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Yup.
We have so much cop news.
I sometimes try to get stories
and I put them into a theme.
I try to put thematically
related stories together.
This in cop stories come up every week.
Cops are always either arresting
people or getting into trouble.
Either way, it’s exciting
and interesting, but
this week was just
overwhelmingly cop news.
I was like, do I do cop
news first or seconds?
I’m going to go with cop news
and then random news at the end.
I don’t know why I enjoyed this so much.
A cop from Shizuoka.
Shizuoka is up here in Japan.
For those of you
listening to the actual audio
podcast, I just put my hand up
in the air and waved it around.
You actually didn’t miss
anything by not having the visual.
Shizuoka cop was arrested for
kicking a Tokyo cop in the face.
I’m always interested
when cops get arrested
because they have to
get arrested by other cops.
That’s a big thing.
I always have this expectation that
cops know how to not get arrested.
Literally one of the
reasons I would join law
enforcement is to
improve my criminal skills.
If I was going to be a criminal, the first
thing I would do is become a cop and learn
the ins and outs of copness
and then start committing crimes
using my intelligence to use
the system against the system.
This is a smart way to do crime.
The engineer’s Japan has
once again quickly descended
into advice for criminals and
how to be a better criminal.
You can see what I would
like is to be the best criminal.
I saw a thing.
It was in America.
I don’t know if this is true everywhere.
They have standards for police officers.
One of the standards was there was
actually an upper level of intelligence.
You take an IQ test and if you
score too high, you can’t be a cop.
That was a new story somewhere.
The reasoning behind
that was interesting
because what they’re
saying is if you’re too
smart and you become
a cop, what will happen
is you’ll get bored or
you’ll do what I think
about and be like,
“Oh, I could manipulate
the system and commit crimes
effectively and not get caught.”
Very much Lee, very much Lee,
Trump has infected the way I speak.
Very much Lee abused
the system and out with
the cops who are chasing
you because A, you know them.
B, you understand how they work.
You understand the rules they work within.
Lee, most importantly,
you are smarter than
them because you scored
higher on the IQ test.
I don’t know how true or real that is.
It was an interesting, it was
a new story from ages ago.
It may have just been
in this one town, but
it informs my belief
of the intelligence level
of police officers
overall, which is not true
because actually a bunch of
cops I know are really smart.
Nice.
So, I guess my real
world experience and the
Internet information
I’ve received don’t line up.
I should correct my real world view.
That being said, hmm.
So anyways, Ashizuoka-Kob
is in Tokyo drinking.
He calls Ashizuoka-Kob’s backup.
Something’s gone wrong.
He calls for backup.
Cops from Tokyo, Tokyo Metro
show up and they start to help him.
They respond to this call from
one of their brethren for help.
There are no details
given about what transpired,
but then the Tokyo
cops end up fighting
with Ashizuoka-Kob, who
ends up kicking them in the face.
Now, kicking them in the face is broad.
This was to me, one
of the more specific
things I wanted to,
what kind of kick was it?
Was he down?
Was he standing up?
Did he do like a flying spin kick?
Was it backwards, bicycle kick?
Was it like some cool
type one, those stuff?
I don’t know because they didn’t tell us.
When they say no details, we need details.
We need details of the kick.
The action scene needs
to be built in my head.
This Shizuoka police officer was
arrested for obstructing official duties.
Now, you might say that,
“Hey, obstruction of business
and obstructing official
duties are not the same thing.”
Actually, it falls under the same law.
I’m counting obstruction
of official duties
as an addition to our
counter for obstruction
of business because it is
the same law, same rule.
Official duties and
your business, your
business being your
official duties is in fires.
I’m concerned is the same thing.
The counter did go up just one just then.
A cop, opposite guy, two cops are on
bicycles and they stop a guy at one a.
They’re like, “We’re
going to question them.”
He flees on his bicycle.
He’s a bicycle chase.
You don’t get bicycle chases anymore.
Bicycle chase only
lasts for 200 meters,
which I remember doing
the 100 meter dash as a
kid and it was basically the driveway
up to my school was 100 meters.
I know 200 meters is not that far.
They probably went like what?
Two, three blocks maybe.
This criminal wasn’t
dedicated to the chase.
The cops were relentless.
They’re bearing down
on him and their bicycles.
After 200 meters, you know what?
I’m going to stand and fight.
I’m going to be the man.
I know I can fight off two cops at once.
It can be awesome.
