Statistics of Japanese Expats in Canada

As Canadian, even if I don’t pay attention to information about Canada, it just finds its way to me. Much like the phenomenon where, no matter how far you are or how crazy busy you are with other things, you turn around at the slightest mention of your own name: when you live abroad, the name of your country just taunts you with as many useless pieces of information. So, as I was browsing the notices packaged for circulation around my office, I came upon statistics of Japanese nationals living abroad. And of course, there were stats about Canada.

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Oh, yeah! I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet, but I work in a Japanese office. And as far as I can tell, there’s an unwritten rule somewhere – maybe a memo I didn’t get – that say “use as much paper as you can, even for the most trivial reason.” You end up surrounded by paper all the time and it piles up on your desk. Then you basically spend your time moving in ways so as not to create the slightest flow of air, lest it topples in an irreparable mess. I’m barely exaggerating.

You know those emails that end with a little notice for ‘thinking green’ like “do you really need to print this email?” Well, Japanese offices will print the shit out of it without giving it another thought!

Don’t worry, I mostly have good things to say about Japan. But I had to get this one out, because I was very surprised when I arrived.

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Anyways, back to the story.

According to the Statistic Bureau of Japan, the ratio of Japanese expatriates living in North America is 38.46%. Of those, 12.51% can be found in Canada. And as you can probably predict if you know anything about the west coast of Canada, close to half of that resides in or around Vancouver (49.51%).

Montreal has a little Japanese community making up 5.77%. Remember, that’s 5.77% of 12.51% of 38.46%… For all practical purposes, that’s not a lot of people. What? How many, you ask? Well, I do have the answer for you 😉

There are 564 men and 1222 women for a grand total of 1786 people. Among them, 1022 people have permanent residence. Since I read this document last week, I think those should be the stats for 2013, but it might have been for 2012. I must admit I don’t remember. As for the exact number of Japanese expats in Canada or North America, go ahead and do the math if you want ^^;