This is the first in a four-part series focusing on issues confronting Japan's growing foreign communities and their increasing impact on society as a whole.

Community ties held fast by the Internet are drawing people from faraway India to the Nishi-kasai enclave in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo.

Some 2,000 Indians in the area around the subway station, where a tenth of the entire Indian population of Japan resides, are linked in an Internet community.