Japanese Educational System

Japanese Junior High School System

I enjoyed working at the Junior High school because I was the only one who spoke English, everyone else spoke Japanese except the English teacher I worked with. I was able to translate 1st, 2nd, 3rd year English we were studying into handwritten Japanese by chalk on the chalk board. My Japanese was corrected instantly by 36 sets of eyes, ready to pounce like a big cat on Kanji stroke order or missing something. A person keeps that up for years they learn to write Japanese. First period, second period, third period, by the time I got to fourth period I did not make any mistakes! This is how I learned to write Japanese by hand!

Another reason I had success with Japanese reading was because I had another hobby with kanji. I read my students names! I always read my students names in Japanese! When I was out and about at a restaurant, I would read a worker’s name tag. If I missed it! Pencil and paper with furigana. I kept memorizing names in Kanji, and that hobby helped my Japanese reading. JH students taught me their names in English, which was a nice in between subject for them, confidence builder.

I personally attended Japanese Classes with teachers, and Japanese schools, and any free school I could get into I would go! I met a politician, Yokoyamasan, in Nerima-ku, a judo Sandan. He had a Japanese college prep. school that I attended! Everyone was Chinese, or Korean, so I had to speak Japanese to communicate. Yokoyamasan also got me a job in the Nerima-ku Tokyo city Junior High School system. N.A.T.E. Nerima Assistant Teacher English.

Japanese Network Class

Teaching with a shine back screen, explaining in Japanese exactly what we wanted to accomplish in the class.
Working with individual students.
Approximately 40 workstations, 3 printer locations, inkjet & laser Japanese Network Windows server. You can see some of my handwritten Japanese on the board.
This was the introduction of the internet to the National Japanese school system. At this location, Elementary, Junior High School, and University were involved in this research study. Each academic department was involved in this study and needed to produce, create, establish a class.

The fear of the Japanese teachers was tremendous in the English department. Dr. Horiuchi, the research lead/science teacher kept sitting with me at lunch. We would always talk technology, he would ask me, “You bought the new apple laptop, and upgraded the CPU, the first week you bought it?” Then we would get into the details of these Japanese tech projects I was doing! Firewire 400 mb could do video, but the cpu could not. Solution new cpu upgrade. The only thing I gave up was I could not sleep it. That went on for months we talked like that. Images, batteries, software, hardware, printers, routers, Windows, Mac, operating systems, Software & Hardware Emulations, you name it I was doing it. Next thing I knew I was teaching the network class! The Japanese English teachers were relieved they did not have to do it! It also helped that in 7 years, I was not late nor never missed a day. The day I got a raise was when I had two big bags of garbage, one in each hand, in a hurry to the dumpster, the Japanese English teacher had a network computing worry, which was handled weeks before, I explained. She looked down, then looked up and said to me, “you are teaching the network class, and you are taking out the garbage!” That was a 10 dollar jump in my hourly pay. (Sen yen) I received it the following year, but the decision to give it to me was made right there!