Like many of Japan's smaller cities, Miyazaki has been hit by a growing labor crunch, a trend highlighted by the mere 56.8 percent of high school graduates that chose to remain in the prefecture to work — third-worst among the 47 prefectures.

In the hard-hit information technology sector, the city has been encouraging firms to run businesses there to help energize the area, said Tsugunobu Ogino, president of KJS Co., a Miyazaki-based IT firm that makes e-learning systems.

"But they are struggling to find engineers, since many move to Tokyo," he said.