Trash Taste Podcast - Secrets of Ludwig's Chessboxing Event | Trash Taste #133

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

💻 Get an extra 3 months free at https://www.expressvpn.com/trashtaste Follow Trash Taste: https://twitter.com/TrashTastePod https://www.reddit.com/r/TrashTaste/ To watch the podcast on YouTube: bit.ly/TrashTasteYouTube Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: bit.ly/TrashTastePodcast If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: bit.ly/TrashTastePodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Trash Taste 2023. That feels really weird to say. Yep, I know right. I still in my head, you know, every time when you would, the new year would happen in the school, you'd write the new thing. I'm still on like 2017 in my head. I'm, oh, no, it's 23.

I gotta fix that. I'm still in 2013, dude. What? I haven't changed since then. Honestly, I'm kinda the same. You know, you know, what's, like, what do they say about like, after you reach like 23 or something,

then you never feel like you've, like, aged up anymore after that point. It's like, yeah, you're probably just like 23, 24, I feel in my head. That's until, I think it's until your body starts, like, giving up. This is just 30s copium. I'm like, I'm still 23, right? I'm still young.

They say that, right? They say you're still 20, right? Are you 30, right? Am I right, fellow kids? Um, I guess I should start the year off with a take. All right, what's your take, Connor? All right, so my take. So I was at, I was at Dytocin Emily's house,

and he asked if I wanted something to drink. I was like, yeah, sure, I'll just, I'll have some water. So I pull myself some water, he's like, what do you, no ice, really? I was like it, I like it less when it's cold. So my take is that I don't like cold water. I think that the room temperature water is tastier. Is that?

It's easier to drink. That's my take for the year. Welcome to Trash Taze 2020. We're starting off with a bangor. I've been holding this back as we swore to the two days ago and I really wanted to be like, is this weird? I'm like, this is not weird, right? We're gonna be like in Trash Trey's 2024

and we're gonna be like, you know what? Smiling, overrated kind of. I kind of like. I just had this conversation and he made me feel like I was weird for liking water that was straight from the fucking tap, just room-ass temperature. I just wanna be able to drink it right then. Like, if it's too cold, my mouth gets too cold

and then my esophagus feels like it's freezing. I just wanna have the drink right away. Sounds like a skill issue to me. Maybe it is a skill issue. Is there a reason you just, okay, since we're declaring war against cold wars. I'm not again, listen. I'm not again, I'm not again,

It's cold water. Do I hate it when I'm in America and they give me a cup of water and it is 99% ice and one drop of water? Yeah, I hate that shit. Okay, so like, are you just like a no ice person no matter what? I'm like a one two cube guy max.

Like I wanted to like lightly cool the water. Like I don't want it to, I don't want that shit to be ice cold. Like lightly cool. I just want it, I want the illusion that I'm cooling it without cooling it. Is it possible that I just have a take that's the same as you?

Cause I'm like, no, give me all the fucking ice. Just if you're gonna put it. If you're gonna put ice cube. This feels like an AI generated conversation, like your trash taste. If you're gonna put ice cube in it, just fucking fill that shit up. I don't want one or two.

I want the entire glass or nothing, man. And on brand, I'm just in a position where I'm kinda just like, give me both, bro. This is not that I don't. Both is fine. I'm not like, I'm dying on the cell. It's like, I just did it and I felt attacked

that did this was like, how dare you not have ice? To be fair, I don't care that much, it's just my Southeast Asian blood. Like it's, when I, when I, because when we have ice there, we need to fill that shit up to the brim because their ice melts so quickly. So I, I've just got on your customs.

The moment you grab at the hands with, basically, right? Basically. Okay, here's, here's something even more outrageous that Thailand does, right? Arregis. Yeah, outrageous. Yeah, outrageous. Sorry.

I fuck up the words all the time. We have like 900 clems in the air. Okay, you talk about putting ice cubes in water, right? So here's what they do in time. I know you're gonna tell me. I know, I already hate it. They serve you the beer. I know, I know.

And then they put- With ice in it and they give you ice and some places and some places have the ice already in the cup where you pour the beer. And it's... Why? It's because of the weather.

Okay, because of the weather. Okay, because of the weather. Yeah. Because I want to get to the bottom of this. Is Thai beer made or I guess like brewed in a way where it's better cold? Or is it just like any other beer where if you put it with some fucking ice cubes

and it's like, what the fuck? It's kind of like any other beer, honestly. Yeah, I'm gonna have to be like, no, that's not allowed. I was gonna give it the benefit of the doubt if it was like brewed differently where it's like, oh, it's actually better serve chilled, but like, no. Okay, but here's the real question. Would you, what, which of the two evils would you prefer?

A warm beer or a beer with ice in it? Because you, you ain't getting, you ain't getting a cold beer in Thailand that like maintains itself, okay? So you have two options. So you have two options. Either you drink a warm beer or you drink a beer with ice in it.

And I'm gonna be honest, I choose the ice cube, man. That to me having a refreshing feeling with a beer is the lesser of the two evil. To be-hmm. Hold up, hold up, hold up. Would you put ice cubes in a glass of wine? Because this is the same kind of question, right?

You're compromising the drink. Obviously with stuff like, you know, whiskey, there's arguments there and some people say water helps the flavor. But with beer that's flat out, just no, no, no, no. You do not, the, you don't put water in beer. Okay, to be fair, I've never had warm beer, nor beer with ice-coes. You've probably had, no, you've had a warm beer.

You've done, you've never had a warm. When you're at college or something, right, like, you just forgot to put in the fridge. You're like, all right, well, I'll just take a warm beer. I mean, is that warm? It's like room temp is a bit different to warm. Well, I mean, how warm can it be? I mean, it's, yeah, room temperature in Thailand

is very different from room temperature. It's fine. It's fine. It's like, you know, because sometimes you have a barbecue in the summer and it gets, you know, the beer gets really warm because you ran out of ice in the cooler and it's like, all right, well, you know,

it's whatever. Warm beer is fine, but putting water in beer and ice, having like dilute all into the beer, that's pretty nasty. Water down beer is a little bit gross. That's nasty. As if like Coors Light wasn't drinkable, like it wasn't, like, fucking, what's the word?

It's hard enough to drink some beers. Why the fuck was you want to put water in it? It's okay, yeah. Like, I'm not gonna defend this, obviously, because I, both, Both are like awful in my minds, but like my strat in Thailand is like, if you have let's say a glass full of ice, for example,

cools it down very quickly. So it doesn't get like too water down. So you, and since there's like less volume, you can drink it more quickly as opposed to like letting it get water down. I choose that evil over having warm beer because there's just something about, I'm not like a fan of like warm water in general

unless it's kind of like I'm ill or something. I like love warm water. It's like, it reminds me of tea. Warm water is like watered down tea. I have some, I have occasionally just drank in warm water. Yeah. I'm just like, fuck it. I just want the feeling of tea without having to make a tea.

I don't know why. I'm not too sure about my, but I don't know. It's close enough. It's close enough. Not sure about that one, she. There's two ends of the spectrum of me. I have dog shit takes, all right? This is my dog shit take of the year.

What are they just, okay, what I don't understand, right? Is that, okay, obviously it's hot outside, right? Yeah. And you want to, to keep the beer as cold as you possibly can. So why don't they just do that thing where they do in Japan, where they just shove the beer like glass in like a freezer or something

so that it's like chilled out. Yeah, I thought about this as well. And then immediately pull the beer and then if it starts to get warm, just fucking neck it. Problem solved, in Australia, we don't have to fucking worry about, it's hot as shit in Australia.

Yeah, I wonder what the glass strut is in the go-to. Yeah, just use the glass strap. That's just like a lot of like fridge space though, you know, that- So is storing all those ice cubes. Actually, I'm wondering how like Japan is like so optimized with space because in most places like having like a fridge full of glasses, that's just like that's just a fridge that you're basically like not using for food

or other drinks. Well I guess I let's break down the logistics here, right? Okay. You, you, let's say you're cooling the drinks. Obviously they stay cooler for longer. That's the benefit. You probably can't store all of your drinks in a cooler though, right? Like you pretty don't have a big enough thing to put all the drinks

if you're a business selling drinks all day, but maybe the glass is cool, quick enough where you could just shove them in because they fill up with ice. So they don't take up that much room. So maybe it can work. I don't know, you can stack drinks, right? Outside like ages, I feel like, I don't know. This is like a weird complex.

Maybe I feel like the bigger problem is, is that if you're giving glasses out to everyone, right? Like if you give a bottle, you sell it, it's done. You don't have to worry about getting it back, right? If you give a drink with a glass, you have to get rid of the glass that you, you know, poured the beer out of. And then now you have to try and get

the beer glass bag. Yeah, and also every, that also means every time you're so complicated in my head. Every time you order a new beer, you need a new cool glass with it, right? I imagine most of it's cans as well. Most of it's bottles, actually. Oh bottles?

Oh, glass bottles. So there's, it's, especially if you go to like the local kind of, you know, bars and restaurants, they don't really have like beer on tap, like singer beer. Singa beer isn't good enough that it like deserves to be on tap.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna say that out loud, okay. No, noise Chang beer. Um, it's, It's kind of like, it's mostly just in like glass bottles. So I mean, if they were- Why don't they just shove the glass bottles in the freezer? And then you can just drink straight out of that. The freezer?

Well, you know, in a cool environment so that it's frozen down so that you can just drink directly. Rather than pouring it into a glass, just drink it straight out of the bottle. I think the problem is, is that ice keeps are really fucking easy to make. Yeah, but they also take up space. Yeah, but I think you can make them pretty quickly.

And I think maybe keeping glasses in a fridge will take a while. I think the solution is that making a shit ton of ice cubes is easy. Yeah. And that keeping glasses cooled and stuff is complicated. It just doesn't seem like intuitive in any way. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I feel like it's probably something that started

and then they just kept doing. Yeah. Maybe they haven't thought, I don't know. I also, I don't know, fucking refrigerators are expensive. Yeah. Tana, come on, man, what the fuck? Come on. I don't know.

Like, to me, this is just like the equivalent of being like, oh, I'm gonna make some ice cubes. So I'm gonna take some cold water. and then boil it, wait till it cools down, and then turn it into ice cubes. It's like two steps in one, when you can just go straight to the one step. Yeah, I guess.

Go on Thailand, get your shit together. Either way, I'm not excited for beer in Thailand, that's for sure. I'm gonna be like, no ice please, no ice. Will they say anything if you say no ice? How do I say no ice? Sorry? How do I say no ice? Most places in Thailand speak English,

oh, okay. Especially if you're in Bangkok, just be just, yeah, Yeah, just ask for no ice, it's pretty, yeah. Well, they give you a weird look if you say no ice. No, I think most tourists go through this like conundrum when I go to Thailand, they like, why are they serving ice cubes? German would fucking drop dad, dude. It'd be like that, you know that Giff of Walter White

fall into the ground when he's like with his mouth open? It'd be that. Germans, when they go to Thailand and get offered a beer with ice. Fucking heart attack. Yeah, I think they would. I think they would. I think war would be declared.

Germany would re-milge for ice again. They'd be like, all right, we found a reason. Yeah. Oh my God. But does dieters need ice with every glass of water? I think so, yeah. I think he refuses to drink, like, water. Or is very picky at least.

We're gonna get them on. Yeah, we'll get him on. And I can grill him more about this. Because I felt like, I felt attacked, you know. Is that an American thing you think? Dude, yeah, they fucking love it. Because they love ice with everything. Remember every single, like, uh,

or diner anything you go to, you always get the giant fucking like two liter cup, like plastic cup with a straw and a ton of ice. It's not the ice, it's not the big ice cubes either. It's like the shaved ice. Yeah, that's, that ice sucks. I kinda like it. No, no, one of like the saddest looking like,

the saddest looking thing is with the shaved ice, I'm, I'm an advocate of if it's like the shave, like really small cubes, it needs to be up to like the brim. Otherwise, like, when you, when you have like the, when you have a glass and it's just like, like a little like one small layer of shaved ice. That just, it just looks so sad for me. Cause I'm like, that ice is doing nothing.

I also literally don't do nothing. I just don't use that ice. Yeah, I'm just, if I, like, you know when you, because a lot of the time you go to the soda machine and you do it and it's always that shitty ice and you're like, oh, you know, I kind of wanted to like not have my drink be immediately watered down.

So I'm just not gonna put it in. But I like crunching on it when you finish with the drink. Fuck, say. It's kind of like, mhm, yeah, it's nice. I feel that. I feel that. I feel that. You guys are monkey brains on this one, dude.

I feel like I'm gigabrain, like, I'm like, third eyeing this shit. Like, no ice for me, please. I don't know, man. How about tea? What do you feel about... What do you chew the tea bag? Like, how about... Okay, there's like ice tea and there's hot tea.

How do you feel about lukewarm tea? Just like room temperature tea? You know, I mean, obviously it's a lukewarm tea is a tea that has been left out. Yeah. Same with coffee, you know? Yeah. You know, it depends on my mood.

I'd say 80% of the time, I'll just down it. It's running to have the time I'll just throw it. Just town it. Because I'm like, I'm not excited about it because it's not even warm anymore. It's kind of room temp. I'm like, all right, look, all right, make another one. That's that's someone who's a teacher to coffee.

That's tea, tea. It's like, I will swallow my pride because I need this in my body. Waste tea? That's what the British people conquered the world about. That's what they struggled for. It's our identity. That's like, I can't throw away what they worked so hard for

and ruined the world for. Do you ever like reheat coffee or reheat if it's like going to hold? No, no, no, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. I'm not allowed to do that. I'm not. I sometimes do it.

Sometimes. Sometimes just like, just like 20 seconds in the microwave. Oh, that hurts to hear. That hurts to hear. It's weird because sometimes I'm okay with doing that with coffee, but I just refuse to do with my tea. I don't know why, weird mental thing.

Yeah, coffee it doesn't work. Coffee doesn't work? No, tea it works. Coffee it doesn't. I don't like doing it with tears. Like the forbidden technique. I think it works with coffee. Fine.

No, no, no. I mean, I don't let it get to that point. The Italians are like, Mama Mia, a microwave of my coffee over here. What the fuck. I mean, it's like, I don't- No, I just take, sorry, I literally took me five minutes to process with you.

I was like, there's no way he said that. That's why it took me so long. What the fuck? To be fair, 99 times out of 100, I don't let it get to that point. I'm drinking that shit while it's hot. All right, but sometimes you get a little bit busy, You know, you might, you might have to go out for a little bit.

You commit to the ice coffee. You put some fucking ice cubes in it. You don't fucking try and turn it back. Nah. That's like, it's like climate change. We've gone too far. We can't, we should just fucking commit. We should just go full hellscape.

