Golden Week in Japan.
What is Golden Week? Golden Week is a series of small national holidays and
if you have a nice company, it gives you the whole week off.
Schools don’t and other companies don’t, so I’m alone in the house.
What?
So that of course is led to a lunchtime cocktails.
I’ve realized I like drinking in the afternoon better than I drink at night.
I don’t know why.
I think it’s because it wears off as the day progresses.
Number two also means afternoon ice cream.
I am living the best life 12 year old me good have ever imagined because I,
okay, when I was a kid I never podcast didn’t exist yet.
I didn’t like, oh, I will be podcasting what I grow up.
Oh, fucking idiot.
I could have done, I realized like you think about, I came to Japan in 2001.
YouTube wasn’t a thing yet and it wasn’t a thing until I think 2004.
I could have been one of the first YouTubers and I missed that opportunity.
I realized most of my failure, which is all things.
I have been primarily because I didn’t
realize when I should adopt something new.
So now all these like new services like Twitter is kind of failing and all
these other services are coming up to take its place.
And I think, oh, maybe this is the opportunity for me to get in on the
ground floor and be
one of the sort of the OG guys of this
platform and that’ll build up an audience.
And then I go, yes, work.
Fuck that.
Anyways, Japan is on holiday but that
doesn’t mean we take a break from news .
I might have to take a break later in the month but that’s other stuff.
Nothing to do with you.
Don’t worry about it.
A man in a goya, he worked at a host bar.
Not a terrible thing.
I don’t judge people.
We work at host bars.
I think it’s a bit skeasy but yeah, because you’re manipulating people into
giving you money because you’re trying
to get them to think that you love them.
That is the bad part.
If everyone was above board, like I’m here, I’m here to entertain you.
I don’t love you.
Sure.
Okay.
I’m here.
I’m here to entertain you and I do love you, give me stuff.
That’s not cool anymore.
Part of that job is to bring a new customer.
So they have you like sometimes go out on the street.
This is a question.
So if you have a host club, you have a host club or a host is club.
And you have like let’s say 10 staff, 10 hosts.
Do you take the best ones and put them on
the street so the people come in and they’re
slightly disappointed by the quality of the host that are in the club?
Or do you take like the lowest tier ones, put them on the street so when
they people come into the club, they’re
like, ooh, those guys are looking better.
It’s an interesting dilemma because better
looking hosts on the street should bring
in more traffic.
But then if everyone’s disappointed, you get a bad reputation.
Whereas everyone, if the host, your lowest level hosts are mediocre and they
bring in people
and the people in, if you bring in people
and they’re all like, oh man, it’s even more
of a wonderland of man meat in here than it was out on the street.
That’s a good thing, right?
It’s a tough one.
There’s a thing about that.
So you got to go out on the street and you got to get more customers to come
to your club in that way you can get the
fake out that you love people more and steal
their money.
Fortunately, an I.G.
Not across Japan.
I don’t know, only an I.G. but definitely an I.G.
That kind of solicitation is actually illegal.
Oh, you can see where the problem arises.
Problem arises when you can cry.
That’s how you get on the news Japan.
There are two ways to get on the news Japan.
One, to commit a crime in Japan.
And that’s vaguely interesting to me.
For number two, send me a message.
You can send an email to chunk@beefchest@umail.com.
SpeakPike.com/track@beefchest as an audio
message and then I’ll hear your voice.
I will respond to your voice.
I like people’s voices very much.
So if you want to be 800 people famous, my core audience is 800 people.
You want to be 800 people famous.
You got a New Jersey pet.
I give you a little.
Who knows?
Your video might be the video that takes off.
So this guy goes on the street.
This is a job.
He’s like, I got to ask people to come to my club so I can pretend to love
them so I can steal their money.
He makes the classic mistake of soliciting
an undercover police office woman .
And so he gets arrested.
But turns out during the day, he is a school teacher.
Now the first thought I had was those are overlapping skills.
A host needs to keep you engaged and entertained while you know talking
about you in your life.
School teacher needs to keep you engaged
and entertained while talking about material
that isn’t inherently boring.
If you are inherently boring, those are the exact same skillset.
So if you’re a good host, you probably would also be a good teacher.
Go figure, right?
That’s what I thought.
Oh wow.
Hosts and teachers.
They need the same basic skills.
Teachers in IT are classified as civil servants.
So you need permission to work a second job.
So everyone’s like, well, how did this teacher get permission to work a
second job as a host?
