Something about #Japan I have Never Heard About Before: Evaporating People

Here is a fascinating article about something I have never heard about before.

The New York Post reports, of the many oddities that are culturally specific to Japan — from cat cafes to graveyard eviction notices to the infamous Suicide Forest, where an estimated 100 people per year take their own lives — perhaps none is as little known, and curious, as “the evaporated people.”Since the mid-1990s, it’s estimated that at least 100,000 Japanese men and women vanish annually. They are the architects of their own disappearances, banishing themselves over indignities large and small: divorce, debt, job loss, failing an exam.

It makes sense that these are people that would be people around that would hide their shame and invent a new life instead of simply killing themselves. This is the Japanese equivalent of giving up ones life and "moving out West" or "leaving for the colonies." Although the description of their lives after they "evaporate" sound pretty terrible.