bleachbleachbleach

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hitsugaya doodle

[bleachbleachbleach]

why did I assume this was Grimmjow tho

like, ah, of course, Grimmjow wine

from Hueco Mundo’s finest vineyards

[bleachbleachbleach]

Fascinatingly, listening to the same sea shanty for 12 hours straight (inclusive of the 2.5hrs I spent humming the same one sea shanty while bicycling) is not conducive to thinking "yeah I'm totally in Ichigo's headspace. I can write this"

WE ARE PUTTING THE SEA SHANTY AWAY

[bleachbleachbleach]

For the character ask meme (...okay, I got carried away going down the list so feel free to pick and choose your favorites if 5 is excessive)!

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character? (Hitsugaya)

6. What's something you have in common with this character? (Renji)

9. Could you be roommates with this character? (Byakuya)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? (Matsumoto)

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? (Hinamori)

Character ask game!!

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character? (Hitsugaya)

It's very petty and doesn't bug anywhere near as much as it did when it was revealed, but it's that he's older than Hinamori. Ever since I started reading BLEACH, I was always under the impression he was younger of the two, so I was a little annyed when Kubo revealed he's actually older than her. It's obviously not an issue, no even close, and has little to no impact on BLEACH's story or his relationship with Hinamori, but having that changed bugged me at the time.

6. What's something you have in common with this character? (Renji)

We're loyal to those we consider a friend. Renji struggled with this for Rukia, but he ultimately showed himself to be a steadfast friend who would not let her go when even facing Aizen. And then there's what he does for Ichigo at the end of manga, and he went against the Seireitei to save Orihime with the others. I don't know if I could go to another world for a friend or be as brave as he was when, you know, the world was maybe about to end (hoping neither of these things happen XD), but I do consider myself very loyal to those I call a friend.

9. Could you be roommates with this character? (Byakuya)

I want to say yes because I consider myself pretty easygoing, but I think this would be a bit of a nightmare XD I think we could bond over arts and crafts (paddle pop art for instance, his of Wakame Ambassador and mine of something far too basic) and I would keep the place as tidy as he does. But then he'd probably ask me to keep quiet for most of the day because he's conducting meetings in his room (maybe they're in person ones, maybe he's learned the wonders of video conferencing!), would want to organize the kitchen in a certain way (the cutlery goes her, the small mugs go here, and medium mugs go here, etc) and I'd feel like I was being judged for everything, form the TV shows I watched to the way I dress (he's just got that stare, you know?).

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? (Matsumoto)

I want to cheat for this one and say multiple relationships, because she's such a versatile character in how many relationships she has and how she treats everyone. I'll settle for two though...

Her relationship with Hitsugaya stems back to his childhood and she's been there watching his growth as a Shinigami since the beginning. Aside from Hinamori, no one else has been so involved in Hitsugaya Shinigami life. They deeply respect each other, have gone through a lot together, and complement each other in their opposing traits.

Then there's her relationship with Hinamori. We've only seen it in the manga once, but Kubo has mentioned Rangiku helped Hinamori in her recovery. You tell me this, and yet I don't get to see it...why?! It would've been amazing! There's Rangiku, going through her own struggles at the time, choosing to come visit Hinamori and help her through her depression. There's Hinamori, probably knowing Rangiku has gone through the ringer when it came to Gin, and maybe trying to help her as well. They're like sisters, I could just see it!

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? (Hinamori)

Hinamori is a delight to write for. My fave thing when writing for her is exploring all the untapped potential she has. I've said it time and again, but we never got to see her full recovery journey. At best, it's implied or in other material (like Death Save the Strawberry or BLEACH: Rebirth of Souls) and at worst it's just not there. You can go in so many directions, and it's been interesting to read how others thought she dealt with Aizen's betrayal after the Arrancar arc and beyond. When I started writing for her, I had a sense of what she did and what it was like for her, but then as I was writing I would think fo something else and add it to her journey.

An example that comes to mind is Hinamori's love for drawing. At first it didn't come to mind when I started writing fics for her, but then I was rereading Color BLEACH+and realized I'd forgotten one of her listed interests was drawing. Then I saw the Fifth Division recruitment brochure and how she drew Aizen. It made me wonder if she kept sketchbooks and how many of them were filled of drawings of Aizen. What would she do with them? How do they reflect how she saw Aizen? If she opened them and saw how she used to see Aizen, how would she feel about her past self? How and when would she decide to dispose of them?

