I think I have 13 stories,
but I’ve incorrectly
used the numbering
system of how numbers work.
Which is a terrible
embarrassment that I didn’t
have to tell anybody,
but one thing we are, an
engineered to pan, is open and
honest and kind and sarcastic.
In Ikeda, Osaka, there is a Tori
gate and it’s called the Sky Tori.
It’s Tori gate, Sky Tori,
or whatever, anyways,
it’s one of those
very classic red gates,
I think this one’s actually
gray, but you know what I mean?
If I say the red gate,
it’s got the two pillars
and then it’s got a couple of slats
across the top, very iconic Japanese thing.
If you come to Japan, it’s great to get
a picture of everyone about a year ago.
A young person came
over from another country,
sort of doing chin ups
on one, doing a little
show off for their Instagram,
gotten a lot of trouble.
That of course does
not dissuade other people
from doing the exact
same thing, a pair
arrived by taxi, they hung
around the gate, so they were
clearly at that point thinking
like, should we do this?
I guess one got brave
enough, the other one
got his camera out,
guy jumps up, blasts out
some chin ups, because
that’s what you do at
any sort of religious
site is just show off
your physical prowess,
that’s what religion’s
all about showing off
your religious, showing
off your religious
prowess, showing off your
physical prowess, it’s going to be
the whole day today I can tell already.
The thing is in this
case, another tourist
filmed these tourists
blasting out their chin ups
on the tortoise gate,
went to the police
and reported them, so
Japan now has had this
problem where there’s
too much tourism, tourists
are causing a lot of
problems and there’s
a lot of complaining
about tourists, but now you
have tourists who are
very respectful of Japan
who loved Japan so
much, they are going to
start ratting out the
other tourists, this is an
interesting like, or a
borealis, or a borealis,
this is why you write a script, so you
don’t try to say words you only vaguely know
in the moment, I
think I’m smart, but not
as smart as I think I am, that might be the
problem, because I keep trying to say stuff
that’s above my own capabilities,
anyways, this is tourists eating.
Self-policing other tourists, that could be
an interesting new future for Japan, where
the Japanese people
don’t even have to get
involved, the tourists start like lambasting
the other tourists, but of course, the
problem is over tourism,
so there’s too many
tourists around, so
you’re going to get some
bad ones and some good ones, I
think that’s a pretty much unexpected.
Then we have Kelton G, he’s a kick streamer,
and as soon as I say kick streamer now,
that already
encompasses a lot of like
preconceptions, kick
streamers are the trouble
streamers, they’re the
streamers who cause
problems, because if you
do this stuff on Twitch,
you get kicked off,
you do this stuff on
YouTube, you get kicked
off, you do this stuff
on kick, you may get kicked off, but it is
less likely, so they cause more problems.
Now this was very
interesting, he was sitting
in a priority seat on a train, now these
are priority seats are reserved for older
people, people with
injuries, pregnant women,
you know, people
who need to sit down, I,
interestingly enough,
I’m almost always injured,
so I should get the
priority seat all the
time, but if you looked
at me, you would never
know I was injured, so I understand
why no one would get up and stand for me.
But honestly, if no
one’s sitting in the seats,
if no one’s standing up, there’s actually
no problem sitting in the priority seats,
it’s just the expectation
is if someone gets
on the train who needs more to sit down
than you do, you should let them sit down.
An old man, so
there’s a clip that went
around the internet, it
was an old man coming
up to him and sort
of stick in his finger
in the guy’s face, this
streamer’s face, and
then the streamer gets
up and he pushes him
away, and then he
pushes him again, now this
is interesting because
he claims self defense,
he actually ended
up going to the police
starting to the police and he didn’t get
in trouble which would sort of explain that
maybe he was right, but the clip we saw
was old man pokes him once, guy gets up and
pushes him twice,
which would seem sort of
like an overreaction
considering what happened.
So it’s interesting
because I live in Japan,
I’ve been on trains
with Japanese people,
little Japanese men
are annoying as shit, so
it turns out this wasn’t
the clip that we saw
on the internet wasn’t
the whole situation of
course, I mean the
guy’s probably streaming
for hours at a time, now he was maybe being
loud or being annoying because he had his
stream up while he was on the train, which
a lot of Japanese people think that’s, you
know, impolite, it’s not illegal, so I mean
that’s actually sort of the thing you have
to deal with, there’s
a difference between I
don’t like it and it’s
illegal to do or it’s
prohibited and you shouldn’t do it, there
are big differences there, old Japanese
men think anything I
don’t like, you should
not be allowed to do
and I should be allowed to
walk up and sort of,
in your face basically.
