Tokyo Assembly Elections, 23 June 2013

     On the last Sunday, 23 June, elections were held for the 127 seats of the Tokyo Assembly, with a term of four years.  It is not a Legislative Assembly, as Japan is not a federal system and the Parliament is the only legislative organ in the country.  Still, the Prefectural Assemblies, of which there are 47 in all, are an important stage for the political drama, as they are empowered to decide on the annual budget of the Prefectural governments, and so on.  Of course, we have known certain cases where the Assemblies were simply the rubber stamp.
     This time, the elections attracted great attention, not only as they were held in the capital, but as they were the first significant political battle after Abe Shinzo's LDP government came into office.  Also, we are expecting the elections to the Upper House of the Parliament in July, and the Tokyo election results were generally seen to be the forerunner of the shape of things to come.
     The voting ratio was only 44%.  This was not exceptionally low, but was by no means praiseworthy.  Is it an expression of the general indifference of the public?  I do not think so.  In my view, sections of the voters could not decide where to vote.  True, Abe's economic policies("Abenomics") were still popular.  But it also seems to hang on the speculation in the market, as is seen in the rather sharp ups and downs of the share prices.  Apart from the share prices, there was not much that the government could have boasted of as the fruits of their policies.  There was another party, the Restoration Party, which would have cashed in more votes if the Party Chairman had not uttered, more than once, those racially and gender-biased remarks which were reported outside Japan also.  So quite a few were at a loss on the voting day.
     The LDP got 59, their ally, Komei Party, 23, getting hold of a clear majority.  But, to almost everybody's astonishment, the Communists came to the third, with 17, more than doubling the former 8.  Why?  In almost everybody's view, they were the most straightforward and unbending in opposing Abe's policies, by making it clear that they were opposed to the proposed reopening of the nuclear plants, rewriting of the constitution, hike in the consumption tax, joining the TPP, and so on.  So whenever the voters wanted to have a say on these lines and had a look at the policies of different parties, they came, in many cases for the first time, to the Communists, probably the only functioning party of that name in the developed countries.    
           

A Fortnight's Travel in France

     For about two weeks, from the end of May to the beginning of June, we travelled in France as tourists.  The days were getting longer, the weather increasingly picked up, and we greatly enjoyed our journey.  Here are some of our impressions and experiences.

     1.  Trains  We travelled by trains, i.e. by their TGVs and Intercities.  They were mostly on time.  They were clean, no doubt.  But were they comfortable to the tourists?  From the artistic point of view they were not as beautiful as we had thought.  Moreover, there were no restaurant cars/buffet cars as we had expected to find.  Of course selling of drinks, sandwiches and so on by wagons moving up and down the trains was much better than nothing, but are they pleasant to see in the several hours' monotonous journeys?
     To our surprise, even in the TGVs, more often than not there was no announcement in English.  It was only in French.  We thought it was deliberate.  When an inspector came around to check our tickets, I told him that they had been examined by his colleague earlier in the day on the same journey, and he said, in perfect English, 'I don't speak English.'  So it was some new language that was similar to English.  To pretend not to understand English and to answer in French was what we had heard.  But seeing is believing.  Our thought went over to the inhabitants of the former French colonies who had absolutely no means but to learn French, at their cost, in order to be a living cog in that colony.
     One more thing is the large number of passengers everywhere waiting for the platform their trains were coming to to be announced only shortly before their arrival and departure.  I wonder how they manage it in our country, Japan, or in other countries.  Is it not a huge loss of time and energy?I do not think it is like this.

     2.  Food  Most of the food, not only what we took out but what we ate at the respectable-looking restaurants, let me be frank, were not good.  They were surprisingly not good.  The material was simple, but it was all right once you put sufficient attention and labour on the preparation.  They were conspicuous by absence.  What they called 'salads' were just green leaves.  Those dishes served at the central parts of Paris, for example, won't pass as such in most of our humble restaurants.  They are tasteless, and hard to eat.  Sweets, of course, are an exception.

     3.  Museums  Naturally we spent more time at the museums than anywhere else.  I would not talk about the Louvre here.  Though it was on a much grander scale than the British Museum, partly due to the grandness of the building, the Orsay was more systematic and easier to see.  The ships arranged at the Maritime Museum could have been brought into a more intimate relation with the French history.  I was astonished at the collection at the Guimet Museum.  I wonder if they could have been chronologically arranged neatly, with more comments/explanations.
    Outside Paris, we were impressed by the History Museum at Strasbourg.  The Maritime Museum at Marseille is a total disappointment.  For a city like this its rearrangement is a must.  We regret to miss a visit to the Island of If.  At Toulouse we came across a tiny Occitania Museum and enjoy it.

     A final word.  Like so many other European countries France is suffering high unemployment.  I have seen, however, that, in spite of this, labour-saving measures have been rather widely adopted at hotels, at the Metro, in the trains, and so on.  Would not the creation of jobs be far more urgent?