{"id":79674,"date":"2026-08-25T01:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T01:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/79674\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T01:36:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T01:36:32","slug":"japans-pm-im-so-lonely-i-befriended-a-cockroach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/79674\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s PM: I\u2019m so lonely I befriended a cockroach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking after her \u201cextremely good friend<\/a>\u201d Mr Trump and communicating directly with the public via social media, Ms Takaichi said: \u201cI\u2019ve written about the official residence, so I\u2019ll also answer some of the questions I often get.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Have you already met the ghosts that are said to appear<\/a> in the official residence?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never encountered a ghost, but until recently I was the one screaming when I came across cockroaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven after moving to the official residence, I carefully wiped down the floor under the dining table, put food scraps in a sturdy lidded garbage can, and washed and sorted plastic containers, so I was shocked when, one day, a cockroach suddenly scurried past my feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve loved Osamu Tezuka\u2019s Firebird [manga comic book series] since I was a child and have read it over and over many times.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirebird depicts the idea of reincarnation, that \u2018life is connected, changing forms\u2019, and it had a huge impact on me even as a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe because of that, even now as an adult, I can\u2019t bring myself to kill insects, cockroaches included.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the cockroach that ran through the official residence, I thought things like, \u2018maybe this life is also part of that long cycle of reincarnation,\u2019 and for a while, I endured it, hoping it would somehow leave on its own \u2013 but when I told my secretaries about it, they were appalled.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s unclean. I\u2019ll handle it,\u2019 one of the secretaries said firmly, and arranged for Operation Combat. After that, the cockroaches stopped appearing. I felt relieved, but also a little lonely, or maybe sad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking after her \u201cextremely good friend\u201d Mr Trump and communicating directly with the public via social media, Ms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[72,50348,8,358,1043,16788,8061,213],"class_list":["post-79674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-asia","tag-cockroaches","tag-japan","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-standard","tag-top-story","tag-us-content","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}