How Organic Rice Is Grown in Japan | Grow & Tell

I'm sitting in the rural Japanese countryside with Momo the goat, about to meet a man who left a life in the city to farm organic rice for a living. And we just finished planting out one of his fields. This is one of the coolest grow-and-tells we've ever done here on Epic Gardening. So let's go meet the man, the myth, the legend, Vince. Before we get started though, Momo has a better life I think than most human beings. Just eating crackers hand-fed by a pet human. Look at this, on the countryside. Okay, let's go. I'm in Vince's village. I think this is an old temple and he's somewhere around here. Naturally he's gardening. Oh, hey man. What's up? Welcome. Thank you very much. Yeah. Nice to see you. Love it. We've got some onions going on here. Okay, Vince, I'm here in your village, which is called? It's called Nakahami. Nakahami and not that many people live in it from what I can tell. Um, I think it's around 30, but it keeps getting diminished. Right. Which is kind of a thing in this area of Japan. Right. And maybe part of why you're here, which we're going to find out about, but we're here in this garden, but you own a lot of different spots in this village. Yeah. Like a lot of people can't maintain their plots anymore. So I'm able to take care of them for them or, but I also have my own actual home property as well. This one here is the garden, the temple garden. Oh, the temple garden. Yeah. Because I was, I stumbled across, of course the temple. And then someone did live there at one point. Yeah. The monk used to live there. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's take a look at what else you've got going on here. This is my land over here. Yeah. Uh, so that's kind of my buildings, houses, and this is my kind of weedy garden, just stuff I eat daily. And so I don't really grow that much, but whatever I need. Yeah. Yeah. Momo-chan's down there helping out. I don't know if you can see her. Oh, Momo-chan. Yes, I can see her and I love her. And it means peach. Yes. Right. Cool. Well, let's go hang out with Momo and hear your story, man. Okay. My turn, Momo. Oh, stretched for it. Vincent, how do you get to a point where you own maybe half of a small village in rural Japan? I mean, there's a lot of land available if you know where to find it. It took me a long time to find the perfect village and then obviously get the process of the paperwork to take some time too. And then the calling was to move from the city, do something simpler and you've selected rice. Yeah. Uh, it's kind of burnt out from kind of the corporate world working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was in the hotel business. So I was always on kind of standby. So whenever I was dreading those like late night phone calls when something bad would happen, then I'd have to go deal with it kind of thing. I was worried about my health and stress. And I always want to get in touch with nature again. And a perfect opportunity arose and I took it. And had you gardened before you came out? You know, I had some, you know, small balcony gardens. Uh, I was watching this channel called Epic Gardening. Oh, I've heard of that. I learned some tricks. Let's see some of the village life and then we'll head up to the paddies. Okay. Let's do that. I hear a pond. I see a koi. Yeah, there's a turtle. Oh, and a turtle. We got some little hens. Some people waiting for us. Oh, look at these. Yeah. Do you know the breeds? The hens are called a Momiji. It's a Japanese kind of egg-laying breed. Yeah. Rooster is Toki Hayate, which is the name of a sumo wrestler. He kind of fits the part. Yeah. Look at the cheek plume. He is a big guy. Yeah. So he's a special breed. So you get some eggs? Yeah, I get three eggs a day from all three hens. Beautiful. They lay huge eggs. Like... Really? Yeah. Come here, Toki. Oh, you can pick up your rooster? Yeah. Wow. He'll perch. Ouch. Oh my God. Let me try. Let's see if I can. It might scratch a bit. That's okay. That's okay. Let's see. Make it horizontal. Oh, oh, he likes you more than he likes me. Guys. You, Toki Hayate. Guys. I feel like a falconer. Yeah. You know? I'm a chickener. He's probably the same size as a falconer. This is seriously a beautiful rooster though. Look at the orange on the plumes. Plumes, yeah. And this like this greeny teal feather. Shiny. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Jump off. Hop on down. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see the rest of your property, man. Looks like some rice straw, maybe? Rice straw, yeah. And red clay, red clay from the same mountains here. No way. You should really be preparing it like once in a while and mixing it and fermenting it and then applying a new layer. This would have been made many, many, many years ago now. Yeah. I don't even know how long. 50 plus maybe? Definitely 50 years. Oh my God. Wow. We have a barn at the back of the house where the chickens now live. Just kind of go in and out as they please. Yeah. They're free to do what they want. Maybe there's an egg in here for us. Maybe. Let's see. Oh, there are a couple. Oh yeah. There are a couple. Oh my God. You weren't lying. These are huge. It's pretty big egg for the breeds. I have a buff Orpington. Our Orpington breeds are like those big fluffy ones. Okay. And the eggs are slightly smaller. Yeah. So this is a very healthy. Yeah. I would say this is a smaller size compared to what I usually get and what's happening with their diet. I might need to import a couple of Japanese breeds, man. Why not? I mean, why not? Okay. I'm dying to see the paddy. I love