On the morning of September 4, walking down the slopes of Yatsuo after the festival air has lifted and out onto the plain, you find the rice fields beginning to turn gold. The moment the three nights of Owara Kaze no Bon end, autumn in Toyama switches from the season of sound to the season of harvest. Fall here follows a clear order. Once the cutting begins, the smell of rice straw drifts across the plain, and each paddy seems to wear a slightly different depth of color.
Owara opens the season, and new rice follows
Owara Kaze no Bon, held every year from September 1 to 3, is the signal that autumn has come to Toyama. Around the time the last notes of the kokyu (bowed lute) fade, the harvest is underway on the plain and new-crop rice begins to appear. In this rice-growing prefecture, farmers raise not only Koshihikari but also Fufufu, a variety born in Toyama. A bowl of freshly cooked new rice is a dish in its own right. If your lodging has a kitchen, there is the added pleasure of carrying home a bag of new rice from a farm stand and cooking it at the house.
The fish of the bay are starting to fatten too, and the table grows richer by the day. In autumn, the most honest way to plan a Toyama itinerary is around your appetite.
The autumn colors come down from the mountains to the villages
After the rice, it is the mountains' turn. Starting with the foliage that colors the ravines of the Kurobe Gorge, the mountain colors descend toward the lowlands day by day. In foliage season the gorge air turns crisp with the morning chill, and the contrast between the color of the water and the color of the slopes grows even sharper. Foliage in the gorge by day, new rice and autumn fish by night: being able to move between mountain and table within a single day is what makes this season so easy to build a trip around. If you happen upon an autumn festival with hikiyama festival floats or lion dances somewhere along the way, count it as good luck on the road. When you hear flutes and drums while walking through a town, follow the sound.
It begins with a festival, deepens with rice, and closes with the colors of the mountains — autumn in Toyama keeps that order. And the days grow shorter and shorter, dusk falls early, and the nights run long. As the nights lengthen, the hours spent at your lodging become worth more. It is that kind of season.