Japan: Nara

Pocket history: for most of the 8th century, Nara was Japan's capital, and in 1890 the city's first railroad arrived, from Osaka.  Whoa, you say?  Bit of  a jump there?  Sure, but the connection is this: for many centuries between the 8th and 20th, Nara was a famous place with a stready, thin, stream of visitors.  Once the railroad came, that stream became a flood.  (It's no accident that only five years after the railroad's arrival Nara's Imperial Museum, now the National Museum, opened for the first time.)  Nowadays, this town of about 350,000 people has 13 million visitors annually.  Eleven million come only for the day; all but 200,000 are Japanese. 

For a time, the imperial city had an estimated population of 200,000, but in more recent times its population was much less, growing slowly to 50,000 people in 1940.  By 1964, that number had tripled, and from that base of 150,000 the population doubled by 1981.  The curve has now flattened, but it's not stable, because the city's 36,000 children, under age 15, are hopelessly outnumbered by its 82,000 people over 60.