00:00:00 John Daub: Boy, this is one of the largest sushi conveyor belt sushi shops in the world. And it's right in front of the tallest freestanding tower in the world. I'm in Tokyo, Japan. Of course I am. In this episode, I just want to talk about something that is a phenomenon that is going on here in Japan and a debate that I think is very interesting, especially for the outside world, especially for people who are coming here to be YouTubers to film in Japan.

00:00:29 John Daub: Recently, there's something called meiwaku videos (nuisance videos), meiwaku dōga, where kids have been imitating other kids that have done it by going into conveyor belt sushi shops, but also in curry restaurants, which happened four years ago. This is no new phenomenon, but over the last few months, it's been increasing to a disturbing level. And just a few days ago, a YouTuber, I think it was an Instagrammer, licked the soy sauce bottle, he licked the cups, and then he licked his fingers and painted what looks like ikura (salmon roe) sushi. And this was just a few days ago, and it's really making the rounds on Japanese TV news programs because the debate is real.

00:01:25 John Daub: This impacts, I think, YouTubers as well, people that are famous. I'm filming without permits and permission, which is a lot of people, and I have to find the direction, I also have to walk in. I really, really hope that this does not turn out badly. I know a lot of you will come here and take videos inside of sushi shops. You want to film Japan, you want to take pictures here, but with all the bad stuff that's happening, there's a possibility that there's a crackdown on people doing what I do. And I completely understand that too.

00:02:03 John Daub: Because I try very hard, especially with my main channel, to get permits. So when I'm filming something, I have permission. The company knows I'm there. That's the usual way to make videos. You don't walk into a shop and just start filming. And I think maybe 9 out of 10 YouTubers that come here from abroad don't have permits to film inside of restaurants, which are private locations and you really need to do that. I, on this channel, always say, often don't do that either because it's just too hard. It can take weeks to get the permission to go in and film there. But all the other YouTubers and everybody else is doing it, so you do it too. And I think there's going to be a robust debate here in Japan about this. It's just, it impacts society greatly. Especially a country where trust is really important. And that's why such a thing could last.

00:02:58 John Daub: It's always just so impressive to be in front of the Tokyo Skytree. One of my favorite places. Where's the sushi? Alright, so very quickly, Twitter is huge in Japan. Very quickly, Twitter took over. And they found out who the perpetrator was, who this person was. They tracked him down. They showed his high school photos. They completely shamed him on Twitter, which is what Twitter does in these kinds of situations. And this kid is going to have a really tough time in life now because this is going to follow him to the end of time. There's a rumor that his father may have even been the one recording the video, which would be more disturbing. But again, I was reminded on Twitter that such things are not true until it's been vetted by actual reporters. So if you do go down the rabbit hole on this, please be aware that a lot of it could be just rumors or hearsay or people exaggerating who would do something like that.

00:04:25 John Daub: And this is the part that's going to shock a lot of you. Several years ago, there was a video about a CoCo Ichibanya curry. And this guy was eating out of the pickles tray. There's these really nice daikon pickles that complement the Japanese curry very well. And he was eating out of it like this. It was just disgusting. The same spoon that he was putting in his mouth. And the customers got really upset. They wanted to know where the place was. They wanted to stay away from the restaurant. Do you want to know how the restaurant dealt with this? The restaurant chain? This is so Japanese. There was no criminal prosecution of this or anything like that. They asked for an apology. They got an apology from him. A deep apology. And that's the end of the story. No fines. Nothing. The reputation of the chain, the restaurant, was highly diminished for a while. But they've had, every chain I think has had pretty big issues. The PR issue would be if they did prosecute this, this would look bad for the company too. So they're in a lose-lose situation when something like this happens.

00:05:37 John Daub: So, I think, and this is the debate, and I would love to hear your comments on it. How do you deal with something like this? Because people are now seeing this on social media. If the penalty is just an apology that could be not genuine, where usually people would be embarrassed by this discovery, and that embarrassment would be so extreme and so embarrassing for your family that you wouldn't ever do anything like this again. But it's not working anymore. Social media is the catalyst. Social media is what's driving this. Getting people to post this stupid stuff. I wonder how many times has this happened before and you just didn't know it.

