We have an update from two weeks ago. We had the guy who was drinking at a bar with a woman,
and he started getting her really drunk. And clearly, purposefully, he had her drink 32 shots.
And if I remember correctly, it was in a 90 -minute or a two -hour period. It was way
too short a time to be drinking that much. And I thought, like, 32 shots is a lot,
but how much is that? Because I have no idea. So I went and did the rough math, and it turns out
it’s two bottles of tequila. So he had this woman drink two bottles of tequila, and then when she
was getting sort of blackout drunk, he was dragging her essentially to a love hotel. Now, he claimed
when he was arrested that he was taking her to a love hotel so that he could take care of her,
where I think we all know the reality of what he was doing. He was getting her blackout drunk,
and he was fully intending to take advantage of the situation. He called the police because he
realized something’s gone terribly wrong. This woman is in a lot of trouble. So as a result
of this forced drinking, now the thing is, I don’t know how to say it. He forced her to drink,
but he didn’t force her to drink. He got her drunk, and then once she got so drunk,
she, of course, was more susceptible to drinking more. And she drank so much,
she actually died a few days later. I said at the end of the story that it’s clear what he was
intending to do. This was planned out. And as far as I was concerned, this was murder. Maybe not,
you know, first degree murder. I don’t actually know the Japanese system and what kinds of murder
they have in Japan, because I know America, North America has manslaughter, third, second,
and first degree murder. So manslaughter is essentially by accident. Third degree murder would
be in an act of passion, so not planned out. Second degree murder would be sort of premeditated,
and then first degree murder is like you’ve set up the whole situation. This was planned well in
advance. It was clear you had full intent to do the thing. He had a plan, which is why I think it
should certainly be something greater than manslaughter, probably second degree murder,
because he planned to get her that drunk. He didn’t realize he was going to kill her,
but he did plan to get her that drunk. And I said it would be a really good thing if he gets
severely punished. Now in Japan, a lot of these crimes, a lot of these guys, they kind of get away with it
because Japan’s very light on these crimes, but it seems to be taking small steps forward because
this man was given 14 years in prison. And the judge said it was because it was very clear that
he fully intended to rape this woman. But since he clearly intended to do this, this was all planned,
and so he should get severely punished. Prosecutors were asking for 16 years, so the judge didn’t give
him the full sentence, but he gave him a pretty good amount. It is very possible that you have heard of
Punch the Monkey. I have not talked about Punch the Monkey on Ninja News Japan because Punch the Monkey,
little monkey, very cute. Yeah, great. But not much of a story there. People love tragic little animals.
Punch the Monkey was rejected by his mother. And so the group, the family, the clan, I don’t know what
you call a pack of monkeys anymore. The group of monkeys had kind of rejected him. He was getting
a lot of sympathy for him. Fair enough. He’s a cute little monkey. It turns out last week, Punch got a
girlfriend. He was seen hanging out with a female Makau Monkey, just like nuzzling each other and taking
care of each other. And then one of the adult monkeys is actually sort of taking him under her
wing. So he’s actually getting some affection. Now, I did see a thing on the internet saying like,
Makau Monkeys are very strong. And if they wanted to actually hurt or kill Punch, they would have.
So they’re not doing as much as they could. If they wanted to hurt him, like really, really hurt him,
he would have been hurt. So they’re actually saying like, yes, this is social integration.
This is problematic. It’s tough. But they’re not actually like rejecting him to the point where he’s
actually in danger. But that’s all irrelevant because of course, with popularity on the internet
comes scams. And it’s just a very natural sort of one, two things. So Punch the Monkey got popular.
Therefore, people are like, how can I, as someone not related to this, take advantage of Punch the
Monkey and his popularity? And maybe I could make some money off it. Well, fake Instagram accounts
popped up. Fake X accounts popped up. Fake lots of accounts popped up. And they’re trying to get money,
basically. So the first one that came up was Instagram. And it was the care. He claimed to be
the caretaker of Punch. He says, I am the devoted caretaker of Punch. Here are pictures of Punch and me.
And it was all just recycled images from maybe the zoo or the news or things like that so that you
could actually get some pictures up there. Quickly increased to 80 ,000 followers. And there was a link.
