No Such Thing As Tibetan Traitors

No Such Thing As A Fish

The episode explores a series of bizarre historical and cultural anecdotes, ranging from Japanese social etiquette to the geopolitical conse

Key takeaways

• Japanese paramedics request that visitors stop rearranging shoes to prevent delays during emergencies.
• A historical theory suggests Christopher Columbus might actually have been Spanish noble Pedro Alvarez de Sotomayor.

Main topics

• Japanese etiquette and customs
• Christopher Columbus identity theories

Notable quotes

He was a twat. There is no doubt about that.

Conclusion

A fascinating collection of trivia that connects seemingly unrelated e

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Hi everybody, Andy and Dan here, and we have an announcement to make before the show begins. Speaker 3 (0:04) That's right. In just a few weeks, I, Dan, will be on tour around the UK with my first solo live show in over a decade. Sounds amazing. Well, it's going to be great. It's called This Changes Everything. It is... an hour and 20 minutes. It's not 20. Yeah, there's an interval between the first 20, then you get an hour, and it's going to be packed with all of the stuff that I love. You know, all the weird stories. I've got amazing facts, weird red string theories, anecdotes about my life and your life, Andy. About me? A lot about you in the show. There's Speaker 4 (0:35) loads of personal stuff. Speaker 3 (0:37) Yeah. So I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. I'd love for all of you listening to be there as well. If you like fish, I promise you, you're going to love this. It's packed with facts. It's packed with jokes. October 11th is when the tour kicks off. I'm in Edinburgh. Then the 12th, I'm in Newcastle. 16th in Birmingham. 17th in Cardiff. And then just go to thischangeseverything.co.uk to find out all about November because I'll be going across the rest of the UK then. It's Speaker 4 (0:59) going to be wonderful, guys. If you like anything you've heard on this show over the last 12 years, you're going to like this show. You get Speaker 3 (1:05) to hang out with Dan. Yeah, I know. We'll be hanging out after the show, by the way. Dan promises. And it's like Speaker 4 (1:09) 20 quid. It's 20 quid, guys. Come along. We're all getting our tickets. The other three of us. It's going to be terrific fun. Go to thischangeseverything.co.uk. Just think, 2015, that's when things started going wrong in this country. When you stopped touring. There you go. Let's fix the UK, everyone. Speaker 3 (1:25) 100 seater room at a time. Okay. On with the podcast. On with the show. Speaker 3 (1:44) Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter-Murray, Anna Tyshinsky, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Anna. Speaker 1 (2:08) My fact this week is that paramedics in Japan have asked people to stop rearranging their shoes when they take them off at the door. Lovely. Speaker 2 (2:16) How are they rearranging them? Is it in size order or all the lefts and all the right? Because that's how we do it in our house. That's Speaker 3 (2:26) all Speaker 2 (2:26) I know. That's good. Speaker 1 (2:28) It's for convenience usually. So this was an Instagram video that was put out by the fire department in the city of Kanazawa. Kanazawa and they were saying that of course in Japan you take your shoes off at the door basically everywhere you go if you're going to someone's house and the polite thing to do is to rearrange people's shoes so that when they're leaving they can put them on easily so you'd rearrange people's shoes so that they're facing outwards so that you could almost just walk out of the door and just step outwards without even looking down. Sounds Speaker 2 (2:57) nice. Speaker 1 (2:58) It sounds nice. It sounds Speaker 2 (2:59) perfect. It sounds Speaker 4 (2:59) clever. If I'm a paramedic and I'm taking someone out on a stretcher I want to be able to step into my shoes and walk out the door. But what way are you Speaker 1 (3:06) Not if you're Speaker 4 (3:06) the one who's walking Speaker 2 (3:07) backwards on the stretcher. Speaker 1 (3:09) Exactly. Speaker 2 (3:09) Is that the reason? Speaker 1 (3:11) That's the reason. And they arrange their shoes, as they show in this video, very specifically so that when they are carrying a stretcher out, one of them steps in sideways, one of them might be going backwards. And then, you know, that polite... bloody do-gooder whose husband's just collapsed upstairs starts rearranging the shoes. Speaker 3 (3:27) They can lose 30 seconds if they come out and someone's rearranged their shoes. 