Japan’s countryside,
from your window.

01 · RICE PADDIES

The same field can look completely different.

A flooded paddy may catch the sky like a little mirror. Young rice makes thin green lines; later, the plants fill the plot. As the crop ripens, the colour turns towards gold. After harvest, you may see stubble or bare soil.

Water helps farmers manage rice growth and weeds. But a paddy is not always flooded: water is also drained during cultivation and for harvesting. A dry-looking plot can still be part of the rice-growing landscape.

A visual sequence, rather than a month-by-month forecast. Region, weather and farming choices change the timing.

In the opening photograph, green paddies sit below Mount Mikami in Shiga, also called Ōmi Fuji. Look beyond the mountain: paths and low banks divide the foreground into small shapes.

02 · OPEN FIELDS

Look for the pattern, before the crop.

Some plots have visible soil between straight rows. Others form broad patches of green or brown. Open fields can grow vegetables and other crops; you won’t always be able to identify them from a moving train.

Notice the spaces between them instead: a narrow road, an irrigation channel, a low bank. The banks around rice paddies are called aze in Japanese and help hold the water. A boundary between two plots does not tell you where one farm ends and another begins.

03 · TEA GARDENS

The green waves of Shizuoka.

Rounded rows follow the ground like green waves. These are tea bushes, growing in one of Japan’s tea-producing regions. In the photograph, rows of bushes cover the slopes near Kakegawa.

Look for the slender poles with fans above the plants, too. They help protect the tea from frost by moving warmer air down towards the bushes. The little structures are part of the story of those green hills.

A tea bottle with your bento, a cup at your hotel, and a tea garden outside your window: an everyday drink offers another way into the landscape.

04 · GREENHOUSES

Farming beneath the silver roofs.

Long, pale roofs appear among the fields. Some are rounded tunnels; others have pointed tops. In Japanese, a plastic-covered greenhouse is often called a vinyl house — ビニールハウス.

The cover helps farmers manage the growing conditions. Greenhouses can grow vegetables, fruit and flowers. A roof alone does not reveal the crop inside, so treat it as the beginning of a question.

This photograph near the Toyokawa Floodway shows curved roofs close to the train and pointed roofs behind them. Around Gamagori, other greenhouses cover parts of the foothills.