As for Ishihara, he’s right to take the reins, but I haven’t seen much follow-through. Will the replacement tress get planted or will we start to see more condos at Okutama? Will anything happen?

Ishihara said Tsukiji was old. He wanted to move it to Odaiba to face the Bay. Now, Tsukiji is one of Tokyo’s most popular tourist attractions in addition to having historical and commercial significance. At the same time that he wants to move Tsukiji out of an older, less wealthy neighborhood, he talks about helping people and about increasing tourism to Tokyo with the Olympics.
Moving Tsukiji would end its tourist appeal and leave another area of Tokyo’s older East side with not a whole lot going for it.

The Olympics are a terrible idea - the only benefit will be to Ishihara’s vanity. The city will lose money, green space, and even more of the scant scenic beauty it has. We’ll get more highway overpasses that won’t really bring anything good. Making more space for people to drive in a city where fewer people should be driving is NOT the answer and will NOT help.
If Ishihara thinks young people will fall in line, start working harder, and be more like him just because the Olympics come to Tokyo, he understands neither his constituents nor the Olympics. In 1964, it made a lot of sense, now the Olympics would be a burden and a nuisance to Tokyo.

Ishihara could have dug in much, much deeper here. Here is the page for the MAFF’s “Pollen Outbreak Counter-Measure Team” They plan on having requests for budgetary allocations for fiscal 2008? That’s the final goal in their schedule.

This is party why when Ishihara gets an axe, heads out into Okutama and chops down trees himself, people notice. Over at the Ministry, Matsuoka Daijin seems more concerned with covering up his scandals and coming up with harebrained schemes for approving Japanese restaurants overseas.

Also - I had no idea about probably half of the campaign promises that Ishihara made. Moving Tsukiji to face Tokyo Bay? What? The pollen extermination plan I knew about, as well as the idea to bid for Tokyo to host the 2016 Olympic Games, but some of the other stuff in there is really interesting. Is it a good or a bad thing that he does his own thing in the face of the central government? Fascinating stuff.

(By the way, I’m still sad that Dr. Nakamats[u] didn’t win the Tokyo gubernatorial race. I really wanted to see his magic missile defense system. In fact, I vote that he rolls that sucker out anyway. He can profit monetarily and Japan and South Korea can profit defensively from his zany inventions. Ha ha.)

Ok - let me just say, in defense of Japanese men, that they are not all freaky, perverted, and exponentially randier with every year they add to their lives. But you sure would think otherwise if you followed some foreign media coverage after the recen…

Second, I hoped he would have lost, if only to force foreigners (and ex-foreigners) to think more constructively, rather than just using Ishihara as an Aunt Sally to blame all wrongs (and perceived wrongs) on.