how -do- you choose sweet potatoes?

And that concludes the stamp rally! The girls are south of Koufu somewhere. The bathhouse appears to be called Mitama no Yu in reality.

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oh no

For once, no notes. It’s a pretty straightforward episode! They’re in Narusawa, famous for the ice caves (or ice cave singular; it’s not a terribly meaningful distinction).

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good format?

Do you want to visit Yamanashi yet?

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this is also Bill Clinton’s favourite snacc

Aoi’s accent is subbed a little more aggressively in this episode. Somehow this is the first time our hand’s really been forced. Apologies for the inconsistency; it may be similar moving forward.

Shingen’s banner says 風林火山, a phrase for which he is quite well known. You can look it up. The ‘hidden bath’ (隠し湯) is used to describe baths that allegedly were for the private use of lords and such (ironically, they’re in a town this episode called Shimobe, which could be read ‘peasant’), and gives a sense of a higher quality. 隠し kind of means ‘hiding’ or ‘a state of hiddenness’ more generally, and so it makes perfect sense in Japanese when Aoi interprets it as something more like ‘hiding bath’.

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jesus

They can’t get enough of this houtou business, can they? Aki notes that the only real requirement is to use houtou noodles (which are their own type, a la ramen or udon), and she’s probably not totally insane. That thing up there is, though.

Shichimi and kabocha are a spice mixture and a type of squash, respectively. You probably already knew that.

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good lord

Why does Aoi have that accent if she’s been in Yamanashi that long?

Note: The Balinese ruin probably refers to Goa Gajah and its ilk.

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her eyes are just her eyebrows inverted

It’s like one of Aesop’s fables, but better in every way.

This story is about one Mt. Kachikachi. The original story actually has nothing to do with a race, and you can look it up if you’re interested. Only the core element, which is a rabbit messing with a tanuki, is really preserved in the show. In any case, this note is about the pun. ‘Kachikachi’ is the sound of fire crackling, and when the rabbit sets the tanuki on fire, the latter asks what the noise is. The rabbit claims that it’s just old Mt. Kachikachi, who they happen to be near to, making noise again. That’s pun number one, the sound of fire. Number two is a complication introduced by Heya, who mashed this up with the Tortoise and the Hare. It now being a race, the players can declare victory, which is ‘kachi’ in Japanese. That’s number two. They were dealt with as ‘catching’ (as in ‘to catch fire’, when Aoi’s banging flint) and ‘catch me’ respectively.

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…A person with a pine cone for a nose?

Hot pot’s good for winter months. Stay warm, and watch out for surprise attacks!

Pareidolia’s rather broader than mentioned in the episode here, being any pattern in any ambiguous or random visual context, but it is, as here, usually applied to faces.

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