Latest / Real Gaijin — Japan’s Business, Culture & Life Podcast: A podcast about Japan’s economy, work culture, foreign residents, regional revitalization, and the people shaping the country’s future. / 🍻 Cheers to Everyone Who Joined the 3rd Halloween Edition of “Beers with Real Gaijin” -- Let’s Talk Japan (S-01, E-03)

Transcript

🍻 Cheers to Everyone Who Joined the 3rd Halloween Edition of “Beers with Real Gaijin” -- Let’s Talk Japan (S-01, E-03) · Real Gaijin — Japan’s Business, Culture & Life Podcast: A podcast about Japan’s economy, work culture, foreign residents, regional revitalization, and the people shaping the country’s future.

0:02
SPEAKER_01: All right, it's nine o'clock.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Mark Kennedy.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for joining.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: This is the third session of Beers with Real Gaijin,
0:10
SPEAKER_01: where we,
0:11
SPEAKER_01: in an informal setting with no specific agenda,
0:14
SPEAKER_01: you've got a little bit of an agenda going on,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: with the review of the past work for the past months,
0:20
SPEAKER_01: and specifically if you have any questions.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: But you don't have to limit your questions to that.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: It can be anything you want, so just use the chat functionality to do that.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: I see we have seven people already.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Right on time.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: So, as you know,
0:36
SPEAKER_01: we're trying to do a Halloween edition a little bit early,
0:39
SPEAKER_01: about six days early from the real Halloween.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: But to get you in the spirit,
0:43
SPEAKER_01: I've got a jack-o'-lantern and carried from Chicago,
0:46
SPEAKER_01: which is where I'm from, even though it's plastic.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: But it'll suffice in Japan.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: And this is to get you in the mood.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: But, of course, what really gets you in the mood is you need your beer.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And tonight, My beer is Kirin Ichiban, but this is a very healthy choice.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: It goes to zero, so no sugar.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it tastes okay.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Let me see.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to be drinking beer while seriously going over some of the essays
1:20
SPEAKER_01: from the past month.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Figure that out.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Hey, what are you drinking?
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Please share it in the chat.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious to know.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: What is your favorite kind of beer?
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Also, without further ado,
1:31
SPEAKER_01: I not only have this jack-o'-lantern,
1:33
SPEAKER_01: but I also have something from Chicago that we used to use in our house.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: And we put this decoration out to attract or dissuade young trick-or-treaters from coming by.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: But let me see if it still works.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty loud.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: This is loud.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: I've got to turn it off, okay?
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: All right.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Unplug that one.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: But, yeah,
2:12
SPEAKER_01: we used to leave that out all night for Halloween,
2:16
SPEAKER_01: and it would attract all sorts of trick-or-treaters who would be scared to death
2:20
SPEAKER_01: because it goes quiet, and then all of a sudden, real loud, it scares people.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: But this is a little bit more subdued jack-o'-lantern here.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: So, once again,
2:31
SPEAKER_01: I want to encourage you to use the chat functionality to put in any questions
2:35
SPEAKER_01: or comments, and I'll address those right away.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, let's jump into a couple of things.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: First of all,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: I know you've probably noticed this
2:45
SPEAKER_01: if you've been reading what I've been putting out for about a month and a half now,
2:48
SPEAKER_01: but coming up on November 5th in the evening in Sugamo,
2:53
SPEAKER_01: So in the northern part of the middle part of Tokyo,
2:56
SPEAKER_01: we're going to have the very first Japan-based Substackers in real life IRL meetup.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And you are invited.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: So if you're available on Thursday,
3:07
SPEAKER_01: November 5th,
3:09
SPEAKER_01: anytime between about 5, we're going to start to run probably about 9.30.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: There are now,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: along with me,
3:16
SPEAKER_01: 15 other hosts who are active Substackers that are co-hosting the event with me.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: You can meet all of them.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: In the informal setting, we're probably going to have just a lively cocktail session with food.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And you need to buy a ticket in advance so you pay for the dinner.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: But you'll have more than enough food there.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: And also,
3:36
SPEAKER_01: while you can drink two different varieties of tickets,
3:39
SPEAKER_01: you can have the kind that costs just a little bit more for an adult beverage.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm assuming,
3:44
SPEAKER_01: of course, there'll be beer, but wine and maybe shochi or whatever, sake on tap.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: And then also we have a non-alcoholic drink ticket as well.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit less expensive, but plenty of food.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: It's in a great venue called Cafe Glasgow, which is near Sugamo Station.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: So it should be, and we've rented the entire place out.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So it'll be just us.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: We welcome all fellow writers, readers, or whoever in between here.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is to interact with all of us.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Probably in the middle of the event, we'll schedule a little bit of time.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: For each of the co-hosts to introduce themselves on their books or their writing.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Some of them actually will be bringing their books for book signing and
4:28
SPEAKER_01: if you're interested in buying it.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: So please definitely take us up on this.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: You can find links to this on my Substack and actually all of the other writers
4:37
SPEAKER_01: that are co-hosting the event.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: All of their Substacks are listed in the invitation,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: but they've been helping to promote the event.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: We have,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: to date,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: a total,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: just under 40 tickets,
4:49
SPEAKER_01: which leaves about a little bit more than 15 tickets left, so they're going quickly.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't gotten your ticket yet and you're still available for November 5th,
4:59
SPEAKER_01: please don't wait.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Go to the link where you can buy your ticket through P-A-T-X.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: You have to get a ticket into Grants and...
5:07
SPEAKER_01: Also, if you're a writer and you would like me on Substack to,
5:11
SPEAKER_01: if you want to become a co-host along with us, you are welcome.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Everyone is welcome here.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: Also, one last thing about the cost of the ticket.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: We're not making any money on this.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: The exact cost of the ticket is exactly what we're going to pay the venue.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: So this is a no-profit event.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: You can take my word on that.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you the receipts if you need to see it.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: All right.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: Let's jump into it.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: If you've got a... Ah.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Drinking a real drink.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Gin with Sudachi.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, getting into the spirit.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, tonight I've got Kirin Ichiban with no sugar.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: But in order to keep me company here, I've got my trusty jack-o'-lantern.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And a little later on, we'll put that loud Halloween display back on.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: But let's get into it here.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: A couple of things that I've been writing about for the past month,
5:59
SPEAKER_01: which hopefully you've taken that look at.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: The first one,
6:04
SPEAKER_01: which came out on October 1st,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: right after we did this Real Gaijin,
6:09
SPEAKER_01: our beers with Real Gaijin last month, is called Geographic Triage, How Japan Inc.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Stopped Pretending the Countryside is Growing.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: What prompted this is some of the biggest brands in the country,
6:21
SPEAKER_01: so for example, Uniqlo,
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Daiwa House,
6:25
SPEAKER_01: For example,
6:26
SPEAKER_01: they have recently announced plans to reduce their footprint
6:31
SPEAKER_01: in certain geographies around the country.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: Daiwa House is probably the most extreme example.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: About a month ago,
6:38
SPEAKER_01: they made an announcement that they will only be concentrating on
6:41
SPEAKER_01: the domestic market for new housing construction in the largest cities in
6:46
SPEAKER_01: the country.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: So that means that in smaller areas like where I live,
6:53
SPEAKER_01: in Kyushu,
6:54
SPEAKER_01: They're only going to focus on Fukuoka and Kumamoto,
6:58
SPEAKER_01: and they're going to be closing the branch of their office near me.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: So that's pretty interesting.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: And what's also the background of all this is it's not as though they're doing this
7:07
SPEAKER_01: because they're not having good financial results.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: They're actually having outstanding financial results,
7:12
SPEAKER_01: not only in the big cities of Japan, but also overseas.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: But they've got a new president,
7:18
SPEAKER_01: and this is a very bold move for a Japanese firm to basically...
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Pull back from the countryside.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: And Uniqlo, one of Japan's most iconic brands, is basically doing the same thing.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: They're not totally abandoning the countryside,
7:34
SPEAKER_01: but they're definitely focusing their resources on the big flagship stores in
7:39
SPEAKER_01: the big cities.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And those are just two examples.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: There are many other examples that I put in the paper.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, I mean, if you're living in Tokyo, you might not notice this as a big deal.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: But for me, out in the countryside, I've been noticing that this is a pretty big shift.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: So the demographic changes of Japan,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: meaning the shrinking population,
8:01
SPEAKER_01: particularly in the rural parts of the country,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: are starting to really inform corporate boardrooms about where
8:08
SPEAKER_01: to put their resources.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: And it's resulting in changes in their footprints for stores around the country.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, same thing is happening with banks.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: So I like the Mitsubishi, biggest bank in the country, Mitsubishi, UFJ.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: They're also closing branches in the countryside.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that was the first article.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have any comments or questions about that,
8:31
SPEAKER_00: but I found that to be particularly relevant to where I live.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, if you're in Tokyo, then
8:38
SPEAKER_00: it's no big deal.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Next one that we wrote about was Japan's AI labor paradox,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: why companies are automating without firing.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: So if you're keeping up with the AI issue in the news,
8:53
SPEAKER_01: which is pretty hard to not keep up with it since it's everywhere,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: it seems like,
8:58
SPEAKER_01: particularly back in my home country of the United States,
9:02
SPEAKER_01: the general fear about AI is that it's going to take white collar jobs
9:07
SPEAKER_00: and You know,
9:08
SPEAKER_00: frankly,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: despite the fact that the people that are
9:11
SPEAKER_00: running AI firms say, oh, no, no, we're not going to do that.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: And it certainly seems like that is actually starting to happen.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Although there is not a lot of empirical evidence yet to suggest that
9:21
SPEAKER_01: that is actually happening.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: What probably is happening in the meantime is new hires are being slowed
9:29
SPEAKER_00: and people
9:29
SPEAKER_00: that already have a job are being asked to
9:32
SPEAKER_01: apply AI to their work,
9:34
SPEAKER_01: possibly with the ultimate intention of putting themselves out of a job.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's basically,
9:40
SPEAKER_01: at least in the United States,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: the general thinking is,
9:43
SPEAKER_01: oh, AI is a scary thing because it's going to take away our opportunities at work.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: The question I posed in this article is, well, what about Japan?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting here is that at least it's still early days, first of all.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: But among some of the larger companies like Sonpo Japan,
10:01
SPEAKER_01: for example,
10:02
SPEAKER_01: an insurance company that are applying AI,
10:05
SPEAKER_01: what they're doing is it's kind of similar to not hiring.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: They're using it not to take jobs away,
10:14
SPEAKER_01: but to augment existing jobs to make more efficiency in the workplace.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: But then at the same time, they're not backfilling positions.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: So it's basically...
10:25
SPEAKER_01: Right-sizing with the aid of AI through attrition,
10:28
SPEAKER_01: meaning they're not going to be hiring replacements.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of similar to what's happening in the United States.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: That's one avenue.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have a different viewpoint on this,
10:38
SPEAKER_01: but the general thinking in Japan is there aren't enough people Right now to do
10:43
SPEAKER_01: a lot of the grunt work that would normally be done by younger associates.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: So therefore,
10:50
SPEAKER_01: that's the golden opportunity for AI, particularly in Japan, along with physical AI.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: But that's a little bit further down the road.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: But in terms of using the large language models in companies here in Japan,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: that seems to be the trend.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've experienced this on your own,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: but if you have, I'd certainly be curious to know about that.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: If you could put that in the comments to the article.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: I definitely would be interested to learn more about it.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: But this is a pretty common subject.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: So in other words,
11:21
SPEAKER_01: and I put this in the why it matters section,
11:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you find that useful,
11:25
SPEAKER_01: but overseas,
11:27
SPEAKER_01: I wrote the conventional narratives as it relates to AI is automation means leads
11:33
SPEAKER_01: to job replacement, layoffs, and then unemployment.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: That's the general fear.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: And there are some preliminary signs that that's happening.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: Whereas here in Japan,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: the issue is there aren't enough people to do all the things that used to be done in
11:48
SPEAKER_01: the office.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's questionable whether all of these various busy work tasks are absolutely necessary.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: But let's assume that the same amount of workload is done.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: There aren't enough people, so that causes a worker shortage.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: That's where AI can play a big role here in Japan,
12:04
SPEAKER_01: which means that there are fewer replacements that are hired,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: fewer human replacements that need to be hired.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And therefore productivity improves.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: That's the general idea here.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious to know if that's your experience too,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: particularly at your own office,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: or if anyone who's listening in here has actually applied AI on a grand scale
12:25
SPEAKER_01: and generated meaningful,
12:27
SPEAKER_01: measurable statistics as it relates to being more efficient at work or
12:33
SPEAKER_01: through some metric that they can measure the ROI of investing in AI.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: I'd be curious about that.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: So that was the second article which we covered over the past month.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: The third one, totally different subject.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: So this came up in the research.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Japan doesn't just want more tourists, it wants richer ones.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: In particular,
12:55
SPEAKER_01: there is a focus on tourists from the Middle East and Africa,
13:00
SPEAKER_01: particularly from the Middle East, the Gulf States.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Now, in terms of overall numbers, Yeah.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: All right.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: There aren't a lot of these people.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
13:09
SPEAKER_01: what was interesting is that the amount of money that they spend while they come
13:14
SPEAKER_01: to Japan and the amount of time that they spend in Japan is significantly longer
13:19
SPEAKER_01: than other visitors.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: So just quoting from the article,
13:22
SPEAKER_01: it was interesting that on average visitors These visitors from the Middle East,
13:29
SPEAKER_01: particularly in the Gulf states,
13:30
SPEAKER_01: spend like almost two weeks in Japan when they come and they spend 480,000 yen,
13:36
SPEAKER_01: which is like 3,000 US dollars.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: That's significantly more,
13:41
SPEAKER_01: like double the amount of other visitors who spend less time on average and
13:46
SPEAKER_01: about half or 40% of that amount when they do come to Japan.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: So that's why this lucrative source of Well-heeled tourists is
13:57
SPEAKER_01: a new target specifically of the Japanese government.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And particularly,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: there's a section of the government,
14:03
SPEAKER_01: the Japan National Tourism Organization called JNTO,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: that has signed some sort of a memorandum of understanding with Emirates Airlines.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: Now, somebody pointed out in the notes
14:15
SPEAKER_00: or comments to the article, yeah,
14:17
SPEAKER_01: well,
14:18
SPEAKER_01: but the overall numbers of visitors and therefore,
14:22
SPEAKER_01: you know, the amount of money that they're spending is still pretty low.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: I got it.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
14:26
SPEAKER_01: what's curious and why I wrote the article is that the government of Japan is
14:30
SPEAKER_01: so specifically focused on this segment of the tourism trade.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: So already,
14:36
SPEAKER_01: of course,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: they've got millions and millions of tourists,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: but they're focusing on moving up the ladder in terms of trying
14:44
SPEAKER_01: to attract well-heeled or wealthy tourists.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: And the wealthiest of all the tourists come from the Middle East, the Gulf states.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have a comment.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: So let's see here.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Several other substacks are upset by the new AI overview of your writing
15:02
SPEAKER_01: to check how much of your article was AI generated.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: Haven't read anyone who likes it.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you brought that subject.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: I have kind of mixed feelings on this too.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: And as a matter
15:14
SPEAKER_01: of fact, in a couple of weeks,
15:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be participating at a journalism conference in Tokyo,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: uh, Which is going to talk about this subject.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you're right.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: About, yeah, I think you're right.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: About six weeks ago,
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Substack introduced this feature called Pentagram,
15:32
SPEAKER_01: which you can use to analyze your own writing or somebody else's writing,
15:35
SPEAKER_01: if they've allowed it,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: to see how much of the article is estimated to be written by AI.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: And I often turn this off frequently.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: I am a frequent user of AI.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I use it to do research.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: And in particular, my favorite tool, in case you're wondering, is Gemini Notebook.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: It used to be called Notebook LM.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: If you have not tried this, try it.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's free.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: What's unique about Gemini Notebook
16:04
SPEAKER_01: and why I like it is what you can do is you can upload a Sources into it.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: And these sources don't need to be publicly available sources.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: They could be your own writing or manuscripts or whatever.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And then from a limited number of sources,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: now you can use it to scrap or
16:22
SPEAKER_01: scrape the internet and dump those sources in there.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: But the point is only from the sources that you select,
16:30
SPEAKER_01: you can then have Gemini Notebook analyze the data.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Generate charts, generate infographics only from that data.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: So it's not supposed to be hallucinating on its own or going out on its own to grab more data.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: That's what's so interesting about it.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Also, I heard on a podcast from the New York Times,
16:51
SPEAKER_01: an interview with the head of the editorial group of the New York Times,
16:56
SPEAKER_01: they use it
16:57
SPEAKER_00: in their newsroom.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: Just a reminder, if you haven't had a sip yet, you need to have your beer.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't want it to get warm.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: So that is one way that I use AI to do research.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: And then I write articles and then I have it, polish it.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: As you probably know from looking at any of my work,
17:22
SPEAKER_01: You might not remember this part,
17:23
SPEAKER_01: but I use a format of writing that was developed by the founder of Axiosk,
17:28
SPEAKER_01: which is a news organization in the United States.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: That's called Smart Brevity.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: The idea behind it is don't go on and on and on.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Basically use the old government or
17:40
SPEAKER_01: military technique of,
17:41
SPEAKER_01: you know, bring the most important facts first and then suddenly go down.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: So like a normal article, but in a specific format.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: So like what's new?
17:53
SPEAKER_01: Why is it important?
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Almost like bullet points, but not quite.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: But very short, succinct, concise, clear messaging.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: That's what I tried to do.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Now, I've added a commentary section into that.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: But in order to prepare that,
18:10
SPEAKER_01: I do run those sections by AI to help with the wording and so forth.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: But after that, I always apply the human touch to proofread.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: In addition to that,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you,
18:21
SPEAKER_01: but I have been using AI then to assess the argumentation,
18:26
SPEAKER_01: particularly for the section on But it's commentary.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm putting my own opinion out there and to be brutally honest about its assessment.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: And I have found, frankly, it's very useful.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: It brings up things that I would not have thought about
18:42
SPEAKER_01: or like second order implications of something.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: I find that to be very useful.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: Also, in Gemini Notebook,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: there's a really interesting feature over on the right hand side of
18:53
SPEAKER_01: the page called Mind Mapper.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Based on what you load into it, it helps you get ideas about where
19:05
SPEAKER_00: to take a subject.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: So I know I'm not exactly answering this,
19:08
SPEAKER_01: but my vote on whether this new functionality within Substack to measure if
19:16
SPEAKER_01: a piece is written with the aid of AI is Yeah,
19:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't really like reading 100% AI information.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, since I use it myself, I can see how it's useful.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes when I run my own work through there,
19:33
SPEAKER_01: even though I've written a lot of it on my own,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: sometimes the score is, well, quite a bit AI written or like 25% or whatever.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering, wow, is that from the spell checker maybe?
19:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: So lately I've been turning it off.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, that's my opinion.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no getting away with it.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to get away from AI.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: So I want to use it for what it's really good for.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And I have, as I've been explaining, been finding
20:02
SPEAKER_00: real value in research.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Using this interesting database functionality called Gemini Notebook,
20:10
SPEAKER_01: which is free to query its findings,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: to do research within a select group of sources,
20:17
SPEAKER_01: and then also to prove my work and then assess by writing and find holes
20:23
SPEAKER_01: in argumentation.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: So that's my opinion.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: You'll have to tell me what you think.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: All right, well, let's move on since it's already 20 minutes after.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: The next article,
20:32
SPEAKER_01: which we talked about,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: was Japan's real wages are rising, so why aren't households feeling richer?
20:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is not really limited to Japan, of course.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: I also want to bring out the Halloween spirit here.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: But back,
20:45
SPEAKER_01: for example,
20:46
SPEAKER_01: in my home country out of the United States,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: I think to a certain extent the same thing is going on.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Even though the cost of living is much higher in the United States now
20:56
SPEAKER_01: than probably what we're experiencing in Japan.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, Japan is not going to follow in the United States' footsteps to the same extent.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: But the bottom line is, I think people are just nervous.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And even though it's a very positive development that
21:10
SPEAKER_01: for several months running now,
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Japan, on average, real wage growth, so meaning the actual wages...
21:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, taking out the cost of inflation from there, it's actually positive.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are questions about, well, how do you actually measure that?
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And what about take-home pay and so forth?
21:31
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to get down in the weeds here,
21:32
SPEAKER_01: but the bottom line is that it does seem like real wage growth is happening
21:38
SPEAKER_01: in Japan, and that is an extremely positive thing.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Also, I just saw in the news just a couple days ago that the new...
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Rate that the labor unions are going to ask for is at a minimum 6% wage growth of
21:55
SPEAKER_01: the big firms.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: And that would definitely be higher than the rate of inflation and result
22:00
SPEAKER_01: in further real wage growth
22:04
SPEAKER_00: next year, if that actually comes to fruition.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are all sorts of, yeah, but, yes, but, right?
22:10
SPEAKER_01: You're going to say, well, most of Japan doesn't work for big companies.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: You're right.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: And smaller firms,
22:16
SPEAKER_01: so small to medium-sized enterprises,
22:18
SPEAKER_01: might not be able to match that wage growth,
22:21
SPEAKER_01: and therefore,
22:21
SPEAKER_01: they might not be giving enough wage
22:24
SPEAKER_00: increases that would cover the cost
22:27
SPEAKER_01: of inflation.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's always true.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Also, as you might have noticed in the article,
22:34
SPEAKER_01: there's a huge statistical issue with measuring real wage growth this way because
22:41
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people in Japan that,
22:43
SPEAKER_01: for example,
22:44
SPEAKER_01: have already gone out of the workforce,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: like people that are retired,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: are not counted in the official statistics for real wage growth.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: So...
22:55
SPEAKER_01: That certainly begs the question of, well,
22:57
SPEAKER_01: wait a minute,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: when you say real wages are above inflation,
23:02
SPEAKER_01: if that leaves out like half the country or at least a quarter of
23:05
SPEAKER_01: the country not counted,
23:08
SPEAKER_01: that means that the rest of the Japanese people are probably experiencing
23:14
SPEAKER_01: the full effect of inflation and therefore are cutting back their spending.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: All right.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: So once again, the devil is in the details here.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: But even if I think the point of the article and the research that I did was even
23:28
SPEAKER_01: if you do experience real wage growth,
23:32
SPEAKER_01: there's still kind of a questioning going on about is this safe to spend money?