He pulls out a wooden
sword and starts
swinging it at the police
officers while at the
same time trying to
grab their gun out of
their holster so that I
assume he can either
hold them or use their
gun against themselves.
The other cop, the
problem here is taking
on two people at the same time and
they have guns and you have a stick.
The wooden sword,
wooden sword sounds more
impressive than big stick,
but what it is is just a big stick.
They have practice training swords.
They’re just pieces of wood.
They’re used for basically practice
flicking things or hitting things.
They don’t have a sharp edge or anything.
If it’s the one I’m thinking
of, it’s a solid piece of wood.
There’s a kendo stick
that is four pieces of
bamboo put together and
it makes it really loud sound.
That’s the ones they
practice with and they’re
really cool, but they
don’t technically hurt.
They don’t hit with anything.
Like you could get a meter
stick and two or four together.
You’d basically have
one of these kendo things.
They don’t, okay, yeah,
they’re staying if they hit
your skin, but they’re not
going to like damage you.
They’re not going to hurt you.
The solid piece of cedar,
let’s say, is going to hurt.
It’s not a baseball bat size, but
it’s a baseball bat kind of action.
It’s going to hurt.
So I think that’s probably where
they have when they say wooden sword.
He cop shoots three warning shots at
the man’s feet and hits him in the leg.
So we don’t actually know
if he meant to shoot him.
I bet he sort of did.
They gave a warning, a verbal warming.
They gave a verbal warming.
They said, hey, buddy,
let’s just hug it out.
Now they gave a verbal
warning, put the big stick down.
And the guy’s like,
no, I’m going to hit you
with my stick and I’m
going to steal your gun.
I’m going to shoot at your legs now.
Pew, pew, pew.
One of those hits him in the leg.
I’m assuming he shot him on purpose.
The two warning shots
and then the third one
was like at his body or the cops
like he knows I’m such a bad shot.
There’s a kill three at the ground.
One might hit him.
He was arrested for
obstruction of official duties.
That tracks.
This was interesting though.
Last week on Seamig B.
I was actually sort of mentioning media
awareness and how one of the things I do for
the engineers,
Japan, is find multiple
versions of the same story to try to
make sure that I have my facts straight.
I am not an investigative journalist.
I’m essentially a commentator.
I get news.
I read the story and I give you
sort of a summary of the news or
the interesting bits and then I
give you some color commentary.
That’s the bit you enjoy.
That’s why you come back here.
That’s why we’re friends.
I know that.
I get that.
We’re good.
But I do want to make sure that I’m
as honest and accurate as I can be.
I found a different
story on a different
news story on the same story and
some of the details were significant.
The first one said big
wooden stick, wooden
sword, he took it out
and tried to fight the cops.
The second one said
knife and saw which gives
a very different
atmosphere to the conflict.
So if a guy comes at me
with a big wooden sword,
I am threatened but I actually don’t
think my life is in danger in any real way.
I think I can probably
take him if I’m a tough boy.
I like to think myself as a tough boy.
A guy pulls out a knife and a hacksaw.
I’m thinking this dude’s
unhinged my life is in danger.
So shooting him three times in the leg,
shooting him two warning shots and shooting
him once in the leg makes a lot
more sense in the second version.
I am looking for a
third or fourth version
of this story to confirm
what was pulled from
the Rucksack that the
guy attacked the police with.
Because to me that changes the story.
The first one, almost
whimsical in the idea that you
could take a big wooden
stick and fight two cops.
The second one, knife and hacksaw,
you are now shifted to psycho mode.
And that psycho mode
is such that I’m not
messing with you, I’m
going to put three in your
leg if I can, put you
down on the ground and
then arrest you for
obstruction of business.
On the other side of
the police spectrum, an
unemployed man, a
taxi to the police station.
And he arrived at the police station.
He says to the taxi driver,
“Hey, what does it cost?”
The taxi driver says it costs $1,410.
So let’s say $15.
Yes, sorry, I have no money.
Let’s go in and get me arrested.
Clearly, that was the
plan from the whole time.
So he had brought extra
clothes for his stay in prison.
So really the question
is, why would he do this?
Why would you get in a taxi
knowing you can’t pay the fare?
Get the taxi to take
you to the police station
where you will be arrested
or refusing to pay the fare.
Knowing that you brought extra clothes, the
suspicion no one actually has said anything
yet is that he was
actually wanted to get
arrested so that he
could get food and shelter
for a while, which is a
really sad state of affairs.
Like that, it’s funny at first
because of how organized it is.
