(This book was first published on Zongheng Chinese.com, address: http:///book/925019.html)

In the 14th year of Tenbo's division (December), the three of Naohide returned to Edominato. It's hard to say how the wanderer feels when he returns to his hometown, maybe because of the different mentality, the same trees, when traveling abroad, seem to have more feelings, or are more pleasing to the eye or more irritating, but in his hometown it only seems that it should be like this.

The tour lasted about 100 days, starting from Nagatsuki (September) and returning from the division (December), and although the absence was not long, Edo still gave people a subtle different feeling, as if it had become another Edo, the familiar scenery and pedestrians became much more friendly, and some muddy roads did not spoil everyone's pleasant mood.

"I'm back"*3, to my surprise, there was actually someone in the house of the Hori family, and Naohide opened the door and saw that it was Gakujiro's sister Eiko covering her mouth in surprise. After that, Hayato ran out first, Katsugoro followed closely, and Toranosuke's mother, Hanako's mother, also appeared with a smile on her face.

It turned out that Hanako's mother and Eiko knew that Naohide had returned recently, so they came over today to help Naohide clean the room, and Hayato and Katsugoro followed to help, and they happened to wait for Naohide.

"It's still comfortable at home", drinking hot tea, Naoxiu sighed. Eiko stayed behind to take care of Naohide, Hanako's mother, Toranosuke, and Gakujiro went home first with the luggage and gifts, and Hayato and Katsugoro on the side happily fiddled with the travel gifts that Naohide brought back to them.

It's going to be cold in a few days, and now it's the coldest time in Edo, and the brazier in the room is burning vigorously, and it still can't stop the cold, but Naohide's heart is still hot. No matter how far you go, only here are memories and you can feel at home.

Eiko finished cleaning the room and reluctantly said goodbye to Naohide, Naohide thought about it and told Eiko that the gift she gave her was a tortoiseshell hairpin from Nagasaki, which had been taken away by Nakjuro first, and she left happily.

Naoxiu walked around the house, and the cleaning was very clean, and it seemed that Hanako's mother and Yingzi usually came. Turning back to the living room, he called Hayato and Katsugoro over to ask them about their studies, and the two little ones began to squeak.

Naohide entrusted them to his uncle Taro Takemae before leaving, Hanako's mother was very kind to the two of them, there was no shortage of food and clothing, and according to Naohide's opinion, they were sent to the temple house, and their grades in reading, writing, and abacus were not bad, but in mathematics, they had a dispute with the teacher.

Naohide usually lectures to the children of the neighborhood at home, and his knowledge of mathematics is very different from that of Fuso counting at this time. Fusang follows the Chinese numbers, calculations, abacus and Suzhou yards, and where Zhixiu understands these, he directly teaches Arabic numerals.

About 4,000 years ago, the Phoenicians on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean invented the alphabet, and both the Greeks and Hebrews used the letters of the alphabet to represent numbers in turn. About 2,000 years ago, the ancient Romans created a unique way of writing numbers: I, II., III., etc.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Indians first used l, 2, 3...... 9 These nine numbers, around the 8th century AD, the Indians invented "0". The Arabs introduced Indian numerals to West Asia, North Africa, and Europa, hence the name "Arabic numerals".

On the oracle bones of Yinxu 3,000 years ago, there are special numbers representing "one, ten, hundred, thousand, and thousand". Later, China created the symbol "O" to represent empty spaces, which has the same effect as the "0" in "Arabic numerals". After that, the calculation, the abacus and the Suzhou yard appeared one after another.

Fuso fully embraced the influence of Chinese numerals, using Chinese numerals, calculations, abacus, and Suzhou yards.

