Everyone, go follow @japan_nobunaga on X.com!
It’s the funny, whimsical stories of a Japanese person exploring America and learning about their customs! Like salsa chips! And trucks! 🙂
I just love reading his very real stories which very much happened to a human! 🙂 🙂
They’re extremely believable. Particularly this one, where he goes to a car wash, pays for the cheapest option, and a rando car wash attendant upgrades him (for no perceptible reason) to premium service while talking like a badly-written NPC in a videogame (“OVERRIDE! UPGRADE HIM TO THE TITANIUM HURRICANE! ON MY DIME!”)
And I love his adorable art, which (as he explains on his website) is not AI art! (Which just couldn’t match the warmth of hand illustration.)
I also love his not at all insane-sounding political opinions about immigrants and gay people!
(This was the only post on the account I could find that wasn’t AI generated.)
And it’s delightful that his account is based in “Japan”, but has a pesky little warning symbol beside it, indicating that he connects via a VPN.
And it’s divinely magical that his account has an August 2023 join date, no activity before Nov 14, 2025 (tip, search old tweets using by adding until:2026-01-01 or whatever to the query), and nine username changes. Seems legit. Not at all like he’s a professional marketer who asset-flipped an account through several failed gimmicks until one gained traction. (His earliest public posts appear to be discussions on how to game the X algorithm. They’re in Japanese, which allays my suspicion somewhat. Not completely: it’s odd that he’s so fixated on Trump and US culture war issues. I also wonder how many Japanese people would be comfortable doing an exaggerated, caricatured portrayal of their nation for the edification of borish Americans. I’m Australian. The idea of creating an X.com account called @australian_nedkelly where I pretend to tour America while saying stuff like “blimey, you seppo bastards really call ‘taps’ ‘faucets’, don’t ya? straya, mate. throw another shrimp on the barbie.” makes me want to put the barrel of a gun in my mouth and commit teddy bear picnic)
Next comes the part we’ve all been waiting for. Where you say one of three things in japan_nobunaga’s defense.
“1. My urine is green and cloudy”
You probably have a urinary tract infection. I am not qualified to comment further. Please see a GP.
“2. He admits the stories are fiction on his website/profile, doofus!”
He says this:
These stories are not journalism. They are not realism. They are not a think-piece about America. The samurai is fiction. His misunderstandings are fiction. The diner waitress who calls him “honey” is a composite of every diner waitress who has ever existed.
There you go! Surely, that’s good enough, right?
1) His tweets go viral with none of this context included. The average person does not read his website and probably never clicks back to his profile (which contains a vastly different claim anyway, that he uses “AI to polish [his] English” and for research.)
2) The stories offer no hints that they are fictional. They are written in the first person, in a naturalistic style, and involve everyday events. There are no “winks” to the audience, no pulling back the curtain. The “samurai” does not behave as a samurai would. He’s a “clueless foreigner” stereotype, corny but not unbelievable, and is easily mistaken for the narrator himself.
3) Even if the writer’s intentions are good (doubtful), most of his audience absolutely does not realize they are reading fake AI slop.
Here are some replies:
“Brother, thank you for these posts. If you ever get to Florida let me know, dinner and drinks are on me.”
“I love your objective view of true American culture and your desire to go beyond observing culture, but to participate in it. “
“I love the effect that the World Cup is having, bringing us together as good humans regardless of our evil leadership! Here’s a visitor from Japan experiencing free chips and salsa for the first time.”
This Reddit thread describes his fake truck story as
“A longer, yet outstanding, tweet by a Japanese man living abroad in the US.”
The account has received coverage from the withered vestigial organs of the old school printed press, which mainly treat its stories as real accounts.
Spoon University describes him as “a Japanese tourist” who “shared his experience” of going to a Mexican restaurant.
The New York Times found the matter so unclear that they DM’d the author for comment.
Nobunaga, the Japanese wanderer whose reverential written meditations on X about bottomless baskets of chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant in the United States, isn’t quite what some observers have taken him for, either. He is a pseudonymous character. He isn’t on his way to any World Cup games, either.
