For some in Japan, cramped internet cafés double as cheap living spaces
For members of Japan’s corporate class, financial security frequently means suffering gruelling overtime and institutional hazing. However, the alternative to the stresses that accompany Japan’s corporate culture can be equally grim. Unable to afford rising rent costs, some paycheck-to-paycheck workers have taken to living in internet café cubicles as they struggle to save money and get back on their feet. Shiho Fukada’s film follows two such Japanese men as they sleep in internet cafés at night and attempt to reinvent their lives during the day.
Director: Shiho Fukada
Producer: Eric Maierson
videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
videoDemography and migration
In California’s farmlands, immigrant workers share their stories of toil and hope
17 minutes
videoHome
Life moves slowly in a Romanian mountain village, shaped by care and the seasons
13 minutes
videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
videoSocial psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes
videoGender
A catchy tune explains the world’s ‘isms’ – according to your mum doing the laundry
5 minutes
videoEngineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
videoTechnology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
videoFairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes