The final stop of Leg Two of my Top Ten and Bottom Three Longevity Expedition took me to Japan's capital, with a surprising result. I know Tokyo well. After nearly thirty years in Japan, I have visited countless times and even lived here for several years. But this visit was different. I arrived with my True Longevity Index™ as my compass, looking for evidence of what helps people live not just longer, but healthier lives. One highlight was a day of filming with Stu Sp encer,

Public Policy and a Private Prayer: Can a community change how it ages? Nagano Prefecture, once troubled by high rates of stroke and hypertension, offers a remarkable example of what can happen when communities take healthy aging seriously. On the second leg of my Top Ten and Bottom Three Longevity Expedition, I returned to Nagano for the third time, guided by my True Longevity Index (TLI)™. I wanted to understand how a prefecture that once faced serious public-health challen

Mountain moai, deep earth water, and belonging in Yamanashi / Leg 2: Top Ten and Bottom Three Longevity Journey This autumn I am traveling through thirteen Japanese prefectures identified by my True Longevity Index (TLI)™, the Top Ten and Bottom Three, looking beyond the numbers for clues about what helps us live not simply longer, but well for longer. Yamanashi was a stop on the second leg of that journey. Amid the chatter around a table, one woman leaned forward and looked

How my son’s name on a map led me to Shizuoka’s battle for the American teacup, and back to longevity How can a century-old battle over tea teach us about longevity—and about remaining curious enough to change our minds? I went to Shizuoka because the longevity data pointed me there. The prefecture has remarkable examples of people staying healthy and independent well into later life, and wherever I traveled, one thing was hard to miss: tea. I expected eventually to visit a t

A mischievous neighbor gave me red underwear at my 60th surprise birthday party. At the time, I understood very little about kanreki, the Japanese tradition marking the completion of a 60-year cycle and, symbolically, a return to the beginning. Today is Respect for the Aged Day in Japan, and thirteen years later I understand that gift rather differently. It connects with an idea that has become central to my longevity research and to what I call the Art of Community. In much

In 1963, when Japan began keeping official records, only 153 people were aged 100 or older. Today, there are 107,677. That trajectory over just 63 years is extraordinary. Japan has crossed the 100,000-centenarian threshold for the first time, further cementing its reputation as one of the world's great longevity nations. It is a milestone worth celebrating. But at the Never Too Late Academy, it also prompts another question: Is living longer, by itself, the right measure

Top Ten or Bottom Three? The Journey Has Begun For the past two years, I have been traveling across Japan asking a question at the heart of the Never Too Late Academy: What can we learn from the places where people live not only longer, but healthier, more engaged lives? This autumn, that journey has become much more focused. I am using my newly developed True Longevity Index™ as a compass to visit thirteen Japanese prefectures—the Top Ten and Bottom Three according to the c

What a Japanese festival for the dead can teach us about aging, community and mathematics? I think about lines and circles alot! My earliest memory is in primary school. I cannot remember his name, the classroom, or even exactly how old I was, but I remember one lesson clearly. The teacher drew a line across the blackboard and asked us what it was. A line, obviously. He explained that what he had drawn wasn’t really the line at all. It was only the tiny bit of the line we cou

For thirty years, I’ve been passing through Shizuoka Prefecture, a long stretch of coastline with glorious views of Mt. Fuji. I’ve crossed it countless times on the Tōmei Expressway without stopping, sped through on the Shinkansen, and even sailed its coastline on my first-ever long-distance solo sail. And I’ve also cycled through it twice. Once with my dog and my friend, Professor Yoshi Masuda, and another time with two friends, Tony Torres and Mark Macbennet, as we rode fro

Ten Days with Chiharu and her Son Fearless. Wise. Gregarious. Curious. Creative. Adventurous. Independent. All these words describe Chiharu. But after ten days living in close quarters with her and her son, Mitsuharu, one word seems to undergird them all. Engaged. She is remarkable! Yet spending time with Chiharu, along with Mitsu and other family members, raised a persistent question. How much of what I was witnessing belonged to Chiharu alone, and how much ran through the f

