Mystery Chants Take Over 5ch: ‘See No Bread, Speak No Bread, Hear No Bread’

Background and Key Points

5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board is a live-commentary space where users post in real time while watching TV, sports, or streams — closer in spirit to a Twitch chat than a discussion forum, which is why threads like this one exist purely to flood the page with in-jokes rather than debate anything. The chant “see no bread, speak no bread, hear no bread” is a pun on the classic three-wise-monkeys proverb (mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru — “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”), swapping “evil” for “pan” (bread) purely for the rhythm. Funassyi, the pear mascot flooding the thread in image form, is an unofficial character created to promote Funabashi City in Chiba Prefecture; it became a nationwide phenomenon around 2013 for its manic, unscripted energy, which is exactly the tone this thread is imitating.

There’s no real argument in this thread — it’s chat noise — but the one moment resembling disagreement is buried in the welfare tangent: one poster complains that living costs demand seikatsu hogo (welfare) payments of 200,000 yen, and another pushes back by asking whether they’d already received Japan’s periodic rinji kyufukin, the one-off cash relief payments the government issues during inflationary spikes. That’s a real policy distinction — ongoing welfare benefits versus temporary supplemental payouts — that the thread never resolves.

What outside readers will likely miss is that none of this is a genuine political or cultural discussion; it’s the digital equivalent of chanting along at a stadium, and the off-topic detours (Hololive, comedy-duo callbacks to Tetsu and Tomo’s “why is that” bit) are the point, not a distraction from it.