Somewhat strangely, in the middle of Hirakata, a city with a population density of 16,200 per square mile, there are numerous rice paddies. In this picture, a local middle school is surrounded by various types of farmland. This is not the country, this location is a short walk from the city center. The areas that are underwater are part of an extremely complex system of water channels used to flood specific areas of land to grow rice. When I arrived in Japan, farmers were just harvesting their rice and for most of the year, these fields are empty, but over the course of about a week, most farmers planted their rice plants and flooded their fields making for a stark change of scenery walking around town.
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