“Welcome to E-JAN! “

– Introduction –

First of all, we deeply appreciate your visiting our E-JAN website, and for your interest in our service. My name is Shintaro Akazawa, the founder and the CEO of Wilicus Incorporated, the operating corporation for E-JAN in Tokyo, Japan.

Today, let me introduce myself briefly and explain why we started our service for people who are interested in Japanese language and culture.

I was born in a suburb of Tokyo, close to Narita airport. My father used to work for a travel agency, so I was fortunate to experience a diverse world and other cultures during my childhood. Spontaneously, I became eager to study abroad when I was a college student, and decided to live in the United States (in California and Massachusetts) for a period of time in order to study English and American culture. While the United States is the only place in which I have studied abroad, I still love traveling, and I have visited about 30 countries and regions across Asia, North America, Europe and North Africa so far.

Ever since I got to experience living in a different country from my own, creating something which can connect this diverse world more closely, while respecting our individual differences, has been my goal. In my early 30’s, I established a startup to try and realize it. Although it took about 10 years for our company to grow enough that we could offer this new service to people overseas, I’m now very happy to be able to invite those who are interested in foreign cultures to a place where they can get to know Japan, its culture and its people more easily.

“Once for the nation, now for the world “

– Our History –

Our first mission was to create a space where Japanese people could learn English effectively. As many people know, Japan in particular is a country where the number of English speakers and levels of proficiency are not high. Although there are many reasons for this, as a language learner myself, I noticed that the biggest problem lies in grammatical order differences between Japanese and the majority of other world languages.

As Japanese authorities have not yet found a definitive solution to overcome this issue, our first task was to construct a learning method for developing communication skills within Japanese learners of English while getting past the language barrier both technically and psychologically.

After grappling with this mission for about 10 years, Seven Seas English Academy, the English school we founded, was successful in developing a 1-on-1 / 1-on-2 private learning support method for our students. SSEA has helped over 1,000 Japanese students learn to communicate in English. Since then, we have established a new corporation, Wilicus Incorporated, so we can offer even more language and cross-cultural services not only to people living in Japan, but also around the world.

Wilicus incorporated is operated by a diverse staff, with members originating from 5 countries. Although our headquarters are located in Tokyo, we hope our organization is a place where anyone, regardless of their background, can enjoy working and living in Japan. It is our mission to connect with people who strive for a diverse, peaceful world where every individual can be understood and respected. E-JAN is therefore our second mission we aim to carry out in order to realize that goal, especially for people who are interested in Japanese culture and what it is really like to live here.

Now, we are proudly introducing this service operated not only by Japanese tutors, but also by diverse staff members from around the world, to people who are eager to learn about the Japanese language and culture, and to those who are planning to move to Japan in the future. We aim to be not just a language learning institution, but a support platform offering comprehensive services from Tokyo, Japan.

“To establish a more diverse society “

– Our Principles and Goals –

In accordance with what we have been doing so far, the mission of Wilicus Incorporated is to offer not just language classes, but to add new value to the world, one in which anyone can enjoy the benefits of global diversity. This, along with achieving our corporate goals as a company, is why our operating principle is “Students First, Employees Second, and profits follow.”

As long as our goal is to establish a new, enjoyable and peaceful diversity, we think our organization should be operated by people from diverse backgrounds. Thus, half of our administrators based at our headquarters in Tokyo are non-Japanese. This component makes our organization more unique, interesting and exciting. As colleagues, we always have something new, something exciting, and sometimes something unexpected to find out about each other. While it can sometimes be difficult to reach a common point of view among such diverse staff members, we always enjoy exploring our differences and similarities.

At the same time, we hope to be generous and kind to the people who join our organization, or solicit our services. In order to facilitate this, it is necessary for us to have a great human resources team. Our HR policy, “be the right person before a business person,” reflects our mindset in pursuit of that goal, and we believe our actions “as people” will help us to achieve it.

“Accept the difference, make a difference “

– Message –

It is our hope that everyone in the world can enjoy a peaceful daily life while respecting anyone who may be “different” to them. Throughout history, there has been a lot of conflict when people abandoned this belief.

To put an end to such misfortunes, we would appreciate it if more people could get to know something “different” while enjoying a world that may be new to them.

Let’s try something different, but exciting. It is people like you who will lead the change for future generations, and we are more than willing to support you through it.