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Francis Turner's avatar

When I have business trips to Tokyo I regularly run around the neighborhoods where I'm staying and that often involves running up or down steep slopes, steps and poky passages that may or may not dead end. I'm fairly good at predicting which ones will dead end but usually each run I do in a new area will result in a couple of unanticipated backtracks. Heck even runs in areas I know fairly well can lead to dead ends if I try to do different streets. I generally don't regret the failures.

Out here in inaka Japan the fun bit about hills is how many of them once had a fort or castle on the top (and/or side). Doing a search on google maps, yamap or your mapping tool of choice for 山城 or 山城跡 (or 要害山) in an area will find many but not all of them. Often you can hike up them and see traces of the fortifications even though most (all) of the buildings have been erased.

For example I did a quick search around Onomichi and found several nearby. I very much doubt that is all though.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/%E5%B1%B1%E5%9F%8E/@34.4458807,133.1239639,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

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Tom's avatar

I have been waiting a while for a post on this.. and it didn’t disappoint! Very interesting to think of slopes in a relational sense, liminal rather than peripheral. Will need to read a little more of Yoshimi. Thanks

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