Questions like that came up, and I've ended up including this idea of Hinamori slowly disposing of her sketchbooks in quite a few of my fics. Coming across ideas like this and being able to write them is a joy for me.

Something I don't like is trying to find the right balance of her moving on in a realistic way and how much of her still stuck in the past with her admiration for Aizen. I fear writing her trauma in an insensitive or unrealistic way. I have not gone through anything like what Hinamori has, and I sometimes fear that I am not doing her or her experiences justice because of that. I don't believe you have to go through something horrible to know how to write it of course, and everyone's journey to recovery is different. I ultimately hope that I can convey that Hinamori's story is one of hope and patience. It's showing that recovery can take months, years, decades even, and that it's not a straight forward path. I think that's how it would go for her, but I just hope that I am not coming across as ignorant or insensitive about how one recovers form trauma.

Thanks for sending these in! :D

[bleachbleachbleach]

Captain Hitsugaya finds a Nel car in the World Of The Living.

🧊 Casual Captain Toshiro Hitsugaya: me

📷 Photographer: lockheartcosplay (IG)

🗓️ Event: Car Show at @otafest 2025

🚙 Car: supbirdy (IG)

🧥 Jacket: animeapeofficial (IG)

👕 Shirt: sixonclothing (IG)

[bleachbleachbleach]

I really really love those little anime collaborations that Japanese cafes do that have wacky custom merch and menus and stuff, and I was google-image searching them (for Renji hair-do reasons, if you must know) and I came across this one from last year:

(sorry, this was the biggest version of the picture I can find)

ANYWAY, I cannot get the phrase "Kuchiki Byakuya Chili Cheese Fries" out of my head now. This is an abomination. I cannot think of a food Byakuya would like to be associated with less than Chili Cheese Fries.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Jushiro Ukitake Cosplay 2

[bleachbleachbleach]

6/30-7/10/2025

I wanna do this now, before I move on to the next task, because I feel like the strain of tackling revisions for Hisagi's chapter is going to make me forget everything I've ever known. The yellow block in the first week was the result of "bedbug prevention fiasco" + "hell with this I'll just sleep in my car at a racetrack" + "oh no work deadline," lol. The rest was mostly finishing Hitsugaya's chapter, which is, you know, "done," I guess. We're gonna let that meditate on it self for a while before opening it back up. Then the last two days were revisions for Kira's chapter, which I'm of two minds about.

On one hand, the revision pass was pretty chill! It didn't feel like there were any big swings required--clarify some things here, elaborate on things there, cut elsewhere. I had nearly incomprehensible notes for a bigger addition/revisions of focus to the last part of the chapter, but I decided that would actually make it worse, so nixed those. I feel like a lot of this chapter is really strong, at least at the level of scene and sentence.

On the other hand, it took so long to read I feel like I don't have a good handle on how it feels at the macro level of the entire chapter. Well, I partly do: It's very intense, like Kira is narrating at FULL VOLUME the entire time. Less in the sense of like, the volume of a Michael Bay Transformers film, and more in the sense of "someone who used LiveJournal in 2007," but not for fandom. In this chapter, Kira has the bearing of someone using LiveJournal and is friended to all their RL friends on it. That's the most accurate--if likely selectively legible--explanation of the vibe of Kira's chapter.

I haven't yet decided if that's okay, and part of the character of the thing, or if some volume modulation is in order. Given the circumstances I do feel like he's probably justified in coming across that way. But maybe it hedges into too disorienting because a lot of what Kira's focused on is tangential to what anyone else in the fic thus far has been focused on. I could probably convince myself it works because it's tonally so opposite the last interlude chapter (Hinamori) and Kira is legitimately in a very different headspace than everyone else; but I could also convince myself it doesn't because Kira's coming in wayyyy hot, and over 10k of being a major negative nancy doesn't ALSO need to be FULL VOLUME the whole time.

And then I had a separate spike of panic last night because most of the chapter is very intimate and most of Kira's narration is extremely ungenerous, and I feel like particularly when those two things intersect the onus to make sure it's done as well as you possibly can is great. So then I was like, am I though????

