Monday, July 15, 2013

Entry #11 - Liberdade: A big chunk of Japan in Brazil.

On Saturday, we went to the biggest Japanese neighborhoods in São paulo. Actually, they told us that this is the largest Japanese community outside of Japan in the world. Honestly, I have to admit that I didn't know that the Japanese population in this city was so prominent. 

Street market

Liberdade's main street

You could find all sorts of things here, some really cheap and some not so much. On weekends, which is the busiest time for this neighborhood, there is a market on the streets of Liberdade where people sell a wide variety of things such as jewelry, bags, ornaments. Also, there a lot of stores where you can find pretty much the same thing plus some souvenirs, but definitely more expensive.


After walking around for a while, we stopped to get some Japanese food. Angela, our tour guide for the day, took us to a buffet-style restaurant where you could fill up your plate with whatever you wanted, and then, they would weight your plate to calculate the cost of you meal. It was pretty cheap considering that I ate a decent amount of food and a water for 20 reais (almost 10 bucks). 


Buffet at the Japanese restaurant

In this neighborhood there was a lot of really interesting street art. For instance, the one in the picture was covering the a whole all, which I thought looked pretty cool.

Graffiti 




The buildings with the characteristic Japanese features, and the traditional lamps on all the streets made it seem like you were in an authentic Japanese neighborhood. Plus, there were some funny cultural things like a fortuneteller I saw working on the street.


Fortuneteller
I enjoy going to markets so it was definitely worth it going there. If you ever want to go, take the metro blue line and get off at Liberdade station.


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