Do you feel population decline/declining birth rate?

20 comments

1. I mean, smaller class sizes are far from a bad thing.

2. > the roaring 80/90 seems to be disappearing.

   dafuq this even mean?

3. My immediate neighbors are all 70+. Wonderful people but I worry what will happen when they pass away and leave akiya behind… very common problem tbh.

4. My kids go to the same school their mom went to. When my wife was going to school, she said each grade had 6-7 classes, now they have 3.

5. Yes yes of course. How much just varies based on location. Real communities have been declining in population for decades. Public schools closed or get merged. Private schools all over the country are having a hard time filling their desks.

   The data is clear enough. A more interesting question is what’s going to happen in the next half century. How low will the numbers fall? We’ll find out.

6. 45 students in a class sounds insane. You went to school in Japan and it was like that?

   In my home country it was always 25-30 students. Maybe 31 max. Smaller class sizes aren’t a bad thing at all anyway and don’t necessarily reflect on the birth rate

7. An elementary school I taught at several years back had like 30 6th graders and then it was a linear decline in students per grade lower with just 14 first graders.

   O well, depopulation isn’t too bad at the current rate. I just wish they’d do a better job cleaning up abandoned places. Maybe let some of it return to nature.

8. 2 grocery stores closed near me and now I have to drive to go shopping. Schools closing all around the area. Abandon houses and stores everywhere. Finally one of the schools in town has gotten the city to tear down the abandoned house across the street from me saying it’s a danger to others walking by…. Now for the other 200 buildings in the immediate area…. Funny though, people are still asking high prices for any real estate here.

9. No. In fact, I often comment about my desire to find these child free areas.

   Here in Oita, it seems like there are a lot of families. I know after graduation, they move away from Uni or for work, but there are so many kids here it’s wild.

   So, I don’t really feel this personally. But the data doesn’t lie. It is happening.

10. I live in Okinawa, so, no, people here tend to have larger families.

11. No, they seem to have massively increased around where I live. Can’t escape them.

12. When I visit relatively rural area for travel, the average age seem 60+ years old and lots of small shops are closed.

13. I feel it every time I pay one of those insane health insurance bills.

14. Classes are max 31 at my school. We did entrance exams recently and only 65 students showed up. We usually take in 140.

15. Not in my area as it’s fairly popular and there are a lot of young families. But in inaka, definitely

16. Nopes . Kindergarten are still very difficult to get in. Always waiting list or lucky 🍀.

17. A decade or more ago I was teaching at a small countryside school. The class sizes were so small they had the grades combined. 1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6. The upper grade had about 8 students. The bottom grade had like 3 students.

18. I haven’t noticed this – the majority of my Japanese friends are married and have kids…and almost all my students (office workers) are the same.

19. Just from my experience, I was living in a very rural area about 10 years ago and they just closed one of the two local elementary schools because there weren’t enough students. I was volunteering at the other school and on a regular school day, a lot of their classes were half full. I keep wondering how many students are there now because it’s pretty unlikely that area would have people moving into it except casual workers. It was a shock tbh.

20. My kids have attended 2 schools. First school in Tokyo had lots of students, they performed theater and music festival every year, lots of other activities as well. Then moved to northern Osaka, about 1/3 the number of students from first school. No activities other than sports day.

    So, the “feeling” is still sporadic, normal people like us won’t feel them uniformly in all aspect of lives for another 20 years at least (just pulled that number out of arse). The effect will start when today’s children enter the work force and those born pre 2000 has retired.

    Companies and farmers though have felt it since a decade ago, it’s the reason why the company I work at when from almost non-existence foreign employees to dozens and dozens, and management trying to overhaul working conditions to attract and retain foreign talents.