Utashinai, Hokkaido
is a Cities of Japan, city located in Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. It is Japan's smallest city by population. History It was formerly a prosperous coal mining city, but has declined greatly since the closing of the coal mines. The population hit a maximum of 46,000 in 1948, and has been decreasing every year since. Efforts to transform Utashinai from a gritty coal mining town to an alpine climate, alpine tourist destination have met with mixed success. The town has adopted a Swiss theme as part of its tourist oriented strategy and many new buildings are Switzerland, Swiss chalet style. A medium-sized ski hill, Kamoidake, attracts a decent crowd of locals and hosts frequent ski meets, while a hot spring resort called Tyrol, after the Tyrol (state), Austrian region, is known throughout Hokkaido for the quality of its water. However, despite these new projects, Utashinai continues to experience population decline and economic stagnation. The high school closed in 20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cities Of Japan
A is a local administrative unit in Japan. Cities are ranked on the same level as and , with the difference that they are not a component of . Like other contemporary administrative units, they are defined by the Local Autonomy Law of 1947. City status Article 8 of the Local Autonomy Law sets the following conditions for a municipality to be designated as a city: *Population must generally be 50,000 or greater (原則として人口5万人以上) *At least 60% of households must be established in a central urban area (中心市街地の戸数が全戸数の6割以上) *At least 60% of households must be employed in commerce, industry or other urban occupations (商工業等の都市的業態に従事する世帯人口が全人口の6割以上) *Any other conditions set by prefectural ordinance must be satisfied (他に当該都道府県の条例で定める要件を満たしていること) The designation is approved by the prefectural governor and the Minister for Internal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hot Spring
A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by circulation through faults to hot rock deep in the Earth's crust. In either case, the ultimate source of the heat is radioactive decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements in the Earth's mantle, the layer beneath the crust. Hot spring water often contains large amounts of dissolved minerals. The chemistry of hot springs ranges from acid sulfate springs with a pH as low as 0.8, to alkaline chloride springs saturated with silica, to bicarbonate springs saturated with carbon dioxide and carbonate minerals. Some springs also contain abundant dissolved iron. The minerals brought to the surface in hot springs often feed communities of extremophiles, microorganisms adapted to extreme conditions, and it is possible that life on Earth had its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Population Density
Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopulation Density Geography.about.com. March 2, 2011. Retrieved on December 10, 2011. In simple terms, population density refers to the number of people living in an area per square kilometre, or other unit of land area. Biological population densities Population density is population divided by total land area, sometimes including seas and oceans, as appropriate. Low densities may cause an extinction vortex and further reduce fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it. Examples of the causes of reduced fertility in low population densities are * Increased problems with locating sexual mates * Increased inbreeding Human densities Population density is the number of people per unit of area, usuall ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Household
A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is important to economics and inheritance. Household models include families, blended families, shared housing, group homes, boarding houses, houses of multiple occupancy (UK), and single room occupancy (US). In feudal societies, the royal household and medieval households of the wealthy included servants and other retainers. Government definitions For statistical purposes in the United Kingdom, a household is defined as "one person or a group of people who have the accommodation as their only or main residence and for a group, either share at least one meal a day or share the living accommodation, that is, a living room or sitting room". The introduction of legislation to control houses of multiple occupations in the UK Housing Act (200 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a census, a process of collecting, analysing, compiling, and publishing data regarding a population. Perspectives of various disciplines Social sciences In sociology and population geography, population refers to a group of human beings with some predefined criterion in common, such as location, race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of populations. Ecology In ecology, a population is a group of organisms of the same species who inhabit the same particular geographical area and are capable of interbreeding. The area of a sexual population is the area where inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ainu Language
Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. Due to the colonization policy employed by the Japanese government, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers decreased through the 20th century, and it is now moribund. A very few elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it. According to P. Elmer, the Ainu languages are a contact language, having strong influences from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ishikari River
