On the twelfth of the first month, no rain. Following on from the harbor of Nahan, we reached Murotsu.
In the days that followed, wind and waves were too rough to put out, and we stayed at Murotsu day after day. Before dawn on the thirteenth a little rain fell, but it soon stopped. The women went down to a convenient spot nearby to bathe. Looking out at the sea: "The clouds all look like waves. If only there were a fisherman here, to ask which way the sea is."
As the days kept passing, everyone sighed. "When will we ever reach the capital?" they fretted. Half a month into the new year, and we could barely keep the New Year customs.
On the night of the twentieth the moon rose. There was no mountain ridge; the moon came up out of the sea. Seeing this, I thought of a man long ago named Abe no Nakamaro. When he had gone to China and was about to return to Japan, the people of that country gave him a farewell banquet at the place where he was to board ship, and in their sorrow at parting they composed Chinese poems. Unwilling to leave, he stayed until the moon of the twentieth night rose. That moon too came up out of the sea. Seeing it, Nakamaro said, "In my country, gods have composed songs like this since the age of the gods, and now people high, middle and low compose them when they are sorry to part, or glad, or sad," and he composed this poem:
"Gazing far across the blue plain of the sea, the moon I see now is the same moon that rose over Mount Mikasa at Kasuga, at home."
He thought the Chinese would not understand, but when he wrote out the meaning of the poem in Chinese characters, they seemed to grasp its heart and were deeply moved. China and this country have different languages, but the moonlight is the same, and so perhaps people's hearts are the same too.