Stuff You Should Know - What are ninja?

Episode Date: January 26, 2010

Ninja, Japanese warriors famous for stealth, deception and sabotage, were inspired by Chinese military philosophy. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the origins, history, gear and popularity of the ninja in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple Podcasts. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Bryant. Hi Josh. I'm going to tell you something that you might not know about me. As a youth, an older boy in the neighborhood named Tommy Roper trained me as a ninja. An altar boy or older? Older.

Okay. So I'm a trained ninja, right? Yeah, this encompassed, generally sitting on top of a storage shed in my backyard, quietly sure for hours on end, waiting for somebody to walk past so that we could find out whether or not they noticed us. That's where you started smoking because you were bored? Not yet. That came like a year or two later.

Okay. Yeah. So you did not adhere to the Bushido? No. I don't know if smoking is outlawed by the Bushido. I just meant the way of the ninja. No, that's the samurai. Well no, the ninja though shined the Bushido.

Right. Right. I don't know what you're saying. I think we're on the same page. Yeah. So Chuck, I thought, you know, I kind of carried that with me my whole life. I'm sure. Like I'd see a throwing star every once in a while and be like, I know how to throw

that, you know? Did you have any of those? Tommy did. I never had any. Those were big in the 80s for little nerds to collect. Totally. I found out though when I read how ninjas work that I am nothing more than a dill tot. Really?

Yeah. I was surprised to find that out. I believe you just said ninjas. That is not correct, right? No, it is. It's like a ninja. It's like fish or deer. I know.

We've been drilling that into each other's head all morning. And it hasn't stuck at all. And I'm still saying ninjas. Yeah. So if we slip up, then give us a break. Right. So Chuck. Josh.

One of the first things I noticed from this article was that ninja, although Japanese in nature and origin actually can trace its roots back to the Chinese. Yes. Very much. Because it's kind of what I was just talking about with the Bushido was the samurai code where you very respectfully would face one another face your enemy one on one and do battle. And the ninja subscribe more to the art of war school of thought. Right.

As espoused by Sun Tzu, which was a little sneakier. Right. And smarter if you ask me. It is smarter. And I mean, that's how the American colonists won the war for independence. Yeah. The British were all like, Hey, we've got a bunch of Hessians here and they're ready to fight you on this field.

And we were in our guys were yeah, jumping out of trees and bayonetting them. Yeah. Very ninja ask very Sun Tzu. He wrote the art of war back in the fourth or fifth century BC. Right. And yeah, it kind of went against the grain as it were. Yeah. Big time where you could, I think there was a chapter chapter 13 where he specifically

said that you should use people to spread confusion in the ranks and paranoia through sabotage, spying, spying espionage, that kind of stuff. Pretty cool. Yeah. Just basically underhanded stuff. Disguise was okay. Yeah. Deception.

I love it. Right. So that is actually where it's, that's pretty much the basis of ninja, isn't it? Yeah. From what I gather. And what is it? The art of ninja, the art that ninjas practice. Yeah.

Ninja practice. Ninjutsu. Right. And it is not a martial art, but it is an art of war is what they call it. It sounds like a martial art. Yeah. But it's not. Okay.

It's because of Utsu. It sounds like Jujutsu. Right. So, okay. We've got this first seed of the ninja planet by Sun Tzu, right? And it takes a little while to catch on. And actually, strangely enough, we can trace back to some of the first ninja stories, right? Some people who were thought to be among the first ninja in Japan.

We've moved over to Japan now, by the way. Yes. Right? Tell me about Prince Yamato. Yeah. Prince Yamato is in some halls called the first ninja, right? Because he was the first person that we know of to blatantly use deception and disguise by dressing as a woman and to attract, this is where it gets all hinky, to literally physically

attract to barbarian chieftain. So apparently he was a good looker as a woman. Or androgynous at the least. He actually gained their confidence and lulled them into a sense of security, a false sense of security, and killed them. Yeah. Then he butchered them. Yeah.

Yeah. That's not a bad one, frankly. I like that first ninja story. I like yours, though, the 13-year-old kid. Yeah. Kumawaka. Yeah. He was a little, I guess kind of a little shrimpy, right?

