A Podcast to Damage your Dignity

[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.

Lost Dream Jobs

Okay, so we got almost the end of the Gassi saga.

So I keep saying I don’t want to talk about

Gassi anymore, but then something happens

that makes it vaguely interesting.

This time it’s pretty interesting.

And so the only final part will be if he

ever ends up back in Japan and actually has

like an interaction with the police.

So Gassi has been expelled from the government.

This is the first time this has happened in the last 72 years.

There were 236 votes cast, 235 people voted to get rid of Gassi.

The only holdout was a fellow party member,

which is pretty sad when you got like one

person who’s like standing up for you.

Then as soon as Gassi was expelled, the police went and started like putting

out warrants for his arrest.

The accusation is that he has swindled people

out of money claiming he could introduce

people to BTS.

So he’s running this kind of like weird, fame adjacent scam saying if you

give me X-Money Yen, I will introduce you to BTS.

On Thursday last week, police secured an arrest warrant for intimidating and

defaming celebrities.

So in a weird way, he was actually right.

He said, “I don’t want to come back to Japan because the police are going to

arrest me.”

We found out that if you are a member of the government and the government

is in session,

you actually can’t be arrested, which

I’m finding to be a very weird, weird rule.

Because government members… Check just

as if I call them bathrooms or washrooms.

I call them bathrooms.

I don’t know why, but yeah, I call them bathrooms.

In Japan, this is totally going to be off topic from the podcast.

In Japan, the toilets and the bathroom are separate rooms.

So in the West, when I had apartments and stuff, you would have like a

bathtub and a sink in a toilet all in one room.

I think that’s really, really normal.

That’s your bathroom.

In Japan, you have an actual room for just the bath and it’s got a shower

and the best part is you can spray water everywhere.

The whole room is the shower room.

Then in a separate room to that is a sink.

So that’s where you brush your teeth and stuff.

Then there’s a separate room that’s just a toilet.

In Japan, it makes way more sense to say toilet than bathroom because they

would actually different places in the house.

That’s a very valuable question though.

Do you call bathrooms washrooms?

I’ve said washrooms.

I think you say washrooms when you’re trying to be like more polite maybe.

So we found out that if you’re in the government, you cannot be arrested.

So as soon as the session was finished, as soon as the diet session was

finished, Gassy was going to get arrested.

So he was actually right.

And this was the most interesting bit to me is that he was right about what

he was saying.

They have confiscated his passport,

but they haven’t actually confiscated it.

They just nullified it because they didn’t take it away from it because they

didn’t see him.

And then they put him on the international wanted list.

So this got what I thought was going to be a weird little story about a guy

who was being

a politician from Dubai and is that going to work

out or not to now that he’s now an international.

criminal.

So when they see like when you watch a movie and they do interpool and they

have a list

and they have pictures of all the like

most wanted in the world, Gassy might be on

that now for realsies.

So he’s believed to have threatened three people and conducted one instance

of obstruction of business, which is Ninja News Japan’s favorite crime.

As we know, the party went from the anti-NHK

party to the politician girl’s 48 party.

They had a press conference with some of the

new members they were putting forward and

they’re all relatively attractive women.

So this is obvious their new platform and it makes it a little harder to

take them seriously as politicians.

The anti-NHK party was already a bit.

But now it’s like, oh, we’re just going to

put girls forward and see if you’ll just vote

for girls.

And since this is a real political party and with real reporters, the

reporter has asked

a couple like fairly not like hard-hitting

questions, but asking about taxes.

The lady politician they put forward goes, oh, that’s a tough question.

I’ll pass.

Getting sort of the level of quality of the politician they’re putting up.

I mean, it has nothing to do with gender.

It’s just they’re trying to use gender to get seats.

It’s dumb.

I mean, let’s face it, this whole party now is just one of the dumbest

things I think I’ve seen in Japan.

And yet weirdly, because they’re putting up a bunch of girls, it’s probably

going to work.

In 2022, so last year, 3.997 billion yen was turned into the police

lost and found in Tokyo.

Not all at once.

This is the entirety of the year.

