At the end of rice harvesting season, the folks of the Kagawa and Niigata Prefectures in Japan hold a straw festival to celebrate the abundance of the harvest. Dried straws cover wooden frames to form larger-than-life sculptures from animals like sharks and gorillas to vessels such as ships and tanks. The family-friendly event invites visitors of all ages to engage, interact, and play on the enormous structures.

Passengers watch as The Waverley, the world's last remaining seagoing passenger paddle steamer arrives at Clevedon Pier on June 10, 2011 in Clevedon, England. Built in 1946, the trust which owns and operates the Waverley, is warning that this could be the last season for the vessel and is appealling for more public funding saying it is struggling to make ends meet in the current financial climate due in part to rising fuel costs. Restored in 1973 after service on Loch Long in Scotland, since 2003, Waverley has been listed in the British National Register of Historic Ships core collection as 'a vessel of pre-eminent national importance'. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

A customer shops at an Alibaba rural service centre in Jinjia Village, Tonglu, Zhejiang province, China, July 20, 2015. E-commerce growth in the countryside now outpaces that in major cities, though fewer than one tenth of online purchases made on Alibaba platforms were shipped to rural areas in the first quarter of this year. Alibaba estimates the potential market at 460 billion yuan ($74 billion) by next year. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

One of only three active female blimp pilots in the world, Kristen Arambula guides her passengers towards the Goodyear blimp “Spirit of America” in Carson, California August 5, 2015. Christened in 2002, the air ship is being retired after 8,000 flights and replaced with a newer more modern version named the “Spirit of Innovation” in September. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

“These eerie formations in the sky may look like alien ships. But as the Daily Mail points out, they’re actually a natural occurrence called lenticular clouds”. – Claudine Zap. Photo: Lenticular clouds hover of the mountains of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. (Photos by Denis Budkov/Caters News)

A fairy tale and movie-themed gingerbread house creation, featuring a reindeer, made by pastry students of the San Ysidro Adult School Culinary Arts program is pictured during their 9th annual gingerbread house competition in San Ysidro, California December 9, 2014. The students' voting results will be delivered back to their class but the official judging will be performed by chefs and culinary experts during the 9th annual event. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A freediver uses weights, yoga and camera tricks to create the illusion of walking underwater for a film which took three years to shoot and was completed in 2013 in El Hierro, Canary Islands. Like a scene from a Hollywood science-fiction movie, this trick footage shows a man apparently walking on water. The underwater film was shot by biologist Armiche Ramos and brothers Armando and Francisco del Rosario, who used their expertise in freediving to create the illusion. No computer graphics were involved in the production, with the team relying solely on their own skills – and a few hidden secrets. (Photo by Ocean Brothers/Barcroft Media/ABACAPress)