Ozawa-Clinton Meeting On

The Ozawa-Clinton meet-and-greet is on after all: the DPJ had second thoughts and asked the U.S. side, who obliged. If you like the over-under kind of bets, then you must be curious about the odds of Ichiro Ozawa serving if the DPJ wins. Well, they’ve just gone up as the result of the about-face. More substantially, it’ll be interesting to see how Ozawa handles issues related to the U.S. military presence in Japan (ex. Japanese sendoff gift for U.S. troops headed to Guam, U.S, relocation within Japan) and the overseas projection of Japanese Self-Defense Forces (ex. Afghanistan, refueling operations in the Indian Ocean, piracy off the Somalia coast).