“There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last”*…
Japan’s government will no longer reward its centenarian citizens with a silver sake dish worth ¥8,000 ($64), saying the growing number of long-lived Japanese are putting a strain on the country’s budget.
The Japan Times reports that the government will find a more frugal gift in time for the country’s annual celebration of the elderly on Sept. 15. Last year, the government spent ¥260 million ($2 million) on the program, which provided dishes for more than 29,000 centenarians. Japan expects as many as 38,000 more people to celebrate their 100th birthday in 2018…
More on longevity– and the prospect of a “demographic time bomb“– at “Japan has so many 100-year-old citizens that it can’t afford to give them presents anymore.”
* Robert Louis Stevenson
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As we settle in for the long haul, we might send birthday greetings to Abilene (Wrage) Spiehs; she was born on this date in 1898. When she died (on November 24, 2008), she was 110 years old– the oldest living Nebraskan at the time, and one of a select group of humans who lived to that age.
