Down-&-Out in Tokyo

[Taro Toporific]

For Japan's New Homeless, There's Disdain and Danger
New York Times - Dec 17
KAWASAKI, Japan The memory of how three youths pounced on him one night with sticks and fists twisted Masahiko Sugai's face with pain. ...

[cstaylor]

Another good quote:

In that time, boys had attacked him three times. In early September, he had gone out one night to a grocery store, a little drunk, when three boys called out, "Old man, come here!"

" `This is bad,' I remembered thinking," he said. "They go after the weak. In Japan, there is a tendency to go after the weak."

[Caustic Saint]

Oh, the irony. An article about homeless people has this ad on the page:

[Blah Pete]

A young couple — Makoto Watanabe, 33, who said he became homeless after his parents fled in the night, and Maki Ito, 28, who loved him desperately and so followed him here under the bridge — pitched a tent.

At 33 shouldn't he have his own place to live? At 33 do you call yourself an orphan if your parents die?

[kamome]

In Japan, there is a tendency to go after the weak."

Ooh, that is a good quote. I'll have to add that one to "Kamome's personal list of pithy quotes on Japan" (and I do maintain such a list).

[Robato]

A young couple &#8212]

At 33 shouldn't he have his own place to live? At 33 do you call yourself an orphan if your parents die?

His parents didnt die, they fled in the night!!! He must have did something really bad to them

[Big Booger]

If you were homeless where would you live? I'd find a small town with a public library, a couple of churches, a public health center, etc...

I'd spend most of my day at the public library reading books, go to church for salvation and maybe a free meal, even a bed if they have one, and to the public health center for medical care.

As for living, I'd try to gather up wood to build a cabin/shed/shelter for survival.

Where would you live if you were homeless?

[Taro Toporific]

[Robato]

If you were homeless where would you live? I'd find a small town with a public library, a couple of churches, a public health center, etc...

I'd spend most of my day at the public library reading books, go to church for salvation and maybe a free meal, even a bed if they have one, and to the public health center for medical care.

As for living, I'd try to gather up wood to build a cabin/shed/shelter for survival.

Where would you live if you were homeless?

go to a place like sweden where health care and education are free.

[Blah Pete]

Robato,

I know his parents didn't die. I just thought that it was odd that a 33 year old would would still be living at home and complain about being made homeless by his parents.


Where would I live if I was homeless?
Probably on the edge of a large city, under a bridge where I could build a shelter away from where it would be torn down. Not in a city park because you would be subject to abuse from the cops and punks like in the story. Also would look for a library or community center to keep warm in the winter. I would also sharpen up by vending machine break in skills before I actually went homeless.
Being a gaijin I suppose you would get a one way ticket out of Japan if you were found by the police.
The homeless use to buy a 120 yen ticket and ride the Yamanote-sen all day/night but I think JR put a stop to that.

[Big Booger]

I generally try to help the homeless anytime I see them. In Kobe I generally give them a drink from a vending machine nearby if I see them.. or I'll run into a convenience store and get them some onigiri or a sando.. or something.

Well the other day I had just went to Lotteria and got a few things.. I was driving with my wife to her families' home, and we saw a homeless guy wearing what looked like a parachute, and carrying some old bags with nasty clothes or rags inside. His shoes looked awful, his beard was dirty grey like a russian building in Moscow.. it was rough, and filthy. His face was sooty.. like a chimney that hadn't been scrubbed in 1000 years. He was bone thin, almost to a point where his skin was being absorbed by bone.. He was wrinkled like an unironed pair of underwear.

I passed him in my car and my wife didn't even notice him. I stopped the car and told her to get out a sandwich that we had just purchased. I said there's a homeless guy back there who looks rough. So I backed up my car about 300 meters and stopped. He slowly crept by like a sloth on valium. My wife hollers out the window for him but he doesn't even look our way.. he was like a zombie. So my wife hangs the sandwich out the window, and again hollers.. again, the guy just kept toddering back and forth.. without looking in any direction but forward..

