Talk:Tōyō, Kumamoto

I am an Assistant English Teacher currently living in Toyo, and am a direct observer of what goes on here. Most of the current material was written by me in months past. Feel free to alter it, but as a matter of credibility I suggest doing so only if you are factually certain of what currently goes on here firsthand. -cbarlaan

If you're refering to edits of yours that I reverted, the reasons were the following:

• Factual errors, such as

• Yatsushiro-gun is not a "county"; 郡 is officially translated as "district"
• A village merged into a larger municipality does not become a "town". It no longer exists as an independent unit of government.

• Non-encyclopedic content: Reassertions of the village's relative importance or separate identity in the region are not appropriate for this forum, unless you can point to a significant political movement (hopefully with sources to back it up).

I'm glad you've taken an interest in writing about where you live. However, a more appropriate place would be in the article for the town you actually live in, which is Yatsushiro. (It sounds like you're a JET; you may live and work in the Tōyō area, but I'd wager dollars to donuts your CO is the Yatsushiro BOE. Incidentally I'm a CIR in Ikata, Ehime.) Amake 04:32, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Assertions of the village's separate identity are valid and important, and so are all of former towns which were acquisitioned into Yatsushiro because they've all had vastly different cultures and histories and still retain these traditions and practices up to today. To ignore these facts, and thus the reality of the way things are, does not do an encyclopedic article justice. Again, the only people who would know more about this are the people who actually live here and the participant-observers who have studied the area extensively. By the way, you mispelled Yatsushiro... -cbarlaan

All of that can be adequately addressed within the Yatsushiro article. Make a "Tōyō" section if you have enough material for it. To put things in perspective, though, Tōyō is just another tiny little village out of hundreds that have merged over the last few years. The audience for whom Tōyō's independence is relevant is vanishingly small and becoming smaller every year. Tōyō is just another neighborhood of Yatsushiro now, and there's no going back.

If you're interested in sharing about Tōyō, I suggest you a) make your contributions in the Yatsushiro article, and b) find a way to emphasize the uniqueness of Tōyō as a part of Yatsushiro and the surrounding area. For reference, you might want to see how I've treated the Misaki and Seto areas of Ikata, Ehime. Amake 06:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)