Latest news with #Murata
Pink Villa
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 9: Ruriko ‘Plays' With Husky—Recap, Release Date, Where To Stream And More
In 'It's the Wind's Fault,' Ruriko panics when a sudden gust lifts her skirt in front of Murata. Murata smoothly deflects the situation and compliments her adjusted pouring technique. During her day off in 'Signs,' Ruriko, dressed casually, visits the ballpark with coworkers and grows upset when Murata fails to recognize her. Days later, she mocks him for it, only to be flustered when he says he always notices her flower accessory. In 'Watch Out for Online News!,' reporter Iijima plans to write a damaging article but changes course after witnessing the vendors' genuine joy. Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 9 will see Ruriko rush into the locker room after oversleeping, only to be startled to find Tommy, a large Siberian Husky. Afraid of the dog, she will try to drive him out, though Tommy will resist. In 'Mr. Murata,' Ruriko will find Murata's MotorSuns-themed wallet and searches for him in the stands, but cannot locate him. In 'SHOW YOUR SUN,' the MotorSuns aim for their first Climax Series appearance. Before the game, Kojiro receives an unexpected call from his wife Yuki, raising his concern due to its unusual timing. Titled 'Tommy's Melancholy,' Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 9 will premiere on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, at 12 am JST. Viewers in Japan can catch the episode on TV networks such as TXN (TV Tokyo) and AT-X. Japanese fans can also stream it via platforms like ABEMA, Lemino, and Anime Times. International audiences can watch the English-subtitled version of Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 9 on Crunchyroll, though access to these streaming platforms requires a paid subscription. Keep an eye on Pinkvilla for more updates from the Catch Me At The Ballpark! anime.
Pink Villa
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 8: Aona Gets Interviewed; Recap, Release Date, Where To Stream And More
During a vocal warm-up meeting in 'The Pointless 99 Times,' most beer vendors consider the exercises useless. However, while working, Ruriko finds herself using every phrase from the session and comes to respect Manager Matsudo's earlier quote about persevering through failure. In the clubhouse, Ichinomiya feels overshadowed by Shishio but finds some comfort from cook Marie until Shishio unknowingly spoils the moment. Meanwhile, Ruriko and Murata share a conversation about high school. Later, it's revealed that Yamada was also featured in Weekly Baseball, although her name was misprinted. The open-air MotorSuns Stadium is famous for its sudden, strong wind gusts, impacting gameplay and beer vendors in Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 8. One such gust affects Ruriko and Murata while they're in the stands. In 'Marker,' Ruriko attends a game privately with Kokoro and Aona but, dressed differently than usual, goes unrecognized by staff and regulars—until she spots Murata. In 'Watch Out for Online News,' a shady journalist named Iijima sneaks backstage. Aona agrees to an interview, unaware of Iijima's pressure to write a profitable article. Titled 'All Because of the Wind,' Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 8 is scheduled to premiere on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, at 12:00 am JST. Japanese viewers can watch the baseball-themed anime on TV channels such as TV Tokyo (TXN) and AT-X. Catch Me At The Ballpark! Episode 8 will stream on platforms like ABEMA, Lemino, and Anime Times. For international fans, an English-subtitled version will be available on Crunchyroll. Please ensure you have an active subscription to access content on these streaming services. *The release dates and times provided are accurate at the time of writing and are subject to change at the discretion of the creators.
Yomiuri Shimbun
18-05-2025
- General
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Beef, Bamboo Combine in Simple, Simmered Dish; Less Than 10 Minutes for Meal Embodying Freshness of Spring
The Yomiuri Shimbun Beef simmered with wakatake-ni. Wakatake-ni, a dish made with bamboo shoots and seasonal wakame seaweed, is a treat bursting with the freshness of spring. Akihiko Murata, owner of a Japanese restaurant, adds beef to this popular dish to increase its richness. I found the dish to be both elegant and energizing. Bamboo shoots, which have a pleasant texture and a distinctive mild aroma, are an invaluable ingredient for Murata at his restaurant this time of year. The gyuniku no wakatake-ni (wakatake-ni with beef) is often served at the end of a multicourse meal at his restaurant. Making the dish is simple. Cut up the ingredients, add to the dashi broth in order and simmer. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. The important thing is to bring out the individual flavor of each ingredient. 'The umami of the wakame and beef can add depth to dishes. But in this dish, the umami should not be transferred to the bamboo shoots,' Murata said. I think the cooking method employed in this dish is somewhere between taki-awase, in which ingredients are cooked separately and served in the same bowl, and nimono, in which the flavors of the ingredients are mixed by cooking them together. Murata started cooking by simmering the bamboo shoots. The bamboo shoots almost seemed to be swimming in the dashi. 'In Japanese cooking, ingredients are simmered in plenty of dashi,' Murata said. 'If there is not enough dashi, it tends to simmer down and the dish's flavor will lack consistency.' Simmering in a large amount of dashi may seem a bit wasteful for home cooking, but 'you can boil vegetables, such as spinach and komatsuna [Japanese mustard spinach], in the leftover dashi. It makes a great side dish,' Murata said. He then added wakame, and then beef and fuki Japanese butterbur, simmering all the while. The intervals between adding each ingredient are short, so using a clock to time it can help avoid mistakes. The temperature will drop slightly after adding the beef, so increase the heat to compensate. The scum from the beef does not need to be carefully skimmed off, except for any big lumps that form. I was served the freshly cooked dish. The bamboo shoots had a pleasant crunch. Its light aroma and sweetness spread throughout my mouth. The richly flavored beef was satisfying. The Japanese butterbur was slightly crunchy, refreshing my palate. The natural flavors of the ingredients were brought out effectively by letting them soak up just the right amount of dashi. This dish would go well with both sake and rice. Wakatake-ni with beef Ingredients (serves 2):
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata review – a future without sex
In Japanese writer Sayaka Murata's fiction, characters do perverse things in order to 'play the part of the fictitious creature called 'an ordinary person''. This description comes from Keiko, the 36-year-old narrator of Convenience Store Woman. Keiko's conformist family and friends can't believe she can be happy being single and working a dead-end job at a convenience store. Keiko finds an unexpected way to make it look as though she is normal: she keeps a man in her bathtub, hoping that everyone will simply assume they are a couple. A similar idea appears in Murata's short story Poochie, from the collection Life Ceremony. A young girl takes a friend to a shed in the mountains to meet her pet; the friend is surprised to discover that the pet is a middle-aged man. Murata is interested in the lengths humans will go to in order to domesticate one another. Something in that has touched a nerve – Convenience Store Woman became a surprise bestseller. Vanishing World, Murata's latest novel to be translated into English, is set in a speculative Tokyo where artificial insemination is ubiquitous and sex is considered 'unhygienic'. The narrator, Amane, grows up with a mother who is still attached to the vanishing world of sex within marriage. Although Amane considers it a shameful secret that she was conceived via intercourse, as an adolescent she experiments beyond the passionately imagined relationships with anime characters that are more typical among her friends. Her first experience is disappointing: her friend Mizuuchi has trouble finding 'the mysterious cavity' where he can insert his penis. By the time she gets married, Amane has come round to the view that marital sex is 'incest'. When her husband initiates a kiss, she vomits into his mouth and reports him to the police. Amane marries a second time to a more suitable man. She compares him to 'a beloved pet', and they both like stews. They would have a comfortable domestic life together, if it weren't the norm to have chaste romantic relationships outside marriage. Amane, still holding on to her mother's way of doing things, tries once again to teach one of her lovers how to have physical sex. 