the village, but I'm dying to see the paddy. So can we hop in? Yeah, let's go. Maybe my favorite truck. All right guys, this is the K truck. You can only get them in the U S if they're 25 years or older, but it's the coolest looking truck ever and I want to smuggle one into the concrete, but for now I'm going to ride in yours. Welcome. Welcome. So the land came with the paddies or no? Um, yeah, the land included paddies. And you told me offhand, casually, very casually, a couple mountains too. And a couple of mountains. Yes. What does it mean to own a mountain? There are mountains that are under my name. Um, I own the trees on the mountains. Uh, problem is that there's no direct road to the mountains. So I haven't actually been up there before. Yeah. But they're on, they're on the title deed. What a flex to own a mountain and never have been up even. But no, something important is up there, right? Cause when, when I was getting here from Kyoto, the thing that was so interesting to me is looking at all the paddies of course, but not knowing how they get filled with water, which is, you know, of course growing any plant is going to be the, one of the most important inputs. And so how does that even work? Rice growing, it's all about the water. Uh, one of the very first, uh, communal activities we do as, you know, a farmer living in this community is we all get together and we clean all the waterways that have been building up gunk and dead leaves, uh, for half a year. Uh, so once the water's flowing, then we can start all the various, uh, farm activities. So you have to routinely come and check and make sure they're not clogged. Uh, also everything's kind of arranged by terrorists. So yeah, it goes from top to bottom and eventually flows to the sea. So we're coming on one of my paddies here. Uh, yeah, this is the one over here and then down there and so on. Couple more. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see that these are paper mulched, um, with black paper that will, you know, block the weeds naturally. So it is an organic way to grow rice. So before we go check out an actual paddy up close and personal, we're going to head to the source of all life for these paddies. Yeah. Yep. Deep in the forest, we have the water source that flows through all of the paddies down the valley here. So we are here, Vince, at the source. That's right. No one thinks about this. I don't know why I never thought about it when I look at rice paddies, but obviously the water has to come from somewhere. That's right. And in your case, it's coming from a rural mountain stream. Yeah. It's a nameless stream in the middle of the mountain. Nobody ever comes here except for the farmers. There's nothing else above this. Yeah. Yeah. So this is just a hundred percent natural water collected from this gorge here. Capture, rain capture. Exactly. Yeah. Do you even need to tell anyone you're going to use some of it? All the farmers that are farming rice, there's an understanding that the water comes from here and we all come together to clean the waterways from here all the way to the paddies. They're down. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not even using all of it. You're just diverting. Yeah. We're siphoning off a piece of it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we've seen the source. Let's see the paddies now. Let's head on back. So the fruit of your labor is right here. Yes. All of that work to get this much water to come out of this little pipe. Where we were just now, that water is coming out right now. Nice and cold. Your sensei, which we haven't even talked about. You have to learn rice from someone. Of course. Right. So let's take a look. This may be the most risky thing Vince has done, even moving to Japan and farming rice. He's letting me drive the K truck. Vince, what's gotten into you? This is every American's dream. Wait a minute. Yep. That's great. Cool. Thank you, sir. Park and brake. Brake. Engine. Yep. There we go. I'm available if you need services. After we visited the water source for Vince's paddies, I need to know where the rice started. And just like every other plant, it starts with a seed. So we're here where it starts. Once the rice seedlings have gotten about yay high, they're moved out from the incubator out to the greenhouse where they continue to grow. Water's being pumped, not pumped, but it's being channeled in from the natural waterways into the greenhouse. So they make sure that the rice seedlings are constantly hydrated and they don't dry up because they do dry up really quickly. Yeah. And they're just in trays. Let's take a look. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It looks like a lawn almost. Yeah. Like all together like this. Yeah, it is. So it's flooded much like a paddy is just because that's the more efficient way to water. Exactly. You're also, you have to keep watering. Although you do water at the top once in a while, what happens is the roots grow very thick and they form this type of mat. Yeah. This is like microgreens. Yeah. So they can be handled when you, uh, they can be handled as an entire object. Oh, you can just roll it up. I can roll it up. You can take it up and pass it around and insert it into the rice machine. These are very nice looking roots by the way. Yeah. It's very healthy. The seedlings you have to watch, uh, watch after them. They do develop some type of diseases. Sometimes they'll get a little blotchy. They'll get, they'll turn yellow. They might not get enough fertilizer. So certain patches might develop. Yeah. And you can, but when it's all in a row like this, you