Last Christmas Eve, Ririko Saito and her 11-year-old daughter gathered some plastic bottles, pots and a kettle and made several trips to a nearby park to get water. Their utility had just turned off the tap after months of unpaid bills.
"I was going to take care of it as soon as I got my paycheck in a few days," the 49-year-old single mother said. "I figured they wouldn't be so callous as to cut us off at that time of year. I figured wrong."
Saito, who works part-time caring for the elderly in a Tokyo hospital and gets welfare to supplement her salary, represents a growing army of poor in a nation that continues to pride itself on being an egalitarian society despite a decades-long rise in poverty.