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●❾●❻・●❼WWIMIIAWIAIAAAIIntroduction Information■Ⅰ▶■Ⅱ●❷●❸・●❽Education■Ⅰ▶■ⅡGO! GO! NIHON ●❹・●❺●●●❿URL▶https://daigakushinbun.com/ E-mail▶info@daigakushinbun.com［Animation］［Culinary/Confectionery］［Automobile］INCORPORATING No.14, 2023 [Summer Special Issue]Special Interviewvol.14Hawaii EditionAfter graduating from college, Mrs. Keiko “Eko” Burgess began her career as a broadcaster at Tohoku Broadcasting Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Sendai City, Japan). She is currently a Japanese language teacher at Kaiser High School in Hawaii, USA, where she teaches Japanese to students.We visited Mrs. Eko Burgess to hear her life story and to send a supportive message to the young people in Hawaii!―Please tell us about your background.grew up in Tokyo, and after graduating from high school I went on to Kokugakuin University (Shibuya-ku, Tokyo). I had always dreamt of becoming a broadcaster on TV, so I decided to apply and was fortunate enough to receive a job offer from Tohoku Broadcasting, Co., Ltd.fter joining, I worked as a broadcaster at Tohoku Broadcasting Company for about three years, and then became a freelance broadcaster, working in TV and radio for about 12 years.―You are currently working as a Japanese language teacher. Please tell us how you started.orking as a broadcaster was very enjoyable and rewarding. However, in Japan, female broadcasters often played a supportive role to male broadcasters. Our looks were important, and we were ―Please give a message to the youth in Hawaii.f you are interested in the Japanese language and Japan, try watching Japanese TV and movies and making Japanese friends. By having experiences that you cannot have sitting at your desk, you will be able to acquire Japanese language skills dramatically faster. Also, if you have a chance, please visit Japan. Japan has many attractions, and you will surely discover something new by visiting Japan.Written in two languages［Mr. Ryota Katayama］INDEXKaiser High School also offers cultural exchanges with Japanese high schools.always expected to be young. I thought that unless I became an experienced newscaster, it was not a job that I could continue for the rest of my life.have always been engaged in reading, writing, and speaking Japanese as part of my job, so I was always interested in the language itself. When I thought about what kind of work I would like to do and what kind of work would allow me to utilize my experience, the first thing that came to mind was teaching Japanese as a second language.t the time, my dream was to live on my favorite island, Bali, while working as a Japanese teacher. In the end, I settled on Hawaii (she laughs).n the mid-1990s, teaching Japanese became a bit of a thing, so much so that a TV drama series called “Doku” was broadcast featuring a Japanese teacher and her Vietnamese student.―Please tell us about your career after that.fter concluding my career as a broadcaster, I joined the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) and began working as a Japanese language teacher at the Junior College of the Marshall Islands (Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands). There I met my husband, an American teacher, and we got married.fter that, my husband's job took us to the United Arab Emirates, and in 2001 we moved to Hawaii, where we live today.fter moving to Hawaii, I was blessed with children and did my best to raise them. In 2006, after child-rearing had calmed down, I started my career again as a Japanese teacher at an online school, Myron B. Thompson Academy. With the spread of coronavirus around the world after 2019, online classes became rapidly popular, so my experience with online classes at Myron B. Thompson Academy allowed me to smoothly transition to online classes when I had to.―I have heard that you taught in many schools in Hawaii.have taught at Aiea High School, Mililani High School, Niu Valley Middle School, and McKinley Community School, and I am currently teaching Japanese to students at Kaiser High School.―What kind of Japanese Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School●Profi leBorn in Tokyo. After graduating from Kokugakuin University, she joined Tohoku Broadcasting Co., Ltd. as a broadcaster. After working there for about 3 years, she worked as a freelance broadcaster for TV and radio for about 12 years. After that, she began working as a Japanese language teacher overseas and moved to Hawaii in 2001. As a Japanese language teacher, she has taught Japanese at schools throughout Hawaii. Currently, she teaches Japanese to students at Kaiser High School.language classes do you offer at Kaiser High School?e teach classes using textbooks or Japanese news as material. At Kaiser High School, Japanese language classes are required, so some students are interested in Japanese while others are not so interested. Therefore, we try to keep the students interested in the Japanese language and culture by incorporating Japanese animation and culture into our classes.―We often hear that Kanji is a diffi cult subject for foreign nationals when learning Japanese.hile hiragana and katakana are relatively easy to remember since they have 46 characters each, there are over 2,000 kanji characters Mrs. Keiko “Eko” Burgess, when she was active as a broadcaster.in Jyouyo-kanji alone, which makes it difficult to teach all of them and even more difficult to learn. For this reason, we practice an approach in which we ask students to take pictures of the kanji when they find them in their daily lives and imagine what they mean.also try to tell them that kanji characters have origins in their design, so it is easier to understand and remember them more deeply if I explain them using illustrations, such as mountains, rivers, and the moon.―What are your future goals?y goal is to help as many students as possible fall in love with Japan through my work as a Japanese language teacher. Hawaii in particular, has a strong relationship with Japan, and many Japanese tourists visit Hawaii every year. As a Japanese language teacher, I will continue to do my best to help build bridges between Japan and Hawaii.●●⓫・●⓬・●⓭High School ReportCool JapanALL THE NEWS & TOPICS FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSFulfilling Days as a Japanese Language Teacher, Applying Experience Acquired as a BroadcasterMrs. Keiko“Eko” Burgess進路新聞The Shinro Shimbun