Yokohama has been a cultural intersection between Japanese, foreign residents and visitors from overseas ever since opening its port to international trade in 1859, leading what was once a sleepy fishing village to become home to one of the first foreign communities in the country and develop into a bustling city of nearly 4 million.
However, even in a city that has historically been so foreigner-friendly and was home to 9,129 foreign-born and multiethnic students last year, it's quite rare to find a public school like Minami Yoshida Elementary School, where 57 percent of the students have foreign roots.
With its unique events and local volunteer language assistants, the school has seen the number of foreign students surge by about 20 percentage points in the past seven years.