Rick's b.log - entry 2014/09/24

Glasslip - reality

Glasslip itself is a strange series. A girl that can see snippets of the future. A newcomer who can hear the future likewise when he is near the girl. A bunch of friends in love with each other, but not in the pairings they would necessarily choose. Here's the series' wiki page. The story is bordering on being, well, boring. What does Tōko's ability to see the future when she looks at sparkly things have to do with... anything? They haven't exactly set up a "Tōko saves XXX" scenario in eleven episodes. About the only thing we stand to learn is "love is complicated", or something like that. The pace is really slow, but a lot faster in how we jump around from character to character. It's like somebody got their direction ideas from watching Twin Peaks.
The only reason I keep watching is for the sumptuous scenery. I've pretty much given up on anything amazing actually happening in this series. Girl has a mystical ability, but she's no mahō shōjo.
Actually, it seems as if most of the action takes place in Mikuni [wiki link], a sweet little coastal town. The girls take the train a lot, so I am guessing that the high school is perhaps in Awara?

All of the "real life" images are from screenshots from Google Streetview. The angles and perspectives don't quite match up as we are constrained by where the Googlemobile was when the closest matching image was taken. I have scaled and cropped to get them as close as possible, but short of actually walking around Minato with my camera (I'm open to offers...), this is the best I can do from the other side of the planet (!).
All of the animé images are captures from various episodes of Glasslip, by P.A.Works.

Wataglass Studio

Mikuni Museum

Also, this lovely shot with a huge distortion of reality to make the important landmark look HUGE:

Mikuniminato Station

Just a little distance to the east of the station is a building with a great big crab stuck to it. So I'm guessing either they sell crab, or Google has caught the beginnings of the invasion of mutant giant (pre-cooked (it is red!)) crab monsters. Pick whichever option pleases you most.

That bridge - below

That bridge - topside

Other random locations

The river bridge (here).

The park (zoom shot from other side of river as there is no road closer).

I have not found Sacchan's home, nor ... girl with the yellow ribbon (what's her name again?)'s home, the school, the swimming pool overlooking the road, nor the coffee house (Kazemichi, was it? though it probably has a different name in reality).

It would be fairly easy to do "scenery porn" from the animé, here are a few random shots:

While there are some yucky parts of town (and I seem to have a propensity for finding graveyards!), it ain't Bracknell. Here are some of the things I wandered across:

First up, check out this house. I wonder if it is as interesting inside as it is on the outside? Oh, and that tiny little road is something you have to get used to in this place. A lot of roads are like that, and the Googlemobile does go up it. [map link]

Looking along the waterfront. The wall, although you can't quite see it, is painted light blue and has designs of crabs and fishes at intervals. It is little touches like that which can turn an otherwise ordinary place into something special. [map link]

Did someone's house use to be here? It isn't an interesting picture, but what a view they must have had! You can imagine it better if you follow the map link and it'll become clearer to see that down behind the plot you can look out across the port. Your neighbours just down the road, beyond the house that you can see, are lots of corpses. Remember I said I seemed to keep finding graveyards? [map link]

A tree lined road. I was looking for that big tower the appears behind the restaurant and somehow I ended up here instead. [map link]

There is plenty more. The final photo of Japan is up in Mikunicho Shinshuku (1-chome). It probably helps that it was a bright sunny day when these pictures were taken, though it is a little odd that there don't seem to be many people around.

Finally, for those wondering why I am able to get excited about an otherwise unheard of fishing village on the other side of the planet..... I used to live in a place like this:

Now I live in a place that looks like this:

I used to like this place when I was a child. We'd go to Cornwall for holidays, but I gather it has changed quite a lot since the '80s. Look at those three guys in the foreground. Beer O'Clock, right? Jeez... Shouldn't they be in Newquay?

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Gavin Wraith, 27th September 2014, 21:26

I confess. Sometimes I use Google Earth to retrace the steps of walks taken in childhood, or to revisit places that were once magical to me. It always ends in nausea.    It is not that usually the place has changed out of recognition. It might be caused by the incessant flashing in street view mode as my ancient little notebook struggles to download data over the slow broadband line to our village. But the real truth is that those empty landscapes and starry backdrops occasionally, almost guiltily revealed, induce in me a kind of panic. It is like opening your eyes under water and not knowing which direction is up. It is the suggestion that the world around us is only stage scenery, and behind it is the void. From Heraclitus on, we are told over and over that when we leave home in the morning our feet will never cross that threshold again. Not even Google Earth can bring us back again.

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