From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is a Daily.

On yesterday's show, Sabrina Tevernese described why for the first time in generations,

the birth rate in the United States has been falling,

and the long-term risks posed by that trend.

One of those risks is that the US could eventually follow the path of a country like Japan,

where a persistently low birth rate has resulted in a shrinking population that grows smaller and smaller by the year.

Today, I turned to Tokyo Bureau Chief Motoko Rich to understand what that change has looked and felt like inside Japan.

It's Wednesday, May 5th.

Motoko, tell me about this town that you had visited.

It's a little town called Nagorou. It's on the island of Shikoku.

It's pretty remote. Japan's not that big of a country, and yet it seems to take a really long time to get here.

We flew from Tokyo to this medium-sized city called Kochi.

From there, we have to take a train and then a bus.

We're clearly just moving further and further away from known civilization.

There are no convenience stores, no gas stations, and then you finally get to this little remote village.

And what is it like there?

It's kind of eerie because you're driving into town and you've already been coming up these winding roads and signs of civilization have been disappearing.

You start to see these figures.

One perched on a little wall on the side of the road.

There's what appears to be an old woman crouched over in a field.

There looks like this guy is kind of shaking chestnuts of a tree.

There are a couple of construction workers on a cigarette break.

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