Whee!
December 4th, 2011
This is a prominent feature of a building in the neighborhood:
At first I thought it was a cool feature in a facility for kids. What kid wouldn’t love to have this around instead of a staircase? I went around the side of the building to see what kind of place would have this.
Turns out it’s an old folk’s home. Huh?
That puzzled me for a while, then I figured it out: if there’s a fire, many would have trouble going down stairs. It is, in all likelihood, an emergency slide.
LOL.
First I was all cool!
Then I was all yeah.
When I was FOB in 1992 there were ~20M kids aged 10-29 and 6M old folks aged 75+.
Now there are 12M kids vs. ~10M folks.
2020 will be ~12M vs. 16.5M.
2050 will be ~8M vs. 20M. Japanese society will have reversed completely.
I don’t know how this is going to play out, but maybe I’ll be one of those old people in Japan by 2050. That would be weird.