#✨ my anime vacation ✨ cringe is dead ✨

[bleachbleachbleach]

Byakuya’s Falconry Teahouse

Or, you know the Shihouin Falconry Teahouse, or the Shiba Falconry Teahouse, or whoever. Because I am me *I* never turn down an opportunity to imagine Byakuya in A Getup.

I visited the Hama-Rikyu Gardens, a restored Edo Period garden in Chuo City, which were really exciting to me because they had 1) A FALCONRY TEAHOUSE, and 2) a saltwater pond, because the gardens are situated right on Tokyo Bay. How cool is that?? A saltwater pond! I love canal locks.

I wanted to share some details that might serve as inspiration for any and all of your Bleach purposes, as they are now serving mine.

First of all, this one garden has five teahouses in it, which seems like a lot of teahouses--but as someone who owns a lot of tea, who am I to judge, really. I act like if there were a Teahouse Tycoon game I wouldn’t put 19 teahouses on one island.

This is what Soul Society would look like if Yamamoto didn’t put his foot down and pass municipal codes to keep the architecture uniform and period, LOL.

I only took pictures of the Falconry Teahouse, my beloved, but they were all architecturally very different, which I thought had a fun, like, Disneyland effect. Shoguns, amirite. If your eyes don’t mind very tiny text, here’s some info about the others:

The falconry teahouse was located near the duck-hunting grounds, where ducks were hunted with nets and--you guessed it--raptors.

There was a shrine for the ducks they killed:

The Falconry Teahouse (or Hawk Teahouse) takes the Bass Pro approach, with a much more rustic, countryside aesthetic than the others. I am obsessed with the roof in particular:

THICC

Here it’s closed up in storm shutter mode, because it was a cleaning day, but it continues its rustic aesthetic indoors as well, with a dirt-packed floor and stove area. This is so its users would have room to sit around in it without taking off all their falconry gear and shoes and whatnot.

I joked about the Disneyland effect, but as you can see from the first photo in this post, the next tea house is basically across the street, and looks nothing like this one. We have a teahouse at home, but we built another one.

I assume there’s ducks that non-shinigami nobles spend their time hunting, but I also like the idea of divisions having outposts out in Rukongai, since it makes sense to have bases of operations that are closer at hand than the Seireitei, given that even the Seireitei is so large it can’t be quickly traversed (or so we’re told when we’re first introduced to it).

Ope, I lied, I do have a photo of a non-Falconry Teahouse teahouse. This is a wood detail on the Tsubame, or Swallowtail, teahouse:

I’m gonna be honest with you, this is not the most virtuoso woodburning I’ve ever seen, but still think it’s cool, and adds a loving character detail to the structure!

Maybe the only shinigami who can effectively navigate the Seireitei are the ones who know to look for the poorly stenciled birds on each building. (Real talk, I was looking for a meeting room at my workplace once, and after locating it I was told that the rooms are all named for local water features, and their relative elevation correlates to what floor the meeting room was on. It was a REVELATION.)

#bleach worldbuilding #bleach headcanons #✨ my anime vacation ✨ cringe is dead ✨ #no brain just bleach