Category Archives: Photos

YASHIRO, Oct. 28 ― You can eat disposable chopsticks once you’re done with meals. Farmers in Yashiro, Kumamoto prefecture have developed their rush, called igusa, the primary material in tatami, into pairs of “tatami-flavored” edible chopsticks. A tatami is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. The chopsticks are made from flour, sugar, eggs and igusa powder, which gives you a crunchy texture. A pack of five pairs of chopsticks are 1,930 yen and now available online. The Yashiro farmers now hope to promote their locally grown rush at a time its demand for tatami rooms has been declining in Japan.

It’s believed that the name “Honnyo” has come from “honio,” the name of the method of stacking freshly-harvested rice plants, or from “honioh” from the shape that looks like a temple guardian. To make Honnyo, you assemble four bunches of the rice plants in the shape of a cross and hung them around a cedar pole of two to three meters long which stands in the rice fields. Usually, you can place around 30 of them per 10 are. Farmers in Nagasaki region do it a little differently, by making triangles with the rice plants and assemble them on the pole in an angle so that the tips of the … Continue reading →

FUKUSHIMA, Oct. 21 ― Autumn is the season when rice is hung to dry. So Naoshi Tsuchiya used golden rice bundles to create an icosahedron, like a giant soccer ball, in the rice paddy fields. “Bundles of rice stalks hung out to dry is a symbol of co-existence between humans and rice,” says the 34-year old Japanese rice farmer. Tsuchiya manages 18 hectares of rice paddy fields. A harvested rice field at the end of growing season is symbolically centered in Inawashiro, Fukushima prefecture. Tsuchiya stresses that rice to be hung to dry is a unique cultural scenery in rural areas in Japan and said with a big smile, “I … Continue reading →