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How crowded Japan is, is what surprised me

What I learned is..

And one question I have is..

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What surprised me was that in Japan they are able to build such tall buildings even though they live in a major earthquake zone

I learned that in Tokyo it takes almost 2 hours just to get from place to place

I wonder how they are able to maintain such a healthy environment went they could be having very large pollution issues

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-what surprised me most was just how populated japan was.

-I learned that 3/4 of japans land is mountainous.

- what are they doing to prevent this from going out of control.

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- I'm surprised that Japan's population density is 10X's the amount of the US
- I learned that Japan used to be farmland
- How are they trying to solve this problem?

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Four decades after the first forecasts that Japan's population decline was inevitable, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is drawing a demographic red line with a target to halt the slide at 100 million people by 2060, a 20 percent drop from current levels.

But holding the line will be difficult and costly unless Japan opens the door wider to long-term immigration, a step policymakers say they have no intention of taking. A proposal floated among Abe's advisers to increase the number of immigrants to 200,000 a year by 2050 was rejected.

"What the prime minister is thinking now is to let foreign workers in for a limited period because of the shortage of construction workers in the run-up to the (Tokyo) Olympics in 2020," said Seiko Noda, head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's General Council.

"As for the idea that in 50 to 100 years this country won't be able to function unless foreigners are allowed to stay more permanently - no one is thinking about that," she said in an interview.

Many Japanese have long prided themselves on their cultural homogeneity, although the nation has tiny minorities within its population of about 127 million. With strict immigration laws, less than 2 percent of the population are foreign nationals.

The population has been shrinking for the past three years, and demographic forecasts make grim reading. The number of newborn babies fell to a record low of 1.03 million in 2013 despite a slight uptick in the fertility rate, as the number of women of childbearing age shrank. If the trend continues, the population will fall below 100 million in 2048, and to about 87 million by 2060. At that point, 40 percent of people will be 65 or over.

Such figures have raised the specter of a Japan where ghost towns dot the countryside as huge numbers of elderly huddle in Tokyo, government coffers collapse under the fiscal strain and the nation's global influence fades.

"If we do not alter the trend of a rapidly shrinking, aging population, there is a risk the economic scale will ... fall into a contractionary spiral," the government said in a draft of economic policies earlier this month.

With a labor shortage already biting, those policies include steps to increase the numbers of highly skilled foreigners as well as to expand a trainee program for blue-collar workers that has been criticized for human rights abuses.

But authorities insist the steps are not part of an "immigration policy."

"That is probably the worst policy," retorted lawmaker Taro Kono, deputy head of an LDP committee on foreign workers. "If you stay five years, you don't have to be a good citizen, you don't have to practice the Japanese language.

"Keidanren is pushing this (expanded trainee program) because every five years, wages go back to zero. They are trying to introduce cheap labor," he said, referencing Japan's top business lobby.

Plans to fill labor shortages caused by the shrinking population by increasing the participation of women and the elderly in the workforce will not suffice, Kono said. "The government is not telling the truth, so a lot of people don't want to look at immigration," he said.

A cultural allergy to diversity, as well as negative impressions of the experience of other countries, have combined to make Japanese authorities and the public wary of immigration. Xenophobic voters on the Internet have amplified those concerns, making conservative politicians even more reluctant to address the topic.

"Japan must ultimately open its doors and become open to immigrants," said Hiroya Masuda, a former Cabinet minister and member of the advisory panel that rejected the proposal to raise the intake of foreigners to help halt the population slide.

"But if we suddenly said, 'We'll allow immigration,' people are not ready for that," Masuda said during an interview.

Abe's plan to stabilize the population at 100 million people by 2060 is new, but politicians have long been promising steps to help women juggle work and child care to fill the gaps in the labor market and bear more children - but with limited impact.Japan's fertility rate, the average number of children a women bears during her life, stood at 1.43 last year. That was higher than the nadir of 1.26 set in 2005 but far below the 2.1 needed for a stable population.

Even hardened skeptics, however, say the focus on the population problem looks different this time, now that mostly male corporate managers are feeling the pain of labor shortages as the economy picks up on Abe's recipe of hypereasy monetary policy and spending.

"Previous debate about working women focused on gender equality," the LDP's Noda said. "This time, what Abe is talking about is the economy."

The government is shying away from explicit fertility rate targets, not least because they would have uneasy echoes of Japan's wartime "Beget and Multiply" policy.

But experts say stabilizing the population even at about 90 million without a significant increase in immigrants would mean pushing up the fertility rate to 2.1, and the sooner the better.

The Japan Center for Economic Research, a private think tank, estimates that would require spending an additional ¥13 trillion ($127 billion) on child care benefits annually over 15 years. That amount would equal 2.6 percent of Japan's gross domestic product and the revenue from a 6 percentage point rise in the sales tax.

Japan currently spends a little less than 1 percent of GDP on such support. Major changes in lifestyles, work patterns and mindsets would also be required.