So what happened is
this old dude comes up
to him three times, so
he comes up and talks
to him, goes and sits
down again, comes back
and talks to him again,
doesn’t get the reaction
he wants, goes back
and sits down, comes up a
third time and then he
starts getting physically
aggressive, starts sticking his finger in
his face and then pokes him in the face.
This product of reaction,
so clearly the guy,
the old man was not
going to back down, but
this young guy gets
up and he pushes him,
and he pushes him pretty
hard and the old man
goes back and he goes to the second
his chair, he then pushes him from behind.
Now I think the second push is where he
crosses the line, the first push, I actually
am on board with, he
touched you first, you’re
just saying get away
from me, but then when
the guy’s backing off, now you’re in this
sort of gray zone where it’s like, no, this
is not okay, you shouldn’t
be doing this anymore.
I was on a bus and an
old man and I had a DS or
something, I was a game
system and his old man.
I didn’t speak very good
Japanese yet and so
he started pointing
at it and then pointing
at me and doing the X, now in Japan, the X
is the universal symbol for no, they don’t
realize that not every country uses it that
way, so they’ll walk up and go, and you
don’t really know what
they’re saying unless
you’re imbued in the culture enough
to actually know what that means.
So he thought I had a cell phone and he was
trying to tell me that you’re not allowed
to use your cell phones on the bus or in
public or on the train, which of course you
actually are, it’s just sort of maybe rude,
it’s impolite, but I think really when they
say don’t use your cell phone,
most people are saying don’t
speak loudly on the phone in a
public setting, so on the trains.
So I can understand someone
kind of getting upset for that.
If I am silently using a PlayStation, a DS,
I’m silently using my phone to play a game.
I don’t see how anyone
could rightly complain
about that, old Japanese
men will and they
have no problem getting in your
face about it because they have
no problem, they don’t think
there’s going to be any consequences.
I’m an old Japanese man, the
world is designed for my satisfaction.
I can do whatever I want.
This is kind of how these old guys think.
And then as soon as there’s any pushback,
they just have no idea what to do.
So I’m not saying go
around pushing old men,
but stand up and look them straight
in the face and be like just go away.
I bet that has an impact.
The streamer, again,
he went to the police and
the police didn’t charge
them with anything
and they let them go,
so I’m thinking I have
to always kind of end
up being on the police
aside because they actually know
what kind of things they’re making.
I also know what it is
to deal with a Japanese
man, an old Japanese
man who just decides
that he’s going to make you
the target of his afternoon.
Think?
Yeah, I think the push is too much.
This is a personal opinion.
The push is too much, but a
stand up, face him and just tell
him to like say something in
English, tell him to go away.
If you speak Japanese, tell him to
go away in Japanese, that is all fine.
It’s perfectly deserved.
And if you end up in that situation,
something you should think about.
It’s a word that I took
years to learn how to say.
It’s actually funny because
it’s in the commercials.
It’s a food company.
They make food stuffs.
They have a home delivery
meal, so almost every
big company, you know,
it’s like a package meal.
They send it to your house.
They get all the time.
They decided, you know
what we’re going to do?
We’re going to give these meal prep things,
these pre-packaged foods to influencers.
They can eat it.
And they like it.
They can talk about it.
This is called stealth marketing.
Now it’s because it’s not
sponsored marketing now.
If you go on most like
Instagram, they have to
say if the post is being
sponsored by a company.
If I give you a product
for free and you
use it and you talk
about that product, that
is technically a
sponsorship because you’ve
gotten something for the
service of making a post.
These guys, at Genomoto,
was trying to say
like, we didn’t tell them
to review our foods.
We didn’t tell them to do anything
with the food we gave them.
We just innocently gave them the food.
They just happened to
have a million followers on X.
They happened to have a
million followers on Instagram.
And if they happen to talk about
our food, well that’s just a quinky dink.
That is not legal in Japan.
So if you do not disclose a sponsorship,
so you’ll notice that when you listen to an
engine in Japan, I never disclose a
sponsorship because I am not sponsored.
