Multiculturalism in Shizuoka Prefecture

Contents:

• News Bulletin
• Information for Foreigners
• Foreigners in Shizuoka
• Best of Shizuoka
• Essential Daily Life Information
• Interesting Facts
• Cabinet Office Links to Official Information for Foreign Residents
• About the Multicultural Affairs Division

 News Bulletin

The Multicultural Affairs Division of the Shizuoka Prefectural Government manages a Facebook page (click here) and a Twitter page (click here) where information about events, news, or items of interest are periodically posted. This news bulletin section hosts the most recent posts so as to allow visitors without Facebook or Twitter to be kept updated.

Tweets by MtFujiShizuoka

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  Information for Foreigners

Information for Foreigners is a radio show broadcast every Friday on K-MIX at 8:53 p.m. Topical, relevant or useful information is summarized in an approximately one-minute broadcast aimed at the English-speaking community of Shizuoka. Below are links summarizing the Information for Foreigners broadcasts from the last five weeks.

• July 20, 2018: Water Safety（PDF：25KB） 
• July 27, 2018: Trash Sorting（PDF：22KB）
• August 03, 2018: Heat Exhaustion（PDF：25KB）
• August 10, 2018: Mountain Day（PDF：23KB）
• August 17, 2018: Drunk Driving（PDF：28KB）

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 Foreigners in Shizuoka

Did you know that, as of December 2015, there were 72,690 foreign nationals registered in Shizuoka Prefecture?
The table below outlines the changes in population since 1997 among the most common nationalities.

	Total Reg.	Brazil	Philippines	China	N./S. Korea	Peru
1997	59,196	33,575	4,743	4,260	7,107	3,773
2002	79,955	41,209	9,617	7,768	6,990	5,397
2007	101,505	51,900	11,850	12,669	6,467	6,624
2012	76,284	29,185	12,231	12,993	5,827	4,857
2015	72,690	23,714	13,565	11,102	5,329	4,339
% of 2015 total	100%	32.6%	18.7%	15.3%	7.3%	6.0%

City Name	Registered Foreigners	City Population	Percentage (%)
Hamamatsu	20,934	809,027	2.59
Shizuoka	8,170	712,184	1.15
Iwata	6,176	170,559	3.62
Fuji	4,486	256,731	1.75
Kakegawa	3,525	117,609	3.00
Numazu	3,520	200,704	1.75
Fukuroi	3,104	87,254	3.56
Kosai	2,644	60,905	4.34
Kikugawa	2,491	47,779	5.21

 Best of Shizuoka

Did you know that Shizuoka is number one in Japan and even the world at many things?

Shizuoka has the: 
 Tallest mountain in Japan with Mount Fuji at 3,776 m
 Deepest bay in Japan with Suruga Bay at 2,500 m
 Highest manufacturing volume of green tea in Japan at 42%
 Only place that sakura shrimp can be caught
 Entirety of Japan's piano and photomultiplier tube production manufacturing industry
 City (Omaezaki) with the most hours of sunshine out of 154 observation points across Japan

To find out more about just how great Shizuoka is, check out My Shizuoka, the Best of Japan.

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 Essential Daily Life Information

This section features various kinds of useful information for living a happy, healthy life in Shizuoka Prefecture.

• Quick guide to Japanese customs and etiquette
• NTT Dengon Dial Service
• Tokai Earthquake preparedness information
• List of hospitals in Shizuoka city offering foreign-language services
• Information regarding the new residency management system as of July 2012
• Japanese law translation service
• Introduction to a few of Shizuoka Prefecture's facilities
• Free legal interpreting and consultation service

The Shizuoka Association for International Relations has also collected information about a wide variety of topics that are essential in everyday life. Everything you need to know, from visa processes to paying taxes, can be found at the link below.

Useful Information for your Daily Life (English)

The daily life guides can also be found in Portuguese and Japanese.

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 Interesting Facts

Here are some interesting and fun facts to help you get to know more about Shizuoka:

• Shizuoka has the tenth-largest population in Japan out of forty-seven prefectures.
• 26% of the population is age sixty-five or above.
• Shizuoka is the thirteenth-largest prefecture by area.  
• Shizuoka has the third-most onsen (hot springs) and the highest number of traditional ryokan inns in Japan.  

Source: Statistics Usage Division, 2013

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 Cabinet Office Links to Official Information for Foreign Residents

The Cabinet Office of Japan has compiled a list of helpful documents for foreign residents living in Japan. In addition to English, information is available in Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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 About the Multicultural Affairs Division

The Multicultural Affairs Division exists to look after the non-Japanese population of Shizuoka Prefecture and implementing plans and procedures to allow non-Japanese people to assimilate into Japanese society. The division employs people from Japan, Brazil, the United States, and the Philippines. In addition to in-house native checking and translations for English, Portuguese, and Tagalog, the international staff visit various schools within the prefecture, where they give presentations in Japanese about their home countries to try and raise global awareness in the youth of Japan. The Multicultural Affairs Division also hosts a radio show on K-MIX, supervises a Facebook page and Twitter page, and maintains this website, all as part of an effort to get important or useful information out to people interested in, and residents of, Shizuoka Prefecture.