Tama River
The Tama River is a major river in Yamanashi and Tokyo Prefectures on Honshū, Japan. It is classified as a Class 1 river by the Japanese government, its total length is 138 kilometres, the total of the river's basin area spans 1,240 square kilometres. The river flows on the dividing line between Tokyo and Kanagawa. In the city, its banks are lined with parks and sports fields, making the river a popular picnic spot; the Tama’s source is located at Mt. Kasadori in Koshu in Yamanashi Prefecture. From there, it flows eastward into mountainous western Tokyo, where the Ogōchi Dam forms Lake Okutama. Below the dam, it takes the name Tama and flows eastwards through Chichibu Tama Kai National Park towards Ōme, Tokyo, it flows southeast between Tama Hills and Musashino Terrace. At Hamura is the source of the historic Tamagawa Aqueduct built by the Tamagawa brothers in 1653 to supply water to Edo. Further downstream, the river forms the boundary between Tokyo and the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Its mouth on the industrialised Tokyo Bay is next to Haneda Airport. Tama River is prone to flooding, has wrought havoc on surrounding areas throughout history. On occasions the river changed its course after massive floods, sometimes dividing pre-existing settlements in two; as a result, there are several locations where the place names on opposing sides of the river are the same, such as Todoroki. The current course was set as a result of a 1590 flood. Levees have been in place for hundreds of years, but floodwaters have breached them numerous times in history. Extensive engineering projects in the early 20th century have reduced the amount of flood damage, although a 1974 typhoon caused floodwaters to burst a levee in Komae, washing away 19 houses; the levees have not been breached since 1974. Projects to further upgrade the levees have been underway since 1990; as with most major rivers in Japan, the levees are built some distance away from the river itself to accommodate the extra floodwater.
The open expanse between the levees and the river in the middle is covered in grass and shrubbery, forming a useful belt of greenery and wide open space, used as playing fields in many places. Rapid post-war urbanization of surrounding areas took its toll on Tama River, whose water quality in the urban areas plummeted from 1950s onwards rendering it uninhabitable for most species. Pollution control measures and the river's official designation as a wildlife protection zone have now led to the return of many species. Carp, rainbow trout, cherry salmon, iwana and ayu all inhabit Tama River in sufficient numbers for limited commercial fishing to take place in upstream areas. Recent moves to fit weirs with fish ladders have resulted in a steep increase in the numbers of ayu migrating upstream. Other fish such as loach inhabit the river, as do crabs and crayfish. Japanese cormorants, white wagtails, spot-billed ducks, grey herons, little egrets, Japanese white-eyes, Mandarin ducks, black-headed gulls are among birds seen at the river.
Various types of ducks have made a comeback after the 1969 designation of the river as a wildlife protection zone. The expanse of greenery between the levees and the river itself attract additional wildlife. In the summer of 2002, Tama-chan, a arctic male bearded seal first spotted in the Tama River by the Maruko Bridge, became a major nationwide celebrity. In recent years the Tama River has been settled by a larger number of non-native species including Red-eared slider turtles and tropical fish like piranhas, it is assumed that life for tropical fish became possible because of higher water temperature of river due to global warming and waste water from sewage treatment plants. Those higher temperatures now allow tropical pet fish abandoned by their owners to survive the cold Japanese winters. In the early 2000s a Kawasaki man named Mitsuaki Yamasaki established a "fish shelter" to house pet fish that owners would otherwise dump into the river. There are a large number of stray cats living along the river.
Some homeless people live near the Tama River. Near the outskirts of Tokyo, the river is a popular kayaking spot, with the Japan National Slalom Kayak competitions being held on the Tama River where it passes through Mitake; this section of river is a budding white water rafting and hydrospeeding destination being so accessible from Tokyo. Companies operate from early spring until late autumn; the boulders on the riverbed around Mitake form one of Tokyo's premier climbing spots. Some of Japan's famous boulder problems can be found here, on boulders such as'Ninja rock' and'Deadend'. Further down, sports fields appear on both banks of the river, with many teams practicing or playing a range of sports here on a regular basis, including baseball and rugby union. There are many playgrounds, park spaces and golf driving ranges found on the side of the river as it passes through the city. A bike path and running track travels the length of the river through urban Tokyo, extending to the river mouth in Tokyo bay.
The area around Tama River on both sides have been suburban in nature, with a few low to mid-rise office buildings. High-rises were nonexistent until the late 2000s, with the bottoming of Tokyo's 2 decade long real estate bubble collapse; this has changed with increased rail passenger services due to double tracking and line extensions and thru-services. The skyline has visibly changed at Futako-Tamagawa Station and Musashi-Kosugi Station but there are renewed developments from Keio-Tamagawa Station area downstream as t
Romanization of Japanese
The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as rōmaji (. There are several different romanization systems; the three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki romanization, Nihon-shiki romanization. Variants of the Hepburn system are the most used. Japanese is written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese and syllabic scripts that ultimately derive from Chinese characters. Rōmaji may be used in any context where Japanese text is targeted at non-Japanese speakers who cannot read kanji or kana, such as for names on street signs and passports, in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language, it is used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English on topics related to Japan, such as linguistics, literature and culture. Rōmaji is the most common way to input Japanese into word processors and computers, may be used to display Japanese on devices that do not support the display of Japanese characters.
All Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. Therefore all Japanese are able to read and write Japanese using rōmaji, although it is rare in Japan to use this method to write Japanese, most Japanese are more comfortable reading kanji and kana; the earliest Japanese romanization system was based on Portuguese orthography. It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography; the most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was the Nippo jisho, a Japanese–Portuguese dictionary written in 1603. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels; some consonants were transliterated differently: for instance, the /k/ consonant was rendered, depending on context, as either c or q, the /ɸ/ consonant as f.
The Jesuits printed some secular books in romanized Japanese, including the first printed edition of the Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike, romanized as Feiqe no monogatari, a collection of Aesop's Fables. The latter continued to be read after the suppression of Christianity in Japan. Following the expulsion of Christians from Japan in the late 1590s and early 17th century, rōmaji fell out of use and was used sporadically in foreign texts until the mid-19th century, when Japan opened up again. From the mid-19th century onward, several systems were developed, culminating in the Hepburn system, named after James Curtis Hepburn who used it in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887; the Hepburn system included representation of some sounds. For example, Lafcadio Hearn's book Kwaidan shows the older kw- pronunciation. In the Meiji era, some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system and using rōmaji instead; the Nihon-shiki romanization was an outgrowth of that movement.
Several Japanese texts were published in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. In the early 20th century, some scholars devised syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin that were less popular since they were not based on any historical use of the Latin script. Today, the use of Nihon-shiki for writing Japanese is advocated by the Oomoto sect and some independent organizations. During the Allied occupation of Japan, the government of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers made it official policy to romanize Japanese. However, that policy failed and a more moderate attempt at Japanese script reform followed. Hepburn romanization follows English phonology with Romance vowels, it is an intuitive method of showing Anglophones the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the United states as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese, but that status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today in the English-speaking world.
The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron to indicate some long vowels and an apostrophe to note the separation of confused phonemes. For example, the name じゅんいちろう is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, romanized as Jun'ichirō in Revised Hepburn. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u; this system is used in Japan and among foreign students and academics. Nihon-shiki romanization, which predates the Hepburn system, was invented as a method for Japanese to write their own language in Latin characters, rather than to transcribe it for Westerners as Hepburn was, it follows the Japanese syllabary strictly, with no adjustments for changes in pronunciation. It is therefore the only major system of romanization that allows near-lossless mapping to and from kana, it has been st
Tokyo
Tokyo Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603, it became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is referred to as a city but is known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo; the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo were Tokyo City. On July 1, 1943, it merged with Tokyo Prefecture and became Tokyo Metropolis with an additional 26 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture, the Izu islands and Ogasawara islands south of Tokyo.
The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million. The prefecture is part of the world's most populous metropolitan area called the Greater Tokyo Area with over 38 million people and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy; as of 2011, Tokyo hosted 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world at that time. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development Index; the city is home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo third in the Global Cities Index; the GaWC's 2018 inventory classified Tokyo as an alpha+ world city – and as of 2014 TripAdvisor's World City Survey ranked Tokyo first in its "Best overall experience" category. As of 2018 Tokyo ranked as the 2nd-most expensive city for expatriates, according to the Mercer consulting firm, and the world's 11th-most expensive city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's cost-of-living survey.
