Akio Watanabe knows what a dead end feels like.
The 34-year-old native of Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan found himself one of a growing legion of "netto cafe nanmin (Net-cafe refugees)" at the end of March, when the major temp agency he had worked for suddenly terminated his contract — leaving him three days to pack up and leave his company's dormitory.
Watanabe (not his real name) had a hard enough life before that. As the only child of a divorced, alcoholic father, he got a job at a local stationery company after graduating from high school. But when he was 26, it went bust — this just two years after the death of his father.