In what could be a chilling vision of our own future, city-centre workers in Japan are now living in cubicles in internet cafes to save on rent.
With much of London so expensive ordinary human beings can no longer live there, only Russian oligarchs, this could happen here sooner than we might like to think.
The worrying Japanese trend was shown off in a documentary called Net Cafe Refugees.
Low-paid young men who spent most of their time playing games in cheap internet cafes have moved completely into the 24-hour cafes which have cubicles where the computer user can even fall asleep.
There are also bathrooms where they can freshen up before heading back off to their low-paying, thankless jobs.
Fumiya, 26, works as a security guard on a construction site, and says, ‘I originally wanted an apartment of course but it was expensive here in the city, so I decided to just live at the Internet cafe.
‘I spent most of my time there anyway hanging out, so it wasn’t really much of a step to spend the rest of my time there. I must admit it is not that easy to sleep here, you never feel rested because there’s always noises and disturbances going on around but it’s got great facilities. I had hoped I’d be able to save some money but it doesn’t really work out like that. It’s just getting me from one day to the next.”
Social worker Makoto Kawazoe said: Internet cafe refugees started appearing in the late 1990s but became a larger social issue in the 2000s.’
Follow Me On Twitter & Instagram: @effiongeton
No comments:
Post a Comment