Polls were right for this time and Obama won. It seems for the first time American and the rest of the world agree on something… I am not going to comment any advantage/disadvantage about this election, but I want to share with you this video.
It is quite long, and he does not really say anything he had not said before. But, I want to point something out. Look at the people there. I have read that they expected one million people, in a city with “just” 8 million seems a lot of people to be out on a tuesday night… So, that is a lot of people. And look at those people: they are just there because they want to be part of the historical moment and because of him, not just because he is a democrat. They are there not to only to celebrate the victory, they want to listen to what he says: they do not interrupt him more than twice in 18 minutes! Most of them listen to him and are about to cry… Quite impressive. These American make everything “King Size”, like the burgers…
These have been the first US elections I am not sleeping while they recount the votes (advantages of being time-shifted). So, I have paid more attention to the way they have to count the votes for the president… Each state has a number of “Electoral votes” (that is familiar to me, in Spain we have a number of representatives per province), and the one who has more votes (people voting him)… is the one who gets all the electoral votes!! So, if Obama wins 51% – 49% in a state, he gets like if he had won 100%-0%. That means that Obama was supported by a 52% of the voters, but he got a 63% of the electoral votes. Quite an important difference and in other not so clear cases it will probably lead to some injustice (from my point of view)…
That’s all for now about Obama, US, elections, etc. Now, back to Japan.
Coming back from Koya-san, I spent a couple of hours in Osaka to do some sightseeing. It was more than enough, as Osaka is just another megalopolis in Japan, with very few tourist spots. Here you have a couple of pictures showing one of the musts in Osaka, its castle…
All big cities in Japan are the same. Some very old buildings (most of the reconstructed, though), with amazing new buildings, and most of the times, very close one to each other.