 The Japanese government is urging its young citizens to drink more alcohol. This seems kind of odd, even for Japan. But what's the real reason? Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. David, what's going on in Tokyo? Japan's national tax agency has launched a sake-viva campaign, Andrew, to try to get the young people of Japan to drink more so they can get more tax money, support the izakaya industry that's ailing and possibly even make more babies. What? All right, guys, we're going to go break this down from a micro-mid to a macro. If you're excited about this video, please do us a favor right now and hit that like button. And then after this, check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. But David, let's get into it. All right, let's look at it in the micro, Andrew. Basically, it's a campaign from the government. The government may potentially own a lot of shares in the alcohol industry, maybe in the cigarette industry, who knows? So there may be some double dipping going on, but they want the youth to drink because the alcohol consumption patterns from the younger generation, Andrew, from that like 80s and 90s stereotypical salaryman, dropped like 20, 30%. Exactly. Ever since 1995, actually, alcohol consumption has been slowly declining in Japan, you know, so nobody is drinking as much as the 50-year-olds, man. Those guys that were knocking out on the subway just like this, after throwing back shots of like 10 sake shots. Yeah, those days are like dwindling basically. But those guys were very hard-working and they did a lot for Japan, obviously, that whole workforce, right? Right. Well, I think the younger generations looking at it like, I don't want that. And then the older generation is like, I want you to get freaky with habiki. And please, drink more san tori, so your son is horny. And then I think like, it's funny because I look at America and I'm like, well, one, you would never have to convince kids in America to drink at a younger age. Oh, they already want it. Oh, they want that and more. They want everything. They're trying to drink at 12, all right? And then also, if anything was ever advertised by our IRS, we would totally do the exact opposite because we just hate the IRS. Hate the tax man. Yeah, their tax man is telling them to drink more alcohol, which, you know, anyways, that's a different dynamic. But yeah, I guess like the whole birth rate thing, like, was that even going to work? Just because like, people are going to supposedly drink more, get more, you know, loose and a little tipsy. There was this comment that was like, oh man, you want it to become Alabama with all the unplanned pregnancies and growing up and whatever. I don't know if that's really the plan, because I don't think that would really affect birth rates as much as it would, like, lowering the cost of living in the city. I feel like that would do more for raising a family. Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. It sounds like almost like an old uncle from like 80 years ago's like idea, being like, hmm, make them drink more. Yes. The old like, yeah, coups up. Yes. The more the Japan has a problem, baby, so it's moving on. Andrew, point number two, why does Japan have a shrinking population? South Korea also has a shrinking population. China, surprisingly, even has a shrinking population. Yeah. I mean, actually this is happening in a lot of societies around the world. Even America, obviously, American families are getting married later. They're having less kids. More people are caught up in the lifestyle living in the big city. The kids will cramp their style. They cost a lot. You want a lot for your kids. Your standards are very high. Now you want to send them to private school, and then you got to do all this and that. I just think in the Confucian sort of like accomplishment accolades based culture, you're trying to send your kids to the best schools, make sure they get the best grades. If they do a sport or an instrument, they're like the first chair or a starter, so they're the best at that sport. It's just like a lot of pressure. And I think when you really compare it globally, it's just like it's not in a weird way. It sounds so stereotypical. It's not that fun to be an Asian parent. So we're growing up in a more westernized global society. We know what's fun and what's not fun, even though we still went through the non-fun way. But we can only imagine how not fun it'll be to enforce that non-fun high pressure childhood on a kid of our own. We didn't even like it, but we went through it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, why do you want it? Like it's almost like you're like, I know it's good because it makes other countries strong, but I don't want to do it. And if you have to do it to like more than two kids or three kids, man, it's just like you can't do that and eat a hundred nummy things from like a hundred different cultures and be a foodie at the same time. It's just too much commitment. You're splitting your focus pie too many ways. Not only that, of course, in China, they had a one-child policy for a long time, which really dropped their birth rate. Now it's back up to three-childs being allowed, but it hasn't really rebounded. Dude, I don't understand how they thought, hey, everybody, you can have three kids now. Where are the kids? Oh, yeah, I was so excited. I was just waiting like, God, it was that one, but I was waiting for you to change the rule. I have like two or three. The government's