Did you know that in Japan and on September 15th of each year they have a holiday designated for every person who has turned 100 in the past year? It’s called “Respect for the Aged Day”. The birthday elders get silver cups from the government. That is going to change. Too many people are turning 100 and the cost of the silver cup is too high.

Last year 19,769 people reached triple figures in the world’s most rapidly aging country, compared with only 153 in 1963, the year when the cups were first presented.

Elderly people work out with wooden dumb-bells in the grounds of a temple in Tokyo on September 15, 2008, to celebrate Japan’s Respect-for-the-Aged-Day. The number of people aged 70 or older in Japan has topped 20 million for the first time, the Japanese government announced.

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