US Japanese Population Concentrations

[Charles]

I found this odd dataset on US cities with the highest percentage of Japanese residents, and thought I'd pass it along. I was surprised at the #1 slot.

1. Salem, WV (pop. 2,006): 7.0%
2. Tuckahoe, NY (pop. 6,211): 6.5%
3. Rolling Hills Estates, CA (pop. 7,676): 5.6%
4. Fort Lee, NJ (pop. 35,461): 4.9%
5. Rye, NY (pop. 14,955): 4.4%
6. Forest Home, NY (pop. 941): 4.2%
7. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA (pop. 41,145): 4.2%
8. Orangeburg, NY (pop. 3,388): 4.1%
9. Torrance, CA (pop. 137,946): 3.9%
10. Manorhaven, NY (pop. 6,138): 3.6%
11. Cupertino, CA (pop. 50,546): 3.5%
12. Honolulu, HI (pop. 371,657): 3.5%
13. Scarsdale, NY (pop. 17,823): 3.4%
14. Pleasant Valley, AK (pop. 623): 3.3%
15. Ardsley, NY (pop. 4,269): 3.2%

The list continues to 101. Other interesting demographics available here.

[climb678]

Nice site, lots of great data. Thanks for the link.
Please note that the data is for: Top 101 cities with the most residents BORN in Japan. Of course, that is exactly what the post said, just worded differently .

[dimwit]

It appears that Salem College might be the reason.

Salem University is a small For-profit school in Salem, West Virginia. It has about 300 students, enrolled in 2 and 4 year degree programs, graduate programs, and classes are available through both on-campus learning environments and online courses. SIU offers B.A., B.S., M.Ed., and M.B.A. degrees

The school was founded as Salem College by the Seventh Day Baptist Church in 1888. It soon became a non-sectarian non-profit college.

The school continued as a liberal arts and teacher education college until the 1989 when it was beset with financial problems. This led it to form an alliance with Teikyo University of Tokyo, Japan. This changed the focus of the school to one of education of international students in a unique atmosphere. Salem College was then renamed Salem-Teikyo University.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_International_University

[Charles]

It appears that Salem College might be the reason.

Hmm.. I guess a few nihonjin can make a big splash in a small pond. Since the chart lists by percentage, a small town can rank higher than the better known concentrations like the LA-area communities of Torrance and Rancho Palos Verdes, or even Honolulu.

[Sensei]

Salem College is part of it; probably the main part is Japanese industries that opened factories in that part of the country since the 80's.

[Adhesive]

Hmm.. I guess a few nihonjin can make a big splash in a small pond. Since the chart lists by percentage, a small town can rank higher than the better known concentrations like the LA-area communities of Torrance and Rancho Palos Verdes, or even Honolulu.

Yeah, and it doesn't really matter much when 25% of the population means 500 Japanese people; good luck finding Japanese supermarkets, language schools, etc.

[kamome]

I'm not surprised by number 4 on the list, Fort Lee, NJ. I used to live near there and went shopping at the giant Mitsuwa located in Edgewater, NJ, which is only about a 10 minute drive from Fort Lee. Even bought a real Japanese futon at one of the adjacent stores.

[ttjereth]

Salem University, it hasn't been Salem College for years and years, was the reason, but I think those statistics are outdated.

How do I know? I graduated from there.

It used to be Salem-Teikyo University, with Teikyo University in Hachioji owning a stake in the school, mainly for the purpose of sending Japanese students there to study for short term and full degree programs. There were all kinds of slightly shady things about how the "exchange" students were handled though. The town itself only had a population of 2000 being a failed coal-mining town, and the vast majority of that was from the university. Of that I'd say at most there were probably somewhere between 3 and 5 hundred Japanese students at any given time.

Just for the record, we actually had a little Japanese grocery/video rental on campus, owned by one of the professors.

After Teikyo pulled out, the school was owned by a Singaporean company for a few years, essentially replaced the Japanese student population with Singaporeans and Chinese, however a decent number of past students actually remained living in the area and working at the University (there's really no place else to work) which would give still give the constantly declining population of the town an irregularly high percentage of Japanese residents, but it's nowehere near as many as it was up until around 2000.

The school itself was mostly terrible, but our Japanese program was quite good(lots of opportunity for extracurricular study and practice) actually being ranked #2 in the country based on achievements (JPLT, etc.) by some rankings during the time I was there (I'd like to claim credit, but I was just lucky to be there when the professors running the department were from very good backgrounds, Todai in Japan then MIT, and Waseda in Japan then Georgia Tech, and the students at the time were all overachievers, most of the graduates from my program for my year, and 1 year ahead and behind me are currently working in Japan, or for Japanese corporations in the U.S., I think Honda in Ohio, in particular hired a decent number of our graduates).

[Adhesive]

Salem University, it hasn't been Salem College for years and years, was the reason, but I think those statistics are outdated.

How do I know? I graduated from there.

It used to be Salem-Teikyo University, with Teikyo University in Hachioji owning a stake in the school, mainly for the purpose of sending Japanese students there to study for short term and full degree programs. There were all kinds of slightly shady things about how the "exchange" students were handled though. The town itself only had a population of 2000 being a failed coal-mining town, and the vast majority of that was from the university. Of that I'd say at most there were probably somewhere between 3 and 5 hundred Japanese students at any given time.

Just for the record, we actually had a little Japanese grocery/video rental on campus, owned by one of the professors.