But when you think
the reality of the
situation, this guy was
dealing, I actually feel
a lot of sympathy for
him, I feel really sad.
And now I feel like maybe I
shouldn’t have done that story if
I wanted to keep sort of the
humor aspect of the podcast going.
The humor falls apart
when you get into real
life and you’re like, “No, poor guy just
wanted to play sustained some food.”.
This I can see being
an issue with the aging
population in Japan where the people who
haven’t prepared for retirement properly.
I’ve heard of this story before.
So it’s interesting to see how
often it will actually happen.
The guy was arrested.
They don’t actually
say if they put him in jail.
Here would be the
saddest thing for me is if
he goes up to the cops, he’s
like, “I just took a taxi here.
I didn’t bring any money.
I refused to pay my fare.
I want to get arrested.”
And the cops are like, “I’ll pay the
fare for you and just let them go.”.
Then weirdly, that is actually
one of the sadder outcomes
of that story is he’s just
left out on the street again.
A 40-year-old woman was skating.
So they actually called
her a 40-year-old skater girl.
Or maybe I wrote that down.
I wrote 40-year-old skater girl.
I think you hit your 40s.
It’s not really tend
to be referred to as a
girl anymore, but at the
same time, you know?
She’s clearly got a
youthful jwazaveef going on.
She was called noisy and
she seemed to be drunk.
Some guy called her
noisy and she grabbed a
construction cone,
bumped the guy in the head.
When we get to non-life
threatening forms of
violence, I find them
incredibly entertaining.
I just, okay, so they
don’t give any details.
They say, “guy was in the
park, ladies in the park skating.
She’s probably drunk.
She’s making a lot of noise.
The guy calls her noisy.
She grabs a construction cone.
I assume skates up behind him, just
cracks him in the back of the head.
With the plastic nature of the
construction cone, I can’t get me a cone.”
Yeah, more like that.
It would make this pop sound
that I would find really funny.
I used to skate when I was like 15, 16, 17.
I mean, like that.
I was so serious about skating.
I thought I was going to
be a professional skater.
I was very good.
I didn’t have a breadth
of skills, but the few
things I could do, I
could do really, really well.
I actually thought I was going to move
to California and skate for Dogtown.
My hero is not as helpless.
I should actually look up
and see how he’s doing.
He had the highest vertical all-e
in all of skateboarding at that time.
The record may have
been broken, but that was
something I could do,
so I kind of idolized.
This is the guy I want to be.
Had four of his
skateboards or five of his
skateboards over the course
of my skateboard career.
So this lady bonks a guy with a
traffic cone, people call the cops.
They actually said she was throwing
bottles and cut someone’s leg.
This could be a more
serious version of assault.
I think the bonking might not be that bad.
I think you get a good talking to.
You know, you hit someone with something.
I bet the police would arrest you for that.
But I can’t see you getting any jail time.
Cutting someone with a broken glass.
Not on the other hand.
That’s sort of a step up and
you’re getting more serious.
Just the in your 40s,
getting drunk in the
parking skating, and
then getting violent with.
people, that’s not a good way to be
taken on the next phase of your life.
I had one more cop story.
Maybe I can swap it.
This was terrifying to me, this cop story.
Not a police officer was
forced to confess and
then to false charges
and he went to court.
He sued the police
station and he won $21,000.
They have to pay damages of $3 million.
He was actually looking for $8.2 million.
The interrogations he
underwent were considered illegal.
So what happened?
The quote from the
mighty chief is, “Police
persistently press the
officer to make a confession
as if to make up for weak evidence.”
So basically they’re
saying, “We didn’t have
enough evidence to
prosecute him properly
so we wanted him to
confess so they just brought
him in for confession
again and again and again.”
He was repeatedly
interrogated almost daily between
February 28th and March
8th for up 7 to 10 hours a day.
This is, he hasn’t been arrested.
He’s been brought into a
room and they’re like, “We need
you to confess to this
crime that you’ve committed.”
He’s like, “I didn’t commit this crime.
We’re going to go for 7 to 10 more
hours every day until you confess.”.
And in February, it’s like a week they
were doing this 7 to 10 hours a day.
That’s insane.
A detective with a
pre-factual police is first
investigation division
coerced him into making
confession telling him, “There’s no one but
you who could have done it and we’ll arrest
you as many times as possible
by delving into various charges.”
We’ve talked about this before.
Police in Japan, they can arrest
you and hold you for basically 20 days.
So the cop knows this and each
charge means another 20 days.
