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KASHIWA CITY — Toshie Kimura is reading to a room full of enraptured three-year-olds at Kurumi Kindergarten in Kashiwa City, a bedroom community 30 kilometres from downtown Tokyo.

“I try to pass on the old traditions – when I was young there was no TV and gadgets,” she says, as she displays an origami crane she has been showing the kids how to make.

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Kimura-san is 80, but she doesn’t look it – and she says she doesn’t feel it, thanks to her efforts teaching unruly pre-schoolers “waka,” traditional Japanese poetry.

As a “machi-no-sensei” (town teacher), she is an unlikely economic saviour. But with the Japanese economy is facing a growth crisis brought on by its declining birth rate, seniors who sign up for “second life employment” may be part of the solution.

Japan is a hyper-aging society, with the highest life expectancy in the world at 83.4 years.

One in four of its population is over 65, compared to one in six in Canada, and that number is forecast to rise to 40 per cent within 50 years.