Viva the Democracy

It's local election season here in Kanazawa. Before I moved to Japan, my idealized and somewhat stereotypical image of Japan was that of a tranquil, spiritual, intensely private people. I'd heard how the surface of Japanese society is so hard to crack through, so difficult to expose the creamy, fascinating inside of its culture. Well, some of those descriptions are somewhat true, but tranquility is not something I've experienced a whole lot of in day to day life here. The practices during election season are a case in point.
All day for the past week, the town reverberates with the echoes of political speeches being blasted from giant speakers atop the roofs of automobiles, inside which candidates ride, their neon-clad arms and white gloved hands waving out the window, as they drive at a snail's pace up and down the streets. It doesn't matter that you might not actually see one of these cars, because you can ALWAYS hear them. I don't understand much of what is being blasted through the speakers, as it's delivered in at hyper pace that crescendos in a frantic barrage of 'arigato gozaimasu's and 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu's. And then it starts over again, because of course, it's not actually the candidate speaking, but a looped, recorded rallying cry. The candidates will free style over the recording on occasion, particularly if there's a supporter who has stepped out in front of their house, at which point the candidate will jump out of the car to shake hands and bow, all the while narrating the whole confrontation over the loudspeakers. This has been going on all week, and I've been waiting for the chance to snap some photos of the spectical. Tonight I hit pay dirt as around dinner time, when I'm hoping these people will go home, the individual candidates took one last lap through the neighborhood. Notice that I waited for them to drive PAST me before taking my spy photos, since after the whole shrine incident last fall, there was no way I was going to get involved with this stuff.







Japan is an amazingly loud country, and the Japanese people have an unexplained tolerance for noise. There is a strange affinity for obnoxious noise piped through low tech, tinny sounding loudspeakers. Virtually everywhere you go there is a constant battle against over stimulation. Walking down any given city street, one is assaulted by hidden megaphones blabbering on about whatever the particular store is selling. Individual sections of the supermarket have megaphones tucked away amongst the product spouting some ingratiating sales pitch or gimmicky song. How many times have I come home from shopping to find myself singing 'o-nikku suki suki, o-nikku suki suki' (i like meat, i like meat) as I unpack my groceries? Walking by a pachinko parlor when the doors happen to open is enough to put any epileptic on the ground. It's a nonstop effort here to get the message out, whatever that message may be. And it's often hard to identify what the message actually is because there are so many messages coming at you at the same time.
Automobiles are whole other area of obnoxious noise here. Unlike Massachusetts (I can't speak for other states), there are no noise pollution regulations here. So everything with a motor has some tricked out, loud exhaust system. On top of that, all the fancy scooters have stereos cranking hideous J-pop at obscene levels. Then there's the habit of punk-ass J-teens to pull in the clutch and rev the hell out of their bikes as they roll down the street or sit at traffic lights. This is something I find so amazingly rude and annoying. I'm the biggest dove you'll ever meet, but the idea of physically damaging these people, or at least their mode of transportation, is very tempting. To put it in perspective, my neighbor has a Harley, and it is by far the quietest thing on two wheels that I've encounter here. But no matter the noise, the Japanese people take it all in stride, as if they don't hear a thing at all. It makes me a little bit crazy sometimes.
Now that I've got that out of my system, I want to discuss the Red Sox for a moment. Our man Daisuke lost his second straight game last night, though allowing only three hits and two runs, and striking out 10 in 6 innings. I am actually feeling really good about this team at the moment. There pitching has been stellar, it's there offense that's been touch and go, and nobody ever worries about the Red Sox offense. It's a given every year that this team will hit and produce runs. The engine of this team has just turned over, and it's still sputtering to life, but I'm pretty confident that once things warm up, literally and metaphorically, this Red Sox team will be quite a force. The only threat to this team is injury, but that's a universal for everyone. The end of last year was a comedy in both the amount and nature of injuries that the Red Sox experienced. Ortiz's heart got freaky, John Lester got friggin cancer, plus a host of other more traditional baseball injuries, pretty much wiped the Sox off the map for the last six weeks of the season. If they can make it through the majority of the season avoiding serious and widespread injury, this team should go a long long way. That said, I'll probably be freaking out a month from now after they lose three in row to some crappy team, but for now I'm feeling optimistic.