Poor people in Japan? WTF!?!?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japan’s working poor left behind by ‘Abenomics’

Last Christmas Eve, Ririko Saito and her 11-year-old daughter gathered some plastic bottles, pots and a kettle and made several trips to a nearby park to get water. Their utility had just turned off the tap after months of unpaid bills.

“I was going to take care of it as soon as I got my paycheck in a few days,” the 49-year-old single mother said. “I figured they wouldn’t be so callous as to cut us off at that time of year. I figured wrong.”

Saito, who works part-time caring for the elderly in a Tokyo hospital and gets welfare to supplement her salary, represents a growing army of poor in a nation that continues to pride itself on being an egalitarian society despite a decades-long rise in poverty.

At 16 percent, Japan’s relative poverty rate — the share of the population living on less than half of the national median income — is already the sixth-worst among the 34 OECD countries, just ahead of the United States. Child poverty in working, single-parent households like Saito’s is by far the worst at over 50 percent, making Japan the only country where having a job does not reduce the poverty rate for that group.

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

[Coligny]

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

[mode asshole:ON (set phaser to 'cheap shot')]
Then again, had those girls been smart they would not have been hanging with youze...
[mode asshole:OFF]

Monthly salary for a postman in the BigT: 138000 yens

[Samurai_Jerk]

I need to look into this more and put a book together. If marketed right, the "Poverty Diet" (TM) could make me a very rich man. And, yeah, I know about IF so no need to burst my bubble.

[matsuki]

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

What a dumb cunt...

[wagyl]

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

What a dumb cunt...

Actually no, it is apparent that she can in fact speak.

[Coligny]

Ramadan works also for diet, got a babe at work who was losing 1 bra size every year with this bull... Damm them 95 D wuz nice... Bad luck she had half a dozen brothers ready to go jihad on your ass if you were even thinking aboot going muff diving...

[Russell]

Homeless face uphill fight to get life back

The social security system, including health care and pension programs, are supposed to be a safety net for people’s daily life, but an increasing number of people have fallen through the safety net and become hopeless. The following are some of the plights facing young people who have been unable to count on either their families or their employers after losing their dwellings and are living a castaway’s life.

At a busy commercial area in central Tokyo, a man in his mid-40s clad in a business suit came out of an Internet cafe shortly after 7 a.m., heading for the nearest station.

It appears to be a typical everyday scene for an ordinary office worker. But unlike an ordinary white-collar worker, he puts all his clothes and other belongings into a coin-operated locker every morning.

The man is a temporary worker at a data-management company but has not told his employer that he has no fixed address. He only gives the address of the employee dormitory run by his former employer. He has lived at an Internet cafe for six months. He pays ¥1,800 to use a cubicle for 12 hours.

“I find my job rewarding, although the monthly wage is ¥160,000,” he said. “But sometimes, I think of myself as a ‘closet homeless.’”

The man went to Waseda University after graduating from a locally famed high school in Kyushu. His life began to slide off track after he dropped out of Waseda, one of the nation’s most prestigious private universities, and began working as a part-timer.

After his fixed-term contract at a machine parts factory expired, he left the company’s dormitory two years ago. While he briefly lived under the roof of a friend, he has led a life as a temporary worker.

His mother passed away and he cannot count on his father, who can barely live on his pension.

“I want to live in an ordinary house and have my own family...If I had my own home, I would become more forward-looking,” he said.

At the Net cafe, there are several other men and women wearing business suits and apparently going to their workplace every morning, he said, but they never greet each other.

In late 2008, many temporary workers who had reportedly lost their dwellings and jobs in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers gathered at what was called a “village to weather the year-end” set up at a public park in central Tokyo. Of the about 500 homeless people who stayed at the “village” into the new year, 60 percent were in their 20s to 40s. The presence of these relatively young people who apparently had no home to go to even during the New Year’s holidays sent a shock through society.

It was once assumed that it was people who, because of their advanced age, had difficulty finding jobs that would cause them to become homeless. In 2007, The Big Issue Japan Foundation, a certified nonprofit organization, noticed that there was a major change to that pattern. An increasing number of people in their 20s or 30s showed up at the foundation’s offices.

A survey conducted by the foundation’s researchers in 2010 showed the real situation surrounding younger homeless people.

Of the 50 people under age 40 surveyed, 12 said they lived and slept out in the open. Many others slept out in the open and at a Net cafe or 24-hour restaurant. One out of three came from a family with a single parent, and more than 70 percent said they would not contact their family.

“I lost my job and became homeless when I was 35. But I haven’t got in touch with my mother,” said a 40-year-old man who left home when he was 30. He said he left home after his father died and his relationship with his mother deteriorated.

Miku Sano, an official at the foundation, said: “There are still many of those who can barely make ends meet. As there has been an increase in the number of Net cafes and apartments of very poor quality, the real situation has become rather more invisible.”

Prof. Michiko Miyamoto at the Open University of Japan, said, “For those hard-pressed young people, [society] has provided only unemployment insurance and public livelihood assistance.” She said it was families and workplaces that have assisted young people to socially stand on their own feet.

As socially drifting youth became an issue, the central government began taking it up for discussion since the “village to weather the year-end” came to be widely known.

The main tenet of new assistance is a rent subsidy for up to nine months, which the government has provided since the autumn of 2009 to those who have quit their jobs and may even lose their housing. So far, as many as about 110,000 people have made recourse to the new assistance.

The temporary worker at the data-management company, for one, tried to get the assistance. But he could not get his pensioned father to be recognized as his guarantor in renting an apartment, even though he approached six apartment operators. Then he gave up making use of the rent subsidy.

“Tokyo Nanmin” (Refugee in Tokyo), a film released in February, depicts how an ordinary university student begins treading a path of decline after his parents run away. It has aroused considerable interest, as it reflects the stark reality of society today: It is extremely difficult for those who have dropped out of the mainstream to get back on track.

“Businesses are pursuing efficiency from young workers, not viewing them as employees to be developed but instead as replaceable assets,” said Tetsuzo Fukuzawa, who wrote the book on which the film is based. “Problems often develop when those young people, whose links with their families or communities have weakened and whose communicative ability has declined in the IT era, enter such a social situation. I think we have to make a fresh start by rebuilding the links to other people.”

Under the law concerning support for homeless people to help them live on their own, the homeless are defined as those who live in a park, in or near a railway station, on a riverbank or on the street. The number of such people confirmed as homeless by local governments stood at about 16,000 in 2009 and 8,000 in 2013. According to information collected through interviews, their average age was 59.

A survey taken by the central government in 2007 estimated that 5,400 people had lost their dwellings and lived in Internet cafes. But there have been no similar surveys taken since then. Support measures for homeless people mainly consist of temporary livelihood assistance or assistance in finding jobs. In major European countries, such support measures include housing assistance.

Link

That's quite a depressive situation. We are talking here about people having jobs.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I haven't had a chance to watch this yet but I thought I'd share.

Dark side of Japan revealed in film about Internet cafe living

The bleak and unforgiving existence of Japan's salarymen and part-time workers, who often live in Internet cafes to save on rent, is difficult to describe, but one filmmaker has done a great job of giving us a brief peek.

Net Cafe Refugees is a short 10-minute documentary that plunges the viewer into the world of 24-hour Internet-connected cubicles that serve as makeshift living spaces for many Japanese living on the edge of society.

If you've ever wondered if some of those film depictions of futuristic, dystopian cities will ever come to fruition, you need look no further than the dark, broadband-connected caves shown in director Shiho Fukada's film.

[yanpa]

Interesting watch, thanks.

[Mike Oxlong]

Poverty worsens as more Japanese work on non-permanent contracts

THE residents of Kotobuki live not far from the glitzy shops and upscale restaurants of Yokohama, Japan’s second-biggest city, adjoining Tokyo, the capital. Yet Kotobuki is an altogether different world: a squalid district, it is a pit stop for local Japanese on their way to destitution. Men living here in cheap hostels have lost jobs and families. Some survive on casual day work, but many have no work at all. A 250-bed shelter dominates the centre of Kotobuki, part of a public network of around 40 built in the past decade. Though these have helped to take 18,000 people off Japan’s streets, it has been harder to check the creeping poverty that put many of them there in the first place.

