Following on from Day 283 – planting rice.

These days most the rice is planted by machines. Big, clever ones that drop a little bunch of rice seedlings in a perfect straight line, the perfect distance apart.

Some people however, maintain the traditions of the past – trudging and squelching up and down the paddies, hunched and bunched. The old lady in these pictures was planting all day, weaving a perfect field of rice.

Around the countryside of Japan you can see the remnants of traditional rice planting – sweet old ladies with hunched and crooked backs, a hangover of a youth spent bunched over planting rice.

If I had not seen the old lady planting I would never have suspected the field had been nurtured by hand. It was as perfect and uniform as if a machine had done it. I bet it will taste better too!