Meet Our Teacher

A journalist once said, “As a student, I learned from wonderful teachers, and ever since then I’ve thought everyone is a teacher.”  I have been teaching children for the last 30 years both in Japan and the United States.  I have taught both in the classroom and as a Japanese teacher, and I am now so fortunate to be part of a great community of learners and teachers here at Donguri kai.  I hope to enjoy our journey to learn about this wonderful Japanese language and culture.

After 10 years of working in the healthcare industry, Ms.Tabion started with Ms. Yatsuda a study group teaching Japanese to their kids and friends. In 2017, she started Donguri Kai at JASC and has been teaching since. She is a member of an international research community of kanji teaching methods in multilingual children at Learn Japan.

I am currently living in Osaka, Japan. I worked for a couple years in Chicago, then moved back to Japan in August 2023. I have been teaching children for 6 years. I worked at an international school in Japan teaching Japanese to international students for 4 years.  Hope to make my class fun for children to teach Japanese and culture through Donguri Kai.

I have been teaching English and Japanese to adults and children since 1995. As a mother of two who speaks the two languages, I deeply understand the need for bilingual education in the U.S. Currently, I sub Tampopo class, and teach Baby Tampopo class and Japanese program at Banner Preschool.

Ms. Yatsuda is a resident of Chicago since 2010, and a mother of two children. In 2016,  she and Kaori Tabion founded a small Japanese study group for her own children and their friends, and taught them Japanese for 3 years. In 2019,  she began teaching Japanese at Donguri program. Her goal for teaching is to deliver a Japanese language program that makes children motivated and excited.