In response to a direct message, Nobunaga’s creator said the premise of the account is that an ancient samurai had traveled through time and space to land in the American heartland. When he wrote that “the trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it,” it was meant in a spirit somewhere between parody and cultural commentary.
4) His “stories” are incredibly boring and pointless if read as fiction.
“I ate some salsa chips”
“A guy called Kevin moved my sofa.”
There is no twist, subversion or element of surprise. They are big bags of nothing. They suck and are dogshit. 100% of their juice comes from the fact that people think it’s a real Japanese person having real experiences.
“3. But who cares if it’s fake! They’re nice stories!”
Here are real reactions people have had after realizing they’re huffing Claudeslop:
“In some ways… I’m OK with that in that the story was a nice story, it resonated with a lot of people and it shows how humanity at one of it’s better sides.”
“I like your stories. I realize most of them aren’t exactly the truth, who cares? It’s entertainment. Your stories are also very pro-American and down-to-earth…something rare these days. Write on, Samurai.”
I do not agree that they are nice stories. They are maudlin pap, are written horribly, and they don’t show humanity at “one of it’s [sic] better sides”. They are focused with steely intensity on the classic samurai virtues of consumerism and gorging yourself like a pig on fast food.
What’s great about America, according to nobunaga?
– the food is cheap
– they give you large portions
– sometimes businesses give you free shit
– sometimes a guy named Kevin moves your sofa
The reality that the “free” salsa chips are a loss leader in the Mexican restaurant’s expense account (they are counting on consumers being enticed by free chips to indulge in more expensive, higher-margin items) is lost on the samurai. As is the fact that “Kevin” (if he even exists) is performing reciprocal altruism—today you, tomorrow me. A good practice, to be sure, but he’s hardly doing it out of the kindness of his heart. He’s accruing positive social capital, to be cashed in when he needs help.
This is saccharine, condescending AI slop, poorly-written by a machine, documenting a dying, decrepit nation trying to cheat death by being too obese to fit into its coffin. They are vapid celebrations of an unworthy life spent rattling like a dry and empty can from one toy to the next. Maybe they are an accurate portrayal of America. This should be a national embarrassment.
(Also, are they not written in a manner that’s…pornographic? Excessively sensual, etc? “I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.” … “By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.” I wonder if this is “algo-speak”. Social media won’t allow descriptions of fucking, so we transplant erotic frisson onto things like food.)
In 2017, HuffPo published a wokescold piece titled “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People”
It’s a fine example of vintage 2017 wokescoldery, almost fit for framing in a museum. “I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves.” Great stuff. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. It’s nearly up there with Tommy Needy Drinky.
Right now, I am feeling “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About The Truth”.
When I was a child, I was a compulsive liar. Or at least I had an impulse to fabricate details about myself that made me look cool and important. I would claim to have done things that I hadn’t, to know people that I didn’t. Sometimes I would lie just to fill an awkward silence.
My internal justification was “It doesn’t hurt anyone, and helps my social life. Who cares about a lie here and there?”
What changed me (aside from growing up) is that I cared when other people did it to me.
When someone lied and I caught them, I felt violated and betrayed. Even if the lie was small, I had a hard time getting over it and forgiving them. It was like violently disliked the person who had done it. It was like like reality was a swimming pool, and they’d whipped their dick out and pissed in it.
And I was doing this to other people. If they ever caught me (and since I was catching other people, it was obviously very much a live possibility), they would probably feel the same about me. And they would be right to do so.
The account is lying. The internet is awash in AI junk, and a philosophy of “well, this particular incident of lying seems harm-free” is not defensible. I could easily take this in a thousand uncomfortable directions. Nobody is obviously harmed when I claim you owe me money. Or if I claim only five million died.
To be clear, I would not have a problem if the stories were obviously fictional and fantastical (like if nobunaga drew his blade and practiced Kiri-sute gomen / 斬捨御免, on the car wash attendant, cleansing his ride in filthy commoner blood). But instead they trade on blurring a line between reality and fiction, where he gets to present them as real experiences while rugpulling them as fictions when convenient.
Maybe they make you feel good, though.