So it could have been like 10,000 yen at the time.

3.997 billion yen, again, you do the quick math.

It’s like $4 million.

We’re actually lost and turned into the police.

So people in Japan, this is actually saying like, if you are going to drop

your wallet or

going to drop money anywhere in the world, Japan’s a pretty good place to do

it because they’re not just going to leave it there.

They’re going to pick it up and they’re

going to take us as a cops and turn it into

the cops.

We’ll try to get it back to you.

On that point, police managed to return 2.95 billion yen.

So let’s say it was $4 million, they managed to return about $3 million.

So there’s still a million dollars that essentially went missing because of

lost items.

The unclaimed money, so after the year, they hold it for an X amount of time

and then they just like, well, it’s our money now.

That claims money gets turned into the metropolitan government.

So if you lose your money in Japan, in Tokyo specifically, I guess, in this

case, and someone turns it in and

you don’t claim it, they don’t get it back.

The person who found the money doesn’t get to keep the money.

The money goes to the metropolitan government which is kind of a shaft.

I think I should get the money.

If I found the money and I’m a good person,

I turned it in and gave me the money.

I’m okay with that.

There were 3.43 million lost items turned in last year.

And that is up 21% for 2021.

Now, of course, last year we were in the throes of COVID.

It actually, the numbers have gone way down last yesterday.

They had 2,600 cases of COVID in Japan, the country.

And that is great because I used to be just one or two cities would have

that many easily.

So it’s not finished, but it has gone

way, way down, which I’m very happy about.

So this actually demonstrates the 21% increase of lost items and people

turning them into the

police means there are more people just doing stuff because you have to be

out of your house.

If you’re in your house all the time, you’re not really losing stuff and if

you do lose something in your house, it’s not getting turned into the cops.

So that’s neat because basically COVID meant there was less things lost and

less things turned into the police.

From 2015 to 2019, it was about 4 million items a year.

So Ron Track, weirdly, for pre-pandemic numbers of lost items in Tokyo for

the year, which is a good thing.

Oh, so they do this every year.

They do a survey of what kids want to be when they grow up.

And it’s always a bit shocking because of the attitude of children.

It’s always really weird because it’s Japan

and different countries because you ask a

kid where they want to be.

What did I want to be when I was a kid?

I wanted to be like space ranger.

I actually for years and years and years want to be a truck driver.

I really like trucks.

I think cowboy and cop were in there for a while.

They do this in Japan.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Boys uniformly want to be company employees.

Now last time I did this, which was last year I was making fun of because it

was like, hey little boy, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a businessman.

A businessman.

I want to be a businessman.

It’s a really weird thing to want to be because again, little kid’s concept

of businessman is not very realistic.

But junior high school and high school girls

also just wanted to be company employees.

Between elementary and middle school girls, they wanted to be manga artists,

which is pretty cool.

It’s artistic.

Scholar entered the top 10 for boys who were in high school in junior high

school and girls in high school.

I honestly don’t really know what a scholar is.

I guess that’s just like a lifetime student.

What is a scholar?

Because I think you have to be more specific.

But together young, their kids in high school and stuff, they might not

really know what scholars are.

I don’t.

I’m 50.

I have no clue what a scholar would be.

And that’s not really a job, is it?

I guess professor at university is, which is scholarly.

I’m not sure.

The comments on the Internet were interesting because some were lamenting

the lack of aspirations.

Because it’s like, when I was young, I wanted to be a rock star.

I wanted to be the number one.

I wanted to go to the Olympics.

I wanted to be the best dude in the world at something.

And they’re saying these Japanese

kids, they don’t have those kind of dreams.

They have, I want to find a good solid company and hunker down and be a

company employee for 40 years.

And then I want to retire and have no drama in my life.

And it’s not exciting and it’s not interesting.

But then a whole bunch of other people were saying, like, is it better to

have a dream that’s unattainable versus a dream that you could actually get?

So like, my real dream when I was younger was to be a writer.

I wanted to write novels.

I wanted to write books.

I wanted to do, you know, I wanted to

be like a cliche, pretentious artist type.

I wanted to write.

