There are still plenty of metal bars and handcuffs. But prisons these days have some new features -- like wheelchair-friendly stair ramps, handrails in the bathrooms and nurses trained to spoon-feed inmates.
The aim is adapting prison life to a new kind of convict in Japan: the elderly one.
Like the wider society, the prison population is rapidly aging, with the number of inmates age 60 and older -- more than half of them first-timers -- tripling in the past decade and expected to rise even higher.