#hitoyoshi

My favourite finds were the last two spots at Hitoyoshi Castle Park, as they were spots that didn’t ping on my radar while I was researching for Natsume. I was wandering around Kuma-gawa and saw the long white wall, and it struck me as looking rather familiar. So I went digging through my image archives and  managed to uncover one screen shot that matched that particular wall (the one with Shibata and Natsume). Finding the exact spot where the reference shot was taken for the anime took a bit longer - if I recall, it required some extra leg work to scale up a high stone wall that was overlooking those white walls.  It’s not a spot where I would have explored nor have found had I not been looking for it, but it’s got a pretty nice view! Wasn’t able to find the screen shot for the last photo while I was there, but I just had this feeling it might be relevant so I took a picture of it anyway (and my hunch was right)!

Story time! I thought that Tengu Bridge would be close enough to Hitoyoshi City that I could clear with the other locations I was planning to hit within the day, but it turned out to be a whole other station away, accessible by a local train that only ran every other hour. Another miss was underestimating the distance between each location hunt, so there was no time to budget a trip to the bridge and back before evening. I was due to leave on a 9:30am train so there wasn’t much time to attempt a next day quest either. It did seem silly to be so hung up on one location when I’ve already got most of the ones on my checklist, so I decided to sleep on it, hoping that I’d get over Tengu Bridge by morning.

Spoiler alert: I did not get over it. 

Full luggage in tow at 7:50am, I got into a taxi to take me to Tengu Bridge. Now the thing about me and Japanese taxis is - 1) I still don’t know how to call for one on my own and pretty much relied on hotel/ryokan staff to do that for me; and 2) Tengu Bridge was located pretty far away from…. everything? But I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet, and when we got to the bridge I explained my predicament to the driver. The plan was to negotiate for her to wait for me for five minutes while I sprinted off across the bridge for a picture and back. And part of the reason why I’m sharing this story is so I could give a shout out to this lovely lady driver in her shiny pink taxi who did me a real solid, and granted me ten minutes to enjoy Tengu Bridge while she waited for me with the fare meter paused, which meant she didn’t charge me for the waiting time at all. 本当に ありがとうございました～！Also, she knew about my 9:30am ride and was mindful of the time for me, so I even made it back to the station and was able to board that train after all. All in all, a last-spurt side adventure that thankfully turned out well. To think I was almost prepared to give it up! (p.s: you can actually spot the pink taxi waiting in the third photo at the far end of the bridge).

I keep procrastinating this post but to be honest there’s quite a bit to unpack for this trip. Tl;dr, other dramatic misadventures happened on that faithful 9:30am train I was on, and it seemed that my travel plan was destined to be delayed no matter what I ended up doing that day anyway, ahaha…

And そ, I continue to ponder about questions that I do not have the answers for. But ah, such is life too.

Other fandom travel musings: