Tag: scam

(upbeat music)

This is episode 333 half the devil’s
number episode of Ninja News Japan.

‘Cause we do about 50
episodes a year once a week.

I don’t do every single week
’cause there’s holidays and stuff.

I will take a week off here and there.

But anyone who’s been
around for the last couple weeks

or the last couple months or
the last couple of years, of course,

thank you for hanging out and
listening to Ninja News Japan

and news from Japan
and my musings on being

a resident of Japan
and living in the world.

And I hope it’s brought you some
entertainment more than anything else.

Let’s get to our news.

First story’s kind of depressing.

Japan has dropped to 90 seconds place
of 116 countries in English proficiency.

So the overall level of English ability
of the Japanese people has gone down.

It’s the lowest on record.

Last year, they were 87, so
they’ve gone from 87 to 92nd place.

The drop has been
between 18 to 25-year-olds.

Lower than the overall average
compared to people who are 26 and above.

So people who are 26 and above,

the average ability in their
English proficiency is higher.

People 18 to 25, they are below average.

The government’s trying
to make excuses, I guess.

I don’t know.

You’ve got to come up
with a reason for this.

Why are these students, particularly low?

They’re saying these
students kind of lived through

coronavirus and has
affected their motivation.

So they are less motivated to study.

So they don’t study as
hard as they didn’t really

achieve the proficiency
that they would want.

It’s interesting, because someone

a representative said that
Japan hasn’t actually dropped.

They’ve just stayed the same
while all the other countries went up.

So really they’ve
maintained their standards,

but other countries have
improved their English proficiency

forcing Japan down, which is
an interesting way of looking at it.

Because I actually wouldn’t
have thought of that.

We look at lists, we look at numbers,
we look at things that go up and down.

You think of them as just being
relative, who’s done more, who’s done less.

If you maintain the
same in everyone else

advances, you actually
drop in your rankings.

So that’s pretty interesting.

If you’re interested in who is number
one, the Netherlands, six years in a row,

the Netherlands has been
number one in English proficiency.

Beating out.

I was about to say beating out America,

but unfortunately that
I might actually be true.

I don’t know what kind of test.

The test they administer there
is not going to be the same test

they would administer in America,
but it would be interesting view.

Gave English-speaking
countries like Canada,

Australia, New Zealand,
England, and America.

The same test to see where
they ranked in English proficiency.

I would actually be very
interested in those results.

I would like to take this test.

I have taken multiple
English proficiency tests

that students of mine have
taken, just to see how I do.

And it’s not always perfect.

I mean, I do well.

Let’s give me some credit.

I do do well.

But I am like Japan.

I don’t think I’m
improving my English skills.

I think I’m maintaining.

So if someone else is
improving, they would surpass me.

So that’s very possible.

And I hope that for you.

The highest ranked Asian country,

which is what Japan
wouldn’t be more likely to be

measured against Singapore,
they got number three.

So Netherlands number
one, the highest ranked

Asian country is
Singapore at number three.

So since we’re talking about rankings,

I thought, oh, wouldn’t
it be nice to have

a counter-ranking where
Japan has improved?

Well, Japan rises to 31st place
in global digital competitiveness.

What does that mean?

I’m not 100% sure.

There are 67 countries that get ranked.

And you might be like, wow, that’s great.

31 out of 67.

It’s an improvement of one from last year.

So the ranking assesses
the adoption and utilization

of digital technologies
that drive transformations

and government
business models in society.

So Japan recently gave up floppy disks.

They recently have tried
to push things onto digital,

which should have
been digital 10 years ago.

So I see Japan’s technology push is
catching up more than anything else.

This is published by the
Swiss business school.

The ranking is based on statistical
data and surveys of executives.

So this is based a lot on, I would
say, an older generation of people.

Executives do tend to be older people.

Singapore claimed the top spot this year

with South Korea Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and Nordic countries

such as Denmark, Sweden,
Norway, all ranking within top 10.

Japan remained 31st.

Although Japan was recognized
for its robust technological

frameworks and high
standards of higher education,

it ranked poorly in areas
such as business agility

and international experience among senior
executives where it placed at the bottom.

So an interesting thing of
what they’re saying is like Japan,

they’re teaching people well, their
infrastructure is good, their education is good,

but the people who are
actually using it implementing it,

the executives, the current
executives in Japan now

are horrendous, raking
at the bottom is bad.

Business agility, Japan is not
an agile business environment.

That is something I have
not worked in a bunch of

Japanese companies, but
I’ve seen a lot of these stories.

I’ve looked at Japanese
companies and things like that.

Japan’s traditional way
of thinking is not agile.

