睦月

Making supply runs to the convenience store in the dead of night. A one man graveyard shift in a Japanese three day blizzard. I'm stocked up on black tea and artificial lemon drink. It's trench warfare against the common cold. There's fish and rice and all the miso soup you can drink to last through coming of age day. Daikon on salted pike, guts still in and bitter if you are a grandperson. Daikon in the soup, daikon for virility. Taste the umami.

Two shirts, to track suits, three pairs of socks, a pair of shorts, two gloves on each hand, three pairs of socks and it still feels like trenchfoot creeping up. Got wet clothes in front of a space heater steaming up the room and a towel wrapped around my head. Reading and writing and listening to Elvis. Cool biz Koizumi would be proud. An economy built on biking vegetables to the farmers' market fears black ice more than a global banking collapse.