(Electronic music)
We have some education updates.
Yay.
The government has asked boards of
education to make revisions to their rules.
Now they have a thing in Japan
called black rules and black companies.
Black companies, basically a black company,
this is where it sort of originated,
the terminology it came from, is a
company that you know abuses its staff
and tries to cheat you out of money.
And it does all the bad things.
It’s a bad company.
So they’ve employed that
terminology for other things
and so they have the black rules.
Now we’ve done several stories.
There was the rule that
some high schools had
that part of the
uniforms that you had to
wear, white underwear,
which brought up the,
basically human rights issue or
privacy issue of, how do you check?
There was a school a little while ago who
basically got sued because when this girl
was in high school, the school said, you’re
not allowed to date, she started dating,
and instead of sort of dealing with
that, the court said like you have a right
as a board of education
to say kids can’t date,
but instead of sort of dealing with it, you
forced the kid to stop coming to school,
that sort of beyond
your educational purview.
Then there was the girl
with naturally brown hair
and the school rule is that
you have to have black hair
so it made her dye her hair black
and it actually did damage
to her hair and her scalp.
She sued the school board.
The government has said, please review your
school rules so you’re not being dicks.
Now they phrased it slightly differently,
but that is basically what they’re saying.
Please review your school rules.
84% of education boards are
reviewing the rules on white underwear.
The government asks boards
to make revisions themselves,
but that means the government
isn’t making them make revisions
and they’re not putting up national
standards of what appropriate rules are,
which leaves a percentage
of schools that are not.
So that’s actually, so
84% are specifically looking
at the white underwear
rule, how it’s been enforced,
hasn’t been enforced, maybe
we should just get rid of that rule.
I actually suggested when
I first talked about this,
very simple change to the
rule would be, don’t check.
So basically you make
the rule if I as a teacher
can see your underwear somehow
through your uniform, it’s inappropriate.
So therefore if I can’t
see it, it’s not a problem,
which is actually how underwear works.
And that solves the problem because
basically I can say as a teacher,
look, I could see the students underwear,
maybe I could see it through the uniform
or I could see like bits were sticking
up or something, I could see it, it’s bad.
But if I can’t see it, I
don’t know what color it is,
I assume therefore it’s
a hearing to all the rules.
That still leaves a percentage
of schools that are not,
because the government has
not made this anyway enforceable,
it’s just a recommendation.
This has meant there are
certain percentage of schools
that are not going to
check or revise the rules,
which means in a weird way,
good for an English-nus Japan,
’cause year from now we’re
gonna get another story
about some kids sitting at school for
something that is honestly quite stupid.
But that’s just what keeps me going.
That’s terrible, I don’t wanna, I
actually, in a weird way, like news.
So this is all, it’s not news parody show,
but it’s like I do light news for fun.
It would be really nice if I
could struggle to find the news,
and then I would have to shut down the show
because the world is
so perfect, but of course,
as never gonna happen, people
are always gonna be weird.
(Upbeat music)
Speaking of weird, you
might remember the guy,
he was a teacher, this is
sort of education related
which why stuck these two together.
It’s also an update.
You might remember the
guy who was a teacher,
he went into a convenience
store, he had a bought a condom.
I don’t know why it’s weird
buying them individuals weird.
He said to the staff, I
would certainly enjoy
a touch of masturbation
right now, sort of in the mood.
Can I use your toilet?
Staff said no, apparently this
wasn’t the first time he did it.
But what is the fallout from that?
So he was basically
booted out of the
store, they called the
police and were like,
you can’t come in here
and ask to masturbate,
there’s something
wrong about that.
He was fired.
So there was nothing
really to arrest him for
because all he did was make a
request and that request was refused.
So he therefore had to leave.
But this attitude, this pervasive attitude,
this sort of way of living your life,
didn’t mesh with the
education board in Japan
and the school board found
out because it was national news.
Guy lost his job.
I mean, yes, I think it’s okay.
I don’t think this is the kind of person
who should be working with kids anyways.
Although at the same time, I don’t want,
god, should I be, should I
be like defending this guy?
No, absolutely not.
He wasn’t abusive.
He just asked a question and
then was told no and that was it.
