Foreigners in our city

There are 1,600 foreigners in our city. That is about 1.3% of the population, slightly less than the national statistic of 1.5% (from here). Which is interesting because the general perception in the missionary community is that there is a large abundance of foreigners clustered around the school (CAJ). Obviously there are not so many as they imagine. 

A street shot from our city a couple of months ago.

To compare that statistic, 26.8% of people residing in Australia in 2010 were born outside of the country (from here)!

Standing in our church.

Here's the breakdown of nationalities in our city:* 515 Chinese
284 Koreans
239 Filipinos
206 Americans
33 Canadians
25 British
20 Australians
10 Germans
260 from other countries

Yep, as a family we make up ¼ of the Australian  population in our city of 116,006 people (according to Wikipedia). In our church, as far as the pastor knows, there are people from at least eight difference countries. 

A random fact I learned  while researching this is that in 1993 Japan had 50% of the population live on 2% of the land (cited here). I doubt that's changed significantly. Crazy!

Not wanting to open a can of worms, or anything, but you might be interested in a growing debate about immigration in Japan. Here's an article about both sides of the discussion. The population is greying and declining and some say immigration is the answer (trying to persuade women to have more babies simply isn't working).

*This list comes from a recent sermon at our church here.