Small Japanese class is gaining in popularity
Published 1:43 pm Thursday, December 11, 2008
By Brenda Sexton, The Courier-Herald
Ask sen sei (teacher) Kelli Sugihara's class, "Eigo o hanasemasu ka (Do you speak English?) and the will likely answer "hai" (yes). But they may also answer "lie" (no), because Sugihara's Plateau area students are learning to speak Japanese.
Her students range in age from 5 to 58, but once a week her tiny classroom at the Church of the Nazarene has 30 high school-age students, both beginner and intermediate, learning Japanese.
Oddly, when Sugihara, a 1980 Enumclaw High School graduate, was a missionary in Japan she taught English to the Japanese. Since her return to Enumclaw six years ago, she's teaching Japanese to English-speaking students.
It was while on that mission to Japan, which started in 1984, that she met her husband Masaki. He teaches Japanese at Sedro Woolley High School. They lived in Japan for 13 years. Sugihara herself, like her children, was born in Japan and is bilingual. But that wasn't always the case. In addition to English, she was fluent in German before getting the Japanese mission call where she got a crash-course in the language.
When she returned to Enumclaw, she started teaching Japanese to preschoolers. She has advertised classes in the local paper and by word of mouth. The younger students meet one hour a week and Sugihara charges $30 a month. Older kids and adults get 90 minutes a week of instruction for $35. Most of the students are from the Plateau, but others come from Puyallup and Kent. The classes have grown in popularity.
Sugihara said there's an obvious interest in the language and the culture. She said the Port of Seattle does more business with Japan than any other in the country. Japanese, she said, is the business language of technology, " and how many Japanese tourists do we see in the Seattle area each summer?" she asked.
Her students, she said, communicate with Japanese students on-line in computer chat rooms.
She said the tables have turned. It is the Americans who are now interested in Japanese pop culture.
That interest in Japanese pop culture is drawing high school-age students into her program. This is her third year offering lessons to local high school students. She currently has 30 enrolled. Enumclaw and White River high schools do not offer Japanese as a foreign language. Sugihara is working on a way to get her students high school credit for her classes.
They come to the class for different reasons, but many like Kayla Miller, Kegan Peterson and Cat Azzelino were drawn in with an interest in the popular Japanese cartoon animation - anime - or by friends already in the class. Others like Sam McCorkle were interested in the food and culture.
Arayia Mayeda, an EHS freshman, was interested in her roots. "I'm a quarter Japanese and very proud of that."
"It's a language that's not very common, and I wanted to learn more about it," Chelsea Radford said.
And still others, like Michelle Miller and Michael Schweiger, were drawn by our increasing global society.
"Most of the tech jobs are in Japan," said Schweiger, who also speaks French and German. "It's a good language to learn if you want to get ahead of the game.
"Despite popular belief, it's not that difficult to learn. It can be complicated," he said, referring to the three different written languages - hiragana, katakana and kanji, and the speed of conversation.
Sugihara agrees.
"It's a different language," she said. "It's not hard, just different, very straight forward. The grammar is very straight forward. It's the written language that will kill you. It's the only language in the world with three writing systems used simultaneously."
There is also no alphabet, just sounds, she added.
"We have a lot of fun. Learning a language should be fun."
Although the emphasis of her classes is on speaking the language, students also learn to read and write Japanese.
Having roots in Japan, Sugihara also teaches more than the language. She teaches customs, history and social studies.
"I don't want them to go and just see, I want them to understand as much as they can, and not just understand, but appreciate," she said.
The driving force behind this year's study is four of her students will accompany her to Japan for a three-week home stay in late June. The group will visit Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Tokyo.
To help students come up with the $3,000 each, Sugihara and parents have planned a number of fund raisers to help cut costs like car washes, an April yard sale and a May spaghetti dinner.
"If the community could look for those and support us, that would be wonderful," she said.
Brenda Sexton can be reached at bsexton@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/courierherald