The , at long, is the third longest in Japan and the longest in Hokkaidō. The river drains an area of , making it the second largest in Japan, with a total discharge of around per year. It originates from Mount Ishikari in the Daisetsuzan Volcanic Group and flows through Asahikawa and Sapporo. Major tributaries of the river include the Chūbetsu, Uryū, Sorachi and Toyohira rivers. Until 40,000 years ago, it flowed into the Pacific Ocean near Tomakomai. Lava from the volcanic Shikotsu mountains dammed the river and moved its mouth to the Ishikari Bay. The name of the river is derived from the Ainu for "make(s) itself go round about something" (''i-si-kari'' < ''kari'' meaning "(to be a) circle, round, loop; spin, turn, go around, go back and forth," ''si-'' "reflexive prefix, itself, oneself," and ''i-'' "it, something, an impersonal third person object marking prefix, middle voice inflection prefix), ''i.e.'' "winding (river)." As it suggests, the river once meandered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kamisunagawa, Hokkaido
is a town located in Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. As of September 2016, the town has an estimated population of 3,278. The total area is 39.91 km2. There is a microgravity test facility located in Kamisunagawa used for astronomic purposes. Since 1980, Kamisunagawa has been the sister city of Sparwood in British Columbia, Canada. History *1949 – Kamisunagawa Town split off from the towns of Sunagawa and Utashinai (partial). *2009 – Kamisunagawa Town, more specifically its microgravity test facility, becomes the namesake of a crater on 25143 Itokawa, an asteroid visited by Japanese unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa. Culture Mascot Kamisunagawa's mascot is . He is a shiitake mushroom. His name is unknown but his name come the either "shiitake town", "see town" or "town of shiitake and coal". Notable people from Kamisunagawa *Junichi Watanabe, writer *Ryoko Yamagishi, manga artist *Ikuro Takahashi Ikuro Takahashi (高橋幾郎 Takahashi Ikuro in Japanese ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Towns Of Japan
A town (町; ''chō'' or ''machi'') is a local administrative unit in Japan. It is a local public body along with prefecture (''ken'' or other equivalents), city (''shi''), and village (''mura''). Geographically, a town is contained within a district. Note that the same word (町; ''machi'' or ''chō'') is also used in names of smaller regions, usually a part of a ward in a city. This is a legacy of when smaller towns were formed on the outskirts of a city, only to eventually merge into it. Towns See also * Municipalities of Japan * Japanese addressing system The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. When written in Japanese characters, addresses start with the largest geographical entity and proceed to the most specific one. When written in Latin characters, ad ... References {{reflist External links "Large_City_System_of_Japan";_graphic_shows_towns_compared_with_other_Japanese_city_types_at_p._1_[PDF_7_of_40/nowiki>">DF_7_of_4 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Akabira, Hokkaido
is a city located in central Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. The name is Ainu for "mountain ridge". As of October 2022, the city has a population of 9,081 people living in 5,503 households. The total area is 129.88 km2. The city was once a prosperous coal-mining city, its population reaching 59,430 in 1960. The population has been gradually declining. There have been efforts to create tourism around the city's coal mining heritage and other sights in order to strengthen the local economy. Other than that, there are also hot springs and campsites. History *1891 - Settlement begins. *1918 - Moshiri Coal Mine opens. *1922 - Second-class municipality Akabira Village split off of first-class municipality Utashinai. *1929 - Akabira becomes a First-Class municipality. *1937 - Shōwa Denkō Toyosato Mine opened. *1938 - Sumitomo Coal Mine, Hokkaido Coal Mine Railroad and Akama Coal Mine opened. *1943 - Akabira Village becomes Akabira Town. *July 1, 1954 - Akabira Town b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ashibetsu, Hokkaido
is a city located in Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. As of September 2016, the city had an estimated population of 14,260 and a density of 16 persons per km2. The total area is 865.02 km2. History Ashibetsu was once a prosperous coal mining city, its population exceeding 70,000 at its peak, but its population has fallen since the closing of the coal mines. *1893 - Satō Denjirō (originally from Yamagata Prefecture) founds Ashibetsu. *1897 - Nae Village (now Sunagawa City) and part of Takikawa Village (now City) split off to form Utashinai Village. *1900 - Ashibetsu Village split off of Utashinai Village. *1906 - Ashibetsu becomes a Second Class Municipality. *1917 - Kuhara Mining Industry Yuya Ashibetu Coal Mine opened. *1923 - First Class Municipality. *1924 - Mitsubishi Mining Industry Ashibetsu Coal Mine opened. *1935 - Meiji Mining Industry Meiji-Kamiashibetsu Coal Mine opened. *1938 - Ashibetsu-Takane Colliery Takane Mining Station opened. *1941 - Ashibet ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sunagawa, Hokkaido
is a city located in Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. As of September 2016, the city has an estimated population of 17,589 and a population density of 220 people per km2. The total area is 78.69 km2. Name Name of Sunagawa is derived from an Ainu word "Ota-ushi-nai", meaning the river near sandy shore. History *1890 - Nae Village founded. *1895 - Nae Village Office opened. *1897 - Utashinai Village splits off . *1902 - Nae becomes a Second Class Municipality. *1903 - Nae Village becomes Sunagawa Village. *1907 - Sunagawa becomes a First Class Municipality. *1923 - Sunagawa Village becomes Sunagawa Town. *1944 - Naie Village splits off. *1949 - Kamisunagawa Town splits off. *July 1, 1958 - Sunagawa Town becomes Sunagawa City. Education High school * Hokkaido Sunagawa High School. Transportation * Hakodate Main Line : Toyonuma - Sunagawa * Hokkaidō Expressway : Naie-Sunagawa IC ( Naie) - Sunanaga SA - Takikawa IC ( Takikawa) Notable people from Sunagawa, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |