Rice Harvesting

It's fall, a beautiful time in rural Japan. The trees are beginning to turn colors, the persimmons are ripening, and the rice that's been growing in green fields all around is finally ready to harvest.

Watching the green rice grow is fun. More exciting than watching the grass grow, I promise. The rice fields start as dirt. Then water is let in and they become mud.  The rice is planted in the mud in clumps, in an arduous and tedious process.

They look hair implant plugs on a bald man. The rice begins to grow, turning the brown fields green. The kids like to catch bugs in them after school, and each night the sound of thousands of chirping songs lulls me to sleep. That's Kazu in the middle.

The fields can be gorgeous, especially at sunrise on my way to work.

From Japan 2009

This summer, the rice fields provided a nice foreground to the misty mountain behind our apartment. I watched Star Trek during the long rainy season, while the river rushed by, the mountain misted, the rice grew, the rain fell, and the frogs chirped.

From Japan 2009

Eventually, as the rice matures, it grows to be tall grass with beads of rice at the tip. It looks a bit like wheat.

From Japan 2009

The rice starts to smell a little like baking bread, and then it's ready to harvest. We drove to a friend's field to cut the rice in the traditional way. We use a little curved knife called a kama, and it looks like a small sickle. 

From Japan 2009

The the rice is bundled and tied together with a piece of straw.

From Japan 2009

 Then the bundles are hung to dry over wooden beams.

From Japan 2009

We took a break for curry and rice.

From Japan 2009

It's hard work, and tiring, but it is fun to connect with a way of life that's been keeping people fed for thousands of years.

Comments

[Tomo Edington]

Hi Sean,

Do you and your family like Hayao Miyazaki? Have you watched "となりのトトロ"?? My girls LOVE it since they were very little. And they don't even understand Japanese. That movie captures so well how Japan used to be, and I'm thrilled to see it's still there now where you live!!

I grew up in Utsunomiya, and back then the city was still surrounded by rice fields. I don't know how many times I went to catch frogs with friends during the summer. We ended up each time with a big plastic bag full of frogs, which I can't remember what we did with... we didn't eat them, that's for sure. We also caught locusts for the farmers, which they ate. Uuugh.

The colors must be beautiful now in the mountains. It's peaking where I live, but rain is in the forecast for the entire week. I miss Japanese hills.

[Sean Sakamoto]

Hi Tomo,
We do like Totoro. In fact, our little train here, the Nagaragawa Tetsudo reminds us so much of the movie that we made a little video about it called The totoro express.

Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clhwzw3-zPk