Covid-19 chases more Japanese from cities into countryside

File photo of people crossing a street in front of Shinjuku station, a normally crowded street during the weekend, after the government expanded a state of emergency to include the entire country following the Covid-19 outbreak, in Tokyo, Japan, on April 19, 2020. - Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters): When the coronavirus outbreak caused rice and instant noodles to disappear from supermarket shelves in Tokyo this year, Kaoru Okada, 36, decided to leave the capital because he was worried about food security.

Okada settled in the central Japanese city of Saku, Nagano prefecture, about 160km northwest of Tokyo, maintaining his online retail and export business while growing vegetables in shared farms and threshing rice.