Interviews
As a Japanese instructor (Japanese)
(Japanese) Honestly, I didn’t have any experience at first. I was still pretty young, and—not to sound rude, but—there really weren’t many people providing guidance on how to instruct. So in the beginning, I was just blindly feeling out how to go about things. I felt like this wasn’t really the career path that I was supposed to be on... One of the most memorable things… there’s a former student of mine named Pablo, who now works in Japan. He was my student for about half a year, and during that time he entered into an annual speech contest held by the Kyoren (Center for Japanese Language Education in Argentina), in which I think he placed 3rd. So he was awarded with the bronze. That inspired him to go to Japan, and now he is in Japan as an English teacher. One day he came back, and stopped by my office at Centro Nikkei. He said to me, “Sensei, thank you so much. Taking your class and then placing in the speech contest was a huge turning point in my life. Because of that, I now work in Japan. I now live in Japan.” He had sought me out to give me those words of appreciation. That was such a wonderful thing, to find out that I had a part in affecting someone’s life to such a degree. It made me extremely happy.
Date: 2006
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Interviewer: Takeshi Nishimura, Ricardo Hokama
Contributed by: Centro Nikkei Argentino