Comment by franciscop
3 years ago
That's why I said virtually; in Tokyo you know where you saw one at some point as a curiosity. In many European cities just walking around aimlessly you have high chances of seeing some homeless people. In SF I had to literally jump over homeless' people stuff to walk down multiple streets in my last visit.
I wasn't looking for encampments in Japan but found them anyways. Ueno train station and the park behind it is obviously a high traffic destination. And in Osaka, we were just walking around randomly. Homelessness is common and visible enough that to say it virtually doesn't exist is not really accurate.
"Tokyo Ueno Station" is a well-received novel written about the homeless population in the adjacent park. https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Ueno-Station-Yu-Miri/dp/0593187...