crisis

As was reported last week, Japan's fertility rate is up but the population is still in decline:

Japan's fertility rate edged up for a third consecutive year in 2008, three years after dropping to a record low of 1.26 in 2005, the health ministry said Wednesday.

The total fertility rate, or the estimated number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime based on current birth trends, rose 0.03 point to an average of 1.37 compared with a year ago.

[...]

A propos my comment on now being a bad time to come to Japan, an example of how the economic meltdown affects English teachers:

As Japan's economy began to meltdown last year, the Japan Times ran a couple of articles detailing how people were coping. One article was about a surge in the sales of bicycles while another noted how more and more people were turning to car-sharing as an alternative to owning a car.

Cycling back in fashion: