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WE DID IT!

Well the election returns are in and Tokyo voters re-elected the outspoken dinosaur Ishihara to their prefectural governorship. I suspect they like him not particularly because of the irrational ideas he often espouses, like a true gerontocrat, but for the way he shoots off at the mouth in unexpected sound bytes and gets into trouble, unlike most of the monoliths in parliament and elsewhere. In other words, Ishihara is much more entertainer than politician. And in a not unexpected but still unpleasant setback for the antinuclear power folks, the apparatchik governor of Fukui Prefecture (a major focus of Japan's nuclear power industry) was re-elected over his antinuclear power opponent, who nevertheless garnered an unexpectedly large number of votes in a hotly contested election. News was much rosier in the vicinity of Pure Land Mountain, as our local candidate for the Shiga Prefectural Assembly, a very nice midwife who lives just across the ridge and is strongly against the proposed incinerator, handily and unexpectedly edged out the major party-backed pro-incinerator incumbent, to very loud cheers in the neighborhood. "We Did it! We DID it!" Was heard from living room windows throughout the land around.