TOKYO - It has been a decade since Liliane last saw her little girl. She fled Africa in fear for her life, leaving behind everything she knew and loved in the hope of a fresh start in Japan.

Today, she scrapes a living from dead-end jobs, and what Japanese she knows has been snatched from television shows. There is little government help for people like her: free language courses are limited, social housing is hard to find, discrimination is rife.

Yet Liliane is regarded as one of the lucky ones - she was granted refugee status in Japan, a country which refuses more than 99 percent of cases.