because they hated NHK and the fact that
you had to pay fees to this
national broadcasting company.
They’ve become a party
that’s essentially trolling
politics, trying to get
messages out there
that are not big issues or overly popular,
but they’re still actually a lot of ways
kind of important because
there are things people
are either embarrassed
or too shy to talk about.
So the first one that I really
enjoyed was a female kick boxer.
She took up half the slots.
So if you have like 60 spaces for posters,
30 of those were the same posters she paid
for, and it’s just her
saying like, I’m a kick
boxer, not even like I
want to be governor.
I’m a kick boxer and I’m a
really good kick boxer and
you should follow me on
Instagram and watch me kickbox.
Another candidate
got a warning from the
police for making a
poster that is of an almost
nude woman posing in what
they called a very sexy pose.
Their platform is talking
about censorship in Japan.
This is the same group.
I did this story
previously, but I can’t
remember how long ago,
where they talked about
how if Japan would open
up its censorship laws
and not use pixelization
in their pornography
that Japan could make a lot more
money with the pornography that they have.
We have done stories
where it’s like the
ranking of pornography
has come out from Pornhub
and it’s always like Japan or
Japanese is really high in the ranking.
So this guy is saying
we should capitalize on
this love for this thing
our country does make
and we are holding it back
by being too conservative.
He’s teamed up with
actress Sakurai Miyu, a
very specific kind of
actress if we’re going
to be clear and they
wanted to end nudity
censorship laws and
promote freedom of expression.
Because she was basically
naked, I think they had
little flowers over the bits
that need to be censored.
The police came and said you
have to take the posters down.
So then this guy who had decided like I’m
going to promote this porn star and put up
these posters and make my issue censorship,
he’s like I’m going to pivot since I’m not
allowed to put those
posters up, I’m going
to pivot to making
cannabis legal in Shibuya.
So marijuana cannabis is illegal in Japan.
It’s actually still very seriously.
They don’t they don’t like
classified drugs in order.
It’s just drugs bad.
So heroin and marijuana are in the
same group as far as drugs are concerned.
So if you smuggle in heroin and you smuggle
in marijuana, same punishment across the
board, which a lot
of people are like ah,
that you know other
countries they like grade
it like marijuana is
not as bad as heroin in
Japan that’s considered
like a slippery slope.
So they’re just like no
drugs bad if it’s a bad drug.
You did a bad thing.
You get the exact same sentence.
So he’s pivoted his platform to try to make
posters he also puts on face paint like the
Joker and stuff that actually in
itself makes me take it less seriously.
If you wanted to do
this seriously he should
just wear a suit and
look as normal as possible
and they start very seriously talking about
censorship laws and don’t even get like
salacious on the posters
and I bet you’d get
a lot of support because
one of the hardest
things to do is it
takes something that is
essentially embarrassing
like I look at pornography
and I want to de-sensor pornography
again he’s thinking of the economy.
I’m actually kind of on
board with this as a concept.
If there is an economic
gain for the country
by doing this thing it
might be worth doing.
Sure regulate the industry.
I actually have no problem with that.
I think safety is very important but because
he like dresses up and puts on a face
paint and tries to look
at the Joker and stuff
it immediately goes well
why would I take you seriously.
So he’s actually undermining his own
potential of actually getting one of these you
might be considered a
side issue into the forefront.
Of course there’s commentary.
The news did interviews
with people on the
street and one man says
it does not communicate
their policies at all
and I was like well no
it does because the
kick box or her policy
is I really like kickboxing and kickboxing
is cool and you should follow me online.
It’s a pretty clear policy it doesn’t apply
to Japan in any real way unless you want
to make kickboxing
like a national thing
that everyone has to
do which would be crazy.
And then the censorship one
with the almost naked lady on it.
I mean the policy is pretty clear
we would like to stop censoring this.
There were a lot of
complaints that they were
putting up like basically a naked lady on
a poster where kids go by which again I’m
actually on board with
that which is another
reason to do it in a
more serious vein where
people actually might take a moment and
actually listen to what you’re talking about.
And the policy is I like
kickboxing and I like sexy ladies.
Thank you.
you you.
you.
you you you you you
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She’ll be drinking in public
has gotten away and I’ll have.
Does mean the
government does mean the
government does mean
the government does have it.
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