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A long time ago a lovely old man lived with his wife in a small mountain village. One day while he was working in the field, a little pooch escaped to him and was being chased by a vicious old man.
"Help me or my master will kill me," said the puppy. "What happened to you?" Asked the lovely man. "This is my dog. He ate my fish. I will kill him.", The malicious man interrupted the conversation. "Please forgive the dog. He didn't know the fish was yours. By the way, would you sell me the dog for 10,000 yen?" Asked the lovely man. "10,000 yen? That's not enough. I gave him a lot of food. But I'm selling him for 100,000 yen," said the evil man. "That's expensive. But if I can save his life with it, I'll pay," replied the lovable man.
Now the dog belonged to the lovable man. He and his wife loved him and gave him the name "Pochi".One day the man was walking with Pochi on a mountain and the dog suddenly started barking loudly out of the blue. "Dig here, dig here, woof, woof, woof," said the dog.
"Is there something buried there? Okay, I'll check it out then," said the man.
"Oh, my goodness! I found a lot of gold coins. Thank you Pochi. What a wonderful dog you are Pochi!"
When the evil man found out about this incident, he secretly stole Pochi, took him to the mountain, and forced the dog to do the same for him as it did for the lovable man. "Dig here," said the dog aloud.
"Okay, I found a box. A box full of snakes! I'll kill you, Pochi!" The evil man killed Pochi and the lovable man was very sad about the dog's death and buried the animal in his garden. Soon after, something unusual happened. A large tree grew out of the grave and a mysterious voice rang out from nowhere "Carve a mortar out of the tree."said the voice.
So the lovable man felled the tree and carved a mortar out of it. When he put the rice in the mortar, something strange happened again. The rice turned into gold coins.
When the wicked man found out, his wife stole the mortar and put rice in it, but nothing happened. The man burned the mortar out of sheer anger.
The lovable old man and his wife found only the ashes of the mortar and were very disappointed, but took the ashes with them. The ashes, however, were able to make cherry trees bloom.
One day the man was summoned to the landlord's court. When he threw the ashes between the branches of the bare cherry trees, they immediately blossomed.
The landlord was delighted and rewarded the lovable man.
When the evil man found out about it, he also went to see the landlord. "I am the wonderful old man who can make the cherry trees bloom. I can conjure up the most beautiful cherry blossoms on your withered branches that you have ever seen."said the malicious man.
He threw his ashes in the air, but nothing happened. Much more tragic was that the ashes got in the eyes of the landlord and he had thrown the wicked man in prison out of sheer anger.

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