The future’s not looking so great for Japan’s Sento Public baths sadly.
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00:00 How to Spot FAKE Waygu Beef
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41 Comments
Am I the only one that thinks that Crhis look younger? It may be the new hairstyle and fit body? Perhaps?
It's a shame about the sento and onsen decline. I'd much rather visit a nice bath where the water's warm and (mostly) clean without ME having to do all the standing around waiting for the water to get warm, then the tub to fill, and then after the relaxing soak having to eventually drain and clean the tub.
I think the real reason is the general problem with the world culture… everyone is too busy to pause for an hour from time to time. It's not that we're busy accomplishing things, but we've made everything around us into chores and jobs, and feel compelled to always be working on something with a progress bar.
I went into Aldi the other day and they had a whole range of "wagyu" products. But also underneath, they were proudly stating that it was 100% British beef, which is so contradictory it just makes zero sense
I worked in book off for 1.5 years and we had depending on which cathegorie english and Japanese alphabet order.. but in most cases the more common products we plased according to Japanese あいうえお かきくけこ etc system.
and them you search for labels usually from left to right so in our case we had arashi at the very right side and x japan pretty close by
hope I could help you.
参考になったら、頗る嬉しいです
Is channel now permanently co-hosted by this other dude?
its just glue, yeh
On the topic of Japanese Hotels not necessarily being good at managing their English hotel listing sites..
I'm travelling to Japan very soon. I booked the hotel with one of largest English hotel listing sites as recommended by google. Roughly a week after I booked I got a phishing email. It was sent trough the hotel listing sites official messaging service and it was sent by the actual hotel. I got the message in their official cellphone app and in my email. The message itself was written with good English and grammar. But apart from that it had all the telltale signs of a scam. Something was wrong with my payment. I needed to verify my credits details. The email was sent in the middle of the night JST. If I didn't act within x amount of hours the booking would be cancelled. I had to click a link to an external website (Though the URL looked like it could be an officially affiliated site).
I had recently had real credit card issues so I was very close to just sending the details over. Luckily I decided to call the hotel listing site up first and verify with them if the message was legit. They immediately told me to ignore the email and not to respond or give them any credit details. They told me to carry on and enjoy my trip.
I asked them if there was a chance the hotel listing was fake. Do I have a real booking or did I just pay my hotel room in advance to a scammer? I later learned all the hotel listing site did in response to that question was to send the hotel an email in English (to the same email that tried to scam me 🤦) asking whether there was a problem with the booking or not.
I can totally imagine some older generation Japanese person barely understanding how services English hotel listing services work. Why they need to update their passwords with regular intervals etc…
In the end I did call the hotel myself using a number I found on their google maps listing and managed to confirm the booking with much effort in broken Japanese. I think once I am there I'm going to make an honest attempt to explain to them that they might need to reset their password both on their email and on any hotel listing site they may use.
Was not expecting mentions of Aphex Twin here! 😀 Good choice!
21:30 hell yeah Aphex Twin
Dear considerate Chris and patient Pete,
Yesssssss! 🎉Yessssss! Yes, yes , yes, fucking yes! 🎊Finally, a mention of the majestic bear on the Abroad in Japan Podcast. You have fulfilled my life's greatest wish. I am ever so grateful to our benevolent lord Broad and solemn knight, Sir Donaldson. My journey ends here, friends. I will meet you in the comments section of the next video. Until then, farewell and tata!
Yours sincerely,
Sayantan.
Chris, I really like to listen to yourpodcast and have been watching your videos since 2014. But those thumbnails just look so enormously stupid, I am sometimes not clicking on videos of yours, because it just looks like cheap rubbish. I know its for the algorithm yadayada, but you yourself stated you dont want to produce low quality videos, so why bow down to yt so much to have those shitty thumbnails. The money from your patreon should be enough to finance your doings and even with a "normal" good thumbnail you would still be financially stable. If you look on your youtube videos in 20 years you will just see silly poses of you. Are you really content with that?
Aphex Twin referenced, hell yeah!
Thanks for the podcast 🙂 was great to take my mind of things for a bit
Standing at the bottom of asso looking up the crevasse 😮
I hear that you can't just start a farm in Japan, gotta have a licence for it…
While I was traveling in Japan I booked a Hotel with a special Discount for People living in Japan by accident and they checked my Passport because as they told me the discount was payed by the government…..
Joey the anime man might know how the record sorting system works there. It sounds daunting, to say the least. Let us know if you ever discover how it's supposed to work.
I wanted to go to a bath house when i went to japan but unfortunately i have tatoos
The issue with Waygu: The problem is that Waygu is a specific breed.
In Japan it is a protected term and is tracked extensively. For a given cut of meat in Japan, you can find out exactly which farm, which cow in the farm, and the parents of said cow as this is all tracked. However before they protected them, Japan allowed some cows and bulls to be exported.
This allowed them to be crossbred. In America for example, they were crossbred with Black Angus. As they are a breed, this allowed those offspring to be marketed as both "Waygu" and as "Black Angus" depending on the market. Same issue in other countries. None of the Waygu is 100% as those are breeding stock.
The real kicker is that each country has different rules (if any) for what percent of the genetic line needs to be _ before they can call it ___. In some places it can be a shocking low amount, at which point it really makes no difference in taste.
Yeah i don't have money to buy a proper wagyu steak and went for a wagyu burger but there's no point to that is it, it was a delicious beefy burger no doubt but the point to wagyu is that layering of fat and meat, when you mince it all up you leave most of the fat on the grill
Why would you get naked with strangers if you don't have to? Bathing facilities have been standard equipment in first world nation homes for over 50 years now so there is literally no reason to bathe in public.
