Although the area where I live in Japan is technically classified as “suburban,” the same as my hometown back in California, there are some notable differences in the city’s layout and the way that the city blends with the countryside here.
For one thing, back in the US, everything was split into different zones – Residential, Industrial, Commercial, and so on. In Japan (and I suspect in many other countries, as well), everything is mixed together: residential houses next to fashion warehouses, an apartment complex with a hair salon on the first story, and a patchwork quilt of rice paddies amidst stores and Japanese-style houses alike.
As summer draws to a close, the harvesters come through and start mowing down the rice. The other day I was lucky enough to see it for myself:
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the rice harvesters come through, but it’s still so interesting to bear witness to that dichotomy firsthand: agriculture side-by-side with parking lots and street sides. It’s a very practical thing to do, of course, especially when you take into account that Japan is a relatively small country and the people have to make use of what space they have. It’s for this same reason that roads in Japan are very narrow and single-story buildings are almost a rarity; you have to be economical when there’s only so much space to go around.
Rice Harvesting in Action
For anyone who’s curious, I took a brief video of a harvester in action:
Yes, it’s only five seconds of rice harvesting, but I did say it was brief. Any longer than that would get boring real quick, I promise.
Even though I lived in a suburban area back in the U.S., there never would’ve been a random bit of farmland in amongst buildings and busy streets. I’m pretty sure that’s due to zoning (which doesn’t seem to be a thing here in Japan), but in any case it’s fascinating to see the differences in each country’s definition of “suburb.”
