Tokyo Mokyo

I found a flyer for this business when checking out at Pearl, & thought to myself, «Japanese language lessons? Hell yes!» I may be semi-​fluent, but I’m fully aware that I can still use all the help I can get.
When I went home & looked them up online, though, I found to my dismay that they only offer beginning & intermediate classes. When I reported this to my fiancée, instead of sharing my disappointment, he said, «Why don’t you see if you can teach or tutor through them?»
& so I did just that, & now I’m a teacher’s aide for one of their beginning classes.
They pace their classes much more slowly than I had expected — the first book takes 3 sessions, each session 16 weeks — but they said that they do so because after trying around with other setups (1 or 2 sessions), they found that this had the highest retention & continuation rate. & let’s face it, I’m used to language classes being 5 days a week for 1 to 3 hours. Once a week for 1 hour is definitely going to slow things down.
Paul, the instructor that I’m working with, is quite a good teacher, & apparently is also a teacher at St. Petersburg College, so it stands to reason that he knows what he’s doing.
The program uses the book «Japanese for Busy People, Kana edition» & supplements it with kanji (Chinese characters) handouts. The first 8 weeks of class are spent both on lessons as well as on learning the hiragana & katakana, Japan’s syllabaries. They start each class session with a cultural tidbit, then move on to review, & then the lesson.
It strikes me as a pretty effective way to start learning Japanese if you have no previous experience in the language, & it’s a really positive setting.