Posted on 01/01/2010 7:25:30 PM PST by Steelfish
For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk
By HIROKO TABUCHI January 1, 2010 TOKYO — For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels. Atsushi Nakanishi is among the jobless living in a capsule hotel, renting a bunk with no door. [More Photos] “It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”
When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.
Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless. The country’s woes have led the government to open emergency shelters over the New Year holiday in a nationwide drive to help the homeless.
The Democratic Party, which swept to power in September, wants to avoid the fate of the previous pro-business government, which was caught off-guard when unemployed workers pitched tents near public offices last year to call attention to their plight.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here, we call them “kennels.”
I need to find one of these places here!
These remind me of the kennels at my vet’s office....Welcome to the obamaville hotel chain.
The Obama-condos for the masses will be arriving here soon.
Good heavens- thanks for the pic post. But beats homeless on park benches!
Do they have widescreen TV’s?
Goodness, I’d gladly trade that for a tent out West.
LOOKS CLEAN AND I IMAGE TEMPERATE..... NOT BAD BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE SERVED FOR THIS TO LOOK THAT WAY ....
Future Obamavilles? Nawww... these are too small even for Japan.
Plenty of affordable, available, spacious rooms in Detroit.
Well... maybe bigger but not better....(:
U-Sleep
Animal Farm
Wonder what that hallway would look like after a month of our welfare recipients living there?
A lot of containerships are floating out there without anything to do. Maybe Americans with foreclosed homes would like to live on them?
Detroit? No way! I still want to live!
Do they supply the newspaper and water bowl?
I imagined myself living in midtown Manhattan and spending the entire day walking around the city, eating bagels, drinking coffee, hanging out in Central Park, taking in a museum, concert, movie, or some nightclub action, and then crawling into my "coffin" apartment to get some sleep so that I could do it all over again the next day.
That was when I was about 22 years old. Since then, I have substantially upgraded my standards of what "home" should be. Lots of large rooms, fireplaces, a game room, a library and a kitchen to rival that of a small restaurant. I live in a 2,700 sq ft home and still feel cramped.
Modular housing units, about the size of 40' shipping containers, were installed in nearby parks and other available open spaces within days of the quake.
The drawback, of course, was that a few of the people who occupied these units were slugs and didn't want to move out of these prime locations even three and four years later when there was alternative housing options aplenty. It was sort of like those so-called Katrina victims found living in three star hotels near JFK some two or three years after the disaster.
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