Politician in Hyogo-ken caught using gov't money for onsen

[greg]

So this has been big news here in Japan for the past month or so. Some politician in Hyogo-ken (where I used to live 12 years ago) was caught writing off his 100+ trips to an onsen spa resort as "business travel expenses." So as we have seen on the morning TV news programs ad nauseam, this "man" during his "apology" (by "apology" I mean "avoiding responsibility") breaks down into some infantile autistic conniption fit.

This has spawned countless Internet memes as a result. For an introduction, start with this Kotaku article.

Videos started surfacing on Nico Douga and YouTube too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iThFDucY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x-jgGSw68c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROnK4-f7fU0

So now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

[Drew_Sutton]

A co-worker of mine showed me that a couple weeks ago, trying to see if I had any other insight into it (I didn't). Of new Japanese Internet memes, this one's pretty .... eh. I don't get it. To me, government corruption should always be taken with some degree of seriousness. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, there are worse things to misappropriate government money on than onsen...

[greg]

When it comes to corruption, I don't think anybody at Minolta became an instant Internet meme. It's just the absurd way that this politician's sperged out on camera that makes him hilarious. Not only did he act like an autistic child crying phoney crocodile tears, but his words were total nonsense, too. His words of "People think that it doesn't matter who they vote for" while he, as an elected official, behaves so bizarrely just added irony to the whole thing.

[ParaParaJMo]

Ok, tears can work with teams that lose the koushien but it won't work with nonomura.