Roadworks on the weekend

Location
Sannohe Aomori Japan
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom pole array

Sannohe Town area

In Japan council workers will work even on Saturdays, and recently the town council has been resurfacing the roads through the centre of town. This was a good opportunity to record a variety of material. The process involves several pieces of heavy machinery from a standard small scale earth mover to rollers and a machine that lays out bitumen.

I tried to get isolated samples of each of the larger machines, but the various stages of work occur simultaneously, so most of the samples contain the general ambiance of a busy work site.

Sannohe Roadworks

It is also the time of year for farmers to be planting their rice fields. Many farmers still do all of this by hand, but many use a small strange looking tractor that has metal wheels fro moving through muddy rice fields. The tractor takes fresh rice stalks and sows them into the ground in a rotary mechanical motion. I am hoping that the sounds from this carry above the general running sound of the tractor as they are an interesting combination of mechanical whirring and a watery slosh sound.

Sannohe Riceplanter

Finally today I was able to capture two frogs who have taken up residency in an unused swimming pool. The local elementary school has a pool that looks like it has not been used for several decades (probably since the economic crash in the 80’s I suspect) As a large body of water I am surprise there were not more frogs present. It did allow me to get a good clean sample of just two frogs isolated instead of the usual horde of frogs present in the rice fields in this area.