As part of the research for Rest, I’ve been interviewing digital nomads, people who combine work and travel, running their businesses or doing freelance work in coworking spaces in Thailand, Indonesia, Colombia, and other (to Europeans and Americans) exotic locations. It’s a fascinating way of life, and one I’ve had lots of fun learning about.

Today, via the Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims, I ran across its dark twin: Japanese workers who live in Internet cafes. They’re subject of a new documentary, Net Cafe Refugees. (It’s part of a larger series called Japan’s Disposable Workers, supported by the Pulitzer Center, and which also has videos on worker suicide and the growing problems of homeless retirees.)

The video is below, but you really should watch the full-sized version to read the subtitles. (If you’re bilingual, hats off to you!)

Japan’s Disposable Workers: Net Cafe Refugees from MediaStorm on Vimeo.

While the hook of “living in an Internet cafe” is what draws you in, these are essentially SROs, single resident occupancy hotels. SROs used to be common in big cities the United States, particularly in port and gateway cities like San Francisco and New York. (San Francisco still has a fair number of these hotels, and about 30,000 people live in them.) They’re not great, but it’s better than being homeless.

As director and photojournalist Shiho Fukada told Vice Motherboard’s Kari Paul,

“I decided to make this series because I wanted to shine a light on some of the extreme conditions people are forced to work in Japan, and I wanted to show how people are treated more and more like disposable machines,” she said.

Maahable writer Adario Strange, who lived in Japan for five years, calls it “disturbingly accurate.”

This is why my book has already been picked up by a Japanese publisher.