Japan's Biggest Liar

Graffiti all over the wall. Somebody illegally dumped their household trash here. This has been here for weeks. There's even graffiti on the abandoned house. This isn't London. It's not New York. This is actually Tokyo, Japan.

>> Never would I have imagined that a small video about graffiti would cause such a firestorm. For those of you who don't know, this is a YouTuber who goes by Oriental Pearl or Alyssa. A little while back, Alyssa made this video here called "What is Happening to Japan?" Where she goes into various places in Tokyo and talks about criminal activity, teenagers in poverty, and homelessness.

>> It's sad. There's a lot of elderly homeless people in Japan and an alarming number of young homeless, which was not very common in the past. In response, Chris Broad, who probably has the biggest foreigner in Japan YouTube channel based on monthly views, went on to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, the YouTube community tab, and Alyssa's comment section to show his disgust at her video, calling her a grifter who produces sensationalist content designed to make Japan look bad in exchange for views and money instead of, you know, a person who's trying to look after her community and reflect the interests of the local Japanese people. After seeing the comments that Chris made, Alyssa wrote a post on Facebook and made this video asking him to remove the comments, which I get why she said it, but in my opinion, this was a dumb decision because it sounds like she's trying to censor her critics.

>> There's a lot of problems with this post other than just being malicious, unnecessary. I asked him to take it down. It's still up.

>> Yeah, this was a bad move. Chris was accusing her of some pretty harsh and untrue things, but I don't think she should have said that. Anyway, now that we're all caught up, let's talk about this video here that Chris made where he copies Alyssa's title, "What is Happening to Japan." Originally, before Chris made this video, I wasn't really going to talk about this drama outside of a small mention in a different video that I was already working on. However, Chris's video was so dishonest and manipulative that I'm surprised that it wasn't made by Hassan [ __ ]. And the worst part is that you can't tell he's being manipulative unless you know a lot about his channel, have insider information on the subject, and can interpret statistics. So, of course, everyone took Chris aside because his following is much bigger, and it requires at least 10 seconds of research to prove some of his points as false. Well, this video didn't help either, but the lack of fact-checking of Chris's video, particularly from other YouTubers, was disgusting. Now, full disclosure, I've been friends with Alyssa for about a year. She helped out a lot with my Japan trip, so I do have a bias. However, I've been a fan of Chris's channel for probably close to 10 years, so I think that cancels out the friend bias. I'm not taking Alyssa's side because we're friends. I'm taking her side because I think Chris is wrong on this subject and was highly manipulative. And also because in order to make his point, Chris essentially rubber stamps vandalism, which particularly pisses me off because as an American, I'm tired of people constantly defending criminal behavior. It's not a violent riot where people are setting buildings on fire. It's a mostly peaceful protest. Oh, come on. The graffiti is not that bad. There's always been graffiti in Japan. Look, here's some graffiti from the '90s. Therefore, it's okay. That doesn't matter, Chris. Unless the property owner consented to it being there, it's a crime. And it's not wrong for Alyssa to be upset about that. Clearly, Japanese people don't think it should be there because there are anti-graffiti signs everywhere in Japan. Anyway, let's get into Chris's video. The other day, I started receiving messages from people asking me if Japan is Okay, linking a rather ominous sounding video called, "What is happening to Japan?" It wasn't just the title and thumbnail that were ominous, but the description reading, "Is Japan cooked?" I've seen a lot of changes and things seem to be getting worse. In an era where I'm now being sent daily AI videos and photos that sorely misrepresent Japan from bizarre and questionable accounts, it made an almost refreshing change to be sent something produced by a human being.

>> Yeah, why didn't you have a crash out about that problem? I mean, those AI videos constantly spread false information about Japanese culture. Personally, I think that's a much bigger issue as YouTube is flooded with them. So, where's the video about that? Anyway, let's talk about Tokyo. More specifically, a part of Tokyo called Kabuki Cho.

>> For half of the runtime in the video, the creator in question walks through Kabuki Cho in Shinjuku.

>> Sorry about the instant pause, but you might notice that throughout the video, Chris continuously blurs Alyssa's face and her channel name and calls her the creator in question instead of by her name or by her YouTube channel.

>> Why is he blurring her face? Why is he blurring her face out? And no reference to the channel. Oh, no way. No way he did that. Allow me to point out that this is not to protect her from Chris's viewers harassing her, which is something that will happen anytime you criticize someone, no matter what preventative actions you take. But Alyssa has a channel with over a million subscribers. Anyone who would write a mean comment about her already knows who Chris is talking about. So, this is not an altruistic protective move. What's actually going on here is that he's using an old Twitch streamer technique of purposefully not mentioning people by name because big creators know that the easier they make it to find the person they're criticizing, the more followers they will bleed to their opposition because it allows followers to fact check their favorite creator and sympathize with the person that they're criticizing. This is a strategy that Hassan [ __ ] and friends love using so that less people will find out that actually the creator in question is not as bad as you made them out to be.

>> Hassan calls out the haters and slop tubers. Oh my god, all theing haters don't like it. Suck my dick, too. Oh my god, all theing slop tubers.

>> Obviously talking about me here, but he's never going to mention my name. Just in case one person from his audience checks out my channel and realizes that his son is a complete fraud in everything.

>> Chris blurring Alyssa's face is him basically saying, "I'm afraid of losing followers, so I'm going to intentionally make it harder to fact check what I'm saying." I mention this because Chris very clearly tells his audience to not watch Alyssa's content or do any critical thinking for themselves. I don't care how bad you think the content is. Outwardly discouraging your followers from watching the source material for themselves so they can come to their own conclusions is immoral. But you know, I wonder why he would say that. Maybe people would find out that he's lying about some things. Maybe he's avoiding important arguments. Maybe he edited things out of context or said she said things that she didn't say. Well, why don't we get into that? For half of the runtime in the video, the creator in question walks through Kabuki Chaw and Shinjuku, Japan's biggest nightlife district with a reputation for being dirty and gritty, filming bin bags, litter, and homeless people. And it's at this point I need to reiterate, if you don't know Japan, Kabuk Shinjjuku can be a bit of a shock. And in recent years, it's been gentrified more than perhaps anywhere in Tokyo. It used to be genuinely quite dangerous. In the short form content, the same videos show the litter being intercut at times with foreign tourists who are queuing unremarkably to take a photo of the Toho Godzilla statue. I mean, I don't know who edited this, but this shot looks like a bunch of Japanese people loitering, not tourists. So, a real good example of your points. The next shot has tourists in it, which I guess Chris is using to suggest that Alyssa is a racist trying to make people hate foreigners. But also note that Kabuki Cho is a massive tourist spot, so it's really hard to take B-roll footage without showing tourists. More importantly, Chris avoids Alyssa's main point about Kabuki Cho, which is not about trash on the street, but about prostitution being made worse by COVID lockdowns.

>> Right after the pandemic, a lot of runaways from all across the country, even really young kids, middle school and high school age, came and gathered here at Toyoko Koba. So, there were the Toyoko kids, the runaways from Japan all across the country that came to Shinjuku. They'd stay in the manga cafes. They'd work, you know, not legal jobs during the daytime, but you don't see them so much anymore because it became so famous in Japan that the police had to get involved and put a stop to it. And I had never seen anything like this in Japan before. Not only the professional ladies of the night standing out here, but also the amateurs.

>> The narrative from when she was in Kabuki Cho was not primarily about trash or rats. It was about minors fleeing from their homes because school shutdowns from COVID lockdowns were forcing them to be around their abusive parents a lot more. A lot of people don't realize this, but if you have bad parents, school sports and clubs can be a very effective escape from that. So, because these kids couldn't use school programs to escape because they were shut down, teens ran away, and a lot of them were forced to turn to sex work to survive. I mean, Alyssa spends around 20% of the runtime of her video talking about this, but Chris just completely skips over the biggest tragedy in Alyssa's content and moves on to homeless people in Shinjuku, which I guess is easier for him to attack. The area is also synonymous with Tokyo's homeless population as far back as 2003 when the film Tokyo Godfathers shone a spotlight on the long-standing homeless population, which according to the statistics is thankfully going down. And if you walk around there today, compared to 10 years ago, there are far less homeless people.

>> Okay, so Chris has provided us with some numbers about homelessness, so let's fact check them. Now, he did a terrible job of citing his exact resource, but thanks to AI and 7 years of experience, I was able to find this graph. First of all, these numbers seem a little bit low. There's only a couple thousand homeless people throughout the entire country in a population of 120 million. That's very difficult to believe. How are these numbers being collected? This is another problem that people have is that they look at data but they don't have any sort of understanding of how data collection methods work and so they only can look at outcomes and they can't look at processes or you know basically the way that the data was collected. So apparently the Japanese government is notorious for underounting homeless people which is why Oriental Pearl was bringing attention to it. And if you actually look at the paragraph right below the headline, it says that these stats do not count people who live in internet or manga cafes, which is important because this was a major point in Alyssa's video. There's actually a newer article from the same website that also says that manga cafes were not counted. Not having a permanent residence means that these people are still considered homeless. For those of you who don't know, a manga cafe is basically a building full of cubicles with a bed and a computer. And you can stay at them overnight for anything from $13 to $16 a day, which is around $400 to $500 a month. People in Japan do this because you can't get in an apartment unless you have a stable job. And often times you have to come up with the amount of 6 months of rent in advance before they let you live there, which is nearly impossible for some of these people to get. Japan is in serious need for some protective legislation for renters. But how many people are living in manga cafes? Well, here's an article that said they counted 4,000 people just in Tokyo. Just in Tokyo. So, there's no way in hell the homeless numbers that Chris showed are accurate. But don't take it from me. Take it from Joey, Chris's friend from Trash Taste. Apparently, according to a government study just last year in 2023, they found out that only 3,65 homeless people exist in the entirety of the country. If we go back to this Japan today article, they actually look into the fact that hey, the way that these numbers were calculated might be a little bit skewed. Second is the method by which the numbers were collected for parks and rivers. Local government workers visited the sites in the territories and reported the number of homeless people they saw there. So any homeless person out of sight or out of the park at the time of the visit site's visit was not included in the tally.

>> That's interesting. We aren't even talking about them not including the manga cafes here. The numbers that they were counting in the government study weren't even accurate because as Joey goes on to say in his video, there could be like a tent left out, but if a homeless person wasn't there at the time of the tally, they wouldn't be counted. Also, look at what else he says. Nowadays, especially in Japan, there is actually a whole other crisis that is happening which is actually resulting in a completely different demographic slowly becoming homeless. And that is actually kids. They're called poor yoko kids. Some ranging from as young as 14 years old. Maybe that's not on Japan's agenda right now. Maybe they're just too concerned of the whole tourism problem and the whole immigration problem and every other problem that Japan has been, you know, quietly sweeping under the rug to make sure that the rest of the world doesn't know about it. But hey, unfortunately, they've got someone like me who is not afraid to pull the dust from under the rug and show you the unfortunate ugly side to a country that is viewed by many people as a utopian society. I mean, that sounds a lot like what Alyssa said in her video. So, I'll expect that Chris will now do an update accusing Joey of making sensationalist content about Japan for views and money. But going back to the numbers, underounting might not be the only issue with the research. Most of the homeless people living outside are old men. So, the number could be lower, not because Japan has done anything about the homeless problem, but simply because they are dying off and their younger replacements are choosing to live in manga cafes. Either way, this is a really embarrassing level of research that Chris has done. Like, I haven't seen research this bad since the video on Noah Samson. Or maybe Ethan is online. Chris couldn't even read the paragraph directly below the headline that puts the numbers in question. How is it that this kind of incredibly lazy research happens every time I fact check someone? But here's the most egregious part about the whole homeless situation, though it's going to require a little bit of backstory. To start, Chris made a big deal about Alyssa adding additional graffiti to her thumbnail. When I went to take the thumbnail for my video, I quickly noticed a few interesting differences between my original ungraded photos and the thumbnail of her video. It is a rather fascinating game of spot the difference.

>> All right, valid criticism. She said her reasoning for doing this was because she was standing in front of some of the graffiti, so she added a little bit more so that people would get the point. I'm not sure if this is a creative decision that I would have made. But personally, if her claim is that there is more graffiti in Japan and she proves it in the video, then I don't think this creative choice for her thumbnail is the biggest sin in the world. Every creator who is popular sensationalizes their thumbnails in some way, and even Chris admits to doing that.

>> Some criticisms leveled at me is that I also make sensationalist content and that I only show the nice side of Japan. And to that, I would say there's a big difference between sensationalist content and clickbait titles and thumbnails. I hate having to pull a stupid face. I hate my thumbnails and titles, but it is simply a matter of survival on an increasingly crowded platform that doesn't share your content unless it has a high click-through rate. And I tried to make up for the stupid faces and titles by delivering content that does the subject matter justice.

>> Right? So, it's okay when you clickbait your thumbnails and titles, but not when Alyssa does it. It's sensationalizing when other people do it, but when you do it, it's not sensationalizing because you said you don't like doing it. Great copout.

>> Day in my life, living in Tokyo was a mistake. Do you actually mean it was a mistake? So, like, are you going are you planning on moving out? Because I mean, otherwise, this is clickbait. Hey, look. In my most humiliating moment in Japan in 10 years, it's pretty awful. Oh, is it awful? Oh my gosh, what happened to him? He never uses or adopts any form of sensationalistic title in order to get how many? 1 million views. 1 million views. You literally pointed the finger at a person you blurred out telling us how awful she was because of her sensationalistic and clickbaity titles in order to get the views. And you do worse, though, here's the funny thing. It's only been a couple of weeks and now there's like twice as much graffiti on that building that Alyssa used for her thumbnail. So, you could say that she was ahead of her time on this one. Now, as far as the homeless stuff goes, this thumbnail drama is actually not my big issue. I'm just establishing how Chris says he doesn't like people using the editing to distort the truth, even though not long after the upload, more graffiti was put on the building. However, in regards to the homelessness issue, there's a particular clip that Chris shows of Alyssa that makes her look really bad during this part here.

>> A few years ago, a friend showed me a clip of a video in which the same person walked through an economically deprived part of Tokyo filming homeless people. Oh my gosh, this is a rough area.

>> Yeah, that looks pretty awful. It looks like she's making fun of homeless people here. And because of this cut that Chris made, Alyssa showed me that she got tons of comments from his fans saying that she was laughing at homeless people. But that's not what actually happened in this video that Alyssa made. So, for context, let me show you where that audio comes from. In this situation, while she's filming, a homeless guy calls her over to talk to her. They talk for a bit, and this is how the conversation ends.

>> [laughter]

>> Don't you? [clears throat] [laughter] No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Oh my gosh. This is a rough area. Yeah. Yeah.

>> So, the audio that Chris used comes from her talking to a homeless person. And the clip of her laughing is actually her laughing uncomfortably because she was being sexually harassed. Chris decided to cut that up and put it with different B-roll to make it look like she was laughing at homeless people. I mean, that kind of sounds like defamation, buddy. And I know he's aware that what he did was wrong because he cut it out of the video. This is what the video looks like now. A few years ago, a friend showed me a clip of a video in which the same person walked through an economically deprived part of Tokyo filming homeless people under the guise of showing the real Japan.

>> It was in the video and now it's not. So Chris, who is Mr. Morals, cut this moment out in the YouTube editor after people noticed what he did. And you know, maybe this was a mistake, so you would expect an apology or some sort of public acknowledgement of the clip and an explanation for why it was cut. But nope, he tried to memoryhole something that millions of people saw before it was removed, which again sounds a lot like defamation. All right, let's talk about graffiti.

>> The other half of the runtime in these videos was dedicated to Nakamero, a trendy district that's historically one of Tokyo's most artistic neighborhoods.

>> Wait, Chris, that's not true. The second half is not just about Nakameodo. There's a pretty large section of that video dedicated to graffiti in Shibuya.

>> Here we are in Shibuya now. And of course, you're very familiar with the Shibuya crosswalk, which is right ahead of us. But what you're less familiar with is what I want to check out today. Graffiti again next to Louis Vuitton. Check this out. [sighs] This is right by my Chinese school. I have to see this every freaking day. The city actually did come and repaint this whole bridge cuz it looked like that green wall before. But as you see, it's already back. That's a new one. That's a new one.

>> It's really interesting to pay attention to which things that Chris chooses to leave out, especially considering that I've been a viewer for many years. So, I know why Chris might want to leave Shabuya out of his criticism of Alyssa's content despite it being a large section of her video. I also find his reassurance to people in his Twitter crash out that Shibuya is not that bad to be a little suspicious as well. And that's because Chris owns a bar in Shibuya that's really close to that famous crosswalk that Alyssa shows in her video. I've actually been to Chris's bar. I was just there about a month ago. And it was exclusively foreigners, like exclusively his fan base. I don't think any of the locals go there. It's clearly a tourist trap. So, you can understand why Chris might want to forget to mention a place that Alyssa was suggesting had a ton of graffiti and thus a higher crime rate than other places in Tokyo considering that it was not that far from his business. Actually, Kabuki Cho isn't even that far from it either. Like, if you were planning a day trip, you would hit Kabuki Cho/Shinjuku, Maji Shrine, and the big Shabuya crosswalk, which is by Chris's bar, all in the same day. So, again, it's a little suspicious that he chose to not bring up the Shabuya part of her video on his YouTube channel, where it would have far more reach than his Twitter account. But anyway, let's continue with Tokyo's Megado district.