You could argue that that’s not so bad.
Asking and then having someone refuse and
then you actually accepting the refusal,
in a weird way is how
it’s supposed to work.
But I feel dirty saying that.
Like I actually feel dirty saying that,
’cause it’s not, in this case,
I guess it’s not okay to ask.
That’s the problem.
The asking is the problem.
‘Cause I think maybe the
asking has an implication within it
and then you also as the staff member
know what’s going on in the bathroom.
So maybe that’s it.
It took me a moment to get there, sorry.
Yes, okay, I think the problem isn’t
that he asked and was refused
and then it sort of behaved
appropriately by leaving and not doing it.
The problem is the asking in itself
has an inherent implication, which is not.
It’s don’t do that.
Okay, yeah, I think we’re
on the same page now.
I don’t know why it took
me that long to get there.
I think it was hard for me to.
To lose a date to express
coherently why this was wrong.
But it’s because it’s not just asking.
It’s asking and putting an imposition on
another person and that’s why it was fired.
(Phone ringing)
So Japan has come up with its
new sort of self-defense thing.
It talks about that last time.
Sorry, everything on my desk has changed.
I’m moving everything around.
So I’m trying to find a
place to put my notes
so they’re still in front of me
without hitting the microphone
’cause that’s been a problem lately.
We had the conversation a little while ago,
Japan is talking about
increasing self-defense
and this is basically
we wanna have missiles
that can shoot other
stuff out of the sky
if it comes into Japanese airspace.
But then if someone shoots a missile,
someone shoots a missile towards Japan,
we should be able to not
only shoot up down that missile
but also the place it came from,
that still counts as self-defense.
And a lot of people are like, whoa,
that is very aggressive self-defense
you have going on there.
And we all know exactly
who we’re talking about.
The way they wanna pay
for this is through corporation,
taxation and taxes on cigarettes.
It’s going to double military spending.
Apple Japan was just hit
with 14 billion yen in back taxes
which is essentially
now 100% military funding.
I wouldn’t do it if anyone
was ’cause I edit all this, okay?
So all this like dumb shit i’m
doing right now, I get to edit it out.
And I’m wondering if people
like who watch the YouTube
which is still only like four people.
People watch the YouTube if they’re like,
the editing must be insane
’cause it’s me sitting talking
and then just big cuts and
then me sitting with a dog
on my lap, oh he’s very warm though.
It’s quite nice.
You’re gonna try to
keep him here for a bit.
It means I have to look down at my
desk so I can’t hold my notes anymore.
No dude, just stay still.
Okay, where are we?
That 14 billion yen in back taxes,
I gotta set this up somewhere.
This is the next step is
to put my notes somewhere
like where they’re standing
up so I can just look at them.
Newsreaders put it like
it’s sitting under the camera
so when they read does that,
mm-hmm, mm-hmm, like that.
That’s actually what I need to do.
I was looking at teleprompter
programs like just go to the studio note
but then I just think put it in a
point form and just do it that way.
I still might try that.
But I read all my notes.
That’s all just written out by hands.
(Sighs)
I kinda wanna start again but
we’ve already done 12 minutes
and the editing is gonna be a nightmare.
Actually maybe that’s
why I should just start again.
Nah, let me keep going.
I like the power through.
The 14 billion yen in back taxes is
based on the improper duty free sales
of iPhones to foreign tourists.
So basically tourists were coming to Japan.
They were buying an iPhone
but they were not paying taxes
on it because foreign
people don’t have to pay taxes
but this is not, maybe
the way they were selling it
wasn’t appropriate so it wasn’t
supposed to be sold that way.
So they have to pay that back
taxes, they have to pay the back taxes.
The back taxes then
now will go to self-defense.
The self-defense being
the ability to attack facilities
in other countries which is really scary.
But then of course everyone
knows, including north Korea,
knows who we’re talking
about as north Korea.
North Korea of course could not let
this stand and had to make statements.
Now one of my favorite things is the
way north Korea phrases statements.
I don’t know how good, the
translations must be good.
I don’t know how good they
are but they’re always awesome.
So this is the North Korean government
government foreign
ministry made this statement.
