Has there ever been a list of the Okayama places that inspired the Character names?
I want to rewrite the Okayama page on the fandom wiki so it's relevant to a Tenchi forum instead of just a wikipedia copypasta.
Such a list would be key.
Or is it more like almost every character is named after a location and you just have to look for it?
Here is a list of some of the places which character names are base on; I hope that this list can help you.
Washu - Mt. Washu. Kurashiki City
Hakubi - Railroad line starting south from Kurashiki City
Lady Seto - Inland Sea
Yosho - Mt. Yoshozan and Yoshosan Hot Spring. Asakuchi City
Sasami - Sami Beach, Kurashiki City
Kiyone - Train Station and neighborhood in Soja City
Taro Masaki - Taro Shrine in Asakuchi City. Masaki Family Shrine's design is based on Taro Shrine
Anyone have others off the top of your head?
I guess I'll eventually just take whoever else and do some Googling/Mapping.
Just to see if that would work, I searched for Noike Okayama (and told Google, no, I did not mean "Nike") and got a result for a "famous" pond called either the Kayo-noike or Sawa-Noike or Man-Noike pond.
Also, Apparently Mihoshi is derived from the town name of Bizen. It's mentioned in the fandom and reg wiki pages, but I don't quite get that.
It's the same kanji with a different pronunciation.
https://www.uselesstenchi.org/Forum/index.php?topic=1562.msg51356#msg51356
Souja is named after the town/area of Souja. It's all over the map. So is Minami. And yes, Mihoshi is an alternate pronunciation of Bisei.
Hitoshi Okuda continued this trend with several of his characters, such as Yakage and Ibara being named after smaller cities in Okayama. Makibi is there. Hakubi references the main East-West Train line through Okayama and Kurashiki-cho. Funaho is the city on the west bank of the Takahashi river. And I found Kiyone (https://goo.gl/maps/Db8qeALUQRhPnQnG6) nestled between Souja and Kurashiki. Bizen is the next city north-east along the coast. And Minagi is a town or two up along the Takahashi river.
Seriously, one only has to open google maps to see all this.
It is nice that some map services translate the local place names, at least to some phonetic approximate. I always grinned seeing Mount Yosho-don and the shrine on Kamidake Road / Lane?