Amid a rapidly aging and declining population in rural areas of Aichi Prefecture, an exchange program to send young students from cities to the Tomiyama district in the village of Toyone will be terminated in March 2015, along with the closure of the district's only elementary and junior high school.
The exchange program, which started in May 1985 in what was then the village of Tomiyama, was designed to send city kids ranging in age from the second grade of elementary school through junior high to Tomiyama to live and go to the local school for a year so they could experience rural life while living in a dormitory under the care of instructors.
The program was also meant to keep Tomiyama Elementary and Junior High School open even though the number of children in the small village was dropping.