Every summer on the 2nd Saturday of August, seven local temples parade their mikoshi to Oyama Fudoson to pray for rain to swell the rice before harvest. I think it worked this year. We’ve had rain. A lot of rain.
Earlier this week, Typhoon 15 made landfall in Ibaraki prefecture and also dropped a heavy downpour here.
Yesterday, a linear rainstorm blew across Chiba and treated us to a six hour thunderstorm punctuated by bucketing rain. Our backyard gauge registered 98.7mm for the day. To the north and south of us there were reports of 100 mm in an hour. It’s still raining today and the forecast is wet through next week.
This much rain is not good for the rice. Heavy rain bends the stalks and they don’t recover. That makes harvest harder work. These two fields, part of Oyama Senmaida’s many properties outside the terraces, took a hit overnight. The terraces themselves were only lightly touched.
This morning I didn’t see any landslides, but the water is still running fast through the streams. One of the recent embankment repairs collapsed. In my experience landslides often happen during the next storm after the big one, when the ground is soaked and loosened. I wont be surprised to hear of some happening in the next few days as the rain continues.
Before the storms blew in, we had an inoshishi in our garden. He was digging three meters from our front door. I’m used to wild boars digging around in the wood chips along the Blueberry Road below the house, and over in the old fields to the east. But this is the first time one has come this close. Looking for tasty bulbs, I suppose. He dug a hole about a meter long and 50 cm deep. Perhaps I will use his work to plant a tree there. 🙂 The wood chips on the road have a wading pool-sized crater. I could line it with plastic ans enjoy a splash!
Harvest at Oyama Senmaida is scheduled to start in two weeks. Here’s hoping the rain lets up and the mud dries before we start.
