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became adults who greet me around town.

They stop and chat with me from time to time.

In Jonancho residents struggling with various problems

come to the association for help and counsel.

So we as members of the association take it into our own hands

and help them by offering support and solutions to their problems.

I was the chair for 13 years.

I get phone calls at my house from visually impaired people

asking for help with daily tasks such as taking out the garbage.

There are isolated elderly people

who live on their own and have become withdrawn.

We visit their homes

talk with them listen to them and offer solutions to their problems.

There are also people with dementia in town.

We see them walking around.

They may be just walking.

Or maybe they are wandering.

Really 13 years!

So we walk beside them.

Then we walk them back home.

I believe that community associations

need to provide services such as these.

Before I joined the association didn't handle such problems.

When I became chairman of the association

I didn't think of doing this kind of work.

So I didn’t handle these problems.

Before I became a chairman I had a retirement dream.

It was to drive all around Japan with my wife.

Do you think that’s a long time?

Then 10 years passed.

I hadn't been able to go.

You see my car broke down after 10 years.

Then six more years passed.

Yet I still haven't gone on that road trip.

And now I will be 76 years old.

At my age I can’t just get in my car and go driving around Japan

now that my body is worn out and too weak

with age getting the better of me.

So I became interested in working with the social services in town.

Or do you think that I'm just peculiar?

The first problem I struggled with was in October 2006.

In our neighborhood

a 60-year old man had died alone in his home.

No one found out for eight days.

I was really shocked to hear about this.

Because as the chairman I knew that this man was very ill

and I had specifically asked his neighbors to watch over him

and I was also keeping an eye on him.

Despite all this he died alone.

Deep down I felt that I let him die alone.

Does someone have a question? I see you there.

I felt that very strongly.

Then I thought about how to prevent such deaths from happening again.

I thought long and hard about this

but I struggled to find any solutions.

By any chance are there very old people living in your neighborhoods?

Well most of you are quite young.

You may not know many elderly people.

I wonder what would you do in my place?

In 2007

I spoke to Ms. Ryoko Yoshimura from the Anjo City Social Welfare Committee.

Well we know each other. So later?

She recommended that we create a community care map.

So we followed her advice.

Now this community care map

divided the neighborhood into blocks

creating numerous blocks on the map.

Residents with different challenges live on each block.

Some have dementia others are physically disabled.

There are also residents who live alone.

We tag that information to the map.

Then when we get together we use the map for reference

By the way this conference is located

and discuss how to address each concern one at a time.

We have been tackling social issues in our community in this way.

Since we created this community care map

the residents have seen that we'll go the extra mile to help them.

They've found this reassuring

and they now come directly to us for help and advice.

I feel that that is one of the things that this map has helped us achieve.

As we continued on

the local elementary school asked me to come in as a guest speaker for a day.

They asked me to talk to the students about the problems of the elderly

Why do you make a presentation?

And why did you come here today to listen to our presentations?

I myself have watched a lot of TED or TEDx talks.

but my iron board was still too big.

Anyway I plunged it to my backpack

but which was actually hitting the rocks and quite dangerous.

Everyone asked me What is that?

It's an iron as you can see.

What are you doing? Of course I'm ironing.

So this was my whole new experience

that 'usual activity becomes unusual'

and to share this 'unusual' to others.

When I ironed on the top of the mountain Tsukuba

But among them there are only a few talks I adopted.

crowds of curious people gathered around me

And I realized that my happiness makes people smile.

These smiles bring another smiles especially among children.