Winter or merely Autumn?

The weather today is a perfect example of mid-winter Wellington region weather: it's alternating between rain and sleet, it is very windy and it's about 5 degrees. But it is still officially autumn, and will remain so until the first snow falls.

The kerosene heaters in the staff room have been fired up, so I have a headache from the fumes. They stink!

For the past two weeks there has been a thunderstorm practically every day. I don't remember there being so many last year or the year before. Last Wednesday there were only three people at my English conversation class because no one wanted to brave the weather, even with cars. I had to go, and of course I had to go by foot. I walked there last night too, in the middle of a thunderstorm. I didn't take an umbrella with me because I thought it would be a bit dangerous.

Last Saturday I went shopping in Akita City. I went by myself, by train. My umbrella broke while I was walking about. On Sunday I went with Atsuko and Toshi to Sakata City. We ate at a tonkatsu (pork cutlet) restaurant. It tasted rather ordinary to me. Then we went to a big new butchery that we had seen an article about on TV. The butchery is owned by a farm outside town, so the meat you buy there has never been frozen. They sold all sorts of things there, but mostly made out of pork. A friendly employee let us try lots of little bits of cooked meat. I ate little sections of sausages, bacon, raw ham, cooked ham, sausages with peas in them . . . I'm not usually a big fan of pork, but the meat from that butchery is delicious, it really is. I bought an uncut section of bacon to take home with me.

It was very cold that day. My cellphone told me that the weather was snowy. It didn't snow in Nikaho or Sakata, but it did snow in Akita City, apparently. And I heard on Tuesday that it had snowed that weekend up at Kamagadai, although it had not lasted long. It looks as if the snows will be coming early this year. Although it has been horrible leaving my apartment to go out places recently, it has been nice to listen to the rain on the window panes and the wind whistling around the building in the evenings. I ought to enjoy those sounds while I can, because soon they will be replaced by the gentle fall of snow, and the blanketed silence that follows.