No, I look, I look at it, I pick it up and I feel it's lukewarm and I'm like, I can fix you. Let's just shove you in the microwave. No, no. I just realized, I was like, oh my God, I did the whole, I went to America. back. Yeah, I was gonna ask about. I was gonna ask about that, which was there. How was, how was the Ludwig chess boxing events behind the scenes? Yeah. So I went to America for about a

week, uh, to L.A. I say America. It's L.A. It's like barely America. It's like a different America. Yeah. We can now say that now that we've been across America. I know. I've been to a lot of states, guy. I tried all the local foods and it's all the same for the most part. Um, but yeah, no, so we went to LA, went for a week, mainly went out to watch Chris Box, which Chris did very well. Yeah. Really get him on sometime soon. I'm proud of my boy for almost throwing the chess part of it.

No, no, no, no, he somehow threw more in the chest than boxing. Yeah, I think like literally, like the throwing of the punches didn't happen nearly as much at the throwing of the chest. Yeah, he had like, was it, checkmate in two? And then he ended up just like giving away his queen. I was like, well, how,

What do you do this? So obviously. I was screaming at my fucking TV. Yeah. So obviously if you don't know, yeah, Chris did chess boxing, a lot of chess event. We talked about it a bunch.

You all probably know, but if you didn't know, there was just, yeah, Chris was boxing someone. In between that, he had chess. And he'd been training about this for months

and we were all very excited for it. And I said to Ludwig and Chris was like, hey, if I get front row tickets, I'll go out. Because then in my mind, I was like, all right, well,

I'll figure out, I'll find some other work stuff to do to make it worthwhile. Yeah. And luckily I did. But yeah, so I did that. I did the thanksmas as well. Jack's episode.

That was so much fun. That was crazy. Had to go after Jack Black, which is nerve-wracking. I keep saying this. I'm like, it is nerve-wracking. To see Jack Black, kill it. And then you're like, all right, next up we got,

who, sea dog, Connor, I guess. This guy. Yeah, so it was like kind of crazy. Just seeing him real. Like, it was like, what the fuck? Oh, you're a real person. He's so chill as well. Of course.

Of course he is. It's like finding out Keanu Reeves is a nice guy. It's like, all right, no one is surprised that Jack Black is super chill and nice. He was just like, dude, everyone in the studio was like doing their job, but you could tell everyone was trying to like get closer to watch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really, because it was funny enough, it was where we did our rehearsals for the trash taste tour. Oh, was it? Oh, really? It was in the exact same, obviously you guys won't know this. We did rehearsals before we did our Trash Taste tour

and the exact building that we did it in was the same place where Thanksmas was. Oh, nice. Which was crazy. That was cool. So I got to see a bunch of the tour staff that we did with. So that was nice.

I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. So that was really cool again. We did that and that was a lot of fun. Jack's great. We had Jack on the pod. He's just, he's so fucking nice. He's so chill.

Good to hang out with him and that was great. See Aaron again. Nice. So that was so much fun. Did that, that was crazy. It just feels like a big family reunion. It was great. Everyone who we've met on like traveling

this past year. Yeah, it was awesome. It was like the highlights, like seeing everyone like the final anime. It felt like when I said by, the anime ending was about to play. Like that's, so that was fun. And then, yeah, I stayed at Ludwig's house as well.

That was good. Although there's so many noises, his cats and dogs kept moving around and I'm not used to sleeping with them. Right, right. So they would keep like trying to scratch on the door or come in. And it was really sweet. It was nice, it was nice, yeah.

His cat is so goddamn cute. Have you seen Coots? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the tiny white one, right? Yeah. Good, like, every time I see a pet, I'm like, that's so cute, but also fuck you because I wanna put. So goddamn bad here, man.

I wouldn't help myself. But anyway, it was, Chris came to LA and I was really excited to see what Chris thought about LA. And it was pretty much what I thought. I'll let Chris come and tell his thoughts about LA. I'm sure he'll go off on one. What was it like behind the scenes of the chess boxing event? Yeah, so it was interesting.

Because obviously I was staying at Ludwig's house so a lot of the time I was kind of getting, I was just tagging along to a lot of stuff whilst I was going to do other stuff. And so it seemed like it was kind of all working nicely and then Ludwig had to just go from A to B and whatever. And so I was kind of just,

like, hi, yeah, I'm here. Hi, I'll turn up. And it didn't really start to get crazy until the way in. Yeah. And that was kind of intense because you just turn up to this giant 5,000 person stadium

and there's just insane amounts of staff. And you're like, God damn. Like, this is all being coordinated by, well, a streamer, essentially. Like, and his team, his team's amazing. But it was just absurd, seeing all that equipment, all that gear. And it really felt like, oh shit.

Like, I'm, I'm like kind of watching like a serious kind of broadcast almost. Like this is, I can't imagine it would look that different. And the way in was fun. And oh, before that as well, they had the interviews where they, I don't know, you saw the videos. Oh yeah, I saw the videos, yeah.

So they had two hotel rooms adjacent to each other and they were both really fucking tiny. And so they did the interviews in the hallway of a hotel room and I was sitting in the room next door just talking to like, Ludwig or whoever was there, just chatting away while they were getting interviewed. And then they were to constantly go like, Can you go shut up in there?

We can hear you really easily. So they did the interviews. I saw Chris, said hi to him, like, all right, you're excited. Did the way in, everyone kind of was, you could tell that a lot of the fighters were like not really prepared to do like the whole, I don't know how to look serious or scary. Yeah.

So they're kind of like, oh. But it was really interesting. Some of them you could tell, they were like, yeah, I'm gonna put on a show, I'm gonna do it. But dude, the air, It was so kind of like, it was like kind of faux tense. Like everyone was kind of like, we're all friends, right? Ha ha ha!

We're gonna punch you the next day. Yeah, yeah. It was just kind of interesting seeing everyone kind of like slowly interact with their groups and kind of not talk. And then certain people were like not talking to other people because they were gonna fight them. And like, I distinctly remember that Chris had said hi to his opponent. Yeah. And Chris's coach is insane. If you haven't seen any clips, he's like, there's a video of him basically beating up a seven foot Korean man. and he's like 5-10,

and he beats him in kickboxing. Like a giant seven-foot man. Right. It's an insane clip. I'm sure Mournan can play a clip right now. It's fucking insane. This man's a machine. And he's like full-on like proper fighter kind of mindset.

And Chris is Chris, right? So Chris is talking to his opponent. And then I'm just standing there watching this. And Nick goes up to Chris, he's like, all right, Chris, now. Now's the fight. No talking to him now. You've got to focus. You're going to punch that guy.

Don't be friends. with him. And you could see Chris went like, oh, oh, alright. It was just weird seeing him like, he's like, you're gonna kill him, you gotta, you can't talk to him. But that was the first time we got to see

like Chris's opponent really show up. Yeah. Chris's opponent was scary. Oh, he was pretty terrified. You can tell he's a big guy. So he wasn't, he isn't like very well trained in boxing. He's done a lot of other martial arts and you can tell the guy's just been generally fit

his whole life. Because you look at a guy You're like, that's the man, that's the body of a man who has been exercising for a long time. Yeah. It's the same you can see like the Twitch chat as a- I wish I could have seen the Twitch chat, dude.

I was like, I was like dying laughing, seeing the, like, you know, Chris has, Chris has a lot of fans, everyone was cheering for Chris. Yeah. And his opponent comes on and everyone was- I just like, it was just like a collectively, you're rip, oh shit. Oh shit.

Well, can you see this man's pecks and this man's back muscles, you're like, oh, shit. And then you realize, you're like, oh, okay, like when you see them both, we saw them both like stand up, you're like, oh. So Chris had been training six months just to get like halfway to where this guy was

before he even started. Yeah, yeah. It's like that's, like, that's- We're about to witness a motor. Right, so that's where it was like, kind of, having a lot of natural fitness helps so much with these things. And Chris was, I mean, Chris was just trying

to get rid of his like excess weight. Yeah. And the way it was like, oh, this guy beats Chris in length, an arm, arm, a wingspan. Yeah. in height, in weight. Chris only beats him an age. So maybe that has something, I don't know.

And so obviously, you know, Chris, Chris didn't really seem that nervous, though. Chris seemed pretty confident about it. I think Chris felt like he had, maybe because he'd seen the clip of his opponent getting knocked out like a week earlier. Right. His opponent got knocked out in one punch a week earlier.

Right. And I'm sure Moodyan can play a bit of that clip. And so, you know, I think it was like a bit worried, but also everyone was kind of like, well, you know, maybe, maybe Chris can do well. Yeah, how was he in the dressing room? Full hand.

Just kind of, Chris, just sitting there. I think he was trying to just focus. He wasn't really like talking much. We were just kind of like doing it. And then I went off to go and go to my seat and watch. Was he doing the thing that Chris does when he's concentrating where he does the mouth thing like. No, he did, he did.

He does that a lot. He might be pissed that you said that. I've said it in a video before. So, yeah, the day of, so I knew obviously all the stuff that was gonna happen. I knew that the table was gonna come up from the sky and I knew that Ludwig was gonna slap, have a slap match with XQC at the end.

So the day off, it's like 10 a.m. And like months, months prior to this, I told Ludwig, I was like, hey, if you ever need anything, you want me to get slapped or whatever, I'll do it, back up. So that morning of the boxing, it's like, it's like 9 a.m. We're going over to go and pick up XQC.

And yeah, he's just not there. Just straight up, not at the, his house. Jeez. And then Ludd is like, fine, I'll just, I'll just call. Doesn't pick up his phone. And I'm like, is that normal? He's like, yeah, that's normal.

That's normal. I'm like, wow, okay. So then we just drive to the venue and just kind of, he's like, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure he'll respond. Because, you know, he's going on at like 7 p.m. Yeah, so he's got from like 10 till 7 p.m. To like, all day.

Yeah, all day. And so we get to the venue, I get there very early, just kind of, because I'm there from like 11. The event doesn't start till 4. So I'm just looking around, just doing stuff, getting lunch, talking to people. And then, yeah, around 3pm is when it kind of starts to get like, all right, okay.

We're nervous. Yeah, everyone starts to get a little bit more tense because everyone realized, all right, they're going to have to actually, like, go on and put on a fight. And, you know, Chris was just getting ready. Nick was doing up his, like, the things that go on your arm. Yeah. What they're called. And then I'm like, all right, Chris, I'm going to get to my seat.

Good luck. And I'll come meet you before we do the walk-in. And so I'm sitting. I got like front row tickets. It's fucking awesome. The boxing's great. see everything. I can't see any of the chest though.

I can't see it from where I'm sitting. And the screen is like up here, directly up. And every time they went to play chess, initially it was broken. Like the board was broken, right? As you saw on a live stream. So it was kind of like, oh, all right.

So I guess we'll just kind of, we were kind of like just quiet for like two minutes and the boxing side. We're like, yeah, it's so good. Front row tickets are amazing for boxing because you see and hear all the punches really clearly. And dude, you can see their face when they're like struggling as well.

It's a pretty fucking fun experience. All right. As I say, from my sadistic standpoint, I think it's punched, so fun. Look at these peasants fighting each other. Exactly, exactly. And like the smashboxing was pretty fun. I think it all went pretty well.

Yeah, yeah. And then yeah, I went to go and do the walking thing for Chris. I basically, I told Chris before, I was like, yeah, you should do something when you go out. You should do like some funny, like a funny bit or something. He was like, what, why? I was like, well, because you know,

it's like a show, like, put on a show. Why not? You know, because it'll be clipped everywhere. There'll be a lot of people watching. And he was like, oh, okay. So he comes back a day later. He's like, all, I've got an idea. We're gonna throw candy into the crowd.

And I was like, why? What reason are we doing this? So he was like, oh, it's Christmas in it. I was like, all right, fine. It's your walkout, let's do it. So we go out, have these candy buckets and I'm just trying to hype him up and hype the crowd up, right?

And whatever, we walk out and that was really fun. And I'd just immediately go to my seat and I'm watching him. And man, it was his, intense. It was intense watching Chris. I'm sure you, were you guys watching from home? Oh, yeah, I was watching from home, yeah. Yeah, it was, um, the boxing started and it looked like Chris was not doing great. So I think it was like, oh, oh, oh, no, oh no. And then the chess happened, and then Chris started winning. And we're like, oh, my God, yes, Chris is crushing it. Chris is literally about to win.

And then the boxing happened again. We're like, all right, just Chris just survive. And Chris wasn't really getting in many punches, right? Chris was kind of like dodging and just moving around. It felt like watching, like, you know, some take on a Dark Souls boss. Yeah, he was just, He was just like dodging, like he was just like, eye frames, eye frames. Literally, he was just like, how many eye frames can I get out of this? I'm like, I'm seeing him like try to win at the chess.

I mean, there's definitely like, it seemed like he's way more experienced, at least in some form of combat sports, right? You can tell because he's constantly going in, he knows his reach and he's playing with it, whereas Chris is a bit more defensive. You kind of just trying to survive. He's spamming the roll button in the armsoles.

And then, yeah, he threw massively. Yeah. And it was like, oh, okay. Well, I guess he's lost, because he's not gonna beat him in boxing. And he's not gonna beat him in chess now. But somehow his opponent was even shitter at chess. So it all worked out and Chris won in the end.

But it was intense, it was like 40 minutes long. I was like on the edge of my seat the entire time. Oh no, same here. Like watching that shit live, I was just, like, seeing like Chris kind of like clutch at the end with the chess, I was fucking screaming, man. Yeah, it was hype, it was hype.

I think Chris was a bit disappointed that he didn't do better in boxing. I'm sure again, he'll talk about all this stuff when he comes on. Congratulations on getting like a big, You're not throwing yourself, by the way. So yeah. So during the Andrea fight,

so about the third to last fight, yeah, Ladov comes out to me, he's like, yeah, so X hasn't replied to me at all. And it's like, it's like five something PM. And I'm like, oh, okay, all right, well, I guess, yeah, I'm down, let's do it. And so he was like, all right, cool. I was like, by the way, please don't try and slap me too hard.

I have a blood thing, so just don't try and kill me. Yeah. And so he was like, oh, okay, just slap me as hard as you want. Like me as hot as you want and I'll reciprocate. And I was like, okay, cool, cool, that works. That works nicely. And then I'm sitting there and I'm realizing I'm like, wait, how the fuck am I going up?

Like how is any of this working? Like I don't understand how any of this is gonna happen. Like I'm sitting here, like the tech guys don't know I'm going up. So like there's no way like, there's no graphics or anything. Like yeah, I'm just sitting there thinking like, what the fuck, how does this gonna work?

Like what do I do I, like, what do I even like, do I do I do a bit? Do I, what do I do? And again, it's two hours. And I've been drinking a bunch of beers before this was free. Yeah. And I was like, fuck yeah.

I want to drink beer and watch boxing. And so I was like, oh shit, I guess I should stop drinking beer. So I stopped drinking the beer. But then I found out that later on, after the fight,

that Ludwig started drinking shots before. Because he wanted to get ready for it. I was like, shit, I should have kept drinking. So, like 30 minutes before I'm about to go up. Because the fights could either be five minutes or 30, right?

Yeah. So I was like shitting myself. I'm like, fuck, I don't know when I'm going up because the Toast versus point point-cro match started and it looked like Toast was about to lose immediately.

And so I was like, shit, I'm about to go out. So I started getting really fucking nervous. And one of Ludwig's team comes to me. And I'm like, yeah, so like what, how is this working? Like what do I fuck do? And they were like, oh, well, we'll figure it out in a sec.

So the fight ends. And just before the fight ends, Lerdy comes over and he's like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna throw it to you and you're gonna come in and do whatever you want. I was like, do whatever I want? What do you, like, give me a role.

Do I be the bad guy? The good guy? Give me something. Like, I didn't know. He was like, oh, just whatever feels right. I'm like, oh my God, okay, fine. So then, yeah, I'm sitting there and then watching it, and I didn't know when they were gonna cue.

Right. So I'm just kind of like, all right, waiting, waiting, and they go, is there anyone in the audience who wants to slap Ludwig? And I'm like, oh shit, I guess I'll put my hand up. There's this great shot on the screen. Obviously, you just like casually like, yes, my time, finally, my time has come. So yeah, I thought to myself, I was like,

I wanna make it look as like swan, suave and casual as possible. So that when I go up, it looks really like fucking extra and over the top. So I just sat there like, yeah, okay. I guess I was slapping as I can. And then yeah, really surreal, herring fucking Jermma go, was that C-Dog?

Jermma's so fucking cool man. Jim is such a nice guy. It seems like such a cool dude. And yeah, then going up and I was like, all, all autopilot. I'll just figure it out, we'll just do it. And I hope I did a good job, I don't know, maybe the audience.

I saw a lot of nice comments, so I'm hoping that I did. It went really well. And it was a good match. We slapped each other. Everyone kept saying that we were faking our slaps. We were, to be fair, the last two slaps were pretty hard. The first two were like, yeah, they were,

we were holding back. Because we also didn't, I was at the mindset of like, I'm not actually trying to injure him. I don't actually want to hurt him. I just wanna make it look hard without actually injuring him. I did give him a little bit of a bruise on the last slap that I got him pretty good with.

He did ask me to go a lot harder, so I did. But I still didn't do like fully 100%. But also, I don't do it. I don't know. I feel like that you don't need that. That's a bit excessive. I feel like, is that really gonna add to anything if I give him a concussion?

I feel like, I don't, I don't think he needs that. People want to see death gone out, you know? I know they do, but I'm like, they want to see a knockout. I don't think we need it. I don't think it needed to happen, but I think it all worked out, and I got my belt. I didn't choke.

I think it was, it was, you know, he definitely wanted to get the time, the clock closer. Yeah. At some point, so he wanted to get it, like, I think, very close. He's a master at stalling for content. Yeah. But I think he accidentally stole too long. He thought a bit too long, I think he actually tried to win.

He might say he threw for content. I think he actually tried away, because if you watch back, you can see him trying to press the clock again. He just didn't press it in time. But then also, we also broke so many rules. Like I didn't, I totally forgot, you're not allowed to move a chess piece and then press the clock with the other hand.

But then also half of these matches, no one fucking played the chess correctly anyway, so why do people care? Something would just like move to piece and didn't even press the clock. Yeah, like Chris's opponent did it a few times. Yeah. So I was like, yeah, got it, got my dub, got the belt.

I was a happy boy. Dude, man, I don't know if you've had this before, but whenever you have like a huge massive serotonin rush, like the next day, you're like, fuck, this is, I'm so sad. Yeah. I was just sad the next day. I was like, shit. Even though I was, it was like a fun time.

We were just, I was just hanging out with my friends. I was just like, damn, I'm just sad. I think the serotonin come down was like really high. Yeah, I get that. And that was like, oh, man, this sucks. And then the next day we flew to San Francisco. Francisco, we did a sushi stream where we did learn sushi with a sushi master.

Yeah, Mitchel chef, right? A Michelin star sushi chef. Yeah. And he was very funny, it was great. It was a really fun stream, check it out if you haven't. We basically just tried to prepare sushi. And I was not good. I mean, we knew you weren't good at cooking anyway. Yeah.

Dude, sushi's hard, man. I know it looks easy. They just kind of like, boom, boom, boom, boom, fish, there you go. Dude, that's just hard. Yeah. This man was cooking. cutting up cucumbers, like it was like arts and crafts.

Insane. Insane. Yeah, it's almost like sushi chefs have to go through years which is crazy man. To get really, really good at sushi. Yeah, it's crazy, dude. It's crazy, dude. This man turned a cucumber into a Christmas tree.

Isn't that insane? Yeah. I'm trying to imagine how. Yeah, I know, right, exactly. I didn't know that too until he showed me. Did he do it in like the one fell swoop? He probably kid him. He probably kid him. He was like, d-d-r-r- and then he did like an accordion.

He did like an accordion with the cucumber. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. And I tried, I copied exactly what he did and it just didn't work. It just fell apart. It just didn't even do anything. And I was like, what the fuck? How did he do that?

I copied him. Yeah. It's, there's like some magic, especially like with some of the cutting techniques I've seen where you just see like chefs, it's literally like real life shirk a gig where she's like, yeah, it's what he did, this is what he did.

I was like, and I copied that and it didn't work. So I realized I'm just not meant to be a chef, but then flew back. I copied that. Now I've three, less fingers. Yeah. I just have half a cucumber.

And then yeah, I flew back, we flew to seven minutes ago, flew back the same day. And the next day I flew back to Japan. And I- Yeah, it was literally like one week of just back-to-back stuff. And it was pretty fun. I mean, I got so much work done.

It was great. I like it when I can do a trip like that where I just go away for a week. It's so much work done, come back and done. Like I did the stream as well where I reviewed cereal with Chris and Ludwig. Yeah, yeah. And that was a lot of fun.

But yeah, it was just great. I mean, getting, it's really satisfying, planning out a trip like that and just getting, doom, doom, do'm back. And then you're like, oh, nice. That was like productive. Did you help Chris like practice that chess at all? Yeah, I did.

I'm wondering like how much he did practice that chess beforehand. I helped him practice a tiny bit, mainly because we never really ended up, we just didn't do it. He knew how to play before I had that, right? Yeah, he knew how to play. He was okay.

I think, yeah, he said he was 800. I don't, I think that's cap. He wouldn't tell me his rating. I think he said he was 800 because that's like the default rating you get when you used to check.com. He's like, yeah. It's like, yeah, 800.

I didn't play once, but. Signs up to chess.com, guys. I'm 800, Eloor. I think he's like 650, 600 maybe. Because he was like, I'm gonna do the Queen's Gambit. He wanted to do the Queen's Gambit. Okay. Which is a chess opening.

And before it, I was kind of like, I was like, well, I mean, I mean, I guess it's fine. Like I told him, I was like, I would have just done the classic, the E4. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just the fucking moving, like, it's easy, you're white. Rui low-peas-old.

Like, he was playing white as well. Right. So I was like, you could just play that, but I was like, honestly, you've been playing this entire time with Queen's Gambit. Me telling you to swap it now is not gonna do you any favors.

Just do it, just don't blunder your Queen. And he's like, and then he kept saying, the days leading before he was like, as long as I just don't blunder the Queen. That's what he kept saying. I kept saying as long as I don't blunder the Queen. I could literally see how tilted he was after he blundered that way.

Yeah, there was a thing that wasn't picked up on the cameras but after he did that, the round, like when the thing thing went and he was next to boxing, he stood up, looked at me and did this. I was like this. Yeah, it was, yeah, I mean.

Made it more dramatic, man. Did it for content. It's awful content. You know, I knew that his opponent was terrible at chess. So I was like, honestly, don't worry about it, just play. Yeah. How bad could it go?

And then it nearly went extremely badly. And then he nearly let his opponent promote to a queen, but apparently he didn't even know that was a thing. What? I remember that, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was one, one move away. So in chess, if you move the pawn all the way to the end of the board,

you can get a queen. Yeah. And somehow, Chris had thrown his queen and then allowed him to get his porn one move away from promoting with nothing defending it. And I think they both missed And they both missed it.

Yeah. And he was one move away at any point he could just got another queen and it probably would have just ended the game. He just didn't do it. Yeah. And then later someone had said that apparently he just didn't know that was a thing. Oh my God. So Chris, Chris was fighting a man who was like a pro in boxing and a toddler in chess. So luckily it worked out for him.

Jeez. Yeah. It was like a really, really impressive. The event was insane. The event was insane. The event was insane. It's like considering how many moving parts like have to like go down for that kind of event to happen and he was like talking about it for like ages as well dude just seeing all the staff there i was like my god this is so stressful but he has like he has like a team of i think 15 employees so you've got a really good amount of people working on the stuff and you know he's he's not always there like on the floor be like you do this it's like it's just like you know he works with his team and his team's great yeah and they're so

fucking cool all of them are so nice yeah just like going to seeing like live events like that going to shit like Mogamani live and also doing our tour as well. I'm like, fuck, live, live things, a lot of fucking fun, you know. Yeah, yeah. That's why I really want to start doing some as well and do some more fun life stuff. Maybe this year, hopefully, things first. There's just something about having that audience energy in front of you that, especially after the pandemic, I've just like, sorely, sorely missed as well. Yeah, I think after the tour as well, it made me think like, damn, I really want to figure out a way to do some live audience stuff, even if that means me going to America for like a week to do something. That's serotonin rush, man. It's a

So good. It's something different, man. It's just like, it's like, you know, I love streaming a lot, but I love the idea of having these big things that you work towards. Yeah. And yeah, I'm really excited. I really wanna do some stuff. Keep rice peeled, might be some stuff coming, who knows.

Next year, next year. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Do you mean this? Yeah, this year, sorry, this year. Of course, we are filming this in 2020. We are filming this in 2023, yes. Yeah, 20203. And it's just great.

Like, every time I go out to LA, you know, I think LA is an interesting city. This is the nicest way I could say it. It's terrible, it's a terrible city, but every time I go there, I always get so inspired, seeing how, like, the creator scene is over there, how, like, how hard and crazy people are working out there. You know, obviously there's some characters that, you know,

it sucks, and a lot of people are not nice. Did you ever find out where ex-QC was? No, I have no idea. Okay. He just didn't show up. I think he, I think he replied actually to Ludwig at, like, eight or nine p.m. I mean, like, sorry, I just woke up.

I think, I don't know, something like that. like that. So that was, that man is on his own time zone. Yeah, it's what it is man. When you're the biggest, you can, you can just not turn up to stuff. I guess. Yeah, no one cares. Um, yeah, I, I, I, just, every time I go that, I get so inspired. And, like, seeing, like, seeing Ludwig just do his thing, man, he's such a, so professional. And the stuff that they're doing and pushing live streaming forward is like, oh my God, that's just badass. Yeah. And they're like, how can you see that stuff and not be, like, inspired to want to better your own stuff and push it further? Yeah, it's kind of like every time I do go to L.A. for anime Expo or whatever.

and like you get to talk to a lot of these other creators. It does like light a fire under your ass. Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah, and then you come back to Japan, you're like, what can I do here? So yeah, we can't do anything. Yeah, which is why I'm like, man, we should just make our own, we should do it.

Yeah, because like just seeing some of like the ideas and some of the shit they can get away with over there, just kind of like, oh, I wish I could do this in Japan as well, right? Yeah, yeah. Because it's just like the infrastructure is there and it's just a lot easier just to, you know, get a, be able to get a camera out and just be able to like do excited

things. It's, you know, I have a lot of problems with LA, as we've all like mentioned before. Yeah, of course. We've all had our qualms with it, but it's, they have like all of the instructor there just to make shit done and get shit done. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, if you want to hire out three guys and someone who knows how to do a live broadcast and an audio guy who knows how to get it all done, it's like, boom, in LA, that's easy. But in Japan, it's like impossible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there are Japanese people who do it, but it's like, they won't be nearly as flexible enough to do what we would need them to do.

And also they would charge so goddamn much money where if, you know, it's just makes more sense at that point, just if you're gonna be doing it consistently, just make your own team. Yeah, exactly. And I get all this stuff. Like when we did that sushi stream, there was three red cameras they were using the stream.

Three cinema cameras to stream that. Insane. For those of you don't know, each one is like 20 grand. No, no, no, no, it's more. More than that? More. Fuck. They're like 30 to 40, I think.

But just the, just the, the camera and then you need to buy all the other shit, which adds up a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. The SSD is also red SSD. Yeah, you can't use other SSDs. They have their own proprietary stuff, which is kind of a, that's a whole thing. So patrons, we know what we want for Christmas

for 2023. Next station. But like I did that, I did a poker stream recently as well where I got invited to play poker with a bunch of Japanese people who I'd just only kind of briefly spoke to you once. And I kind of thought, yeah, this sounds intimidating, just turning up to a, it was a showgie build

that they wanted out to play poker. Cool. And it was just, they kind of brokenly messaged me in English being like, poker, yes, alcohol, yes. And then as I'm like going over there, they message me being like, poker, no. I'm like, what? What do you, what?

But then I get there and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, all good, all good. I'm like, what the fuck? Just message me in Japanese and I'll Google Translator. I thought we could debate him. I met these people on a stream and one of them is like a professional poker

player in Japan. It travels a lot. Is that a thing in Japan? So recreational poker is really big here. Oh. If you wanna play, you gotta pay in. Yeah, and you can't like win money necessarily. Yeah, yeah.

A lot of people just for fun. Like practice here. And then they go to foreign countries to compete. So a lot of them will go to go across Europe, we'll go across America, just playing poker tournaments. But they practice a lot here. There's a really big scene for it here. They were telling me that there was a YouTuber who's in Japan.