China came into contact with Arabic numerals at the beginning of the eighth century AD, but they did not spread. The first to popularize Arabic numerals in modern times was Zhu Wenxiong, who proposed in his book "Jiangsu New Alphabet" published in 1906 that all numerals in the book should be Arabic numerals. In 1908, Liu Mengyang set up a special chapter in his "Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Character Book" to describe the writing of Arabic numerals in the written language, and made relatively complete provisions. However, it was not until the fifties of the twentieth century, when Chinese books and periodicals were changed to horizontal layout, that the use of Arabic numerals gradually spread.

In Naohide's original world, Arabic numerals were introduced to Fuso along with Lanxue books, and they were not used until after the end of the Edo period and the Meiji period, and they were called "arithmetic numbers" and "foreign numbers".

As for the timing of the switch to horizontal rows in Fuso's books, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that horizontal rows appeared on a large scale.

Naohide couldn't help but shake his head and smile wryly when he heard Hayato and Katsugoro describe their argument with their teacher about Arabic mathematics. Later, Hanako's mother had to negotiate with the teachers at Terakoya to waive most of the math classes for the two children, as long as they could plan to do so.

At this time, Toranosuke came over in new clothes to beckon Naohide to go to Takemae's house for dinner, and Naohide extinguished the brazier and left the house with the two children.

Taking off the clogs and opening the door, Naohide smiled all of a sudden, it turned out that his uncle Taro Takemae was rubbing hemp with Nakamura Shoichi, Kojima Shigeru, and Nakajima Kuroo. "I'm back", Naohide bowed and sat down, everyone said kind words like "hard work" in their mouths, but they still didn't stop in their hands, Naohide understood very well, who can resist the charm of mahjong.

Hayato and Katsugoro ran away, not knowing whether to go to the kitchen or go out to show off their gifts to their friends.

Hanako's mother brought Naohide a cup of tea and complained to him, "Since Kinokuniya Rihachi sent mahjong, these family owners have never gone to the jujube house to help" - Naohide didn't dare to say that the method of making this mahjong was what he told Rihachi.

There are many families in Takemae and the house is warm, Naohide rested for a while, and Yingzi wore a new dress to give Naohide a miscellaneous cook, and sat quietly on the side and watched him. The mixed cooking is delicious, the newly made rice cake is very springy, and the soup tastes good. After Naoxiu finished eating, he handed the dishes and chopsticks to Yingzi, Yingzi looked at him quietly, Naoxiu smiled slightly, "The new clothes look good, and the hairpin is also very suitable for you", Yingzi left satisfied.

When Naohide got off the ship today, in addition to settling the remaining fare, he also asked the merchant who accompanied the ship to help send some Satsuma black pork meat to Takema's house in Shinjuku. Therefore, today's main dish is sukiyaki and one-person pot, the four heads of the house and Naohide eat sukiya, and Hanako's mother, Eiko, and Toranosuke take the children to eat one-person pot.

There were already hot pots in the Edo period, but they were basically "one-person pots", and because the current Shichiwa charcoal stoves and braziers have a smaller heat source, only shallow and smaller-sized pots can be used, and the ingredients for one person are full. The scene of a one-man pot often appears in Edo ukiyo-e themes.

The current sukiyaki pot is an invention of Naohide, and for this purpose, Naohide specially made several seven-wheel charcoal stoves with large sizes, and also gave one to his uncle's family.

In later generations, the sukiyaki pot was a beef hot pot, with ingredients including beef, bonito flakes, burdock, seasonal vegetables, green onions, onions, tofu, konjac shreds, kelp, enoki mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, chrysanthemum, baby cabbage, etc., and condiments include butter, spicy radish puree, chopped green onions, raw eggs, homemade vinegar, soy sauce, rock sugar, mirin, sake, etc., and the soup base is generally seafood soup or dashi.

Now eat beef, the public doesn't dare to ah, there is black pork meat is very good, Satsuma black porpoise is said to have grown up from the snack Satsuma taro, the taste is very good, many daimyo and high-ranking samurai say that Satsuma black porpoise is game, game is not within the scope of the vegetarian order, so everyone can eat.

