Part 100: Hide-and-seek, Tofu Shop, Tiny Flower
I hope you like a lot of words about nothing then!Hide-and-seek
quote:
Introduced in: "Eastern and Little Nature Deity"
A game that can be played with two or more people. A general set of rules divides the participants into a balance of "hiders" and "seekers" (also known as "it"). To start the game, the seekers cover their eyes on a wall or a tree and count to a set number.
The hiders then hide themselves in places that they think the seeker will not be able to find. There are many possible numbers that the seeker can count to, but the tempo must be set well. Making it too short (like 2) would not give the hiders any time to hide, but make it too long (like 3958) and everyone will get sick of it. Additionally, factoring in decimals (like 9.58) is generally considered too complex so all figures are rounded out.
The hiders are basically free to hide wherever they want, but there are often limitations to the scope of the game. Examples include "withing the park" or "inside the house".
When the seekers finish counting, they yell out "Are you ready yet?" to see how the hiders are doing. If the hiders are ready, they will reply "I'm ready". If they're not, they'll reply "Not yet", and the process will repeat itself until the hiders are ready. In essence, this means that the hiders can take all the time that they need, but forcing the seekers to wait for an unreasonably long periods of time tends to cause quarrels and fights. Furthermore, it's possible that the players are in a place where they cannot shout, or the hiders are too far to be able to hear the seeker shouting, or simply that it's too annoying. For those reasons, the seekers sometimes forgo the confirmation altogether.
After the preparations stage is over, the seekers will then search for the hiders. There are several variations of this. In general, if a seeker finds a hider, the seeker will say out the hider's name as well as "I've found you!" or something similar. There are also variations where a seeker must touch a hider in order for the hider to be caught. When a hider is caught, they may have to wait until the game is over, or, in some variations, they will join the side of the seekers and search for the other hiders. Something like this can be quite similar to tag, resulting in games like "hide-and-seek-tag" and so on.
When all the hiders have been found, the seekers will change (usually the first person to be found will be a seeker at minimum), and the game restarts at the seekers counting again. Records of points or wins and losses are usually not kept, and there is no set amount of times for the game to be played. The game ends when the players get tired of it, or when it's time for them to go home, but problems can arise when players leave the game while it is still being played, and without telling the other players.
The manga "Eastern and Little Nature Deity" and its sequels depict Cirno and Daiyousei playing hide-and-seek, and acknowledges the considerable advantages that the Three Fairies get in hide-and-seek from their natural powers. FMW references those settings, with the fairies constantly playing hide-and-seek. Fairies seem like the type to get tired of things easily though, so perhaps once the boom is over, they may not play it again.
Tofu Shop
quote:
Introduced in: "Perfect Memento in Strict Sense"
The name of a business. Foodstuffs with tofu as the primary ingredient are cooked and sold for profit. From the writings in "Perfect Memento in Strict Sense", it can be gleamed that one exists in the human village. The transcriptions of eyewitness reports of certain youkai are mostly gotten from people within the human village, and one reporting person is named "tofu shop owner". The entries for "Hong Meiling" and "Ran Yakumo" are examples which have eyewitness reports from the tofu shop owner. From the reports, the owner, who had conversed with both of them directly, has quite a good opinion of both of them, especially for Ran, who had come to "purchase fried tofu".
In FMW, the original character Human B is created as the tofu shop owner's son and is acquainted with Ran, but certain other settings were played with. For more information, please view the entry in the character encylopedia for "Human B".
Tiny Flower
quote:
A FMW original creation.
A tiny, cute flower that was spotted on the path from the human village to the Hakurei Shrine. It is believed to be a species of countryside plant that has crossed over, so please stop harvesting them selfishly.
It was in danger of being eaten by Reimu in the game, but its lack of edibility ensured its survival.
Another report states that an animal-eared girl takes care of it. Stopping on this square may not have meant that you were lucky!
As an aside, the glossary entries have a noticably larger amount of typos (that I took the liberty of correcting) than everything else. I assume the translators just did not care about something so pointless.