Getting to know their real aspect.....

I’m Chika, a new volunteer. I joined APFS from this October as I was interested in problems of irregular immigrants in Japan. Also, I am writing a senior thesis on this topic now. Though I am new to APFS, I am always surprised at the variety of people coming here to talk and variety of problems they have.


Along with volunteering, I am conducting interviews to irregular immigrants with them face to face, I realized how inaccurate images most people have on them. They are far from the ‘criminal image’ portrayed on the media. Most people live without knowing what kind of problems those foreigners have, even though we are all living in the same community. I can’t help but wonder how we can tackle this reality.

Bangladesh concert

Hi, I’m Ikeda as a volunteer for A.P.F.S. On November 6th I went to a concert with the representative Mr. Kato. The concert was held by Uttoron, a Bangladesh culture group in Japan.


Most of the audience was Bangladesh. I felt as if I were in a foreign country because of some women with the beautiful ethnic costumes or the speaking voice in a foreign language. On that day it was an Islamic holiday, so I often heard people said “Eid Mubarak!” (the greeting for the holiday).

The concert was consisted of Bangladesh ethnic songs, dances, and a drama. They showed Japanese translation on the screen. It helped us easily to understand the lyrics. They sang various songs from a famous singer’s song in Bangladesh to a Japanese traditional song “Yagi-bushi”. Not only the traditional dances and instruments of Bangladesh, but also surge of excitement coming from the audience gave a tremendous boost to the concert.

In this year, Uttoron has their 23rd concert. I am really amazed at knowing it. I hope the concert to continue into the future.