Yesterday (Tuesday, February 11) was a holiday -- National Foundation Day. I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this date, but what it means in the immediate sense is that most people get a day off of work or school. Even still, many students went to school anyways for club activities. And, since Monday wasn't a national holiday. . . I had to take a day of personal leave to get my four-day weekend.

I went into the city yesterday, and was wholly unsurprised to see (and hear) the big black vans driving around, spouting nationalistic slogans and songs. Wait, let me back up and explain:

There is at least one "ultra-nationalistic" political party here in Japan, and I've been told that one of the basic tenets of their platform is, "Foreigners are bad. Expel all of the foreigners." Every once in a while, they drive around in big, black, bus-sized vans which are decorated with nationalistic slogans and symbols. Usually there are two flags hanging from the back. One is the old military "rising sun" flag with the rays extending from the sun, and the other (around here, anyway) is a black flag with the Satsuma clan crest -- a circle with a horizontal and vertical bar intersecting in the middle -- with the Imperial chrysanthemum crest superimposed upon it. The vans also have gigantic loudspeakers mounted on the roof, through which they shout slogans and play patriotic music, loud enough to echo back from distant mountansides.

Anyway, these vans make an appearance maybe once or twice a month, depending on where you are. But, yesterday, in the city, many of them were cruising around all day. Every ten minutes or so, another one would pass by Tenmonkan, where i was waiting to meet with friends. Happily, I am able to report that the majority of Japanese that I could see were just as annoyed with the vans as my friends and I were.

Surprisingly, the temptation to wave as they went by was almost irresistable.

As we were walking around doing our usual thing (eat lunch, go to the arcade to play Taiko no Tatsujin, eat Haagen-Das, shop and/or karaoke, go home (are we in a rut? at least it's a comfy rut)), many people went out of their way to be extra-polite and friendly to us, as if to say, "Don't worry. . . we're not all like that."

I would like to note in passing that, if I'm out and about by myself in the city, people don't really react to me in the same way that they react to other foreigners. This is apparently because I don't stand out from the crowd like those blond-haired blue-eyed pale people do.

I am. . . STEALTH GAIKOKUJIN! (^_^)

Actually, there were some white SUVs with speakers driving around the city yesterday too. I'm not sure if they were part of the same party or not, since I couldn't understand what they were saying, although I did recognize when they played the national anthem.

All right, I'll tell you one of the things that's stressing me out.

The Japanese have this word: kataomoi. Literally translated, it means, "one-sided feelings," which is an apt description of. . . naah, you figure it out.

Yah, I write too much. What can I say, I need the practice.