In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
"A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-d...
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064
Being collectivist means not taking up unnecessary psychic space in the lives of others.
The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Burdens also get left behind.
https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-...
This is why my mother sends me an email every morning.
Should be the other way around. Parents watched us every hour when growing up, as adults we should be the ones checking on them constantly.
In the West I rarely hear people who talk about their parents with great love and care. Instead I see parents praising their children all day long. These kids grow up feeling like a prize and they do not develop enough appreciation for the hard work it took their parents.
Growing up in Africa it felt like, as a child, you owed everything to your parents and they did you a favor taking care of you. While extreme, in the long run people take care of their parents and you will not hear of older people being alone let alone die alone.
You are assuming these people have children at all - that's becoming less true every year.
Also, you should consider that people sometimes prefer to be alone. My grandmother now lives with my mother, but that was only after she fell at home at 85 years old, because before she preferred to live by herself. Had she died in that fall, she would have died alone too, but not because her children didn't want to take care of her.
Several government programs act as a poor substitute for family support.
Lack of incentive, lack of community and an emphasis on individualism creates people like that.
I had a great-great aunt who lived alone and hoarded cats and dogs (and many other non-living things). She was partially eaten when they finally found her. My grandparents eventually moved in to that property, and now my parents have it as a second property.
Every time I visit, I still get a little shudder when I think about what it must have been like to stumble upon that scene (a weeks dead, partially eaten corpse surrounded by dozens of hungry cats and dogs...) - I'm not sure which neighbor discovered her, but that poor person...
[Edit: fortunately, my parents didn't tell me the story until I was 18, I had visited my grandparents at that property every summer for most of my childhood. I imagine if they had told me earlier, my trips to the basement of that 19th century house would have been a bit more frightening]
What about a device like the emergency buttons for elderly but it checks vitals? It could update loved ones daily. I bet you could use an Apple Watch.
My grandfather loves talking about cars and he enjoys his weekly phone call. He can't wait to tell me all about new technologies he reads about. He tells me how his car is doing and asks how my car handles. He has 5 grandchildren and I believe that I am the only one who calls every week.
E.g. see photos here: https://apartments.gaijinpot.com/en/rent/view/216237 (about $1,100 USD/mo)
How fancy, must be a Western-style room. In a Japanese-style room you get nothing but a mattress.
I’ve stayed in both ‘international’ hotels that cater to foreigners and in business hotels which explicitly discourage foreigners by having literally everything in Japanese and they’ve all had fairly standard sized rooms for a hotel.
The business hotel's room was tiny (as described by the person your replied to). The ryokan's rooms were a very nice size. The hostel's were tiny (either 4.5 or 6 tatami?), but the bathrooms were down the hall, at least. The hotel in Hakone had decently-sized rooms, but not as large as the ryokan. I don't remember them being any more cramped than when I've visited cities in Europe, anyhow.
And from the other part that mentions "business hotels" and especially ones that "explicitly discourage foreigners". Except if those are the rare kind of business hotels for poor destitute businessmen.
An actual example from two of the categories I've actually stayed in.
ANA Crowne Plaza Okayama - $116AU a night. Not shockingly cheap, but cheap nonetheless.
PRINCE something something, in Osaka. 6000JPY a night on a public holiday.
No matter your definition of cheap, they're not 'expensive' hotels.
Anybody have any idea what sort of device this `deodorizing machine` would be? I'm very curious what sort of technology could pull off such a feat.
I'm in favor of pets as companionship, but an emergency button around your neck seems like a better way to get help with the exception of dieing in your sleep.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...
EDIT: Yeah, looks like the authorities stepped in[0].
[0] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/grand-jury-indicts-nevad...
Bullshit. When I die, if all that is remembered of me are the things in my apartment, then it doesn't really matter if I was alone at the time or who cleans it up.
I'm willing to bet he made a lasting impression on somebody. Friends, coworkers, etc. If not, then having kids or someone living with him wouldn't have mattered.
I definitely get the feeling the message of this article is "make sure you have kids so you don't die alone and forgotten", which is stupid for several reasons.
Apparently not enough of an impression to carry on the friendship, though, right?
I think the point of the article is that Japanese society has traditionally been very dependent on family and work for all of your social bonding, with much less emphasis on maintaining relationships outside of those two spheres.
If he did have kids, they would likely check up on him more than once a month. It's not guaranteed, of course, but Japanese culture does seem to put more of a weight on that than American culture.
The point of this article isn't "this is how it should be or suffer the consequences", it's "this is how it is, and this is one of the consequences".