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
Yamanote and Shitamachi certain "conflation" of the two terms, and those born in Shitamachi are typically considered true Edokko, children of Edo. This conflation is evident in the Edo period habit of saying "I am going to Edo" to mean going from the area around Fukagawa in Kōtō ward to anywhere east of the Sumida river. While the Yamanote grew west on the Musashino Plateau, in time the Shitamachi expanded east beyond the Arakawa river, and now includes the Chūō, Kōtō(Fukagawa), Sumida, and Taitō wards, plus part of Chiyoda ward. The center of Ueno in Taitō lies at the heart of the old