Last year, the Japanese government recorded relative poverty rates of 16%—defined as the share of the population living on less than half the national median income. That is the highest on record. Poverty levels have been growing at a rate of 1.3% a year since the mid-1980s. On the same definition, a study by the OECD in 2011 ranked Japan sixth from the bottom among its 34 mostly rich members. Bookshops advertise a slew of bestsellers on how to survive on an annual income of under ¥2m ($16,700), a poverty line below which millions of Japanese now live.

The country has long prided itself on ensuring that none of its citizens falls between the social cracks. Japan’s orderly, slum-free neighbourhoods seem to confirm that. Street crime, even in Kotobuki, is minuscule. Unemployment is below 4%, and jobs are being generated as the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, attempts to boost the economy through monetary easing. Yet the poor quality of new jobs is compounding the problem of the working poor, says Kaori Katada, a sociologist at Hosei University in Tokyo. Since Mr Abe took office in late 2012, the number of irregular workers—often earning less than half the pay of their full-time counterparts with permanent employment contracts—has jumped by over 1.5m. Casual and part-time employees number nearly 20m, almost 40% of the Japanese workforce.

The effects of this shift to irregular work have not always been visible. One reason is parents’ benevolence. Millions of young workers remain living at home, rent-free. But once the older generation that drove Japan’s post-war boom goes, underlying poverty will become more evident, says Ms Katada.

Mr Abe has been pushing Japan’s cash-rich corporations into hiring more people and paying better wages, with some success. In the past few weeks some of the biggest companies have announced pay hikes for elite salaried workers. But people on the margins are losing out even as Japan’s economy recovers. Welfare applications bottomed out at 882,000 in 1995 but have been rising steadily since. Last year they topped 2m for the first time.

Under pressure to limit Japan’s huge public debt, which stands at almost two-and-a half times GDP, the government cut benefits last summer. Tom Gill, an anthropologist and author of “Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Labourer”, says that has pushed more people into official poverty. Yokohama is one of many local governments in the red. The men who now crowd its homeless shelter once earned a living on building sites or car production lines, paying national and local taxes. Today, construction at least has picked up again. But it is a much smaller industry than before, and wages are lower. Some men have found work. But most in Kotobuki remain a burden.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/2164 ... struggling

[Cyka UchuuJin]

Japan’s working poor left behind by ‘Abenomics’

Last Christmas Eve, Ririko Saito and her 11-year-old daughter gathered some plastic bottles, pots and a kettle and made several trips to a nearby park to get water. Their utility had just turned off the tap after months of unpaid bills.

“I was going to take care of it as soon as I got my paycheck in a few days,” the 49-year-old single mother said. “I figured they wouldn’t be so callous as to cut us off at that time of year. I figured wrong.”

Saito, who works part-time caring for the elderly in a Tokyo hospital and gets welfare to supplement her salary, represents a growing army of poor in a nation that continues to pride itself on being an egalitarian society despite a decades-long rise in poverty.

At 16 percent, Japan’s relative poverty rate — the share of the population living on less than half of the national median income — is already the sixth-worst among the 34 OECD countries, just ahead of the United States. Child poverty in working, single-parent households like Saito’s is by far the worst at over 50 percent, making Japan the only country where having a job does not reduce the poverty rate for that group.

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

i seriously wonder about if girls like this are actually as stupid as they sound. when i was the 36 hour guest of KIX and also couldn't eat, the girlfriend of one of my friends posted a comment 'wow fantastic! please give me diet tips for not eating'.

[Coligny]

Never underestimate the stupidity of mankind...

[Takechanpoo]

there is a homeless guy(i guess it from his tanned face and dirty clothes and burdens on the bike) around my neighborhood(west and north tama area). he rides mamachari and i sometimes pass him on the road. he looks like around 30-40 years old and is somehow so fat
i always wonder how he keeps his fat body while being homeless...

[Russell]

Japan’s working poor left behind by ‘Abenomics’

Last Christmas Eve, Ririko Saito and her 11-year-old daughter gathered some plastic bottles, pots and a kettle and made several trips to a nearby park to get water. Their utility had just turned off the tap after months of unpaid bills.

