At about 7AM one early morning, I was awaken by a riot.

Or so it seemed.
A political campaign van was circling around the Samurai House neighbourhood, and long speeches blasted from its speakers. Unfortunately, I understood everything that was said (They were basically repeats of the same sentences.."Vote for me (name), I'll do my best for you."). I rolled around in my futon, half asleep and half wanting to scream at these people. The noise became unbearable, and at one point, this van stopped in front of Samurai. Then I heard Marc from upstairs getting into an argument with the driver.

"Hey, turn it down! You're too loud!" Marc yelled, from his window. The driver, apparently not understanding a word of English, decided to turn the volume UP. Eventually, the van went away, but most of us were angry as hell at this guy.

There were other kinds of annoying vans that came around throughout the year. One spoke of advertisements for a discount store, another was a campaign to clean up Mitaka, and then there was our favourite, the Yaki-Imo truck. (The Yaki-Imo itself wasn't too bad, to be honest.)