And if you click the link, it was a link requesting donations to Punch, which was going to go directly to
this non -Punch related person who was then fully taking advantage of Punch. And then,
the first two stories may be very sad about people. Like a monkey can’t even be happy
without someone trying to take advantage of it. Can’t try. It’s bullshit.
Leave Punch alone. Don’t try to capitalize on Punch. Just leave the little monkey alone. He’s had a hard
time. The zoo is saying like, we’re not setting up this kind of account. If you want to donate,
you can donate to the zoo. That money goes as much to Punch as it does to every other animal in the zoo.
But we will never put up like a fundraising thing for a person. The implication of the Instagram
account was like, if this person, the caretaker got enough money, they were going to take Punch
out of the zoo and like raise them at home, which seems worse. Like monkeys should be raised with
monkeys. I had another question. I was reading all these stories and I was reading stories about Punch.
And I kind of had a sudden thought. I was like, why would you open a zoo? It seems like a weird
thing to open. Like just sitting around and be like, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to
get animals that don’t belong in this climate and I’m going to bring them here. I’m going to,
it’s going to be really hard to take care of them, but I’m going to do that. Like I understand
devotion to animals and I understand science and things like that, but zoos, the more I think about
zoos seem like a really bad idea and not particularly beneficial. Like I guess, uh,
safari parks would, it would be better where the animals can roam around and stuff.
I went to the Nagoya zoo once and it had, uh, timber wolves and Nagoya in the summer,
like every day is like 32, 35, maybe 40 degrees. That’s really normal in the summertime. And it’s
super, super humid. I as a Canadian think I’m going to die constantly in the summer in Japan.
Timber wolves were not having a better time than me. They didn’t belong in this climate. They didn’t
belong any, any of these places. Just absolutely do not take timber wolves out of the mountains of
Canada and bring them to the hottest, one of the hottest summers in the world and just leave them
out. Cause they were just lying on the ground like, Oh my God, I’m going to die. I wish I was dead.
It was that kind of thing. I felt so bad for those timber wolves. A 63 year old, uh, government
employee submitted a time off request. Very normal thing to submit. You want to take some time off.
It’s your right as an employee, certainly as one of the government of Japan. Uh, he wanted more than
100 days off to take a cruise. So you can see where the issue is. This guy’s like, Hey, I want to take
off a big chunk of the year, like one third of the year so that I can go on a cruise that goes around
the world. Uh, his supervisor apparently seems to have lost his mind over this. The supervisor
verbally warmed him a super, his supervisor verbally warned him twice, issued two written warnings and
advised him to quit twice. So he’s had at least six meetings where his supervisor is like, no, I don’t
want you to take a hundred days off. No, you’re not taking a hundred days off. Here’s a written piece
of paper that says, do not take 100 days off. And I I’m telling you, it would be better if you quit
than to take a hundred days off. Do not take a hundred days off. This guy’s like, you know what
I’m going to do? Go take a hundred days off. He said this man, I will not submit a resignation letter.
And then went on his holiday. He’s like, yeah, you can fire me if you want to fire me for taking a
hundred days off. But the fact that you want me to quit actually tells me you probably can’t fire me for
this, which means I can take my time off and there’s very little you could do about it. And
we all love to kind of stick into supervisors. Those supervisors comes up like, that’s what you
get, man, because I don’t care about you. I’m taking my cruise around the world. He went to 10
countries, including Singapore, South Africa, and the United States. So you can see like he was kind
of doing like a Southern hemisphere tour around the world. That’s pretty cool. He had a four day work
week. So this is a man who, when he hit 60, retired and was hired on essentially part
time. But four days a week is like very, you know, it’s more than just part time, but he’s
got a four day work week. So he has a four day work weeks taking that into account. He
has accrued vacation days. So in total, when he returned, he had taken 109 days off in total,
but it only missed 14 days of work. So the question then is, can you actually fire someone
for missing 14 days of work? Now in America, where it’s like at will kind of stuff, you could
probably fire him for sneezing at the wrong time. In Japan, you have very strong labor laws. So you
can’t just fire people. You need to be able to prove things and justify it. It’s actually very
difficult to fire an employee who has had multiple contracts. This guy has been working at this
government agency for 20 years, making him a long -term employee, making him very difficult to
fire. And so they’ve decided that he’s going to finish out his contract this year. But when it gets to
the renewal, so when you get past 65 and you’re rehired in this kind of situation as a retiree,
you get a one -year contract that gets renewed every year. They have decided to not renew his
next contract after this fiscal year. The man, when they spoke to him said, these are the facts
and I do not intend to dispute them. So he’s like, yeah, I took a hundred days off because I wanted
to take a hundred days off. They want to fire me for that. They want to not hire me back.
