Rice and Golden Week

It's almost the end of April and a big holiday is coming up in Japan called Golden Week, this also coincides with when the rice planting season starts or is in full swing. Golden week's really just a term the Japanese use for a week when a few holidays coincide, things like Emperors day, Children's day and Constitution day. Anyway a few days holiday in the same week, it's a pretty big thing here, they won't even let us into site on a couple of days and we really, really, really, wanted to go in "NOT". So we've got a couple of days holiday we weren't expecting not really time to do much with it though will probably just go to Tokyo.

Back to Golden Week, the farmers have been flooding the rice paddy's over the last week or so, when you leave site looks like you're about to drive through a big lake, site is sort of on a hill and as you drive out and down the hill all you can see is flooded rice paddy's it's bit surreal.

Been taking a few photos as they've been progressing, these guys work hard all the time they're in the fields when I go to work and when I'm on the way home. Mostly its older guys, and from and what i can gather the younger kids don't really want the long hours and hard work so clear off the the city, works too hard in the fields, you don't very often see a young farmer here. I'm not saying i blame them going to the city it's bit like in the UK not a lot of people want hard work me included, but there again as my son once said to me I'm no spring chicken anymore so i guess i can be excused.

Like i say no one wants to work in the fields so of they go off to the city's and sell sub prime lones, well in the US that's what they do, I'm sure it's something similar in Japan. What the hell is a "Sub Prime Lone" by the way and who thinks of these names, guess they called it that because it better then calling it a "F...g Stupid Lone " FSL for short, you know what happened after that, but i digress this ain't a political blog.

Work in the rice fields must have been hard years ago before it got mechanised cos you see a lot of old lady's that must have worked in them from dusk till dawn. Some of these lady's are so bent over there noses nearly touch the floor, they can't straighten up from being stooped over all day planting rice and stuff, kids have got it easy now i bet they say to each other, that is if i could understand Japanese

It's nowhere near that bad now but it's still hard work, but they do have a lot of machinery, come on this is Japan the second biggest economy in the world and they have robots here for f.... sake so a tractors not exactly hard is it, they also have these neat little rice planter.

The photos above are from the rice paddy, one when its been planted and the thing that does the planting, not sure how quick it goes but when i was watching it it seemed to belt along, photo on the left is one i took one night leaving work.

Like i said above one of the day of golden week is Children's day, or "Kodomo no hi" think that right anyway.

Children's day is supposed to be to sort of respect kid's personalities and bring the health and happiness. Traditionally Japanese family's hang out what they call "Koinobori" which i think is flag in the shape of a carp. The black ones are for the farther the man the red for the woman and the blue for the oldest son smaller blue ones are for younger sons not sure about the girls.