But he had some pretty good legs on him. He traveled a really far distance to visit his father, who was ailing. Right. But his father was being held prisoner by a monk in his family. Apparently, monks did that back then. I didn't know that. What we do now, right? So little 13-year-old Kumawaka was turned away after traveling this long distance wanting

to see his father who's dying. Sure. And before he gets a chance to see him, his father dies. So the kid's like, you know what? I swear vengeance right here and now. Right. Little 13-year-old vengeance. Right.

And I think possibly not so much that he'd read The Art of War, but just that being 13, you know, he wasn't aware of pitch battles or really didn't care about him. And he was like, you know what? I'm going to use a little bit of deception myself. Yeah. Plus, he wasn't big enough to just fight them straight up. Right. Right.

He started kind of, I guess, staking out the monk's home. And this kid was awesome. He opened a window to the monk's bedroom and let a bunch of moths in, and they flocked to a lantern blotting out all the light, whereupon he snuck into the room, got the monk's sword, and butchered him. Yes. Have you noticed that most ninja stories end in butchery? Yeah.

That's a good point. The story's not over, though, right? I don't think so. Well, you should also point out, though, he was actually in their home. He faked an illness, remember? That's how he got in there. That's right. He was sick, so they brought him in and took care of him, and he gained their trust, and

then did the old moth trick. Right. The old moth trick. Right. That's like Ninja 101 right there. So after he butchers the monk, he flees, and he's being pursued. So he climbs up a huge length of bamboo until it tips over a river, and he jumps off the other side and is gone into the annals of ninja history.

That is serious ninja stealth right there. Yeah. A little 13-year-old. Right. I'm just going to say a little 13-year-old. I don't know. We could go back and count. So yes, even though these are cool stories and they are thought of as maybe practicing

the first ninja practices, they aren't really believed to be the first ninjas, right? No. I mean, they're kind of legend. Exactly. And there's a lot of lore surrounding ninja. It's really tough, as the Grabster who wrote this article pointed out, to kind of separate facts from fiction. Sure.

And in some cases, Japanese historians just have omitted ninja altogether because they're so secretive. Right. Or, you know, exaggerated and glorified it to the point that it's misinformation, which is part of the whole ninja lore as well. Right. Which apparently the ninja were perfectly fine with. Of course they were.

Because it freaked people out. Yeah. We'll get to that in a minute, right? The supernatural stuff. Yeah. Okay. So Chuck, what was the true birth of the ninja then? Well, they think that the regions of Aiga and Koga, or is it Iga?

Iga and Koga. You know what? I think I have no idea for those two, but you were getting good at the Japanese. And let me tell you. You have what is called Pura Pura Pura, which means you're very fluent. It's Japanese that describes very fluent talk. Japanese is a little easier to pronounce, I think, than some, because it's usually just kind of pronounced like it reads.

There's just a lot of letters. Sometimes, yeah. And there's a lot of vowels together that don't make any sense. But we're doing our best. Yeah. You're doing a great job, Chuck. And they are considered to be the birthplace of ninja as a major force in warfare. Right.

And here's why. There was a bunch of clans in these two regions. And the guys who were members of the clans tended to farm themselves out as mercenaries, which we've talked about before. Absolutely. And they actually adopted a lot of the ninja attitude. The ninjitude? The ninjitude.

Right. They adopted a lot of it, serving as spies, saboteurs, and assassins, right? Yeah. I love that word, by the way, saboteur. It's a pretty cool word. That's why Firefly was one of my favorite GI Joes, which we'll get to in a minute. Wow. It's all coming around.

Yeah. So in Iga and Koga, basically this region, rather than turning to brewing or grain production, they turned to ninja production. Yeah. And they protected, they were hired out by the Daimyo, which was another word for a lord. Pura, pura, pura. A feudal lord.

And basically, like mercenaries, whoever had the most dough would get hired. So they were not known as loyal. They would go where the money was. No, which as you said is completely contrary to the Bushido code of the samurai, who was a, I guess you could probably make a case was a rival faction in Japan at the time. If you wanted somebody who would be willing to die for you, you had your samurai. If you wanted somebody who you could pay to go do horrible things for you, but then may eventually come back and kill you after he was hired for somebody else, you went with

the ninja. Yeah. Right? Good point. So one of the cool things that the Grabster mentioned was that the reason Iga and Koga were, I guess, these hotbeds of activity for ninja was that the, the art of ninjitsu. Yeah. Was passed on from father to son, generation after generation after generation.

Right. And we're talking sneaking around. From what I gather from reading is that the lowly ninja were the ones that were slinging the swords around and the true skilled ninja did not do a lot of face to face fighting. They were sneaking around, they were gathering information. Like you said, they were sabotaging, they were spying and giving myths information. Right. So apparently, since castles were, they figured so largely into feudal Japan, the ninja became

especially adept at infiltrating castles and escaping from castles that were under siege. There's the story of one ninja who was hired by a Damyo who owned a castle that was under siege and one night he slipped out, went to the enemy encampment, stole their flag and then when they woke up the next morning, they saw their flag like on the, uh, embattlements of the, the castle, which you can imagine, you just be like, Right. Wait, don't we have that sound effect? Yeah, I think so.

Okay. Or did they wake up and think, did we already capture this castle? What were we doing here? That's what I would think. We already captured it because their flag was flying, but apparently it was a mocking thing and right. Yeah. It would kind of take the wind out of their sail.

And there was also a, uh, another story, legend, ninja lore of a group of ninjas actually, a group of ninja, sorry, um, that captured the, uh, I guess the badge, a paper lantern badge. Oh yeah. Identified like it, it identified with a castle and a Damyo. Uh-huh. Tell that one. Okay.

I'm going to knock your socks off right here, Chuck. So they stole this lantern, reproduced it, reproduced the badge, put them on other lanterns and then just walked right into the castle. Right. And butchered everybody like they do. Yeah. And then walked back out and when everybody woke up the next morning and found the people who were not butchered found, uh, you know, what was going on, um, they had created, uh,

paranoia, right, which as we said is another thing that ninja like to do. Absolutely disruption. Yes. Uh, they were very skilled. Are your socks knocked off? These are actually new socks and they are still on. Yeah, I can tell, uh, did you know that George Hamilton once said that he wore a new pair of socks every day?

He never wore the same pair of socks. I can see him doing that. My good friend Andrew told me that once, uh, moving on the ninja, Josh, you know what their, their main deal was, you know, they were best at what assassination, yes, sneaking in in the dead of night and killing you in your sleep sometimes. And my favorite story was, and this one is not verified, but the, uh, the legend of the ninja who hid beneath the outhouse and you know, it goes on beneath the outhouse. Yeah.

He hid in the pit, hid in the pit. And then the, uh, the Dimeo came in, obviously sat down on the John and the ninja struck from below with the sword. Yeah. But, uh, which is just, that's not comfy. My favorite part of the story though, it says, uh, it's probably not true because historical record show that the Dimeo in question probably died of a stroke or brain aneurysm. But I think maybe if you had a sword stuck up your butt, then maybe you might have a

stroke or a brain aneurysm. I would have a stroke for sure. So maybe that did happen. Plus also I could see his family trying to keep that hush hush. Yeah. I would say so. You know, but it made, made the Dimeo very paranoid. Right.

Yeah. And actually they took a lot of measures to protect against these ninja assassins that they always figured were coming for them. Like, um, there was one clan where, uh, at their castle, everyone had to wear long, um, I guess bell bottoms basically, that made noise whenever you walked. So anyone who was in the castle had to wear these kind of pants. They had a corduroy bell bottoms. Pretty much.

And, and I can only imagine that they had an ample supply for visitors. Yeah. If everybody had to use them, you know, and not everyone was walking around with bell bottoms. I imagine they had them for you. Right. Like drop your keys in the bowl and put on these bell bottoms. Sure.

And stay here. Right. Uh, the other one, uh, cool one was in Kyoto. They had a, uh, the Nijo castle had what they called nightingale floors and they were purposefully squeaky the way they made these wooden floors so they could hear people. Counterbalance, right? Uh-huh. So anyone walking on them, even a ninja could be heard.

Yes. And also the daimyo would spend, uh, more and more time away from their home at, uh, what they called secret springs, basically little hidden resorts at natural springs. So it sounds like out of ninja, the vacation resort bell bottom jeans and, uh, squeaky floors were born. Nice. Pretty cool. You wrapped that up very nicely.

Thank you. So Chuck, um, the whole, um, I guess samurai sword up the bottom story that, that it was probably a legend because the guy probably died of an aneurysm or a stroke, right? Sure. And that kind of reveals that lower that has surrounded ninja forever. And one of the things that, um, they've been attributed with or bestowed with or like supernatural powers, right? Yeah.

Of course that's not true. No. But it's fun. And like you said earlier, the ninja loved it. They were like, yeah, we're seven feet tall and we can fly and become invisible. Those are three. Those are three. They could also walk through walls, which I imagine it would, would really come in handy

for a ninja. Oh, sure. I mean, if you think about it, if you're penetrating a castle that no one else can get through, it probably seems a lot like you can walk through walls. Exactly. And then of course there's the real basic go to one that they're ghosts. Yeah. Shape shifters.

Did you ever read, um, commando comics? No. There, there was like, they were from the seventies, I think they were like just black and white comics set in World War two. Uh, and in one of them that was the, this guy had to fight ninjas in Burma, ninja in Burma. And uh, it was pretty cool. If you ever- I'm ashamed to say I was a little wuss boy with the comics.

Were you? I was like, I was into Archie and Richie Rich. What? I know. What? Isn't that awful? And then stuff, I like the Star Wars comics and stuff like that, but I- Don't try to cool it up now.

It's awful. What? I was a big Archie guy. I was a little Baptist boy. And Richie Rich? Yeah. Richie Rich was great. Yeah.

I liked the cartoon. You never read the comic. Yeah. You know, I was a little wuss. Yeah. I was reading ninjas and stuff. Smoking cigarettes. I was a bad guy.

I was reading Archie in the Bible. Yeah. Good for you, Chuck. But here we are, years later. I know. The same. We're both just twisted. Isn't that funny?

All right. I've been trying to get better. You've been trying to get worse. Yeah. So we met in the middle. Yeah. Uh, where are we now? With your gear?

I would say we're at Ninja Gear. And Chuck, I should say- This is actually the coolest part. Chuck has a, uh, several large printouts of pictures of Ninja Gear. I do. That are just bitchin'. Yeah. Let's talk about some of these.

Um, Ninja, well, first let's talk about their clothes. Their uniform. The Ninja Yori. Yoroi. Yoroi. Yoroi. Yoroi. It is, uh, also called Ninja Armor, and it's like the black jacket, black trousers,

hooded cowl, and light sandals. Not a lot of protection with that. I don't know if armor is the right word. Well, they said some of them were light armor under that. Right. But it's not much, trust me. No, it's cloth. Well, because they wanted to be sneaky.

Sure. And not make a lot of noise, so armor probably wasn't the best way to get around. And traditionally, the Yoroi was, um, black, uh, although apparently there is some historical evidence that they wore all white Yoroi, which is pretty cool too. In the snow? If it was snowy. Yeah. Yeah.

They're like, oh, it's snowing. Gotta put on the white Yoroi today. Go kill some people. Right. However, Josh, most of this is, uh, fanciful lore, although they did have these, uh, costumes. But they mainly wore, they wanted to blend in, so they mainly just dressed like you and I. Yeah.

That's an excellent point too. Like if you're going to be an assassin, um, and you're in a public place, if you're dressed like a ninja, people are going to be like, uh, look out for that ninja. Right. So yeah, a lot of times they, they, they were apparently, uh, masters at, um, hiding in plain sight. Yeah. Disguised as, uh, priests and merchants and farmers, which is, you know, makes sense

to me. So what was it that Henry Hill said, he said, uh, when you get killed, it's, it's somebody who's coming at you with a smile. Who's your friend? Right. That's who kills you. Sure. Yeah.

Henry Hill. He comes up a lot. It's funny. Yeah. I never thought he would come up in a ninja podcast. Uh, what else did they use, Josh? The Ninja Toe was the, uh, uh, short sword that they wore on their back, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. Used to butcher people. Yeah. And then here's what I have the pictures of. Let's go, is this cool little claw hand. It's like a claws on your palm that you would wear as a glove and it says you can use to fight or to climb trees with Tommy Roper had one of those. Oh, really?

