About the Really Good Slope, Part Two

The Really Good Slope actually has a real name: it’s called Aizenzaka.

This area is called Yuhigaoka — something like “the hill where you can watch the sunset.” Walk up it now and all you see ahead are houses; there’s no sea in sight at all. But in the Kamakura period, you could stand here and watch the sun sink into the sea. Later the sea withdrew until it was too far away to see, and the city grew up and blocked the sunset too.

Walking through here, I sometimes try to imagine that sea and that sunset, the ones I can no longer see. Something that really did exist for hundreds of years eventually disappeared, leaving only a name behind.

When summer comes, the cicadas in the trees on the Really Good Slope start screaming. Once summer passes, the wall is still there, Yuhigaoka is still there, but the cicadas are gone. The Really Good Slope turns back into Aizenzaka.