私：川上村という地名は川の上流にあるからでしょう？。きっと全国に同じ名前の村がたくさんあるでしょうね。
父：みずえの予想通り、調べたら全国に六つも同じ名前の村があるそうだよ。
Yosoo-doori
(Nagano-ken no Kawakamimura de)
Watashi: Kawakamimura to iu chimei wa kawa no jooryu ni aru kara deshoo? Kitto zenkoku ni onaji namae no mura ga takusan aru n'deshoone.
Chichi: Mizue no yosoo-doori, shirabetara zenkoku ni muttsu mo onaji namae no mura ga aru soo dayo.
(In Kawakamimura, Nagano Prefecture)
Me: I guess Kawakamimura gets its name from the fact that ifs upstream of the river? I expect there are lots of places in Japan with the same name.
My father: You're quite right. I looked it up and found that there are six places in Japan with the same name.
Yosoo-doori means just as you imagined, expected, or predicted.
We make guesses about things all the time. Whether or not Hideo Nomo, the Dodgers' pitcher, will lead his team to victory again today; how long Tomiichi Murayama will stay in office, and so on. Yosoo-doori no koto mo areba, yosoo ga hazureru koto mo aru. (Some things go as we predict, some things turn out differently from what we expect. )
When I looked up the name Kawakamimura in an atlas of Japan, I found two in Okayama, one in Nara, one in Yamaguchi, and one in Gifu. All of these Kawakami muras were situated upstream of a river - the Yoshino river, the Kiso River, and so on-and Yosoo-doori no kekka ga dete manzoku shita. (I was pleased to find that it was just as I'd expected. )
In Tokyo there is an area called Igusa, which is divided into two parts, Kami-Igusa and Shimo-Igusa (kami meaning "upper," and shimo meaning "lower"), and near Igusa is the Shakujii River. I wondered if this was another case of places being named according to their position upstream or downstream of a river.
However, Shirabete mitara, yosoo-doori ni wa ikazu, hazurete shimatta. (When I
looked it up, I found that my guess was wrong and I was off the mark.) Apparently, when Kyoto was still the capital of Japan, the part of Igusa that was closer to Kyoto was referred to as Kami, and the part farther away was referred to as Shimo. Itsumo yosoo-doori ni iku to wa kagirimasen. (Things don't alwaysturn out as you imagined.)
There are lots of place names throughout Japan that include the prefix kami- or shimo-. It might be fun to see ii you can guess whether they got their names according to their position in relation to a river or in relation to the old capital. Yosoo-doori ni iku to ii desu ne. (I hope your guesses turn out to be correct.)