TORIDE, IBARAKI PREF. – Stretching throughout the windswept plains extending past the outskirts of Toride, a commuter town in Tokyo's neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture, is a massive sprawl of farmland which can soon be the website online of one in all Japan's largest buying department stores.

The 676,000-rectangular-meter belongings — larger than Tokyo Disneyland — also represents the city-suburban quandary the sector's fastest-getting older state harbors as it struggles to mitigate monetary drainage and meet changing demographic needs by using containing its shrinking population in regional urban facilities .

If the assignment is found out, retail behemoth Aeon's new buying and recreational hub ought to function a buying promenade, warm-spring spa and an out of doors nature park, among different centers, and is expected to create hundreds of new jobs while attracting tens of thousands and thousands of site visitors annually.