A boy and a girl meet at a bar or a party, experiencing that special spark that will forever linger in their minds. If they successfully manage to ride out the usual bumps that arise in a typical relationship along the way, they end up tying the knot. Once upon a time, love was simple.
However, finding romance in 21st-century Japan — a country where the population is on the decrease and the average age is on the rise — is a completely different story.
"Japan's population spread was in the shape of a stable pyramid in the 1960s, when the average age of the country was about 29," Tomonori Morikawa, a professor at Waseda University, told The Japan Times On Sunday.