Homeless recruited to decontaminate Fukishima; paid less than minimum wage

[teapot]

This kind of dodgy shit is a perfect example of why I’d find it hard to live in Japan for a long time.

The government and police are disgustingly entwined with the yakuza and the government has no real plan regarding caring for the homeless. Their plan involves denying there are any homeless people, despite the shanty towns that line the banks of the harbour at Asakusa… if you go there to check out the shrine and the markets (which is what most tourists do), make sure you visit the harbour banks which are only a couple hundred meters from the shrine and take a bunch of pictures. Once the powers that be realise they’re looking bad things might change. Shaming people seems to be the most effective method of getting shit done over there.

For an advanced, developed country they are FUCKING SHITTY at taking care of those who’ve slipped between the cracks. These kinds of shanty towns exist all across Tokyo (and I’m guessing others parts of Japan).

Yoyogi park homeless, Harajuku:

Shinjuku Park homeless (a picture taken by Cory Doctorow):

Shinjuku station homeless:

[sugarfoot]

Mobbed-up subcontractors confiscate as much as two thirds of their pay in “fees.”

Every time I’ve been an employee to a subcontractor to a U.S. government contractor, about two-thirds of what the government paid did not go to me.

Hmmm.

[anon85905360]

Everybody knew that radiation fries remote controlled manipulators. Fact is that the whole nuclear industry is living in denial of catastrophic hazards. It’s like “oh, that can’t happen, and if it does, we are all so screwed that we can go and hang ourselves, so why should we spent billions on containment and salvage preparedness”.

[anon85905360]

Where is Fukushima? It lies under the radioactive fallout of Snafukushima.