Hugh Luo-Tatebe

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.

Hugh-san specifically prepared today’s lesson for my learning needs- today we learned a lot of sentences that don’t come up in textbooks. By doing sentence translations, I am forced to think about what I would say in everyday situations. Thanks a lot for the effort you put into (and before) our classes! I would highly recommend Hugh as a teacher

This is my third lesson with Hugh. Today's lesson was 45 minutes long and was so much fun that the time flew by. I still use Japanese a lot, but my goal is to be able to have all my conversations in English.

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！

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 assessed our needs and developed a curriculum to match perfectly. We learned some hiragana and then very specific useful phrasing we would use. The sessions were very clear (and he was very patient when necessary). Most of all we really appreciated the way he understood the mechanics of language, the way it works, and the really fascinating differences.