Karuizawa, Nagano
The Itoshiki are a prestigious family in , , a parody of Karuizawa, Nagano, where they reside in a 70 hectare mansion, and have great influence in local affairs. As a running joke throughout the series, when the characters for "Itoshiki" (糸色) are written closely together, the resulting kanji can resemble , which often undoes the next character it is appended to. Thus writing resembles . The manga eventually reveals that they aren't the original Itoshiki family, but merely the descendants of look-alikes paid to masquerade for the real family while they fled from those who wanted them dead. After the family vanished from the face of the earth, the look-alikes decided to remain as the Itoshiki family.