(Drumming)
- Engineers Japan has complained
many, many times, maybe too many times.
That the biggest problems
in Japan, sort of our part of
the issue is that the
leadership of Japan is very old.
The most politicians are very old.
These older people, they haven’t
updated the way of thinking.
These old men, they
got those biases from the
’60s and ’70s still take
and hold their brain.
They think the world hasn’t changed.
They haven’t updated their point of view.
Well, Dr. City has
decided to take a stance.
Not really, just voted in a
guy who’s probably capable.
They elected the youngest mayor in
Japan at 27 years old, at 27 years old.
I think 26 or 27 is when
I graduated university
because I’d messed up
university so bad, which is
very embarrassing to
say actually, it’s pretty sad.
And then I think the
prime minister of Canada,
so at 27, I was essentially
at that point of failure.
I hadn’t done anything right yet.
The prime minister of
Canada is the same age as me.
And so, you shouldn’t compare yourself.
He actually had an
advantage in that his father
was the prime minister of Canada
previously, and they were very rich.
He had like sort of
legacy money, old money.
I didn’t have that.
I certainly didn’t suffer in my life.
I’ll be really honest,
but I don’t think anyone
would go around calling
us rich, extravagantly so.
I wasn’t in a position to start making
campaigns to run for prime minister.
Maybe that’s what held me back.
So I should blame my parents.
There you go.
I should blame our parents for everything.
And the old people who
are running the country.
And this is why we
should elect 27-year-olds
to be the mayor of the city because
yeah, I’m sure, of course we should.
In a statement after he was
elected, he said he wanted
to attract businesses that
appeal to the young people.
He wants to address population decline, and
these are sort of his main agenda goals.
So it’s an interesting idea, like what
businesses appeal to young people
and they should take the forefront
versus Japan has an aging population.
So we should cater to them.
That’s a nice different point of view.
He’s a young guy.
He’s like, hey, we should think about
young people who are growing up.
This should be there world
as well, maybe even more so.
The addressing population decline so far,
no politician has come out with a policy
that actually is going to
have any impact that’s real.
And so I’m not very hopeful
that this guy’s going to have,
he might actually again
be a new way of thinking.
Maybe he’ll have an idea
that I haven’t thought of.
All my ideas been pretty basic.
Don’t make people work overtime so they
can go out and actually meet other people.
Like that’s the kind
of stuff I think is
really important when
it comes to this topic.
(upbeat music)
There was a very progressive high school.
They were making headlines because
they were doing such cool things.
They were essentially
doing away with school rules.
They were lauded as progressive.
And what is a very
restrictive and old system?
So this is maybe like our young mayor.
They’re deciding like we’re going
to change the way things work.
20 students were practicing hip-hop dance.
And they were practicing
this for, there’s an end of the
year every year they have
sort of like this celebration.
They put on shows.
They do this very Japanese thing.
They have sports day stuff like that.
Part of this was going to be putting on.
The dance club was going to put on a dance.
They decided it on this hip-hop dance.
The principal said he
wanted a different kind
of dance where everyone
is the main person.
So basically it seems like
from what I can extrapolate
’cause they didn’t give
you like perfect explanations.
The hip-hop dance had
a couple of main members
and maybe a bunch
of supporting people.
And he’s like, that’s not fair.
I want everyone to maybe be dancing in
concerts so that everyone is the main person.
I understand this point of
view, but it is also quite stupid.
I understand it as a point of view.
I clearly don’t agree with it.
That’s why I think it’s quite stupid.
I remember going to a
elementary school to see one of
these kids’ plays and
because you got like 20, 30 kids
and that most stories actually only
about three or four main characters.
It’s really hard to come
up with other characters.
Maybe it was a story in Indonesia, Japan.
I saw one where they had
like Goldilocks, let’s say.
And Goldilocks was played by
three girls at the exact same time.
So the three girls rolled out and
they all said the lines together.
They said one line at a
time, that kind of stuff.
They were trying to make sure
that everyone got to participate
but then they also wanted
to make sure it was the main.
