Rice cooker maker opens Japanese-language school
''If you want to learn Japanese, go either to Tokyo or
Okazaki!''
That is what people are beginning to hear outside Japan.
But why Okazaki, a city with a population of 330,000 in Aichi Prefecture in the
central part of Japan's main island of Honshu?
The answer is Hattori Kogyo K.K., a midsize corporation
specializing in the manufacture of kitchen appliances for commercial use such
as gas rice cookers.
Okazaki is the birthplace of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616),
founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867. It is
also known as a one-company town for Toyota Motor Corp.
What is not yet widely recognized here in Japan is that
Japanese-language courses offered by Hattori Kogyo are winning acclaim abroad.
Hattori Kogyo President Yoshio Hattori set up the Yamasa
Institute nine years ago to help foreigners study the Japanese language, work
or set up service ventures in Japan.
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Hattori, who studied in the United States, said he started
the institute feeling Japan should follow the U.S. in offering foreigners the
opportunities to exploit their talents and fulfill their aspirations.
Guiding a visitor to the institute in a five-story
building near Hattori Kogyo's factory, he said he embarked on the language
school undertaking without worrying about what he would do if it failed.
He said his father Tarokichi, who established the kitchen
equipment-making company, allowed him to do whatever he pleased.
''My ultimate goal was the establishment of the
institute,'' he said.
The government has not granted it ordinary corporate
school status, but Hattori said, ''Instead there is the aspect that we can
operate (the institution) freely.''
Personal computers and keyboards are lined up in the
institute's classrooms where 177 students from 23 countries study Japanese
taught by about 40 full-time and part-time teachers. Monthly tuition is 55,000
yen.
The courses range from four weeks to two years. Most
students found the institute on the Internet. Yamasa Institute officials said
they get 150 inquiries a day on its Web site.
About 95,000 foreigners are studying Japanese at
universities and corporations in Japan, while there are about 1,500
Japanese-language educational facilities, according to the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Declan Murphy, an Irishman who grew up in Sydney and who
also holds an Australian passport, studied at the Yamasa Institute and set up
Internet ventures in a leased office in the institute's building.
He is currently pouring his energies into the development
of software for learning the Japanese language. He is in the midst of making a
program that will enable each individual taking a correspondence course to sit
in front of a personal computer and study Japanese in six areas, including
vocabulary, kanji (Chinese characters), grammar and conversation. He will also
incorporate photographs and recordings of spoken Japanese into the program.
He said the main characteristic of the program will be the
full utilization of the experience he has acquired in studying the Japanese
language.
The program will be available in a total of seven
languages, including English.
''I've worked in Tokyo,'' Murphy said. ''But there are too
many people there and foreigners such as us would be buried if we try to do
something. Here (in Okazaki) I can work until midnight every night because my
apartment is close (to the office).''
What is lacking most in Japanese business is know-how in
the tourism industry, he said, adding that it lags behind in the utilization of
the Internet and is slow in achieving growth in productivity.
Murphy said foreigners can engage in businesses in areas
outside Tokyo if they utilize the Internet.
Hattori, meanwhile, is working in cooperation with a local
university on ways to breath new life into the conservative one-company town
and give vigor to the local region.