Here I am in the Big Shitty (Tokyo) with too much time on my hands just to sit around but not enough time to go to a movie or something, so I decided to duck into an Internet cafe.
I have to confess that this is my first foray into one of these joints (not too many of them up in the hinterlands of beautiful Tochigi Prefecture), and I really was a bit apprehensive about the whole adventure. I sort of expected to be surrounded by dorky sleep-deprived geeks, smelling of Cup Noodle and unwashed undergarments, perusing the latest in porn site perversions.
What I found was a pretty pleasant place with a clientele consisting of more young gals than guys.
If I was young and single (oh how my pockets would jingle), I know where I would start hanging out.
That smell must be coming from somewhere else then, huh.
Haha which inet cafe did you go to? I always went to either a yahoo inetcafe or cybercafe. Which was nice. Private cubes, free drinks, free magazines to read and cubes in different comforts and sizes.
I even spend one night there one day. Hah!
But never again.
i’ll take a guess (JP) - you are not in the Amateur’s Cafe at Koenji, rubbing elbows with Hajime Matsumoto and discussing the literary merits of Karin Amamiya’s “We are Entitled to Live: The Precarious Situation of Young People”…or sipping Latte (from the dispenser) and quizzing Shigeru Yamamoto - “Young People’s Challenge Movement” as a field exercise for a future Post?…
you are just hangin’ with the young “precariat”
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9cariat
*jingling coins and wishing you were young and single*
I’d love to be there - Great Post! (cobber)
(*_*)
remora.
High-Tech Homeless = Precariat lodging in Internet Cafe.
” Precariat “, What a useful word !
(^o^)♪♪
I started using an Internet Cafe during a stay in Tokyo when I didn’t yet have my laptop. I was surprised to see so many sleepy people brushing their teeth in the morning. And then there were the guys asleep in their booths. There was an air of otherworldliness about the whole place, complete with the self-serve drinks and the low lighting. I thought to myself this is the kind of thing that can only exist in Japan.
Close, rem. I was in Asagaya, one stop further out of town from Koenji.
I would like to credit Phillipe Pons (Le Monde) for my guess JP.
I’ll send you the recent Article in Guardian.
rem.
My husband and I practically lived in an internet cafe in Ueno during the last couple days of our honeymoon. (We’d been married for a few months by the time we took the trip, just so you know…) He was going through culture shock (he’d never been to Japan before) and I was just plain tired. So we logged on to the familiar :>