Dad said it was the finest house in the world.
Those who got to know a house like that would never want to go anywhere else.
He said my grandfather used to say the same thing.
My grandfather loved the fields as he did his house.
When he passed away the villagers carried his coffin on a route that wound round all his rice paddies,
and only then did they take him to the cemetery.
Every year, when the rice ripened,
my grand knocked on his grave to tell him about to good harvest.
My father took pride in the face that he’d never once left the village.
He said he only wanted to visit places that had rice fields.
How to earth could he go anywhere else and be sure to still see rice fields?