Gustav Strandell believes that if there is something good about his home country, Sweden, that he can bring to Japan, it's the concept and some of the technical skills of its social welfare system developed over its 100-year-plus history as an aging society.

Born in the small town of Tyreso, near Stockholm, Strandell has over the past decade tried to spread in this country Swedish ideas about nursing care for the elderly with a strong focus on delaying the progress of dementia.

After extensively researching the nursing care system here, he said he found what was lacking in many of the elderly homes: efforts to enable the elderly to live in an environment as close as possible to conditions they were living in when they were with their own families.