(electronic music)
Nagasaki cops can now wear sunglasses.
It did, okay, growing up.
You don’t realize
things until they tell you.
So I would have
thought that cops are just
allowed to wear sunglasses
in the West in Canada
when I grew up, you
know, cops wear sunglasses.
I remember as a kid watching the TV show,
chips, California, highway patrol, sexies,
sexy boys, I don’t know.
I don’t remember what the S stands, patrol,
sexy. It’s the only word that comes to mind
when you see those two
hunks of hunks of men.
The scene, I don’t remember the show.
I do remember, fuck,
this is now a brain’s gone.
I’m gonna talk about chips for a second,
only because if you talk about cops,
one of my first images is
them riding up on motorcycles,
wearing sunglasses, probably
taking the sunglasses off.
That’s it.
It was a show about California Highway
Patrol officers who were very sexy.
All crime had to be highway related,
which already makes it a
very complicated story to write.
There’s several issues there.
The, I do remember one episode
where it was a kid on a skateboard,
grabbed onto the bumper
of a car, and then I guess
went on the highway, and
so they had to save them.
That’s the only thing I
remember from chips.
I’m not gonna go back and visit it.
Anyways, so my thought from when I
was a child is the cops wear sunglasses,
and then we have the
very, very famous CSI Miami
where he takes off his
sunglasses and goes, “W.
“So, I had never thought that you
weren’t allowed to wear sunglasses,
“and it’s not that you weren’t
allowed to wear sunglasses,
“they weren’t banned outright,
“but it wasn’t, they
weren’t worn, “but it was just
something you just didn’t
do, “please in Japan.”
And they didn’t want, because they didn’t
want to seem intimidating to local people,
because you want the
local people to work with you,
and you can’t be seen as
a scary person to approach
if people with sunglasses,
sunglasses in Japan,
they’re very, very connected
to the Yakuza lifestyle.
I do remember a friend
of mine went to a wedding,
and he said, “There’s the bride’s side of
the wedding “on one side of the church,
“and the groom’s side of the wedding,
“and the other side of the church.”
And the bride’s side, all the guys were
wearing sunglasses, in the church, inside.
So clearly they were trying to send a message
that they were like, “Tuff Yakuza do.”.
“Anyway, the officers
were kind of complaining
“when they were on
patrol, it’s very sunny in the
summertime, “and it’s
hard, they’re worried about A,
“having an accident because being blinded
by the sun, “or B, damaging the ride.”.
So to prevent accidents and
reduce damage to eye health,
also so that they can whip them off
and do a really cool CSI Miami thing,
and let’s face it, sunglasses are
sexy, so you could be more chips-like.
So you could put the S in chips.
Oh, look at that’s the title theme.
Okay, got it, got it on the second try.
This is a story that has
come back irregularly,
and I’m fascinated
by it because it is part
of the modernization of Japan as a culture,
demonstrates the resistance Japan has
to moving forward and integrating people
who are not initially natively Japanese.
Now the thing is, the kids in
these stories were born in Japan.
They might have mixed heritage, but they
were born in Japan, so the Japanese kids.
But they are not, you
can see that the country
has not come to accept
them as Japanese kids yet.
37,000 signatures have been
collected calling for an end
to hair discrimination.
We’ve done the story of
the girl who had naturally
brown hair, who was
told to dye her hair black,
who then damaged her scalp and
ended up suing the Osaka school board.
We did the story, the young boy who decided
to wear corn Rose to his graduation,
and then was excluded
from his own high school
graduation because his
hairstyle was not approved.
The thing is that we haven’t
seen that kind of hair before.
Therefore, you’re not allowed to wear it,
such a bullshit reason, but I
mean, that is what they said.
The petition is calling for a
revision to problematic school rules.
And basically, these are
exclusionary school rules and they’re
saying the problem is, these
school rules encourage bullying.
So it’s basically state
sanctioned or, in this case,
board sanctioned bullying
by teachers or other students
to students who have not
naturally black-straight hair.
So if you have, there’s
a story that came out
of it, someone who
had naturally curly hair,
they had to get a certificate
to show to the school board
that this was naturally curly hair
and that they hadn’t been perming it,
but there’s the brown hair.
They had to prove that
they weren’t dying their hair.
The school rule needs to be changed.
So way back.
And this is because I
ended up talking about
it, people tried to come
at me on the Internet.
But there was a rule
that you had as part of the
school uniform you had
to wear white underwear.
And I saw the immediate problem with that
sooner or later it means
someone has to check
if you’re wearing the
right color underwear.
Gross teacher stories are pretty common.
I actually cut out, I think, to this week,
it was a teacher taking up skirt photos
and the teacher doing
something else creepy.
There are a lot of creepy
people in a lot of places.
So you don’t want teachers
checking your child’s underwear.
That was it.
I was like, just straight up, this is
not something you want teachers to do.
So they needed to change the rule.
to the underwear just shouldn’t be visible.
‘Cause I was actually thinking,
the girls tend to wear a white shirt,
so if they wore a colored bra or
something, it would show through.
That would be enough to say, you
have to wear a white or a neutral color,
but basically make the rule,
we can’t see your underwear.
If we can’t see your underwear, no problem.
I don’t actually say what color it is.
That’s the saving point.
This is the same.
You have to change the rule.
So right now the rules,
you have to have black,
straight hair and it
might be to your shoulder
or something very
specific about the cuts.
What they want to stop
students doing is dying,
permitting or changing
their hair in such a way.
So what they need to actually do is
just say, your hair needs to be natural.
Instead of saying, straight black,
it needs to be natural and
that will solve this problem.
But it also means you’re gonna
have to accept that some kids
with mixed heritage are going
to have different kind of hair.
I think that might be where it falls apart.
(upbeat music)
Speaking of high school,
international relations I guess,
the relationship between China and Japan.
is a difficult one.
This certainly is not gonna out.
So this popped up on the Internet.
It was a Chinese high school.
They’re having like a sports day or
some sort of festival or something.
And they decided it
would be a really good idea.
Which, the thing to me, this means this
had teacher/parent approval to go forward.
Now if I was a teacher, I
would have said, oh, this is
import taste, not because
of international politics,
but because of the
content of what we’re doing.
So this Chinese high school, they say,
what we’ll do is let’s reenact
the assassination of Shinzo Abba.
Here I go.
Abba was giving a speech.
He was standing on this platform,
giving a speech for some
political person coming up.
A guy with a homemade
shotgun walks up and shoots them.
It was, I don’t wanna get too into it.
We’ve actually talked about this a
bunch of times on the international Japan.
Anyways, former prime minister
Shinzo Abba last year was assassinated.
They had a kid standing
on a chair, this other kid
runs up and like fake
shoots him with a shotgun.
And then they unfurled as
very big, produced banner.
Again, because this had to
be approved by some adult.
who was like, yes,
you kids should reenact
an assassination of someone.
That’s a great idea.
The banner said, two
gunshots left dead bodies,
contaminated water
leaves a legacy of suffering.
And then everyone in the audience was like,
oh, excellent, wonderful
play, wonderful message.
So what they’re talking
about is China’s very unhappy
about the release of some
of the contaminated water
from the Fukushima
power plant into the ocean.
Now, studies were done.
I’m just going off the news.
So studies were done.
They have international people come in
like third bodies come in and they said,
the amount of radiation
it’s releasing to the
water is less than if
they did it another way.
So they’re doing this, what they
consider the safest way possible.
China’s saying, no, I don’t care.
You didn’t consult us.
You didn’t do it the way we wanted it done.
So you’re doing it wrong is a very
Chinese anti-Japanese stance to take.
They banned all fish
imports from Japan to China,
a pretty serious reaction.
Japan was actually talking about suing
them in the world trade organization.
So there’s all this other stuff happening.
The message of the Chinese government
as that the Fukushima
release of the water is bad.
Okay.
That’s an opinion.
I don’t know enough about it.
It seems like from what I’ve read, but
of course I read maybe biased material.
I don’t know.
That this is the best way.
Russia and China were at
one point saying, you should
put it up into the air
and it will disperse more.
