Rice Harvesting Day!

This afternoon was set aside for all teachers and students to experience harvesting rice in the traditional way. Niigata (the prefecture I am in) is said to produce the best rice in Japan. The Koshihikari brand of rice (the main variety of rice produced here) has earned the title of the "Grand Champion of rice" in Japan. The rice here does taste good, but it is expensive. A 2kg bag of rice cost me 1,200 yen (S$18)...omigod! I really shouldn't convert anything to S$! I won't be able to buy rice anymore!! However, I have had an experience that testifies to the quality of Niigata rice. After having eaten only Niigata rice for over a month, when I ate at a cheap place in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, my immediate thought when I tasted the rice was this rice is definitely not from Niigata! I can't explain it...but there IS a difference.

Everyone gathering in front of the school for rice harvesting

Parents came to help too...

Our harvesting tool...the ancient sickle

Since we are doing this only for the experience, our efforts are focussed only on one patch of the rice field (where you see all the little people in blue)

We managed to cut all the rice stalks within an hour...yes, there were more than 400 of us working on just one small area, but it's back-breaking work!! See how flat the patch we worked on looks now.

And you can see tufts of the cut stalks of rice lying on the ground

Close-up of the famous Niigata rice

Next step after cutting the rice stalks: Students lining up to put the cut stalks of rice through this machine that removes the rice grains from the stalks After the rice fields are bare, the students turn up with pet frogs, grasshoppers and all kinds of other weird creepy crawlies...

And our work is done! We will have our school Sports Day this coming Saturday and the students' parents will come and make onigiri (Japanese rice balls) for us using the rice that we harvested. I think that's really cool!

Oh, what happens to the rest of the rice in the rice fields? They bring in the machines to harvest the rest of it. Harvesting rice is really simple and brainless, but it is tiring and back-breaking. I think it was a good experience...any longer would have turned it into a torturous one...but I did have a fun time with the students.

The students in my team for sports day (blue team!) made me join their cheerleading team and are teaching me the dance steps. I'll have to perform with them in front of the whole school! Very embarrassing cutesy dance steps...URGHS!!