"The Wajin's rice god was blocked? Hmm, it seems that four-fingered interpreter Watanabe once told me something? 'In a single grain of rice, there are seven gods'... Right! The Wajin revere rice very much, just as we revere Corn. He even recited an interesting little poem for me: 'The tiny rice field leading into the mountains, the seedling-water all silted up. Now the bond between two people is no more; for many days no word has passed between them. How sorrowful it is'..."
"I heard the captured Wajin say that in the Wajin villages to the south, the farmers must build very long canals, letting the mountain springs they draw out flow slowly and grow warmer before irrigating the rice fields. Otherwise, the rice god will be angry and make the rice fail to grow. From this, it can be seen that the Wajin's rice god does not like the cold..."
"Hmm! The white rice and yellow millet they grow, the things the Wajin captives called 'rice' and 'Foxtail Millet,' cannot survive on Mashiri Island?... So, is it because the climate is colder? That must be it. The Far North Peninsula only thaws in May, and drifting snow comes by October; the coast is even colder than the inland! And the Kuril Islands and Mashiri Island just to the south surely cannot be much warmer!..."
"The nomads here on the peninsula are the same. They have never grown crops, and all live by their deer herds, fishing, and hunting. The Sweet Potato, Corn, and pumpkin we brought cannot survive at all; only the hardiest Pigeon Egg Potato can grow!... And even the hardiest little potato can only yield three for every one planted, and grows terribly slowly..."
Ice and snow gleamed white; the peninsula's spring was still a clean white.