Japanese Residents Abroad by City, and Hiring Locally

Before bringing a chef from Japan, look for Japanese people locally first. It is the most cost-effective move a Japanese restaurant abroad can make in hiring. If you can hire someone who already holds local work rights, there is no visa cost and no visa wait. So how many Japanese people live in which cities?

This article extracts city and country data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas (海外在留邦人数調査統計) (as of October 1, 2025, published December 25, 2025) and reads it from the point of view of a Japanese restaurant hiring locally. Figures are transcribed from the Ministry's published material, without estimation or adjustment (other than calculating ratios).

1. Japanese nationals abroad: the overall picture (as of October 1, 2025)

By region, North America has 491,701 (37.9%) and has been first every year since 1985. It is followed by Asia with 347,333 (26.8%), Western Europe with 215,695 (16.6%), Oceania with 131,707 (10.1%) and South America with 72,264 (5.6%).

The top 10 countries are the United States (416,380), Australia (105,566), China (92,928), Canada (75,316), Thailand (72,113), the United Kingdom (62,270), Brazil (49,037), Germany (44,648), South Korea (44,471) and France (36,023).

2. Top 30 cities

Of the top 30 cities, eight are in the United States (Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, San Diego) and five in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Perth). The pattern of Japanese people concentrating in large English-speaking cities is clear.

3. Cities 31 to 50, and the biggest movers

Growing cities, shrinking cities

Among the top 50 cities, the fastest growth year on year was in Dubai (+13.2%), Metro Manila (+9.6%), Dallas (+9.0%), Houston (+7.8%) and Frankfurt (+6.2%). The biggest falls were in Suzhou (−12.7%), Shanghai (−8.5%), Beijing (−7.7%), São Paulo (−6.8%), Paris (−6.7%) and the Chicago metropolitan area (−6.2%).

The fall in Japanese residents in major Chinese cities points the same way as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries survey, which found that Japanese restaurants in China fell by about 15,000 between 2023 and 2025.

4. By country: long-term residents vs permanent residents

When you consider hiring locally, what kind of status the Japanese residents have matters as much as how many there are. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statistics divide Japanese nationals abroad into long-term residents (staying three months or more, but not permanent residents) and permanent residents.

(Share of permanent residents calculated as a proportion of long-term plus permanent residents.)

The make-up differs completely between countries. In North America, Australia and Brazil, permanent residents are the majority, while in most Asian countries and the UAE almost all are long-term residents.

5. Side by side with Japanese restaurant numbers

Putting the number of Japanese restaurants by country from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries survey (2025) next to the number of Japanese residents shows how the number of Japanese residents per restaurant varies.

Of course, not every Japanese resident could become a chef, and these figures do not show how many people you could hire. Even so, in countries like South Korea and China, where there are few Japanese residents relative to the number of Japanese restaurants, the scope for hiring Japanese people locally is small, and you should plan on training local chefs. The detailed trend in restaurant numbers is in Japanese restaurants abroad: the data.

6. What it means for hiring locally

Countries with many permanent residents: look locally first

The United States, Canada and Australia have large Japanese populations with a high share of permanent residents. People with permanent residence can generally work without employer sponsorship. In cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver and Sydney, it is worth running one round of recruiting through local job media for Japanese residents, Japanese community networks and specialist job sites before bringing someone from Japan.

That said, many permanent residents have lived locally for a long time and are not necessarily experienced in restaurants. The challenge is how to reach those with cooking experience.

Countries where most are long-term residents: check work rights case by case

In Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, China and the UAE, almost all Japanese residents are long-term residents. They include corporate expatriates and their families, students, working holiday makers and others, and whether they are allowed to be employed by a restaurant in that country varies from person to person. Whether an expatriate's accompanying family can work also depends on the country's rules. When you receive an application, check the person's residence status and whether they can work first.

Working holiday countries: design around the time limit

In countries with working holiday schemes, such as Australia, Canada and the UK, there may be young Japanese people with cooking experience already there. But stays are time-limited, so it is realistic to plan for them as fixed-term staff rather than long-term core members. For scheme details, see Hiring Japanese cuisine staff on working holidays.

Growing cities bring more competition

Cities where the Japanese population is growing, such as Dubai, Manila, Dallas and Houston, may be seeing more Japanese companies arrive and more people choosing to live there, and demand for Japanese food is likely to grow too. On the other hand, the absolute number of Japanese residents is still small, and it will be hard to fill a kitchen by hiring Japanese people locally alone. How to plan a mix of local hires and hires from Japan is covered in Staffing an overseas opening.

7. Caveats on reading the data

• These are estimates based on residence notifications. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statistics are estimated from residence notifications (在留届) and similar filings submitted to diplomatic missions (Taiwan figures come from the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association). Article 16 of the Passport Act requires anyone staying abroad for three months or more to file a notification, but people who have not filed are not counted.
• City boundaries follow the names used in the statistics. "Los Angeles metropolitan area", "Greater London", "Singapore" and so on define their areas differently. Simple comparisons between cities have limits.
• Japanese nationality only. These are statistics on people holding Japanese nationality. People of Japanese descent (Nikkei) and people who have naturalised and taken local nationality are not included.
• On the source data. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also publishes an Excel version of the same survey (with details by city and country), but we could not retrieve the file directly when preparing this article, so figures were transcribed from the tables in the PDF version of the same survey.

This article is general information, not hiring or immigration advice. Figures are transcribed or calculated from material published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Always check each applicant's work rights individually.