Worldwide, billions of people are losing their jobs and losing their homes. What does that tell us about the nature of home?
Photo: pareeerica
The New York Times recently ran a story about unemployed Japanese men who sleep in tiny bunks that are stacked on top of each other.
Shocking? Sad?
My initial reaction was that sleeping in Japanese capsule hotels is no big deal. Capsules are safe, clean, and centrally located, with traditional Japanese baths and easy access to fast public transport.
I’ve stayed in Japanese capsules a couple of times, though my favorite budget accommodation choice in Japanese cities was always the 24 hour internet cafe with private cubicle.
After all, who needs a full-on hotel room when you just want to sleep for a few hours? You’re in Shinjuku, man!
But there’s a difference between crashing in a capsule for a night, and using one as a home of last resort.
Home – reduced to a tiny locker in a vast, heartless city – is a deeply saddening idea.
The importance of how we look at our homes is the powerful message in The Recess Ends, an excellent new documentary film about the American recession.
Home – reduced to a tiny locker in a vast, heartless city – is a deeply saddening idea.
The Recess Ends opens with a man talking about homes. He speaks about Americans who’ve stayed inside their big homes for the past decade and are just now starting to emerge, take stock of their communities, and take true ownership over their collective future.
Worldwide, billions of people are losing their jobs, losing their homes and losing their livelihoods. It’s happening in rural Africa, India and China, and now it’s happening in rich countries like America and Japan.
Most Americans and Japanese, though, are still rich enough to barricade themselves in shrinking homes, getting more and more frustrated and alone.
Reflecting on shrinking Japanese homes and The Recess Ends reminds me of one of the most profound lessons of travel – that home is not a building, an apartment, or a bunk.
Home is a community. Home is a refuge. Home is wherever our loved ones live.
What does home mean to you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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I definitely think our ideas around home are shifting and changing. And as with most changes, we can see both the positive – connecting to cultures and heritages other than our own, choosing our family instead of simply being give one – AND the negative – lack of center, tiny roof over our head, if at all, less community. As someone for whom home has never meant a comfie place to land, I seek it out in the world. But sometimes, it feels like running away from dealing with what’s at the core.
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I’m not sure I have a home anymore…
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I wrote about this on my blog. I’m still trying to figure it all out.
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Since leaving “home” in 2005 I dont feel I have one anymore. It used to be my childhood home, but we’ve all moved out and moved on. Perhaps that is why I keep traveling, because I am still looking for “home”. I have places I “live”, but I dont consider it home. Not sure I will ever find it either. And that’s OK.
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Using the age old adage, Home is where the heart is, I must admit my home is a green Hilleberg Nallo-3 tent. I’ve safely camped through snow, hail, rain, wind, and lightning storms and visited three contintents with my humble home. Thankfully, I can honestly say I do not regret a single night spent beneath its thin nylon shelter.
The moments spent in the tent form many of my fondest memories. I cannot wait to head back into the wilderness, where the struggles and headaches of modern life have yet to leave there mark. There is nothing as comfortable as home.
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Just wrote a blog post about this. I’ve tried to seek out a new one for the past 10 years, but I’ve always fallen back on the one that I knew for the first 18 years of my life.
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Community, refuge, loved ones…couldn’t agree more.
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Home can be anywhere really. Home is better when you can share it with friends, family and people you love. It’s even better when it’s like a lab where you formulate your master plans for your life. I haven’t quite pinned down my sense of place yet though, so I hope to have a better definition in a few years!
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I left a home that was never home when I was nineteen.
The first thing that became my new home was a city that I had a love affair with, learning every part, sleeping wherever I could afford rent for awhile, moving on every few months. Eventually the love affair ended as my horizons broadened and I didn’t feel the same rushing sense of homecoming I used to get when pulling into the city limits by plane, train, or automobile.
In the city I loved I found an apartment that years later various people I dated would refer to as “that place that really suited you.” It was a great apartment and, for a year, was absolutely home and the epicenter of everything important in my life. It held great parties, great friends, and great sunny Saturday mornings alone. I gave it up for an opportunity abroad and still think of it fondly, I checked on it and almost wrote a note to the new owners when I was back in the city.
The next thing that became a home was a person I fell in love with who had a much more stable life than me. His home, but more so his presence in it, became a home and a resting place for me. In his presence, I would feel a calmness and be able to stop moving. His stability gave me place in the world.
I got restless and went to the other side of the globe, literally, and found a small community full of people like me, who welcomed me with open arms. It was something like how in almost famous the protagonist says “I have to go home” and Kate Hudson’s character responds “You are home.” Home can be a bunch of other people, a community in a specific place. There, I live somewhat communally, sleeping, eating, and living generally with people I love, mostly those who also left a non-home to find it.
Right now I’m far away from home. I live in an apartment in a city, by all means comfortable and quirky, but nothing about it feels like home. I’m working eight more months, going “home” for five months, and finding a new adventure.
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Very nice piece. I remember reading Candice’s piece about this recently too. Both are excellent. I have never felt that my dwelling was my home. I am at home when I am with family and friends. I am on the road now with my husband and we definitely don’t feel at home. We are happy with each other, but it is good to know that we have family and friends at home to go back to.
I agree, home is a community and family, not what you live in.↵ -
i always believe home was where i want to live happily, wherever it might be, but now that i have been on the road for a while i feel home is where my family is back in italy.
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Interestingly, I was just thinking about this. My boyfriend just returned back to Chile for two weeks (he was up in California for a while with me) and when we talk, he tells me he wants to come back home to San Diego with me. I tell him I want to come home (to Chile where he is even though I have never lived there with him before). We both find that home is where the other person is, even if we dont have a house there.
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