After seeing this statement:
I don't know where Nerima is
for the Nth time (no offense meant to the authors -- why *should* you know
where Nerima is?), I decided to post a quick little geography lesson.
Nerima is one of the 23 wards ("ku") of Tokyo; in Japanese, that's
"Nerima-ku". Like the boroughs of New York City, many of the wards were
towns that were annexed by Tokyo as it grew. However, they're part of Tokyo
proper now.
Nerima is in the northwest corner of Tokyo. Here is a map (in Japanese) of
Tokyo and the cities to its west:
<http://www.mapion.co.jp/html/map/web/admi13.html>
Even if you can't read Japanese, you can see the 23 wards of Tokyo at the
right side of the main part of the map; they're colored a sort of peach
color. Nerima is the large ward in the most northwest (upper left) corner.
Here's a map in English showing where it is, though without the ward
boundaries:
<http://www.mapblast.com/mblast/map.mb?loc=wo&CT=35.738783%3A139.605124%3A10
00000&GAD1=&GAD2=&GAD3=Tokyo+Tokyo&GAD4=Japan&W=425&H=250&IC=35.6754%3A139.7
694%3A8%3A&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mapblast.com%2Fmblast%2Fquick.mb%3Fsec%3
D6%26ad3%3DTokyo&lv=7&zoom.x=23&zoom.y=211&MA=1>
It's in the center of the map, two wards over from Shinjuku ward.
Like most wards of Tokyo, Nerima-ku is made up of many neighborhoods which
used to be little villages and towns in their own right and have names.
There is a Nerima town near the southern border of the ward, and I assume
this is the place the ward is named for. Here is a closeup from the Japanese
language map, with Nerima station in the box in the middle:
<http://www.mapion.co.jp/cgi/m?no=3091977500196250036&bmap=10919835001970500
00&cat=web>
Finally, Nerima is written with the kanji "neri" (practice, drill, train)
and "ma" (horse). Maybe it was where people went to practice their
equestrian skills?
OK, I think that's all anyone could possibly want to know about Nerima, so
I'll stop here. :-)
Deborah