Straw Dinosaurs Blow Away Visitors at Japanese Harvest Festival
Your standard hayrides and stacks of hay bales don’t cut it in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture. Instead, you’ll see giant straw dinosaurs and other fantastic straw creations on display at the rice-straw festival held at the end of summer.
Artist Amy Goda’s dinosaurs are the standouts — watch out for those teeth, especially if you suffer from hay allergies — but there are lots of amazing sculptures at Uwasekigata Park in Niigata City. This year’s theme was “living creatures,” and it took a group of about 30 people to complete the works, which typically have a plastic frame underneath the rice straw.
The straw is essentially just a byproduct of growing rice. So it’s great to see it being put to creative use, instead of just dumped or even burned. Niigata City’s website has pictures of straw sculptures created every summer since 2008, and they get more elaborate each year. It’ll be hard to top Goda’s triceratops. Maybe a straw Millennium Falcon?
We’ll have to check back in 2016.
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