Rice planting season is here again!

this year I got to have a brief push of the machine that plants the rice

GOLDEN WEEK 2008 (3rd May)

Winter is far gone and the rainy season is almost here and It's that time of the year again when Japan plants rice to keep stocks of their staple food high. Rice is eaten up to three times a day across the country although this is changing with western food products making up a considerable part of the Japanese diet.

I was out at Naomi's place to help out. The weather was hot and dry, much more pleasant than last year when it was humid and rain clouds threatened the planting activities.

I am doing 'uenaoshi' which is where you walk from one end of the rice paddy to the other checking if enough seedlings have been planted. (The machine isn't perfect!) It is aruduous work and that smile was only for the photo! Each person has 4 rows at a time to check. The general rule is to make sure 3 seedlings are planted.

I am evening out the muddy soil

Wisteria!

Sunday, 11th May 2008

After a couple of weeks with temperatures in the high twenties warm enough to take the chill out of your bones after the long winter, the weather took a change for the worse with the last 3 days being cloudy and dull. It was raining when I woke up yesterday, the temperature rising to a cold mere 12 degrees and it was still raining at midnight last night when I went to bed! This morning it was quite cloudy but at around 10am the sunlight poured through the clouds and the bright blue sky was at last visible again. Naomi and I decided to go to Sera Highland, a 50km drive away, where there are flower farms growing pretty much everything that can grow in Spring! The only snag is that each farm is separate and each costs about $7 to enter but the farms are huge and you can spend a couple of hours strolling around. Last year we visited the tulip farm so this time we went to the Wisteria Flower Farm which has nothing but wisteria! They have an array of purples, pinks and some whites on display and the flowers give off a very sweet scent that you can even get a whiff of from the car park! It was mother's day here in Japan today so there were a few families out enjoying the day. The weather stayed mostly fine and the mercury is going to drop to 6 degrees tonight! I can't wait for it to warm up again.

they almost look like grapes growing on a vine

the flowers look very different up close!

Giant Cherry Trees!

YOGAI-ZAKURA

要害桜
広島県庄原市東城町小奴可

The following write-up is my translation of the information board found on site.

This large cherry tree, a member of the ‘edohigan’ family in Japanese, is found on Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu in Japan as well as in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and central parts of China.

This cherry tree in particular was planted around 260 years ago on the site of what was the Kameyama Castle and known to the locals as ‘yogaizakura’. It has been well protected and cherished by the town folk ever since allowing it to grow into the giant it is today. Its trunk is 5.7 metres in girth and stands at a height of approximately 18 metres.

Yogaizakura is the largest of all the Hiroshima Prefecture designated cherry trees, noted for its magnificent features and beauty of its blossoms when it flowers in mid April each year. Yogaizakura is not only recognised for its size but also for the great significance its presence had with the locals and being deeply linked to their lives. From an academic point of view this tree is of great value.

CHIDORI BESHAKU YAMA-ZAKURA

千鳥別尺の山桜
広島県庄原市東城町千鳥

The following write-up is my translation of the information board found on site.

The yamazakura tree as it is called in Japanese can be found on Shikoku, Honshu and Kyushu as well as in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula. It is commonly found in Hiroshima Prefecture. The young leaves of the yamazakura tree are usually a reddish brown colour and shoot out as the tree flowers, however, on this tree the young leaves are hardly tinged with red at the time of flowering. The different varieties of the yamazakura are strikingly vast and many are known, however it is still unknown which variety this tree in particular belongs to.

There are very few large yamazakura trees and in Japan there are only a handful of yamazakura trees where the girth exceeds 4.5m. In 1990, there were only 8 national and 7 prefecture designated yamazakura trees and as far as it is known, this is the largest one. Its trunk is 4.6 metres in girth and stands at a height of approximately 25 metres. In spite of the fact that this tree is old, it is rare for the trunk to remain this healthy without it hollowing out.

One the southern side of the tree is a small shrine sacred to the koujin （荒神）god and although little is known about the purpose of this tree, it is thought that the tree was planted as a religious symbol and that the site was a common place shared and used by the local population and believers of kojinshinko （荒神信仰） for events.