Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing. They've down in a forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody see it. Nobody else you might see that.
Speaker 1: You don't need to know, man, You don't they like
Speaker 1: you fall another point and you got back to fro
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: That's the point.
Speaker 1: Man got blackly Da on the pan.
Speaker 3: Man. Now you don't matter, man. I think that Japan
Speaker 3: holds a special place, certainly culturally in the US, but
Speaker 3: particularly on the American right. We're we're fascinated by it,
Speaker 3: at least so far. It's a country that has missed
Speaker 3: many of the worst elements of globalism. It's still largely homogeneous,
Speaker 3: very safe, and culturally unified. Obviously, you are also have
Speaker 3: the explosion of Japanese culture on the internet, with martial arts, anime, manga,
Speaker 3: car culture, things that many of us will be familiar with. Anime,
Speaker 3: for example, has gone fully mainstrain in the US. Instead
Speaker 3: of being the weird kids with their own table in
Speaker 3: the lunch room, now many many people under the age
Speaker 3: of about thirty five watch anime. It's completely and totally normalized.
Speaker 3: And when I say that this is interesting to the
Speaker 3: American right wing because of their ethnic homogeneity and relative stability.
Speaker 3: It also has a sort of inverse obsession on the
Speaker 3: left where they sort of have to delude themselves about
Speaker 3: this little ethno state halfway across the world. Look at
Speaker 3: how beautiful it is in a country where our attitudes
Speaker 3: towards women, minorities and sexual minorities are shall we say,
Speaker 3: not exactly replicated. But unfortunately globalism has come to Japan.
Speaker 3: They are nowhere near as far along as we are,
Speaker 3: but we've seen immigration, specifically from Kurdistan, although also from
Speaker 3: countries like Nigeria and India start to hit the Japanese populace.
Speaker 3: This has produced a backlash in politics and in the populace,
Speaker 3: but it's still very, very small. It hasn't necessarily become
Speaker 3: ubiquitous yet. And so I think a lot of us
Speaker 3: are watching Japan eagerly. What will they decide to do?
Speaker 3: Will they follow the rest of the developed world quote unquote,
Speaker 3: or will they sidestep this bizarre, self destructive obsession. That's
Speaker 3: exactly why I reached out to my guest Lone Star.
Speaker 3: He's an expat. You may have heard him elsewhere. A
Speaker 3: guy living in Japan for fifteen years, and so he
Speaker 3: understands exactly what's going on. He spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time in the country. He's a sober thinker. This isn't
Speaker 3: a sensational podcast telling you it's all over. He provides
Speaker 3: the context you need to understand what you may or
Speaker 3: may not be seeing. I think a lot of us
Speaker 3: have been especially enchanted with our Japanese brothers because of
Speaker 3: a sort of a quirk of the social media algorithm.
Speaker 3: Several weeks back, where the streams got crossed. We had
Speaker 3: easy access to AI translation and the American chuds and
Speaker 3: the everyday Japanese, well they got crossed up. We started
Speaker 3: running a little cultural exchange. It was a ton of
Speaker 3: fun pulpo. A mutual of mine started a trend, a
Speaker 3: craze in Japan, you know, doing something that your grandpa did, right,
Speaker 3: salted peanuts and coke swept the nation. And most of
Speaker 3: it was exactly that, you know, this kind of harmless
Speaker 3: cultural exchange. And I think, like a lot of us,
Speaker 3: I realized, well, we're not so different, you and I.
Speaker 3: In the more serious conversations, you heard the same issues
Speaker 3: with immigration, the same issues with feminism, and on each
Speaker 3: side of the Pacific Ocean, guys were realizing, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: what the media told us, You know that you were
Speaker 3: all lib tarts. That isn't true. There's a very analogous
Speaker 3: culture to ours over there, and sure they're very, very different,
Speaker 3: that's what makes them charming and interesting. But I think
Speaker 3: a lot of us realized we're in kind of a
Speaker 3: similar boat. Also, given the fact that the World's Cup
Speaker 3: is going on, I'm sure you have seen the videos
Speaker 3: of Japanese fans in the US both behaving very well, right,
Speaker 3: cleaning up after themselves in the stadium, leaving it spotless,
Speaker 3: and also at bars and Texas right, Japanese guys getting
Speaker 3: absolutely blasted with good old fashioned you know, American cowboys
Speaker 3: having the time of their life. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of cultural admiration going both directions, and so for that reason,
Speaker 3: as well as the kind of unique test case that
Speaker 3: is Japan, I think all of us are watching what
Speaker 3: happens with bated breath. And the off chance that you
Speaker 3: are Japanese listening to this, godspeed, do not make the
Speaker 3: mistakes that we have had. But for the Americans, I
Speaker 3: think this will be useful to give you the real context,
Speaker 3: not the sensationalist garbage pushed on social media, very oftentimes
Speaker 3: by people who are not Japanese or even American, write
Speaker 3: these sort of slop accounts designed to profit off of
Speaker 3: doom and gloom. So, without further ado, I will start
Speaker 3: this episode as per usual, sponsored by Axios Remote Fitness
Speaker 3: and Coaching and Fox and Sons Coffee. Use the code
Speaker 3: j Burden get fifteen percent off. I know I'm not
Speaker 3: the only one in these circles associated with Fox and Sons.
Speaker 3: It's because one, the guy who owns it's one of us,
Speaker 3: and two makes a good product. Had it this morning,
Speaker 3: it every morning. It's delicious. Also, if you want the
Speaker 3: episodes early in ad free a few bucks a month
Speaker 3: on Patreon, Substack or come road now thanks to inflation,
Speaker 3: less than the cup leus than the cost of a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee gets you hours and hours of me
Speaker 3: every month with no ads before anyone else, So if
Speaker 3: you're interested, be sure to check that out. I will
Speaker 3: be on vacation when this comes out. You shouldn't notice anything.
Speaker 3: I've pre recorded a ton, But if I'm slow getting
Speaker 3: back to you, it's because for once in my life,
Speaker 3: I've decided to unpluck. So all of this is pre recorded.
Speaker 3: There will be no interruption to your stream of content.
Speaker 3: But if I don't get back to you, that's why.
Speaker 3: So anyway, here's lone Star. All right, lone Star, how
Speaker 3: you doing?
