On a recent weekday morning, a group of men in their 70s and 80s gathered for baseball practice just down the road from a junior high school where students were arriving to start the day.
At full strength, the Shimohama Club baseball team's 33 players outnumber the students. Only 27 children attend the school, one of about two dozen in the city of Akita, the eponymous capital of the Tohoku region prefecture.
Akita Prefecture has the oldest population in the country and more than one-third of its residents are over the age of 65 — demographic woes which reflect a nationwide issue.