Hey Francesco, you filming yet?
Ah yeah, they're there. So okay.
Um, the reason I asked you to start filming is I was kind of bored in my room. I was walking around.
I started reading some stuff.
And I think that,
I don't know if it's actually a video that we can post, but it's worth checking out.
At the very least you should come. You'll find, ah it's...
Its unique. It's interesting. At the very least, it's interesting.
Okay, you ready?
Okay, so first, we are staying in Apa Hotel. It's a hotel chain in Japan. It's a huge business chain.
I believe it's the biggest in the country, but,
not 100% certain on that.
It's one of our final nights in Japan. I think we're here one more day. And, ah,
so let me just start. Have a seat. I'll ah, I'll take you through it, step by step. So I was in the bathroom,
and I was looking at the amenities, and some of them were kind of like,
borderline
sexist a little bit. Some of them talked about pure masculinity and how a man must find himself.
Anyway, so I'd looked at the razor, and it says, "a wise hawk shows his claws". And I thought,
that's, that's a really weird thing for a hotel razor to say to you.
I kept looking around the room and I came across all the literature
that they put in place of, I guess where our Bible would be in the West,
and the first thing I came across was this
magazine called Apple Town, which I thought, yeah. I thought it looked kind of cute,
I guess cuz it's called Apple town, which is, I don't know it sounds like it should be a magazine for fruit.
And it had this little title "Japan has finally begun breaking free of the post-war regime".
Which,
I'm not gonna lie, was not exactly what I expected from the magazine called Apple Town.
And then I moved on to the next book, and it had this beautiful
character here. Um.
Nice hat. A nice little leopard print scarf. And I thought to myself, who is this man?
And I started to look through it. And it's just a bunch of basically those same sentences that were on the,
that were on the toiletries.
Which was kind of funny. I thought that was amusing. So I kept him out, and the next thing I picked up,
this is where the story started to get very strange to me.
It's the theoretical modern history or the real history of Japan.
And I think the only word here that really works is theoretical. Because it's ,well, let's look through it.
It's pretty denialist. I got to page six and it starts talking about the Nanking Massacre.
Which, first of all, any hotel that's talking about a massacre, and it's literature is already kind of questionable.
But for those who don't know, the Nanking Massacre was a World War II
atrocity that took place when the Japanese military slaughtered a bunch of civilians in China.
A really terrible thing. A very
big sticking point between the Chinese and Japanese governments, and it's a big focus of Japanese nationalists to deny that this happened. And
this magazine or book denies that it happened. So I was already kind of, um,
shocked. By the time I flipped the page and it got to
comfort women.
And again for those who don't know, comfort women is a polite term to describe
forced prostitution in World War II, where the Japanese military picked up women from surrounding nations like Korea and China,
and forced them into prostitution. To follow the military.
Again something that the ultra-nationalist of Japan just flat-out denied. Moving on, by page 11 and 12,
it pretends that Pearl Harbor was actually a United States false flag operation where
they blew up the USS, Arizona
so that they could declare war on Japan and that Japan did nothing wrong. Which
there's so much evidence to prove that's incorrect. And so, there's actually three of these in the hotel here.
Um, and they're all just like this. They're all,
basically denialist propaganda from an ultra-nationalist Japanese perspective.
And so that was really weird,
obviously. And I started to google further, research further and it's all the work of our man in the leopard-print here.
The CEO of this place. He calls himself Seiji Fuji in the writing, but that's not his real name.
And I started thinking about it further and further. And,
it occurred to me that I'm happy he does this.
Not because I agree with the propaganda. I think it's disgusting. It's absolutely factually incorrect.
But I like that he does this because now I know where the money goes.
Is that not better?
Is it not better that he puts this propaganda in his rooms, so you know instantly, well
this is what you're supporting. I mean, I, what, got my Huawei Nexus phone, I got,
Old Spice Champion. Where's the money from Old Spice going? I have no idea. I don't know who owns it.
I don't know what they do with the money. Is it not better that a company tells you flat out
where those profits go. What those profits are looking to do. Imagine if Nestle said on every chocolate bar, we deny
the fundamental right to water around the world. Or if
Abercrombie & Fitch shirt said, we don't want fat people to wear our clothes. Would that not be at the very least
better for the
consumer to decide. When Apa Hotel, when this hotel group started moving into the United States and Canada, where they have around 50 hotels
right now, the literature actually was
anti-Semitic. It was no longer just about Japanese nationalism
but actually turned to anti-Semitism. And instead of shutting down the hotels,
protesters convinced them to remove the anti-Semitism from the rooms. And I'm not saying that's better or worse.
But I do question it. Because now if you stay in those hotels in Canada,
you're supporting anti-Semitism still. It's not like they stopped being anti-Semitic.
But you don't know you're doing it.
Now it's harder to tell. Now you have to google in advance. And honestly, who's googling every single purchase
they make. Every single hotel room they stay in. To say where does this money go?
I don't think anybody's doing that. And if you are, kudos to you. But you want to spend a heck of a lot of time
deciding where your money goes. So is it not
better
to have a piece of nationalist propaganda
if you're a nationalist hotel. If you are,
Mister Leopard Skin here, I'd argue that that it's better that he does this.
Personally.
I'm not saying that it's right.
I'm not saying I agree with what he says, but at least I know not to stay in this hotel anymore.
This is Rare Earth.
This is, uh,
quite the hotel.
This is Rare- Oh wait, oh, I didn't even notice him on the back here. Oh look at that guy. Yeah, that is a man,
who has a...
a lot of hats. You know a man who has this hat owns so many hats. You know who paid for those hats?
I did. We did.
Unfortunately.
I apologize.