Elections

Yesterday was election day here in Muroran for the city mayor and council. Unlike back home such positions have some municipal merit as our elected representatives oversee a budget of just over 438 million yen (about 3.4 million of that Euro funny money) which gets spent on everything from school lunches to social welfare payments. It does not however get spent on an exiled Gael's attempts to start a Junior B football team. This despite the fact that said Gael has being contributing to city taxes for the ten years he has lived in Muroran. On average I pay 900 annually in city taxes and what has a decade and 9,000 Euro got me? Feck all. And certainly not the vote. Obviously 'No taxation without representation' doesn't translate into Japanese. My thoughts are beginning to turn revolutionary...
Anyway, yesterday 37 year old Takeshi Aoyama was reelected mayor of Muroran for a second four year term. Sanae voted for him as his daughter goes to the same school as Cian and she figured he'd probably keep the school open until she graduated. Mayor Aoyama's success wasn't unexpected as he managed to convince both main political parties to back him along with securing the endorsement of the local labour union (though not the backing of the city's Irish diaspora).
What intrigued me most about the election was the actual voting process. First Sanae received an official 'Voting Place Entrance Ticket' (no, really), which, as the wonderfully pedantic title makes clear, enabled her to actually enter the polling station at the local junior high school. Then they confirmed Sanae was Sanae but unlike AIB, she did not have to provide any proof of identity. Rather, her 'Entrance Ticket' and the voter list was compared. Each of these had half an official stamp on them and when the halves were aligned, they matched perfectly. She was in!
She was then directed to another counter where she got the official voting paper to write her preferred candidate's name. Yes, write the name. No ticking boxes, or marking x's, or photographs of the candidates to help you. You write the name and you had better not make any mistakes or you'll render your vote invalid. Then you put your ballot in a special box and hope the talliers can read your handwriting. And then she had to repeat the process all over again, this time to vote for her preferred candidate, yes candidate singular - none of that head wrecking proportional representation voting here - for the city council. Who also got elected. It would seem that Sanae has better luck at picking political winners than equine ones.