Which is why I get to say
whatever I want though.
But should you want to sponsor me Doritos,
I would be willing to take Doritos money.
Because I could tell
you without a shadow of
doubt, I’d be more than
happy to promote Doritos.
It’s the only American thing
that I actually would buy.
So I’m Canadian and the sort of
ban on Canadian American products.
I’ve actually joined on that.
Now for me, the biggest change
in my life has been very small.
I no longer buy under armor sports clothes.
So I basically, I had all under armor
sports clothes for my workout routine.
And when I had like
rash guards for judo and
stuff, it was all under armor,
I had under armor slides.
Now I’m not dumb.
I didn’t throw them away because
they already got that money.
So there’s no going back in time.
But I no longer buy under armor goods.
I had to buy some workout clothes.
I bought Mizuno, which
is a Japanese company.
I’m like, I’m in Japan.
I’m going to buy a Japanese company.
And they had stuff to fit.
So I am now head to toe
dressed in Mizuno when
I’m actually buying my
sports clothes from now on.
Even my moral principles
will be pushed aside
for Doritos because
Doritos, okay, a rum and
coke into ritos is
like my dream evening.
The best night in the
world for me would be
pizza for dinner, rum
and coke with the pizza.
And then maybe a
couple hours later Doritos
because it’s almost
like not pizza, but it’s
got like the same, it’s
the same flavor profiles
pizza, but it’s also
now crunchy and crispy
and you’re having, um, man, see,
now I’m going to go and buy Doritos.
So I do enjoy, uh,
when people take moral
stances because it’s always
funny how mutable morality is.
And I, you know, like to think
of myself, I’m a moral person.
I have more, I don’t depends on
the situation, depends on the time.
And that’s phase that I
haven’t given up Doritos yet.
So this law that’s
actually being broken by
stealth marketing is the
act against unjustifiable
premiums and
misleading representation.
So it’s the misleading representation.
So it’s like this influencer
gets this meal prep thing, eats
the meal prep and talks to their
audience about how good it is.
It’s misleading that that isn’t
sponsored is what the actual problem is.
The company deleted
questionable posts, uh,
and is totally now
complicit and will remain
complicit far into the
future is what they’re saying.
They got caught.
They’re going to not
do it for a little while
and then try again later, which is a
pretty normal business thing to do.
It was all over, uh, all the
news feeds for the last month.
And I didn’t really
want to talk about it too.
There’s a city in Japan
that passed an ordinance
that you cannot use
yourself full and for
more than two hours a day
for entertainment purposes.
So if you’re using it
for work, you can use it
if you’re using it for
research, you can use it.
Uh, but the city ordinance
was there is a limit of
two hours a day for
entertainment on your cell phone.
Now, this ordinance
came with no punishment.
This ordinance came with no enforcement.
So a lot of people are
saying like it’s useless.
Why would you even do it?
And a lot of people
were saying like the
government shouldn’t be telling
me how long I can use my cell phone.
The government
shouldn’t be telling me how
I could do spend my
time in my private life.
There was a surprising
amount of push back
because this is again, the government is
actually telling you how to live your life.
Uh, it’s officially a starts from
tomorrow, October 1st tomorrow.
This city in Japan will
not allow you to use
your cell phone for more
than two hours a day,
especially children
and it has for children
and they actually have like before
nine o’clock or before us other times.
And the mayor who
actually introduced this was
saying, uh, the reason
isn’t actually to enforce it.
The reason isn’t
actually to get people to
stop using their cell
phones because they’re
not going to spend
any money enforcing it.
The idea was to get people to think
about how much they use their cell phone.
So he was talking about
like I was at the dinner table.
I’m looking at my phone and
my daughter’s looking at her
phone and we’re not actually
having any communication.
Kids are staying up too late.
They’re looking at their phone.
They’re scrolling on their phone.
He heard about
incidences where kids were
staying up all night
looking at their phone and
they wouldn’t go to school the next day
and they’re actually kind of dropping out
of school because they were
spending too much other phone.
So he didn’t put this
Sydney ordinance into place
to actually stop people
from using their phone.
He put it in so that
people would take a
minute and hopefully think about how
much their phone is impacted their lives.
He wasn’t even saying cell phones are bad.
He’s saying these are
amazing pieces of technology.
They’re useful.
They’re amazing.
