Within the first few days of my Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream playthrough, a shop on my island was stocked with buchimgae, a Korean savory pancake dish, filled with vegetables or other goodies. “Woah, there’s Korean food in this game. Neat!” I thought. But I didn’t realize how much there would be.
A few days later, I got yangnyeom chicken (stylized in-game as yangnyeom chikin). Eventually I found more and more: sotteok sotteok (rice cakes and sausages on a skewer, doused in a sweet-spicy sauce), gim (dried, salted seaweed, also known as nori to some people), and gamja-tang (spicy pork bone soup). I excitedly send my group chat a screenshot of the new dish each time. I feel like a caveman discovering fire every time I get a new one.
I racked my brain to remember if there were Korean foods in the Nintendo 3DS version of the game I played more than a decade ago. No, certainly not. Upon some research, I learned that Tomodachi Life was released for the 3DS regionally with region-specific foods. The Korean version of the game has Korean food, duh. But now, with Living the Dream, that seal has been broken.
Naturally, I have to feed my Miis the Korean food. I, of course, have a Mii of myself, and I gorge her with every Korean food dish I get. I am repeatedly disappointed when she tells me she doesn’t really like it. And I’m put off by the fact that her currently top-liked food is a tempura rice bowl (food that I just think is fine, and would probably not order over a different Japanese dish). None of the Korean dishes even break her top three.
Even now, I look at websites that have databases of Living the Dream’s food to see what I can get. I slam my fist on the table. Why has my game not serviced me ganjang-gejang (raw crab marinated in soy sauce and garlic) or sangyeopsal (barbecued pork belly) yet!? I need to feed this to the Tomodachi Life version of myself right now!
