Have Bae Yong Joon by your side! Limited Official "Joon Bear 2006"
Posted on 05/08/2007 12:27:27 AM PDT by mathprof
Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person.
From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite.
Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment.
It's cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning to basic office work.
Asked how long he plans to go on living like that, Yamashita smiles and shrugs.
"I hope the situation in Japan will improve. The new Japanese generation doesn't have any money, and many young people don't have any motivation. I don't have money, but I have a dream," he says, sitting in a cubicle with a PC and a stack of comic books.
So what is his dream?
"I don't know. Maybe some ordinary job in an office."
Yamashita is one of Japan's many "freeters" -- a compound of "free" and "Arbeiter", the German word for "worker".
A by-product of the economic crisis that hit Japan and its lifelong employment guarantees in the 1990s, freeters drift between odd jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Have Bae Yong Joon by your side! Limited Official "Joon Bear 2006"
When you compare this guy’s life to Vietnamese women picking scrap off a garbage dump just to earn enough to eat, or equally poor people living in India, Africa and elsewhere, he really doesn’t have it that bad.
A warm dry place with internet access and a shower is not really inspiring pity in me. Great that he works. Should have worked harder in school.
Japan has like 4% unemployment. This guy is an exception not the rule.
Japan is so expensive because it is an overcrowded volcano with very little space to live and 70% forest cover. My heart just can’t bleed for this guy.
He is an internet, lounge sleeping FReeter????
:P LOL Japanese style..
Sounds a lot like SF DU'er, except that he works odd jobs. The SF DU'er just passes time waiting for the next welfare check, and free drugs and needles at the methadone clinic, free hot meals at the shelter. They don't have time for anything else, it gets in the way of their protesting schedule.
I’ve done this myself.
If stuck downtown Tokyo after the trains have stopped, they’re great.
I don’t read the manga, but I can FReep, drink free coffee, buy cheap snacks.
Total price maybe 2,000 yen. Where a taxi ride from central Tokyo back to my apartment is over 6,000 yen.
I guess you can’t “hit the rails” with 200-mile per hour trains.
That would be “ROR”.
” Japan has like 4% unemployment. This guy is an exception not the rule.
Japan is so expensive because it is an overcrowded volcano with very little space to live and 70% forest cover. My heart just can’t bleed for this guy.”
That 4% figure they spout is dubious ...Also , a lot of folks are working for less that the US minimum wage OUTSIDE the bid cities ...and they are living thanks to loans .
Japan 70%s forest cover ? I don’t think so . Mountains ? Yes .
Not much of a dream. It appears this person has achieved exactly the degree of success his ambition deserves.
Thank either you are anal retentive about rounding (it is actuall 67%) or you don't know Japan very well. http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia24/en/feature/feature01.html
man, 24 hour internet, drinks, and tons of manga comics? i’ve found a new home!
seriously though, this is becoming an increasingly bigger problem in Japan with college age adults who simply drop out of society. they’re called NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). The number of functionally unemployed (those who simply work odd jobs to get by) is growing. the promise of lifetime job security at japanese companies has been torn away after the bubble burst. As a result, large shifts have occurred in the japanese workforce hierarchy and society in general.
Forests ON the mountains ...
Yeah, what the hell could YOU possibly know about Japan? LMAO!
You certainly have a way with satire, Monk!
OMG MONk that so cute despite the fact you photoshop Chia PET LOL!
hehehe
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