For Japan, and especially this recession-wracked western city, hosting the World Cup is a dream come true. Trains, planes and hotels will be full.
Restaurants and bars will serve hundreds of thousands of visiting fans. And local economies will get a much-needed boost.
The World Cup is nothing short of a nightmare for Hiroshi Sato and his living mates, who reside just across the road from Osaka's Nagai Stadium. They're homeless and have the added misfortune of building their cardboard houses and tents near one of Japan's World Cup venues. Local police have been dropping by to let them know they'll soon be evicted.
"We'll just have to find another place to stay," complains Sato, 55, who has lived on Osaka's streets since losing his job at an air-conditioner factory just over three years ago.
Sato is among the rapidly growing ranks of Japan's homeless.
Almost unheard of five years ago, at least 30,000 live on the street, mostly in Tokyo and here in Japan's second-biggest urban area. Their increasing presence is the most obvious sign that the nation's 11-year slump is hitting some very hard.
The homeless "are growing in number and this has become a huge social issue," says Tsuyoshi Inaba, who works with the Resource Center for Homeless Human Rights.
Stories like Sato's were never supposed to exist amid Japan's cradle-to-the-grave lifetime employment system. Compared with cities like New York or Washington, Japan's homeless problem seems trivial. In general, homeless here aren't the public nuisance folks in other nations claim street-dwellers to be. Overt drunkenness, drug use and panhandling aren't major social problems in Japan.
But in a nation that's always gravitated more towards socialism than every-person-for-his-or-herself capitalism, even a handful of homeless is shocking to Japanese. It's a reminder that far from ending, Japan's malaise is deepening and manifesting itself in ways that seemed unthinkable a few years ago. It also could be a harbinger of things to come.
In a nation suffering from a crisis of confidence, the sight of more homeless people collecting cans and sleeping in train stations is a jolting one. For no longer is Japan's downturn hitting those toiling at the margins of society, but those at the center of it. It's now possible for salarymen who earn a handsome wage one day to be yen-less and homeless the next.
Increasing homelessness complicates things for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as he tries to trim government spending.
Revitalizing Japan means many deadbeat companies may go bust and downtrodden areas will have to do without economy-boosting construction projects. Bottom line, unemployment will skyrocket.
Japan may be in its third recession in a decade, but one hardly gets that impression. Telltale signs of recession one finds in other nations are curiously absent here. Because Japan's slump is largely a corporate one, not a consumer one, most are still employed and socking away savings. So far, banks have kept fragile companies afloat, cushioning households from the pain.
When there's a recession virtually anywhere else, you know it. But in cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Sapporo, swanky shopping districts are still abuzz. Glitzy stores are packed with people plopping down hundreds of dollars for names like Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Whiskey bars are full of office workers dropping US$20 for a shot of single-malt scotch.
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