Uh-huh. Hey, he tried to climb trees once in a while, so he was never successful really. He could when he didn't have those on, like he could just climb a tree, but just climbing like that. It didn't work. Yeah. Uh, and this is the tiger claw. Those are cool.

Yeah. That looks like Freddy Krueger Wolverine or something. Yeah. You know what it looks like and it would butcher you if put to your jugular and what are these? And this is my favorite. These are the cow traps and these were, they look sort of like little metal sharp origami razor things. I was just about to say origami.

They do. You got to leave it to the Japanese. They have great design with everything. Yeah. They're beautiful. Including little tags meant to puncture your feet and soles of your feet. Yeah. That's what you would do.

You would throw these on the floor, uh, for your enemy to step on and they apparently wore like the sandals and the thin shoes so that worked. And I wish this were a video podcast because Chuck gave Jerry and I a demonstration of what that would look like when people were chasing the ninja. Yeah. Yeah. They also used smoke bombs. Yeah.

And what else? Ropes. The coolest thing, small one person boats that were collapsible. So they were highly portable. Yeah. So a ninja would just be running away from people. He's thrown his tax. What were the tax called again?

The cow traps. Right. He threw his cow traps and they didn't work. A couple of guys got around and he's reached a river. There's no bamboo in sight. He just whips out his little boat and sails across like so long jumps. Pretty cool. I'll be back to kill you when you're sleeping.

The other thing that has been refuted by the mythbusters I read was the Mizugumo and they were, uh, wooden shoes to walk on water with. They kind of look like snow shoes actually big round things in your foot goes in the middle to disperse the water and those mythbusters guys said, yeah, this doesn't work. Did they try it out themselves? Yeah. Of course they did. That doesn't disprove anything.

They should be called. They're too fat to be ninja. We should call that show the fun killers instead of the mythbusters. You're right. Yeah. All they do is destroy fun. Nice. But they said it could work on Marsh.

That's what they said. Like we'll give them something. Yeah. Of course there's the throwing star a.k.a. the shuriken. Yeah. I didn't know this. I thought that, you know, when you see in the movies, they clearly always fling knees and it goes right into somebody's forehead.

Right between the eyes. Yeah. That's really not true. Was it? No. Apparently they were just kind of a distracting weapon. Yeah. Like it was meant to look like it was about to hit you right between the eyes, but the

chances of it actually hitting its target are pretty low. So they would turn around when being chased, throw a star at them to distract them and then drop some caltrops on the floor and a smoke bomb maybe. Right. And then use a grappling hook and a rope ladder to escape. That's what they call the Schenectady Shuffle and Ninja Lore, that combo right there. Really? Yeah.

So Chuck, there's the grappling hook, right, which you can't leave out. Sure. Basically if you have all this stuff, you are a little white kid in suburban America trying to be a ninja. Right. Because if you're a stealthy guy and you're infiltrating a castle, you're not going to have all this stuff except maybe your collapsible boat, your caltrops and your little sword, right?

Right. And it seems like this was more the arsenal that no ninja at any one time had all these things on it, right? Yeah. But in the movies, of course, it's how it's portrayed because it's more fun. Movies like Enter the Ninja, maybe? Enter the Ninja? American Ninja.

Did you see that one? No. Did you watch Ninja movies as a kid? No. Where were you, Chuck? I told you. I was reading Archie. American Ninja was awesome.

I was watching Escape from Witch Mountain and Archie. That was a creepy movie. That wasn't. Escape from Witch Mountain? No. It didn't age well. You should go watch it now. No.

And not the Kredi remake. No. Isn't like the rock in there? Yeah, of course it is. That's Dwayne Johnson to you, buddy. What was the first movie, though, Josh, credited as being the first movie with a ninja? You only lived twice. The James Bond movie.

Yes, sir. When the movie came out in 1967, Ninja just exploded in Western culture. Oh, of course. Because people that go to see the James Bond movies are looking for any cool new thing anyway. So imagine when they saw the ninja, they were like, oh my gosh, that's the coolest mercenary I've ever seen in my life. They were like, look at those guys butchering everybody. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Of course. I never got into them. No, me neither. And then, Chuck, of course, you probably haven't heard of this, but there's this thing called G.I. Joe. I know the early G.I. Joe.