“I was going to take care of it as soon as I got my paycheck in a few days,” the 49-year-old single mother said. “I figured they wouldn’t be so callous as to cut us off at that time of year. I figured wrong.”

Saito, who works part-time caring for the elderly in a Tokyo hospital and gets welfare to supplement her salary, represents a growing army of poor in a nation that continues to pride itself on being an egalitarian society despite a decades-long rise in poverty.

At 16 percent, Japan’s relative poverty rate — the share of the population living on less than half of the national median income — is already the sixth-worst among the 34 OECD countries, just ahead of the United States. Child poverty in working, single-parent households like Saito’s is by far the worst at over 50 percent, making Japan the only country where having a job does not reduce the poverty rate for that group.

It kind of reminds me of a guy I know here who recently lost 30 kg. I asked how he did it and he said he was so broke he couldn't eat for days at a time and he wasn't joking. One of the girls we were hanging out with actually fucking said "Sugoii!!!", like that was a good thing.

i seriously wonder about if girls like this are actually as stupid as they sound. when i was the 36 hour guest of KIX and also couldn't eat, the girlfriend of one of my friends posted a comment 'wow fantastic! please give me diet tips for not eating'.

But at least, you will live longer...

[legion]

there is a homeless guy(i guess it from his tanned face and dirty clothes and burdens on the bike) around my neighborhood(west and north tama area). he rides mamachari and i sometimes pass him on the road. he looks like around 30-40 years old and is somehow so fat
i always wonder how he keeps his fat body while being homeless...

poor diet, it's a common problem

[Samurai_Jerk]

there is a homeless guy(i guess it from his tanned face and dirty clothes and burdens on the bike) around my neighborhood(west and north tama area). he rides mamachari and i sometimes pass him on the road. he looks like around 30-40 years old and is somehow so fat
i always wonder how he keeps his fat body while being homeless...

poor diet, it's a common problem

Exactly. Being homeless in the first world doesn't mean you're starving. Those guys live off instant noodles and expired convenience store onigiri they fish out of the garbage.

[kurogane]

i always wonder how he keeps his fat body while being homeless...

Good one man.

To make for homeless is because also not eat

You've actually being putting a bit of back into it lately, coming up with these stereotypical Japatard non sequitur observations.

All the homeless I saw in Kyoto had alarming diets; I can't recall anybody eating anything but food like products; it was almost a Young Salaryman level Girlish Helplessness as Omiai strategy

[Cyka UchuuJin]

http://www.japantoday.com/category/nati ... 5-04-03_AM

[Samurai_Jerk]

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/abe-unveils-plans-for-fund-to-tackle-child-poverty?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2015-04-03_AM

Single parents face strong social stigma in conservative Japan.

Most recently, the mother of a 13-year-old schoolboy who was murdered in February by a gang of youths, publicly blamed herself for his death, saying he would not have died if she had kept an eye on him.

She said she had not known what her son was doing because she was working day and night to raise her five children alone.

Talk about a clumsy segway.

[Wage Slave]

Talk about a clumsy segway.

A segway




A segue

A segue /ˈsɛɡweɪ/ is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next.[1]

The term is derived from Italian segue, "it follows"; the pronunciation in English differs from the original Italian pronunciation.

[Coligny]

there is a homeless guy(i guess it from his tanned face and dirty clothes and burdens on the bike) around my neighborhood(west and north tama area). he rides mamachari and i sometimes pass him on the road. he looks like around 30-40 years old and is somehow so fat
i always wonder how he keeps his fat body while being homeless...

And I hear some poor people evven dare to have fridges...

And even worse... Some japidiot also have internet and a account on FG...

[matsuki]

Talk about a clumsy segway.

A segway

A segue

A segue /ˈsɛɡweɪ/ is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next.[1]

The term is derived from Italian segue, "it follows"; the pronunciation in English differs from the original Italian pronunciation.

