Living in a Stranger's Closet

This news item tells of a homeless woman in Japan who was caught after she had been living for about a year on the top shelf of a man's wardrobe closet. She was only discovered when the man started realizing that several times lately he hadn't had as much food on hand as he had thought.

Naturally this item raises a lot of questions, especially if, like me, you have been to Japan ...several times. The woman had even put a mattress in the closet and had taken showers in the house during the guy's absence. The police said that she was very clean and neat. Maybe they should have added "quiet and tiny," too.

Can we doubt that this is a growing epidemic of massive proportions in the U.S. as well? We might do well to think about it, and to trust our ears more than our eyes.