A Taste of Two Cities

1. The city of São Paulo, Brazil, has hundreds of Japanese restaurants. A world away, in Hamamatsu, Japan, there are many places to buy and eat Brazilian food. Why is each country’s food so renowned in the other? The answer to this question dates back to the early 20th century.

2. In 1908, people from Japan began moving to Brazil to work on coffee plantations.1 Many of these Japanese immigrants (called nikkei) ensconced themselves in São Paulo and settled in a neighborhood called Liberdade. Like many immigrants, they spoke their native language and prepared ancestral foods from their home country. Over time, the nikkei opened many Japanese markets and restaurants in the Liberdade district. Today, this neighborhood has one of the largest Japanese communities outside of Japan. Restaurants sell ramen noodles and sushi on every corner. Also, each weekend, there is a large street market. Street purveyors sell traditional Japanese goods and foods. The event is popular with both the denizens in the city and tourists.

3. In the 1980s—three lineages after the first Nikkei settled in Brazil—a reverse migration began to take place. Over 300,000 Japanese-Brazilians went to Japan, mainly to work in electronics and automobile factories. Many settled in Hamamatsu, a city on the east coast of Japan. Most Japanese- Brazilians spoke only their native language (Portuguese). They also yearned for the foods and culture of Brazil. Over time, a number of Brazilian restaurants and stores opened in Hamamatsu. Today, there is still a large Brazilian population in the city. All over Hamamatsu, food shops and restaurants sell traditional Brazilian foods, such as pão de queijo (a type of bread) and feijoada (a bean stew with beef and pork).

4. Today, it’s possible to partake of excellent Japanese food in São Paulo and traditional Brazilian cuisine in Hamamatsu. Whether traveling through Brazil or Japan, it’s worth visiting these two cities to experience the tastes and cultures of their idiosyncratic immigrant communities.

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1A plantation is a large farm on which crops such as coffee, tea, and sugar are grown.