>> A few years ago, I think it was 2019, there was quite a lot of graffiti and the local schools got together to paint over it. And then the graffiti came back again. But when Japanese TV made a video on it, interviewing locals, interestingly, they didn't intercut it with shots of Asia's biggest nightlife district and call it what is happening to Japan. They called it residents express discomfort at 37 graffiti sites found around Nakamero station. And maybe that's why despite having twice the number of subscribers, they only got 100,000 views instead of almost half a million. Silly traditional media attempting to present news in an objective manner in 2025. He's essentially saying that it's fine if Alyssa talks about graffiti, but not if she talks about graffiti and Kabuki Cho in the same video. YouTubers are only allowed to cover one problem that Japan is having per piece of content. Outside of that, after hearing that last point from Chris, I have fully started to believe that he is either [ __ ] or highly manipulative because anyone who is big on this website would know that Alyssa and this Japanese news channel are appealing to different audiences and thus they will get different outcomes. The English market on YouTube is far bigger than the Japanese market because more people speak English. So naturally, just by putting your video out in English, you are more likely to get views. But this is also an example that's in [ __ ] Japanese and so you can't really compare that to an English video. Actually, speaking of, most of the reason that I have an issue with Chris's stance on crime in Japan is because he's saying it in English, meaning that it's not really going to affect the ideas of Japanese people. However, it will have an effect on Westerners who already have incredibly soft on crime stances, which is a part of the reason why America has massive crime rates compared to Japan. After watching that girl get stabbed on a train by a crazy violent felon who was let off when he should have been in prison, "Of course I'm going to get mad when somebody with a big audience on YouTube says in English, "Come on, guys. Graffiti isn't that bad. Actually, sometimes it looks kind of cool, so it doesn't matter if the property owners don't want it there." Anyway, this comparison between Japanese media and Alyssa's channel is [ __ ] for numerous reasons that have nothing to do with Alyssa being an evil propheteer who is sensationalizing Japan for money. What's actually happening is that this Japanese channel is one in a different language and therefore in a different market. Two, it's one of those news channels that uploads like a million videos a day. So none of their videos do particularly well despite their high subscriber count. I scrolled down through two weeks of content and zero videos hit half a million views. Most of their wellperforming videos were about the new prime minister actually. And last, they do their content in the style of old media which young people find boring these days. Also, the title the news company gave the video is really bad and not formatted for YouTube success. But Chris, how are you not able to see this as a channel with 3 million subscribers? Again, he's either [ __ ] or he's being super dishonest here to make Alyssa look bad and he can get away with it because normies don't understand this stuff about media. And on a final note on the graffiti part, outside of his bar being in one of the areas that Alyssa was talking about, I'm not even sure what Chris's issue was because all the Japanese people I see commenting on this in videos are essentially agreeing with Alyssa about the graffiti.

>> So in this case, I don't think Oriental P is exaggerating or sensationalist seeing that much gravity in Japan. It's not usual.

>> So that corner is actually here. Um, it was actually it's actually getting worse 2023 versus now. So, if her point is like, oh yeah, Japan's getting more graffitis everywhere and trash everywhere. Yeah, I didn't know about this myself. It seems like she's actually true.

>> There are also multiple news reports of Japanese people saying they don't want the graffiti there. So, why are you defending criminals by saying it's not that bad, Chris? It is bad. 90% of the graffiti looks like [ __ ] and it's expensive to remove.

>> Living here for all these years with my Japanese husband, I've never seen the vandalism this bad. It's obvious. We can see it every day. It makes me very sad, too, because this is a provable news story going on across Japan, like this recent story from Coobe where two guys graffiti the wall in the middle of the night causing thousands of dollars in property damage. In Nigata, the same thing happened and it cost $40,000 almost to clean this up. It's no surprise that some cities can't afford to clean this up, even though Japanese really do hate graffiti. And there's a theory that this will cause more crime in the area. Allow me to add a fact-checking note to say that the headline said it costs 4 million yen to remove, which is about $26,000, not $40,000. Before it would have been around $40,000, but the yen has gotten much weaker. Well, either way, it's still expensive to remove, but that won't stop Chris from minimizing criminal behavior.

>> So, at this point, you might be thinking, "Okay, right. So, what's what's happened to Japan? What happened next?" Lean in. Come closer. Come over. That was it. That was literally it. In a country of 120 million people, they were all cooked because of some bin bags in a red light district and some spray paint on a wall down six or seven streets in the capital city. Again, he's avoiding the issue of child homelessness that was brought up in the video. That was the primary reason that she was in Kabuki Cho. As for the title and the description one, no one reads the description of any video ever unless they're clicking on a sponsor link or donation link or the creator directly tells people to look. So, no one is reading this here before the video and thinking, "Oh my god, Japan is cooked." Because no one ever reads the description before watching any video. Two, realistically, I don't think either of those are saying that it's the end of Japan. I think taken into context with the video, it's just like, hey, there's a lot of graffiti in Japan and it keeps getting worse. Japan might be cooked in terms of graffiti. Also, there are some other problems, which I think is a fair point to make because as Chris's friend Joey said earlier, most foreigners seem to have this idea that Japan is this magical fairy tale anime land where everything is great and no bad stuff ever happens. I don't think it's a problem to talk about the issues that Japan is having like the economy or the constant pressure to be an alcoholic or the gambling or the lowering birth rates or the mass availability of pornography with no barriers to keep children from seeing it and how that might be turning people into porn addicts who don't want a relationship. There are plenty of things to talk about and just because you Chris don't think graffiti is a big deal doesn't mean Alyssa can't feel that way. Clearly, Japanese people think it's a problem, and they also have the perception that if they allow for crimes like vandalism to grow rampant, then it will invite in more serious crime. Now, statistically, I don't know if this is true, but I'm inclined to believe in whatever crimereventing ideology that Japan has because there is so much less crime there compared to America. Okay, but let's take a pause here because I think Chris would say that that's not his core issue with Alyssa's content. Chris had a problem with Alyssa's video because it's a part of a growing trend of sensationalist content creators who are making content at the expense of Japan and talking about its downfall. Well, for one, does this content even have an effect on Japan? It's all in English, so Japanese people probably aren't watching it. Two, if this is such a massive trend, then why is Alyssa the only person that you bring up in the video? Surely, you have at least one other example. Now, Chris brings up Johnny Somali, but that's not the same type of content. And the suggestion that talking about homeless people in Shinjjuku is going to inspire a million Johnny Somali to come to Japan is [ __ ] Plus, I think that maybe Johnny Somali and Vatitali going to prison forever for nuisance streaming is probably a pretty big deterrent from that kind of behavior. This might be a shock to Chris as he has done nothing but run positive PR for petty crimes. But the answer on how to stop those nuisance streamers is just to enforce the law and put them in prison or revoke their ability to come to Japan. I know it's shocking for a Westerner to hear this, but if you want to stop criminals, then put them in jail. All right, speaking of other stuff that pissed me off about Chris's video, there's a reason why I related Chris to Hassan [ __ ] multiple times. A part of that is because Chris is in the same social circle as Hassan. So, it's not ridiculous to believe that they've talked before, but also he keeps using fan favorite disinformation tactics that Hassan and his stupid fan club love to use. For example, if you can't find someone saying something bad, then go to the most radical comments on their videos and use that to accuse them of saying what the comments say.

>> If you look at the comment sections, particularly on those shorts, you will see the most vile, hateful, angry comments that you can find.

>> I'm sorry, that one was actually funny. I mean, if you think that someone saying, "Looks like Japan is enjoying the benefits of diversity," is as vile as the internet can get, then allow me to point you in the direction of all the people who cheered on Charlie Kirk getting murdered. Or the people who said that Arena Zerutka deserve to be stabbed on a train because white people deserve things like that. I mean, you're really reaching on this, Chris. This is probably the most polite, mean comment section that I've ever seen. Were these really the worst comments that you could find? But I see what you did there. You couldn't find Alyssa saying these things that you know your audience would find offensive. So, you had to go into the comment section and use what other people said to make everybody think that Alyssa believes what the commenters are saying. For longtime fans of this channel, you might remember Noah Samson using this technique of let's look at the worst comments I found to get people to think that I hate Jews during the Ilimation drama, which is just so ironic considering that just a few months later he would start uploading non-stop Jew hatred content. And obviously I don't hate people for being born Jewish. But as for Chris, he's trying to convey that Alyssa doesn't like foreigners and she's trying to make other people hate foreigners for money, which obviously is not the case. She obviously disagrees with these comments, considering that Alyssa at multiple points in her video tries to lower the temperature on the anti-forigner sentiment. Here's an example from the video that Chris is reacting to where she directly addresses these types of comments and says, "Hey, we don't know who's doing the vandalism." When [clears throat] I did a short video the other day about the changes I've seen in Japan, the comment section was wild and I did not expect that. Everyone had something to say about who done it. You know, a lot of fingerpointing. It was this group. It was definitely them. It was whatever. We don't know who did the graffiti. It's not like I'm saying graffiti is a new thing. It's never existed in Japan before. What I'm saying is I see changes over the years and there's places where there's more graffiti than I've ever seen before.

