Getting Dirty With Your Food

When you think of Japan, rice is one of the first foods that comes to mind. I remember being shocked as a child to learn that people in Asia also ate bread. While Japanese eat plenty of bread, donuts, and crepes all made from the whitest of flours, rice still remains a staple of daily meals, so much so that the word “meal” is the same as “rice.” Think of it as a “give us this day our daily bread” thing. On a related note, that phrase is on the side of a now-closed bread shop near my apartment.

Shortly after moving to Japan, in a desperate desire to add more whole grains to my diet, I started eating brown rice. Brown rice is unrefined rice and while easier to produce, is almost non-existant in Japan. Traditionally, it’s reserved for the sick (who may need a bit more fiber to clear their systems) and those too poor to afford sparkling white rice. This clearly dates back a bit, because I pay significantly more for brown rice.

When I tell Japanese friends that I eat brown rice, they stare at me in horror. Most have never eaten it in their life. I grew up never being adverse to rice, but it really wasn’t something I paid attention to. It wasn’t something I ever cooked myself. In Japan, the cooking of rice is an artform. Today, housewives all have shiny plastic rice cookers to carefully adjust the cooking time and temperature to produce perfect tasting rice. When I arrived in Japan, I didn’t have a rice cooker, so I plopped at pot on the stove, put water in it, covered it with a lid and cooked the rice until it was done, or whenever I remembered to check. I survived quite contently in that fashion until my parents gave me a rice cooker for my first Christmas. In the meantime, though, my coworkers lived in awe of my cooking abilities.

Rice is taken seriously in Japan. Packages are labeled with the strand of rice and some forms are considered higher quality than others. I always got the Top Value brand and called it good. There are financial benefits to not having a trained pallet. While I’ve slowly been working my way through a 5kg bag from a year ago, many Japanese housewives buy rice in huge bags four or six times that size and probably finish them in significantly less time.

Two weeks ago, I got to experience rice in another way many Japanese people never do, or haven’t done since elementary school. I participated in a rice planting festival at a mountain shrine a short train ride away. There were a dozen tennis girls from a local high school and a dozen foreign English teachers together performing the ceremony.

At the practice, the tennis girls were spot on planting beautifully in time with each other. The English teachers… needed more practice. As the head priest played the recording again and again, we desperately tried to place our straws on the ground on the drumbeat.

The festival consisted of planting twenty rows of rice. After all, this was more for religious purposes than back-breaking food consumption. The fields around us would soon be planted by machine. Each planter was responsible for six rice plants per row.

On the day of the festival, I arrived with my neighbors and we met everyone else to get dressed in a large tatami room in the shrine. The shrine itself is huge and modern, with large windows looking out over the mountain and a gazillion stairs leading up to it, where you find a convenient car park for the less vertically inclined.

In the tatami room, we all dressed in traditional Japanese rice planting clothes. I wore a long shirt, with the ends overlapped in front, kimono style. Over it, puffy pants, then arm and shin guards. I can only speculate they were guarding against the sun, as they would soon turn from pink to brown in the mud. On our heads, we wore white cloths and secured them in place with a wide-brimmed straw hat topped with a pom-pom. Not liking anything tight against my throat, I tied mine loosely. We then walked out of the room, into our straw sandals and headed to the fields.

There, in true Japanese tradition, we took a dozen photographs, while everyone who had come to watch took dozens more each. Finally, the priests declared it time and we processed in. There was a long ceremony, with the presentation of food to the shrine. I didn’t understand much of it, and given that it was early Saturday morning, I was feeling quite drowsy. After every big wig from the community presented a sacred branch to the shrine, it was time to get dirty.

We marched down to our rice paddies, and carefully entered from the sides, the shutterbugs going mad as we slipped our sandals off and stepped barefoot up to mid-calf into the black mud. We squished our way to our places, noticed a frog watching us, then it was time to go. The singers took up the traditional rice planting song, and we planted on beat with them and the taiko drum. First we ran a hand back and forth over the row, then on the beats of the drum, we planted six rice plants. The mud was so thick that we just had to plop the plants down and they’d stay vertical. After six, we could stand vertically and take steps back as the drum pounded out three beats. Behind each pair of planters was someone holding extra rice plants. There were also two boys who held a rope, tied with little markers, directing us where to plant to keep everything aligned.

 It wasn’t as easy as you’d imagine, especially once the rope got drenched in mud. It was nothing like planting straws on the tatami mats in the practice room. Tying my hat so loosely came back to haunt me and one of the two chin straps slipped off. With my hands covered in mud, I had little choice and pushed the strap back on, getting a muddy splotch on my face. I found out later that the photographers loved it, and photographed me more because it added character to the picture.

Despite rice planting being back breaking labor, I really enjoyed it. I found it relaxing and I enjoyed all the photographers gathered around me, begging me to look up for their perfect shot. Once our twenty rows were done, the singers stopped and we trooped back up onto dry land again, camera flashes going mad. Eventually we made our way over to a storm drain, where we rinsed our feet, hands, and leg protectors.

I opted to walk back up to the shrine after the festival, though I was offered rides three times. After the experience, it just didn’t feel right to pile into a mini-van. The steps didn’t take all that long, and the scenery was gorgeous. The three photographers who followed about 100 yards behind us snapping pictures also seemed to agree.