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A longer summer day for Sapporo

TOKYO, July 2 (UPI) -- Japan's northern city of Sapporo, which has the country's shortest summers, has decided to try out daylight savings time to maximize the city's sunlight hours.

The month-long experiment involves the Sapporo city government, 220 local firms and about 6,000 citizens, to see if it will benefit their lives and work.

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Unlike daylight savings time in the United States and Europe, participating organizations will open their offices an hour earlier without setting clocks ahead, reported the Yomiuri Shimbun Friday.

The Sapporo Chamber of Commerce and Industry applied in January to the government for this deregulation measure, hoping to stimulate the city's economy. Sapporo is suffering one of the worst recessions in the country.

The measure is expected to allow working people to pursue more after-work leisure in a region where the sun sets earliest in the archipelago. It will also reduce electricity consumption during the night by about $1 billion, according to one estimate.

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