So let’s say this is actually about
bullets went missing in the police station.
So let’s say it’s five bullets.
That would mean they
could hold him for 20 days,
20 days, 20 days, 20
days, 20 days, 100 days.
It’s basically that we’re
going to arrest you.
We’re going to hold you for 20 days.
Well, that charge didn’t hold.
Okay, walk out.
We’re going to charge you
again for the second bullet.
We’ll hold you for 20 days
and they can do that endlessly.
So the cop knows this
and he knows they will
do it, especially with
you have this detective
standing there telling you
this is what we’re going to do.
So we’re going to force you to confess.
So he ended up confessing.
The court criticized
police saying they
drove the man into a
corner by denouncing
his personality and
using insulting language.
So they’re basically really rough with him.
The ruling stated that
such harsh interrogations
go beyond socially
acceptable bounds at our legal.
It also recognized the link between
interrogations and the officers depression.
So the officer suffered depression.
He had to quit.
He’d been accused of this
crime that he said he didn’t do.
I mean, it’s just a nightmare.
This is where Japan goes
from being your fun anime
wonderland to literally
dystopian nightmare in one step.
Because one day you’re
out having a good time
with your anime and
you’re drinking in public
and you’re maybe bonking
people with traffic cones.
Then next thing you are, you’re
in an interrogation cell for 20 days.
You got eight charges because
they rack up obstruction of business.
You touch an officer.
It’s assaulting an officer and
that’s also obstruction of business.
That’s three charges
like knowing the tiny, tiny
bit of live learned from
doing the the entire thing.
I know how to stack charges in order to
hold you for the maximum amount of time.
Make your life miserable.
You’re going to lose your job.
You’re probably going to lose a
huge chunk of your personal life.
And there’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s perfectly legal.
This case shows that
if you can bring it to
light, the courts recognize that this is
too much, but they haven’t done anything to
actually address the issue of
trying to get cops to stop doing it.
Okay.
We’re off cop news now.
Climate change.
People have argued that
climate change is not real.
Again, C-McB last week.
One of the clips I played was one
of the, it was the presidential debate.
I don’t know if it was CPAC
or something, I don’t remember.
The one dude said the
climate change agenda is a hoax.
Let’s give you some real world data now.
Nokia had 30 degrees Celsius
or more every day in August.
That’s a first.
They started keeping
track of heat temperatures
in 1875 at no point
between then and this
last month that they ever had a full
month of 30 degrees Celsius weather.
That’s not even, that’s the minimum.
Every day was at least 30 degrees
Celsius most days were more.
Last year they had 21
what they call hot days.
This year we had 22
extremely hot days, extremely
hot days are 35
degrees Celsius or more.
I know some of my American listeners
are not going to know what Celsius.
So let’s do.
I’ll see you.
Fahrenheit converter.
The 30 degrees Celsius
is 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
35 degrees Celsius is
95 degrees Fahrenheit.
That is really hot.
Taking to account that Japan is
particularly humid in the summer.
It’s actually the humidity that
actually causes a lot of heat stroke.
You sweat.
I walk a 15 minute walk from
my house to the train station.
In that amount of time I start to
sweat and like literally dripping sweat.
That’s no exaggeration or joke.
I know I’m prone to exaggeration.
Dripping sweat off my body.
That’s not like I’m not exerting myself.
I’m not trying to get there quickly.
I’m just walking.
From July 6th to August
31st they had 57 consecutive
hot days which is
terrifying and ridiculous.
I’m sorry.
You can argue climate change.
Oh well this is the natural
change or something.
No man this is sped up way too
much for it to just be like a trend.
There have been two stories about
driving structures in the last week.
One story is actually quite interesting.
There’s a driving school
and what they want to do
is make you understand
what it is to drive drunk.
They actually offer this course
where you do a course so it’s
like a slalom and maybe an
S-turn or something like that.
It’s a little course you have to drive.
You drive it sober and then
you go off and have cocktails.
I think you have a beer or
some shochu or something.
Then you get legit drunk.
They ask you how you
think you’re going to do.
You go back and do the course and
they can tell you what you did wrong.
You went too fast.
This is how you’re driving a change.
You can experience it
which is really interesting.
Then this story comes
up a driving instructor
arrested for groping a
woman during a lesson.
Police in Sapporo,
that’s the North part of
Japan, arrested a 65
year old driving instructor
on suspicion of allegedly
sexually molesting a
woman in her 20s while she
was taking a driving lesson.