'By trial and error,' she says, 'we stimulated our sexual organs, and eventually some liquid came out of Mizuto.' Mizuto tries his best, but never finds pleasure in the 'ritual'. In Murata's fiction, ordinary activities – drinking tea, wearing clothes, making love – seem very strange. Reading Vanishing World, I felt the profound oddness of the heterosexual family unit, with its legal, sexual and child-rearing rituals. Dissatisfied with their domestic arrangement, Amane and her husband are seduced by the promise of the 'Paradise-Eden System' set up in a place called 'Experiment City', where sex does not exist, both men and women are artificially inseminated, and parenthood is a collective responsibility. But the reality of Paradise-Eden freaks Amane out. She is unsettled by the identical outfits, haircuts and smiles of the children raised in the Centre, doted on 'as though they were pets'. Murata dispenses with conventional world-building and incidental detail, focusing on the points where character and society come into conflict. Her writing is compulsive, and she has an uncanny gift for intimate observations that get under the skin. It doesn't matter that I can't tell you how Experiment City looks and feels; I won't forget the description of Amane's husband's pregnant belly as a distended 'testicle' with the outline of a baby inside. At the same time, there is something strangely reassuring about the way this fiction boils down the bewilderingly complex prohibitions and obligations of ordinary social life to clear choices between resistance and assimilation. Vanishing World narrates the creep of a new worldview – that all sex is wrong, unclean, and masturbation the only appropriate way of relieving unwanted urges – radiating out from the scientific and social experiments of Experiment City. As its grip on Amane tightens, her relationship with her stubbornly old-fashioned mother deteriorates. The final stages of the plot rehearse a scenario familiar from Murata's previous books, in which one character takes the urge to control the behaviour of others to its logical extreme. This recycling is evidence, I think, of the strength and singularity of the author's vision. It's also a reminder of how quickly even the strangest ideas can become convention. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
QuantumScape and Murata Announce Framework for Ceramics Collaboration
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 23, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QuantumScape Corporation (NYSE: QS), a global leader in next-generation solid-state lithium-metal battery technology, and Murata Manufacturing Co. have entered into the first phase of an agreement to explore a collaboration for high-volume manufacturing of ceramic film for QS's solid-state battery technology. Murata Manufacturing Co. is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and sale of ceramic-based passive electronic components & solutions, communication modules and power supply modules. "Murata's deep expertise in high-precision ceramics manufacturing makes them an exceptional partner as we look to scale production of our proprietary ceramic separator," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, QS CEO. "By combining our groundbreaking Cobra separator production process with Murata's proven capabilities and global manufacturing strength, this agreement has the potential to create significant value. It brings together QS's advanced solid-state battery technology with Murata's longstanding track record of delivering ceramic-based electronic components for some of the world's most demanding applications." Building a global ecosystem is a cornerstone of QS's capital-efficient business strategy: by leveraging a network of industry-leading partners, QS is accelerating the industrialization of its solid-state battery technology while maintaining a strong focus on innovation and technological advancement. This ecosystem consists of leading equipment vendors, materials suppliers, auto OEM customers and contract manufacturers. By collaborating with experts in key areas, QS ensures a streamlined path to commercialization while optimizing resources for continued innovation. About QuantumScape Corporation QS is on a mission to revolutionize energy storage to enable a sustainable future. The company's next-generation solid-state lithium-metal battery technology is designed to enable greater energy density, faster charging and enhanced safety to support the transition away from legacy energy sources toward a lower carbon future. For more information, visit Forward-Looking Statements Certain information in this press release may be considered "forward-looking statements," within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including, without limitation, statements regarding the company's plans and objectives for future operations and growth, the collaboration with Murata Manufacturing Co., the potential advantages of QuantumScape's solid-state battery technology, and the anticipated benefits and value creation of the collaboration with Murata, development of the battery ecosystem, and of QuantumScape's licensing business model, among others. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, hopes, beliefs, intentions and strategies regarding future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Because forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified, you should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur and actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including due to the development and commercialization of QuantumScape's solid-state battery technology, the ability to scale production, including of its separator, and successfully collaborate with Murata and other partners in the ecosystem, changes in economic and financial conditions, and other factors, including those discussed in the section titled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report and Quarterly Reports and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, the company disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements. View source version on Contacts media@ Sign in to access your portfolio
