October 21, 1990
The days are passing through small but perceptible stages toward winter. In the penultimate week of September, exactly as last year, a typhoon blew summer away, leaving the sky a deep blue that is rare for usually humid Beppu. The mountains loom over us, suddenly stunningly close. As I leave my apartment for school, I feel that the warmth has been drained from the air, although the air is not yet crisp. But as I walk on I feel my cheeks and the tips of my fingers grow cool to the brush of air. I gulp deep breaths, like someone half-drowned, after panting shallowly through the heat of summer.
A week passes and I stop turning on the fan at night. The next week I put it away for the season. Then it becomes too cold to sleep with the doors open. Then I slide close the fusuma and the shoji cocooning myself in one 6-mat room. A blanket replaces the summer's terry cloth sheet, and then a comforter replaces the blanket. My fingers grow cold if I sit too long typing and I wear my socks all the time. Finally on October 18th, I mark the first chill of autumn, a chill that raises goosebumps on my arms and leaves my fingers cold.
How can we measure our days in degrees of Fahrenheit or Celsius? We all nourish themes in our lives that progress from passion to obsession to eccentricity. And for me, living within each season has become one of those eccentricities. It is not a habit that I assimilated from Japan, although living here has allowed me to practice it completely, for here is a society whose traditional rhythms match the cycle of seasons.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
October 31, 2005
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Time to bake an apple pie. Oh yeah. I don't have an oven.