Fans cheer Brazil's team members on a bus upon their arrival at Narita international airport in Narita, near Tokyo Friday, June 3, 2022.
Fans cheer Brazil's team members on a bus upon their arrival at Narita international airport in Narita, near Tokyo Friday, June 3, 2022. Brazil national soccer team will play a friendly soccer match against Japan on June 6. Brazil's national soccer team is a draw wherever it plays, often a sentimental choice. The affection will run deeper for some in Japan when the countries play Monday in Tokyo with both headed to the World Cup in Qatar.
"I'm not sure I can go to the game, but surely I'd cheer for Brazil," said Silvia Semanaka, who was born in Brazil to a mother with Japanese roots and moved to Japan 16 years ago to work.Semanaka followed her brother Norberto to Japan, where he played professional baseball for the Chunichi Dragons, a game he honed in the Japanese community near Sao Paulo. Almost no one in Brazil plays baseball.
About 2 per cent in Japan have foreign nationality. Oizumi and other small towns that have drawn immigrants are different. Of Oizumi's 40,000 residents, the local city hall says 20% were born outside Japan and just over half are Japanese Brazilians Three of Silvia's teenage students studying English -- Tatyane Kataoka, Juliane Soares, and Nicole Enomoto -- represent the language hodge-podge. They were born in Japan, have visited Brazil only briefly, speak Portuguese as their mother tongue, and have varying dexterity in Japanese."I understand most of what they say, but I'm afraid of speaking it," Juliane said.