XXXI:The Price of Loss
XXXII: The Crimson of Ill Omen
XXXIII: The Thoughts that the Blue Holds

The character guide mentioned that Oz giving blue feathers to Echo at the festival is like a marriage proposal.

Mochizuki-sensei’s blog once mentioned that when Break says “I” in katakana, it’s Break speaking, and when it’s in hiragana, it’s Kevin speaking, but in some cases, the kana has been erroneously edited.

Volume 17 is scheduled to come out in March here.

The bubble says “Thank you for buying the comics”.

And because I got Kuroshitsuji 13 at Animate, it came with an illustration sheet drawn just for Animate:

The illustration has the Undertaker dressed up as Animate’s “Anime Shop Manager” character.

The text says “Thank you for buying volume 13 of Kuroshitsuji. The first time there’s a girl on the cover. Yay! Various characters star in many ways in the luxury passenger liner arc. A creepy shop manager seems to be making a visit at Animate…hee hee”

Volume 30 is scheduled to come out here sometime in spring.

The series just celebrated its 10th year running in Hana to Yume.

From the second escalator I could see the sign with the name of the shrine and the kanji “Hatsumoude” (= New Year’s visit to a shrine).

If you bought a hamaya (the kanji literally mean “destroy-evil-arrow”), an arrow-shaped good luck charm, the shrine maidens danced a kagura to bring in good fortune, with the hamaya in hand. Note that the shrine maidens are holding a kagura bell with their right hand.

The shrine was also giving out omiki. I put a 100-yen coin in the offering box, took a white sake cup, and the shrine maiden poured some sake in it.

The shinshi here are monkeys, so there’s a statue on the right of the hall of worship:

And on the left. This one’s a mother monkey, holding her baby:

The monkey statues are husband-and-wife.

When you go to a shrine, you first go to the shrine to purify yourself.

The correct protocol is as follows:

Take the dipper in your right hand, and purify your left hand.
Take the dipper in your left hand, and purify your right hand.
Take the dipper in your right hand, put some water in left hand and purify your mouth.
Purify your left hand again, then hold the dipper up and purify the dipper by letting the water fall down on the dipper handle.

I took the local train line to Izumo Oyashiro station:

And was a little surprised at the retro western look of the station building:

It was a short walk until I reached the first torii. The sign on the right says that the shrine is going through the “Great Repairs of the Heisei Era”.

At Izumo Oyashiro, the inner shrine and other various buildings are hidden behind fences. But because they’re under repairs, the hall of worship has been turned into the temporary inner shrine. This means that during the repairs, worshippers can get right close to Ookuninushi by worshipping at the temporary inner shrine.

Repairs are scheduled to be completed in 2013.

Miketsukami looks a bit shota in the kid version.

The book contains three stories and essays from Vols 1 and 2, plus three extra commentary essays, and looong talk between Yamazaki-sensei and the editor-in-chief.