Since 1989 About one hour northeast of Tokyo, overlying an ancient agricultural economy at the northern end of the Kanto plain, is Tsukuba, a modern, planned city of 150,000. Tsukuba was incorporated in 1987 by merging five villages and towns in Ibaraki prefecture into one of Japan's "science cities," designated to relieve metropolitan density through systematic relocation of prominent research and educational facilities to less congested regions of Japan. With 45 national research and academic institutions, plus approximately 230 laboratories operated by domestic and foreign corporations, Tsukuba currently is home to 12,000 researchers, 2,800 of whom hold doctorates. A large community of international scholars and researchers give the city a unique cosmopolitan quality. Tsukuba has achieved worldwide recognition as a major scientific and technology center, and has striking demographic, economic, academic, cultural and geographic similarities to Irvine.		Click here to visit Tsukuba's website