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Description
Spindle: For this day Parcly, influenced by her subconscious, picked the same sweater as the day before and had planned to go to Celty’s abode of Ikebukuro. Another Dullahan Day?
Parcly Taxel: Some ponies had taken photos of my headless body, so it was a good idea to repeat. Furthermore, whenever an anime or manga uses or adapts a real-world setting the latter may be frequented by its fans as proof of loyalty. Considering all factors, I therefore broke my neck again and headed to that part of Tokyo.
Spindle: Faithfulness to the source material is an important part of cosplay. Celty, when she takes off her helmet head, shows her neck stump smouldering in the same colour as her suit. Parcly had not created that effect on the previous outing, so she made sure to “smoke her neck” today.
Parcly: My ride to Ikebukuro used the Marunouchi Line (丸の内), one of the few metro lines in Tokyo with elevated or at-grade segments. Housing flats crowd as much space as they can all the way to the fence, but the train’s interior was sparser.
Spindle: There are multiple contributing reasons for the sparsity. One of them was mundane – we were travelling just after morning rush hour – but the other two point to longer-term trends: rail infrastructure has continued to improve at the road’s expense, giving more ways to reach any particular destination, and Japan’s population has been shrinking.
The original mythology surrounding the dullahan is one of death, like the banshee and other “unseelie” creatures. He was always a stallion using his head as a lantern and holding a spine for a whip; he would gallop under a moonless night, stop by a house and somepony inside would utterly perish. (This is only one version of the legend; different tales describe female dullahans, dullahans of all sizes and classes and the dullahan pulling a carriage to match the macabreness.)
Princess Cadance: Too much peripheral information, really. The actual reason is that there are too few foalings!
Also, regarding your description, Celty is nothing like the mythology. She rides a motorcycle and has all the other modern conveniences by her side.
Parcly: I think we’ve digressed too much, no?
At Ikebukuro we entered the perenially long queue to the corner ramen bar Mutekiya (無敵屋), so long (and the place so small) that we ended up waiting for 90-plus minutes and had our orders taken halfway along the queue. I myself had the signature bowl with a variety of meat cuts, vegetables (including bamboo stalk) and a seaweed sheet with a greeting on it.
Spindle: Having had lunch at the perfect time of 1pm, we walked around the main attraction of this district, the Seibu (西武) department store, to digest the food. These integrated developments (as compared to shopping centres, outlet malls and other places where shops operate independently) are a very common sight across Japan, especially so near sufficiently important rail stations of any kind – Matsumoto Station hosts one, for example.
Parcly: This time around I actually had a need to buy a pencil case and mechanical pencils to put inside it. Department stores for all their variety can’t satisfy certain niche needs enough, so they liaison with stores that can fill the gaps. In this case Seibu had liaised with Muji, and I bought my stationery from the latter’s shop located one walkway away.
All this while I was headless, and I started to give my body autonomy. It did some cute things, like curling into a ball on the train and “booping” me with its neck stump in Mutekiya, and it also had enough magical intelligence to fetch me the stationery at Muji. Then I realised my body would do whatever I was thinking upon relinquishing control, becoming a useful pet while my head registered a stirring, blissful numbness.
Princess Luna: Parcly continued, moving closer to the night, moving through the scurrying masses of evening rush hour. Express Fukutoshin ride to Shibuya. The Crossing, and other nearby scramble crossings. Sounds blaring from everywhere, including trucks whose sole purpose was to run advertisements slapped onto their sides. Her head grew dizzy; her body led the way, with some assistance from a helpful Miraidon.
Finally the two parts arrived at the inconspicuous Fujimon (富士門) restaurant… and I was waiting for them!
Parcly: Here I was informed by my long-time mentor that I would be returning tomorrow, flying side-by-side out of Japan. As for the restaurant, it was a high-end yakiniku outlet with fixed courses of meats to self-cook, delicate presentation and delicious appetisers. We had a room to ourselves, dominated by a giant paper fan, and I completed my experience with a highball (whisky + soda).
Spindle: An almost divine conclusion to this trip – except that Parcly initially forgot to take her head along when she left Fujimon…
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