Recently a student from Mainland China was arrested for committing the largest theft of personal data in Japanese history. According to police, Yu Hua, a student at a private university in Tokyo, hacked into more than 14 company internet servers and stole 500,000 items of information, including account passwords and personal identification numbers, which he sold to spammers to pay for his studies.
It's sensational nature aside, Yu's crime highlights the strain many mainland students in Japan are under. High costs of living and the pressure to succeed, coupled with the opportunity to make money relatively easily, albeit illegally, make it tempting to take the path of least resistance.
Min Zhengwen can testify to those pressures. Besides full-time study for his course on American literature, he puts in 40 hours a week at two part-time jobs to cover his living expenses. At the end of a regular graveyard shift at a convenience store in central Tokyo, he's exhausted and looks it. All he wants is a shower and a few hours' sleep. Instead, he'll have to hit the books to keep his grades up.
"There's a lot of pressure on Chinese students who come to Japan, because living here is so expensive," Min says. "If you're able to study abroad but you come back empty-handed, with no qualifications or skills, or without making yourself rich, then you're seen as a bad son or daughter."
A native of Mudanjiang city in Heilongjiang, the 26 year old arrived in the Japanese capital two years ago as a research student at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. It was an unfamiliar environment that required a great deal of adjustment.
Learning to deal with the complexities of Tokyo's enormous railway system and a new language were just a couple of the problems he faced. One of the most daunting challenges, he says, was funding his stay.
"I knew things would cost more here, but I never realised how big the difference would be," he says. "My family can't afford to pay my tuition fees and living expenses, so I have to work. My living expenses for one month would be enough to take care of my entire family in China for six months."
Annual tuition fees at a university often exceed 1.5 million yen (about C$16,447). Then there are the basics--food, transport and accommodation. Some students are also expected to send money home to their families.
Toshiko Marks, a lecturer at Shumei University, which has about 50 Chinese students, acknowledges that money is often a stumbling block.
"One of the biggest problems that our students have faced in recent years is paying for their studies," she says. "Many have had to withdraw because they couldn't pay." Now, some are too busy working to be able to keep up with their studies, Marks says.
Through word of mouth, most mainland students land lowly paid jobs in restaurants or shops in the Chinese districts of major cities.
Others work in convenience stores, gaming centres or bars or teach Chinese at language schools.
The chance to make easy money, however, sometimes undermines students' judgment, Min says. "It's no surprise to me that some Chinese get involved in crime. For us Chinese, it's very easy to disappear into our underground world here."
In May, the district court in Fukuoka sentenced former student Wei Wei to death for his part in the robbery and gruesome murder of a Japanese couple and their two children in June 2003. His two accomplices fled home to the mainland, where they were arrested. One was sentenced to death; the other to life imprisonment.
As media attention on crimes committed by mainlanders grows, so does suspicion and hostility among the Japanese public.
Mutsuko Tsuyuki, a mother of two who lives near Yokohama's Chinatown adds, "I'm sure that most of the Chinese coming to Japan have just come to learn or make a living, but I'm also pretty sure there's a minority whose sole aim is to work illegally or make money through crime.
"Of course it's wrong to generalise, but after the Fukuoka killings, people I know have become concerned."
Says Marks,"Whenever there's a crime committed by a foreigner, there's always a huge outcry from the Japanese and it's reported in all the newspapers."
"That deepens this image of Chinese being a threat or a risk. And it's not just an image of being a criminal--it's the image of Chinese being cruel, savage people. "I try to reverse this notion, but it's difficult to change people's minds."
Responding to the public outcry, the Japanese authorities have tightened visa requirements for foreign students, most of whom come from China. According to the education ministry, of 117,302 student visas issued in the past year, 77,713 were for Chinese nationals--up nearly 7,000 from the previous year.
People might agree to my face, but when something happens they automatically think the Chinese are to blame again."
Some mainland students concede that such concerns aren't entirely misplaced. "You meet all sorts of people in Chinatown, from all over the country, and it's true that sometimes they're mixed up in crime," says 20-year-old Yu Pingping, a business student at Tokyo's Sophia University.
