Isaac meets Ezoe at a high-stakes negotiation table!
What is it that each side wants?!

As always, here’s the map, and here’s the chapter.
As always, warning about minor spoilers below, so go read it first!

Here you go with this week’s notes:

1. Boeing C-32A: There are apparently four of these, and “Air Force One” is used as the air traffic control call sign for an aircraft carrying the president of the United States.
2. Joint Base Andrews is a military facility located in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
3. Yokota Air Base is a US Air Force and Japan Air SDF base in the city of Fussa within the Tokyo prefecture.
4. Isaac totally got “Nihongo jouzu”ed here.
5. This is not a reference, but just wanted to point out how Ezoe is really slipping. He got overconfident here.
6. Ishihara’s “Demo kotowaru wa” (However, we refuse.) seems to carry really strong “Daga kotowaru” vibes.
7. Prisoner’s Dilemma: “a paradox…in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not produce the optimal outcome. The typical prisoner’s dilemma is set up in such a way that both parties choose to protect themselves at the expense of the other participant. As a result, both participants find themselves in a worse state than if they had cooperated with each other in the decision-making process.”
8. “Number 8 Gyoza Restaurant”: Reference to Number 7 Gyoza Restaurant, part of the “Numbers Gyoza Restaurants” famous in Kanazawa. There actually was an eighth one long, long ago, with very limited mentions on the internet. According to this expose, it actually closed within a few years after opening.
9. “Miyuki”: Reference to Miyuki (different kanji), a place famous for oden
10. “beer garden at ollo building”: Reference to Beerfesta on top of elle building
11. “Shinano”: Reference to Shinano (different kanji), a place where customers and the owner chef yell “Yaho!” at each other for everything, including saying hi, when they serve you, when you ask for rice refills, and when you ask for the check. Here is a video of the experience. It’s “Yafuu” here probably out of the usual worries of copyright. It sounds like a very interesting experience, but sadly, this place has gone down.
12. Gravitational time dilation: “The stronger the gravity…the slower time itself proceeds.”
13. “Sugino”: Reference to Sugino (different kanji), a place famous as a seafood izakaya
14. “Ezokuma”: I failed to figure this one out. To anyone who wants a try, the Japanese name in-text is 蝦夷熊 (えぞくま).
15. The House of Representatives being dissolved: This is apparently an extremely common tactic used by Japanese prime ministers, as much so that “Over more than seven decades, the lower house has run its entire four-year term just one time.” Some of the names of those dissolutions on the linked article are pretty funny.
16. Lebludor: Whereas LNs tend to go with “Cerberus” for monsters described as “dogs with multiple heads,” Shinozaki-sensei instead references レブルドル from God Catching Alchemy Meister, a game created by Eushully. [Illustration]
17. Kurogasumi: Reference to a ninja sword from Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. The name “kurogasumi” (黒霞) by itself, however, is the name of a precious marble harvestable from the city of Mine in the Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Lastly, “Training Whip of Love” doesn’t seem to be a specific reference to anything, but I checked just in case, and now I’m worried it’s messed up my Google search preferences a little 😂
Anyways, that’s all we got this week.
There was a pretty big foreshadowing in this part, see if you guys spotted it hehe.
Stay tuned for next week!

(As always, feel free to point out grammatical mistakes, typos, and the like on either the relevant JNC forum or on the #translation-talk channel on our Discord.)