So there’ll be less in
one place at one time.
I don’t know.
I just don’t know.
I mean, that’s just leave it at the facts.
I don’t want to say something
that ends up being not true.
I’m fairly ignorant on this issue, but it
seems like they’ve taken steps to make sure
that they’re doing it the safest
way, possible at the moment.
I’ve used from now, we might
find out that was 100% incorrect.
That wouldn’t a surprise me either.
The little play these
Chinese kids put on though.
Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan
being assassinated has
nothing to do with Fukushima.
He wasn’t Prime Minister.
He didn’t have anything to do
with the release of the wastewater.
He was already dead by that time.
They seem to have just decided,
let’s take a dramatic moment
in recent Japanese history,
reenact that and connect
it to something we don’t like.
So the undertone of the violence
and the threat is maybe what I don’t like.
‘Cause if I was teaching my kids,
even if there was countries I don’t like,
I was about to think
of if there’s a country
that I don’t like, but
every country I’ve been
to, I’ve liked and I’ve
liked the people I’ve met.
I can talk as a teacher.
As a teacher, if my
students came to me and
said, we would like to
reenact the assassination
from another country,
another country that we,
traditionally or have been
conditioned to not like.
The hatred towards other countries in Asia
is very much, I believe,
nurture, not nature.
It’s a taught thing, but even as a teacher,
I guess if I was a Chinese
teacher, I would think differently.
I’m now struggling because
what I’m trying to say
is that I as a teacher would
not think that reenacting the
assassination of anybody is a
good thing for students to do.
And political criticism, I think is fair,
but again, I’d like it to be more unbiased.
Maybe use the word I’m looking for.
The assassination
element puts a tone of
violence into this
protest that is unnerving,
primarily because it’s an undertone of
violence is constant and that’s the issue.
I would like them to start looking at
politics, international politics as not.
The prelude to war,
the prelude to violence.
Is that seems like where a
lot of these countries are going
and that’s what they’re
teaching their youth
and the youth grow
up and then they don’t
have an opportunity
to change their thinking.
I’m trying to solve world
of violence and racism.
Maybe a 30 minute news oriented,
Japanese oriented podcast
isn’t the best format for that.
I’m just like my brains now going
in circles, like what would I do?
I would absolutely tell my students
you cannot reenact in assassination.
You want to make a political statement
about releasing the Fukushima water?
We could find a way to do that.
I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Okay, let’s get some
statistics up there or something.
Sure.
Let’s talk about alternatives.
Okay.
Let’s reenact in assassination.
Sorry, kids, no.
Dustreal espionage.
Not something we’ve talked about a lot
and it is one of those things
I find incredibly interesting
because it’s two companies
and they’re stealing secrets
and selling secrets and it’s
espionage, but it’s not like spies.
It’s like normal people
could do this kind
of espionage, which
I think is really cool.
So a man was fired in 2022.
Let’s get back to the
whole history of this thing.
He was fired for stealing
suspicion of stealing data.
from a glass bottle manufacturer.
So what they do is in Japan,
this Japanese company they
create ultra light glass bottles,
glass being easier to
recycle and it was ultra
light, you can make more
bottles from less glass.
This could be valuable
because you could see things like
plastic bottles being made more
illegal in the future or difficult.
So a very light glass could
be the next stage in sort
of the environmental gains
that they’re making in them.
We sold this to a Chinese competitor.
He joined the Japanese company 2003.
In 2013 to 2017, he was
part of the overseas team
as an interpreter and they
suspect he stole the information
from the company in 2016 as
he was working for an interpreter
in China and then would have
had sort of deeper connections
with some of the Chinese
employees that he was working with.
Maybe they would have
convinced him to do it.
He was fired because of his suspicious
connections to the Chinese in 2022
and around the same time, 189.6
million yen was sent to his wife’s company
where she is on the board of director
and they didn’t really explain why.
So what they think this
guy working for this company,
this glass company, stole the information,
gave it to the Chinese company.
The Chinese company
paid the wife so they didn’t
go directly to him in
the hopes of hiding it.
But that 189 million
yen is pretty noticeable.
They was caught pretty quickly.
