[fiblye]

Are you speaking specifically about your farming town losing 10% of its population? Because I also live in Shizuoka-ken near the countryside and population decline is nowhere near 10%/year. It's been pretty much the same for 20 years now.

http://www.citypopulation.de/php/japan-admin.php?adm1id=22

But there is a definite decline in the liveliness of small towns, but that's due to migration to other towns and cities.

[mikekchar]

Hmm... you are correct. I was stupidly repeating unverified information I heard on a news report. I should know better :-( Actually, that's great news for me!

BTW, feel free to ping me at my username on gmail. It would be great to meet someone else in this area! I'm also interested in writing games (and I wonder if we've met a few years ago... although that person said they wanted to make iPhone games)