The number of foreign residents is Japan has hit a new record high, but there are also more cases of people overstaying their visas.
The Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau says about 2.56 million foreigners were living in Japan at the end of last year.
That's up 7.5 percent from the year before and is the highest figure since record-taking began in 1959.
Chinese are the largest group with more than 730,000 residents, followed by about 450,000 South Koreans. The number of Vietnamese residents surged 31.2 percent last year to more than 262,000.