Monday, September 03, 2007

Back to the future(land)

Two or three years ago I met some friends of friends who had come for a whirlwind tour of Japan. Within 10 days they visited every major city, tried almost all the foods and saw almost all the major sights that each place had to offer, and nicknamed Japan 'Future land'. Robots, neon, high speed trains, high speed lives...

Today is the first day back at school after the summer hols. On my desk, a statistical sketch of Nagoya, a leaflet from the statistics division of the city of Nagoya planning department, with a reminder that October the 18th is 'Statistics Day'. It's a timely kick back into the reality of the country I live in after my 2 week (not enough time) visit to the U.K. Here are some of the salient points:

Nagoya City:

City officially established - October 1st 1889

Current population - 2,231,727 (male 1,108,515 female 1,123,212)

Birthrate 8.6 every 28 mins.
Deathrate 7.9 every 30 mins.
Marriages 6.4 every 37 mins
Divorces 2.2 every 1 hour 50 mins.

Percentage of households possessing durable goods:
Microwave oven 98.4%
Air Conditioner 98.7%
Cell Phones 93.5% (that low?)
VCR 91.1%
P.C 83.4%

Places of amusement:
Restaurants 2,318
Mahjong Parlors 456
Pachinko Parlors 217
Bowling Alleys 12
Game Centers etc 200

Temperature:
Average 15.9
Max. 37.5
Min. -3.7

Average Humidity 65%

(Many stats date from end of 2006, some before)

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

admittedly I don't live in Nagoya but until recently i would have been one of the 1.6% who don't own a microwave....now got one but don't use it.
technology huh? It'll never catch on.

jsh

Nick Benwell said...

Impulse buying? You can always use it for storage! (-O-)V