Japanese Homeless Camp, Complete With Solar Panel

If it's that awesome why is the guy still homeless?

It looks to me like he has a home, even a "neat" one.

I don't know if I would consider him homeless if he has been living in the same structure for years. This is definitely challenging my definition of being homeless.

Well hell, hire the guy to make a ton of these and sell them. Use them for camping trips, etc etc.
Or make more of them for other homeless people.

"The Japanese are just better than the rest of us."

LOL - that's funny.

Since we're making wide spread generalizations - here's my take.

The Japanese are emotionally repressed xenophobic sheeple that couldn't create/invent their way out of a wet paper bag.

Since I several Japanese scientists as friends, you can only imagine how interesting our diner parties usually are.

“The Japanese are just better than the rest of us.”

Right... case in point:

http://gizmodo.com/5159074/image-of-the-day-why-japan-why

Is that the toilet paper holder over the TV? I think I see how that could come in handy... :P

@VonSkippy: "The Japanese are emotionally repressed xenophobic sheeple that couldn’t create/invent their way out of a wet paper bag."

Not everybody needs to be creative. If there's anything I've learned from graduate studies, it is that you need one creative guy (the prof) and many, many, many technically adept people (grad students, post docs) working for him.

Too many creative people actually ruin things (artists colony, anyone?)

I have to agree with the other people. This man is not really homeless. He just lives in a tent, not homeless.

@Alex. So what happens when the prof. is NOT inventive and only thinks he is? Then all those toe-the-line grads, post docs, etc just churn out pedestrian drivel time and time again because they were never taught how to think, only how to memorize, and they were raised from day one never ever argue with your seniors (which luckily like all "me now generation kids" is slowly going away). Japan is certainly a interesting place/society/people/culture - but "better then the rest of us" - hardly (although I guess you would have to define "rest of us" a tad better).

Very neat! Elegant use of space. Contrast that with American FEMA trailers, ha!

As far as the Japanese being better.. well of course the author just wanted a 'sting' to get our attention.

Dude's not homeless ... that's a regular Japanese detached house! Everything in Japan in teeny-tiny: cars, hotel rooms, cell phones, and houses. :)

i want one. i wont ever have to travel to work again. and least it works during floods.

Pshaw... I can think of several Neatoramians who would probably over-think and over-design their homeless shelter if they were in a similar situation. Hell... half of you would probably do a dissertation on it and blog about it from a public library. *giggles*

I prefer to think that the Japanese are a powerful creative civilization that experienced the most rapid and deep modernization in history, though tragically, like almost everyone else, they did so on the backs of other people to lower their costs at home. Also, like everyone else, they are "creative" by building extensively on the backs of other great civilizations. And as to their "superiority" at schools - if you understand the differences in their education system from ours (for instance our tendency to allow far more egalitarian access to standardized testing and higher education), well, let's just say we're all human and roughly equal given similar institutional and structural conditions. But Japanese robots look cooler than American robots. Of course OURS actually kill people. Da da da dum.

Americans would score much higher -like we used to- if we were, like Japan, more ethnically homogenous -like we used to be.

Massive influxes of poor, low IQ immigrants will dent a countries "average" education rankings. But smart kids in this country are still doing just fine, and can compete anywhere in the world.

"ethnically homogenous"
interesting ideology you've got going on there.

note : here in Europe we have been sleeping with strangers for centuries, it's worked out fine for us.
BTW: In case you don't know, Europe is that country in France, near Australia.

Just reporting the facts. I'm sorry they may not fit your ideal utopia. The real world has a funny way of doing that.

I wasn't naming the ethnicities, but South American Indians (mexicans) score very low in IQ tests, they are only above those of African descent.

Intelligence is at least 70 % genetic, according to every study done on the subject.

this works and would be cheep and easy,,
THIS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED BY A GOV TO HAPPEN!
just like taking a bunch of FREE pallets ,
nailing them together with 2x4's and
throwing a polly tarp over it
so i have a place to sleep!

i hate every .org .gov etc
"our vision , our mission statement,"
a bunch of burocrats make their living comming up
with a $20,000 10 X 10 desaster shed ,for the homless

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20070628/dh1-disaster-house-is-a-puzzling-yet-pricey-alternative-to-homelessness/

Excellent effort to promote Green Energy for the homless people. Congratulations to Japanese technologists !!

PsychoBob speaks the truth. People believe that multiculturalism being a positive thing is some kind of absolute universal truth. Anyone who shows dissent from this default position, even if based on Enlightenment Principles, is immediately cast as some kind of strange extremist.

Except the funny thing is...a vast tract of people have these thoughts in private, they just don't want to articulate them in public for fear of the Intelligentsia's reaction. A group who espouse multiculturalism not due to any honest conscious belief in it as an ideology as an end in itself, but because their default mode is to believe society always needs to be in a state of flux.

In an age of mass deceit, speaking honestly is a revolutionary act.

This is so bad!
"The homeless man who was living in it worked for a camera company and knew his electronics "

This is the return of the fucking man eating manchaster capitalism:

Workers in hightech jobs who can not afford real housing.

This is not inovativ! This is sad!

JohnDoe. PsychoBob speaks the truth? Puh-lease. It doesn't matter if "People believe that multiculturalism being a positive thing is some kind of absolute universal truth" or not, because the continued progression of multiculturalism is an absolute universal FACT. And "anyone who shows dissent from this default position" frankly, is generating a discussion on how to change yesterday's weather, which is what causes "the Intelligentsia's reaction". The vast tract of people who have these thoughts, would be wise to keep them private, because it makes them sound antiquated and unaware of what is going on in the world. I am not "espousing" multiculturalism due to any conscious or unconscious belief. I am accepting is as a reality. This ship has sailed and has been sailing since, well the beginning of people and culture. It is not a my "default mode" to believe society always needs to be in a state of flux. It is simply a "absolute universal" FACT that society always IS in a state of flux. Matter of fact, it is my understanding that EVERYTHING - EVERYWHERE - is ALWAYS - in a state of flux. You might want to get with the program because multiculturalism, is like a snowball it the way that it cant be stopped. Reality is not "mass deceit". And speaking honestly is not a revolutionary act. I speak honestly every time I say my name. Speaking your mind, when your beliefs differ from the majority CAN be revolutionary, but not when your beliefs are, well ridiculous. Not when the majority is ON the ship and it's out of view, and you're idea is to try to keep it from leaving.

"The Japanese are just better than the rest of us."

WHAT??? This is the measuring stick you want to use to determine "better"?

That's pretty high praise for a guy who stuck a solar panel on the side of a cardboard box and covered it with a blue tarp! Someone might huff and puff and blow his little cardboard shanty down.

I'll reserve my praise for people who use actual building materials.