常青市 Tokiwa City
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Hakone (I don't remember source except it was a travel site) |
We have arrived to Tokiwa City! トキワ (tokiwa)comes from 常磐色 (tokiwairo) which is the color of evergreen which in HeartGold & SoulSilver describes the town as being very green for the entire year. As you may have noticed by now, the cities in this game are very color based which also corresponds with if you are playing on a Super Game Boy anything with that kind of support where the cities have their own palette. Shudou Takeshi's novelization of the anime TV series describes it as a reasonably large city.
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| Tokiwa City in the original anime series |
Tokiwa closely resembles Hakone which is located in western Kanagawa Prefecture. The town is located within a collapsed volcanic caldera surrounded by mountains about 1,000 meters above sea level, and its population is mainly concentrated around National Route 138 and the Odakyu Hakone Railway Line. In the late Muromachi period, Hakone was ruled by the later Houjou clan, and during the Edo period it became part of the Odawara Domain. What Hakone is known for nowadays however is its onsen and it looks like a very older Japanese town. The original seven onsen began developing as hot spring resorts during the Edo period, and from the Meiji to Taisho eras the area became an internationally renowned summer resort and vacation destination. Hakone was also the model for Tokyo-3 in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
We come here to get the parcel from the Friendly Shop and deliver to Dr. Ohkido in Masara Town and go back to Tokiwa City and then finally proceed with the game. I capture a Poppo and name it ポちゃん (Po-chan).
常磐森林 Tokiwa Forest
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| Path in Mt. Tokusa (Image: Wikipedia) |
This is one of my favorite locations in the entire series and Game Freak knows just how good it is as they reused it in Pokémon X/Y. Anyways, FireRed/LeafGreen describes it as a natural forest maze that a lot of people get lost in which is in line with what An Illustrated Book of POCKET MONSTERS says about it. In Shudou Takeshi's novelization for the anime TV series, he describes the forest as it being really dark during the day as it is at night.
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| Tokiwa Forest in the original anime series You can see Mt. Fuji just like if you were to take a view like this with the Okuchichibu Mountains :) |
Tokiwa Forest is obviously taken from the Okuchichibu Mountains. Tokiwa Forest is inside Route 2 just like how Okuchichibu is inside Chiba! 奥秩父 means "Chichibu interior." The Okuchichibu Mountains is a mountain massif that extends from Mt. Iimoriyama and Mt. Kumotori, southeast of the Nobeyama Plateau, and southward to the Mikubo Plateau (over 40 mountains total). It forms the watershed for four rivers: the Chikuma River (upper stream of the Shinano River), the Arakawa River, the Fuefuki River, and the Tama River. A major characteristic of the region is that it has almost no volcanoes.
尼比市 Nibi City
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| Iwajuku Museum (Photo: Wikipedia) |
Nibi City is pretty interesting I think! A cool grey, city with a science museum. HeartGold/SoulSilver say it is a quiet city that is set between mountains and An Illustrated Book of POCKET MONSTERS says it is a town where Pokemon fans gather (whatever that means). ニビ comes from 鈍色 (nibi-iro) which is a dark grey color. The Museum of Science is interesting as the space shuttle is said to be the Space Shuttle Columbia. Why is an American space shuttle is sitting in a Japanese museum?
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| Nibi City in the original anime series |
Anyways, Nibi City is Midori City in Gunma Prefecture. There is not a lot I have to say about Midori other than it has an archaeological site. The Iwajuku site is a Paleolithic archaeological site that was discovered in 1946 by Aizawa Tadahiro. Within the black soil layer at the Iwajuku site, stone tools and Joumon pottery from the "Japanese Paleolithic period" were unearthed. However, because that soil layer consists of acidic soil, not much other those stone tools were unearthed. It received protection as a National Historic Site in 1979.
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| Iwajuku Ruins (Photo: WIkipedia) |
Anways, we go and beat the pervert Takeshi which causes my Trancel to evolve into Butterfree. Byeeee! ★
