The Japanese Internet Cafe Residents

Seems like a strange title, but I caught a YouTube video, documentary in my feed which grabbed my curiosity. 

The documentary, as you can gather from the title of the post, was about people in Japan that life out of small cubicles in internet and manga cafes.

Unlike any cafe, internet or otherwise, I have visited in the UK; these cafe's were open 24 hours a day and allowed you to pay by the hour, day and in some cases 14 days. 

Staying the night

One of the videos I watched after the first documentary was about a couple who decided to have a night in one of these said Internet cafes as it was cheaper than renting a room. 

The camera panned to the cost. For a 24 hour it worked out around £25 (with the exchange rate at the moment here in the UK); a 2 week stay worked out to around £250.

In theory, you could fly to Japan and stay for 2 weeks at a low cost. 

For this price you got a small cubicle; some so small you could not lie straight out. From all the research I did you also usually get a computer (it is an Internet cafe after all) along with free charging of phone and WiFi. In some of the others it seems you can get a TV and often access to a collection of Japanese comics.

Drinks and Food vending machines tend to ben available and often a shower - though in many cases this seemed to be at an extra cost.

The cybercafe homeless

I think what really pulled my interest is that they seem to be referred to as the cyber homeless or net cafe refugees.

It seemed that these were places where, if you were living on the street and you got some spare cash - you could have a night off the street. Though, in the first documentary I saw there was one guy who lived and worked as a web host out of one of these cafes - choosing to live there instead of an apartment.

More research to do

This post is really an introduction to a subject I have found interesting. It maybe the first in a number of articles - but I wanted to post it to raise awareness to anyone that doesn't know and may also find it interesting.

Searching on YouTube will bring you a list of videos that your can watch. See if it draws you in as it does me? For a while now I have been watching video and reading posts on people who live out of vans, boats and other alternative accommodation - maybe that is why this peaked my interest?

Either way - there is much more investigations to be done...