(upbeat music)
Kaiten Sushi.
It’s really big in Japan.
It’s big deal.
People love it.
You sit your table.
There’s a little conveyor
belt that goes by.
Sushi’s on it.
You like the Sushi.
Take it off.
Eat it.
Feel good.
Everyone’s happy.
Couple viral videos though.
May have ruined that for everyone.
So in the viral video,
it was a young man, of course.
And he would lick his finger.
And then he would
touch some of the Sushi
that went by, which
meant someone else
who takes it off and eats it, is
of course, ingesting his saliva.
But it didn’t stop there.
There were the bottles of soy sauce.
and a young man licked the end of that.
So anyone who went to that table afterwards
would be using soy sauce
that had been contaminated
with the saliva of the previous young man.
And then there’s the little.
cup.
It’s covered.
And you take off the cover
and there’s a little spoon
and it’s the green tea and you put that in.
You put in some hot water.
You have some nice green tea.
The boy took the spoon from that
and then licked it and then put it back in.
So it’s just young men being gross.
Three incidences of young men
being really gross at Kai-ten Sushi.
They videoed themselves.
They videoed themselves
and then put that online.
This is massive outcry in Japan.
And the problem is people think it’s gross.
Now in Japan, when
people think stuff is gross,
they’ll stop coming to your restaurant.
The company, the main company is Sushi-toe.
And what they wanna do is,
it’s not what they wanna do.
The main company is Sushi-toe.
They have contacted the police.
They want to proceed with
criminal and civil charges.
‘Cause this is obstruction of business.
So put a little ding up there for
another obstruction of business.
It’s sort of endangering other people.
‘Cause if you have
coronavirus or anything else,
’cause it’s obviously people’s mind.
If I lick my finger and touch the Sushi,
if I have a disease, I’m
giving you that disease.
So that’s kind of the problem.
Now, the interesting fallout for this.
is there was a 5% drop in
market value of Sushi-toe stock.
Now it’d be interesting,
of course, it’s a giant chain.
So there’s one near my
house, there’s one near my work.
Like everywhere I go, I could
probably find a Sushi-toe.
A 5% market drop for
Sushi-toe is 12 billion yen.
Chinese news outlets are
actually reporting this story
and then people are
canceling their trips to Japan.
So tourism is being
affected by some, I
know he’s underage
because of something
that comes a little later.
Some underage, like basically a teenager,
being gross and stupid.
But when it affects your stocks,
when it affects national tourism,
you know you got a big issue.
So Sushi-toe contacted
the police, they
have security camera,
they found the kid.
Now, I know it’s a kid because
they received a direct apology
from the customer and this guardian.
So you know if they’re
talking to the guardian,
it’s not an adult, they’re not
responsible for themselves.
The company plans to continue with criminal
in this civil case.
So here’s the thing,
imagine you’re that kid’s mom
and that this company,
this nationally famous chain
has showed up at your door and said,
“Your kid licked some Sushi,
it has cost us 12 billion yen.
What are you gonna do?”
‘Cause the mom can
apologize, the kid can apologize.
I can pretty much promise you
that kid’s not gonna do this again.
But at the same time,
Sushi-toe could ruin this family forever.
Like that’s it, it could just
be like gone, you’re done.
They could take all the money you
ever have and will make for themselves.
It’s just that simple.
Now there’s also, hama Sushi,
which is a competing Kaiten Sushi chain.
They called the police,
’cause a customer
was videoed taking
Sushi off the thing
that had no wasabi
in it and putting wasabi
in it and putting it
back on the thing.
So when the people got it,
they got Sushi with wasabi
that was not supposed to have wasabi.
It’s spicy, so it’s a little
prank, but then again,
I don’t know how common
wasabi allergies are,
but I have no significant
allergies other than, you know,
like seasonal allergies
and I just take some drugs
and I’m fine, none
of its life threatening,
but you know people
with peanut allergies
and people with other food allergies,
like this is stuff that kills you.
So this other kid, he’s basically
on the hook for attempted murder.
I know they’re not actually
gonna charge him with that,
but that is kind of the severity of
the thing that’s actually happening.
So, the problem, okay, I hate doing this,
I do this every time and I gotta stop.
It’s weird instinct, but budding criminals,
you have to stop videoing yourself.
I understand that the clout
is what people wanna go for.
