I knew it was bad.
I just didn’t know it was that bad.
I’ve been reading my local newspaper, the aptly named コミュニティー新聞 Community Newspaper.
Now, the newspaper isn’t the thing that is bad, there’s usually at least one decent thing to read and then a whole bunch of classifieds.
Yet in today’s newspaper there were two things worth reading, both front page news, one outright cute,
the other outright disastrous.
First up was the pink slide in the shape of an octopus refurbished for the first time in 55 years1. Frankly, it does look like a lot of fun. And some kids from the local nursery school even got to cut the ribbon!
Jealous!
Plus, this time around they thought to put in rubber matting and added some stairs for safety or something.
Yay!
One of the children had this to say:
I’m so happy. I want to play on it a lot more from now on.
We want that too, buddy!
And then there was the other front page news: ‘Severity of Population Loss in Both Cities Amplifies’.
Not so fun.
The article explains how both Sakata City and the adjacent Tsuruoka City have been experiencing severe population loss. In fact, in the ten years from January 1, 2015, to January 1, 2025, Tsuruoka City’s population fell from 133,153 to 116,731, and Sakata’s from 108,098 to 93,924.
That’s a 12.3% decline in Tsuruoka, and 13.1% in Sakata!
I officially became a Sakatan on October 31st, 2014, the day I registered with City Hall. That means that I too am included in these numbers,
barely.
Either way, I’ve been here long enough for more than 10% of the city’s population to fall. I try not to think about it and focus more on what I can do,
and I gotta say,
it’s not making for good reading.
But the pink octopus slide is.
And maybe that’s the point.
Sure the numbers may be alarming, but as long as there are people here who believe refurbishing a pink octopus slide is good for the community,