I’m taking a nap in the car on a cool, overcast evening while Hitomi makes a visit to one of her students training at a nursing home. The cicadas and birds are chirping, the smell of rice paddies and humid mountain mist drift through the air, mixed with the sweet burning leaves from nearby farms, giving me strange and relaxing dreams. Somewhere in the distance a Buddhist temple bell rings, echoing through the mountain valley, signalling that it’s 6:00. And then all of a sudden the tranquility is broken by a loud, high pitched woman’s voice making bizarre promises and spewing out meaningless slogans: Ah yes, it’s election season!

For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese politics, there’s one major difference from American elections: in addition to kissing babies, fliers, and general campaigning techniques, every politician has an army of loudspeaker-armed trucks that drive around constantly, polluting the air with inescapable, mind-numbing, and completely distracting aural trash.

The noise kept getting louder and louder until I have to wake up and look around. The election truck has pulled up right behind me and the loudspeaker is calling to the building next to me — the nursing home. This is no ordinary truck; it’s the real deal. The man whose name is painted in emergency black and yellow on the side of the truck steps out and the loudspeaker grows to a deafening level. At a nursing home??

Sure enough, he enters, giving his valuable time to a growing demographic here, hoping to win the votes of Japan’s dementia patients. Ah, politicians.