After having a blast compressing a Summer’s worth of activities into one day at Shiina’s estate, this week finds the girls mired in acute Summer Fatigue, a state that would have had more impact if I were watching this in the actual Summer, rather than in the dead of winter with sub-zero winds howling outside my window.
After snapping a rare picture of Kirin with no appetite, Ryou decides that broiled eel is the answer: a tasty meal that will give them the stamina to stand up to Summer. Personally, I’m a huge fan of eel (I usually acquire it in the form of unagi maki rolls) and this dish looked as delectable as ever.
But even after the eel, Kirin still feels like her “body is asking for something” she hasn’t yet eaten. Then the A/C goes out, and they retreat to the bath to wash off their sweat. Kirin then gets the idea to eat ice cream in the bath, which is, as she says, a very luxurious thing to do, like doing anything in the bathtub that isn’t bathing (watching TV, for instance, is pretty fun. Just keep the cord away from the water!)
Yet even that doesn’t hit the spot bothering Kirin. Once out of the bath, she spots a can of sweet beans and Ryou makes her a quick Azuki bean soup with mochi, which turns out to be what her body was asking for. Ryou acts against her better judgement and tries some soup too, and pays for it with a stomachache. There’s no way eel, ice cream, beans and mochi will go well together in any stomach (other than Kirin’s, which seems to be perfectly fine.)
This episode was more about the tastes and textures of food, but the whole sensory experience of cooling off in the Summer, which consists of a variety of specific sights and sounds. The color of the sky, the smell of a mosquito coil, the sound of a wind chime, the waving of a fan; all these little things contribute to the cooling sensation that made non-A/C Summer days and nights not only tolerable, but pleasing.
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