He's a poker YouTuber with one million subscribers. And that's a lot. I think I know, yeah. He has his own brand of poker chips as well. Oh, he recommended. Yeah, that's one million in Japan is fucking insane. Poker's pretty big in Japan. Like you, if you look on the map,

like you go to like Tokyo and type in like poker, there's a lot of poker places that pop up. Right. Obviously you can't gamble any real money. It's like all recreational and you can buy drinks and stuff. And sometimes they have like fun tournaments and stuff. Like it's just for fun. And there's a lot of people like playing poker. And yeah, so he was a poker pro and they just messaged me being like,

hey, do you wanna come play poker with us three? and five other people you've never met who don't speak English. And I was like, all right, fuck it, sure, let's do it, why not? It went really well, they were already chill, they were already fun. And it made me really wanna do like, oh man, we should just, I was like, man, I should just buy a poker table,

just cut out some holes for the cards, put some plexiglass and then hook up cameras underneath and then have like three cameras going around. I'm like, man, we could do this. It'd be expensive, but I'm wondering like, I'm like, damn, I should, I should do this. Yeah, if you do, hit me up because I fucking love. I love to do all the work.

Hit me up. Conno, do the work. Do the thing. I just want to play poker. Hit me up. I do. I really wanna do some shit like that where I'm like, all right,

we can get a space that is built for like live stream content where you can like remake it into some stuff. We'll see, we'll see, I don't know. Maybe I'm being ambitious, I don't know. I mean, poker's just a lot of fun in general. And then yeah, that's easy. Pocus is fun, it's great.

Poker's the fun part, you know. Have you ever played poker, Joey? Yeah, I've played it in Hokkaido, actually, like earlier this year. Yeah. When I was up there, with a few of my friends. Yeah, like there's a, yeah, as, as, as Connor was saying,

there's a ton of places, especially in like the biggest cities as well. Like, there's a bunch in support. Yeah, in support, there's so many. And it's super fun. And again, it's like a whole buying thing. And then when you finish with it, you get like kind of, I guess like a credit type of thing, where you can use it again to buy yourself back in. Right.

If you go back to that store, for example. But yeah, it's like, you just play it with a bunch of like random Japanese people who are just like having drinks and just like hanging out It's a good conversation game. It is. It's a lot of time to talk. Perfect, perfect like Boys Night, just because it's like, it's the perfect mix

between, okay, we're playing a game, but also enough time to just like, chill out with the boys and just have a conversation. Sure, yeah, anything like that. I remember like when we went to Vegas, we tried going to like the poker tables in Vegas and then we saw the buy-ins there and we were like. It was like a minimum a hundred bucks a hand.

Yeah, yeah. And so that's like a minimum, right? So you need at least a few thousand to even sit down. And then I, when we walked past it, we just saw like, dude, people, looked intense. Yeah. And like people were like shouting and stuff. I was like life or death situation. Dude, I think a lot of those people are gambling with like their entire life like war. And so I was like man, I don't think this is the vibe. I don't think this is the vibe. Yeah, I think I

I wanted to have a little fun poker game with some friends maybe but no, not not a. So we just ended up at the roulette table, right? Yeah, we went to Vegas on the tour and I, we, me and God had never been. So we were like, wow, we want to see the casinos because that's, that's what you do in Vegas. Have a look. That was crazy. It was overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. Vegas was so much fun though. It's a crazy city. It is.

I mean, you've been plenty of times, Joey, so you're definitely bars. I've never seen an American city that made it so apparent that if you want to spend money, you can just like get way better treatment. Yeah. Like we were lining up for a cab, right? To go back to our hotel.

And as we were lining up, this line is long. It's like maybe like a 20, 30 minute wait. And this guy just shouts like, if you want a private vehicle, it's $50. And I was like, oh, so we can just skip the whole line if we pay $50? Yeah, yeah. So we can't go like, oh, fuck it, yeah, let's do that.

So we just did that. We just skipped the whole line for 50 bucks. And it's like, in my head, I'm like, why would everyone here is like, probably wasting so much money on these tables. Just say 50 bucks so you could skip the line. Bro, some people have like lost a lot of money. Oh, I know, I know.

I know. I ain't any more money on taxes, man. Yeah, I'd rather lose money on a cab ride and tip the guy, then give a casino more money. I am sad that me and Connor weren't able to go to like the Caesar's Palace buffet though. That was, that was a one. You went to the buffet, right?

Yeah, we took them, we did, my friend did this, who lives in Vegas, is also a YouTuber. Yeah, I've got digital necks. He did this, I've never seen this baller move before, but it was a huge line of the Caesar Palace buffet, right? It's like one of, it's, in my opinion, one of the best buffets like ever,

especially in Vegas. So we were like, all right, we got a lot of staff here who have never been to, you know, Caesar Palace buffet. We got to take him to Caesar Palace buffet. And he was like, yeah, the line might be really long

though, especially since we haven't reserved it. And we show up and sure enough, there's like, you know, 50 to 100 people waiting in line around. It's like a two hour wait. And we're just standing around being like, all right, fuck, what will be going to do? And then my friend Digital was just like,

all right, I got this. And he walks into the queue and like calls over just like a staff member. And he goes, yeah, So I've got a bunch of famous people here with me right now. And they really want to sit down and they want to grab a seat where they can't really be seen because they might be bombarded by fans

and that might be a problem with that. No way did this work. And the guy was like, all right, give me a second. And he goes back and he like gets on a phone call for like 10 minutes. And he goes, okay, so we got a seat for you right down the back, come on through it. And we just skipped the whole fucking line

and went to the biggest, nicest seat in the back of the restaurant. I was like, how the fuck did you do that? Even if I was fucking like, Leonardo DiCaprio, I wouldn't have the balls to do that. To be like, I need the back room. The absolute confidence in this man to be like, there's some famous people

I'm just like, that's such an alpha move. That's like speech 100. America's different, bro. That just different. That works. I can't put that work to either. What the fuck? That must happen quite often.

I mean, this is Vegas we're talking about, right? So there's probably just fucking celebrities walking around all the time. Yeah. I mean, but it's just like the fact that it was just like, Me and like a bunch of the tour staff were just standing around me like,

hi. And the guy looking at us like, those are the famous people? Those are the famous people? Those are the famous people? Actually, that's the anime man. I don't know if you know. Yeah.

I saw a claw machine in one of the casinos. Really? It was like a gambling claw machine. What was in it? Oh, money. Oh, just like cash. So you could bet however much you wanted to and then it would be like, hey, if you got one of the balls,

you'd get this much back. So I tried it and I was like, nah, this shit ain't gonna, no, this shit, this shit is not happening. At most I might get it once, but because it's like a computer that decides how much money you get, obviously, the computer will probably decide

that you get to win when it's a very tiny amount, right? So it's like, this shit, this is so dumb. No, it's not happening. So, it's game. Going on tour has made me realize, like just Connor has an unhealthy addiction to claw machines now. I don't know if I see one,

I kind of have to play it. I don't know why. It's kind of, you think I'd be sick of them, but I kinda just always wanna play them. The system's gone on, man. I know, right? He's, it's like the jumping effect, all over again. You've, like, you've done it so much,

you've reprogrammed your brain. You've tortured yourself with claw machines so much, that you've convinced yourself that you like it. Yeah, I've spent, like, so much on Claytono Crengings, though. Yeah, I, I, I never told you the story, but, like, the point I realized, that Connor, oh, Connor's like actually addicted, addicted was, so we went to one of the league

world's quarterfinals or it was like kind of the group, no, it was a group stages in New York. Yeah. And we go in and of course we're going in to watch League. That's why we're going there. And so we go to take our seats and there's just like one single like claw machine in this entire building, right?

It's just like one thing that they've put there and no one's like playing it and I just- No, no, no, no, fuck off, people were playing it. No, no when we were walking in. No when we were walking in. It's free, it's free to play. It was free to play. And Connor just glances that and just goes,

oh, there's a claw machine. And I was like, yeah, there's a claw machine. I don't know what you can win. Did you, did you know what you could win there? Yeah, so it was like a stress ball of like league things. There was like the like Gregas Barrel and a minion. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was just something for like fans and viewers to do like in between games. Right, right. So we watched like the first two games at this event that we're in. And then Connor's like, I'm going to go to the toilet. I'm like, okay, sure thing.

I did go to the toilet. And he did go to the toilet. And so what proceeds to happen is I, so before the next game starts, I go out as well. I'd go to the toilet before the next game starts. And I see Connor on this claw machine with like five people around him, right?

And I just thought, I just thought, oh, it's, because actually at that league event, we got recognized so much. Because of course, league fans and we've, we go hand in hand. So I thought, you know, Connor is just like, Connor's playing a few fans there.

He's playing a few claw machines with some fans. Go to the toilet, come back, watch the match. The entire match is like, I watched the entire match by myself, thinking where the fuck did Connor go? Where did he go? He missed an entire match of league. Okay, to be fair, it was a shit game, so I didn't care.

Yeah, so I go out. And what I see is a group of like 30 people, making a semi-circle around Connor playing this fucking claw machine. He had been playing this claw machine for 40 minutes. So that's a late match. And I was like, God, have you been here this entire time? And he was like, yeah, haven't won yet. I'm not leaving until I've won, like one of these fucking balls.

Yeah, so I went to the toilet and then there was no line for it. So I had seen a line earlier. So I was like, oh, I'll just have a go. And then I started getting recognized a lot by people there. And so people started lining up to like, um, some people were just waiting to take photos. Some people just wanted to watch me play. And then some people would just gather

because they're like, oh, I've heard this guy's good at this. People would just watch. And so, yeah, like Gant said, by the end of it, I had like a group of 30 people and it, it was kind of like, where they were all interacting and we were like, everyone was like talking shit, everyone was like bantering. I kind of felt like a like Spartacus

with my like audience. Like, are you not entertained? Let's get it. And I kept getting like perfect grips, perfect claws, perfect like, Every single time I nailed the grip on it. I had the perfect tech every single time and for 40 minutes I didn't win.

And then I was asking everyone like, has anybody seen anybody win this? And they were like, no, no. There's like three machines around the whole menu. And they're like, I haven't seen anyone win. I'm like, this is bullshit. We should riot. We should, we should rob it.

We should just tip this thing over and take its contents. And so the woman came to fell over one of the other machines and we were like, why, why, why? And then the guy started asking him like, why can't we win this? This guy's been playing for like 50 minutes and we can't want. They're like, it's easy, it's free to play.

A bunch of kids have won them. We're like, no one's won anything. What are you talking about? The government is lying to us. Begin the coup d'etat. They literally watched me for 50 minutes. Nail it, nail it, nail it, nail it. And I didn't win a single fucking time,

a $2 stress toy. So yeah, I was just kind of sad about that. And I- Did you end up winning? I like I was a friend. I didn't, I had to give up, because eventually it was like, I got to actually, like, cause I'd ask somebody, a good friend, well, not a good friend,

I'd ask somebody I know. I knew, hey, can I have tickets, please? Because the tickets were all sold out. So I was like, I should go watch the game. After 40 minutes, like that's enough, that's enough. Jesus. I like how it was a free claw machine. I was like, and you were like, I want a refund.

Give me a refund. I want a refund on my time. That was fucked up. Legal Legends, if you ever watched this clip, please consider sending me a free stress toy because I needed it afterwards. That was unfair. I bought so many white claws at that venue

and they were like $15 dollar white claws. white claws. Oh my God. I needed it to get through that claw, man. I was like, I was so sad. We also had a very first Geeks Plus office Christmas party the other day, which was a lot of fun. You missed the beginning of that. I did. I did. Yeah. So I think, I think the highlight of that light, of that night, because I've been thinking about it ever since that night was, we had like a secret Santa, right? So we had a secret Santa, you know, everyone, everyone got some nice gifts and everyone, but I forgot, there was someone who bought, what was that,

like fucking, sorry, Kendama, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like a Kendama, like Japanese toy. And there was a revolution that happened that now. That like opened my mind to be like, I didn't realize something so simple could be so much fucking fun. Holy shit.

It was like, I forgot who actually got it. For the, for the, yeah, that's right. Dider's got it for a present. Who gave it to Dydos? I think Anna did, right? Oh, Anna did, yeah, yeah. Anna gave it to Dytis for the president. And it was just like a small little Kandahma

and Dytas was like, what is this? And someone had to show him how to do it. By the end of the night, there was like, at all times, at least seven people just in a semicircle surrounding them being like, me next. Me next, come on, I got that. I got it, I can nail it. Now give it to me, you shit, I can do it.

It got so competitive. It just made me realize, damn. Kids in the 1950s had it fucking good, man. Holy shit. Who needs a fucking iPad? Who needs fucking Fortnite? When we have like a fucking Ken down- When you get cracked at it,

then it's no longer fun because you can do it every time. No, because then you start to learn like the special tricks and those just take like years to perfect. I'm good, I'm good. Honestly, I've been thinking about getting one myself. I'm just, a literal children's toy.

It's actually so fun. You don't understand. Because like initially you look at it. You don't know, you haven't tried it. That's why. I know what it is, I've used it. Yeah, initially you look at it. And you're like, this is fucking stupid.

I mean, you try it once, and you're like, we're trying it again. I'm gonna try it again. I'm gonna try it again. And it's got like that perfect, I'm gonna call it like a gameplay loop of just like, just one more time. One more time.

I'll get it this time. I'll get it this time. Joey is fucking cracked today because he, Joey showed us the strat. And I think that's what made it like so much fun because we could see what we needed to do. So the strut is just like, you have to pull up,

you have to pull the string up at like the perfect amount of like strength directly vertical as well. Directly vertical. And you need to fucking just like, perfectly landed on the Kendama. And so there are like four stages of difficulty. So they're like, there's like,

if, you know, here's what it looks like on screen, right? So you got like three appendages. And each appendage has like a cup that is a different kind of size. And Joey did it like, so the smaller the size, the harder it is to land it on that cup. And Joey like, Joey tried to do it. Joey showed us to do it on like the hardest difficulty setting.

And everyone's like, that looks easy. I'm just gonna go for the hardest difficulty setting right off the bat. Difficulty setting in a kid's toy. Yeah. And yeah, and then we like, I think a group of like fucking seven of us wasted two hours just watching this ball go fucking up and down.

It was so high up and down. It was the hype as things to happen. When anyone got it the first time, everyone was just like, oh, oh. Literally, you showed me how to, like spin it and actually wanted it on my first try. Yeah, I told people how to do it on like the spike, like to get the ball on the spike, which is the hardest one.

And I did it, and I did a first go. And even I was surprised, I was like, oh shit. And then everyone was like, yo, let me try that. And for like the next two hours, everyone's just trying to do it. What gift did you guys both give and receive? So I didn't find out that we were doing a secret Santa until literally like two hours before I was supposed to show up. Right.

Mealene was like, by the way, we're doing a secret Santa. I wasn't here for this because I was on a plane. Connor was on his way back from the US, right? So Maylene texted me like two hours before I was supposed to show up, being like, by the way, we're doing a Secret Santa. No pressure, though. And I was like, why are you telling me this? You'll end the loop if you don't.

Yeah, exactly. So I was just like, well, fuck, I don't have time to go out to shop for something, let alone wrap it up. So I just got to like grab something from home. And so I just was like, all right, I guess if everyone's kind of doing like joke gifts or whatever and like not serious gifts, then I'll just, I'll just give a joke gift.

So I just grabbed my copy of TSF Monogatari by Shindowel and just wrap that shit up. Yeah. And then of course, out of all of the people who had to grab my gift. There were about 40, 40? Yeah, those had like 30 or 40 people there, right? I had a one in 30 to 40 chance

that Sidney would grab my gift and she grabbed my gift. No way. And I was like, this is- Was it all just like a free-for-all? You just grabbed a gift? You didn't have a person? We had a system.

I don't know. Mainly did it in the most arbitrary system I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, like, we were, we had like, we used up like 20 to 30 minutes figuring out a system. And don't you just normally just go online and type everyone's names in

then it tells you if you're buying a gift for? No, no, because it was like, it was like randomized. Yeah, that's random though. Like you put everyone's name into a website and it'll be like, gone, is your secret center? Oh, how. How I always used to do it was just like,

for me it was always just like, okay, there's, you know, all the presents are at the bottom of the tree, right? Yeah, yeah. And then you, it's just a, you just go up and grab up. No, it's fun more fun to know who you're buying for and then you don't know who's being Santa.

No, it's secret because you don't know who's buying for you. You never know who's buying for you. So this, well, I don't know if it's different because this was called like white elephant, so I don't know if the rules are different. I mean, the only thing I know is secret Santa. White elephant. White elephant is basically the same thing,

but you know, You just, it's kind of like more of like, you buy a random gift that you put into the pool. And then like all the gifts are randomized and you kind of like pick from the pool or whatever. You don't know who you're buying for. You don't know who you're getting you from. And so we came up like,

Meilin being the mom came up with this like fucking overly complicated system where she was like, how many people bought gifts? Everyone put your hands up right now. Okay, we're all gonna, we're all going to assign you a random number and everything like that. And so we spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out the system.

And Joey just goes, wouldn't it be what's stopping us from just everyone taking a random gift? And it's like, no, no, no, we cannot do that. We need the numbers. We need the numbers. And so we all had to wait for mainly to like write like on each individual note fucking pad

just be like write a number and then like put it in a bag and then everyone pick it out and then calling the number. Like I was at the fucking ward office. So I was just like waiting for my number. I'm just like, number 21. I'm just trying to Japanify it. It's just trying to Japanify it. I was just like, oh my God.

It's like, welcome to the D-A Japan DMV. Yeah. So Sydney got your gift? Sydney got my gift. And I was like, no, all right, come on, Sydney. Replace it with someone. Because, like, that's just, that's a lame present for you, right? Like, you probably already have a copy of that.

So she gave it to Masa instead. Yeah. You know, he enjoyed it. Yeah. And then I got, I forgot who bought it for me. I got Seki-Hung, which is like the red rice. Oh. You know, so in Japan, there's this thing, which is called Seki-Han's red rice.

And traditional, you cook it, like parents cook it for their daughters when they hit puberty. Oh, that's nasty. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, what? Think about that. Wait, why?

Because they got their period for the first time. They get them red rice. They get them red rice. Because they hit their period. I'm not joking. You can look that shit up. That is a tradition that's been going on. And someone was like, I'm a buy-johners on.

That's like me taking my first shit and you just give me like brown rice. Just give you curry. Around, just like, oh, great. Oh, no, my first fecal excretion, I get to have some food that reminds me of it. Yeah. So I got, I got that, I got a steaming pile of that.

Great, that would be great. Congratulations on getting your period, Joey. That'll be good, yeah. I'm sure it tastes great. I'm now a fully grown old. Maybe it'll last until you get a daughter. I was just hold on to be like, I got this 30 years ago from a Christmas.

But holding on to this. Is there any other like Japanese traditions like that? because I know there's like the coming of age, kind of like, ceremony, right? The- Drink. Which one? You just drink.

You just drink. You just get shit-faced. Is that, that is, oh. You do, you do drink. Yeah. I mean, there's also, uh, Sikigu-Thang, which is like, it's this ceremony that you do when your child turns

either three, five, or seven. Oh yeah, I've heard this. Um, and, uh, and I don't know exactly what happens in it because I never did it. But both childs are boys? I think, no, I think it can be either gender, right? Yeah.

There's a boy thing, right, as well. There's like a boy celebration, something. I can't fucking remember what it is. The penis festival. Not the penis festival. What's the thing where you put the little fish out? The fish, uh, waving things. Oh, Kodomōi?

That's there, that's, uh, children's day. Oh, maybe children's day. Yeah, that's May the fifth and we, for some reason we, we put up these like, huge koi, like the koi fish decorations and we put them on like a top of a flagpole and it's just kind of as like a mock up flag. I don't know what the resemblance.

There's a lot of holidays in Japan. There's a lot of weird holidays like that in Japan. There's also Hinamatsidi which is like the little dolls as well that you display as like children as well. Yeah, I don't know. Lots of celebrations for children. Which is ironic because Japan has a child population. They have none so they're like,

it's just like, we don't know what to celebrate. Oh, children. It's a momentous occasion when someone's like, oh, you decided to have kids in Japan? I experienced something truly Japanese the other day. Gone, right. Gotcha. What?

Gotcha. Like, just experience that. Like gotcha porn machine? In the weirdest way ever. Oh, okay. So I rented a car, and there's an option on the website that was called Gatcha rent a car, where you just rent a car,

and you have no fucking clue what car it is. And you only find out when you turn up. That sounds epic. Yeah. So I always rent the smallest car anyway, just because I never have much luggage. And when I'm doing video shoots, I just need something that can get 30 people

to a weird place that a train doesn't go to. So I always just rent like a small car, like a Toyota Yaris or something, right? Like a tiny car fits four people. Yeah. Has room for bags and stuff. And that's normally like 6,000 yen just for the car for the day.

So it's like 45 bucks. So pretty cheap. Not bad. And then on the website I saw, it was like, oh, but for 4,000 yen, so for 30 bucks basically, like even less than that I think now, you can get a random car for the day.

And I thought, well, it can't be worse than the Yaris. Like, it can't be worse than the smallest car. And so I was like, right, fuck it, yeah, I'll do it. I'm down. So I turned up, and I won the Gatcha, dude. Did you get the SSR? No, and I get SSR. I got a pretty decent.

I got a fucking Toyota Prius when I turned up. Okay. And I was like, I'll take a Prius. I'll take a Prius. That's kind of like a win, right? Because if you're always going, if you're always going for the three star anyway, then it's only gonna go up from there, right?

Yeah, literally. I'm literally pulling for the most dog shit thing normally, so I'm like, hey, if I get- But what's to say the three stars, the law is right? What if you show up and it's like, here's your bicycle. Yeah, it could be. And then the SSR is like Lambo, right? So I, yeah, I think the way it works is whatever,

because you obviously people bringing cars back. I think it's whatever car is just kind of like awkwardly kind of at that rent a car where someone else doesn't need it yet so they don't transfer it, you just kind of get it. So I got a turn of Prius, and I was like, oh, that's fucking awesome.

Yeah, for less price as well, right? Yeah, the Prius is normally like 100 bucks a day. Oh, hell yeah. So I was like, fucking, let's fucking go. Dude, you got it. But I did have to Google how to, uh, I was in the car, the Prius, I'd never driven a Prius before,

and I couldn't fucking find the handbrake. I was like, how the fuck do I get this thing, the handbrake? Right. So I'm sitting in the thing and the guy's asking me, like, oh, you know how to drive this, right? And I was yeah, it's a fucking, it's a fucking car, I don't how to drive it.

the fuck. Is it not, is it the foot pedal one? Is it the- Yeah, and I've never seen them on these before. Oh really? I've literally never been in the car where it's a foot pedal handbrained. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I'm in the car, and the guy, the car who's with me and my cameraman, he's like, do you know,

how to get it out of the handbrake? I was like, I have no fucking clue. So I'm like, hey Google, how do I get the Prius out of hand-hand brake on and off? And then a YouTube video guys, this is really easy, up, this is just a pedal at the bottom. It's a tiny little pedal. Yeah.

You just push it in and then it's the handbrake. And I was like, holy shit. I've never seen that before. Yeah, my mom had a Prius sign. Oh, oh yeah. Have you ever seen that before? I've never seen that before. I've never seen it.

It's this tiny little hidden thing next to like where the brake is. Yeah, right. And it's just, like a third pedal next to the break. Yeah, tiny, tiny, like, like the fucking size of this. Fuck, and you just push it in and that's a handbrake. And I was like, oh, okay, but it was great.

I mean, it was so cheap, like with all the gas and stuff. I think the gas was only like, because it's a Prius, it was only like 20 bucks for gas. Ooh. So the whole day, the rental car, I was like, like, fucking just paid for itself. Paid for itself. It's crazy how like, because, you know,

obviously the train's great in Japan, but there are a lot of occasions where a car makes way more sense. Yeah. And so, you know, we were going to Fuji Q, which you can get a train or a bus too pretty easily, but I just want to be able to go there. I wish they would do that with all public transport, you know, just being like, it's like, okay,

so you want to get front to this station, take the train, gotcha. Honestly, you won't know which train you're going on. I feel like we need more gotcha in every ass. It's safe and sounds. If there was like, let's say like on a plane, right? There's 30 economy seats, two premium, one business. Yeah. And you can just be like, fuck it, Gatchett.

But it's a slightly more than economy. Like it's slightly more, you're like, ah, fuck it, there's a chance. I can it sell. Play the fucking restaurant. Hey, they should do it. You know? Go, go to the restaurant and they give you the menu

and be like, you can pay for less, but it's Gatchify. The bottle of wine, the wine gotcha. You could get the Dom Perry on. Or you could get a capricet or you could get a capricet. Or you get a capricet. Actually, yeah, because one of my favorite restaurants do actually have like a gacha machine. Why, you took me to it?

Yeah, yeah, weird. It's a gacha when you leave. Oh, really? There's this Italian restaurant, and if you spend, you know, a certain amount of money, you get free pools on this gatch machine. And you can buy, you can win either like a free drink or like a free meal or a lot of other stuff.

So I don't know. There's a lot of Izzikayas that I've been to in Japan where it's like, it's kind of gotcha, but it's like they use like the dice rolling game. I fucking love that game. Yeah. It's the Yakuza game, right? Yeah, the Chinchiro, it's cool.

But it's like two dice in a bowl. Yeah. And like the one that's near kind of my house is like you, if you buy a beer, you can do Chinchito for it, which is where like, depending on what's thrown, you can either get like a bigger price for the same price or you can get a bigger price for free

or if you get like two ones, then you have to like do five shots. Or it's like, you know, it's just like, it's just this kind of like cool, fun little method to be like, all right, let's see. Is that the game they, because I, I, I, learned how to play this game after I watched Kaiji.

Yeah. Is it the same game they're playing Kaiji season two? That's just Chinchiro? Oh, okay, okay, I love fucking, it's a good game. Yeah, really, really good game. Yeah, I played it in the bar, Pete taught me how to play. Yeah. I went to a bar in Japan and the owner would play Chinchiro with you.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, if you lose, I lost sometimes, so if you lose, you had to do a shot of Jaeger. And then, and so like the bar owner lost like three times and there's like three shots of Yeager. It's pretty fun. It's a good game. You should Google out of play it.

I could explain, but it takes like a few minutes. There's lots of local rules as well where it changes. Yeah, basically roll high. Yeah, that's basically it. Like get doubles. Yeah. I went to like a craft beer place the other day that had a pretty cool system as well.

So they, you know, you can obviously buy, just buy like normal like glasses and normal pints and everything like that, but they also have the system, the special system where it's like one price for like a certain amount of drink, right? And then it's kind of like a tier system. So this drink will always be this one price. But if you can finish your drink,

you can order more of this same beer, but then the next beer you get is gonna be a bigger size and volume. Oh, I picture a place like this. And it gets to a point where he gets like a comically big size of volume, like a fucking bucket by the end. That's like the final tier. I just, I remember me and Tini went to there

and we were just like, let's try and do it. Let's try and complete the game. And it's, it's, I wanna take someone my mates that sometime just to see like, just to see like, what if we take a Brit there? Now, what if we take a fucking, take a German there? See how far we get.

Because we got to like the second to last tier and we were like fucking slush. What was the vessel? What was the vessel? Yeah, what was the vessel? It was like, um. Are we talking like a boot or? Yeah, what was it?

It was, you know, you know when you see like some of that, like, you know that comically big, wine glass that's just like, oh, I'm only gonna have one glass of wine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bottle of glass of wine in that. That was, that was like the second to last stage. Holy shit. And then the final stage was just a straight, it was just like a fucking glass bucket almost.

Like it was like kind of like a yard basically. I think there's a few of places that do that gimmick in Japan. Yeah. Cause it's like, I've been to one like that in Rapungi as well. Yeah. Um, that was- We should do it to see out of the three of us who can complete it. I did beer last time I went and I think that was a mistake because Like by the, I think the second one or third one,

I was really full. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, I can't drink this bucket. I can't drink out of this. It's not even fun to drink anything. Yeah. Like it just becomes not fun. It just becomes a chore.

I just rather have a bunch of small glasses the way everyone has been doing for a very long time. Yeah, it's fun for a one-off. Yeah, I mean, I like going to places where they kind of like, it's kind of just gamify something, whether it's what fucking gotcha or having- There's like so much gacha shit here. So much got-gacha stuff in daily life.

Yeah. Like even like you go to Akihabra, you can play this Gatcha machine to like 10, 20 bucks. Yeah. And you might get something, but normally you get something kind of, yeah.

One thing I've never understood is, uh, have you ever like, you know, gone to like an anime convention, right? And you know they have like those special mystery boxes, right? Yeah, yeah. That's one thing I, like, that's one thing I've never gotten

and I don't understand why people would get them because do you think they actually put like good gifts in there? So I think it originated, it's a New Year's thing in Japan, right? It's how it started. and they're normally actually pretty generous. Right. Like it's meant to be like a lot of the times

you have to book these and they're limited. A lot of the times as well, like especially some of the more expensive ones, like the ones that you have to book. Like some of the stuff in these LuckyBah, they're called Fukbukuro. But like in these Fukubukro, like there's a lot of stuff where you can only get it

in the Lucky Bag. Like it's not sold anywhere else. It's like a special like package, but like you won't know what it is until you get it. Like I got one last time from Amiami it was 500 bucks. And I definitely, got more than $500 with the figures in the box.

The Pokemon one, for example, that they do with the Pokemon's in every year. Like, you have to book that shit like four months in a month. Jesus. I didn't realize you have to book this shit. Yeah, of course you do, it's Japan. Yeah, you have to, all the good ones you have to book,

but you also, generally it's more like a celebratory thing than a, let's make a lot of money. It's like, yeah, let's just. It's like, happy New Year. Yeah, happy New Year's one of the biggest things in Japan. And then I think, you know, when American cons, they were like, Money.

Is this a money making scheme? Because remember, an AX was always that one booth. I can't remember which one it was. There was that one where they would make the walls were the lucky boxes. Do you remember these? At Anime Expo they just have a, like a booth that was made out

of these lucky boxes. Yeah, I remember that. And did you just, they had never had anything good in it. Never, never. They're good for content, that's about it. Even then, like, Movedown or edited to the video of, I think with a heart unboxing one of them,

but it's just the saddest thing ever. And it was like 50 bucks. And there was nothing good in it. He gave me like a squid game plush that wouldn't shut up. It was like a tiny one. Yeah. And then you press it and he goes,

whatever the fucking side of it. I was like, oh my God. This is so shit. It's funny. Oh man. What's normal to do in Japan for like New Year's? What's like the tradition here?

The tradition is to... Do you have to get to like a temple, right? Yeah, temple. Oh, that's usually a New Year's Day. Okay. But like for me like this year, I'm going back to my grandma's place up north. Cause like it's very much like,

it's weird like Christmas and New Year's. You already went to your grandma's place, Joe? It's the New Year. It's the New Year, sorry. Fantastic, I loved it. Yeah, so I think it's interesting because like I thought about this is like Christmas and New Year's how it's celebrated in the West

is like the complete opposite to how it's celebrated in Japan. Yeah. Because it's like in the West it's like Christmas is for the family and then New Year's where you get sloshed with your mates. Right. Right. But in Japan, it's the opposite.

In Christmas is like a couples thing. Or you get sloshed with your single friends. I've been there. Yeah. And New Year's is when you go back home and you spend it with your family. Right. And so like, at least for me, like the tradition is like usually,

I go back to my grandma's place like a few days before New Year's Eve and then we do like a big like final cleanup of the house to kind of like, you know, not to like physically clean up the house, but also just like to refresh ourselves like, you know, for the, for the upcoming year. That's what they say. Yeah, you come in and clean my house. Yeah, you're coming in,

tradition. It's just an excuse for my grandmother to be my clean my house, bitch. So I go there, I clean the house and then we have this thing called Toshkosh Soba, which is you have this bowl of soba as your final meal.

And for the year, not in general. You will be put down. You'll be put down. Yeah, it's a Toshkoshi Soba. And, I don't remember what the exact reasoning behind why you eat the sorbos, but there's like some kind of like traditional reasoning

behind why you would do it. So then you would eat that. And then the New Year's happens. And then you go to the temple first thing in the morning usually to do like, you know, your first prayers and stuff like that. And then you eat or Sichi, which is like a type of traditional Japanese, like huge fucking platter of like,

I think like 50 different things, like small little different things. Like imagine what you get. I think I've seen this, you can, seen this to be able to book. I think I've seen it. Yeah, you usually, you book it.

I mean, people who are like pros just like make it themselves. But like, think of like, you know, like the breakfast that a deal-on. Think of that by like four times the sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you share it among your entire family, right? And it's really good, but it's like, it's definitely something you can't have. Is it like the chocolate boxes where there's like, everyone likes a certain one chocolate and everyone's like, can I have, yeah, can I have that?

Yeah, can I have like that, that one? I don't want the fucking squid come. I'm good. Yeah, there's always like, there's always like two or three that are just like untouched. It's like, I'm good fam, looks nice. It's just there for variation.

Help yourself. I feel like there are some real items that people just buy just for like, oh, it's just because everyone else bought it before. Yeah, do you have like Quality Street in Australia? What's that? Okay, fuck, that's a British thing. Quality, like, like, quality street.

Do you have A quality street? Like quality street. Is it what it's called right? Yeah, it's called it. I've heard of them. It's like kind of like a, Just a different type of chocolates. Right.

It's a lot of different type of chocolate. Yes. Yeah, there's like a triangle that's perfect. Yeah, I've seen it before, I think, yeah. And I think there was, I saw an episode of QI that was like, they, everyone, the favorite pieces that everyone likes, they purposely put less in the box of, which is fucking is cruel, it's cruel.

Is that true? Yeah. Motherfuckers. Yeah. Mom. Yeah. They swindled, bamboozled lights. And I was like, that's fucked up.

Bro, that's just a waste of food, man. You could have more chocolate if people are eating them. They don't want to put the good stuff in. The good stuff's expensive. Damn. It's annoying. They probably do that with, uh, yeah, they probably do that with like a bunch of different ones, right?

Yeah, I think so. Do you have celebrations? Yeah. Okay, you have those. We have those, yeah. I've sure any American, non-British people are like, what the fuck? Celebrations, there's only like two of the best ones.

Okay, wait, wait, wait, what is it? What is the best, best two in the celebrations? Oh, actually like most of the celebrations. I like most of them, but the, the, the Maltiser one is the best. Maltese. It's like a chocolate Maltese one. What, what chocolates are in there again? Like the fuck.

I got, I got, I go to Google this. So, British now. Yeah, we're going to British chocolates now. Wait, okay, but like, it might be different because like, do you guys have cherry ripe? The fuck is that. Okay, that's Australian. What the fuck is that?

That's the best one. What is it? Explain that to me. Cherry ripe is, uh, it's this, it's this chocolate bar that has like, kind of, I don't know what the hell it is. It's this cherry flavored something inside of it. It's like cherry chocolate.

Um, I actually don't know what it is. I don't care what it is. is, it's delicious. Yeah, okay, so in British celebrations, it's kind of like a box of different kind of famous chocolate bars, just like in very, very tiny candy form. Yeah. So we have Maltese's, Mars bars, Twix, Snickers,

Milky Way, Bounty, Galaxy, and Galaxy caramel. And I think Galaxy is the best. Yes. No, dude. Maltese's, teasers are the goat, dude. If you ever know, you gotta have one of these. If you come to the UK at some point, I'm sure we, because we eat it, but it's a very, very festive thing as well.

People buy them. They're so fucking good. Yeah. They advertise hard for the holidays, dude. Okay. I don't know if this is a white people thing, but they're in like every white person's home. They must be a white people thing,

because I didn't even know that. Yeah, after talking to Garn so much, I'm like, ah, I have to reframe how I view the UK. I'm like, I know, it's not the UK. It's the white people. It's the white people. Because I only have experienced the UK through the lens of white people.

Because I'm not. I'm obviously white. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of like me with Easter chocolates where I, I, fuck that. Easter's overrated. East is, I like the Easter chocolates. I don't know why.

You could have like a Cadreys milk bar, milk chocolate bar, and I'm like, I will buy the egg version. Eating it in egg form, I don't know, just makes it taste so much better. I don't know why. It's something about like slowly breaking off. It is, it is, right?

It is. I get that. I don't know why this is the thing, but this is so fucking British now I'm saying. out loud. Often when you buy these, these Easter eggs in the UK, they would come in these boxes. And for some reason, they always come with mugs.

They would, like, you would get an Easter egg that would come with a mug that was branded, like if it was Cadbury's, it would be a mug, a very cheap mug with the Cadbury's logo on it. Right. And this was a thing. Like, did you have this in Australia? So this was like, it was, like, you'd always get the chocolate bar and a mug.

Do you remember this? Yeah. And then I realized, I like, oh wait, I just remembered, in university, everyone would bring mugs and stuff. And I swear half the fucking mugs were just Easter egg mugs because they're the cheapest, shittest mugs that your parents wouldn't mind letting you take to university.

Do you remember seeing these now all the time in university? Now that you remind me, I'm just having a lot, fucking, you're the wave. I remember I see the fucking Cadbury and Kit Kat logo on these fucking mugs all the time. Dude, it looks so shit. Let me pull it up. I mean, can you pull this up?

It looks so pathetic. I can imagine. Easter eggs, mugs. Oh, those? It's those ones. God, just saying that, oh. It would come like this, it would come like this, right? It's like it would be the egg in the mug

or like adjacent to it and this was like everywhere. I've never seen that. Yeah, it was everywhere. Like every single fucking chocolate bar did this. It was insane and now I think about it, I'm like, why the fuck do we want so many mugs? This is too many mugs. For the tea.

You, but I already have mugs. That's the thing about every like British home. There is always, there is always an overabundance of mugs. Oh, so, right? And there's the nice mugs. And these are the shittest the shit. And if you ever go to like a government building or you ever go to a hospital

and or any kind of thing and you get a cup of tea, guarantee it's coming out in a mug the exact same quality as this one. Thank God. Because they're like they're like the replaceable mugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like the actual good mugs, no one gets those. No one's allowed to drink other.

It's like, once you're finished with that, we're just chuck it out of a wall. Probably, probably just throw it away. Did you ever have like, did your household ever had like a soft tier list of like mugs in your home? You know, you have like the cheap ones, but when you like, when a treat, You have like your personal mug.

There was like two or three mugs whereas my dad was just like, those are my fucking mugs don't touch it. Well, because it was like some mugs were like China, like with some nice equality, but they're still mugs. And whenever I used it, my mom wanted a cup of tea, she's like, why do you keep using the mug I like?

That's my mug. I'm like, I thought you weren't gonna have a tea so I took it. I just thought it's okay. Because it was such a good mug. Like I swear to go, every British person has like, everyone has a favorite mug. Has that one mug where they become like Sheldon from Big Bang thing. It's just like, don't use this mug.

This is my mug. Every British person is like this, because everyone drinks so much fucking tea or coffee. You need a mug. You need the goat mug. And I like ones that are, like, I've come to become very fond of like deep, very like cylindrical mugs,

not the ones that like curve up, just a fucking cylinder. Chop it off, boom, big mug. I hate the ones that like curve up, like those ones, they're shit. Like teacup looking ones. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of those. I just want this, like literally a perfect cylinder,

just chop it. and half, boom, that's the model, give it to me. I like the kind of like oval shaped ones. Yeah, they're pretty like that. Oh, like like, yeah, like this one actually. Like they're kind of dumpy one. Yeah, like literally like this one, maybe like a little bigger.

Kind of kind of feels like I'm drinking from the medieval ages or something. No, no, what are you talking about? That's not medieval. I mean, some of the designs I have in my house. Also, my mom has so much fucking. Yeah, your, dude, I. Your mom has a collection.

Your mom's house feels like a Looney Tunes accident waiting to happen. It is. Like, you go, you walk in and you're like, I can't touch anything. If I touch a wall, everything will break. It's like a foliarist's nightmare. And this number's doing VR in the living room.

With there's fucking China all over the wall. Yeah, so, to explain, my mom had, like, for my entire life, let's say, had this hobby of collecting kind of like antique, kind of like very, there's a word for it now, because it's kind of become a trend. It's kind of back in fashion now. Yeah, it's kind of like very, very, bougie kind of like teacups and china and stuff like that.

So my entire life, I felt like my, I was surrounded by like jenga pieces. And if I would make the wrong move, then the entire house would come falling down. You know, that's how I felt. And I kind of just got used to it until people like started coming around my house and everything like that.

And people like, what's up with all this China man? What's up with that? Like whenever you were like come home drunk, you must be just fucking sweating. God, it was, because it's like a mission impossible like dodge the lasers thing.

I just like, I need to get to my room, but there are mugs everywhere. Yeah, I don't- The earthquake, UK doesn't have earthquakes. Exactly, oh, this would not work. This would not work in Japan. I don't think, like, I don't know how I can properly verbalize just how much,

how many, like, precious, there's a lot. It's like, like, antiques and like mugs. It like goes up the same. She has literally like filled up every wall with like nice fine china, like plates, okay? We don't have posters. I never grew up with having posters

or paintings on my wall. My walls were filled with plates and china glasses, okay? That's what my walls for. And yeah, by complete, by complete, I don't know if it was coincidence or nice like luck. They've come into fashion. So she's ended up being like she's like selling, she's able to like turn this hobby

and turn it into like kind of like a hobby where she can make money out of because holy shit people people buy this for like a fucking ridiculous price in Asia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's I hope I'm hoping none of my mom's customers watch this because they buy it for like

a very, very high price. I'm like motherfucker I saw you buy this for 50 pence at the car boot sale. What way? Spline demand man. Spline demand. No one's just like When there's demand, man. It's like a lifetime's, well, like,

I could see my lifetime's worth, my mom going to car boot sales, buying this shit for like 50p, a pound a piece. Like, that's not gonna come back. And like selling it for like, God knows the amount of profit margin on that, man. Jesus Christ. Good on you, mom.

Inflation. Good on you, mom, but please keep selling them because I want my house back. I want to walk in my house and not feel like I'm going to break something. Jesus. But yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it was, it was certainly weird growing up

with that kind of environment. Okay, actually, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is mind me about a totally different topic, okay? Decorating a room, right? My room, my house was always decorated with, as I said, like teacups and plates or something like that. So I never really got to like, let's say,

I never really got to a point where I knew what to do with decorating my own room. I never had posters. I never had, like, different things. things in my room to like show my own personality. What like, I'm guessing you put a lot of like music posters in your room and stuff like that, right? I don't even know how to get posters.

What do you mean? How do I get them? What do you mean? You go to stores. I don't have money. Where are you getting this money from? They were like three bucks. No.

They were like the good post was like five pounds in the UK. Oh, no, no. You don't get the good ones. You get the shit ones. So I only ever put shitty posters out when it came like a magazine for free. Yeah. And I think I also like-

Yeah, that's where you start off. Yeah, I think I got a free poster of Halo in like, Halo Reach or something, and I put that shit on the wall. Did you ever have trouble like decorating your room in university? I didn't decorate my room. You didn't at all? No, it was, it looked like a serial killer's room. I had nothing on the walls, nothing.

I didn't get, in my head, I was like, why would I decorate? Like, I'm leaving this room in a year. Oh, that's true, that's true. But I've seen some university rooms, and they are like filled to the fucking brim with like different stuff and I was like, how the fuck are you affording this? Yeah, I think I never decorated, ever.

Had like one poster and that was it. It was, it was, it was, I think I bought one poster just so like if anyone came in here, they wouldn't think they were going into a serial killer room. It was, I think it was like a fucking star, a scar face poster. I was just like, let me buy something from like the university fair.