They give us like the coal
internet at our fingertips.
We can see everything in the world.
We can learn a whole bunch.
Cell phones are amazing.
But they also can and have
taken over huge aspects
of our life where we
don’t spend quiet time.
We don’t spend time with our family.
We don’t have time when we’re bored.
And that’s actually something that’s
really important to human creativity.
And I thought, okay, at first I was like,
and all there’s more than one ordinance in
Japan where there’s
actually no enforcement and
no punishment and it
seems kind of pointless
and I’m very against
doing pointless things.
But when he came out and explained the
reason was to just draw attention to this and
it has worked because
again, like I said, the
entirety of the last
month has been Japanese
City, it makes a law
and that law is banning
cell phones and it
was just, you know, of
course, internet titling
is way out of hand.
It’s all saying stuff
that has got a grain of
truth in it and then blowing it
up so people actually click bait.
The reality is the mayor
is being conscientious
and saying, look, I’m
not stopping anyone
from doing this, but
if I can get a couple of
people to think about
it, if I can get people
to think like, hey, maybe my kids
shouldn’t be using their phones before bed.
That might be worth
doing and so he went ahead
and do it and it doesn’t
cost them anything
to pass this law, this ordinance, so
he thought, yeah, it might as well do it.
So while I was against
at the beginning because
I’m against doing things
that are essentially
pointless, I understood his
point of view and I let it go.
So you’re welcome.
I have a theory that
Japanese society in the
military in Japan or
the self-defense force
is primarily focused on leading towards
the creation of a Gundam in real life.
Now they’ve had
satellites and giant robots
in these different technological
innovations in Japan.
The one that has really caught my attention
as far as is that very recently, they have
been working on a railgun and to me, a
railgun is one of the most Gundam things you
can have because of course
they don’t shoot guns on a Gundam.
They have to shoot
a railgun, it has to be
like amazingly more
powerful than everything else.
It has to rip through an enemy’s
Gundam giant robot machine.
But last week, a ship
mounted electromagnetic
railgun successfully
hit a target vessel in a
test, which is super anime, but
also real life, which is a bit terrifying.
The projectile traveled
at 2.3 kilometers per
second and it’s 70
times the speed of sound.
So that’s just giving you a sense of
these guys haven’t gone like full anime.
They’ve gone like full, fun anime.
They’re like we’re going to send a
piece of metal as fast as humanly possible.
It’s going to hit our enemy target.
It’s going to explode.
It’s going to do a cool anime explosion.
It’s going to have that
big circle that comes
out and then pauses
for a second and then
all the fire comes out and
all the explosions and stuff.
It’s going to be super
cool and then we’re
going to mount it on
a giant robot and we’re
going to walk into battle and
Japan’s going to take over the world.
Oops.
And she’s a real guy, a
man stole 50 fire hose nozzle.
It’s such a weird thing to steal.
So like this sex stuff, like a stealing, we
have a couple of those stories coming up.
But like stealing the underwear and stealing
like things and all the gross purses.
I cannot understand it.
It’s like a weird fetish
and this one, because
these fire hose nozzles
are made of brass
or a combination like a
smelting of brass of some sort.
So they are vaguely valuable.
So if you were stealing them to sell
them, I would understand that as well.
This 57 year old man
was arrested in the act.
So he was actually
stealing a fire hose
nozzle and he was caught, red
handed, stealing a fire hose hose nozzle.
And in a search
of multiple locations
connected to the man,
so he probably had like a
shed, he probably had like an apartment,
he probably had some family stuff.
He had, you know, multiple places
he could hide fire hose nozzles.
They found 50 more.
So if they found 50 more, he
wasn’t stealing them to sell them.
He was stealing them
just to have them, just
to take them away
from the fire department
or whoever needs them
in an actual emergency.
He’s now suspected in 81 similar
cases in this surrounding area.
In Hiroshima, there
were 57 threat theft, in
Hiroshima there were 57 thefts, but
they admitted they stole them for money.
And the current suspect
just seems to be keeping them.
So I’m wondering is this
just like he wants there
to be a fire, like he’s
one of those fire bug guys.
He wants the fire to get in a hand and when
they try to use the hose, it doesn’t work.
And he’s just sort of like anarchy.
Is this a weird sex thing?
These are the questions
I got to know, I got
to find a way to start getting interviews
with these people who get arrested.
