Tokyo's Hottest DJ Is an 82-Year-Old Woman

Age may be nothing but a number, but one octogenarian in Tokyo is still defying the odds with her energy. Sumiko Iwamuro has spent six decades making dumplings in the restaurant she and her brother inherited from their family, but when her husband died in her 70s she decided to pursue her passion for music and took a year-long course on DJing at a local music school, reports Mashable. Now 82, she continues to work in her restaurant by day but now also hits the turntables at DecaBarZ, a nightclub in the heart of Tokyo's Shinjuku district, as a monthly fixture, reports Reuters.

In Japan, more than one in four people are 65 and older, but Iwamuro—who goes by the name DJ Sumirock or, as news outlets like to call her, DJ Dumpling, reports DJ Mag—plays to a crowd 60 years her junior. She is "shattering stereotypes," as China Global Television Network puts it. "She's got this energy that is beyond her age," one 25-year-old clubber says. Iwamuro describes her music as techno, which she thinks would be boring on its own, mixed with jazz (her father was a jazz drummer), French chanson, and classical music. She likens DJing to cooking, describing the result of her efforts as being immediately visible in the faces of those eating her food or dancing to her beats. "The best thing is for my audience to enjoy themselves," she adds. (We may be happiest in our 80s.)