Japan votes. But, from the outside looking in, things appear pretty grim.
Tokyo Times is owned and run by me, Lee Chapman, a long-term resident of Tokyo who arrived in 1998 for ‘a year or two’, and, for a myriad of reasons, stayed put.
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Great picture. Sums up the mood of everyone, I think.
Cheers. It was as exactly how I felt/feel. Good to know I’m not alone.
Great shot, you really are nailing the photos especially well the last few weeks! I can see that the election has brought out a purpose in you.
Abe is set to win on a message that he will fix the 20+ year old economic crisis, did nobody ask him why he didn’t bother doing exactly that when he was in power a few years ago? The situation was grim then and thanks to him as well, things have gotten worse… 空約束 is the word I’m looking for
Thank you very much. Yes, I guess it has. Or at the very least it has caused me to see things a little differently.
Couldn’t agree more. His claims are laughable, aren’t they? Yet huge numbers of people voted for him and his party. Proving, I guess, that whilst his words are indeed empty promises, they are obviously seen as less emptier than those of his rivals. What a thoroughly depressing situation…
Wow, sounds a lot like someone who won a major election recently. Words always speak louder than action in politics these days, it seems.
Anyway, what are all the chairs for? Do voters tend to wait seated before voting (or after) in Japan?
I’m not sure to be honest, as I wasn’t allowed in. But from what I could see, they had simply been laid out that way to direct people towards the exit.
This shot is very nice, was this taken with your new Leica?
Cheers! Yes, it was. In fact pretty much all the shots since early November have been. I’m very happy with it!
Those bulky winter coats certainly make for a grim site election or otherwise. And now that the outcome has come out, an even grimmer winter…
We never may know which wing is right, but it is doubtful if it is the right wing.
That’s certainly my opinion. But yeah, it’s hard to see things getting anything but worse. The people who created the mess Japan finds itself in have been put back in power. The only blessing of sorts is that Abe won’t be PM for long.
Certainly, a quick turnaround in J-politics.. well that nimble footedness used to be a cornerstone of the country’s economic might.. but only remains as a flaccid shadow of former glory these days… nobody knows where all the managers went… or whether they were just sucked under as the rest of the world caught up. We seem to be able to watch these things unfold all over the place as the years pile up… history, etc…
So Abe is now the new PM? (for some odd, latent reason, a line from an old Who song, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” runs through the mind). Japan seems destructively bent on being culturally, economically and politically by-passed and regulated to irrelevance by keeping to the past and those who wish to maintain a status quo that has long outlived its need.
On a micro level, had a younger Japanese couple drop by yesterday to buy some of our grown son’s childhood books. In the chit-chat the wife said she was a Japanese professor at a college in southern Pennsylvania . Asked her about her class size and she said the number of student enrolling in Japanese language courses is noticeable lower.
Yes, a sign (if it were needed) that Japan really is going backward. A retreat that Abe will only accelerate. One that is clearly being noticed outside the country too if the woman’s class sizes are anything to go by.
What’s even worse is that it really is hard to see anything changing in the coming years. Even after everything that has happened in Japan, nuclear power appears to have played a surprisingly minor role in regards voting. If an event of such proportions doesn’t result in a shift in direction, it’s hard to know what will…
Now Aso is back, it is becoming clear: A lot of bickering with China to whip up national support and still no solution for the 20 year old LDP created economical crisis, what a joke at the expense of the Japanese people….
Yeah, a sorry state of affairs that just keeps getting worse…
My only hope — although the appointment of Aso somewhat contradicts it — is that since winning, Abe has been scaling back some of the nationalistic rhetoric. Even if it’s just for pragmatic reasons, it’s slightly reassuring. About the only that is mind you…