There is a secondary issue.
Maybe the host was the main job.
And teaching was the secondary job in which case technically wouldn’t work,
but you know that’s not how that works.
Now this guy only worked 20 hours a week.
Therefore you have found a loophole.
If he works part time, he doesn’t need permission to work a second job so he
can work a second job as a host.
Of course they don’t intend for you to take on these salacious type jobs.
But there is a rule that if you are a teacher, you can’t take on a secondary
job that discredits
teaching, which is where the host and teacher of Venn diagram separate, that
being a host would disparage the nature of being an honorable teacher.
But of course because he committed a crime.
So now they’re like, I should be guy, you
rid of this guy, but then we can’t fire him
for that because technically it’s not listed
specifically that you can’t be a host.
Because he committed a crime, he solicited
an undercover police office woman .
That is a loophole they found to fire him.
So he found a loophole to get that second job, but they found a loophole to
get rid of him.
I really enjoyed this story and I don’t know why.
So a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister
of Japan had a pipe bomb thrown at him.
It didn’t go off.
It didn’t actually hurt anyone.
It made some smoke.
It was how life just happened sometime.
The public safety chief was eating lunch.
He was just about to eat lunch when he got the news that a pipe bomb had
been thrown at one of his wards, the Prime Minister of Japan.
What did he do?
What did he say?
He said, I had been looking forward to
eating a delicious bowl of grilled eel rice.
I was just about to start eating when I received a call.
So instead of getting up and being like, I have to go defend, I have to go
check on the Prime Minister.
Never mind, defend him.
I go check that he’s okay.
This guy that I’m so irresponsible for taking care of, fuck that.
Lunch has been served.
I’m going to eat lunch first.
So I made sure to eat the bowl of eel rice.
Everyone’s now really pissed off at him because you’re supposed to be the
guy in charge of security.
Lunch comes and you have an option of dealing with a security issue or
eating lunch and you chose to eat lunch.
I was like, that’s a bad thing.
I was like, maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Maybe you want a guy in charge of security to be so confident in the
security that he’s provided that he’s
like, I don’t even need to leave lunch.
I can eat my lunch.
I know security is taking care of because I’ve done such a good job.
And I am so calm and cool during a crisis.
I just eat my eel, my grilled eel on top of rice.
I fucking hate grilled eel.
Water snakes grilled is not good.
Let’s just be honest.
There’s a lot of foods in Asia that I’ve tried and some I like some I don’t
know to be fair.
I tried grilled eel and I found it.
I think primarily the texture really put me off but I did not enjoy grilled
eel at all.
This guy, chief of safety, chief of public safety was very, very much
looking forward to his grilled eel.
Now the secondary concern is that he is also in charge of security at the
upcoming group of seven summit next month
in Hokkaido and some of the other party.
So there’s LDPs in charge and he’s part of the LDP party.
He’s in charge of public safety, chief.
They saying he has no sense of tension or responsibility towards his duties.
But maybe he just has priorities.
I’ve set security in place.
There’s nothing I can do about it now.
Lunch is here.
My priority is now lunch.
I’ve done my job.
I’ve done my due diligence.
Here’s my lunch.
My due diligence at this point is to not waste taxpayers money.
Or paying for my lunch probably most likely because of the way Japanese
politics works.
Statistics.
I do enjoy a good stat.
The problem being that these are all kind of depressing in one way and yet
when God closes one statistic, he opens up the variable on the other side.
I don’t know if that quite works.
I might have to work on that phrase a little bit.
By 2070, Japan’s population will shrink 87 million people.
That is a shrinkage of up to 30%.
I almost made a penis in the cold joke.
But I didn’t because this is a classy podcast.
Foreigners in 2020 made up 2.2% of the population by 2070.
They will, according to current projections,
be 10.8% of the population of Japan.
You can tell you there’s a lot of our old Japanese racist politicians would
not be happy
about that because it cuts to a point where you might be like, “Hey, maybe
we have to give foreign residents basic civil
rights,” which Japanese politicians have
argued against in the past.
Past, Ninja News Japan episodes, I have talked about how they’re like, “Yeah
, they’re foreigners
in there here and they pay taxes, but we don’t want to vote or anything.”
By 2043, that one, 2043 is going to be
the peak of 65 and older people in Japan.
Nearly 40 million people in Japan will be 65 and older.
In 2070, the fertility rate is projected to be 1.36%.
