Organic agriculture is a global trend. In Japan, some local agricultural cooperatives, farmers, and local governments have tried to form organic agricultural production areas as a strategy for rural development.
The aim of this study is to examine how farmers have accepted the promotion of organic agriculture in Aya Town, which has been one of the pioneering organic agricultural production areas in Japan.
To attain this aim, the author investigated the agricultural structure of Aya Town. Then he undertook intensive interviews with farmers in the town, comprising 'natives' and 'newcomers'. Two communities were chosen for interviewing with the 'native' farmers; Odate, located in a hilly area where farmers tend to grow outdoor vegetables with no agricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers; and Sakinota, located on a plain where most farmers engage in the production of hothouse cucumbers with 'less' chemicals. 'Newcomers' were chosen from all of the area of Aya Town and they had migrated there after 1986.
In Aya Town, Mr. Gohda, the previous mayor served from 1966 to 1992, led the local government and the local agricultural cooperative to promote organic agriculture as a rural development strategy. The contexts were rapid depopulation in the town, and a lack of competitiveness from the management of the area and its agriculture in the 1960s.
As a result of the promotion and the practice of organic agriculture, various changes have resulted in Aya Town. Firstly, the town has obtained a reputation as a pioneering organic production area. It has attracted new farmers and visitors from urban areas and this has become a source of pride for the residents. Secondly, the structure of agricultural production has changed. After failing to become a major production area for oranges in the 1960s, stock raising and hothouse cultivation of cucumbers have been the major agricultural products. Fruit and rice growing, which were originally smaller, have reduced. In this situation, organically grown outdoor vegetables have contributed to the conservation of farmland and the development of agriculture in the entire town, although the scale of the management is comparatively small. Thirdly, most native farmers have integrated into the system for the promotion of organic agriculture through registration to the public 'Organic Agriculture Development Center' since 1988. The promoters have given subsidies, advice, markets, and even organic certification services for farmers and they have reduced the gap with conventional agriculture. Moreover, collective changes in the practice of farming have given a sense of security to the farmers.
However, farmers in Aya Town show differences in terms of attitudes toward the promoted organic agriculture. Notable differences were found between natives and newcomers, especially in attitudes towards the manner of promotion and the practices of the other farmers. Almost all newcomers are distrustful of the promotion and of native farmers' practices, and are critical of the lack of their frontier spirit. Such differences are caused by the dependence on public promotion, and thus some similarity is found among some native farmers who do not depend on it so much.
Moreover, there are differences among local farmers' attitudes towards organic agriculture by area. In Odate, where the growing of outdoor vegetables is popular, farmers are more interested in organic agriculture than those in Sakinota are. In addition, in their narration the farmers in Odate refer to concrete issues about organic agriculture. In Sakinota, where most farmers engage in the growing of hothouse vegetables, farmers regard the promotion of organic agriculture positively but they do not see themselves as the main actors in developing organic agriculture.
Such local differences are caused by existing local agricultural conditions especially in the main agricultural sectors.

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This paper examines the recruiting methods for young non-regular workers by stores in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, and the interrelationship between recruiting strategy and employment seeking behavior. The study area is the Nagoya metropolitan area.
Paid employment information media such as employment magazines, classified advertisement sites on the Internet and recruiting leaflets in newspapers tend to be used in downtown areas. On the other hand, the media mostly used in suburban stores are store window recruiting advertisements. These stores actively use this method to save the cost and bother of recruiting young non-regular workers.
One of the reasons for the popularity of store window recruiting advertisements in suburban stores in general relates to the growth and development of roadside stores. Roadside stores have grown with low cost management and systematization, and provide essential goods and services for suburban residents at reasonable prices, which is the reason that the stores need cheap unskilled labor. Therefore, the best method for recruiting cheap labor is store window recruiting advertisements.
The stores systematized as chain stores after 1980 accumulated on suburban roadsides and each introduced a standardized style of building along with their corporate identity. The movement towards standardization was extended to the recruiting methods for part-time labor. Furthermore, standardized labor recruiting using store window advertisements in suburban roadside stores became more popular because of the need for cheap labor. Thus, standardized labor recruiting using store window advertisements became widespread as the number of suburban chain roadside stores increased.
Store window recruiting advertisements are now the most important factor and information source for young people to obtain non-regular work. Young people living in suburban areas apply for part-time positions by seeing the store window recruiting advertisements as they use the neighboring store on a daily basis. Employment in the neighboring stores for young people results from the interaction between employers who need to save the cost and bother of recruiting and young people's life styles. The interaction consequently involves attracting young applicants who live in those neighborhoods.
In this process, employers benefit from the fact that they are able to save the cost and bother of recruiting since young people are fitted into the employers' strategy through their daily consumption behavior.
Little speculation has taken place concerning interrelationships between work activity and consumption behavior in studies about metropolitan areas. However, there are close interrelationships between the work activity and the consumption behavior of young people who reside in the suburbs. It is assumed that the interrelationship is becoming more significant amid ongoing denormalization of labor.

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Since the middle of the 1990s, the rapid diffusion of the Internet into society has driven various social transformations. A number of geographical studies with diverse approaches on the impacts of information technologies (IT), including the Internet, have been carried out in Western countries, although Japanese geographers have produced few studies. This paper provides an overview of research trends in this field among Western geographers in the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s. A framework proposed by Dodge and Kitchin is employed. In this framework, geographical aspects of IT are broadly divided into two categories: the impacts of IT on real economies and societies (called 'geographies of information society') and the geographical characteristics of virtual space emerging in computers and information networks (called 'geographies of cyberspace'). Using this framework, studies analyzing the geographies of information society are reviewed first, and then studies discussing geographies of cyberspace are considered. Finally, a research strategy for Japanese geographers in this field is proposed.
While almost all studies on the impacts of IT on real economies and societies discuss the technical possibilities or the economic benefits of IT usage up to the first half of the 1990s, geographers increasingly have paid attention to the social and political consequences of the penetration of IT. A clear trend from a techno-economic view to a socio-political view is observed. Within this trend, eight issues are discussed: 1) industrial location in the IT age, 2) new urban IT-industrial clusters, 3) growth strategies of peripheral areas using IT, 4) emergence of e-commerce, 5) IT and the city, 6) the digital divide, 7) electronic surveillance, 8) political impacts of the Internet.
The first studies by geographers on the characteristics of virtual space emerged around 1997. Several new analytical concepts, e. g. Adams' 'virtual place' and Batty's 'virtual geography', were proposed. Many cultural geographers became interested in the socio-cultural aspects of the virtual world as argued by Kitchin, who first proposed the concept of 'geographies of cyberspace'. A research approach of 'spatial analysis of cyberspace', by which the virtual locations and spatial structure of cyberspace are analyzed applying traditional methods of spatial analysis, was also proposed. The spatial characteristics of various media of cyberspace, e. g. e-mail, chat rooms and multiple user domains (MUDs), were analyzed and methods for mapping cyberspace were developed under this approach.
From the review of studies in this field, two major trends are identified. One is the growing attention to the social, political and cultural aspects of IT's impacts in either the real or virtual worlds. Another trend is the wide acceptance of the concepts of 'cyberspace' or 'virtual space' by geographers. This acceptance may reflect the rapid penetration of these concepts into both general and academic society.
Two current research areas are identified to activate Japanese geographers' work in this field. First, close examination of new, advanced IT usage in Japan, e. g., e-commerce and mobile phones, is required. These studies will open the possibility for a new model of information society suitable to Japan as well as other Asian countries. Second, the introduction of the socio-cultural approach accepted among Western geographers is effective. The positive participation of social geographers and cultural geographers is expected.

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