VLVL2 (9): Shinjuku
Tim Strzechowski
dedalus204 at comcast.net
Tue Nov 11 09:38:39 CST 2003
143.26: "[...] the Professor looking even more goofy than usual, lurching after a noted beauty in gold lame, flip hairdo, and two-centimeter eyelashes outside a bar in Shinjuku [...]"
Some demographics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_special_wards
Interestingly, there seems to be a botanical connection to this particular city, which may or may not have been on P's mind as he chose this location for the sake of the Vineland narrative:
"In 1872(Meiji 5th), the government established Naito Shinjuku Experimental Station in order to promote modern agriculture in Japan in the area of 58.7ha, which consisted the land paid from the Naito family and another neighbor land that was purchased.
"In this station, extensive studies were practiced such as the cultivation of fruitand vegetable, sericulture, stock farming using Western technique. And in 1874(Meiji 7th), it belonged to the jurisdiction of the Home Office and was newly established the educational institution for agriculture. The institution was moved to Komaba in 1877(Meiji 10th) and it became Komaba Agricultural School, which was the forerunner of the agricultural department of the university of Tokyo."
http://www.shinjukugyoen.go.jp/history/english-history.index.html
and another pretty comprehensive site:
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/
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