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Wait, what season?

I had kind of a shock today when I realized that Christmas was next weekend. Ish. I'm usually really prepared for Thanksgiving, which has the courtesy to fall on the same day of the week each year, but Christmas is harder. There's more to do and it's easier to put off, somehow, especially since I do so little anyway.

I have one decoration up. It's been up for several years now. I should probably dust it off.

That is not to say that I don't enjoy the year end holidays. I like to see the pretty decorations that other people put up. I like getting gifts for people (though I'm glad my list is short). I like baking up the things that I only make at this time of year.

Here are some signs of the season that always make me happy.

The first snows have fallen at the monkey hot spring.

Japanese news covers the opening of the hagoita market at Asakusa. Long ago, when I was an exchange student in Tokyo, my host mother took me to the hagoita market. I still have my pretty hagoita , I'm looking at it right now.

Japanese news covers the start of the New Year's card mailing season. They show us a popular actress dolled up in a fancy kimono dropping cards into a special mailbox decorated with cute, cartoon inoshishi (wild boar, look at this great picture of a temple carving (?)), to signify the Year of the Boar. Which reminds me, it's exactly twelve years since my trip to Japan to visit friends (with whom I browsed through the inoshishi merchandise) and to make an aikido pilgrimage.

My neighborhood has its annual Christmas festival, in which I'm not really involved, but which is pretty to see. This was today. The gaslights south of Broad Street are decorated with red bows, and people are wandering around with little maps looking for the houses on the house tour. The very mellow spectacle included a horse-drawn carriage jingling through the neighborhood and a lady in a red satin riding habit riding sidesaddle here and there and through the parks. There's nothing like horse-based transport to give you a different perspective on your neighborhood. From across Libby Hill Park, I saw the lady on horseback riding along 29th Street and towering over all the parked motor vehicles. Horses are tall! (Oh, how profound!) People on horseback are even taller, but look more properly in proportion to nineteenth century houses than cars do. Huh. Funny how that works.