Japanese Country Cooking

Hi folks!

Like us, you might've been intrigued by the home-cooked dinner Rena brought in Day 14 to tempt Keiichi: vegetable miso? side dishes? What are those?

We were lucky enough to find Domo, a restaurant in Denver, Colorado that serves Japanese country-style cooking - including the same kinds of mouth-watering dishes Rena made! They even have a detailed explanation of side dishes.

Feast your eyes on (not) Rena's home cooking!

This was Mion's lunch order. The entree is Unagi-don, grilled eel on rice; the soup is vegetable miso - a lot like your standard miso with tofu & seaweed, but with the addition of thinly-sliced daikon and other vegetables.

The three dishes behind the unagi & miso are the side dishes of the day (for lunch) - on this particular day, the side dishes were, from left to right: kinpira gobo, burdock root; hijiki ni, hijiki seaweed & green beans; and renkon to kiriboshi no nimono, which is lotus root & dried daikon strips (we think - our dish had lotus root, anyway).

Oh yes - they didn't have them at that lunch, but Domo does prepare some dishes with mountain vegetables.

Anyway, we enjoyed our taste of country cooking and the extra understanding it gave us for Keiichi's excitement at the prospect of a home-cooked meal ^^

Mion

Onikakushi Day 14 Release!

(Updated Aug 13 2009 to remove old links)
Hi everybody! Sorry for the long wait!

The Sonozaki Futago-tachi English patch for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi (Days 1-5,9-14) is now ready!

This release features Keiichi's favorite cup ramen, ginger tonkotsu (pork-bone) flavor. The pictured ramen cup is not exactly the same, since it's just tonkotsu without the ginger. It does taste pretty good, though a little sodium-heavy like most cup ramen. (The image on the lid is pretty accurate, actually - it even came with the scallions!)

You'll need the original Japanese game Higurashi no Naku Koro ni in order to play this translation; go to our Getting the game post if you don't have the game already. Acquiring our releases will tell you how to get our latest patches.

As always, let us know what you think, or if you encounter problems playing the translated game.

We've made a number of changes to earlier days based on comments from our new native Japanese helper, so now quite a few scenes make a lot more sense - take a look! (At least our mistakes didn't affect the main flow of the story ^^;;)
We'd also like to warn everyone that we changed Rika's speaking style, so don't be alarmed if it catches you off guard.

Anyway, well. A lot happens to Keiichi today, and things go from bad to worse very quickly. Beware of reading this late at night! The creepy marches onward!

Enjoy,
Mion

Onikakushi Day 12 Release: Shion makes Ohagi!

Hi everyone!

In honor of our Onikakushi Day 12 release, Shion decided to try making ohagi, the Japanese sweet that appears in this chapter. Ohagi are balls of sweet rice and sushi rice mixed together, with a coating of sweet red bean paste. It's fairly easy to make as far as sweets go, and the only cooking required is simmering the rice and cooking the beans (if you don't use canned bean paste like Shion did), so it works well as a summer treat. She mainly used the recipe from this book, but with some suggestions from an excellent Japanese cooking blog that also has a full recipe for ohagi if you want to try it yourself. Tip: avoid buying 'koshian', written こしあん in Japanese, since that's what Shion used and it ended up being too soft and sticky to form a good coating. Either get a can of the chunkier 'tsubushian' (つぶしあん) if you can find it, or a can of the red azuki beans to make it yourself per the recipe instructions.

Which one do you think Shion made? (Hint: the one that looks like crap)

Here you can see Shion's amateurish skills, in both ohagi making and iVideo editing - both attempted for the first time on Friday!

Oh yeah, and here's that new release!

The Sonozaki Futago-tachi English patch for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi (Days 1-5,9-12) is now ready! Check Acquiring our releases to find out how to get the patches and the original Higurashi games.

As always, let us know what you think, or if you encounter problems playing the translated game.

Enjoy the steadily-growing creepy, and BEWARE THE OHAGI!
Mion