Speaker 1: Man doing all right? Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you and I got connected on X not too
Speaker 3: long ago, and you have a pretty interesting area of expertise,
Speaker 3: I think, something that a lot of people are going
Speaker 3: to be interested in. But before we get into that,
Speaker 3: if you don't mind as much as you're comfortable, well
Speaker 3: who are you? And well what do you do?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So, kind of long story short. I'm a long term
Speaker 2: expat living in Japan. I'm currently living in Tokyo. Been
Speaker 2: in Japan about going on eighteen years now. So it's,
Speaker 2: as I say, you know, time flies. It's kind of
Speaker 2: an old adage, but it really does, you know. When I,
Speaker 2: you know, I first came here, it was a completely
Speaker 2: new environment. I was fresh off the plane, had never
Speaker 2: even visited Japan before. I was just curious about traveling
Speaker 2: the world after graduating college. And it was right at
Speaker 2: the time of the financial crisis, so it was a
Speaker 2: bit lost on what to do. So I figured I'd
Speaker 2: take a year and just travel a bit and kind
Speaker 2: of find out what I want to do. Japan wasn't
Speaker 2: my only option. I looked at you know, China, Korea,
Speaker 2: places in South America as well, but lied to company
Speaker 2: in Japan, had some interviews stateside, and yeah, about eight
Speaker 2: months later, they offered me a contract, got the plane ticket,
Speaker 2: sold my car, and you know, packed my bags and
Speaker 2: you know, landed in Japan and with not a clue
Speaker 2: of what I was going to do. Pretty much, I
Speaker 2: had a job, but outside of that, I didn't know
Speaker 2: where I was going to go. So, yeah, it's been
Speaker 2: about a year in Japan. I returned to the States briefly,
Speaker 2: but then I came back right around the time of
Speaker 2: there's a big earthquake around twenty eleven, and yeah, I've
Speaker 2: been in Japan since. So it wasn't always in Tokyo.
Speaker 2: I kind of managed to ran some English schools in
Speaker 2: a city up north of Tokyo, but yeah, the last
Speaker 2: five years been living in Tokyo now, So it's especially
Speaker 2: in the last five to six years. The changes, as
Speaker 2: you know you've alluded to in our chat previously, are
Speaker 2: are are a parent, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a couple of things there. I think like
Speaker 3: a lot of people, uh, just kind of due to
Speaker 3: culture osmosis being you know, on the internet, Internet natives,
Speaker 3: there's always been, you know, an appreciation for Japanese culture,
Speaker 3: both on the level obviously of media, but also it's
Speaker 3: an orderly place. Themes, things seem to work there in
Speaker 3: a way that well they used to in America and
Speaker 3: don't anymore. And when you combine, as I mentioned earlier
Speaker 3: before we started recording the recent I guess kind of
Speaker 3: random algorithmic change which cross pollinated a ton of normal
Speaker 3: Japanese guys and kind of you know, chud Americans on
Speaker 3: social media, you know, where we have an auto translate feature,
Speaker 3: we can actually talk to each other. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if you caught the U the peanut coke craze that
Speaker 3: my friend Polpo started.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw that, and I'll go ahead, I
Speaker 2: let you finish. But I have some coinor colary on that.
Speaker 3: So no, but it was it was this great moment
Speaker 3: of good feeling, you know, where we finally had been
Speaker 3: able to talk one to another and realized, no, hey,
Speaker 3: we're pretty similar, similar interests, you know, enjoy many of
Speaker 3: the same things, and honestly, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people were surprised at how, not to say similar the
Speaker 3: politics were, but at least there was a cohort of
Speaker 3: you know, right wing Japanese guys on the internet who
Speaker 3: were noticing the same things, particularly around feminism and immigration,
Speaker 3: and there was kind of this funny discourse for a
Speaker 3: few days of wait a minute, we thought you were
Speaker 3: all libtards because that's what we see on media. Oh wait,
Speaker 3: you know, there is a you know, some semblance of
Speaker 3: a resistance there. And with that obviously came the realization
Speaker 3: that you know, in Japan, you guys are facing the
Speaker 3: same problems with immigration we are, albeit thankfully at a
Speaker 3: much relatively lower scale. But you're seeing in real time
Speaker 3: a graded on a curve, perfectly ordered society all of
Speaker 3: a sudden speed running what we've gone through over the
Speaker 3: last sixty years. So just a little bit of background
Speaker 3: their loan star obviously, you know this just for the
Speaker 3: sake of the audience, But I'm curious as regards immigration,
Speaker 3: when did that start to be a problem, because you know,
Speaker 3: obviously there's a difference between you know, getting a job
Speaker 3: moving over and Johnny Somali, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's.
Speaker 2: It's a bit more nuanced and obviously what's a what
Speaker 2: you see on Twitter. Basically, there's always been you know,
Speaker 2: a small minority of people from pretty much everywhere in Japan,
Speaker 2: but it's always been about one, maybe two percent of
Speaker 2: the population among all the foreign population. The large majority
Speaker 2: of the foreign population here are other East Asians, mostly
Speaker 2: Chinese and Koreans, so that makes up the huge bulk
Speaker 2: of the foreign population in Japan. Outside of that, you
Speaker 2: have Southeast Asians like Vietnamese, Laotians, Thai people coming here
Speaker 2: as well. A lot of the a lot of those
Speaker 2: people come you know as cheap labor pretty much, right,
Speaker 2: not all, but there's a lot in that sector. And
Speaker 2: then you have all the other foreigners, which includes Europeans, Americans, Africans,
Speaker 2: South Americans, Brazilians, et cetera. Right, So, even amongst the
Speaker 2: foreign population, someone like myself is still relatively small, so
Speaker 2: to speak. So the image of what foreigners are in
Speaker 2: Japan is different, and the Japanese have slightly different attitudes
Speaker 2: towards foreign population so to depend, especially because of the history.
Speaker 2: Won't really go into too many details about that, but
Speaker 2: there is you know, a long history along rivalry between
Speaker 2: Japan and especially China and Korea. But the real issues
Speaker 2: kind of started I would say maybe ten ten years
Speaker 2: ago or so, maybe a little bit before that. I
Speaker 2: wasn't living in Tokyo at the time, but there were
Speaker 2: you know, reports of a growing population of Kurdish refugees
Speaker 2: in kind of North Tokyo, and they would seek refugee
Speaker 2: status come here, and then apparently what's happening is some
Speaker 2: of them are overstaying the visas and they're unemployed, so
Speaker 2: they're kind of, as people say, kind of you know,
Speaker 2: leeching off the system. But they've all mostly kind of
Speaker 2: congregated area. So in general, Japan is still a relatively
Speaker 2: safe country. It's just they there are some like concentrated
Speaker 2: pockets where there is higher you know, like petty crime.
