> buying 150 F35's

Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.

What does buying one hundred and fifty F35 aircraft have to do with not being able care for your parents / grandparents?

Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?

The Government™ probably can solve defence.

It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.

The socialized cost of protecting your castle is massive. It makes for a very popular and very lazy target for this kind of “think of the children” (or centenarians) style rhetoric.

Something I keep in mind when reading these kinds of opinions is that when war breaks out and moves through a region (think Ukraine), the elderly are common among those who cannot flee.

>And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.

I'm torn on this issue. I think the elderly and people in general should get a decent life, but on the opposite side we have Europe that's investing massively more in making its boomers richer and more comfortable than anyone in human history has ever been(average pension in France is now higher than the average salary), rather than investing that money in ensuring opportunities and prosperity of future generations, who are facing economic stagnation/degrowth and are forced to foot the bill for this elderly spending, with the guarantee the pyramid scheme they're funding will fail them when their turn comes to benefit from it.

So perhaps Japan sees the defense capability those 150 F-35's bring to its future national security more valuable than keeping the elderly alive for a few more years.

Yeah, it sounds harsh when you look at people like that, but taking care of people takes resources(money), and money is finite, so all these decisions are a game theory trolley problem, where you have to choose whose lives a country should prioritize the most: the past generations, or the future generations.

Historically in the history of nations would be willing to sacrifice the elderly to prioritize the survival and growth of its future generations, that was the social contract of the tribe, that is until the western boomers came and decided they deserve to fuck the future of their nation if they can get wealthier and feel good till the end.

I'm not saying there's one correct solution here, because I don't have it. I'm saying tough decisions have to be made from which there will be winners and losers, so a nation should choose the winners carefully, if it wishes to have a future.

> very quickly, going to need extra care.

they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention.

What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?

I head similar stories. Also from Italy. Another aspect is that many 100+ year old have questionable birth certificates, as in the record of the birthday might be guessed. Different times back then.

That’s all true, but if you walk around “old people neighbourhoods” even within Tokyo, you’ll realize there are A LOT OF old people. Maybe it’s much more urbanized, and older people are more likely to still go out for groceries and stuff here. But even on the ground it feels like “yeah story tracks”.

I was also thinking about that, but that miscounting story is so old, notable, and well-known by now, that it's basically popular knowledge around the world. So I hope that the BBC, but especially also the Japanese government that the BBC was reporting on, are aware of that issue and have, by now, accounted for it.

Yeah, I agree that the "Blue Zone" theory is mostly explained by bad record keeping. Okinawa is one of the poorest areas of Japan, but was deemed a Blue Zone, despite that wealth is nearly always positively correlated with longevity within similar cultures. Low and behold Okinawa had shitty record keeping and tons of incentives for relatives to commit pension fraud.

I think high housing prices can impact people's decision about when/if they start a family, but other factors do as well. Rural Japan might be inexpensive, but raising a family there can be less attractive for a lot of other reasons.

Real estate is not the only reason why folks have less children, especially in cultures where people don’t mind having less space. Kids are expensive for other reasons in china

> If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.

It doesn't matter how much the property is valued if your work is somewhere else.

It's common enough that the Japanese government has been tracking down long dead "centenarians" to root it out. Also, according to Saul Newman [1], many of the centenarians claimed for Japan actually died 80+ years ago in the war and were never recorded as dead when everyone else in their family died.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZE5ml7a6rE

Did you actually visit Japanese families, or is that assessment based on what you saw in convenience stores and similar? "Convenience" food and western style food has somewhat increased, but on average Japanese cuisine is very healthy.

I also agree on the stressful work part, but don't quite understand what you mean with "lots of commute on public transit". If you mean the Tokyo-style rush hour traffic where people are literally shoved into the train car, of course that's stressful. But at any other time apart from that, Japan's public transit is enormously soothing and stress-free, both because of culture and transit technology.

What exactly did you eat the entire time? tonkatsu and karaage?

there's plenty of great home style food that isn't fried.. nikujaga, gyusuji, nikudofu, etc.

Public transit there is pretty great. If anything the lack of escalators for some stations can be unmotivating to some people but on the other hand walking a lot of flights of stairs is healthy.

I don’t get the bit about public transport. Do you mean it’s unhealthy because public transport is stressful?

Japan is quite a bit different in that regard since they have family registries. Their issue tends to be death records.