A woman I know recently went to her local Social Insurance Agency office to find out about her pension. Since she is 68, she is past the age when she should have started collecting benefits, but she was never sure what she was supposed to do because the SIA never contacted her.
Her husband is eight years younger and therefore has not reached the age when he is supposed to receive his own benefits. She, however, has worked in the past and is the wife of a "company employee," so she thought she should be eligible for her own benefits even before her husband was eligible for his.
Yet the SIA clerk told her that when she turned 60 she was automatically dropped as a dependent contributor, and her husband was not a company employee for the duration of their marriage. Consequently, she is six years shy of the minimum number required to receive "basic benefits." She could have signed up for "optional" contributions when she turned 60, but no one told her this. However, the office decided that she was, in fact, eligible to receive 650 yen a month.