As time went on, more and more people gathered in the Manila bar. The old, the young, one came, and three or five people came in groups.

Female clerks are interspersed with towels, drinks, and things of one kind or another. These Filipino female clerks who work in bars in Manila are able to send 100,000 yen a month to their hometown when business is good.

If you encounter a cold bar business, you don't know. You also need to live, and Tokyo's high level of consumption is also world-renowned and world-class.

They work six days a week, while the Manila bar is open 19 hours a day. If you come during the day, no more than 6 p.m., the cost of personal consumption will be halved.

While Kishimoto and others are drinking, various topics are still going on. Many of them think highly of themselves, thinking that even if they are in a civilian Manila bar, they are completely different from the taxi drivers who come to the store to consume.

It's like some shogi players, who feel good about themselves, always think that they are higher than mahjong players and don't know that there are N levels.

They have souls and the ability to think independently, while they are just a group of people with boring souls, boring lives, muddy, mediocre and mediocre, and they don't even know why they live until they die.

At the same time, Kishimoto leaned sideways and stretched out one ear to eavesdrop on the conversation of the people in the booth next to him. In his mind, there is no such "dirty thoughts of cultural people" in his head.

People in different professions have different lives and experiences. Even if he was a rich second generation in his previous life, he didn't mean to look down on the poor at all. In this life, he is a high-ranking economic emperor chaebol, and he still has no intention of looking down on the poor.

Middle-aged and elderly taxi drivers are also people. Even if the personal life is not very satisfactory, it is much better than these Filipinos in Japan.

Even if they become naturalized in Japan, they will still be subject to various forms of discrimination from the current mainstream society. Their children are often the easiest and first to be bullied in Japanese schools, and it will never be less if they are sent back to the Philippines.

For this reason, they are powerless. Could it be that you really take your children back to your hometown of the Philippines? That is absolutely impossible.

Even if they wanted to, the children who were bullied would not want to. They are all like a mirror, and if they stay in Tokyo, no matter how hard and tired they are, even if they live in the slums, they will have no problem with food and clothing.

If you go back to the Philippines, it will be another unbearable situation. POOR FILIPINOS LIVING IN THE SLUMS OF MANILA CONSIDER A TRASHY FRIED CHICKEN CALLED "PAGPAG" AS AN ALTERNATIVE DELICACY.

What is "PAGPAG"? It is a kind of meat that is sorted from junk food poured out of fast food restaurants such as McDonald's and KFC, that is, fried chicken that others have not eaten or eaten.

There are a lot of filthy things such as phlegm on them. There is a special person who manually sorts the remaining meat from the chicken bones in places where the ground is full of maggots and flies.

If you come across a more complete one, you will leave it for the people in your family to eat. THEY THEN SELL THE MEAT TO SMALL TRADERS WHO SPECIALIZE IN PROCESSING IT INTO "PAGPAG".

SMALL TRADERS WHO SELL "PAGPAG" REPROCESS THE MEAT AND SELL IT TO THE POOR WHO NEED IT. Even if the poor people who buy "PAGPAG" know what they are buying meat for, the reason for buying it is the word "cheap".

MANY PEOPLE BECAME ILL AFTER EATING "PAGPAG". Even so, it did not stop the poor in Manila's slums from pursuing it.

Whether it is self-comforting and deception, or genuine ignorance, when they have no other choice, they all agree that it is not the fault of the "PAGPAG" itself, but the fault of not being dealt with.

For this reason, Masayoshi Kishimoto can't help but think of Jack?? London's non-fiction work, Dwellers of the Abyss. He wrote about the living conditions and patterns of people in the slums of London's East End in 1902.

The one that most memorably brings to justice Kishimoto is Jack?? London has included an account of household expenses in the book, which is the most direct reflection of the miserable situation of low-wage life.

Not only that, but the working hours are long and even the work is unstable. This is not enough to eat and wear, and it is also commonplace. It's better to even be a soldier than to live in London's East End.

George Bernard Shaw once said that soldiers appeared to be heroic and patriotic defenders of the country, but in reality they were unfortunate poor people who sacrificed their bodies as cannon fodder in order to obtain a fixed ration, a place to live and clothes to wear.

This is just like when China was backward, the economy was poor, and the common people were hungry for meat, and even plague pork (pigs that died of disease, the meat would be completely red) would be bought and eaten.

However, objectively comparing the two, the poor in the slums of Manila in the Philippines are much more miserable. It is not an exaggeration to describe their living conditions as cold and cold.

As soon as the people at the bottom of Japanese society reach middle age, many people begin to live alone. It's not that they like it, but there is a kind of helplessness in their hearts.

In Japan, people who work as taxi drivers are generally middle-aged and elderly. They will come to the Manila bar after the shift, just to squeeze out the loneliness in their hearts and find a spiritual harbor to dock into.

They don't need to know who Kenji Miyazawa is, what great masterpieces he has written, and how good the works are, for them, it doesn't work at all.

This will not bring them the most direct increase in economic income, nor will it allow them to be comforted mentally and spiritually.

Only in a place like the Manila Bar can they find solace in their hearts and spirits from the female staff. That's what they want to be spiritually enjoyable.

Located in Takenozuka, Adachi Ward, a northern suburb of Tokyo, there are more than 50 small Filipino-run bars like Manila Bar.

Although Adachi Ward is one of the 23 wards of Tokyo, it is home to one of the three major slums in Japan, and there are many delinquent youths, and the average price of houses in this area is the lowest in Tokyo. It can be regarded as an "isolated island on land" in Tokyo, and it is often ranked at the bottom of the 23 wards.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Thief Family," which won the Palme d'Or at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, not only shows the audience the dark side behind Tokyo's glamour and beauty, but also exposes the problems and contradictions that exist in Japanese society.

This movie takes place on the border of Arakawa Ward and Adachi Ward. Arakawa Ward, even if it is also one of Tokyo's 23 wards, is a marginalized area.

Arakawa Ward in the Edo period was a field of farmland. Since the Meiji period, many factories have been built using the water of the Arakawa River, and industrialization has been promoted.

Today, the sense of existence is very low, and there is not even a commercial area like Akabane, which is more worthy of the word "waste" in his name.

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