Travels with hannah V

An Historic Day

On 20th January, all eyes seemed to be watching Washington D.C. As we were regularly reminded, it was "an historic day" (to steal from Jon Stewart) and marked the start of a new era of politics in America and, hopefully, around the world. Me? I wasn't watching TV; I wasn't even near one. Nor was I hovering at a computer or by a radio. I was spending my historic day in a once-in-a-lifetime way: I was celebrating hannah's birthday and the inauguration with her in Obama, Japan.

For those of you who haven't heard about or seen Obama, Japan in the news, the name "obama" in Japanese translates to "small harbor" - this makes it a rather common name, and there are at least three cities bearing it here. The biggest is in Fukui prefecture, near Kyoto. (For more information, you can read about Obama-shi on Wikipedia.)


The plans for visiting Obama began long before hannah arrived - I made a flip comment about visiting the city being a fun way to celebrate her birthday, as it was decently close to Kyoto, and hannah instantly jumped on it. Her energy spurred my energy and soon I found myself making as many arrangements as possible to allow us to be in Obama for the inauguration.

We set out from Kyoto early on the 20th, but various problems (mostly with my general ineptitude) had us arriving at Obama at around 2 or so in the afternoon. We were practically flying when we entered the town and started seeing the Obama paraphernalia.


We were given directions to the Obama store in town where we could satisfy our need to buy, buy, buy, and found that we weren't the only tourists in town. Aside from the bus or two of Japanese tourists, we met with two other Americans in the store - the only other foreigners we'd see while in the town. One was a professional photographer; the other was simply another person who couldn't resist being in Obama on Inauguration Day. We gushed, giggled, laughed, took our pictures with ridiculous Obama things, and in general had a good time.

The story behind this is that there is a comedian in Japan who is considered the "Japanese Obama" as he looks like the President. As far as I can tell, that means he has short hair and ears that stick out. In any case, the statue of Japanese-Obama was almost as frightening as their depictions of the Commander-in-Chief himself.

hannah and I decided to explore a little and get lunch, so we split off from the other two Americans and began walking, having been given a recommendation for a restaurant by an employee of the Obama store. It was at this point that things began to weigh in on us: the stares, few of which were merely curious; the look of complete and utter shock that met my every use of Japanese; the continual reappearance of certain faces that watched us intently as we walked around the town, waiting, it seemed, for us to commit some dastardly crime. When we had first entered the town, hannah and I regretted that we would be returning to Kyoto that night; by the time we found a place that was open for lunch, we were thanking God that we weren't compelled to stay. In all of my time in Japan, I've never felt so consistently and blatantly watched. It occurred to me then that the town only celebrated President Obama for his fame and name, and not for a single thing for which he stands. It was a sigh of relief rather than one of sadness that we gave as our train pulled away from the station and took us safely back on the long road toward Kyoto.

There was one thing to save the end of our visit, however - as we made our way to the train station again after lunch, a news team ran up to us and asked if they could interview us for the news on NHK, a rather large station here (on the level of Fox, TBS, or NBC). They asked us our thoughts on the city (we lied through our teeth) and our thoughts on our to-be president. I did the interview in Japanese, to my great pride. I'm not sure that the interview ever made it into the news, and I know that it didn't appear nationally even if it did, but it does at the very least provide us with a wonderful story. Of all the things I anticipated experiencing in Japan, I never expected being interviewed by a Japanese news station to be one of them!

In the end, Obama is a small, insular town and their reaction to foreigners is sad, but not unexpected. Still, it was frustrating to see that a place was so willing to celebrate the election of our president but was unwilling to understand what the election meant. While President Obama stands for change in a number of ways for Americans, he was merely a face and a name to use for the residents of Obama, and a way to bring tourists to their small town that, in the end, they didn't really want. I can't find it in myself to give the town much credit. Still, America has elected and sworn in a black president - even the most unexpected of changes can happen. Let's hope Obama, Japan will catch the bug.