I am a Nikkei Sansei living in Torrance, California. I have interest in investing in and operating a farm – organic produce, flowers, heirloom seeds, etc. – in Chiba Prefecture.

Can anyone help me find a Nikkei Brazilian farming organization in Chiba Prfecture to obtain more information?

Regards
rkk

@Adamu:
I don’t have to speak on behalf of our new Brazilian friend,but I believe it’s pronounced as “Joan”.
The truth is,lots of Brazilians are here to work and make a better living.Not intend to become Japanese.I also covered mass rally of Brazilians in Nagoya on march 1st.All of them were waving Brazilian flags,but somehow strangely all the demand was targeted to Japanese government,which probably come from the fact that all of them know that local Brazilian consulate has done next to nothing and can’t ask for more.
I would brand them as “nomad” or “migrant” than immigrant.

Your story just about matches word for word what I have seen on NHK documentaries on this subject.

If this recession ends up sending a majority of the Brazilian workers home, it looks like we might get a neatly packaged case study of a group of immigrants coming to Japan, importing their lifestyle wholesale, and then simply transplanting themselves back out when opportunity fades. I am tempted to call this a “failure of Japan to integrate an immigrant population in their society” but who’s to say that’s even necessarily desirable or possible.

In the Mideast a plurality of the population of some countries consists of purposely unacculturated foreign workers, and the citizenry seems totally fine with it.. And in ancient Rome, it was actually “romanized” barbarians that slowly gained acceptance among the ranks of the military, took control of the emperor and ultimately brought about the collapse and fall of the empire in the west, so it doesn’t necessarily follow that cultural assimilation automatically breeds stability.

I believe that the big problem about the Brazilian immigration to Japan was how it grew. By the middle of the 90’s we had a big recession (Oh yeah I’m from Brazil, Hi) and a lot of people searched and found a better life in Japan, working there ass off as manufacturing jobs, and very little tried to enter (somehow) the Japanese society, placing their children in Japanese Schools and engaging in other Japanese day-to-day activities. Probably if you check the records of Brazilian Schools and Business there would be a Boom of opening by ht mid 90’s. Making it harder to develop a Japanese – Brazilian engagement, since it is easier to recreate some Brazilian standards in Japan then trying to become Japanese Likewise.

I have many of friends from Japan then HAD TO come back to Brazil because of the recession and the Sad thing is that none of then can speak proper Japanese.

Lets see what will happen in the Future… I believe we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Do you have any corrections to make on my own text?

The kids have it tough because many of them do not come here young enough to be able to jump into an all-Japanese school environment. I’ve taught kids who came to Japan at 12 or 13 and were miserable in Japanese public schools. These parents pay extra to send the kids to school in an all Portuguese environment, and then end up saving less. The apartments the family in this documentary was staying in cost them 6000 yen a month, so you can only guess what they were taking home in factory wages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/world/asia/02japan.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/O/Onishi,%20Norimitsu&pagewanted=all

Anyway, it IS close enough to the urban myth about can tabs so it would be a good idea to get Snopes to put in a supplement saying that THIS seems to be a real scheme.