Sunday, January 27, 2008

北海道 2万人転出超過

A recent article in the Hokkaido Shimbun paper (sorry, related link in Japanese) reports that for 2007, the number of people that left Hokkaido to relocate elsewhere in Japan exceeded 20000. This is an increase of almost 2000 people when compared to the same figures from 2006. Most of these people likely relocated to the greater Tokyo metropolitan, in search of jobs, as Hokkaido suffers from an increasing lack of thereof.

This is similar to the situation in Hawaii, where a brain-drain has been occurring for as long as I can remember. The best and brightest often find themselves leaving because there is not enough to keep them there.

Not that I've lived in many places in the world, but this is still a sad thing, as Hokkaido and Hawaii are two of the most beautiful places to live. For myself, it would be great if telecommuting becomes more wide-spread and acceptable, because then I wouldn't have to tie myself to the vagaries of the current local market situation here in Sapporo. The systems integration company I currently work for has a business model (if you can call it that) that is largely hand-to-mouth, survival only by finding enough gigs to build smallish web-sites and then try to charge a recurring fee for support and administration. I don't think this scales at all.

Adapt. Improvise. Evolve. It is high time to think, rethink, and reinvent.

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