30 seconds here or there. Okay, Speaker 4 (3:34) it's very sensible. I've visited Japan once or twice and the shoe thing is, you know, it's really real. And normally there's a lower bit where you leave your shoes and then you step up into the room, which I just think is so nice. Yeah, the genkan. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Have you, James, because you've been as well. Did you experience toilet slippers? Love those. Love those. I love the idea Speaker 3 (3:54) of them. I've never been to Japan, so I've never had the whole Speaker 4 (3:56) slipper situation. You get to someone's house, you're going for dinner or whatever, you leave your shoes, you put on your house slippers that they've provided for you. Yeah. Then you need to go to the loo. So you go to the loo, you step out of your house slippers into the toilet slippers. The ones Speaker 2 (4:10) you're allowed to pee on. Yes. Speaker 4 (4:14) I just call those my shoes. Then you go to the loo and you change out of your toilet slippers into Speaker 3 (4:20) your house slippers and then eventually out of your house slippers into your shoes. Okay, can I ask you a question then? Because you both have experienced it. Anna, have you been to Japan? I have not. Okay, we've all got different sized feet. Does every house have the equivalent of bowling shoes at a bowling alley? No, there's Speaker 2 (4:32) a Speaker 3 (4:32) counter Speaker 4 (4:32) and someone takes your measurements and there's one of those little machines you stick your foot in. Speaker 2 (4:37) And Speaker 3 (4:37) they spray Speaker 2 (4:37) some weird stuff in them to get rid of your verrucas. That's Speaker 1 (4:40) what Speaker 2 (4:40) I see. No, they're more like flip-flops that one size fits all a little bit. Speaker 4 (4:45) Because you're not walking far inside the loo. Yes. We Speaker 1 (4:49) have a range of slippers for guests in our house. And the thing is, the good thing is, Dan, that humans don't have a giant range of foot sizes. So it's not like some people's feet are two centimetres and some people's feet are a metre long. In the end, if you've got, for women, sizes five and six covered, and for men, sizes 10 and 11, you've bought enough. And that's what we have. Speaker 3 (5:07) What if a clown's coming to stay? Speaker 1 (5:09) We never invite them around for that reason. Speaker 3 (5:12) There's one other interesting thing about the toilet slippers, and I wonder if you both experienced this, is if you're staying in a dorm situation where the bathroom is outside, a lot of Japanese toilets, they don't actually have locks on them, from what I've read. And the slippers act as a lock because when you're walking towards them, when you see the house slippers outside, you know someone's inside. And so not to rattle the door. That's clever. Yeah. So that's your way of saying this is occupied. Yeah. I'm sorry to Speaker 2 (5:36) say that I only stayed in places that had their own toilet. So. You didn't use Speaker 1 (5:41) many outdoor toilets. No, I know. I'm a bit hoity-toity these days. You've changed. Speaker 4 (5:47) Apparently a big faux pas is when you get back to the dinner table and everyone looks at your feet and you realise you've left your toilet slippers on. Oh, yeah, that's bad. That is embarrassing. Very cringe. Speaker 1 (5:56) Well, speaking of locked doors, I'm surprised that Japan doesn't have more of a security problem because all of their doors, as you guys may be noticed, all of their front doors open outwards. And that's because if you opened inwards, you'd knock all the shoes in the indoor porch out of place. But that must be a problem because I was looking up some locksmiths websites. And the reason our doors open inwards is so that you can have the hinge on the inside. Otherwise, you can just take the hinge off and remove the door and get into the house. Speaker 2 (6:24) So Speaker 1 (6:25) I don't know how Japan does it. There's a lot of chat about them having. burglar-proof hinges, but... You go to Speaker 2 (6:31) a lot of the places and it's like the walls are made of paper anyway. It's like you don't really matter