By Mirembe Martina

The Guinness Book of World Records named Misao Okawa as the oldest living woman in the world just a few days to her 115th birthday.

Okawa is a Japanese daughter of a Kimono maker and was born 1898. Yesterday, she was awarded the title with her 3-month-old great-grandson.

Asked what her secret to a long life was, she said, “Watch out for one’s health,” she said meaning eat whatever you want just as long as it is made in Japan. Japan also has the oldest living man  who is also the oldest living person, Jiroemon Kimura aged 115 years old. “The Japanese diet is the iPod of food,” Naomi Moriyama, co-author of Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen told Web MD. “It concentrates the magnificent energy of food into a compact and pleasurable size.”

The Okinawans revealed that their traditional diet of rice, soy, and vegetables could be the reason that, on average, Okinawan women live to be 86 years old.

In 1919, Okawa married and had three children with her husband who later passed away. She later moved back to Osaka and has four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.