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THE TIMES, ARE THEY A'CHANGIN?

You may recall the elation-turned-debacle that was the Toyosato mayoral recall a few weeks ago (Hooray for Toyosato! Unhooray for Toyosato!), well that setback doesn't seem to have put a damper on mayoral recalls, which seem to be the going thing around the country. Many folks in Shiga-cho are hoping to bring about a recall too, of the mayor who angered his constituency by selling some forest and okaying the construction of an industrial incinerator without even asking. This morning as I entered the village train station I was handed a leaflet that says they only need 674 more signatures for a recall vote. They have a week to get them, and I just heard yesterday that they still needed over 850 (they need 6000 plus, all told), so it seems they're getting some 200 signatures a day. Let's hope the nasty powers that be can't unify as well as they did in Toyosato, where the recalled mayor was squeaked back into office with a slightly smaller margin than Bush was squeaked in with. I can't vote here myself, being a law-abiding, tax-paying, permanent resident of Shiga Prefecture, but I gave the activist village folk handing out the leaflets a thumbs up for their efforts.