Rittou: Winter Has Arrived

Today, the first day of winter, 'rittou' in Japanese, lived up to its name. As I type this, I have my heater on for the first time this season, and my shoji rice paper doors shut to keep out the cold air.

My home is somewhat like a house of cards, in that the walls are thin, like cards. :-l The floors in all the main rooms are made of tatami, tightly woven straw mats. Under the straw mats are boards of wood. There's no insulation in the floor, walls or ceiling. Every room in the house has a window or a set of glass sliding doors(there are 3 sets of sliding doors). Air seems to leak in through all of the sliding doors and windows, and even the floors and walls are cold in the winter. Perhaps, for me, one of the most difficult parts of life here is no escape from extreme temperatures, outside of the little heater/air-con in the bed room.

The cold can and has been a real issue for me in the winter. (And of course, the heat is tremendous in summer. One example of this that I give of the ferocity of the heat is that the rosin in my violin case actually melted or morphed, or whatever that could be called, in my case last summer it was so hot inside my house.) This year, however, I'm interested to go through another winter, see if I can get through it, you might say, even inviting in the cold.

Living with an awareness of the seasons, the challenges each season can bring to daily life is really interesting. It offers a natural way of operating: if dishes are not cleaned up after eating, bugs will appear quickly. If clothes are not hung to dry, or taken to be dried quickly, they will grow mildew. If the curtains touch the mats in summer, the mats will get tiny bugs. These things can all happen in such a short amount of time, often less than one day, that I find I have to keep things in order just to prevent any possible opportunity for nature to create chaos in my house. As with taking precautions not to get burglarized by not create the opportunity for someone to become a thief, I find that I can't be careless about how I leave things, for scarcely a moment. I image having kids is probably the same...

Living in this way gives me a natural role to play. I am useful to myself; I feel satisfied when I can understand one more little bit of how things seem to work in the natural world. So, although I feel uncomfortable sometimes, I can learn a necessary, practical and useful way to live. At least until I'm no longer here...

That's all for tonight. Happy Rittou, to those who embrace this marvelously frigid and frostbitten season(it's all relative, right?)!!