Gardens among the paddies

 This field looks as though it used some years as a rice paddy but this year they are growing corn. It is one of the largest fields of corn I have seen in Japan, although I know that they raise huge amounts in Hokkaido, I have never been there.

 This gives you an idea of how big, or I should say small, some of the gardens are. You can see a rice paddy in the top right and this garden consists of five newly processed beds, each is about one meter wide and about ten meters long. As I have mentioned before, the machinery that they use is usually owned by a cooperative and shared by all the farmers so that they do not have to pay for the machines themselves. However, there are also many small farmers who own the equipment themselves. Sometimes such farmers will rent the equipment to others. Anyway, that is what I understand without having done any extensive study of farming.

This old picturesque fence and the white flowers separate the gardens and paddies from the public road.