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Coming Here Soon: Episode 3: Japan, Fall of the Rising Sun

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Japan, Fall of the Rising Sun

Episode 3

Episode 3: Japan, Fall of the Rising Sun

BBC Three - Coming Here Soon, Japan, Fall of the Rising Sun

Stacey Dooley looks at how the economic crisis has affected young people in Japan.

Stacey Dooley looks at how the economic crisis has affected young people in Japan, visiting a job-hunting school and a noted suicide spot, and meeting overworked employees.

What does it really mean to be young and growing up in the middle of the worst economic crisis in living memory?  To find out, Stacey Dooley travels to Greece, Ireland and Japan, three countries each facing very different and very difficult economic challenges. She's going behind the headlines to see what lessons can be learnt for us back in the UK.

Stacey heads to Japan, which has experienced two decades of an economic slump. She finds out what this means for young people by entering a hidden world to reveal a new type of homelessness, with many young people having resorted to living in internet cafes.

In a country where a third of the workforce is now trapped in part-time insecure jobs, the struggle to find secure work now consumes many. Stacey goes to an extraordinary job-hunting school that trains people how to become the perfect applicant. She learns how everything - from haircut to smile - can now mean the difference between getting a job or not. The lengths her generation has to go to find the work they want shocks her.

Even those with jobs haven't escaped the effects of this slump. Stacey meets workers now doing the work of those made redundant. She hears stories of 15-hour days and of people who have been literally worked to death. Relationships have been affected too. She learns that many men don't want to get married because they don't think they can afford to raise a family, and she joins a woman absorbed in the one of the latest youth crazes to hit Japan - marriage hunting. Stacey sees the saddest impact Japan's decline has had by visiting a forest famous for suicides.

The film ends with Stacey finding encouraging signs that some young people are starting to learn how to live in Japan today, meeting a group of young part-time workers who have come up with a novel way of thriving during the bad times.

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Stacey Dooley looks at three countries in the aftermath of the economic crisis

Series in which Stacey Dooley looks at three countries in the aftermath of the economic crisis

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