can spot that. Exactly. Right. And go troubleshoot. Yeah. Like these, this, this batch here has done really, really well. This looks great. Yeah. But inside there's some, we'll see some not so good examples. Yeah. Just to compare. This is the covered greenhouse. Yeah. Watching the temperature is very important. Uh, so these ones are a little bit overdue. Um, they have actually gotten too high. Uh, so you can use this to plant by hand, but they're, they're too big and they won't fit into the rice planter machine. Okay. Yeah. So maybe those are used for one of those plots. Exactly. Yeah. Those are used for the hand planting. Um, this is an example of, uh, spotty, uh, it could be various reasons. Um, maybe a little mold or a little bit of mold. You can see like white fuzz and they're also different types, different strains of rice. So they're kind of separated by different sections. Uh, some are for sake planting. Uh, I think that's the majority. That's the Koshihikari, the standard rice. And then some of the ones that were not sufficient in quality, they kind of just got left behind. Yeah. Yeah. I just let them be. So this is the kind of the very first batch that we started, uh, in around April. So they've gone to this level and then the one that you just saw on the next greenhouse. So that's going to be the upcoming batch. We're going to get to my rice planting experience in a second, but I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video, Shopify, who we've been working with for six plus years here at Epic, and are a big reason why we're able to go to places like Japan and show you these amazing gardening experiences. So story time. In 2022, we purchased Botanical Interests, one of my favorite seed brands. But let me tell you, there's a big difference between having a favorite seed brand and running that seed brand. We used to have to call our website provider and tell them the changes we wanted to make to the homepage. It sounds like something you'd do in 1996, not 2026. So because we've been running Shopify and Epic Gardening for a couple of years at that point, the first thing we did is migrate Botanical Interests over to the Shopify platform. And it made a massive difference in the business. Our team was able to build out a custom seed filtration feature extremely quickly, instead of having to call someone. Shopify's checkout experience is 36% more performant than competition. The site was also faster to use. On average, Shopify is 1.8 times faster than other platforms. And they're shipping new features all the time, which means we can keep on growing our store. So if you're a business owner looking to sell products or services online or offline, Shopify is by far the most important piece of software that you need to add to your stack. And you can grab a free trial at the link in the description or at shopify.com forward slash Epic Gardening. We're here at the field with Vince and his sensei. We're going to do planting by machine first. And then I think I'm going to plant my hand with Vince. So this is the machine that we're planting with today. It's got the paper and the rice starts in back. I'm actually really curious how it will work. They're about to plant, but I had to introduce you guys to Momo, Vince's goat. She's just hanging out over here. He brings her up to eat the grass on the fields on the sides. Hello, Momo. Momo. Hello. I'm trying to connect to you. Nope. She doesn't want it. Look at that. Can you imagine being this goat, living this goat's life? So what Vince is up to right now is laying out markers because as you run the machine down, that machine is running a coconut paper and organic rice paper down and all the way over. So you need to make sure that you're not wasting it cause each of the rolls is like 20 or $30. And so he's laying out these markers with a little bit of whatever local plant is on the side of the rice paddy. Nice. Yep. It'll, it'll, yeah. It's like loading a missile, huh? So it's rolling the paper and then it's stealing transplants from the trays and putting them directly into the paper. Like imagine how much time that's saving right there. It's about a hundred feet row we've already done. They're planted as clumps. There's like five or six rice seedlings in each of the clumps. And this looks like black plastic, but it's not. It's a carbon and coconut dust sort of product. It's been turned into a paper. And it's organic. So it's all sort of hard organic rice here. And look how fast this thing is planting. We were seeing some folks plant by hand yesterday that didn't even get close to this amount in triple quintuple, 10 times the time. I had to get a piece of the action. So I hopped on the rice planter to help Vince out and there was absolutely no way I was going to drive it. So my role was relegated to feeding the trays into the machine so that we didn't run out of rice seedlings. And I very quickly realized, although it saves a ton of time to plant by machine, it is still a very complicated task. For example, you have to start in the middle of the patty because if you didn't, you'd be driving over areas that you already planted. So there's a lot of calculation that goes into even just how to start planting. Then the organic paper mulch, while it holds down weeds and disintegrates into fertilizer effectively, doesn't bend well. So when you turn, you have to turn in very slow wide angles so you don't rip the paper. Watching Vince and his sensei work together was this beautiful interplay of knowledge effectively being passed down in real time. Hanging out in the machine was a really cool experience. Probably