Sound of spring

As is common in japan, the land used for agriculture and residences is shared, so our apartment too faces some fields. A few produce vegetables all year, but the largest one is a rice paddy. This one was (intentionally!) flooded this week for this year's crop. From the first day of flooding, the dark hours host a chorus of frog calls, or "kaeru nakigoe". The culprit is the (hundreds?  thousands? millions? of)  "nihon amagaeru":

The calls at night are probably mating calls, but with the misty, rainy days becoming more frequent, daytime calls will increase, too. (These daytime calls in rainy season are called "amenaki", ???).

I recorded a few minutes of the night chorus from my front balcony the other night, at about 1:30 am... Inside the apartment it is loud, but outside it is deafening! Here is a sample:


I recorded this with the voice recorder function of my .mp3 player, and edited it slightly with Audacity audio editor program... It might make nice spring evening listening for folks living far from the fields. Give it a try!