when i was 9 or 10 years old, i would set my alarm and wake up at 0530 on the weekends so i could maximise my internet time (before my parents woke up). i would split my time between neopets, habbo and looking at "kawaii" blogs. an important part of this, that i have been reluctant to write down for some reason, is that i shared a lot of these experiences with my cousin. she wasn't really interested in the kawaii websites, but we would play habbo and neopets together. we even had a shared neopets account. i remember she once snuck away from her mum at the hairdressers to buy me habbo credits at JB Hi Fi, and she gave me the card at a family wedding. i think i still have the card pasted in my diary. i also remember the day we had a random event on neopets - we got a starry paint brush! our first paint brush! we used it on our scorchio. we were so excited we screamed and my aunty ran into the computer room to see what was wrong. i think later that day we were trying to poundsurf and accidentally abandonned our scorchio! but luckily we got him straight back.
you'll have to forgive me for the wall of text... i am reminiscing. but those memories are so precious to me. not just because of the inherent nostalgia i have for my childhood, but also because my cousin died this year. her death was a huge shock, and she will never know... well it's hard to say, but the devastation she left behind. i don't think i even know the full extent of the loss... i guess after she died, i returned to places on the internet, places we shared together. i returned to my old tumblr and listography account. my dashboard is not what it once was, but i happened upon a post about "the old internet". this is what led me to this community of people who too yearn for the old internet. and this is what gave me the inspiration to create this website - which has always been a childhood dream of mine.
when i was younger, i would go through phases of feeling intense desire and motivation to take up new hobbies. i haven't felt this for a long time - i think maybe because i have had less spare time over the past few years. all of those days, that used to just stretch out before me, where i would sit in my room with its big windows gazing out onto the forest... they have been filled with work, spending time with my boyfriend and friends. things like that. it's like time condenses once it is filled. but now i have a break from all of that (except my dear boyfriend of course).
i just realised, i never explained the name! as far as i understand it, sengokuhara is an area of hakone, japan. there are beautiful grass fields there. i went on my first solo trip to japan many years ago and visited this place. that trip brought me such a sense of peace. i would traipse around tokyo and then watch steven universe in my hostel late at night. when i returned home i needed a new name for my tumblr, and chose this. i think that's enough of me for now. thank you for reading this, if you have.