There were two missing notes in the Touko route. I have included them below and updated the notes in the patch files. There will be a future fix to update the numbering and other minor typos.

A few people have inquired about the necessity of these notes, as well as the possibility of a version without them. I consider the notes purely optional, and they are there for people that want a better understanding of the underlying text. Many of these notes may sound like common knowledge if you’re used to Japanese media, but they came out of real questions that came up in the editing phases. I would treat them exactly the same as the endnotes in a novel and skip them if you don’t want to break the flow.

15: Jizo is the Japanese name for the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha. In folk tradition, statues of Jizo drop food and money at the door of an old man’s house as a reward for giving up his hats and headband to shelter the statues from the snow.

16: Prior to smartphones, the predominant method of text communication through phone was through email, as Japanese cell phone plans charged a flat monthly fee for pools of data and SMS charged per message. The term has since then drifted to include instant messaging through apps like Line but in 2004, it is still closer to email.