century

yesterday after a phonecall during lunch, katosan hurried to catch a shinkansen to tottori. he will join his family there, as his great-grandmother (mother of mother of mother) is exchanging the temporal for the eternal...
born on december 18th 1904, she would have turned one hundred years old in a month. still she already celebrated her first century, a while ago, in presence of the local governor, kobayashisan told me. www confirmed that

the traditional way of counting age in Japan was different from what we do now. When a baby was born, its age was counted as one year old. People did not celebrate on their actual birthday; instead, everyone added one year on New Year's day. In an extreme case, when a baby was born on December 31st, he was considered two years old on New Year's day when he was only two days old.

strange you never find this in life expectancy studies...