>> She's saying that we don't know who did the graffiti to try to stop the anti-forigner comments. Now, honestly, to be fair, do I think this was an effective way of doing that? No. Sorry, Alyssa. She should have said it at the start of the video to prevent the more prejudice people watching from making assumptions early on. In fairness to her, though, Alyssa doesn't do a lot of controversial content. In fact, she actually tries to avoid it. So, she doesn't know to do the stuff that I'm recommending. She doesn't have a sense of how much where you place things in your videos matters when you're talking about negative subjects. But whether or not her action was effective, if you watch the whole video, which I hope Chris did, if you watch the whole video, you can see that Alyssa is trying to get rid of the anti-forigner sentiment. So, her motivation is clear. And it's even clearer if you watch multiple videos from her. Though, wouldn't it be a shame if someone made a video with 1.8 8 million views on it that directly blames foreigners for vandalism and thus spreads anti-forigner sentiment.

>> Don't carve your [ __ ] name into the bamboo trees of Kyoto's Arashyama forest, as has happened with over a 100 trees, often damaging them irreparably to the point that they have to be chopped down.

>> Why is it okay when you complain about vandalism but not Alyssa? though, despite the fact that she obviously does not like all the anti-forigner sentiment going on in Japan, Chris accuses her of promoting it anyway, which caused a lot of people to suggest that she's some sort of bigot. Bro, what is with white people? They like they have to wherever they go, they have to do Tyler Olivivera style videos. I think complaining about foreigners in Japan as a foreigner is the most insane thing I can think of, brother. You're the foreigner. Like, what are you talking about? Hassan is reacting to that moment where Chris says that Alyssa used B-roll footage of foreigners in Kabuki Cho and was suggesting that that footage of foreigners was malicious because it's put next to pictures of garbage bags, which has to be one of the most [ __ ] points of evidence that he uses to say that Alyssa is anti-forigner because Kabuki Cho is a huge tourist spot. I mean, how the hell do you take B-roll in Kabuki Cho without catching tourists? That is genuinely difficult. Unless you're thinking, "Well, Chris Broad might react to my video and accuse me of being a bigot, so let me just make sure I don't catch a foreigner in this footage on accident when I talk about the problems of this area." Like I said, this guy is either an idiot or highly manipulative. Where are the critical thinking skills? Though to be fair, Chris's main point here is that Kabuki Cho has gotten better. But he's still ignoring Alyssa's point of, "Hey, the government did some things during CO and now it's getting worse again, which is an okay point to make, even if it's still better than it used to be as it's going back downhill." Anyway, Chris continuously tries to relate her to hatred of foreigners at multiple points in his video.

>> And coupled with the fact there's rising anti-forign sentiment in Japan. It makes me concerned and uncomfortable.

>> Right, that's what this is about. He's mad about the new prime minister of Japan. He's mad because she wants to put reforms on tourism and foreign entry into the country. Now, why would Chris be unhappy about that? Well, I just so happened to notice that Chris's entire business relies on foreign travel. His YouTube channel is essentially a channel that promotes Japanese tourism. His bar only has tourists in it. He runs an eSIM card business, which is a tourist business. For those of you who don't know, eims are how you get internet on your phone in Japan. Last, Chris has been featured on the channel Tokyo Creative numerous times. Tokyo Creative is a tourism marketing agency, so I'm sure Chris is on that channel for a reason. And make no mistake, postcoid lockdowns, tourism is a huge industry in Japan. Like, it's millions of people per year.

>> Since the last time I've been in Japan, I've been This is my third time now.

>> Yeah.

>> I've seen a lot more [ __ ] white people out here.

>> Oh, for sure.

>> And I don't like it. [laughter]

>> All right, I get to see a white guy living here. I don't like it. Okay. [laughter]

>> I feel Okay. I feel that when you show up.

>> 2024. I think we talked about it last episode. It's the most amount of foreign tourists like ever.

>> Yeah.

>> It wasn't even close.

>> Yeah. I don't think it's going to go down.

>> And it's all in Tokyo. Like everyone goes to Tokyo. It's not like America where you'll get it mixed in like New York, you'll get Chicago, you'll get whatever, you know? It's all in Tokyo pretty much.

>> I mean, also Osaka and Kyoto. But yeah. Why do you think Chris opened up a bar in Tokyo right next to the Shabuya crosswalk, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Japan? I was there on a random weekday in October, and the place was full. I had to wait to get in. So, I guess like good business move, it's working. But also understand that Chris has a financial interest in the tourism industry growing and making sure that Shibuya maintains a good reputation because tourists are worth a shitload of money. As for this Tokyo creative company, they do paid sponsorships that are targeted at tourists. Here's Chris and his fiance or whatever doing a paid sponsorship for East Japan Railways on that channel.

>> So today we're going to take you around to some of our favorite spots and show you why we love it so much. So today's video is sponsored by the East Japan Railway Company. They have just opened up the Japan Rail Cafe and you can pop in there and get some information about your trip.

>> Some of you might have noticed that the tourist standin for that ad was also a YouTuber. Hidden secret maybe, but a lot of these foreigner and Japan YouTube channels are being paid by the government or private companies to garner interest in tourism. Here's a different video where it looks like Chris was again sponsored by JR Lines that got millions of views. For those of you who don't know, Japan Railways is like a conglomerate that is the train company that you use in Japan. This is a huge business. Like, he was probably paid a lot if this was a sponsor. And I'm fairly certain it was a sponsor as personally I would never include a direct link like this to a huge business in the description of a video unless I was getting paid. A YouTuber would be stupid to devalue their brand with free advertising like that. Here's another 6 million view video that looks like it was sponsored by Japan Railways except it looks like the link was removed or he forgot it. Today Riot and I have been invited by JR East, the company that owns the bullet trains to try Grand Class for the first time ourselves with rare access to film inside the cabin. If you are a foreign tourist, you can take advantage of the JR East rail parks where for 5 days and 19,000 yen, you can go anywhere you want in all of Tohoku region. It's a fantastic offer.

>> When you travel around Tohoku using JR East pass, do not forget to take this welcome card. It's like a cash card.

>> For more information on how to grab the JR East pass, you can find the details in the description box below.

>> Again, this almost certainly was a paid sponsor for Japan Railways. They also own the welcome Suika card that was showed. I mean, it sucks that it was filmed right before the lockdown, so J.R. probably took a hit, but it is an evergreen video, so I'm sure they got their money back eventually. I would be shocked if Chris wasn't paid a considerable amount of money for this video. So, let's talk shop for a second. If you're not brand safe, you don't get these types of sponsors. You guys have no idea of the insane amounts of money that I have lost just by covering controversial topics. From what I know about brand deals, I am easily losing into the six figures per year because of the topics that I cover. And these are small YouTuber sponsors, not a massive conglomerate like Japan Railways. This is huge money. You think creators make a lot of money on Google AdSense? The real money on social media is made with brand deals, especially if you can do niche audience content like Japanese tourism. However, if you want to make the big bucks, you have to be squeaky clean or brands will not sponsor you. Like, you can lose hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars by not being brand safe. So, here's where I'm going to be less generous towards Chris. Personally, I don't think he merely forgot to talk about the teen runaways in the Kabuki Cho section, which was a significant part of Alyssa's video, and it was her big argument for why certain things are getting worse in Japan. I think he didn't talk about that topic on purpose, because talking about bad stuff happening to minors is very much not brand safe. And I imagine that it's extra not brand safe for a guy who's trying to be buddy buddy with a bunch of tourism companies, especially considering that Kabuki Cho is a big tourist area and some of the topics in Alyssa's video might deter a tourism. So if Chris talks about this stuff, he could potentially lose hundreds of thousands of dollars from not getting future sponsorship offers. Or he can conveniently just keep his mouth shut on that part of Alyssa's video and go over points that are easier to win on. It doesn't matter if Chris had a sponsor on the video or not. If a brand sees you doing things that aren't brand safe, they just won't contact you for future deals. Or if you've been negotiating a contract, they might just ghost you and they'll almost never tell you why. So understand that there are certain things that he will not talk about because it will cost him a shitload of money. And also understand that he's not exactly transparent about how him being in the tourism business affects his bias against Alyssa's video. And also again, and furthermore, the lack of transparency in general is to the extent where if I'm right about these being sponsors, they might be an FTC violation in America because in America, you're supposed to make it obvious that you're being financially compensated to promote a product. Last, Chris is not very transparent about the fact that his business structure obviously heavily incentivizes him to only talk about how great Japan is. And the claim that I show only the overromanticized utopian version of Japan is simply ridiculous. Does this look romanticized? Is

Is this a utopia? Does that look romanticized? But wait, in the video, he said he does talk about bad stuff. Look, he talked about a natural disaster. You've got to be kidding me, Chris. That is not the same thing as saying, "Hey, the government is lying to you about the homelessness problem and their decision to close down schools during COVID led to a bunch of domestic abuse and runaways."

