And here is your daily almanac for Wednesday the fifteenth of November 2023.

On this day in 1958, Kazuhisa Hashimoto was born. He would go on to be known not for grand architectural structures or groundbreaking literature but for a simple sequence of buttons: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A (often followed by Start). Many people my age know the code immediately. It helped us immensely as kids. Many younger people have been exposed to it as well. This is the "Konami Code", perhaps the most famous code in gaming, a sequence Hashimoto created while working on the game Gradius for the NES in 1986. He inserted the code as a means to give himself a full set of power-ups, which he found difficult to have without dying while testing. However, he forgot to remove it before the game went public, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It didn't become widely known until it was added to Contra as a way to get 30 lives. The code has since been used in countless Konami games. When I was a kid, if you were playing a game from Konami, the very first thing you did was try the code to see if it worked with that game. Later even non-Konami games started using the code and even non-games; try this: open Siri and say "up up down down b a start" and see how she replies. (Alexa and Amazon Voice will also respond to it.)

It has become a significant part of popular culture. It represents more than just a cheat code. For many, it's a symbol of the shared experiences of 1980s and 1990s video game culture.

Also today, in Japan, families celebrate Shichi-Go-San. This translates to "Seven-Five-Three". On this day, families pray for the health and well-being of their children. Girls aged three and seven, and boys aged three and five are dressed in kimono – often for the first time – and taken to shrines. There they thank the gods for their health and pray for continued health and growth. Shichi-Go-San is not a national holiday, but it's a personal, intimate event for families, punctuated by the glee of young children in brightly colored kimonos.

Today is shakkō, one of the rokuyō, the Buddhist horoscope. On this day, the hour of the horse (11am - 1pm) is lucky but all else is unlucky. Better save all things that need luck for that small slice of time! Read more about the rokuyō here.

On the old calendar, today would have been the third day of the tenth month. It is The ground starts to freeze (地始凍), the second microseason of Rittō which is itself the first miniseason of winter.

Traditionally this was when it was starting to get cold enough at night for the ground to freeze, paving the way to snow to stick and winter to deepen. This year, however, all bets are off. It is still reaching a high of 25C everyday. But in other parts of the year things might be more on schedule, Ground Starts to Freeze could apply more where you live.

Here's a haiku from Issa:

冬籠其夜に聞くや山の雨
fuyugomori sono yo ni kiku ya yama no ame

winter seclusion—
all night listening to
the mountain rain

In old Japan, there wasn't much to do during winter, especially in rural areas in more snowy places, except just sit inside and wait for spring. Here in his winter enforced solitude, Issa is reflecting on the beauty of fleeting moments.

^{Kawashima Tatsuo - Miyama in Winter}

That's all for today's entry. Remember the simple joys, the brief moments that resonate, and cherish them. Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.