2026年10月20日（火）辛坊治郎ズームそこまで言うか！

Morning Dizziness and the Case for Canes

Shinbo Jiro confessed at the top of the show that he had nearly skipped the broadcast altogether, having suffered dizziness and general malaise since early morning. His cane, originally acquired to manage back pain and later repurposed as a fashion piece and a deterrent against what he jokingly called "brown bears in Ginza," served a real function for the first time. The logic, he explained, is simple: if you suddenly feel faint, a cane gives you one extra moment before you go down, preventing your head from hitting the asphalt directly. "The saying 'a cane before you fall' really says it all," he remarked. He noted that many elderly people resist carrying canes out of vanity, and gently pushed back: safety matters more than appearances. Ginza, he added, is home to two specialist cane shops stocking rare designs from around the world — though on a recent visit he spotted one he liked in the window, walked in, glanced at the price tag, and quietly walked back out.

Lettuce at ¥398 and the "Brown Dinner Table" Problem

The segment was sparked by an email from a 64-year-old female listener in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo. She had found iceberg lettuce priced at ¥398 a head at her local supermarket, decided it was not worth it, and fell back on the potatoes and onions already in her kitchen to make nikujaga. "The dinner table turned all brown," she wrote. Shinbo reported the same story at his own supermarket: iceberg lettuce was absent from the shelves two days in a row. Hydroponic leaf lettuces — the kind grown without soil — can still be found for a little over ¥200 including tax, but the volume is nowhere close to a full head of iceberg. He mentioned that an old-school coffee shop in Osaka he frequents still includes lettuce in its morning set, and he found himself rooting for them: "Costs must have gone up for them too, but they're holding the line — I want to support that." The price surge is not limited to lettuce. Tomatoes have climbed to levels that bear no resemblance to what they once cost, and bell peppers, he noted, have been "consistently expensive" for some time.

Direct Stores vs. Franchise Stores: What the Color of Sweet-and-Sour Pork Reveals

Continuing a discussion begun the previous day about Gyoza no Ohsho (餃子の王将), Shinbo laid out his rule of thumb. Large, freestanding directly-operated stores adhere strictly to the chain's manuals; the gyoza come out crispy and uniform every time. Small franchise outlets, on the other hand, are often formerly independent neighborhood Chinese restaurants that joined the chain when business got tough. In those stores the owner tends to exercise personal discretion, and the results vary. Shinbo described ordering the sweet-and-sour pork set at one such local franchise and receiving a dish that was entirely monochrome. His mental image of the dish has always been a riot of color: dark-brown pork, green bell pepper, orange carrot, yellow canned pineapple. What arrived was meat, onion, and brown sauce — nothing else. A listener later wrote in to note that authentic Chinese cuisine does include a version of sweet-and-sour pork made with meat alone, and that it is fragrant and delicious; Shinbo acknowledged the point as a legitimate stylistic difference.

H3 Rocket No. 10 and the Physics of Phobos

At 4:41 a.m. on October 20, JAXA launched H3 Rocket No. 10 from the Tanegashima Space Center carrying a probe bound for Phobos, one of Mars's two moons. The rocket successfully inserted the spacecraft into its planned orbit roughly 70 minutes later. Shinbo walked through the basics: stars that generate their own light are called fixed stars; bodies that orbit them are planets (Mercury through Neptune); bodies that orbit planets are moons. Just as the Moon orbits Earth, Phobos orbits Mars. Phobos has a diameter of only a few dozen kilometers and a mass about one-millionth that of the Moon, which means its gravitational pull is nearly zero. A spacecraft can drift in slowly, touch down, collect samples, and lift off again with a tiny amount of thrust — none of the high-stakes retro-burn deceleration required for a Mars surface landing. "For a country like Japan that operates on a more modest budget, this is an option we can actually tackle," Shinbo said, praising the mission as evidence that Japanese technology still has plenty to offer. He did add, with some ambivalence, that if the United States pushes ahead with a crewed Mars landing before Japan reaches Phobos, it would feel a little deflating.

That Day's Zoom Flash: Key Headlines

- **Consumption-tax cut bill**: A government-sponsored bill to reduce the tax rate on food and beverages by 1% entered deliberation in a Lower House plenary session. The ruling coalition is seeking broad support; opposition parties plan to press on funding sources and effectiveness. - **US-China-Russia summit**: President Trump told reporters at the White House that he is open to a three-way summit with China and Russia, and that scheduling is under way with agenda items including nuclear disarmament. - **Specified skilled worker program resumed**: An expert panel proposed resuming the acceptance of Specified Skilled Worker (Category 1) visa holders in the hospital and welfare facility catering sector from April 2027. - **Chinese-linked AI cyberattack**: A private cybersecurity firm confirmed that some of the attacks targeting Japanese companies involved AI agents linked to China. - **Smartphone driving verdict**: A former truck driver who killed six people while operating his phone on the Shin-Meishin Expressway in Kameyama City, Mie Prefecture, was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. - **Markets**: The Nikkei Average fell ¥841.28 to close at ¥64,075.42. The yen stood at ¥158.10 to the dollar; crude oil was near $99 per barrel.