Lets begin with Maruyama zoo.
During exam week at Yamanote, me and the 5 other foreign exchange students had nothing to do, so we spent most of our time studying together in the study center, but on the second last day of exams they took all of us to Sapporo's zoo for the day. We were all pretty excited to just be out of school for a day and to see somewhere new.
It was the most depressing place I have been in my entire life.
The animals where in very unrealistic enclosures that were much too small, and dirty.
Everything was rusty and in need of repair. The animals were dull colored and looked sad.
Lions were in a desert environment, with sand, in a small space on a very steep hillside. Tigers had a similar enclosure with more plants. The Giraffes were almost gray in color, and ate branches tied to the walls. The bears had brutally small environments and really nothing to do but sit, or sit in a pool. The polar bear's enclosure was kind of dangerous in how it was set up, and the bear itself was covered in some kind of green fungus. Giant fruit bats with like two foot wingspans or whatever were in an all glass box that couldn't have been 3 feet across, in full daylight. The penguins where in a very rusty pool and the only thing that separated them from people was a thin plastic mesh that was torn to shreds anyway. They also had armbands that had been put on when they were young, and the wing had grown around it. THE SEALS had it worse by far. these ocean animals where in literally less than three feet of water, and the one I saw was completely blind and its eyes were gray and glazed, I'm pretty sure that from some parasite in the water I read about. Two feet of water is not enough at all. I looked Maruyama zoo up on the internet also, and all I found in English was another tourists review, and it sounded very similar to mine.
Japanese zoo's have been in trouble with animal rights dudes for a long time, and Japan as a whole is said to have little regard for animal rights. This particular zoo was just a dirty park full of Japanese 6 year olds in school uniforms watching animals waiting to die.
Now something that gets me even more angry;
I wrote previously that I haven't seen any homeless people and that everyone seems to have perfectly comfortable middle class lives. I mentioned this to the other other exchange boys at school and they gave me a string of extremely shocking information, which was then backed up and expanded on by the English speaking Japanese teacher.
"You haven't seen one yet, eh?"
no.
"yea we see them in the subway station sometimes"
-Sensei jumps in and explains to me that you do not see many homeless In Sapporo because they're all dead. They die of cold, and you sometimes see them dead and frozen in a park or station she told me the Hokkaido (northern japan) word for homeless is the same for a frozen fish or something. I have also stated before that there is not a whole lot of drug use in Japan, so please understand these human beings are not drug addicts, probably not alcoholics, or even mentally ill. These are people, whole families even that lose their jobs and can not find a new one in time to keep their home. There are apparently no homeless shelters or rehabilitation programs here, Panhandling is dishonorable, and there is no way a Japanese is going to offer money or a hand out to a homeless person. My friend, a New Zealand exchange student said he gave ￥1000 (10 Canadian dollars) to a homeless man once and "he shit his pants over it".
I found a long article on Google about this from another Canadian living in japan, they said:
I have been told that the homeless in Japan are on the streets because of shame and their own accord. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their social positions. They are on the streets because they are too ashamed to admit to their families their changed circumstances. How tragic! Honor and shame values continue to exercise a pivotal role in Japanese life despite its Westernization even though these values have been pushed to the background in the West.
Why is it that the individual must bear the brunt of a society's mishaps and economic failures? No one deserves to be on the streets.
It can happen to anyone. It can happen to you, to a family member or to a dear friend. Marital breakup, domestic violence, child abuse, mental illness, job loss can all contribute to someone falling through the cracks and ending up on the streets.
http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/3540
So yea, a fresh crop dies of cold each year, and the government and media try not to talk about it too much, and especially not let it become part of their international appearance. There are no programs trying to get these unfortunate people back on their feet, not even a soup kitchen. There is an American teacher at my school and he explained to me that Japanese often ignore something if they do not want to see it through to its end, as in if someone looks lost, and a Japanese offers to help them, they will follow through with helping them until they get where they need to go, if they do not have the time or desire to help them they will simply keep walking. He said it went farther than that, and that someone could fall down on the ice and people would simply ignore it because they didn't want to get involved, I was a little shocked at this, but I was more shocked when I saw a girl fall off her bike at a crosswalk quite painfully and although she was tangled and trapped under her bike, no one helped her up, or even turned their head. I was most shocked today though, when I found out this can go as far as men and women freezing or starving to death in the street.
I do not consider myself a bleeding heart, and I know for sure my friends don't...
Dinner's ready, and there's a crazy game show on,
There are things I really like here, and things I really don't.