[bleachbleachbleach]

Google but for your brain, so you can query "I'm trying to remember a word and I specifically remember learning it for a vocabulary quiz in high school by associating it with Uchiha Sasuke" and actually get a hit

[bleachbleachbleach]

While I'm in the mood to talk about Seireitei Locations, I meant to make this post ages ago and then just didn't, but here is another fun shop to feature in your Bleach fanfic: the drug store where Matsumoto gets her beauty supplies.

My subtitle here translates the name of the shop as "Asudora"--the Bleach wiki chooses Ashita Tora instead. Literal-meaning-wise, it doesn't matter-- both translate as "Tomorrow's Tiger." ("Ashita" is apparently more formal and "asu".)

Why would you name your pharmacy that, tho????

If you're into the "Four Auspicious Beasts" Seireitei layout theory, perhaps it's in the western/White Tiger portion of the city?

If you use the "asu" pronunciation, is this a pun on Chad's name??? (the 虎 is the same in his name; this is one of those t->d situations). What if you went with your buddy to fantasy afterlife feudal Japan and it turned out your name sounded almost exactly like their version of CVS??? WHAT IF??

I was talking about this with @kaicko who, unlike me, actually speaks Japanese, and she suggested that it might be a pun on the phonetic pronunciation of "astral", like "the astral plane" or "astral projection." Since Soul Society is sort of like...well, like an astral plane, I can see it. Like "Spirit Drugstore." "Soul Pharmacy."

The standing sign next to the door reads "Big Sale."

Rangiku does some shopping here before leaving for the Advance Team Arc, noting "the makeup they have in the Living World doesn't suit me," which is somewhat less ominous than the time Renji declared "the air here doesn't suit me", but has nonetheless stuck in my head as regards the quality of beauty products available in different planes of existence.

I also really like the proprietor of Tomorrow's Tiger, this little old lady that we only see from the back. She calls Matsumoto "Rangiku-chan," so they must know each other well.

She's not wearing a shihakushou, but Rangiku tries to get her to commiserate about business trips, so maybe she's retired??? Maybe "Tomorrow's Tiger" is some reference to her zanpakutou??? Let me have this!!! Also, her little pink cash register, a thing it definitely does not seem should exist in Soul Society, absolutely whips.

[bleachbleachbleach]

— ✨💡💫

[bleachbleachbleach]

Aw, thank you for answering! It made me a bit confused though, had to read it twice lol

Actually, I have tons of questions on Seireitei worldbuilding. Like how big is it? Why is it so hard to navigate for those who have lived there for decades? I actually thought the divisions aren't in order and addresses don't exist like that so it's why it's confusing for shinigami living there but well.

I used to headcanon that Seireitei has a outer cycle, where gotei divisions and kido corpse are stationed, and they're kinda in order, but not so neat. And each division has it's own district, somehow a territory thing? And they have normal shops too. For example, 11th division's district has its own grocery, barber shop, small restaurants or bars, etc.

Ajd we know from tybw that Seireitei has numbered districts, but they didn't list any names(although when you're reporting which districts are getting destroyed , you'd naturally skip the names)

And then we have the inner cycle, which is 1st division, noble parts and shino academy(I think they'd put the young students in a safer area)

I also used to think Seireitei doesn't have a shopping area or bazaar, and the top rukongai districts play that rule. But maybe it has. Who knows

Another matter that I wanted to ask you about before but decided not to is, well, in tybw Ikkaku and Yumichika go to investigate the disappearance of rukongai citizens, and Ikkaku mentions something like "whoever did this, messed with wrong divison's jurisdiction" . Which made me think, so Gotei 13 is in charge of rukongai? Actually makes sense, but how does it work? Which divisions are in charge of which parts?(I think 1st,2nd,4th and 12th are out. 8th might be as well. So 8 divisions, each get 40 rukongai Districts?)

Reading things more than once is a good practice!

According to Yoruichi, it takes 10 days to walk 25% of the outer circumference of the Seireitei, which is… pretty dang big. (We have discussed this previously on this blog. A map of Spain was involved.) Even if we throw out some random numbers and say, okay, walk 15miles in a day, times ten days, times four—you end up with an area that’s like 6 times the size of the Greater Tokyo Area, which as mentioned in the previous post I simply refuse to believe. So… that’s one size I do NOT think the Seireitei is. Maybe Yoruichi doesn't think Team Karakura can walk very fast. Maybe 10 days as an exaggeration. All possible variables!

