Nagano Prefecture

Nakajo Seiko, NHK World.

With Halloween less than a week away, bus riders in central Japan's Nagano Prefecture are getting an early trick-or-treat, a bus given a spooky makeover by some local students.

The Chikuma Bus Company started its annual seasonal service in the area.

Second-year students from a junior high school in Ueda City took charge of decorating the vehicle this year.

野沢菜。

そう、そうだ。 野沢菜って東北の。 ね、長野とかあっちの方じゃないの。

長野。長野。

奈良漬けって奈良？ 奈良。 その通り。九州ってなんか、あ、べったら漬けってなんかどっかにあって。 京都？かな？ いっぱいあるんですね。

It projects it will close between 28 to 38 of its current 88 prefectural high schools by the 2040 school year.

It is followed by Niigata Prefecture, which plans to close 22 of its 86 schools, and Nagano Prefecture that plans to close 17 of its 81 schools.

Along with notable figures for regional prefectures, Tokyo and its neighboring prefectures are also planning to reduce the number of schools to some extent.

Saitama Prefecture plans to shutter between 15 to 19 of its 131 high schools.

Nagano, where I, uh, visited several times since, um, last year, uh, they focus more on conservation by making efforts to put up fences, uh, to cut, uh, or trim bushes to improve visibility near the rivers where, um, bears often, um, roam around, encourage hotels, restaurants, households in areas bears are, are, are sighted, uh, so to make sure that they throw away their food waste, not outdoors, but store them indoors until local authorities come and collect them.

And Professor Izumiyama believes that such measures have been effective, especially in the environmentally protected area called Kamikochi in Nagano Prefecture.

Uh, but the government's roadmap shows it's more inclined towards culling to reduce bear population by around 30% by the year 2030.

And Michio, you know, before I let you go very quickly, you've, you've put in a lot of work, a lot of research, talked to a lot of people about this.

Masanori Aoki was born in the year 1991.

He was from Nakano, a town in the Nagano Prefecture of Japan.

Growing up in the suburb of Edu, his parents were fairly well off.

His father owned multiple businesses while being a speaker of the Nakano Municipal Assembly, and his mom helped run many of those businesses on the customer service side.

And while he was still at home, he reconnected with Ibuka, the brilliant engineer from the research team, who was opening a new lab in Tokyo.

Ibuka's wartime company had 1,500 people in Nagano Prefecture making parts for radar that had to oscillate at exactly 1,000 cycles per second.

And Ibuka had the idea of hiring music students with a fine sense of pitch to check them against a tuning fork.

The freshness of his mind is what made Morita want to work with him.

... of that, but yeah.

That's one we've, we've encountered actually with several clients, I think more in the Niigata, Nagano region, is they find a house and it's like, you know, great price, but it's like a, a very long private road to the house, and that because it's a private road it's not plowed in the winter and, you know, you need to figure that out as a client if you wanna be there in the snow season.

Um, whoever was living there before, maybe they're only u- not using it during the snow season.

But yeah, just know, like, as Taki said, snow maintenance, no joke.

It's a hunch, though.

If you zoom out on the map, so get out of Hokkaido and kind of look at that Hokuriku region, Yamagata, Iwate, that kind of stuff.

Okay, we all know Nagano, we all know Niigata.

Go a little bit further above Niigata.

Wow.

And you move down south a bit to find Sendai City as well as the wider Tohoku region, and you go down even further south, closer to yo- so you're getting closer to Tokyo, you will find the Izu Peninsula, Yokohama City, and its prefecture, Kanagawa, as well as Azumino City of Nagano Prefecture.

If you go in the western part of Honshu, uh, the main island of Japan, right, there is the San'in region.

Their booth represents their two prefectures, Tottori and Shimane.