My Experience as a Rice Farmer

Summary

I’ve been inspired to write something for April Cools Club, and what fits better from my normal content than my experience rice farming in rural Japan! For those who aren’t aware, in 2025 I spent January-July in Japan staying with my wife’s family. During that time we helped out on the family rice farm near Shuzenji in the Shizuoka prefecture. I unfortunately had to leave before the full harvest process was done but I’ll take you as far as I got and also try and share other insights I gleaned. Unfortunately, while I thought I took a lot of photos it seems I’m missing things I would have liked to have captured for this. Where applicable there’ll be other sources and at least one video linked for more information. Quick Farm Intro The farm is primarily a rice farm, there’s no animals (ignoring the koi fish that were in the garden pond). There is a portion of a bamboo forest and space to plant non-rice crops so we also grow or harvest for consumption: Bamboo roots Mushrooms Potatoes Pumpkins/gourds Carrots Warabi - an edible bracken. Not so much planted it just grows everywhere Whatever other vegetables they decide to plant And looking out from the driveway this is the view at the end of winter before everything starts growing and spring properly kicks in: Obviously, me and my wife aren’t around all the time. When we’re not my brother-in-law and mother-in-law work on the farm part time often 1-2 days per week each. Preparation At the start of spring we come back to the fields. They’ve been left fallow over the winter and the dead rice plants from last year cover them. They’re currently dry, we’ll flood them later on once they’ve been prepared. Because it’s hard and spiky we have cordless strimmers with metal blades to cut through this and not take forever. I don’t have a picture of a rice field before clearing but here is one of the fields partially cleared: As part of clearing and getting ready we also dig the drainage ditches along the side of the fields. When the fi...