RAIN or shine, Mercy, a 29-year-old Filipino domestic worker in Tokyo, attends free weekly computer classes for migrant workers. This program, she says, will soon help her find a better job -- paving the way for a more secure future.

"It's hard to juggle work and the computer classes," says the young woman who left her daughter in the Philippines two years ago when she came to Japan.  "But I'm determined to carry on and so grateful for the opportunity to lead a better life someday," she told Inter Press Service on the eve of International Migrants Day, December 18.

December 12 was the last day of her classes before the Christmas and New Year break. Mercy, along with a large group of Filipinos gathered at a church in Meguro, central Tokyo, to celebrate a special Christmas before the actual December 25 festivities. But beyond that, they also used the occasion to raise funds for a literacy

project in rural Philippines that is supported by migrant workers in Japan.

Mercy, dressed fashionably in tight jeans and sporting a jaunty short haircut, was in charge of the extremely popular bingo games. Migrant workers pay ¥500 (about $0.50) for each card, and the winners receive small gifts. The major portion of the earnings that day goes to the charity project.

"Kaya naman kasi ng Pinoy lang" (Filipinos can do it -- pinoy is the colloquial term for Filipino) is the slogan of a unique migrants training project run in Tokyo and its cousin cities -- Yokohama and Chiba. Around since 1998, it was founded by Antonina Binsol, a Filipino working in a Japanese bank.

"The program was undertaken to help migrants educate themselves and also for them to start networking. This gives them the social security necessary to survive in a foreign country and this has worked out very well," said Ms. Binsol.

Mercy is one of tens of thousands of young Filipinos, together with other Asian men and women, who arrive in Japan each year trying to seek their fortune amidst rosy preconceived ideas about making quick money and returning home rich.

They are a valuable source of cheap labor for Japanese construction or manufacturing companies that stay globally competitive by relying on people who can work long hours for low wages.