Rice planting in Chiba

We went to plant rice today in Chiba. Chiba is beautiful farm country. They took you to an area that worked best with your group size.

This is what the rice plants look like before they are planted. The guys working there would rip off a section and hurl it into the water. The people planting would grab one of those chunks and break of a piece of about 5 and push it into the clay and mud at the bottom.

There is a string with little beads that stretches from one side to the other. That is the spacing for the plants. The rows are about 20 centimeters apart.
This elderly woman was working twice as hard as anyone planting rice. She was working a small farm next to where we were.

This is what the rice plants look like planted.

There were salamanders and frogs all over the place. This is a display of Biwa fruit candies. I had never heard of Biwa before and I didn't see the actual fruit. They even had Biwa flavored ice cream.
I liked this road sign, but we saw it at the last minute.