Translation by Richard Gwyn

"All your stories are about yourself, she said, even when they seem to be about other people. I was not going to deny this, nor give her the pleasure of being right. So I quoted Proust, who said that writers don’t invent books; they find them within themselves and translate them. This seemed to do the trick, and she fell silent. I dipped my fingers into a bowl of scented water and started on the rice. An aftertaste of clay and leaves and metal took me by surprise. What is in this rice? I asked her. Mushroom stock? Shotgun cartridge? Earthworm? No, she said, peering at me through the candlelight, the stories that you haven’t written yet are in the rice. You must be tasting them."

Richard Gwyn

From Sad Gyraffe Café

Rice Field Art in Japan

"The creations emerge in the late summer months after the rice plants have had a chance to grow.  But the farmers first sketch out their designs on computers so that they know exactly where the rice needs to be planted.

Hundreds of villagers and other volunteers then help plant the four different coloured varieties of rice in the vast fields.

The most famous work is grown in the village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993.  Each year a different design is on show and more than 15,000 visitors travel to see the creation."

Continue reading at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk