Last week, I did something that I’ve wanted to do for years. At about eight in the evening, I left the house and strolled down the hill in this picture – away from what counts for civilisation in these sleepy, small-town parts and into the darkness.
I was headed for the rice fields, where during the day, the planting season is in full swing. At night, while the sound of tractors churning up the mud may have gone, there is a veritable cacophony that can be heard from our house several hundred metres away.
This only continues for a couple of weeks, which is partly why I’ve missed it for the previous eight years that we’ve lived here, but this time I made the following recordings – not particularly hi-tech or hi-fi, it has to be said – with the Voice Memo app on my iPhone.
One of the students in my community centre English class said that the frogs around her house are so noisy she has to keep the windows shut – then again, her family actually owns some of the rice fields from which the croaking emanates, so I suppose she can’t complain too much.
By way of some bonus tracks, I made another two recordings on my way down the hill: one of an insect that sounds quite frankly as if it’s electrically powered, and another of the spring water that gushes forth from the old castle ramparts (now concreted over but yes, there really did used to be a proper Japanese castle here) all year round.
As well as genuinely relishing the sense of being immersed in such a sea of croaks, I was reminded of how much I enjoy getting out and about and recording sounds. Listening back to the recordings, it was very difficult to avoid wind and handling noise, so at some point soon, I think I’ll invest in a decent microphone (with a proper fluffy cover on it) and some kind of mp3 recorder. Then I’ll be able to treat you to all sorts of exotic wild tracks from the Japanese countryside.
