I got a little nervous last night--not because of the election results: I live in Utah's third district, after all--but because NHK's normal programming was preempted to carry live coverage of the U.S. election. I was worried that Dan Dan was going to get preempted as well. I gotta have my daily Asadora fix! Thankfully it wasn't. Priorities, you know.

Then at the top of the next hour, there was another additional thirty minutes of coverage added to the regular noonday (Japan time) newscast, up until Obama's election became a mathematical certainty. Consider, in comparison, that a month ago, the election of Taro Aso as Japan's prime minister got at best a passing mention in the U.S. media.

Recently, NHK's delightful science program Tameshite Gatten! ("Science for Everyone") followed the "mackerel highway" from Kyoto to Obama (小浜), which is, of course, getting a lot of free press these days (in Japanese, obama means "small seashore"). Wednesday morning, the town turned out to celebrate! Here's the city's website in English.

Labels: asadora, japan, nhk, politics