<story><title>Poverty in Japan</title><url>http://japaneseruleof7.com/poverty-in-japan/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>g09980</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve lived in Japan, and I love Japan for all its charms. Westerners definitely romanticize it, but day-to-day life for local people isn&amp;#x27;t all roses. Something brings one to reality when you see raggedy old men vomiting outside Pachinko parlours, the scantily clad &amp;quot;massage&amp;quot; women shivering in zero degree weather, or the mentally ill muttering to himself while bumping into the walls at the conbini. Aging population, high rate of alcoholism, difficult work culture, and untreated mental illness are some things you don&amp;#x27;t see on a postcard, but they are real.</text></comment>
<story><title>Poverty in Japan</title><url>http://japaneseruleof7.com/poverty-in-japan/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; Of course, if you saw it in your own country, you’d recognize it for what it was—people working their asses off, even well into old age, not out of some perverse industriousness, but simply because they’ve gotta eat.&lt;p&gt;Until we invent replicators, everyone’s gotta work to eat. Even folks on HN are separated from that reality by a year or so of cushion, if even that. What people in the US admire about Japanese culture is their attitude to the work they’ve got to do to survive. It’s not like folks in the US don’t have to work to eat. But if you’ve ever been in an airport security line in both places you can tell the difference.</text></comment>