Establishment of a full-time senior high school could play an important role in facilitating the universal entry of students residing in mountainous areas into senior high school. This paper aims to examine the impact of such an establishment on local students in a mountainous area, where the numbers of applicants are insufficient to meet the criteria for establishing a main school. In this study, the Kogawa branch of Iwate Prefectural Iwaizumi High School was taken as a case study.

The conversion of the Kogawa branch from a part-time senior high school into a full-time one resulted in a drastic increase in the percentage of students who went to senior high school in Kogawa district, reaching almost the same level as that of other districts of Iwaizumi Town.

Immediately after the conversion, most junior high school students in this area selected the Kogawa branch regardless of their academic skills. Therefore, there was wide disparity in the academic achievements of students in the Kogawa branch. As a result, teachers found it challenging to prepare lessons targeting all students uniformly. They selectively supported students with high academic skills and enthusiasm and encouraged them to continue their education into university.

In time, students hoping to go on to higher-level schooling began to seek admission at more suitable senior high schools other than the Kogawa branch. Such an outflow and the declining local population of senior high school-aged students finally resulted in the closure of the Kogawa branch in 2002.

The conversion of the Kogawa branch played an important role in widening the educational opportunities for Kogawa youth, but it also accelerated their outflow from Kogawa.

Since the 2000s, the period of food service industry restructuring is considered that a sharp decline in small independent restaurants, and an increase in chain restaurants of larger scale employees (The number of the employees per restaurant).

This paper studies the causes of the change of location characteristics of restaurants, based on the number of restaurants and the number of the employees per restaurant in small-area 500 m mesh in Keihanshin metropolitan area.

As a result, in the suburbs of Keihanshin metropolitan area, we are seeing the extensive spread of regions with a large number of employees per restaurant. Moreover, there has been a significant decrease in the number of restaurants in urban centers, which used to be excellent locations for such stores.

In addition, the results of negative binomial regression analysis with "number of restaurants" and "scale of employees" as dependent variables suggest that the number of restaurants has increased in areas where establishments and night-time population are concentrated, but the number of the employees per restaurant in these areas is not necessarily expanding.

This increasing trend in the number of employees per restaurant has been confirmed in regions with several stations as well as in shopping centers. This is presumed to be due to the significant decrease in independent restaurants in regions with several stations, as well as the increase in chain restaurants, triggered by the establishment of shopping centers.