Sapuri making me eat my words, Lovers being Loverly, and an article on Japanese cyber cafes.
Shock of shocks. I have been quietly but steadily watching Sapuri and I like it. Maybe it’s just kdrama overdoze (I love them, but I’ve been watching mostly them for a while and need a change) or general good mood I get in the spring but…shocking. I like an ‘office’ drama. One that I was sure I’d dislike.
I wonder why I like it? Could be the low-key good acting by everyone. Could be the fact that I know ‘freeters’ (or the US equivalent) among my friends, actually. I have among my friends people who graduated from college and what not but don’t really have a career, they have jobs.
Could even be the silly thing that I saw a poster for it when we were in Tokyo so it makes me think of vacation (aaaah, the wasted opportunity. :D I only started getting into dramas then :D)
Also, Kame is adorable in this one. He is not someone I find ‘sexy’ in the way I find Yamapi or Takki or Kimura or Takeshi Kaneshiro hot, where I get hormonal because their physicality is almost like a blow. He is too delicate looking for that, if that makes any sense. He comes across as beautiful but not necessarily sexy. But first in TattaKoi and now here, he can really draw me in and make me care like crazy, to a not-too-rational degree (I get the same thing with MatsuJun, someone else I don’t find hot in abstract but whose characters make me swoon).
So I have to eat my earlier words now. Gobble them back, actually :P Heh. But you will still not take me alive if you intend to make me watch Anego ;)
Hmmm.
This is a nonsequitur but I need to post my Japan and England pics. I am so bad at that…argh.
I checked out my Lovers DVDs just to see if it worked and eeeeeee! Mmmm. Our hero, beating up/blackmailing people into signing over stocks to the mob. I am sick sick sick but it’s hot. Korean mob bosses seem to be really sexy, according to kdramas :P But only at mid-level. At low level they are scruffy thugs and at the top they are old and pudgy. But the middle managers of the mob are sex on legs if Lovers or ToH are anything to go by. And they are totally ready to be redeemed by love of a good woman :P
I only have three eps of Something Happened in Bali to go but I am not too keen on finishing as I got exasperated with endless back and forth wallow wallow wallow. I’ll finish out of completist tendencies, but seriously people. You dug your own grave here so forgive me for not being too sympathetic.
And I found this fascinating article on Japanese cyber cafes on CNN. I can say they are definitely very cushy so I can see people living there.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- 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.
Earning around 1,000 yen ($8) per hour, they often struggle to pay the rent in Tokyo, one of the most expensive cities in the world where a modest 30 square meter (320 square foot) flat in a central location can easily cost 150,000 yen ($1,250) a month.
Now the economy is recovering, but many freeters are missing out on the upswing after years of unskilled work. Most expanding companies prefer to recruit fresh university graduates or transfer basic jobs to low-wage countries such as China.
As an Internet cafe owner in Tokyo's Ueno district, Masami Takahashi has had a close-up view of social change in Japan.
Around the corner from his cafe, homeless people who cannot even afford a reclining seat sleep in cardboard boxes.
Chinese prostitutes in Japanese kimonos prop up drunken office workers, or "salarymen", who will stumble into Masami's cafe for a nap later in the night.
The salarymen were the first to discover Internet cafes as a cheap alternative to hotels after companies hurt by the economic crisis stopped funding team drinks -- an essential part of Japanese corporate culture -- followed by a night in a hotel.
And then there are customers for whom Takahashi's Internet point is home. Takahashi, an affable host sporting a mullet and a blue track suit, regularly sees freeters taking refuge at his cafe. He has even lent money to some of them out of pity.
"It shows how the social system is changing. It's a bit sad for us Japanese," he told Reuters, scratching his head.
At about 1,400 to 2,400 yen ($12-$20) for a night in a central Internet cafe -- free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access included -- prices beat those of Japan's famous "capsule hotels", where guests sleep in plastic cells.
This means that on a Friday night in Shibuya, one of Tokyo's main entertainment districts, the dimly lit cafes are packed.
At 3 am, there is loud snoring from salarymen in suits, their shoes lined up neatly outside each individual cubicle containing a reclining seat or sofa, a computer and a clothes hanger.
There are fashionable young women wearing high heels and short skirts, who missed the last train after a night out.
And there are those who use the discretion of a net cafe to their own advantage.
"I often come here with my boyfriend. Today we escaped from high-school and came here," said 16-year-old Naomi, a schoolgirl in a white shirt, tartan miniskirt and knee-high socks.
Shyly sweeping aside her long brown fringe, Naomi said she started going to net cafes with her boyfriend at the age of 15, telling her parents she was sleeping at a friend's place.
"We usually spend all night talking and reading mangas, and in the morning we go to school".
Like Yamashita, the freeter, many of the cyber homeless fade into this colorful crowd, finding anonymity as well as shelter.
"The younger ones don't look any different from other young people," said Kazumasa Adachi, a manager at one of the more elegant net cafes where staff wear suits and receive customers with the polite efficiency of hotel receptionists.
He recognizes cafe dwellers by the heavy bags they lug around.
"They are different from the real homeless because they belong to the working poor, so they do have some money, whereas the ones on the street have no money at all," he added.
There is no official data on the cyber cafe homeless. Japan's Welfare Ministry plans a wider study on the phenomenon, according to a newspaper report, but in the meantime, it is hard to gauge the scope of the problem or its social impact.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many are freeters in their mid-to-late-twenties, who stay in a net cafe for a couple of months before settling for a more permanent housing solution.
Those who are older, poorer, with fewer chances of escaping their drifting lifestyle, and sometimes too embarrassed to return home, find themselves at the very bottom of cyber society.
They congregate in run-down Tokyo suburbs such as Kamata, renting poorly ventilated, smoke-filled cubicles with reclining seats for 100 yen an hour.
