Sunday, June 12, 2011

New love of concrete


There are days when I drive around in Japan and think how sad it is that they have managed to make almost every natural river into a concrete spillway. The concrete sides seem stupidly high and ruin the beautiful scenery which is everywhere here. Of course that is when I am driving around on sunny days.... unlike today! Today I am very grateful for the huge amounts of concrete that have been poured into the rivers near our house. We have had continual rain for the past couple of days (lucky I harvested the wheat, aye!) and the rivers have swollen to pretty near full and the rain is still not stopping. Of course all the farmers around the place are smiling as rain means the rice planting can go ahead as planned. They hardly need to even use the spillways to add any water to their fields - a good thing when everyone is trying to flood their fields at the same time - saves on fighting over who will get the water first etc. I'm guessing that we have had enough rain now though - if someone could just turn the tap off for a bit I would be happy.....

3 comments:

  1. A few weeks ago we had five of the neighbors' rice fields washed out by the Chikuma river. Luckily they had not been planted yet, and there was a group of volunteers on hand for "earthquake recovery" that came out to help pick up all the garbage that was deposited after the water went down.

    Also, luckily, the dead body turned out to be a manikin. How TF did that get in the river??!?!?!?!?!?!

    Our fields were about a half meter above the water line.

    Glad to hear your fields are safe and prospering from the rain. Get a pair of those spiked boots in case you have to fight over water rights.

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  2. I can so see a mannequin getting in the river here if it flooded, what with people dressing them up as scarecrows. Crazy. Still raining here too. Sundays with torrential rain and three small children is p.a.i.n.f.u.l.

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  3. today's rain was a nightmare!! it is clearing up here and looks like tomorrow will be better. phew!

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