After Teikyo pulled out, the school was owned by a Singaporean company for a few years, essentially replaced the Japanese student population with Singaporeans and Chinese, however a decent number of past students actually remained living in the area and working at the University (there's really no place else to work) which would give still give the constantly declining population of the town an irregularly high percentage of Japanese residents, but it's nowehere near as many as it was up until around 2000.
.

How odd. The town would make a good backdrop to some f'd up story.

[ttjereth]

How odd. The town would make a good backdrop to some f'd up story.

There were plenty of fucked up stories. Like the University president who sponsored a thai boy at the university rumored to be his gay lover, the various children of yakuza, and the Japanese students who were there because their rich, powerful, and well known parents just needed a place to hide their fuck up kids out of public site for a few years

[amerijin]

It's the school there.

[unkosando]

I found this odd dataset on US cities with the highest percentage of Japanese residents, and thought I'd pass it along. I was surprised at the #1 slot.



The list continues to 101. Other interesting demographics available here.

I hear there is also a large concentration of wapanese hanging out in book stores in each of these areas.

[Taro Toporific]

There were plenty of fucked up stories. Like the University president who sponsored a thai boy at the university rumored to be his gay lover, the various children of yakuza, and the Japanese students who were there because their rich, powerful, and well known parents just needed a place to hide their fuck up kids out of public site for a few years

Amen. Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver was the source of 30% calls to the suicide hotline where my family volunteers. The Japanese students often are rejects from their families and society.
Teikyo in Denver looks beautiful but actually is on isolated hilltop surrounded by a hostile barrio neighborhood that understandably hates the rich dorks going to school there. There are many rapes (generally unreported) of clueless Teikyo students.
That hate goes both ways as even the chool's dean admits: "Of the 300 students at Teikyo Loretto Heights, all but a few are Japanese....the school does not discourage Americans or other students, but it has not seen an interest from many Americans nor tried to actively recruit Americans."
Teikyo's owners are a super sleazeball bunch of scammers. The Denver campus has been in and out of bankruptcy several times since Teikyo bought it. The Tokyo Taxation Bureau levied a $17-million fine on affiliates of Teikyo University for tax evation, criminal charges.

[ttjereth]

Amen. Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver was the source of 30% calls to the suicide hotline where my family volunteers. The Japanese students often are rejects from their families and society.
Teikyo in Denver looks beautiful but actually is on isolated hilltop surrounded by a hostile barrio neighborhood that understandably hates the rich dorks going to school there. There are many rapes (generally unreported) of clueless Teikyo students.
That hate goes both ways as even the chool's dean admits: "Of the 300 students at Teikyo Loretto Heights, all but a few are Japanese....the school does not discourage Americans or other students, but it has not seen an interest from many Americans nor tried to actively recruit Americans."
Teikyo's owners are a super sleazeball bunch of scammers. The Denver campus has been in and out of bankruptcy several times since Teikyo bought it. The Tokyo Taxation Bureau levied a $17-million fine on affiliates of Teikyo University for tax evation, criminal charges.

Yeah, there were all kinds of underhanded things going on all over the place. People in the Japanese department tended to more or less isolate ourselves from it, even had what amounted to our own dorms two floors above the JP dept. classrooms in a building which was actually slightly off campus.

There were all kinds of problems with tuition and loans with American students, Japanese students with "not quite legal" visa arrangements, mainland Chinese students who somehow managed to disappear on the way to the school from China, etc. etc. Teikyo ended up pulling out of the school in 2000 or so when they were having all of the problems here, and the mismanagement of the school there had gotten out of hand. Almost all of the decent professors and staff left longbefore the ship fully sank.

Salem however was diffferent than Lorretto heights in that they did cater to american students who made up a bit more than 50% of the student body while I was there. They made most of their money off the Japanese student's who's tutuition, room and board were almost 3 times that of the U.S. students.

I've only met one person from Teikyo Loretto Heights, while I was at Teikyo Berlin (which had 0 german students), and she was a dirtbag. There was also Teikyo Post in the New England Area, and one other I can't recall at the moment.

I actually met the president of Teikyo at the time in Hachioji while I was there, and he was sleazy, but he gave me 10man so who cares

[Iraira]

I found this odd dataset on US cities with the highest percentage of Japanese residents, and thought I'd pass it along. I was surprised at the #1 slot.
The list continues to 101. Other interesting demographics available here.

Damn you for posting that site. I just spent 4 hours looking at things that I really didn't need to know....although there was no information for the cities with the largest percentage of red-headed blind gay left-handed pipe-welders. Why?

[ttjereth]

Damn you for posting that site. I just spent 4 hours looking at things that I really didn't need to know....although there was no information for the cities with the largest percentage of red-headed blind gay left-handed pipe-welders. Why?

I was just looking at the area where I grew up and it depressed me...



Should I be worried I made two typos and forgot to attach the image before submitting the post...?

[Iraira]

I was just looking at the area where I grew up and it depressed me...



Should I be worried I made two typos and forgot to attach the image before submitting the post...?

Don't blame it on Philly Cheesesteaks, blame it on early onset Alzheimer's. That way, no one discriminates against you geographically.

[ttjereth]

Don't blame it on Philly Cheesesteaks, blame it on early onset Alzheimer's. That way, no one discriminates against you geographically.

Cheesesteaks are probably the main reason I go still go back to Philly, yeah there's family and friends, but cheesesteaks...mmmmm.