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Core areas in suburban regions that are home to more commercial facilities began growing in popularity around 2016, although central parts of Tokyo were especially popular previously.

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Yoichi Ikemoto, chief editor of Suumo residential information website. It recently released the results of a survey showing an increasing number of Tokyo residents prefer living in the suburbs, with Yokohama the top choice.

© Asahi Shimbun

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Jeff's right, there is a bit more to translation than transcribing katakana jargon into the English words they sound like. "Commercial facilities" probably means "retail" to anyone who cares to refer to real English and not just twenty-year-old Japanese-English dictionaries produced by Monbusho amakudari publishers.

I'm not looking it up to check, but I believe that well-known "suburb" Yokohama is Japan's second largest city, and will have a larger population than all but twenty? fifteen? world capitals.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

"Core areas in suburan regions"? Sounds like a paradox to me.

"...more commercial facilities" The facilities are more commercial than before? Or more in number, and if so, more compared to what?

"especially popular previously" But now not especially popular? Or unpopular? Or just plain popular?

Interesting how much damage an incompetant translator/rewriter can inflict in so short a passage.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

 incompetant translator

*incompetent

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Yokohama is a suburb? Anyway, I agree that "retail" is a better word, Kohaku.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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