But that's not my only issue with Chris's line of argumentation on this topic. Because one of the videos that he cites where he's talking about the negative parts of Japan is basically an advertisement for a luxury strawberry company, a wakeup phone call business/fishing company, an advertisement for a chopstick company, and a small hotel.

So, this is Ichigor World. Literally strawberry world. And in this greenhouse alone, there's over 12 tons of strawberries. And now I'm going to go and eat them all. These are the most premium strawberries that you can purchase here. They're literally called Migaki Ichigo. Polished strawberries. And if you look at them, there we go. Look at that. The absolute best strawberries money can buy. 5,000 yen for a box at $50. But each and every one of these strawberries has been cultivated to absolute perfection.

Does this not look like an ad? These strawberries are so perfect. Here's how much they cost. This is the company. Make sure the box is in frame with the company logo so people can see it. These are all notes that a brand would give you if they're sponsoring you. And luxury strawberries are a big tourist item.

There's also this link in the description and it appears to be a small hotel or an inn. This is a place that he has visited before and the owner thanks him for promoting her business. Now, I don't know Japanese law. However, like I said, in America, if you're being paid to promote someone's business or receiving compensation, it is illegal to not disclose that, but it may not be illegal in Japan. I know the Japanese government will pay YouTubers to make videos advertising certain spots or certain businesses that tourists can go to. He might have received money for that on this video and he might not legally have to disclose that.

However, assuming that I'm wrong about all this and he received no sponsorship money or government money for this video, he still vastly misrepresented what it was. He says, "I talk about the negative issues that Japan is having. I'm not always positive, but when you watch the video, the content is completely positive and he's basically advertising businesses the whole time." Not to say that these aren't good businesses. I probably would buy these strawberries. And the owner of that inn had a really tragic yet compelling story. Her loss was very sad. However, that's not what he said the video was because the implication when he says utopian and sits that next to what he's accusing Alyssa of is that he's talking about the real controversial issues that Japan is having. And he's not afraid to speak up about things even if that might make him or Japan look bad. But that's not what he's doing here. He's talking about how great everything is or how good of a job people are doing. He's literally romanticizing.

Listen to the intro. "I've come to take a look at the past, present, and future of the region. To hear the incredible stories of the people whose destinies were forever shaped by the tsunami. From a destroyed farm that went on to cultivate Japan's most expensive and luxurious strawberries to an inventor who redesigned one of the world's most wasteful products. We'll meet the fisherman who lost everything but went on to redefine their industry. And hear the inspiring story of It Kunnel, the owner of an inn who lost her home and her family but refused to close her business. These are the extraordinary stories of what happened after the tsunami."

Does that clip not fit the definition of romanticizing? Now, he shows a second video that I was able to find. I think he only showed two. It's hard to tell because he didn't do the best job of citing the exact videos of where the footage he used came from. The second one didn't have all the product placement, but it's not really a risky topic. No sponsor is going to drop you over a video about Fukushima, and no one's going to say, "Wow, this guy's a real [ __ ] for sharing those people's heartwarming stories."

Also, I have yet to hear Chris talk about any problem that Japan is facing that would deter a tourist. So again, even if none of this is sponsored content or paid for by a local tourism group, at the very least, these evergreen videos are still funneling people into his tourism business. He's not taking risky positions or brave stances or really doing anything that would harm Japan's reputation. So, I think he was completely misrepresenting himself there. I mean, this video here was the most advertiser friendly pro-Japan [ __ ] that I've ever seen. And mix that with the endorsement from the Japanese lady who said how effective Chris's video was at bringing in new business. It's like an advertisement to advertisers. It's not dystopian to talk about how heroic Japanese people are. This type of content is exactly what would make people believe that Japan is a utopian society.

But, you know, I saw this live stream clip where Chris is talking to his YouTuber friend Connor, and there was something he said that caught my interest. "I'm sure people will react and dredge things up and there'll be lots of horrible coming my way, but that's the price I pay for it and that's I I've accept that." What exactly are you afraid of people digging up? Is this it? Is it the fact that a lot of your videos are not done out of journalistic integrity, but are just paid advertisements? I mean, genuinely, is this an FTC violation?

He's clearly advertising tourism products and says in the video that you can only get a JR pass if you're a tourist. And the welcome Suika debit card is specifically for tourists because it's only valid for a month. You primarily use these cards to ride the train without having to buy a ticket. But Japanese people or foreign residents get the green Suika card or use the phone app. They don't use the red card. That's for tourists. Also, make sure that you show your friend buying food with his card so that tourists know that it's not just for the train. And further note that this is probably not his personal card because it's a red tourist card. It was probably loaded with money and given to him by Japan Railways for the ad. This guy is a resident. So if he was spending his own money, then why wouldn't he just use a green Suika card? This moment looks like compensation for doing an ad. Why would you spend your own money to film an advertisement for someone else's product? I'm saying this because the implication is that Chris and his friend paid for everything themselves.

"This is it. This is the the pinnacle of railway travel. It doesn't come cheap though. It is about $750 to ride in this seat from Tokyo to Hakodate in Hokkaido. As amazing as Grandlass was, I'm not sure I could justify spending my pocket money on it again anytime soon."

This makes no sense. Why would you burn $700 on a ticket plus a hundred or so dollar ticket for the other Shinkansen ride that was shown in the video? Because this is an ad, so you have to start by showing how great the economy option is for the people who can't afford first class. I'm still in awe of the amount of seat pitch you get on the standard seats. These seats here are what 98 98 cm of pitch. I can barely reach the seat in front of me if I outstretch my arm. And I've got a normal human sized arm.

So, it's those tickets plus the $1 to $200 economy train ride home. Why would you burn all this money and possibly pay for your friend's ticket for being in the video when you could easily just have Japan Railways pay for this stuff? That would be financially stupid considering they already pay creators for advertisements. A year later, Chris took a sponsorship from them. And this isn't like a critical product review that the company wouldn't like, so of course they would pay for a video like this. All Chris does the whole time is glaze Japan Railways. I think the only negative thing he said was that it was too expensive for first class. But he's also like, even though it's too expensive, you could buy the ticket for a special occasion.

Would you ride this grand class again though, Rio? Would you ever do it? "Oh, yeah. I would. Lovely." Of course he would. What situation would you consider using Grand Class yourself? "My second honeymoon." Your second honeymoon? "No way." This is not a paid sponsorship.

Now, Chris isn't in America, but you know, the video is in English, so part of the target audience for this ad clearly is Americans. I don't know if the FTC would have any legal jurisdiction over this, but they do have this nice set of social media guidelines that can be found here. Even if he isn't legally at fault here, if this was a paid ad by Japan Railways, I certainly think he is morally at fault. The guidelines say that you have to make it obvious that you're being compensated. But if I look at this as an average viewer, I would not be able to tell that this is an ad. I only recognize this as a paid sponsorship because I'm a YouTuber. I've done brand deals before and I know how sponsorships work.

So, Chris, if you're being financially compensated for this video in any way, like being given free tickets or a discount or free food or being paid a flat rate and not disclosing that to your audience, then you're a real piece of [ __ ]. Like, that is super deceptive if that's true. Certainly, if I wasn't being financially compensated for something that looks this much like a paid sponsor, I would make it very clear to my audience that I wasn't getting money, but this is like sort of an open secret amongst Japan YouTubers. A lot of these foreigner and Japan channels are being paid to advertise tourist attractions, and they aren't all super open about videos being sponsored.

Okay, full disclosure, this is editor Sean doing this at the last minute. Normally, I would weave this in smoothly so you wouldn't know it's last minute, but I'm tired. It's been over 2 weeks and I just want to get this video out. So, if there are any continuity errors past this point because I don't want to re-edit everything, that's why. Some of this video I had to record while I was sick, so I'm sure you heard that because I didn't have time to re-record the audio. Anyway, this whole Tokyo creative thing is a huge rabbit hole and a lot of creators that you might recognize are openly a part of it, which is fine. Most creators who have a decent-sized following have brand representation.

Chris has since moved on from Tokyo Creative, but now he has his own company that he runs called Sekai Studios, where you can see on the website that their business interest is in promoting tourism. This is something that you can just Google, which again is fine. That's all well and good. What's not fine, though, is the disclosure to the viewer. As I said earlier, I've watched Chris's channel for close to a decade, I believe, and I didn't know any of this stuff until the past two weeks. I say that because these old videos very much look like advertisements for Japan Railways. I didn't know that when I first saw them. And if they are, my big issue is the extent that Chris went to make you believe that it wasn't an ad. Which begs the question, what other videos are ads?

