Saturday, May 3, 2008

Politics

Although I'm sure there are many forms of politicking in Japan, the only one I'm really familiar with is when the person with a thought attaches a bunch of loud speakers to his car, pulls up Nagoya station and starts yelling. Normally it's just one group of people going at it, but today was special. Okay, look at this:What you see is one group of people behind Nagoya station yelling at another group across the street, look close, they are those four people on top of the white van. And it's weird, because it seems like the group on this side of the street was pro-Tibet and anti-China, which most people in Japan are.But if we assume this, I can't figure out what the people across the street are yelling about. I mean, they would not be yelling back in agreement. Like "YES, YOU ARE RIGHT!"Unless this group above is pro-China. But that's like being pro-Cleavland at a Tigers game.Now the group, we are now calling pro-China, was much more polite, dropping please and thank you's as if they were free. They also had a large group of spectators watching and clapping on each counter point. Basically, I had no idea which side of the street to support. After about 15 minutes, both sides were done making their points and started packing up, probably to drive off to a new corner and yell at people. When out of no where, this guy who, I think been drinking to much (it's not even noon yet) wanted to get in a confrontation with the pro-Tibet side.This guy was pissed, but I think he might of been mad because he was trying to take a nap under a tree outside Nagoya station and these people would not shut up.But they ultimately took care of this issue by simply smacking him with Tibetan flag. He ended up going back to his nap under the tree.[Addendum] I was thinking about this; in this case where two people meet at Nagoya station and yell at each other from across the street, do you call each other and plan or is this just a coincidence?

I was asked, and yes, there are many restaurants in Japan that are from the US. For example, here is a McDonald's a few feet from the protest. You can't really tell, but it's full of people enjoying menu item #7. There are two more in the station also.

4 comments:

Erin said...

I went to see the Dalai Lama [with Dave and Tim] at the Key [don't worry I found a replacement for you, although he wasn't as cool as you of course, but he paid for his ticket which was nice] and I was kind of hoping for some screaming on top of cars from across the street, but nothing. There were some people on videotape talking but no arguments I didn't even see any emphatic discussions.

Anonymous said...

You know... I've been reading about a lot of travel in Japan. As I understand it, you are there for work, but it seems like quite an extended vacation you are taking. Looks like fun...

Demian said...

well, I can't talk about work... so what you see on the blog is the effort of a lack of television.

Atticus said...

Hmmm..

The people in the white van had a website listed at the bottom of their big sign. Perhaps there is more info there. At any rate I like the pics of the angry guy, they look like something out of time magazine.