little_details

[This is for fanfiction, or else I'd make it up.  It's Fushigi Yuugi, since that's important to the character in question.  First post and all that jazz.]

Time:  modern-day Nagoya
Searches tried:  "admissions to uni - JP" "about uni - JP" "University of Tokyo Medical admissions" "Todai admissions" (kinda useful, but geared toward IT jobs), "Japan uni", "Japan university"; I also checked the international forums of StudentDocter.net, but the topics there were geared towards China/Hong Kong/Korea...

( Cut for length - backstory and fleshing out of question, yayCollapse )
This is a little unimportant sort of sidenote, but the character does muse on it, so I want it to be believable.

I hope my incoherent rambles make sense, and thanks in advance for helping!

I have not searched for this because it's pretty specific, not really searchable that I can tell, and not something I want to be reading about in gory detail (given the sorts of webpages I suspect I would find). :(

As the entry title says, my question relates to physical evidence of child abuse. It's a mild example, as child abuse goes, but I am putting it under a cut.

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My story revolves primarily around two 'races' (I say 'races', although that might be a misnomer: both races are definitely 'human'; although their difference lies in their ways of looking at things). Anyway, to get on with it, for one of these races; I call them the witches; I've decided to make them live in forests. The closest example that I can think of is that of the Wood Elves in Tolkein's Legendarium.
 For some reason or the other, I'd really like to clothe the nobility in silk.
Therefore, my question is this: What is the exact, ancient (oldest) method of weaving silk? I'm asking because I want to know if my witches are technologically advanced enough to be able to do this (so far as this is concerned, they can't use magic). I gather that the Chinese were the first ones to do it, I'd like to know, thus, exactly what were the methods and tools they employed and the such.

My second question is this: As mulberry is essential to silk, what kind of a forest (what kind of trees, etc, etc) are liable to grow alongside mulberry? And what kind of physical features would that entail, the climate, etc.

SEARCHES USED:

• Google. I used the search term, "Silk Weaving". I got either modern returns, or a history of silk weaving and the Silk Route. It didn't get into the actual practice and the technical details, so far as Ancient Times went. I did get something on how the Romans (mis) interpreted it, but that's about all.
• Wikipedia. Pretty much the same thing, with slightly more structured information perhaps; but still of not much help, I'm afraid.

It's 1932 in British Columbia. There's a town of about 120 people built on an island between the mainland and Vancouver Island. This town is wealthy enough to have its own church.

What type of church is it? Presbyterian? Methodist? UCC? Catholic?

Do they have more than one?

The obvious place to look is the census, but I've had trouble tracking one down. (I've found an online copy of the raw data behind the 1901 census, but that's going to be an awful lot of work to analyze for this sort of thing. Beyond that, the closest I've gotten is 1981, which isn't much help.) I can't think where else to refer to for this sort of information.