What Japan’s longevity hotspots taught me about individuality, vitality and relevance of being iki-iki. My article, “The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down?,” sparked far more discussion than I expected. Some readers agreed wholeheartedly that individuality is alive and well in Japan. Others insisted the famous proverb still perfectly describes life here, particularly in the corporate world. Some shared deeply personal stories of feeling like a nail hammered down. One en

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. The irony is that my relationship with language did not begin well. I didn't speak a recognizable word until I was three years old. Doctors were concerned. My family tells me my first word was "Pop," spoken on the day my older sister started school. Until then, the only sound I uttered was a single syllable: "ish." She did the talking for me, interpreting "ish" and telling everyone what I meant. School wasn't much eas

Earlier this year, I was invited to join a plenary panel at the Asian Conference on Aging & Gerontology in Tokyo, organized by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR). Sharing the platform with Hector Garcia, co-author of Ikigai, Professor Sawano, and moderated by Professor Dexter DaSilva, I challenged one of the most familiar assumptions about Japan—an assumption that has found its way into countless books, business seminars, and conversations about Japanese culture. "The n

What if Japan's super-agers are the "Last Cohort"? A question I am asked, and to be frank, one I have pondered myself, goes something like this: "Lowell, you refer to the Art of Community in Japan. But what about hikikomori and kodokushi? If Japan is getting community right, how do you explain those?" It is a fair question. For readers unfamiliar with the terms, hikikomori refers to people who withdraw from society, sometimes remaining isolated in their homes for months or ev

Father's Day has a way of bringing old thoughts back to the surface. Over the past few weeks, I have found myself in several conversations with fathers. Some were casual discussions between men comparing notes. Others were more intentional conversations with younger fathers seeking advice and coaching. Different backgrounds. Different circumstances. Yet beneath each conversation lies the same question. How do I help my son become a man? Over the years, I have written about fa

One of the privileges of spending the past two years traveling across Japan researching longevity has been meeting people who defy the statistics. Not people who deny aging. Not people who have somehow escaped it. But people who continue to be ambitious, curious, engaged, and active well into the years when many assume life inevitably narrows. For most, death is not what we fear. What unsettles is the long, slow decline that leads to it. The period between healthy life expe

Why the words we use may determine whether we achieve our goals At the Never Too Late Academy, we often talk about audacious goals. Crossing oceans. Writing a book at seventy. Changing careers at sixty-five. Getting healthy after years of neglect. Starting over after loss, illness, failure. Learning new skills. Moving to a new culture. Running a marathon. Starting a new business Big goals. But here is the reality: audacious goals are not achieved through inspiration alone. T

I do not like retirement homes. There, I said it. I understand why they exist. I understand the economics, the healthcare efficiencies, and the reassurance they give children and grandchildren who worry about aging parents living alone. But after spending the last two years traveling through Japan’s longevity hotspots researching healthy lifespan, community, and aging, I am uneasy with the idea of separating older people from the normal rhythm of society and placing them into

One of the greatest threats to healthy aging is not medical decline, but the collapse of intergenerational relevance. For the better part of the last three years, I have been traveling through Japan’s longevity hotspots, meeting people who remain active, independent, socially connected, and purposeful well into their eighties and nineties, long past Japan’s average healthy life expectancy of approximately seventy-three years. Again and again, I encounter something that is dif

Rites of Passage, Intergenerational Life, and the Communities That Endure In a small hamlet not far from where my boat Wahine is moored in remote Japan, there sits a weathered stone beside a tiny shrine overlooking the bay. It is not especially large, perhaps the size of a basketball. Salt air and countless hands have worn much of its surface smooth over the years. At first glance, it seems ordinary, another object aging alongside the village itself. For generations, however