The narrator tells us that he was able to participate in a rice eating contest for free. He's got to figure out how to win the prize money, so he's going to keep track of the monk's eating habits. The narrator asks the innkeeper at the inn where the monk is staying if he can stay the night. The innkeeper says he'll take the monk to the room where the buddhist is staying. The monk says he can feel the two-thirds of the omelette he ate earlier in the day, but the monk can't tell if it's the second or the third tray of rice. It's hard to believe that the monk ate so much food in such a short period of time, the narrator says. He tells the innkeeper he was the monk who tried the rice-eating contest, and he was surprised at the amount of food the monk had eaten. He wants to know if there's another rice eating competition in town, and the innkeeper says there isn't, so the monk should just continue his life as a monk.