The Big Issue coming to Japan
Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3175319.stm
I don't know if it will work here, but it will be interesting to see
what happens. It was always a mag I picked up in the UK, but I'm not
sure how its style of journalism will translate to Japanese.
Ken
Ed
"Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson" <ken_ni...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6afefaef.03082...@posting.google.com...
The Japanese take on the homeless situation is without fault. They simply
ignore it. If somebody wants to be homeless, they're free to be homeless.
Nobody is going to help them be homeless so there are very few homeless.
Those that don't want to be homeless have as many options in Japan as people
in sepponia do. They can always get a job pushing a shovel if they want a
place to call home. Hell, if somebody wants a full-fledged house, all they
have to do is take a ten kilometer hike from my house and they can take
their pick of free houses from a whole ghost town. I can't say that the
roofs don't leak, or that the wells aren't dry, but they're houses, and the
one remaining guy living there isn't going to be adverse to a decent hard
working neighbor.
another fool
> place to call home. Hell, if somebody wants a full-fledged house, all they
> have to do is take a ten kilometer hike from my house and they can take
> their pick of free houses from a whole ghost town. I can't say that the
> roofs don't leak, or that the wells aren't dry, but they're houses, and the
> one remaining guy living there isn't going to be adverse to a decent hard
> working neighbor.
hehe where do you live? I'd love to find a ghost town - trinket
hunting in those old places can be a blast...
John W.
> Hell, if somebody wants a full-fledged house, all they
> have to do is take a ten kilometer hike from my house and they can take
> their pick of free houses from a whole ghost town. I can't say that the
> roofs don't leak, or that the wells aren't dry, but they're houses, and the
> one remaining guy living there isn't going to be adverse to a decent hard
> working neighbor.
>
You're kidding, right? They're just there for the taking? Old farm
houses? That's pretty damn cool. I've always had this dream of living in
rural Japan.
John W.
another fool
Hmm... How do they handle property taxes in Japan (and property sales
for delinquent taxes like in the US)?
I wonder if they have auctions in different prefectures for houses
that were abandoned etc...
And where are these ghost towns?
John W.
I've heard a couple of times that there are homes/farms held by the
local goverment (or coop or something like that), and if you agree to
farm the land you can live in the house rent free. Not sure if that's
just a tall tale or not, but it sounds like a good plan if they'd let a
gaigin in on it.
John W.
John Yamamoto-Wilson
>>>>have to do is take a ten kilometer hike from my house and they can take
>>>>their pick of free houses from a whole ghost town. I can't say that the
>>>>roofs don't leak, or that the wells aren't dry, but they're houses, and
the
>>>>one remaining guy living there isn't going to be adverse to a decent
hard
>>>>working neighbor.
>>>
>>>You're kidding, right? They're just there for the taking? Old farm
>>>houses? That's pretty damn cool. I've always had this dream of living in
>>>rural Japan.
>>
>> for delinquent taxes like in the US)?
>>
>> I wonder if they have auctions in different prefectures for houses
>> that were abandoned etc...
>>
> > And where are these ghost towns?
>
>I've heard a couple of times that there are homes/farms held by the
>local goverment (or coop or something like that), and if you agree to
>farm the land you can live in the house rent free. Not sure if that's
>just a tall tale or not, but it sounds like a good plan if they'd let a
>gaigin in on it.
I don't know about absolutely free (though I'm quite prepared to believe
it), but there's this big U-turn push to get people who've left the
countryside for the cities to return to the countryside and (with typical
Japanese logic) an "I-turn" push to get people who were born in the cities
to leave them and go and set up home in the countryside. To encourage
people, there are television programmes and rural estate agents' catalogues.
The catalogues offer ever larger properties (with surrounding acres of land)
for ever lower prices the more remote the area is, and the television
programmes have the studio audience (or panel) going "Eeeeee! Wah, sugoi!"
as some old peasant with a hunchback and a cackly voice tells the TV
interviewer, "That place? It's been empty for three years. The last person
was paying 500 yen a month rent for it. I'd sell the whole house for 3000
yen." The camera then pans round all the rooms of this stately adandoned
dwelling, with its beams as thick as tree trunks, its roof as sturdy and
rainproof as the day it was put up, and everything under about three inches
of dust. Some of these rural places even have their own hot spring.
They also show people who've taken on such places and, yes, one was a
gauguin, with his Japanese wife and several children, all up at 5.30 milking
the cows, and an interview with the city-born wife, who never dreamed of
such a life and says it's hard but she'd never want to change now (her
husband had been working for a company and lost his job or something, I
think, but perhaps I'm getting my wires crossed with another family).
Anyway, yes, if I became destitute I wouldn't join the urban homeless; I'd
head for the countryside. I guess those who don't are people who've lived in
cities all their lives, and either fear leaving behind what they know or
simply can't imagine that such a life might be possible.