February 19–23土脉潤起 Tsuchi no shō uruoi okoru - Rain moistens the soil
February 24–28霞始靆 Kasumi hajimete tanabiku - Mist starts to linger
March 1–5草木萌動 Sōmoku mebae izuru - Grass sprouts, trees bud
Well, now that 立春 Risshun (Beginning of spring - Feb. 4th - 18th) is sorted, let's see how the predictive snippets of 'ancient wisdom' relating to each of its three component sub seasons lined up with what actually went down on the ground here in our rarified little corner of Deadbeat City. For lack of anything more poetic, we'll just call this...
The 立春 Risshun Roundup (cue the theme from TV's Bonanza)...
*February 4–8東風解凍 Harukaze kōri o toku - East wind melts the ice
This started off with the weekend that we were supposed to be hosting okasan (we do this alternating weekends, ostensibly to give Mayumi and her crew a well deserved break); but two of the group over there (her eldest - 'Number One Surly Sumo Son' and his youngest,' Little Bully Boy') had reportedly been running fevers and feeling poorly as of the evening of Thursday, Feb. 3rd.
With Omicron COVID moving from strength to strength (and kicking the living shit out of this place) since the end of the New Year's Shogatsu holiday, and Mina being the only person in the big picture to have received a third jab, I made the (unpopular) decision to do some preemptive damage control and ask that they both go in and get tested negative for the virus before we go ahead and bring the old lady over on Saturday morning.
It seems that Mayumi's idea was to hustle her out of harm's way and over here at the first sign that the plague might have made a return visit over there - all the while not actually considering that if that were the case, the entire crew (seven in total, including okasan) would need to be tested and self-isolate for ten days. They'd all be considered mutual 'deep contacts', and potentially infectious...which wouldn't bode particularly well for us, were we to have her over for two days and a night. My late summer vaccination's efficacy had also already crossed its six month threshold, and 'lapsed', as it were - putting me right in the potential cross hairs of any loose Omicrons that might come calling.
Mayumi's second son had been the harbinger of all this news, texting Mina the details around meal time Thursday evening. We discussed what to do over dinner, then texted back and outlined our position, vis-a-vis needing to see some negative test results before agreeing to pick her mum up on Saturday. Mayumi's second son seems to be the more level headed of the brothers, and works as a physiotherapist at one of the two day service places okasan spends time at every week. Naturally, he expressed concern that if his elder brother and youngest son were in fact infected, neither he or okasan would be able to go in to the day service, lest they risk sparking off a cluster infection that could shutter the center, and have potentially disastrous consequences for everyone involved.
The problem was that Number One Surly Sumo Son said that he simply, 'wasn't going to go in and get tested'. No 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts'. It wasn't going to happen. Needless to say, that meant that Little Bully Boy wasn't going to get tested, either. I have no idea what his reasoning for this was. By all indications, it seemed that he fully intended to go to work the following day, whether he had a fever or not. I would assume that also meant that, either way, Little Bully Boy was going to be off to school, too.
It's so nice to see people exercising social responsibility.
It's worth mentioning that at this point, I'd been furloughed from my part time gig at Mr. Insecthead's kindergarten due to four of the students testing positive in the ten days since I'd last been there, and that my Saturday kid's class over at the Horita Danchii had been similarly shut down when the twelve year old girl woke up on the final Saturday of January with a sore throat and fever (she later tested positive - though somehow her thirteen year old brother, mum and grandmother all avoided being infected). Little Bully Boy had a fever and sore throat. Common sense would dictate that this alone meant that negative test results for both father and son were in order before anyone over there could safely go to work or school. Just one of them testing positive would mean that the whole crew would need to be tested, then locked down for ten days.
One also might think that in light of their previous experiences early on in the pandemic - and with a vulnerable elderly family member now sharing their abode - that the prospect of an ensemble reinfection would have them rushing out to get tested as soon as humanly possible.
Nope.
It looked like no one over there had any appetite to go up against Number One Surly Sumo Son - being the eldest, and a bit of an intimidating bully. The younger brother told Mina that he'd reserve judgement until Friday morning, then decide what (if anything) he'd do. It all depended on whether or not his brother and/or Little Bully Boy were still running fevers or exhibiting other symptoms. He told Mina that he would text her early the next morning and let her know what was up.
I could sense that Mina wanted to bring okasan in anyways, and that my demands for negative test results were being universally met with shaking heads, rolling eyes, and curses on my very soul.
I hate being put in this position. I mean, shouldn't he just be going and getting tested voluntarily - like a normal person? Shouldn't he want to know if he and his boy are packing around infections? Isn't it important to consider the potential impact said infections might have on the people around you?
It kind of beggars belief.
Mina and I have had a few false alarms over the course of the last two years. She's had three PCR's, and I've had a lateral flow test. They've all come back negative... but that's what we're expected to do at the first sign of a fever.
So, here we were again.
After a brief respite, I was back in my default position as 'family villain'. The foreigner who doesn't want to fall in and go along with 'the plan'. I take absolutely no pleasure in it. I simply refuse to be railroaded into accepting someone else's janky decisions regarding what we should do - especially if those decisions have the potential to impact our health or safety. If I don't advocate for our best interests, no one else will.