Like what are you doing with them?
But of course they never going to tell me.
They’re going to be like yeah man, I love
licking the inside of a fire hose nozzle.
The Osaka police have
started to patrol on
motorized scooters because being
intimidating isn’t part of the job.
So there’s actually, this
is truly an interesting thing.
But I think of Canadian
or American police,
actually when I think of Canadian
police, I tend to think of the RCMP.
The RCMP in Canada is like
the highway patrols and stuff.
They do the national police, they
wear gear and look intimidating.
Not to the same level as you’ve seen on the
internet as the American guys who are like
in full battle, again
they’re like one step
away from like being in an
anime with helmets and stuff.
Japanese police are
not trying to do the same
thing, they’re not trying to
look intimidating in the same way.
They wanted to, again
bring to light that there
have been a lot of
incidences and accidents
and stuff involving
motorized scooters lately
because they’ve sort of
taken to the streets of Japan.
I’ve actually seen them around
the city where I work and to go yeah.
I know they’re in Tokyo.
And so now people are
using them regularly, of
course there are
accidents, there are people
driving drunk on their
motorized scooters.
These are all problems.
And so like the best
way to bring it to light
would be to take a
whole bunch of cops and
put them on bright green scooters
and have them patrol to see you like that.
It’s actually a fairly sensible
way to get around for a cop.
It just doesn’t give that intimidation
factor that we’re kind of used from a western
culture being like this isn’t
how cops present themselves.
In Osaka there were 4,540
traffic violations involving scooters.
There were 59 accidents and
62 injuries like in the last month.
They want to encourage people
to take videos and lead by example.
So this is again, it’s the different
philosophy of these kind of people in charge.
So they’re like look if we’re going to tell
people to be safe on scooters the best way
to do it would be let’s
get ourselves on scooters.
Let’s put our helmets on, let’s drive
responsibly, let’s go around in our scooters.
Yes it’s not going to be scary,
it’s not supposed to be scary.
We’re cops.
We’re not actually
supposed to be intimidating
people and here’s a
thing that maybe everyone
in the west who’s listening
to this is something like what?
No cops aren’t supposed to
intimidate you, they’re supposed
to be the ones you feel
comfortable coming to for help.
I don’t know how
personalized you get into this.
My daughter was in a bit of an accident,
she was hit by a car and basically she was
not hurt, there was
no one hurt but she was
very freaked out and
then of course the police
had to come and take a
report and then they had to call
my wife and she had to
come and pick up my daughter.
Now that meant there
was a drive which meant
they had to wait so
the police waited with
my daughter and to try
to get her to calm down
because again she had just
been technically hit by a car.
They were chatting
to her quite calmly and
trying to get her to
distract her and trying
to be really nice and
this was actually one of
the nicest stories I’ve had about
an experience with the police.
The police in Japan started talking to my
daughter about things she’d done, she said
I’d been to this beach and then that’s
where I confessed my love to this girl.
And she rejected me which made my daughter
laugh so this young sort of 25 year old cop
is relating to my
daughter and trying to
distract her and making
her laugh and she felt
a lot better and isn’t
that more like what’s
police are supposed to
be so while I was initially
going to make fun
of how silly the police
looked on their scooters
I’m way more on board
with that than them wearing like
body armor and having machine
guns and walking around like
they should be terminators.
Talking about streamers of course
Japan has their own streamers.
News and streamers are
not an uncommon thing here.
They don’t tend to get
out in nuisance other
people though so they just
tend to make a lot of noise.
We did have the guys
who were like trying to
hunt down predators
which again it’s one of
those ones like maybe that’s
okay I don’t know it’s really hard
to say because you’re not
necessarily doing it the legal way.
You don’t have any
sort of jurisdiction here.
You’re just a guy with
a camera that doesn’t
mean it’s okay for you
to like tackle someone
and accuse them of
something and then it
turns out you’re wrong you should be
punished for that but they almost never are.
Azumaru is a nuisance
YouTuber who got into politics.
What could go wrong?
I mean his whole career
up to this point has
been based on making
a lot of noise about
nothing and now he’s in politics where your
job is to make a lot of noise about nothing
but they have rules in Japanese parliament
so is he able to follow those rules?
Well they were talking
about violence against
deer in Nada calling
for stricter penalties.
