立冬

Winter starts on the seventh of November, and unlike 立秋 back in August, this one is roughly honest. The mornings have gone sharp. The leaves you spent October looking at are mostly on the ground.

Notice the pattern in the names by now: 立春, 立夏, 立秋, 立冬 — the four *standings*, one for each season's beginning, spaced evenly round the year. They're the load-bearing walls. Everything else is detail hung between them.

And winter announces itself with a specific wind.

木枯らし is the first properly cold wind of the year — the one that takes the last leaves off and makes you rethink your coat. 木 is *tree*, 枯らす is *to wither*. The wind is named for what it does to trees.

Like 初霜, it is **announced**. Tokyo and Osaka officially declare 木枯らし一号, 'cold wind number one', when the first one meets specific criteria for wind direction and speed, and it makes the news.

There is something worth noticing in a country that issues a press release about a wind. The twenty-four seasons aren't a quaint survival here — the habit of naming and marking small changes is still running.

The kana

The *m* row. Nothing irregular, and one word you already half-know.

ま, み, む, め, も — m + a, i, u, e, o. You met む back in chapter three without being able to read it: 虫の声, the voice of insects. むし is *insect*. That sentence is now almost entirely inside your reach.

め on its own means *eye*, and み starts みみ, *ear*. Japanese is generous with short body-part words.