Saitama (city) city boundaries. The western portion of the city lies on the lowland created by the Arakawa River along with those created by small rivers such as the Moto-Arakawa River, Shiba River, and Ayase River. The rest of the area mostly resides on the Ōmiya Plateau lying in the north-south direction. Dispersed in this region, major rivers flow southward, almost paralleling to one another. Saitama has ten wards ("ku"), which were assigned official colours as of April 2005: Saitama's economy is principally constituted by commercial business. The city is one of many commercial centers of the Greater Tokyo area and serves
Japanese gunboat Sumida (1903) the Allies. "Sumida" saw combat service in the Second Sino-Japanese War, beginning with the First Shanghai Incident in 1931. "Sumida" continued to operate on the Yangtze River in China during the early 1930s, but was already considered obsolete, and was struck from the navy list on March 1, 1935. She was scrapped on March 31, 1935 at Shanghai. Japanese gunboat Sumida (1903) "Sumida" was the first gunboat in the Imperial Japanese Navy inventory designed specifically for inland river service. The need for such a vessel to operate on the rivers of the Asian mainland to protect Japanese commercial interests at