霜月

The cold won't be as bad if we study frost in Japanese poetry and keep in mind the small birds that return home to Japan in November. And discover the relationship between warm Japanese soup and sleet.

Goodbye to this year's nice weather. chilly temperatures, and naked tree branches. It's the last month of fall, when everything is at its peak.


In the lunar calendar, November is approximately equivalent to December in the contemporary calendar. Because it is believed that frost falls throughout Japan around this time of year, it was named "Shimotsuki."

Shimo

tsuki

a popular seasonal word for late autumn, which means cold, distinctly continuing into the evening

You might not even be aware of it during the day, but once night falls, it seeps into your very being.

Perhaps that is why poems describing the cold experienced inside the house seem even more expressive than those describing the cold outside the walls of homes.

In Japan, the “chill of the night” inside the house is something special.
At night, the spot heating only works in the bedroom, and all other rooms feel like an ice house.
Touching the chilly surfaces practically took your breath away, and it felt impossible to crawl out from under the warm blanket.

Tsugi no ma no/ tomoshi mo kiete/ yosamu kana

次の間の灯も消えて夜寒哉

The cold of autumn, of an autumn evening is not the biting, bitter thing of winter, but a melancholy chilling of the spirit.

Despondency and gloom settles on the mind with a gently irresistible power, and everything becomes tasteless and meaningless; yet there is a taste in this tastelessness, a meaning all its own.

Masaoka Shiki

小鳥 来る　

But don't be depressed; "Mizore" has a culinary version in the form of "Mizore-nabe," a nourishing soup that warms the body and the soul in the fall and winter. Grated Japanese radish, or "daikon," is added to this soup; with its white flakes, it resembles the "mizore" that goes outside the window.

Naitō Jōsō,

soko nukete furu

_01_

mizore kana