Hello viewers today we've got Jake with us and we're going to be talking about the Japanese mafia

Is it pronounced Yakuza it is pronounced Yakuusa. That is correct.

My sister lived in Japan.

They have many names for themselves and many names in Japan.

Yeah, my sister's fluent in Japanese.

She lived her for many years and she really loved it. She told

me about the Yakuza. So Jake, can you just start out by telling the viewers a little bit

about you and what got you on to this? Sure.

I came to Japan in 1988 as an exchange student and my first job out of college was working for a Japanese newspaper, the Umarishimbun,

which is the biggest newspaper in Japan.

I think it had 10 million readers at its peak at newspaper, you know, readers decline, maybe 6 million.

And like every reporter in Japan, you start on the police beat that mean that's where everybody starts

Sorry I'm gonna try and turn off the various dude ads on the computer.

Let's see if we can get the mail to turn off

without turning off you guys.

And so I think the very first year that I was on the beat there was a complicated case involving a serial killer

Actually a husband and wife team serial killers and one of their victims was a

yakuza boss and the yakuza driver and part of my job was trying to

find out you know in the stages we didn't actually know what had happened to

them what had happened to them, what had happened to them.

And that was the beginning of sort of having to chase around Yakus and deal with them.

My reward for a job well done was my second year. I was put on the police headquarters in Saitama, which is kind of outside of Tokyo. It's sort of the bricksden of Tokyo.

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