(Version française plus bas)

You would never believe what happened to me the other day. As I was craving for some bread, I stopped at this huge bakery on my way home. As I’m taking my leave with a precious loaf a sliced bread under my arm, I suddenly stop, in sheer shock.

Ten meters away stands before me a familiar figure I haven’t seen in more than a year. Is this true? Her haircut has changed. It’s shorter. Her face is not sweaty. Unusual, for a tourist in Saigon. Her long skirt and tall figure leave no doubt. This is my friend Ariane, a delightful lady whom I met during a summer internship in Paris, a year and a half ago. Good God! I thought she was supposed to be in America!

(more…)

What do I think of Ho Chi Minh? Crazy. Exhausting. Different. Awesome.

I know I blogged about this a bit while it was happening, but I slowly descended into a sort of sleep-deprived mania madness, and I lost the ability to compose coherent posts about it.  So now I can explain in a little more depth and lucidity…

The Backstory: We were so broke in Tokyo, mid-April, 2.5 weeks away from departure, and one of our monthly leases was up.  Renewal would be $500 we didn’t have.  We were already living in poverty in one of the world’s most expensive cities, so why not go one extra step…Manga Kissas, Internet Cafes: Tokyo is peppered with internet/manga cafes, a cross between an internet cafe, a manga library, and a hotel that rented cubicles instead of rooms.  You can rent by the hour or stay overnight.  They seem to be used for 4 things, as far as I can tell. 

First, people who have missed the last train home and who don’t want to pay the monstrous cab fees to go home.  They’re either Japanese salarymen, stumbling out of a client dinner, or those damned denizens of Tokyo with money to enjoy the nightlife.  In the cafes, you could hear them throwing up or snoring drunkenly. 

Second, highschoolers who want some private time – they live with their parents and they can’t go to love hotels.  In the cafes, you could hear them…well, you could hear them.

Third, manga lovers and gamers. I was actually surprised that people paid money to go to a manga library and read manga.  What kind of manga people read or internet sites they browsed is anyone’s guess, although, in the cafes, they sometimes sounded like the highschoolers.

Fourth, the internet cafe refugees or “cyberhomeless” – people who can’t afford the outrageously expensive housing in Japan but who have enough money to afford a $10/night roof.  They rove from cafe to cafe, catching 7 hours of peace at night to recharge for a part-time job during the day.  It was in this fourth class that I fell.  So instead of paying $500 for another 19 days, I’d pay around $12/night for sleep in Tokyo’s central districts.  I’d save money on transit, because I wouldn’t need to travel out to exciting Kanagawa.  I’d also still be tutoring, so I’d be making a decent amount of money.  The cafes had free coffee and juice, and I’d enjoy internet speed we only wet-dreamed about back at our guesthouse.  I’d sleep in the cafes when I could and then just huddle up on one of the trains and sleep as it wound its way around the city.  So I packed my bags…

and set out with 4000Yen, about $45, to see where it would all take me…

It’s midnight, and I’m settling down for another 7-hour stint in an internet cafe in Shinjuku.  Last night, I cashed in my “crash at a friend’s house” token and slept in the living room of the guesthouse.  It was a troubled sleep, but it was definitely sleep.  It also let me use a shower and reload on rice…I’ll probably allow myself one night at the guesthouse each week, just because most net cafe refugees seem to sleep periodically on the floor or a friends house. 

Here’s a picture of me with my new duffel bag, wandering around outside the east side of Shinjuku station.

I don’t look homeless, right?

Let’s review some data from the past couple days to see how this experiment is going in its initial stages, from Tuesday morning to Thursday morning…

*remember that I started with 4000 in my wallet, and 1000 went to a 2-week wifi pass

So far, so good – I’m definitely saving money, even if its costing me sleep and pumping me with coffee.  We’ll see how I hold together.

What are some other things you’d like me to track during this time?

Many of my friends know that I can sometimes be a creature of excess – beneath a relatively mild exterior, I have a streak of recklessness.  Perhaps this vein in me has helped inspire a little experiment I started today.  Basically, I am now homeless.  I have moved out of the guesthouse in Kanagawa, and will join the ranks of the so-called net cafe refugees, who spend their days as normal people and spend their nights in internet cafes.  My thoughts on this were threefold. 

Not too shabby

First, it’s a cheap intense form of cultural immersion. This isn’t just a “wild and crazy Matt idea” – as I alluded to, people do this every day. About 1.5 years ago, there were estimated over 5,000 such refugees and given the waves of layoffs, more people will be doing this very soon. The furnishing isn’t too bad, just slightly smaller than a standard closet…

Showers, coffee, fast internet

Second, it’s a way to save money. For my tiny single, I paid about 50,000Y/month, roughly $18/night. For a 7-hour stint in this internet cafe, I can pay only 1,000Y ($11). For a trip into central Tokyo and back, I once paid at least 400Y; now, I walk out of whatever cafe I happen to sleeping in. I’ll be measuring my new budget against what I would have been spending to see how effective this strategy is.

3,000 Y to my name

Finally, if we’re going to be poor in Tokyo, let’s drive it into the ground, utterly and completely. I have 3,000Y in my wallet and a 2-week wifi pass redeemable at McDonalds. My only source of income is my tutoring. Basically, we will see whether I have reached a financial equilibrium in Tokyo without a stable teaching job. It’ll be like a worst-case scenario for an aspiring English-teacher…

Every night, I will sleep in a different internet cafe throughout the city, and by day, I will haunt various regular cafes, McDonald’s, subways, and public parks, weather permitting (which, unfortunately it is not at the moment).  Everything I have is laid out below, and I encourage you to visit the Flickr picture which explains each item.

My worldly possessions for the rest of our time in Tokyo

Think I’m nuts?  Let me know, and stay tuned for a daily update of my new lifestyle…