Hello, this is Kenji, your host for this week’s #techAsia newsletter from Tokyo. Entering the month of October, the record-breaking summer heat seems to be finally receding, as the daily high temperature was below 25C on Wednesday for the first time in 112 days.

While the weather has begun to cool off, local politics have been heating up. The election campaign for president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is in full swing ahead of voting by its parliamentarians and eligible party members on Saturday.

The election brings a sense of déjà vu, being an almost exact re-run of the election held about a year ago, with almost all of the same candidates, with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba one of the few missing this time. His term as party president was supposed to last three years, but internal party politics compelled him to resign, even though he was not part of the money corruption scandal that has damaged the party’s popularity.