This paper aims to explain the social and spatial change in a rural-urban fringe of the metropolitan area, focusing upon social networks for understanding the characteristics of socially mixed neighborhoods. The phenomenon is commonly known as konjuka, which is understood as “an established local community becoming more heterogeneous with the inflow of newcomers, ” and that situation causes various difficult problems in the local community. Previous konjuka studies have had some methodologic problems. For that reason, this paper introduces the social network approach in this geographic study.
A social network is a device for representing social structure which depicts persons as points and relations as connecting lines. One advantage of the social network approach is that the researcher is not confined a priori to the spatial units of analysis such as the neighborhood or the community. The other advantage is that the researcher can analyze the emergent property of networks.
In this analysis as a case study in Asahi-cho, Washimiya Town, Saitama Prefecture, the author draws on 1) fieldwork for describing the residential neighborhood relationships, and 2) a questionnaire survey to clarify the structure of personal networks.
The main findings are summarized in the following three points:
1) Established residents formed groups between neighborhood relationships throughout the community range but newcomers formed them only in the han range, which is one of the areal units of the local autonomy association. Residents tend to have cliques of intense social cohesiveness in their han range but such groups have little interaction among them.
2) Established residents had dense kinship and friendship networks in the proximity of their residential area. In the case of newcomers, however, women formed into a sparsely knit, spatially dispersed, ramifying structure. Men maintained personal networks in their workplaces and outer communities. In terms of intimate networks, women tended to have socially close friends who lived in near by neighborhoods or communities.
3) In the gender role in their households, women developed personal networks in their neighborhoods. Women whose children take part in kodomokai, i.e., the neighborhood group of elementary school pupils, play an especially important role in bridging the gap between newcomer groups and established resident groups.

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The present study investigated atmospheric conditions producing summer-time nocturnal cooling in high mountain areas of central Japan. The focus was on the cold-air pool observed in a small hollow in the Yatsugatake range during 1997. Differences in cooling mechanisms between the high mountains and lower plains/basins were examined in terms of atmospheric conditions and land-surface environments.
The cold-air pool, formed in the hollow immediately after the Baiu rainy season (late July), was as strong as that during autumn. The enhanced cold-air pool during late July was observed when an anticyclone with extremely dry air and weak winds covered central Japan for one week. The dry air mass led to a large deficit in the longwave radiation balance, i.e., an intense radiative cooling. Although other dry air conditions occurred during late August due to migratory anticyclones, they did not produce intense cooling because of strong ambient winds.
In low-elevation plains and basins, nocturnal cooling was stronger during late August than during the post-rainy season. This may be due in part to surface moisture conditions: wet soil conditions during the post-rainy season versus drier soils in late summer. In brief, the nocturnal cooling in the high mountains is primarily affected by atmospheric conditions, such as air dryness, cloudiness, and ambient winds. This is because the smaller scale high-elevation valley is exposed to the free atmosphere. In contrast, the land-surface wetness appears to play a major role in cooling in low-elevation plains and basins.

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Dairying in Tulare County was started as part of general farming coinciding with the development stage of agriculture in California. As “grain raising was a gamble and fruit raising was a speculation, ” a dairy herd paid every 30 days, not on a very large scale but steadily. By working hard in dairies as a milker and saving money, an immigrant was able to start an independent dairy farm in a few years.
lthough the number of dairies has decreased constantly from the 1930s, and that of dairy cattle remained stable or slightly increased in California as a whole, dairy farming has been stationary or trending upward since 1960 in Tulare County. Decreasing dairies in Tulare County was compensated for by the influx of Portuguese dairies from southern California, including those from suburban Los Angeles. The trend accelerated from the 1980s, and especially during the 1990s Dutch dairies moved from the Chino Valley. Development of large-scale dairies promoted the differentiation of dairy operations. Old, sizable dairies owned by British and European immigrants specialized in breeding registered cow and bulls, which were followed by the Portuguese and Dutch. Some dairies raised Jersey cows for specialty cheese. Custom calf and heifer ranches also emerged with the specialization of dairy farming. The ethnic composition of dairy farmers changed from British and continental Europeans to Portuguese and Dutch in Tulare County.
Tulare County is located in central California between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Reasonable land prices, available groundwater, and familiar local climate attracted dairies from southern California, especially from the Chino Valley. Dairies without sufficient cropland in the Chino Valley were suffered from complainments of newcomers an air pollution (odors or flies) and groundwater pollution, while faeing the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency. Thus relocated dairies were able to purchase extensive fields around dairy sites for disposing of manure and sewage from barns and corrals.
A Dutch-American family built multiple, large, state-of-the-art dairies for sons and brothers by investing abundant capital, which they raised by disposing of the high-priced land of former dairies. They manage industrial dairies with a scale of 2000_??_3000 milk cows. They milk cows nearly 24 hours per day by using 70-head Herringbone milking machines and hiring Hispanic milkers and workers, As large trucks collect milk two or three times a day, this industrial dairy corresponds to one Japanese dairy cooperative consisting of 50100 dairy farmers. Industrial dairies grow corn and wheat for silage. These crops grow fast by absorbing the organic wastewater from barns and corrals. All fields owned by dairies are equipped with pipeline networks to irrigate with sewage water. Manure separated mechanically from sewage water is also distributed in the field after harvesting crops by their own trucks or custom spreading companies. Some dairies sell manure to fruit and cotton growers. On the other hand, dairy farmers use the cotton seeds, almond full, and orange and carrot residues of agroindustries located nearby. Hay stacks of alfalfa bale are brought from the Imperial Valley, California, as well as form Utah and Arizona. The existence of these regional combinations makes possible the existence of industrial dairies and dairy product companies.
The Dairyman's Cooperative Creamery Association (DCCA), operated sine 1911, is now the largest single dairy product facility in the USA. The influx of industrial dairies in Tulare County attracted milk product facilities of the California Milk Producers (CMP) and Kruse Grain & Milling company from southern California. Moreover, big dairy product companies such as Kraft Foods and Saputo Inc. and medium and small cheese companies are located in the city of Tulare and vicinity.

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