Politics is not the kind of stuff you normally stay up to watch on the telly long into the night. Not unless scandals, drunkenness and other juicy activities are involved, of course.
But on Wednesday night, things were just a little bit different. On that day, Yukio Hatoyama became prime minister and appointed his Cabinet members. One by one, the appointees came on stage to meet the press in their new capacity.
The procedure itself was not that different from the way it used to work in the LDP years. What was different was that the ministers had not been briefed by their officials before going on stage.