John Keats once taught that beauty is truth and truth is beauty. Thus inspired, let me now present my own beautiful truth gleaned from life in Japan . . .
Blessed are the "mikan"; they shall inherit the Earth.
Or at the very least inherit the winter. For this is citrus season, and -- whether bouldered onto wooden bowls on dining room tables, stashed in cardboard boxes in chilly family "genkan" or loaded like miniature cannonballs into net wrappings sold at train stations -- mikan are as pervasive in Japanese winter as that which they propose to prevent: runny noses. Call them mandarin oranges or tangerines or whatever, a mikan by any other name is the same, and the typical Japanese does not spend a winter's day without feasting on a lot more than just one.