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I've been workin' in the ri-ice field...
19 years ago
... all the livelong--
Well, I -had- been, on Saturday --:=)
(continued from here)
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/38938/
On TV, I'll sometimes see advertisements for rice threshers and other such machines, which is kinda neat... even when I lived in the Midwest, I only caught those kinds of ads over the radio. Here, the farmers technically own little plots of their own individually, but in practice they seem to distribute their equipment and the work amongst themselves.
I know rice farmers here get a -lot- of subsidies from the national government, but I'll admit I don't know much beyond that. Competition from imports is becoming tighter. On the domestic (well, Japanese) front, I don't know if creeping agro-business and landlordism is becoming more of a problem or not. After the war, farming in Japan became more efficient when landlords and such were given fewer privileges -- that particular reform was based on Georgist principles, and I think that's really cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George
Since I don't own a pair of Wellington boots, I had to stay on the sidelines, given that rice paddies* are basically little square swamps on terraces. While the farmers cut the stalks close to the ground with kama (small sickles), I moved the small stacks of rice stalks into bigger stacks, and letter helped move them into the rice thresher. When I had to move into the paddies themselves, I was careful to step slowly over the recently-cut stalk stubs. I never fell in or anything, but it was a little like a 3D platformer at times.
* tanbo/tambo in Japanese. With a 'p' (tanpo/tampo), it's written with the same two kanji but refers more to a rice -farm-. Anyway, if you watch The Seven Samurai again, you'll hear one or both words often.
Foolishly, while I included a change of clothes I did not think to include a long-sleeved shirt. (I'm technically in the mountains, and it's kinda hard not to be in this part of the west Japanese countryside, but not that high up, altitude-wise.) That didn't stop me, but it did cause my forearms to get a little cut-up, in addition to my chin. The principal's daughter lent me a shirt, though, which did help things after lunchbreak. I got to speak more with the others during the occasional tea break (barley tea, not green tea), and learned that one is the grandfather of one of my best students.
We had some nice talks; better yet, even though my arms and face were sore, I had a sense of accomplishment from the work that I haven't felt in too long. As those of you who know me are aware, I don't personally care for team sports, and am not consistent enough to be able to claim honestly that I "work out". And yet, I do get a lot out of physical labor when I can, and I even had one such job with a 60-hour workweek. That was only for a few months, though. I have to admire those who can do that kind of work for years on end to support their families.
Anyway, for those of you who read this and the other entry: thank you for doing so, and I hope it was interesting for you --:=)
Well, I -had- been, on Saturday --:=)
(continued from here)
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/38938/
On TV, I'll sometimes see advertisements for rice threshers and other such machines, which is kinda neat... even when I lived in the Midwest, I only caught those kinds of ads over the radio. Here, the farmers technically own little plots of their own individually, but in practice they seem to distribute their equipment and the work amongst themselves.
I know rice farmers here get a -lot- of subsidies from the national government, but I'll admit I don't know much beyond that. Competition from imports is becoming tighter. On the domestic (well, Japanese) front, I don't know if creeping agro-business and landlordism is becoming more of a problem or not. After the war, farming in Japan became more efficient when landlords and such were given fewer privileges -- that particular reform was based on Georgist principles, and I think that's really cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George
Since I don't own a pair of Wellington boots, I had to stay on the sidelines, given that rice paddies* are basically little square swamps on terraces. While the farmers cut the stalks close to the ground with kama (small sickles), I moved the small stacks of rice stalks into bigger stacks, and letter helped move them into the rice thresher. When I had to move into the paddies themselves, I was careful to step slowly over the recently-cut stalk stubs. I never fell in or anything, but it was a little like a 3D platformer at times.
* tanbo/tambo in Japanese. With a 'p' (tanpo/tampo), it's written with the same two kanji but refers more to a rice -farm-. Anyway, if you watch The Seven Samurai again, you'll hear one or both words often.