The sort of notoriety
is what you want,
but what you’re doing
is committing crimes
and if you video yourself committing
crimes and put it on the Internet,
this is how they get attention
and once they get attention,
you’re screwed, you got
nothing left ’cause there’s proof.
They already got
this kid because of
security cameras,
but videoing it yourself,
put it out there.
Jade has just posted
in, look, criminals
being dumb as how
the police system works.
In Japan, 100% yes.
I would actually say investigators in Japan
probably do less work than
any other country I can see
because half the time
people turn themselves in,
the other half they video themselves
doing it and post it on the Internet.
These guys basically
just have to surf the net,
go what’s trending, which
crime is trending today?
And then they just
go like, oh, let’s find
out where that guy
lives and go arrest him.
So, the fallout now is they’re
going to put acrylic shields
in front of the Sushi thing,
so you can’t touch it easily.
They’re going to install more cameras,
so if you do this, you’re
more likely to get caught.
But the fallout really is,
people are already going like,
I don’t wanna go to Kaiten Sushi,
I don’t wanna go to Sushi dough
because there is
the possibility that
some dumb, gross
kid is touched my food,
which was always
a possibility, but it
came to light, it
came to the forefront.
when this became national news.
And last week, this was honestly
100% number one, national news.
(upbeat music)
You work in a prison and the
prisons aren’t very full anymore
because you know, it crimes down overall.
And people in Japan aren’t
committing, actually, no.
My last story is about how
crime is up, but different crimes.
People aren’t going to jail
as much as they used to,
maybe it’s more accurate.
So this guy, he’s like, I got
a lot of free time at work,
I don’t have to abuse prisoners.
So I’ll bring my PS Vita to work.
So the guard brings his PS Vita.
Already, weirdly okay again, being
someone who plays a lot of video games,
my first slide is PS Vita.
I mean, you don’t have a switch.
So the PS Vita
though was very popular
in Japan, because it
had a lot of functions
that honestly the switch doesn’t have.
You could download TV
to it, I actually don’t know.
My son has a switch, but I’ve
never played with it seriously.
So I don’t know what its capabilities are,
but the PS Vita,
you could download
like MP4 files to it
and you can watch TV.
So this guy, he
brings a couple games,
downloads a couple TV
shows, sits at his desk,
he’s playing some games,
he’s watching a little TV,
but of course, it’s noticeable.
He’s the guy who’s
supposed to be doing rounds.
He’s supposed to do five rounds a day.
His reasoning was, I was bored
because there were so few detainees.
He played games, he fell asleep,
he did not do his five rounds.
He watched TV saved on the console
for at least an hour, probably more.
I would assume, if I was the
boss of this prison facility,
I would assume that if I
caught one of my prison guards,
not doing his rounds watching
TV playing video games
on the clock, that he would be fired.
In Japan, gets a warning.
I was really shocked by that.
Like your literal one job is to watch,
to make sure people don’t escape.
I am playing a video game
right now with Mr. Warman’s,
called a way out where
we escape from prison.
And it was surprisingly
easy to escape from prison.
It was a couple of really simple puzzles,
had to get a screwdriver out of
the workshops, it’s stuff like that.
But if there’s two people,
I mean, I can tell you getting
out of prison is dead easy.
I’ve run the simulation
twice and success both times.
Even went on a little bit of a shooting
rampage at the end of the game.
So, prison guards got to be on the ball.
The prime minister, one of
the prime minister secretaries.
So last week we had one of
the prime minister secretaries.
Now, secretary is not like a
personal assistant kind of thing.
It’s like a serious job, ’cause
you’re like secretary of stuff.
It was his son last
week, got in trouble
for the scandal of
taking a government car
around Paris and places
and buying souvenirs and stuff.
He claimed it was for official duties.
Everyone else is
saying it was just for him.
That pales in comparison to this
dude, who is, he got to learn to shut up.
So the prime minister secretary
told reporters off the record,
he hates to see LGBT people and
would hate to have them live next to him.
So he was fired.
I mean, you want to give some
credence to the prime minister.
He was like, oh my God,
that was a dumb thing to say.
Usually in Japanese politics,
they say something stupid.
The government in power
actually backs them up and goes,
oh, he didn’t mean that or he
was taken out of context and stuff.
This was off the records.
You shouldn’t even have heard about it.
They make excuses.
I actually am gonna
give Kishita some credit
’cause he literally just
went, now you’re fired.
If Japan recognizes same sex
marriage, people will abandon the country.
