Japan is facing a nursing shortage.

The nation has the world’s oldest population but not enough young people to help care for them.

Now the country is turning to foreign nurses to help make up for that deficit.

But not everyone is convinced this is a good career move for these caregivers.

From Tokyo, reporter Jason Strother has more.

Forced to flee due to the brutal repression of the military regime in Burma, Rohingya refugees have been living in camps in southern Bangladesh for nearly three decades.

For the last three months, our reporter in Bangladesh, Ric Wasserman, has been tracing the lives of a group of these Rohingyas.

In a three part series we follow the Ahmed family, refugees living in squalor and with few lifelines.

Until one day, when their lives take an unexpected and remarkable turn.

Last week on Asia Calling we heard about the desperate state of Indonesia’s Citarum River.

For twenty years, the river has been a dumping ground for domestic and industrial waste, and severely damaged by land-clearing and erosion upstream.

Now the Indonesian government has initiated an ambitious 15-year plan to clean up the river, with the help of a half-billion dollar loan from the Asian Development Bank.

The plan has received mixed responses. Some local NGO’s and activists praise the plan, saying urgent action is needed.

But others say it will only encourage corruption, and negatively affect the lives of poor illegal tenants who will be evicted during the cleanup.

Elise Potaka has this report for Asia Calling.

One hundred years ago, a wave of poor Japanese migrants resettled in Brazil to work on coffee plantations.

Today, their descendants number around one million and are one of Brazil’s most successful minority groups.

In the 1990s Japan offered this Diaspora work visas and close to 300 thousand Japanese-Brazilians have since returned to their ancestral homeland.

But now, due to the global economic recession, many are heading back to Brazil.

From Nagoya, reporter Jason Strother has more. 

The Citarum River is one of Indonesia’s most strategic waterways, supporting millions of people and providing water to the country’s capital, Jakarta.

But overuse and increasing industrial pollution over the last twenty years has severely damaged the river.

Winding its way through the hills above the Jakarta, the Citarum collects sediment from eroded land, and pollutants from villages and factories.

Floods are commonplace, and the livelihoods and health of those who live along the river are under threat.

For Asia Calling Elise Potaka visited communities living on its banks and filed this report.

Vietnam’s once pristine coastline is being transformed by a wave of huge tourism developments.

Fishing villages and empty beaches are giving way to golf courses and high-rise luxury hotels.

For Vietnamese who are just emerging from decades of rural poverty, it is hard to see what is being lost.

But with the global economy turning sour, it is no longer clear that the tourist market for such massive luxury projects exists anymore.

From central Vietnam, Matt Steinglass has more.

Laos might be relatively small with a population of around 7 million, but over 100 different ethnic groups make up the mix.

Differences can be found in language, and also in material culture like weaving and embroidery. In this way the different groups all contribute to the complexity of Laos’ cultural heritage.

Elise Potaka takes a look at two different projects in Luang Prabang.

For the past nine years Canadian Sylvio Lamarche has run one of the last laid-back beach resorts in Vietnam.

Jungle Beach, just north of Nha Trang, is a cluster of simple bamboo huts at the foot of jungle-covered mountains. The mountains are home to a troop of rare langurs, unlike those found anywhere else.

But the ape’s idyllic sanctuary is under threat. The Vietnamese government has announced huge plans to develop the area, including the construction of a massive oil refinery.

From central Vietnam, Matt Steinglass has more.