My apartment is surrounded by paddy fields!

I'm sure Ive mentioned this before but when I first arrived I was surprised to see despite being in an urban location my new pad was surrounded by these small fields. Luckily at the time I asked Etsuko (my co-ordinator who helped me move in) what they were and she told me they were paddy fields, otherwise I wouldn't have understood what the fark they were doing with them. Apparently they plant in May & harvest in Aug/Sept so I felt lucky to be able to watch it right from my front door! I must admit I wasn't sure how they actually grow rice...doh!
Ok so here they are when I moved in, kind of dried out grassy fields. Oh yes and thats my apartment block over there!

So within weeks the little farmer (yes everything is little here) with his little tractor comes and ploughs the fields. Ooh, I feel Im at home! Don't have a piccie of that one. Within a few days of plouging they started flooding the fields, water was pouring down these gulleys (you can see one on the right of the above photo)


Within a day or two the fields are submerged in water. When someone said "flooded" I wasn't expecting totally submerged so that was a bit of a shock. I was then told by Ugee (ok prob wrong spelling), Cari's boyfriend that flooding would mean the arrival of the frogs. I took what he said with a pinch of salt but then got home that night to a chorus of frogs. I recorded the noise (as its quite mental) below. I'm just praying I won't step on one on the way home!




A week later, which was Thursday this week, on my bleary eyed daily morning walk to the train station I was actually excited to see the first shoots in two of the fields! I had to get my camera out like a proper tourist!