[Music]
Got a lot of politics today.
It’s actually the,
essentially the fallout from the guy who threw the pipe bomb at the prime
minister last week.
Of course, the very first thing I said was what was his actual motivation.
So the fact that he threw a pipe bomb, it didn’t go off properly, which is a
good thing,
because there was a lot of people there, and a lot of people would have got
hurt and killed.
What was his motivation for doing it?
Now, he has not admitted to a motivation, but they’ve looked into his
background and come up with some interesting facts.
He had filed a lawsuit last year for mental distress after he was unable to
file for candidacy for the House of Counselor’s election.
So he wanted to be a politician.
He was unable to file to be a politician,
and was so upset about that, said it was
mental distress, and then he tried to sue them.
This is where we get to learn some of the requirements to be a politician.
You actually have to be 30 years old. That’s, I guess, fair.
I actually don’t think age should be part of it.
I mean, I think if your teenager goes up there and no one wants to,
a teenager to be their counselor or governor or anything,
then you won’t vote for them.
I don’t, I actually don’t necessarily, this is a good personal opinion.
I don’t necessarily agree with an age requirement.
I think it would make sense if you were over 30,
have a little life experience, maybe done some work,
but I don’t think that should be a requirement.
I actually think there should be a end point,
a retirement age for becoming governor,
because right now in America, I was noticing the prime minute.
It was just how Canadian I am.
The president, he’s in his 70s and Trump is in his 70s,
and all the guys are trying to be president in our own their 70s.
I think that might be too old.
I mean, they talk about, you know, Trump being feeble and stuff,
but I think when you have a mandatory retirement age for work,
being 60 or 65 or something like that,
that should also be the retirement age for service in public office.
I think a certain amount of youthful vitality is important.
So this is why Obama was good.
He was a young president, Justin Trudeau,
even if you don’t agree with the politics, he’s a vibrant leader,
which is, I think, important.
So the must be at least 30 years old, I disagree with that,
but I think they should have an upper limit
of how old you can be to be president,
or public office.
And this is actually the more important part.
You have to pay 3 million yen.
So if you want to run for office in Japan,
you have to put a deposit of 3 million yen.
The man’s claim was that this violates
the constitutional guarantee of equality.
And I sort of agree with that as a philosophy.
If you have to pay 3 million yen to run for office,
then only people with 3 million extra yen can run for office.
In which case, if you are of, you know, strict means,
if you’re poor, you’re not allowed to run for office, which is unfair.
I don’t know what the 3 million, it says deposit.
So maybe you get it back if you fail, I’m not sure.
But it seems interesting that I actually agree with kind of his claim.
He also submitted a letter opposing Abe State funeral.
Now I was actually against the State
funeral when I found out how much it cost.
I wasn’t against the State funeral because Abe was a prime minister.
He, whether you agree or not with his politics, he did work for the country.
And what he believed was the best way.
Whether or not you agreed with Abe’s politics,
he was doing what he thought was best for the country.
He was a state official for a very long time.
So I didn’t have a problem with the State funeral.
And then I found out how much they cost.
And I was like, the taxpayer shouldn’t be paying that much.
Abe in the government want to want a State funeral.
So he submitted a letter opposing Abe State funeral because it was forced
through and not Democratic.
So my problem with the State funeral was how much they cost because the
taxpayer shouldn’t be
footing that bill. The government wants to do that. They should find some
other source.
The family should pay for it. Donation, something like that.
Off you go.
He’s saying that the people didn’t get to vote on the State funeral.
And therefore it wasn’t Democratic. And that made him upset.
He is a failed politician.
And I think the thing is, so he wanted democracy and he says he wants to be
a politician and he
wanted things to be done right. But he’s also failed in his ideals because a
great politician or
whatnot, they would not use a pipe bomb to push their ideas through. So that
‘s the unfortunate
reality is this man has failed in two ways. He’s failed as a politician and
he’s also failed
to live up to his own ideals as what he claims a politician should be.
