heavy rice

So today after work i waited for the rain to stop then headed out for one of my fun long bike rides where i chose a direction, get lost for an hour, then ask where i am and start heading home. My goal today was to capture some pictures of my new favorite thing: heavy rice. Someone told me (perhaps erroneously) that the translation for the japanese word for rice just before the harvest is "heavy rice." Literally, the rice matures and ripens from a brilliant lime green to an almost mustardy yellow, and becomes too heavy for the stalk to hold it up. Soon stalks yield to the weight, shifting in either direction, collapsing onto eachother like exhausted children, and pushing the other stalks down like a row of dominoes. Depending on the strength of the surrounding plants, some fields wind up looking completely side-swept, while others have crop circles whiddled out in the middle. For some reason the whole thing enthralls me - why some rice stalks are stronger than others, greener than others, taller and thicker; why some stand up to the pressure and continue to grow and others give in and lay limp on their sides. Today so many more fields seemed flattened and ready for pulling and drying. I'd like to imagine that after today's rain showers some stalks just soaked up on ounce too much rain, swayed a tad bit too far in one direction. Like leaning with your toes just too far over the last step.

Then again, i know next to nothing about the harvesting of rice (save what i learned two years ago in a village in Thailand, posing for pictures with my wide-brimmed hat and sickle) and could have the whole thing wrong. Maybe its just time to move on. Maybe this is the beginning of the new season (harvest season should, i suppose, arrive before typhoon season sets in). Either way, it's fabulous. So i spent the evening taking about 30 bad pictures that in no way capture the magic of the heavy rice, but i suppose that is to be expected.