An otherwise cute story and a happyish ending for a troubled... well, not really protagonist.

On re-reading the piece this week however, I was struck by one thing that I realised really bothered me. During Sayaka and Edamoto’s first encounter, there is the following interchange:

“Why don’t you come visit sometime, Sayaka-senpai? We can have tea and, umm….” Edamoto-san glanced at her shopping bag, “…I can offer you some bean sprouts.”
“That’s a pairing I’ve never tried before.” I attempted to picture myself eating bean sprouts between sips of tea, but my imagination wasn’t up to the task.

On the surface it sounds like an innocuous rib on how silly Edamoto can be. But in fact it disturbs me when I was awake enough to realise I’ve actually had this pairing often. We have a great many Korean restaurants in my city and bean sprouts are a very common banchan, which are often served as an appetizer. Thus if you enjoy Korean food, you may very well be just eating sprouts and sipping tea on occasion. Iruma seems to be suggesting the idea is just absurd.

What worries me is that I can’t tell if Iruma is trying to indicate that although she acts mature, in fact Sayaka is still very young and inexperienced in the real world; or if Iruma herself is making anti-Korean disparaging commentary… or if the racism I interpret is (ironically) purely accidental on the part of the author. And if it is the latter, could it be possibly be a unconscious learned attitude rooted in Japanese xenophobia and millennia-old anti-Korean sentiment? ( )