The digital age meets the stone age in these pictures “painted” with different coloured crops in Japanese rice fields. Making giant pictures on the earth is an ancient art form…Japan’s lovely new contribution to this ancient art is, however, unimaginable without modern technology.

I don’t mean that the farmers of the village of Inakadate where the rice pictures started in 1993 – they are now spreading through Japan – have somehow cheated. The images are created by laborious handicraft: kodaimai rice, which has purple and yellow leaves, is planted among green-leaved tsugaru roman rice to create the patterns. This takes loving care and it’s a real triumph of folk art, but computer imaging is used to work out how to plant such complex designs.

Simply irresistible.