Japanese-Brazilians in Japan

In Japan, we lived in Hamamatsu, a city with one of the largest populations of Brazilians in the country. The great part about that, and really the only way that that fact made any difference in my life was that I had access to the Brazilian store--a good source for affordable beef, beans (outrageously expensive elsewhere), provolone, guava juice, and pão de quejo.

The other way that this mattered (although, not really) was that I had a map to the immigration office written in Portuguese, but couldn't get one in English. I also worked with a couple of guys from Brazil, and unfortunately they didn't leave good impressions on my workmates. But it was because their personalities didn't mesh well with us, not to mention other work issues. I must mention, however, that the company president did say that he would never hire Canadians again because of bad experiences with them leaving the country without notifying the company, so I think the issue was really only that the company had a hard time finding decent, loyal workers who spoke excellent English, which is another issue entirely.

Riding the train, I think most people found the Brazilians to sometimes be just a little bit too loud. But so are teenagers on the train and all people on cell phones in public here (It's the worst when people are chatting during the morning commute here. Nobody's awake yet and the bus/train is in complete silence except for the jackass on their cell.). On the other hand, I know that many of the Brazilian immigrants have had a hard time living in Japan and feel that, in general, Japanese are cold and unfriendly towards them. It's a difficult issue that I feel like people try to avoid a bit too much.

Here's an article from the New York Times about an enclave of Brazilians in Toyota City.

As the demographic squeeze grows tighter, Japan may have to open itself further to immigration, experts say, if it is to have the workers it needs to remain a major industrial power. A homogeneous and insular nation, however, Japan is notoriously unwelcoming to immigrants; Koreans who came here during World War II are still treated as second-class citizens.

To make itself an attractive destination for immigrants, the experts say, Japan will have to undergo a difficult cultural transformation for which the Japanese-Brazilians pose an elementary test case. If even they cannot gain acceptance, what chance will there be for immigrant groups that may be ethnically, racially, religiously and nationally different from native Japanese?