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Am I going to fall into trouble?
23:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
23:41
SPEAKER_01: in Japan,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: it's probably not as much of an issue about worrying about losing your job
23:46
SPEAKER_01: as it might be in the United States, for example.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's still,
23:51
SPEAKER_01: I think people are so accustomed to not experiencing real wage growth for years,
23:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
23:57
SPEAKER_01: literally decades at this point, that it still takes some time to get used to it.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: So that's my opinion,
24:03
SPEAKER_00: but I'm curious to know if you have a similar
24:05
SPEAKER_01: opinion or
24:06
SPEAKER_01: if you think totally differently.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: In any case,
24:10
SPEAKER_01: there was a survey results that are published in this article that talked
24:15
SPEAKER_01: about this very issue.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: All right.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: The next thing that I covered was a very interesting podcast.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: So this month,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: I've been going a little bit more slowly here with the podcast,
24:26
SPEAKER_01: although I have one on Tuesday with a very interesting guy.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: So hopefully you can...
24:31
SPEAKER_01: Join us for that.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: He's going to take us actually on a tour of one of the two homes
24:36
SPEAKER_01: that he bought secondhand in Otaru, way up near Sapporo.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: So that's going to be very exciting.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: But back on October 15th,
24:45
SPEAKER_01: I interviewed a fellow writer who's actually going to be at our meetup in Sugamo,
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Tokyo, on November 5th, so you can meet him.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Alex Dwyer, very interesting person.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've ever met somebody that's so into Japanese tea and Chinese tea
25:00
SPEAKER_01: and Indian tea other than Alex.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: He's very humble, but he knows a lot about tea.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: And he can literally read the tea leaves and he helps to,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: you know, help us get steeped in Japanese tea culture.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: I know I'm pushing the puns and so forth here, but it was a very interesting interview.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: He is originally from California,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: but he's moved to Kamakura to be closer to Japanese tea culture.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And he lives right near temples in Kamakura and routinely serves tea at home
25:33
SPEAKER_01: for friends that visit him and also goes to temples.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's his favorite place to go have tea.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Actually,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: I use that
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Gemini Notebook to develop a very interesting infographic based on
25:49
SPEAKER_01: the interviewing.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: With all of the podcast interviews on Real Gaijin,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: I try to distill what we talked about down to like three or five key takeaways.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, of course,
26:00
SPEAKER_01: there are all sorts of other interesting things,
26:02
SPEAKER_01: and I try to capture those in small clips afterwards and dole them out over
26:06
SPEAKER_01: the next, well, sometimes six months.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: But Alex had some very specific key takeaways.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: His big point,
26:14
SPEAKER_01: which I think is just wonderful to remember,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: is that Use tea,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: not just for the medicinal or health benefits, but his focus is use it to relax.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Almost like we're using alcohol and beer to relax tonight.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: I understand.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And some of our listeners and readers have reminded me that,
26:37
SPEAKER_01: all right,
26:37
SPEAKER_01: it might be after five o'clock in Japan,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: but where I am in California, it's first thing in the morning.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not going to be having a beer.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: I got it.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, you can have tea, all right?
26:47
SPEAKER_01: So Alex's point is that don't look at it as a productivity hack or focus on the caffeine.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Use it to relax and then to take a deep breath and so forth while you're having that cup of tea.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: I think that's great.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: I am addicted to Japanese tea.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: I drink it every day.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: What have I got here?
27:05
SPEAKER_01: I got oolong chai in addition to my beer here.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's great.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, I also like coffee, but not as much.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that he talked about is how tea culture,
27:17
SPEAKER_01: of course, came from China, but it came through with Zen Buddhism.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, I didn't know this.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that there's such a close connection between tea and Zen Buddhism.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Of course,
27:30
SPEAKER_01: thinking about it,
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I suppose the whole ceremony of tea preparation does have a lot in common
27:36
SPEAKER_01: with Zen Buddhism,
27:37
SPEAKER_01: but I hadn't consciously thought about that until Alex reminded everyone.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: So that was good.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Another thing which I found surprising,
27:46
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know this, matcha,
27:48
SPEAKER_01: of course,
27:48
SPEAKER_01: world craze of matcha, sencha,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: which is probably the most common kind of tea that you'd have in Hojicha,
27:54
SPEAKER_01: for example, they all came from the same tea plant.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: They're just made slightly different.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: It's like how Irish whiskey scotch and bourbon are basically the same thing,
28:04
SPEAKER_01: but they're distilled in a different format.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, who knew?
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: So that was something interesting.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: I took away from that short interview with Alex.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is, you know, he has kind of mixed feelings about matcha.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's good to see how popular matcha has become around the world.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: And Alex,
28:27
SPEAKER_01: I think,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: was This week,
28:29
SPEAKER_01: traveling to Ureshino Onsen,
28:31
SPEAKER_01: which is a fantastic town, not too far from where I live here in Kirchho.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: It's in Saga Prefecture.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: It is one of the oldest and most famous hot spring towns.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: It's famous for the Hadanon youth.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: So in other words,
28:44
SPEAKER_01: particularly women,
28:45
SPEAKER_01: but not just women,
28:46
SPEAKER_01: but People like the water there because it makes your skin soft and supple.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: But it's also a fantastic place for tea.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: And the onsen town is surrounded by hills
28:59
SPEAKER_00: that are just covered in tea leaves.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: So that's a great spot.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's where he was heading this week.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: Then the last thing is just like what happened to Alex.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: He says a simple bowl of tea can change the direction of your life.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he decided to move from his native home.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: So anyway,
29:22
SPEAKER_01: that was what we took out of the discussion with Alex.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't listened to it yet, I definitely would encourage you to do that.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: If you're taking a walk, for example, it's a great thing to do.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Put in the podcast, download it on Spotify or whatever.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: That's what I do.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: And give it a listen.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: And then also,
29:39
SPEAKER_01: just a reminder,
29:40
SPEAKER_01: on Tuesday,
29:40
SPEAKER_01: we've got another podcast in the afternoon with an interesting American guy,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: CD is his name.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: He's focusing on restoring two homes in Otaru, way up near Sapporo.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: But that's only scratching the surface with CD.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: He's a deep guy, and I'm looking forward to this discussion.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: All right, switching gears a little bit.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: I had a very interesting experience in the middle of October on the 14th,
30:07
SPEAKER_01: and that's a key date, and that's why I'm mentioning it.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: Every year for the past 1,200 years,
30:14
SPEAKER_01: essentially,
30:15
SPEAKER_01: on October 14th at this small little shrine near where I live in Oita Prefecture in
30:23
SPEAKER_01: a place called Kunisaki Peninsula, a very,
30:26
SPEAKER_01: very important place,
30:27
SPEAKER_01: actually, once again, for the introduction of Buddhism to Japan.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: But this is actually a shrine.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: Every year,
30:35
SPEAKER_01: there's a famous festival there that takes place called the Kebesu Site,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Kebesu Site.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: And Kebesu is a devil, and he fights fire, literally.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: So what was interesting about this particular festival is I have been hearing
30:52
SPEAKER_01: about this ever since moving down to this part of the country,
30:56
SPEAKER_00: probably seven years ago.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who's a local tells me, oh, have you been to the Kebesu Site?
