When they stepped out of the house, they were greeted by roughly a dozen people waiting in various small groups and chatting with each other. As they noticed Ayami stepping outside dressed for the day's work, they slowly, one by one, turned to face her and the unfamiliar foreigner with her. Waiting for everyone’s attention, Eva noticed people shooting each other glances, though she was a bit surprised that there was no hushed whispering or anything.

“Good morning Everyone.” Ayami greeted her assembled workers only moments after, which was replied to with more or less vigor from all the employees. “For the next week, this young woman will be working alongside all of you. Even if she is not experienced, please take her under your wings so that she can be a good help.”

After getting a light tap on her back, Eva took a step forward and gave a shallow bow before introducing herself. “Nice to meet all of you. I am Eva Mayer, and looking forward to working with you and learning from you all.” Finishing her introduction, Eva bowed once more before standing around unsurely as everyone gave her some polite smiles, in a few cases looking a tad strained.

A few moments of awkwardness later, Ayami waved to dismiss the lot of them as she urged, “Now get to work everyone.” While most of the workers quickly dispersed, one young man, maybe a few years Eva’s senior, approached the confused and overwhelmed kitsune.

“Greetings, I am Tanaka Asahi.” He introduced himself with a friendly smile. “And as it seems no one else feels responsible for showing you around, that honor falls to me.”

“Ah, Thank you.” Eva said, offering him her hand for a shake unsurely.

“Now come, Let’s make ourselves useful.” He said cheerfully before waving for her to follow him into the Larger building. This time, entering from the other end of the L-shaped structure, Eva found herself in a small room seemingly stuffed with industrial pots, some of which were already being filled with rice and water. Asahi though directed her to the side of this room, where a wooden staircase, refitted with rubber mats to stop slipping, led up to a storage area under the roof.

“Here’s where we store the rice.” He explained as they dodged people, mostly men, carrying the big sacks of rice out of storage and down to the ground floor. “We don’t polish our rice ourselves, so we buy some at the right grade from other breweries that operate all year and store it up here.”

“Why don’t you do that yourself?” The Kitsune inquires as she squats down to help her guide with one of the large sacks. Once they lift it, She realizes they easily weigh dozens of kilos as she struggles to hold her side up enough to not scrape along the floor.

“We only make Sake for a few months a year.” He began to explain slowly, clearly straining to carry the rice as well. “So Buying modern machines would be too expensive. And doing it the old fashioned way would take too much time. I am also told they make too much noise for how thin all the walls are.”

“I see.” Eva replied between hard breaths as they reached the stairs and slowly descended towards the pot filled floor. Once down there she was more or less dragged over to an as of yet unused pot, where Asahi told her to drop the sack on a little slightly raised wooden board that creaked slightly under the weight.

“That’s to keep the rice from getting wet too early once the first batches are done cooking.” He explained before pointing over to a rag of large bags,or maybe towels, Eva couldn’t quite make out what the fabric had been sewn into. “Go get two of those while I fill up the pot.”

With a quick nod her only reply, the young German quickly walked over and grabbed two of the pieces of fabric. As she crossed the room, people seemed to either not actually mind her presence. Or more likely, they were too lost in their work to notice her passing them in the first place.

As she made her way back, she noticed Asahi filling the pot with water from a long hose he must have dragged across the room.

“Ah good. Do you know how to wash rice?” he asked as she returned. When he got a nod in reply, he pointed to a pair of wooden buckets and a second hose. “Then I’ll take these off of you, and you can start washing the rice bucket by bucket.”

Nodding once more Eva took the knife he offered her as well. Using it to cut open the bag, Eva then quickly filled the larger bucket half way with rice using the smaller one, before filling it the rest of the way with water and washing the rice.

“Uh, Mr. Tanaka?” Eva tried to get the man’s attention as he finished draping one of the fabric pieces very loosely over the pot. Once he looked over she indicated the bucket of mildly cloudy water before her. “Where do I pour this?”

“Just on the floor, there are drains all over, so don’t worry.” He replied with a smile. “And once you are done, throw the rice on here.” Indicating the fabric over the pot he then turns away after seemingly noticing a co-worker. “I’ll be right back, just do this until about five buckets of rice are washed and in the pot.” With that, he walked off towards another worker, probably female from what Eva could make out.

Doing as she was told, Eva was just finishing with bucket number five, when Asahi returned.

“Hey, Just asked Ms Satou, and she wouldn’t mind if you joined us for our usual lunch later. If you would like to join us that is.” He said, a smile creeping on his face as he noted how much rice was weighing down the fabric on the pot.

“Ah, sure. I did bring a bento, but that should keep for dinner as well.” Eva mumbled, a bit unsure how to reply to such an unexpectedly forward invitation.

“Great. Now I’ll carefully lower this in, while you prepare the next batch of rice.”

“Why is that piece of fabric in there?” Eva wonders aloud as she fills the bucket up once again.

“So we can remove and carry around the rice more easily once it is cooked.” Waving towards a set of large double doors opposite the entrance he continues. “Most of the rice from this morning we’ll carry over there, where it’ll be seeded with koji. Now come on, we need to fill this top completely and get the rice cooking.”