Currently, it is 1.33%.
It’s up 0.3%, which is not enough to keep the population going to maintain
your population.
You need a fertility rate of 2.07%.
That means for every man and every woman, you have to have 2.07 children, so
some families have to have three, to maintain the population.
I, being a foreigner in Japan, I am on the plus column.
I have produced extra babies for Japan and you are welcome.
My babies have good genes.
My genes.
They have good beard genes.
I actually am waiting.
My son’s 15.
Can’t grow a beard yet.
I want to see what he’s bearded.
I’ve been growing a beard lately.
If you’re watching the video, you can see my beard is a glorious red color,
which is really
weird because my hair is brownish red, but there’s a transition point up by
my ear where it changes dramatically.
But it’s a full beard.
It’s not that I’ve only been growing it for
a month or so, but give it a little time.
It’s going to be a massive viking beard very soon.
My son, he has Japanese genes, which don’t grow beards very well.
And he has my genes, which grow some of the most magnificent face hair ever
known to men.
What is he going to have?
I really want to see.
I guess I got to wait a couple more years.
I think he’s going to have, he doesn’t seem to have much now.
I’m wondering if that’s because he’s still a bit too young.
I can’t remember when I kind of came into my own.
I think it was 58.
Anyways, there’s a couple, one more step.
In 1990, Japan was the seventh most populous nation in 2022 to drop to 11th.
And that’s because of the population decline, which is increasing.
People got to get fucking, I mean, it’s really just that simple.
People got to fucking make babies and they
talk about all these government programs.
I think the last like five, six weeks we’ve
done stories about population decline and
what the government is doing.
It’s just the core issue is.
Those work culture sucks ass and therefore Japanese people don’t.
God damn, this is a dirty episode.
Lunchtime cocktails during a holiday really change the tone of this podcast.
This is what you like.
What you have to do is find a way to give
me enough money that I quit my job and lunch
drink all the time so that I can do my podcasts like this.
Here’s a story about how tough it is to be Akusa in modern Japan.
They put a lot of rules in place to discourage Yakusa.
Basically, there’s a rule that says, “A Yakusa, someone, a member of
organized crime family, cannot engage the contract with another person.”
It’s illegal.
“A Yakusa makes a contract with you.”
That contract is null and void by the very
nature of the fact that the other person on
the other side of the table is a Yakusa.
So that means Yakusa in modern-day Japan technically, it’s illegal for them
to have a phone because they have to have a phone contract to get a phone.
There was a story like last month or two months ago.
I didn’t actually think I did it in Jusban.
You can’t get a supermarket loyalty card
because you’re entering into a contract with
the supermarket.
You cannot get a car legally because you have to enter into a contract with
the car dealership to buy a car.
You can see by just making it that it’s not legal for you to enter into
contracts, they can get you on almost anything.
Two Yakusa at the end of last month.
So now is May 2nd, so it’s like a couple days ago.
They were like, “Hey, we like tigers.
The tigers is baseball team.”
We were like, “Tigers, let’s go see tigers baseball game.”
The other Yakusa was like, “Yo, buddy, let’s do that.”
Let’s go get a driver, drive us to the stadium, get in, we’ll take it, we’ll
be going with it.
So what happened though?
Previously, 2003.
That is 20 years ago.
What Yakusa were doing is they would get homeless people to go buy tickets.
They would collect those tickets and then scalp them at three times the
value of the ticket creating their scheme to scalp tickets.
Because in Japan, a lot of things you have to go and you can buy basically
one or two tickets per person, but you
actually have to show up and buy the tickets.
They got around this by employing homeless people.
The stadium, this is nothing to do with entering into contracts.
The stadium said, “We’re just going to ban members of organized crime from
the stadium.”
It’s a very easy thing to do.
There’s literally, if you go to the Tiger
Stadium in Japan, I think it’s in Osaka.
There will be a sign in it that says, “Members of organized crime are not
allowed, are not permitted to enter this facility.”
You think that would just be like a given.
A member of organized crime shouldn’t be allowed to enter anywhere.
They just put up a sign.
Now they can actually say, “We’ve legally made it very clear that you
organized crime members are not welcome.”
Here’s where it all falls apart.
They had a guy, I assume a low-level guy,
who’s a guy, drives them to the stadium.
He has to wait outside.
He’s not allowed to watch the baseball game because he’s low on the totem
pole and he is like sock, so he has to sit in the car.
