Over half of researchers polled preferred to live within a 30 minute commute of the ILC campus. The Iwate Prefectural Government presented the results of an online questionnaire of foreign researchers at a meeting for the Prefectural Assembly General Affairs Standing Committee.

The questionnaire was aimed at researchers at DESY in Germany, CERN in Geneva, and other major laboratories. It was opened in July, and 74 people had sent in answers as of mid-August.

For the question, “How long could your commute be and still feel comfortable?”,
55.4% answered “0-30 min,” and 43.2% answered “30 min – 1 hr.”

For the question, “Where you most like to live?”, the highest percentage was
55.4% for “near the ILC campus in a residential area with many neighbors and amenities.”
25.7% answered, “A nearby large city (such as Sendai or Morioka, which both have national universities).”
8.1% answered they’d like to live within the ILC campus.

Many researchers were keenly interested in learning Japanese:
56.2% wanted to learn enough Japanese for daily life/simple conversation, and
30.1 % wanted to learn enough to be “able to converse about many things with some difficulty.”

Jun Sasaki, Executive Director of the Office of Science and ILC Promotion for Iwate, said, “We will keep this survey open to hear from researchers what we need to build the environment around the ILC, and I hope it will be of use as we deliberate further.”