Opponents of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's postal reform plans have a number of complaints, but the point they tend to harp on about, presumably because it's the only one the average citizen can appreciate, is the downsizing of post offices in far-flung regions.
It's easy to sympathize with the little old lady who walks five kilometers to the village post office to send a money order to her grandson in Tokyo for his birthday, only to find it's closed. But it's difficult to feel sorry for the owner of that post office, because that is what the people who run the so-called tokutei (special) post offices are -- owners. Of the 25,000 POs in Japan, 19,000 are tokutei, which means they belong to the people who run them and have been handed down from father to son since the postal service was created in the Meiji era. These people have a sweet deal. The government not only pays them rent for the use of their property for a government function, they also pay them hefty salaries regardless of the amount of business they do. And they don't even have to take a civil servant test. In short, tokutei post offices are subsidized inheritances.
Japan Post has been in the red since 1997, and 60% of the budget goes to personnel costs, which includes the owners of tokutei post offices. I say good riddance.