Ikanadate
THAT'S RICE!!
Hirosaki Castle Front Gate
Inekari in Japanese means "rice harvest" and this past weekend that's just what we did. We picked up two friends and went to Hirosaki which is about a two hour drive away. Its best known for its Cherry Blossoms in the springtime at Hirosaki Castle. But for this weekend, we went to Ikanadate which is a little ways from Hirosaki. Its a town with a size of 800, but for the rice planting and harvesting, they get about 200,000 visitors to help. So for that Sunday, we chucked rice, bundled it up, and schleped it off to the side. The most amazing part of this rice field is that every year, the planters make a design with four different kinds of rice. They spread it in such a way that as the rice grows, the different colors start to make designs in the rice field. The have created Edo period art, Samurai, and this year they did a design in the model of Hokusai's wood block tsunami. They built an observation building just to show the design. It's positively breathtaking. After the harvest, we made our way to look at Hirosaki Castle, also awesome, and made our way home. It was an amazing experience. It made me realize the hard work those hunched over baachans were doing. I felt a little bit more Japanese after that. I would gladly try that again.