If you live in a residential area of Tokyo, no doubt you’ve noticed the big boards which popped up just before the elections started a few weeks ago. I took the left photo when the boards first appeared and it was mostly empty even after the gubernatorial election which Shintaro Ishihara won again. Then magically overnight the boards were filled completely in preparation for the municipal election for my ward, Setagaya-ku. It’s interesting that so many of the candidates have their first names written in hiragana instead of kanji. This is to make the names easier to read and more memorable, but I wonder if their names are written that way on the ballot. Since I’m not Japanese and cannot vote I guess I will never know. I’m not really interested in local politics but I’ve heard that political candidates in Japan have strict rules about what they can and cannot due during their campaigns. Not really sure what those rules are, but I wish one of them was not allowing them to drive around the neighbour all day long shouting their names out through loud speakers. Election time in Japan is very noisy.
O-69!
When one noisy politician drove past the other day I tried yelling out “urasai!”, and my Japanese friend stopped me. What kind of country is this any way? ;-)
Do you know the insignificance of the numbers, if any? I noticed that 49-64 are gone.
Is it me or do politicians around the world take the same photo? Politicians and Realtors.