Saturday, March 8th, 2014.

When I woke up, surprisingly, Hatsuharu hadn't snuck into my bed. She was sitting in my computer chair, facing me with her arms crossed and eyes closed, and she greeted me as per usual as soon as I woke up. She explained that she was in a low-power state of consciousness that was similar to sleeping, but her essential systems like her sensors would still work through it. It sounds like how you put a computer to sleep so that you can quickly turn it on sometime later.

Since Hatsuharu saw me writing in this journal, I asked her if she looked through it at all. She said that she didn't, since it would be rude and disrespectful towards me, her superior, to do so. I guess I can hold Hatsuharu to that, since she's a level-headed girl, unlike some of the destroyers. But I will have to be careful writing my journal from now on, now that I've got a bodyguard schedule imposed upon me by my own friggin' fleet. I'm not quite a fan of knowing that my own ship girls are going through my journal.

I left the destroyers and submarines last night in Shinsengumi to keep playing Super Meat Boy while I went off to sleep. The thing was, when I went back there to check on them, all of them were knocked out on the floor and the tables, sleeping away.

I checked their score and progress, and it was at 106%.

They beat the game.

THEY BEAT THE GAME.

I'm impressed.

Houshou was less than thrilled about it, though. She'd tried to convince them to clear out of the izakaya, but they were too set on completing the game, so she had no choice but to leave them there. So after breakfast, I had the other destroyers and some of the light cruisers carry the ones in Shinsengumi out to their dorms to sleep properly.

With Ooyodo, we breezed through the light amount of weekend paperwork so fast that by 0940 hours, we didn't have much of anything to do. The rest of the fleet (by this time, Takao went into the destroyers' and submarines' dorms and dragged them out to the piers to train) trained for a bit to prepare for the night battles later next week, so Ooyodo asked me if I could play the piano again. So I tried playing the piano again, and since it didn't hurt my arms too much if I played slow songs, I asked Ooyodo if she had any piano song in particular that she wanted to hear, as thanks for her basically doing my work for me. She asked me to play Chopin's famous Nocturne Opus 9, Number 2. It's one of those songs that everyone knows subconsciously because it's played all over the damn place. They might not remember the name, but they sure as hell can recognize it once it's played to them.

So we spent the rest of the morning sitting together at the piano as I played Chopin's Nocturnes. Some of them I had to bring up the scores for on my laptop and played with the laptop sitting on top of the piano, but it worked out. Error joined us sometime in the middle when she entered bringing us some chocolate hazelnut wafers and orange juice, so Error wound up sitting on my other side with Batsubyou the cat lying on my head on his belly, with his forearms dangling down in front of me.

As we were about to head out for lunch, Ooyodo asked me if I was willing to teach her how to play piano. She's always wanted to learn and she loved piano music, but she never had an opportunity to learn herself. The only reason why she didn't ask any sooner was because she was afraid that I wouldn't be interested in teaching her because we didn't really know each other all that well until recently and that I'd been busy managing the fleet and dealing with other stuff. Looks like I'll be a piano teacher too. Better put that on my resume next to "Commander of a Naval Personnel Fleet".

After lunch, I was about to head out with Yamato, Yahagi, Houshou, Mamiya, and Irako out to the piers again to prepare setting up for tonight's barbeque, but Sazanami and Kiyoshimo stopped me and asked me if I had any other games that I could show them. Even though beating Super Meat Boy 106% was hellish and it took them seven hours, they said that they had way too much fun doing it, because they'd always laugh hysterically whenever something stupidly funny happened. (I had flashbacks of playing through World 3 and getting pegged by missiles across the map. Who the fuck puts missile defense systems in a salt factory? The place already makes me salty enough.)

Soooooo...I hooked my laptop back up to the projector at Shinsengumi and introduced them to Touhou Project, starting with Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

I spent the afternoon setting up the pier for the barbeque. Mamiya had ordered lots of firewood specifically for tonight, so we set up four big pits where the fires would be and put the grates over them and kindled the fires. After that, we set the tables and brought out whatever else we needed as we waited for the fires to get to the right temperature to start cookin'.

Once the barbeque preparations were done, I headed back inside to tell everyone to start heading out to the pier for the barbeque tonight, but at first I didn't know where everyone had gone off to, but as soon as I went near Shinsengumi, I realized what I'd done. Almost the entire fleet was inside Shinsengumi, watching the girls play EoSD as they took turns every time they used up all their lives. They'd already beaten the game on Easy, but they were constantly getting wrecked by Remilia on Stage 5. It was as though suddenly the place just turned into one of those e-sports bars where people hang out having drinks and light refreshments and watching games be played on the big screen or something. Kiyoshimo eventually dragged me in, begging me to beat the game on normal for them, and because I only have enough experience to beat the Touhou games on normal and no higher difficulty, I barely managed to eek out a victory on normal. I told them that I wouldn't be of any help on the higher difficulties, and that the warning on the Lunatic difficulty was there for a reason.

But I told them to come out to the barbeque first, and at the mention of a barbeque, the fleet immediately rushed outside. Akagi and the carriers especially.

So we spent the night barbequing, karaoke-ing, drinking, and overall having a good time. I worked the barbeque pits, mainly, since I'm the only one who has an idea of cooking in a barbeque manner, but I did teach Houshou, Mamiya, Irako, Yamato, and Yahagi the basics.

At one point, Shouhou came up to me and asked me worriedly if I was cooking too much. There was so much food that it was clear that even Akagi wasn't going to finish it all, which is nothing short of amazing. She said that Japanese tradition didn't look favorably upon such an excess of eating and such, and that I didn't have to cook so much food. Was it just an American thing that I was following?

I just said that while Americans probably do tend to have bigger eating habits, I said that that wasn't what was on my mind. I just like to think that everything should be practiced in moderation. Including moderation.

Finally, a crazy Saturday night barbeque that I've actually enjoyed. Ironic, isn't it - that the first time I ever felt pretty good eating out with other people would be with people I've only known for barely two months and are from halfway around the world.

Writing a short entry today, cooking all night long's left my arms dead and me dead tired as well. Lots of the girls have just fallen asleep right here outside in the pier, and that's where I'm writing this too, heh. I'm just not looking forward to the hangovers and cleaning up tomorrow.