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DO YOU BELIEVE ANOTHER SUMMER

Down on the flatlands they're already beginning to harvest the rice! Slower than the sun moves, slower than the moon turns, the rice has been steadily turning from imperial jade toward a deeper gold as it ripens into the ancient riches, the refulgent golden riceheads in many places toppling the stalks in their heaviness, inviting the wild pigs to luscious banquets under starry skies.

Farmers stand by their fields in the dawn, thinking, thinking... And now down on the lakeshore amidst the rich gold fullness are the first bareshaven rectangular stretches of stubble, sure sign that an entire summer has passed. The riceheads up here on the mountain though are as usual a few days behind, still a bit green at the edges.

The Japanese have always taken great pride in being able to grow all the rice they need, but apart from this neighborhood, one of Japan's oldest rice-growing regions, it's been a bad year for rice throughout Japan because of the continued cool and rainy weather I've griped about at such length in these humble chronicles. The harvest is expected to be the worst in many years, necessitating considerable importation of foreign rice (GASP!!) for the Japanese table: foreign rice, that cooks differently, doesn't smell or taste or feel like homegrown Japanese rice, or act like homegrown Japanese rice, doesn't clump together nicely on the hashi (chopsticks)-- in short, it is simply not Japanese.

No one abroad truly understands the Japanese rice consumer. To everyone else, rice is just rice, for godsake. To the anciently subtle discernment of the Japanese, though, Japanese rice is about equal in importance to air. Japan is in for some big atmospheric adjustments this year.