Speaker 2: I don't have any statistics about that, but that's usually
Speaker 2: been an issue that you see in the news. Local
Speaker 2: news here is about the Kurdish issue. Right outside of that,
Speaker 2: you hear random reports about in terms of foreign crime,
Speaker 2: you know, usually about you know, people stripping carper wires
Speaker 2: out of buildings and selling it on the black market.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So all that being said, relatively speaking, Japan is still
Speaker 2: I would say it's it's still a great place to live.
Speaker 2: It's it's still safe, it's still orderly, it's still clean.
Speaker 2: But the trend is actually posts uh covid has you
Speaker 2: see a large demographic shift, and especially even in you know,
Speaker 2: the smaller cities, And that's the biggest change that I've
Speaker 2: been hearing from people as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 3: Think it's important to stress the relative nature because just
Speaker 3: to hazard a guess, I'm guessing that the worst block
Speaker 3: in Tokyo is still safer than oh block in Chicago.
Speaker 3: I don't know that. I'm not a statistician, but I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure. And this is something you see a lot
Speaker 3: from the kind of like as much as I hate
Speaker 3: to use this term, but kind of the immigration slop,
Speaker 3: you know, big Maga account where you know, they will
Speaker 3: take a video out of you know, England or you know,
Speaker 3: even continental Europe Japan and basically say, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: X y Z country has fallen and look, we're the
Speaker 3: trend lines aren't good, but we need to we need
Speaker 3: to understand what we're talking about in relative terms. Even
Speaker 3: within America, Like my city is perfectly safe. I could
Speaker 3: go almost anywhere, you know, with one hundred dollars bill
Speaker 3: sticking out of my back pocket, and I'd be fine.
Speaker 3: So my relative crime weight is next to nothing. Now
Speaker 3: if my city goes from an average of one murder
Speaker 3: a year to two, well it's big enough. I probably
Speaker 3: don't know a difference, but that's that's one hundred percent increase, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that there's a vested interest in selling
Speaker 3: this kind of if I can use a crude term,
Speaker 3: kind of doom porn, you know, it's all over because
Speaker 3: it sells, and so I don't want to, you know,
Speaker 3: put words in your mouth, certainly, But it's not as
Speaker 3: if Japan is now forty percent Japanese, right, but a
Speaker 3: change from again one percent primarily East Asian, with a
Speaker 3: few other you know, kind of assorted foreigners to you know,
Speaker 3: even Kurds, which graded on a curve, aren't that bad
Speaker 3: compared to other populations. It's notable change. So what has
Speaker 3: the reaction been like from the Japanese public, at least
Speaker 3: in the West, we are assured that this new I
Speaker 3: think it's a female prime minister, correct.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, you know we female prime minister. Japan
Speaker 2: has had two, which is interesting because the controversy around
Speaker 2: her is not usually around that, which is surprising for Japan.
Speaker 3: I would say, well, and at least in the West,
Speaker 3: somewhat similar to you know Maloney or Orbon or any
Speaker 3: other of these leaders. The coverage we get from mainstream
Speaker 3: media is, you know, this is the reincarnation of you know,
Speaker 3: General Hirohito. The farthest right. You can imagine she's you know,
Speaker 3: putting immigrants up on gibbets in public, you know, letting
Speaker 3: the crows feed on them. I'm guessing that's not accurate,
Speaker 3: but nonetheless, one what is the reaction from both the
Speaker 3: populace and kind of the political class to this new
Speaker 3: changing immigration landscape?
Speaker 2: Right, so, kind there's a touch on your first point
Speaker 2: about you know, people sharing like this, as you said,
Speaker 2: like doom porn or these almost like sensationalists posts, which,
Speaker 2: just to be clear, a lot of what you see
Speaker 2: posted about Japan, they use real videos, those are real
Speaker 2: incidences that happen, but oftentimes they're years old, or they're
Speaker 2: they're posted out of context in some way, and they
Speaker 2: are sensationalists. There's a lot of LARPing accounts that are
Speaker 2: people who are not Japanese who are posing as Japanese
Speaker 2: posting this kind of slop and well, actually, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3: One of the things that was really interesting, sorry to
Speaker 3: just build on that point talking to the you know,
Speaker 3: the Japanese bros. Was they were like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: you have Nigerians pretending to be Americans on social media
Speaker 3: and making money from it. We have that too, and again,
Speaker 3: you know, it's the business model is the same everywhere.
Speaker 3: But to your point, yes, I've I've heard, you know,
Speaker 3: from my mutuals on social media the same thing. Sorry, lugstar,
Speaker 3: I'll stop.
Speaker 2: It or uh no, no problem. But yeah, even amongst
Speaker 2: you know, people in our circles, they'll repost it, you know,
Speaker 2: because they don't know if it's you know, they only
Speaker 2: dig a little bit into it. They see what's happening.
Speaker 2: So a lot of it is Yeah, there's there's truth
Speaker 2: to it, but it's not as bad or it's not
Speaker 2: the same context as what they're sharing. Right, So Japan
Speaker 2: is not doomed at least not yet anyway. It's uh,
Speaker 2: like I said, it's still relatively safe country. I live
Speaker 2: in live in Tokyo. It is the largest, the largest
Speaker 2: you know, metropolitan city in the world, right or in
Speaker 2: the most populous, I guess. And even in a city
Speaker 2: like Tokyo, you go to a restaurant, you go anywhere
Speaker 2: you can claim a seat, uh first by leaving your bag,
Speaker 2: leaving your phone on the table, and then going to
Speaker 2: the counter ordering comeback, and no one takes a seat,
Speaker 2: no one takes your stuff. That's I would say ninety
Speaker 2: nine point nine percent at the time. You're good, no
Speaker 2: one's going to steal your stuff. But it's weird, like
Speaker 2: the things that get stolen the most in Japan are
Speaker 2: going to be umbrellas or bicycles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll I'll leave your imagination to that, but
Speaker 1: might might surprise you.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, so it's it's still, relatively speaking, one
Speaker 2: of the safest cities to live in, one of the
Speaker 2: safest countries to live in. So getting that out of
Speaker 2: the way, it's not fallen, it's not doomed, it's not
Speaker 2: you know, a hellish landscape, or it's not even you know,
Speaker 2: comparative to Europe in that way. Right, But as I said,
Speaker 2: the trend is happening, especially since the borders opened after
Speaker 2: COVID that there's been a large increase of especially salt
Speaker 2: Asians here from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. There was always you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a small minority because there's you know, Indian
Speaker 2: restaurants are quite popular here, so there was always you know,
Speaker 2: a small minority who were mostly peaceful, you know, ran
Speaker 2: restaurants things like that, right, But you see more and
Speaker 2: more of people who are you know, working at convenience
Speaker 2: stores or whatnot, students, exchange students, language school students. In
Speaker 2: these smaller cities people, you know, cities like five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people or less, which for Japan is medium to small,
Speaker 2: you'll see just large amounts of these, you know, groups
Speaker 2: of these people just appearing out of nowhere, seemingly out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, and the local population is you know, Japanese
Speaker 2: are outwardly very welcoming people. They're reserved, but they're usually
Speaker 2: very welcoming and friendly, and so they're just they don't
Speaker 2: know how to react, especially you know, the smaller town people.
