A former Birstall man teaching English in Japan has set up his own Internet company aimed at teaching children a foreign language.

Richard Graham, 25, originally from the Intake Lane area of Birstall, went to Japan in 1997 on the Government's JET Scheme which gives new graduates the opportunity to teach English abroad.

Richard, who is single and employed on the Japanese island of Shikoku, taught English to children from the age of three up to high school pupils and adults at evening classes.

His methods of incorporating self-composed games and songs into his lessons were so successful he made guest appearances on NHK TV - the Japanese equivalent of the BBC - to promote them.

As his JET contract came to an end, Richard decided to stay on to form his own Internet company so parents and teachers throughout the world could seek inspiration for teaching children a foreign language. The page is updated every month and the system took one year to build up.

"I initially started the games ideas using my school's Internet account," said Richard. "As the page became more popular and I started selling CDs, I had to move it and it's now hosted by Yahoo.

"My idea is to make a complete Internet TV station so teachers can go to the page, find what they want to teach and see a video on how to teach it, along with songs and animations."

Richard has also composed music, written songs to help in the lessons and produced a CD. His homepage is now visited by around 2,500 people every month from 49 different countries, including China, Paraguay, Brunei and Mexico.

"I often get quite amazed that I can be e-mailing a customer in Honk Kong, another in Canada, have the money being put in an American bank account and be an English man doing all this in Japan.

"I learned to teach by looking at my teachers, taking the good bits I saw and making sure I never did the bad things," said Richard, whose website is at www.genkienglish.com