Own

O - Own is a letter in Rolypolys no Nanakorobi Yaoki.

Plot

A large ship is going by in the night. Mr. Okhotsk is in a storage room on the ship, reviewing a cooking book by Pon. The player can open the book and look through the pages, which describe a recipe for making miso and miso's history. After clicking off the book, Cho appears in the background, rapidly moving between two stacks of crates. Clicking on Cho causes him to tackle Mr. Okhotsk and take off some of his painlessly detachable limbs, one of which he starts eating. Mr. Okhotsk knocks over Cho, then unhinges his mouth revealing it to be a secret cooking tray. A montage of Mr. Okhotsk cooking soup for Cho occurs, Cho then eats the finished soup.

Ingredients

• Soybeans - 5 cups
• Salt - 1.6 cups
• Rice yeast (or substitute wheat yeast) - 5 cups

Required appliances

• Large pot (seemingly mistranslated as pan) - Capacity of 4 liters
• Jar (or substitute plastic container meant for pickles) sterilized with boiling water, for storing the miso
• Mortar and wooden pestle (not listed)
• Plastic wrap (not listed)
• Parchment paper (ambiguous)

Recipe

1. Wash the soybeans and soak them in water overnight. Boil them for six hours and then drain. Set aside the liquid they were cooked in.
2. Mash the soybeans using a mortar and a wooden pestle, adding 1 cup of the stock to make a mushy consistency.
3. Loosen the rice yeast with both hands. Add the salt, mixing well, and then add this mixture to the soy beans, again mixing well.
4. Sprinkle the base of the jar with salt, pack the soybean mixture firmly into the jar and then sprinkle the surface with salt.
5. Cover with gauze and fill any gaps with a twisted towel or cotton cloth. Cover this with plastic wrap and place a wooden lid on top and place something heavy to add weight.
6. Cover the jar with brown paper and secure firmly with string. Leave to mature in a cool place for six months.
7. Once every two months, during this time, break the brown paper seal and scrape off any mold. Liquid seeps up to the surface but this contains a lot of flavor so don't discard it.

About miso

"Miso is a fermented product made by adding yeast and salt to soybeans. Its origins lie in chi (plain bean paste) made in China 200BC, and it is said to have reached Japan prior to the Nara period (710-794). Miso contains protein, calcium, fat, sugar, iron, Vitamin B1, Vitamin E as well as lysine and threonine that are not found in rice. Miso is easily digested but should not be eaten in large quantities since it has a ten percent salt content."

Moral

"Every cook commends his own sauce."

Explanation

"Literally: Miso made by one's own hand."

"To everyone, the miso (soybean paste) they make themselves tastes good. It is only natural, then, to praise oneself or one's own work. Such self-confidence is not a bad thing; but, at the same time, we have to be careful about not overdoing it and becoming a bore to those around us. Mr. Okhotsk, our noted chef, is looking up how to make miso in Pon's cookbook. It's not very difficult, so why don't you follow along and give it a try, too?"

Notes for making the miso in real life

• In step 2, the "stock" refers to the liquid the soybeans were cooking in.
• In step 6, when the recipe says "brown paper", they most likely mean parchment paper.

Trivia

• An unused render of the cookbook with different graphics exists in the game's files.