Published: July 25, 2025
This all happened during the time when the charcoal pencils were drying.
Since Tulli started working, the cooking duties began to fall to me as well.
However, given that I could barely hold a kitchen knife and couldn’t properly use fire, it was still impossible for me to prepare the entire meal alone. I helped out within my limits and cooked together with my mother.
Since I had the chance, I wanted to get creative and try to make Japanese food.
My modern knowledge would surely come into play! …Well, I wanted to say that with enthusiasm, but it just didn’t happen.
Because from the very beginning, I was at a loss.
Longing for Japanese food, yet there was no rice. No miso. No soy sauce. Of course, no mirin or sake either. Without seasonings, there was nothing I could do. It didn’t seem feasible.
You know, I do know how to make miso and soy sauce, right? I even know the ingredients. Soybeans, koji, and salt, right?
I learned the process too. When I was in elementary school, I visited a miso factory and seriously observed the section where they showed how it was made in olden times.
But where do soybeans and koji come from in this world?
Even if soybeans could perhaps be substituted with other beans, where does one buy koji?
There’s no way I could dare to make koji from natural sources. After all, koji is a type of mold, right? One small mistake and it would cause food poisoning for the whole family.
Even if by chance I found koji, fermenting it in that filthy house would be terrifying, and the smell would probably lead to it being discarded before it’s ready.
I gave up on making seasonings myself and tried hard to think of Japanese dishes that didn’t require any.
How about sashimi?
No soy sauce, but salted and dipped in citrus juice would be tasty, wouldn’t it?
But apparently the sea was far away here. Even at the market, there were no fresh seawater fish. No wakame or seaweed either.
Not only was sashimi impossible, even seaweed salad was out of the question.
Without seafood, naturally there was no kombu. No dried shrimp or katsuobushi. I wanted to cook Japanese food, but could not make dashi. That was the real dealbreaker.
I’m not asking for instant dashi powder, but at least give me kombu and katsuobushi.
Even the cucumber-like vinegared dish was unsatisfying without soy sauce, with no sugar allowed and only wine vinegar available—the flavors were too different.
Though I tried making it, the sourness was overwhelming and it turned out nothing like the vinegared dish I was imagining.
Frustrated by how incompetent I was, I ate a simple dish I could handle as a child: salted and rubbed cucumber-like vegetable.
The slight dehydration from salt made it limp with a pleasantly salty taste, somewhat like a pickle. I thought I’d feel satisfied with something Japanese-like, but instead it made me miss white rice so much I nearly cried.
By the way, the millet bread and salted cucumber-like vegetable didn’t pair well together at all.
Rice, rice, Japanese food! Someone, please give me Japanese food! Please grant me Japanese food!
Because of the cucumber-like vegetable, I craved Japanese food so much that I thought about catching fish in the river and trying to make something Japanese-like myself.
Since I couldn’t use fire, drying fish was my only option. I’d catch fish in the river, sprinkle salt on them, and dry them. Maybe that would work. …I really hoped so.
“Hey, Lutz. I want to try fishing, but can you catch anything in this river?”
“I don’t think it’s possible for Myne.”
Just as Lutz said, I failed miserably.
Catching fish itself was difficult.
Looking dejected, I watched as Lutz brought me a fish he caught.
“Here, I caught this, but what should I do with it?”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure. I don’t want it.”
“Lutz, can you make fire? I want to grill it with salt.”
Unable to resist, I grilled the fish Lutz caught, like ayu, with salt.
It smelled awful!
Bitter!
Terrible!
After one bite, I grimaced. It was strange. It tasted muddy, not at all what I expected.