Funny...all of this almost makes me sound like some kind of head-up-the-arse anti-vaxxer or libertarian, grousing on about 'my freedoms', and all of that nauseating shit.
At the very least, Mina said that she respected my decision...and that she'd stand by it, if that's what I thought was best.
Mayumi was less than thrilled, but said that she, 'understood'.
Just before 7:30 am on Friday morning, Mina got a text message from Mayumi's level headed second son, announcing that neither Number One Surly Sumo Son or Little Bully Boy were running a fever, and that they were all in the process of getting ready for work and school, as-per usual. The whole imminent crisis now seemed to be little more than a tempest in a teapot. A false alarm.
I'm quite sure that there was at least some amount of satisfaction taken over their breakfast at the fates having made me look like a histrionic, over-reacting gaijin asshole.
Truth be told, I felt a bit like one, too.
While I was initially relieved that everyone was apparently alright, my sense was that they should have gone and been tested anyways - just to be certain. That's what Mina's workplace would expect her to do. While they've both had COVID and recovered, re-infection is a thing with Omicron. The symptoms are also a bit outside the parameters of what we would have seen from a COVID infection a couple of years ago. A friend of mine in Vancouver picked up the virus over the Christmas holiday season, and didn't have any fever at all.
Of course, no one had any intention of erring on the side of caution, and they were just going to carry on like they'd never had fevers to start with.
I felt some pressure to relent, and walk back the ban on her mother...though I still had reservations about the whole situation.
I told Mina to message her sister and tell her that, in light of the news that the two were apparently fever free and feeling well, we'd pick okasan up on Saturday morning, as usual.
Mina shook her head.
"No. She's already made up her mind. She'll keep okasan there this weekend. I don't want to get into it with her. She's already decided."
It seemed that Mayumi had her back up in the air, and wanted to hold us to it, just to make me feel bad. I'd made the bed - now I was going to have to lie in it, and feel guilty for stealing her precious 'weekend off'.
Lovely.
Mina then went on to tell me that, regardless, she'd have to go over there during my class on Saturday morning to take some skin creams to her mum, and have a look at the irritation on her back.
"So then there's no actual point in Mayumi keeping her there. I mean, if you need to go and do this and that, you'd might as well just pick her up and bring her here as usual. If there is Omicron floating around over there, you'll just pick it up and pack it over here anyways, right? It makes no difference. What's the point?"
"Mayumi's made up her mind. That's it. We should take my mum the next two weeks in a row, to make it fair."
Two weeks in a row. Jesus. I looked at the calendar, and noted that next Friday was a national holiday - meaning that we'd be expected to take her for three days and two nights...then the following weekend, to boot.
Ah-ha!
I could see what Mayumi was playing at. Had I kept my mouth shut, we'd have had that three day weekend off. That's why she was being so obstinate about sticking to "Shaun's rule". She saw a window - an opportunity to snag that long weekend, AND make me pay for being...me. She seized the opportunity.
"No negative test - no okasan this weekend".
Checkmate. I got played. I had to apologize to Mina for blowing the long weekend.
When Mina spoke to okasan on the phone, she seemed surprisingly laissez-faire about the whole thing.
"You can't come over this weekend because those two had fevers and didn't go to get a negative test...."
"Oh, that's right. Okay. You're still coming with the creams and medicines, though, right?!?"
Sigh.
This brings us to 'East wind melts the ice'. As promised earlier that week, Saturday night actually saw something of a snowfall in these precincts. This winter has been bitter cold, and while several recently predicted snowfalls have failed to materialize, when I pulled back the bedroom curtains at around 7:30 am on Sunday morning, the kid's playground between our building and Danchii 16 was covered in a 2-3cm blanket of white.
There was already a group of screaming kids out there with some obviously cold, less-than-enthused looking parents. I guess between all the shrieking and frolicking, the project was to build a snowman.
As is won't to happen in these parts, snow cover typically doesn't last too long. By noon the kids and their parents were long gone, and there were only a few patches of white left here and there. They'd apparently succeeded in their endeavour, though... and left behind a crude looking three ball snowman set at the outer-edge of the playground. It wasn't a particularly handsome effort - bits of sand and gravel from the playground were mixed in to the dirty looking snow-cum-ice making up the bulk of its body... with two black gravel stones stuck in its 'head' for eyes, and two painfully thin twigs stuck in its sides as 'arms'.
Nevertheless, we paused briefly to take in the fruits of their efforts as we packed our shopping bags out to the van.
Lost long weekend aside, it was kind of good not to have to deal with okasan. The last thing anyone needed was for her to take a spill on a patch of snow or ice.
When we got back a few hours later, the snowman was little more than a shapeless lump of dirty snow...and as the earlier cloud cover started to break at around sunset, a gusty, mild easterly wind had started to pick up.
There we had it. 'East wind melts the ice'. I would be lying if I said I wasn't kind of impressed.
