Just outside Tokyo unemployed and homeless Japanese move into cubicles in an internet cafe, paying about $500 a month for the privilege, including, I suppose, all the internet you can use. Sometimes referred to as “Net Cafe Refugees,” these people are typically day laborers or part time workers who are unable to find steady work.
Being Japan, the shoes are all neatly lined up outside the doors, and you can tell the men from the women by the colors of the umbrellas hanging over the door. The cubicles consist of a computer and just enough room to lie down. No natural light comes into them.
It isn’t very social, either; the manager says “they are lonely people and they don’t seem to want friends or company.”
60 people are currently calling these windowless boxes home and research shows that they are a new and growing class in Japan. Mr. Sutter, owner of the cyber cafe used to sell family villas, now he plans on expanding the cafe to hold more people.