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<\/p>\nCherry-blossom season is here. And with your view of gorgeous pink clouds of blossoms, you get election posters:
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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"