Remote Towns Die, Graying Of Japan

[TuskCracker]

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They need hippies to setup communes in these far away places

Village Writes Its Epitaph: Victim of a Graying Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: April 30, 2006

OGAMA, Japan — This mountain village near the Sea of Japan, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on.

So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution: selling all of Ogama to an industrial waste company from Tokyo, which will turn it into a landfill.

With the proceeds, the villagers, mainly in their 70's, plan to pack up everything, including their family graves, and move in the next few years to yet uncertain destinations, likely becoming the first community in Japan to voluntarily cease to exist.

...
Rural Japan has never recovered from the long economic recession, unlike the cities. Many of its commercial main streets have been reduced to what the Japanese call "shuttered streets," and few rural areas have found economic alternatives to the huge public works projects that the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party kept doling out in return for votes.
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[anzen]

I would be tempted to buy up any land I could afford. One day soon the economy will turn around.

 

[JimmySeal]

Why would you want a plot of useless land out in the boonies?

 

[anzen]

One day people in Japan will realise they can get a better life if they move out of Osaka, Tokyo Nagoya etc. As more and more people travel and see how the rest of the first world countries live they are going to expect more.

The boonies will cease to be the boonies (and hopefully I will get rich!)

 

[Mike Cash]

I would be tempted to buy up any land I could afford. One day soon the economy will turn around.

Put your money where your mouth is. Come over here and bet your family's future on it.

 

[DoctorP]

One day people in Japan will realise they can get a better life if they move out of Osaka, Tokyo Nagoya etc. As more and more people travel and see how the rest of the first world countries live they are going to expect more.
The boonies will cease to be the boonies (and hopefully I will get rich!)

Many families already do this. I own some land (a gift to me) in Ibaragi Prefecture. It is mainly farmland there, but over the last 5 years, many families from the cities have been buying land and putting up homes. The idea is that once they retire they will sell their condo in the city and move to the countryside.