One of the sad things about knowing a few things about Japan is that you don’t get to indulge in the fantasy of a nerd paradise on the other side of the world.

Sure, not everyone over there has it as difficult as the person in the video below. The point is, his situation is not as rare as one might think. And that’s especially jarring considering that it was just three decades ago that Japan enjoyed a brief stint as the world’s number two economy, due in large part to electronics manufacturing.

Here’s the video:

The video shows as a man, having nearly fallen asleep on a train after a long shift, picks out a container of ramen as a meal before he seeks out a net café to spend the night in.

Which itself is a fascinating topic. Japan has a culture of net café refugees, where working class men rent out a cubicle overnight in a net café because that’s the cheapest form of lodging available.

And it’s not for lack of employment, either. The guy works overtime for a company that’s barely staying afloat. There’s a culture of loyalty to one’s company in Japan which people regard their company as family, but that’s not the stated reason why the man is trying so hard with limited means. The reason he gave was to support his parents, who are too old to work.

One question that immediately came to mind was, what about children of his own? He was already at the point of life in which he could start thinking about his own family. Yet, he was a single guy working to support his parents, and otherwise living in destitution.

If a situation like his isn’t rare, it would go a long way in explaining why Japan’s birth rate is so low. There would also be the fact that, in a sense, Japan’s relatively high IQ is counting against it. Smart people tend to wait until they’re ready, while stupid people jump right into what they want to do, thinking little of the consequences.

As the guy walks the streets, he passes by people who seem to be living relatively well in comparison, some with smiles on their faces. But when you understand the tendency that the Japanese have to put on a smile in spite of their circumstances, even those smiles become easy to doubt.

But going to the topic of the video, the guy stops by a convenience store, picks out a cup of ramen, a cheap candy bar, and a bottle of green tea, finds a convenient place to dine, and does so. He picks out the cheapest cup of ramen, carefully noting the calorie content, as this is where he’d get much of the energy from this meal.

He’s got me beat when it comes to sheer patheticness. But this does remind me of back when I worked retail, and attempted to live off of what little I made. I walked to and from work, and had pasta to eat nearly every day, just because that was cheap. But at least I lived in an apartment.

And while I’m getting nostalgic about difficult times, there was a time when I was a dormitory student, and had arrived back at the campus right when the dining hall closed for the evening, and wouldn’t reopen until 10:30am the next day. So, I searched cushions in the dormitory lobby for change, then went to a nearby grocery store for a pack of ramen.

But when I see a video about some guy in Japan living a difficult life, I can hope that there will be a time when he can look back on the situation he is now in as a nostalgic time of his own.