Spanish-American Subculture Analysis: Nipo-Brazilians

Subculture Analysis: Nipo-Brazilians According to IBGE, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics there are approximately 1.4 million people descendent of Japanese living in Brazil. One of the largest concentration of Japanese immigrants these days are located in Bairro da Liberdade, Sao Paulo, Even though a couple hundred Japanese started to immigrate to Brazil in 1908, to work in coffee agriculture, before and after World War II is when 164,000 Japanese arrived in Brazil. Which would result a couple decades later in a new subculture, the Nipo-Brasileiro or Mestizos (Brazilian and Japanese mixed races). In this paper, I will write about some characteristics of a subculture
However, among other mestizos is more like starting a sentence in Portuguese with some words in Japanese or vice-versa. I can relate to what Americans call “Spanglish” for Mexican speaking Spanish-American. On the other hand, with my Brazilian maternal relatives I only speak Portuguese. Which overall, the way Brazilian people communicate in terms of body language can be a little bit intense for other cultures. Contrary of my Japanese relatives, with my Brazilian cousins and aunties, we have a lot touching and steady eye contact, during conversation we touch hands shoulders and do a lot of hand gests. When greeting is normal man and woman kiss other people in the cheeks. If a man is greeting a woman he usually give only one kiss on the cheek. Woman also upon meeting someone give a hand shake. Usually woman touch much more than man during a conversation. Just like in Spanish, in Portuguese, we have feminine and masculine words to name things. For example, table is mesa in Portuguese so if he word finish with “a” is feminine, if finish with “o” like “sapato” which mean shoes is
We usually use Japanese stores in our community and we try to keep the money there also because we are a big minority. We also have the option to work in japan. Due to Japans strict immigration laws it’s hard for foreigners to move and work over there. Illegal migration in almost unseen in Japan, since we are part Japanese we are allowed to work in Japan were the minimum wage is extremely higher than in Brazil. After working in Japan most of us send part of our pay back to our families in Brazil. Another unique value we have also comes from the Japanese side where the oldest male is responsible for taking care of the parents. We don’t really have old people homes or retirement communities in Brazil so the parents will live with the oldest son and his wife will look after them while he goes to work. Sometimes the merge of two entirely different cultures can get confusing, Brazilians are very warm, open and informal, contrary of Japanese culture which are very formal. However, Nipo-Brazilians have to find our balance will living with one foot in each