I realize I don't speak for everyone here, but the last thing I want is to be spaghetti bollock naked in a musty room with a bunch of soggy man sausages flopping about the place.
Well jokes on you, look at this WAGU hot dog I picked up at the Circle K!
I was just at a great Sentō not far from Ueno Station but the water was so hot. They have Shogun Burger next to my house but I guess I’m the only person who prefers the umami of a regular Aberdeen Angus steak. Wagyu just tastes greasy to me.
Here in spain we have a lot of restaurant selling expensive burgers and meat cuts claiming its wagyu and in reality most of the times is mix of australian wagyu with angus.
A lot of them even claim that its kobe wagyu when they do not appear in the official list.
Sadly it has become a lot pupular when not only is fake but its worse than galicia and asturias meat
0:25: ! Pete falls in love with a wagyu beef burger.
3:26: ! The speaker expresses their dislike for non-authentic wagyu beef and explains the characteristics of true wagyu beef.
7:22: 😱 Local governments in Japan are using scary wolf robots to frighten bears away from cities due to the increase in bear sightings and attacks on humans.
10:19: 🤔 The speaker discusses the importance of providing proof of address when checking in at hotels and shares a story about writing fake addresses without any consequences.
13:54: 😢 Public bath houses in Tokyo, known as sento, are disappearing as they grow older.
16:53: 🛀 Public bathhouses in Tokyo were initially created out of necessity but are no longer needed as people now have baths at home.
19:52: 🏋️♂️ The speaker is looking for daily activities that are good for the soul and mind.
23:23: 🚜 It would be difficult to have a farm in Japan as a foreigner, but it is possible without a cow.
26:09: 🎵 The YouTuber and a viewer discuss their confusion with the Japanese alphabetizing system in record stores.
Recap by Tammy AI
Chris, you have a ghost in your studio at @25:22 ! 😱
I was disappointed to hear the sento near Asakusa close down for good during the pandemic. That place had great vibes because they cater to tourists more than other places.
25:42 I'd like to think I do something relatively obscure here in Japan as I'm a Ferrari technician. You can see me at Suzuka, Fuji Speedway, etc on raceday.
#FaxMachineQuestion
Hi guys,
I'm a library assistant here in the States who is hoping to return to graduate school to become a proper librarian. For a few years, I've been working in programming at my public library job, helping in varying capacities to develop and implement activities and speakers for our local community. Most of this work has been with our teens.
That got me to thinking: here in the US, public libraries are increasingly becoming community hubs, where we connect our patrons to other local agencies to meet needs they have or, if we can, we provide the programs to meet those needs. Is this the same with Japanese public libraries? What are they like? Do their librarians also need a 4 year university degree and a master's degree on top? How are UK public libraries?
Thanks for any insights!
Cherish from Olean (/OH-lee-anne/), New York
Great podcast! But why are they still using 50fps? I thought that old PAL broadcast standard has been phased out since the release of HD (PS3 comes to mind in 2006). Stick to 30, 60 or more please thanks
I bought a SecretLabs chair a few years ago. Very overpriced and low quality. The covering on both my armrests were ripping within two years.
I understand how this format is alot simpler to make, but i really miss the usual videos u make. I come to youtube for videos, not radio. I do listen to the pods on spotify, but when i come to watch what youve posted on youtube after a while, its only podcast.
Has anyone else noticed the reflection of a person walking in the glass in the background from 21:24 to 21:30? I like to think it is a ghost or something even scarier, like Ryotaro.
Is there a window behind him? Am I crazy for seeing a person walk behind him at about 25:20? Surely that’s a window…
Aphex Twin! 🙌
Wagyu burgers are a waste of time. You might as well just grind up cheap meat because the marbling is useless once its ground up. Also monounsaturated fats are converted when you cook them to saturated fats.
#faxmachine Heyhey my favorite podcast duo! Just wanna say I've been really enjoing listening for the last few years!
I've been planning a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto together with my partner. She's visited before with her family, but it'll be my first visit to Japan. We're visiting in March and will be staying for two and a half weeks. When we were looking for hotels we stumbled upon this odd pattern. I know Japan full of weird stuff, so I probably shouldn't be suprised, but why do so many hotels put the toilet in what seems to be a tiny little closed with a sliding door? Found this really funny.
Also, bonus question: What is the temperature and weather typically like in March?
Thanks a lot for the advice, and 10 bonus points to the one that answered the bonus question 😉
Øyvind from Norway
Oooo! Let's listen to 'Windowlicker'!
I’ve had A5 Wagyu before in Sushi Marvel in Manchester, served as Nigiri, and it has a pretty distinct flavour to it. It must have been the real deal because it cost up to £18 for two pieces, unlike some supermarket sold “Wagyu” burgers which were alright but weren’t much different from other burgers I’ve had not claiming to be as such (I don’t recall the exact price). It’s more like a marketing buzzword which tricks people into assuming a higher quality product really, so I recommend only going into speciality places outside of Japan to experience the real deal if you’re unable to go into the country itself rather than fall for devious tactics.
Chris' wagyu weekend? No?
#faxmachine
G'day Chris and Pete! Long time viewer and recent listener of the podcast. Gotta say you guys have great chemistry and always give me a bit of a chuckle with your antics.
Also thankyou for adding more great metal/Rock bars to check out when I go back over. I would like to add Metal Justice Bar in Ropongi, one of the very few bars there that won't scalp you and have a headbangin' good time!
My question: Chris do you think you'll cover any of the more "traditional" Sports in Japan in the future? (Eg sumo, kendo, karate)
Cheers guys!
Joey of Trash Taste buys LPs and thus might know how it works.