So I want to see how this plays out.
And I actually, again,
very, very interested in
what is the punishment
for corporate espionage.
No one is physically hurt by them.
The secondary issue is
that the secrets already
out there, that Chinese
company has a secret.
So they could put this Japanese
company out of business, possibly,
if they utilize that information
for the best of their abilities.
I’m going to be watching this story.
I’m hoping we get more
information where it comes out
in the future, because
this is really interesting.
Johnny and Associates, we’ve hit this
one in the last three weeks in a row now.
They had a press conference.
And in the press conference, they’re
going to deal with some of the issues
that have been coming up like, OK,
what are we doing with our company?
We’re going to change
it to smile, up, company,
and they’re going to deal with restitution
for the victims of the sexual assault
that have happened
over the last 20, 30 years.
They need to have a press
conference and answer some questions.
So turns out they made a
blacklist of outlets and reporters.
They will not talk to, because nothing shows
how much you want to repair a situation
that might be like, oh, yeah, we
want to be open and transparent,
but we’re not talking to you
or you or you or this company.
We want to redress
past issues, but if we’re
not going to talk about
specific past issues,
the list, so this company called FTI,
they put together the press conference.
They are sort of the promotion company,
the organization that’s putting this
press conference together.
They say that Johnny’s didn’t
have a part in making the list,
which I think is almost impossible, because
how would they know which companies
or which reporters to
not allow to ask questions?
Unless there’s just like, oh, this
guy from the industry of Japan
has a reputation for
asking the hard questions.
Let’s just put him on a blacklist.
But you know, Johnny’s
must have had some input as
to who would and would
not ask the worst questions.
They claim that the list was made so that
the press conference would run smoothly
with the limited time the venue was
available, which I think is absolute bullshit.
I mean, it’s all bullshit, of course.
They’re just trying to get
out, dig themselves out of
this hole, but of course
you do this kind of stuff.
What you’re doing is showing
is how deep the hole is.
The press conference had a
one question per company rule.
So if you had three
reporters from one company,
all three of them could
only ask one question
didn’t matter how
many people were there.
Some reporters started shouting
out because they weren’t being picked.
So these were probably
the reporters on the blacklist.
So they accidentally showed some
guy a reporter that there was a blacklist.
And he, of course, then went and reported
it and now it’s caused a big problem.
Maybe Johnny and Associates needs to
just change the whole attack from, okay,
we not only were we were sexually
abusing people and trying to cover it up,
maybe we should just
stop trying to cover
stuff and try to deal with it
and try to make the world better.
Now, now let’s just
keep going down the path
you went down before
because it works so well.
Two Portuguese people
tried to get into Japan.
They had 1.8 kilograms
of cocaine wrapped in
plastic wrap in small
balls inside their body.
They didn’t say, oh, no, they did.
They did.
They swallowed them.
So what they did is they took
the 1.8 kilograms of cocaine.
They wrapped it into 15 gram balls
wrapped in, so ran wrap or plastic wrap.
I have an issue with that.
Like I could swallow a lot of stuff.
I didn’t know how it does say.
They were 4.5
centimeters long and 2
centimeters wide, so
you could swallow that.
That’s pretty big.
It’s a big pill.
This thing like a big, big pill.
The plastic wrap I feel like would stick.
That’s all.
And plastic wrap isn’t sealed.
That’s the other issue.
I got a couple issues with this.
I know the condoms, if
a condom break, if you
fill a condom with
cocaine and you swallow it
or put it in your body
and it explodes, you die.
I guess they’re hoping that
not many of these will explode.
What I really wanted to know was how many
pills or tiny balls of cocaine that is.
So at 1.8 kilograms
divided into 15 gram balls,
that’s 120 balls total
between two people.
So that’s about 60 balls each.
They got caught in the
dumbest way possible.
So I’m not a great drug mule.
I’ve never done it before.
I could call myself inexperienced.
I was going to become
a drug mule and you’re
like, “Okay, Peter, I want you to
swallow 60 pill-sized balls of cocaine.”
Okay.
We’re going to fly you
into another country.
When you get to the customs, you’re
going to say you’re here for tourism.
All right, I’m ready.
Let’s go.
Then the customs guy got suspicious.
And he got suspicious because
they said, “We’re here for tourism.”
And the customs guy was like,
“Where are you going to visit?”
And they didn’t know any tourist places.
And I’m thinking, Japan is a
very famous tourist destination.
Like you don’t need to
have learned much about
Japan to know some of
the tourist destinations.
Like I want to go to,
and then he’s just one of
the first things that
comes to my Mount Fuji.
I want to go to Shibuya.
I want to go to where the
Yakuza games take place.
Because like all this nerd
stuff is completely valid.
What is it?
Kabuchiko?
I want to go to, yeah,
I want to go to Osaka.
I want to go to, it’s very
easy to start naming stuff off.
I didn’t do any research.
I didn’t think about it.
Standing in front of a
customs officer, you know
they ask, “Oh, a tourist,
what are you going to do?”
You say a couple of
places and they’re like,
“Fine, I want to go to a
traditional Japanese hot spring.”.
The amount of research
you would have had to
do to get that question
right is non-existent.
If you’ve heard of Japan, you
could just say a place in Japan.
I want to go to, go
to, to look at a temple.
And you’re home free.
You’ve now taken your 60 balls of cocaine.
You poop them out.
You pick them out of the toilet.
It’s not a funny evening.
But street value of
43.77 million yen, it
was worth doing a
little bit of homework for.
You have lost that much money
and you’re probably going to jail.
Why?
Because you wouldn’t do
your eight minutes of homework.
This is maybe revealing
your personal issue I’m having.
It’s not right now.
It would not be an episode in Engineers
Japan without some creepy stuff.
I mean, this was actually one
of the creepier ones this week.
I did, again, I cut out
some of the ones with
some creepy teachers and stuff
because they just weren’t pretty valuable.
They weren’t interesting.
You 63 year old man was arrested
for giving a teen girl a note on a bus.
I could stop there.
You know it gets grosser, but I could
be like, I leave it up to your imagination.
Let your imagination run wild
and see how your brain ends up.
Okay, the note said, Oji-San
will teach you sex education.
It says more than that.
Oji-San for those of you
who don’t speak Japanese
would be like old man or
uncle, that kind of thing.
The Oji-San will teach you sex education.
So this, to me, indicates I was interested
in the note itself in the contents because
it shows what kind of brain space
he was in when he was writing it.
He knew that he was going to be
targeting young to underage girls.
Let’s grow with 17.
He’s 63.
That’s a pretty big age gap.
So he used Oji-San on
purpose because he knew
he as an older man was going
to be talking to younger women.
So he had a target in
mind when he wrote this.
No, which again, pre-gross.
He hasn’t even done the gross thing yet and
he’s already like in the gross mentality.
The note continues.
I used to direct adult videos.
I used to be an actor.
Now it doesn’t say an
actor in adult videos,
but I’m going to connect to those
two and assume that’s what he meant.
He is trying to, I
guess, show that he is
physically capable,
adept, skilled at these acts
in the hopes of enticing the
young woman to untact him.
He did include his contact
information in the note.
So I do have one question.
Was this note typed out?
They sit down on the
computer and type it up
and then print out
multiple so you could just
hand them out a random
or did he write it out
and then just plan
to give one girl a thing.
A statistical odds thing here, right?
If he gives it to a thousand girls,
maybe one will answer in a positive way.
But if he just had one,
he had to like pick the girl.
So there’s a different feeling there.
Both gross, but a difference in sort
of what his, his, his tack was in this.
Including his contact
information may have been his
downfall because the young
girl on the bus took the note.
She went to the police and said,
this gross old man gave me this letter.
This is his phone number or
his other like his email or so.
Please track him down
and have him arrested.
And that is exactly what the police did.
So do I need to give advice on this one?
Don’t include your contact information, but
now the guys like sitting there going like,
but if I don’t get my
contact information, how
is she going to contact me
for all the crazy weird sex?
So you have created
a dilemma for yourself
in that you should have grown
up and realized this was a bad idea.
[MUSIC].