The girl hurried down the stairs in front of me

Girl going down the stairs — Staircase of Meiji University

There are many universities and other educational institutions around Ochanomizu station. It all started with the Yushima Seido, which is located near the station. Yushima Seido was a Confucian school opened by Razan Hayashi in the middle of Edo period. Originally a private school, it later became the Shoheizaka Gakumonjo, an academy under the direct control of the shogunate, and in the Meiji era (1868-1912), Tokyo Normal School and Tokyo Women's Normal School, the predecessors of Tsukuba University and Ochanomizu Women's University, were built here. In the midst of all this, many other schools were also built in the Ochanomizu area, which originally had many former samurai residences and a lot of wide open spaces.

One of the schools located near Ochanomizu Station is Meiji University. Meiji University was moved from Sukiyabashi to this location in 1886. I looked at an old map to see if the large site of Meiji University used to be a large feudal lord's mansion, but that was not the case. It must have been samurai residences, but I couldn't find any large mansions. It was a plot of small mansions lined up in a row.

I was standing by the stairs on the university grounds. There were no vestiges of the former samurai residence here, just a flight of stairs stretching out in front of me. It was the weekend and there were hardly any students. As I gazed blankly at the lonely stairs, a girl appeared and ran happily along the railing.

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