I&#x27;m Irish and out of interest I looked up the area of Hokkaido to see how it compares to the island of Ireland and they&#x27;re actually pretty close - Hokkaido is 83,453KM2 with a population of 5.5M versus Ireland 84,421KM2 with 6.3M. So it is funny to me when you say &quot;Japan keeps the entire island of Hokkaido running for too few people&quot;.<p>Of course, Irelands population is growing while Hokkaido&#x27;s is dropping...