Mellow Autumn

Don't you just love it when you walk into the street in the morning, the air is crispy and the sky is blue? You can smell that autumn has come.

Some ten or even twenty years ago, that autumny breeze used to arrive in around September - when a new term just began, and the delightful weather seemed to give the new academic year a promising start. These days, thanks to global warming, autumn may not befall until November if there is any autumn at all.

It is amazing how weather affects the mood of a city. In summer, when it feels like a steaming kitchen outside but a freezing icebox indoors, our tempers are probably as fluctuating as the varying temperatures - it is easy to hover between the extremes of summer craziness and laziness. Once autumn is here, the mood changes - the city calms down and quietens; the city-dwellers' impatience disappears with the heat, and fine apparels replace loud summery attire.

I can still remember that autumn in Hokkaido, as I walked down the street, my senses fully absorbing the beautiful blue sky, the sweet crispy air and the autumn leaves - my heart was filled with both content and a wisp of inexplicable sadness that is generally associated with the season and, for a moment, I thought that life never felt so concrete before.