In episode 206 we saw what life was like on when you’re about as broke as is possible in Tokyo.  The experience of day to day life inside the cafe was just so surreal we had to go a bit deeper into it – and with that we present Internet Cafe Living.  A firsthand account of just what its like to try and make it in one of these places.

We hope you enjoy it. We know Matt sure did.

With finances reaching the critical disaster zone Matt must forgo his spot in the guesthouse and find a home on the streets of Tokyo to save money.

Okay.  So, it has been a while.  More than three weeks, to be precise, which is exactly two weeks longer than it should have been since this episode was released.  A lot happened this month, from obvious hardware failures, to marauding ex-girlfriends, to rheumatoid arthritis, to hilariously weak immune systems, but the simple fact of the matter is that once upon a time none of this ever would have phased me.

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I have tried to maintain a strictly healthy diet during this adventure, avoiding fast food and concentrated sugar – foods that make me tired and easily frustrated. The only way I’ve survived off the number of hours I’m sleeping is because of my diet, which is admittedly not appetizing but nonetheless, highly functional. Here’s my favorite…

One of my 3 basic food groups...

Mochi balls (rice beaten, mashed, made into a sticky dough, and steamed) dipped in a mix of kinako (a common powder high in protein) and fiber. Mochi gives calories, kinako gives protein, and fiber gives, well, fiber. It’s only about 120 Yen and it only involves me carrying around the powder mix. Simple, easy, effective.

ManBoo! Cafe, on the edge of Kabukicho (the red-light district near Shinjuku), has so far emerged as my favorite place between the hours of 11pm and 6am.  980Y/7 straight hours in you enter between 9pm and 3am.  That price is unbeatable…unfortunately, it buys you a dimly lit booth in a long line of computer stations.

Dark lights, sticky keyboards.

CONS
* The dude to my right smoked all night = first-class second-hand smoke
* No footrests = no lying down completely
* Constant commotion = no silence
* Crowded aisles = frequent bumping

PROS
* Cappuccino machine = (come on, that’s obvious)
* Slurpee machines = sugar fix
* Miso soup machine (!) = free warm salty calories
* Showers, though I haven’t used them yet

Drink machines!

If you’ve ever been traveling with others, you know that there’s a strong feedback between how they’re feeling about something and how you feel about it. The idea is a lot like waves in a pool of good morale– if many waves come together at their peaks, things are amazing, and we feel absolutely vindicated in leaving our lives behind. The problem is that Brian, Matt and I meet at our troughs as well.

Episode 3 begins to explore just how we felt every day living in poverty. We could tell ourselves each day, “yeah, I’m poor, but I’m poor in Japan!” but saying it didn’t take away the mental and physical exhaustion. It didn’t inspire us to put in another all-nighter, and it didn’t give Christmas back to those that missed their families.

Maybe that sounds like a lot of privileged whining. I’m ok saying that, because the depression we felt around being poor wouldn’t have been so strong if we hadn’t had nice lives to look back on. Matts, Brians, and Robs in alternate dimensions, were laughing with their cousins, ordering a pizza, or playing with their cat. They were happy and healthy, and best of all, not hungry all the time. While so many would envy our lives abroad, keep in mind just how tremendous these comforts really are, and also just how much it sucks to live a monotonous life of white rice and eggs.

Well, I can’t imagine there are any “awesome” times for being homeless – unless steaks rained from the sky and it was always summer – BUT turns out that right now is particularly terrible.  Here’s what I woke up to around Shinjuku station…

When a day of homelessness starts out like this...

Almost 7am, almost freezing, the sun a barely an annoyance to the tops of the thick clouds.  The day opened up and it got colder, and a little colder, and then rainy, then more rainy, then that thing that happens when it rains in sub-zero temperatures.  Snow started to fall in Tokyo.  This wasn’t the pathetic sprinkling of snowflakes, like when you permit a polite amount of ground pepper on a dainty salad.  This was a proper urban flurry, like when you pour salt and pepper on a terrible-tasting lasagna.

Snow falling down Cocoon Tower

It wasn’t quite cold enough for the snow to stick, but that only meant it melted.  And because it drifted, hiding under overhangs was only so effective.  I don’t think an umbrella would have helped me too much, if I had one.  Unfortunately, I didn’t, so I scurried to the train station with all my bags, with snow felling and melting, and me wishing I had a warm room to go lie down in.  Instead, I was destined for a nap on the Yamanote line subway.

All snow and no umbrella makes Matt...

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?

First, allow me to clarify this internet cafe plan: I, Matt, will rove around Tokyo, sleeping in random internet cafes by night, working on Jet Set Zero at cheap wifi-enabled establishments by day.  Brian and Rob will stay in our normal guesthouse, resuming life as usual, just without me.  I chose this particular date to begin the experiment because we just finished the 2-month mark on my room, so rather than pay for an entire third month (50,000Y), I’ll just ride out our remaining days in Tokyo from the cushy confines of an internet cubicle. 

So, after my first day, I had a couple crucial realizations that inspired me to repack my stuff. 

1. I’m not equipped for how cold it is before dawn, so I exchanged my vest for a light jacket and I picked up an extra.

2. Given that I once needed to buckle that cheap blue laptop case to my nice black backpack, there’s no way I’m not going to look at least a little homeless.  Plus, if I hid my bulky laptop between my back and the actual pack, then my body would take about 5 minutes of walking to scream in protest.  Finally, the backpack simply didn’t have much room, and my jacket pockets were overflowing with things to carry.  I chose my ratty hiking backpack, trading a professional facade for more room and cheaper chiropractor bills in the future.

3. I need earplugs to sleep well, both in the cafe and on the train…so I got some.

Here’s my new set up:

Me, hunkered down around the only usable power outlet in the KFC at Saginuma station.

It looks a little more ragged and I look a little more like a bum, but it keeps me warmer, my posture tighter, and my jacket pockets empty.  Today took me through 3 offices: McDonalds, KFC, then another McDonalds.  Tomorrow I’ll have some numbers for you…

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…

This was just the beginning

You saw this message as well as I did.  As Brian just mentioned, we aren’t in good shape (I try to be positive and think of being 20% not-fucked…).  We have a couple creative strategies for getting nutrition, taste, entertainment, and something that is vaguely Japanese on our empty budgets.  We haven’t considered shoplifting BUT I’m just saying that a bumper sticker illegally pasted on the side of a road told me that it wasn’t crime if we decided to go there…