Yukio Hatoyama is the current Prime Minister of Japan. He was recently appointed, and posters of him were all over the city when we first arrived. He came into office on September 16th. His appointment marked the end of a nearly 54 year streak by the Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyoma is the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, which was founded in 1998 by a few opposition parties. The DPJ is now the ruling party in the House of Representativesand and has the largest number of seats in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors.
Now to the fun stuff. Yukio's wife, Hatoyama, released a book last year titled, "Very Strange Thing's I've Encountered" which documents an out of body experience she believes to have had 20 years ago. During her out of body experience, she claims to have gone to Venus, which she described as being, "...very beautiful...and really green." Hmmmm....last I checked...Venus isn't what I would call a lush, foresty place...hahaha.
Also, Yukio was ironically nicknamed, "the alien" for his prominent eyes. I haven't really spoken with anyone local on the subject of the current Prime Minister, but I did have a conversation with a woman I was tutoring in English a couple of weeks back on the former Prime Minister, who tried to use government money to fund/create a manga museum. She explained that manga was certainly an important part of Japanese culture, but when the economic crisis grew in severity, he was criticized for the project and it was disbanded.
Other than that, no one really talks about politics, but then again with the language barrier, it's a bit difficult to ask about anyhow. I've also read that it's a little on the bold side to discuss those matters, but people like to chat about them at bars and things like that.
Huh. In Japan, people are a little reluctant to talk about politics. In the USA, people WILL NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT POLITICS.
ReplyDeleteScore: Japan 1, USA 0.