OSAKA (Bloomberg) Within two months of losing his job packing shelves at a cold-storage company in Osaka, Toshiyuki Miki said, he was homeless. He counts himself among the many people worldwide whose life has been turned upside down in the wake of the "Lehman Shock."
Lacking the ¥60,000 a month he needs to pay rent, Miki, 40, sleeps in cardboard boxes under the elevated Hanshin expressway in Umeda, Osaka's central business district. It's his home as the global recession triggered by the implosion of Wall Street banks batters Japan. About 460,000 people have lost their jobs since the Sept. 15 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to government data.
"I never realized it would affect me in this way," said Miki, who picked up the Japanese phrase "Lehman Shokku" from the pages of discarded newspapers. "Before, I could always find some kind of job, but now there's nothing."
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