Chinese hot pot and Fusang hot pot are very different ways to eat, Chinese hot pot is shabu-shabu, while Fusang hot pot is generally fried first and then shabu-shabu, and there is also a way to eat is "put less water or no water, directly simmer the ingredients, and use the moisture of the ingredients to heat the food and cook", claiming to maintain the original taste of the food.

In addition, Fuso hot pot is generally oil-free or less oily, sukiyaki pot is generally eaten with a bowl of rice, and other Fuso hot pot also has the way to eat rice in the hot pot to make hot pot porridge in the final stage.

Today's sukiyaki pot is fried first and then eaten, everyone sits together, eating quite happily, eating hot pot and drinking sake in winter, it is really enjoyable.

The four heads of the family asked Naoxiu about his study tour and whether he encountered difficulties on the way. In these years, the public security is extremely chaotic, and people disappear on the way from time to time, Zhixiu briefly introduced the situation of the study tour, and pulled the scenery along the way, the four family owners are actually quite vulgar, and they don't care about what he learned from the study tour, and slowly the topic is far away.

Chatting and talking, let's talk about the personnel changes of the shogunate, not long after Naohide left Edo, the chief old man Nakamizuno Echizen Mamoru Tadakuni was deposed, and there was a lot of discussion among the shogunates, and there were two reasons for the recall according to the grapevine, one was that the "Upper Knowledge" offended people and was dismissed by slander; One is "the grudge of food, not to be settled", offending the public.

As the official official of the Edo Shogunate, he was the official of the Shogunate and was in charge of the affairs of the Shogunate, and was the highest official position of the Shogunate without the appointment of an elder, with a quota of four to five members, who took turns to manage different affairs on a monthly basis, and in principle, the candidates were selected from among the daimyo of the 25,000 koku realm or more.

(The Elder is the highest official in Edo who is the assistant shogun, overseeing all the affairs of the shogunate, and has a status above the old man, and is only established in extraordinary times, with only one person, similar to the prime minister of China.) Because the rights are too large, they are basically not set up in normal times. ）

The "Shochi Order", also known as the "Fiefdom Exchange Order", issued in the 14th year of Tenpo, stated that "the daimyo and the flag were located in a radius of ten miles around Edo and five miles from Osaka, and they were under the direct jurisdiction of the shogunate." The princes and banners within this range shall be transferred to other lands." At this time, the Fusang one "li" was about equal to 3,927 meters in later generations.

The princes and banners within the scope of the Shogunate's order are basically the daimyo and the big body banners of the shogunate, and this time they stabbed the hornet's nest, who wants to run to the countryside, so they put pressure on them, and the princess and Mizuno couldn't bear it, so Mizuno had to resign.

There is also a theory that Gongkata (Shogun) Jiakei likes to eat the sweet vinegar ginger sprouts attached to the grilled fish (the taste is similar to the ginger slices attached to sushi, but the shape is different, slender and long, and the whole root is pickled), but Mizuno Tadabuni implemented a "saving order", and ginger sprouts are one of the "forbidden items", so during the ginger sprout season, even if it is the shogun's table, sweet vinegar ginger sprouts cannot appear. There is a Japanese proverb that "if you eat a grudge, you can't settle it", so three years later, Mizuno Tadakuni was deposed.

Naohide knew that Mizuno Tadashi would be reappointed as the "chief elder" next year, and the reason given by the public party was that "foreign disputes need to be handled by the ministers", so the reason for "food grievances cannot be settled" is a rumor.

The sky is high and the emperor is far away, gossip is the nature of human beings, and everyone is just happy, but Naohide understands that his opportunity is coming, because it is Masahiro Abe who will take over the position of chief lieutenant of Mizuno Tadakuni in the future, and Masahiro Abe Ise has met him and showed that he appreciates himself at that time.

The opportunity to embark on the road to Qingyun finally appeared in front of Zhixiu.