sizes do not differ significantly, lengthy disputes ensue. Sometimes the problem can be solved by adopting the district's name. Another easy solution is a simple compounding of the names, but this method, relatively common in Europe, is unusual in Japan. Instead, they are often abbreviated. For example, the Ōta (大田) ward of Tokyo is a portmanteau of Ōmori (大森) and Kamata (蒲田), it seems that Ōkama was not chosen because of its likeness to 'okama', a derogatory word for homosexual. Toyoshina, Nagano, is an acronym of the four antecedent villages: Toba, Yoshino, Shinden, and Nariai. Another common method is borrowing a well known nearby place name and adding a direction, like Nishitōkyō ("West Tokyo"), Kitakyūshū ("North Kyūshū"), Higashiōsaka ("East Osaka"), Shikokuchūō ("Central Shikoku") and recently Higashiōmi ("East Ōmi"). Other towns sometimes use nouns with pleasant connotations, such as , , or . A characteristic of the Heisei mergers is a rapid increase of hiragana names. The names of Japan's cities used to be written in Kanji exclusively. The first instance of "hiragana municipalities" was , renamed in 1960. Their number reached 45 by April 2006. They include , , , , and , which was upgraded to a designated city in 2003. The creation of Minami Alps in 2003 is the first example of a katakana city name. Criticisms Most of Japan's rural municipalities largely depend on subsidies from the central government. They are often criticized for spending money for wasteful public enterprises to keep jobs. The central government, which is itself running budget deficits, has a policy of encouraging mergers to make the municipal system more efficient. Although the government purports to respect self-determination of the municipalities, some consider the policy to be compulsory. As a result of mergers, some cities such as Daisen, Akita temporarily have very large city assemblies. Some people see it as a form of federalism; they consider that the ultimate goal is to change Japan into a union consisting of more autonomous states. So far the mergers are limited to the local municipalities. Mergers of prefectures are also planned in some regions of Japan. Suzuki and Ha's empirical research found that municipal merger in Japan during 2008 to 2014 discourages performance of legislative activity and bylaw proposals, using a dataset of 754 Japanese city-level governments. Local councils, after municipal merger, propose fewer municipal bylaws. Those mergers that created new communities appear to experience more