Around 2.30 pm on August
14th during the lesson
at the driving school’s
course, the instructor
asked a woman to stop and
then groped her upper body.
The woman filed a complaint
with the police the next day.
The driving instructor said he’s quoted as
saying he didn’t indecently touch the woman
but gave her a shoulder massage
because she looked stressed.
This is an interesting
thing for me because I’m
sure she looked stressed
because she’s doing
a driving test and maybe she’s
struggling with the concept of driving.
You decide to start massaging her.
If it was not requested,
if it was not welcome,
maybe the nicest way to
say it, that is sexual assault.
So this guy has the
problem that I think
all old men have where they don’t
understand that you need consent.
Consent isn’t a thing when
he was a kid, I think, in Japan.
Consent is someone actually
wants you to do something to them.
So if someone looks
stressed and you just walk up
and start massaging
them, that is sexual assault.
This guy is using that
his admission of sexual
assault as his excuse,
which I find very entertaining
because he doesn’t seem
to, I bet he doesn’t realize.
He’s actually just told on himself.
He’s just ratted himself out.
Anyways, we got to be
careful about driving schools.
All right, last one for today.
The Sanjo taxi corporation
during the pandemic was struggling.
So what they do, what does
any Japanese company do?
This is again, this shows for the wild
variations we go through in Japanese society.
You have the previous
story was about consent
and the change that
you have to understand
that you have to give
consent to do something.
But then also in the same
breath, we’re going to have what
a company does to try to
like revitalize its corporation.
But at the same time, that of course
the end of the story is going to go wrong.
What does any Japanese
company do when they’re struggling?
They create an idle
division called the
Sakura team of all
female taxi drivers in all
their 20s and so they have them
post on social media and stuff.
They have them sort of
create this atmosphere
that if you take our taxi, you might
get one of these Sakura drivers.
It’ll be in the presence of a
woman who’s young and beautiful.
So again, you can see
the message there is
different from what you would actually think
from the previous story of what’s okay.
But I think this is a natural
instinct for a Japanese company.
So we’re having trouble.
So let’s get a young
attractive woman up there.
That’ll help.
One member gained
100,000 followers and then
August became the Sanjo City
hometown tourism ambassador.
So the city that they live in is like
this woman taxi driver is so successful.
If you have so many followers, let’s
bring her on as the town ambassador.
Everything’s good.
The taxi is getting good press.
The ladies getting good press.
The city is getting good press.
The CEO makes a tweet.
I guess they’re now called an X.
So you know, as soon as you say
that phrase, this is where it went wrong.
And he said how cute they are.
The problem is the picture he posted
was the ambassador biting a cucumber.
So a bit of sexual imagery there.
So again, this is
actually what they’re
selling by creating
the all female taxi fleet.
of young attractive women
who are on social media.
They are selling sex and
we know that sex sells.
The CEO is just saying
isn’t she attractive,
isn’t she cute with all
the things she does?
Now it’s on the Internet though.
So he if they just left it
alone, not done anything.
The CEO hadn’t made any
comments, hadn’t posted that picture.
Maybe if the lady
had posted the picture
herself, there wouldn’t
have been an issue, but
the CEO posted this picture
and said how cute she was.
He got blamed for sexual
imagery to lure male passengers.
The tweet was deleted,
then the account was
deleted, then it was
brought back with an apology,
then it was deleted
again, then the CEO had to
quit his job, and the
ambassador had to quit her job.
I don’t know how I
feel about all of that
because things are going well
for the lady, but she was selling.
Yeah, I don’t know.
I think I need other
people’s opinions so I
can kind of help gather
my opinion together.
Because the CD took
on this woman as the
essentially cultural
ambassador, and everyone was
okay with it, but it’s not like
she changed what she was selling.
She probably was eating a cucumber,
like a locally grown cucumber or something.
Assuming she didn’t do anything, I’m
going to try to hunt down the picture.
So when I actually
post this on the Internet,
they’ll have a picture up in the corner
of the lady biting a cucumber or not.
Or maybe I’ll just draw one.
Maybe this is where I should go.
Because Ninja News Japan is
not held to any actual standards.
For the video, I could
start drawing my version
of what I think the new
story image would look like.
I don’t have very good
drawing skills, which
is what would make that
actually good as in so bad it’s good.
But at the same time, I don’t know
if I have much time to draw pictures.
I guess I drew them throughout the week
and then just threw them up on the day.
That might work out.
Anyways.
If you go to San Jo City and you take
one of the Sakura taxis, you’re sexist.
(calm music).