Every year, a Japanese village in northern Aomori Prefecture creates field-sized, living, 3D paintings made of coloured rice shoots. From ground level, it didn’t look like much. In fact, the scene looked like a lot of rural Japan: rice paddies with tender shoots in shades of green, rippling in the wind and stretching off into the horizon. Bucolic, surely, but nothing unusual. But as I ascended the
![An ingenious solution made of rice](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/df695f008ab98f91623dd33e740e2aa6cf3b42c3/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fychef.files.bbci.co.uk%2Flive%2F624x351%2Fp04txz7k.jpg)