31:01
SPEAKER_01: No, I haven't.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: And then when I was finally ready to go, COVID hit and it was canceled for four years.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: So for the past 1,200 years, except for four years following COVID, it has not been held.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: But it was held last year and I couldn't go.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: This year, we decided, all right, we're going to go.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Now,
31:20
SPEAKER_01: what is interesting about this particular festival is there's almost no information
31:24
SPEAKER_01: about it, even in Japanese.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: So I decided,
31:27
SPEAKER_01: all right, well, Now,
31:30
SPEAKER_01: if you want to go in the future and you don't want to know what to expect,
31:34
SPEAKER_01: which is how I saw it,
31:35
SPEAKER_01: which actually there's a benefit of not knowing what to expect.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And I'll get into that just a second.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, if that's the case,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: close your ears.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, don't read the article.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: But if you want to know a little bit about what to expect,
31:46
SPEAKER_01: you can check out my article about it.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I'll give you some hints.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: It has to do with fire.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: I broke it into basically three sections.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: It started like around 6 o'clock in the evening, so right at dusk.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
32:00
SPEAKER_01: all of us gathered,
32:01
SPEAKER_01: probably 300 or 400 people in this tiny little area made out of wood for hundreds
32:06
SPEAKER_01: of years old.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: And there's this big bonfire basically glowing.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: Like everyone else who is there,
32:15
SPEAKER_01: and there are actually a fair number of fellow foreigners that have come
32:18
SPEAKER_01: from nearby Euphrine or Beppu.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I think they came by bus.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
32:23
SPEAKER_01: we were all there with plenty of other people figuring,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: okay, this is going to start any minute now.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, like for an hour, almost an hour and a half, almost nothing happened.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: There was no music, nothing.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Everyone was just sitting there watching some sort of ceremony
32:40
SPEAKER_01: that we could barely see occurring in the middle of the ginger.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: The fire was going, but we didn't know what to expect.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Then finally,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: The second part started where Kebesu,
32:52
SPEAKER_01: so this masked gentleman who's dressed all in white,
32:57
SPEAKER_01: is fighting with other monk-like figures that are dressed in white,
33:01
SPEAKER_01: probably about 15 or 20 of them.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: And they fight in front of the fire before Kebesu,
33:06
SPEAKER_01: the guy with the mask on,
33:08
SPEAKER_01: runs into the fire and This is basically a bonfire,
33:12
SPEAKER_01: and he uses a long pole to make the brush fire go every which way,
33:17
SPEAKER_01: and embers come flying over.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: By the way,
33:21
SPEAKER_01: you're supposed to not wear clothing that can catch on a fire,
33:24
SPEAKER_01: so you're not supposed to wear any polyester, anything with plastic.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: Don't wear it.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: It should be something that you could easily brush embers off of,
33:31
SPEAKER_01: or you're okay if it burns a hole through your clothes.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: So anyway,
33:34
SPEAKER_01: that took place for about another half an hour or so,
33:37
SPEAKER_01: and then Then we figured, okay, the music was dying down at that point.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: However,
33:44
SPEAKER_00: all of the monks then
33:46
SPEAKER_01: went and grabbed a long pole,
33:49
SPEAKER_01: like a bamboo pole,
33:50
SPEAKER_01: and rushed into the fire,
33:52
SPEAKER_01: took clumps of these burning bushes,
33:55
SPEAKER_01: basically burning ferns,
33:57
SPEAKER_01: and then started moving the fire over the people that were there, including me.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And they'd run up to you with this pole,
34:05
SPEAKER_01: and it was like this,
34:07
SPEAKER_01: with fire over your head,
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Under a wooden building that looked like it could burst into flames in a matter
34:15
SPEAKER_01: of seconds.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know what was going on.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: And that took place for like 20 minutes or so.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: So it was just chaos.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: And actually,
34:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:25
SPEAKER_01: because we were crammed into this bare and narrow space under a wooden roof
34:29
SPEAKER_01: that looked like it was going to burn down.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, there was a fire truck on hand.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, actually, it was a little scary at times.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: But I got to tell you, I would do it again.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, I know what to expect.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: And I'm now just blowing the cover for you.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: But if you have a chance to come, it's October 14th every year.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to get to that kind of map in the In the last section of the article,
34:52
SPEAKER_01: you can see three levels of maps on the map of Japan,
34:54
SPEAKER_01: map of Kyushu, and then way up in the map of the Kunisaki Peninsula.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: I'd encourage you to go.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: It is definitely worth going to visit.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: So that was the next article that I wrote,
35:05
SPEAKER_01: and it was in the section called The Road Less Traveled,
35:07
SPEAKER_01: and this definitely qualifies as a road less traveled article.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: All right, next one.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: And hey, if you've got any questions, we don't have to cover the articles.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: We can cover anything that you're interested in.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: But moving right along.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: Another thing we... Ah, yes.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: Japanese mothers spend 50% more time per child.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Here's where it goes.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: All right.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a government survey.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: And what they found was, at least conventional wisdom, is that when raising children in Japan...
35:40
SPEAKER_01: The time to get a child through like cram school, juku, to get them into college.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: So basically, kyoiku mama, so meaning educational mother.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: So traditionally,
35:54
SPEAKER_01: the mother in most families in Japan has been focused on making sure
35:58
SPEAKER_01: that their child is educationally prepared in order to pass entry exams in order
36:03
SPEAKER_01: to get into college.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: That's the convention of wisdom.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, the authors of this study Found that a couple of interesting things.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: First of all,
36:14
SPEAKER_01: they found that now many mothers might say, yeah,
36:17
SPEAKER_01: I could
36:18
SPEAKER_01: have told you this, but instead of the teen years getting into college,
36:22
SPEAKER_01: the focus is actually between zero and five.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: So when children are babies,
36:28
SPEAKER_01: infants up to around
36:30
SPEAKER_01: kindergarten age is where they spent the most amount
36:32
SPEAKER_01: of their time.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's where the additional time went.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm guilty if I thought that wasn't the case,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: but apparently invention of wisdom across the country was that that's not the case.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: So that was one finding.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is the number of children that are being born,
36:49
SPEAKER_01: as everyone knows, has gone way down and now it's under two.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: So what the interesting thing about this was that even though the number
36:58
SPEAKER_01: of children have gone down,
37:00
SPEAKER_01: the amount of childcare time over the whole time Not in one day,
37:06
SPEAKER_01: but over the entire childhood experience, it's gone up.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: So it's by 50% is the finding.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: So if you take the entire period of birth through like end of high school or so,
37:21
SPEAKER_01: the actual intensive time of parenting was measured from 0.74 years,
37:27
SPEAKER_01: so three quarters of one year, to 1.12 years.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: No, nothing.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: So that during that entire period through high school,
37:38
SPEAKER_01: in terms of the actual amount of parenting going on,
37:42
SPEAKER_01: it's been distilled down to this level.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might have an issue with how
37:46
SPEAKER_01: the researchers came up with these figures,
37:47
SPEAKER_01: but that's what they did.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: And they looked at thousands of data points.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: So it probably is accurate.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that was kind of interesting.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: A couple of other key data points.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: Expenditure per child increased from about 7 million yen to almost 8 million yen
38:05
SPEAKER_01: during this
38:06
SPEAKER_00: period.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: So in other words,
38:08
SPEAKER_01: the amount of money that it takes to raise a child through high school is
38:15
SPEAKER_01: about 8 million yen.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course,
38:19
SPEAKER_01: there are all sorts of ranges here and the median might be different,
38:22
SPEAKER_01: but on average, that's about the amount.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: So that was also interesting.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you think about this,
38:30
SPEAKER_01: but it certainly didn't get covered in the news media very much.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I picked this particular topic to focus on.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: And I would be curious to know if you have any
