2015 Rice Terrace Tour of Japan | Doya Tanada

Jun 10 | Evan | No Comments |

Back in 2013 I escorted a large group of photographers around Hokkaido, Tokyo and Kyoto. It was a great trip as we explored and photographed Japan for just about 2 weeks. I was delighted when Dmitry from Photosafari contacted me again about creating a short extension trip for him and other photographers after they spent some time in New Zealand. Due to the timing of their trip, we decided to focus on Rice Terraces (Tanada in Japanese) of Kyushu as the timing would be close to when the rice terraces are filled with water making for some beautiful landscape photographs. We would have liked to arrive a little bit earlier, but due to the group’s other commitments we arrived just after peak season for taking photos of some of the rice terraces in Saga and Nagasaki Prefecture.

After flying into Tokyo, we had a short break before flying to Fukuoka and then we chartered a bus to take us to our hotel in Karatsu. Karatsu is in Saga Prefecture and a great base for exploring rice terraces in the area. After Kamikochi and Kyoto, Saga Prefecture, especially Karatsu is quickly becoming one of my favorite places in Japan. Our first rice terrace would be Doya Tanada, which is actually in neighboring Nagasaki Prefecture. Photos of Doya were the original inspiration for creating the rice terrace tour of Japan as I’m sure you can see why!