And I’ve always, I actually now, over the last decade or so, I actually have

done a lot of writing.

I’ve done writing.

I’ve written articles and stuff.

I did games, journalism, I did stuff like that.

Last year, I did Montana LDablo, which was a choose your own adventure,

which is something that had been in the back

of my head for years and years and years.

So I have achieved that goal, but not, of course, the way, the way you think

of it as a kid is I’m going to write books

and becoming internationally famous.

And like, people are going to want to get with me because I’m so smart and

artistic and famous.

But that’s not actually the reality.

A working writer though, I would be happy with that job.

So this is realistically a very attainable job.

So is that a bad thing?

Like you could grow up.

Oh, wait, wait, the whole point is I failed.

I never became the famous writer that I wanted to be.

The last episode of “Seeming Be,” I actually

talked about some of my exploits into trying.

to become a writer and the sheer volume of rejection you have to go through

to not succeed in the end is pretty hard.

Yeah, a lot of other people on the Internet when they were commenting on

this article, what

they were saying was like, isn’t it better to have a dream you could

actually achieve and then achieve your dream?

Because you get that sort of sense of accomplishment, like you’ve done the

thing you set out to do,

isn’t that better than saying, I want to

be a rock star and I can’t because there’s

so few people actually end up succeeding in their desires to be famous.

So I’m a little torn because I think young people should be aspirational.

But having an element of reality in there, so maybe I want to be a musician,

but you need if you understand what a working

musician is, like you make jingles for

commercials, you

do background music for videos and stuff, understanding the reality of it

means you could

get a job doing something you like, but realistically, I think would be

pretty appealing.

Because I did games journalism and it actually was, it had really good

points and really

bad points, but I was doing, I was playing video games and I was writing

which are two things I love to do.

I would be very happy to do that for the rest of my life.

And yeah, I’m not going to be like super famous

or international or anything, but it would

be a low key constant satisfaction, which I

think is what people sort of don’t think about.

It’s like, do I want to be super, super successful or nothing or would I

like to be happy, maybe to a lesser degree forever?

So Prime Minister Kishito, we’ve talked about birth rates in Japan.

The last year they had less than 800,000 babies.

It is the lowest number of babies born in

the country in years and years and years.

I think since World War II, since they actually started keeping track.

So this is a really big problem.

Because the population of the country, it just keeps diminishing.

So you have old people dying, you have not

enough babies being born to replace them.

That’s actually bad for the economy, it’s bad for the country, it just means

your culture may disappear.

So slowly Japanese people are going extinct.

And then you’ve got foreigners like me coming in and making half babies.

Oh my God, that’s not cool.

So Kishito sat down, he said, we have a plan.

We’re going to make a plan for increasing the birth rate.

And it’s going to be assistance to employers who encourage male staff to

take child care leave.

Last year, 14% of the people who were eligible to take child care leave

actually took it.

So most men in Japan traditionally don’t

take any time off when they have a baby.

But they’re thinking, we make them or help them take more time off.

They’ll be more likely to have a baby to share that sort of burden.

More support for freelancers and self-employed workers.

So yeah, if I am self-employed and I have to take off six months to a year

to have a baby

and raise the baby for the first year, I’m

not working that entire period which makes

I have zero income for that time.

Very going to inhibit my desire to have a baby.

What I wrote in my notes and my kind of point from the beginning has been

this doesn’t help you get people making babies.

This supports people who have babies.

So what are they actually going to do to get people to actually have babies

in the first place?

Because really the problem is people, modern people, and modern society do

not find the idea of having children appealing.

Because I don’t make enough money.

I can’t support myself.

I can’t support a family.

So it’s better for me to remain single.

And this has been going around for a long time.

So what they need to do, when I’ve said this a bunch of times, I’m actually

thinking of like not talking about this as much now.

What they need to do is actually change the entire culture of Japan so that

work is not at the forefront of everyone’s lives.

And that is going to be, I think, an impossibility.

And it’s the one thing they refuse to talk about.

Because men and women need time to spend

time with each other, to date, to go out, to

form a relationship so that they can then

get involved enough to actually want to have

a baby in the first place.