Speaker 2: You know, they're they're not going to be outwardly rude.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, a sudden demographic change like that,
Speaker 2: you know, causes a bit of confusion, I guess, but
Speaker 2: just concern overall concern, and that's a key cultural element
Speaker 2: in Japan. That is very important is the overall peace
Speaker 2: and safety that they've built here, right, So that's a
Speaker 2: that's a very big thing in Japan is you know,
Speaker 2: keeping the peace, keeping the order, right. So anything that
Speaker 2: disrupts that is is kind of countering their their cultural norms, right,
Speaker 2: So it could be anything innocent or not innocent, but
Speaker 2: it is still kind of great up against that. So
Speaker 2: it causes an unease whether the immigrants coming in or
Speaker 2: are causing issues or not.
Speaker 3: Basically speaking purely anecdotally, I really got introduced to Japanese
Speaker 3: culture with the kind of you know, like early two
Speaker 3: thousands car culture, like video option and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: these kind of bootlegs that were passed around. And so
Speaker 3: because of that, there are a lot of people who
Speaker 3: you know, either through forums or you know, even now
Speaker 3: on on x as it's gotten seemingly quite big in Japan,
Speaker 3: a lot of guys who I've you know, not followed closely,
Speaker 3: but been aware of for kind of fifteen years. And
Speaker 3: what's interesting is at least in that community, you know,
Speaker 3: guys who are into kind of old cars and stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, including the kind of you know, older American stuff.
Speaker 3: There's been an interesting rise of auto theft. We're somewhat
Speaker 3: similar to you know, big cities like Portland in America.
Speaker 3: They are these kind of rings of they say Eastern Europeans.
Speaker 3: Who knows what that means. Basically, you know, with contacts
Speaker 3: at shipping yards who will take a car, goes into
Speaker 3: a shipping container and it shows up in Russia or Ukraine.
Speaker 3: And again, right, this is not on the order of
Speaker 3: a place like Detroit or you know, Johannesburg, where there's
Speaker 3: you know, dozens of carjackings a day. But still, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of these guys live in these kind of
Speaker 3: small to medium cities. And again I'm not on the ground.
Speaker 3: I'm just reading tea leads, so to speak, on the internet.
Speaker 3: But the tone of this is obviously angry, but also
Speaker 3: surprised and shocked. You know, this is not something I've
Speaker 3: ever had to deal with, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you know, my hobby, my prized possession, is most likely
Speaker 3: in a shipping container headed to Russia, you know, And
Speaker 3: of course you know there's a rational anger to that.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a lot of money. But the surprise
Speaker 3: is interesting as well. The tone seems to be and
Speaker 3: again it's through Ai translation. So who knows how much
Speaker 3: I'm picking up on is basically wait a minute, I
Speaker 3: didn't know that happened here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you say that. So I don't really
Speaker 2: know too much.
Speaker 1: About the.
Speaker 2: You know, the car import export kind of industry here.
Speaker 2: But even from early on, from the first you know,
Speaker 2: year that I was that I was here, I met
Speaker 2: people who were from I think Nigeria that had multiple
Speaker 2: import export businesses operating in the same city. They would
Speaker 2: buy cars from let's say China or Korea, import into Japan,
Speaker 2: resell them to somewhere in Africa or the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of a middleman sort of business. Didn't
Speaker 2: really dig in too much into that. That's the extent
Speaker 2: that I know. Other related crimes to that. I've heard
Speaker 2: of the Chinese mafia being involved with luxury car thiffs.
Speaker 2: They often operate at night. They'll they'll you know, scout
Speaker 2: out the car that they want, stake it out, and
Speaker 2: plan a big basically a heiss, you know. They they'll
Speaker 2: go to someone's apartment complex and with some machine and
Speaker 2: quietly just like pick it up and carry it away.
Speaker 2: You don't hear too much about those crimes. These days,
Speaker 2: but yeah, maybe about ten fifteen years ago, there was
Speaker 2: a string of those happening. More recently though, I haven't
Speaker 2: really heard too much in that area.
Speaker 3: So lone Star, you told me about the kind of
Speaker 3: public level reaction, you know, this kind of growing concern
Speaker 3: that this social balance is being disturbed. Has that made
Speaker 3: its way into politics. Are politicians talking about immigration?
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially the most recent elections. So to put it shortly,
Speaker 2: Japanese politics post World War two has just been dominated
Speaker 2: by one political party. But because it's so, it's basically
Speaker 2: had power since then. But there's a number of Japanese
Speaker 2: political parties. They even have a you know, the Communist
Speaker 2: Party here, right, which is it's more closely like a
Speaker 2: democratic socialist, like a Bernie Sanders type of party, right,
Speaker 2: But they do have a very you know a lot
Speaker 2: of different political parties. But because the LDP, the Liberal
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, has been in control since then, say for
Speaker 2: a couple of times, very short times where they weren't.
Speaker 2: But other political parties will form coalitions right to either
Speaker 2: defend against them or to counter them, or to ally
Speaker 2: with them, to become like a super party.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So it's uh, there's a lot of game of Thrones
Speaker 2: style stuff that goes on in there. But yeah, even
Speaker 2: within the large LDD party there's factions as well. So
Speaker 2: the current Prime Minister Takeiji, so she was kind of
Speaker 2: elected as you know, people were she was portraying this
Speaker 2: image is like the next Margaret Thatcher type, right, the
Speaker 2: next you know, Japan's Iron Lady, right. But another another party,
Speaker 2: a fairly new party, kind of made a lot of
Speaker 2: games recently within the Japanese government. It's called Sanseeto and
Speaker 2: they're very very nationalistic. Their slogan is Japan First, so
Speaker 2: to kind of take for that. So they've really harped
Speaker 2: on the immigration issue. They're really hard line on that.
Speaker 2: I I haven't really paid too much attention to them
Speaker 2: since the last election. They did gain about teen seats
Speaker 2: I believe, which is a large number but not a majority.
