Our base of operations is located in a relatively snowy area of Yamagata. Although there are many hardships in winter, there are also many advantages unique to this climate. One of them is that we can see swans flying in with the melting snow up close. They eat the fallen ears of rice in the melting rice paddies with a single-minded devotion. Their appearance is quite cute, but it is a sad fate that the white ones are dirty. You can easily tell which ones are eating harder than the others by the color of their faces. If you look closely, you can see that a child with a black face may be a veteran because of its large size. The ones with white faces are not yet experienced. When swans fly in, we hear their calls throughout our working hours, but we don’t find them noisy. Rather, it is a pleasant and soothing BGM. Eventually they leave to migrate north where the snow has melted. Interestingly, the flower buds of the “swan flower” begin to swell around the time the swans fly in.

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