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Old 2019.10.22, 11:57 AM   #128
Osiris12345
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Originally Posted by frecklegirl View Post
Well, I'm back from my visit to Fukuoka which included a mini Ringo pilgrimage. I'm not sure where to put this but since I chiefly went to places mentioned in Tadashii Machi off this album, I'll put it here. In Tadashii Machi there's the line:

momochihama mo kimi mo muromigawa mo nai (Kiwi-musume translation: It doesn't have Momochi Beach, or you, or the Muromi River)

So I went to those two places, which are also near Ringo's junior high which she attended the last two years of and graduated from (it's the last school she has ever graduated from... haha). I've made a map that shows where these three places are. You can see Muromi River on the lower right, Momochi Beach up by the top, and Ringo's junior high is circled in red (I had to blow up the part of the map that has it labeled).

I got off at Muromi Station on Fukuoka's subway line, which put me right next to Muromi River (first two photos). It's not very scenic (although there's a great pair of shrines on the other side of the river!)... and it's also quite far in terms of walking distance from the junior high and Momochi Beach. I'm guessing she used to ride her bike, alone or with friends/her boyfriend, over to this area to hang out or whatever, or maybe it was on her way home (it's towards the direction of her high school, although that's much further west - not close to this area at all).

Then I walked over to Momochi Beach by way of the junior high... but unfortunately I couldn't get close enough to the school for a picture. It shares a campus with the Fukuoka International School, as far as I can tell, and those gates were closed so I couldn't get through and get closer to the junior high. I'm pretty sure I saw the building, but I couldn't get close enough to see. I could have snuck in, but if someone caught me I would have had a hard time explaining what I was doing there. Unfortunately I stand out in Japan...

Then Momochi Beach (next two photos), although it had gotten dark by then so I'm sorry the pictures are crappy and grainy. As you can see on the map, that whole area is called Momochihama (Momochi Beach) so I'm not sure in the song if she meant the area--from which her junior high takes its name--or the actual beach. I explored both in any case.

And I listened to Tadashii Machi a lot while walking around these places. And I caught a bus out of there from the Momochihama Bus Terminal. haha

And last, if you've seen the NHK SONGS video that came out around the time of Sanmon Gossip, you'll know that Ringo went back to Fukuoka and took the camera crew to some places, including her junior high. She also took them to a music store she used to visit called Indou, located inside the Shintencho shopping arcade close to Tenjin Station (one of Fukuoka's two major hubs/stations). So I went to that, and bought Carnation there! (In SONGS she also took the crew to a music venue in the same general area where she used to see shows, and I considered visiting that too, but it didn't really seem worth it.)
Okay, I can't believe no one commented on this because this is REALLY cool and would I love to make a pilgrimage myself some day! It's neat to see the actual pictures of the river and places she grew up in. I've grown to have more of a love of Tadashii Machi in recent weeks (probably because I'm feeling homesick) and this really scratched that itch! So, uh, thank you frecklegirl from 6 (almost 7) years ago! I don't know if you'll see this but I thought this was some really good stuff.
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