straw

Let's not lie to ourselves, we are aware that if we leave a glass of water on the table, our cat might just drink from it. It's a true moment of contemplation, standing over that glass with our eyes squinted and thinking "is there cat spit in that?" and "do I care?" The real question is: how far are cats willing to go to get to that drink they're not supposed to touch? 

They do have a tendency to go where they shouldn't. And apparently, even a lid can't stop them. Because if that lid has a hole in it in which there is a straw... they'll get to it. Some of these kitties seem a little confused by the mechanism of the straw, but that doesn't stop them. Eventually, our smart little felines figure it out.

Northern Japan is known for its wealth of rice that produces a rich harvest each Fall. And after that rice is harvested, there's a huge amount of rice straw that is leftover called "wara."

The Japanese people are also known to not waste anything so that excess wara was reused in plenty of ways: roofs, fertilizer, livestock feed, and historically used for a variety of goods that have been since replaced with modern advances. 

One area decided to do something different with the excess rice straw. In the region's capital city, Niigata, they have used the rice straw to create giant and incredible animal sculptures. The Wara Art Festival has been an annual event for the past decade!

Story via Atlas Obscura

Autumn is the rice harvest season in Japan. Every year, farmers make sure that the leftover rice straw, known as "wara", does not go to waste. Japanese artist, Niigata, has found a very creative way of using these leftover rice husks by hosting an annual event called "Wara Art Festival". Ever since 2008, the straw has been used as a material to make giant sculptures exhibited at Uwasekigata Park. All of the monuments are handcrafted out of wooden rods that serve as the spine of the sculptures and dried straw molded on the frame. Each handicraft takes about a week to be completed. Via: Design you trust

Fall is a season of harvesting, and festivals to celebrate it are currently taking place all over the world. In Northern Japan, the Wara Art Festival recently rang in the September-October rice season, and it's a wildly inventive and fun way to repurpose rice straw left over from the harvest.