Matsumoto also talks about how long it would take to assemble all the Captains/VCs for a meeting, based on wherever they might be when the meeting is announced, which suggests the Seireitei is, again, pretty big. But it’s also possible Matsumoto is prone to exaggeration, too. (I mean, we know she is!)

As alluded to in the previous post, I imagine that the Seireitei is difficult to navigate because even if you know how to read a Seireitei address, and it all seems to follow logically, that logic is going to point you to the wrong Ward or the wrong block just as often as it points you to the right one, and there are so many counter-logics at play knowledge of the system can be just as bad as complete ignorance of it—or worse. I mean, Ichigo found this way to stuff, and all he had was *instructions from Ikkaku* and *Ganju’s terrible map.* I have definitely worked in places where there are certain places you can only get to by instinct, and trying to think about it at all or logic it out will guarantee you getting lost!

Even if the Seireitei is not 6x Greater Tokyo Area huge, I think it makes lots of sense that different areas would each have their own shops, like you say. Even if there’s a designated shopping district (there is anime filler that implies that there is) that doesn’t mean that every single shop is there, and nowhere else, in the same way that like, every Chinese business in a city is not in Chinatown. And of course we do know that Rukongai also has some shops (there is at least one confectionary shop, and it’s in Junrinan lol). But I don’t think they’re the only shops. Like, sure, we know nothing about the guy, but I do not believe in my heart that Shirogane would lease some random building in Rukongai to set up the Silver Dragonfly.

I think the Gotei has decided it’s in charge of Rukongai, yes. Whether that paternalism is universally acknowledged is a different story... (See: short-lived Bount Arc Rukongai Insurrection.) Similar to how the Gotei has divvied up the Living World jurisdictions, so goes Rukongai. Whether these are set in stone or get re-negotiated every time there’s a spending bill on the floor of the Central 46 or a new 50-year strategic plan is probably up to interpretation.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Which I find hilarious, as a general translation principle, though these Mansions are a bit more specific. The 28 Mansions are lunar mansions, or lunar stations. The terminology is definitely related! They intersect with apartment-mansions in that they are where the moon goes to "rest." Cuuuuute

hellooo

So I'm reading cfyow right now, and well, I don't know how canon it is, but it states that Seireitei has towns inside it

As in, aside from the noble District and shopping(iirc) District, there are several towns and gotei's barracks are in each town. The only example it gave until this point I've read, is Kutsuwa town, and 11th division's barracks are there.

So I always had this question, that what exactly is inside Seireitei aside from gotei's barracks and sokyouku hill. Are there bazaars, restaurants, shops, or do you have to go to Rukongai? Where do officers live? Do you have to live in barracks or can you have houses outside it? Can someone's family live with them?

According to the hell chapter, officers do have a mansion district, but like, do all of them live in one district apart from barracks? Because it seemed most of them prefer to live in their division base.

And we still have no canon map of Seireitei. Where is each division located? Are they scattered randomly, or is it like, 2 then 3 then 4 and go on?

Since you're a pro on the matter of bleach lore, I thought yoh might have better ideas on this whole thing? I keep making headcanons because canon source isn't providing enough, then get hit with "Seireitei has towns". Although we might just say the novels aren't that canon

Disclaimer: I haven’t read CFYOW

But as far as what constitutes “towns” in the Seireitei, we have a Colorful Bleach example of how addresses work in the Seireitei, and this also supports the idea of it having designated “towns” within it! I don't recall if there are other instances of exact addresses being mentioned in Bleach.

The Seireitei Communications lists their address as:

[Colorful Bleach]

The address part is:

一一九ノO一六三 瀞霊廷一番区柳青二ノ五ノ十

Or, in English:

1 1 9 - 0 1 6 3 Seireitei, 1st District, Ryuusei 2 - 5 - 10

If we assume this functions like a Japanese address, we can break this information down to learn more about how the Seireitei organizes itself.

瀞霊廷 (Seireitei)

Address information is arranged largest to smallest, like a nesting doll of address-ness. If we start with the biggest piece of information, we learn that the SC office is located in the Seireitei. Cool, we knew that!

一番区 (First Ward)

More specifically, the SC office is located in the 1st Ward of the Seireitei. I’m saying “Ward” for now but we could say district/borough/city. The unit/designation is for this area unit is 区. Given that all of Rukongai is numbered, it's maybe unsurprising that (modern) Seireitei has numbered parts, too.