"It's very uncomfortable. You can't really sleep," said one Kamata cafe guest who preferred not to be named.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/05/08/japan.cyberhome.reut/index.html
I wonder why I like it? Could be the low-key good acting by everyone. Could be the fact that I know ‘freeters’ (or the US equivalent) among my friends, actually. I have among my friends people who graduated from college and what not but don’t really have a career, they have jobs.
Could even be the silly thing that I saw a poster for it when we were in Tokyo so it makes me think of vacation (aaaah, the wasted opportunity. :D I only started getting into dramas then :D)
Also, Kame is adorable in this one. He is not someone I find ‘sexy’ in the way I find Yamapi or Takki or Kimura or Takeshi Kaneshiro hot, where I get hormonal because their physicality is almost like a blow. He is too delicate looking for that, if that makes any sense. He comes across as beautiful but not necessarily sexy. But first in TattaKoi and now here, he can really draw me in and make me care like crazy, to a not-too-rational degree (I get the same thing with MatsuJun, someone else I don’t find hot in abstract but whose characters make me swoon).
So I have to eat my earlier words now. Gobble them back, actually :P Heh. But you will still not take me alive if you intend to make me watch Anego ;)
Hmmm.
This is a nonsequitur but I need to post my Japan and England pics. I am so bad at that…argh.
I checked out my Lovers DVDs just to see if it worked and eeeeeee! Mmmm. Our hero, beating up/blackmailing people into signing over stocks to the mob. I am sick sick sick but it’s hot. Korean mob bosses seem to be really sexy, according to kdramas :P But only at mid-level. At low level they are scruffy thugs and at the top they are old and pudgy. But the middle managers of the mob are sex on legs if Lovers or ToH are anything to go by. And they are totally ready to be redeemed by love of a good woman :P
I only have three eps of Something Happened in Bali to go but I am not too keen on finishing as I got exasperated with endless back and forth wallow wallow wallow. I’ll finish out of completist tendencies, but seriously people. You dug your own grave here so forgive me for not being too sympathetic.
And I found this fascinating article on Japanese cyber cafes on CNN. I can say they are definitely very cushy so I can see people living there.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- 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.
Earning around 1,000 yen ($8) per hour, they often struggle to pay the rent in Tokyo, one of the most expensive cities in the world where a modest 30 square meter (320 square foot) flat in a central location can easily cost 150,000 yen ($1,250) a month.
Now the economy is recovering, but many freeters are missing out on the upswing after years of unskilled work. Most expanding companies prefer to recruit fresh university graduates or transfer basic jobs to low-wage countries such as China.
As an Internet cafe owner in Tokyo's Ueno district, Masami Takahashi has had a close-up view of social change in Japan.
Around the corner from his cafe, homeless people who cannot even afford a reclining seat sleep in cardboard boxes.
Chinese prostitutes in Japanese kimonos prop up drunken office workers, or "salarymen", who will stumble into Masami's cafe for a nap later in the night.
The salarymen were the first to discover Internet cafes as a cheap alternative to hotels after companies hurt by the economic crisis stopped funding team drinks -- an essential part of Japanese corporate culture -- followed by a night in a hotel.
And then there are customers for whom Takahashi's Internet point is home. Takahashi, an affable host sporting a mullet and a blue track suit, regularly sees freeters taking refuge at his cafe. He has even lent money to some of them out of pity.
"It shows how the social system is changing. It's a bit sad for us Japanese," he told Reuters, scratching his head.
At about 1,400 to 2,400 yen ($12-$20) for a night in a central Internet cafe -- free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access included -- prices beat those of Japan's famous "capsule hotels", where guests sleep in plastic cells.
This means that on a Friday night in Shibuya, one of Tokyo's main entertainment districts, the dimly lit cafes are packed.
At 3 am, there is loud snoring from salarymen in suits, their shoes lined up neatly outside each individual cubicle containing a reclining seat or sofa, a computer and a clothes hanger.
There are fashionable young women wearing high heels and short skirts, who missed the last train after a night out.
And there are those who use the discretion of a net cafe to their own advantage.
"I often come here with my boyfriend. Today we escaped from high-school and came here," said 16-year-old Naomi, a schoolgirl in a white shirt, tartan miniskirt and knee-high socks.
Shyly sweeping aside her long brown fringe, Naomi said she started going to net cafes with her boyfriend at the age of 15, telling her parents she was sleeping at a friend's place.
"We usually spend all night talking and reading mangas, and in the morning we go to school".
Like Yamashita, the freeter, many of the cyber homeless fade into this colorful crowd, finding anonymity as well as shelter.
"The younger ones don't look any different from other young people," said Kazumasa Adachi, a manager at one of the more elegant net cafes where staff wear suits and receive customers with the polite efficiency of hotel receptionists.
He recognizes cafe dwellers by the heavy bags they lug around.
"They are different from the real homeless because they belong to the working poor, so they do have some money, whereas the ones on the street have no money at all," he added.
There is no official data on the cyber cafe homeless. Japan's Welfare Ministry plans a wider study on the phenomenon, according to a newspaper report, but in the meantime, it is hard to gauge the scope of the problem or its social impact.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many are freeters in their mid-to-late-twenties, who stay in a net cafe for a couple of months before settling for a more permanent housing solution.
Those who are older, poorer, with fewer chances of escaping their drifting lifestyle, and sometimes too embarrassed to return home, find themselves at the very bottom of cyber society.
They congregate in run-down Tokyo suburbs such as Kamata, renting poorly ventilated, smoke-filled cubicles with reclining seats for 100 yen an hour.
"It's very uncomfortable. You can't really sleep," said one Kamata cafe guest who preferred not to be named.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/05/08/japan.cyberhome.reut/index.html