My wife was thinking about moving out the the U.S. with me next year sometime.
My question is what are the best places to live as a Japanese person in the U.S. ?
She doesn’t speak much English and I’m not sure how to get her a drivers license even though she already has a Japanese one.
So I’m worried how she’ll get along if we live anywhere outside of a large Japanese community because she’s not even used to the country yet.
21 comments
Hawaii and the West Coast have the highest number of ethnic Japanese. Know that learning English from Japanese is one of the hardest language learning tasks. She may enjoy living near the coasts, since all of Japan is coastal. Or, many Japanese people enjoy West Virginia and other mountain states, since Japan has many mountains. There is a stereotype, particularly in the Old South that Japanese women are sex objects, and since she’s your wife you both might find that in some places.
Hawaii, Seattle, SF for sure.
Yeah I would definitely stick to the coasts, and probably the west coast. Depending on your financial situation, some places like the SF Bay Area might be too expensive, but these days everywhere is pricey. It will be cheaper if you move inland, but it will be considerably less comfortable and predominantly white in most areas, which may be undesirable if you’d like to live near any kind of Asian population. Happy to explain more if interested. 日本語OKです。
There’s a high Japanese-fluent population in the South Bay in cities like Torrance and Lomita.
Novi, Michigan near Detroit is very nice. The hospital has Japanese speaking staff too.
Chicagoland area has a sizeable presence of Japanese people, although not as much as other locales people mentioned. Would be more affordable than the coasts/Hawaii though, if that’s a determining factor.
This is an odd question. Where are you planning on moving and why? What is your job and income?
If it doesn’t matter at all, there are actually a lot of cities with lots of Japanese. Look up native Japanese groups on Facebook for whatever city you’re in.
BUT
Where I live (metro Phoenix) I have heard they tend to be VERY cliquey. Some are almost impossible to get into if you don’t know someone or have a connection already and – as you might expect – absolutely no foreigners allowed. Some are unique to companies in the area, shit like that.
Really do your homework. Don’t just rely on “oh this place has a lot of people” in it. Yeah it may – but making friends in a big city can take years and it is very, very hard anywhere you move.
She will need a lot of support from you and probably want to go home a lot.
I was in the same situation as you. My wife also doesn’t drive. Needless to say, being in a major metropolis with decent public transportation is going to go a long way to making life more comfortable on a day to day basis. Unfortunately it’s also true that those types of cities are few and far in between in the US.
I second others’ recommendations if West Coast cities. Chicago and the suburbs have a decent Japanese population, though minor compared to the West Coast.
I’m not Japanese, but I would say a plus for Seattle is that it is a pretty short drive if you ever want to go up to Vancouver, BC.
100% Hawaii is the best place for Japanese expatriates. there is a large population of native speakers, and tons of Japanese tourists travel to Hawaii every year. Due to this there are many jobs for Japanese speakers. Living on Oahu is thr only island where it’s reasonable to not have a car, and obviously the cost of living is high, but my wife and I have lived there for years. Another bonus is that flights back to Japan are relatively cheap!
Well I’m in Columbus Ohio which has some Japanese restaurants that have Japanese living close by and while I don’t know how many % of population I’m sure it’s not Hawaii but it’s cheaper and hopefully expanding -you’ll have to investigate that but Columbus Ohio is getting a chip manufacturing plant has an ikea and isn’t half bad
I’m honestly surprised of how many Japanese are in San Fernando Valley CA . My parents volunteer at their local community center where I also took Japanese classes.
Going by population density, the west coast have the highest Japanese-American population density, especially California and Washington. But if you like city life Chicago, really fun city. Pretty diverse there, lots of things to do, and outside of cars the people there are typically friendly. It’s hard to name a good location because I’m not sure whether you’d want to live somewhere more urban, suburban, or somewhere a bit more small-towny, or rural. I would urge you to take her outside of her comfort zone, I know plenty of first generation immigrants that have trouble in day to day life because they just never learned English. Languages can be a lot harder to learn when you’re older, but being in an environment that speaks the language is the greatest resource.
Denver has a pretty healthy Japanese-American community.
HI WA CA and NY are literally your only realistic options.
Hawaii, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, then pick towns where Japanese automakers and other large manufacturers are, ex: Tennessee.
She can learn English in about an year with concentrated effort, I wouldn’t worry about that!
Absolute best place is Southern California. Most JP food manufacturers US branches are in SoCal which means more Japanese food for the area. All food imported into the US hits the ports in SoCal prior to reaching its destinations across the nation. Hawaii may have a decent amount of JP tourists but the food(price, variety, quality) doesn’t compare. NY, Chicago etc. all dwarf in the sheer amount of Japanese food available in SoCal. SoCal also gets a lot of the freshest produce in the US. Source, I work in the JP food industry.
If she has a green card or i485 receipt, she can get a license. If you want to bring her, i suggest filling out a i130 soon (can take years to get approval) unless you can spend the money on a lawyer for her coming into the country and overstaying her visa or planning to overstay (which might be illegal, but i cant remember if illegal or just frowned upon)
Hol’up! Before answering that I have questions for you and your wife.
What type of weather conditions do you two prefer? Or at least can tolerate?
Would you rather be in a city, or the countryside?
Which type of shops would the both of you prefer to have nearby?
What kind of atmosphere would you either want, or be okay with?
I know there are some Daiso shops in some places in the states, each section of states do face some sort of “extreme” weather conditions.
Any metropolitan area. Here is my reasoning. The two of you could really live anywhere, but the fact is that her ability to function without your assistance will be heavily influence by the speed at which she learns English. Any metro area is going to have ESL classes available. You could try finding an area like LA with a Japan-town, but that’s more of a social crutch. It will make the initial move easier, but long term, her gaining fluency matter way more.
A second benefit of metro areas is that they tend to be more diverse. I’m not really talking about avoidance of overt antagonistic racism here, but if your wife is a quite lady, and she’s got loud country folk trying really hard to get her involved in the community so she doesn’t feel left out, it may have the reverse effect of making her feel like all social interactions are a lot to deal with.
This is all in a vacuum of course. What you interests are and what kind of life you’re pursuing are important in figuring out the best fit.