Hukumusume fairy tale collection > Foreign language (English) > Japanese classical stories

A rice cake falls from the moon

(Japanese classical stories)(Okinawa)

Translation　ちいさな翻訳屋さん

Japanese　←→　Japanese ＆ English　←→　English

　A long time ago, there lived a boy and a girl in one small island.

　They spend time playing around for whole day, sleeping when they got tired, and playing again when they woke up.

　About food, they picked up rice cakes which the god dropped for them from the moon at a certain time in the night.

　Both of them never thought why rice cakes fell from the moon.

　They took it for granted that they would eat freshly pounded rice cakes as many as they wanted, run around in the beautiful green island,

and swim in the shiny blue sea every day.



　On one of those nights,

　when they were eating rice cakes from the moon,

　they unintentionally began to talk about things like this;

“Hey, until now, we have dumped the leftover rice cakes, but if we keep them, we can eat whenever we get hungry.

　I guess we should save the rice cakes from tonight.”

“That’s right. If we keep the leftovers, we don’t have to pick up rice cakes during night.

　There are times I get sleepy when the rice cakes fall.”

　After the discussion, they decided to keep the leftovers.

　They were happy about they came up a good idea.

　However, the god of the moon did not like their idea.

“Every night, I never forgot to give them rice cakes, but why they think of keeping the leftovers.

　Don’t they trust the god?”

　Since then, the god stopped to drop the rice cakes.

　They were very confused and begged the god in a flurry.

“God, oh god, please drop rice cakes from the moon.”

“My god, I am almost falling down for hunger. Please give us rice cakes as you did before.”

　But no rice cake fell from the moon again.

　From the next day, there was no other way for the boy and the girl to go to the sea to get seashells and fishes and to eat them.

　From now on, they cannot live in playing as much as they want like they have.

　They longed for the old days when they never felt hungry, and appreciated the god for the first time.

The end

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