The Wara Art Festival recently welcomed the September-October rice season in Northern Japan, with its wildly inventive and fun repurposed rice straw sculptures. (Photo: VCG)

The Wara Art Festival was started in 2008 in Niigata City, where it began as a creative collaboration between the city’s tourism division and the Musashino Art University. (Photo: VCG)

The students of Musashino worked together to fill the fields of Niigata with giant animal sculptures made of bound rice straw, and they’ve been doing it every year. (Photo: VCG)

All of the monuments are handcrafted out of the 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. (Photo: VCG)

The Wara Art Festival was started in 2008 in Niigata City, where it began as a creative collaboration between the city’s tourism division and the Musashino Art University. (Photo: VCG)