Barack and Yukio - Japan

Well, we have come to call each other Barack and Yukio," said Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan in a joint press conference after the first meetings of President Obama's trip to Asia. 

The Prime Minister went on to discuss the almost infinite range of issues on which our two countries are aligned and working together.   President Obama also gave full recognition to the importance of the relationship:

We have to understand that the future of the United States and Asia is inextricably linked.  The issues that matter most to our people -- issues of economic growth and job creation, non-proliferation, clean energy -- these are all issues that have to be part of a joint agenda.  And we had very productive discussions about these issues this evening.

It's true that because of the strength of our economic ties, that was not the first item on our agenda, but we are fortunately going to have the opportunity to spend a lot of time discussing that in Singapore in the coming days.  As the world's two leading economies, we have spent a lot of time working together in the G20 to help bring the world back from the brink of financial crisis, and we're going to continue to work to strengthen our efforts so that we can expand job growth in the future.  And we will be discussing with our APEC partners how to rebalance our deep economic cooperation with this region to strengthen our recovery.

The Prime Minister and I discussed our cooperation on Afghanistan and Pakistan.  And I did thank the people of Japan and the Prime Minister for the powerful commitment of a $5 billion over the next five years to support our shared civilian efforts in Afghanistan, as well as the commitment of a billion dollars to Pakistan.