Airmen Ray Ryan, left, and Jeudy Craig, both of Yokota Air Base, Japan, serve meals to homeless people at Ueno Park in Tokyo, March 15, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
TOKYO — Approximately 180 people recently turned up at Ueno Park for a free meal courtesy of a homeless outreach project organized by the Yokota Air Base chapel and a local church.
Sixteen service members and two Air Force spouses joined 40 members of the End of The Earth Mission Church in Tokyo to feed and clothe homeless people during the March 15 event in one of Tokyo’s most popular parks.
“I feel like it connects us a lot closer with our Japanese locals and that we do get a lot of good results out of this,” Air Force Staff Sgt. Alex Cook-Ransdell, a volunteer organizer, told Stars and Stripes during the three-hour event. “It makes the people who volunteer from the church happy; it makes us happy for what we do with the military. Overall, it is a good experience.”
Sixteen service members and two Air Force spouses joined 40 members of End of The Earth Mission Church in Tokyo to feed and clothe homeless people in the city’s Ueno Park, March 15, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
Air Force spouse Lorraine Cook-Ransdell serves meals to homeless people at Tokyo’s Ueno Park, March 15, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
Staff Sgt. Angel Ramirez, of Yokota Air Base, Japan, serves food during a homeless outreach project at Ueno Park in Tokyo, March 15, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
The number of people fed that day represented about half the 402 homeless people in Tokyo, according to the metropolitan government’s website. The world’s largest city has a population of 13.5 million people.
Across Japan, only 3,000 people are confirmed homeless, according to a January 2023 nationwide survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
That number is likely much larger, according to advocates for homeless people who count people with nowhere else to sleep but businesses like internet cafes.
“If the number of those so-called ‘internet cafe refugees,’ who are invisible homeless that are not reflected in the surveys are added, it is believed that there are a great number of people that are spending the night at unstable living environments even now,” said the website for Big Issue Japan, a magazine sold by homeless individuals to earn money.
For the March 15 event, the base chapel and the mission collected more than 2,900 pounds of food, clothing and other supplies, Cook-Ransdell said.
The church group erected tents in the park for food preparation. In a separate space, those waiting for food gathered for a message from the church members. Finally, they lined up for a meal near the tents.
Passersby stopped to watch as volunteers unloaded rice, snacks and freeze-dried foods from their vehicles, then washed and dried dishes when the meal concluded.
Despite Tokyo’s relatively low official homeless count, their numbers appear to be growing, Cook-Ransdell said.
“Today was probably the most we have had,” he said. “Even from December to now, it’s been significantly higher.”
Shim Nayoung, a mission leader, said the church hosts similar events for Tokyo’s homeless people four days a week at three locations in the city, including Ueno Park.
She said some of the city’s homelessness is caused by unemployment.
“It is not special to be homeless; anyone has the possibility to become homeless,” she said.
