Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Sapporo… and I should say upfront, I didn't hear this from anyone who actually verified it themselves, so take it as a rumor, nothing more.
Apparently, on North 13th Street, the 11th block… doesn't exist.
You can see it clearly on a map, they say. Along North 12th Street, everything runs in perfect order — 1st block, 2nd block, right on through, and the 11th block is right there where it should be. But the moment you cross into North 13th Street, the 10th block is followed directly by the 12th. The 11th has simply vanished.
Sapporo is, as you know, a city laid out like a grid — straight roads, addresses in clean sequence, the kind of place people say you can't possibly get lost. Which is exactly why that gap looks so deeply, wrongly out of place.
Someone noticed it. Two, maybe three years ago, from what I heard — this person had been asked by a local friend to drop off a package somewhere near North 13th Street. They were cycling there with a handwritten address, just after nine in the evening.
It was late October, cold enough that your breath showed white, and though there were streetlights, something about that particular road felt dimmer than it should have been. They kept telling themselves it was just their imagination, and kept pedaling.
They passed the sign for the 10th block, and as they approached the next intersection, a thought crept in: wait — did I even see a sign for the 11th?
They doubled back a little. There was the green sign for the 12th block, clear as anything. But looking back toward the 10th, there was nothing in between. No sign at all.
That's strange, they thought, and pulled out their phone to check the map — and there it was, plain as day: no 11th block. A blank space sitting in the middle of the map. The address simply skipped.
They filed it away as odd, finished the errand, and took the same road home.
That's when they noticed it. In the space between the 10th and 12th blocks — the space where the 11th should have been — there was an old wooden building. No way to tell what it had once been. No sign above the door, just windows covered with paper gone brown with age. In front of the entrance, a single weathered plant pot.
That part, on its own, wasn't frightening. But inside the pot there was no soil, no plant — only small wooden slats, standing upright. Thin, thin sticks, like miniature grave tablets, bundled together in a cluster.
They felt, without quite knowing why, that they shouldn't photograph it. So they rode on.
Later, they asked one of the older locals about it. The person started to say, "Ah, yes, that place—" and then stopped. Just stopped. "Well," they said finally, "it's been that way for a long time." And that was all. They wouldn't say anything more.
What "that way" meant, they never explained.
But from that night on, the person started having a dream. Not every night — just sometimes. In the dream, they're riding through the grid of streets, counting the signs as they pass. 1st block, 2nd block, 3rd block…
But no matter how far they ride, they never reach the 11th.
Every time the numbers skip, they start counting again from the beginning. Over and over.
…Maybe someone buried something there. Something they didn't want anyone to count.
There are people who say that letters with no address to go to — they accumulate in places like that.
