"An empty water bottle/adult diaper can become a luxury in the middle of the night to avoid putting on your clothes/shoes and exiting the van in the coldness"
For anyone who's spent any time sleeping in a van or car in public parking, this feels like gently worded subtext that fits in with this from the 'safety' section:
> While sleeping in normal parking I think it is important to keep discrete so people will not bother you and you will not annoy anyone.
In much of the world, going outside to pee in the bushes in a populated area carries a nonzero risk of attention from law enforcement and a progression to sleeping outside minus the now impounded van.
Public exposure convictions/registration from people who are innocently peeing somewhere they shouldn't is vanishingly rare. As in, I've never seen a report of a conviction that I found credible, but if I did, I'd bet lots of money that you couldn't find a second one. What I HAVE found is lots of people on the registry for indecent exposure who tell their friends "I was just peeing in alley, I swear", but I do not count those as credible.
Diaper is gross, but peeing in a bottle while sleeping in the car can be nice. Just roll over, pee, roll back over and fall asleep again. Much less intrusive than getting up and walking to the bathroom, dealing with bright lights, etc.
There’s a device called a she-wee and many female vanlifers report success with Folgers tins or large fountain drink cups, which then get poured into a bottle.
While my personal urinating experience so far in life has involved a male urethra, I met on trail women who've been using Shewee for peeing in the outdoors. I imagine that if it works the way it's supposed to work, maybe it could work with a bottle.
Author here:
Just to clarify: We don't wear diaper everyday... But it happened and was a good option during snow for the lady..
The luxury was an expression (I'm not English native speaker).
I wouldn't. I'd go outside in the snow. My wife claims the same. Don't take this as negative commentary directed at the author of the article. If this works for them, great! I'm just saying that it isn't a solution that would work for me and my wife.
It’s hard to imagine putting up with stuff like this when for the same amount of money it takes to do “van life” in Japan you could live quite well elsewhere.
I lived in rural Japan for two years as a single guy and it was very, very cheap. I was making ~30k USD and saved half of it without really trying. I didn't have a car, but you don't need one even in the countryside if you can bike. These days you could Uber etc too which didn't exist yet when I was there.
I have a hard time imagining it to be cheaper to live in this truck than most things. And the kid… I can’t imagine this is good for the kid.
Obviously the point of the van is that you can move around a lot!
Aside: vagrancy is illegal in Japan, so if you’re sticking to the law you probably need to rent somewhere (or use your parents) and have a registered address.
This is absolutely fine for a young kid. Kids are way less conventional than adults at that age. If a kid gets food, warmth and attention they're basically golden.
It solidly depends on the age/stage of development of the child. When you say young, that really means like <3 years. Anything above that, and they really need stability, routine, and regular/stable interaction with individuals outside of the immediate family group to avoid long-term developmental and psychological issues.
Yeah I think one could quibble on the exact age...I think even up to 4 it would be OK. After that I think a more stable setup is definitely positive. I would say though that a stable environment where they get little attention from parents is not superior.
There are homeless people in Japan. You'll see them sitting in alcoves by train stations or sleeping under a stack of umbrellas in parks sometimes. The places I've seen them most are in remote locations by rivers, where they'll set up tents or tie tarps to trees to live under. They aren't as ubiquitous as they are in the US though, and I've only seen a homeless person panhandling once in all my years in Japan.
There are lots of homeless in Japan, and people do see them.
Anyone living near Tokyo who has money, clothes, shoes, gas cans, batteries, shelter material, work opportunities etc they wish to pass on - please reply here or email i.am.grozzle at gmail, please. Or ask staff at Lavanderia cafe in Shinjuku ni-chome.
According to a very untrustworthy source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan) the numbers of homeless people are somewhat low-ish, if those numbers are anywhere near accurate it may account for the low visibility of the problem.
> Is that why you don't see any homeless in Japan? They just arrest them for vagrancy and house them in jail?
Each time I've been to Japan I've noticed plenty of homeless people. They are really tidy about it, but you'll find encampments in Osaka and Tokyo if you just check out some of the parks.
There are limited public places to "sit" in Tokyo/and other cities too, for example, this is increasingly common part of civic design, to encourage either "moving on", or "taking refuge" in shops/cafes > ie. spending.
They could have bought a house in rural Japan for peanuts. Probably less than they spent modifying the van let alone buying it. They did it to travel. Not what I’d choose, but interesting.
These vans do seem reasonably priced compared to American living vans. I don't think you'd get much living for around $60k. Plus you could rent vs. buy.
The author links to a van rental service. Looks like a van comparable to the author's van rents for ¥24,800/night. Ouch! You could get a very nice hotel room in rural Japan for that.
Funnels that are specifically shaped for that purpose very much are, yes. I don't understand how that's even a question.
Adult diapers' main purpose isn't peeing while on a van trip; I would imagine elderly people around the world need them day to day. A funnel specifically made for women to pee is an incredibly niche product with little to no day-to-day use.
Nobody said that a diaper is superior to a funnel. The grandparent comment makes it seem like it's easy for half the population to pee in a bottle and I called them out on it. I didn't even mention the ubiquity of adult diapers, I compared finding a specialized funnel to a water bottle on purpose.
I guarantee you there are many women van/car lifers who don't use adult diapers (I know quite a few!). As has been said many times in this thread, there are inexpensive tools for this.
I said that just peeing in a bottle really only works for half the population. That's all. Your choice to somehow read into those words so deeply as to make up a completely new sentence that was never written is yours alone.
Gross. Anyone who has camped knows that feeling of sadness when it’s cold outside but you have to go to the bathroom at 3am. But some of the best moments I’ve had outside are during that time. The air is cleaner, you can see the stars if it’s clear, you might hear coyotes or other animals yipping not too far off...well worth the momentary annoyance.
Camping in a remote environment is way different than parked in a parking lot on some highway exit - and now that Walmart isn't 24 hrs in the US you can't even just park there and walk in.
Temperature also changes things - if it's above zero outside it's not so bad for a quick jaunt, but if it is -40º it's a whole different ballgame.
True, but at the same time I'd wager its rather difficult to appreciate the grand mystery of nature while you're sloshing around in a pee soaked diaper.
I don't buy it. What do buses and RVs with toilets do in japan? If it is that difficult to dump trash, then what do these guys do with their soiled diapers? Certainly there has to be better options than wearing diapers.
I don't know, but I drove an RV for a month through Europe and we've never used the onboard toilet because we didn't want to have to deal with it. (We were also students on budget and wanted to avoid camps as much as possible.)
Of course I would prefer the RV toilet to a diaper though.
Buses with toilets probably have dedicated disposal facilities operated by the companies. Long-distance buses here are mostly run by big conglomerates.
> While sleeping in normal parking I think it is important to keep discrete so people will not bother you and you will not annoy anyone.
In much of the world, going outside to pee in the bushes in a populated area carries a nonzero risk of attention from law enforcement and a progression to sleeping outside minus the now impounded van.