In its ability to pivot,
in ability to change,

they do things the way
things have been done before

because that’s the way
it’s been done before.

So that’s the right way to do it.

That is kind of the base philosophy of
most Japanese companies and people.

It is this utmost respect
for tradition and history,

which is respectable in
some aspects of life, but

then you turn it on and
go, maybe not everything.

And the second point,
the international experience

among executives, yeah,
Japan is very insular.

They don’t travel outside their country.

They don’t interact with other cultures.

They don’t do a very good job
of existing on the world stage.

And that is actually something I think

the next generation of people going up in
Japan, that’s where they need to look at.

Don’t look at just Japan as your market.

Look at the world as your market.

And what can you do to achieve that?

And that would actually change
the nature of Japanese business.

It would get you up in this ranking.

I don’t give a shit about
rankings if I’m being really honest.

But rankings do give you insight
into sort of comparative data

and that comparative data
can tell you where you’re weak.

And then you can start to improve
yourself if anyone took this seriously.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is where I was going to do the quiz,

but I didn’t manage to
arrange some of this week.

And episode 333 is, I think, might be
the baseline for how we move forward.

This is since I’m just did
a story where I’m talking

about, like, look at where
you need to improve.

This is what I need
to do with this episode.

Is, where do the failures in this episode?

How do I need to improve?

I need to figure out a way to
get the guest on more efficiently.

It means I have to do
the guest segment earlier

than the actual
recording of the episode.

I can’t have people sitting in the wings.

I got to work on other people’s schedules.

But this is where I
was going to do the quiz.

So I thought, ah, here’s the quiz that
I wrote that I didn’t actually get to do.

So I’ll just put it out there.

And then I’ll answer the question.

Maybe I need to come up
with a little thinking song.

The 65-year-old man came
to Japan with his family.

The problem is, this very
small story got massive push

on the news sites or that
talk about Japan news.

This came up like eight, nine times.

It’s one of those classic stories.

It’s fairly inconsequential.

But it’s got that kind of like
flavor that everyone enjoys.

It’s got that little bit of like, mmm,
oh, the little, all-genu, the little,

je ne se qua that everyone
loves in their news stories.

‘Cause it doesn’t hurt anyone too bad,

but a guy gets kind of
taken down for who he is.

My first assumption was anyone in
Japan would have heard this story.

If you pay attention to the news at all.

What crime does he commit?

So a 65-year-old man
came to Japan with his family.

What crime does he commit basically
on his first day walking around the city?

I gave four options.

Number one, he sexually
assaults a woman at a bar.

Number two, he got
drunk and gone into a fight.

Number three, he commits
a form of vandalism.

Number four, riding a bike
drunk and on his phone.

As you learned in last week’s episode,

riding your bicycle drunk
is now illegal in Japan.

Riding your bike while using
your phone is illegal in Japan.

Doing the boasts, accumulates those, takes
those two crimes and put them together

and gives you an extra big
fine and possible prison time.

So then we would have the discussion now.

Ask me some questions, turns out.

I mean, all these four
choices are pretty standard.

Stories of foreign people coming
to Japan and getting in trouble.

The last one’s the most interesting one.

That was kind of my, what
I put in there to make it the

most interesting one
because it applies to a new rule

that was just implemented
in the last couple of weeks.

The actual answer is
number three, vandalism.

He used his fingernails to
carve his family members’ names

into a tory gate, which is, okay,
if you’re gonna vandalize stuff.

I’m gonna give us, stop for a second.

I need a second camera
so I can turn to the camera

and actually talk to the
criminals in the audience.

If you’re gonna commit vandalism, so
this would be, we’d turn to camera three.

I don’t have three cameras,
I have one, but we turn

to the second camera
and we say, “Hey, criminals.

” If you’re going to commit
vandalism, don’t write your

actual names in it because
then your names will be connected

to the actual crime, which
would be connected to you

giving the police a very easy job of
figuring out who committed the crime.

Here’s a little story, I,
once committed vandalism.

It was in university.

I didn’t get housing my
first year of university,

which was a very
weird problem to have.

The fraternities offered housing.

So you could stay in their fraternity
house and pay rent, it was very low,

but you didn’t actually
have to join the fraternity.

So for almost 10 months,
I lived in a fraternity

house without being a
member of the fraternity.

That was a very weird experience.

Anyone else who was in a similar situation
in mind ended up joining the fraternity.

I was the only one
who didn’t actually join.

They had a balcony and it was all wooden.

It was very old and I was
just playing with my thumb,

just like this man
carved in with his finger.

He carved his name in.