So basically they’re
saying there’s a lot of
overtourism in Nada,
there’s a lot of deer
and that’s actually what
attracts the tourists,
the tourists come
and they’ve been saying
that tourists are kicking
the deer or the deer
are attacking the
tourists in the tourists
like push back and so basically there’s
like tourists are fighting deer in Nada.
We have to punish people who are actually
hurting the deer because they are protected
species, they’re actually
protected by the city
and that’s why they’re
you know so comfortable
roaming around the city
in the parks and stuff.
The mayor responded
that maybe these penalties
you need to proof and this was actually
the big problem because it was very hard to
prove someone kicked
a deer because the deer
can obviously come
and like make a report or
give a confession of
any sort and then our
man, as Umau said, how the
hell can you call yourself mayor?
No.
In these proceedings
you’re not supposed to
be talking like that and that of
course then became a problem.
He got a verbal warning after the meeting
as the comment lacked the dignity expected
of an assembly member,
which is pretty fair.
Going how the hell
can you call yourself
mayor does not have a lot
of dignity connected to him?
He said, I spoke my
mind but in the end it was
intimidation which is showing a
certain amount of self-awareness.
It’s like the way I talked to him
was supposed to be intimidating.
This is probably again
how he got popular on
the internet but this
isn’t YouTube anymore.
This isn’t how I’m
supposed to be talking to
these people and it actually shows he
kind of understood where he went wrong.
I want to become a
competent politician and
then he sent a DM to the
mayor on X to apologize
and the mayor said, don’t get too
heated and do your best for the citizens.
Which is a super happy
ending to that story.
I actually really liked it because you have
this guy and maybe his reaction is sincere
maybe he’s just a
reaction to get like a
tension but he turned around
and he said maybe I did too much.
He properly went and apologized.
I don’t know if X was
the format, maybe like go
into the guy and be like
hey, kind of lost my cool.
I’m sorry.
But then the mayor didn’t turn
around and like admonish him.
He’s like look, you
are passionate about
politics and you’re
passionate about this city
and you’re passionate about this town, don’t
get too heated, do your best and we can
kind of work together and that really seems
like what politics should be and since most
of the information I
get about politics that
is not directly Japanese
is American, it’s
something we certainly
would hope for a 50-year-old.
I think we should just do
a counter for 50-year-olds.
I was doing a counter
for certain violations
and then they just sort of dropped off
when I started counting them regularly.
I bet they’re still
happening to the same
degree but those aren’t
the stories I’m doing anymore.
There’s certainly got
to be trends of stories
that come out and
trends of stories that
I pick up on but 50-year-old
men in Japan seem to be it.
They seem to be the newsmaker for
an engineer in Japan and me being 53.
I keep wondering if one day
I’m just going to lose it and
then end up telling a really
awful story about myself.
A 50-year-old man did 183 in a 60 zone.
This is the highest
speed violation since 2019
when portable detection
devices were introduced.
So basically in 2019
they got those like
laser guns, radar guns
where they can actually
track how fast you’re going
and those are going to do so.
Since that gives you
a fairly accurate record
of the speed of the car, I think
that’s why they started the record then.
But this is the biggest violation
since those were introduced.
I was going fishing the next day so I
wanted to get home quickly to sleep.
I mean, as far as reasons
go, that’s pretty fair.
I just don’t think you
adrenaline from driving
that fast in a zone
where you’re not supposed
to drive that fast
might be enough to keep
you awake but he’s
like, his priorities were
like I need to get home and
get to bed as quickly as possible.
Yes, a lot, please don’t prioritize getting
home 10 minutes faster to sleep over, you
know, murdering everyone around
you by smashing your car into them.
I do also wonder what kind
of car was that guy driving?
The 61-year-old man was shoplifting.
He shoplifted 11 items
and while leaving the
store, the staff chased him so
this is probably convenient store.
He dropped all the stuff and
he got his car to drive away.
The staff jumped on the hood of the car.
Now, I appreciate the
passion of the staff but
you work at like a grocery store or
a convenience store or something.
It is not worth it.
Just take the license
plate number and let him go.
So should any staff
member at any store listen
to an engine of Japan
and you are in a similar
situation, do not jump
on the hood of the car.
It’s not worth it.
