Centenarians and longevity

Work and physical Activities

 They were always hardworking and sexually active beyond 100. Additional activities like walking for example. The elderly here takes twice as many steps as young people in Naha, the capital of the archipelago. Pedometers/Step counters on their feed to prove its common.
Others practice martial arts–Okinawa is the home of karate. Several times a week, they play “gateball” with their friends, a kind of croquet. And they sing and dance, “Sanshin”, the traditional folk music.  As if following the orders of an inner voice, they start trembling with the first note of music, and when they dance their hands and arms sway back and forth like seaweed in the surf.
 “Yuimaru” (connected or appreciated) is absolutely part of it as well. The word means circle a “close social tangle”. Being needed, being useful, being part of the community. No segregation, everywhere around here, even in the cities, the oldest of the old ones still sell goods on the market, sweep squares, sort fruit. By now, it has even become extremely lucrative to employ hundred year-olds as a customer attraction in the shops. They hold together.