小寒

小寒 begins around the fifth of January and starts the coldest stretch of the year — 寒の内, *inside the cold*, running thirty days until winter's last season ends. The New Year decorations are still up for the first couple of days. Then they come down and there is nothing between you and February.

This chapter has no new shapes in it at all. That is not a rest — it's the single most efficient thing in the writing system, and it nearly doubles what you can read.

On the seventh of January you eat a thin rice porridge with seven specific wild herbs in it. The list is fixed and very old, and several of the seven are plants most people would call weeds.

The timing is the point. It lands immediately after the New Year, which in Japan means several days of 御節料理 — elaborate cold food, a great deal of it, eaten over days. 七草粥 is deliberately the opposite: plain, warm, green, easy. A reset.

It is also the only thing growing. Picking seven edible plants in the first week of January is a real constraint, and the seven were chosen because they are what you can actually find.

The kana

Two small marks in the top right, and the sound goes soft.

か becomes が. さ becomes ざ. た becomes だ. は becomes ば. The marks are called 濁点 — *dakuten*, muddy marks — and they turn an unvoiced sound into a voiced one: k→g, s→z, t→d, h→b. Say か and が back to back and you'll feel your throat switch on.

You have been reading these for ten chapters. ありがとう has a が in it. 紅葉狩り is もみじがり — both marks, twice. You just didn't have a name for the dots yet.

Two of the row keep their softening: し + dakuten is じ (*ji*), not *zi*, and つ + dakuten is づ (*zu*). ぢ and づ do exist, but they are rare enough in modern Japanese that you can meet them when you meet them — じ and ず do nearly all the work.