If you blinked and missed the cherry blossoms, the next seasonal clue to look for in Japan is fields full of water. April and May are rice-planting months, and while this is mostly done by machines these days, I live in the real, hardcore country where it’s clearly more fun to watch people wade around in the mud and do it by hand. If you have a Taue festival at the same time, you can get people to do your farm work for free. Er, I mean invite people to celebrate with you. In your field. While they plant rice.
It was actually a lot of fun. The mud was really cold and I was on the lookout for the little black poisonous snakes that lurk in rice paddies, but I still had a good time. I went to the same festival last year, so I knew what to expect this time around. A team of old ladies jump, strip and redress you in a fashionable burlap kimono and sexy straw hat, then march you out to the field. Since it’s Japan, there was at least half an hour of speeches and a ceremony at the beginning, including shaking hands with the mayor, offering the field a bottle of sake, and watching two guys dressed as an ox be pulled around in the mud to symbolically plow the field. Then it was down to business.
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Everyone walks backwards though the mud, planting row after row of rice. When we got partway across, the costumed drummers who had been playing at the side of the field got into the mud behind us and continued to drum and sing. I’m sure we’d have been done faster if they had planted rice instead, but I digress.
It’s backbreaking work, but I’ve never had this much fun playing in the mud.
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