And then there was winter ...

Huzzah! Winter is here! With the arrival of Sir S came the first December snows. At the local yakitori inn for local people, we had just finished a delicious dinner of skewered tofu and shiitake mushrooms, and were polishing off the last of our hot sake, when we noticed a flurry of snowflakes in the lane outside. Sir S and I immediately hurried out in a frenzy of scarves and velvet coats and dropped gloves and thus proceeded to prance about - to the amusement of the locals - in the snow. The next day, all the trees below my balcony were powdered with white, and Sir S and I made haste to Mitaki Temple before the bright winter sun reduced the pure-white carpet to slush.
At Mitaki, the last maple leaves of autumn clung stubbornly to their branches despite the dramatic change in seasons. It was a most beautiful thing to see the starry clusters of blood-red leaves crowned with white. A rare sight, so my students tell me! Sir S and I meandered among the snowy graves and I snapped this wee piccie on my mobile phone as the light fell through the maples overhead. The graves were most pretty with their caps of snow! Many of the Buddah statues also donned snow on their heads (some adorned with a maple leaf or two, like red feathers tucked into a white hat!).