'tis the season.

     I walked outside yesterday morning into a nasty, gray-sky day. It looked like it was going to rain, but the wind was blowing so violently that an umbrella would have been useless anyway, so I continued without one. Then, I heard the sirens. "Are those voices?," I thought, and I wondered what they were saying in Japanese. Naturally I assumed was a warning of some kind; what if the weather was getting so bad that the announcement was urging people to evacuate? Do they even have tornadoes in Japan? I looked for other people so I could see how the natives were reacting, but nobody was on the entire street. "Strange," I thought, as I found myself drawn to the rambling of the horns in the direction of the station. The speaker was very monotone; whatever he was saying, this was not a festival. The walk was about a mile, yet the horns sounded clear as day. In the distance I saw a large crowd of people, and I imagined the imperial Big Brother of Japan, loading buses full of willing passengers unsure where their government was taking them. To my surprise, upon reaching the crowd I noticed group of four old men in suits, standing atop a self-painted van, speaking to the crowd. They wore sashes adorned with their credentials and had a few news-teams recording their speech. I should have known; it's political season.

I definitely agree with Mr. So-and-So about that one point.

     Apparently in Japan it's legal to drive around town with a giant megaphone on the roof of your van and spout political nonsense. It makes me weary to think that there is a country with a more invasive campaign strategy than the United States, but Japan seems to be doing a pretty good job of intruding every half hour when they drive by in the cars again. The only other images I have of these mobile-audio propaganda machines is among the plighted countries going through revolutions, like in the movies about Nazi Germany. Sure, today, the Japanese people are probably saying, "please vote for better education funding!," but I imagine tomorrow it could be something along the lines of, "Find those Gaijin! They must be turned in to the police!"