It's prayer time at Tokyo's biggest mosque and the congregation is pondering God, community and Naoki Inose, the city's governor, who many here say has revealed himself to be, well, a bit of a bigot.
"I think he has a problem with Islam and Turkey," says Osman Demiritas, a Turk who has lived in Japan for nearly two decades. "My wife is Japanese and she cried when she heard what the governor said. She couldn't believe it."
Cuneyd Parlayan, a doctoral student at the Tokyo Dental and Medical University, is more blunt. "Inose is an amateur politician showing complete ignorance," he says. "I think he believes in the supremacy of Japanese culture. That might have influenced his opinion."
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.