The English Language School Helping Niseko Residents Access Opportunities

Takeo Yoshida had a problem.

It was 2014 and he had just arrived in Kutchan as the manager for the new LUCKY Supermarket Niseko, and while success in this new role largely depended on him being able to appeal to foreign visitors, his grasp on English wasn’t strong.

It was just around this time that Julian and Yoshiko Bailey, an international couple, launched the English language school SMiLE Niseko with the goals of teaching English in a more effective way than is generally found in Japan and helping the local Kutchan population access the opportunities of the Niseko Resort.

Shortly after enrolling in SMiLE, Yoshida san began deploying his rudimentary English, visiting foreign companies, working to add English signage in the supermarket – then a novelty for Kutchan – and interacting with foreign customers and suppliers.

Yoshida san said that although his English at the time still had a long way to go, having enough of a grasp of the language to make the effort went a long way.

The beginnings of SMiLE Niseko

Julian Bailey first came to Japan as a Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program instructor in the 1990s, having previously studied education at Cambridge University in the U.K., his native country.

While Bailey grew to appreciate Japanese culture, he found the country’s official English education model of rote learning through relatively inexperienced native speaker-recruits to be lacking.

After having a business career in London, he and his wife and SMiLE cofounder Yoshiko moved back to Japan in 2006, choosing Niseko due to its proximity to Yoshiko’s Eastern Hokkaido hometown and its then-emergence as an “hybrid-ish international community,” as Bailey described it.

After some time working in hospitality positions in the resort area, Bailey and Yoshiko started SMiLE, which stands for Social Mobility is Language Education in 2014 to ensure that the opportunities of Niseko were accessible to locals.

“There was a little bit of a gap developing between two economies like the one in Hirafu and the one in Kutchan Town,” said Bailey, who also expressed concern that this could lead to a culture of foreigner-resentment, something he saw in his home country ahead of its Brexit withdrawal from the European Union.

SMiLE Niseko now educates 80-100 people a year through its various private English courses as a Cambridge English Authorised Centre, all taught by professionals with an emphasis on classroom language, immersion and interactive teaching.

Expansion into the public sphere

As more people graduated from SMiLE courses and began using their English in the local economy – like LUCKY Supermarket’s Yoshida san – officials began to take notice.

Kutchan Town, according to Bailey, had recognised that the national curriculum for English language education wasn’t particularly effective.

Bailey said the town came to understand that if it wanted to keep its young people around after high school, it was time to “do something proactive” to further their English skills.

In coordination with the Hokkaido Prefecture government, Kutchan Town outsourced its English curriculum to SMiLE beginning in 2018, meaning across four grades about 600 children per year are taught by SMiLE in the public school system.

In an effort to normalise the use of a foreign language, the teachers are all Japanese nationals who have been certified to teach English and the curriculum includes occasional field trips, like in 2023 when 60 5th Graders travelled to the Hirafu Resort to interview foreign workers in English.

The Kutchan public school curriculum is in addition to the private classes SMiLE holds, an effort, said Bailey, to further democratise English education.

The future

SMiLE continues to work with Niseko Supermarket LUCKY, conducting workshops for the staff to enable them to better serve foreign customers, including through soft skills like honing English-language “warm welcomes” that the staff can deploy with guests.

SMiLE also offers some Japanese lessons for adults, working with some of the major brands like the Hilton Niseko Village to enhance their staffs’ abilities.

Bailey is toying with the idea of offering intensive Japanese language classes for foreigners outside of the winter season, thinking that resort companies may be willing to subsidise such programs to upskill and retain seasonal staff.

Whether SMiLE expands further or not, Bailey is surprisingly unpossessive of the professional-based, interactive language system he and Yoshiko created, readily saying he hopes others implement similar programs elsewhere.

“You don’t learn that much by just sitting and listening to someone, you need to actively use that language,” said Bailey.

“What we are trying to do is set up a model that other people can copy.”

You might also be interested in…

• Japan Moves To Shorten Foreign Arrival Entry Time
• How Niseko Is Addressing Its Labour Problem
• University Students Go ‘Glocal’ in Niseko