I wanted to give him the food, but he seemed to be mentally screwed or afraid.. or even comatose..

I felt sorry, but he wouldn't take the food.. so we drove off.. what more could have been done... I still think about that strange homeless man from time to time since that day..

[Robato]

yeah there is a guy in DC....he stands by the side of the highway and points a stick at the cars rushing by....

My father has lived there for much longer than I and said "He has been doing that for the 12 years I have lived here. I used to work in this area and passed the guy every single day, he has never missed a day. He seems to point at every single car that passes in the morning"

I told him when I get back from Japan that we should stop by on the side of the road and ask the guy why he does that. Although you never know how the homeless will react.

When I was in college, my roommate offer a dude his sandwich....the guy screamed at us and threw the food right back at us.

[tonikoro]

I'd have to say one of the Interesting things about Homless in japan is the "Interstitial pokets of makeshift shanty". Usually under bridges, hywy overpasses, and here in Nagoya Central Park. But I think in some ways, they Hide well. haha "Yonige" everytime I hear that word it cracks me up. There's a house around the corner that looks like a yonige result, and not only houses, people here ditch whole automobiles. How's that for Ghetto Fabulous?

[Robato]

I went to play golf with craig the other day....we were driving through the mountains when I seen a trashed car through the trees. It looked like it was there for a few months as it had tons of mold all over the windshield.

I was shocked to see such a thing because it was the first time I seen a car in such a bad condition sitting in the beautiful countryside. Reminded me of driving in the US or Mexico for a moment.

[ramchop]

BBC: In pictures

I came to the park because when I was a child I played in its pool.

[AssKissinger]

I'd find a small town with a public library, a couple of churches, a public health center, etc...

The reason there's no homeless in small towns like where I live is they get drummed out of town. But you can't really blame folks. I'm sure you'd be a decent bum, BB, but a lot of homeless people start causing trouble.


Good on ya for trying to do what you can.

[Taro Toporific]

BBC: In pictures

I came to the park because when I was a child I played in it...

Here's another picture taken by the BBC from a different angle....

[Big Booger]

Why doesn't the government build permanent housing for the homeless... and not charge them anything.. help the get jobs... however menial they may be... I mean it sounds like from those guys that the pool of talent is immense, and that they got down on their luck and now society has written them off....

I have never fully understood how a society that claims to be as advanced and modern as Japan, US, UK, and so on, let's members fall between the cracks??? I mean we spend more on pets than goes to charities to feed and house the homeless.. and don't get me started on military spending....

I know this is sounding like I am pro socialist or something, but it is our problem and you never know when you might be the one on the other end of the spectrum.

[Mulboyne]

Japan Times: "A Man With No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer" by Shiro Oyama
Toward the end of his account of what life is like at the bottom of Japan's social structure, Shiro Oyama (a pseudonym) observes that, during his 15 years as a day laborer, he has "never beheld the kind of lofty or beautiful human spirit that people somehow expect to witness at the bottom of society." On the contrary, "I have lost count of the men I have run across who embody a veritable trinity of ignorance, meanness, and arrogance."...He looks at the religious volunteers and detects "utter shamelessness," because they depend more on the hungry homeless than the hungry homeless depend on them...more...

[Greener]

That post title was the same name I used for my columns the first time I lived in Tokyo!

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri Review:
...Tokyo does have an underbelly...Readers can now take a vicarious trip into this hidden corner of Tokyo, however, with the extraordinary memoirs of Shiro Oyama (not his real name), now available in English as A Man With No Talents (Japan Title: Sanya Gakeppuchi Nikki)...Oyama turns out to be the most acute and perceptive of observers--not least about himself. One of the strengths of the book is the author's dispassionate and clear-eyed analysis of his own fate and failings, which include dashes of xenophobia and homophobia. Oyama neither romanticizes his situation, nor asks for pity, and it's an attitude that makes his dissection of Sanya life all the more credible.