NEWS: Japan
At 119 years old, the oldest person in the world has celebrated his birthday and is ready for the next one.

Anoth­er year passed, and with it, anoth­er can­dle was added to Kane Tanaka’s birth­day cake.

Many of us will have lofty res­o­lu­tions by 2022, but Kane has seen more New Years than any­one on this plan­et, and prob­a­bly isn’t naive enough to both­er at this point.

Kane was born on Jan­u­ary 2, 1903, six months before the Eng­lish nov­el­ist George Orwell.

The math­e­mati­cians among you will have under­stood that this meant that his last birth­day par­ty yes­ter­day (Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 2) was his 119th.

She spent it at the retire­ment home where she resides in Fukuo­ka Pre­fec­ture, south­west Japan — and she already has the big 1–20 in her sights, accord­ing to her fam­i­ly members.

Eiji, her 62-year-old grand­son, told Kyo­do News Agency: “I would like to per­son­al­ly con­grat­u­late her soon.

“I hope she stays healthy and has fun every day as she gets older.”

The sev­enth of nine sib­lings, Kane mar­ried at the age of 19 and ran a noo­dle shop after her hus­band and eldest son went to fight dur­ing the Sec­ond Sino-Japan­ese War, which began in 1937. .

She was rec­og­nized by Guin­ness World Records as the old­est liv­ing per­son in March 2019, reach­ing an all-time Japan­ese age record when she reached 117 years and 261 days in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

She still has a few years to go before she becomes the old­est per­son of all time, with the record set by French­woman Jeanne Louise Cal­ment, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days.

As for Kane’s secret, she enjoys spend­ing her days solv­ing puz­zles, eat­ing choco­late and drink­ing soft drinks.

So men­tal stim­u­la­tion, and con­sum­ing tons of sug­ar, seems to be the key.