Walking home from the dentist's

 For a long time this has been an empty field. Periodically someone did a little work on it, cutting down trees, smoothing out sections, for example, but nothing serious. This time there was a lot of equipment and some serious land shaping was going on. I found a sign that said the city is building a medical center on the property.

 One unique feature of Japanese houses is the sliding doors on which the panels are covered with paper. This is what happens when a house is not lived in or when the family has kids.

 This rice paddy looks a lot bigger than it actually is. It is squeezed in between private homes, but obviously is still being worked.

 This is the rice cooperative. The rice farms band together to sell their crops and to maintain and expand the water system that is absolutely necessary for rice production. The Japanese have been doing this for more than a thousand years and many scholars, both Japanese and foreign, believe that it is the root from which Japanese groupism grew.

 Here are some larger rice paddies. They are next to a main road. There are also paddies on the other side of the road.

This is what the newly planted rice seedlings look like.