Foolishly, while I included a change of clothes I did not think to include a long-sleeved shirt. (I'm technically in the mountains, and it's kinda hard not to be in this part of the west Japanese countryside, but not that high up, altitude-wise.) That didn't stop me, but it did cause my forearms to get a little cut-up, in addition to my chin. The principal's daughter lent me a shirt, though, which did help things after lunchbreak. I got to speak more with the others during the occasional tea break (barley tea, not green tea), and learned that one is the grandfather of one of my best students.
We had some nice talks; better yet, even though my arms and face were sore, I had a sense of accomplishment from the work that I haven't felt in too long. As those of you who know me are aware, I don't personally care for team sports, and am not consistent enough to be able to claim honestly that I "work out". And yet, I do get a lot out of physical labor when I can, and I even had one such job with a 60-hour workweek. That was only for a few months, though. I have to admire those who can do that kind of work for years on end to support their families.
Anyway, for those of you who read this and the other entry: thank you for doing so, and I hope it was interesting for you --:=)
Seondly, I found it extremely interesting. I love rice, and usually when I find something I like, I'll go try to figure out its' production. Never knew that the physical labor was still the only way to do it. I figured that we would have a machine or something by now. And I'm jealous of you, Laocorn. ^^
Your elbow has dual layers of overlapping scar tissue? Can you even feel that?
My furture father-in-law, Tom, works 80 hours a week plus, every week and he's sixty; he's done it for thirty or forty years.
And there are machines that help with the planting of the rice, also with the threshing. That second is what we used the other day, actually... we (especially yours truly, who didn't have proper boots) used the chaff to help walk over the mud and such.
As for the harvesting itself: without a rather complex machine, hand-labor may still actually be the most efficient way. Rice stalks are really thin, and you want them all facing the same way for purposes of threshing. If a bundle is held and one hand and cut using the other, you get to keep the rice together the same way it was when it was planted, at least a little while longer.
I've only had this one experience so far, so I'm in no position to compare or talk about "efficiency" the way I just did, but we seemed to have a good system: we'd put the rice bundles into piles, positioned in such a way that it was easy to feed them a little later into the thresher.
As for the elbow, there's a little wrinkly bump there still, but I was told to leave it alone and let it go away on its own, which I'm happy to say has worked out. For the first few months, it hurt to rest that elbow on anything unless I cushioned it with a hankerchief or something. A few months after that, it hurt if I rested it at a wrong angle. Fortunately, now I barely notice it anymore.
Sounds very much like something out of a movie, with the old japanese folk teaching the gaijin thier ways. heh.
But, well, maybe. I wasn't actually -taught- much as such: just told to move this thing there and expected to figure it all out on my own, which of course I hope I did ^_^;
As we sat down and drank barley tea, they largely asked me questions about school and about their grandkids, and why bread isn't called "pan" (or pain or whathaveyou) in English.
It was in what would be considered a rustic style Japanese (a kind of "Kansai-ben", 'west Japan dialect'), but it really wasn't all that exotic --;=P
I did find the Henry George link interesting information. I had only heard of him in passing as the inspiration for "Monopoly" and had no idea he was so influential on US history. Thanks for the info.
Then again, these things can be unexpected. For example, Alexis de Tocqueville wasn't that famous in political science either until someone rediscovered him, decades after his death.
As for the land here in Japan, it is very much as you say, especially to the west, where Yamato ("Japanese" civilization) started out before spreading east... it seems to me the further west I go, the more intense the terracing is.
While there are a lot of asphalt roads here (both practical and pork barrel), the density and number of train tracks is -much- higher than in the US. More comparable to Europe, really --:=) both in the number of normal commuter trains and the presense of expensive but extra-profitable high-speed trains (TGV in Europe, Shinkansen/"bullet train" over here).
I'm reminded of the insane ramblings of a Marks-couple character, as shown in Namir Deiter Book 2:
"Our aunt was deployed in the Ozarks of Russia..."
"'Ozarks of Russia'? Aren't they in Arkansas?"
"You mean... there's another Ozark?!"