Koichi Yamagata

The relationship between the environmental sounds and the sound images of a place

In recent years, we have a growing interest about the environmental sounds. Usually, we make great account of the visual elements for the townscape planning and design. It is important for the townscape planning to take not only the visual elements, but also the acoustic images of a place into consideration.Therefore, the aim of this study is to make clear the relationship between a place and the environmental sounds, and the relationship between the sound images and the visual elements. As a result, we found out the characteristics of environmental sounds and sound images of 6 places in Hitachi City.

A Study on Meanings and sources of River names and Road names in Ibaraki Prefecture

The aim of this paper is to make clear the meaning of river names and road names, and to introduce the impotance of their names as an information of the regional environment. We selected 110 rivers and 150 roads in Ibaraki Prefecture and classified their names by the comparative method with “koaza” - a small place name -. As a result We understood their names have a close relationship to the regional characteristics of the geografy, social and industrial activities and landmarks.