And I was like, what's something I can buy that's cheap that would also make me feel like a normal person? Scar faces that poster that's on the brink of like, I'm a normal person, but I'm a little bit quirky. Yeah, that's like, that's like, he was just waiting for the wolf of Wall Street to come out. So you put a different poster up. Because I was like, well, I can't put anime on my wall.

That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that just means, that's out of the question. That just means, uh, that just means I'm just gonna be shunned from every social group in university. This is back when anime wasn't accepted. So I was like, how do I, let me pretend to be a normal human, Let me scientifically work this out. What is something I can put on my wall

that's like, oh, I got a little bit of personality, but I'm a little bit quirky. It's either Scarface or Pulp Fiction. That's the only two choices. That was the two things. It was just like either Scarface or Pulp Fiction, and that was it. I just always wanted to spend my money on food.

So I thought, I'm not gonna decorate my room, it's dumb. I'm also like, if I'm moving like every year, what's the point in decorating? I just put a PC in my room. That's decorated. Did you move every year? Yeah, every single year of university, I moved. Oh shit.

Oh wow. Well, because the first year I was in student dorms and in the UK, I don't know if I wasn't your university. In mine, you only liked to be in student dorms for one year and then you had to find your own accommodation. And then obviously because like, you know, some roommates dropped out and some roommates, you know,

whatever, like people changed. So I just always moved every year. I was only in university for three years. Yeah, so you know, I was living at home so I was just, lucky, decorated my own room. Like I had this like weird conversation with Sydney the other day. Because, like, Sydney was like,

Sydney, Sydney found this, like, fucked up movie iceberg tier list kind of thing. And I think I've watched that. Watch that. I think I've watched it. Is that like the two and a half hour one on YouTube? No, she just found, like, the image of it, right?

Oh. And I come home and she was like, I'm thinking about, like, going through this iceberg. I was like, Sydney, don't, do not fucking do that. Because I, I, I don't really like horror movies and I'm not really, like, I don't really have, like, I have morbid curiosity, but I've never, I've been. But you also have a sense of reason.

I also have a sense of reason as well. But I ended up, I looked at the iceberg tier list, and I ended up realizing that I've seen a lot of these movies. And the reason because of that is because when I went to university, there was a phase where people, like, your roommates, you always knew that fucking one guy that would try to, like, show you the most fucked up thing that they could find,

whether it be something like a Serbian film or other like things they found on the internet. Or something on like, yeah, and Sydney had just like never experienced that. So I was like, I was like realizing, is this a me thing that happened in my phase? I got that fucked up front too. It's either in high school or in college.

Like you had that one, yeah, it was in high school for me. It was like that one kid that was just like, do you know what Reddit 50-50 is? They're trying to like meet spin everyone. Yeah, me spin everyone, yeah, me, it made me wonder if it's still a phase because I think it became a phase

because of shit like, you know, two girls, one cup and everything like that. So I'm like, the good old days. It's like, anyone in university now, anyone in college or high school, is this still a thing? For sure. Where, are you guys still showing each other two girls one cup? Hey, hey, as long as there's the internet,

someone wants to be a little edge lord. Of course, yeah. And that's how life is. God, I saw some of the most traumatic shit in high school just because that one fucking friend. Yeah, go, that one friend, who is not a friend anymore. Fuck you. You've literally scarred me for life

with some of the shit that you've shown me. I do not want to like... Oh no. Oh no. It's horrible. Oh, gone. Yeah. I'm ready for, I'm ready to like fucking fadden myself up for Christmas. Yeah, I'm gonna gain a lot of weight on purpose.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna gain so much weight. Just I just eat and drink like a motherfucker around the holidays. I just don't stop. I become like no face in that one fucking... I don't even seen that movie, so I don't even know what they have. What you've never seen spirited away? No.

What? No. No. What? What? What? Wait, are you actually serious? Yeah, I like I've talked about that

with such confidence and familiarity. I'm like, I've seen that fucking- I'm like fucking no face-meard. I've seen that gift like a billion fucking times. Have you actually never seen it? Never seen it? That's shocking. Yeah. For a long time I just lied and said I did

because I was just like. I think I remember you saying you have told me. Probably, probably because I, It was just kind of like, you know, it's like saying you haven't watched death note. Right. It's like, well, I just don't care to. But I've watched death note, don't I was gonna say.

Yeah, I remember you say you have watched death note. Yeah, I think you're a lie. I think one time we had a conversation where you were like, oh yeah, Princess Mononokey, it's so dark. Yeah, yeah, but I've never watched Princess Mononucky either. Have you seen any Ghibli film?

Never, I've never watched my neighbor Todoro either. No, Toto is fine. Toto is that's the one that I'm- Because that's purely like driven off The only Ghibli film I've watched, and this is within the past five years, I only watched as well, before that I hadn't even watched any. It was like, Howells Moving Castle.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good movie. And Kiki's delivery service. Okay. That was kind of mad. Yeah, it's all right. It's all right. I like it's all right. So yeah, I never watched Spirited Away.

Okay, if you like Howells Moving Castle, you'll like Spirit Away. Yeah, did you like Howl's Moving Castle? Yeah, I liked Howl. Okay. How was the Go? How's the Goal. Yeah, I watched the dub.

Yeah, Christian Bell, right? That's Christian Bail? Yeah, it's Christian, Yeah, it's Christian Bail. Fuck off, that's Christian Bail. What the fuck? He's the goat, man. What can't he do?

What can't Christian Bail do? I swear to God, man. He does everything. I love those moments where you're just like talking about a movie that you love and then someone says like, yeah, did you know he's voiced by that guy? And it's just like, I had no idea that was Christian Bail. Well, to be, to be fair, it's really fucking hard to tell.

He's so fucking good at disappearing into the character. Yeah, he's a Welshman, right? And you can never tell. He's a Welshman. I swear he has like a different accent. I think he was born in Wales, then immediately moved to London, I think, or American.

He's got a, I remember he spoke about it once. Right. Yeah, I think he was born in. It's funny though how so many people just like, yeah, he's American, right? Well, I mean, he's so fucking good at appearing. Yeah. Have you watched any, have you watched Changelman? Yeah, I'm nine episodes in.

Oh, I like it so far. It's, it's, it's something, man. It's, I'm kind of glad that we finally got a show that was hyped and, so far has been following through. Like every episode is a delight. It's fucking weird. It's just insane.

Every episode is like a movie budget. It's a lot. Crazy. The fact that there's a different ending every time as well. Like I, it's kind of insane. I am blown away. And in 2020, 23, it's fucking sweaty.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, fuck, we're gonna live up to that. It's kind of crazy. Even if I wasn't a fan of the show, it's like you're like, you just can't not be amazed by it. Like even if you don't enjoy it.

It's fucking insane. Yeah. Oh, the story is crude sometimes, but that's, I like it. I think it's fun. I mean, I like, it's obviously a bit edgier than like a lot of, like, other children, but it feels like edgy.

Yeah, but I don't feel like it's like edgy for the sake of being like edgy, which we see with like some other shows, you know, where it's just like, oh, this is the show that's aimed towards 15 year olds that, you know, want to think they're watching something adult. No, it's clearly just like Fujimoto, just being like, I don't give a fuck

of people like this or not, like this is just how I'm gonna make my story and how I'm gonna make my characters. Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of amazed at one point in episode nine. The episode before ends with the scene. And then they reuse the scene in the next episode,

but they reanimate it very slightly, entirely, all over again. And I'm like, okay, now this is, that's too much. That's just a waste. Like, this is insane, but this is like, what? And it's all insane animation. Like, it's like, I don't understand how much, or time power, cost money again, ha, ha, I got in trouble.

Like, the amount of time, money and effort put into this is must be another level. Like the amount of talent that must have gone into this is insane. What blows my mind is when, you know, when people look at something and think good animation, they think, oh, the fight scene was like good or they think of the fight scene.

Like, change the man just looks good in like every single second. The talking, the talking scenes. Oh my God, it's so fucking, every shot is so like dynamic, right? It's like, you know, sometimes you watch an anime, it's just like always like, like, oh, basic shot for shot for shot.

There's a way, they always feels like there's some thought and to put some thought put into how this like, how this looks on film. Like, what angle have we not put a camera at yet? Let's do it, let's do it from there. Go, yeah. Like, I know you've read the manga, but you need to watch the anime, man.

I am watching it. Oh, you are watching, yeah, of course. I kind of, I kind of, I kind of have to. I think I would actually be hung and quartered if I didn't watch it. The anime is so good that I'm like, I really don't want to touch the manga. I'm like,

This is insane. I know, I bet it is, but like watching the anime, I'm like, there's no way. I think this first season's only gonna end halfway too. Probably, probably. Yeah, I think the manga's as good as the anime. I agree. I've been doing something like little quirky. I've been watching, watching the anime then reading the manga.

Oh, okay. Should the fuck up, God. Don't fucking say that shit to me. Fuck, why you fuck did you do that? Why would you do that? Why? Because why, why did that? Because anime is my medium of choice, if I have a choice.

And the anime is doing an amazing production. But I think, Tatsky Fujimoto, the mangaka, is an absolute fucking genius. I agree. He uses manga in a way that no other manga artists, I think, has done. He has such a unique way of conveying,

like, his ideas and emotions, and it's a way that is impossible to replicate in any other medium. He's able to draw it in a way that looks and feels cinematic. Yeah. Which I think is really hard to do in the medium of manga. Like, because, you know, again,

it's like a lot like with a lot of anime, it's like you have your bono standard like flow of panels and like, you know, maybe every now and then there'll be an artist that would be like, oh, I'm going to draw outside of the panel, like literally outside of the panel to kind of add like dynamic to it. But like Fujimoto just kind of draws it in a way where it's just like, this flows in a really smooth way, but it's also a really strange feeling. Yeah. At the same time. Like now that I've like read like what's been adapted so far in the manga, I'm like, how the fuck does Tatsky Fujimoto have better comedic timing

in the manga, which has no comedic timing, than in the anime, right? It's he's, he's, the job he's done with is like, the way he's like paneled and laid out his page. It's like, the scenes in the manga, there are like some funny scenes that are like way funnier, I think, in the manga than in the anime. And it's just because of the way that he's kind of like timed it really well

with how like you turn the page and stuff like that. Do you have any examples that you might feel to think of in the spot? I can't think of off the top of my head. I just wanted if you did. Yeah, there's a few things that I think have, like are impossible to translate to the animal. Like one of one thing I can think of is, how can I say this without sporting anything that happens?

So there is, there is a weapon that involves a nail, right? Mm-hmm. If you've, if you're like, you've... Nine? I'm on episode nine. You should have seen it then. There's a weapon that involves a nail. Maybe? It's like a demon kind of thing, right?

A nail as in this nail? As in as in-d-d-d-d-dum-d-d-l. Okay, all right. What's this nail? I don't, oh, this nail. I've seen something that involves this. I've seen something that involves this. No, you have.

Really? If you're after episode nine, you know. Yeah, you definitely have. Have I? Yeah. Did you think it was a sword? Maybe it was a sword? Maybe you could, I fucking, I don't know.

All right. I, okay, we'll carry on. Yeah, yeah. But there's a scene where he uses this weapon. And obviously it's a weapon that's like infused with a demon, right? Yeah. So there's this, there's this like really cool panel where, like, to use this weapon, you have to have a contract with a devil. That's what every, that's what every weapon is, right?

And so how he portrays that this weapon is controlled by this devil is that you have, you have like the normal panels and that's how it is throughout the entire manga, every comic book. And then when he uses this, Well, when he uses this weapon, a finger just appears from that goes from like outside of like the box panels, right? And so it kind of like flicks from out of frame into frame. And you're like, oh, that's really fucking cool to be like, oh, there's something that's being like called out from like outside this world and shit like that. And I'm like, you can't really do that in anime because it's, it's, you know, we don't have boxes and shit like that.

But it's like small things like that where he really thinks about how do I like, how do I do something that? It's really cool that only manga can do. And he does this in, not just like, you've convinced me, you've convinced me. Not just chainsaw man, but pretty much everything I've read from him, he does something unique to manga that I've not seen anywhere else.

And that's true especially. If you've not read, I would highly recommend goodbye Airy, which is like a one shot, you can read that within like, that is so genius. And I was like, I've never, I've never read something that is just like so, it's a masterpiece in my mind, so fucking genius. Yeah.

I mean, James and I've loved it so far. James Lamine is great. I think it, yeah, it's crazy to see. Because again, we've had hyped up shows, but I don't think we've had a show that's been this hyped up in so long. I don't think ever. Yeah, and yeah, it's insane to see it

kind of meeting it and kind of crushing it. Because I was a bit worried because I remember watching like the first six episodes. I'm like, this is cool, but it's kind of like your standard affair right now. Yeah, from episode like five, six onwards, it definitely got way more excited. Yeah.

And it's been like so fun watching it. Yeah. But also I'm sad that I have to wait every week. I'm sad that we're gonna have to wait for a season two. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully. I mean, is the manga finished? Part one of the manga is finished.

So he's currently writing, so he went on a little bit of a break after part one and now he's starting up part two again. Oh, okay. Yeah. I did get a chuckle out of, I guess it's not really spoiler, but like at one point that like the name of a demon is, means its strength or something. and they're like, what's the scariest thing, a chainsaw in a garden.

I was like, what? I was like, what? You have this like really intensely, like, really edgy, built up world and they're like, gun, strong, dude. Yeah, gun strong, gun strong. Gun, strong. Gun, strong.

I was like, all right. That stuff doesn't really spoil anything. It's just, yeah. It's just a funny, but like, I was like, what? I thought things just get more and more intense in the manga as it goes on though. It's already pretty fucking intense.

I've never watched the show and actually said, what the fuck out loud so many times? Like, just shit happens, you're like, what the- God, and the second half of the manga is just like that on steroids. Like the last two or three volumes

are just insane. I'm just like, I don't, what? I'm very happy. I'm very excited. Is it 12 episodes they're doing? 12 episodes. Fuck, man. Bring back the 24.

I know. Bring back the two core. Oh, hey, I'll take the same ending. Let's just get a few more episodes in. Come on. That's like a whole episode of animation we can do. Come on.

Let's get more episodes. I don't need the ending every time. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah, I really hope we don't have to wait too long for another season because it's... I think we are. This...

It's been a while since I've watched the show and I'm like, 12 episodes, that's it? That's it, 12 episodes? I've never been bricked up through the entire show like that before. Like, start to finish, like the food. I'm like, I'm rock solid when they show food in the show. The food looks so good.

That's the map effect right there. I've never been more fucking bricked up watching a handholding scene. Holy fuck man. Talk about like awakening something in you. I'm like, I thought this was a meme. I thought hand-holding anti was a meme and they actually fucking made it a thing.

