00:00:02 John Daub: So here we are in the heart of Akihabara on Chuo Avenue and I never thought I would do this episode. But I feel like I have to discuss this.

00:00:30 John Daub: Yesterday I was talking about the Shibuya Halloween and how Shibuya Ward, the mayor, Hasegawa-san, has decided to cancel it or at least he's trying to. It's kind of a mixed message with that. Check out that episode yesterday.

00:01:00 John Daub: But today I wanted to talk about the nuisance YouTubers. They're actually not YouTubers. They're mostly on Twitch and Kick, which is a platform that many of us probably didn't hear about this year until recently.

00:01:30 John Daub: And for me, this is mostly in the news because a streamer was arrested. And I think you all know who this person is. There was a video that went viral.

00:02:00 John Daub: And you know, this really brave guy stood up on the train approaching this streamer named Somali who is putting a lot of people in really bad situations, shouting out some of the atrocities of World War II. When I watched this, my heart sank.

00:02:30 John Daub: Look at those people here. I'm actually not going to show this because this version that I have has not blurred out people's faces. But this was also on the Japanese news and they were very sensitive with using that footage.

00:03:00 John Daub: The issue is though, this is increasing. Since Japan reopened in November of 2022, which is almost a year ago, the amount of situations like this that have occurred has just continued to go up.

00:03:30 John Daub: More recently someone tried to get around Japan for free. I'm somebody who hitchhiked, but there's good hitchhiking and then there's bad hitchhiking. I mean, it was Japanese that taught me that you could hitchhike here in Japan.

00:04:00 John Daub: So I mean, it's still something that students do to get around the country. But what he was doing was just bad stuff.

00:04:30 John Daub: I was going to do this episode, I announced it yesterday, and today I saw that Chris Broad also made an episode on this. I had a look at it this morning and he hits a lot of the key points.

00:05:00 John Daub: If you want to get more in depth with some of the archival footage of the bad stuff going on, please do check out his video as well.

00:05:30 John Daub: And if you want to know the rules of Japan, I'm going to talk about this because this is important because what happened with Mr. Somali, or Somali as they call him here in Japan, this impacts me as a streamer, but it also impacts you as a visitor to Japan.

00:06:00 John Daub: And there is a spiraling effect that happens when this stuff goes really big on the Japanese news. And I'm going to talk about this in great detail today because I'm already feeling it.

00:06:30 John Daub: In fact, Chris had a couple of signs on his video that he posted today. I've been seeing signs all over the place. Not banning live streaming, I guess you can say that, but they're telling people no more.

00:07:00 John Daub: Just there is a very strong initial reaction when something like this occurs in Japan. I've used this historically with this live stream telling you about the cases where... Thank you very much, sir.

00:07:30 John Daub: I'm talking about the cases where a guy flew a drone onto the roof of the prime minister, and within a week, he was shot. And within a week, they had banned drone use. They didn't even care if it was registered, if you had a license. All drones were banned.

00:08:00 John Daub: And then from this, they eventually rolled it back and then created laws. So that's what they do. So now there's like this big, strong push for IRL nuisance streamers. And that's sort of become the term nuisance streamers here in Japan.

00:08:30 John Daub: And it is impacting me, and it makes me a little bit scared about the future of what I do. I'm not an IRL streamer, which is in real life. I don't do what these people do. I don't even see the attraction to it.

00:09:00 John Daub: I'm here in Akihabara, and I've noticed that there's a ton of people that are doing IRL or making TikTok or all this other content. This isn't going to go away.

00:09:30 John Daub: I've been doing this now for over six years before it was a thing. It's a thing now. It's caught up to me. And now it really is impacting in a negative way, and I'm even thinking that I might have to change and do something different.

00:10:00 John Daub: Like more popular. Like more broadcasting. Change this channel to make it more, I don't know, relevant to the times because when everything gets knocked out of whack, you kind of have to adjust to it.

00:10:30 John Daub: All right, so let's get into it first. Right now, Japan is increasing with foreign tourists. This comes from TBS News, and I work with TBS as an inbound tourism specialist on TV sometimes here.

00:11:00 John Daub: And what the news did was, look. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. Gaikokujin. They showed the line inside of a convenience store, and it was all just foreigners. There weren't any Japanese.

00:11:30 John Daub: And this is on the news, so this is something Japanese are quite aware of. And there's a little bit of stress here. In particular, I think the response to the Shibuya Halloween is a sign of that, where locals in particular are just, we went from zero to 100 in like five seconds.

00:12:00 John Daub: That's what it feels like. We had no tourists. In fact, nobody outside. And then all of a sudden, there's 35 million tourists coming every year. Before, from 2013 to 2019, during the six years, it took six years to get from like 7 million tourists to 35 million tourists.

00:12:30 John Daub: All right? So it took six years to build up to that. So people were used to it. The pandemic hit. We got down to zero. Nobody will, like a couple hundred. I don't even know how those people got in. And then, you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic.

00:13:00 John Daub: And then all of a sudden, November of 2022, bam, there's like this. And it is a shock to a lot of people. There's some people that, you know, when they see what happened on this train with this guy, hold on a second, with this guy who's doing this stuff, it has a big impact on those people feeling the frustration.

00:13:30 John Daub: And it gets taken out on people like me, like Chris. Like Greg. Like all of the people that are working as YouTubers here in Japan, doing a really good job showing Japan in a really nice way. This hurts all of us. It hurts our ability to work. It hurts our ability to get access to tell those stories.

00:14:00 John Daub: I've already had some businesses, when I said that what I do as a YouTuber, they're hesitant to work with me. And I have to sell myself. I have to. When I sell myself, I have to sell myself. When I say that, I mean I have to make a proposal.

00:14:30 John Daub: I have to do it in a very formal way that Japanese media does it. It takes a lot of time. Sometimes I'm in four or five Zoom calls just to get access to something. And then I wonder at the end, like, was it even worth it? Sometimes, no. But the impact of what these nuisance YouTubers do hurts.

00:15:00 John Daub: Now, we all knew about Logan Paul. And, you know, he's apologized. He's moved on. He's doing other things. I don't think he's going to be coming to Japan for seven years because when you're deported, you can't come back to the country for seven years.

00:15:30 John Daub: We've moved on from that. At least I'd hoped I did. Let me put it to you like this. I could not get access to film at several locations as a result of what he had done because he put the reputation of YouTube creators so back into the Stone Ages for a solid year and a little bit beyond.

00:16:00 John Daub: Saying that you were a YouTuber was a bad thing. I started off in 2012, 2013 as a YouTuber making stories, programs. One of the first companies that I worked with was Honda. I called them up. They worked with me.

00:16:30 John Daub: I had to tell them they trusted me because I was an NHK World reporter. So I used the fact that I am on TV here in Japan and abroad and my reputation to get an opportunity to film at their welcome center.

00:17:00 John Daub: They actually brought Asimo in what looked like a coffin for him to kick a ball with me and to do some of the things that he did with the President of the United States on a stage in Japan, which I thought was so badass.

00:17:30 John Daub: Now Asimo, by the way, has gone the way of... He's not here anymore. Asimo Project has gone. But I'm really proud that I get a chance to work on Japanese TV.

00:18:00 John Daub: Here's one of the news programs that I'm on every now and then. I think maybe once every two months. I get called in. There I am on the left. I get called in to talk about Japanese tourism.

00:18:30 John Daub: And it's the reputation that I have built over a very long time. Boy, I look a lot bigger then. But it's a reputation of doing good stuff here in Japan.

00:19:00 John Daub: So there are streamers that are doing good things, but we get tied in with the bad actors. WRX Turbo is in the house. Thank you. And I saw... Was that Brondania was here? Thank you, Brondania.

00:19:30 John Daub: All right. I was first called in to this nuisance streamer thing about six months ago during the cherry blossoms. There was... Maybe before this, actually. I got like five or six messages from a lot of viewers, telling me that there was a live streamer by the name of Ice Poseidon.

00:20:00 John Daub: I don't know who this person is. He was on Twitch at the time. And they'd said, please call the police. There's somebody down at Nozaki Village in Ia, in Shikoku.

00:20:30 John Daub: This is the middle of Shikoku. There's not a lot there. Population like a thousand maybe. It's... There's a village full of scarecrows where because the population is so depleted, it's so low, they've created scarecrows, which is this creepy... Made this almost creepy like village out of it. It's an attraction in its own right.

00:21:00 John Daub: I tried to film there. But I could not get permission. So I didn't film it. But, you know, there... I turned on the stream to see what was going on. What were these people telling me about it?

00:21:30 John Daub: And there is a streamer, Mr. Poseidon. Again, I don't know what kind of a person he is. Obviously, not very good. He was vandalizing a school that's left open because nobody does that. Like, nobody robs the place. The population is small.

00:22:00 John Daub: He's inside of there messing around with the wires of the PA system and vandalizing it. Vandalizing the school. Vandalizing the scarecrows. Trespassing on people's land and starting campfires in private property.

00:22:30 John Daub: The police eventually came. And he acted dumb. And, you know, I have a friend down there, Alex Kerr, who owns... I don't know if he owns it. He has a bunch of 300... He has a 300-year... The Chiyoda Project. A 300-year-old house that you can rent. It's such a beautiful area.

00:23:00 John Daub: You know, I even got in touch with him and I said, Look, man, I feel like I gotta do something. There's a guy who's vandalizing Nogoro, which is your neighboring town. Is there anybody you can call?

00:23:30 John Daub: And I talked to him and I said, There's nothing that we can really do. There's really, literally nothing we can do. If we call the police, they don't even know how to handle it.

00:24:00 John Daub: And these local police officers went there. They don't know... How do you handle someone who can't speak Japanese, don't understand the rules?

00:24:30 John Daub: And, you know, I want to refer you to Greg Lamb's... Greg Lamb's video, The Rules That Rule Japan. He's a wonderful creator.

00:25:00 John Daub: The way that Japan works, it works so well because Japanese here are born into a system of society where we feel the weight of things when we do something bad.

00:25:30 John Daub: We could have alcohol vending machines on corners, tobacco vending machines on corners, and kids would not buy them because if an older person had seen them, or somebody... You know, they always say the oba-chan have eyes that can see. They can catch anything, right? And they do. They see everything.

00:26:00 John Daub: But if you were a kid and you bought tobacco, your whole family would be embarrassed by that. Everybody in the town would know that you did something wrong. Even though you could do it, you didn't do it because society kept you in check.

00:26:30 John Daub: The weight of pressure on people, society here in Japan, is really, really heavy. I feel that here because... You know, I'm really sad that I have to even talk about this. I'm quite emotional about it. I'm really sad that I have to talk about this.

00:27:00 John Daub: But the weight of the society on people's shoulders is quite a lot. And one of the things that I learned when I was backpacking, and I'd been in Japan for maybe three or four years, and I would leave, and I would meet Japanese outside Japan, they acted different because the weight of society was not on their shoulders, and they felt free of that, where they were being looked at everything that they did.

00:27:30 John Daub: Hello. Oh, I don't know. Hi. Oh, hey. Thank you. You know, and I knew that too. In fact, for the first five years, the girlfriends that I made were girls that I met outside of Japan because society was just different back then.

00:28:00 John Daub: I guess dating a foreigner was easier 20 years ago if you were outside of Japan. I want to be really transparent with you. Societal pressures in Japan are strong, which is one of the things that keeps people in check.

00:28:30 John Daub: When you drop your wallet on the ground and it's returned to you, for all of you foreigners, coming here to do this social experiment, the sun is always watching you. The sun is always following you in Japan. Someone's watching.

00:29:00 John Daub: Their wallet is returned because if you walk past the wallet and somebody saw you, people would feel guilty and think somebody saw me not return the wallet. That's societal pressure. It's a kind of honesty, but it's also a stronger sense of guilt.

00:29:30 John Daub: This is my understanding from 25 years of experience. There might be some Japanese that comment that have a different point of view than I do. This is what I've learned through my time, and these are my opinions. Japanese have told me this as well. This is coming from good sources.

00:30:00 John Daub: When the societal rules are not followed and international tourism returns like crazy, and the people that are coming here are too young probably to come to Japan back then and just have different values, it creates an incredible amount of stress here in Japan. I feel it. A great deal of it.

00:30:30 John Daub: I'm not sad when... I'm disappointed when I can't film something, but I'm really sad when society here starts to see foreign visitors as being represented by these kinds of people. I think a lot of you understand that as well.

00:31:00 John Daub: And I know that this is... We'll get through this era. We always do. The Logan Paul thing is years ago. We've forgotten about it, and it got through it. But the fact that these people are coming and coming and coming here, I don't know when it'll go away, but eventually it'll go away, and I know that they're going to make a case out of Mr. Somali.

00:31:30 John Daub: Let me give you a little bit of an update on what's going on behind the scenes based on Japanese news here. He was arrested initially for... Hold on. I think I even have the video here. For... I can bring up the newscast here. Hold on. I don't want to even play this one here. I'm going to pull up one before this one here.

00:32:00 John Daub: So he was arrested by going into this construction site. All right? A lot of people say he's going to get three years. All right. He was not indicted for this. All right? So he's not going to be going to jail for this. Not that... I don't believe so, because he was not indicted.

00:32:30 John Daub: 23 days is what the period that they can hold you without any cause, just as they investigate after they arrest you. So after 23 days, they did not indict him. All right? I think after what's going on in politics in the U.S., you know what the word indict means.

00:33:00 John Daub: Now, he was rearrested 23 days after he was arrested on another charge. All right? Which is this one here. And Japanese news is... I mean, this guy is so demented. Who smiles like that? Do you understand your life is over, bro?

00:33:30 John Daub: Maybe it's not. I don't know how the world works anymore because it's now a cult of personality where people are watching, based on who you are and the shenanigans that you do, not so much on the quality of the content, but on how crazy you can be.

00:34:00 John Daub: And I think that that's a representation of what we see, you know, in TV in the U.S. But we don't see that here in Japan. We're not used to it. Not yet. We have Japanese craziness on TV, but that's on TV. That's in a studio. It doesn't spill out into public.

00:34:30 John Daub: Satrio is here. What about peeping to... What about peeping to Akihabara Secret Alley Temple? Maybe. Let's see what kind of time we have here.

00:35:00 John Daub: So he was rearrested, and now he's going to be gone for another 23 days minimum. All right? And good riddance. And then the Japanese police can keep doing this endlessly for a year. And every time they investigate, they get more people who want to press charges.

00:35:30 John Daub: Now, I'm going to walk across the street here eventually. I guess, Satrio, you're right. I should walk around a little bit. I'm just not sure if I can do it. But I'm sorry about the signal.

00:36:00 John Daub: Now, I want to tell you about this now, okay? Japanese people in general, they avoid confrontation. So when this a-hole... I think it's past many kids' bed time. When this bunghole was on the train, a lot of people were just tired. They're done from work. They don't want to get involved, and they don't want to be confrontational. This is a Japanese thing.

00:36:30 John Daub: And, you know, no one's going to punch you out here yet. They're like, you know, this guy's a bunghole. Ignore him. People are not confrontational.

00:37:00 John Daub: However, if the police find these people who make a complaint, then he goes in for another 23 days. As they investigate, each time he's arrested for something, they can hold him for another 23 days. And what's the word? Karma? He just keeps getting indicted, and they can keep holding him.

00:37:30 John Daub: And I don't know what it is with my countrymen, all right? The rights, I think it's just because a lot of people haven't traveled outside the U.S. The rights that you have in your country do not extend to this one.

00:38:00 John Daub: So these innate rights you're born with that you think is part of your... This is Japan. You don't get that here, all right? How do you not know this, all right? This is like 101.

00:38:30 John Daub: Let's just walk across the street here. Maybe it's because I've... I've been to, what, 70-some countries. I've been traveling for over 27 years. Maybe I know this stuff. It just seems like, you know, second nature to me. Learn the laws, learn the rules of the area that you're in, all right?

00:39:00 John Daub: But Mr. Somali was calling on the U.S. Embassy to get help, and that's not what happens here, all right? The U.S. and Japan have an extremely close relationship.

00:39:30 John Daub: If the police have a really strong case, this is kind of a cool retro shop with a lot of old radio parts I think you should go into because I never know how long this place is going to be around.

00:40:00 John Daub: The U.S. Embassy is not going to do a darn thing. All they can do is recommend a lawyer to you, and that's it. They cannot do anything that's going to harm you. You're not, like, held hostage by North Korea or something, okay? You're in a friendly country, and you did... And what you did was something. You did something wrong.

00:40:30 John Daub: So I can't understand why he thought that he had these kind of rights here. He did not. So I'm going to walk down this street. This is... I call this the new maid cafe alley because we see a lot of maids down on the street here.

00:41:00 John Daub: Some of the excuses that I heard were ridiculous. I'm young. I was drunk. Your actions are what you get arrested for, all right? This is, like, what? You don't have to say this. I don't have to say this.

00:41:30 John Daub: But the fact that there are so many people that are defending him, it just... Like, if you're arrested, he's not going to be a problem in Japan anymore because, as I said, if he is arrested, either he's going to serve his time, and then he's deported.

00:42:00 John Daub: And being deported is not a free ticket home. Rob Britt also writes, I share your opinion. We missed you again. Did you? Oh, I just got back from four weeks in Japan. Oh, man. Well, I will be here next time you come back. That's a true story. And Bob eats chocolate.

00:42:30 John Daub: As someone younger and someone who has lived in Osaka and someone who is very tech-savvy, I think live streaming is great. This adult is a detriment to all. Oh, hello. How you doing? Nice to meet you, too. That's cool. Yeah, you know, the technology has really evolved.

00:43:00 John Daub: And just to follow up on Bob eats chocolate and what you wrote here, the technology has evolved so much that I can do these live streams on the street. Like, what... I talked with UFO Bob, who also was in video production a long time.

00:43:30 John Daub: We used to need a van, a satellite dish. And even when I started on TV, I was doing the same thing with NHK. We had to go on location. And if you wanted to do a live stream, you had to have satellite dishes, you had to have... you had to have expensive equipment, it had to be broadcast.

00:44:00 John Daub: There was a delay. The quality was not that good. And it was pretty... just pretty amazing that you could do live broadcast at all from location. Now, we can do it with the bandwidth that we have anywhere.

00:44:30 John Daub: And how you decide to do it, like, what you decide to do with that power, it's a free country. But it's not, though, because you have consequences to actions. Like, I don't know why people don't do it. I don't know this.

00:45:00 John Daub: But if you look at that picture of him arrested, sitting in the back of a police car, maybe he is just mentally disturbed. And maybe that's his plea, you know, of insanity. I don't buy it.

00:45:30 John Daub: So, he'll be deported. He will not be a problem in Japan anymore. In fact, he will not be allowed to come to Japan at least for seven years. And even then, he will have an arrest on his record and probably not be allowed to come to Japan ever again.

00:46:00 John Daub: He's not an American... He's not a Japanese citizen. So, he's going to be America's problem from now on. Or whatever other country he goes to, it's not going to be this one. Fugue's Life writes, I don't buy it. I don't either. Yeah. Yeah.

00:46:30 John Daub: Adrian, he... I hope he didn't put a bad light. He put a bad light... It's not about the color of somebody's skin anymore, alright? In the Japanese media, they introduce you as, you know, American. And this is the problem, alright?

00:47:00 John Daub: They tell his real name, and then they say he's American. He's got an American passport, and it puts Americans in a bad light. And I'm pretty sure the last thing that the U.S. Embassy wants to do is help the State Department help a criminal in Japan. You're going to have to do the time, man.

00:47:30 John Daub: So, again, if we look beyond the arrest, and he's going to continue to be arrested, and not indicted for a very long time, I don't think they're going to indict him. They're not going to put him through a court case.

00:48:00 John Daub: You want to know why? Because, quite frankly, it will hurt tourism to Japan. It will deteriorate... He's mostly going to be forgotten. Every 23 days, he's probably going to hit the news for a while until they stop charging him with stuff. I don't know when that is. It can be infinite. He's going to lose some weight, which is... I don't feel bad. But... I don't. I can't feel any pity here.

00:48:30 John Daub: Robert, thank you for sharing the opinion. I'll try to get a coffee. And Jared is here. How are you doing? Aloha, brother. Everyone in the Ninja... And Ninja Monkey, he's another creator who's talking about Japan. John and others set a great example for everyone to follow.

00:49:00 John Daub: In Hawaii, these guys might have gotten false cracked. I don't know what that means, but it sounds pretty violent. I think there's a reason why these guys wouldn't be in the U.S., because they would be in... probably knocked out regularly.

00:49:30 John Daub: Let me go back to what I was saying. Japanese are non-confrontational. If you do something wrong as a foreign tourist, there is an assumption that you don't know Japanese culture, and you don't know those rules that I was talking about.

00:50:00 John Daub: Again, Greg Lamb did an amazing job. The Rules That Rule Japan is the name of his episode. I always thought that I would do an episode similar to that, but he got there first. He did such a dang good job with it, I just let it be for a while. It's a good video.

00:50:30 John Daub: But we don't expect you to know the rules that rule Japan. So if you do make a mistake here, you're not a nuisance. You just don't know. If you're just talking too loud on the train, maybe that's allowed in New York City. It's not allowed here socially.

00:51:00 John Daub: But we don't ask you. We won't say anything, because we're non-confrontational here. And you just don't know. But if you're doing what he's doing, which is disturbing people over and over again, but more than that, he's putting it on social media, and then people are imitating what he does, or it looks like he's getting away with it to people from North America.

00:51:30 John Daub: They're like, how has this