>He kind of shrugged and said it would be kind of like if it had happened to Trump in the US, in that there were a lot of of people that didn't like him.

I hope you enjoyed the conference... I haven't been to Japan in many years. I regret not extending my trip, it was a wonderful place to visit.

I assumed when I first read about the death, it would be due to politics, not religion.

I am an antifascist, and he was shot as I took the stage at an open mic where I'd called for the removal of our previous mayor. (Though speaking as a scientist.... correlation does not equal causation.)

I hesitate to call for violence in my comedy, but on the other hand, I often mock those who die after creating precarity and despair such that someone more mentally ill than I "does the deed".

>Ironically I was reading 1Q84 at the time, which is about a cult in Japan.

As I get sadder, my attention span gets shorter -- I've mostly been reading poetry, but one of the last fiction books I read was "Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata... before that the last piece of Japanese literature had been by Yukio Mishima when I was younger and angrier.

One of the things I liked most about Japan was the "Onigiri" -- little hockey puck like things of rice and seaweed that were about the price of a candybar. I wish I'd saved the wrappers, I had one that had an egg in it with fried rice around that was quite good.

It made me sad, to see how folks there could flit from place to place, purchase healthy food, use public transit, walk... I lost weight and felt healthier the short time I was there despite drinking quite heavily.

But... there is a lot of sadness in that country, it's a place that's fun to be a tourist but not a place I would make my permanent home.