Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "What a Small Town in Japan is Like" video.

  1. Small towns in Japan are like the ideal people thinking about their retirements on a small rural town looks like - an almost utopic setting. xD Through a great deal of selfless work and community strength. What we really get here where I live is deep isolation, abandonment and a death trap all combined in one. :P People particularly from generations older than mine all have this dream of retirement that is either in rural towns, or a beach house. But I think from my generation forwards, this dream kinda ended in my country. My mom and dad used to think this way, they mostly gave up entirely after seeing the experiences of other family members and friends. Crime and violence reached even the remotest of places, the sense of community driven neighborhoods died off, and so I have multiple cases in my extended family of uncles, aunts, and whatnot that had this dream of living their retirement years either on beach houses or rural property that almost all gave up on it. That is, for the few who have amassed enough wealth to be able to afford a second home. A few of them tried moving and "living the dream", but most of them just came back to a more urban setting for multiple reasons. Several of them also sold their properties because they either needed the money, or it was simply not worth maintaining. My mom comes from a small town that is pretty much the same in terms of population. Back when she was young, it was a 5000+ small town where most of the people worked in farms. My grandfather was the local bar/bakery owner with a multi-story home in the middle of the town center there, where most of the commerce used to be. Today, the city shrank to 2000+, the town center moved to the other side, and the region became completely abandoned. People who live there mostly commutes by car to neighboring cities... it's over an hour away and the road is pretty dangerous. The town itself isn't as safe as it was in the past too. The church which used to be the social center of the town almost has no one there anymore. And the population that is there is mostly from outside, poor, and completely at odds with those who grew up there. Small farms don't give enough money to survive anymore, so it was all sold off to big agribusiness firms, including my great grandfather small plot of land. The town sometimes has a big influx and then outflux of people because of projects like a solar farm that was built there. But it's also because there is no government incentive programs, no one working to take care of elderly people who are still there, no services like the truck delivery or taxi/bus business - so the inevitable happens. Most people who would like to keep living there until their old age are forced to move in with younger family members for care. It becomes basically impossible to live in the town if you can't drive or if you have worsening health issues that comes with old age. We don't have as much of a problem with negative birth rates and aging population as much as Japan, South Korea and others - but the migration towards urban centers might be even worse. It's because there is absolutely zero effort on government and social side to maintain small towns, particularly rural ones. Anyways, thanks Greg for another amazing video! I'd have no problems moving to a town like Kofu... as any place in Japan would be several times better than living in any city in my country in terms of safety, cleanliness, conveniences and whatnot. But then again, I'm not young, don't have wife and kids, and have nothing to offer to raise up a place and community like that. xD I hope those towns are able to keep going for a long time though. There'll need to be profound changes in culture and society, and particularly government policies and whatnot for that to happen, but I hope those will come too. I can see that a lot is being done, and I don't mean to discount or belittle all of that, particularly because I know from my own country things can be much much worse. But the size of the issue seems to require much more profound changes. Japan, despite being in a recession for several decades now, I think has the money and cultural backgrounds to revert this trend. I hope it can leverage that to change the situation...
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