Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao
Aren't the parts that are not very populated mostly mountains? Or Hokkaido, which is damn cold and not many people want to live there (I would but I like the cold lol).
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It's rural areas that aren't populated. Besides maybe Kanto (which is now entirely consumed by the Tokyo metro area), most of the countryside is quite sparse. The bigger problem in Japan is that the population is overly concentrated in just a small number of cities (namely Tokyo and the Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe metro region). I'm no expert but I'd guess that land prices in cities like Nagasaki, Fukuoka, Sendai, Hiroshima or Sapporo are more reasonable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumeragi
If only life was that simple. The costs of raising kids regardless of the existence of day care are too high for the average Japanese to want to have them. It's a matter of the people not being up to the task, and not that of the government.
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I don't really get why child-rearing is so much more expensive then in other western nations. For instance in the
US it's only about $12,000 a year, which, though high, is within reach of the vast majority of middle class families.