The young rice plants are still growing well.

As the rice plants develop, the weeds grow, too. The battle against the weeds now begins. In the old days, weeding was very difficult, as we had to crawl around the paddy fields on all-fours and pull the weeds by hand; now we have herbicides to do the work for us. However, if the herbicides are overused, the excess chemicals can cause problems, so the producers of these products are constantly trying to develop herbicides that do the job with a lower concentration of chemicals.

Ancient agricultural methods existed that did not require the use of herbicides: weeding by hand; pushing a weeder through the fields; or even the use of domesticated ducks to eat the weeds.

The paddy fields now appear to be a single blanket of green; if you were to see them from an airplane, they would probably look like a golf course.

Anytime soon, firefly season will begin here in the Tohoku region.