It was a story and it was like
they had 10 or 15 snow whites
and they weren’t like, come on, do a
line and then swap out the snow whites.
They were all on stage at the same
time and which is of course ridiculous.
Most shows you’ll have a
couple of main and then support.
That’s not an unusual
or unreasonable thing.
The principal decided
this was not acceptable.
Everyone’s got to be the
main so maybe just a single
coordinated dance that
everyone does together.
The students went to him and said, Oh
man, we want to do our hip hop dance.
It’s part of our
performance at the festival.
This is what we’ve decided to do.
The parents said it was unfair.
So they sent a letter.
The kids have already been practicing.
They organized this.
It’s their club.
How can you come in at this later
stage and tell them not to do the dance?
They’ve already decided they want to do.
The news story said there
was a high school band’s hip hop.
That’s not actually the case.
I actually get very frustrated.
Now that I read a lot
of news for an engineer’s
Japan, I get very
frustrated at misleading titles
because they’re trying to
clickbait you into reading it.
I kind of understand that, but
also you don’t want to be deceptive.
There was one who last week who was like,
man, bumps shoulder of
other man and get stabbed.
And then it should
have been by an umbrella.
It’s getting stabbed and
getting stabbed by an umbrella.
Getting stabbed by an
umbrella is not fun, but it’s not
sort of the same caliber is
getting stabbed by a knife,
which is what you would assume
if you read the phrase stabbed.
46 parents signed a letter.
The principal does not listen
to the parents or the students
and just decided to hold on to this
like you cannot do this hip hop dance.
Now this seems really weird.
You had this school that
was incredibly progressive.
How did it get this way?
Well, like how did they get to this point?
Well, it’s very clear
actually 2014 to 2019.
You had principal Kuda.
And it was a very progressive person who
wanted to make a very progressive school.
Got a lot of media attention
and there was a lot of growth.
It went from 384 students to 570.
So this was appealing to students.
Students wanted to go to the school.
They wanted this experience.
They weren’t getting another schools.
2023, oh, oh.
Principal Horikoshi takes over.
2023, principal Horikoshi takes over.
So you know that’s already
going to have a different thing.
And principal Horikoshi says
they want to rebuild the school.
Now you know when someone
has done a ton of reforms
and then someone else
comes in and takes over
and says, I’m going
to rebuild the school.
What they’re actually saying
is I’m going to take the school,
take all this stuff you’ve
done and changed in advance.
I’m going to roll all that shit back.
I’m going to take it back to
what it was at the beginning.
I’m going to make this
the most traditional school.
I can.
And you know, everything’s
going to be super awesome
because it’s going to be
back the way it should be.
So this is again, old people thinking,
traditional way of doing
things, not successful.
So 2023, standardized tests
were brought back into the school.
So between 2014 and 2019, there
were no tests as we know them.
There was probably sort
of like checks and things.
And they did talk to the students.
They made sure they understood
stuff because they probably still
had to do national tests and
exams to get into universities.
But within the school, they were
taking away this pressure of the test.
They wanted the students
to study and learn and grow.
2024, back to uniforms.
So this school had done
away with the school uniform.
2024 comes along.
Horikoshi says, you know what?
We’ve brought back tests.
We’re going to bring back the uniform.
But bring back all the shit that was
done away with that maybe is unnecessary.
I don’t know.
But the question is, so
under principal CUDA,
the progressive principal, the school
almost doubled in size, student body wise.
In the two years, Horikoshi took over.
The enrollment of
students has dropped to 346,
which is actually below
the initial level of 2014.
So in 2014, it was 384.
Horikoshi has now driven it down
to about 40 people less than that,
which shows you just
how good his ideas were.
But of course, they’re not
going to take any responsibility
for that and just say, I’m putting
things back the way they should be.
I’ve rebuilt the school by tearing
down half the student body.
Japan is famous for not having
that many guns, not having any guns.
They have very strict rules.
And so there’s not a lot of shootings.
Actually, over the
last two weeks, there’s
been a lot of stabbing
stories in the news.
It’s been about three or four.
There was a lady.
Her ex-husband had a restraining over.
He came into a cafe.
He stabbed her and she died.
He stabbed her in the neck.
Staff, like five people held
him down till the police came.
There’s been a couple of
just inter-family stabbing.
This to me actually says,
it’s good we don’t have guns.
Japan is famous for not having
many guns, very strict gun rules.
One of the gun rules I
know is that if you register
a gun, you have a gun,
you have to register it.
That’s given.
That means the police can
come into your house at any point,
any time, and check on
the well-being of the gun.
So, four o’clock in the
morning, I’m in my bed, I sleep.
I sleep like a vampire.
I actually didn’t realize
this until very recently.
Like I sleep.
I lie on my back with my
hands kind of on my chest.
And I realize like I basically
just sleep like a vampire.
I’ve taken on a lot of vampire
attributes in my old age.
I don’t go out in the
sun if I can avoid it.
Because the sun hurts me.
I haven’t gone full of vampire yet.
I was just waiting to see.
Maybe that’s like an evolutionary
thing that happens over time.
What happened?
Oh, the police, this is
the problem with tangents,
is I actually lose the point
where I go off in the tangent.
The police can come into your house.
So it’s four o’clock in the
morning, you’re sleeping.
I assume not like a vampire.
They knock on your door,
they bring your doorbell.
You come down, you’re
like, “Oh, it was your garage.
” He’s like, “Dude,
it was four o’clock.
” And they’re like,
“Yeah, where’s your gun?
” And then they can
just walk in your house.
They don’t need a warrant or anything.
You basically sign away the right to
essentially privacy if you have a gun in Japan.
You have to allow the police
to come in and just check
as your gun loaded, is it unloaded, is it
locked away, is everything taken care of?
If there’s a mistake, they
just take the gun away.
That’s, I don’t know, I don’t
think that’s a terrible system.
I know I’m not American,
so Americans who listen
to this might be like
very like, I disagree.
You should have the freedom
to buy as many guns as possible.
I actually have no problem
with volume if you’re responsible.
This guy, this SAPro man who’s 59 years
old, he was arrested for having 33 handguns.
And he said he bought them for fun.
He had five handguns and 28 imitation
handguns without any ammunition.
But he also had no reason
that was permitted by law.
So he didn’t have a
reason for having the guns.
I’ve talked a couple times
about if you are searched
by the police and you
have like a Swiss Army knife.
I used to carry a Swiss Army
knife with me everywhere I went,
found out in Japan, carrying a knife is
illegal unless you carry it for a reason.
So you have to say, why do
you have this, the police stop you,
check your bag, they
look in your bag, they find
a Swiss Army, they go,
why do you have this?
You go, I just carry
it with me just in case.
They’re like, that’s illegal.
You say, oh, well, I’m
going camping tonight.
I want it with me for kindling or
something or I want to screw something in
whatever.
Then you have a reason, then it is legal.
So if I buy a knife at a shop, I can
obviously take it home, I could take a
fish scaling knife with
me when I go fishing.
But if I just carry a
knife around, that’s illegal.
So you have to have a reason
for having a knife with you.
This is kind of the
same statement for guns.
He has no legal reason
for having these guns.
He’s not permitted by law.
The interesting thing
that I found was this
was actually discovered
by the cyber patrol.
So Japan has like a section called
the cyber division, the cyber patrol.
They primarily try to deal with scams,
but they also come across information.
Information like this,
like, hey, this guy,
I’m assuming his bot guns
online or is talking about guns.
So they went and searched his
house. They go search his house.
They find, oh, where’s the number?
In his garage, he had 100 other
guns and rifles with no ammunition.
So he’s clearly just a
collector, a guy who likes guns.
He has no intention of shooting them
because he doesn’t have any ammunition.
So for me, I’m like, this
guy may be more responsible
because he’s like,
yeah, I got all these guns,
but none of them are functional.
They’re just big sticks at this point.
I like the way they look. He’s clearly not
even using them or practicing with them.
He’s just really likes
guns. So I’m really
torn on whether I
think this is okay or not,
because having the gun is just one
step away from getting ammunition.
