Over the past half decade, major changes have taken place in the demographics of foreign residents in Japan. Weekly Playboy¡¯s Dec. 18 issue devoted a four-page article to ¡°Research into Vietnamese.¡± Why Vietnamese? And why now?
¡°Their numbers in Japan have drastically increased,¡± the magazine rationalizes. Up fourfold from five years ago, they grew by a remarkable 36.1 percent between 2015 and 2016. The Vietnamese population of 232,562 (as of end June 2017) has shot past Brazil to make them the fourth-largest nationality, and they may soon overtake the Philippines (251,934) for third place.
Take, for example, the city of Matsudo, a bed town of about 484,000 in Chiba Prefecture served by the JR Joban commuter line, about 21 minutes from Tokyo¡¯s Ueno Station. It currently boasts 15,058 foreign residents, including a growing community of Vietnamese.
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