Recently, while the number of children in Japan has been steadily going down, the number of elderly people has been going up. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in Shinagawa City, which lies on the east side of Tokyo. It has one of the fastest growing elderly populations in the world, and the city is having difficulty finding places for these seniors to live.

To solve this problem, the city put Togoshidai Junior High School and Togoshidai Special Nursing Home for the Elderly inside of one building. This is the first place in Japan where a junior high school and a nursing home share the same building.

Because they are in one building, the students and the elderly have many opportunities to get to know one another better. For example, elderly residents can come to watch the school's athletic festival in May, and there is a joint exhibition of handcrafts in January and a day-long volunteer program at the elderly home during the summer.

This year 36 students spent one or more days of their summer vacation helping at the nursing home. They volunteered at the home from 9:30 in the morning until 6:30 in the evening. The students helped the staff with things like rehabilitation, making the beds, and serving the meals. They also kept the elderly residents company and chose to help out with fun activities like writing Japanese calligraphy, music, and handcrafts.

During an activity session on one of the days, some seventh graders joined the elderly, who were making postcards out of origami paper. As the students began helping the residents, conversations soon started up. Some of the elderly people asked questions like, "You're big for a junior high school student, aren't you. What size are your feet?" or "Where do you live?" At the end of the day of talking with and helping out their new friends, a lot of students said, "It was fun, just like talking with my grandma at home," and, "I want to come back again."

Many of the students do come back, too. Some of the ninth-graders have participated in the day-long volunteer program three years running. They even volunteer to come on other days during the year, saying, "It really feels great when people here remember my face and tell me to 'Come back again!'" One of these students said she was sitting down together with a friend on a crowded train one day, when an elderly person got on. She and her friend, who was also a volunteer, jumped up at once and offered their seats to the elderly person.

This spirit of caring that the students have towards the elderly is a unique lesson learned at Togoshidai Junior High School, and it's one that the students carry with them everywhere they go. With about 1,000 visitors from inside and outside of Japan coming to see the school every year, perhaps this sense of community between the young and the old will spread to other places as well.

Photos: Togoshidai Junior High School students helping elderly people to make origami as part of a summer vacation volunteer scheme.