00:06:26 John Daub: So this is going to be a huge debate here in Japan as people talk about, are these sushi shops? And not just that. Are public restaurants, family restaurants that have things out on the street, on the table, is it safe? Is it clean? Are there people doing bad stuff to it? Can you see the risks? In Japan, chefs don't wear gloves. The reason why is that they, especially sushi chefs, because that's part of what they do. They handle the food. And that's what makes it special. But, honestly, there's going to be huge debates on that as well. In California, by law, you have to wear gloves. In Japan, you don't. It's like saying, your mom should wear gloves when she cooks in the kitchen. It's just not a thing that people do here in Japan for chefs. Professional chefs, they wash their hands. Have you ever seen a sushi chef's hands? They're cleaner than the gloves, which could have chemicals on them from the production of it. It's crazy how clean a sushi chef's hands are. I've seen them file down their nails and all the skin off of it. It looks like they should be hand models. But, like, culture is changing. And I think social media is a huge, great thing. And it's also a very bad thing. And we're seeing the bad in Japan here. So I'm really excited to see your feedback and your comments on this.

00:07:57 John Daub: You can see here the Japan Times. The Japan Times has a story just a couple of days ago on this where the sushi chains are now considering to take really harsh measures. And I don't think they have really much of a choice. Do they? They have to kind of do this or else it's going to be... I mean, what do you do? I asked on Instagram stories for people to give me feedback. And I read it this morning. What should the companies do to try to stop this type of thing? And everybody, almost everybody was saying they need to be arrested. They need to be made examples of. They need to be fined heavily. Nobody was lenient on these people. I don't think I'm going to eat at conveyor belt sushi for a while because this is going on everywhere all over the country. So it's just a few cases. Yeah, I'm a YouTuber. That's what I do.

00:09:13 John Daub: Again, the punishment until now has been an apology. We saw you eat half a sushi and put it back on the conveyor belt. Please apologize. And the company has to sanitize the entire conveyor belt, probably the entire restaurant. But they should probably be doing that anyways, right? I love conveyor belt sushi. One commenter on Instagram on my story said that this should be a time to go more to conveyor belt sushi to support them. And I think that that could be something that is valid because I would hate to see some of these places go out of business. Look, there's the ticket checkers. There's such a team. Look at that. They're going to ticket bicycles and stuff. There's a police station near here too. So I have to be a little careful.

00:10:10 John Daub: I'm personally, I'm grossed out. But I'm still going to go to kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) places, but just not for a while. But is it dirty? Look, I'm going to be honest with you. I never eat off of the belt. It's for the exact reason that we saw the video. You don't know how long it's been out. Well, you kind of do. On the bottom of the plates, there's a QR code that has registered the time it was made, and it automatically dumps into the trash if it has been on the belt for too long. So there is technology to make sure that this sushi is good enough. But seeing what you see, and these sushi go past people's tables where manners have not been great. And this is not, again, this is every generation will say that the generation after them is worse. But they're pretty bad. This isn't a bunch of foreigners either. And I saw the comments on Instagram shocked that they weren't Japanese. They weren't foreigners, sorry. And that's quite true. These weren't foreigners. This wasn't another American YouTuber coming here and making a jerk out of himself. This was Japanese kids.

00:11:46 John Daub: The way things used to go in the olden days, if a kid went to like an alcohol machine or something, and he was underage and he was able to buy beer, there would always be a grandmother who saw him and would report it to his parents who would be in huge trouble. And the fact that somebody saw him buying the alcohol would disgrace the family. And it would go back onto the parents. These days though, with social media and the way that parents are kind of, I don't know, just busy, a lot of it gets lost. And there's been an increase in parental abuse of kids over the pandemic. A lot more violence in Japan. A lot more crime in Japan. Even though the population is decreasing, there's a lot more bad stuff happening here. So I think we all believe that Japan is a really super safe country. And it is. But it's not 100% perfect. And you do have to have your guards up. And I think food safety is one thing. Maybe you should question just a little bit. Because it is a thing.

00:12:51 John Daub: Do you want to see this video? Alright, the hashtag that's going around on Twitter is Sushiro Peropero in katakana. And if you put that in there, you're going to see a bunch of really nasty things. This is so cool. Check it out. This is where I'm going, the Hōsō Center, where they're doing earthquake prevention. And they have a fire engine up there. Probably they're practicing and cleaning the windows. I mean, if you're a firefighter, and you had firefighters with hoses, I guess they would be in charge of cleaning the windows, right? That makes sense. Why would you hire an outside company when you have all the equipment to clean windows right here? That's awesome!

00:13:43 John Daub: Alright, I'm going to show you the video now. For better or for worse. It's going to be really small. There it is on the side here. You see he's putting his finger in. The most disturbing thing, if it's true, is that his dad was the one filming it. I don't, like, why would you post this video too? You know, because you know that everyone is going to figure out who you are. This is the internet. Or maybe this is what they wanted. Maybe they knew the penalties weren't going to be harsh. Look at him loading up his finger. This is just, I can't even watch this. I'll watch him cleaning the windows. And look, he's so proud at the end of it.

00:14:41 John Daub: You know, this is going to be an interesting debate here in Japan. This is going to be the debate that they talk about on TV probably for the next couple of weeks because it is a societal debate on the way. I don't know, who records their own crimes? I think it's because they didn't think it was a crime. I think they saw other people doing it, and so they thought it was okay. And there's other people just got an apology as a punishment. There's no mask mandate in Japan. There was never any punishment. So people who wanted to go against societal norms would just be looked at and disgraced in the Japanese way, which is very powerful here. But seems like that power has decreased to the point where people don't care. And it's actually more Western-leaning in a way.

00:15:27 John Daub: So hopefully over the next couple of weeks, this is debated. And the actions taken in Japan are usually quite harsh. They usually react by doing something extreme and then bringing the rules down. When a dude flew a drone under the roof of the Prime Minister's building, they banned drones in Japan for like six months. And then gradually, slowly, they changed the rules. And it's still quite strict compared to other countries as a result of that. This is one of the societal issues. It's been going on for a while, but now the public is outraged. So we're going to see where this goes because I am quite worried as a YouTuber that this could limit the things that I can do, even though I'm trying really hard to do good things to help them. Maybe they're not going to want that help because when social media gets such a bad rap in Japan, especially after an American YouTuber went to the suicide forest and filmed suicides and stuff like this, it really hurts us, who are here making YouTube content and those coming here to make content about Japan, which I think can be quite valuable to this country.

00:16:38 John Daub: They'll find a way to blame foreigners. I don't think so. It's very obvious this is not foreigners, and the issues go deeper than that. But the media platforms they're posting on are foreign, maybe. I don't know. But honestly, I think people have gone to the level now where it's not just blaming. There's always going to be a very specific, very small percentage of people who do that, and they get blown up so much that you see that on the forefront. But the vast, vast majority of Japanese are very welcoming, and they cannot wait for you to come to this country. This issue has absolutely nothing to do with foreigners. It has everything to do with societal issues in Japan. And I think that that's... That impacts me because I live in the society, and I like it very much. And I'm not perfect in the society, but I try really, really, really hard to be a benefit, an asset, and I think everybody does. And that's what makes Japan such a safe place, a great place to live, a wonderful place to visit. But if you lose trust or that societal... the rules break down... Rules are rules for a reason. They need to be enforced, all right? So I'm really hoping that they enforce these... These people get, you know, hammered by the law. Police are now involved. That's a new thing. Before, police were never involved. The company would take care of it because the police are busy. Are they?

00:18:00 John Daub: So leave your comments below. I want to hear from you. This is such an interesting topic. Thanks for watching, and I'll be back in another livestream really, really soon. Something a little bit better than this stuff, okay? I will eat sushi again. I really want to be supportive of this industry. All right, everybody. Take care.