I can tell some personal stories about my experiences with organic vegetables that would be about as unpleasant. Though the strangest things can be blessings in disguise – in one case, it turned out to be a good thing that I had been vomiting all night. While I still think that, given equal prices and quality, organic is better, my experience contradicts a lot of the claims.

This volume was kind of weird in that the competition element was downplayed. Usually there are two or three storylines per volume where he has a food battle with his father, it was strange that there was only one story here. I kind of missed them when I didn’t have them.

There are similar messages in other volumes (watch where you buy your sashimi because some chefs don’t cut the fish right, buy privately made sake instead of mass-produced because big companies do it wrong, et cetera), but this was the hardest I’ve ever seen it hit those themes. It was a little tiring after awhile, and yeah, made me want to go and pick up a peck of blackberries from the corner store and pop them in my mouth, regardless of quality or whether or not they’d been washed.

The jumping all over the place was a bit confusing, especially as the opening made me think there’d be much more about the competition. Has Viz said how much they’re going to publish? A time-line or tagging the stories somehow would’ve been nice.

I also really liked the eggplant story. I want to try those recipes…

I also just ate some gyoza myself, but it’s been years since I’ve eaten ramen.

So far, the Ramen and Gyoza volume has been the only one that’s covered something I eat. I think the next volume covers rice, which I’m looking forward to.

Actually, I don’t do the above either, at least not regularly. But I most certainly do eat vegetables, and I’ve been really looking forward to this volume because it’s dedicated to something I actually do eat.