about the door. You can just walk through the wall quite a lot Speaker 1 (6:38) of Speaker 2 (6:38) the time. Speaker 1 (6:39) Those are human-shaped holes. Can Speaker 4 (6:41) I just have a little guess as to whether everyone here is a shoes-on or a shoes-off in the house person? Okay. Anna just said their house is shoes-off, which you could have knocked me down with a feather. I'm staggered. Yeah. I would have thought you were absolutely a shoes on. Did I? I think I Speaker 1 (6:56) was talking about people generally. Speaker 4 (6:57) Other people come around, they have to put slippers on, but you wear shoes at home. Speaker 1 (7:00) Muddy boots, yeah. I put on the muddy boots as I walk in. Speaker 4 (7:03) Okay. I would say Dan is a shoe on household person. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:07) But he lives near the beach, and so that does risk getting even dirtier. Speaker 3 (7:11) Are you going to tell us? I know I reveal a lot about myself on this show, but this Speaker 4 (7:15) really feels quite personal information. Speaker 3 (7:18) I'm sorry. So I'm going to plead the fifth on this one. Go back to mentioning your sperm Speaker 2 (7:22) count. And you can have a guess on me. Shoes on, no doubt. Shoes on. I am naturally a shoes on person, but due to my wife being a shoes off person, we are now shoes off people. I would have said Speaker 1 (7:36) exactly that. I had that answer in my mind. Speaker 2 (7:38) Nice. It is a Russian thing, like shoes off for sure. Nice. I think like quite often you can tell. Countries that have a lot of snow and stuff or people traditionally would have had dirty shoes. It's more common, I think. I Speaker 1 (7:53) would say it's way more common now than it was 20 years ago here. Much more common. This is just anecdotally, but everyone I know pretty much, I'd take my shoes off in their house now. Whereas when I was a kid. If anyone had asked my mother to take her shoes off before walking in, she would have slammed the door in their face and that was the end of Speaker 4 (8:08) the Speaker 1 (8:08) friendship. Would you slam it Speaker 4 (8:09) inwards or outwards? Speaker 1 (8:10) She Speaker 2 (8:10) would have taken the hinges off and whacked them over the head with the door. Speaker 1 (8:16) You're a strong woman. Your shoes off, obviously. You're all clothes off, aren't you? You Speaker 2 (8:21) can't be too careful. I'm just going to put on my toilet suit. Speaker 3 (8:27) It's shoes on, clothes off. It's Speaker 2 (8:29) a Speaker 3 (8:29) weird, weird dinner parties at Andy's. Just back to your headline fact very quickly. A lot of people made the point, listen, if it's a paramedic coming in, I think maybe just keep the shoes on and get inside, right? Like, why are you losing time at all taking your shoes off? Good point. But there is precedence in Japan of people being hit as a result of coming in as a paramedic and not taking their shoe off. Speaker 2 (8:51) As in hit in the face because they've still got their shoes on? Yeah, yeah. So there was a case in Speaker 3 (8:55) 2017. There was a 66-year-old man who complained of a pain in his leg. Paramedics came over. The guy didn't take his shoes off. He said, what the hell are you doing? Punched him in the face. And then some more paramedics came in to get him. They didn't take their shoes off. And in the end, you just got a pile of paramedics. Speaker 4 (9:10) Yeah, I think they both got taken to hospital in the same ambulance. Speaker 3 (9:14) And he got in big trouble. But he did have a sign saying no shoes in-house and he took it seriously. So maybe Speaker 4 (9:20) that's why they do it. Japan is quite particular in lots of ways. It's obviously a very mannered society with lots of different layers of politeness. And shoes are a big thing. I wonder if you guys remember there was a thing that might have got into a book of the year. We used to write the books of the year about all the interesting stuff. And in 2018, there was a huge cultural ding-dong when the then and current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, served the Japanese Prime Minister, who was then Shinzo Abe, do you remember this? Dessert in a shoe. Oh, yes. I do remember this. And Speaker 1 (9:57) this was Speaker 4 (9:57) a huge faux pas. Not the worst thing Netanyahu's done, but it is a deeply insulting thing to do, basically. Was it