Buildings are Mountains

Note is prodding me again.
Thanks to that, I keep going.
I have plenty of things I want to write about, though...
I often write about how I'll eventually post something on Note, so my drafts just keep piling up.
Having too many choices is also a problem, and just as I was struggling with what to write, a savior appeared.

A place I want to return to, huh...
No matter how much I think about it, nothing comes to mind.

When I change my perspective and wonder why that is, I realize it's because I am currently running a place that someone else wants to return to.

Someday, that person might come back, and that person, and that person too.
In the days spent thinking like that, there is no room in my heart to feel homesick.

Perhaps if there were never a moment where I felt like this place was an 'away' game, I would never feel the urge to return anywhere.

I think it's also significant that the place (building) where I was born and raised no longer exists.
For someone born in Tokyo (in a ward without a river, even among the 23 wards), isn't it often the case that their original landscape is a building (or a shop)?

Every time I'm asked why I moved, I preface it by saying I was longing for nature, then answer, 'I spent my life watching the red blinking lights of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.'

I think it sounds metaphorical, but when I pulled out my elementary school graduation album to show that it was actually like that, the high school students here, surrounded by the sea and mountains, shouted, 'What? It looks like a composite photo!'

Of course, there are many moments when I want to go back.
...Like Shimokitazawa back in those days.

It's not that there's no place I want to return to; it's that that place, and that place, and that place—the places I want to return to no longer exist.

If I ever leave Hakodate from now on, this city will undoubtedly become a place I want to return to.

If I even just go on an overnight trip, by the next morning, Mount Hakodate comes to mind.

When I'm coming back from a short trip from the north and see Mount Hakodate looming as I drive along the Hakodate Shindo, what a relief it is.

When I see Mount Hakodate looming as I return by ferry from Aomori, what a relief it is.

Mount Komagatake, which welcomes me when I return from the north, makes me feel the same way.

The power of mountains, rivers, and the sea that you keep watching to permeate your heart is tremendous.
I am layering on the original landscape that I couldn't imprint in my childhood, year after year.

Even while living here, this city is my place to return to.

With Shinjuku Gyoen, Yoyogi Park, and Wadabori Park, you can visit reasonably rich nature if you're an adult with a range of movement, but for an elementary school student, the area around Minami-Nakano was a concrete jungle.
I really did grow up in an amazing place.

The same phenomenon as Mount Hakodate back then is the cluster of buildings in Shinjuku that loom over you on the Odakyu Line when returning from Enoshima, where I used to go often.
I see, for a Tokyoite, buildings are mountains.
The disappearance of tall structures is the sudden vanishing of the mountain that is the original landscape, something that could never happen in the natural world.

Regardless of whether I want to go home, when I do return, I find myself heading toward the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building's observation deck.

(This was three years ago, but there are so many more buildings now.) I can see the Sun Plaza in the direction of Nakano.
I heard the demolition was called off.
A faint remnant of the Nakano resident identity.
When the Sun Plaza is gone, the feeling of having a place I might want to return to—which is perhaps still lingering faintly—will likely vanish as well.

But it's okay.
Because I have reprinted Mount Hakodate.
A primal landscape that should never disappear within the span of a human life.