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Obama Manju, Obama Burgers |
| Written by Chris Yeager, on 02-26-2008 16:07 |
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2082  |
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A small fishing town in Western Japan called Obama is enthuasically supporting the American presidential candidate of the same name. The city seems to be running far with the phonetic coincidence (“Obama-shi” is Japanese for both “Obama City” and “Mr. Obama”) and has gone as far as to produce “I Love Obama” T-shirts and Japanese-style "manju" sweets with Obama’s face printed on them.
It certainly seems like a disturbingly arbitrary foundation for a political stance – I’m reminded of a distant memory in which my 2nd grade classmate announced his support for Bill Clinton because of his “cool hair” – but some news sources note that the Mayor of Obama, Toshi Murakami, is a qualified politician who undoubtedly has sound reasoning for supporing American presidential candidate Obama. He has declared support for Obama’s stance on global warming, the Iraq war, and is confident that he would pursue peace talks with North Korea.
It would seem obvious, however, that Murakami is at least to some extent motivated by the hope that a President Obama would bring the average little fishing town of Obama some international attention. Check out some of the articles below for more information:
Google News - Obama, Japan, roots for accidental namesake
Yahoo! Asia News - Central Japanese city hops aboard the Obama bandwagon
The Japan Times - Of manju, fish burgers and pachinko in the town of Obama
Exciteニュース - 小浜市、米大統領選で民主党候補のオバマ氏を応援
FujiSankei Business - 「小浜市のオバマ氏応援」米メディアなどが相次いで紹介
Last update: 05-22-2008 16:07
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