So since there was a pipe bomb thrown and last year Prime Minister Abe was
assassinated,
campaign speeches will only happen indoors now. So they’re not, they used to
do, this is actually
what I thought was quite sad about this whole thing. They had politicians
with the Prime Minister
very high level people out walking amongst the people, talking to people in
crowds and they were
all safe. It was all good. The secret service in Japan were primarily
trained to stop knife attacks,
which is why the home made shotgun actually worked and why the pipe bomb,
like it got really close
to the Prime Minister. The guy, the security guy I saw in the video, he
actually did his job properly.
But you know, also it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. So now
they’ve decided like we’ve
had one politician murdered another one attacked. We can’t keep going like
this. They want to create
a controlled environment for these sort of speeches. So they’re all going to
be happening indoors.
now. There will be metal detectors and every all the bags we get checked
before he can come in.
Street speeches will still happen. So what happens in Japan is these vans go
around and then they
stop and then they stand on top of the Van and they get a microphone with
these loud speakers
and they give a speech from the top of the Van. Those will still happen but.
they’re going to have a
sheet of bulletproof glass up in front of them. So I guess that’s not too
much of a difference because
the guy standing up there, he was quite far away anyways. You weren’t going
to get that close to him.
The bulletproof glass isn’t going to be much of a change, but it is sad that
we’ve had to actually
do that in a country where again a year ago, Abe, the prime minister,
whatever they were walking
around in crowds of people shaking their hands and like talking to people
and just being in and
amongst the people was really nice. They’re going to enforce like a 20 meter
space away from the Van
to make it just that much harder to get sort of leave you want to throw a
pipe bomb let’s say.
It’s going to you’re going to have to be able to throw at least 20 meters to
get your job done.
But it’s I’m a bit disappointed that’s had to happen because it’s like this.
violence is changing the
nature of politics in Japan, which is too
bad. Now on to more honestly more in the
news, Japan style news and the LDP official, so the liberal Democratic party
official. He’s up,
talking up one of his co-workers. There’s
sort of campaigns going on right now.
And he says, “Oh, I’m talking about my friend and then I start talking about
his wife and then the
rival, the rival of his friend as a woman.” He says, “I’m glad she’s not
really pretty either.”.
So he’s basically saying like, “Here’s my friend, his wife is hot, his.
competition, she’s not hot.”
So vote for my friend. He’s obviously a better person because he’s got the
hotter wife. This of course.
sexist and it’s going to piss people off. So the complaint was that his
comments damaged her dignity.
He later retracted his statement. So he made the remark and then the guy was
interviewing him and they.
said like, “Did you mean to insult her dignity? Did you mean that she was
unattractive?” He said, “No,
I totally do her.” But of course that’s not what he said. That’s actually
what I wish he said. I
wish he actually doubled down on it. He retracted his statement and he said,
“I said it inadvertently.
I retract everything. I apologize for offending the dignity of both.” So he
‘s talking about both the
rival and the man’s wife. But then he said, “Come on, she’s got a bit of a
hog face.” I just sat there going
like, “Okay, I’ve talked about this so many times. I actually think I have
to stop talking about it.”
Retracting statements. It’s not like the thing he said goes away because of
it. The apology means
nothing. I don’t get how this is acceptable. There’s almost no fallout and
no responsibility for the
dumb shit politician say. But it happens all the time and they say the dumb
shit. You just don’t
comment on people’s looks. And yet, when I think back to Trump, that’s his
whole deal. It’s commenting
on people’s appearance and their attitudes and what they’re like. So maybe
just politics have changed.
Certainly, Trump has changed the landscape of politics in America. But has.
it had an impact over
here? Because, no, because again, like five years ago, I was still doing the
Ninja News Japan.
