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Comment by turrican | Hacker News Reader

We just spent a week in Japan and did not stay only in tourist areas, my Apple Watch logged our walks as around 10-15 miles per day.

Over the entire week, I saw one obviously homeless person, one “maybe” and no encampments. It really was striking coming from the United States. ~3,000 homeless may be low, but they have drastically fewer than us.

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The homeless tend to congregate in encampments. You'll sometimes see the rare one in a park or a station but usually you only see them if you happen to wander into an area where they've all set up.

Homeless in Japan don't panhandle or really bother regular people.

Go in late January, Shinjuku station, above Marunouchi line, 20-40 homeless sleeping in the main tunnel under Yasukuni-dori to get out of the cold. Go into the park behind city hall. Look in tbe bushes. See tents made from tarps. Same is true in many other parks. Also that park behind city hall hands out food to homeless people. I'm not saying Japan has lots of homeless people, only that they are there.

My impression from XX years in Japan is there is a strong ethic of "don't bother other people with your problems" so the homeless generally try to keep to themselves.

When were you last in Japan? The tent encampments were cleared out before the 2020 Olympics and have not come back.

I'm there now

Does Japan make a much more substantial investment in institutional mental health care?

No. Mental health in Japan is not broadly talked about. Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis is probably being cared for privately.

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