AKI HAPPY

My weekly Happy Conversation lessons with Aki Sensei have become a really important part of my study routine. It’s funny how it works - on any given week I often feel like I’m struggling but I can look back to a few months ago and see how much progress I’ve made. Her infinite patience with my clumsy Japanese is much appreciated, and she always gives me enough time to work out what I want to say. She is clearly a gifted and experienced teacher and I’m really glad I found her on this site!

Today was the first lesson with Aki sensei, it was a great lesson! She prepared cards with different topics, such as: - If you could tell something to all people on the Earth, what it would be? - If you have a chance, would you go to the Mars? - What book made the biggest impression on you? I think its a great way to make lesson, every time we can pick different themes and discuss it. Your Japanese level will be improved much faster if you will speak on different themes everytime, in this way you can broad you vocabulary, and also you can heard what Sensei thinks about that, which is very interesting as we all have totally different backgrounds, and that that we can talk about anything online while studing language its just great. Thank you Aki-sensei, looking forward to the next lesson with you!

Thank you Aki Sensei for another great lesson! Even if I still have a long way to go, little by little I can tell that I am improving thanks to my weekly conversation lessons. I still get stuck occasionally, but increasingly I can figure out a way to communicate my thoughts even if my grammar and word choice is questionable. I definitely got a little far afield with one of my responses today, but as always with Aki Sensei we laughed it off and kept going. One of the things I enjoy most about Aki Sensei’s approach is that she always gives me time and space to try without worrying about needing to be perfect - that was important to me as a beginner and after 100+ lessons I still really value this approach.

Aki-Sensei is an excellent teacher. She is attentive to the student and makes the lesson fun and engaging. She also made sure to communicate very well before the day of lesson to get to know a little about my daughter and made the lesson fun for her. Thank you so much! If you book with this teacher, you will not be disappointed! We will book again.

I realized a long time ago that I’m not very good at learning languages. However, I’m very willing to show up every day and bang my head against the wall, and little by little I can learn. Fortunately, Aki Sensei’s lessons never feel like banging my head against the wall (they’re actually very enjoyable!) and with well over 100 lessons completed I can attest that every week I get a little bit better and can understand a little bit more. Today we talked about a lot of different topics and the time flew by as it always does. I always appreciate the way that Aki Sensei guides the lesson along, keeping the conversation going at just the right pace. With just a few hundred more lessons I should be all good, and I know I will be able to enjoy the process and the conversations along the way 😃

Today’s lesson was exactly the change of pace that I needed, and it was a good reminder of why I value Aki Sensei’s lessons so much. For the past week I’ve been struggling with my self-study and getting frustrated with feeling like I’m moving backwards. Today’s lesson was like pushing the reset button and just enjoying being able to communicate in Japanese. Topics of the day included 税金, 推し活, and 料理. Even though I wasn’t feeling particularly sharp today, we still had a fun conversation and now I feel much more motivated to get back to studying 📚