Went on a day trip to Yokohama with the Dean of Students and a famous British author who spent time living among the homeless in the extreme ghettos of Japan. This area of Yokohama, Kotobuki Cho is a slum inhabited by Koreans, Chinese, Philippine and Japanese people who live in government (yakuza) run and provided apartments called Goya, that are disgusting, small, and cost about $100 a month. They work as day laborers, flooding the streets in the morning looking for work, and if provided with a job can hope to make about $80 in one day. The area was filled with Yakuza office buildings, little back allies where people would gather and would illegally bet on horse races, motorcycle gangs (who i made friends with), garbage, fires burning, mentally ill people yelling at us, drunks, people sleeping in boxes in the rain, ferrel cats, and some of the most awful living conditions i have ever seen. It was a cold wet day, but the rain seemed strangely appropriate as we walked around listening to the author, Tom Gill, talk about the horrible way of life the people here live. I didn't see a single person under 60 something years old, and everyone looked to be in pretty bad shape. I wish i knew more about the story behind all this, but I'm going to pick up a copy of this guy's book when he talks at school this week. A really incredible experience. Yokohama is a port city, and was where all the foreigners came during the Korean war, which is the reason for the heavy Korean and Chinese influence in the city, which is the second largest in Japan.
Good story to better describe the area:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071208f2.html
(however, the article, from 2007, talks about a bright future for the area... didn't see much progress...)
Inagawa Family (Yakuza) Main Headquarters.
Cat with no tail.
Glove and socks vending machine.
Smaller Yakuza office, next door to a police station.
iPod touch
Dudes
Trash bed
Man with radio
Tenements
making s'mores
day labor quarters and job center
roof we snuck onto
Of course, there is a nice part of the city too, but we didn't spend much time there. I took some pictures outside of the train station though:
Yokohama Sea Paradise
Landmark Tower - tallest building in japan
Videos from Kotobukicho, saw lots of other things I would have loved to capture but didn't feel safe trying.
1. Yakuza back alley
2. Yakuza and day-laborers betting on horse races
When walking past these guys, one looked me in the eye and said "Nanda kore??" --
"What the hell is this?!"
HAHA! oh my god, the music is so terrifying. Just screams global dominance. Thats the shit. Don't the yakuza fucking hate tourists though??
ReplyDeleteAh yeah, it can always be hard seeing that kind of stuff. We are currenly doing service at a place that makes your photos look like the ritz.
ReplyDeleteooooh rachel i can't even imagine. obviously much much much worse situations throughout the world, but this was especially eye opening from the japanese context because the media/government what have you do a really really good job of sort of taking a situation like this and sweeping it under the rug if you will. felt like a completely different country; it was great to get a different perspective on a country that from the outside (and inside too) seems so happy and energetic.
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