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I’m Back in the Other World? – Chapter 11

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Chapter 11 –  The First Dinner

By punctured coin, I assume she means the old Asian/current Japanese style coins. Basically like American coins, but with a hole in the middle.

“Innkeeper, thank you for the tea. It was delicious.”

When I reached the dining room, I called out towards the kitchen.

“That’s fine. I’m glad it suited your taste.”

The innkeeper gave a light smile and took the tray from the Squad Chief, before heading back to the kitchen.

“Dinner for three, please.”

The Prince spoke to a nearby employee (the daughter of the innkeeper?), and sat down at an empty table.
The Squad Chief sat down at the table as well, so I also vaguely decided to sit down as well.
Somehow or other I ended up listening to them talk about the bandits from today, and the knight squad, before our food was carried to us.

“Tonight is bread with grilled herb chicken, and a vegetable and sausage stew.”

When I looked at the food, the innkeeper explained them to me.
Since I was hungry, I decided to immediately begin eating.
If you looked around, the other two at the table were already eating.

“Itadakimasu.”

After bringing my hands together in thanks, I tasted the food.
One by one, I took a bit of each of the foods, and chewed them.
After that, I took one of the pieces of bread from the basket in the middle of the table, and tearing off a little, I tried eating it.

“…”

I had forgotten…
The taste of the food was no different from in the knowledge of my old life.
In other words, it was not tasty.
It was by no means bad tasting. For the sake of protecting the honour of this shop, I have to say that it’s tasty for this world.
But to this tongue of mine that has gotten used to the food of Japan, it’s not food that can satisfy me.
MSG doesn’t exist in this world, but the way you use herbs and spices can greatly affect the taste of the cooking.
I know from the knowledge of my old life that the herbs and spices in this world are basically the same as those on earth.
In this world, most of those are used in medicine or talismans, and there’s no concept of using them in cooking.
The bread is also black coloured, and is extremely hard. It seems that there’s no bread that uses the fermentation of yeast. I must quickly reform this situation. If I remember correctly, spices and herbs should be sold in general stores or adventurer-related stores. Let’s have a look at them later.
While I was thinking this, perhaps because they had noticed that I had stopped my hand, the Prince and Squad Captain were looking my way.

“What’s wrong? You’re not going to eat? Does it not suit your tastes?”

“I thought that this place had pretty good cooking though.”

The Prince and Squad Captain asked me in confusion.

“No, it is fine. I was just a little shocked.”

While giving a small lie, I finished off my dinner. Whilst thinking about what I would do from now on.

After finishing dinner, I decided to try asking for a favour from the two who were now chatting while drinking fruit liquor.

“Umm, I’d actually like to go have a look at the general store and the stores that sell tools for adventurers after this.”

The two of them looked my way.

“Well, that’s fine but, did you need something from them?”

Well, if I suddenly wanted to go to a store, I suppose that’s a natural doubt.

“Yes, there are a few things that I want, you see. And so, umm, this is something difficult to ask, but…”

Indeed. Even if I go shopping, at present I have not a single one of the Golshu coins used in this world.

In this world, a single punctured copper coin is the lowest denomination ‘1 Golshu’, 10 punctured copper coins are 1 copper coin, 10 copper coins are 1 silver coin, 100 silver coins are 1 gold should. That’s how I remember it.
Above gold coins are treasure coins used for business dealings, which are worth 100 gold coins.
Comparing living expenses, 1 punctured copper coin corresponds to 10 Yen.
In other words, a punctured copper coin = ¥10, copper coin = ¥100, silver coin = ¥1000, gold coin = ¥10,000.
As for treasure coins, one of them is worth ¥10,000,000.
If I remember correctly, the living expenses of a normal commoner should be 5000 Golshu per month, so about 50 silver coins.

While recalling such a thing, I began negotiating to make money for my shopping funds.
“Umm, I have only just come to this world, so I have not even a single Golshu. It’s obvious, but I need money to purchase the things that I want. So… umm, Prince Sedrim…”

I cut off my sentence there, and looked at the Prince’s face.
What I have to negotiate with are my ballpoint pen, and the new notebook that I bought as a spare.
I’ll need the notebooks I’m currently using and my binder notebook for when I return back to Japan after all, and my permanent marker and mechanical pencil are probably not all that useful. As for my textbooks, they’re meaningless to the people of this world after all, so I’ve judged that amongst my belongings, the ballpoint pen and new notebook have the most value in this negotiation.

“Please… buy my most important thing(, the stationery that I brought from my old world)!”

 

40 thoughts on “I’m Back in the Other World? – Chapter 11”

      1. I suppose, though I can very much so her leading her own little culinary revolution.
        That said, “revolutionize the world you’re born into” is kind of a mandate for a reborn-type story, so I suppose culinary revolutions (however minor) would be part and parcel of that.

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    2. Apparently the kinds of people who write these stories care about food much more than the average person. Who knows?

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      1. Considering that whenever I leave capital and go to the countryside, I always crave old foods… Yeah, I can see why a Japanese would crave Jap food. They were very rich people, so the food and the cooking are high quality.

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    4. I’d say 1. national pride, 2. Japanese food (at the right price and grade) does taste really good, 3. as an Asian country hunger is not that distant of a a memory so food very important (my Chinese family until recently still asked ‘eat yet?’ as a greeting), and 4. Japanese views of Medieval cuisine have been influenced my Western misconceptions that it was very bland and horrid. For example, as a kid, I saw an “educational” video that said that the medieval upper class used pepper to disguise the taste of rotten meat. Think about that for a moment. Pepper was about as valuable as good by weight, why would they waste it on rotted meat? That makes no sense, but I’ve heard it repeated more than once. Another fellow online said that he bought a goose drumstick at a medieval re-enactment fair, and the cook left out the salt, because he had read that medieval cooks didn’t use spices including salt. I could go further, but middle age cooking got a bum rap in the West and simply carried over.

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      1. All good point. I suppose my point is less that they miss food from their homeland (which I completely understand, given that I grew up half a planet away from where I now live, and I randomly pine for food from my homeland) and more that it feels like several of these protagonists are also unreasonably good cooks. But perhaps I am being unduly influenced by a salient minority of rebirth stories when I say this, and they are no more common than in regular non-rebirth displacement-type stories.

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  5. why not charge the prince for the cookies he ate? at 10 gold a piece she could make a tidy sum. ;-) “my most important thing” to most girls… isnt something they are willing to sell.

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  7. Well, those things are unique. Got high desirability factor if you raise the perception, which is a matter of marketing.

    A girl’s virginity, to a prince and knight captain, is dime a dozen in that world. Well, not that cheap, but not that rare, either.

    Also, that chopboard doesnt consider herself to be a beauty, since she’s lacking her useless meats. So that would be low in selling price.

    Morality aside, I mean.

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  14. Oh boy, I reeealllyyyy want to see their reactions in the next chapter. I feel like I will lmao so much I’ll die

    Thanks for the chapter!

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  15. I always chuckle at the paragraph on yen/”other world money” explanation. It’s in many WN, and it’s always ridiculous :D.
    If there is no commerce between the 2 worlds, there is no possible exchange rate. At least here he quickly switch to the local money…

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      1. Oh I didn’t (yet) read that one, but just for that I will read it :).
        Yeah it is sort of a tacit convention between reincarnation/transported authors to always try to tie the local money to the yen. It’s a simple but really bad way to give people a sense of what’s cheap and what’s expensive.
        The good way is simply to never mention yen and always write local prices, and then readers will naturally understand…

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