simple things
Winter light in Yanaka. A small cup of coffee with a spoon balanced on the saucer. The shine of metal against porcelain and the glimmer of sandals against stone outside the temple. White tabi socks and crimson ribbons. Leaves falling and light glowing through paper.
Winter renders things visible in a way that few other seasons can.
It’s a time to see through things—through branches and emptied streets and dampened landscapes. Snow and ice and cloud become the blank pages on which to write a new year. And January sun, which is always too brief and too bright, illuminates moments we might miss in the distraction of longer, warmer days. The way it catches curls of steam rising from a cup or casts thin shadows along the stone walls and silver pavements of a city you hardly know at all.
It’s like being let in on a secret that was never yours to keep, and which you will have forgotten all about by the time the first buds arrive in spring.
