Cherry-blossom season is here. And with your view of gorgeous pink clouds of blossoms, you get election posters:

I think election day is going to be on Easter, which of course is not a holiday here–it’s just a coincidence. I gotta say, overall I like the way electioneering is handled over here better than in America. There are very few TV ads, and thus much, much less money spent on advertising, which I think has a lot of benefits. Those boards are put up in specific places in every neighborhood, and everyone running for an office can put up one poster of a clearly-defined size. Then the pols do a lot of walking around and shaking hands.

The only bad thing, really (other than the widespread corruption, but that’s not much different from back home), is the use of sound trucks, which is pretty annoying. But then a lot of people use sound trucks, and I would actually miss some of them, like the baked-sweet-potato guy who drives around singing the "My baked sweet potatoes are de-li-ciouuuuussss! Come and buy my baked sweet potatooooooes!" It would be nice to get rid of the ultra-rightist neo-facist guys in the huge armored trucks, though.