Kwan Weng Kin observes a new housing trend: Internet cafes.

In Tokyo

LIFE is precarious indeed for Japanese who are forced into part-time jobs that don't pay enough for them to rent a room to live in.

It is a vicious cycle.

No landlord wants a tenant who has no permanent job.  On the other hand, it is very hard for anyone to find permanent employment if he cannot show he has a permanent address.

This predicament of the new "homeless" has not gone unnoticed. 

Some Internet cafes offer their company address to customers to register as their personal "permanent address" -  for a small fee.

Aware that one of the biggest problems of the "homeless" is a lack of cash savings, the government has set up support centres nationwide to help these people find a regular job, or a room. An interest-free loan of up to 600,000 yen is made available for the purpose.

The problem is that some of the "homeless" can't even afford the train fare to travel to one of these centres from where they are based.

So for them, life remains hellish, having to live out of Internet cafes or worse.

Some time last year, a new buzzword appeared in the Japanese media - the "McRefugee", a reference to people who are apparently forced to spend the night at a 24-hour McDonald's restaurant, staring into a cup of coffee, for the days when they can't afford even the minimal comforts of an Internet cafe cubicle.

But in the end, it appeared that the term "MacRefugee" was in vogue only because it was talked about in some blogs and was not a serious phenomenon.

From personal observations, most of the customers who linger at fast-food restaurants till the early hours of the morning are those who were out drinking the night before and had missed the last train home.

Instead of forking out for an expensive taxi ride home, they seek refuge in a 24-hour hamburger shop and wait for the first train in the morning.

Unfortunately, however, there might be something to the Internet cafe refugee theory.