About ImaWakatta
Learning with ImaWakatta
ImaWakatta is a Japanese e-learning site designed from the ground up to make your learning enjoyable and productive. The site was the brainchild of Miki and her desire to expand her ability to teach Japanese beyond the classroom.
Our mission is to create a Japanese learning tool that is approachable, affordable, and easy to stay motivated.
We strongly believe that "context based" and "interactive" content makes a huge difference when it comes to learning a language. Our content is created with those principles in mind.
We are open to any ideas from you, to make our site more useful and effective for all Japanese learners. We are just a small team and love to be your friendly learning partner!
The Team
Miki - Teacher
Miki has been a Japanese teacher for 10 years. Miki did Japanese education as her undergraduate degree at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies then completed a Masters of Japanese Applied Linguistics at Waseda University in Tokyo. She taught in classrooms, as well as online, then worked as a headteacher at a local Japanese school in Melbourne. Drawing on her broad teaching experience, she decided to create an online Japanese learning site to help remote learners.
Miki was born and raised in Hiroshima and sometimes misses the okonomiyaki from the region. Outside of work Miki enjoys spending time with her daughter.
Kumiko - Teacher
Kumiko has 10 years of experience as a Japanese teacher. She taught Japanese as a full-time teacher in Australia. She has experience teaching from Beginner level to JLPT preparation N1, as well as writing instructional courses. She currently writes content for ImaWakatta part-time while she works as a full-time Japanese teacher in Japan.
She is originally from Osaka and her hobbies are looking for nice cafes and going to see nature. She is into cycling these days.
Mina - Teacher
Mina studied Japanese education at university and graduate school and has been teaching Japanese for 8 years.
Her special interest is Japanese language education for young people. Currently, she lives in Nagano prefecture, Japan and teach Japanese to international students. Mina likes reading manga and walking her dogs.
Yuri - Community
Yuri has 10 years of experience working as an administrator and manager at a Japanese language school. As well as regular managerial responsibilities she has taken the lead on social media marketing and business planning.
Originally from Aichi prefecture Yuri is a passionate advocate for Japanese culture, food and craft. Outside of work she loves walking and exploring cities and has also been getting in touch with nature as she has recently taken up snorkelling.
Chris - Engineering
Chris has been a software engineer for over 10 years and is passionate about online learning. He is interested in how technology can enable and motivate the learner through various means such as reward feedback and gamification.
Chris has traveled to Japan many times and even lived there for some time. Outside of work he enjoys game development, playing video games, studying Japanese and planning his next trip back to Japan.
Content
All written content is prepared by professional teachers who are native Japanese speakers.
Additional credits
Additional photography from Unsplash