Memory of hunger

It was sunny all day today. In the morning, Ayako and I went to Furusato Noen to bed out the shoots of beans which we had grown in the wood deck. Maria from Urguay, and Ilsemarie from Germany sent me an email for my birthday. A few days ago, Emiliano sent me an email from Barcelona, too.

My history after the war 　③
Now I will continue my story in Miyagi. Our everyday life in the mountains in Miyagi was filled with hardship. There was no electricity and no running water. And for us children, to go to school was hard work. Walking along the footpaths through woods and weeds up and down hills and valleys, it took us more than an hour to get to the village where our school was. In winter, we had to leave home for school almost before dawn, and it was already dark on our way back home. What was worse, I,as well as my family, was always feeling hungry. My father sometimes brought home some rice presented by his relative in his birth house, but it was far from enough. We ate rice porridge our mother made with much water and wild vegetables. But we sometimes had  happy time. In spring, we ate edible wild plants collected around our house. In autumun, we gathered chestnuts, wild fruits, and edible fungi. But our struggle to develop a new farmland was completely failed. our father wanted to grow rice, but the water in the valley was too cold for rice to grow . Next, we planted corn, beans, wheat, millet, and vegetables. But the soil was very poor, and hare and birds came to our fields and ate up most of them. We set traps to catch hare but in vain. We were feeling almost always hungry.