So the newly appointed Prime Minister for Japan, Yasuo Fukuda, breaks the younger-aged PM trend, but maybe that's what Japan has been looking for: after scandals and waning party popularity, Fukuda and the LDP are going to revert to the old way of doing things, evident in his selections for the cabinet -- "heads of internal party factions that supported him in the race". Fukuda will be good because he "is by temperament an arbiter between conflicting views and interests", which, for the party, it will be good to have someone pick up the pieces and rebuild...but he is "not a bold initiator like Mr. Koizumi". I was hoping for a Koizumi comeback. Not for anything other than his looks. He's the slickest PM I've ever seen. The lion-mane hair is amazing--I hope when I am in my 50s I can grow that hair.