He’s parked illegally because this is an organized crime family.
They organize crimes all the time without even thinking about it.
They, he parks illegally, he’s like, “I’m Yakuza, this is what I do.”
It’s police walk up and they’re like,
“Hey, oh, boy, you’re parked illegally .”
He’s like, “Yeah, fuck you.”
You didn’t actually say that.
They probably had a very pleasant conversation because the Yakuza driver guy
didn’t want any trouble.
So they talk to him and they’re like, “Hey, partner.
This is me being too police officers.”
Hey, partner.
I think this is a little suspicious.
The other guy goes, “The other police officer goes, “Yeah.”
This is a little suspicious.
No why?
Why?
Because I think he’s parked illegally and he thinks it’s okay because he’s Y
akuza and the other guy goes, “Fuck you.”
But, why is he just waiting here?
Why is he waiting here to get in trouble?
So I think there’s other Yakuza in the stadium.
Let’s do a stakeout.
Ah, fucking classic.
Let’s do a stakeout.
Let’s stake out together.
Hey, you and me, buddy.
Let’s get some Doritos getting the car.
Sit and watch.
I mean, we’ll listen to the game.
As we sit outside the stadium, so the game’s
happening right there as we listen to it,
sort of live, not really.
We’re going to catch ourselves in Yakuza criminals.
Fuck yeah, let’s do that.
That’s fucking great.
Let’s do that.
It’s awesome.
So they do that.
The Yakuza come out of the stadium, fucking arrested.
They got arrested for going to a baseball game.
So my thinking was, the driver really fucked this up.
So what he should have done is he’s sitting in the car, the police walk up
to talk to him.
He says, “Oh, shit, guys.
I parked in the wrong place.
I will drive away.”
Send a text message.
So there’s two options.
One, drive away and say, “I’ll meet you around the corner.
I’ll pick you up after the game.”
Or number two, send them a text message and go, “Guys, you got to make your
own way home.
The cops are checking me out.
I’m going to bail now.”
And I think any reasonable Yakuza would be like, “Oh, shit.
The cops checked you out.
You should get out of here.
We’ll catch the bus.”
I know the Yakuza.
Oh, they’ll get a taxi.
They got fucking money.
It’s the driver who’s really at blame for this.
Now, when the Yakuza were arrested, like, I didn’t know it was illegal for
us to go to a baseball game.
But essentially because your entire life is illegal, you should just know it
‘s illegal for you to do anything.
So the fact that you get arrested for
something, it should not be a fucking surprise.
You fucking idiot.
I’m calling out all Yakuza right now.
You do illegal things.
You can’t pretend to be surprised when you
get arrested for doing something illegal.
Ffff.
Ffff.
Let’s get some more, but maybe I’ve sworn it or sworn it.
It’s enough.
This is the last story.
And this is again, how not to commit
crimes anywhere, not just Japan anywhere.
Is lady, she had applied, so there was a recent story.
This is maybe connected of a guy who got really upset.
He wanted, the guy who threw the pipe bomb at the prime minister was a
failed politician.
This lady is also a failed politician.
Just the other day, she said she was going to disperse siren gas on the
subway of the city.
She posted that on Twitter.
Now here’s the first problem.
The account was in her name and totally
just was very clear about what was going on.
It’s like, I’m going to threaten everybody in the city.
I’m going to tell you a time.
I’m going to post it on Twitter with my name and my face attached to it.
A bunch of people called the cops.
This is fraudulent obstruction of business.
But then I realized, okay, who is she defrauding?
Is it the train station?
No, because the police showed up and
they had to look for siren gas can isters.
And is it obstruction of business?
Because technically, what they’re arresting
her for is obstructing police business.
But police business is investigating crimes.
So if she’s created a crime for them to investigate, therefore she’s not
obstructing the police business.
She’s creating jobs.
She’s creating business for the police to investigate.
The police had to search the station.
They didn’t find anything.
They went and arrested her.
Her post says, I am Shoko Asahara of the Rewa era.
So that for anyone who doesn’t live in Japan, maybe a little confusing.
Shoko Asahara is the person who dispersed siren gas in the 90s.
The Alm cult.
A leader.
I think executed.
A bunch of them were executed.
I think he was also executed.
The Rewa era is the current era in Japan of the most current emperor.
So what have we learned today?
Don’t be a Yakusa.
If you’re going to not be a Yakusa and threaten to kill everybody, don’t
post it on Twitter.
[Music].