Speaker 2 (10:03) a pastry mistranslation? Speaker 4 (10:05) I don't follow. Very good. Sorry, that joke was actually, it was too good for me to laugh. It was a chocolate praline pudding and he served it in two pairs of men's brogues. And there's Speaker 3 (10:20) a Speaker 4 (10:20) picture of Shinzo Abe sitting there looking at this pudding in a shoe and thinking, in my culture, this is the most insulting thing you can do. Speaker 1 (10:28) Sorry, can I just say that if I were served a pudding in a shoe, I would find it slightly odd. I don't think, it's not the kind of thing where you say to students, oh, in the rest of the world, we always do this. Speaker 4 (10:40) That's such a good point. I think it was a very posh chef who had been hired for the occasion. And run Speaker 2 (10:45) out of plates. Speaker 4 (10:47) We spent all the money on the Speaker 2 (10:49) chef. We didn't have any crockery budget. What Speaker 4 (10:52) are we going to do? Speaker 2 (10:53) Don't worry, I've got it. One thing that I associate Japan etiquette with is cleaning football stadiums. Have you seen this? It happened in the most recent World Cup, but it's happened for a while now. Vaguely seen it, yeah. Yeah, so whenever Japan plays any football match, after the game, the fans always clean up the stadium after themselves, and they get a lot of plaudits from everyone else around the world saying, isn't that polite? But in the Japanese press, they're not so happy about it because apparently Japanese men have one of the worst rankings in the world for doing household chores. So a lot of the newspapers, when they show these pictures of these guys cleaning up the stadiums, they're like, Like, well, why aren't you cleaning your house? I'm already Speaker 1 (11:34) burning with rage on behalf of the Japanese women opening that newspaper. Oh, you'll do it at the football, Speaker 3 (11:39) will you? Speaker 4 (11:39) When you're trying to impress the Belarusian fans, you do apparently know where a litter picker is. Yeah, that is crazy. That is so annoying. Yeah, wow. Speaker 1 (11:49) I was reading a book of etiquette from Japan from 1911. And it was really interesting because it was actually very similar to what... our etiquette might dictate with a few, well, a few quite revealing things that just shows plus à change. Like one rule was that it is extremely rude to send a caller away when you're at home, as in someone who knocks on the door, that kind of caller. But some people decide whether they shall be at home or not only after they've heard the caller's name. Speaker 2 (12:15) That's good. Wink. So did they have to, when they ring the doorbell, did they have to say, Andy calling? Speaker 1 (12:21) I think you must have to because, yeah, you have given the game away, haven't you, when you say, who is it? Well, Speaker 4 (12:26) obviously the answer is I put on a fake voice and I say, it's Dan calling. Oh, Speaker 2 (12:30) come in, come Speaker 1 (12:31) in. Speaker 2 (12:31) Their Speaker 4 (12:32) jokes Speaker 2 (12:32) go, knock, knock. Who's there? Dan, I'm not home. There is a thing at the moment called nuikatsu, which is you get a cuddly toy and you take it with you to restaurants. And you sit on a chair next to you in the restaurant. And it's common in Japan or relatively common in Japan, I think. And the idea is you dress them up and then you take a photo of them. And what it means is you can have a photo of your food and your cuddly toy. in the restaurant which shows you were there but you don't have to be in the photo. So like let's say you worried about online security or whatever. It's like almost like your alter ego. It's Speaker 3 (13:15) like an Speaker 2 (13:15) avatar. Like an avatar. Witness protection. Speaker 4 (13:18) You're worried about the Yakuza. It Speaker 2 (13:20) could be. Speaker 4 (13:21) You Speaker 2 (13:21) never know. But it's been banned in quite a lot of restaurants for etiquette reasons. Can you guess any reasons? Might get Speaker 4 (13:27) gravy on it. Speaker 2 (13:28) Well Speaker 1 (13:29) not Speaker 2 (13:29) really though. Okay. But almost. Takes up a seat. Annoying. Yeah, so it takes up space because if you're in a restaurant which is not like private tables, most of them in Japan are, but sometimes you might have like... counter service. It will be taking up one of the seats. But also, if you make a