Crazy train journey over, so...
Is it different? The scenery that passes outside the train windows.
Are the fields different? Nashi and grapes in Fukuoka disappeared. On the way to Hiroshima, the windows framed mountains rolling above rice paddies in various stages of maturity. There must have been rice fields in Fukuoka too, right? Although there definitely weren't any of Okinawa's sugar cane (satou kibi).
Between those paddies, the occasional contrast of tea plantations, yams, sweet potatoes, fields freshly tilled with rich brown soil, fields lying fallow. All empty but for the lone scarecrows - not yet time for harvest.
Then on to Touhoku and Hokkaido, where the flowers were still blooming by the wayside, scattered gold in a sea of green. Fields of corn amongst the paddies. Patches of corn between the houses. Neat tiles giving way to ordered slats with strange jagged projections - for the snow perhaps?
Japan. A land with many faces yet unknown, at least to me.
Are the fields different? Nashi and grapes in Fukuoka disappeared. On the way to Hiroshima, the windows framed mountains rolling above rice paddies in various stages of maturity. There must have been rice fields in Fukuoka too, right? Although there definitely weren't any of Okinawa's sugar cane (satou kibi).
Between those paddies, the occasional contrast of tea plantations, yams, sweet potatoes, fields freshly tilled with rich brown soil, fields lying fallow. All empty but for the lone scarecrows - not yet time for harvest.
Then on to Touhoku and Hokkaido, where the flowers were still blooming by the wayside, scattered gold in a sea of green. Fields of corn amongst the paddies. Patches of corn between the houses. Neat tiles giving way to ordered slats with strange jagged projections - for the snow perhaps?
Japan. A land with many faces yet unknown, at least to me.