Hans Holm wrote:

I have vague memories of someone's (possibly the same fan as previously
mentioned) investigations showing that there are no open canals/ditches
of the kind shown in the manga in Nerima.

No, there is at least one...  You can find it on the tokyo on-line maps, 
it's pretty big, probably a boxed-in river, it's hard to tell with all 
the captions in Japanese.  I found a Ranma site once that had a direct 
link to the Nerima map page.  There are also a few parks with artificial 
lakes... and golf cources.  Though I'm not sure how common fountains are.

The funny thing about the picture of the streetcorner I saw was that 
there really was a train station just down the street... and a shopping 
district.  I'm sure it must have been strange to live there when Ranma 
was airing.

One thing I consistantly see people getting wrong in fanfics in general 
is how Japanese schools are set up.  From what I've gathered, unlike in 
American schools, the students stay in one classroom and the teachers 
move from class to class.  But that might depend on the school in 
question.  Not to mention that the school breaks are shorter and they 
have a completly different set of holidays.  Though I've never seen a 
fanfic that attempted to put any obviously non-japanese holiday into the 
Japanese school calendar....except Christmas and Valentine's day.  And I 
hear the Japanese have taken those holidays in a particularly Japanesque 
maner.

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