The Hindu : Front Page : Homeless of Tokyo using internet cafes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 01, 2007
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Homeless of Tokyo using internet cafes

Justin McCurry

TOKYO: After a long day’s work on a Tokyo building site, all Eddie Tanaka can think about is a cold drink, a cigarette and bed. If he can keep his eyes open long enough, he might just be able to fit in a few pages of his Manga comic book before drifting off. It promises to be an uncomfortable night. Tanaka will sleep in the clothes he is wearing. His room is a stuffy booth not much bigger than a toilet cubicle, with wafer-thin walls that don’t quite reach the ceiling. And his “bed” for the night is a reclining fake-leather chair.

Home for Tanaka is Manga Square, a 24-hour internet cafe and comic lounge in the Ikebukuro neighbourhood of Tokyo.

It is one of thousands of cafes across Japan that have become de facto shelters for people who can’t afford to rent a place of their own: the unemployed and others, such as Tanaka, who depend on daily contracts in construction work to survive. According to a recent government survey of the people the media has dubbed “net cafe refugees,” 5,400 people spend at least half the week living in cafes such as Manga Square, though most have little or no interest in the internet. Instead, they are attracted by the low cost of a night’s accommodation, an expanding array of services and the sympathetic attitude of cafe owners.

Manga Square, which occupies two floors of a run-down building near Ikebukuro station, looks more like a hostel than a cafe.

The exodus from the street begins after 10pm as dozens of mostly middle-aged men, many weighed down with bulging rucksacks, file in and make their way to the free soft drinks or order cheap, grease-laden meals.

He is one of a growing number of Japanese left behind by their country’s recent economic revival. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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