In August 2014 I moved to Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, and started working as an assistant language teacher at a high school through the JET Programme. Over time, I have come to know many different cultural communities outside of the usual Western expat circles. I would also interact with yonsei (fourth-generation) Nikkei Brazilian and Peruvian students daily and hear about their experiences in adapting to Japanese society.
As a first-generation Pakistani-American who grew up in an immigrant community myself, these students' stories resonated with me and inspired me to pursue ethnographic research here. Since 2016 I have been researching the lives of Brazilian and Peruvian residents throughout the Tokai region and Okinawa. In particular, those who were born and raised in Japan face many challenges, ranging from prejudice and discrimination to a lack of access to fairly paid jobs and higher education.
This past August I heard about an upcoming event in Hamamatsu called The Gaijin Day. The pre-publicity for the event went viral in many expat groups on social media, and posts were flooded with comments. If the organizers chose to call this event Gaijin Day to get attention, it certainly worked. When I attempted to ask the organizers, the Executive Committee of Gaijin Day, about the reasoning behind the name, the person on the other end of the line hung up on me.
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