Ōuda, Nara

was a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

located in Uda District,

Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. As of 2005, the town had an estimated

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

of 8,647 and a

density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...

of 182.27 persons per km². The total area was 47.44 km². On January 1, 2006, Ōuda, along with the towns of Haibara and Utano (all from Uda District), was merged to create the city of Uda. The town of Ōuda lies in a valley between two long mountain ranges in northeastern

Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

. A three-mile long stretch of national routes 166 and 370 in the southern part of the town is where most of the businesses and homes are clustered. A large portion of flat land north on route 370 is less densely populated, covered mostly by rice fields. A large ''

torii A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The presence of a ''torii'' at the entrance is usually the simplest ...

'', or Japanese Gate, rises out of the rice paddies. File:Ouda.jpg, File:Ouda_outskirts.jpg, The outskirts of Ōuda Dissolved municipalities of Nara Prefecture Populated places disestablished in 2006 2006 disestablishments in Japan Uda, Nara {{Nara-geo-stub