Japan Elections

Politics is a subject which I avoid writing about - the reason being because I don't really know much about it ^^;

What I do know however is what I observe around me and up until today for the past few weeks, politicians have been driving around in vans shouting out their names repeatedly and hitting the local shotengai (shopping malls) to look at folks in the eye.

Here we see Baba Yuko with her comrades from the democratic party at our local shotengai.

Behind Baba-san is some sort of pedo-dog?

For these general elections, there was an all time high number of people casting their vote - probably because of the amount of promotions each party done this time round.
You can see some of the TV commercials from the parties on the first few pages at Japan Probe and also at YouTube Japan.

Some of the parties are even using cute cheerleaders to get citizens votes.

The prime minister Aso Taro came to our local shotengai! Here we see a welcome sign being prepared for him.

The next day, the sign is up but nobody has any idea when he was going to come and I missed my photo chance in armor with him ^^;

Didnt notice before but saw much of them for the current general elections - the Happiness Realization Party. Apart from driving around in vans and walking around shotengai's, we often see political folks on street corners speaking out to the citizens.

These photos were taken back at the beginning of the year outside a venue for the coming of age day. Many parties were out in about trying to recruit folks who just turned 20 as thats the age when they can start to vote.

The Japanese Communist Party kidnap me and ask that I help recruit some communist troops.

On a related note, the fire brigade were out in about trying to recruit folks too.

Foreigners are not allowed to vote in Japan but was asked in an interview who I would vote for if I had the right to. I don't really have any complaints about the society that I currently live in and am rather content with the way things are now so I guess I'd go for whoever was in leadership at the time. I'm sure there is a load of stuff to fix in society but I've already got a plateful to think about

Back in the UK I never bothered with voting as I never took interest in politics. All I saw was a bunch of people shouting at each other at parliament saying how bad the other party was. Much of the same goes in in Japan too though.

How about yourself? Do you keep yourself in the loop with whats going on in politics and do you cast your vote when the time comes around?