Japanese Upper House Elections

This coming Sunday, July 29, is election day in Japan, definitely for upper house of the national government, if not for local institutions as well. For those of you interested in learning a bit more about Japanese politics, there's a feature today on the BBC International website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) on the views of Japanese citizens on the "state of the union" so-to-speak. I know I was surprised to read that a lot of the same issues people are concerned about in the States are also issues people are concerned about in Japan.