because I wasn't doing all the planting, but what a beautiful place to be growing some rice. That was great. Beautiful. Satisfying. This obviously would have taken forever if you did it by hand, right? Like days. Let's not think about that. Yeah. Let's not, let's not think about that. So you learned all this from, from your sensei who's around here. Yeah. He lives up the mountain and I've been growing organic. I didn't know that you could do that with paper mulching. So I knew, I heard about someone who was doing that technique and he was doing it at a very professional level. So I wanted to learn how to do it. So I approached him. And then he took me under his wing and now I'm able to do this. Yeah. Earlier this morning, we watched as you and your sensei, it's crazy the amount of things you have to track because you've got the depth of the water, the spacing, of course, the feeding of the rice and now the paper. So learning all that must've taken a while. Oh yeah. It's taken years. And I don't think I'll ever get the hang of it ever, but you know, anything in Japan, it takes like a lifetime to master. So we've seen the planting process by machine, but we're going to go do it the traditional way at one of your experimental patches. And I am getting in the patty. Vince, we're at your experimental field, hand planting rice, water's coming down from the stream. Way up there. Yeah. One, two, three. Oh, that feels great. Honestly, that feels great. Is it duckweed here? Looks like it. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So what we're going to do is we're going to use these seedlings from the leftovers. Let's start. Yeah. Let's start here. I mean, some people are very specific and they measure exactly how you want to do it. This is an experimental field. It doesn't really matter. What would the spacing be if you're being very particular? Yeah. Between 15 to 30 depends on what? Centimeters? Yeah. Centimeters. So that really depends on the strain. Something like that. Yeah. I would say something like that. Ashaka. Ashaka-like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take about three to four pieces, three to four, uh, rice starters, rice seedlings. Interesting. So you don't, yeah, it's not just one per. Yeah. You just kind of rip a little chunk off like that. Yeah. Yeah. And just you can hold a group in your other hand. Yeah. So let's go, instead of going all the way down straight, we'll go kind of this way. Yeah. Horizontally. Width wise. Yeah. And it's not going to be a hundred percent straight. It doesn't really matter. Uh, so each of us are going to do a five. So how I usually start is I usually do the first, the first of the fives in the, in the middle. So then you have your gauge. So you're planting it very deep into the water. Yeah. Deep in the water. Yeah. And then the second, second batch, just like, you know, Ashaka-like. Great. And then over there, then you got your third one over here. And then you're going back to the left. So you can really efficiently pull like a five set down. Yeah. Yeah. Then you can start here. You'll start here, but you're going to start in the middle. So I'll go there, there, there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. All right. That's it. And then you just, just rip and go down. Yeah. Go down the path. If you were to plant out your fields that you have by hand, the ones that we saw, how long would it take you per field? Oh man. I don't want to think about it. Probably an entire day just. Right. At this point, the water, cause we're right near the sea now. Yeah. This will have gone through dozens of paddies probably. Yeah. The dozens of paddies, but well, the forest is right there. So it's coming directly to this paddy and then it's going to go down to the sea. Yeah. It just runs out to the sea. So with the season starting, I guess, I mean before now, of course, cause you have to start the seeds. Yeah. But, but the growing season is about five, six months, maybe. Well, we start around March, March-ish. Okay. Yeah. And then by the time it's about after May, usually the seedlings will be big enough to grow into the soil. The entire rice season is generally just about half a year late, maybe a little bit more than that. And a lot of the work is clustered into now and the harvest. Yes. I mean, those are the two vital periods. Yeah. Two periods that take the most work to prepare. It's the most nerve wracking for farmers because you can't control. If you mess it up. Yeah. You're screwed. This is the first step in the, in the entire process. Yeah. But then during the season it's, it's more of a management crop than it is like, you know, it's not like a tomato where you're out here pruning and all that. Yeah. It's heavily water management, I would say. Most farmers come and check their fields every morning and then every evening besides deer, which obviously are a problem. Are there any other pests that, that, that hit it? In the early stages, especially if you're doing direct sowing, like you're sowing seeds directly for like dry, dry growing. Yeah. You'll get birds that eat, just eat the seeds as is. Yeah. Not directly eating the rice seedlings, but moles. They'll dig holes under the paddies and then the water management gets thrown off the charts because the water is just suddenly draining somewhere else. See, they'll be able, even though it's so muddy, they'll still dig up. They'll dig on the side of the banks there. Oh, and they'll break the edge. Yeah. They'll break the edge or they'll make a hole that'll flow to the next paddy. Oh my gosh. So yeah, uh, that also happens. Uh, but definitely