Chapter 3

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~~ 3 Months Later ~~


"Yes! I did it! I finally did it! I have done the impossible! Oh, what a sense of accomplishment! Hahaha take that stupid floor! I am your conqueror!", I announced excitedly while sitting up for the first time in this new life on my own strength, under the watchful gaze of three of my new grandparents. Obviously, all they heard was their grandson jabbering away excitedly in baby talk to no one in particular.


'Ah multi-generational households. I had heard of the existence of such family structures from my Hispanic and Black friends but I completely forgot that this was most common among Asian families. It feels weird, but in a good way. Weirdly good? Weird but the good sort of weird? Hmmm.'


In the three months since my rebirth, I had discovered several important things. One, my new family was poor. I mean all 12, yes 12 of us lived in a rather small but habitable single-story structure made primarily out of wood way out in the middle of nowhere, without a single structure larger than two-stories in sight. That single two-story structure is apparently the barn or something. I mean, I saw some cows in there when one of my two new grandmas carried me inside one day, so I'm assuming it's a barn. Hey I was always a city-dweller, what the heck would I know about farming. The closest I got to farming was watching some documentaries about it on Netflix, on my phone, while lying on my nice comfy bed in my tiny apartment.


And yes, my family were apparently farmers judging by their outfits, equipment and the stiff callouses on new dad's hands. And oh no, they weren't the John Deere-equipped farmers either, oh ho ho that would be asking for too much. Oh no, I was born into probably the one and only Amish-style farming family in Japan judging by the equipment they were using. Can you believe it, farming equipment made of wood! What on earth! Do these people shun technology for religious reasons or something? Would they be denied entry into Japanese farmer heaven because they used a metal shovel?


But things weren't all bad for being poor Amish-style farmers in the Japanese countryside I suppose. I mean, food was always readily available, if rather monotonous. We ate rice, lots and lots of rice: boiled, steamed, cooked, cooked then dried, thick rice porridge, rice cakes and on and on the list of rice-based foodstuff goes. The rice was usually mixed with all sorts of ingredients such as soybean, bean curd, soy sauce, yams, sweet potatoes, radishes, cucumbers, bamboo shoots, onions and spring onions which were usually boiled, steamed, pickled or even eaten raw.


The prepared dishes were usually flavored with salt, ginger, garlic, mint, fish broth of some kind or vinegar. So yes, food was abundant in this large household. I suppose large households do require lots of food. By the end of my second month here however, I noticed that there was a distinct lack of meat in our diet. Probably because we were poor. I mean, I get it. We're poor, we can't afford to eat meat. The cows in the barn are our sole source of milk and we can't eat them. Someday though, someday, walking hamburger patty. You. Me. Barbecue. I'm almost tempted to rub my hands together in glee while laughing like some evil villain but it would probably freak out my three new grandparents who were keeping an eye on my younger new siblings and I while my new parents and my older new siblings toil in the fields with their wood-based farming equipment.


"You don't look older than three. Possibly four. Are you my youngest older sister?" I asked the girl sitting down on my right, who was intently arranging wooden blocks of some kind. Ah yes, even our toys were made of wood. What did plastic or metal ever do to this family?

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