Japan’s 24 Hour Net Café Refugees

For people who do not have access to the Internet, dropping by the nearest Internet café shop is the best alternative they can get. But in Japan, there is an added twist…Café’s are becoming hotels or temporary homes for people who have no real place to live or sleep. These people have been tagged as Net Café Refugees.

This is not to say that people are checking in and out often. There are just a lot of factors such as safety in the streets at night when they are through checking the web. Some work over the web and Internet access is a need. Perhaps this is their cycle; work at the nearest café and pay for the connection used, take a nap and back to work. Now isn’t that something?

“In its first ever study of a growing group dubbed “Net cafe refugees” by local media, the Health Ministry estimated that some 5,400 people live at least half the week at the 24-hour cafes because they have no permanent home.”

Tags: hotels, internet_access, japan, sleep, SLEEP News, take_a_nap

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under SLEEP News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.