For those of you keeping score at home, it seems the foreign population in Japan increased 58,717 last year; according to The Daily Yomiuri, one of the English language newspapers in this county, this rise is the 36th consecutive yearly increase. At the end of 2004, the total number, a record number, by the way, of foreign residents in Japan stood at 1,973,747; 1,195,164 of the total were registered in training or education programs. The breakdown of the top five by nationality, number, and percentage is: