Racist march Shibuya

While enjoying a lovely meal outside with my friend yesterday in Shibuya this 'orrible bunch walked past destroying our peaceful Sunday with megaphones screaming out hysterical anti-Chinese messages. Their message was for "bad Chinese get out of Japan", specifically Chinese mafia. But we don't think they were too picky with who they wanted out of Japan. Many customers at the cafe were foreigners like me and one guy faced us screaming "foreigners get out of Japan" through his megaphone. Though this kind of thing is depressing I was heartened to see that there weren't many people in the demo (only about 70 or so) and passersby were ignoring them. We have the national front in the UK who are equally vile but usually anti-racist groups stage demos on the same day. However this often leads to violence so one wonders if the Japanese reaction of pretending they're not there isn't better after all.

Dangerous voting habits

The above poster which has appeared on trains recently reads "Are you a dangerous young person". My reading skills being rather poor I assumed it was berating young people for looking scary to older people but actually it is a campaign to encourage people to vote. Pointing out that while 76 per cent of 60 year olds vote, only 36 per cent of 20 year olds bother. Overall only 58 per cent of the population vote. "Don't you think this figure is a little dangerous?" the advert adds. As Aso's outdated and incompetent government shows, it's really time for young people in Japan to get interested in politics.