Japanese Word of the Day: Yukiguni

yukiguni, n. snow country

Yukiguni is the title of one of Kawabata's novels, translated as Snow Country in English.  The famous opening sentence is "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country."  The idea that a country can have snowy and non-snowy areas in close proximity is a bit foreign to Canadian thinking, where nearly everywhere is snowy all winter long.  There are moments of striking beauty in late autumn and early spring, when snow mixes with living green.  It's that overlap of seasons that gives the opening sentence its piquancy for me: not a sense of crossing a border but of inhabiting a mental state where warmth and cold are both present.  Douglas