Anyway, the SC being in 1st Ward makes me wonder if the SC office uses a PO box that lives near 1st Division, or if the 9th Division buildings are seriously in the 1st Ward. (I would love this. Mayhem.) How many Wards are there in the Seireitei? idk, dealer’s choice?? Maybe these Wards go by the four cardinal gates into the dang place, and there’s four??

Since I mentioned that 区 could also be translated as "district" and we already have things in Soul Society that we call "districts" in English: The Rukongai "districts" use the kanji 地区 (chiku). 地区 seem bigger than 区 to me. Less strictly urban, maybe? (The first kanji 地, means "earth.") For example, Touhoku is 地区. Kanto is 地区, Kansai is 地区, whereas Shibuya is 区 (ku). Shinjuku is 区, though the 区 in Tokyo are a lot smaller, area-wise, then some of the 区 elsewhere, in less population-dense areas.

* 区 in Tokyo are maybe not the best example, period, because governance re: their 区 is different than other cities. But who knows! Far be it from me to tell the Seireitei it can't have autonomous municipalities. ACTUALLY, given that the Gotei divisions allegedly operate autonomously, maybe they do. But are the ward governments and division governments aligned? Or are the Gotei divisions within these 区 entirely separate autonomous zones? Oh, wild times. Does the Seireitei have a mayor (surely this function is fulfilled by the Council of 46...? Or some separate governing council with reps from the Council of 46, the Gotei, and the Nobles...?). Do each of these wards or towns have their own Mayor Guy?? I feel like all of this Seireitei municipal governance stuff is totally one of those things where it's equally plausible to say "we never see any of this; governance is simplified in this weirdo town and none of this exists, it all happens at the level of a Gotei division and ITS various subdivsions" as it is to say "we don't get to see any of this because none of our POV characters understand it and/or give a shit but it's all totally there, essential to the lives of non-shinigami living in this place."

ANYway--

柳青 (Ryuusei)

Within the 1st Ward (区), the SC office is located in the Ryuusei area (maybe this is what CFYOW calls a “town”). Regardless, it is some smaller area within the 1st Ward.

This post is already way too long without me going down another illuminati rabbit hole, but: You can translate the name of this area as "willow-blue." Interestingly, the pronunciation "ryuu" for this kanji points toward a Chinese constellation system that the 4 Gates of the Seireitei are based on. "Willow" is the 24th of the 28 mansions in this constellation system, and is located in the South quadrant. This lends credence to the idea that perhaps the Wards of the Seireitei are cardinal (though if that's the case, why not name them by direction rather than number? but whatever). Maybe there are 28 "towns" or areas of the Seireitei!

Though--if the SC post box is in the South quadrant, this contradicts where they seem to appear in the TYBW map of the districts, though that's me assuming that North is "up" on that map. (I will fully admit that whenever I imagine where North Rukongai is, it is "to the left," because that's where Hisagi's Dumb Bowl Map put it. Maybe that's what the big horizontal line is meant to denote, and that's how Soul Society does compass roses. Even if left is North, though, the 9th on this map still isn't South.

But we also don't have to assume that the 28 mansions are in the same places in the Seireitei version of this! Maybe the "blue" part of the Ryuusei name suggests it is not in the South (Vermillion) Ward, as it would be in the Chinese constellations, but the East (Azure) Ward, as they both use the same kanji for "blue." In which case the 9th is exactly where it should be on the TYBW map, assuming "left" is North.) This in turn suggests that if the Seireitei's organization is also constellation-based, their stars may be in different places than ours (or even if Soul Society did steal our stars, they appear in the sky differently, because the Seireitei is not looking at them from the same geographic vantage point as China. Which makes a ton of sense, really.)

^ Given that it is canonically stated that the Seireitei is difficult to navigate, even though it's ostensibly a circular grid with quadrants and addresses and the whole nine, I think that's definitely what we're seeing in action here, LOL.

*NB: I checked with the Viz and they translated 柳青 as "Ryuusei," so I did, too, but you could conceivably pronounce it differently, as there are no furigana to explain further. And lots of proper noun kanji in Bleach are pronounced in ways exclusive to Bleach.

二ノ五ノ十 (2-5-10)

The office is located in the Ryuusei 2, in fact, which is a subsection of Ryuusei. We can tell this from the trailing 2-5-10 numbers, which don’t include their respective kanji designations; instead, those are implied by the format. 2-chome (丁目), 5-banchi (番地), 10-gou (号).

