*******************<\/p>\n
How to Pass Your Love of Japan onto Your Kids<\/strong><\/p>\n By Jessica Kennett Cork (CIR, 1997-2000, Hiroshima<\/a>-ken)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n (Note:<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Click here<\/a> <\/strong>to join the JET Alumni Parents Facebook group<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n My kids (7, 5, 2 and 4 months) are the only blond-haired kids in their school.\u00a0 My two oldest know the names of all the Pok\u00e9mon characters in both English and Japanese. My toddler can sing the Totoro and Anpanman theme songs in Japanese.<\/p>\n No, we don\u2019t live in Japan. We live in a suburb of Atlanta.\u00a0 But I knew that even though we live in the United States, I wanted to share my love of Japan with my kids.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to \u201cforce\u201d Japan on them, and it is fine with me if their future careers have nothing to do with Japan. But at the same time, I want for them to appreciate our family\u2019s adopted culture, and to understand that since I met their dad in a Japanese class in college, they wouldn\u2019t exist if it weren\u2019t for Japan.<\/p>\n And so I decided to enroll them in Japanese\/English bilingual immersion school. We\u2019re lucky to have several here in Atlanta: two daycare centers and one elementary school. Almost all the other kids in the school are full Japanese or half Japanese, so it is not always easy on my blondies.\u00a0 The elementary school is Japanese Ministry of Education approved, which means homework every day, even during summer vacation, and lots of parental involvement expected from the PTA.\u00a0 Not to mention the pressure to come up with a decent o-bento for lunch. My seven year old often wonder why his o-bento doesn\u2019t have cute rabbits made out of apples and carrot flowers. But at the same time, he got to pound rice for New Year\u2019s, grow tomatoes and morning glories as part of his life skills class, has mandatory music and art class, and can use chopsticks better than I can.<\/p>\n But what I love most about the school is the global perspective he is learning. Take Social Studies class. The class is taught on some days in English using an American textbook and on other days in Japanese using a Japanese textbook. Imagine the discussion the kids will have when covering World War II.\u00a0 My kids are native English speakers, so obviously English class is easier for them, but sometimes they really struggle with Japanese.\u00a0 When they see the native Japanese speakers struggling in English class, they understand how the Japanese kids feel and they help them out. They realize that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and if we help each other out, we can all reach the same goal. They are also learning that even if the Japanese kids know more words than they do, they don\u2019t necessary know more kanji. My oldest son takes great pride in beating the Japanese kids on kanji tests!<\/p>\n If you are lucky enough to have a school with a bilingual immersion program in your area, I encourage you to consider it. It can be a bit daunting at first, and you may be concerned about what effect it will have on your child to perhaps be the only non-Japanese in the school. But the benefits to your child far outweigh the negatives, and once your child begins to speak and understand Japanese more fluently, things get easier.<\/p>\n If you do not have such a school near you, I encourage you to seek other options. Many large cities throughout the United States have Japanese Saturday schools. While these are primarily for Japanese kids who are attending local English-only public schools to keep up with their Japanese, anyone is welcome to attend. You can get information on the Saturday schools from your local Japanese Consulate. Another idea is to hire Japanese nanny for your child, either full time or after school.\u00a0 Many Japanese wives of expatriate businessmen are interested in this type of work since it does not require a high level of English. Advertise in your local Japanese newspaper or put up an ad at an Asian grocery store or Japanese owned restaurant. You could also start a playgroup of parents who want to teach their kids Japanese and invite local Japanese parents who want to teach their kids English. And you can ask your local Japan-America Society or JETAA chapter to plan kid-friendly events so that you will get to know the other Japanese parents in the area.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t start studying Japanese until college, and there was so much to learn in just four short years. I remember hours of cramming to try to remember 50 kanji per week, which were promptly forgotten to make room for the next 50 kanji required on the subsequent test. I\u2019m glad my kids have the opportunity to take it slow and truly master a foreign language. And I love it when my son says to me, \u201cKanji is my favorite thing to study at school.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ******************* How to Pass Your Love of Japan onto Your Kids By Jessica Kennett Cork (CIR, 1997-2000, Hiroshima-ken) (Note:\u00a0\u00a0Click here to join the JET Alumni Parents Facebook group.) My kids (7, 5, 2 and 4 months) are the only blond-haired kids in their school.\u00a0 My two oldest know the names of all the Pok\u00e9mon characters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,305,177,304,282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-cultural-outreach","category-language-study","category-notable-jet-alums","category-jet-roi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-65G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23416"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23418,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23416\/revisions\/23418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}