And all these financial systems and stuff.

These are great after you’ve had the baby.

But you have to put people in a position where they want to get together to

have a baby in the first place.

And that is the one thing they don’t want to talk about.

Because that would mean we don’t work 12 hour days anymore.

We don’t dedicate our entire lives to the

company like Japan has since World War II.

We change contract types so that people get

more free time and deep prioritizes work,

which is 100% against the current Japanese philosophy of life and existence.

Tattoos.

So I have a couple of tattoos.

I have one on my shoulder, one on my back, but they’re very small.

And that means that I cannot go to a public pool.

I cannot go to a public onsen with my tattoos exposed.

So I just wear one of those swimming jackets, rash guard things.

And they’re covered so no one says anything.

It’s fine.

Because you can actually tell there’s

the guys walking around with rash guard on.

Like I probably has tattoo.

So a survey was done should tattoos be allowed in hot Springs.

So again, if I go into a hot spring, if it’s public, I’m actually not

allowed to go in with a tattoo on my shoulder because everyone can see it.

It basically changes by age.

So younger people are more accepting.

Older people are just 100% against it.

But 43.9% say that tattoos should be 100% banned.

If you have a tattoo, you shouldn’t be

allowed to bathe in an onsen in a hot spring.

33.7% say it should be handled case by case.

So I’m a foreigner.

I have tattoos.

And they’re very small.

That clearly shows that I am not a Yakuza, which is what this is all about.

This is all about the Yakuza showing their gang affiliation.

And I’m clearly not affiliated, certainly not with a Japanese gang.

And my tattoos are not like the full body one.

So they don’t have the same sort of impact or feeling.

And I think as soon as people see that I’m a foreigner, they’ll think, “Oh,

it’s just a fashion thing for foreigners.”

So they’re saying like, “Yeah, so if I come in and I have a tattoo, it

should be okay.”

But if a Yakuza comes in and he’s got the

full body thing, that should not be okay.

22.5% say hot Springs need to change with the times.

Which I think is actually pretty sensible.

And you know, most of the 22.4% who said that were really young people who

are probably getting tattoos themselves.

Well, this was actually, I don’t know if other people would care about this.

You can see, if you watch the video, if you watch the YouTube video, you can

see in the background I have a chin up bar.

I haven’t been using it lately because I hurt my shoulder in judo.

But it is something I’ve always, as an exercise, I’ve always enjoyed it.

And I’ve always enjoyed it because if I’m

ever hanging off a cliff, I want to be able

to pull myself up physically so that I can climb up the cliff.

So at the end of an action movie when someone’s hanging, you know, if you’re

not physically strong enough to pull yourself up, that’s when you die.

Whereas I want to be the guy who like pulls

himself up really impressively in one go.

So I’ve always enjoyed chin ups.

This guy named Kenta Adachi, he works for the Japanese Coast Guard.

He’s 35 years old.

He has taken the world record for dead hang.

So it’s like you get on the chin up bar, you hang with both hands, you just

hang there for as long as possible.

Previously, a Norwegian guy did it for 16 minutes and three seconds.

I think I maxed out once at five minutes.

So maybe with training, I could actually get it, but I’m a big dude.

So it might be harder for me.

I’m not sure.

That was back in 2020.

So Adachi came in and he’s like, I’m going to kill this record.

Oh my god, did he kill it?

Not only did he beat 16 minutes, he did one hour and 20 minutes and 41

seconds.

So he took it, took the 16, beat it by four minutes and then put another

hour on top of that, which to me seems inconceivable.

But this guy is also holding the world record for the most consecutive chin

ups, which is 651.

So he now has two world records.

I mean, very related, obviously his upper body strength is off the charts.

Either that or he’s incredibly light.

I don’t know which is, which is probably both.

He’s probably a very svelte man, but with massive shoulders and chest.

But good on him.

I mean, he didn’t just beat that record.

He absolutely destroyed it.

And I will, after this podcast, go and try

to see how long I can do a dead hang for.

I mean, there’s so much shoulder.

I’m assuming it’s only going to be like eight seconds.

