The Prefecture of Kinboshi (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario at midnight, local time, something strange happens around Japan. In short, two million people around Japan are taken away. All of whom are under 40 years old and while some children are taken, they are taken with their parents (be they biological or adoptive). There is some video footage of doors being opened and odd machines involved as well as people suddenly falling asleep in apartment buildings. There were also odd RADAR signs picked up over the pacific ocean by the JSDF, USN, PLAN and Royal Australian Navy. Regardless, a respectable part of the Japanese Population is now gone. Exactly what is going on is not known and there is a bit of political tension until three days latter when a radio message reaches earth from the Second Planet orbiting the sun.

In short, that part of the Japanese population has now been relocated to a set of 128 balloon cities hovering in Venus's upper atmosphere. Each of these Balloon Cities is about 3 kilometers across, half a kilometer tall and disc shaped. Inside each of these Balloon cities are 3D farms in which crops, fish and livestock are cultivated, then residential levels in which there is housing and amenities and a lower level for storage, life support, recycling and industrial facilities. Some Balloon Cities are more agriculturally oriented, others are more industrial. Metals are supplied by a set of industrial robots on the surface and the Balloon cities can manufacture anything that modern earth can produce. There are also a number of smaller airships which fly between the Balloon Cities. Six Balloon cities working together can build a new one in two years. There is a local internet and cell network. Finally they are not fully cut off from earth. There are sixteen sixteen space planes which can each bring up to thirty two people into orbit. In orbit is a cylindrical spacecraft 150 meters long, 100 meters wide that's programmed to make the journey from earth to Venus and can do it in as little as three weeks and can accommodate up to 1,000 people, though it does need deuterium for it's fusion reactor and about a month of down time every two years to engage in a maintenance cycle. The name "Prefecture of Kinboshi" begins to float around the media shortly afterwards.

What happens?

Zor

[madd0ct0r]

Are the population taken able to read the instruction manuals?
Are they assigned randomly or 'correctly'- eg farmers and farm familiar communities in the agosphere, factory robot programmers in industrial balloon.

Either way,
China immediately denounces this secret Japanese colonisation effort and demands the discovery is shared across the developing nations in reflection of their damage incurred during the west's industrialisation.

[Zor]

Are the population taken able to read the instruction manuals?
Are they assigned randomly or 'correctly'- eg farmers and farm familiar communities in the agosphere, factory robot programmers in industrial balloon.

Yes they can and yes they are distributed by occupation.

Zor

[Solauren]

Efforts would start to reverse engineer the technology. I can see a 'spare' balloon city being made, and sent to Earth via the 'venus to earth express' ship.

[Sky Captain]

World freaks out because this smells like an alien experiment. Some godlike alien entity just demonstrated it can do whatever it wants with us and there is nothing we could do to stop it.

[Raw Shark]

Japan's economy, already skewed sharply toward a higher age demographic than average, takes a hit as so many of its present and near-future workers relocate unexpectedly. Immigration of skilled and unskilled labor becomes more loosely regulated or even incentivized to make up the difference, leading many to move there from around the world.

People who are already inclined to think that Japan is some level more cool than other places or that Asian people are somehow sinister get a big nudge further in that direction based on the special attention paid to them by the alien invaders. Anime fandom, sushi bars, and discrimination see a slight rise elsewhere.