It's 1:50 p.m., just five minutes before the fourth period is set to start at Tanashi Daini Junior High in western Tokyo. From one of its classrooms reverberates the sound of frustrated teachers, who surround and stare anxiously at a large screen set up to replace a green chalkboard that, under normal circumstances, would be commanding the attention of students in the room. At the center of the scene is Megumi Kurihara, a veteran Japanese-language teacher who is supposed to begin her class in just a few minutes. But this isn't like any class she has ever taught in her decadeslong career. It's going to be fully remote, with only that big screen and a tablet connecting her to about 70 students logging in from home.

Some areas in Japan are struggling to secure enough public school staff to teach Japanese to children with foreign roots amid a recent surge in the number of such students in the country, a Kyodo News survey showed Wednesday. The city of Yokohama, Saitama Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture began the academic years of 2018 and 2019 without enough Japanese-language teachers, with a deficit of 28 in public elementary and junior high schools, according to the survey of local education boards. The three authorities were short by 21, five, and two teachers respectively. Almost all vacancies were able to be filled by the middle of these school years, but the Fukushima education board was unable to fill one spot during the whole of the 2018 academic year. With the number of children without adequate Japanese-language skills on the rise, the education ministry formulated a standard in 2017 that requires schools to have one licensed Japanese-language teacher per 18 students with such needs, aiming to achieve the target gradually over the next 10 years.

YANGON – Myanmar's first-ever training course for Japanese-language teachers is opening as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to invite more Asian youths to work in Japan. The initial phase of the training program starts this month at the Yangon University of Foreign Languages for students majoring in Japanese and for teachers from private Japanese-language schools, the Japan Foundation said. The foundation, a government-backed institution that carries out international cultural exchange programs, picked Myanmar as the third country in which to offer such training courses, after India and Vietnam, following Abe's speech at an international conference in Tokyo in 2017 where he said Japan would choose three locations in Asia to nurture Japanese-language teachers. Noriyuki Matsukawa, executive director of the Japan Foundation Center for Japanese Language Testing, said the yearlong program aims to support Myanmar's human resources through Japanese-language learning, recruit a new kind of teacher and improve current teachers' skills. "Myanmar has high demand for Japanese-language proficiency," he said, adding that the number of people in Myanmar taking the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test nearly tripled from 13,099 in 2016 to 37,786 in 2018.

NEW DELHI – India's first training center for teachers of Japanese was officially opened Monday in the capital, New Delhi. The inauguration ceremony for the center, which is a joint project involving the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and the Japanese Embassy with the support of the Japan Foundation, was attended by Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu. The ambassador noted in a speech that demand for learning Japanese is growing significantly as the Japan-India relationship flourishes, leading to an increasing number of employment opportunities in Japanese companies in the country. "The number of Japanese companies is increasing every year and is now about four times the number seen 10 years ago. These companies require Indians who can speak the Japanese language, in order to act as bridges between their Indian subsidiaries and headquarters in Japan," he said.