LEESEAN.NET

Tash and I went to a restaurant in Nakatsu called Ichi-gou Gochisouya (一合御馳走屋) for the first time tonight. It's in an old Japanese-style building close to downtown that used to hold an udon/soba noodle shop popular with local expats. Now, it's an Izakaya, a kind of Japanese style tapas/gastro-pub sort of restaurant. [...]

After everything I said in the previous post, I think we have to look at another fundamental question:  is a declining population necessarily a bad thing?  In the case of developped countries like Japan, maybe not.  
Afterall, Japan is only the size of Sweden or California in terms of landmass, but it has half the [...]

Various media have recently reported on the 2005 fertility statistics in Japan. According to the BBC, Japan's fertility rate in 2005 dropped to an average of 1.25 children per woman, down from 1.29 in 2004 and the lowest on record since recordkeeping began in 1947. This makes Japan's birthrate one of the lowest [...]