#from back

Parcly Taxel: Like many other cities in Japan, Hiroshima has its own castle. Its distinguishing quality is its age: destroyed by the atomic bomb, it was replicated in the same place with concrete in place of wood. North-east of the Aioi Bridge (相生橋), the bomb's intended target, it now houses a museum of the city's pre-war history.

It is also quite small, which is why we didn't visit it.

Spindle: As Parcly sipped tea with her hind legs under the kotatsu, I restored the place to the state we found it in. Punctuality for the Japanese implies order, cleanliness and mindfulness about the coming users, and I saw a television programme declaring their hospitality the fourth-most liked part of the country by foreign tourists. This stands in contrast to, say, places around Manehattan, where reckless ponies plow through like tornados across whatever lodging they find themselves in. Even cannibalistic windigos are careful not to freeze an unsuspecting pony…

Parcly: Under a white sun with luggage bathed in a purple glow, we trotted into the train station, whose interior had the same comfort as an airport's departure hall, containing an entire souvenir shop and kiosks selling meals for voyages of all lengths.

We boarded the Sakura No. 546 Shinkansen back to Shin-Osaka, which took approximately 90 minutes. Where I rested my plot I found loose pages of a left-behind newspaper whose contents were a little more titillating than usual, though whole sections of magazines and other publications with more of the same are present in some convenience stores.

Remembering the magic that hauled my luggage towards the platforms, a nice question suggested itself: what are magic auras to the touch? They lie in the subconscious of unicorns and alicorns, served through their prominent horn but hidden behind the objects they manipulate. I closed my eyes and relaxed the muscles in my left hoof, focusing it in the centre of my mind, then caressed it with right hoof and wings.

My magic was cold and thick, uniformly dense where it was applied, hugging solid matter close to its edge. No two auras are the same – I knew Rarity's was thinner and Twilight's was warmer. Like a cutie mark, it reflects personality traits, but in a more abstract and specialised manner, closer to the heart of its wielder.

Spindle: Alighting at Shin-Osaka, a large terminal, we connected with a regional train towards the even bigger terminal of Kyoto, whose platform numbering was accelerated to accentuate the impression. From there we rode the subway and walked a substantial distance, all to reach our new accommodation on the other side of a university campus.

Parcly: New local regulations required me to show my passport to the original tenant. This had already been done, so we admired the phonograph, retro-style television set and tabletop rock garden that were present within.

Spindle: Before Luna was banished in the moon, this place was called Miyako (都), which became Meaco in the records of the first outside visitors to Japan. Until the Meiji Restoration this was the effective capital of Japan, evidenced by its rich assortment of castles and temples with fewer modern buildings to obstruct the view.

Parcly: As a primer, I first went to Fushimi-inari (伏見稲荷), the top tourist attraction in all of Japan, and walked through its torii. There was not enough time to go full circle before dinner, but I accustomed myself to its layout.

Returning from Inari to Kyoto, I was stunned by the sheer size of the station, large enough to hold a hotel and theatre and stab both ends of my field of vision. It was decked with Hearth's Warming decorations, as were the underground food halls selling "winter exclusives".