Japan has always claimed to have "four distinct seasons" like in Canada, but here I think nature takes it literally. Back home, Fall would come slowly, dropping a few degrees each day until you go from wearing a shirt outside to a hoodie to a winter jacket. I think Japan skipped the hoodie part altogether! Right when the seasons changed a few weeks ago (with the Monday holiday to celebrate it), the weather definitely started to change. When I arrived here the trees in the hills surrounding my town were a nice healthy green in the midst of summer. Every day now as I drive to work they've slowly started to turn to Autumn colors in phases, one patch here, another patch there. Now the entire hillside is awash in reds, golds and browns and the leaves are starting to drop to the ground. The temperature has been dropping pretty steadily since that weekend too. During the summer it was usually 25-30 degrees each day and I was usually drenched in my own sweat. Lately I've started to wear an undershirt just to stay warm. Now the average temperature is 5-10 degrees, the sun sets at 4:30pm and it's been raining more frequently. I've just started using the heater in my apartment but fortunately (comparing to friend's houses) I have insulation in my apartment! A lot of houses in Japan don't have any insulation in their houses, only in the colder parts of Hokkaido. Pretty soon (any day now actually) that rain will turn to snow and then it'll become Winter overnight. Then it's back to the same old routine of bundling up to go outside, digging out my car, warming it up, driving 2 minutes at 30 km/hr to work while trying to keep my car from sliding off the road, freezing my ass off to and from work and then getting home to huddle around my heater. There's not much to love about Winter... except maybe for snowboarding!