New Shiga Pref. night school helps Chinese mom converse with Japanese-speaking kids
KONAN, Shiga -- The first night school in west Japan's Shiga Prefecture opened in April 2025 -- one of a growing number in Japan providing basic education for those who missed out on studying and for foreign nationals learning Japanese. The Mainichi Shimbun recently visited the new program in the city of Konan to learn about the students' backgrounds.
Yua Yamamoto, 44, finds herself busy juggling work and going to night school, but her first-year junior high school daughter keeps her going with a daily word of encouragement: "Get better at Japanese."
Yamamoto, a Chinese national, works at Konan's school lunch center from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., goes home to freshen up, runs errands and makes dinner for her husband and daughter. The night school classes start around 5:30 p.m., and so she says she has "no time to eat" during the day. There are four periods each evening, which run until around 8:45 p.m., after which she can finally go home and sit down to have a meal. Though she hardly has time to catch her breath, Yamamoto enjoys going to school, saying, "The teachers come up with creative ways for us to have fun in class."
"I want to speak Japanese better, and communicate with my children at a deeper level." This is why Yamamoto goes to night school, despite her busy schedule.
Struggling with Japanese
Born and raised in China, Yamamoto moved to Japan about 20 years ago with her Chinese husband, whose work brought them to the country. Sixteen years ago, they settled in Konan. Their son, now a second-year vocational school student, has already moved out and lives by himself. Both their son and daughter were born and raised in Japan.
At home, the parents spoke Chinese, while the children communicated in Japanese. While daily conversation was never a problem, Yamamoto felt like she was unable to fulfill her parental responsibilities through her words. Her children asked her for help in their school work, but she recalls, "I couldn't speak in Japanese well, and my kids didn't understand Chinese. I didn't understand what was in their textbooks."
Her daughter is active in extracurricular activities -- calligraphy, dancing and piano. These lessons involve regular communication with instructors and they frequently contact Yamamoto. They are important exchanges to support her child's learning experience, but reading and writing Japanese has remained a challenge for her, making every exchange a struggle.
One day, her daughter brought home a flyer from school announcing the launch of a new night school program at the city's Kosei Junior High School. Yamamoto had been interested in enrolling in a night junior high school in another prefecture to study Japanese while catching up on basic education, but the demands of raising children had put that idea on hold.
Now that her children are old enough, she has decided to give it a try to "do something about the daily struggle with the children because of Japanese."
A new goal: working at hospital
Yamamoto's days are busy, but she doesn't mind the tight schedule. At night school, she found herself among classmates who weren't so fluent in Japanese. "It's fun. People from all over the world are there, and I'm learning more every day," she says, her eyes lighting up.
Yamamoto envisions a future with improved Japanese, where she can have deeper conversations with her children about studies and life. She also now has a new goal: After graduating from night school, she hopes to attend vocational school and become a qualified medical interpreter working in Japanese and Chinese.
She has come across situations at Japanese hospitals where she couldn't communicate with the doctors in Japanese about her symptoms and couldn't ask questions. "I've heard many international students have the same problem. I want to work at a hospital to help them," she commented.
On the other side of her busy routine -- working by day and learning by night -- she sees a clear path forward.
(Japanese original by Mayu Kikuchi, Otsu Bureau)
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