The first time Fumiya, 26, spent a night at the internet cafe, other people's snoring and footsteps kept him awake throughout the night. Since that sleepless night, ten months have passed and the little noises don't bother him anymore. Once he got used to sleeping with a blanket over his face to block out the fluorescent lights that stay on through the night, he says living in an internet cafe is “not so bad.”
Fumiya started living t an internet cafe after he left his job with a dormitory. He looked for an apartment but it was more than he could afford. At first he rented a private booth for 12 hours just to sleep but he soon realized that he could actually live there. Fumiya’s discounted monthly package costs 1,920 yen (US$25) a day, or around $750 a month. It’s cheaper than renting an apartment since he doesn’t have to pay for utilities.
The booth is clean and the café offers unlimited free soft drinks, blankets and cushions. The booth is partitioned by 1.8 meter high dividers and a door and Fumiya can enjoy his bath-tub sized privacy of a 1.8 x 1.2 meter space which is big enough to sleep without bending his knees.
He currently works 8 hours a day, 6 days a week as a security guard and makes about 230,000 yen (US $2,900) a month. He says he needs about one million yen ($13,000) to pay for security deposits, estate agent fees and furniture for an apartment in Tokyo, money he can ill afford on his salary. He reckons it would take him up to five years to save up this much money.
“We need places like internet cafes. Without them, there would be many more people who have jobs but no homes.”
Fumiya eventually wants to be a regular worker so that he can have stability and rent an apartment. The older he gets, the more difficult life as an irregular worker becomes and the gap between the wages of those with full-time contracts and casual workers is widening. By the time he reaches the age of 45, he will earn less than half of what people on regular contracts will make. “I want to get married and have a family. That is, if I'm lucky.”