Man, I’m retired anyways. I don’t care. Trump wants Japan to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz.
And I mean, this is, he wants everyone to take care of this problem that he’s created.
The Japanese prime minister, Takeiichi, just recently went to America and spoke to the
president. He made that really weird Pearl Harbor joke, which I don’t think was a joke because it
wasn’t funny. I don’t think he gets what humor is. The people who defend him who say he’s making
jokes. I’m like, I don’t think you guys get jokes. He’s not, he’s just saying offensive things.
That’s not a joke. That’s not humor, but I don’t know what to do about that.
The problem really is the Japanese prime minister is bound by rules. So it seems like America
with Trump in charge has done away with the rule of law. So he, Trump just does what he wants. He
started this war without Congress’s approval. That would never happen in Japan. And that is one
of the things I like about Japan. It’s just previous story where we had like, there are legal rail
guards on how you can and can’t fire people. And there’s protection for workers’ rights. And that’s
why people can keep jobs even when they have a disagreement with their boss or something like
that. Those are good for society because it means that people just average people don’t get abused as
much, which is a good thing. Abusing the military is a very similar situation. You have Trump. He’s
start taking troops, airplanes, whatever, sent them to the Middle East. And he’s just like
killing kids by blowing up schools. I do like the way they claimed that they didn’t blow up the
school with the missile that they own that probably no other country has. Certainly not one in that
region. When Takeuchi comes, she would actually have to get permission. She couldn’t just like move
ahead without the permission of the government. She couldn’t actually like, she would have to get a
vote to actually make something like this happen. If she wanted to send, let’s say, destroyers to the
Strait of Hormuz and actually like aid in America’s efforts, which she, I would bet deep down inside,
doesn’t want to do. Because while America and Iran have a very negative relationship,
Iran and Japan actually have a relatively positive relationship because they buy a lot of oil in
Japan from Iran directly. So they’re good customers and they don’t want to mess up that relationship.
Some Japanese oil tankers have been allowed to go through the Strait of Hormuz, whereas American
tankers would not be able to go. And again, that is the soft power that Japan is trying to build.
A lot of Asian countries are now, strong Asian countries are trying to compete in soft power
politics. So China is doing a lot of like rebuilding of infrastructure in Africa. Japan goes around,
does a lot of humanitarian and aid projects because when you get to a situation like this,
they’re like, oh yeah, we’re going to blow up any American tanker that comes through. We’re trying
to get America’s oil. And then they’re like, oh, but those Japanese guys, they were really nice to
us before. We’re going to let them go because they’re cool. And that’s what soft power is. When you get to a
situation like this, you have the ability to sort of deal with the political difficulties of having
two of your associates fighting. Takeji was noncommittal and said, no decision has been
made on whether to send any destroyers, which is basically the closest thing to saying we are not
going to send any destroyers. The other interesting part is this is also the same government that actually
took real time to discuss the legality of should the self -defense force in Japan be sent in should
a Godzilla -like occurrence happen, like incident. So if Godzilla came up, are we legally allowed to
use the self -defense force was an actual discussion they had. Now that’s hypothetical. It’s just for fun,
but they were actually saying like the real legalities of it because the self -defense force can only be
deployed against an invading attacker, someone with intent. And as Godzilla does not represent a nation,
he is not attacking in that way. So legally the self -defense force should not be deployed.
But if you take in a different way of thinking and see Godzilla as a natural phenomenon,
the self -defense force, the self -defense force can be deployed to actually, you know, support and
fight back against, you don’t really fight back against tsunamis and tornadoes and storms and stuff.
But in this case, you would actually, you could legally justify it by saying that Godzilla is an
act of nature. But the fact that they had that kind of conversation defining the legalities of this
completely irrelevant situation shows how seriously they take the actual issues of legality, which again
is one of the reasons why Japan is at this moment a better country than America.
