I could have gone back to Kakunodate on Saturday to see different aspects of the festival but I decided I'd better see a bit more of Akita and that proved very worthwhile, not least seeing this field of lotuses which is not in fact a field but a stretch of water completely obscured by the plants.

Here's a close up.  The lotuses are growing in what was a moat for a castle that is now long gone but its grounds are a beautiful public park and a couple of buildings, a gate-house and an outlook tower have been restored.  Like all sensible castles it was built on a hill so there are views.

I spent a large part of the morning there and stretched my Japanese in conversation with a couple from Yokohama who seemed impressed by my travel plans.  The lady insisted on having her picture taken with me and declared I should be her お手本 for when she was older, not that she was very young to start with.

The restored gatehouse

The mountains inland from Akita

A view over the city to the Sea of Japan

A corner of the park

There was a wedding going on at a shinto shrine in the park and I desperately wanted to shoulder people aside and get up close for a picture of the beautiful costumes that the bridal party were wearing but that seemed intrusive, not to say frankly indecent so I took the happy couple through a gap and the bridesmaids from behind.

I had hoped to go to the theatre in  the afternoon to see a performance by a mega famous (in Japan that is) all female singing and dancing group - a modern response to kabuki?  But the show was sold out as was the evening performance.

So I settled for a visit to the 26th edition of the Akita Bus Festival.  I'm not kidding.  There were three buses, it was not on a grand scale, and stalls touting bus information of all sorts, even vintage bus bits,  There was a bus driving simulator very popular with the kids and one of those cardboard cutouts you stick your head through to be photographed.  One eager young lad stuck his head in and knocked the thing over and got a very nasty bump on his forehead.  He got a lot of tlc from his mum and various organisers but there didn't seem to be anything equivalent to the St John's Ambulance volunteers to administer relief.

I refrained from photographing the painful scene.

What I did photograph was the local brass band.  Technically they weren't a brass band because of the inclusion of woodwind instruments but that's what they called themselves and who cares east of Suez.  They were very good.

 You may notice the girl playing clarinet has her instrument wrapped in a colourful piece of material.  Why?  Who knows.