We've been over this, the 12-inch G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu grip. No, not them. Not tiny dolls. The tiny ones. They're not dolls or action figures. What you played with are dolls. Yes.

Like, you can hug them and cuddle them. You can't cuddle an action figure. That's true. And they had bendable elbows and stuff like that. Did your 12-inchers have Kung Fu grip? Because they had little action figures, too. Did they really? Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's where it started, buddy. Okay. Well, in the 1982 series, a little ninja was introduced, known as Snake Eyes. Right. He worked on the good side. Oh, really? I thought Snake Eyes was bad. No.

Oh. You're thinking of Storm Shadow. Oh, okay. Storm Shadow is a Cobra Ninja. And actually, I was looking on yojo.com today. Have you ever trolled that site? No. Oh, my God.

It's like Nostalgia Central, right? I did see that new movie, though. The G.I. Joe movie? Yeah. Is it out? No. It's out on video now. Was it any good?

No. Not really. Okay. And I love the cartoon, though. I don't think any animation had more of an impact on the development of my personality in the G.I. Joe cartoon. Really? Yeah.

Every time it came on, I was just like, thank you, God. Thank you for letting me be alive and at an age where I can fully appreciate the G.I. Joe cartoon. See, I said the same thing about Tom and Jerry. Yeah. So that's where we were. So, well, again, let me go back to Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow is clearly a ninja.

Snake Eyes is listed on his file card on the back of the package as a commando. Although he is proficient in bladed weapons and martial arts, several martial arts, right? So I'm thinking, why would he be called a commando? Is he not a ninja? Well, I was going to totally throw the smackdown on the grabster for calling Snake Eyes a ninja in this article. I did a little more digging. It turns out that Snowjob and Snake Eyes were once brothers in arms for the same clan.

And actually, Snake Eyes is a trained ninja, although he's also a commando. Really? Yeah. And then they went their separate ways. There was a little bit of a falling out. They went their separate ways. Sure. And Storm Shadow, the Cobra Ninja, actually went to work for Cobra as a disguise to find

who killed the clan leader. Wow. Well, yeah. And once he did find out, he was actually brainwashed. He was discovered as a spy. He was discovered, brainwashed, and then actually did start working for Cobra. Snake Eyes, he always was on Joe's side. Dude, I did not know that there was that much real information out there about GI Joe.

So this is all in the history. No one's actually written that. Yeah. Well, again, there's a comic series you're probably not aware of. Yeah, not a comic. And yeah, it's pretty storied. See, I was confused. When I watched the movie, I kept waiting for Joe.

Kept waiting for Franco Harris to come out with the beard. Who? Yeah, Joe. I look like Franco Harris to me. The Pittsburgh Steeler running back. Wait a minute. I'm trying to think of who you're thinking of. Duke was the closest to the...

Well, there was no Joe. I think Duke was the leader. Duke was the collective name of him. Yeah, see, that just confuses me. Oh. Because back in the day... Don't be confused. Back in the day, GI Joe was a dude, a single dude.

Right. But then they just kind of said, that sucks. Let's go with the better version here. Let's go with action figures. Let's make GI Joe the collective thing. Right. Did you see that link to the Stop Action Vietnam movie, full-length Vietnam movie that Rob Schrupp sent?

I did. Did you see my reply to that? Yeah, you made a movie? I did. I was six and nine years old, respectively, made a stop-motion Super 8 movie with GI Joe dolls. And it had a little plot and everything. What was the plot?

We had this little shiny button, and the button represented like a microfilm disc. And they got stolen, and Joe had to go retrieve it from the bad guys. Nice. We shot it in the woods near our house, and it was pretty cool. Do you have it? Were there explosions? No, there were no explosions. I think we might have lit something on fire.

I bet you're in the woods. I don't know if it still exists. It's got to be somewhere, but my brother and I want to see it. So Scott, if you're listening, if you have that, we would love to see that. Agreed, Scott. But I don't think he has it. We should probably get back to Ninja, right? Is there anything else?

There are a couple of things. Of course, Ninja exploded in popular culture recently to kind of rival pirates in Chuck Norris, right? Well, that's what I hear. I didn't know about that, though. So there's like that site. They showed you real ultimate power about how ninjas flip out and kill everybody. They're awesome, and by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

It tells a story of one ninja who was eating in a diner, and some guy dropped a spoon, and the ninja flipped out and killed the whole town. Oh, really? Yeah. Just stuff like that. Right. What's the whole pirate versus ninja thing? Because someone wrote in about that.

