On the caldera plain of Aso in Kumamoto stretch vast grasslands, the largest in Japan. Mount Aso at the center is an active volcano that is still repeatedly erupting. Fresh volcanic ashes with almost no organic matter easily turn this land totally infertile. This is a story of a satoyama on a pastoral land where people and cattle live together with an active volcano at their doorsteps. Explore an year of the grassy satoyama and see how the idyllic scenery has been protected by the people's constant effort for a mindboggling time and how ancient wisdom still supports the lives of the locals.

The terraced rice paddies with their breathtaking views of the stars reflected in the water mirror. It is 'tanada,' terraced rice fields in Hoshitoge, the name of the hamlet, meaning Star Pass in Japanese. The episode takes viewers on a journey into a small, beautiful farming village deep in the snowy mountains in Japan, where people have tenaciously addressed nature's fury and kept their old farming method to this day to produce the best rice in the country. A year of the snowy satoyama -- it is a story about the bonds among the people and those between the people and the creatures, about the old wisdom the modern world tends to forget.