Japan is well-known for its gorgeous gardens and there are many nice gardens in Tokyo. One special garden is located right next to Tokyo Dome. The Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens is special because it’s designated as a Special Historic Site and Special Place of Scenic Beauty. Not many gardens in Japan carry both designations.
Inada
What really struck me about this garden is its built-in rice field. This seems a bit weird because it’s too small to feed anybody and it doesn’t really count as a garden feature.
As it turns out, lord Mitsukuni had the rice field installed so his heir’s wife could learn about the hardships faced by Japanese farmers! I have no idea if he had succeeded but we know that local school kids have taken over.
Planting is done in May, presumably by hand so the kids experience the hardship; and then in fall the kids come back to harvest their rice. And in this way they continue the old traditions.
Mrs. Magara
This brings me to Mrs. Magara, the toughest farmer I know. When I first met her she worked in construction when she wasn’t busy farming.
This isn’t the first time I blog about this lady. One of my earlier blogs mentions my excursion into a bamboo forest owned by Mrs. Magara. What a concept. I openly admit I was jealous because owning a bamboo forest is very cool.
We collected bamboo shoots (takenoko) which are used in soups and salads. But let’s get back to rice fields.
Hardship for 15 minutes
Modern rice farms use planting machines so the back-breaking labour is more or less eliminated. But where the planting machine enters the field there is a bare spot that still has to get done by hand. And this is where I got to try rice planting.
Standing barefoot in the mud, I grabbed a clump of rice plants and, bent right over, stuck them in the mud. And so on. When I stood up and looked out at the rice fields in the distance, I gained a lot of respect for the old farmers. They were champions.