That one, I don't know. Okay. I know that Ask a Ninja took on Askaninja.com is another site where you can ask Ninja practical questions like how to work a new iPhone app and stuff like that. But he does actually take on the pirates on pirate, talk like a pirate day, which we mentioned as well. So apparently there's some bad blood between pirates and ninja. My money is on the ninja.

Well, sure. Because they could sneak in onto a pirate ship pretty easily, I would think. Pirates are all brash, and ninja just comes up, puts the blade at the base of your skull, inserts it into your brain, scrambles it, dead pirate. The pirates are all drunk on ROM, and ninja, I don't think they drink. No. They drink sake every once in a while, but that's about it. And then one last thing.

If you're a true ninja lover, there is one place you have to be first week of April, and that is in Aiga at the Haku Hojo White Phoenix Castle, known as the Ninja Museum. Yeah, they've embraced, Aiga has really embraced their ninja roots, and they try to capitalize on that, obviously. Yeah. For money. Well, why not? It's the root of all ninja.

Yeah, I went to that website, the museum website, it's pretty cool. But they have a festival, a ninja festival every year, including a ninja parade. I don't want to see that. I can see ninja like driving around in a little Shriners car. Right. Yeah. So that's ninja. That's it?

Yeah. Great. We covered just about everything, but if you want to see some boss picks of ninja hiding in trees, and ninja weapons, and stuff like that, you can type in ninja in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I guess now, it's time for Listener Mail, huh? Yes, Josh, you got a short one, and I call this, Our Influence on the World. Nice.

This is pretty cool. I don't know if you read this one or not, you're going to love it. It just came in today. Chuck and Josh, I am a geologist in Columbus, Ohio. Go, Buckeyes. And I often stumble across Geo. Is it Keish? I always say Keish in sketch.

I think you can say it either way. And I often stumble across geocaches when I'm out in the field doing research. I always follow all of the geocaching rules and sign the logbook along with usually leaving something behind for others to find. This time, however, I was a little different. It was a little different because when I opened the sealed plastic container, I found a key chain, a deck of cards, bottle caps, and two Carlos Santana CDs. That's so awesome.

So awesome. I thought this was a little odd until I remembered your podcast on geocaching, Keishing, from last year putting you two joked about putting Santana CDs. So wait, should we go back and listen to one part? Sure. So like if your average hiker happens upon this box full of Santana CDs, and they're thinking, wow, I can just take these CDs, someone lift these, this is awesome. So there it is.

And apparently... And that wasn't the only time we mentioned Santana CDs several times. Yeah, several times, sure. And JD from Columbus says, I thought I would let you know that at least two geocaching fans in Columbus listened to your podcast, and it was awesome to sort of meet one of them. That's cool. I don't think that's coincidence, do you?

I don't see how it could be. A Santana CD and a geocache, are you joking? Yeah. Yeah. I think that was our influence directly. I agree. Pretty cool. You know, we've had another influence on somebody in, I believe, Slovakia.

Not sure. I think so. There is a guy who wrote in, and he founded a site called Weird Worm, and actually started a podcast, and it's pretty good. You should listen to it. I did. Did you? Yeah, yeah.

And he attributes it directly to being inspired by us. Hey, cool. Yeah. So you should check out WeirdWorm.com and their accompanying podcast, too. Watch they're going to overtake us in the ratings immediately. Yeah, probably. Thanks, Josh. Sorry.

Thanks a lot. At least there's people out there trading Santana CDs. That'll be our legacy challenge. Right. Well, if you have any story about how Chuck and I have impacted your life, influenced you in any way, or got you to do something really, really bad, we want to hear about it in an email, which you can send to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable Escorted Tours and European River

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She was a city girl, but always somewhere else in her head. Somewhere where bison roam, rivers flow, and people get their hiking boots dirty. Like actually dirty. So one day she fled west and discovered this place of beauty, history, and a delicious taste of adventure. But before she knew it, she was driving away with memories to share and the hopes of returning. Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.