“I wish I could dive into you.”

“I wish I could dive into you, too.”

I wish you’d move things a bit faster, like not starting the episode off by having the camera linger on two spear-carriers, and then cutting from Hero to Heroine with a really long scene transition. There’s letting the story breathe, and then there’s padding out the runtime.

Also the bad CGI explanation of “The Laws Of Respect” is going to be a regular intro? That’s 20 seconds of nonsense added to the credits that we could do without.

This week, Our Cyber Cops chase down an escaped villain into Retro Country, where everyone lives offline to the point of having dial telephones, providing some convenient isolation to make the plot work. The resulting confrontation is painfully awkward; have Our Heroes ever watched a police drama?

After that, everyone arrives at the correct place with precise timing, which is pretty impressive since Our Girl Detective was choked out, tied up, and left behind with a severely damaged car, and didn’t even contact anyone once she was back online. It took the power of sheer coincidence for her to show up just in time for the final confrontation (next week).

Verdict: this takes itself more seriously than the material deserves. I’ll give it another week, but I’m not really feeling it.

(Great Detective Chika is unrelated)

Don’t think I’ve told this story before…

During our 2022 Japan trip, my sister and I ate at Kyoto’s Hanaroku teppanyaki restaurant several times. Their amazing A5 wagyu is served with a tiny dish of sea salt, just right for sprinkling on top.

It’s really good salt, with a distinctive texture. My sister asked the waiter about it, and he came back from the kitchen with the words “tango salt”. Some quick googling revealed this to be sea salt harvested on the Tango Peninsula north of Kyoto.

I texted her the kanji and the search began. Grocery stores, gift shops, gourmet shops, Amazon Japan, etc. By the time we made it back to her place in Chicago, she’d bought at least half a dozen different types of salt, looking for that distinctive texture (which the restaurant had helpfully supplied a sample of…).

As I was packing up to drive back to Ohio, she gave me one of the bags from Amazon, and said “I think this one is the closest.” I immediately pointed at the sticker in the upper-left corner that read, in English, “TangoGoodGoods”; she’d found it without realizing it.

I’m reminded of this because the last time she was in Japan for work, she picked up more for both of us. And now the weather is right for grilling steaks.

I’m not springing for wagyu, though. That’s a post-lottery retirement thing.

Speaking of Japan,

A while back my sister was chatting with two friends who were planning a trip to Japan, and they asked her for advice. She pulled up the Trello board we use as a trip planner and emailed them a long list of possibilities: hotels, shopping, restaurants, sights, random fun things, etc.

Fast-forward to their return, and they called her to rave about the country and her recommendations. When she asked what they’d done, their answer was “everything; everything on your list”.

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