So, Japanese people, especially old folks, are always fond of telling people foreigners how they have four proper seasons in Japan, like Fall and Spring are some rare special thing that only happens here. And they're really surprised when I tell them that Fall much better in the US. But they do have one thing that Americans don't; in addition to the four seasons we know, they divide the year up into 24 "seasons" as well, all of which have funny little names and meanings mostly related to harvests and such. Of course, like so much in Japan, this tradition comes straight from China.

Right now we are in 大寒, which means "major cold." And yeah, it's pretty cold. There's been talk every day like, "It's going to snow tonight! It's going to snow tonight!" but there hasn't been any snow yet. Fortunately, at least in this regard, school is mostly cancelled this week. The high school is having 3 days of entrance exams, so public junior high students who didn't manage to get into their first choice schools are applying to get into mine. From what I hear, the high school is shrinking a little bit, but in contrast the junior high's popularity is very high. Last week we had the entrance exams for the junior high, and 800-something students applied for like 75 positions. I kinda wanted to go in on the test day and get a first glimpse of who would be in my class next year, but even more than that I wanted to stay home and avoid this "major cold."