It was another statement he made,
which I was like, I don’t
actually see how that’s true.
Because what are you saying?
Are you saying that people born in Japan,
if they live around or
are with LGBT plus people,
they’re gonna leave the country?
‘Cause they’re already here and
people are not leaving the country.
So that doesn’t make sense.
I struggled with what
they were actually saying.
Because basically this guy’s just saying,
I don’t like it, I think
it’s the short version.
It did bring me to a secondary story though
of some of the hypocrisy that’s
going on in Japanese courts
because Tokyo court upheld
a ban of same sex marriage.
But the same court said
that the lack of protections
for same sex families
violates human rights.
So you can see they
understand, like if you are a couple,
whether you’re a man or a
woman, a woman, a woman,
or whatever, whatever
combination you wanna put together,
you should have fundamental
basic human rights
supported for you by the
government, regardless.
But at the same time, they
like, but you can’t get married.
So I think maybe there’s some confusion
as to what these protections
actually are supposed to mean.
Because a lot of times
my view of marriage
is that it’s primarily
for taxation.
It’s representation in taxation.
You get married for love, that’s all great,
but that has nothing to
do with the government.
As far as the government’s concerned,
two people come together
and bring their finances together
that changes the taxation or
the structure of their finances
and taxes should be done differently.
It has very little to do with love
or gender or anything like that.
So my view of the
law is actually really
simple in that whether
you are cis or LGBT,
if you form a partnership,
it will affect your taxation.
Because again, laws
shouldn’t really be
concerned with gender
politics in any way.
It should be
concerned with people
and how they live
their lives and fairness.
And so that being the case, I
fully support same-sex marriage
and any sort of combinations
that are out there.
I’m like, “Hey, man, if you are happy
and your partner’s happy,
I’m actually okay with that.”.
Because what we’re
really talking about is
how you should be
taxed by the government
when you’re talking about a marriage.
Marriage ceremonies and
stuff, they’re all about love,
religious ceremonies,
I can’t comment on
if they think it’s bad,
that’s up to them,
but I would not join that religion.
So it’s really that simple.
But I’m really
happy that I got fired
because normally
they wouldn’t fire them.
Normally they try to cover it
up, normally they try to deflect.
And this time he’s just
like, “You know what?
“Now what you’re saying doesn’t
reflect my beliefs “and you’re fired.”.
(clock ticking)
I got it.
Oh, last week we talked about Luffy,
who was running a crime
ring from a detention
center in the
Philippines in Manila.
And my question was, how does
this guy who’s in the Philippines,
who, how did he
get a cell phone and
how is he running a
criminal organization
from the Philippines with
just a cell phone successfully?
Well, turns out he had six cell phones.
There were four people involved.
I think I’m giving too much
credit to the Luffy character
because his name came to the
forefront, but there were four people
and they were kind of running
this mini criminal empire.
They had six mobile
phones and police
when they went and
searched their cells,
they actually retrieved phones and laptops.
So I’m wondering how they got a
laptop in without anyone noticing,
or are the prison facilities, the
detention center facilities in Manila,
just that generous.
So I found that to be very interesting.
I would like to know
more about that system.
There seems to be the scams racked
up nearly six billion yen worth of money.
So we’re talking about home
invasions, we’re talking about scams,
we’re talking about just
stealing money from people.
It’s insane.
One of four of the guys
may not be deported to Japan.
So this week and next week,
they’re trying to deport them to Japan
so they can actually answer
for their crimes in Japan.
But one guy, because he committed
assault, is on trial for the assault
and when you’re on trial in the
Philippines, you can’t be deported.
You actually have to stay
there and go through your trial.
After his trial, he’ll probably have
to serve some kind of punishment.
After that punishment, he
could be deported to Japan
to be put on trial again for
the crime scenes committed
while he was in detention
in the Philippines.
It’s incredibly complicated.
It’s insane that it’s actually
happening, but there you go.
I will keep you updated.
I’m really interested in what
happens when he gets to Japan,
when the sort of the main dudes
get to Japan and they go on trial.
I would love to have more details
about how they were organizing it.
It’s how they organized it.
So I understand the crimes.
Home invasions, in this
case, were quite simple.
We show up, we pretend
you have a package,
you open the door,
they kick in the door.
Maybe they beat up the person, but
they just want to steal some money.
Ski wise, not that
sophisticated, but at
the same time, simplicity
and effectiveness
often go together.
