On the campaign trail

In a couple of short weeks, Japan will hold local elections at the city level. Fortunately for the residents of this country, the campaign season is mercifully limited to a few short weeks for each election cycle. That is not a lot of time to prepare the electorate for the day. Thus, the politicians have been on the campaign circuit from morning to night "debating" the issues. To the left is the debating platform of choice for local elections. When you get to the national level, you get a bus with bigger and more speakers.

Politicians or their designated mouth-pieces spend the day cruising the neighborhoods of their district, screaming "good morning", "good afternoon", "good evening", "elect (insert name of candidate here) and "thank you" through their sound systems at the unsuspecting citizenry.

Any resident within a six block radius is well aware of this message. Those at 100 meters endure a ringing in the ears for a few minutes. Any closer and you would probably just go deaf.

Local elections are over in a couple of weeks, at which point the din of Tokyo returns to normal until the campaign season for the upper chamber of parliament kicks off in June. They get the buses -- there's something to look forward to.