38:40
SPEAKER_00: similar experiences.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: Alright, if not, hey,
38:44
SPEAKER_01: it's now 9.40, so if you've got any questions, put them in the chat or comments.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: I say yes, interesting Matsuri, thank you for the comment.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Another subject, oh yes, this is a more recent article, so only from a couple days ago.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: Japan has wealth, its younger generations need the money
39:04
SPEAKER_00: now, basically.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is not unique to Japan,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: but because the numbers are so enormous here,
39:12
SPEAKER_01: And the average age in Japan is so old.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: Basically, I think the average age of Japanese is around 50 years old at this point.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: What's happening is that people are
39:23
SPEAKER_01: living so long that in order to pass along
39:26
SPEAKER_01: the wealth and have their heirs inherit the wealth, heirs are not getting.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the people that have the money in the first place are not dying,
39:36
SPEAKER_01: basically, so they can leave the money to their children.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Fast enough.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: And so oftentimes, like in the United States, this is happening too with baby boomers.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: Essentially, it takes until you're around 60 or so to actually inherit any money.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: If you have any inheritance coming now, not everyone does.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: So you might say, well, this doesn't affect me.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: I understand that.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: But the point here in Japan is that there is a lot of money out there,
40:04
SPEAKER_01: just like in the United States,
40:05
SPEAKER_01: among baby boomers or even people in the silent generation,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: the generation above the baby boomers that are still alive.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: the impolite way of putting that is they're hoarding the money,
40:17
SPEAKER_01: but of course it's their money to begin with.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: However,
40:20
SPEAKER_01: the point is that, um,
40:22
SPEAKER_01: Because of the tax treatment in Japan,
40:26
SPEAKER_01: essentially, unlike,
40:29
SPEAKER_01: for example,
40:29
SPEAKER_01: where I am,
40:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:31
SPEAKER_01: where we have estate tax,
40:33
SPEAKER_01: but the threshold for having to pay
40:36
SPEAKER_00: it is so high that most people don't have
40:37
SPEAKER_01: to pay it.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Here in Japan, it's also the equivalent of estate taxes.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: It's done completely differently.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: The heirs have to pay it.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: It's very different.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
40:47
SPEAKER_01: for most people,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: they don't
40:50
SPEAKER_00: have to pay tax unless they're inheriting a lot of financial assets.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: The point of this particular article was the most common way to try and pass
41:02
SPEAKER_01: through wealth to younger generations,
41:05
SPEAKER_01: not necessarily successfully,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: so it could be grandparents passing along wealth to their grandchildren
41:10
SPEAKER_01: or even great-grandchildren.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: It's possible,
41:13
SPEAKER_01: but the limits here in Japan,
41:15
SPEAKER_01: and it's called
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Zouyoze,
41:16
SPEAKER_00: so this is a gift tax,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: the limit for Up to the point where there's a threshold for the gift tax not to cost
41:27
SPEAKER_01: the recipient.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: So the person receiving the money in Japan is the one that has to pay the tax.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: It's only 1.1 million yen per year and that's cumulative.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: So like it's not per family member that gives them that.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: It's per, you know, they have to combine all the financial gifts into one.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: And anything over 1.1 million yen per year is subject to gift tax payable by the recipient.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: Why is this an issue?
41:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, since like the early 1970s,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: the longest time to I think 2001, the limit was only 600,000 yen.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: But then the last time this amount was moved up was in 2001.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: And that was to 1.1 million yen.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Given, you know, Relative to the
42:13
SPEAKER_01: United States dollar,
42:13
SPEAKER_01: for example,
42:14
SPEAKER_01: how the yen has been devalued so much,
42:16
SPEAKER_01: that's equivalent to like $7,000 per year, which,
42:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:21
SPEAKER_01: in the whole scheme of things,
42:23
SPEAKER_01: that's not a lot, okay, compared to other OEC countries.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: So I put in some comparison numbers in here for your information.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: So, for example,
42:32
SPEAKER_01: like in the United States,
42:34
SPEAKER_01: I believe, let's see if I can find that,
42:36
SPEAKER_00: uh, It's like double.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, okay.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: So in the United States,
42:44
SPEAKER_01: essentially,
42:46
SPEAKER_01: two parents can give the same amount,
42:48
SPEAKER_01: and it's like $19,000 per year that can be given for a combined gift of $38,000,
42:53
SPEAKER_00: and that's tax-free, essentially, for the recipient.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's quite a bit more.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: Now, it doesn't necessarily have to do that much,
43:00
SPEAKER_01: but the point of the article is that this is starting to become an issue.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because the older generations in Japan,
43:09
SPEAKER_01: as I mentioned before,
43:10
SPEAKER_01: are living so long and they've got a lot of financial assets and more than
43:16
SPEAKER_01: the younger generations.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: And the younger generations need the cash now
43:20
SPEAKER_01: while their older relatives are still alive, basically.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: So what can be done about this?
43:27
SPEAKER_01: There are a couple of proposals being floated here.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they're going to go anywhere,
43:31
SPEAKER_01: but some of the regional tax offices are starting to field requests
43:37
SPEAKER_01: to triple essentially the limit from 1.1 million to 3.3 million yen threshold,
43:44
SPEAKER_01: which I think would actually,
43:46
SPEAKER_01: my opinion is that would actually do a lot to stimulate the Japanese economy.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: That said,
43:55
SPEAKER_01: It has been explained to me by a tax advisor that the National Tax Authority
44:00
SPEAKER_01: in Japan,
44:01
SPEAKER_01: so the equivalent of the IRS,
44:03
SPEAKER_01: Internal Revenue Service in the United States,
44:05
SPEAKER_01: their goal is to basically make sure that dynastic wealth doesn't happen in Japan.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: A long time ago, before World War II, that was a pretty big issue in Japan.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: And it still is a little bit of an issue right now.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: But the bottom line is that before World War II, it was a major issue.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: So rich families would stay rich for literally generation upon generation.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: One of the goals is apparently to make sure that at least
44:32
SPEAKER_01: after three successive generations,
44:34
SPEAKER_01: that wealth cannot be passed on because it'll be taxed so highly.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are ways to get around that,
44:41
SPEAKER_01: but basically in Japan,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: there aren't as many
44:44
SPEAKER_00: loopholes as there are in my native United States for that.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: Essentially,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: one key way would be to transfer wealth into a family-run business that
44:55
SPEAKER_01: the shares can be passed along.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: But the other way,
44:58
SPEAKER_01: the most common way of giving financial assets is to take advantage
45:03
SPEAKER_01: of this gift tax exemption.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: And so as I mentioned before,
45:07
SPEAKER_01: currently and since 2001,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: so for the past 25 years, the limit has been 1.1 million yen per recipient.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: And that's pretty low, especially when you convert that amount into U.S. dollars.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: So the proposal is to triple that.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's going to get any traction.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully it will.
45:25
SPEAKER_01: But I think that that would benefit a lot of younger people in Japan quite a bit.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: And it would help pump money into the economy.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: The other school of thought is, yeah,
45:36
SPEAKER_01: well, then that's just going to be a tool for rich families to pass along wealth.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Yep, it is.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt about it.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: But hopefully that wealth increases.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: We'll not just be reimbursed.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, that's another counter argument to this,
45:51
SPEAKER_01: that the wealth,
45:51
SPEAKER_01: if it passed along,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: it'll just be invested and won't result necessarily in any more economic activity
45:57
SPEAKER_01: or incremental activity.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: But I have a feeling that some of that wealth will be spent because real wages,
46:05
SPEAKER_01: typically,
46:05
SPEAKER_01: even though we just covered this a minute ago,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: are starting to increase,
46:09
SPEAKER_01: but that's not adequate for a lot of young families,
46:12
SPEAKER_01: particularly young families that are trying to raise children.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: And we just covered the cost of raising a child as like 8 million yen through high school.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: So they need the cash and they need it now.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: So why not pass it along and make it less taxing to do that?