For example, this video where he goes to a racetrack with Connor that is like $30,000 a person. This video is definitely an ad for that racetrack as well as Epidemic Sound. The good part though is that in this case, I think he makes it pretty clear that he was being sponsored by Epidemic Sound. And more importantly, he makes it clear that they were being given track time for free. "The Garagara Club is one of the most exclusive members only driving circuits on the planet. The team here kindly gave us access to the track. And look, we're a bit out of our depth here because a full permanent membership can cost up to 49 million yen. So, a very big thank you to the folks here for letting us use their track."

Do you see how that was different from the Japan Railways video? In this case, when he openly states that there is no way he could afford this, he's making it clear that he didn't pay. So, when he does an ad for the racetrack later in the video, the free use of the club was his reimbursement. But the problem is that these channels don't always make it that clear.

All right, that's the end of the last minute edit. Either way, it is still very clear to me that Chris has a massive financial incentive for calling Alyssa a liar because of what she talks about. And he has a massive incentive for avoiding important and difficult issues that Japan faces, especially the ones that might negatively affect tourism like crime and homelessness. The moral grandstanding here is just ridiculous, you know, considering the pro tourism brand that he owns. And it's also ridiculous because he talks in the video about how he just had to speak out. "I had to say something. I chose to bring attention to it publicly. I hate myself sometimes that I can't keep my mouth shut on certain things, but when you feel something is profoundly wrong in here, you have to talk about it."

He just had to speak out because he's such a good person who will make false defamatory edits to make his opponents look bad. So, when Chris cries about this [ __ ], I have a hard time believing that it's not actually because he's afraid of losing money from lower amounts of tourism. I don't think he really cares that much about misinformation. He spreads tons of misinformation in his videos due to lazy fact-checking, if I'm being generous, or he's intentionally doing it to keep his sponsors and protect his tourism business.

"It is increasingly hard to compete when you're producing videos to a higher standard, when you have to fact check everything. What I'm saying is social media platforms don't care. They don't reward accuracy. They don't reward nuance or objective reason. They reward clicks. They reward attention. They reward sensationalism. Journalistic integrity really doesn't count for much online, unfortunately. Uh, to an almost dystopian degree."

Bro, you do like the worst kind of journalism. You obscure your resources to make it harder for people to fact check you, and you actually go out of your way to tell people to not watch the source material. You essentially defamed Alyssa with that homelessness edit and tried to cover it up after millions of people saw it instead of doing a retraction or making some sort of effort to let people know that she wasn't making fun of homeless people. Not just that, but you remove important context at multiple points in the video. And then you tell your audience that Alyssa believes the exact opposite of what she actually believes. You really know better than Hassan [ __ ] This is the exact type of journalism that he does. And I'm not shocked at all that Chris is friends with Connor and Lewig, who are both friends with Hassan. Remember when Hassan was on Trash Taste right after Ethan Klein's content nuke, which was after Hassan had been promoting terrorism for over a year? These guys sat there and tried to run positive PR for him for 2 hours now. I don't know if Chris and Hassan are friends, but since Hassan has been to Japan multiple times and hangs around people in Chris's social circle, "I love visiting Tokyo." I wouldn't be shocked if they've had a conversation before. Maybe it was about journalist integrity or lack thereof.

"This dude seems like a douche me." "No, Chris is the man." "No, Chris is the [ __ ] man. I really I like Chris a lot."

Around this event, Chris has stated that there are all these issues that he has, but he has kept quiet. He's been the bigger man and held his tongue, but I find it really convenient that the one time he does speak up just so happens to be on an issue that affects his income. What a coincidence. What a coincidence that Mr. journalistic integrity over money was just bitching about a video not doing well at the same time that he attacked Alyssa.

"One thing about the um YouTube and creating videos and stuff is that it does feel like right now there is a massive reward for just making videos that just lie or uh play on people's kind of political leanings." "It's scary. I mean." "Even look at my video. It's got an insane number of views in a very short space of time." "Yeah, it's really unfortunate when a creator lies and gets an insane number of views in a short period of time." "I'm sure a lot of people are clicking on it waiting to be angry about something and it's probably not what they expect." "And it's sad cuz you you put so much effort into the the recent wacky weekend. It obviously isn't going to do as well. It's not a sensation." "I mean, racing around. I mean." "It's a great video. The video that upset me the most this year was the volcano documentary we spent three or four months working." "It was always a tough." "It was a weird one. I mean I get most people don't really care about volcanoes in everyday life and I'm glad it's still got 700,000 views but." "It it it influences the choices we make."

Boohoo. Welcome to YouTube. The last thing viewers want to hear is a creator crying about how their video didn't do well. Has anyone ever heard me complain about a 10 out of 10? Right. It's because the audience doesn't care. If they cared, they would have watched the video. Like, I have a really hard time sympathizing here when you call my friends content lazy slot content, which is yet again another Hassan strategy, demeaning all the work that goes into your opponent's videos. I swear I've watched that stoastic terrorist animal abuser let his [ __ ] chair react to other people's work that took over a week or more to make, and he has the audacity to call other people's content slop content. What work do you do, Hassan?

Now, I don't have a problem with live streamers reacting to content as long as there's actual commentary on the video, but to pretend that watching someone else's video is more work than it took to create it is like criminal levels of dishonesty. Anyway, let's take a look at this for a second because we haven't really looked at Chris's social media post. First, he starts out by saying, "Look for bad things and you'll find them. Look for good things and you'll find them." But unfortunately, positivity doesn't drive clicks. Chris, most of Alyssa's views come from positive content. So, I have to say that this no nuance take is very negative, sensationalist, and not very reflective of reality.

Next, he says, "If you enjoy Oriental Pearl, oh wow, he's saying her name now that it's not on his main social media platform and he's less likely to bleed audience members. If you enjoy Oriental Pearl, allow me to recommend you a few of her videos." White Girl Speaks Japanese. Japanese people shock, surprise, amazement. There's also White Girl speaks Japanese. You won't believe what the locals did next. Wow, he is really harping on her race here. Last I checked, Alyssa never mentions her race in her titles. Why are you so insistent on bringing that up? You're saying it like a slur. And my personal favorite, Japanese react to white girl speaking Japanese. Sugoi, incredible, man. He is so jealous. Is he also friends with Misk? Guys, don't watch Alyssa. Her content is stupid. I'm the real content creator. Watch me.

The real stupid thing here is that he's acting like giant displays of skill hasn't been a huge market since like the beginning of time. They literally have a show for it called America's Got Talent that has tons of viral clips. Though, the bigger reason that it is insulting for him to call Alyssa's content slop content that takes no effort is because he clearly doesn't understand why a video like this does well. Like, why does this video have 47 million views on it? Well, it's because she's speaking three different languages in it fluently. Not only that, but she picked a topic that addresses a common anxiety that people have and debunks their preconceived notions by saying that if people are speaking a foreign language around you, they probably aren't saying anything bad.

"In these 10 years of living in China and Japan, I've sometimes caught people talking about me, but I've never caught anyone saying anything bad. That is the truth. Not saying that it doesn't happen, but a lot of it is definitely in our heads." To make a 15-minute video essentially suggesting that this girl is a racist or hates foreigners is ridiculous. How about this video? Why did it do well? Maybe it's because she speaks four different languages in it. Can you do that, Chris? This is not slop content. The hard work is the decade of studying for ridiculous hours to be able to speak Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and English would be the fourth language. But saying that this is easy would be like watching America's Got Talent and going, "Well, that's not that hard. They just did a 60-second performance." ignoring the years of practice that it took to be able to do that 60 seconds. He speaks Japanese, so he should know that it's a lot of work to get to Alyssa's level at Chinese and Japanese. I mean, unless his fluency level isn't that high, that is possible. But she took graduate courses in college with classes that were completely in these languages, her fluency level is very high. On top of that, just from talking to Japanese people in Japan and through speaking lessons, I do think that Japanese people get a lot of exposure to foreigners because of tourism. However, I don't think very many Westerners in Japan speak Japanese at more than a very basic level.

"According to a survey to foreign workers, about 70% can't speak Japanese well. Among them, 30% hardly speaking and about 50% only manage a basic conversation. Another survey to foreign resident says just about 20% thinks that they able to speak enough." But he finds it totally unsurprising as many foreigners only stick to other foreigners. So, it's genuinely impressive for someone to start the conversation in Japanese and then switch to Chinese. I know people have a skewed idea of how much work it is to learn a foreign language because of all these ass hat fake polyglots who pretend to speak 15 languages at like 20 years old and tell you that you can be fluent in Japanese in a year with 30 minutes of study per day, which is an incredibly unrealistic expectation. Nobody gets fluent in Japanese in one year. Being able to say your name and your age and what hobbies you have in a video that you can edit does not mean that you are fluent in a language. So where's the video on this? Chris, why don't you speak out against that?

