Once a week, Rena Shinohara heads off to work, clocking in for a shift at a job one could say she was born to do.

Rena, 18 months, is a baby worker at a Japanese nursing home, hired to brighten the days of residents whose own grandchildren may rarely visit.

“It energizes me to see them, so this really helps me,” said Tatsuo Ojiro, 93, one of about 100 residents at the Ichoan Nursing Home in the city of Kitakyushu.

The patter of little feet around wheelchairs and walkers here is meant to ease the isolation that can come with growing older, especially in a shrinking and rapidly aging nation where a third of the population is over 65.