Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, has a population exceeding 800,000, including some 30,000 foreigners, many of them involved in the manufacturing industry.
But unlike other large commercial centers, the city 260 km southwest of Tokyo is patchwork whose Japanese and foreign communities live largely separate from one another.
That separation makes it hard for foreign children to integrate into the society. Only about half the children of foreign workers attend high school, raising the specter of an alienated and undereducated underclass taking root in the city.