A Little Fog Lifted Today at Matsuyama City Hall — Pensions, Long-Term Care Insurance, and the Shape of Not Understanding 2026/4/30 (Thu) R8

Kanon
April 30, 2026 21:21

I worked as a teacher for many years.

Every month I received my salary, taxes were deducted, and I lived on what remained. I thought about the money needed for my children, set aside a little savings, and lived my life that way.

I didn’t have to think very deeply about money. It simply flowed.

After retiring, I received my retirement allowance and continued a very small personal business for five or six years. To be honest, there were years when the taxes felt higher than what I earned.

Since around that time, there were two things I never truly understood:
pensions and long-term care insurance.

I was paying. Money was being deducted. Notices arrived.
And yet, I could not grasp what I was paying for, how the system worked, or where I myself stood within it.

Today, I went to Matsuyama City Hall.

As I moved from counter to counter for my moving-in procedures, insurance matters, and address registration, something suddenly dawned on me.

All this time, I had simply been
a person existing inside the system.

While I was teaching, I was protected by the structure of payroll deductions and mutual aid systems. After retirement, I had stepped outside of that structure, yet my thinking had remained exactly the same as before.

That is why I did not understand.

It was not that pensions or long-term care insurance were especially difficult.
It was that I had not realized my own position in life had changed.

Today, for the first time, I felt I understood that.

There was something else I felt as well.

The staff at Matsuyama City Hall were very kind.
And yet, at the same time, there was a faint sense of an older atmosphere lingering there.

A place where newness and old ways quietly coexist.
Standing there as the person I am now felt strangely moving.

I currently live independently in a residence that also provides care services.

It is a place where a system that existed before the year 2000 overlaps with the systems of today. Perhaps that, too, made things harder for me to understand.

But today, as I went from window to window, filled out forms, and listened carefully,

I felt as if just a little of the fog had lifted.

I realized: it was not only me.

In fact, this is a system that becomes harder to understand precisely for people who have lived their lives responsibly and diligently.

Those who worked seriously, paid their taxes, and followed the rules
are suddenly, after retirement, placed into a world where they must understand everything on their own.

Today, I finally recognized that.

That is why I wanted to write this down before I forget.

Today, at Matsuyama City Hall,
a little of the fog lifted.

⸻

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