The last Sunday of February, morning.
Perhaps because feeding deworming medicine to the yearlings and foals, including Little Light, had taken too much out of me yesterday, I fell asleep without realizing it the moment I boarded the plane. Then, as I felt the impact of landing, an announcement woke me.
If I remembered correctly, Hong Kong's high temperature in February could exceed twenty-seven degrees Celsius.
It was hard to tell through the window, but it would probably feel very hot once I got off the plane.
So, as I unbuckled my seat belt, I took off the coat I had brought from Hokkaido.
The moment I stepped through the boarding gate—"As expected, it's hot."
Now, only a short while into 2030, the Japanese archipelago was experiencing its first true winter since the great Hokkaido earthquake.
Reconstruction work should have been underway after the disaster, but honestly, it still felt distant.
To conserve precious electricity, the streetlights in town came on later and went out earlier than before.
The streets, shrouded in darkness all day long, seemed to lend even the ornate phrases and overly bright imagery on post-disaster reconstruction posters a conspicuous restraint.
The music playing in cars was newly released reconstruction-support songs. Television repeatedly aired recovery campaigns from public advertising organizations. Even at the JRA Awards ceremony held a few days ago, Chairman Yoshida and the industry figures receiving awards repeatedly emphasized the word "reconstruction."
The entire Japanese horse racing world seemed to have chosen endurance rather than actively pushing forward—no, perhaps it had been forced into it.
Calling it an "age of bitter cold" would probably not have been inappropriate.
Against that backdrop, although the racing world had been affected by the postponement of Monbetsu Racecourse's opening day and major adjustments to domestic stallion schedules, racing continued.