In a proposal rejected by the government advisory panel, former Bank of Japan Deputy Gov. Kazumasa Iwata, who now heads the economic research think tank, suggested Japan aim for a fertility rate of 1.8 while gradually allowing more immigrants up to a rate of 200,000 a year by 2050. That would increase the percentage of foreigners to 6 percent of the total populace.

Iwata said initial costs associated with immigrants would be more than offset by the benefits.

"At first, there is a cost for infrastructure and the like. But these foreigners will work and pay taxes so in the long term, it is a plus for the Japanese economy and that plus becomes larger," he said.

Japan's recent experiments with immigration have hardly been encouraging. A program allowing in Brazilians of Japanese descent, thought easier to assimilate, as a source of cheap labor ground to a halt when the economy stalled in 2008, prompting the government to pay for many of them to go home.

But the nascent debate suggests attitudes may be slowly changing.

"People in the more conservative parts of the government are starting to realize there aren't a lot of options left," said Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist at Goldman Sachs. "When push comes to shove, they don't really have a choice and that is forcing changes to the mindset at the margins."

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Population woes crowd Japan | The Japan Times

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Four decades after the first forecasts that Japan's population decline was inevitable, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is drawing a demographic red line with a target to halt the slide at 100 million people by 2060, a 20 percent drop from current levels.

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Video of a crowded subway during rush hour

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Video of a crowded subway during rush hour

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Insanely crowded Japanese train during the rush hour　crazy!!!!

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beginning to think globally and Global connections

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beginning to think globally and Global connections

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Japanis a wealthy industrialized country.Japan has one of the highest population density of the world

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Garbage and pollution problems.Whenever people crowd a citie pollution and garbage pile up. Smoke from factories and exhaust from cars can cause breathing and lung problems.Sewage and wastewater poison rivers.Despite that Japan is one of the world's most crowded cities but also the cleanest.The streets are swept every night.Japan is a major industrial country so they face severe pollution.Acid rain is one of the problems that occur along with toxic chemicals getting dumped into the ocean and rivers.Some results from the poisoning is babies with twisted limbs and dead fish and sea life.Long lives. The japanese have one of the worlds highest life expectancies in the world

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Conflicts can brew when there is limited land to use.For years there has been plans for expanding japan's airport  but homeowners have blocked that. The governor has offered to move them but they don't budge.People have threatened to burn down their houses if they don't move. One way to make more space is to build up and down. But this is not easy because japan is in a major earthquake zone.Until 1965 buildings in Japan were limeted to a certain height.Today they build up using earthquak-resistant construction techniques.These earthquake safe buildings can withstand severe shaking.Another way to save space is to build underground.A lot of major cities in Japan have underground shopping malls. Creating new land. The japanese have also created new land for example, they have filled in wetlands with dirt and rubble.Much of tokyo is built on filled in bays and marshes.Filling in wetlands can have pros and cons. Cons- destroys habitat and wildlife.Pros- Creates more space for the high populated cities.To create more farm land they cut into the side of hills. This is called terracing.

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Housing in a dense population can be difficult.In japan flat land for building can be scarce due to that Japans land is 3/4 mountains.Houses are flatter and smaller and they have to be earthquake safe becuase Tokyo is on a marjor fualt line.Most families live in appartments no bigger than a family room in an american house.Japinese didnt always crowd into small apartments about 50 years ago Japan was largley rural.Most people lived in their own homes that were on a farm. All extended family used to live under one roof to.This pattern began to change in the 1950's. Many people left the farms to go to school in the cittie.Today many Japinese families live with just parents and children.Japinse have found clever ways to make space for living space such as using one room for more than one purpose.At bedtime,mattreses called futons are taken from closets and spread on the floor or living rooms to sleep on.They aslo make space by hving smaller aplliences like smaller stoves and ovens.Lifes crowded after death to because there is no room for semetaries so the bodies are creaminated.

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How Population density affects Transportation

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How Population density affects Transportation

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Overcrowding has a big effect on the transportation in Tokyo.The average commute time in Tokyo is an hour and a half a day.The japanese have adapted to a busy commute by things like underground subways that link each part of the cittie.These subways and underground cars run every minute.Rush hour is an amazing sight.Workers that wear white gloves shove as many passengers in the subway as it can hold before the doors close.Japanese have developed some of the worlds fastest trains called "bullet trains". These trains travel up to 180 mph.Despite the excellent public transportation system, many japanese have the their own cars and love to drive.As car ownership has increased the last 5 years traffic has been getting worse and worse.Parking is so scarce that the cittie has strict parking limmits.You cant own a car unless you can prove thayt you have a place to park it.Tokyo has built highrise parking garages that look like gian cubbies and have elevators that bring your car up and put it in a spot

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Tokyo is one of the world's most crowded cities.Tokyo is the capital of Japan. Japan's population density is 10X the United States population.