The Smells of Early Autumn

Inspired by Holly MathNerd's photo posts

Over in Vermont it is the season of changing leaves and Holly MathNerd has the photos to prove it.¹ Here in Japan we’re not quite there yet, or at least we aren’t in my corner of the country.

Why so green? Where my changing leaves?

In fact things are running later this year than some so we’re actually still seeing higanbana (red spider lily) flowering on the banks at the sides of roads and fields

Masses of higanbana

A close up of a higanbana

Indeed they are still harvesting the rice though most has been gathered in

Midway through harvest

However when you go through the countryside at this time of year the view is not the only thing to admire. If you hike/run/bike or drive in a car with the windows open you get enchanting smells here and there.

Kinmokusei (金木犀)

The perfume of kinmokusei (or sweet olive? in English) is the most distinctive. People plant these shrubs in their gardens and at this time of year they in flower and sharing their perfumed scent with the neighborhood.

close up of kinmokusei leaves and flowers

Kinmokusei are grown all over Japan - you may encounter the smell as you turn a corner in a residential part of Tokyo, for example - but in rural Japan it is frequently more intense because the plant is not always the small shrub of the carefully maintained garden but can be left to grow into trees some 10-15m/30-50ft high.

More rare are the closely related Ginmokusei -銀木犀 - with white flowers, rather than yellow. We encountered one of those today as a decent sized tree

Ginmoksei tree probably 20’/^m tall

It seems to me that Ginmokusei and Kinmokusei semll slightly different, but that’s hard to be sure because I’ve never been close enough to one then then other in a short period of time to make a proper comparison

Soba

Another smell you encounter is the that of the soba (buckwheat) flowers from the fields where they are grown. It’s a more astringent smell than Kinmokusei, somewhat reminiscent of chemical fertilizers, and absolutely distinctive.

Also (as the picture above shows) you get the oddness of seeing the rice being harvested as the soba grows. That’s not quite as weird as May when they harvest the winter wheat/barley and plant the early rice at the same time, but it seems odd to me coming from a place where can only get one crop a year.

Fresh Harvested Rice

Another smell that can be scented in the countryside is the small of freshly harvested rice straw. This is a very fleeting smell, kinmokusei and soba flower for a week or more but you only get the smell of fresh cut straw as it is being cut or in the following few hours… It’s much the same smell of fresh cut hay or straw and brings back memories of hot summers days back in England

Rice harvest in progress

That same smell is stronger and more long-lasting when the straw is brought indoors to make things from it such as the Shimenawa ropes that hang from shrines and shrine gates

The Shimenawa Museum/Workshop in Iinancho

The shimenawas themselves lose the smell after a few days of being made - we made one each at the Shimenawa museum a couple of weeks ago - but the workshop has so much fresh rice straw in it that it retains the smell for months.

Bonfires and Burned Stubble

Rice farmers regularly burn the stubble producing billowing clouds of smoke and lots of people burn grass cuttings and the like. If we have the windows open at this time of year we regularly get a whiff of smoke entering from some fire nearby.

Smoke billowing across rice on drying racks (hade)

Warm Sake (燗酒)

Actually this can be an all year around smell but warm sake is something most people prefer to drink when the weather is colder and with temperatures now dropping down from their August/September peaks in the high 30s(°c)/90s(°f) to the current evenings in the low teens(°c)/fifties(°f) this the time to restart that tradition.

Warmed old Tamazakura kimoto junmai sake

Not all sakes are good warmed but some sake houses here in Western Japan specialize in the types of sake that are good. Generally speaking this means sake made using the kimoto (生酛) method. A lot of sake is like white wine and expected to be drunk fairly soon after it has been brewed but kimoto sakes age well (more like red wines) and many get a brown tinge as they do so making them resemble whiskey. They don’t taste like either red wine or whiskey but if you appreciate the nose aspects of your single malt scotch or premier cru bordeaux then you’ll get a similar enjoyment from inhaling the scents of heated kimoto sakes

And with that I’m going to hit publish on this post and inhale some warm sake

1. Through Autumn's Canopy