When Theresa Nakagawa moved to Japan in 2003, she had no idea she’d be there for more than a decade.
Twenty-three, she had just graduated from UC-Santa Barbara, when she saw an ad in the newspaper about teaching English abroad. Nakagawa thought it sounded like an interesting program, so she applied, stayed for a year, and was traveling around Europe when the school contacted her and asked her to come back; the teacher they’d hired to replace her had gotten homesick.
A year later, Nakagawa met her husband, a Japanese native, at a drinking party, and the couple dated for six months before getting married. Nakagawa kept working at the language school until 2013, when she decided to branch out on her own, frustrated by the school’s emphasis on standardized testing.
“Training for a test doesn’t teach you anything,” she said. “That’s why I focus on conversation skills. If I have to be [in Japan] for the rest of my life, I really want people to speak English.”
Nakagawa’s classes, based out of her home in Nagoya, draw about 200 students. Groups of eight to 10 students meet once a week for a 50-minute hands-on session.
One of the ways Nakagawa has tried to encourage their interest in English is by bringing them to Bainbridge.
“These students getting out of Japan is the most important part,” Nakagawa said of the motivation for the trip. “Japan is really small. I want them to be more international and open.”
Several years ago, she led a group of 3- and 4-year-olds with their mothers. They stayed at the home of Nakagawa’s parents, Fred and Mary Goetz.
The trip was so successful that Nakagawa decided to do it again this July, although this time she didn’t have the help of any parent chaperones. Nakagawa arrived on the island July 15 with her three kids, a 57-year-old Japanese assistant named Shoko, and nine Japanese children, ages 6 to 11.
“Most of their parents have never been to America themselves,” Nakagawa said.
She planned an action-packed itinerary for their visit, eager to give them new experiences and new vocabulary words to ponder. Last week, the students attended a summer camp at IslandWood, visited the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, went shopping in downtown Winslow, and competed in the All-Comers track meet.
“These kids have never experienced that,” Nakagawa said of the community track meet. “Of course they run at their schools, but there’s none of this opportunity to intermingle with everybody and race in their own age groups for fun.”
Roller-skating in Bremerton was overwhelmingly the group’s favorite activity. There aren’t any indoor rinks in Japan, Nakagawa explained. “But I don’t understand it. They were falling everywhere. It looked painful!”
The unanimous consensus was they all want to come back — even Satsuki, the 9-year-old that had to go to urgent care after being stung by wasps more than 10 times at the IslandWood camp.
Nakagawa thinks it has something to do with the inherent freedom here. “You can come to America and be American, no matter where you’re from. I’ve been in Japan for 12 years, and I will never be considered Japanese.”
