Along, long time ago, humanity and the gods lived in total harmony. The gods took pleasure in creating favorable conditions so that plants, people and animals could thrive and grow. The world was a carefree place to live. People failed to realize just how lucky they were. They could get more than enough to eat without any effort. For the gods had invented a perfect, wonderful, nourishing food-a food called rice.
In those days, vast quantities of rice came right out of the ground, already warm and ready to eat. Unfortunately, people wasted this precious resource. They would gather more of it than they needed and throw large amounts of leftovers away at the end of each meal. All that waste enraged the gods. They got together and decided to punish humanity for showing so little respect for nature and its generosity.
The Goddess of the earth, who was also the Goddess of Rice, got an idea: she would hide the rice by sealing it up inside a sacred quartz stone.
The next morning, people got up as usual and went out to collect the rice that had grown during the night. But they discovered that not a single grain of rice had appeared. The same scene awaited them in the following days. So the people soon had to face the fact that the rice had stopped growing. That meant that they had to learn how to clear the ground, work the land, make things grow themselves. And they did, but after they had worked so hard and the rice stalks were finally filled with grains, birds swooped down to peck at them.