Tetsu Sensei’s Japanese Class

I teach Japanese from Sapporo.

I hated English as a kid. I figured I’d live in Japan my whole life, so what was the point? It was just another subject — memorize the irregular verbs, pass the test, forget it.

Then COVID shut down my high school, and everything went quiet. Everyone around me seemed to have something — a hobby, a talent, something they were building. I had nothing I was proud of. So I picked English back up. Not because I liked it. Because I needed something to hold onto.

I studied completely alone. Textbooks, vocabulary lists, YouTube videos. I couldn’t remember anything. Some nights I wondered if I just wasn’t smart enough. But I loved talking to people. Even badly, even slowly — getting through to someone felt incredible. For the first time I thought: I want to know the world.

Later I moved to New Zealand, completed a Level 6 diploma in Early Childhood Education at New Zealand Tertiary College, and worked at a preschool for two and a half years. It wasn’t the picture-perfect life abroad. I couldn’t follow fast English. I got things wrong every day. There were days I felt like no one could see me. But there were kids who called my name, parents who trusted me, coworkers who taught me their words. Slowly, I started to belong.

That’s when I learned a language isn’t grammar — it’s how you reach someone.

So I don’t teach grammar as rules to memorize. I show you the image behind it — why Japanese works the way it does — and then you learn it by using it, not by drilling it. I focus on the Japanese people actually say, not the sentences that only exist in textbooks.

And because I struggled alone, I know where learners get stuck. I know which explanations sound clear but leave you unable to say anything. Speaking Japanese and teaching it are two different skills, and I’ve spent years on the second one.

Studying alone is hard. I know, because I did it. That’s why I make videos, teach one-on-one, run a community, and built an app where you can write every day — so you never have to do it the way I did.