Will Miss #258 - language schools (the good)

A Geos poster, implying that you'll be in one big happy family with foreigners and Japanese alike if you attend their school. Of course, it's too late now since Geos folded.
While there are problems with working at language schools (related mainly to cultural differences and working expectations), the experience carries some unique benefits. The main one is that it is often an ideal environment

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Won't Miss #258 - language schools (the bad)

An ad for "Geos" language school (eikaiwa) using Disney's "Shrek". Even though the school went out of business, these posters are still up all over Tokyo. Given the cash they must have invested to use these images, it's no wonder the company went down the drain.

One of the things that foreigners learn rather quickly after being engaged at a language school is that the experience is not what

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Will Miss #197 - cultural story exchanges

English language schools ("eikaiwa") and foreigners working in them get a bad rap among the foreign community in Japan, but I can say without hesitation that they are the best cultural exchange environments around. A big part of the reason for this is that foreigners who are studying Japanese tend to want to speak mundane Japanese for practice outside of the eikaiwa, and those who work in an

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