Yet in the countryside numbers have been falling for decades—and rural Japan will bear a disproportionate share of the future reduction in population.
In the countryside, the number of only-couple households of the 45 49 age group is significantly larger than in cities, whereas the number of only-couple households of the 20 to 44 age group is smaller than in cities.
In the countryside growing numbers are entering senior middle-school too, but it is far less common.
A map showing areas where numbers are growing and declining across the country reveals a stark divide between east and west, cities and the countryside, with numbers falling fast in the rural east while spiking in Berlin and metropolitan western areas.
As for the spotted owl, chief emblem of the rift between city and countryside, its numbers go on shrinking because — in an ironic parallel — it's getting robbed of its traditional terrain and livelihood by the barred owl, its burlier, more aggressive eastern cousin.
Despair in the countryside feeds a number of potent anti-government insurgencies.
Father Edmond Music, the protagonist of Isler's new novel, is a French priest living in the English countryside with a number of secrets.
The state news agency SANA gave a somewhat different account: "Armed forces units inflicted heavy losses upon terrorists in the town of Jdaidet al-Fadl in the Damascus countryside, injuring a number of them and killing others".
The state news agency Sana reports: A series of operations were carried out against the armed terrorist groups in the villages of Jobar, Irbeen and Zamalka in Damascus countryside, killing a number of terrorists and destroying their hideouts, an official source told [a] Sana reporter.
A visit to the Dominican Republic's impoverished countryside highlights the number of children who, like Chalis, have a claim to Dominican citizenship and missed the change to register for naturalization.
Roe deer, however, occupy the countryside in growing numbers, and large-antlered red deer can be found in the forests of Jutland.