I swear the "won't it ever fucking stop!" trend on pod casts and radio lately is segue masturbation. Can't go hardly a single episode without one of the hosts saying something like "what a segue!" or ""nice segue!" We listeners don't fucking care and it ruins the whole point of the segue when you stop the convo to point it out

[inflames]

There are a few things that hold back people in Japan, but the articles never talk about them. There are two lines for a lot of places - 20 hours of work and then 30 hours per week (unemployment and then shakai hoken) - places hiring part-timers usually watch these very closely. Then, if you get some job, a lot of places try to use shift work - your shift changes week to week for no good reason - this makes it harder to actually get a second job. That being said, it isn't overly difficult to get a job. The best thing the government could do (ironically, it would also help make solve the pension/health insurance issues) is to make the applicability of shakai hoken like FICA taxes in the US - basically everyone who works has to pay them with basically no exceptions (some government workers are exempt but, for example, someone working 1 hour a week for a company is still obligated to pay FICA taxes).

In most industrialized countries there are tons of people like this - who are barely surviving. My aunt and her husband make shit money but are able to keep things together despite being huge alcoholics and actually have some level of savings.

[kurogane]

Perhaps I have been watching too many of a certain variety of Brasilian production lately, but doesn't a FICA Tax translate as Ass Tax?????

Sort of like how car names don't always work across language and cultural boundaries

Anyways..............aren't Shakai Hoken payments mandatory???? That is actually F'ing scary. No wonder their public finances are so screwed

[inflames]

The only Brazilians I know try to fight me so not to sure about the videos (not that anybody I know pays attention to what people are saying). I did send a closeted friend of mine a video of some Brazilians getting waxed but didn't actually listen to what they were saying.

FICA taxes are automatically split between the employer and employee. If you're self-employed you have to pay both halves quarterly.

Shakai hoken isn't mandatory but pension and insurance are and the rates vary based on which you are in (there is the base component for the pension but there is also a salary based component you have to pay if you are in shakai hoken that you don't pay if you are in kokumin nenkin). Companies are obligated to enroll employees working over 30 hours a week (and it winds up being 12% or so for someone making around 200k a month) so they don't want people working over 30 hours (as that 30th hour means a lot more costs during the month).

[kurogane]

Yeah, sounds like different Brazilian movies. My favourite is Airtight Mona Lisa.............

Thanks for the explanation. I remember discussions elsewhere talking about employers restricting weekly hours to skate under their contribution obligations. Scumbags. Good idea about making it mandatory, though it would probably end up as much of a mess as the NHK licence fee debacle.

[dimwit]

Companies are obligated to enroll employees working over 30 hours a week (and it winds up being 12% or so for someone making around 200k a month) so they don't want people working over 30 hours (as that 30th hour means a lot more costs during the month).

That would work except the tiny problem of service overtime which doesn't count. I know of a number of 'part time' workers who are putting in 40 hour work weeks.

[inflames]

If they're part-timers doing service overtime they need to grow a pair and get paid the money. Usually companies are pretty strict about service overtime for part-timers and haken (especially haken as the agency will come after them demanding money). When I was a temp, they would literally make us leave and I knew of a few people who wanted to do overtime but weren't allowed to. Working as a part-timer was the same - they wanted us out of there.

[dimwit]

If they're part-timers doing service overtime they need to grow a pair and get paid the money. Usually companies are pretty strict about service overtime for part-timers and haken (especially haken as the agency will come after them demanding money). When I was a temp, they would literally make us leave and I knew of a few people who wanted to do overtime but weren't allowed to. Working as a part-timer was the same - they wanted us out of there.

This is Japan. They get conned in with the notion that the company will hire them full time if they don't complain. What you really need is labour law enforcement to 'grow a pair' and start fining companies who break the law and at the very minimum published their names.

[Samurai_Jerk]

If they're part-timers doing service overtime they need to grow a pair and get paid the money. Usually companies are pretty strict about service overtime for part-timers and haken (especially haken as the agency will come after them demanding money). When I was a temp, they would literally make us leave and I knew of a few people who wanted to do overtime but weren't allowed to. Working as a part-timer was the same - they wanted us out of there.

Easy to say when you're not the one who might lose his job for speaking up.

I do think that one of the problems in Japan though is that a lot of people say "shoganai" when they get screwed by their employers instead of actually standing up for their rights. Labor law is pretty clear and the courts tend to be labor friendly.