In case you’re not familiar with the term “benjo ditch,” it is a shallow, gently-sloping ditch that funnels water and human waste from the cities in Japan out to the fields for use as fertilizer. These ditches line the roads in town, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find most of them covered with small concrete slabs. Just be careful when you round a corner, because you don’t want a wheel dropping off into a ditch where the covers have been broken.
The winter I spent in Misawa was a relatively light one, but there was enough snow to do a little cross-country skiing. Here are a few shots of where I
“skiied the benjo ditches.”
- Buncha bean poles
Long shadows from a low sun. Getting very close to finding the benjo ditch.
- Rice paddies in the snow
This is way up north in Japan, but they still grow rice here.
- The benjo ditch, at last!
You can see the ruts from my skiis in the benjo ditch. This one is a bit diffferent from those you might see in the city, as it is sunken with high berms on either side. It made for quite an interesting outing!
- And the ditch goes on
The scenery was quite nice here, quite enjoyable — if you don’t think too much about what you’re stepping in.
Forest in the snow
See how light the snow was -- normally measured in meters
- Automatic snowballs
Out of the benjo ditch and onto the golf course (I think). These “automatic” snowballs were driven by the wind into solid shapes, but no ghostly snowmen (“yuki otoko”) rose from the Michinoku flatlands. Notice my two ski poles that I planted at strategic intervals to give some scale to the photo. I’ve seen snoballs like this on some of the more remote meadows of the ski slopes in Colorado, too, but they usually had little trails behind them where they were rolled into very special spheres.
Next time, I’ll post a few photos from the Sapporo Snow Festival of 1989.
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