Ladies, Want to Live to 100? Move to Japan

At the detriment of Japan’s social and welfare systems, the number of Japanese people aged 100 and above has hit 60,000 this year.

It’s no secret that Japan faces unprecedented challenges in the very near future with its troubling low birth rate, but things look even more bleak when you take into consideration the vast amount of retirees, future pensioners, and Prime Minister Abe’s questionable “robot revolution” that some believe is merely just an anti-immigration stance.

trees and sakura by pond in Japan

Currently the Western media is filled with stories about refugees in Europe and illegal immigration in the United States, but these types of stories are almost non-existent in Asia, especially on the tiny island nation of Japan.

The opposite side of this argument is that old economic paradigms will simply be flipped on their heads by future technology and new monetary inventions like bitcoin. This argument concludes that smaller more efficient countries will prevail and big countries with huge populations will lumber into obscurity.

Whether either of these potentialities becomes the reality—or something in between—remains to be seen, but one simple fact stands out, if you want to live to see 100 you may want to move to Japan and eat and live like Japanese.

Women especially seem to benefit from the Japanese lifestyle. Out of all OECD countries, Japanese females reign supreme in the longevity category. Japanese men on average live just over 80 years, while Japanese women boast the world’s longest life expectancy of 86.83 years.

Demographic time bomb aside, the keys to longevity seemingly remain in Japan locked in a small box underneath Japanese women’s beds on the island of Okinawa.

H/T: Quartz