But how did he organize it?
It must have just been
through social media
and stuff, but how
do you organize it?
How do you get people to do it?
How does he collect his profits?
If I’m the criminal
who’s kicked in the
door and gotten,
let’s say, a million yen
from that household somehow,
what motivation do I have
to actually send him his cut?
Is a really interesting question.
There’s a lot of those
details I would really like
to know about because it’s the machinations
of the machine they’ve
created that I really want
to hear about because it’s fascinating
that this was as successful as it
was for as long as it was from, again,
a detention center in another country.
makes it just almost mind blowing.
The first time, so
this actually relates
to my verbal gaff sort
of at the beginning.
For the first time in 20 years, in 2022,
it’s the last year, nine as
2023, when we’re recording this,
crime increased in Japan.
This is primarily an increase in
street crime, but it’s up 5.9% from 2021.
Now that sounds like crime has shot up.
over the last year, which
is not the actual case
because every single
year since the end of
World War II, which
is when they recorded,
it started recording crime stats like this.
The number has gone down every single year.
So this is just a tiny self correction
because you had coronavirus
actually put everyone away,
crime decreased
significantly during that time
because during that time,
people just weren’t out and about
and it was harder to commit street crimes.
Primarily, now people are
out back on the street again.
Street crime is more possible,
more than anything else.
Again, opportunity is a big part of crime.
So this is up 5.9%
from 2021, but we’re
talking about a decline
every single year
for the last 70 years.
So it’s just a little blip
upwards, comparatively speaking.
So I don’t think people should freak out.
There’s a lot of very serious crimes
that you wanna talk about,
but I was very interested.
Bicycle theft is up 14.4%.
So if you ride a bicycle, the bicycle
is a very common way of transporting
yourself around Japan.
If you use a bicycle,
the last year was a lot,
but not surprisingly,
the ransomware, cyber
attacks, that kind
of stuff, up 57.4%.
Because criminals may be
are shifting from street crime
to cyber crime because
it’s probably more profitable.
It takes less investment.
There’s actually
probably less risk at first.
As long as you can
cover your tracks, it’s
very hard for people
to actually find you.
90% of the crimes we talk
about in Indonesia, Japan,
the people get caught,
it’s surveillance cameras,
see them, follow them to the train station,
they take the train home, the
surveillance, you now know where they lived
and they please just
show up at their house.
So again, I’m not talking
about like deep detective work,
like Jade said earlier,
these guys are one step away
from turning themselves in
if you do a crime in person.
So cyber crime,
computer crime makes
a lot more sense in
the current situation.
When talking about
real life dumb ass crimes,
we have a man who was
walking around a supermarket.
and he walked out and
he didn’t buy anything.
He got really frustrated.
So he kicked a glass door
and the glass door shattered.
And when he was a red, the
police, so the staff called the police,
Mandra calls the police
and the police show up
and they’re like, “Hey,
what are you doing?”
He goes, “I was really frustrated
that there was nothing here
that I wanted to buy so I kicked
the door and shattered the door.”
That is obstruction of business.
And he’s going to be arrested for that.
I don’t think too much is gonna happen,
but I don’t know,
again, you didn’t wanna
buy anything so
you kicked the door?
Like what level of
frustration are you feeling?
How badly did you wanna buy something?
Clearly just dumb ass.
(clock ticking)
Which takes us into our last story
which was sort of pretty interesting.
They do surveys about like
consumption habits and sales
and this is all important to the government
because it all talks about GDP.
One of the most recent,
I think last week again
on the news Japan, I talked
about how 50% of Japan’s GDP
is basically just consumption.
It’s just people buying stuff.
Like it’s huge.
It’s really important that
people keep the economy going.
People under 35, their
propensity to consume is weak,
which is really bad for Japan as a country.
‘Cause again, Japan’s
economy survives on
the fact that the
money is moving around.
But why are, this is under 35,
so it’s technically younger people.
I would say mostly people in their 20s.
Why are these people in
their 20s not spending money?
I would go ahead
and guess most of
them aren’t making a
lot of money to spend.
Everything just went up 4%.
And again, I’ve talked a couple times about
my electricity prices
doubled compared to last year.
I, not as a young person,
but I am spending less money.
I am suddenly being way
more cautious with my money.
I saw a cool little figurine
that I really wanted to buy.
It was 8,000 yen.
I was like, I cannot justify
spending 8,000 yen on this figurine.
So what are these kids
doing with their money?
It’s a 20% increase of young people
saying they want to save for retirement.
This is compared to 2007 to 2009.
So they do these surveys
over a couple of years.
So basically, young people are now saying,
I have to keep money so that
when it comes time for me to retire,
I have enough money to retire.
I don’t want to be working
indefinitely in perpetuity.
because I actually want to
have at least some point in my life
where I’m not bound to a
desk or doing some kind of job.
And they’re saying
that this is the root
cause of stagnation of
the economy in Japan.
It’s actually people, young people,
being so concerned and
so worried about the future
that they’re preparing for the
future by not spending right now.
So this is part of why the
government has made a call
for an increase in the
lifetime wages of people.
Because like I said, I have a job.
It’s pretty stable.
I make the same money
I made last year, though.
So actually, my take
home earnings value-wise
has gone down 4%
because of the force,
percent increase in inflation.
Electricity in these
things have doubled
in price, which I
have no control over.
I still have to pay for electricity.
So I now have to spend money there.
I’m not spending money on something else.
That 15,000 yen, so it
went from 15 last year
in December to 30,000
this year in December.
That 15,000 yen is not
going into the economy.
I’m not buying little figurines
or toys or entertainment
or stuff to keep the economy going.
That’s going directly to the power company.
They might be building nuclear power plants
or something else to make
power cheaper in the future,
but as an older person, that’s
not really going to benefit me.
Hopefully it benefits these
young people who are saving.
But they’re seeing stuff like this happen
and they’re thinking, “I
need to hold onto my money
“so I have enough money for the future.
“and paid does not increase
significantly in Japan.”
So I’m not going to
get paid a lot of money,
so I need to hold on
to as much as I can.
That, the problem
they’re not really realizing
is that philosophy,
that core kind of thinking
is going to continue with them
throughout the entirety of their life.
They’re not going to, at 35, something go,
“Ah, you know what, I
have enough to retire.
“I’m ready to go.
“Let’s just start spending money.”
These are going to be a generation
of people who do not spend money.
And if we don’t, like, because of the way
the economy works in
Japan, if they don’t get people
to have more money, then
they cannot spend money,
and then you get into
this cycle of decrease,
where I’m not spending
money, so companies make,
maybe offer less
salary, like salaries go
down because
products are going down,
and it just keeps declining
as if, and then, of course,
I’m making less
money, so I spend less
money, and it goes
down and down and down.
It relates to a very weird different story.
I’ve always, the Chinese foreign minister,
this is about four years ago.
He was this amazing guy,
because he was just so
blunt and straightforward.
And they said, “Oh, China,
they were interviewing him,
“and they say, “China’s investing
a lot of money “in Indonesia.
“Why are you doing that?
“Like, what is the focus on Indonesia?”
And he just looked at him and goes,
“Indonesian people are
too poor to buy our products,
“so we want to increase
their economy enough,
“so they have enough
money to buy our products.”
So then they become our customers.
But you can see what he was saying was,
there needs to be
a fundamental level
of wealth for people
to be able to spend,
so we need to create essentially an economy
where people can spend
or people do not spend.
And it’s the same, the Japanese economy,
almost internally, functions
very similarly to that.
If people aren’t making enough
money, people do not spend.
People need to be rich enough to
spend money to increase the economy.
And if they do
that, then it will build
up and up and up,
it’s the reverse cycle.
of what I was talking about.
I am interested to see
over the next year or two,
how many companies
actually increase their wages.
‘Cause I honestly believe a
lot of them at this moment
cannot, it’s not that they
would, it’s just that they can’t.
And then going further from
that, going into the future,
how do they make sure that
people have enough money
so that they can spend money
to keep the economy going?
Because we gotta get, this
is like one step away from,
we have to just start giving
people money to spend.
Will that work? Probably not.
Because what’s gonna
happen is this generation’s like,
anytime I get extra money, I need
to put it away so that I can retire.
Which is one of the bleaker endings.
I usually end off in Indonesia, Japan,
with like a creepy guy story,
so I can make fun of him.
And sometimes it goes wrong and I
feel really bad at the end of the story,
but I mean, I’m
literally just talking
about the demise of
the Japanese economy.
You can see the solution
is actually increased wages,
but the reality is, most
companies probably can’t increase
wages, I think I just killed Japan.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
[Music].