Now for the man who’s driving the car, the
shoplifter, if you’ve stolen stuff and you
get in your car to drive away and someone
jumps on the hood of your car, if you drive
away in Japan, that is
now attempted murder.
So you’ve gone from
attempted shoplifting
because he didn’t actually
take the stuff all the way home.
I guess he wants it’s out
of the store at shoplifting.
So you’ve gone from shoplifting which,
yes, a crime but a relatively minor crime.
Two attempted murder
which is a much bigger crime.
He drove 30 meters before the man fell off.
When he was arrested
he said, “I really
wanted to drink and I didn’t
have enough money so I shoplifted.
” But he shoplifted
11 things, like maybe if
you shoplifted just the
liquor that you wanted
you might have got away with it
and they wouldn’t have noticed.
But when you have 11 things,
you’re not hiding that anywhere.
How did this shoplifting work?
Did he just like pick it up and walk out?
Because if you pick
up a bottle and try to
hide the bottle and
walk out of the store, you
might get away with it, why did
you go for the 10 other items?
Unless it was 11 drinks which would
have been pretty impressive in itself.
So I shoplifted but
I didn’t want to get
caught by the police so I drove away and
now I’m being charged with attempted murder.
Having your clothes stolen, socks,
I mean that’s just a straight up true.
We’ve done a multitude of stories of
underwear getting stolen off balconies.
We’ve done a multiple
of stories of people
breaking into houses and
apartments and it’s terrifying.
I, okay we’re going to get into
personal trauma now, I do not sleep well.
I have not slept well
for the last 45 years,
no less than that,
you’re like 40 years.
Because when I was about
nine years old, my father
very kindly made a bedroom
in the basement for me.
It kind of made me separate
from the family, felt really cool.
I kind of had the whole
basement to myself,
so I had my room and
there was little TV room.
It felt like I had my own mini apartment
when I was only like nine, ten years old.
This was the basement
so there was a little
window above my bed
that would have been like
almost like a little gutter thing and one
night while I was asleep, a man broke into
my house through that
window and stepped on my head.
So of course I screamed, man run
away, very technically nothing happened.
We called the police
and reported it but we
had no evidence, cameras weren’t like
a thing back then and I was freaked out.
I have never slept at the
end of the entire night since.
So this is like a deep-seated
trauma, I do not sleep well.
Any noise that I hear
I wake up, my wife has
found me walking around the
house at night, checking stuff.
I sleep better with a
dog in the bed because
I know the dog will
wake me up as someone
comes into the house but our dog right now,
Dave, bit useless, I bet I would wake up
before he does but I don’t know if
there may be a comfort element there.
You now know that I, Chuck, will be just do
not sleep in any real way compared to other
people who sleep, I guess,
all the way through an evening.
I understand sort of
the feeling of trauma of
people who have had
their homes broken into
and don’t feel safe anymore and then like
if you’re a woman in Japan, you’ve had your
underwear stolen,
like it’s really, it’s
just creepy and gross
and just the some fact
that someone’s touched
your stuff is awful.
A man came home and he
found someone had broken
into his home and was wearing
his daughter’s school uniform.
That is, take both
those traumas, someone
stealing your clothes
and someone bringing your
house and put them
together and you have this
guy, I do want to know
what he was doing.
Was he like spinning,
like, “Oh, I’m so pretty.
I’m so nice.”
I was like, “What was he doing in the high
school girl uniform in this guy’s house?
” Now, there’s
also another thing.
What’s going through this guy’s head?
He’s broken into someone’s house.
My feeling is you breaking into someone’s
house, you get what you want, you get out.
This is efficiency.
This is when you break
into anything, maybe I’ve
watched too many movies
and I’m not having a good time.
But it’s about getting in and
getting out as quickly as possible.
When I play video
games and you have a
stealth mission, get in, get
out as quickly as possible.
You don’t want to get noticed.
So if I were to break
into someone’s house, I
would want to make it as
quick and efficient as possible.
I want to know what I want to take.
I would try to take it.
I would try to get out.
If I’m trying to, you
know, ransack the place,
I would do as quickly as possible
so I could get out of there.
I wouldn’t dress up and
start lounging around
the house, but we
have had stories where
people have found like they had a crush on
someone, broke into their house, and just
sort of like lounging
around in their space.
So I guess they could
feel closer to the person.
The intruder was a 37
year old man who took off.
The father ran him down
and there was a scuffle.
