Jakarta: Siti Maesaroh, 24, who is Japanese-speaking and bowing, hands a tray containing a mug and two bowls to a classmate who is posing as an elderly person before asking if he needs chopsticks and a spoon to eat with.

The role play is an illustration of the kind of instruction provided by vocational schools all over Indonesia to students looking to fill job openings in Japan.

Maesaroh, a student at the Onodera User Run school in Jakarta, Indonesia, said, "I think the reason Japan chooses us is because Indonesian youths are very capable of caring for the elderly."

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The school, which opened in 2022, also provides Japanese language instruction for those who wish to enrol in a government initiative in Japan to hire foreigners with specialised skills for jobs in fields like caregiving.

According to UN statistics, Japan has one of the fastest-aging societies in the world, with 28 percent of the country's population now being 65 or older.

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According to official data, births in Japan dropped to less than 800,000 for the first time last year as the country's working-age population declines.

Only 130,000 of the 340,000 special skilled job openings in Japan, according to Hiroki Sasaki, labour attache at the Japanese embassy in Jakarta, have been filled.

Consequently, he said, a foreign labour force is becoming more and more essential.The second-highest number after Vietnam of Indonesians employed under Japan's special skilled worker scheme as of December 2022 was over 16,000.

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With 280 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. The principal of the school, Kamila Mansjur, claimed that sending workers to Japan to take care of the elderly benefited both nations. Every year, the population of Indonesia grows by about three million people. But here, the lack of jobs is our own problem," the speaker said.