Explore everyday life in Japan
To the amusement of my wife and the befuddlement of the many Japanese people I have told this to, one of my favorite things about living in Japan is witnessing the production of rice and participating in its harvest. Having grown up in an area where agriculture most often meant cornfields or cow pastures, I find myself endlessly fascinated and amazed by the beauty and variety of landscapes that rice production creates.
With the onslaught of spring, comes the beginning of rice season in Japan. And with the beginning of rice season comes a steady bustle to the once quiet and barren looking countryside. Little white trucks begin busily traversing the one-lane dirt roads that often divide and surround rice fields in Japan. The edges of individual paddies become dotted with small groups of farmers checking the mud walls for holes and cracks.
Toward the end of April and the beginning of May these rice fields are flooded with water and for two or three weeks, much of the countryside in Northern Japan ends up looking like a land that is magically floating on the surface of a mirrored sky.
It is a landscape unlike any I have seen anywhere before, and it is something that I look forward to seeing every year. Two months from now, the same mirrored fields will be a rich and vibrant green, and the landscape of today will be almost unrecognizable.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.