It's just not funny anymore...

Who will best represent MY interests? Maybe that little guy...

If I wanted to, I feel pretty certain that I could get Japanese citizenship fairly easy now as I have permanent residence and now also sprouted two offspring that are Japanese. However, as life is going pretty well without it and I have so far yet to run into any situation where I have felt that being a Japanese citizen would make things easier, nor encountered any blatant discrimination due to my Swedish citizenship. 

The big thing with citizenship is of course that you get to have a vote in the elections, however considering the current state of Japanese politics it feels more like a relief than anything that I am not allowed to vote in the upcoming December general election and having to take some form of responsibility for the outcome...

In the past I've posted a bit on the new splinter groups from various parties that have emerged the last years (see post here). At that point it was ridiculous and depressing, but still a bit funny. However, now that Ishihara and Hashimoto have thrown their masterful minds together headlining another new party the fun is all gone and now it's just depressing. 

The Liberal Democratic Party had a golden chance this election to show that their loss in the previous election had made them take a critical look at themselves and removed the excess fat that the complacency after all those long years in power is now gone and they are once again hungry and revitalized. However, what do they do? They elect former one-year Prime Minister Abe as the party chairman, the guy that started the whole "Japanese-one-year-Prime-Minister" thing that has been going on the last six years...

The Democratic party is in disarray, splintering into infighting groups with no evidence that they would be better prepared for a second term than the first one that turned into a massive fiasco with revolving door Prime-Minister and Cabinet change and fighting within the party.

What remains apart from the clownshow of new parties, LDP and DPJ is the Communist party and the religious Buddist party New Komeito.

There's hardly even a lesser evil here, it's all bad across the board and the only good news is that since I'm not a citizen I do not have to make the choice here. Mrs. Sunshine does not have this luxury however and is trying to figure out who will do the least amount of damage... 

For the sake of full disclosure, it should however be mentioned that I have on rare occasions accepted tissue paper handouts from party representatives loitering around the station as I enter the Communting War on weekday mornings.