So he has a bad day, he gets the
ammunition, and then off he can go with like
20 guns on a belt,
the wrong is chassis.
He doesn’t have to reload.
He’s just pulling about
shooting and dropping. So
who knows what could go wrong?
I understand the
potential danger.
But up to this point,
it seems like the guy
just really likes having
his gun collection,
but of course it does seem
like he’s done it illegally.
I have been buying guns
as a hobby for 15 years.
I have never fired any of them.
I actually believe that
statement. If you had no
ammunition in his house
at all, I actually believe
that he did not ever fire
the gun. I think that’s true.
But 15 years he’s
been collecting guns,
it does seem like he’s
been doing it illegally,
so there is a problem
there. The investigation is
now ongoing to find
out how he bought them.
But the fact that the cyber
patrol discovered this, I’m
betting it’s just like online
auctions or one-on-one deals.
I don’t know. But
clearly this is all
happening over the internet.
In August, a crowdfunding
project was started
to create a town.
Now Japan has a lot of sort
of small towns that are empty,
their ghost towns. And
so this group was like,
hey, what we’ll do is
we’ll get 500 million yen.
We’ll essentially buy this town.
We’ll restructure this town
and we’ll create this town.
And it’s going to
be for women only.
I had a conversation on a
different podcast about the
women only cars. And I
was like, look, Chican exists.
Chican is the guys
who will get on the train
and they’ll push up behind
you and they’ll touch you.
That’s disgusting. It’s gross.
I actually was wondering very
early on why there are not more
cameras in Japanese
train cars because I’d heard
about this issue before.
So why did the security
position things already
not exist? But maybe there’s
a privacy issue I’m
unaware of. It being public
transportation though,
I think there is no
expectation of privacy. So they
should have cameras in the cars.
But regardless,
they decided let’s
just make a car women only.
And a bunch of sort of men dicks.
They were like, this is unfair.
Why did they get
their own car and stuff?
Oh, I should be able to use
it freedom and all that stuff.
And I’m like, if everyone
would stop touching them, it
would not be a problem.
So if they need a safe place
to travel, they should
have a safe place to travel.
The town though takes on a sort of different
feelings or a misendry kind of feeling.
The goal was to make 500
million yen. They were going to
get a deserted village
and rebuild it and only
women could enter. Now
there is a constitutional
issue with this in
Japan. The constitution in
Japan dictates freedom
of travel. And this became a
problem during COVID in
lockdown because it’s you
can’t lock down people
if your constitution says
people have the
right to move around.
So there’s your first actual
issue is like we want everyone to
stay home in their house.
We can’t mandate that.
We can only ask very
nicely because we can’t make
it a rule that would
defy the constitution.
This does something
very similar. You’re a man,
you’re saying I can’t come
into this town because
of my gender that
defies the constitution.
So constitutionally, they
already have a legal issue
where this probably
would not be enforceable.
You could build a town. You
could try to get a majority
of the residents to be
women. But I don’t think
you’d be able to deny
men entry into your town.
But that was the stated
goal was to have this town
and only women could
enter. Now I actually weirdly
don’t have a problem
with that either.
Like, if you don’t want
me in your town, I’m kind of
okay with not going to
your town. But you know,
other people would
have a problem with it.
They want to make a
political statement what not.
You can’t lock off one
gender on anything and expect
to be successful, I
think, but whatever.
Project managers, they were
recruiting and they wanted
to recruit from only women.
It was very recently canceled.
And so the website where it was is now just
doing a 404. This doesn’t exist anymore.
One of the statements was we tried to
raise funds on a platform created by men.
So misogyny has been
blamed for the failure of
this project when if it
was crowdfunding, if you
only want women to be in this town, you
have to expect only women to crowdfund it.
Maybe they must have assumed
that the idea was that women
would contribute to this
town and then women would
live in this town. Is
there enough women who
are going to contribute
to this? Is there enough
women who actually agree that
will do this is actually the question.
Clearly not. The
fact that it was just
shut down so suddenly, maybe
there was another issue there.
And that might be
back at the legal issue
that I stated earlier.
