Ready to Slam My Head into a Tree
 VIDEO – Two local assembly candidates in Minato-ku try to drown each other out
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 A local assembly candidate in Minato-ku blasting her message through our neighborhood
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 A banner in Shinagawa station: April 22 is election day for the local assembly in Minato-ku
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Check out this video I shot from our balcony (click the first thumbnail on the left) – it offers a real glimpse into Tokyo political campaigns. For the past week or so there has been an almost non-stop cacophony from the blaring PA systems mounted on politicians’ campaign cars, buzzing around our neighborhood like mosquitoes around the head of an Alaskan moose. I picked that particular analogy because a friend of mine told me once that persistent swarms of mosquitoes can drive a moose so crazy that, in desperation, it will charge headlong into a tree, sometimes killing itself. That’s about where I’m at.
In the video, there’s one candidate (or possibly one of his surrogates) who has pulled over on the left side of our apartment building, to give a speech to the buildings. Well, OK, to the people in the buildings, whether they want to listen or not. The PA systems the candidates have are loud – closing your windows and doors does absolutely no good. They usually just keep driving while they talk, so stopping like this is uncommon. One of the several other candidates driving around has noticed he’s stopped, and – not wanting to let the other guy have the full attention of the local residents – he stops only half a block away, on the right side of our apartment, and starts his own speech. This makes it impossible to understand what either one is saying, but I imagine that’s the point: the candidate who pulled up to drown out the other guy is mainly concerned about blocking his message, not necessarily getting heard himself.
About a month ago I wrote a post on the Tokyo race for governor, which is over now (Ishihara won). I mentioned that politicians aren’t allowed to advertise on TV here. If you combine that with the fact that door-to-door campaigning is impossible, since the vast majority of people here live in secured high rise apartment buildings (the Japanese actually call them “mansions”), then this aggressive, blaring, drive-by campaigning is the unfortunate result. It’s actually created a real problem for us: Eidan has been sick for the past few days with the stomach flu, and the poor kid keeps getting woken up from his naps by these massively amplified voices that are so loud that I don’t have a prayer of shielding his room from the noise. Political ads on American TV may be annoying, but at least you can control the volume (or even change the channel, or turn it off!). Eidan is napping as I’m writing this, and I can hear at least 3 different campaign vans driving around the neighborhood right now – if one of them comes down our street, that may be the end of Eidan’s nap.
The election is tomorrow, April 22 – I can’t wait for this to be over. The election that was on April 8 was the first part of the “national unified elections,” and now we’re in part two. The FPCJ has a good explanation of how the process works:
The unified local elections are held once every four years to select the heads and assembly members of regional governments. These will be the 16th unified local elections since 1947. The local elections are held at the same time to cut costs, improve efficiency, and stimulate interest in regional autonomy. There will be a total of 1,120 elections within a single month with voting taking place in two parts, first on April 8 and later, April 22. Because of the so-called Great Heisei Mergers of local cities, towns and villages, the number of local municipalities has been greatly diminished with 60 percent fewer mayoral elections and roughly half of the assembly seat elections compared with the number of elections that were held in 2003.
