Hugh Luo-Tatebe

Hugh is a very supportive, patient and personable sensei. I have taken a few lessons with him now. I find it especially helpful that he is both a native Japanese and English speaker. He is able to explain things to me in everyday plain English. I enjoy our classes very much and have been learning a lot from him.

Hugh is a lovely teacher who is extremely easy to talk to. The lessons are very enjoyable, whether it is conversing in Japanese, or translating sentences. I am also amazed by his ability to not only converse in Japanese and English, but in multiple other languages as well!:) Hugh-さんはそごく相談しやすくて、レッスンはいつも楽しいです。いつもありがとうございます！

I have been looking to improve my Japanese conversational skills, and Hugh is exceptional at this! His explanations of various japanese nuances are impressively easy to understand. Each lesson feels stress-free, yet you are always learning at a fast pace. Would recommend trying his lessons if you want to further advance your japanese studies!

We are two retired teachers taking Custom Lessons from Hugh in order to increase our ability to communicate while visiting Japan. Teachers can be very critical of other teachers, so please know that Hugh is an excellent teacher. He is prompt, really responsive and his linguistics background means his explanations are clear and give us new insights into the Japanese language, making it easier for us to remember. He has been very consistent in hearing what we want out focus to be and responding to that. Hugh provides us with detailed feedback during the lesson and written notes that we can use in the future. As he asks us to repeat, we are becoming more confident in pronouncing and listening. We strongly recommend Hugh.

He’s an incredibly kind and friendly teacher who’s really easy to talk to. Because he researches languages, we had some fascinating conversations that touched on language acquisition as well.

I am 10 years old and have studied Japanese for almost 2 years. I have now had 10 Japanese pronunciation lessons with Hugh Luo-Tatebe. He is a wonderful teacher. He is fun, interesting and helpful. He is great at helping me to improve my pronunciation. We do translation exercises, pronunciation drills and sometimes we talk about anime and games.