Shams El-Mutwalli

DUBAI: As part of the Shiroyone Senmaida’s annual light-up festival Aze no Kirameki, the rice terraces in Japan’s Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture have been lit up using solar-powered LEDs that will remain on display until March 13.

The 1,004 rice paddies are on a slope that faces the sea and are illuminated using 25,000 solar-powered LEDs that can be seen up close when walking on the pathway—they will be open to the public for five hours.

“The LED lights, each placed by hand by local volunteers, change color every 30 minutes. With the rice fields changing the color from pink to yellow against the backdrop of the ocean, they are truly something to behold,” the Shiroyone Senmaida official website states.

The website assures that “these green rice paddies create a beautiful and bright contrast to the background of the blue sea. The rays of the evening sun setting over the sea reflect beautifully on the paddies and make it an ideal spot for landscape photography.”

The rice paddies’ small size make it hard to use machinery for farming, and so all the work is done by hand.