Japan’s foolish attempt to
satiate its black-hearted greed,
the building up of its
military invasion capability
under the pretext of
north Korea’s legitimate
exercise of the
right to self-defense
cannot be justified and tolerated.
I love that because, okay,
Japan is getting all antsy
because north Korea keeps shooting
its missiles over and around Japan.
And so if they would stop, Japan actually
probably wouldn’t be doing this military
strike capability thing.
North Korea is using
the exact same argument.
We’re not attacking anyone.
We’re exercising our right to self-defense.
Whereas Japan’s saying
the exact same thing.
We’re exercising our right to self-defense.
But it’s one of these things,
these dictatorships and stuff.
They say literally the
opposite of what we’re doing.
Missiles shooting over
countries is not self-defense.
And I actually think that
missiles being able to hit places
that shoot missiles isn’t
really self-defense either.
It’s a pretty extreme
version of the definition.
North Korea continues.
Our country will continue
to take actions to show
how much we are concerned and displeased
with Japan’s unjust greedy attempt
to realize its wild ambitions.
Even just the way they say it,
it’s very poetic, I quite like that.
The other threat at the moment, I mean,
sorry, Dave’s making little happy noises.
China had to weigh in as well.
And the Chinese foreign
ministry spokesperson said,
“the hyping up of the
so-called China threat,
China has been flying
airplanes into Japanese airspace,
bringing boats in around the islands up
north, doing all the things you would do
if you’re going to
threaten another country.”
Hyping up the so-called China threat
to find an excuse for Japan’s
military buildup is doomed to fail.
So really, yes, I’m not
happy about any of this.
I’m not happy about this
because I don’t like to see
military buildup because military buildup
does mean that eventually
someone wants to pull a trigger
and that’s not cool, but
the saber rattling statements
from countries and the disingenuous nature
of all those statements
is always entertaining.
We talked about a politician.
He was a youtuber and he
left Japan to go to live in Dubai
where he could still YouTube.
And what he does is he
exposes celebrity scandals.
He says if he comes back to
Japan, he’s going to be arrested.
So he’s not coming back to Japan,
but he decided to run for
government from Dubai on the Internet.
And he won.
So officially, this guy named
gassi is a Japanese politician,
but he does not live in Japan.
Gassi has been asked to come
back for voluntary question,
sorry, gassi has been
asked to come back to Japan
for voluntary questioning for
inflammatory posts, which is also slander.
A slander is illegal in Japan.
So basically they’re saying you come back
for voluntary questioning
and deal with these sort of like
things you’ve been posting on the Internet.
Whereas he’s saying if I come back,
they’re absolutely going to arrest me.
So it’s not in my best
interest to come back.
Since he’s been elected
to the government,
some celebrities have
submitted complaints,
claiming slurs and extortion.
So there’s actually the
secondary complaint that maybe
he’s been like blackmailing people.
If you pay me money, I won’t
publish this YouTube video.
But it seems like gassi is on the edge
of not being in the government anymore,
because sooner or later he’s
either going to have to come back
and deal with this stuff, or
they’re just going to boot him out.
(Phone ringing)
All right, we got some
work related issues in Japan.
Get my notes, I’m holding a dog
and trying to get my notes together.
There was a man who was, he
said he was exhausted from work
and he didn’t want to
come into work anymore.
So at 1.20 A.M., he called the police.
He’s been stabbed and he’s like, oh
god, I’ve been stabbed in the back.
I can’t go to work anymore.
When the police checked video
cameras that were in the area,
what they saw was, there
was no one else around him.
He had just been magically stabbed.
He was really stabbed, magically
stabbed in the back by himself.
And what he did was he
put a knife up against a wall
and walked back into it really
hard to stab himself in the back.
And he did this because he
didn’t want to go to work anymore.
He said he was exhausted from work.
So he stabbed himself in the back.
Now honestly, the
extremity of what he’s doing,
I would say yes, he really
shouldn’t have to go back
to work anymore because
he’s clearly actually exhausted.
They didn’t say what he does.
I really want to know what job
has made this man so exhausted
that he actually thought
faking his own attempted murder
was the best solution to the problem.
But the result is that he’s actually been
charged with interfering with police duties
because he’s basically filed a false
report and had taken up the police’s time
for a murder that never actually existed.
But he should take some
lessons from the next two guys
we’re gonna talk about
who found ways to
sort of alleviate the
stress of work at work.
And nagoya civil servant has been suspended
for surfing adult sites
while earning overtime.
So he claims he did it for relief.
Which if we’re being honest, is the number
one reason why you would surf adult sites?
You do it for relief.
He apparently spent, so computers and
government agencies are well monitored.
He spent 114 hours of
non-work related sites.
Now that’s not all porn.
58 of those hours were on adult sites
and eight hours of those were overtime.
So basically he was staying late at work
and looking at porn on the
work computer in his office.
And seemed to, so it’s bad to
look at non-work related sites.
But I think everyone does it.
I certainly do a lot of reading to keep
myself sort of aware of what’s going on.
I do a lot of news and stuff.
I probably could get away
with saying it was work related
but then I would have to stop.
These are going to be working for
the government, very different thing.
So non-work related sites would be pretty
obvious if you work for the government.
But then the porn sites
are going to be obvious.
The eight hours of overtime though,
like staying late in the office
when everyone else leaves
and then looking at porn
on your office computer,
that is being monitors
because they all are.
Like let’s just be really clear.
Government computers
are all monitored all the time.
It’s actually amazing.
I guess it’s not because they weren’t
really looking for him specifically.
So once he got past the hundred
hour Mark of just surfing the Internet,
yeah, then it would be problematic
and it maybe would show up.
‘Cause you could also claim, like I could
walk away from my computer and leave it on
and claim that someone
else was looking at stuff
from my computer, so
maybe they would need also
to collect enough evidence
to make sure it was me.
So something to be aware of.
But you know, he was getting relief at work
so he didn’t try to fake his own
attempted murder so he’d get out of work.
But then we have our final guy.
A Yokohama government
employee has been disciplined
for spending 275 hours playing
games at work on a work computer.
So this is a 50 year old section chief
and he said, when he got in trouble,
he said, “I started
playing games to freshen
up as I thought it
would be okay to do so
for a little bit as it
didn’t affect my work.”
Between December 2021 and
August 2022, he played for 150 days.
Now that’s not 150 actual days.
There were 150 days he played.
But he played for 30
minutes to three hours a day.
And what actually, so it was
like, how did you get caught?
So like was this a, was this monitored?
Again, like the other guy
was the computer monitored.
This is important to keep
your coworkers happy.
So you may think like, I hate my coworkers,
I hate them all, I don’t
wanna like make anyone happy.
It’s important to keep
them happy to a degree
because another employee
actually reported this section chief.
I had heard the clicking sound too
many times, which I thought was unnatural.
When I observed him, he was playing games.
I’m betting he was playing sort of
the standard like solitaire mind sweeper.
The games that are already installed on
pretty much every computer by default.
So this man, he was caught playing games.
What is the punishment?
So he’s not actually getting fired.
What he’s gonna get is a
10% pay cut for five months.
Now I would like to work
out how much was he paid
for the 30 minutes to three
hours a day for 150 days
that he was actually playing
games instead of working?
Does that work out to
an equivalency of the 10%
pay cut for five months?
I bet it’s pretty close.
So basically the government is just saying,
okay, you’re gonna work exactly the same.
I assume you’re not
gonna play games anymore.
Therefore we make our money back and
you’ve learned not to play games anymore.
Which I think is a pretty fair punishment.
I mean, I think Japan
for whatever fault it has
as a culture, most of the
punishments are pretty fair.
It tends to be a lot
softer than other countries.
But again, should you lose your
job for playing games at work?
Probably not.
Honestly, he was ticking
around ’cause he’s 50.
I’m 50.
He’s ticking around ’cause he
probably doesn’t want to work anymore.
Like that other guy, man,
he’s just exhausted from work.
He just needs a break.
But yeah, three hours a day is a lot.
So what we have learned though
is if you’re gonna get a job in Japan,
especially working for the government,
just remember, government
computers tend to be monitored
almost more than anything else.
So just be careful with your
non-work related porn viewing.
Certainly don’t do it as overtime.
Your non-work related web searches
and your non-work related game play.
(Upbeat music)
(Upbeat music).