Monday, July 18, 2005
Crisis? What crisis?
I've heard so often about how Japan is in a population crisis, what with the aging population, and low birth rate, Japan's population is actually expected to shrink within the coming years. My old Board of Education head (now since retired) urged me to find a nice Japanese girl, settle down back in Toyono, and have lots of babies to replace the low numbers of enrollment my town is having. The picture is generally seen as bleak.
The thing is that, looking around the country, it doesn't seem so bleak. I don't doubt the seriousness of the issue, nor can I speak for 130,000,000 people. But while in Fukuoka this past weekend to catch some baseball games, the stadium had healthy numbers of young expecting mothers, or young mothers already. It's a random sampling of 30,000 people, but who knows? The future might be rosey. Either that or pregant women like going to baseball games so my sample was skewed.
Post script: Don't Japanese women look young? I guess men too. But going back to these prenant women at the baseball games, many looked like they were in their late teens or early twenties. And alot of the mothers of kids at my school look young too. There's the fact that Japanese women seemingly start families earlier than Canadians. There's also the element of, as I said, Japanese just generally looking younger. You could be talking to a 35 ear old, and think they just graduated university.
The thing is that, looking around the country, it doesn't seem so bleak. I don't doubt the seriousness of the issue, nor can I speak for 130,000,000 people. But while in Fukuoka this past weekend to catch some baseball games, the stadium had healthy numbers of young expecting mothers, or young mothers already. It's a random sampling of 30,000 people, but who knows? The future might be rosey. Either that or pregant women like going to baseball games so my sample was skewed.
Post script: Don't Japanese women look young? I guess men too. But going back to these prenant women at the baseball games, many looked like they were in their late teens or early twenties. And alot of the mothers of kids at my school look young too. There's the fact that Japanese women seemingly start families earlier than Canadians. There's also the element of, as I said, Japanese just generally looking younger. You could be talking to a 35 ear old, and think they just graduated university.
