JOK03.5610.xf1bAt a senior center in the small city of Nago, Okinawa, elderly Japanese can spend the day in a setting reminiscent of a spa, taking footbaths, enjoying deep-water massage, and lunching with friends. With their caring, community-based nursing and assistance staff, Okinawan nursing homes and senior daycare centers, both public and private, seem wondrous places—vibrant and lively—where friends gather for foot massages, water volleyball, haircuts, or simple meals. (Supporting image from the project Hungry Planet: What the World Eats) /// See also: The Matsuda family of Yomitan Village, Okinawa. They are one of the thirty families featured, with a weeks’ worth of food, in the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Takeo Matsuda, 88, and his wife Keiko, 75, live together with Takeo’s mother, Kama, 100. (Please refer to Hungry Planet book p. 186-187 for a family portrait [Image number JOK03.0001.xxf1rw] including a weeks’ worth of food, and the family’s detailed food list with total cost.) /// Hara hachi bu—”eat only until 80 percent full”—say older Okinawans. The island has been the focus in recent years of researchers trying to discover why a disproportionately large number of Okinawans are living to age 100 or more. Some scientists attribute this longevity to the island’s unique, unbeatable combination of healthy eating habits, exercise, and low stress, as well as a community commitment to ensuring the quality of its older citizens’ lives. Sadly, although the island is being studied for clues to the oldest generation of Okinawan’s great longevity, studies say that the younger population will not live as long because of their diets higher in saturated fats and calories.