I’m a little late to the party but…

…with our new President Barack Obama becoming recently inaugurated, I just wanted to share more stories from my last trip to Japan.

My shiny new passport in hand, wherever I went, I proudly announced to friends and family that as of last summer, I am now an American citizen. And, invariably, one of the first things everyone said was:

“You got to vote for Obama?!”

It seems Obama Mania had caught hold in Japan as well. My new American citizenship might have further legitimized the Cool Relative From America status I frequently enjoy (and yes, I’m a fittingly arrogant American), but people seemed really, really excited that I was able to vote for Obama. Of course I was excited too, and I am excited that this is my first real President, but not being much in touch with the pulse of Japan these days, I was a bit surprised at the extent of the hoopla around him.

I’d heard about the city of Obama, Japan being into Barack Obama, but it seemed to be common knowledge in Japan that they sell Obama manjuu there. I love the pun on the bottom of that packaging, too — they combined “Obama” and “manjuu” to create…”おばまん” or “Obaman.” Haha! My dad and I wanted some of these novelty items, but apparently they only sell them in Obama.

One day in Japan, I was watching TV and I even heard about this book of Obama’s speeches printed in English as well as Japanese, with a CD included so readers can follow along. I just did a quick Google search and it looks like NPR has recently picked up on this. It’s a pretty cool idea.

On another side of things, maybe I just forget how much the U.S. is scrutinized by other countries. I talked a bit with some of my dad’s cousins, and one of them asked me if I ever engaged in protests in college (I’ve never been to a protest of any kind), and commented that student protests don’t seem to occur much anymore. Curious, I asked what she was protesting, and she answered, “the Vietnam War.” This prompted me to ask a rather dumb question: “With America?” I guess it never occurred to me that there were young people overseas protesting the Vietnam War. She laughingly exchanged stories with her sister about their eyes burning from tear gas and how nobody was probably paying attention, all the way in Japan. It was an enlightening conversation for me.