Life In Japan: Rice Art Honoring a Great Champion

Posted on July 23, 2022 by John Rachel

I’ve been meaning to write about “rice art” for quite some time. But an announcement this week gave me the necessary push, so here it is.

Rice is usually planted here by weird-looking but truly ingenious machines. But as my neighbor is doing above, the job is then completed by hand-planting any areas which the machine can’t reach.

One notable exception takes place a few minutes from my house at a local B&B.

Here the entire field is planted by hand. The observation tower is there for good reason. Because when the rice comes in, here’s what it looks like.

It varies from year to year but my take on this piece is that it’s the Tambasasayama City mascot, a highly romanticized wild boar. Trust me, they’re not at all cute. If fact, they’re downright ugly!

In any case, here’s why I mention any of this. Probably the greatest skater in history — at least I think so — Japan’s own Yuzuru Hanyu, just announced that at age 27, he’s retiring from competition. He’ll still be skating, of course, but not in such demanding, high-stress situations as the Olympics and the myriad of clashes for primacy that surround it.

While looking at this story, I discovered a very special tribute to this great athlete, done as only the Japanese do things.

Rice art. What would be the equivalent in the U.S.? Wheat art? Corn art?

I’ll leave that to your imagination.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: Rice Art Honoring a Great Champion | John Rachel

Life In Japan: Planting Soybeans

Sasayama, the traditional rural town I live in, is famous throughout Japan for two food items.
One is wild boar.  We even have a wild boar festival!  Can't say I get very excited about wild boar, either in the wild, or tearing up the local farm land, or on the plate.  Cooked it looks like pork but to my taste buds has a weird flavor.

The other item is black beans, better known as soybeans. 

Soybeans are eventually harvested in two stages.  When they first mature, they are green and relatively soft.  They are best eaten fresh, right off the vine, boiled for 12-15 minutes. 



When you go to a Japanese restaurant and order edamame -- 枝豆 -- this is what you're eating.  They are served in the pod, which is boiled and lightly salted, and you pop the green beans into your mouth.  Delicious!  And nutritious!

Many of the soybeans are left on the vine to mature to the second stage of harvesting.  They become very dry and extremely hard, and they turn BLACK!  The advantage is that these can be stored without refrigeration and used throughout the year for a whole variety of recipes.  Black beans are even extensively used in very sweet soups and pastries.

Regardless of whether they end up as "immature" young green beans or black beans, the whole business starts in spring with the planting.  My wife Masumi and I even get in on the action, planting a couple rows we rent from our neighbor.



Fasten your seat belts. The excitement builds fast as we make some holes, then insert greenhouse-grown seedlings, push the dirt back in the hole, wait, read a book, build an atomic submarine in a bottle out of used match sticks, wait some more, fertilize the plant a couple times in the summer, keep waiting (patience is very important in farming) as momentum on the soybean growing scene steadily keeps gathering steam.  Did I mention there's quite a bit of waiting involved?  Then finally sometime in October it all climaxes in a earth-shaking, rib-rattling, jaw-dropping, game-changing finale (I've dedicated a separate article to the harvest).

Whew!  I'm surprised they haven't made a Movie-of-the-Week out of it.

Anyway, sarcasm notwithstanding, the soybean fields are quite beautiful.  And the farmers are very hard-working folks.  Masumi and I are hobbyists.  The growers are the real deal.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Life In Japan: Planting Soybeans