I know that I’ve still got lots of years left of working age, and as a teacher, my body isn’t really going through much wear and tear through the years. As long as my brain is still operating correctly I should be able to work quite a bit longer.
However, it is hard not to think about retirement when you live in a country that is absolutely dominated by senior citizens. Just about everywhere you look there are old people walking around, and those are just the ones that are mobile enough to leave their houses.
The retirement system is under some stress here in Japan, with no end in sight. In companies, the mandatory retirement age is 60 years old. At that point, you have to leave your position… you’re done. They have changed some laws and over the next ten years the mandatory retirement age will gradually slide up to 65, as a means of keeping people in the workforce. There aren’t enough young people to keep it going, so they’ll keep the old folks working.
That’s probably a good thing. Most people cannot access their pension payouts in retirement until they 65 years old, so for the longest time there was a five year gap when they had no regular income from their job, and they had no income from the pension system.
Some retirees were rehired by their company at low-low wages and classified as special part time employees, thereby sidestepping the retirement regulations and also keeping their company salary budget lower. The workers are just happy to have some income until the pension check comes in, and so it is a win-win situation. However, not all people work for large, major companies in Japan. Smaller companies cannot afford to keep the old folks on the payroll, and so they are cut loose at 60 and they have to fend for themselves. Most old folks get a part time job directing traffic, working night security, or driving a taxi. They hope to scrape by somehow until their pension comes in.
When the pension check comes, however, it is not a whole lot to live on. In fact, it just barely covers the minimum to sustain a modest lifestyle. However, riches and freedom at the end of the rainbow is not really what people are looking for. From what I’ve heard and seen, workers don’t work their whole lives towards a goal of retirement, they work their whole lives because they love to work.
There are a lot of retirees that succumb to depression and loneliness once they retire, which causes more visits to the doctor to socialize with other seniors. Because seniors here in Japan often go to the doctor every day to take care of the mild aches and pains they experience, it turns into a social event.
My student once told me a joke about this phenomenon: two seniors in the waiting room of the doctor’s office were talking about a third senior that they hadn’t seen arrive yet. “That’s odd,” one of them said. “I guess he just wasn’t feeling well enough to come to the doctor today.”
