what do you see?

Today is the last day of the Hokkaido festival, and I'm afraid to say we're quite relieved. The craziness around the station is unbelievable, and not so fun when you're dressed in businesswear and trying to get somewhere on time. Oh no, that makes me sound so serious and capitalist :-{
And it seems like a huge percentage of festivalgoers get lost or parted from loved ones judging by the constant announcements from the police tent.

Anyway, I saw a couple of festival related things today - a smallish portable shrine being carried through Tanuki-koji around lunchtime and a bit later a big procession making its way down the streetcar/tram street and then turning towards the park. Imagine a line of a few hundred people dressed in traditional wear (including a few of those straw hats) most walking but some riding in convertibles, accompanied by a portable shrine and various musicians, proceeding down the middle of a main road (traffic still travelling on it too), stopping occasionally for traffic lights. It's fun to watch, but it feels like there's something a little wrong about these things here in Hokkaido. There's not quite the same depth to things, and always something a little bizarre - above the usual background level of bizarreness.