[Hikari's Izakaya Diary] Heading North for Dinner, Heading Home Fatter (1/21/2023)

Every time I get to hang out with the team, or with Soda-sensei and all our action directors, I'm reminded how lucky I am that I decided to join this crew.

Because, I mean, look at this incredible crab (kidding, kidding~~~

Huge thumbs up to Liv for handling the menu! Besides heading home to vote, this trip north also meant a dinner with the SODAART crew — and, okay, let's be honest, it was also for my 10K-subscriber red envelope! Thank you so much for the generosity, boss — this trip north was basically eat AND take home a prize, truly a happy occasion, especially since our table was small... there was way more food than we could finish XDDD. I really shouldn't be having this much fun. I also got some souvenirs from Japan from Zhima-chan, who I was meeting for the second time — I'll share those on stream sometime soon. I also got to meet a few action directors I hadn't seen before, including A-Zhe and Dandan. Really enjoyed talking with them and hope we get the chance to hang out again.

And this time, I finally had somewhere decent to stay up north (cue happy tears). Last time I stayed at a hostel, and honestly, it wasn't a great experience — but that's actually how I met Kanzaki and Torii, a married VTuber couple, who very warmly told me I should crash at their place next time I'm in town. So this time, shamelessly, I did XD. We'd only met once before, but catching up with them felt just like meeting old friends — we talked forever. Thank you both for your warmth, it meant so much.

And, well, when I got back south, I definitely noticed I'd gained weight...

Every so often I'd see Torii's cooking photos on Twitter and immediately comment "I want to eat that!" So she promised that next time I stayed over, she'd cook me a whole table of food. Before I headed up, she even asked me directly what I wanted, told me to just place my order — and that's how we ended up with this spread of four dishes and a soup (didn't get a photo, unfortunately). I have to say, you can really tell Torii's been cooking for over a decade — her whole process was smooth, efficient, no wasted movement, and she had the whole table done in no time. Cooking with her was fun too — she streamed the whole thing and chatted with her viewers while cooking, which also happened to be my first-ever real-life collab (a viewer pointed that out and I was like, oh wait, it totally was XD). Super fun experience. And the food — I don't even need to say it — I had three bowls of rice... and cleaned out every single dish on the table except the mapo tofu. So good...

This week's journal is a make-up post for last week QWQ. My brain's been running a little slow lately, especially with my trip abroad getting closer. Hoping I can get everything wrapped up smoothly over the next month or so. See you all in the next journal!