Yokosuka's New Connection With Nepal

For those who have lived in Yokosuka over the past 10 years, one noticeable trend has been the appearance of numerous Indian Curry restaurants .... There are over a dozen of them now, all small businesses, and often built in old Japanese shops which had closed .... Names like Nirvana, Delicious, Sarina, Gorkha Palace, Lotus, Kalika, etc.

And it turns out the people who run these establishments are actually from Nepal.

Japan is aging and its population getting smaller, so it is beginning the experience a serious labor shortage, and the government has revised immigration laws to allow more foreigners to come work and live in Japan.

Not sure how things developed, but looks like some of the Nepali restaurant managers must have reached-out to Yokosuka City government with a proposal to help actualize the National Government's new foreign labor policy.

What subsequently happened is that Yokosuka signed a three-year immigrant labor agreement (memorandum of understanding) with Bharatpur City in south-central Nepal. 

Yokosuka Mayor Kamiji traveled to Nepal (15-19 October 2019) to meet with National Government officials, and then went to to Bharatpur for a signing ceremony with Mayor Dahal.

Don't know the details of the agreement, but its intent is to bring more Nepalis into Yokosuka to work at local small- and medium-sized Japanese businesses which are suffering due to the overall labor shortage.