President Obama coming up on the left

We spent the weekend in Nagasaki, a good two to three hours from Kumamoto by car. I did not know until we saw this sign that U.S. presidential campaigning was allowed in Japan.

As it turns out, there is a town not too far from Kumamoto with the same name as the new President of the United States. As we watched news of the election results, they had a lot of celebrating going on, in typical Japanese fashion: crowds of folks in Hula shirts and leis doing Hawaiian dances, in honor of Barack`s Hawaiian roots. A fun "I (heart) Obama was designed, and put onto everything from T-shirts and posters to kimonos and, you guessed it, Obama burgers. If I find some pictures of this stuff, I will post them.