And they were all saying racist stuff. So I guess they’ve just shifted. They
don’t say the racist stuff
out loud like they used to. They still get away with misogyny. And they’re
going to get away with that.
But now people are calling them out from misogyny. So I guess that’s going
to be on the chopping block
next. Politicians in Japan, they’re being held to a much higher standard.
Like the stuff Trump says,
he would not be able to get away with it in Japan. Like it just would not
fly. He would not be a.
successful politician. There is a group that supposed to promote gender
equality. And they had a
poster. And it was up about consent. And it had the first picture. And the
guy’s like, “Mm, she’s
into me.” And then the second picture was her going, “Ooh, I’m not into him
.” And it was about,
you know, you have to get consent before you start to do stuff to other
people. The problem is that
promotes the gender stereotype that a) men are the aggressors. Men are not
capable of reading
the signals of women. They don’t understand women. And that they are always
at fault in these sort
of sexual relations. It doesn’t suggest that the woman should get consent
from the man. It only
suggested that the man should get consent from the woman. So that is
promoting gender stereotypes.
In a group that is supposed to be promoting gender equality, they should.
know better. So the people
started complaining. So they took down the poster. And then they started
saying, “Oh, not only does it
promote gender stereotypes, it also has copied the art style of another
artist.” So they took
all the posters down. The company,
the group, the gender equality group said.
, “We apologize
publicly, so there’s your public apology.”
But then they blamed the printing company.
Not to actually take responsibility for you shit. That’s not cool. The
artist who is sort of the
one being, you know, copied in this case said that the apology and taking
down the posters is enough.
I don’t know. It’s weird that gender equality
in Japan still means gender stereotypes.
just that men should behave better.
But again, that is the gender stereotype.
that is being promoted.
Yeah, it’s almost like people don’t know what gender equality is. This is
Japan. I would say when
it comes to gender equality, LGBT rights and stuff like that, Japan is
decades behind other countries,
Western countries. Like just even the equal rights men and women still aren
‘t there. Because I mean,
that guy just got away with saying that this other politician had a hog
phase. I’ve never seen a
picture of either of them, so I can’t really comment. It’s that low-key mis
ogyny that is just a
part of Japanese culture. And people, I think they come to Japan and they
have weird expectations
of what it’s going to be like. And I don’t think they realize, there’s a
whole generation that’s
still in charge that has not changed their thinking from the 1960s. And it’s
going to take another
generation or two before it goes away. There’s a man called “Boys Over
Flowers.” I’d never heard of it.
And then I found out it has the highest circulation comic series for girls
by a single author. It’s in
the Guinness Book of World Records. But then I was like, that is a very
specific. This is one of the
things about world records. It’s how specific the world records are. So the
highest circulation of
a comic series, that’s good. Four girls, okay, you’ve now just split out at
least two so that you
split it in half. So there should be the highest circulation comic series
for boys by a single author.
That one sort of makes sense. Because if it’s
a team, it wouldn’t have the same impact.
So I was like, because it’s a world
record, I could publish a comic series for.
white 50-year-old men with beards and get 100 people to buy it. And that
would probably be the
highest circulation comic series for white 50-year-old men with beards by a
single author. Maybe that could
get in the Guinness Book of World Records. Because that is how you finesse
world records sometimes. It’s
actually get something so specific. No one else is attempted to try it yet.
But then I saw she has.
59.4 million copies of her comic in circulation. Those are physical comics.
So like if you had a
comic on like an ebook or something, that would encounter. And I was like 54
, 59.4 million copies is a
lot. It just says physical copies published. It doesn’t say bought. So could
I do a self-run of 60 million.
comics of a series that I have written for girls by me and beat that record
if I didn’t sell any?
