monkey see, monkey ignore

Over Silver Week, which is the name that's been given to the five-day holiday this September, we went up to Hotaka in Nagano prefecture to visit M's parents. The weather was spectacular, and highlighted the Northern Alps rising over the lush, golden rice fields, which--like this field here--were heavy with the rice heads, or already being harvested. We ate plenty of great food, checked on the progress of M's parents' apple tree, which will be ready for picking very soon. It's hard to believe that it's almost been a year since we picked all those apples last November.
M's dad had spent the last month training kids to play the traditional flute for the local shrine festival, and he rode in the fune, the boat-shaped float, with the kids and taiko drummer. We couldn't see him inside the red and white bunting without going up and poking our head inside, but the flutes were in rhythm and pretty much in tune. It was a perfect local festival: very small and intimate, with three or four food stalls, a karaoke contest, farmers and local dignitaries in their suits and ties that hadn't seen the light of day since the last festival. We hung around a while until it got too cold and walked back through just-cut rice paddies back to the house.
m took lots of photos of the little frogs that were everywhere--most of them bright green except for this little guy in camo--around the rice fields. They don't bother anyone, unlike the monkeys that come down from the forest and scavenge their way through the farms. They even eat the blueberries off the plants of M's parents' garden. When we were looking at the orchard, you could hear the farmers setting off what sounded like M-80s in steel pipes to scare them off. I guess the guy at the top of this post, who we found stacked against the wall of a farm shack, had been retired in favor of the fireworks. I don't know about those monkeys, but he looks pretty spooky to me.