This walking tour takes you from the Gimyo rice terraces to the Kamo rice terraces throughout the villages.
You can visit two of the most popular terraced rice paddies scattered around Tokamachi City.
Take a look at life in a ‘satoyama’ (a place where nature and human life intersect) as you walk through the villages and satoyama with a guide.
The approximately 1.5-hour course is mostly on paved paths, making it easy to walk, and anyone can participate, regardless of age.
The landscape of the satoyama with its terraced rice paddies, a symbol of Japanese culture.
Beautiful terraced rice paddies have been cultivated and passed down from generation to generation since ancient times. In Tokamachi, the satoyama lifestyle centred on terraced rice paddies is still alive today.
Tokamachi City in Niigata Prefecture is dotted with beautiful terraced rice paddies, of which the Gimyo Rice Terraces and Kamo no tanada
This walking tour takes you from the Gimyo rice terraces to the Kamo rice terraces throughout the villages.
You can visit two of the most popular terraced rice paddies scattered around Tokamachi City.
Take a look at life in a ‘satoyama’ (a place where nature and human life intersect) as you walk through the villages and satoyama with a guide.
The approximately 1.5-hour course is mostly on paved paths, making it easy to walk, and anyone can participate, regardless of age.
The landscape of the satoyama with its terraced rice paddies, a symbol of Japanese culture.
Beautiful terraced rice paddies have been cultivated and passed down from generation to generation since ancient times. In Tokamachi, the satoyama lifestyle centred on terraced rice paddies is still alive today.
Tokamachi City in Niigata Prefecture is dotted with beautiful terraced rice paddies, of which the Gimyo Rice Terraces and Kamo Rice Terraces in the Matsudai area are popular spots visited by many tourists and photographers. The Gimyo Rice Terraces offer a spectacular view of lingering snow and mountain cherry blossoms all at once in early spring, while the Kamo Rice Terraces are known for their fantastic morning misty scenery.
The terraced rice paddies in this region, which is also famous for its heavy snowfall, are the crystallisation of our ancestors’ efforts to remain strong and flexible in the face of nature’s fury.
Challenges behind the beauty of the terraced rice paddies
While outsiders consume the beautiful scenery of the terraced rice paddies free of charge, the people living in the villages have been making steady efforts to protect this scenery by cultivating the terraced rice paddies on a daily basis, weeding and sometimes removing rubbish dropped by visitors to the area.
However, this area, like other rural villages in Japan, has an ageing population and the challenge is to continue to produce energy to cover the enormous amount of work required to maintain the terraced rice paddies and surroundings.
We hope that by learning about the thoughts of the villagers who protect these terraced rice paddies and the environment surrounding them, you will have the opportunity to think a little about the universal issues facing Japan today.
