Reading Report: 26 July 2026

ダンジョン飯

ダンジョン飯

I finished Dungeon Meshi and had a very pleasant time all the way through from start to end. The final few volumes went about the way I expected, but they were still very enjoyable to read. Laios' handling of the demon contract was very in line with classic fairytales and the aftermath of it all, especially the uncertainty about what happens afterwards, was very engaging. I still think Izutsumi was sort of a forgotten character, and to be honest towards the end even Senshi starts to feel like a background character despite cooking being such a key part of the series. Still I strongly recommend the series. It strikes a good balance of humour and heartfelt storytelling, though it probably has a few too many characters by the end.

モンスターハンターワイルズ

I played a bunch more of this this week because the addiction continues. I managed to finish all the side quests available to me, which included catching the スナノリュウセイ, which I'm proud to have captured without any online assistance. The endemic life in this game and Monster Hunter World are my favourite parts of the games. I just love the balance of realism and magic that goes into all of the breathing parts of the world. Another example of my love of the little guys was in Dragon Quest X which doesn't have little guy catching (though it does have fishing which I did a lot of) but it does have a lot of ambient low-poly creatures which I documented in screenshots and recordings as I played the game. More games should just have little guys to document.
I got to over Hunter Rank 110 and I've had no luck at all finding a Lagiacrus gem. Sword and Shield is completely broken in this game just like it is in every game.

As a side note (probably should get its own entry but whatever), I also booted up my save of Monster Hunter P2G on my Vita. My save had exclusively used light bowgun but I was in a sword and shield mood so I made a few okay swords and hunted some monsters. I mostly just wanted to mention it because even though I'm in end-game high rank in Wilds, the struggle of low rank P2G (Freedom Unite) is so much more visceral. Getting pushed around or paralysed by small monsters is a real threat, large monster legs do chip damage, and hitboxes are less "accurate", but three of the hunts I did in the handful of sessions I played were jaw-clenchingly exciting. I wiped against a Red Kezhu, beat an annoying Blangonga who kept wiping the paintball off his body, and then had a 40-plus-minute epic against White Monoblos where my stamina fell to the bare minimum and I ran out of healing but I just managed to kill it. There's just something special about Monster Hunter when it hates you.

砂漠

After finishing Dungeon Meshi I started my next novel for the year, 砂漠 (Desert), another novel by 伊坂幸太郎. Like Submarine (the last novel by him I read and also the last novel I read in Japanese) I had no idea of what to expect going in. The story is told from the perspective of a new university student, Kitamura, who meets up with a guy he knew from highschool called Torii, and then befriends three other university peers, Nishijima, Minami, and Toudou. With the exception of Torii, each of the characters has a cardinal direction in their name (Kitamura is north, Nishijima is west, Minami is south, and Toudou is east), a coincidence that strikes Nishijima and compels him to arrange a casual mahjong group amongst them. They play at Torii's house and sort of just chat, get to know each other, and do Isaka Koutarou's signature dialogue of name-dropping artists, talking about random political events, and generally being worldly. There's a lot of mahjong talk in what I've read so far, and when tiles are mentioned the book uses an image of the tiles in the text to represent them, which is very cute. Torii has a pet bird he named イーソー, the name for the green 1 tile which traditionally looks like a peacock. During dinner after one of their games, Minami "revealed" that she can "do magic" such as bending spoons and moving table-bound objects. She and Torii also claim that she has previously moved cars (though she has to utter the exact make of car because her parents run a car dealership so she can't think about cars in general terms). Kitamura has been taken aback but hasn't outright rejected the idea that Minami might actually have psychic powers, so that's a thing that's happening. Meanwhile Toudou revealed to Kitamura as they walked home after mahjong that she might be catching feelings for Nishijima.

In the 70-ish pages I've read (of about 540 according to my e-reader) sort of nothing has happened but also the story has felt like it's moving very quickly. I don't know if I should expect a real plot to emerge or if it'll just be a story where Kitamura finds his place at the start of university, but so far I'm enjoying it pretty well.