Machu Picchu exhibit in Tokyo

Yesterday my wife and I went to a special “Machu-Picchu” exhibit at a museum in Tokyo.

Have you heard of Machu Picchu ?

They are an ancient Inka ruins in Peru that wasn’t known to the Spanish when they invaded South America…therefore it wasn’t plundered when it was discovered by an American archaeologist in 1912.

Since this year is the one-hundred anniversary of the discovery of Machu-Picchu, the 「国立科学博物館」 (National Science Museum) has a special exhibit about the Inka people and Machu-Picchu, titled 「マチュピチュ発見100年インカ帝国展」 (“The Inka Empire, 100 Years after the Machu-Picchu Discovery”).

The flyer for the special “Machu-Picchu” exhibit.

Among the items in this collection, you can see actual mummies and a short twelve-minute 3-D movie that takes you “into” Machu-Picchu.

This exhibit can be seen at the 「国立科学博物館」 (National Science Museum), not far from 上野駅 (Ueno train station) in Tokyo until Sunday, 2012 June 24th.

Brazilian-Japanese

This week is the 100 year anniversary of the mass immigration of Japanese to Brazil.

In the early 1900′s, Brazil’s economy (which was still poor) was better than Japan’s…so in June 1908, the first ship of Japanese emigrants left Japan for Brazil.

They were mostly farmers who got jobs as laborers on Brazilian coffee plantations.

Supposedly, the language barrier and culture shock was too much for most to bear and many wanted to return to Japan…but were forbidden by the coffee plantation owners.

Many of the Japanese were finally able to buy their own farmland and start their own farms. And they began raising families in Brazil, so roots were set.

But after WWII, Japan’s economy became much better than Brazil’s…so to return the favor to Brazil for allowing so many poor farmers to immigrate, Japan began allowing Brazilians of Japanese descent to come to Japan and get a special visa to allow them to live and work here.

There are many Brazilians of Japanese descent. Brazil has the largest number of Japanese people outside of Japan.

But most of the Brazilians who come to Japan have a hard time. Many can’t speak Japanese very well. They usually get low paying labor jobs in factories and their children are unable to keep up in school.

Here’s a picture of the first Japanese to immigrate to Brazil in 1908: