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