Kids Web Japan

Making a haza for drying harvested rice

The fifth graders spend one year learning how to make rice in the school field. In the spring they prepare the earth and plant the rice seedlings, and in the autumn they harvest the rice and make a haza, which is a long rack made of wooden poles, against which the rice plants are leant to dry them out. After drying them thoroughly, the rice plants are threshed, which separates the rice grains from the plants. The students learn how to do all of these tasks from local instructor Ota Tetsuo. The rice harvested by everyone is made into o-mochi (chewy rice cakes), but there is always so much that some is left over even if every student in the school eats some.

Ota Tetsuo

Ota Tetsuo (74 years old, local instructor)

Mr. Ota has been teaching children how to grow rice ever since his own children were in elementary school. Unlike regular teachers, who move to other schools after a certain number of years, Mr. Ota has been at Shinanodai for all of his time as a teacher, so he knows the school better than anyone else. He says, "It all started when I lent the school a rice field for the students to learn how to grow rice. I've been doing it for 30 years now, and I have even taught some of the children of the students I taught early on!"

Nagae Tsubasa

Nagae Tsubasa (fifth grade)

Tsubasa looks completely at home carrying a sickle. That's not surprising, because he has been helping to harvest the rice in his family's fields since he was little. He takes it all in his stride, saying, "Two years ago we turned our family's rice field into a vegetable field, so unfortunately I don't get to cut down rice at home any more. Sometimes we find vipers in our field at home, but there aren't any in the school field, which makes it easier."