Worst Place to Live in Japan

Osaka has been in the news quite a bit lately due to the newly elected governor Toru Hashimoto.
The media has been highlighting all the bad points of Osaka that they expect the new governor to fix. As you can see from the following statistics, the media is highlighting Osaka as being one of the worst places to live in Japan. The above is a screencap from a TV program with a list entitled "statistics which show the reality of Osaka." The figures show that Osaka comes out tops (worst) out of all the cities in Japan in the following categories...

• Theft
• Car vandalism
• Murder and other violent crimes
• Number of homeless
• Death by Cancer
• Number of offices declining
• Unemployment rate (2nd worse)
• Bankruptcy rate (2nd worse)
• Number of primary schools that don't serve food
• National learning proficiency test
• Child abuse deaths

While some of these statistics are recent, some are old like the cancer rate which makes this appear like another case of Osaka bashing by the Tokyo media.

As a visitor to Osaka only once (photos here), I didn't receive any bad impressions but its difficult to understand what the social problems are from a short visit. I did notice that people drive very differently to folks in Tokyo - I've even saw the bus drivers ignore traffic lights.
Anybody here who lives/lived in Osaka can tell us what its really like?

A place that you can figure out what the social problems are from a short visit is my home town of Hackney in London - previously voted the worst place to live in the UK. The vandalism, lack of transport and people throwing stuff at you (chicken/eggs/rocks) for no reason can be experienced from a short visit.

I suppose I owe a lot to being brought up in Hackney - the terrible conditions served as just one of the reasons that kept me focused on getting out of that rut.

Do/did you live in a rough neighborhood? Are there are cities that you would call "worst" in your region based on the crime/unemployment rate and other social problems? Not being able to get hold of Gundams and figures easily could be classified as a social problem ^^;