Harusame Urame Describes Discovering Hungarian Palinka on a Sunday Drinking Stream

AOGIRI HIGHSCHOOL — Harusame Urame spent much of a Sunday “duty drinking” stream describing her first taste of palinka, a Hungarian fruit spirit she called the most striking drink she has had lately. The Aogiri Highschool streamer opened by declaring that drinking on a day off is a duty, toasted with her first can and settled in with tuna scraps, a lemon-basil sausage and pickled daikon.

She said she had gone to a Tokyo bar meaning to try Unicum, a Hungarian herbal liqueur that listeners have urged on her since her debut, even though she dislikes herbal liqueurs. Staff there instead steered her to palinka and served it neat. She put it at around 60 percent alcohol, but said it went down easily. She explained that the spirit is distilled from a very large amount of fruit, about 40 kilograms of muscat grapes for one bottle by her account, and that it can carry the name only if it is made in Hungary. The melon version, she said, smelled like Yubari melon, and her favorite was one made from dried fruit, which was the color of whiskey. She left the bar without ordering the Unicum, and said she found only three or four places in Tokyo that serve a wide range of palinka.

“Palinka was just so shocking. It was so good.” — Harusame Urame, on her first taste of the Hungarian spirit

She then turned to her second solo live, set for Nov. 11 at Club Citta in Kawasaki. Answering a viewer’s question, she said small bills are easier at the venue and that attendees can buy drinks at the bar counter. She said event staff may approach fans to chat, and that she had told them to look for people already drinking before the show. She also told holders of the top-tier tickets, which come with a few seconds of face time, to decide in advance what to say. On her song series, she said five of six monthly releases are out, and the last could come before the live or debut at it.

Asked by a newcomer about the name, she said the “high school” in Aogiri Highschool is a leftover: the school setting was dropped, but the agency name stayed. Later she talked about her height. She said her feet are 26 centimeters, that she gives her height as 168 centimeters although it is closer to 167.6, and that she wears platform shoes because she wanted to be taller. Her 3D model was set at 165 centimeters, not the 175 she had asked for. She joked that every corporate VTuber is at least a Tosa dog, and said she would like to be a Saint Bernard. She closed the topic by showing photos of a Maine Coon she once kept and of her family’s dog.

Chat answered the opening toast with a stream of “kanpai” emotes, and one viewer played a visitor from the future who claimed to have seen the live, which she took up as a running joke. The stream drew 40 Super Chats.