An aside...

And now... Democracy in Action!

There are roughly seven million citizens of the United States living abroad right now. That is almost twice the population of the state of Connecticut. Until now, the only option for an ex-pat to vote was to secure a ballot by mail for their last U.S. address -- a difficult and time consuming task.

This year, registered Democrats have another option. There is an international primary election, being held Feb. 5 - Feb. 12, for all ex-pat Democrats who choose not to vote in a U.S. state primary. At stake are 11 delegates to the National Convention (actually, 22 delegates each with one-half vote). This under-represents the size of the ex-pat population, but is much better than zero voting delegates, which is what the DNC used to give ex-pats!

Even better, I was able to vote on-line this morning. It is also possible to go to a polling place in certain areas; Kyoto will have a polling place open on Feb. 10, for example.

Sorry, Republicans-living-abroad. The RNC doesn't give delegates to its ex-pat members...

We now return to politics-free Japan blogging.