"I know of girls who have got involved in prostitution so they can pay their tuition fees. They had no choice. But it's also true to say that the majority work hard to support themselves."
"One of our new policies is to focus on the quality of foreign students who apply to come here to study," says an official of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
"Before they enter Japan, the immigration bureau will study each case individually and determine whether they're suitable. Then it's the responsibility of their university or college to ensure that they attend class."
This provision was added after officials found that more than 230 Chinese enrolled at Sakata Training University disappeared just weeks after arriving to start their studies. They're believed to have moved to other big cities to seek illegal work.
The crackdown has been extended to the less-reputable schools that charge mainlanders extortionate enrolment fees and aren't overly concerned with the quality of the education delivered, nor whether students attend classes.
In June last year, three Japanese-language schools operated by 56-year-old Katsunori Yoshida were closed down after 10 Chinese students were found to have disappeared.
Individuals or companies operating such schools will be held responsible for students who abscond, the education ministry says.
"University staff are also required to check the kind of part-time jobs the students take and they need permission from the university to do them," the official says.
The ministry says it doesn't believe Chinese students are working illegally or without having notified their schools, but that claim has been met with doubt.
Of the 9,779 people who entered Japan on student visas in 2003 but overstayed or failed to renew their papers, 7,920 were from China. In the first half of that year, Chinese committed 5,103 violations of the penal law, although official statistics don't show how many of those violations were by students.
Min knows of at least one--a former schoolmate who is now wanted for killing two people in a robbery. "He came to Japan to earn money," Min says. "He caused an accident when we were in school [on the mainland] and he owed a lot of money, so he came here to pay off his debts more quickly.
"He's disappeared into the Chinese underground and they'll protect him. Maybe he'll join their organisation and be a criminal, or he can just pay them money to look after him, or arrange for him to sneak back to China. It's all possible."
Tokyo-world's most expensive city
Four of the world's ten costliest cities are in Asia, with Tokyo being the most expensive city globally. Osaka takes 2nd position due to the strengthening of the Japanese Yen relative to the US dollar, (121.8) followed by Seoul in 5th place (115.4) and Hong Kong ranked 9th (109.5).
The abandonment in China of pegging the yuan to the US dollar and the falling prices of Western consumer items meant that Chinese cities--despite the buoyant economy--have seen the most significant drop in the rankings, with Beijing falling 17 places in the biannual Worldwide Cost of Living survey.
Osaka has become the world's second most costly city, due to robust economic growth and inflation boosted by rising property and oil prices, according to the survey by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).while London has stopped its ascent of recent years, slipping two places to eighth.
"Japan has been locked into a pattern of low or negative inflation for some years now as a result of unemployment and a number of economic problems," said Jon Copestake, an editor of the report.
The EIU is the business information arm of the Economist Group. Its survey compares the cost of a representative basket of goods and services in dollar terms from more than 130 cities worldwide to provide guidance for the calculation of executive allowances. New York is used as a base index of 100 for comparison.
In real terms--when combined with the yen's poor performance against a number of currencies--a number of countries have gained ground on Japan because they have a generally upward trend in prices, as seen in Oslo, according to the report.
Beijing is at position 19 (score 95.6) followed by Shanghai in 30th place (90.4).
Similar reasons have seen Iceland's capital Reykjavik prosper enough to take fourth place, while London has stopped its ascent of recent years, slipping two places to eighth.
The United States has suffered in cost-of-living terms with static prices and a weak dollar responsible for no US city making the top 30, and New York slipping eight places to 35th behind many European cities, Wellington in New Zealand and Seoul in South Korea.
Although euro-zone cities have generally continued to see a rise in the relative cost of living, non-euro cities have shown dramatic price hikes due to the comparative slippage of the euro.
Those cities benefiting from recent or potential accession to the European Union in particular have made big jumps up the table, including Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Bratislava, rising 37, 20, 12 and 10 places respectively.
Despite the high and rising oil prices, close links to the struggling dollar and low inflation have also been responsible for lowering the cost of living in many Middle Eastern countries.
Tehran remains the world's cheapest city destination with a cost-of-living index of less than a third of that of New York.
