By Terumi Kai (甲斐輝美) — Founder of Japan Language Factory (JLF), creator of the Terumi Method.
I’m Terumi Kai, the founder of Japan Language Factory.
I’m Japanese — but for the past decade, my life and my work have moved across three continents. That journey is exactly why JLF exists.
I built this school to give people what languages gave me. Not a certificate. Not a passing grade. A life that doesn’t fit inside one country.
Over the past ten years, more than 5,000 students from all over the world have gone through what we now call the Terumi Method. Some of them have built businesses in Japan. Some have married into Japanese families. Some are senior executives, military officers, artists, photographers — people who refused to let language stand between them and the lives they wanted to live.
Whatever brought you here — curiosity about Japan, a partner, a business venture, a long-held dream — I’m glad you arrived.
For the next nine posts in this series, I’m going to write to you.
Personally. From me, not a marketing team. One letter at a time. No sales pitch. No fake urgency.
Just thoughts about why I built JLF, what I’ve learned in ten years of teaching language to serious people all over the world, and a question I think every smart person needs to answer right now:
In a world where AI can translate anything you say… should you still bother learning to speak?
That’s the question we’ll explore together.
Some letters will be personal. Some will be uncomfortable. Some will challenge what you’ve been taught about language learning your entire life. All of them are written for the kind of person who refuses to live a small life.
If that’s you, you’re in the right place.
In the next letter, I’ll tell you why I closed a successful business in Tokyo at 28 — and got on a plane to Europe with no English, no friends, and no plan. That decision is what eventually built JLF, and it’s the reason I’m writing to you ten years later.
For today, I’ll just leave you with this.
A lot of people are about to give up on speaking another language. They’ll tell themselves AI will do it for them. They’ll outsource their voice. They’ll choose convenience over connection.
But a small group of people will go the other way. They’ll choose to speak. They’ll choose to be heard. They’ll choose real communication over a screen.
Which one are you going to be?
— Terumi Kai
Founder, Japan Language Factory
The Founder Letters — a 9-part series by Terumi Kai (甲斐輝美), founder of Japan Language Factory.
This is the first letter in the series. Next: Why I Closed My Tokyo Business at 28 and Moved to Europe With Zero English →
About the author
Terumi Kai (甲斐輝美) is the founder of Japan Language Factory (JLF) and the creator of the Terumi Method — a speaking-first approach to Japanese that has graduated over 5,000 students worldwide, including learners from Amazon, Google, ANA, Mitsubishi, Lufthansa, and the U.S. military. Japanese by birth, Terumi Kai has lived and worked across three continents, and writes about language, culture, and identity at terumikai.com.