February 9–13黄鶯睍睆 Kōō kenkan su - Bush warblers start singing in the mountains
As Olde Nagoyaland is essentially pretty flat and 'mountain-free', I can't speak to what the bush warblers are up to in more alpine climes. As I basically know next to nothing about our fine feathered friends, I Google searched the name so that I'd at least have some idea of what to look for, and can confirm with near certainty that groups of brownish, pocket sized birds that seem to fit their description have recently been pretty hyperactive in the park across the road, and out front between our danchii (apartment building) and the main street.
As luck would have it, while passing the City Park's Board office near the northeast corner of the big park across the street about a week and a half ago, I noticed a terrible racket coming from a rather large bush, set in the shrubbery on the east side of the building. It was like hundred of these pocket sized brown birds had all crowded in to this one bush for a town hall meeting or something. I thought it was odd, as I neither saw a bird going in or coming out.
The cacophony of frenetic chirping from that one bush went on unabated, and projected quite a distance in every direction.
I'm sure they could hear it pretty clearly in that building. If I had to work in there and be subjected to it for eight to ten hours, it'd drive me up the fucking wall.
Sitting down today, I was initially kind of stumped by the whole 'bush warblers singing in the mountains thing' - until I remembered the hive-like racket coming out of that bush. Curiously, this went down on February 9th or 10th... falling neatly into the 9th to 13th window of 黄鶯睍睆 Kōō kenkan su.
Impressive. I mean, minus the 'mountains' and 'singing'...it was fucking loud and odd, for sure.
It was indeed, 'the bush that warbled'.
I can't say that I'd actually ever paid much attention to what the birds were up to before I embarked on this '72 Seasons' project, either - other than the crows, that is; that's mostly only after one of them swooped down and smacked me on the back of the head on the promenade last spring. Into my 28th year in this place, I'm still picking up new things.
February 14–18魚上氷 Uo kōri o izuru - Fish emerge from the ice
This one's a bit of a stumper, as the only bodies of water around here are the Horikawa salt water canals - and while there are absolutely fish (and turtles!) in there, I've yet to ever see any ice on the water. Winter gets cold in Losersville - but nowhere near cold enough to freeze ocean water.
February 14th and 15th were a continuation of the relatively mild weather we had over the long weekend (the first of our two consecutive weekend run of minding okasan due to my hyper-vigilance over the fever business over at Mayumi's). It actually got up to 15C on the afternoon of Saturday the 12th (the highest temperature we've seen yet this year), which enabled us to get Mina's mum out to the park and into the sunshine for half an hour. This averted what surely looked like an oncoming episode of obstinate old lady crap moodiness - and literally saved the day.
Weather-wise, things went to shit from Wednesday, with a nasty Siberian cold front dropping down over most of the archipelago until Friday afternoon. While the snowfall that had been forecast for Thursday fortunately never materialized, our apartment windows were almost as thick with condensation as during the depths of winter in mid January. That meant that all the windows and sliders (front and back) needed to be squeegee'd and dragged at least twice a day. This is a massive pain in the arse.
What I'd give for proper insulation and Canadian style double-glazed windows.
So...no fish coming through any ice in these parts. Though I did go out and run the canal on Friday afternoon, having opted to avoid freezing my nuts off and stay in and ride the spin bike on Wednesday and Thursday.
'Fish emerge from the ice'.
I figure we could simply replace the 'fish' and 'ice', and re-christen this third micro season , 'Gaijin emerges from Danchii', and call it even.
In any case, we're now officially three days into 雨水 Usui (Rainwater), and - as said 'ancient wisdom' promised - yesterday, February 19th, it started raining around mid-afternoon...'moistening the soil'...and everything else.
With that, we're at the end of our second weekend minding the old lady. Today, I told Mina that I'd be giving her a virtual report card for each one of her bi-weekly interludes over here. Last weekend, despite the extended stay, she earned a 'C', which might have well ended up a 'C minus' or 'D', had we not been able to get her out of here and over to the park for a sunshine 'recess'.
This week, she came in with a solid 'D'. She was insensitive, rude and selfish, and had managed to piss Mina off from the get-go. Next weekend we're free...at least, Mina is. After a month's hiatus, I've got to my usual Saturday morning kid's class at the Horita Danchii.
The twelve year old girl has finally fully recovered from her mild case of COVID, and I have last month's lessons ready to go, and a load of Valentine's sweets to dump on her and her brother two weeks after the fact.
We'll be learning a B.T.S. song in English.
The girl is cross-eyed crazy about those androgynous dancing Korean boys.
That's where we'll leave it for now...four micro seasons into seventy two, and counting. The promise of milder weather is currently being dangled in front of us by the local ne'er do well meteorologists. It seems that the previously mentioned Siberian cold front we're currently being treated to will be sticking around until Thursday the 24th, when 'ancient wisdom' dictates that 'Mist starts to linger'. I'll be watching closely for that...and for the daytime high temperatures to magically rise to between 12 and 15C.
We'll see.
Watch this space for the skinny on the next handful of micro seasons, with a generous side of grousing and bitching about the local flora and fauna. That'll be in two weeks or so. Give or take.
As always, you'd do well to remember that, "No matter where you go, there you are".
There, and nowhere else.
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