deer are the worst. What's been the hardest part for you about living this life versus the life you used to have? Actually, I'm pretty satisfied to be honest. I don't think I can go back. I mean, that's the whole point of doing it, right? So you think you'll do this for the rest of your life? For the foreseeable future, as long as it's fun and exciting. Yeah. So as I took the train out here, I saw obviously hundreds, maybe thousands of little paddies. Sure. Are they all farmers or is it sometimes just a family thing? There's something like 2 million small farmers in Japan. So it's not like in the States where you have gigantic conglomerate companies that grow, you know, pretty much everyone's corn, soy and wheat. Yeah. Japan has a system where it's still kind of controlled on a smaller scale. Yeah. And most of them are family plots and people are not really full-time farmers. They grow rice, but they also do a lot of other different things. They have other family businesses and they'll grow enough and they'll grow extra and they'll sell that to usually JA Japan agriculture. Yeah. Or they'll have a, you know, they'll sell to their friends and family as well. So unless you see like a really big field, really big paddy. Yeah. And if it's like next to maybe a small rural home, that's likely just the family's paddy. Yeah. Most likely run and maybe just even consume themselves only. Yeah. Ah, rice agriculture is kind of the foundation of Japanese modern Japanese society. Yeah. Um, it kind of delineates the kind of getting into history, prehistoric history. Uh, the original Jomon people here were more of, uh, hunting gathering with, you know, some degree, some type of level of cultivation and gardening, but, um, because that'd be like during the agricultural boom across all of the world, all of the world, 10,000 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit more than that, but Japan was quite isolated from. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. So they had had their own thing going on, but then what happened was a huge migration from, uh, the mainland of Asia through China and the Korean peninsula brought a different group of people here. Then that's kind of the people that brought wet rice agriculture to Japan. So they had figured it out and brought it over. Yes. Yes. And that's when you get the development of kind of Japanese society, you know, people settling in, uh, communities land, they're not moving around that much. Yeah. Uh, they have excess food to share and store and you have development of kind of States and yeah. Cause the second you don't have to hunt or gather, you can create a village. Exactly. That's more stable, right? So rice is pretty much has played that role in Japanese society. And actually here we are in one of the oldest kingdoms of Japan called the Tango kingdom. Tango kingdom. Yeah. So Tango kingdom was an independent kingdom before the rise of the Yamato people, which is what we associate as modern Japan unified everything. Yeah. So there was a lot of trade between the Tango kingdom and the Korean peninsula and a lot of hardware. Yeah. We're really close. Yeah. We're really close to the peninsulas. Yeah. So this is actually one of may have been one of the first contact points, uh, between the mainland people and the Jomon people who were here and there's evidence, archaeological evidence, because there are lots of these great, uh, huge Kofuns, which are gigantic burial mounds and a lot of Kings were buried in these gigantic mounds. They're basically size of a mountain. They don't look like a pyramid, but inside. Similar like philosophy of burying your royals. Exactly. Yeah. Like as sort of magnificent as you can give them a burial. Sure. Yeah. We're going to continue planting rice right here in this experimental field, the old fashioned way. But I want to show you where Vince's rice ends up when it comes time to harvest. We're heading to a sushi restaurant, but not the sushi rice. It's actually the rice vinegar that his rice is used to create. We've arrived at Nishi-Iru, our final stop with Vince of course and chef Ricardo and Miel to enjoy a little bit of a meal. And I did hear that you've watched some epic gardening videos. Since I started gardening. Yes, basically. He says this really, really, really, almost every day. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, so it just popped up on my feed. Yeah. And I started following you. That's so cool. How many years ago was the first time? Uh, three, three years ago. Three years ago. Wow. Well, now you're in a video. You'll be in one. You'll be in one. So we're here at Partwell to enjoy a meal, but also because Vince, your rice ends up at the restaurant in some fashion, right? Mostly with the vinegar. Yes. Ricardo is using the vinegar, which my rice is in. Well, let's enjoy. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. So the sushi course has just begun. There's a three second rule. The second the sushi hits the plate, we need to eat it within three seconds. Incense rice is very likely in one of these pieces. Yep. A couple of grains here and there. It's hard to say, but we hope you've enjoyed the process of growing rice, organic rice here in Japan and showing you the various ways that it can be grown and of course enjoy it. So Vince, thanks for taking me on this journey. My pleasure. I appreciate it. We'll see you soon guys on this grow and tell series. There's more in the Japan episodes coming soon. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing. Here we go. The rice makes a difference, Vince. You're welcome. Yeah. Delicious. Delicious.