Deep in Japan

This week, Jeff and Trevor tumble down a matcha ice cream–soaked rabbit hole of Japan news, global oddities, and nonsense that somehow connects (like conspiracy yarn on a corkboard… but stickier, and with more Strong Zero).Man Marries AI ChatbotAsahi reports that we’ve officially crossed into sci-fi territory: a man in Japan has tied the knot with an AI chatbot. What does this mean for love, tech, and the future of human relationships?👉 Read more7-11 Japan Rolls Out RobotsFrom stocking shelves to cleaning floors, robots are increasingly taking over tasks in convenience stores. Is this the beginning of our robot overlord era—or just another reason to avoid the register guy who judges your midnight Strong Zero runs?👉 Details via SoraNews24Tangent Topics & ShenanigansOsaka demo: Watch hereJapan gives town to Africa: Yes, this is [*not] real“This is a pen”: Japan's leading Coronavirus transmission theorySoraNews does AI gags: Sato performs an ippatsu-gei devised by AIBullzone Chiemi: Career WomanSassySisters: Subscribe to Jeff's daughters' new YT channel hereOutro Music:薬物をやろう (by Jeff on Suno)Enjoying the Show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DogePunk2077 and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Thank you for listening, fellow traveler of the ear. 🚀🚀 Yoroshiku and rockets 🚀🚀

Originally aired in February 2024, this episode features Anne Crescini, an American-born linguist who had recently acquired Japanese nationality. Anne shares the story of what it meant to become a naturalized Japanese citizen, the identity shifts that came with it, and the unexpected backlash she faced on Twitter. From love of country to questions of belonging, nationalism, and social media outrage, Anne opens up about the personal cost—and deeper meaning—of “turning Japanese.”Enjoying the Show? — Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DeepinJapanPod and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Yoroshiku and rockets. 🚀

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This episode will almost certainly offend you. If you possess even a shred of conventional morality or a functioning conscience, for the sake of your own health and sanity, you may want to skip it. This week, Jeff and Trevor plunge headfirst into the neon abyss of the Goon Cave, armed with nothing but questionable translations, half-finished cocktails, and a deep suspicion of gacha machines. We explore a ヤンキーソング about a man’s doomed life choices, speculate on whether bamboo spears are the ultimate anti-geriatric-robbery tool, and marvel at the inexplicable fact that the world’s oldest manga has been reincarnated as… a bra. Yes, a bra.Somewhere between sake capsules that dispense like Pokémon and the unstoppable meme-force known as 自己防衛おじさん, we also attempt the cultural crime of translating Gen Z slang about gooning and edging into Japanese. It’s high art, low content, and entirely unsafe for public consumption. In other words: just another day in the Happy Hour multiverse.The Sweet Sauce: (Song) "Let's do bad things to our bodies" からだに悪いこと【オリジナル曲】男の人生を唄ったヤンキーソング 作詞作曲 なかのよしのり(Vid) Old man teaches you how to make bamboo spears to defend against foreign home invadors / 竹槍で【高齢者】をねらう【強盗】を防ぐ方法 など4つ、を紹介します 80才 【老後の田舎暮らし】World’s oldest manga is now a bra thanks to Japanese lingerie maker’s art history series【Photos】Gacha capsule sake shop opening in Tokyo to serve up randomized rice wine and liqueurs(Vid) 自己防衛おじさん (Self-Defense Ojisan) (BGM) Ambient & Experimental, jazzpiano Vinyl Mix in Watanabe Manufacturing Co.,Ltd/DJ Asano(Song) Gooners Paradise (Trevor's SUNO)Enjoying the Show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DogePunk2077 and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Thanks for listening, fellow travelers of the ear. 🚀🚀 Yoroshiku and rockets 🚀🚀

Originally released in May 2022, this episode features my conversation with author and investigative journalist Jake Adelstein about his book Tokyo Vice and the hit TV series it inspired. As the first American reporter assigned to the crime beat at Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Jake pulls back the curtain on the yakuza, systemic corruption, and the hidden side of Japanese society. We dive into the stories that shaped Tokyo Vice, the challenges of reporting in Japan, and the high risks—and hard-earned rewards—of pursuing the truth.Enjoying the Show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DogePunk2077 and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Thanks for listening, fellow travelers of the ear. 🚀🚀 Yoroshiku and rockets 🚀🚀

