In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
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Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#2Isn’t there one in America also ? Is the market significantly smaller in America ?
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#3Isn’t there one in America also ? Is the market significantly smaller in America ?
in American it's target is people who will die alone and the objective is cleaning up financially.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#4Was that the entirety of the apartment in photos, minus the bathroom? Even by New York standards, that's pretty tiny.
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#5Was that the entirety of the apartment in photos, minus the bathroom? Even by New York standards, that's pretty tiny.
Have you been in a Japanese hotel room? It’s a bed, plus about a few square feet of access pathway into the bed.
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#6Was that the entirety of the apartment in photos, minus the bathroom? Even by New York standards, that's pretty tiny.
From first-hand experience, Japanese apartments can be very tiny and pack a lot in a small space. Something like ~20 m^2 / 250 ft^2 range.
E.g. see photos here: https://apartments.gaijinpot.com/en/rent/view/216237 (about $1,100 USD/mo)
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#7Reminds me of this documentary about Sweden. 50% of Swedes live alone, and 25% die alone. Often it takes a long time for someone to notice, as pensions come in to the account automatically, and the rent is also paid automatically.
https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-...
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#8Recommend also reading this beautiful and very sad NYT article from a couple of months ago.
"A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-d...
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#9Isn’t there one in America also ? Is the market significantly smaller in America ?
in American it's target is people who will die alone and the objective is cleaning up financially. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...
That's one of the most disturbing stories I've read in a while. It's unbelievable, felt like I was reading science fiction. I wonder if there are ways to protect oneself in old age from being a victim of that...
Re: In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone
#10This is more about hospitals and less about solitary apartments, but there's a program in the US called No One Dies Alone: http://www.how-we-die.org/howwedie/story?sid=8. I'm really glad there are people like that.