Japanese Obama fans try and fail to meet Barack

I forgot if all of this was ever covered on Japan Probe, but it’s true that it seemed just silly fun at first … but the wacky news kept coming and coming and coming, and the comments of adulation by the townspeople in interviews seemed to take on the tone of religious fervor.

- Considering making Obama an honorary citizen.
- Plans to vis8it the inauguration en masse and dance the hula in front of the White House … uninvited.
- Building an Obama shrine.
- Paraphernalia ranging from benign “I Love Obama” T-shirts, to the Obama burger patty.

All the while, the underlying motivation for the whole movement was supposed to be a campaign to try to promote tourism to the town, basically using a foreign head of state as the punchline.
It started getting creepy and seemingly inappropriate really quickly. Many a facepalm were had.

Maybe I shouldn’t take it so seriously, but I feel embarrassed in the same way if a younger sibling started obsessing over some celebrity to the point of sending a continual stream of (unreciprocated) gifts, poems, and love letters, plastering their room with photos and posters, and planning surprise visits to this person’s house in hopes of “touching” them.

*shudders*