These are Tom's rough notes from a fascinating ACHR-supported exposure visit by a big group of Thai community leaders to Japan, in November 2003, to visit community development projects by Buraku communities and homeless encampments in several cities.

Here is an English language guide to the centuries old Asaka Buraku settlement in Osaka Japan.  In the 1970s and 80s, this extraordinary community completely transformed itself from an isolated, dilapidated and impoverished outcast settlement on the banks of the Yamoto River into a thriving, caring and healthy neighborhood of comfortable apartments, parks, trees, children's playgrounds and all sorts of amenities.  In the process, Asaka inspired many other Buraku settlements around Japan to undertake similar self-development projects.  This guide was prepared in 1995 by Yamamoto-san's team at the Buraku Liberation League branch in Asaka, and translated into English with help from friends in the ACHR-Japan network.  

This historic report, by the Kochi-based community architect Yoko Hatakenaka, describes one of the early Buraku redevelopment projects in Japan, which Yoko helped to guide as a young arhitect in the 1980s.  The project is in the city of Kitakyushu, and it is still there today.

This is the report from a survey of vinyl house settlements and "Jjokbang" laborers' housing in Seoul, conducted in 2011 by the Seoul-based NGO Asian Bridge. The survey was done in collaboration with ACHR and ACHR's ACCA Program.

The 10-day "East Asia Caravan" trip that ACHR organized in June 2009 was partly a very rich exchange visit, partly an ambitious ACCA Program advisory tour and partly a big chance to help build an eastern-Asian sub-group for mutual learning and mutual support. This report presents a detailed account of the four-day portion of the trip spent in Korea - the place where ACHR was born in 1989.