Lost in Manboo

What is life like when you live in a four-square-metre room for the majority of the day? This short documentary seeks to investigate those who choose to live in a Manboo – small cyber cafe rooms in Japan.

The interior of the rooms are glazed white with a computer screen dimly lighting up the darkness. Life in here is seperated from a buzzling modern Japan, a small sanctuary to some and a tomb to others.

This is what modern Japanese cyber-cafes offer, a place to rent – open every day 24/7 – where you can have your own corner and surf the net.

Most customers just spend an hour or two here but there are thousands who spend their lives in them, sleeping, eating, watching the world go by through the connection to the internet.

To explore what life really is like, Life in Manboo finds permanent internet cafe residents and get a small idea of how things really are.

Those who chose to live in the small rooms are usually out of luck when it comes to money, forced into the situation of bleak living quarters.

But it is a home for them, even though they sleep on the floor.