Somehow, in all the stereotyped images of Japan that lodged in my head over 26 years, thoughts about homelessness were nowhere to be seen. Why does no one mention Japan's homeless - whose numbers do not seem inconsiderable - when waxing lyrical about this intriguing country?

Both in Fukuoka and here in Kyoto, the reasonably large numbers of people (mainly - but not exclusively - men) sleeping rough have shocked and surprised me. They congregate near the rivers running through both towns, living under flimsy tarpaulin humpies or sleeping on public benches.

Many lead distinctively 'Japanese'-seeming lives, if you take 'Japanese' as a synonym for order, structure and whatnot gizmos. The tarpaulin shanties are decked out with reused bits of wire which serve as clotheslines and salvaged pegs to pin things up neatly. Every beaten, battered belonging has a place, and most likely a carefully thought-out container in which it's housed.

Furthermore, whilst talking about the darker side if things here, Pachinko Parlours have also shocked and depressed me. (Pachinko is usually described as being a sort of 'upright-pinball-machine').

The name sounded so cool, I thought they would be gleaming and animated and full of über-cute Japanese things. Instead, when the opaque doors of a Pachinko Parlour slide open, a cacophany of noise issues forth (a bit like an automatic carwash and a thousand vacuum cleaners mixed together) and you see a slump-backed array of people sitting on tiny stools under big, blinking gambling machines. Many are grey-haired, and look defeated and wrung out.

I had no idea the cool-sounding 'pachinko parlour' I'd been exoticising was effectively just a Japanese pokie arcade.