大寒

大寒 — the coldest fortnight of the year, beginning around the twentieth of January. It is the bottom of the curve. Everything after this is, technically, warming up.

Japan's response to the worst of the cold is to make things in it, on purpose.

This is also the last chapter of winter, and the last of hiragana. After this you can read every sound the language makes.

The best sake and much of the best miso and soy sauce are started now, in the coldest weeks, and this is not sentiment. Cold suppresses the wrong microbes. Fermentation you want proceeds slowly and cleanly; fermentation you don't want doesn't get going at all.

Before refrigeration this was the only reliable window, so the craft calendar bent around the weather, and the association stuck hard enough that 寒仕込み is still printed on bottles as a mark of quality.

There is a nice symmetry to closing winter here. The coldest, emptiest fortnight of the year is when the things that need the longest are quietly started. 立春 is two weeks away.

The kana

Three last things, and none of them is a new shape either.

**A small circle** instead of two dots — 半濁点 — and は becomes ぱ. Only the は row does this. h→p, and that's the whole rule.

**A small つ** between two characters doubles the consonant after it and puts a tiny gap where it sits. きって is *kitte*, a stamp — you stop for a beat before the t. Compare きて, *kite*, which means come here. The pause is the difference between two words, exactly like vowel length in おばさん and おばあさん.

**A small や, ゆ or よ** hooks onto a character ending in *i* and merges with it. き + small ゃ is きゃ, *kya* — one sound, not two. This is why 処暑 is しょしょ and not しよしよ. The pattern works for every *i*-ending character, so にゃ, ひゃ, みゃ and the rest follow without being listed.

Size matters and it is easy to miss on a phone: つ against っ, や against ゃ. When a character looks slightly too small, it is.