Posted on 05/04/2007 5:30:26 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
TOKYO — The number of children below 15 in the nation came to 17.38 million as of April 1 for the 26th straight year of decline, accounting for a record-low 13.6% of the population, according to an internal affairs ministry population estimate released Friday.
The number was 140,000 lower than last year, and the children's share of the population declined for the 33rd straight year, according to the survey, which was released ahead of Children's Day on May 5, a national holiday. The number of boys and girls below 15 decreased by 70,000 each from last year to 8.91 million and 8.47 million, respectively, according to the estimate.
Those numbers don’t look good.
Hey, where did Japan go?
For your ping list
Whoa....human populations can’t grow forever? And a society will sub-consciously realize they’re over populated and adjust? Who’d a thunk it?
The adjacent overpopulating people would be a concern.
Appreciated.
Yes....there IS that problem.
All industrialized nations have shrinking birth rates. I suspect the only reason the US isn’t in the same boat as Japan is because of our much higher immigration quotas. They had something like 370,000 immigrants in 2005, once you subtract out all the 90 day or less visas. Whereas we in the US have 1.7 million to 2.5 million immigrants per year (1 million legal + .7 to 1.5 illegal).
Here in America, there are school buses everywhere. It gets very annoying because our children are conditioned not to walk anywhere. SO the school bus has to make stops continuously.
For example, I sometimes get stuck behind a school bus in Billerica, MA on the way to work and it will stop to pick up a child, then go less than one block and stop again to pick up another child. It will stop 6-7 times in a very small area where the children could have all walked to a central bus stop, causing the bus to stop just once and pick up the whole bunch of them at once.
Wouldn't that be more efficient?
When I was a child going to school, I didn't even take the bus. I thought nothing of walking to school which was nearly two miles away. And this was in busy city streets too. I used to take short-cuts through alleys and one time a bunch of kids beat me up in one, took my lunch money and pulled my pants down and gave me a wedgie. SO I took a different route home from school after that but still I walked.
But even kids who took the bus usually had to walk a fair distance to get to the bus stop. Buses in those days never stopped right in front of your house like they do today.
What really slays me is the way that parents will actually drive their kids down the driveway or just down the street to the bus stops and then sit in their idling cars until their kids are picked up. Why do they do that?
I think my mother walked me to school maybe three times when I was in the 1st grade. After that I was on my own. Even after I got rolled in the alleyway by kids that looked like those bullies in "A Christmas Story" and had my lunch money stolen and pants pulled down.
Anyway, the fact that there are less Japanese kids does ont necessarily concern me. I see plenty enough Japanese kids in the movies. Also, what is with the fascination that Japanese kids have with those tiny wristwatch-type video games that have stupid looking animals that you have to electronically feed and clean up after? Also, we could have done without Pokemon, thank you very much. Though those cheesy 1960s-era "monster coming out of a nuclear waste site" movies are still pretty cool to watch today. Especially when they are getting riffed on by the MST3K crew. I especially liked the one where giant mutated grasshoppers started climbing skyscrapers in Tokyo.
Factoring out immigration, legal and criminal, the numbers for the US, the UK and most EU countries look just as bleak. That is the main reason for the lack of effective border control. You can’t have a growing economy with a declining population. Unfortunately, because politics is a function of demographics, the West will probably be seeing its zenith over the next fifty years.
America Alone
Pull up the sex offender registry, Sam, and plug in the school's address. The beat cop back in the day could take care of that sort of thing. Not any more.
I either walked or rode a bicyle to school, but I never had to walk in snow. Until tenth grade I was less than a mile away from schools. The only times my brother and I were driven to school was when it rained.
You would like Japan then. No school buses there. If the kids don’t walk or ride bikes they take regular public transit with student passes.
I rode the bus to kindergarten and then walked from first grade on, about a mile. Mile and a half to Jr. High. For both it was all uphill there and all downhill going home. I wouldn’t trade those walks for anything. We had a lot of fun.
My elementary and middle school kids ride the bus but the distances are a little further than I had to deal with, about 5 and 10 miles respectively. The bus stop is on the main road about 1/2 mile away. I know the parents you’re talking about that take their kids to bus stop every day. I take them in the morning in the winter if the temperature is under 10 degrees, otherwise they walk.
Except for muslims
What in the world is Gamera going to do?
Stupid as it was, I miss that show. Especially the villians.
Please tell me it is still on...somewhere. At least then there will be some hope...
I think maybe it’s their porn. They like puking and crapping on each other so much, they’ve forgotten how to copulate.
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