The legal issue may be the
thing that was actually
holding them back because
you’re essentially not
allowed to do this in Japan.
There would be other
countries where if you
wanted to make a town
with only a certain amount
of people or certain kind
of people can come in,
that might be legal,
like you might be able to
create rules for your
town that are separate from
the national rules. In
Japan, you can’t do that.
I think that would
probably be more likely the
bigger problem than just
not getting enough money.
I’m pretty sure they did not
get enough money as well.
So did enough women contribute if they
did, there’s breaking the law probably.
But realistically, I don’t
think enough women are
on board with this idea
to actually contribute
all that money because
how many women are actually
going to live in that
town? It would only be,
to me, the town’s
people would be willing to
contribute to money.
Like, if I am a woman,
I’m not going to contribute
to a town that I’m
not going to live in.
Maybe I could go visit.
It would be interesting to a
spot, but how much money
would you be willing to
put up in the first place?
I have to get some
women’s opinions.
This is a one person
podcast, which makes that very
difficult because as
it turns out, I’m a man.
Nagoya University of
Arts has refused a request
from the union, so sort
of the student union.
Maybe teachers, unit
actually just said union in the
article now that I think
about it, to release a report.
There have been
multiple allegations of
sexual harassment of
the university president,
the university of Nagoya,
Nagoya University of Arts.
It’s a very interesting
thing that has happened.
So this guy clearly has
been harassing people,
probably students.
The students reported
this and then an internal
investigation was created
and that internal
investigation found something,
but now won’t say what
they found. The report was
set up by the educational
corporation and they
stated it cannot be
accepted that any sexual
harassment, warranting
punishment took place.
Very interesting phraseology.
I’m always very careful
about the phraseology of
an article of a statement
made by someone in the
news. So they’re saying
sexual harassment, warranting
punishment took place.
So there’s not saying
that sexual harassment
didn’t take place. They’re
just saying he doesn’t
deserve to be punished
for the sexual harassment
that did take place.
So maybe they’re saying
he made comments and those
comments are not deserving of punishment.
Maybe he touched someone, but he didn’t
touch them bad enough to warrant punishment,
So we don’t know what
their scale is and their
scale should actually
match the law. So in the law,
in Japan, if you say stuff
to people in that sexual
harassment, so actually,
if you can set anything,
it is probably breaking
the law. But this does
actually confirm some
kind of sexual harassment
actually happened.
Newspaper found out about
this and they were like,
they started doing sort
of an investigation. They
talked to some people and
they were like, we know
sexual harassment happened
and we do feel that it
warrants punishment.
The investigative group was
for internal members, one senior.
So basically, you
had three people
and they are boss where the
group investigating the person.
So the boss is
going to say, look,
we don’t want this university
president to get in trouble.
We’re going to cover for them.
And the three other people
were like, you’re our boss,
I want to keep my job. So
yes, we’re going to agree.
The unions demanded
they set up a third party
probe, which I do not
think is going to happen.
The statement was that
the students are not willing
to engage in dialogue.
So they’re like, we
can’t set up a third party
probe because when we
tried to talk to them, the
students didn’t want to talk to us.
The students
didn’t want to talk to
essentially the friends
who were covering for the
person who sexually
harassed them is the issue
they ran into and
they’re like, well, we tried.
And they just didn’t
want to talk to us.
They didn’t want to say the
things that we wanted them to say.
So a third party isn’t
going to do any better.
So there’s no reason to have a third party
organization do a probe. Then they came
out and had to make
an actual statement.
The actual statement was
the perpetrators rights must be
protected as well, which is
something I sort of agree with.
They do have some rights, but the rights
to not get punished because you don’t
like them like it or you
don’t want them to get
punished isn’t one of
those rights. So the fact is
this is just a cover up. Clearly
sexual harassment did happen.
This internal group,
this investigative
group is trying to cover
it up and now they’re
getting public attention.
They’re like, we have
to protect the human
rights of the perpetrator,
not just the victims,
but that also would imply
that they are the
perpetrator that they have
just done something and
they should get punished.
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