My city, Hidaka by Sadamu

Here is Sadamu's interesting and informative essay about his home city, Hidaka, that forward from the Advanced Writing group on Google. I thought he has already posted it to the blog like Allun did. Sadamu and all: please accept my apologies. I'd like to draw everyone's attention to an important point that Sadamu makes: learning about something by writing about it. I've also heard this referred to as "write to learn."  Vanessa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sadamu
To: StudyCom Advanced Writing

My city, Hidaka

I have two cities which I can call that it's my city. One of them is the city where I had raised till my high school graduation. The other is Hidaka where I have been living since 1996. Working on this home
work, I found that I didn't know about my city, Hidaka. I studied about my city, so I got wiser now.

Hidaka is located in the southwestern part of Saitama Prefecture,almost in the center of Japan. You can easily view my city on Google Earth at 139 degrees 20'42" E longitude, 35 degrees 54' 36" N latitude. It extends 11.1 km east to west, 6 km north to south. The eastern part of Hidaka is made up of plains and the city's urban district, while the west features high hills and mountains 200m high.Hidaka is a wonderful sightseeing location with Koma River.

The city was founded on October 1, 1991. We have 39 cities in Saitama Prefecture. Hidaka is 37th city in Saitama. The city has estimated population of 56,821 at Jan. 1, 2010. Population density of Hidaka is 1,200 persons per square kilometers. 25% of the city land is agricultural land and 20 % of it is residential and building lots. The city is served by Komagawa and Takahagi stations on JR line and by Koma station on Seibu line. One fifth of working people who live in Hidaka commute to outside of Saitama by these lines.

The oldest relic that has been uncovered in Hidaka is a knife shaped stone implement, about 12,000 years old. It is said that 1,799 Kokuri-jin (Korean immigrants) moved to the Hidaka area and established Koma
Country, in the year 716.

Main industry in Hidaka is sight seeing. There are many places to see and visit in Hidaka. It is supposed that Hidaka will have 6,500 thousands visitors in 2009 FY.

Regards, Sadamu