雨水

雨水 — *rainwater*. Around the nineteenth of February the thing falling from the sky stops being snow and starts being rain. Nothing looks like spring yet. But the snow that fell has begun going somewhere.

And one tree has decided it is time, well before any of the others.

The plum flowers in February, in the cold, sometimes into snow — a month or more before the cherry. Small, white or deep pink, and the scent carries a long way, which the cherry's does not.

For the first several centuries of Japanese poetry, 花 — *the* flower — meant plum. Cherry took the title later and never gave it back. So when you read old poems about blossom in the cold, it isn't a confused reference to 桜; it's a different tree entirely, and it was the more admired one.

The plum is respected for the timing. It flowers when nothing else will, and it does it without waiting for the weather to improve.

The kana

The same two rows that gave you trouble in hiragana give you trouble again — and for exactly the same reason, which means you already know the fix.

シ and ツ are the katakana し and つ, and they have inherited the problem. Both are three strokes. The difference is **which way they run**: シ's strokes come in from the left and the long one sweeps up to the right, like し hooking upward. ツ's sit along the top and the long one comes down, like つ curving over.

Same rule as before: find the direction of the sweep. Bottom-left and upward is シ. Top and downward is ツ.

ソ and ン are the second pair, and it's the same test. ソ comes down from the top. ン comes up from the bottom left.