The very interesting question because technically I think I could beat the
world record. Since we’re talking
about world records, I have the number one highest rated karaoke version of
House of Pain’s Jump
Around in Japan. So we have a switch and my daughter wanted to do karaoke
and they have a thing,
a company called Joy Sound. And they do karaoke machines. And so they have
an app where you can do
karaoke through the switch. So her and her friends came over and did it and
they were on it. Me to do
an English song and I was like, this is going to be really bad. I only know
the words to like three
songs. And one of them is jump around. That came out when I was like in my
20s. So I did it. I got like
69% or something like that. And then it goes number one in Japan. I had this
like big fanfare and
everyone was super excited. And I was like, oh wait, I’m the only person in
Japan to have ever attempted
this song. That’s how I got the world record. Are the the national record.
Now back, way, way back,
I was the, I was doing video game reviews and an app came out and it was.
called poop ride. So it was
P-O-O-P-R-I-D-E. So either it was poo, P-O-O, Pride, P-R-I-D-E or poop, P-O-
O-P, ride, R-I-D-E. And it was this.
little game where you had poop and you slid it along the floor and you had
to get it enough power to
touch the line. But you didn’t want to go over the line. So whoever got to
the closest to the line one.
Now because I was doing video game reviews, I got the earliest version of it
on release day,
had to play it for a few hours, leveled up really fast, actually came up
with some strategies for it,
wrote my article. And then as I put the app down, I checked the rankings. I
was number one in the world.
So I have held both a national Japanese record and a world record. I’ve
never gone back to poop ride
to see if that record has been broken. I do believe Mr. Warm Hands purpose
fully went onto.
the Joy Sound app and with his kids and did jump around and I do believe he
beat my score. He may be
the number one in Japan now. But I held that record for years, mid-pandemic.
So at least two years now,
I’ve had the record for I should go back and do it again because I wasn’t
even trying. Imagine if I drop.
So the Osaka court had to pay $375,000 yen. That’s like $3,000, $4,000 to a
former inmate and his attorney
because they wouldn’t allow him to wear sunglasses while he was in a
detention facility and in prison.
So at first I thought this was a Yakuza guy who and they wear sunglasses.
They just wear sunglasses
all the time. I actually have a friend who married into a family that was
sort of extended family
was all the Yakuza and they said at the wedding, one side of the room was
all wearing sunglasses the whole
time. So this is a Yakuza thing. So that’s what I thought when I read the
article of the title and then
I went read the actual thing and I was like, “Oh, it’s actually quite
different.” So this guy usually wears
light purple glasses because of a light sensitivity. There’s actually a
really famous comedian
in Japan and he wore sunglasses all the time. His name is Tamori I think.
And it’s because he had
light sensitivity to his eye. So he wore sunglasses all the time because the
lights on the TV.
shows were too bright for his eye. It’s an actually constant pain. Now they
said you’re not aware
of loud to wear glasses in prison. So they wouldn’t let his wear his glasses
but that actually means
he wasn’t able to read documents and the light was so harsh like it would
cause some physical pain
and it made everything like he was told to do much harder because he wasn’t
allowed to wear it.
This wasn’t just like because he wanted to look cool. This was essentially
prescription.
medically necessary glasses. He had to carry out his sentence without
corrective lenses as the.
way he was phrased. The detention house says you can have shades that allow
up to 25 percent
blockage. In prison, colorless glasses are only allowed if there’s a medical
reason. But it seems
like this guy had a medical reason but they didn’t allow him to wear his
glasses in prison because
they thought oh this guy wants to be cool just like my assumption. We’re
going to say no but they’re
actually like violating sort of fundamental human rights. So you got to pay
up. 4000 bucks though.
So you think about like a lot of the stories where people sue each other.
The numbers are very small.
In America, something like this would be massive. It’s because Japan is just
not as litigious. And one
of the reasons are not as litigious is because the awards are so much
smaller than in America. I bet in
America if I went to prison and they said Peter is not allowed to wear his
corrective lens. So I’m
essentially blind the whole time I’m in prison making everything more
difficult. I bet I could sue them
and I get millions of dollars. In Japan, 4000 bucks shared out with my
attorney. I mean sometimes
you got wonder if it’s even worth it. But I think a lot of times in Japan
you sue them for the moral issue.