In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle. The Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo was ranked first out of all sixty cities in the 2017 Safe Cities Index; the QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student in 2016 and 2nd in 2018. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, the 1993 G-7 summit, will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Tokyo was known as Edo, which means "estuary", its name was changed to Tokyo when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph; some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei".
The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, he got the idea from that book. Tokyo was a small fishing village named Edo, in what was part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from Mikawa Province to Kantō region; when he became shōgun in 1603, Edo became the center of his ruling. During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century, but Edo was Tokugawa's home and was not capital of Japan. The Emperor himself lived in Kyoto from 794 to 1868 as capital of Japan. During the Edo era, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, in the presence of such peace, Edo adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city.
The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. However, this prolonged period of seclusion came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Meiji Emperor leveraged the disruption that t
Drainage divide
A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighbouring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, may be in the form of a single range of hills or mountains, known as a dividing range. On flat terrain where the ground is marshy, the divide may be harder to discern. A triple divide is a point a summit, where two drainage divides intersect. A valley floor divide is a low drainage divide that runs across a valley, sometimes created by deposition or stream capture. Major divides separating rivers that drain to different seas or oceans are called continental divides; the term height of land is a phrase used in Canada and the United States to refer to the divide between two drainage basins. Height of land is used in border descriptions, which are set according to the "doctrine of natural boundaries". In glaciated areas it refers to a low point on a divide where it is possible to portage a canoe from one river system to another.
Drainage divides can be divided into three types: Continental divide in which waters on each side flow to different oceans, such as the Congo-Nile Divide. Every continent except Antarctica has one or more continental divides. Major drainage divide in which waters on each side of the divide never meet but flow into the same ocean, such as the divide between the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze. Another, more subtle, example is the Schuylkill-Lehigh divide at Pisgah Mountain in Pennsylvania in which two minor creeks divide to flow and grow east and west joining the Lehigh River and Delaware River or the Susquehanna River and Potomac River, with each tributary complex having separate outlets into the Atlantic. Minor drainage divide in which waters part but rejoin at a river confluence, such as the Mississippi River and the Missouri River drainage divides. A valley-floor divide occurs on the bottom of a valley and arises as a result of subsequent depositions, such as scree, in a valley through which a river flowed continuously.
Examples include the Kartitsch Saddle in the Gail valley in East Tyrol, which forms the watershed between the Drau and the Gail, the divides in the Toblacher Feld between Innichen and Toblach in Italy, where the Drau empties into the Black Sea and the Rienz into the Adriatic. Settlements are built on valley-floor divides in the Alps. Examples are Eben im Kirchberg in Tirol and Waidring. Low divides with heights of less than two metres are found on the North German Plain within the Urstromtäler, for example, between Havel and Finow in the Eberswalde Urstromtal. In marsh deltas such as the Okavango, the largest drainage area on earth, or in large lakes areas, such as the Finnish Lakeland, it is difficult to find a meaningful definition of a watershed. Another case is bifurcation, where the watershed is in the river bed, a wetland or underground; the largest watershed of this type is the bifurcation of the Orinoco in the north of South America, whose main stream empties into the Caribbean, but which drains into the South Atlantic via the Casiquiare canal and Amazon River.
Since ridgelines are sometimes easy to see and agree about, drainage divides may form natural borders defining political boundaries, as with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in British North America which coincided with the ridgeline of the Appalachian Mountains forming the Eastern Continental Divide that separated settled colonial lands in the east from Indian Territory to the west. Drainage divides hinder waterway navigation. In pre-industrial times, water divides were crossed at portages. Canals connected adjoining drainage basins. Important examples are the Chicago Portage, connecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi by the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Canal des Deux Mers in France, connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; the name is enshrined at the Height of Land Portage which joins the Great Lakes to the rivers of western Canada. List of watershed topics River source – The starting point of a riverCategories: Category:Drainage basins
Eurasian collared dove
The Eurasian collared dove is a dove species native to Europe and Asia, introduced to North America. Because of its vast global range and increasing population trend, it has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 2014, it is called collared dove, spelled Eurasian collared-dove. Collared doves are sometimes kept in aviculture, form strong relationships with each other; the genus name Streptopelia is derived from Ancient Greek streptos meaning "collar" and peleia meaning "dove". The specific name decaocto is a latinisation of the Greek word for "eighteen", it is a medium-sized dove, distinctly smaller than the wood pigeon, similar in length to a rock pigeon but slimmer and longer-tailed, larger than the related turtle dove, with an average length of 32 cm from tip of beak to tip of tail, with a wingspan of 47–55 cm, a weight of 125–240 g. It is grey-buff to pinkish-grey overall, a little darker above than below, with a blue-grey under wing patch; the tail feathers are grey-buff above, dark grey tipped white below.
It has a black half-collar edged with white on its nape from. The short legs are red and the bill is black; the iris is red, but from a distance the eyes appear to be black, as the pupil is large and only a narrow rim of reddish-brown iris can be seen around the black pupil. The eye is surrounded by a small area of bare skin, either white or yellow; the two sexes are indistinguishable. There are two subspecies, Streptopelia decaocto decaocto in most of the range, Streptopelia decaocto xanthocyclus in the southeast of the range from Burma east to southern China; the latter differs in having yellow skin around the eye. Two other subspecies sometimes accepted, Streptopelia decaocto stoliczkae from Turkestan in central Asia, Streptopelia decaocto intercedens from southern India and Sri Lanka, are now considered synonyms of S. d. decaocto. It is related to the island collared dove of southeast Asia and the African collared dove of sub-Saharan Africa, forming a superspecies with these. Identification from African collared dove is difficult with silent birds, with the African species being marginally smaller and paler, but the calls are distinct, a soft purring in African collared dove quite unlike the Eurasian collared dove's cooing.
The collared dove is not migratory, but is dispersive. Over the last century, it has been one of the great colonisers of the bird world, travelling far beyond its native range to colonise colder countries, becoming a permanent resident in several, its original range at the end of the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka. In 1838 it was reported in Bulgaria, but not until the 20th century did it expand across Europe, appearing in parts of the Balkans between 1900–1920, spreading northwest, reaching Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953, Ireland in 1959, the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s. Subsequent spread was'sideways' from this fast northwest spread, reaching northeast to north of the Arctic Circle in Norway and east to the Ural Mountains in Russia, southwest to the Canary Islands and northern Africa from Morocco to Egypt, by the end of the 20th century. In the east of its range, it has spread northeast to most of central and northern China, locally in Japan.
It has reached Iceland as a vagrant, but has not colonised there. In 1974, fewer than 50 Eurasian Collared Doves escaped captivity in New Providence, Bahamas. From the Bahamas, the species spread to Florida, is now found in nearly every state in the US, as well as in Mexico. In Arkansas, the species was recorded first in 1989 and since has grown in numbers and is now present in 42 of 75 counties in the state, it spread from the southeast corner of the state in 1997 to the northwest corner in 5 years, covering a distance of about 500 km at a rate of 100 km per year. This is more than double the rate of 45 km per year observed in Europe; as of 2012, few negative impacts have been demonstrated in Florida, where the species is most prolific. However, the species is known as an aggressive competitor, there is concern that as populations continue to grow, native birds will be outcompeted by the invaders. However, one study found that Eurasian collared doves are not more aggressive or competitive than native mourning doves, despite similar dietary preferences.
