In Japan many people still live together in large families. Never met someone to ask about this until now. Had a little small talk the other day with a man from my day job. Let’s call him Tanaka.

He told me a little about his wife and children, I asked were they lived and he said the lived in a house that his mother had bought for them. “My father died a few years ago, then my mother bought us a new house and moved in with us”, he explained. I know this is not uncommon in Japan, still the way he told me it seemed more like an offer he could not refuse. “Well, my wife does not always get along with my mother”, he added with a funny smile on his face.

Of course she doesn’t! It’s one thing to like your mother in law, but would you want her to move in? I realize that this is the way things were done in the old days when people died and an old person couldn’t be left alone, but today?

Tanaka and his wife both work full time so they actually need grandma to help taking the kids to school and such, but in other families it can be very heavy on the wife. As the old person gradually needs more help with daily stuff it is the wife who most often gets to take care of her or him.

As more and more people get older the load on the hospitals is also increased. People are now starting having to pay a larger part of the hospital bill themselves. There is no real plan for how to take care of all the elderly people in Japan. For regular people there are really just two options. Move in with your children or have them pay a nursing home for you.