Speaker 2: They're the probably the most conservative party that's in the
Speaker 2: government at the moment. But the LDP does have a
Speaker 2: conservative wing, like the Shinzo Abbe style wing of people,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of where Takiji kind of falls into,
Speaker 2: kind of very close to Shinzo Abbe. So you see
Speaker 2: her kind of butting up with Donald Trump. That's really
Speaker 2: kind of why right, So they're kind of in that
Speaker 2: sort of connection in that sphere. So because that sort
Speaker 2: of more conservative branch of the LDP was elected, it
Speaker 2: was kind of influenced by a growing sentiment amongst the population.
Speaker 2: It's taken a more conservative swing so.
Speaker 1: To kind of.
Speaker 2: Similar to the West in a way, where the younger
Speaker 2: generation like gen Z, especially in Japan, are swinging a
Speaker 2: lot more conservative. They're openly talking about the immigration issue,
Speaker 2: even in.
Speaker 1: Japanese.
Speaker 2: Guy I work with, young guy, maybe twenty seven years old,
Speaker 2: lived in Belfast up until recently, so he has some
Speaker 2: stories to tell. But he saw firsthand what was happening
Speaker 2: in Belfast and sees what's happening to Japan and doesn't
Speaker 2: want that to happen. So he's very open about voting
Speaker 2: for the SUNSETA party. We played a little joke on him,
Speaker 2: kind of a half joke at the company Christmas party.
Speaker 2: We gifted him my Japanese language version of Mindcom that
Speaker 2: he was appreciative of. So yeah, but that's not to
Speaker 2: say the entire youth is that hardline, but the overall
Speaker 2: trend is going that way. There's a lot more younger
Speaker 2: people openly, you know, talking about being political, which is
Speaker 2: a bit more rare in Japan. People aren't as usually
Speaker 2: as open with their politics here, but you see a
Speaker 2: lot more people who are vocal about their politics who
Speaker 2: are younger, and it's it's definitely more of a right slant.
Speaker 3: So that's immigration. I'm also curious to get your thoughts
Speaker 3: on kind of feminism in Japan because for a long
Speaker 3: time people have been talking about, you know, the six
Speaker 3: B movement in Korea, and then I had some sources
Speaker 3: on the ground kind of correct beyond that and say,
Speaker 3: look like that's that's much more of a feature of
Speaker 3: Western media than it is local politics. And so even
Speaker 3: with relatively free social media, you have this distortion of
Speaker 3: living halfway across the world. And you mentioned the fact,
Speaker 3: of course that the current prime minister is the first
Speaker 3: female prime minister ever, and so is there a similar
Speaker 3: war between the sexes happening in Japan or is that
Speaker 3: just projection of American Western trends through which we view
Speaker 3: news coming from the East.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like the immigration issue, it is a bit
Speaker 2: more nuanced than that. So the I would say culturally
Speaker 2: Japan is compared to the West, tends to be a
Speaker 2: bit slower playing ketchup. So things that were trend in
Speaker 2: the West maybe ten years ago kind of cropped up
Speaker 2: about five to six years ago here, right, So.
Speaker 1: You know, back when what was it, the me too?
Speaker 2: The me too movement was big on social media in
Speaker 2: the West, it took Japan. Japan had its own med
Speaker 2: too movement, but it was you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: years later after that, right, and it focused solely you know,
Speaker 2: on Japanese culture within that context. So, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: only focused on women. There were actually some cases where
Speaker 2: men were involved with that too. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: it's a bit more nuanced, but culturally speaking, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: still very traditional, you know, thinking to its core. Right, So,
Speaker 2: you know, there are women in the workplace, there are
Speaker 2: you know, women in leadership positions and companies and now
Speaker 2: in government, and that's actually been kind of a more
Speaker 2: of a normal thing here in the last twenty years
Speaker 2: or so, maybe thirty years. But there's still this kind
Speaker 2: of core idea that you know, a woman who is
Speaker 2: working once she gets married and is pregnant. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: have a maternity leaf system, but the idea is like, okay,
Speaker 2: now your role is shifted to motherhood, right, Tokyo. It's
Speaker 2: a bit different because it's a it's a big city, right,
Speaker 2: so you're gonna you're going to have a lot of different.
Speaker 1: Attitudes.
Speaker 2: But the more of the smaller towns and cities you
Speaker 2: go to, the idea still is very still, very pervasive,
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 3: So that brings us to another question, which is the
Speaker 3: demographic situation within Japan. As far as I understand it,
Speaker 3: this is sort of an inverse pyramid where you have
Speaker 3: a large number of older people, and oftentimes Western immigration
Speaker 3: advocates will point to Japan. I mean even people you know,
Speaker 3: I generally am more aligned with guys like e Michael Jones,
Speaker 3: who I've sort of equipped before. Is this perfect? Say
Speaker 3: the sists of based and cringe. You know, you can
Speaker 3: find radically different opinions, but they will say things like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, given this aging population, Japan needs to open
Speaker 3: its borders so that they can have you know, on
Speaker 3: the kind of left side. You know, they will say,
Speaker 3: you know, areas like the you know, the Middle East
Speaker 3: in Africa, or you know, if you happen to be
Speaker 3: an Irish traditional Catholic, they'll point to the Philippines. But regardless,
Speaker 3: non Japanese people come in to pick up the slack.
Speaker 3: So to kind of summarize that into two questions, One
Speaker 3: if you could speak to the demographic situation in Japan
Speaker 3: and two has there been an attempt to basically prop
Speaker 3: up this sort of inverted pyramid with foreign immigration?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, go to the first question, the demographics. You're you're right,
Speaker 2: it is a reverse pyramid, and that's reverse pyramid. You know,
Speaker 2: the top of it grown was, you know, day by day.
Speaker 2: So it's really a kind of a trend in the
Speaker 2: last thirty forty years in Japan where the younger generations
Speaker 2: have also kind of checked out. They don't like the
Speaker 2: rigid rules or the work culture or whatever the expectations
Speaker 2: put on them. There was even a kind of I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say a trend, but there was like a an issue,
Speaker 2: a cultural issue, I guess you could say, in like
Speaker 2: the two thousands of maybe you've heard of it. The
Speaker 2: hiki komori, the so ahiki komori is someone who just
Speaker 2: is a recluse in their house. They never leave their home.
Speaker 2: They're unemployed, they either live off their parents or some
Speaker 2: sort of welfare system, and usually only go out just
Speaker 2: to buy food. Right, So they spend all day online,
Speaker 2: so that became sort of like a social stigma if
Speaker 2: you were that or they taught they had like an
Speaker 2: issue with neats, you know. So there's always some sort
Speaker 2: of youth problem issue within the last twenty years or
Speaker 2: so that people complain, you know, young people aren't getting married,
Speaker 2: they're not having kids, which statistically, looking at it is true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the trends looks like it looks like that. If you're
Speaker 2: here on the grounds, you would you wouldn't think that. However,
Speaker 2: I know it's just anecdotal, but you go to any
Speaker 2: park in any city in Japan, you're going to see
Speaker 2: families with at least one, if not two, three kids
Speaker 2: like there are you know, the people who do have
Speaker 2: families here tend to have more than one child, I
Speaker 2: would say, And I'm not sure if that's offsetting anything,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the the real issue here is the growing
Speaker 2: aging population and just not enough people to contribute to
Speaker 2: the pension and the government retirement for them. So and
Speaker 2: that trends to kind of go into question number two.
