Hi! I’m Zubiya
I’m a native Japanese speaker with a JLPT N1, and I’ve been teaching Japanese for the last 3 years to beginner and intermediate students.
I grew up with Japanese and English, but for a long time Japanese was just something that existed in the background of my life. I spoke enough to communicate and watch anime, but it wasn’t something I wanted to think about or try to improve. It was just a tool, and I really didn’t like kanji.
What changed the way I saw it
That began to change when I met a cool teacher who introduced me to parts of Japanese culture that I had never thought about before. For the first time, I started to see Japanese as more than vocabulary and kanji.
I realised studying languages in isolation is quite boring. It becomes so much more interesting when you understand the culture, habits, and thought processes behind it.
How I teach now
My idea of teaching revolves around asking lots of questions, making lots of wrong guesses, and then learning why. (Also, science says that’s a really good way to remember things.)
I had always been that fun-fact person, asking “by the way, did you know…?” to anyone I met. But it was my teacher who gave me the spark to start doing that with Japanese as well.
So now my mission is to light a little bit of that “why?” spark in you too :)
You’d be surprised how much you can learn about culture and ways of thinking just by questioning the shapes of kanji and weird grammatical structures.
So ask away, and I’ll do everything I can to help you find an answer. Can’t wait to see you in class!
Ready to Start Learning?