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Nagashima Area Description; Courtesy of Yes.
Topic Started: Feb 20 2018, 09:08 PM (90 Views)
FirebreathFishslap
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I'm the best! I'm the king of me! I'm gonna eat chips out of the garbage!

The pulse of the Nagashima economy runs through Matechi Street. This economic sector holds many hotels meant to accommodate business types and traveling salarymen, and business buildings stretch into the sky. Glass gleams in daytime and lights in the night, but the bustle of motion on Matechi never ceases.

It runs north and south through the west of Nagashima, at its busiest where it intersects Yamaoka Street, another major street of Nagashima, in the Nagashima Downtown. This intersection is referred to as "the quad," and the city's largest organizations are centered around here. The major news outlet has an office at this intersection. A night out in Downtown Nagashima can be full of spice and enjoyment.

Nagashima City Hall is located to the northwest of Matechi.

Ruwashi Park reconciles Uptown Nagashima and Downtown Nagashima, east of the geographic center of Nagashima, offering its visitors precious respite from the hustle and bustle of daily life. South of the park, there is the Nagashima Wildflower Center and the Miyagi Sculpture Garden. To the west of Ruwashi, the Museum of Nagashima can be found.

Historically, Nagashima was founded towards the west, and expanded further eastward and southward as time marched on. As such, West Nagashima forms a secondary economic center in Nagashima, with a more consumerist flavor than the Downtown's commerce and big business. Tanjiro Shopping Center is one of the largest outlets in the area, and a multitude of boutiques and restaurants vie for attention near Tanjiro.

There is a lot of history to be found in West Nagashima. The biggest shrines, the traditional-style homes, and carefully maintained roads can be found in West Nagashima. It gets hilly, so there are some wonderful views of Nagashima from the west side.

This tone bleeds into Uptown Nagashima, where restaurants and boutiques are prevalent. Uptown Nagashima is a population center commonly associated with the middle-class; the working poor are present, but Nagashima's gated communities, best cram schools, and apartment complexes are located in the north.

Taiyoutono High School, a public school with a considerable amount of affluence, is located in Uptown Nagashima.

The "inner city" of Nagashima is located to the east, surprisingly towards the relatively "younger" parts of Nagashima rather than the older. This portion of Nagashima experienced rapid growth during the Bubble Era, and housing flourished in what is now the Inner City. However, when the bubble popped, portions of the area began to ail, particularly to the southeast.

The yakuza presence in Inner City Nagashima is overstated by tradition, but in recent years, it has been weakening dramatically. Nagashima's oldest crime families have reeled from the social instability brought on by the many incidents recently, and the domestic terrorism of the Black Hoods certainly isn't helping. Nowadays, it is far more likely that a passerby will find a thug than a yakuza, and even then, on an unlucky day.

Some of Nagashima's most niche stores and boutiques are found in the Inner City, along with the various warehouses and industrial complexes of Nagashima. There is high demand and access to manual labor jobs in this area of Nagashima, and it's slowly beginning to look better. Slowly but surely.

The worst of the city is colloquially called the "back streets" of Nagashima, situated eastmost of the Inner City. The back streets reels from the economic crash far harder than the rest of the city, and mismanagement led to its current state: at its ugliest parts, dilapidated, at its best, dreary and substandard. The wounds of the back streets are deep, and it will take much more than a fresh coat of paint and re-paved roads to bring it out of its rut.

Talk about improving the back streets—and the rest of the Inner City, by extension—is eternally in the air, but evidently, dispatching mass help to this hotbed of squalor is incredibly difficult. Some parts of the back streets have been untouched and forgotten. Though in decay, these little pockets of gaudy architecture are a reminder of what the 80s and 90s meant for Japan. Elsewhere: graffiti, boarded-up doors, bars, alleyways littered with broken glass.

Reitaku High School finds itself situated between Downtown and the Inner City, in a neutral zone of low-to-middle income households and neighborhoods of variable crime rate. As a public institution, it doesn't shine above the other schools in Nagashima, but the negative view of the school is an anachronism from a darker time.

The back streets stretch out into the fringe of the city, and when Nagashima gives way to open road and hills and the Narima Woods, nameless mountains comes into view, dusty brown-grey dotted with vegetation, too low-lying to be ice-capped outside of winter. They would have you believe nothing is wrong.

The people of Nagashima are nervous. Discontent. They know something's wrong, but they don't know what. Some still seek answers. Others just accept the strangeness and move on. Many have been hurt by it. Few have been chosen to awaken.
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