46:28
SPEAKER_01: So that was what the purpose of that article was.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have an opinion about this or think it's a good, bad idea or what.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: Let me know in the comments.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: All right.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: One final article that I just published a couple of days ago.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: And Just for the people listening, I'll let you in on a little secret.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: I actually was a ghostwriter for this article.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: At least the initial draft came from a good friend of mine who is working for a firm
46:55
SPEAKER_01: and is helping people in this very situation.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about?
46:59
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the article, Japan pays workers who are too sick to work.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: So in other words, paid medical leave.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: But the problem is that the cash payments often are late.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: And especially when someone is struggling with a pretty catastrophic illness,
47:14
SPEAKER_01: for example,
47:16
SPEAKER_01: and they have got a lot of other things
47:18
SPEAKER_01: on their mind other than paying bills, survival in one case, or at least getting better.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: It could be a lot worse.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: It could be a chronic illness that doesn't necessarily have a solution.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that this is just yet another source of anxiety which they don't need.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: It probably is not all that good for helping people to recover as soon as possible
47:39
SPEAKER_01: if that's possible.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: So my friend who's helping right now,
47:46
SPEAKER_01: so he's a finance manager at a company,
47:48
SPEAKER_01: he's helping several people work through these issues.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: The other thing which I kind of knew about since I used to manage a company
47:56
SPEAKER_01: in Japan,
47:57
SPEAKER_01: but I had kind of put it on the back burner,
47:59
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't thought about this in a long time,
48:01
SPEAKER_01: but if you go out and pay it medically, Yeah,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: you can apply for the paperwork and get paid in most instances,
48:08
SPEAKER_01: but you're not going to be paid 100% of your salary.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: It's basically two-thirds.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: somebody wrote in the comments,
48:16
SPEAKER_01: I had a similar situation during COVID when I had to take off at least a week
48:21
SPEAKER_01: or maybe it was a 10 day period.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: And this person consulted their HR department and was, you know, given two options.
48:30
SPEAKER_01: Basically, one option was to go through with paid medical leave, but accept a lower salary.
48:37
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that's one option.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: The other option was this person had paid time off or PTO available.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: So UQ Kyuka, simply use up that.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course,
48:48
SPEAKER_01: as you probably know or have experience in Japan,
48:51
SPEAKER_01: typically Japanese workers are notorious for not using their paid time off
48:56
SPEAKER_01: or UQ Kyuka.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: And in some cases,
48:59
SPEAKER_01: like the company I used to manage,
49:01
SPEAKER_01: we allowed only one year A paid
49:04
SPEAKER_00: time off to be carried over until the next year.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: But then if the person
49:08
SPEAKER_01: at the other end,
49:09
SPEAKER_01: the tail end of that
49:11
SPEAKER_00: PTO, if they didn't use it, they'd lose
49:13
SPEAKER_01: it.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: I was just shocked by how many Japanese associates would give up PTO or paid time off each year.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: It was basically almost everyone except for small groups of people.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: And I could always know exactly who was going to use all that PTO,
49:28
SPEAKER_01: which was absolutely fine because that's what it's for.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: But anyway...
49:32
SPEAKER_01: This article,
49:35
SPEAKER_01: the person that shared some of the guts of the article
49:38
SPEAKER_01: with me had done some real research on actual case studies of these people
49:45
SPEAKER_01: that he's helping and also did supplementary research to look
49:48
SPEAKER_01: at more national statistics.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
49:51
SPEAKER_01: in the whole scheme of things,
49:52
SPEAKER_01: this might not come across as the most important thing in your opinion.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, it kind of shed light on A subject which I had never thought about.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: And certainly,
50:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm guilty as a former president of the company here,
50:07
SPEAKER_01: not giving as much thought to just how traumatic this kind of experience could be
50:12
SPEAKER_01: for somebody that actually has to use paid time.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not necessarily for
50:17
SPEAKER_01: like a physical disability.
50:19
SPEAKER_01: It could be for mental illness or some other anxiety attack or something like that.
50:25
SPEAKER_01: And just The fact that the money is not immediately available or it takes a lot
50:32
SPEAKER_01: of paperwork and time to process that paperwork,
50:35
SPEAKER_01: typically the money payment doesn't come on time
50:42
SPEAKER_01: in order to pay the bills.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: In other words,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: the person that has to pay the bills has to rely upon cash flow,
50:47
SPEAKER_01: which they might not have.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: They might not have a financial resource to do that.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately,
50:53
SPEAKER_01: I didn't go into this in my article,
50:55
SPEAKER_01: but Sometimes that forces people in this situation to borrow from insurer or sources
51:03
SPEAKER_01: that charge very high interest rates.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: some of them are not above board.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: So loan sharks, so yamikin, that would be an extreme case.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, it is the fact here in Japan.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: So the article was leading up to what my friend suggested as a couple
51:20
SPEAKER_01: of potential solutions, which are listed at the very end of the article.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a long one this time.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: Way down at the bottom, I talk about what could change.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: Certainly a little bit more transparency up front about how the process is supposed
51:34
SPEAKER_01: to run and how quickly everything can be processed.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: The key is having an employer that understands the financial timetable
51:43
SPEAKER_01: when bills are going to be paid and that they can provide
51:46
SPEAKER_01: the necessary financial supplement in advance or at least on time.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: So that there is less stress in having to pay these bills.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: Those are a couple of things, like bridge financing or give a loan or something like that.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: So these are very practical solutions.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure how much traction this particular piece will get,
52:07
SPEAKER_01: but I just wanted to throw this out there to everyone,
52:10
SPEAKER_01: especially if you're a resident foreigner in Japan.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: And let's say a young person that might be completely physically fine and not,
52:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:18
SPEAKER_01: maybe you noticed a section in this and the work rules of your company,
52:22
SPEAKER_01: Shugyo Kisoku,
52:22
SPEAKER_01: when you first joined,
52:23
SPEAKER_01: but you kind of perused over that because you have no experience and
52:27
SPEAKER_00: you're healthy,
52:27
SPEAKER_00: young and healthy.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, unfortunately, not everyone is going to be young
52:32
SPEAKER_00: and healthy forever.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: And at the point when you might need
52:39
SPEAKER_01: You want to know what your rights are, how much money you can expect.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: And to many,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: unfortunately,
52:45
SPEAKER_01: it comes as a shock
52:46
SPEAKER_00: that, oh,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: wait a minute,
52:47
SPEAKER_01: you're not going to pay me my full salary if I take paid medical time off?
52:51
SPEAKER_01: No, you're not going to get that in Japan.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: So, no, it's better than getting nothing, okay?
52:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely occurring.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: But also you have to be aware that you might not get reimbursed right away or
53:05
SPEAKER_01: at least on time to actually pay your bills.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: So what do you do about that?
53:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, luckily, some hospitals are understanding and that they'll work with you, I believe.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
53:16
SPEAKER_01: there is a great program through Japanese National Health Insurance,
53:20
SPEAKER_01: which is kind of a corollary to the health insurance program,
53:24
SPEAKER_01: which is a program to take care of extremely high medical bills.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: So there are limits as to how much you can be charged.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's still quite a bit of money.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: And now compared to where I'm from,
53:36
SPEAKER_01: where The United States,
53:37
SPEAKER_01: where a lot of people get their health insurance through their employer,
53:42
SPEAKER_01: it's light years better, okay, here in Japan.
53:45
SPEAKER_01: But especially when you consider the high deductibles that a lot of people sign up
53:49
SPEAKER_01: for in the United States,
53:50
SPEAKER_01: like thousands of dollars of deductibles,
53:52
SPEAKER_01: meaning that you pay that out of pocket on your own cash flow before you get any
53:58
SPEAKER_01: from insurance.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: In Japan...
54:00
SPEAKER_01: The National Health Insurance Program is terrific, really.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: And I've written other articles about that.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: I have been hospitalized a couple of times.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm fine.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, those were for me in my 50s.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: That was the first time to have to be hospitalized.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: It came as a shock.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: What was kind of a nice surprise was just how good
54:20
SPEAKER_01: the National Health Insurance Program is and how much money that covers.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
54:25
SPEAKER_01: This is a topic that my friend feels strongly about,
54:28
SPEAKER_01: and I learned a lot from his research and augmented that essentially by using
54:33
SPEAKER_01: that Gemini notebook to do some research
54:37
SPEAKER_00: and then
54:37
SPEAKER_00: poke holes in the thinking
54:39
SPEAKER_00: by using AI.
54:40
SPEAKER_01: So that was the most recent article that I just published.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: Once again, wow, we have quite a few people joining us.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: I've been doing a lot of talking.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: I need you to fill in here, but I'm going to take a swig of my Kirin Ichiban.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been Keeping up with me.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: Now's the time to do that.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: All right,
55:01
SPEAKER_01: we're having more than enough fun tonight with the Halloween edition of Beers
55:05
SPEAKER_01: with Real Gaijin.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious, does anyone have plans to do actual trick-or-treating here in Japan?
55:12
SPEAKER_01: In my neighborhood,
55:13
SPEAKER_01: down in Kyushu,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: most of my neighbors have never heard of Halloween
55:17
SPEAKER_01: or they definitely don't know anything about trick-or-treating.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: They might have heard of Halloween.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: We are going to decorate our house a little bit.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: I enjoy that.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: And, uh, I don't, excuse me again.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we're going to have any trick or treaters.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: I kind of doubt it.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: So we're probably not going to prepare candy,
55:36
SPEAKER_01: but I can share a little bit about the experience of living in a suburb of Chicago
55:41
SPEAKER_01: where this was a huge event.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: We used to get like probably at least 200 kids and they'd come in packs
55:48
SPEAKER_01: and they'd ring your doorbell.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: And of course I had this guy on hand to scare them, but, uh,
55:53
SPEAKER_01: You know,
55:53
SPEAKER_01: they'd sing trick-or-treat and usually the young ones like who are four
55:57
SPEAKER_01: to maybe seven would go around with their parents who would often stand off at
56:01
SPEAKER_01: the street and let their kids go up to the door and,
56:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:05
SPEAKER_01: say trick-or-treat and then you'd have to feign,
56:07
SPEAKER_01: oh, you're so scary and so forth, what would you like?
56:10
SPEAKER_01: And then you'd have to remind them just take one or two,
56:13
SPEAKER_01: otherwise they'll take like 10 different pieces of candy and then
56:18
SPEAKER_01: the older kids would come too.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: So I know I have two boys who they used to absolutely love this.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: And when they got a little older, they didn't have to go around with their parents.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: They would go in groups and, you know, there would be a curfew, of course, in my little town.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: But they went right up to the curfew.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is because, you know,
56:40
SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, there are some.
56:42
SPEAKER_01: Weird people out there that put strange things in the candy.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: So what they did is they bring all their candy back and we were surprised
56:49
SPEAKER_01: at how much they would get.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: And we searched through each piece of candy to make sure it looked okay and
56:54
SPEAKER_01: the packaging was still intact.
56:57
SPEAKER_01: Because unfortunately,
56:58
SPEAKER_01: every year
56:59
SPEAKER_01: there was some Horrible events where the candy was tainted and there'd be
57:03
SPEAKER_01: an accident, but we didn't want that.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Luckily, we didn't have any experience.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: But then the biggest problem was, okay, you can't eat all this at once.
57:10
SPEAKER_01: You have to ration this out and it's going to take like a month or two to get
57:14
SPEAKER_01: through all the candy.
57:16
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, it's a lot of fun.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: I think it is catching on, at least in Tokyo, I understand, in certain neighborhoods.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's done more at schools in Japan, which is fine, but it's not the same thing.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: And You know,
57:29
SPEAKER_01: at least in the United States where I'm from,
57:32
SPEAKER_01: I had one colleague at work who literally spent half of every year with her husband
57:38
SPEAKER_01: and family decorating or planning the hollering decorations and then going all out.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: Usually like you start putting up the decorations.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: About two weeks in advance of Halloween and like the whole house is covered
57:52
SPEAKER_01: and she would videotape this and, you know, everyone couldn't believe it.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: There's always one house in every neighborhood where
58:00
SPEAKER_01: the person just is like totally focused on Halloween.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: All the kids love this house.
58:05
SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily the house that gives out the most amount of candy,
58:08
SPEAKER_00: but the decorations are extraordinary.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know,
58:11
SPEAKER_01: kind of curiously,
58:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got our adult beverages for beers with realgaijin.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the houses in the neighborhood,
58:22
SPEAKER_01: including,
58:23
SPEAKER_01: we did this too,
58:24
SPEAKER_01: we would have Halloween gifts for the parents that are coming along too,
58:28
SPEAKER_01: and it would often be cold beer.
58:31
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, in that spirit, we'll get back into the experience of beers with realgaijin.
58:39
SPEAKER_00: Tastes good.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: Not as good as the Halloween snack, but Anyway,
58:43
SPEAKER_01: oh, another comment.
58:45
SPEAKER_01: School kids did their costume parade today.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: Oh, in Japan.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: The holiday has really come a long way since my kids were
58:51
SPEAKER_01: in school there.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: They even had a huge pumpkin omikoshi.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: All right, I'm impressed.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: Wow, we're out in the sticks down here in Oita Prefecture in Kyushu.
59:01
SPEAKER_01: We don't have that.
59:02
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if they actually carved jack-o'-lanterns out of real pumpkins, not plastic ones.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully they did.
59:10
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: Hey, if it's done at school,
59:12
SPEAKER_01: that's fine, but it would be even more exciting to do it in the neighborhood.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, believe it or not, it's exactly 10 o'clock.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: We've been going for an hour.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your participation.
59:24
SPEAKER_01: We had quite a few people join us.
59:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm surprised.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: I hope I'm entertaining to you.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: Certainly use that chat functionality next time.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: I'll do it again next month.
59:35
SPEAKER_01: We'll have another beer.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: So tonight was Kirin
59:40
SPEAKER_01: Ichiban Shibori Toast Zero.
59:41
SPEAKER_00: So kind of healthy, sort of.
59:45
SPEAKER_01: Next time I will search wide and far for another choice of beer.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious to know through the comments what kind of beer
59:54
SPEAKER_00: or other alcoholic beverage or whatever you're having tonight.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: All right.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: Thank you again for joining.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: Have a wonderful evening and have a great week leading up to Halloween.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully you'll have more Halloween activities just like tonight.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: Alright, that's it for tonight.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: Kampai.