My town has died.

Well, the growth rates would suggest it was dying anyway, but my little Takebe has officially died. Ceased to exist. It was eaten by the hulking beast that is Okayama-shi about a fortnight ago.Luckily, my day-to-day life is unlikely to meet any great changes; I'm not moving into ChampClair with the other city JETs, and the waste disposal system still sucks in its lack of recycling. But there are several small changes that I've noticed.
1. I now receive the monthly magazine for residents of Okayama-shi. The first issue celebrates the city's invasion of Takebe and Seto.
2. My BOE boss became obsolete and abruptly retired, leaving me his office computer. This is a big step up, as my previous office computer was on Windows 98 (98!), had no USB port, didn't recognise CD-Rs, and took about 15 minutes to start up.
3. My office is strangely bare; a lot of the piles of folders and paperwork, and most of the stuff on the walls, has vanished.
4. Our lunch hour has been shortened from an hour to 45 minutes, in line with other city employees.
5. Our tea/coffee cupboard and urn has been moved into the storage room. We can't be seen having beverages on the job, perhaps?
6. The other BOE staff now answer the phone with "Okayama-shi board of education, Takebe branch." They still keep getting it wrong and have to correct themselves, even when receiving a call from one of my schools.
7. Every part of town once had a small sign like "Fukuwatari, Takebe-cho," or "Kawaguchi, Takebe-cho." These have been replaced with "Fukuwatari, Takebe-cho, Okayama-shi" and so forth.
8. Road signs have changed from "Okayama 30km" to "Central Okayama 30km." Because, you're already in Okayama-shi! Get it?


One of the English teachers had an interesting theory for why Okayama wanted to take over Takebe and Seto (another town with the same story of absorption). In Japan, cities exceeding a certain population (I think the ones termed as "designated cities") are given certain special rights, especially in having greater autonomy unto themselves in civil matters. So, Okayama wants to boost its population to the magic threshold (700,000 maybe?) to become a "designated city." Still, even if that is the reason, I doubt that Takebe's six thousand people would make a great difference in boosting Okayama's population. You could probably fit Takebe in one big housing estate. Why not absorb Kurashiki instead?
The reasoning is likely to be the opposite of population growth; Takebe is shrinking, and I guess it's just to small to operate as an independent Local Government Area. According to the free "Takebe: 40 years" book I received, the population was 8,838 in 1970, compared to 6,524 in 2005. Even worse, the number of children (14 years and under) has dropped from 1,759 in 1970 to 705 in 2005. Indeed, pre-merge, Takebe was the smallest LGA in Okayama. Everything else had already been eaten up by Niimi-shi, Tsuyama-shi, Takahashi-shi and the rest.

It's too bad, 'cause it's a nice little town, and I its far less interesting to be living in Okayama-shi, if by technicality.
Still, as long as they don't make me move into ChampClair, it's all good.