Not so much for the money. So there’s a new Pokemon show. Now I don’t follow
Pokemon. I do remember all
the conversations about you have like a 12 year old boy who never goes to
school who goes around
battling animals. And it was a lot of memes actually when I was in my
university and later day.
Because people were talking about the lifestyle of a Pokemon master. Zero
education beyond elementary
school basically. There was a lot of jokes online and I enjoyed them because
conceptually it was
quite interesting. The new hero it’s called Liko. Liko joins the school
which apparently Ash did
and then just never showed up like went to school and then was like well I’m
going to go be Pokemon
master. Bye. And then took off for the rest of his life. Liko joins the
school but then takes lessons
remotely which I found very interesting because they’ve really updated it so
they do have the child hero
who’s going to go around and do their adventures with their Pokemon. But.
actually still technically
get education. The only thing I can think is a problem is how many hours a
day are they expected to do.
these lessons remotely. How much are they going to show without online. But
they’re actually using a
tablet again updating the technology of Pokemon. They’re they’re they’re
they’re going to wonder
if they’re going to how much they’re going to actually bother with this
showing them actually doing
this. But one of the comments I really enjoyed was I hope Liko has an
unlimited data plan because
of course they’re not going to be hanging around somewhere where there’s Wi-
Fi all the time. It’s
a bit ridiculous. But I do like that they’re showing the kids like yeah even
our Pokemon heroes they.
still have to go to school. Okay so this is a new kind of harassment. So
Japan has a billion kinds of
harassment. So there was Seku Harada which is sexual harassment. There was
Paohara. Paohara harassment.
They’re actually using the English and then condensing it into a Japanese.
Then I learned about
I forget it was Akahara which is Akachana so that means baby. Maybe I might
have that one wrong. But
anyways there’s essentially maternity harassment. So you get pregnant and
then you’re pushed out of.
your company. I found a new one through an article today called Owa Harada
and Owa Di is finished. So
Owa Harada is finishing harassment and this has to do with recent graduates
looking for jobs. So they do
kind of graduate recruitment. All the companies every year when the students
graduate they do recruitment.
cycles. And they try to get new employees. In Japan again having fewer and
fewer young people they
need the competition for companies to get more young people to join their
company is part of keeping
their company alive. The competition is quite serious. Owa Harada. Owa Har.
Ada. What Owa Harada is. It’s
really hard to switch between English and Japanese like in one word. Is you
‘ve come and interviewed with
our company. We want you to stop. That’s the Owa Di part looking at other
companies. But we want
you to make a promise to stop looking for other companies. But that is
essentially saying to the
graduate recruit person looking for a job that we want you to limit your
options and only join our
company. We want you to stop looking because what if you find a better deal
if you find a better deal
you might take that job and not our job. So they try to get them to sign
letters of acceptance saying
like here’s a letter that says I will accept the proposed job that not the
actual job. So they’re
saying we’re not going to give you a contract right now to sign. We want you
to sign this letter that
says you’re not going to look for other jobs and then later down the line we
‘ll give you a contract
which is bullshit. If you’re not signing a contract it doesn’t mean anything
because they could say
we’re going to pay you millions dollars and then the contracts get slid
across the table. It’s got five
bucks on it. But you haven’t been looking for any other jobs where you could
have also got paid
millions dollars really unfair. They also require them to attend company
social gatherings and what
they’ve done is tried to make enough of these company social gatherings that
it’s difficult for you
to go out and find other jobs. So the government’s asking companies to stop
this. Now asking isn’t a
very strong thing but there was a survey done in 2021.10% of the students
said the experienced
“awada, awada hara.” Okay I’m getting it. “awada hara.” And then 10% oh 64%
of the 10% say they ended their
job search because of awada hara. 42.3% had received demands to provide a
letter of acceptance. So almost
half the people who went out to do recruitment said like really quickly they
were like “sign this
letter saying you’re going to accept a job from us and stop looking for
other jobs.” 11.6% were
harassed persistently. Some cases say they were physically barred from
leaving when they declined
an offer. So they’re like “here we want you to work for our company.” So you
know I’m not into this.
I’m going to go now and they like lock the door and say you can’t leave
until you accept our offer.
Which is of course no way legally going to hold up but they might actually
cause you problems
if you actually like end up signing something to just get out of there. I
would say if you’re ever in
a situation where someone just like you’re at work and then your boss locks
the door and says you
can’t leave until you do something. What you do is just call the police and
you say like I would
like to leave this office and they are not letting me. When the police show
up because that’s kidnapping.
I mean a lot of people don’t think about it but what they’re doing is saying
like you are not physically
able to go where you want under some sort of dress or threat. That’s
kidnapping. It’s illegal in
every Western country, every like sort
of Western legal system I know of. So.
just call the cops and
say like “Hi I’m in this room in this building. I would like to leave and
they’re not letting me leave.”.
You probably could just put this phone
on speakerphone and they’re going to like
have to let you go. Then you could probably sue them afterwards. The most
interesting part of this
though is that there is an article 627 of the civil code. It says even if
you sign a letter of acceptance
you can back out. So even if these companies force you to sign a letter
saying you’re going to accept
the job with their company. Legally you can back out at any time and that
letter doesn’t mean anything.
I find it interesting more though that because this is such a common problem
that it’s actually written
into the civil code. So this has happened so much in the past and they’ve
had so many sort of legal
issues I assume that they just wrote into the civil code that these letters
don’t mean anything and
that you can just back out. You don’t
have to take a job you don’t want to take.
There was a man caught on camera by a passerby who sent OG SONS photo. So OG
SON is an old man in
Japanese. And what this guy does is he takes the short shorts that girls
wear they’re called bloomers.
He takes the short shorts they wear and he wears them around the station and
this guy has a Twitter
account and he’s really proud of this. He wears like Lea Tards. He’s
actually I’m going to say a pretty
fit old dude. Someone took a picture of this guy sent it to his mom and said
oh my god look what I
can see at the station. This woman posted it on the Internet and she said my
younger son sent this.
photo to me saying there was an OG SON wearing bloomers at the station. I
didn’t believe him until he
sent this photo. It’s real. It’s just sick. And then she put pictures over
his face because you can’t
publish other people’s pictures in Japan without getting in trouble and
posted the picture with what
she tweeted on the Internet. The man himself shows up to her Twitter account
and says don’t censor
my face. So this dude he’s not only doing something that’s kind of weird. He
‘s super proud of it which
I love. And then it turns out his whole Twitter account is just full of
these kind of photo. I don’t
know why but this guy is doing the thing that makes him happy. Yes it would
creep me out but at the same
time I’m sure stuff that I like creeps out other people. I know like the jud
o I do. A lot of people
disagree with fighting and like beating the shit out of other people but I.
love it. And yeah
if people said stop I wouldn’t stop. There was a couple comments and one was
three cheers to this man’s
confidence and I got to admit he is super confident. You can really sense
the sort of strong willpower
from the bloomers ojisa. I mean he’s been doing this for nearly 10 years now
. He also says some philosophical
things or tasteful things sometimes on his Twitter. Just don’t actually
commit a crime please.
I’ve seen the man’s Twitter before. He’s actually quite intellectual and
well spoken which makes his
bloomers obsession even weirder which is so true because he’s not an idiot.
He’s not a dumb guy.
He just he knows what makes him happy and he’s living that lifestyle which
again I kind of had a certain
amount of appreciation for. And then the very last comment which I did enjoy
this is what makes Japan.
Japan and that’s a good thing.