It is Sunday nlate afternoon, and I am writing from my hotel room in Odate, in northern Akita Prefecture. Akita is one of the northernmost prefectures in Honshu, Japan's biggest island (the island where Tokyo and Kyoto are located), I came to Odate because it is in Akita's Second Electoral District, which is the most elderly electoral district in all of Japan, and I am working on a project about aging and Japanese democracy.
I have my first research interview tomorrow morning. Here are a few pictures and videos of what I have been up to (the first two pictures are actually of Aomori Prefecture, which is north of Akita -- I took them from the train):
This was my lunch today a a very nice family run restaurant called Miura.
This is on the Tokyo Electric Building in Odate, and the big caption says "A Place called Odate." Odate's claim to fame is that it is the home of the Akita dog named Hachiko (there is a very famous statue of that dog in Shibuya in Tokyo).
