Last week when I started to research this article I went looking for foreign factory workers.
I didn't have to travel far. A few kilometers from our house in Tsukui, Kanagawa Prefecture, I came across a restaurant called Sabor Latino catering to a small community of local South Americans, a little ethnic oasis in a desert of identikit convenience stores and family restaurants.
Inside, first and second-generation Brazilians chatted over barbecue beef, Feifoada and coffee with the sound of TV in Portuguese blaring in the background. Some were sprawled out asleep in seats, exhausted from long shifts at the main local employers, two factories making box lunches and windscreens for cars.