The first number designates the area 2-chome in Ryuusei, the second number tells us it’s in block 5 (of 2-chome), and the third means it’s in building 10 (of block 5)!

As a visual example of how all this works, let’s look at a random part of Tokyo:

In the sprawling thing that is Tokyo (which in the SC example would equate to the Seireitei), where’s an area called Nakano City (in the SC example, this is 1st Ward). Within Nakano City, there’s an area called Arai (in the SC example, Ryuusei). Here we can see Arai 2-chome, which is an area in Arai, and then on the right side of the image we see Arai 1-chome, another area in Arai.

Our nesting doll looks like this: Tokyo > Nakano City > Arai > 2-chome.

町 (town)

In places that are smaller than Tokyo (because you can’t convince me that the Seireitei is the size of Tokyo. It’s surely smaller), “town” or machi/chou (町) can be used to designate an area within a larger... erm... area. Karakura-chou, for instance. I dunno the word CFYOW used, but again, the important idea here is the nesting doll quality of these designations.

Bonus: 一一九ノO 一六三 (1 1 9 - 0 1 6 3)

The numbers at the top of our original address at the postal code—if the SC office’s address were in Japan, the 1 1 would designate the prefecture. The 9 is a group of cities within that prefecture, the 0163 designates the neighborhood/smaller increment within that set of cities. How this tracks within Soul Society is anyone’s guess, but poses some fascinating possibilities, and suggests a bit about how areas beyond the Seireitei factor into their postal codes.

--

I would be absolutely happy to share my headcanons about all of your other delightful Seireitei zoning and housing questions (oh my HEART), so please do let me know if you want to hear those, too.

We also have a number of posts and reblogs that collect various pieces of information and headcanons regarding the Seireitei’s cartography, which we've tagged "map society"—both headcanon and canon (for example, TYBW gives a decent look at a map of the Seireitei), and the 10th is either in or near the “warehouse district,” also according to anime canon).

[bleachbleachbleach]

hellooo

So I'm reading cfyow right now, and well, I don't know how canon it is, but it states that Seireitei has towns inside it

As in, aside from the noble District and shopping(iirc) District, there are several towns and gotei's barracks are in each town. The only example it gave until this point I've read, is Kutsuwa town, and 11th division's barracks are there.

So I always had this question, that what exactly is inside Seireitei aside from gotei's barracks and sokyouku hill. Are there bazaars, restaurants, shops, or do you have to go to Rukongai? Where do officers live? Do you have to live in barracks or can you have houses outside it? Can someone's family live with them?

According to the hell chapter, officers do have a mansion district, but like, do all of them live in one district apart from barracks? Because it seemed most of them prefer to live in their division base.

And we still have no canon map of Seireitei. Where is each division located? Are they scattered randomly, or is it like, 2 then 3 then 4 and go on?

Since you're a pro on the matter of bleach lore, I thought yoh might have better ideas on this whole thing? I keep making headcanons because canon source isn't providing enough, then get hit with "Seireitei has towns". Although we might just say the novels aren't that canon

Disclaimer: I haven’t read CFYOW

But as far as what constitutes “towns” in the Seireitei, we have a Colorful Bleach example of how addresses work in the Seireitei, and this also supports the idea of it having designated “towns” within it! I don't recall if there are other instances of exact addresses being mentioned in Bleach.

The Seireitei Communications lists their address as:

[Colorful Bleach]

The address part is:

一一九ノO一六三 瀞霊廷一番区柳青二ノ五ノ十

Or, in English:

1 1 9 - 0 1 6 3 Seireitei, 1st District, Ryuusei 2 - 5 - 10

If we assume this functions like a Japanese address, we can break this information down to learn more about how the Seireitei organizes itself.

瀞霊廷 (Seireitei)

Address information is arranged largest to smallest, like a nesting doll of address-ness. If we start with the biggest piece of information, we learn that the SC office is located in the Seireitei. Cool, we knew that!

一番区 (First Ward)

More specifically, the SC office is located in the 1st Ward of the Seireitei. I’m saying “Ward” for now but we could say district/borough/city. The unit/designation is for this area unit is 区. Given that all of Rukongai is numbered, it's maybe unsurprising that (modern) Seireitei has numbered parts, too.

