What's in a name?

A question I often get is why Shinmachi doesn't have its own sim. After all, Shinmachi literally translates as 'new town' and by choosing such a name, surely the group would have at least a 1/4 sim dedicated to the recreation of its namesake.

Well, Second Life is a complicated world. Shinmachi started off as a full homestead sim at a place called Harborside; the buildings were simple and the landscaping ... well, nonexistent; it was pretty much a flat land with a pond, but it was our first home. We had our own kabuki theater, courtesan residence, market area and even a few buildings open for rent. This Shinmachi at Harborside was a labor of love and a small scale version of the pleasure district it was named after.

One day, the leasing company accidentally deleted the sim. To this day I have no idea how that happened, but months of work (including some of my treasured Rumi instruments) was suddenly gone. The company apologized profusely and offered to give us a few days free at a new sim to compensate us for the disruption. The leaders at the time came to the conclusion that if the company was unable to figure out how one of their sims was deleted, what will stop them from accidentally deleting another one?

So, we improvised and a few days later we opened a temporary location at Sorrento Moon. This place was also a recreation of the real Shinmachi, though on a far smaller scale than Harborside. We kept our kabuki stage, made a smaller courtesan residence, had only a few market stalls and a pond (of course). We downsized even more with our move to Keisei, where Shinmachi was simply a rather large courtesan residence. By this time we realized that Shinmachi had become more of a conception, an idea which led our group then and continues to guide us today.

Though our name suggests a full town, Shinmachi of SL focuses on recreating different aspects of the real district, and not on making a full version of it in this virtual realm. In short, we're not a town nor are we a pleasure district; we're a performance and role-playing group that hopes to preserve some of the culture from its namesake in a virtual sense.