Many farming groups in Japan have been expanding their farmland beyond the boundary of village.　The purpose of this research is to clarify how regional farming groups redistribute their farmland use.　In Kanzaki district, Ichinoseki city, while the farmers are aging, the young generations are engaged in non-agricultural industries.　Therefore, individual farming is declining in size.　The farmland in Kanzaki district has been consolidated in 2013.　The improvement of farming infrastructure triggered the establishment of a regional farming group called “Kanzaki Farm”.　As a result, six farmers from Kanzaki district joined the Kanzaki Farm as operators of the agricultural machine.　However, some farmers hope to maintain their own.　Such farmer’s existence obstructs the efficient farming by a regional farming group.　However, from the point of labor for farming, they are important labor force for some agricultural works to which mechanization is not advanced.

The Kanzaki Farm has integrated the existing improved farmlands in Kanzaki, and redistributed the lands in the following order.　First priority was given to the operators of Kanzaki Farm, followed by the farmers who wanted to continue their own farm management.　As a result, the Kanzaki Farm achieved the efficiency improvement of farming by operators in large-scale farmlands while allowing the farmers who wish to farm individually to stay engaged.

The Usu volcano erupted and the destructive pyroclastic flow and surge had struck the Abuta settlement in Hokkaido, northern Japan on March 23, 1822. Six Wajin （ancient Japanese people） and 72 Ainu perished and they died within 48 hours after being burned. Currently, the reason why many people happened to die has not been determined, even though many of them escaped once from the Abuta settlement to the place of refuge. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct how the Wajin and Ainu people judged the Usu volcano eruption and how they behaved. Also, to reveal the reason why especially the Ainu people had returned to the Abuta settlement from the place of refuge, just to die in the heavily rainy evening of the day before the Usu volcano eruption.

Because the Usu volcano began to erupt on March 19, the general manager of the Abuta area issued an evacuation order. He proclaimed that the people who lived near the Usu volcano to escape to the Benbe settlement, which was about 10 km from the Abuta settlement. This evacuation order, by the Wajin general manager, was fundamentally based on the precise memory of the old Ainu people who had encountered the 1769 Usu eruption. Many of the Wajin people obeyed this evacuation order and escaped to the Benbe settlement and its environs. But, on the other hand, the Ainu people had already escaped before such evacuation order was issued. Similarly, the Wajin priests of the Zenkouji temple had also started on a course of escape action before the order was issued. It is recognized that the Ainu people had started to escape to the nearby Benbe settlement quickly and autonomously, according to their own experiences.　Likewise, the Wajin priests had obeyed the Ainu people’s memories of the past eruption.

The Ainu people had interpreted that the bad gods can make volcanoes erupt. So the Ainu people prayed that the good gods would make the volcano eruption abate. It was also true for the 1822 Usu volcano eruption. The Usu volcano began to erupt on March 12, after three days’ intermittent series of earthquakes. This caused the volcanic eruption to become more gradually violent over time. At last, the destructive pyroclastic flow and surge struck the Abuta settlement on Mach 23, in the early morning.　But on the previous day, March 22, the weather became heavy rain after about four p.m.

It is estimated that the Ainu people interpreted that the bad gods were becoming inferior to the good gods now because of the heavy rain and the little volcanic fumes on March 22. The heavy rain, especially was thought to be interpreted as an indication of eruption’s settling down, by the Ainu people. The Ainu people thought that the heavy cold rain are cooling down the heat of the eruption. So they went back to their own houses at the Abuta settlement to have a short rest in the evening. After their short breather, it was estimated that the Ainu people had some plans to take their daily necessities back to Benbe （the place of refuge）, get fresh fish at the sea near the Abuta settlement for their own food collection, and/or to help the Wajin people to unload various goods from the chartered ship to the wooden warehouses on the coast. Finally, the Ainu people were thought to return back to the refuge place soon after.

It is recognized that this kind of schedule, by the Ainu people was not forced by the Wajin people. The Ainu people judged the state of the volcano eruption with their own interpretation and behaved autonomously. As a result of their own independent behaviors, the Ainu people could only have a one night’s rest at their own home after leaving the Abuta settlement for refuge. But they could not complete the other plans due to the destructive pyroclastic flow and surge of the next early morning.

This study aims to examine the demand for broadband using optical fiber network in low-density residential areas. Broadband services that diffused quickly in the 2000s have influenced the way the Internet is used. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line （ADSL）, widely diffused in Japan, is unsuitable for broadband deployment in low-density residential areas, such as extensive plain fields, because ADSL has a spatial limitation in that the data transmission speed decreases with the increase in distance. However, an optical fiber network does not have this limitation. We focused on Internet usage based on the data collected from each household of Higashikawa town, Hokkaido, Japan, through a questionnaire survey.

An analysis of the collected data yielded the following results: First, there is a strong demand for optical fiber network in the periphery of the town wherein the use of ADSL is restricted. Second, the purpose behind Internet usage via optical fiber network is similar to usage via ADSL or any other broadband. As a consequence, we indicate that an optical fiber network complements the spatial limitation posed by ADSL in large spaces. Thus, we conclude that an optical fiber network is a rational solution for broadband deployment in low density residential areas. However, because such areas are sparsely populated, broadband deployment through optical fiber is deemed unprofitable. Our study suggests a need for new policy aimed at maintaining broadband deployment costs in low-density residential areas.

Ohuratabaru coast lies in the northern part of Miyako Island, where beachrock develops continu- ously about 400 m in length and 70 m in width. Eight calibrated ¹⁴C ages reported previously were used to estimate formative age and rate of beach rock. They suggest that beachrock was formed from inland toward the present strand line between ca. 1,500 cal BP and present time. The average formative rate of beachrock evacuated from age and distance indicated 3～7 cm/y.