I didn’t carve in my name.

I carved in fuzzy Zellweger, which
was a very old golfing, famous person.

I don’t know anything
about golf, so I don’t know

why that name came into
mind, but I knew immediately.

If I carved in my name, then
the crime I have just committed

is immediately linked to
me, and it’s kind of ever

self-evident who committed
this crime and I’m caught.

So you don’t carve in your own names.

So this man, you’ve
committed the first crime here,

was actually how stupid you
were in committing the crime.

That should be an addition
to the crime you’ve committed.

So he used this fingernail.

He carved in family members’ names.

I don’t know if it was just initials,
but he was caught pretty quickly.

Touring gates are sacred.

So we had a story a few weeks
ago, maybe a couple months ago,

of fitness influencer
came and did chin-ups

on the toy gate and
got just blasted online.

This is worse than
that, because you’ve

actually done physical
damage to the toy gate.

They’re not taking that shit lightly.

The vandalism was founded
11.20 AM at 4.30 AM that night.

So over the course of a single
day, the police went, found this guy,

went to his wherever he was staying in his
hotel on a resume at 4.30 in the morning.

They did not hesitate to arrest this guy.

He had to do the perplock
from the hotel to the car at 4.

30 in the morning.

All the pictures of him of
him with like a fuzzy hair,

and he’s just got like Ben
head and the stuff, ’cause he just

woke him out and said, throw on
some clothes you’re under arrest.

We haven’t got any information
since then of what’s actually happened.

My guess is that he was
just asked to leave and left.

First offenses in Japan,
especially small ones, don’t tend

to come with jail time or any
sort of actual real punishment.

They defer a lot of stuff and say like,

look, if you do this again,
you’re gonna get in trouble,

but if you’re a tourist, they’re like,
look, just go and don’t come back.

But if they wanna make
sure he doesn’t come back,

they charge him with the crime,
they find him guilty, and then

they send him away, then he
can’t come back into the country.

(upbeat music)

A record scam occurred.

Someone took eight
hundred and nine million yen.

That’s five million dollars in one scam.

What do you call it?

In one scam, it’s not one scam event,
one scam session, one scam, something.

I want another word in there,

but I don’t think there is, I
think it’s just in one scam.

My brain was going for another
word to make it like the event.

‘Cause it wasn’t a single instance.

This scam happened multiple times.

You got money multiple
times from the person.

So what would you call that?

It’s like it’s a sequence.

Ah, I need to, I have to look and see.

There’s gotta be some correct
verbiage for that, but anyways.

A Chinese national was arrested for fraud
because of investment scheme via line.

He impersonated a famous economic analyst.

So he basically put up ads saying,
I’m this famous economics guy in Japan.

It’s an ad saying like
if you want information

from me, you can pay
money, we can do some stuff.

I’ll make you super rich if you
give me your money, excellent.

So the appeal of this scam, I think, is
that they don’t go out hunting for you.

So they’re not looking for marks.

They let the marks come to them.

And then that gives the
person a lot more confidence

when they start actually
talking about the money and stuff.

This is one of the more
effective versions of

scams is when you get
the people to come to you

to give you money because
they’re already partially

convinced of your things legitimacy
if they show up at your door.

This is not showing up at anyone’s door.

This is all via the internet.

A 71 year old woman responded to
an online ad and added the line account.

So line is a chat kind of thing in Japan.

It’s one of the biggest ones in Japan.

So she sees an ad and it says,
add this line account and we can talk

about your investment
future, something like that.

She adds the line
account and starts chatting

with this person who she thinks
is a famous economic analyst.

Initially she gave 10
million yen in November

and the scammer’s
faked profits via an app.

So they made an app and
then they put her number in

and they made it look like that number
was going up so she would invest further.

She looked like she was making money.

Over the course of the time
she made 47 more transactions.

Many were cash career.

So she’s basically like,
meet me at this train station.

I will give you cash.

They dropped the cash off.

One cash drop was 83 million yen.

I don’t have any money.

I’m not a rich person.

I don’t have any money.

I have enough money to survive.

I’m not in any trouble or anything.

This woman had eight
hundred and nine million

yen to play with, to
use for investments.

She was capable of dropping
83 million yen at one time

and not really seeming to have
a significant impact on her life.

Whereas if you just
handed me 83 million yen

today, my life would
be completely altered.

It’s almost like these
rich people who I’m

gonna, I don’t know
anything about the lady.

They don’t release a lot of details

about the victim in this
case, which is probably correct.

But you can assume with the sheer volume
of money she was funneling into this thing.

She either is president of
a company or was president

of a company or this is
like generational wealth.

