what do you see?

What else? Well we bought some lemons and plums from a little fruit shop in our area, and then went up to Odori park earlier this evening to see the last event of this year's summer festival - the bon dancing (and competition - called koncouru, after "concours" in French apparently) as it turned out. Interesting, a lot of people in a mixture of traditional costumes, wooden geta, straw hats, and some in fancy dress. The sight of well spaced-apart large peaches, crabs, anime characters and Spiderman dancing slowly round trafficless streets, as other people sometimes dodged across in front of them, and officials using megaphones asked people only inches in front of them to move back in incredibly polite language, all to the accompaniment of impossibly rhythmed music was certainly memorable! (see here for a sample of the music (BTW, the other new sample, "Enka", was recorded on the top of Bihoro pass near Kitami sometime last year, you can vaguely hear a lady singing along with it, as well as the blustering wind)).
It's suddenly cooler, a few leaves are falling, and supermarkets have their "Autumn festa" posters up already. I think summer is ending for real now.