While I can believe in a merchant tongue (good for business if you can keep records) I'm still dubious about its commonality among the random civilians in that world. Now it may be a matter of getting a good wide shot of the Hidden leaf and labeling each building or cluster there of, but they don't exactly fixate on the life of your random villager much. Those that do get fixated on are well off for the area.
Now can you remember seeing signs with words (not those picture signs) or menus in restaurants or is it an 'ask the staff' method?
Getting a general fix on the local tech level is harder. Mainly, because it fluctuates so frequently by area. Town to town, city to city, tech is a hodge-podge of randomness. The random towns look like they are from the 1800s for most places. No power, lots of really flamable buildings.
Leaf is as was said a large population center... at least two rich families live(d) there. Rich people. Rich people like snazzy new stuff you peons can't afford. Like none burning lights.
While I wouldn't put it past the clans of elitists to run the power lines all over town to keep reminding them that all the cool people have power... I think its more likely that Hinata's family or someone like them runs the power station and sells it to the merchants. The rest of the people bought it as it became cheaper.
Sasuke's family ran the police force... so what did Hinata's family do to make cash?
(This discounts the 'I didn't think that stuff came from somewhere, trains are just SOOO Cooll!!! TOOT TOOT!!!' theory... after all the filler did spend several episodes on a fart joke involving bugs.)
Now can you remember seeing signs with words (not those picture signs) or menus in restaurants or is it an 'ask the staff' method?
Getting a general fix on the local tech level is harder. Mainly, because it fluctuates so frequently by area. Town to town, city to city, tech is a hodge-podge of randomness. The random towns look like they are from the 1800s for most places. No power, lots of really flamable buildings.
Leaf is as was said a large population center... at least two rich families live(d) there. Rich people. Rich people like snazzy new stuff you peons can't afford. Like none burning lights.
While I wouldn't put it past the clans of elitists to run the power lines all over town to keep reminding them that all the cool people have power... I think its more likely that Hinata's family or someone like them runs the power station and sells it to the merchants. The rest of the people bought it as it became cheaper.
Sasuke's family ran the police force... so what did Hinata's family do to make cash?
(This discounts the 'I didn't think that stuff came from somewhere, trains are just SOOO Cooll!!! TOOT TOOT!!!' theory... after all the filler did spend several episodes on a fart joke involving bugs.)