Ogaki city in Gifu, Japan begins broadcasting local news in Portuguese

Here's a piece of news in Japanese from today about a Portuguese-language news program that has begun in Japan. This is particularly interesting to me as this is the exact area where I first lived in Japan. The news program is for Brazilians living in Ogaki, which is just west of Ichinomiya where I lived, and the area in general is kind of a suburb of the much larger Nagoya, with the city of Gifu at about the same distance to the north if you feel like going to a bigger city on the weekend but are bored of always going to Nagoya. When I first lived there I was also struck by the large number of Brazilians, though at the time I was fully engaged in learning Japanese and Japanese only so I had no interest in Portuguese whatsoever then. Actually, the first non-Japanese person I ever spoke to in Japanese was a Mormon from Brazil.


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On the 14th of December (2010) Ogaki City's Ogaki Cable Television began broadcasting a local news program all in Portuguese for Brazilians living in the area. According to the prefecture Information Industry Division, "such a program entirely in Portuguese on cable television has never happened in Japan before".

A bit about how the program provides information for life in Japan, emergency services etc., skipping that...

The program is translated and created by a commission from the prefecture and is 30 minutes in length, broadcasting in Ogaki-shi, Kaizu-shi, Ikeda-shi, Kobe-cho, Tarui-cho, and Sekigahara-cho. Broadcasting time is Tuesday to Friday at 11 am, Saturday and Sunday from 1:30 pm and 11 pm.

The show can also be heard at any time online, and will also be shown in other places such as the TV monitor in the Brazilian-oriented school "HIRO Gakuen".

As of November there are 3142 Brazilians living in the city.

The internet address is: http://www.gifu-news.com/