Speaker 2: There are groups that are advocating for bringing in too, yeah,
Speaker 2: bringing in foreigners to help with that. They paint it
Speaker 2: in it like a labor sense like oh, there's not enough,
Speaker 2: not enough young people working, so we need to offset
Speaker 2: the labor. There's not enough people working on farms anymore,
Speaker 2: the people are too old, or we need people in
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, construction thing, you know, labor like that.
Speaker 2: And so they'll, like I said, they bring people like
Speaker 2: from South Asia, Southeast Asia because they're cheap pretty much,
Speaker 2: and there's sometimes there's even criminal groups that are involved.
Speaker 2: So they'll they'll pose as companies offering legit jobs in
Speaker 2: Japan to people in poorer countries in Southeast Asia usually,
Speaker 2: and they bring them over and then they take their passport,
Speaker 2: they'll hold their passport hostage, and then they basically treat
Speaker 2: some of these people like slaves almost or they even
Speaker 2: sell some of the women into prostitution as well. That's
Speaker 2: not you know, a super common thing, but it does happen.
Speaker 2: And then you have the non criminal organizations like NGOs
Speaker 2: that are actively trying to bring more international people in.
Speaker 2: You may have seen recent stories about towns wanting to
Speaker 2: bring in people from Nigeria or India or something. So
Speaker 2: what that story was. The town's designated like this is
Speaker 2: the official you know, Japanese hometown for Nigeria or something
Speaker 2: like that. So Japan does have a sister city system
Speaker 2: in place. So the city I first worked in was
Speaker 2: the sister city was Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was just picked at random. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: this is the same under the same program. But what
Speaker 2: happened was people on social media got a hold of
Speaker 2: the story, especially people from Nigeria and India, and they
Speaker 2: took it as oh, this is our ticket to move
Speaker 2: to this city because we're allowed to move here.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You may see stories that they planned on bringing in
Speaker 2: like a few thousand people from the country and in
Speaker 2: some exchange program. It's been a while, I forget the
Speaker 2: details of it, but yeah, those two stories kind of
Speaker 2: made the rounds the last few months, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's funny. I was gonna say a very
Speaker 3: small town near me, and then I realized I'm probably
Speaker 3: location docksing myself. But you could see the sign that's,
Speaker 3: you know, some town in the middle of nowhere Japan
Speaker 3: is the sister city. Now obviously, what does that mean.
Speaker 3: You know, it's some program who knows how much connection
Speaker 3: there is. But yeah, that's that's helpful to know, right,
Speaker 3: because we see obviously that same sort of to be
Speaker 3: blunt about it, kind of mafia system in certain industries,
Speaker 3: like in America, we see it a ton in trucking.
Speaker 3: You know that this is basically like slave labor often.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is very very common in the Gulf States,
Speaker 3: you know, anywhere where there's this kind of imported servant class.
Speaker 3: And I believe, yeah, exactly, yeah, they're infamous for it.
Speaker 3: But you know, all of the oil rich nation do
Speaker 3: the same thing. So let's be honest, some of them
Speaker 3: just have slaves. You know, they don't even need to, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, inject a criminal label to it. And I am,
Speaker 3: as you could probably tell and start pretty far from
Speaker 3: a bleeding heart lib. But I you know, I feel
Speaker 3: pretty confident in my I do not want slaves in
Speaker 3: my country position. You know, I want to come across
Speaker 3: as a you know, a total lib tard on it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's an interesting, interesting point that because of course,
Speaker 3: you know I mentioned this before, Oftentimes Japan is used
Speaker 3: as kind of a scare tactic here of oh, you know,
Speaker 3: can you imagine living in this country with a massively
Speaker 3: aging population, And that's why, you know, young one Carlo
Speaker 3: ignatio needs to move into your neighborhood. You know, it's
Speaker 3: sort of as a you know, a stick basically, And
Speaker 3: so I assume there are there are problems with you know,
Speaker 3: an aging population, But to what degree are those problems felt? Like,
Speaker 3: to be blunt about it, how bad is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say the issues range from minor annoyances,
Speaker 2: you know, just having a lot of old people around
Speaker 2: that walk a bit slower, you have somewhere to go,
Speaker 2: you're in a rush, or something like I said, that's
Speaker 2: it's a very minor thing, but it's.
Speaker 1: Noticeable, just.
Speaker 2: I I would say, yeah, in terms of like you
Speaker 2: feel in taxes as well. I mean Japan, you know,
Speaker 2: they they love their taxes, right, so a lot of
Speaker 2: it goes to government welfare programs because it's still it
Speaker 2: is a capitalist country. But the culture is still very
Speaker 2: group group oriented, right, as a lot of East Asian
Speaker 2: cultures are.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 2: Group is more important. Society as a whole is very important.
Speaker 2: Your your fellow neighbor is part of the whole society, right,
Speaker 2: So it's like your duty as a citizen to take
Speaker 2: care of people, and the easiest way to do that
Speaker 2: is through you know, various welfare programs, and what you'll
Speaker 2: see on the Japanese online right is they've been harping
Speaker 2: for years and years about welfare for foreigners. Whether the
Speaker 2: extent of that is whether how much they're contributing versus
Speaker 2: receiving from the government. I mean that that's uh, that's
Speaker 2: details I don't really know about, but that that's been
Speaker 2: an issue, especially with the online Japanese right. But in
Speaker 2: terms of the overall impacts day to day feeling, it's
Speaker 2: it's usually you just you just see a lot of
Speaker 2: aged old people, a lot of them are half halfway disabled,
Speaker 2: walking around with various ailments.
Speaker 1: It's and.
Speaker 2: Up until recently, I would say, you don't really see
Speaker 2: too many homeless and it's even in Tokyo. But in
Speaker 2: some areas you start see a bit more homeless people
Speaker 2: popping up, which is is a bit surprising.
