The grass here is called Chinese Silver Grass or Susuki. I noticed it because I see little patches of it on the side of the road on the walk from my apartment to my school every day. Large grasslands are hard to find in Japan, so I became interested in learning why, and I want to focus on this grass in today's article.
Chinese silver grass, or susuki, has tall slender stalks. On top, they have big, fluffy plumes that look like bird feathers. This grass changes colors depending on the season! In the fall they are a shiny gold that looks great next to the red. autumn trees. In the winter and spring, they turn a silvery beige. And in the summer, the fields turn a vibrant emerald green, giving a picturesque calm backdrop to the countryside.
I first saw susuki when I was riding the highway bus, and suddenly the green forests of Japan I was used to seeing dropped away into short patchy cedar shrubs. As the bus wound higher up the mountain road, we entered a sweeping vista of pale gold broken up by patches of burnt shrubbery that gave the land a molten look, I thought it looked like the top of a tiramisu cake. The bare, desert-like landscape created by the silver grass reminded me of my home in New Mexico. I guess that the grasslands were recently burned in the annual tradition practiced by local communities called Noyaki, a controlled burning process done to clear the land of invasive plants. The blackened spiky nubs reminded me of sea urchins and the dark brown earth was visible underneath.