like, what happened to this baby boom that was supposed to happen in China? I thought, I thought we just opened up the floodgates and then people say, okay, we want the five kids. It doesn't work that way. Andrew, and the final macro point, I mean, what are some real solutions, man? How does Japan and obviously the rest of Asia, specifically Japan, fix all their issues that they want to fix? Because they don't want to open up the country because they're really strict on COVID. They're not generally too open to immigrants. These are not immigrant countries like the New World, for example. So Andrew, to bring it to the macro, what are the solutions? Man, these are really macro trends that I think are actually just across the globe kind of common. So it's hard to come up with solutions, but I do know Japan has to try things out. I think this, even though a sake viva campaign sounds kind of silly, I think it's just one of many campaigns that they're going to try. They got to try creative solutions. They might have to get some young people in charge to think of stuff or just make adjustments or just build a bunch of robots that could take care of the old people because you know, there's not going to be enough young people to take care of the old people. One of the top comments on Nexshark was, hey, just send a bunch of Koreans over there. Yeah, the Koreans will booey. Because obviously, if you look at the global rankings, Korea is the number one Asian country by drinking by far. It's not number one, though. Moldova is actually number one. Well, David, have you ever had a yogurt soju? Why wouldn't Koreans drink the most? It is so good. It is good. No, but honestly too, the Japanese, they're super old school with their sake. They just got like snow and like crystal dry and all that stuff. They're not really being on trend. Like the Koreans, where the Koreans, they'll mix soju with whatever that's like popping at the moment yogurt soju. You know, green tea soju, this soju, that's soju. They'll just make any soju to make it popping. But I feel like Japanese are still like, kind of like sushi. You know, they don't want to mess with it. They're being G-Roll like, they're being traditionalist. So I'm like, yo, maybe you need an update if you want the young people to drink more and make some cool drinking games, build the drinking game into the bottle, have the bottle with a little spinner, like abdomen unit. Who knows? But yeah, it's true. If they did import Koreans, it would work because I believe it goes like this, Andrew. It goes Korea, Japan, Vietnam, China. China actually drinks the least out of everybody. David, China drinks the least. I'm shocked. They have Baiju. That stuff is gross, man. Also a product in dire need of a modern update. My goodness. I actually have had one Baiju in my life that was kind of good, but everything else has been very, very hard. What do you think, Andrew? Do you think Japan should open up immigration, open up tourism? Like what can it do other than like having this 80-year-old uncle solution to like being like, everybody just take four more shots of sake? Yeah. I think Japan is going to try to figure it out on their own. If I know anything about the Japanese spirit, man, they feel like they can do it. It's an island country. Yeah. They feel like they can do it. And I think that there's a chance that, you know, it's just, man, it's going to be painful for a lot of people and a lot of governments and a lot of, I mean, America's going through some things right now that we got to figure out. So everybody's trying to figure stuff out. So this sake viva campaign is not even the craziest thing that's going to happen. Trust me. My overall takeaway, I'll end with this, is that I think a lot of the East Asian countries are going to, like you said, have in-house solutions at first. Whether those work or not, I'm a little bit more bearish on it. And then we'll need to see the ultra-traditional old-school attitudes, how they deal with being more like insular thinking. Like, do they accept immigration? What are their immigration policies? Do they put mad restrictions? I mean, if they're even like, if you're on letting tourism open up right now, immigration's like way down the line. I think with tourism, what they could do is like, maybe make sure people spend an extra amount of money or give them a discount if they preload 10 Gs on like a Japan tourism card. You don't basically use like the Disney methods of extracting monetization from like your fan base. Oh, give them free drink tickets when they land. Buy one, get two. Suntory. Hey, buy Ichi. Get that. And buy Ichi, get me. Japan Ichiban. Japan Ichiban. Hey, drink Suntory. Yeah, Andrew. I mean, you did just find a like Japanese song that is like one of your top play tracks right now. Shout out to Takayan too. All right, everybody. Let us know in the comments down below what you think this problem means for Japan and what do you think the possible solutions are? Because you know, a lot of societies and a lot of countries do look at Japan as almost like some type of glimpse into the future. So maybe these are things that other people are going to be dealing with in maybe a decade or two. Who knows? You think Shohei Otani could help? I don't even know if he drinks that much, but I don't know. Maybe Shohei, best baseball player right now. Looks like you'd pack a few beers. All right, everybody. Again, thank you so much for watching The Hop Hop Boys and until next time, we out. Peace. Arigato.