Chanpon

We lived in a "danchi" at that point and I felt strongly that my speaking with her in English only served to add to the already heavy burden of having a foreign mother. As an aside, my husband was tutoring junior high kids in English at that point and one of the students was a young woman with the most beautiful head of auburn hair. I was so jealous. But, she hated it because she was continually harassed, accused of not being Japanese, of being haafu and worse. She wasn't, it was a natural occurance.

Anyway, my daughter had a predominantly Japanese first two years so that when we moved to Madison, Wi she spoke the English that she knew with a Japanese accent that my parents found enchanting. At the end of two years, she had forgotten her Japanese, in spite of the fact that her father continued to speak to her in Japanese, and switched into English. We moved back to Japan and in with my in-laws when she was 4 and a half, so she got reverse immersion. She also attended a local yochien. She started to NIS in kindergarten and then got a heavy dose of both English and Japanese. She always felt inadequate in Japanese, a little behind, which would have made sense since she was starting over at age 4. However, she also switched into Japanese as a language of preference except for her academic work.

After graduating from NIS she moved to the States to attend high school and live with her aunt and uncle. She maintained her Japanese with the help of a Japanese student attending the same school living with her aunt and uncle who sort of adopted her (and helped her get a "fix" when the craving for tsukemono or misoshiru got to be too much). Anyway, she has ended up bilingual and biliterate, through her own efforts and with the help of a school that promoted both languages. It was not easy for her, but she appreciates the result.

My two younger children had a very different pattern. They are "toshigo". I was working full time and continued to do so after they were born and my maternity leave ended. They went into private care for a year and then hoikuen until ages 5 and 6 respectively. Therefore, they had a totally Japanese language input, except for what they got from me.

There is a 9 year gap between my daughter and these two, so by that time we had figured out some strategies. I was consistent, speaking only English to the boys (we called them chibitachi, inappropriate now since they are 6'2" and 6'5"), playing English language kids song tapes, storytelling tapes. They still remember the Limelighters, Burl Ives and Bananas in Pajamas (I was multicultural in English, using Australian along with the American). They would recite, with feeling and appropriate accent the Brer Rabbit stories as told by storytellers and Winnie the Pooh from the video. I restated every question and comment they made in English on our long drives from the hoikuen to home (it was only about 11km, but through Tsukiji and across the Sumidagawa at that point could and often did take over an hour in the evening rush hour traffic) and then responded in English.

But, I never heard them actually use English until they were 4 and 5 years old and I took them to visit their American relatives, including cousins who were close to the same age. So, at least to that point, hearing the language had given them enough to develop their language and surprisingly their pronunciation.

They both started attending NIS, Ataka in grade 1 and Ryo in Kindergarten and went straight through. Interestingly, they both started using English between themselves within 6 months of starting at NIS, although, the dominant language among all three kids continued to be Japanese and then chanpon as the boys became more and more bilingual. I continued to ply the kids with English videos, tapes, reading to them in English and only speaking with them in English because once they left school, their world was Japanese. Although they were comfortable with monolingual English speakers, their circle of friends was primarily bilingual, kids like themselves. At that point in time about 1/3 of the enrollment in their classes was also mixed, raised as bilinguals.

I worked at using English, finding tapes and books. I did not try and teach the kids to read or do any academic work. Partly this was because I was working full time and frankly did not have the energy. I also felt pretty strongly that they needed me as a mother and not as another teacher. (I was teaching kindergarten at that point and had far too many students who had no childhood, only adult directed activities, so I had some pretty strong feelings about what was an appropriate role for me.) I don't think their language skills would have been as strong without the support of NIS. The only reason they were able to attend was because I was working there. I paid for the first three years of my daughter's time there by basically turning over about half of my salary every month.

I have friends who did not send their kids to an international school. Some of them have monolingual Japanese speaking children, some have dominiant Japanese/ESL English proficiency and there are also some who are pretty even bilinguals. Everyone does it differently, because family dynamics and just place are all different. There are two things that stand out, it is hard work for both parents and kids; and there is little danger of becoming a semilingual unless there are serious language learning problems.

Anyway, that's how we did it. All three kids are bilingual and biliterate and in spite of the whinging and fights over homework and kanji tests at the time, they are happy about it.

Good Luck but you can do it! One thing I have noticed is that families now are much more sophisticated and knowledgable about raising children bilingually than we were. You already have a head start.

Otherwise, just enjoy.

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Penny�fs thesis on chanpon identity youth is available on chanpon.org. Click here to download.

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