(From left): Agnes Lepcha, Joita Banerjee and Basabdatta Chatterjee at the Queens Park dinner, ahead of their Saturday departure to Japan. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

?Remember to take a few saris, so that the Japanese children can learn to wear them,? Japan consul-general Yoshikazu Takeuchi advised the first batch of teachers selected from Calcutta for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) programme.

At a special dinner held in their honour at his Queens Park residence, Takeuchi said the programme started worldwide in 1987 and teachers have been recruited from 44 countries ? including Germany, Australia and the UK and US ? where English has become a native language. This is the first time teachers are enrolled from India.

Of the 20 recruited as assistant language teachers from across the country, three are from Bengal. ?Our children must learn about other nations, so along with English, they will pick up information about India from their JET teachers,? said Takeuchi.

Scheduled to leave for Japan on August 5, the candidates (mostly girls in their late 20s) will teach 10 to16-year-olds in various government schools in Japan for a year.

As they will be assisting the Japanese language teachers, the teachers from India can make do with minimum knowledge of Japanese. ?People in Japan don?t expect foreigners to speak fluent Japanese, but they do appreciate if you speak broken Japanese,? said the consul-general.

So, Basabdatta Chatterjee, who will teach in Kobe City (Kobe prefecture), Joita Banerjee, who will teach in Yawata City (Kyoto prefecture) and Agnes Lepcha, who is headed for the Amakusa City prefecture, have as much to learn as teach.

Basabdatta, who was teaching English at the undergraduate level and doing research at Calcutta University, said the screening interview was not too difficult, as what the selectors were looking for beyond academic qualifications was ?a positive outlook?.

She has bought a book to teach herself Japanese and feels certain that the effort will pay off. Joita, who has been doing a Japanese language course and teaching in a school, is more confident, but the fact that she has never ventured out of the country makes her a little apprehensive. ?But everything, including our apartments, will be arranged. It should be great,? she added.

The JET “seeks to enhance internationalisation in Japan by promoting mutual understanding between Japan and other nations”, says a brochure. The number of JET participants now working in Japan is 6,000. All graduates under 40 years of age, with a keen interest in the culture of Japan but who have never lived in the country for three or more years in the past eight years can apply.