A tent village set up in a Tokyo park for the country's growing number of jobless has filled up so fast it has been moved to a government building to accommodate the overflow. The government offered a ministry hall late Friday to house more than 250 unemployed and homeless people after the first comers quickly filled the tents, according to the shelter's Japanese-language Web site.
The tent village that volunteers and unions opened on New Year's Eve highlights the serious social costs of the global recession for the world's second largest economy. The government estimates 85,000 part-time workers will lose their jobs between October and March. Temporary workers have been the first to be fired in the latest wave of cutbacks as Japan's exports and company investments crashed after the US financial crisis.