Anyway, the SC being in 1st Ward makes me wonder if the SC office uses a PO box that lives near 1st Division, or if the 9th Division buildings are seriously in the 1st Ward. (I would love this. Mayhem.) How many Wards are there in the Seireitei? idk, dealer’s choice?? Maybe these Wards go by the four cardinal gates into the dang place, and there’s four??

Since I mentioned that 区 could also be translated as "district" and we already have things in Soul Society that we call "districts" in English: The Rukongai "districts" use the kanji 地区 (chiku). 地区 seem bigger than 区 to me. Less strictly urban, maybe? (The first kanji 地, means "earth.") For example, Touhoku is 地区. Kanto is 地区, Kansai is 地区, whereas Shibuya is 区 (ku). Shinjuku is 区, though the 区 in Tokyo are a lot smaller, area-wise, then some of the 区 elsewhere, in less population-dense areas.

* 区 in Tokyo are maybe not the best example, period, because governance re: their 区 is different than other cities. But who knows! Far be it from me to tell the Seireitei it can't have autonomous municipalities. ACTUALLY, given that the Gotei divisions allegedly operate autonomously, maybe they do. But are the ward governments and division governments aligned? Or are the Gotei divisions within these 区 entirely separate autonomous zones? Oh, wild times. Does the Seireitei have a mayor (surely this function is fulfilled by the Council of 46...? Or some separate governing council with reps from the Council of 46, the Gotei, and the Nobles...?). Do each of these wards or towns have their own Mayor Guy?? I feel like all of this Seireitei municipal governance stuff is totally one of those things where it's equally plausible to say "we never see any of this; governance is simplified in this weirdo town and none of this exists, it all happens at the level of a Gotei division and ITS various subdivsions" as it is to say "we don't get to see any of this because none of our POV characters understand it and/or give a shit but it's all totally there, essential to the lives of non-shinigami living in this place."

ANYway--

柳青 (Ryuusei)

Within the 1st Ward (区), the SC office is located in the Ryuusei area (maybe this is what CFYOW calls a “town”). Regardless, it is some smaller area within the 1st Ward.

This post is already way too long without me going down another illuminati rabbit hole, but: You can translate the name of this area as "willow-blue." Interestingly, the pronunciation "ryuu" for this kanji points toward a Chinese constellation system that the 4 Gates of the Seireitei are based on. "Willow" is the 24th of the 28 mansions in this constellation system, and is located in the South quadrant. This lends credence to the idea that perhaps the Wards of the Seireitei are cardinal (though if that's the case, why not name them by direction rather than number? but whatever). Maybe there are 28 "towns" or areas of the Seireitei!

Though--if the SC post box is in the South quadrant, this contradicts where they seem to appear in the TYBW map of the districts, though that's me assuming that North is "up" on that map. (I will fully admit that whenever I imagine where North Rukongai is, it is "to the left," because that's where Hisagi's Dumb Bowl Map put it. Maybe that's what the big horizontal line is meant to denote, and that's how Soul Society does compass roses. Even if left is North, though, the 9th on this map still isn't South.

But we also don't have to assume that the 28 mansions are in the same places in the Seireitei version of this! Maybe the "blue" part of the Ryuusei name suggests it is not in the South (Vermillion) Ward, as it would be in the Chinese constellations, but the East (Azure) Ward, as they both use the same kanji for "blue." In which case the 9th is exactly where it should be on the TYBW map, assuming "left" is North.) This in turn suggests that if the Seireitei's organization is also constellation-based, their stars may be in different places than ours (or even if Soul Society did steal our stars, they appear in the sky differently, because the Seireitei is not looking at them from the same geographic vantage point as China. Which makes a ton of sense, really.)

^ Given that it is canonically stated that the Seireitei is difficult to navigate, even though it's ostensibly a circular grid with quadrants and addresses and the whole nine, I think that's definitely what we're seeing in action here, LOL.

*NB: I checked with the Viz and they translated 柳青 as "Ryuusei," so I did, too, but you could conceivably pronounce it differently, as there are no furigana to explain further. And lots of proper noun kanji in Bleach are pronounced in ways exclusive to Bleach.

二ノ五ノ十 (2-5-10)

The office is located in the Ryuusei 2, in fact, which is a subsection of Ryuusei. We can tell this from the trailing 2-5-10 numbers, which don’t include their respective kanji designations; instead, those are implied by the format. 2-chome (丁目), 5-banchi (番地), 10-gou (号).

