EVOKE: LEARN2- Local Food Issues

"Wow" My boyfriend exclaimed his eyes following where I was already looking. "A wh*** pack of doughnuts for 130Y! That's so cheap, why don't you get some?"

I cry on the inside as he said that. I don't have 130Y to spend on doughnuts. I have to buy rice and some noodles and some cheap frozen vegetable mixes. I'm freezing my own potatoes and carrots so that I can have them for the next few months. I have no money for the things I want. I bought myself some flour so I could treat myself to some pancakes later or maybe some weird vanilla cookie deal. It only cost 100Y for the bag so I can barely squeeze it into my budget, but I might have to make bannock (potato bread) with it later since having to pay for a doctors visit last week has messed up my projected budget for this month.

But I can't really complain about my lack of money right now. I have an apartment. I have a job with a paycheck that when it comes! (oh when it comes...) I will be able to buy myself these little treats.

But what about people who have less. People who 130Y might have to last them a wh*** week. A wh*** month?

Are there people like that in Japan?

I look around where I live now. A family area, no homeless (at least not that I can see) no people starving on the streets. Food is in enough abundance that if I really didn't have any money at all, I could still eat by picking off of trees or from garbage's. A friend who's father owns a convenience store jokes to me that he can give me the expired bento's (lunch boxes) if I really need them since his father gives them to the homeless in his area. (Ha ha on my part but a kind gesture on his fathers.)

At the moment, I look around and think. "There's no issue here... right?"

Yes and no.

Japan imports 60% of all it's food product. Certainly that's quite high but at the same time that importation is mostly unneeded food stuffs. Every McDonalds, Dennies or Starbucks here is part of that import percentage. And if every one of them were to fall off the face of Japan that wouldn't affect people too much. I look around my house at the food in it. Nasu (eggplant), ningin (Carrots) and potatoes (I don't know the Japanese for that) bought from a street vendor who got them from a local farmer. Kiwi, grape yards and these weird yellow fruit that I don't know the name of grow not more then a 15 minute block away from my house. An empty lot sits two blocks away filled will wild grain, my own windowsill with a tomato plant and lettuce.

Certainly in central Tokyo such emergency abundance isn't available, but central Tokyo is only an hour train ride from here. Possibly a 3 hour bikeride if one followed the tracks so while if Japan was cut off from the rest of the world prices would rise but would people starve?
Does anyone here starve to death anymore?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/asia/12japan.html

Apparently so. Welfare in Japan is harsh. People are expected to use up all of their savings before they are permitted to be on welfare. Unemployment benefits only come after being unemployed for 3 to 6 months after ones savings are completely gone and even then cla**** are to be attended, rejection letters must be handed in and proof of denied work for legitimate reasons from interviews must be given in order to receive those benefits for the time the government is willing to give them. Imagine being disabled or old with no family or friends willing to take care of you? Simply hanging onto your house is considered enough of a reason for the government to deny you assistance as they feel if you have a place to live, then you're not that bad off. These men if it was known they were not actually "Homeless" would have been denied access to soup kitchens or free food from handouts because they were not "Home-less" but indeed simply starving people in a house.

The Japanese people (and with some reason) often lay the blame on the victim in these cases since there is the belief that one has to work for everything here. If they cannot work they can beg everyone for charity. But even then there is a level of honor in themselves. These men choosing to die with dignity then to beg family, friends, neighbours or strangers for help with something as simple as asking for food.

A harsh side of me thinks to agree with the Japanese, that it's not my responsibility to care for those who cannot care for themselves. There are many things they could have done, eaten local plants, begged for money or food, gotten even the simplest of demeaning jobs for the smallest scraps from anyone.
But the other side of me realizes I'm living right now on the charity of others. That I'm in a tough time right now and I could very well be dead already if I didn't have friends, family and co-workers willing to support my every need at the moment. I'd surly be a goner if I didn't have a job (I've been unemployed for a while which is why I'm so poor at the moment)

So much I have, so much others don't. As an outsider looking in (after all I'm but a Gaijin) what can I do to solve the issues of homelessness or even the lack of social welfare in Japan which creates such a level of food insecurity in such a land of pleanty?