Train delays happen in Japan all the time. It’s very frustrating. I actually had the
trains on the route I take to go into work reduced, which is very frustrating because sometimes I have
late shifts and then they’ve actually, some of the routes, they only have two trains an hour.
And it’s just, it’s just killing me because I either have to show up super early or just on time.
And I don’t like that. I like to have a little buffer, but of course I don’t want to go in 30 minutes,
40 minutes early just because it’s the only way I can ensure I catch a train.
Train delays though are usually storms, weather. The trains do stop a lot. Like you get heavy rain
and the trains will stop. It’s very frustrating. 7 .30 at night, a 56 year old man was frustrated.
A 56 year old. Again, we hit this number. All these stories, it’s 50 year old dudes. 50 year old
dudes are losing it. I’m in my 50s and I’m thinking, I’m waiting for the day. I just lose it. And I think
my behavior is okay. And I’m just doing something absolutely insane. And then I have to sit down at this
desk and then do a story about myself. That would be super interesting. Like talking about
how I did something because I’m an insane 50 year old man. He was frustrated that the train was delayed
and to express his frustration, he didn’t, you know, send a message because that’s not going to do
anything. He didn’t do a protest or anything. He did what any sensible person would do. He took an
exacto knife and started slashing the chair he was sitting on because damaging the chair is of course
going to make the train go faster and get you home on time. He was arrested and then stated,
I’ve done it 50 to 60 times. Now, Ninja News Japan, very famous for giving criminals advice. But if you
are arrested by the police on a charge of one thing, do not then turn around to the police and
start bragging about how many more times you’ve done this. Because it turns out there have been 300
incidences of chairs being slashed on the train, the seats of the train being slashed. So this guy
just claimed that he alone has committed 17 % of all the vandalisms on trains when it comes to seat
slashing. Because he admitted it, they’re going to take that as fact. Like maybe he’s exaggerated the
number, maybe not. We don’t know. But at the end of the day, the police will be like, well,
you’ve admitted to 50 to 60. So let’s take you with the low number 50. And now you’re going to get 50
charges instead of one. Keep your mouth shut. But this is again, sort of the issue with these 50
year old dudes is they’re never, they think anything they say is okay. They’ve just got this mindset
that what they can do no wrong. So they’re always running their mouth and saying stuff they shouldn’t
say and getting themselves in more trouble. And I think we need collars on every 50 year old man in
the world that we can just start zapping them when they sort of get out of hand.
So there’s a 12 year old kid, and he’s hanging out. And he is a mutual friend who is also friends with
a 22 year old member of the Marine Self -Defense Force. He works on a submarine. And he tells this
acquaintance, hey, you can park your motorcycle here. And then the motorcycle gets removed by the police
because you’re not allowed to park it there. So at two, between 1 .30 and two in the morning, the 22 year old
Marine Self -Defense man goes to the kid and says, I want you to go to an ATM and get 300 ,000 yen out.
That’s like a month’s salary. Get 300 ,000 yen out and give it to me as sort of compensation for the
motorcycle being taken. Not his motorcycle, by the way, this other person’s motorcycle. And then I had
this weird thought when I was reading it, like, what is this kid, 12 year old kid doing out at 1 .30 in the
morning in a park, having an altercation with an adult? Like, he should be at home in bed and not out at 1 .30
in the morning. There seems to be some parenting issues going on. But the kid doesn’t seem to have
actually done anything wrong. He was just, he said something and that something turned out to not be true.
I think that’s still on the adults in the picture. The guy who has the motorcycle clearly is old enough
to have a driving license. This guy’s 22 years old. They’re technically adults, even though they’re
clearly not acting like adults. So he says to the kid, give me 300 ,000 yen. Also, my boss is a Yakuza.
So if you tell the police about this, we will burn down your house and kill your parents. So that’s
very threatening. The kid does a very sensible thing. He goes to his dad and says, hey, this guy
says I need to give him 300 ,000 yen or he’ll burn down our house because he’s a Yakuza. So the dad does
the very sensible thing of calling the police and the man’s arrested. When the man was arrested,
he said, I don’t remember clearly, but I think I did say something threatening, which again, my man,
dude, don’t say that. Go like, I’ve never spoken to this kid. I’ve never said any threatening to this
kid. There’s no record of what you did and didn’t say. So don’t admit you said something threatening.
Just say, oh no, he must’ve misinterpreted what I was saying. He’s a little kid. He’s out at one
o ‘clock in the morning. Maybe we could like turn the, uh, reframe it that way. Like, why is this kid out
here? And maybe I’m going to get off when I get charged with my 50 year old crime. I think I’m
going to be able to get off by just not saying any of the things I’ve learned that these guys have
said. He absolutely thought he was the main character. He absolutely thought he could just
say whatever you want and get away with it. He thought he could get a 12 year old to give him
300 ,000 yen. There’s a very good chance that 12 year olds don’t have 300 ,000 yen. They might not even
have a bank account yet. Uh, you get like Christmas money and stuff, but he might be one of those kids
who just spends it and doesn’t have a penny to his name. I don’t know what you’re thinking.
A 17 year old girl posted on social media saying she was looking for papakatsu. Papakatsu
is the, I was about to say Japanese tradition. It’s not. It’s when it’s, it’s called compensated
dating. It’s like, I’m old, creepy man and I pay a young woman money and she will go on a date with
me. And that date does include certain expectations is maybe the nicest way to say it of what will
happen. This girl posted, you give me a hundred thousand yen. We’ll go to a hotel together.
And I think again, the implications there are all you need to know. That is papakatsu.
This 36 year old guy says, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s meet and then do things. And then they did
and they met and they did things. Uh, but then he didn’t pay the money, which puts the woman,
the girl puts the girl in a weird situation because she’s had the transactional part, but she hasn’t
actually gotten paid for her services. So she goes to the police and tells them I was not paid
by this man. Uh, the man was arrested. He admitted to it violating the child prostitution law. Uh, but
then there was no mention of what happened to the girl. And I’m assuming because she’s underage,
she was not punished at all. Maybe warned. Maybe they told her parents, maybe something like that.
But 17 is like almost an adult. So it’s weird for her to get away with it. So I actually,
I kind of want to know, like, I don’t know what I think should happen here.
Like, should the girl be punished? Maybe that’s something for the listeners. So send in,
do you believe there should be punishment for the girl? Maybe counseling. All the girls who do this
seem to be just in it for the money. They, they, they don’t actually care about the relationships.
They just want money and they find this is the easiest way to get money. Yeah. Re -educated. So
counseling therapy. I agree. I don’t think she should be like punished, punished, but I think
there is a big problem there. And this is a really common phenomenon in Japan. Compensated dating is a
really common thing. And it actually, again, takes people down some really sort of dark alleys of life.
And if we could turn that around, that would be really beneficial.
Money really is tight, even for kids.
Okay. So that’s off topic before I start this story. Uh, it is, and it isn’t. The thing is they
primarily do this to buy luxury goods. And in this story, I didn’t actually mention it,
but she said she wanted the money to go to underground idol concerts. So she wanted to
basically support bands that she liked. So she would go to the concert, pay for the concert,
and then buying goods supports the band. And this is why she was doing this compensated
dating. Yeah. So like you want a new phone, you want a bag. I mean, a lot of this is about fashion
stuff. You want clothes, you go on compensated dating. They do again, like the guys, I don’t
know if she’s actually going to get a hundred thousand yen, but they agree to that kind of
number. What happened to part time? Uh, again, these kids that, how much money are you going to make
it a part -time job at, uh, at seven 11, let’s say it’s not going to be a hundred thousand yen
in a two hour period. It’s that kind of problem because the money’s there and the creepy old men
are there and they’re the ones who have money. I mean, that’s actually, I think the scariest part
is the creepy old dudes who have money. Speaking of creepy old dudes, stalking cases have been a
record high in 2025 and 2000, they introduced the anti -stalking laws in Japan. So before that,
before 2000, if you had a stalker, there was no law actually saying that was a problem,
but they’ve actually found it was a problem. It was growing. So they created this law in
two, 2024, there were 205 cases in 2025. There were 1 ,546 cases. Uh, tasers would be illegal.