Population growth has ceased in areas where they’ve been established the longest, such as Florida, in these regions recent observations suggest the population is in decline. The population is still growing exponentially in areas of more recent introduction. Carrying capacities appear to be highest in areas with higher temperatures and intermediate levels of development, such as suburban areas and some agricultural areas. While the spread of disease to native species has not been recorded in a study, Eurasian Collared Doves are known carriers of the parasite Trichomonas gallinae as well as Pigeon Paramyxovirus. Both Trichomonas gallinae and Pigeon Paramyxovirus can spread to native birds via commingling at feeders and by consumption of doves by predators. Pigeon Paramyxovirus is an emergent disease and has the potential to affect domestic poultry, making the Eurasian Collared Dove a threat to not only native biodiversity, but a possible economic
Districts of Japan
The district is today a geographical and statistical unit comprising one or several rural municipalities in Japan. It was used as an administrative unit in Japan in antiquity and between 1878 and 1921 and was equivalent to the county of the United States, ranking at the level below prefecture and above town or village, same as city; the district was called kōri and has ancient roots in Japan. Although the Nihon Shoki says they were established during the Taika Reforms, kōri was written 評, it was not until the Taihō Code that kōri came to be written as 郡. Under the Taihō Code, the administrative unit of province was above district, the village was below; as the power of the central government decayed over the centuries, the provinces and districts, although never formally abolished and still connected to administrative positions handed out by the Imperial court lost their relevance as administrative units and were superseded by a hierarchy of feudal holdings. In the Edo period, the primary subdivisions were the shogunate cities, governed by urban administrators, the shogunate domain, major holdings, there was a number of minor territories such as spiritual holdings.
For this reason alone, they were impractical as geographical units, in addition, Edo period feudalism was tied to the nominal income of a territory, not the territory itself, so the shogunate could and did redistribute territories between domains, their borders were subject to change if in some places holdings remained unchanged for centuries. Provinces and districts remained the most important geographical frame of reference throughout the middle and early modern ages up to the restoration and beyond – the prefectures were created in direct succession to the shogunate era feudal divisions and their borders kept shifting through mergers and territorial transfers until they reached their present state in the 1890s. Cities, since their introduction in 1889, have always belonged directly to prefectures and are independent from districts. Before 1878, districts had subdivided the whole country with only few exceptions. In 1878, the districts were reactivated as administrative units, but the major cities were separated from the districts.
All prefectures were – except for some remote islands – contiguously subdivided into districts/counties and urban districts/cites, the precursors to the 1889 shi. Geographically, the rural districts were based on the ancient districts, but in many places they were merged, split up or renamed, in some areas, prefectural borders went through ancient districts and the districts were reorganized to match. District administrations were set up in 1878, but district assemblies were only created in 1890 with the introduction of the district code as part of the Prussian-influenced local government reforms of 1888-90. From the 1890s, district governments were run by a collective executive council, headed by the appointed district chief and consisting of 3 additional members elected by the district assembly and one appointed by the prefectural governor – similar to cities and prefectures. In 1921, Hara Takashi, the first non-oligarchic prime minister, managed to get his long-sought abolition of the districts passed – unlike the municipal and prefectural assemblies, an early platform for the Freedom and People's Rights Movement before the Imperial Diet was established and became bases of party power, the district governments were considered to be a stronghold of anti-liberal Yamagata Aritomo's followers and the centralist-bureaucratic Home Ministry tradition.
The district assemblies and governments were abolished a few years later. As of today and villages belong directly to prefectures. However, for geographical and statistical purposes, districts continue to be used and are updated for municipal mergers or status changes: i
Primula sieboldii
Primula sieboldii, the Japanese primrose, is a species of primrose, endemic to East Asia. The species goes by common names such as Siebold's primrose, cherry blossom primrose, Japanese woodland primrose Snowflake, Geisha girl, Madam butterfly and the Japanese primrose which applies to the related species Primula japonica; the species was first described by Charles Jacques Édouard Morren and was named after Philipp Franz von Siebold, a German physician. The plant is perennial with fibrous roots, its leaves is 3.5 -- 12 centimetres long. It have an ovate blade which hairy but is cordate at the base and is both crenate and round at the apex; the species have 10–25 centimetres tall scapes and have an inflorescence which has an umbel of 5-15 flowers. The sepal is 0.7 centimetres long with spreading lobes that are lanccolated. Primula sieboldii is an ornamental plant which grows in wet areas and forests in China, Japan and Russia
Mexico State, Mexico, affiliated on October 2, 1979
Shanxi province, China, affiliated on October 27, 1982
Queensland, Australia, affiliated on October 27, 1984
Ohio, United States, affiliated on October 22, 1990
Brandenburg, Germany, affiliated on August 26, 1998
Turin, Italy