Anyway, the amount of effort that it takes to be able to do what Alyssa does is at least 4 hours of language practice per day for 5 to 10 years. Alyssa spends a crazy amount of time studying languages. It's at least 4 hours per day. She's a big fan of language schools, and some of those language schools have you doing like 6 hours a day between class time and homework. Even though it's this much work, Chris is still like, "Alyssa's content is so easy to make. I could film it in an afternoon. I mean, the filming part, yeah, of course you can. You have a full team. Alyssa does this by herself."

"It is increasingly hard to compete when you're producing videos to a higher standard when you have to fact check everything. The creator of this video claimed it took 50 hours to produce this video, a claim I find to be quite frankly baffling. I'm not sure where the 50 hours went. And you might think, well, he does sound kind of jealous now. Maybe she's right. Maybe he's just not getting the views. And I say far from it. I could go out and make this content in one afternoon in Tokyo. What I'm saying is social media platforms don't care. They don't reward accuracy. They don't reward nuance or objective reason. They reward clicks. They reward attention. They reward sensationalism. Journalistic integrity really doesn't count for much online, unfortunately."

I mean, at least for your response video, your journalistic integrity and fact-checking ability is dog [ __ ]. I think this aspect about social media actually works in your favor. So maybe you could do the filming for this and have other people finish the video for you in 24 hours. However, you don't have the language skills to do what Alyssa does in most of her popular content. Like I can't understate how petty Chris is in this video and around this whole event. And it's that mixed in with how he straight up sensationalizes, for lack of a better word. He sensationalizes the level of income that Alyssa made from the video that he didn't like as if it were generational wealth. The most unsettling thing is it's never been easier to monetize sensationalist slop content. And if you do it, you'll be richly rewarded for it. Uh, case in point, this video, the creator pointed out, made $1,500, which is a seriously impressive amount of money going around filming some bin bags and some spray paint in a video that would have taken a matter of hours to record. I mean, that's not that much money for a YouTuber, Chris. How much were you paid to do those tourism propaganda videos for Tokyo Creative? How much did you get paid to advertise Japan Railways? I'm sure it was multiple times what Alyssa made on this video.

"Uh, case in point, this video, the creator pointed out, made $1,500, which is it." Right? That's not that much money to a YouTuber. Later in the video, he's like, "Wow, guys, if people learn they can make $1,500 by filming a video in Japan, then we're just going to get endless nuisance streamers like Johnny Somali." Chris, not only is it messed up to say that Alyssa is the same as Johnny Somali because she doesn't like graffiti, but $1,500 doesn't even cover the plane ticket. That amount is not making anyone think pre-recorded nuisance content in Japan is some get-rich quick scheme. To compare her to Logan Paul or Johnny Somali is ridiculous, especially considering that if you actually watch the source material, you can see that people want her around. Also, Chris removed context from this moment where she shows her income. The only reason that he has that monetary stat from Melissa is because she showed it to point out that she's actually taking a loss on this video. Most of her money comes from sponsors, not from YouTube ad revenue, and the types of sponsors that she can get won't pay for a video like this.

"Here's an actual snapshot of the revenue from the video, which is far below my average because most content is sponsored. And I did this one as a passion project cuz I saw a lot of changes in my neighborhood. It's not made to make money. There's no sponsor that's going to sponsor that kind of content."

Real convenient for Mr. Advertiser friendly to remove the context of most of Alyssa's money coming from sponsors. Not AdSense. He removes the context that it's actually better for her wallet to make positive content like he does. She's taking a loss on this content and he must know that. I know he knows about brand rules. I know he knows how much money you can make from brand deals, especially the channels who do not cover controversial content. Plus, it's really rich for him to [ __ ] about money when he's almost certainly far richer than she is. So, it really pisses me off to hear him say that she's lying about Japan for money when she has to sacrifice brand deals to make a video like this. And he knows that when it comes to Japan because of tourism, there is way more money in the type of content that he makes. I mean, how much is he going to take her out of context? How much is he going to lie about her beliefs when if you actually watch her content, you can see she believes the opposite? Like I said, I get why Alyssa was mad and I get why she asked him to remove that Facebook comment. Again, I don't think she should have done that, but you can start to see why she was so upset when you see how much she is misrepresented by Chris.

Now, it's fine to remove context. We all have to do that as creators for brevity. But to remove context and then tell people that she believes the exact opposite of what she said is what a liar would do. This was not a money-making scheme from Alyssa. This is not even her typical content. The reason that she made this video is because she saw certain problems in her local community getting worse. So, as a resident who is married to a Japanese citizen, she felt compelled to speak up about it. Again, the comparison to Logan Paul and Johnny Somali or other nuisance streamers who don't live in Japan and don't have to deal with the consequences of them degrading a high trust society for money is ridiculous. Also, it's one main channel video that she's made this past year about crime. Yet, Chris is out here basically saying, "This racist white girl hates foreigners and wants you to believe that Japan is dying. This is a money-making scheme where she's lying to you to fatten her bank account." It's one YouTube video, Chris. It's just one video. Then the rest of the content is stuff like, "Born in Japan, but too tall for everything." Oh, but what about the Instagram videos? They didn't make any money. They were too short to make money. Nobody makes money on shorts unless they're over a minute long and get like 5 to 10 million views. Alyssa gave me her total revenue for Instagram for the month the video was released. Chris shows this ominous screenshot of her getting 1.7 million views on Instagram from the Japan is over content. $13. That's how much she made on Instagram that month. Oh, but what about Tik Tok? I see 400,000 views. $60 for the entire month. She didn't make any money on this content. This is not a get-rich quick scheme.

So again, it's one video. Now, I can understand if you have an issue with how a creator goes about a topic they talk about. That's fine. That's YouTube. But to complain about someone making $1,000 when you easily made over $10,000 on this video that you said you knew was going to do well and was probably only a few days of work is ridiculous. Oh, and you know, to end this all off, this grand money-making scheme from Melissa to exploit Japan and exploit homeless people. Speaking of $10,000, remember this video here where she got 3 million views and then donated all the profits to charity? Remember that? What a money-making scheme.

What's also messed up is that Chris is acting like all Alyssa's videos are either no work or require no money to make, which is untrue. Outside of constant language studies and the cost of that because language schools aren't free. So outside of that, she often travels for her content and that costs money and time. She films all over Japan, not just in Tokyo. Even if the videos cost no money, like my videos are mostly free to make, but the cost is my time and research and time in organizing the ideas in an order that I think will be interesting to the audience. That takes shitloads of time and so does editing. And unlike Chris said, you can't just make 50 of the same video. People will get bored. So, a lot of time in a YouTuber's day is simply spent trying to decide what to talk about. Deciding what to talk about, especially after people have gotten bored of a meta, is the most difficult part of this job.

Anyway, so the aftermath of Chris's crash out is that the Japanese people don't really agree with him. They were actually more on Alyssa's side. However, that didn't stop droves of creators who were Chris's fans and don't know anything about Japan from immediately taking his side and accusing Alyssa of some horrendous things while largely just reciting points that Chris made in his video. They also didn't really show any indication that they did their own research or fact-checking to verify if what Chris said was correct.

"She doesn't really seem to adjust this heavily in her video. That homeless population has objectively speaking been going down over the past few years. So focusing on this like it's a big problem that's degrading Japanese society, it it's weird as a choice." I mean, that looks a lot like a zoomed-in graph about homelessness that Chris used where the article admitted that it was probably not accurate. Did this guy even read the article? It looks like he just took a screenshot and put it in his video without any factchecking.

"If she does background research, she's not crediting it, which frankly, this is my opinion, but I think that's malpractice. Gee, wouldn't it be a shame if you talked about research that viewers would not be able to look up because you didn't show any reference material for it on screen or put a link in the description? Isn't that malpractice?" As for the videos of Alyssa that he's talking about, I'm guessing he's referencing the what is happening to Japan video and this one about homeless people. Neither of these videos require source citations. They are largely just telling personal stories. So, the source is the story. Outside of that, she talks about the Tooko Kids, but that's a popular news story in Japan. And things that are common knowledge don't require source citations. The video that does require source citations is her follow-up video on Chris Broad. And she does show reference material. And actually, let me just go on a slight tangent about the homelessness stuff because how much Alyssa was lied about really pisses me off.