But she had a lot of money that she
could just play with in her personal life.

It’s almost like these super rich
people who clearly are comfortable

with super rich amounts of money,
super large amounts of money.

Don’t know how to use that money.

Because if she just took 83 million
yen or eight hundred and nine million yen

and redistributed amongst
poor people like me,

I don’t want to make it sound
like I’m poor, but I’m not rich.

It would have this huge positive impact
on my life and she’s just thrown it away.

This scammer just took her.

So after a certain amount of money,
eight hundred and nine million yen,

five million dollars later,
she started realizing maybe

something was up ’cause she
wasn’t getting her money back.

I don’t know, I feel weirdly
frustrated for myself

’cause I don’t have any
money to invest in anything.

But then I could get scam too.

I would do that because I would go
out hunting for something to look at

that would promise me a certain
amount of return on my investment.

And then I would invest it
and then you find out you’re

getting scam but they
always get you to roll in more.

But there’s an app that they say to look at

and the app’s telling
you’re making more money

and you believe it because you want
to believe you’re making more money.

I got a lot of sympathy.

Even though this is a rich person
who clearly had more money than since,

I do have sympathy ’cause they
don’t deserve to be scammed.

I just would like them to use
their money in a more sensible way.

As in bank rolling, the industry
depends next 333 episodes.

An 88 year old father, Chef,
and a 60 year old manager

who is the son of the same
restaurant got into a fight.

The father threatened the son with a knife

so the son hit the
father with a frying pan.

I don’t know why, but that was
enough for me to be into this story.

Like that was a cliche fight.

Like he whips out a
knife, he starts threatening.

The other guy picks up a pan.

Whoop, whoop, whoop,
have to make the sound.

Bong, they were both arrested.

The father said there is no mistake

that I threatened him by
holding a knife up to him.

The son said it’s true I
hit him with a frying pan.

So they’ve both admitted to their crimes.

Both were taken to the custody
and then both were related to release.

So I’m trying to figure out what
happened because I guess the

police were like, do you want
to press charges on each other?

‘Cause both have admitted
to the crime they committed.

Like you’re not supposed to
threaten people with knives.

You’re not supposed to
hit people with frying pans.

But maybe they didn’t
want to press charges

against each other
’cause it’s father and son.

And maybe they have
this kind of contentious

relationship and this is
how they just live their lives.

There’s a weird thing about chefs and the
chefs are all tough and violent and stuff.

And I’ve never seen chefs as
being that kind of personality.

I think it’s like a
persona they’ve put on

themselves, which is how
you get the Gordon Ramses

who like shouts and is
really mean to everybody.

I don’t think that’s a
good way to run anything.

But I’ve never run a successful kitchen.

So what do I know?

But then there’s an interesting thing
where police can send it to prosecutors

and the prosecutors can
choose to press charges

even though like the victim
doesn’t want to do that.

Like they can actually do it
on your behalf ’cause the crime

has been committed whether
or not you’re angry about it.

But Japan being Japan, since
they’re not going to get help

from the other person like
the son’s not going to like

turn on the father, the
father’s not going to turn

on the son, you’re in
this like weird situation

where they’re not
going to actually go after

each other when you
actually get to court.

And that’s actually what
the prosecution needs I think.

Japan has very famously a high probably,

like basically if you go to
prosecution, you’re guilty.

It’s 98%, 99% is massive number.

But it’s because if they’re not 100% sure

or they’re going to get
that, they cut you loose.

So I’m betting that’s
what’s actually happened

because they weren’t going to
get the two to turn on each other

like we’re not 100% sure this
is actually going to work out.

We’re going to kind of loose so
that our record doesn’t go down.

A small city that’s
proposed a tourist event.

It’s a very good thing to do.

You have to have lots
of events for tourists,

you have to have tourism,
tourism’s a big money maker in Japan.

So they have a meeting,
they’re like, hey guys,

we want to make an event
when I have a creative idea.

Then we have a lady over here
and she’s like, I have an idea.

Let’s make a competition where
people pretend to kill themselves.

And then acted out, the idea
came from someone who sold

and demonstrated toy
retractable plastic swords.

So it was a little sword
and you push it into your

body and it retracts
into the hilt of the sword.

Okay, so no one’s actually getting hurt.

You’ve seen those like stage
knives and kind of stuff in the past.

So what they’re like, we’re going
to, every city has a samurai tradition.

I mean, it’s one of those things where they
do like, ooh, samurai’s came from here.

Samurai’s came from everywhere.

This is not a big deal.

So like, but samurai’s
had to commit sepucca.

They had to kill themselves.