Every character has awoke with something you ever once. I've never, I'm impressed that they've managed to make a character who is that horny likable. I figured anyone that horny in real life would, sorry, in any show, normally if a character's just super horny, it's like, like Meliotis. I fucking hate them. They fucking suck.

But that's the thing that, that's what Another thing with Fujimoto that I think is genius is that like not just chainselman but everything he's written. Every character is an absolute piece of shit. Yeah. But he's somehow able to turn these absolute fucking detestable piece of shit characters

likable. Well, it's like in real life, right? Most people are gray. Like most people do bad things so they do good things, right? So it's like if you can kind of channel that and I feel like that's where it's doing that great. Like it so far chainsaw man, all the characters don't feel like they good, bad,

he he, he, te he. It's like, all right, you know, they're a good person, but maybe they've got a lot of problems. Maybe they're a bad person, but they do some good things. But I've also seen a lot of anime where they're just like, they try and make like a purposefully like shitty character, right? To be like, oh, okay, you know, all the, all the edgy people are going to enjoy this one. And then it just ends up being extremely annoying.

Yeah, I mean, this could easily be like a Mirai Nikki situation. Exactly. Where it's like, ha-ha edge and good swords. Ha-ha, everyone is shitty. Yeah, everyone's tawny. And we're all going to stab each other. And it's like, it's, I think he's, I think he's, that perfect balance where he pretty much every character

and changed the man is kind of like an asshole. Yeah, absolutely. But it's like an entertaining asshole. Well, because they're all trying to survive, right? So it's like, you know, how would you act if you had to survive? Yeah, and in this world that is very fucked up. Yeah, like, just like, I remember the scene

where they were all like trapped in the building together. Oh yeah. Just fucking chaos and I was just like, it feels like watching a scene from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. No way, the gang tries to skip. The gang tried to escape from a certain thing. That sounds like a really good edit. That sounds like a good edit.

Because it was just like, why am I having such a good time just seeing these guys try to survive? It's, it's, it's- They're all bitching and complaining and whining. Yeah, they're in like a life and death situation and they're just like, it's just fucking bans, man. Just when Dengie's like, I'm going to sleep. It's just like, I fucking love that scene. It's like, bro.

Who's that scene where one of the girls like freaking out and then power, or just like bursts like full on bursts out laughing. And I was just like, what? It's just fucking riot, man. So good. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been this excited for an anime.

I just hope they don't give me a reason to ever dislike the show. So far I'm pretty happy. Yeah. To be honest, nah. I mean, even the second half, as chaotic as it gets, like, it's just so intense and insane

where it's just like, of course this is how it is. And I think like the like complaints about C. that I've seen on Twitter, I'm so overblown. Oh, no, dude, there's like barely any CG and then when it is, it's like, it's good. Yeah, it's well-inted way. I think the most awkward-looking shots were like in episode one.

Yeah, one-upon. And then, like, they still use CG and, like, they've managed to blend it a lot better, but even in episode one, it was like, it looked a bit dodgy here and there, like a few shots, but it didn't look bad, you know? I've seen bad, CG. I've seen X-R-on.

I've seen X-ROM. I've seen X-ROM. That's bad. Yeah. Just watching it and I was like, this should be such a different show if it was set in America. I was like, what you mean?

Okay, very, very quick kind of, I guess light spoiler, not really. There's like a whole scene where there's a bunch of guns involved. And I was like, they were like, the superpower is gun. And I was like, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense. That makes sense. And I was like, this is in America.

This would be really different by now. This would be a really different show. Every American be like, my superpower is gone. There's literally like a scene in the other. He's like, everything, gun beats everything. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. Yeah, that's true. Americans be like.

America's like, I love this show. It's very so much sense. Finally, they get it. It just made me, I had to like pause and like laugh for a little bit. But it continued. If it was in America, the story would be over in chapter two.

It's like, oh, oh, your superpower Is gun? Same here. They're like, wait, I thought handguns are illegal in Japan. It's like, da-da-da-da-da.

Mini-guns are legal in Texas. This spinner will be 12 episodes in America, dude. Oh my God, no. It was just fun. It was just a good time. It was just fun. Oh, my God.

Because so many shows in anime are very much saved by the fact they're set in Japan because there are no guns. Yeah. If they were in America, because you mentioned if my Heracadamia was set in America, it's like, go save him, Deku, oh shit, he's got an AK.

Fortnite be like, oh no, Bakkega was shot by a Barrett 50 caliber. He can't recover. Like, yeah, Fortnite, yeah, literally Fortnite. Literally Fortnite. Literally. All right, I'm here. I just, I just, I just made me realize, how many shows are more believable

in terms of realistic somewhat because they're not, because they're set in Japan. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you get away with this because you're in Japan. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't need a superior organization when it was in American. You were just guns as well,

like if there was more guns, like Al just had a gun the entire time. Because I feel like would have been way shorter. Like, no. It's like, oh, you're a Kira, pop! Yeah, right? I feel like so many, it just made me realize how many shows could have been quicker

if there was guns. Yeah. Basically, you've just like, erased every shonen from existence. Corokono basket, but he hasn't come. Because it was very, I watched, obviously I've read all of the parts of Georgia except for the last part.

And I was re-watching Stone Ocean. And I remember I was like, oh yeah, there is a whole part about lynching in it. Yeah. And I was like, that's, and I was watching, I was like, this is weird watching this in Japanese. with like an over-the-top narrator narrating about how somebody,

you know, how about like racial tensions in Florida? I was like, this is really weird to why. And I was like, I remember that scene. Yeah, right? There's a whole, there's a character's whole backstory where a character, you know, was Lynch and it was talking about how racist.

And it was really odd because the narrator narrates about racism in Florida and it was very weird seeing them how they handled narrating it. In Japanese. Yeah, yeah, because it was, I can't remember how they did it, but I remember it was a bit odd.

And I was like, I guess there's one way of mentioning how it all works. That is, yeah, that does, that is what happened. Yeah, that is what happened. It was just kind of like a normal anime thing and then it goes, but did you forget that this is 19, 1980s, Florida and this racial prejudice is like, whoa, Iraqi, where's this coming from?

What the fuck? Iraqi watched 12 years of slave and was like, oh, I'll have that. Like, we just, it was just like funny plankton go he-he punching and then it goes, and then it just goes straight into that. And you're like, what the fuck? It was like a documentary. Yeah, it was just kind of like, whoa, Iraqi. Like, and just seeing it animated,

just reminded me like, oh, yeah, this, yeah, okay, this is set in America. They really wanted to use that setting here. That was, all right, okay. All right, a bit intense. Yeah, because, like, every time, every time I've seen, like, portrayals of, like, say, like, racism in anime and manga, it's always tough.

It's always tough, right? Yeah, it's always tough. And especially, like, seeing, like, Jojo Part 6, you know, in, we've seen, we've seen, We've seen stories portrayed, you know, in Western media and something. And I feel like there's like, kind of like, it's powerful, but it's also,

if it's said in the modern day, it can be like subtle as well. You know, it's, it's, it's, but every time I see it in fucking anime and manga, it's always the most in your face, look at racism. This is racism. Well, I think it's like, if you go back and look at movies of like 2000s and 90s, that was kind of how, you know,

a lot of these big Hollywood productions were kind of portraying racism. It's like, look, We can solve it with a movie and a good speech. Like it's fixed, you know. And I think that that kind of whole way of looking at it was kind of, because obviously the conversation isn't nearly as prevalent here in Japan.

I think so that kind of way of viewing it and talking about it was kind of taken into how anime does it. Yeah. Or sometimes it's just flat on racist in anime. Like Gantz, that shit was weird. Yeah. Like, I mean, you know, that happens in anime sometimes. My favorite is the last arc in National 21.

Oh, that one as a so poorly. It's not good. It's very yikes. And it's like, it's like, it's like, it's a shame because it's like, it's such a good arc. It's all for that. Obviously like this stuff was written at a time when this was barely a conversation in the West.

Yeah, like Stone Ocean was written, I think, early 2000. 2003, yeah. Right? Like this was, this conversation was like, you know, barely started in the Western world. Yeah. And then now looking at it through our modern lens

of how we view it and how we talk about these topics. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a bit, oof. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's like the way, by the way, it's not bad in Jojo, right? It's just like you're reading it or you're watching it and you're like, it is a bit like weirdly shoved in. It's, it's a bit shoehorned in.

Yeah, it feels like, it feels very in your face. It comes out of nowhere. It comes out of nowhere. I remember watching the episode and I was just like, I thought I was watching. Wait, have you read the manga? I haven't read the manga. Well, you didn't know if that was coming?

No, no, no, no. Oh, I knew it was coming and I was still like, oh my God, like a whiplash again. Yeah. So I'm watching Jojo Par six, watching a fucking span battle, getting into it, and there's only racism. I was like, what, Jojo, what the fuck?

It's, oh my God. Because it was, it was narrated as well. And the narrator talks about it in a very weird way, I felt like it was very, I don't even know how to describe it, it, it was just odd, it was odd. Yeah, I was watching it, and I even know it was happening,

and I was like, yep, this is as weird as I remember it being. This is a bit odd. It's, it's really weird. that the two portrayals of racism in anime and manga that I remember, one is now like Jojo. The other one is like domestic girlfriend.

What? What? Yeah. Because there's an arc where one of the girls goes to America to, to, to, to go. Oh, so mommy or whatever her name was. It's Rui. Oh, no, so I'm thinking of a friend to girlfriend. Yeah, you think of right. Yeah, you think of right.

It's, so she goes to America to go learn how to be a chef and be a cook. And she goes to America to culinary school. And she, the best way I can describe it is she encounters racism and it's not subtle racism at all. It's very, very in your face. It's almost pretty much the same level of what I saw in Jojo.

And it just put things into perspective of me as like, you know, it's like, it's really good that there are these portrayals in anime and manga. Yeah, I think it's good. Yeah, it's just also, it's, it's very jarring. It's very jarring. considering what, you know, the stories I've seen told

in like West Eidwin films. Domestic girlfriend. Yeah, domestic girlfriend. Just like this is not, this is like, it'd be like watching a Thomas the Tank and then suddenly it's like hardcore racism. It's like, whoa, whoa, it's like, we don't talk to the cars, Thomas. We don't fuck with those.

It was, it was so jarring and I just was not prepared for it and I wouldn't even call it like subtle, you know. But at least, you know, at least it's happening, you know, At least it's happening. Yeah, again, I don't think, I'm not trying to be like, no, no, these conversations can't happen to animate. It's just like, I think sometimes it's,

it needs to be implemented a little, little, less jar-in a way where it doesn't feel like there was, because there was nothing in Jojo, even remotely about like, yeah, racism at all, any of those things, and then boom, they just throw it in there, it's like, whoa. And it only happens once. Yeah, it just happens once, never comes up again. It's like, that was it.

Yeah. But it was like, I mean, for the character, it's a big thing. And I like the character and I like how that all worked into it. It just kind of came out of nowhere. But it was cool. I like, again, I like Jojo a lot. So, Setsamishio, race is a core. I like it when anime tries to go into this stuff

and tries to be more mature. Yeah. It was an Aisheeled as well, wasn't it? Well, I shield did it in a way that was very not cool. No, that wasn't cool. I was trying to think of like, yeah. There's just some, it's just like,

come on, let's have more characters. Like, you know, like I see, A lot of people are like, no, I don't want any diversity in my shows. Yeah, dude, fuck it, yeah. Let's have more diversity in the show. Like, if it lends to the story well, let's fucking do it. If it's not gyrant to the story and you can implement it in a way that seems natural, then, yeah. Because, like, I Shield 21 was just like, dude, it is a black guy playing sports.

He must be amazing at them. It's like, what? That is not how you introduce a character. That is not how you introduce anyone, just flat out. I think it was just the fact that they basically gave him a superpower. And his superpower was the fact. that he was black and I was just like, what?

It's just, I shield, what are you doing, man? It's just like that meme of like, the, the guy with his like smiling and then his mouth drops, it's like, yeah, more diversity in anime. Yeah. Oh, I found out why this diversity in anime. Oh no.

You know, I feel like there's some, you could make some pretty fucking cool stories with it. Just be, be like better with it. Like don't just do it, don't show it. Don't shove it in viewers' faces. Just, just, in a racist way. In a racist way. I mean, it's cool, you know,

if we see these kinds of like portrayals because it means like there is some kind of conversation happening in Japan. Yeah. It's just, you know, seeing it. It'd be cool to have that. Yeah, yeah. It's just seeing it, you obviously see that the conversation

is like not as like far flung as what we've had in the West. No, because in Japan, it's not so much about like targeting a specific race. It's about targeting all races. Yeah. That are not Japanese, essentially. A lot of time when people complain that there's not enough diversity in, uh,

on anime and stuff. I see a lot of people are like, well, it's for Japanese. people, you know, what do you mean? What do you expect for them? And it's like, I mean, yes, Japan is very homogenous, but it's not like there's no diversity. No, of course not. It's like pretending like other other like ethnicities don't exist here. Yeah. It's just flat out wrong. Like, yeah. Joey is a half food. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's straight up just not true. They like, they always say like it just doesn't exist in Japan.

Or it's, you know, they, that's the problem is that it's such a small minority even in Japan. And I think in, in the eyes of like the manga and anime industry, it's just like, oh, okay, Yeah, we know they exist, but are they a market that reads Munger Watch's anime? Yeah. We don't know. So instead of just pertaining to the 1%, let's try and just make the 99% happy.

And it's like, okay, yeah, you can do that if you want, but then you're gonna start running into problems like I shielded. Yeah, I'm not saying just start shoving it in like crazy to meet quotas or anything like that because that has clearly not been a solution anyway. It's like, if the story lends well to it, let's fucking do it.

Because it makes sense, right? Like, just like a pattern I've seen in all of the, these things that we just mentioned, is that does the anime or manga have an America arc? You don't need to put racism in it just because it's like, has an America. You do, you know, manga artists need to understand

racism exists outside of America as well. It's not exclusive to America. It's an American exclusive product, dude. Trains someone would be way more racist and have more guns. Oh my God. A great way to end trash taste episode, What a great topic.

Laughing about racism. You gotta love it. Hey, but look at all these patrons right here. They don't laugh at racism. What the fuck? What is that? Right, guys. I bet you don't.

Guys, racism bad. I just wanted to say racism. Wow, what a hot take. Racism is bad, guys. If you like to support this show, go to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash trashdase. Also follow us on Twitter.

Send us in the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. What a great start to 2023. We'll see you guys. In the coming year. All right. Bye-bye.