[For Seniors] Perfect Brain Training! Fun Trivia

Social worker / Care workermoko
My name is Moko, a mother of three who admired my mother and worked in the care industry as a care worker and as a medical social worker (MSW) in a hospital. I will be drawing on my previous experience to write mainly about caregiving. Thank you in advance.
Care Worker Initial Training Certification ObtainedNakajima Junko
Leveraging my experience working as a care worker at a day service, I am currently active as a writer in the caregiving and welfare fields. Beyond writing, I hope to expand my work into web design and illustration. I am a mother of three who has begun studying to become a certified social worker.

When working at a senior care facility, you may sometimes need to come up with recreation activities or topics for conversations with older adults.

Do you ever struggle with ending up with similar recreation activities all the time or having the same conversations over and over?

So this time, we’ll introduce some fun trivia for older adults that can liven things up.

As people age and accumulate abundant knowledge and experience, they tend to have fewer opportunities to encounter new things and information.

However, incorporating new information such as trivia can evoke surprise and enjoyment, which is said to stimulate the brain.

After a long time, discovering something new and fun can make them want to share it with other seniors or their family members.

Trivia also helps promote communication by encouraging conversations with others.

[For Seniors] Perfect for Brain Training! Exciting Trivia (1–10)

What was the event called in which artworks on sports themes competed for rankings, which once used to be an Olympic discipline?NEW!

Although it is no longer an official event because preserving the quality of artworks and establishing objective scoring criteria are difficult, there used to be competitions in past modern Olympics in which artworks were ranked.

They were called “art competitions.” Japanese participants also took part in the Los Angeles and Berlin Olympics.

Starting with the Helsinki Olympics, instead of a competition, art exhibitions have been included as part of the cultural program, as stipulated by the Olympic Charter.

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sasashina

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What do you call an athlete who has competed in the Olympics?NEW!

Athletes who have competed in the Olympics are called “Olympians.” The word “Olympian” originally referred to residents of Olympia, the Greek city known as the site of the ancient Olympic Games, but today it is commonly used to refer to Olympic athletes.

The term “Olympian” is also said to evoke the gods of Greek mythology and carry the sense of being “majestic and imposing.” That meaning perfectly overlaps with the image of Olympians who take on the challenge of competition while carrying their nation on their shoulders.

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sasashina

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What do the Olympic rings represent?NEW!

The Olympic symbol consists of five interlocking rings, right? When people hear “Olympics,” I think this is the first image that comes to mind, but do you know what the symbol represents? In fact, the rings stand for the five continents—Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania—and signify their unity and the gathering of athletes from around the world.

The colors of the rings—blue, yellow, black, green, and red—were chosen because they appear in many national flags.

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[For Seniors] Perfect for Brain Training! Lively Trivia (11–20)

Why not paint a sunset, monkeys, and autumn leaves in a public bathhouse mural?

You often see paintings of Mount Fuji on the walls of public bathhouses, but conversely, “sunsets,” “monkeys,” and “autumn leaves” are considered taboo subjects.

A sunset, since the sun is “setting,” evokes the idea of business “declining.” A monkey (saru) is associated by wordplay with customers “leaving” (saru).

Autumn leaves suggest “turning red” and “falling,” which in turn imply “being in the red” and “a drop in customer footfall.” Since bathhouses also hope for prosperous business, they want to avoid anything inauspicious.

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Asparagus was originally used for ornamental purposes.

Asparagus has a shape that’s a bit different from other vegetables.

I’ve heard it takes at least three years from sowing the seeds to the first harvest.

I’ve tried growing it a few times myself, but I never made it to harvest…

If managed properly, though, you can keep harvesting for about ten years.

Apparently, asparagus was originally imported as an ornamental plant and only later became a food.

The curiosity of the person who looked at that plant shaped like a horsetail and thought, “Maybe I’ll try eating it,” is pretty extraordinary, isn’t it?

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Taki no namida pin ku

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Origin of the name ‘daigaku-imo’ (candied sweet potatoes)

Daigaku-imo is a confection loved by people of all ages: sweet potatoes deep-fried and coated in syrup.

Many have probably wondered why this treat is called “daigaku-imo,” or “university potatoes.” There are several theories about the origin of the name, which has been used since the Taisho era.

Some say university students loved eating them; others say students sold them to pay tuition; still others note that products branded with the word “university” were in vogue.

These stories suggest that people of the time found the term “university student” striking and memorable.

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The height of the Pyramid of Khufu is approximately 140 meters.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramids and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is the only wonder that is a man-made structure said to have been built around 2600 BCE.

Standing at approximately 140 meters tall, it held the title of the tallest structure in the world for over 4,000 years.

Constructed from more than two million stones weighing between 2 and 30 tons, it is almost perfectly symmetrical.

Yet, because it was built in an era without modern heavy machinery, its construction methods remain shrouded in many mysteries.

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