Gary Kleppe wrote:

Folks, in case any of you out there don't know, currently
available evidence indicates that Hitomi is *not* a
Japanese national. Anything she says regarding Japanese
life, culture, etc. should be taken with a
grain of salt until it can be verified by an actual 
Japanese person.

I'm not quite sure what the assertion is here.  Based simply
on her ability with English and presence on this list, it
is certainly plausible that Hitomi is not a Japanese citizen,
(as opposed to a Japanese-American or -Canadian who came to
this continent as a child, for instance) which is the normal
meaning of "national".  In fact, that's probably what I
assumed, if I assumed anything.  If the assertion is that Hitomi
is not Japanese even by extraction, then I have to say that
I'm quite surprised:  I would have thought otherwise of the
author of "A Son's Duty".

And I don't normally take the word of a single citizen of any
country for blanket statements about that country (as opposed
to answers to highly specific questions).  I've known too many
U.S. citizens who make incorrect blanket statements about the
U.S. (e.g. "America doesn't have high-rise apartment buildings"
by a midwesterner).

information that I get to the list.) Nippon or Japan is a 
contry about the
size of CA (state) yet it has more than 160+ millon people in 
it.  That
implies that rents and proptery values will be higher for 
one...  Japan
does import most of everything it uses... and recycling is a 
way of life
there... Importing food, and other items does jack up the 
costs big time.

I actually found it highly plausible that, if Nabiki thought
she had enough money to rent a apartment and go to school for
four years using a Tokyo cost-of-living, she could easily buy
a house plus school in the mythical "Gotham City".  [Possibly
this is because I'm not necessarily assuming that Gotham
equals New York, at least in prices.]

Let's not forget that just a few years ago, 100 year mortgages
were popular in Tokyo as the only way many families could
afford to buy a home at all.  Housing prices in the Tokyo area
may have gone down a lot since 1992, but they're still
astronomical by normal U.S. standards.  Food is also very
expensive.