Remember WWII?

Do you remember that big war we had although years ago, the one in which we fought Japan in the Pacific and Asia, among other things that were happening? Well anyway, it was a long time ago, especially for me, so it's hard for me to relate or understand the full impact of what happened. Japan has changed dramatically as well, adopting and staying firm with it's pacifist constitution that we gave them (haha, yes, Japan's constitution was written by a bunch of Americans locked in a room for 10 days and unto this day is unchanged, go figure). Well, anyway, I got a taste of what it might have been like during that time. While walking down a Tokyo street last Sunday, I heard loud yelling. I ran down the street towards the noise to see what was going on. When I reached the scene of the commotion, strange emotions came to me. For I saw a huge line of black vans and trucks, with Japanese imperial flags all over them. And they all had loud speakers mounted to them. The noise was incredible. One was chanting loudly and all the others were resounding. In the background was imperial Japanese marching music. If you are American and not patriotic, being here for this would have made you patriotic in about 5 secs. I felt so angry and sad. It was kind of scary too being an American walking around these guys. The riot police were out in full force to keep these guys in line, so I felt ok, but still...

Yea, so apparently this day was the most important day for the Japanese nationalists. It's scary to think that these kinds of people are still around. I think Americans aren't aware of what happened in Asia before and during World War II. Read about what Japan did to Korea and China, and you'll understand why these two countries hate Japan enormously (and strangely enough, many Japanese hate Koreans and Chinese people more than any other people on earth).

So I went to Yasukuni shrine, the Shinto shrine where the souls of the Japanese war criminals are interred and the place were all the nationalist like to hang out. Research Yasukuni Shrine for more controversy haha.

So in conlusion, what am I trying to tell you? Yea Japan is peaceful now and lots of people don't want to see World War II again. But these crazy people are still around. The ruling party of Japanese politics vows to change the constitution to re-militarize Japan. Right now, Japan has no armed forces, but they have this thing called the Self Defense Force, for obvious reasons. They only put aside a small fraction of their GDP for this SDF. But, big but here, the SDF has the second largest budget of any 'army' in the world. Not bad for not having a 'real' army. If Japan were to re-militarize, they would probably become a military superpower in a month. Pretty scary stuff if this happened, especially if those nationalist people try to grab power...

Haha, enough conspiracy theory. I also went to the mountains over the weekend and sat in a hot spring full of minerals that stuck to my body hair haha. Also went on a field trip to see some anime/japanese nerd stuff. It freaks me out, so I don't like it to much. I went to another maid cafe were I got served by, um, maids. This one was set up like a school and had desks, haha.

I'll put up vids and pics next post. Sorry for the long post haha.