The first number designates the area 2-chome in Ryuusei, the second number tells us it’s in block 5 (of 2-chome), and the third means it’s in building 10 (of block 5)!

As a visual example of how all this works, let’s look at a random part of Tokyo:

In the sprawling thing that is Tokyo (which in the SC example would equate to the Seireitei), where’s an area called Nakano City (in the SC example, this is 1st Ward). Within Nakano City, there’s an area called Arai (in the SC example, Ryuusei). Here we can see Arai 2-chome, which is an area in Arai, and then on the right side of the image we see Arai 1-chome, another area in Arai.

Our nesting doll looks like this: Tokyo > Nakano City > Arai > 2-chome.

町 (town)

In places that are smaller than Tokyo (because you can’t convince me that the Seireitei is the size of Tokyo. It’s surely smaller), “town” or machi/chou (町) can be used to designate an area within a larger... erm... area. Karakura-chou, for instance. I dunno the word CFYOW used, but again, the important idea here is the nesting doll quality of these designations.

Bonus: 一一九ノO 一六三 (1 1 9 - 0 1 6 3)

The numbers at the top of our original address at the postal code—if the SC office’s address were in Japan, the 1 1 would designate the prefecture. The 9 is a group of cities within that prefecture, the 0163 designates the neighborhood/smaller increment within that set of cities. How this tracks within Soul Society is anyone’s guess, but poses some fascinating possibilities, and suggests a bit about how areas beyond the Seireitei factor into their postal codes.

--

I would be absolutely happy to share my headcanons about all of your other delightful Seireitei zoning and housing questions (oh my HEART), so please do let me know if you want to hear those, too.

We also have a number of posts and reblogs that collect various pieces of information and headcanons regarding the Seireitei’s cartography, which we've tagged "map society"—both headcanon and canon (for example, TYBW gives a decent look at a map of the Seireitei), and the 10th is either in or near the “warehouse district,” also according to anime canon).

[bleachbleachbleach]

[bleachbleachbleach]

Imagine walking into someone's office to report a Gotei crime and walking out an hour later with:

knowledge of how to hotwire a golf cart with a paperclip

the historical bases of every shift in Clery Act compliance code, down to the specific cases that engendered the change

long meditation on how one's particular context richly determines one's supporting programs under the Clery Act

thoughts about how caring for shelter dogs helps develop skill trauma-informed counseling

stories about working at the Department of Homeland Security

"To be clear, if there is a homicide, you should report it."

"I told myself 'don't be weird' and then was immediately so weird my seven-year old sat me down to discuss my behavior."

"I'm on call 24-hours, 365 days a year, and the Department of Public Safety is actually my Emergency Contact in my phone, so that it will ring even if my phone is otherwise on silent. Though I realize that's weird because if someone ever needs to call my Emergency Contact they're just going to get DPS, which like, that's not going to help ME, probably. I am DPS!"

"Laws exist to keep people safe. Except sometimes they don't. Sometimes you should break them. You didn't hear that from me."

*exposition about how various spreadsheets populate*

My blorbo 😍 Joe "Gotei crime reporting act" shinigami

Today I went to a Clery Act compliance training, which the facilitator said “might seem a bit dry,” but she was so PHENOMENALLY WEIRD (compliment) I was like “oh, she *definitely* works in the Gotei Clery Act office. This is absolutely who that shinigami is.” We should all aspire to give Clery Act compliance trainings so out there they slip seamlessly into life as usual in Soul Society. I’m in love.

Also, the Clery Act is about reporting crime so YOU CAN IMAGINE this would be the absolute best possible pull as Gotei admin jobs go. Oh the stories you’d spreadsheet—

[bleachbleachbleach]

Today I went to a Clery Act compliance training, which the facilitator said “might seem a bit dry,” but she was so PHENOMENALLY WEIRD (compliment) I was like “oh, she *definitely* works in the Gotei Clery Act office. This is absolutely who that shinigami is.” We should all aspire to give Clery Act compliance trainings so out there they slip seamlessly into life as usual in Soul Society. I’m in love.

Also, the Clery Act is about reporting crime so YOU CAN IMAGINE this would be the absolute best possible pull as Gotei admin jobs go. Oh the stories you’d spreadsheet—