Japanese Election OT: Just Wondering How Taro Yamamoto Is Faring in Tokyo's 8th District...

About 8 more hours of voting time left (until 8PM) in Japan.

Taro Yamamoto, the actor turned anti-nuclear activist who has been not just against nuclear power plants in general (like Japan Future Party and others) but against disaster debris burning, against contaminated food, against keeping children in Fukushima Prefecture and who is in favor of spending everything to clean up the mess even if it means national bankruptcy is running for office from the 8th District in Sugimani-ku, Tokyo.

Kenji Sawada, known as "Julie" for generations of fans since 1960s, showed up in one of Yamamoto's campaign events on December 14, and urged the excited audience to vote for this "fine young man" who has stepped up to the plate to stop the nukes.

I remember Yamamoto saying in one of the TV variety shows last year, "We should do everything, spend all the money necessary, to clean up this mess, help people and children in the affected area. Even if the country goes bankrupt as the result, as long as we have people, we can start again." He was roundly ridiculed by other guests at that time, as "unrealistic", as someone who didn't know anything about economics.

It made sense to me.

One of my favorite songs by Julie, from 1971, when he was a teenage girls' "idol". How time has passed. He still sings today, just like this, in the same key.

Toward the wind
Wearing leather shoes
We walk side by side
On a long road

My map is torn
No one here to give me a new one
So we walk, holding each other around the shoulder
On a long road

When you feel down
I will sing you a song
Carrying you across the sea at night
I will be the boat

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