By: Steve Dellar | 10-21-2017 | News
Photo credit: @Ventuskycom | Twitter

Video: Super Typhoon to Disrupt Japan’s Election Weekend

A month ago, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a snap election on the wisdom that even though he is not the most popular person in Japan, voters would elect him given the circumstances surrounding North Korea’s missile testing. In Mr Abe’s reasoning, the Japanese people would prefer a staunch conservative tried and tested in international meddling rather than anyone new given the danger that Mr Kim Jong Un posed

Four weeks have gone by and even though there was some talk of a possible challenger in the form of the popular Governor of Tokyo, Ms Yuriko Koike (who quickly launched the ‘Party of Hope’, a "reformist conservative" party and polls showed at a certain point that 18 per cent of voters planned to support her), Mr Abe’s gamble looks set to pay off.

The excitement around the new parties fizzled out and with election weekend looming it is likely that voters will indeed elect him again as Prime Minister.

As Mr Jonathan Berkshire Miller of the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo said: "The Abe administration obviously is selling the image that they have the experience, they have the stability and Japan's in a time economically and in security terms that it needs that stable hand."

There’s only one problem remaining for Mr Abe: there is a super typhoon category 4 heading for Japan. His name is Lan and he’s packing winds and rain that will probably keep a lot of voters home on Sunday

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Super <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/typhoon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#typhoon</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/lan?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#lan</a> on course for direct impact on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Tokyo?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Tokyo</a>. Massive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/storm?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#storm</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/flood?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#flood</a> damage fcst overall <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Japan?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Japan</a>. Gfx: <a href="https://twitter.com/ChyronHego?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChyronHego</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Metacast?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Metacast</a> <a href="https://t.co/6PbcqpT2y2">pic.twitter.com/6PbcqpT2y2</a></p>&mdash; ChyronHego Metacast (@metacastsales) <a href="https://twitter.com/metacastsales/status/921493346941579271?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">20 October 2017</a></blockquote>

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The typhoon looks massive from space and will bring heavy disruption to traffic and logistics in the southern islands of Japan. So much so that authorities have moved voting in the Okinawa and Hyogo prefectures ahead by a day as the storm nears.

Typhoon Lan is currently classified as a dangerous Category 4 storm, carrying winds up to 156 mph.

Source:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-election-typhoon/strong-typhoon-nears-southern-japan-the-day-before-election-idUSKBN1CQ046?il=0

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Anonymous No. 10061 2017-10-21 : 08:39

lan for prime minister !

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