Do they know its Christmas?
Posted on January 12, 2010
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The Colonel
Every Christmas Kozmoz Japan sends a Christmas Feast to a different group of homeless in the Kansai region. This year we chose a homeless group near Fuse Eki in East Osaka. Our local contact, the Batman of Fuse arranged things on site and our volunteers and interns gathered at the Kyoto Center and made the feast. Extra large bentos with lots of energy and vitamins were topped off with Yuzu Basil Chicken Breasts slow roasted to perfection. They were gleefully received.
One of our ?American interns asked an interesting question. “Do we often get homeless dressed in suits taking advantage of food and healthcare support?” A recent phenomenon where company workers loose their houses with their jobs. And not just single people, families as well have been left in the cold.
Losing a house can be traumatic and not as easy to deal with as in other countries. In Japan, in order to get a house a person needs a cosigner, a report of residence, a job, first and last months rent and in many cases a gift of between 1000 dollars and 5000 dollars is common. This can be pretty difficult for someone recently unemployed and practically impossible for someone does not have family with a substantial cushion. For now, this is something that Kozmoz Japan has little ability to address but we will do our best to help educate about these kind of little known repercussions of more well known social problems.
We hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas and New Years, and moreover helped to make someone else’ s Holidays special.?At least the homeless in Fuse, Osaka know that it is Christmas.
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