Speaker 3: So this this will be a slight digression, but I
Speaker 3: promise I'll bring it back. My tenant, the guy who
Speaker 3: you know rents the other half of my house, he
Speaker 3: is a mortician, right, he works at his family funeral home,
Speaker 3: or at least is in school for it. And you
Speaker 3: know he that's not what he assumed he was going
Speaker 3: to be doing. He's sort of an artistic guy, and
Speaker 3: going back to that because you know, I assume even
Speaker 3: halfway across the world, you've heard the economy isn't great here,
Speaker 3: especially for young white guys. But you know, going back,
Speaker 3: it's been interesting to get you know, his thoughts on
Speaker 3: that process, right of being a mortician, you know, going
Speaker 3: into someone's house after they've died and cleaning up. And
Speaker 3: he was mentioning that he'd come across this Japanese woman
Speaker 3: whose job was to do exactly that, to go into
Speaker 3: you know, someone's place after they deceased, you know, prepare
Speaker 3: their body and take it where it needs to go.
Speaker 3: And as part of that, she'd started a, I believe,
Speaker 3: an art project where she was making these sort of
Speaker 3: miniature dioramas of the house as she found them. And
Speaker 3: you know, reading the artist statement, I cannot remember her name,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, this was a story told to me. It
Speaker 3: was really profound because she was talking about going into
Speaker 3: someone's house and they have no family whatsoever. You know,
Speaker 3: they are simply an old person, completely by themselves. And
Speaker 3: to sort of bring it back around, are you seeing that,
Speaker 3: are you seeing elderly people with other than government assistants
Speaker 3: really no network around them because, at least according to
Speaker 3: this one artist my buddy saw on the internet, which
Speaker 3: I realize it's a pretty pretty shaky, you know, citation there,
Speaker 3: there is this population of people who, you know, if
Speaker 3: they're gone, they won't be noticed to be blunt until
Speaker 3: they start to stink.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for yeah bringing that up. I forgot to
Speaker 2: mention that that that is another issue. Either they'll they'll
Speaker 2: be you know, elderly people who who die don't have
Speaker 2: any family, and it's not until the neighbors, as you said,
Speaker 2: you know, they start to smell something that they find
Speaker 2: these people a couple of weeks sometimes later, that that
Speaker 2: does happen.
Speaker 1: On the other side, you have people who.
Speaker 2: The children, adult children still live with the family, you know,
Speaker 2: mostly probably taking care of the elderly parent. But because
Speaker 2: the parents elderly, they still receive you know, a pension
Speaker 2: or assistance from the government. And you'll find situations where
Speaker 2: the parents will die and the children or the child
Speaker 2: won't report it and they'll just hide the body sometimes
Speaker 2: for years and just keep collecting the money from that
Speaker 2: just to so they don't have to.
Speaker 1: Work or for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: And it's if it happened once, it's kind of weird,
Speaker 2: kind of one of those like internet creepy pastas.
Speaker 1: Or whatever, you know, those weird stories.
Speaker 2: But it's happened, you know, definitely a lot more than
Speaker 2: a few times over over the years. And it's it's
Speaker 2: very grim to think about, you know, kind of exploiting
Speaker 2: your relative's death just to collect the paycheck. But it happens.
Speaker 2: It happens a lot more than people realize. And yeah,
Speaker 2: that's another impact, is you find people dying alone, or
Speaker 2: the the you know, the I guess, the welfare fraud
Speaker 2: of the children.
Speaker 3: So you're an ex pat you've been there for you know,
Speaker 3: quite some time, and you know, not looking to be rude,
Speaker 3: low and start. I imagine you don't exactly pass as Japanese,
Speaker 3: you know, you're you're apparently not from there, And no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm curious how have you been treated? Obviously, if there
Speaker 3: is you know, a rising to whatever degree concern about immigration,
Speaker 3: you were clearly an immigrant. Is that extended to you
Speaker 3: or are you normally seen as sort of a beneficial
Speaker 3: part of society.
Speaker 2: There's really two tiers to it, I guess, So I'll
Speaker 2: be frank. My experience has been positive here I had.
Speaker 2: There have been some negative things, but I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: here as long as I have if I felt like
Speaker 2: I wasn't. This wasn't a good place for me to
Speaker 2: be at at this time. It took me a little
Speaker 2: bit though to understand, I guess where my place is, right.
Speaker 2: So a lot of especially a lot of Westerners. You'll
Speaker 2: find this in Westerners, this mindset they want to come
Speaker 2: to Japan and like become Japanese for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Why, but they just they really immerse themselves into the culture.
Speaker 2: You know, they learn the language fluently. Some even become
Speaker 2: citizens here, which in order to become a citizen of Japan,
Speaker 2: you have to revoke all all of your other citizenships,
Speaker 2: you have to adopt a Japanese name, the whole, the
Speaker 2: whole deal, right, So there's there's some people have done that.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, in Japan, no matter what you do,
Speaker 2: especially if you look like someone like me or something,
Speaker 2: you'll on paper, yeah you're you're Japanese, but you'll never
Speaker 2: be seen as fully Japanese because in Japan, being Japanese
Speaker 2: is more than just your your passport.
Speaker 1: It's it is that. But it's also your your your bloods.
Speaker 2: Your your upbringing. It's a combination of many things. I'll
Speaker 2: give an example when I was when I was teaching,
Speaker 2: I had a private student, older, older guy, he was
Speaker 2: maybe mid fifties, but he he was Japanese. But he said,
Speaker 2: his parents, when he was young, we're living in Costa Rica.
Speaker 2: I think his dad worked for the government or something.
Speaker 2: And so he spent the first twelve years of his
Speaker 2: life growing up in Costa Rica, learning Spanish, just living
Speaker 2: as a childhood in Costa Rica. On moving back to Japan,
Speaker 2: this was you know, maybe the I guess the the
Speaker 2: seventies or eighties. When he moved back, he you know,
Speaker 2: he had to learn how to be Japanese. Even though
Speaker 2: his parents are Japanese. He's fully blooded Japanese, he's a citizen,
Speaker 2: but he didn't have that early upbringing in the culture.
Speaker 2: So he said he was teased. He wasn't treated like
Speaker 2: he was fully Japanese. He was treated like he was
Speaker 2: a foreigner. And that was only because of his cultural upbringing.
Speaker 2: But if you have a full like let's say two
Speaker 2: Canadians moved to Japan and have a child that's born
Speaker 2: here and there, they become citizens and the child is
Speaker 2: born a citizen, but they're white, you know, white Canadian,
Speaker 2: They'll still won't be seen as fully Japanese. Even if
Speaker 2: they speak the language, they grow up culturally Japanese, they
Speaker 2: have the name, the passport, everything, they'll they'll get along
Speaker 2: fine in society, but as society, they won't be viewed
Speaker 2: as Japanese.