A woman thinks that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

I did enjoy the word thinks.

Not there was any proof.

She just suspected her boyfriend was cheating on her.

So she calls her friend, a guy friend.

And then the guy friend comes over with two

other guy friends and they call the girl’s

boyfriend to the girl’s apartment and he shows up.

And then they threaten him with a knife.

They punch him in the face.

They handcuff him.

They say, let’s go to the bank and get some money out.

And then they take his keys and they take his Lamborghini.

That’s a lot.

Like, there’s accusations and there’s confrontational behavior.

But we think you’re cheating on our friend.

We’re going to beat you up and take all your stuff.

I think there’s only reason I found this interesting is because that’s not

going to fix it.

Like, okay, you guys need to break up.

That’s one thing.

But we’re going to steal all your stuff and

now I’m going to go to prison for years.

That is a disproportionate response to the issue at hand.

And I think maybe that’s why I found that one is interesting it is.

Also they took a guy’s Lamborghini.

There’s no way Lamborghini is a standout.

There’s no way you’re going to be driving

that around and the cops don’t figure out.

It’s the stolen Lamborghini.

Okay, and this is the last ones for all the creepy dudes who have this like,

a lot of weeb sensibilities about Japan.

Japan’s changing and all you weeb dudes may not be as welcome as you think

you are anymore.

Japan is raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 and recognizing coercion

without violence.

So since 1907, the age of consent in Japan has been 13 years old.

And it’s never in the last 20 years I’ve been in Japan.

It’s not actually been accepted like if I talk to a 13-14 year old and they

agree to do it, it’s still not okay.

So everyone kind of socially knew this wasn’t cool.

But I do remember a few sort of weird nerdy

dudes online using this as a justification

for coming and trying to hit on basically kids.

But then of course they’re the kind of people who never actually leave their

basements.

So they never actually come to Japan.

They just use it as a justification for their own perverted desires.

Baby is going to be defined by more than just violence.

So previously, if a man raped a woman and

the woman didn’t fight back, it wasn’t rape.

And it’s really disturbing.

So basically if I drugged a girl or I got a girl really, really drunk and I

got in a position

where she didn’t fight back physically,

then a court would not call that rape.

They would say that she knew she was drinking.

I could maybe say that I didn’t know there were drugs and she was accepting.

There were a lot of excuses that could come up.

And that has been now been taking into account.

So coercion without violence is now included under sort of the rape clause.

I think they might actually be changing, you know, the word rape in Japanese

is being redefined.

So violence is not the sort of defining factor of what a rape is.

So if you use alcohol drugs or power.

So if I’m in your boss and you feel like

you have to do it or if I’m in like, I’m.

really rich, dude, any sort of position where it’s like power harassment,

that is now going

to be classified as rape in Japan, which is actually a really good thing.

They’ve also started looking at other stuff like circulating images online.

So revenge porn or taking up skirt photos,

which is a really common problem in Japan.

That used to be you get in trouble, but you didn’t go to jail because it

wasn’t technically illegal.

It’s sort of like taking pictures in public,

but then there’s privacy issues in Japan.

It’s very big on privacy.

So I’m surprised this one went for as long as it did.

If I take pictures, that’s illegal, but if I circulate them online, that’s

double illegal.

So I get two illegal things in one go.

And that’s actually one of the things they’re trying to really, really crack

down on is these guys who are creepy and stuff, sharing them is maybe worse.

And at first, I was worried about Ninja News Japan because I need to get all

these news stories so I can do the content.

But now if there are more arrests, it means more creepy, weird stories will

actually come out.

Because right now, there’s a whole bunch of people they get in trouble, they

get caught by the police, but it’s not technically illegal.

So we don’t hear all the details, so we don’t actually get the story.

So now, I think we’re going to have more crimes come to the forefront, which

means more content for Ninja News Japan.

So at least for a little while, I think we’re going to be getting a lot more

really creepy dude news.

But let’s face it, if you come to listen to Ninja News Japan, that’s

probably what you’re coming to listen for.

You creepy, creepy weirdo.

[MUSIC].