It’s a very dramatic thing.

They have to like, run
it across their stomach.

They have to die dramatically.

We’ve seen it and movies and that stuff.

Let’s have that competition.

And this went forward and
everyone thought it was a good idea.

So the posters go up.

And it said, seeking
participants, sepucca contest.

We are seeking participants for a
sepucca contest to be held at the

Don Don Terrace at Matsui City
Hall in December 14th, a Saturday.

After committing sepucca
with a plastic sword,

please demonstrate
your acting skills by

writhing around for 30
seconds to one minute.

So there’s like a timeframe of when you
have to die, which is pretty interesting.

The person with the most vivid
performance will be named champion.

The use of fake blood is prohibited.

Now that quite sensibly turned
out to be not the best idea.

So the city’s like, hey, no,
you’re not going to do that.

So then they had to do a retraction.

It was canceled.

I would like to apologize to the
involved party at City Hall for causing

such a disturbance from something
we intended to serve as entertainment.

On the other hand, we have also
received emails from people saying they

are proof of the idea and want to
participate, but we feel that holding it can

contribute to a loss of trust from City
Hall, so we are canceling the contest.

So basically, yeah, some people were
like, hey, I want to show my acting chops.

I want to fake kill myself on stage. I
want to get everyone to look at me.

While I die for 30 seconds to a
minute, it’s going to be a great show.

Other people are like, hey, take a second
and think what you’re actually doing.

You’re pretending to kill yourself on
stage in front of a whole bunch of people.

Maybe that’s not the best idea.

Maybe that doesn’t really
represent our city well.

Maybe that doesn’t
represent City Hall well.

Maybe that’s not something
we should be doing.

A drunk passenger sleeps on the
subway car for five hours overnight.

So what happened is this
is a pretty normal thing.

People get the last train.
They’ve been drinking.

They’re really drunk
when they get on the train.

If you’ve ever taken the last train
home from wherever you are in Japan to

enter your home station, you have
encountered the extremely drunk person.

They fall asleep on the benches.

They take up too much space.
Maybe they fall on the floor.

The interesting thing is when the
cell phone or wallet falls out of them,

like people will pick
them up and put them on

the bench next to them
so they don’t lose it.

It’s one of those nice
things about Japan

where it’s like a relatively
honest place where

they don’t tend to steal
from you when you’re drunk

out of your gourd, which
is what a lot of people are.

The interesting thing is what happens
when you get to the last station.

So the staff have to wake
you up and get you off the train.

You’re not allowed to stay there. Since
it’s the last train, you can’t get home.

There’s a whole other set of issues
that you have to deal with as the person

who just kicked off the train.
You missed your stop.

Can you walk home sometimes possible?
Sometimes not.

You probably get a hotel around
the station or something like that.

Karaoke box, something like that.
Who knows? That’s your problem.

What happened here is
the guys on the end car.

The staff come in. They wake them up.
They’re like, you got to get off here.

It’s the last station. So he’s drunk.
He gets up. He walks off.

The station staff person
goes to the next car

to see if there’s anyone
else on those cars

or starts moving up the train.
Then they turn off the lights.

What happened is the drunk I walked off
the train. The station staff walked away.

He’s like, I’m too tired to walk to
the ticket gate and go out the station.

I’m going to go back in and lie down where
I was very comfortable 10 seconds ago.

He gets back on the
train and falls asleep

five hours later because
the first train’s like

six o’clock in the morning, five 30
in the morning, something like that.

Five hours later, staff come
and find him asleep on the train.

The driver of the first
train of the day found

the men asleep inside
the train at 5.20 a.m.

He was said to be intoxicated.

So this is a guy who had 12,
12, 31 o’clock. Whenever that

last train was, was drunk out of his
mind four hours, five hours later of sleep.

And he was still drunk
out of his mind when

they tried to wake him
up in the next morning.

So should you come visit
Japan? Don’t commit vandalism.

Don’t if you, okay, if
you’re going to commit,

this is again when I have
to switch to the camera

where I speak to the
criminals in the audience.

If you’re going to commit
vandalism, don’t write your name.

That’s just going to be straight up advice
from an institution who’s Japan to you.

Don’t use your own
name in your crimes.

That’s what aliases are for. But if you
come to Japan, don’t commit vandalism.

And if you do get super,
super drunk, know that if you fall

asleep in the last train,
they will kick you off.

And if you fall asleep, I
don’t know if it’s a crime.

I guess it’s trespassing.
So he doesn’t

seem like he’s actually been
arrested or gone in trouble.

But it is a good
thing to know that

if you’re on the last
train, they will kick you off.