Speaker 1: So that that's kind of how it's viewed here.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an interesting example. Obviously there was a lot
Speaker 3: of emigration from Japan in the sixties and seventies due
Speaker 3: to economic factors I'm not entirely sure of, but a
Speaker 3: fairly significant figure in the world of weirdly professional wrestling,
Speaker 3: martial arts and also politics, Antonio Anok. Sort of an
Speaker 3: interesting character, but he had a very similar story. You
Speaker 3: can hear him talk about it, you know, growing up
Speaker 3: in Brazil. I think he's full blooded Japanese. I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely sure, but described exactly that, you know, coming back
Speaker 3: even though he was born to Japanese parents, obviously spoke
Speaker 3: it fluently. He was an outsider. An interesting thing, especially
Speaker 3: from the Western perspective, right, that idea that you know,
Speaker 3: I can become Japanese by sort of checking off the box.
Speaker 3: You know, you see this sort of exporting of that
Speaker 3: idea of a propositional nation, you know, to a country
Speaker 3: where it does not apply. An interesting bit of I
Speaker 3: guess we could, you know, if we adopt a leftist
Speaker 3: framework cultural shitism there.
Speaker 1: But lun start.
Speaker 3: This has been absolutely fascinating. I really appreciate your expertise
Speaker 3: on this topic. Is there anything else that you think
Speaker 3: a predominantly American audience should understand about Japan? I guess
Speaker 3: as it relates to kind of immigration in the like.
Speaker 2: Well I mentioned like the trends, it seems to be
Speaker 2: that Japan wants to import a lot more you know,
Speaker 2: foreigners for various reasons. But what the actual government policy
Speaker 2: is showing though, is they're increasing the cost of visa
Speaker 2: applications for everybody, whether you're a new applicant or you've
Speaker 2: been here.
Speaker 1: For a while.
Speaker 2: The cost for permanent residency is also being increased. Roughly
Speaker 2: right now, just the application is about eighty US dollars,
Speaker 2: and that's going to shoot up to maybe close to
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars just for the application. So and they're
Speaker 2: also adding language requirements to some of the visas. So
Speaker 2: there is a lot of these policies aren't going to
Speaker 2: take effect until maybe next year, next spring, but in
Speaker 2: that sense, they are making it a bit more difficult
Speaker 2: for people to immigrate over here, just you know, setting
Speaker 2: both language requirements and monetary requirements to it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, guys, I guess we'll see how how the
Speaker 2: trend goes, because it could be excluding you know, Westerners
Speaker 2: or Europeans or you know, people like that from coming in.
Speaker 2: But there's also talk of programs of still bringing in
Speaker 2: cheaper labor for farms and factories and whatnot. So we'll
Speaker 2: see how the demographic trends over the next couple of
Speaker 2: years too.
Speaker 3: So one last question, and I should have asked this earlier,
Speaker 3: but one of the other things you've seen, and honestly
Speaker 3: a lot of this came from that kind of cross
Speaker 3: pollination in social media, was videos of Western tourists of
Speaker 3: a certain background behaving very very poorly in Japan, and
Speaker 3: seemingly travel to Japan has exploded. It's gone from being
Speaker 3: in my life something that very few people would have experienced,
Speaker 3: primarily through business, to now, you know, every millennial with
Speaker 3: shitty pokemon tattoos has gone to Tokyo driven the Mario
Speaker 3: karts around, you know, done all of the kind of
Speaker 3: touristy things, and so it seems as if, at least
Speaker 3: again from a limited sample size, as that has become
Speaker 3: more popular, the standards of people going to Japan have
Speaker 3: dropped pretty precipitously, and so again it's on social media
Speaker 3: bad behaviors amplified. Has there been a change in tourism
Speaker 3: both in the number and kind of the reaction to
Speaker 3: who was showing.
Speaker 2: Up very much so, especially when they opened the borders
Speaker 2: after after COVID That coupled with the end being really
Speaker 2: weak compared to the dollar, it's a lot cheaper here
Speaker 2: for visitors. So there's even a saying that Japan's become
Speaker 2: the new Thailand pretty much. I wouldn't go as far
Speaker 2: as to say that it's still I would say Thailand's
Speaker 2: still probably cheaper to visit, but Japan is a lot
Speaker 2: more affordable and because of that, there's a lot there's
Speaker 2: a significant increase in tourism. I see it in Tokyo especially,
Speaker 2: you know, commuting on the trains or just going about
Speaker 2: your your day to day, you'll just encounter groups of
Speaker 2: tourists with large suitcases, sometimes blocking pathways, they don't know
Speaker 2: local etiquettes, where to stand on escalators, little things like
Speaker 2: that that you chalk up as okay, if it's they're tourists,
Speaker 2: they don't know any better, it's it's can't be helped, right,
Speaker 2: But the sheer number of tourists that have come here,
Speaker 2: it's causing a bit of issue. And yeah, there's people
Speaker 2: complaining Japanese and residents, you know, like myself that just
Speaker 2: the over tourism is a bit of an issue just
Speaker 2: because it causes disruptions and daily routines for the most part.
Speaker 3: Well, man, this has been great. I really appreciate your
Speaker 3: expertise on this topic, and I think, like a lot
Speaker 3: of westernerds, we certainly envy the Japanese certain things or
Speaker 3: having a society that works. And also even before this
Speaker 3: kind of you know, cross cultural exchange on the Internet,
Speaker 3: I really wanted nothing but the best for the Japanese.
Speaker 3: And you know, once you have a few thousand Japanese
Speaker 3: mutuals on Twitter, feel it even more like I have
Speaker 3: no idea who this is, but you know, we've've got
Speaker 3: a lot in common, deceivingly, and so I wish them
Speaker 3: the best but where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: I know you have an X account which will be linked.
Speaker 3: Is there anything else?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I'm mostly on X.
Speaker 2: I don't really use too much social media, and my
Speaker 2: ex is mostly just ship posting at this point. But
Speaker 2: I do like to, you know, get engaged in comments sometimes.
Speaker 2: But I do have a YouTube channel under my real name.
Speaker 2: You can post in the link to that, which is fine.
Speaker 2: I haven't updated it in a bit, but I used
Speaker 2: to actually host a podcast of my own.
Speaker 1: I still have the episodes up.
Speaker 2: I basically we're just interviewing other ex pats, letting them
Speaker 2: tell their stories. There is a few bonus episodes not
Speaker 2: related to that topic in there, but I'll let people
Speaker 2: find that in the link.
Speaker 3: So well, great, those will be down in the description.
Speaker 3: Lone Star, It's been a great time, and everyone at home,
Speaker 3: keep your head up. Well, I can't last forever. Good night,
Speaker 3: but
Speaker 2: Mhm