There's this narrative that she's stuffing her camera in the faces of homeless people. I also find it quite distasteful how she takes her camera and shoves it in the face of homeless people in the street who probably really don't want that attention on them. They're just minding their own business. "And I worry in an era of nuisance content creators coming to Japan doing things that are unspeakably bad. They might see this sort of content and go, 'Wow, you get $1,500 for that?' Maybe start to wave cameras around in the faces of homeless people, potentially leading to even more nuisance content." If you pay attention, you can see that yes, she is filming homeless people, but nobody's face is on camera. How else are you supposed to show the problem without filming it? She's not pestering people like Johnny Somali. In this video here, the one that Chris used to defame her, she's invited over by the homeless guy. And in this last video, the one that the Dungeons and Dragons guy sites, she's working with the homelessness outreach program. She's invited to film and she shares some quite humanizing stories about the homeless population in Japan. She's also trying to get donations to help these people and spends her own money on these programs. But I mean, what homeless outreach work have you done, Chris?

"And in fact, I've been speaking with a homeless shelter about doing a documentary, but it's a serious topic and these are people's lives, and I need to tackle that carefully." So, nothing. Well, I was going to I was going to make a video. I'll get to it eventually. Meanwhile, Alyssa has been working to help Japan's homeless population for like 3 years now, and has also been doing garbage and graffiti cleanups, by the way. This is why she was mad about the graffiti and trash. And moreover, she's also been working with this homeless outreach group called Don't Give Up that does most of their charity work in Shinjjuku. Alyssa's like the big social media face of this group. Guess who [ __ ] that up, right? Chris did. Chris's video where he edits her out of context and says she's taking advantage of Japan's most vulnerable people for money. And you know what? Now people won't take her seriously on it because she got millions of views by calling her a lying grifter who makes slob content instead. Actually, homelessness in Japan is not really a problem. So, thanks for that, Chris. She was already working on a video for Don't Give Up, and because of you, now she can't release it because it will give them negative press.

Here's the other messed up part of this. If Mr. I spend tons of time fact-checking, which is why I'm a real YouTuber, actually spent some time fact-checking, he could have easily found out that Alyssa does this outreach work. Like, this guy does not fact check [ __ ]. He fact checks like CNN fact checks. Anyway, back to the Dungeons and Dragons guy. And look, as someone who went to J school and like did street interviews for class, I can tell you they have their place in journalism, but not as research.

He's talking about the homeless stuff here again. One, this stuff doesn't require like a peer-reviewed research article. Her point is that people who take the data are hiding how bad the problem is. And she's showing you how they hide it. That is literally investigative journalism. That is research. That is the most difficult research because she has to go out and do it herself. She can't just Google for a bit and call it a day. And this is why she's mad at Chris for citing government data because she knows firsthand that it's wrong and she showed that in her videos.

"I don't want to lie to you like Orientalist Pearl does." Right. It's peak journalism training to assume the motives of your subject. You should sue the school that educated you. Not only did they not teach you how to cite sources, but they didn't teach you ethics either. Though maybe the school was woke, I can tell you that he's heavily on the left because he has a gun on the table that's facing towards him instead of a safe direction. That [ __ ] was bothering me the whole video. Not to say that I don't ever assume the motives of the people that I'm talking about, but I also don't claim to be a journalist.

"I'm grateful that Chris Broad brought this to my attention. I'm grateful that he is on the side of critical thinking and media literacy because dang it, we need more people fighting for it." Yeah, I'm so glad the guy who did everything he could to make it as difficult as possible for his audience to fact check what he said is on the side of critical thinking. Now, I'm leaving out a lot, but this was pretty much the sum total of people reacting to the situation all in one video. It was mostly Chris fans who knew nothing about Japan, echoing his viewpoints without really doing any of their own research, followed by glazing Chris while getting tons of stuff wrong. I think the only moderate or well done video I saw was done by Dogen, who was clearly talking about this drama without openly stating it.

For every 10-second reel of a foreigner walking by a broken window in Kamata or some graffiti in Nakameoro. As a connoisseur of dog whistles, I really appreciate hearing a good one. I thought this was actually a pretty good example of a well done and fair video in terms of trying to accurately communicate the viewpoints of its subjects. Even though it wasn't directly about the drama, it was more so made in response to the drama. But going back to Alyssa versus Chris, Alyssa has kindly shared additional images with me of the graffiti and some of the areas have already gotten worse just in the time that this drama has gone on. I will note that these pictures are from about 2 weeks before the release of this video. And I will also note that some of the areas have already gotten cleaned up, so maybe saying something was a good thing after all.

Last, I just want to bring this up because I'm sure somebody will. If you've watched other content from me, you might have seen that my sentiments towards foreigners are a little stricter than Alyssa's. That being said, I've expressed anti-foreigner sentiment in conversations about Japan towards a particular type of foreigner. That's because after watching all the [ __ ] that's happened in America, I think we need to be a little bit more hostile towards people who don't want to assimilate or refuse to assimilate. And by that, I mean I don't think people should just be deported for being illegals or committing violent crimes. I also think lighter things should get you deported. Like if you don't speak English after 5 years and if you don't follow American customs, then you shouldn't be in this country. And I think a lot of Japanese people would agree with that in respects to their country as many of them are saying they don't appreciate it when newcomers refuse to learn their language. It's not just an annoyance to not be able to communicate with newcomers because they refuse to learn your language, but it also changes the cultural traditions. You know, if you import tons of people who don't celebrate Halloween or Christmas, then there's going to be a lot less decorations up in the neighborhood, which sucks because kids these days don't get the kind of communities that we had in prior generations. And this is why immigration should be limited to give newcomers time to assimilate.

Speaking of the language thing, Chris also believes that you should learn the language of the country that you live in. "Now, I've always said if you're moving to Japan, for God's sake, learn the language. You'll find it deeply rewarding and also as a matter of courtesy. I think it's only right you should learn the language of the country you're moving to." This is actually respectable. Note that in the West, you are typically called a racist for saying that you should learn the language of the place that you live in. So, this is the first brave stance that I've seen Chris take.

But as for the tourism stuff, the reason Japan is going so hard on bringing in tons of foreigners is because they're trying to use tourism to fix their economy. Among other reasons, Japan really took a huge hit from COVID. But I think it's stupid to fix a broken economy with multiculturalism. In the West, it's only made things worse. And as for Japan, it's not really fair to the locals to flood millions of people into major cities every year who don't know the culture or the language. It takes time to learn cultural rules like what side of the escalator to stand on when you're in the subway. And rules like this are important because they'll piss off Japanese people if you don't follow them. Mix that in with like one in five people not speaking the language in certain areas and having to deal with the frustration at maybe your job of constantly struggling to communicate. It would be much less of an inconvenience if that number was like 1 in 10 or 1 in 20. But when Chris is talking about anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan, in addition to commentary from Westerners on Twitter and Instagram that he brought up, what he didn't say in his video is that a lot of his energy on this topic is more specifically coming from foreigners in Japan getting blamed for stuff that isn't their fault. Like there was a rice shortage in Japan and foreign tourists were blamed for it. I'm not going to get into it, but if you look at the full details of the story, the problem was obviously not caused by tourists. Chris is correct in believing that there are a lot of stupid news stories in Japan blaming foreigners for things that aren't their fault. Though, the reason they can get away with blaming tourists for this is because Japanese people are frustrated by over tourism because they're bringing in too many foreigners. And no amount of political framing can fix that. As I keep saying, you can't simply train that many people on Japanese culture all at once. Imagine people just constantly not following the escalator rules because it's their first day and they don't know any better. So bringing in a bunch of people who don't know the rules is going to piss off the native population. And a part of me thinks that Chris is making this problem worse by constantly encouraging more tourism.

But to add one final point of nuance, after scrolling through his entire main channel and his second channel, I finally found a video where he says something critical of Japan that might discourage tourism. Here's a video where he's talking about Kabuki Cho. "The story we're going to read out today is actually in Kabuk Cho. There's one rule you need to follow if you do go there, and that is never ever ever follow one of the touts into a bar. Unfortunately, a lot of people do follow the street touts. They're pretty nice people. They're very engaging and good at what they do. Now, the touts that target foreigners specifically are actually foreigners themselves. They're not Japanese. They're Nigerian guys that have been given visas to come over and basically kind of do this and work for these organizations in the area."

Looks like someone is starting to notice. All cultures aren't created equal and Africa is notorious for having lots of scammers. All you have to do is watch the black expat videos on YouTube to know that. It's the first thing they'll warn you about. So, there's a reason why I have strict beliefs on immigration and travel. And there's a reason why I believe that much softer things should get people deported, like refusing to learn the language. By the way, when I say that, I mean high-level fluency. A lot of the H-1B visas coming to America don't actually speak English past a basic level, if that.

But maybe instead of applying a band-aid solution to the economy through massive amounts of tourism, Japan should actually fix its core issues. I don't know, maybe they can make a factory or something to encourage people to move out of the expensive cities and into a place large enough to raise a family. Maybe pass some workers rights legislation so companies can't just abuse their employees into having no free time for themselves. Whether or not those are solutions, there are always ways to solve this internally without importing tons of people. And unless the core issues are solved, the problem will still be there. Anyway, that's my thoughts on all this.