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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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maybe explained someday, but not today

Don’t forget to get out for some exercise once in a while! Yuru Camp isn’t as athletic as its mountain-trotting cousin Yama no Susume, but the campers get some mileage in nonetheless.

The Fuji Five Lakes (in the established rendering and the one used here) are, of course, five lakes near Fuji. All five are on the Yamanashi side. Kawaguchi’s closest to Fujiyoshida, where we were last episode. Far out to the west lies Lake Motosu, which you’ll remember from the main series.

Just to remind you, ‘-ko’ means ‘lake’, and so ‘Lake Kawaguchiko’ is abomination.

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god no, what

This show is actually just an ad for Yamanashi. If you were expecting actual room activities, you were a fool.

The Fujisan World Heritage Center is of course a real place, in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi. They’re all going to be in Yamanashi.

The myriad ‘local Fujis’ are mostly named after the area they’re in. The one exception this episode is Nanbukata Fuji, which is actually Mt. Iwate. One explanation is that ‘Nanbu’ (‘Southern Part’) refers to the side of Iwate that looks like Fuji (the pretty southern part; viewed from the north, Iwate’s kind of deformed). Another is that that side of Iwate looks like Fuji when Fuji is viewed from the south (i.e. Shizuoka). ‘Kata’ (‘partial’, ‘one (of two)’, ‘one-sided’, whatever else you want) perhaps refers to that the mountain’s deformed and only one side is pretty, or that only one side looks like Fuji, or that the south side is the side that looks like Fuji, or it looks like the south side of Fuji, or any number of things. It’s one of those things nobody actually knows. ‘Nanbukata Fuji’ might not be the best way to break up that combination (as it’s unclear where the adjectives end and how they attach), but it really doesn’t matter and it was better to be consistent with the other ones. Just for your interest.

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