Homeless Japan

After living in Japan for a few years, I noticed that I didnt see any homeless folks sleeping in the streets. After exploring Tokyo a bit more, I would see them huddled in bridges in some locations of Shibuya but cant really recall any other places where I've seen them.

Woke up one morning however to find a homeless chap sleeping on our doorstep...

This chap apparently tripped over and hit his head - felt dizzy so decided to spend the night next to our car. We gave him a hot cuppa tea and he went on his way in the morning.

The most homeless in Japan seem to be pretty pro-active in dealing with their dilemma of being on the streets. Many build small shelters near parks so that they can easily get water for drinking and washing. Many also go around dustbins to collect magazines, cans and bottles to trade for recycle money.

I also saw the story of one homeless chap who went from living in a park for a year to being a top IT guy running his own company. He had an old laptop which he used to teach himself HTML and started out by making small sites - slowly began to build his client base and before he knew it he had his own company. In case you are wondering, there are many places where you can get electricity in public for free and the internet cafes here are dirt cheap too. I cant remember the name of the guy but I saw him on Bari Bari Value.

Another nice thing about the homeless over here is that they never go around asking for money - something which I encountered too often back in London. I remember giving a girl 50 pence (this was like 15 years ago). The girl then sees a pound coin in my hand and says to me...
Girl: I give you back this 50 pence if you give me a pound
Danny: "........"
You can see some pictures of what homeless in Japan do at BBC.