I would love to save him.
Like I mean, if I was
running down a guy
who’d broken into my
house and was wearing my
daughter’s school uniform, scuffle
isn’t the word they would be using.
So I would like to know
kind of what happened there.
Turns out this man’s house
had been broken into before.
His daughter’s clothes
had been stolen before,
but they don’t know if
they were connected.
They don’t know if it’s the same guy.
But this guy was now peak
ready to take someone down.
If those were different
incidences, they’re still
getting blamed on this guy
physically in that scuffle.
The police are currently
investigating if there
are any connections,
but again, it’s going
to be very hard to put together
distant incidences together.
But we do know in Japan like once these
creepy dudes target someone’s home and house
or a person, they tend
to focus exclusively on
that person and go after
them again and again.
Kita Ogawa.
Now this became sort of a topic
of conversation on the discord.
It became sort of a
topic of conversation
amongst my friends because
there’s a lot going on here.
Kita Ogawa is the mayor of my bashi and
she is a single woman, she’s 41 years old.
And she met a married
male subordinate at a
love hotel while on official
business multiple times.
So she says that nothing happened.
She says that I wanted
to consult with my
subordinate, with this
man who worked for me.
I wanted to have these
conversations, but if we
went to a restaurant,
it would be too public.
If we went to a karaoke
box, it would be too public.
The eyes of the public would be on me.
So those were inappropriate
places for us to meet.
If we met in the office,
part of her concern
was I’m getting upset,
I’m consulting about
stuff that I’m emotional about and I cry,
I don’t want people in city hall to see
me emotional, I don’t
want them to see me cry.
So where can we go
where we could be private
and have a conversation and I could bear
my soul and have a real conversation with a
co-worker who would
understand what I’m talking about.
Well, there’s only one place
left and it’s a love hotel.
He and I went to this love hotel
multiple times and nothing happened.
He didn’t rail me from behind.
He didn’t bend me
over the television while
there was, no, I just got that,
he didn’t rail me as enough.
I’m just going to have maybe that’s enough.
During the day I
had official duties and
little time to talk, I
would consult with him
in restaurants and karaoke
boots, but the eyes of
the public were on me, a
hotel was more comfortable.
Why not the office?
I didn’t want to show my crying
or emotional state in city hall.
So she’s apologized.
She said she understands
it’s inappropriate.
A lot of people are like,
well, why is this a problem?
Well, she was on official business.
She was actually,
that means she was like
doing work and going to a
love hotel while she was working.
So she’s taken time out
of her workday when she’s
getting paid and she’s going
to this recreational place.
Now she’s saying she’s
having official meetings.
We don’t know if that’s true.
But I think if you go to a love
hotel, there’s a certain expectation.
She is also using taxpayer
money for the car to get there.
So it’s like a ride share
service and stuff like that.
So she was using that to get there.
She was using that to get him there.
So that was actually
taxpayers paying for some
of that money that was
spent on them traveling
around because that is
often paid for by the taxpayer.
Now she’s claiming she used her own car.
She didn’t use any taxpayer money.
I’m going to give her
the benefit of the doubt.
I still don’t believe nothing
happened in a love hotel.
I think the only thing that happens
in a love hotel is love hotel stuff.
And I think that’s a pretty
reasonable thing for me to think.
There was an interesting
question like why is this problem?
Like why is it a
problem with two adults
consenting adults doing
and consenting things?
Because it was during work
hours is the main problem.
But the secondary
problem is he was married
and a lot of people, what
can happen in Japan?
It’s a very different
system from other countries.
The offended party can sue the
person who’s come into their relationship.
So you have the mayor and
then the subordinate and his wife.
The wife, if she can
prove that something has
happened that has
been detrimental to their
marriage, she can
actually sue the mayor for
damages, which
actually puts the mayor in
an interesting situation because it’s now
a legal issue that she would have to pay.
And she should at that
point lose her job because
her conduct has caused
problems for city hall.
She has stated that
she doesn’t want to quit.
So she’s actually saying everyone please
forgive me, please understand that I didn’t
do anything in the love
hotel that you would
normally do in a love hotel
that everyone doesn’t love hotel.
That’s not me.
I would like to stay on his mayor.
So I’m actually interested to
see if she does stay on as mayor.
But I don’t have a lot of faith
that is actually going to work out.
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