CH 198

Well, there’s no point in rushing now at this point.

According to Donny-san, that shining magic ball-like magic device came with a feature that allowed the other party to know if the recipient had read the message or not. Like ‘they’ve seen it!’ kind of feeling. And Donny-san had already activated the said feature. Which meant Sarasa and the others who were on the other side of the ball must’ve already known that we were all safe and sound.

The three of us had already arrived in another country. Most probably, even if we all rushed back home in a wagon from here, it would still take us about a month to reach Resta. In that case, it was never too late to enjoy what this city, Howai, could offer.  In fact, it would be more beneficial for me to broaden my future cooking repertoire here first. Especially that fish-based cuisine that we had in the hot-spring hotel.

And so, Yurina-san and I were currently sightseeing in Howai. Of course, Ash was coming with us too. 

The fish sauce and that ginger-like condiment we had at Seagull Pavilion was especially exquisite so I went looking for them in town and I managed to purchase a jar of fish sauce. I told them that I wanted to make a regular purchase once a month through Sarasa’s store at Resta and gave them several gold coins as advance payment. As for the ginger, they were selling it with sprouts along with its soil attached so I decided to buy several of them to carry home with. I planned on growing ginger in my garden.

There were also a great variety of other seafood stuff from dried fish to preserved fish in fish sauce, to some of which were frozen in ice with magic. However, if I bought too much, I wouldn’t be able to carry them all with me. So, I made a list of what was currently available and bought just enough to put in the wagon for now. 

But nevertheless, dried scallop alone or stock made from dried scallop sure sounds delicious, huh…

I had a taste of a shellfish with a similar texture to a whelk dipped in fish sauce and the flavor of it was simply excellent as a sake snack. Yurina-san and Ash also liked it. Since these two items had a relatively long shelf life, I wanted to find a way so I could enjoy them back at my home too. Maybe I could freeze them in ice or something? 

My dream just keeps getting bigger, huh…

I also wanted to buy some of Howai’s special products as a souvenir for Sarasa and the others. Instead of bear carvings, they were selling some sort of hot spring ape monster wooden carvings, which was said to be the speciality of Howai so I bought 10 of them. 

This ape monster certainly has a similar form to your typical local mascot character like Kumamon so I guess these wooden carvings would be great as a souvenir? 

Actually, there were a lot more people who had done their best for our sake but still, as expected, we couldn’t possibly carry enough souvenirs for all of them in our wagon. At the very least, I wanted to give some souvenirs to those fours, who were exceptionally best friends to all of us. 

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T/N: Most (if not all) of Japan’s tourist-sy cities have their own local character. Usually in the form of local specialty like apple or mochi or anything. Kumamon is a mascot character from Kumamoto. Also, I’m sorry for the late update. I almost died from food poisoning.