That’s actually one of the problems. And so this, this massive increase in stalking cases is actually
showing, uh, mace. I believe there’s basically anything that’s designed to hurt another person
has significant legal restrictions in Japan. I can’t tell you the law off the top of my head.
I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to walk around with mace. You’re not really supposed to walk around
with anything that dangerous to other people. A couple of times I’ve said on the show, you’re not
allowed to walk around with a knife unless you have a purpose. So if I have a knife with me for,
let’s say, uh, fish gutting, I would have to be going fishing or going to a restaurant to gut fish
to be legally allowed to carry that knife. If I just had a knife in my bag, that’s illegal. So
self -protection in Japan, isn’t a good enough reason to carry any sort of offensive weapon.
I’m a little torn on that one too. Cause I do think women need like me. I think mace, pepper spray,
women should be allowed to carry that. I think maybe let’s say men can’t, but I don’t know. Is that,
is that okay? Is that enough? It’s the creepy men I’m worried about having done this show for as long
as I have now, I’m more worried about creepy men than I am about anyone else. Uh, so my question
for the stalking increase is, so if it went from 200 to 1500, it’s a massive, massive increase,
like multiples, exponential increase. Is it, are there more stalkers or is it people are more comfortable
reporting stalkers? And I actually think it was a combination. I bet because of social media
and the way people can form parasocial relationships with people and they think they know each other,
they are, there is probably more stalking cases and technology is making it easier to stalk people.
But also I think because the anti -stalking laws are now getting more media attention,
people are more comfortable going to the police and, you know, trying to get people to stop stalking
them. Uh, illegal entries into home, which is connected to anti -stalking laws, went from 428 to 2 ,171.
Restraining orders top 3000 for the first time, uh, last year they went, or 2024, there were 622,
2025, there were 3037. So again, I think this is a combination of it’s happening more, but people
are also fighting back more, which is good. And not using the legal system this way is the way it’s
supposed to be used. In 2024, oh, this is totally unrelated. It was just another number that threw out
there. In 2024, they introduced a law that you’re not allowed to ride your bicycle drunk.
23 licenses were suspended for cycling drunk. And in 2025, it was 1507. I recently got a bicycle and I’m
going to be very careful about not drinking and riding my bicycle. And also I’m going to do my best
not to stalk anybody. It’s my resolution for 2026. A sweet potato van was driving with a sweet potato van
driver. Uh, and what a sweet potato van is, is a van. It’s like a food truck in the back has a thing
that cooks the sweet potatoes. So you can basically, they drive around towns really slowly and they play
a song. It’s like, Hey, come out and buy your sweet potato. Come out and buy. I don’t know what the song
is. Uh, I was just going to do a sweet potato song for you a little bit, but it’s just going to get
worse. So they drive around town. There’s a little jingly bell. Come out, buy your sweet potatoes,
come get some sweet potatoes. People come out, truck stops and they get the sweet potato. It’s
nice and hot because it’s being cooked in the back. They’ll have like a festival. They’ll stop at the
festival, cook the sweet potatoes right in front of you. Great sweet potatoes. Everyone loves a sweet
potato. They’re sweet. Unfortunately, that means there’s like a heating element in the back of the
truck. And this sweet potato truck was driving around and the back caught on fire. Now it was,
it seemed like it started on the highway. So I’m actually wondering if the wind increased the heat
and started the fire. And then because they were driving, the fire picked up. We have amazing video
of this sweet potato truck barreling through the city because the driver was like, well,
I got to do something. I can’t just like let my sweet potato van burn. And he drove as fast as he
could to the nearest fire station. And in that fire station, he was able to park the firemen. Hey,
this is what we do. They came out to put the fire right away. Now the back of the truck is actually
ruined and all the sweet potatoes are gone, but no one got hurt. So I’m trying to decide if that was
the right thing to do. The fire department said, what you have to do is pull over, get out of the
van and try to make sure everything’s safe. But if you’re in a city and that fire somehow spreads to
the houses, you can actually start like a multiple house fire. So did he do the right thing? Did he do
the wrong thing? I don’t know. So there’s now two questions I would like listeners to respond to.
And this one is, do you think the sweet potato driver did the right thing? Driving the van on fire,
massive flames to the fire station, or should he have pulled off and then called emergency services
and have them come to him?