This is Part 2 of a two-part series with historian and Sōtō Zen priest Brian Daizen Victoria, discussing his groundbreaking book Zen Terror in Prewar Japan. In this episode, we dive deeper into the unsettling reality that Zen—often romanticized as a path of peace and detachment—was, in 1930s Japan, deeply entangled with ultranationalist ideology and acts of domestic terrorism. Through the story of Inoue Nisshō and his band of “patriotic youth,” Victoria reveals how spiritual rhetoric and militarist fervor collided in dangerous and surprising ways. If you haven’t heard Part 1 yet, click here to listen. Enjoying the Show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DogePunk2077 and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Like the outro? Check it here at Jeff's SUNO playlist. Thanks for listening, fellow travelers of the ear. 🚀🚀 Yoroshiku and rockets 🚀🚀

Enjoying the show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. Be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DeepinJapanPod and Facebook. For inquiries, reach us anytime at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Finally, don't forget to follow us on SUNO to keep up with all the latest fire, including tracks like: 🔥 Come Get Your Bucket🔥 Certified Senpai (運動会のバカ外人)_______________Ah, yes—another self-styled podcast wandering through the thematic wreckage of contemporary Japan, like two backpackers lost in Don Quixote’s subconscious. What we have here is a pastiche of loosely strung anecdotes, cultural musings, and intoxicated speculation dressed up as commentary. The result? A cacophony of low-stakes banter occasionally brushing against relevance, only to promptly wipe its greasy fingers on the fabric of critical discourse.Let’s begin with tonal balance, or more accurately, the deliberate sabotage of it. This episode careens from the potentially rich terrain of Japan’s aging demographic crisis and the alarming uptick in ultranationalist rhetoric, straight into an imagined consumer product called a Gundam Strong Zero bucket. If this tonal whiplash is intended as postmodern juxtaposition—Baudrillard’s hyperreality rendered in podcast form—it fails to commit. Instead, it reeks of intellectual cowardice: the hosts flirt with meaning only to retreat behind irony and “lol” culture whenever things get heavy. One might call it epistemological blue-balling.The hosts’ conversational style, as gleaned from the summary, resembles the digital equivalent of late-stage barroom philosophy: free-associative, casually self-deprecating, and hopelessly drunk on its own cleverness. Their stories—diet-induced mental fog, AI-generated chips—aren’t stories at all, but rather symptoms of content-brain: the condition where everything must be flattened into anecdote, digested as comedy, and stripped of political or historical consequence.And oh, the cultural analysis—or what passes for it. There’s mention of Japan’s aging population and ultranationalism, both of which beg for sober treatment. These are not just “topics”—they’re existential conditions of the Japanese state. To mention them in passing before pivoting to Tenga products and crisp pizza burgers is the podcasting equivalent of quoting Foucault in a BuzzFeed listicle. The failure isn’t that these topics are raised; it’s that they’re raised and dropped like disposable party props at a WeWork-sponsored philosophy salon.There’s an attempt, feeble and twitching, to explore AI’s impact on creativity and truth—a topic that demands serious ontological engagement. But rather than invoking thinkers like McLuhan (“the medium is the message”) or considering the algorithmic collapse of authorship, the hosts opt instead for… what? A chip story? One can only assume “AI-generated chips” refers to some half-baked techno-fable—perhaps an edible metaphor, though it sounds more like content-padding for the TikTok generation. One longs for an engagement with Stiegler’s pharmacology or even a nod to Murakami’s recursive realism, but alas—we are served banter over ballast.To address whether this podcast contributes to the cultural discourse or merely generates noise, one must consider intention. If this is satire, it is toothless; if it is sincerity, it is incoherent. It floats in the purgatory between the two, where “vibes” reign and critique is neutered by constant self-referential detachment. It wants to be both the drunk uncle and the TED Talk, but ends up as neither.And as for influence? In the broader landscape of Japanese cultural commentary—currently crowded with shallow influencers, sensationalist YouTubers, and click-hungry content farms—this podcast makes a valiant effort to blend into the static. But perhaps there is unintentional genius here. Maybe this is McLuhan’s hot medium gone cold, a non-space of commentary so disjointed, so aggressively unserious, that it reflects our fractured infosphere better than any earnest sociological thesis ever could.But don’t mistake this for a compliment.

*This episode was originally published in August 2021Remember our friend Ted Bonnah, PhD? I’m republishing our podcasts together and putting out a call for support. Ted, a single father navigating a challenging transition to life in Vancouver, could use a hand. You can contribute by donating to his GoFundMe or picking up a copy of his latest book, Heisei Ghosts.Enjoying the show? Please consider supporting us—every little bit helps keep the podcast going. And be sure to join the conversation on X (formerly Twitter) @DeepinJapanPod and Facebook. For all inquiries, you can reach us at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com.Thanks for listening—and for being part of the Deep in Japan community!