Enjoy this short video snippet about Kokusaba Tutoring from our 2025 Tokyo Expo.
Transcript
We spoke with Ishanaz Bahar (Founder & CEO), Asma Abdul Jalil (Communications), Ajay Sreepathi (Director of Systems and Development), Yuki Nakashiba (Business Analyst), and Evangelin Carol Lobo (Director of Operations).
ISTimes Global: (00:00) Hi, I’m here with Kokosaba Tutoring. I’m here with
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (00:05) My name is Isha, founder and CEO.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Asma): (00:08) Uh, my name is Asma and I’m in charge of communications.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ajay): (00:12) Hi, my name is Ajay. I’m director of director of systems.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Yuki): (00:16) And I’m Yuki. I’m the business analyst.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Eva): (00:20) I’m Eva and I’m the director of operations. Nice to meet all of you.
Kokusaba Background & History
ISTimes Global: (00:24) Nice to meet you too. Can you tell us a little bit about your company’s background and history?
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (00:30) Sure. Uh, Kokosaba learning uh has started in 2017. Um, we started back when I was a second year student at Waseda University. Um, a little bit about my background. I was born and raised in Japan. I went to a Japanese school until I was in grade five. I don’t look it, but my parents are from overseas and have been in Japan for a long time. Um, and I pretty much went through a Japanese upbringing, so I actually couldn’t speak English until I was in middle school. So, during middle school, my parents decided to enroll me to an international school and I really struggled at first. It really took me about three to four years to um, you know, fit in not just academically, but also culturally and socially into an international school environment. Um, I really wished back then that I had a tutoring a tutoring service for international school curriculum. And fast forward to university, I had a great community of uh, you know, students around me who had similar experiences. So that’s how Kokosaba was born.
Academic Tutoring
ISTimes Global: (01:31) Sounds great. Can you tell me a little bit about the kinds of lessons you teach or like the academics of your tutoring service?
Kokusaba Tutoring (Yuki): (01:39) So our service uh offers in-person tutoring, tutoring at cafes, and also online tutoring depending on the student’s needs. A lot of us here uh do tutoring near Tokyo because that is the place that we’re located in. However, we are able to offer uh services to all across of Japan.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Asma): (01:59) Yeah. Uh, and we we usually can teach a lot of subjects and so the we help with standardized testing, we help with um IB curriculum, we help with British curriculum, and we also help with just in general if they’re in a Japanese school, we also help with Japanese lessons and if they want to learn English and just improve their English, day-to-day English, we also have tutoring for that as well. So even if the parent is okay with the student’s grades as it is, we also help with just day-to-day if the we had a student that she just had difficulty understanding what was going on in the class. So rather than just helping her learn and do her homework, I also helped her understand what the teacher was trying to say to her and I would also spend the first 20 minutes of the lesson trying to just make her um articulate what she wanted to say to me and just communicate what she wanted. And I think that was also a really good thing that we don’t just help with um focusing on grades. We want to help also with things that the student might be bothered by in her day-to-day or she just feels insecure about something and so the parent just wants to help that small amount of thing and we would help with that too. So we’re very, very flexible. So we just the tutor or the parent or the student lets us know what they what they want to learn and what issues they have. And then from that we find the perfect tutor that matches all those requirements and then we have free trial lessons as well. So if they uh have a like a tutor and then they think, oh, maybe I want a more specific thing that they didn’t think about in the beginning, then we can immediately change that up and find a tutor that perfectly matches that current need. And so the trial lesson is free and then after that we make sure that they continue having like good lessons with the tutor and the student. Yeah.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (03:41) Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of Japanese families who have kids who who really want to send their kids to international school, send their kids abroad, but do not know how to equip equip their kids uh, you know, with the skills needed for this. And you know, it was it’s very similar to what I went through with the transition. A lot of these kids do struggle at first to to adapt to a new environment. So we really want to be there not just as a tutor, but also as a friend or a mentor. So our our slogan is learn from an expert, learn with a friend. So that that’s our approach.
Company Structure
ISTimes Global: (04:17) Nice. I hear that the uh structure of your company is quite interesting. Can you tell me more about how you’re structured?
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ajay): (04:25) Um, so for the most part, our uh tutor base is current and very recently graduated university students. Uh, we, obviously, Isha, our CEO started out the company as a university student. Uh, and everyone here is either in university currently or they are very they’re they’re anticipating joining university within the next, you know, year or so. Um, and as a result of that, we have a very young, very kind of engaged tutor base who is perhaps better situated to really kind of talk to students on a on a much more personal level. Um, we do also our our kind of administrative team here is all university students. So having that, you know, more youthful tutor base, I find helps us, you know, keep keep a sense of perspective of kind of who the students are at all levels.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (05:32) Right. So with our students, we aim to, you know, solve the issue of, you know, transitioning to a new environment, um being in an international school for the first time, you know, all of this academic needs as well. But at the same time, we also want to address a common issue that a lot of university level, you know, international students face, which is the lack of part-time jobs and lack of long-term internship opportunities. So we really want to create a student-led team where our tutors who are current university students get to use this opportunity, this platform at Kokosaba to learn how to operate a company, uh empower themselves uh throughout the throughout this long-term internship. So all of our team members here today are current students or you know, about to start university and are, you know, thriving and you know, learning more business skills along the way and I’m really, really proud to, you know, expand our team in the future.
Memories of Kokusaba Tutoring
ISTimes Global: (06:28) Nice. As students finish their time at Kokosaba, what are some of the memories you hope that they take away from their time with your tutoring service?
Kokusaba Tutoring (Eva): (06:39) Um, I think from personal experience, the most important is that they feel like they they um they have someone to empathize with and that they’re not alone. No matter how hard it gets with adjusting to a new environment, there is someone there out for them and that their tutors, they they can finally confide in them. It’s about our motto in fact is learn from an expert, learn with a friend. So we’re not just tutors in the sense that we we wish to improve their grades and their performance. It’s very holistic. We want to support them and also check if they’re doing okay. And so hopefully, they remember us and they take away from that. Um, I have been tutoring a student for quite a long time now for two years and I really hope that they remember that that we’re able to properly we we tried our best to support them and that we can there is someone looking out for them, no matter what, no matter how hard it gets. Yes, my message to the student.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ajay): (07:44) There was also an element of as they grow up, we hope to maintain that love of learning that a lot of students have continuously even into even into university and kind of their adult years. Leading by example, all of us are still university students. So getting to see that an adult is capable of enjoying learning even past school is I think a very important way to model that love of learning throughout life.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Asma): (08:19) Yeah. And also, I just wish that the students that we tutor learn more about themselves. Um, a lot of the students that we tutor, we always try to figure out if there’s a particular style of learning that they enjoy that they didn’t know about before. And a lot of the uh students that I tutor, I like to ask them if this method of being taught helped them or did they think that it stopped them from understanding the content. So rather than me, I’m also learning about them at the same time. So I think that’s also really important that they know what type of learning uh methods they like or if there’s a subject that they thought they hated and didn’t enjoy before, but thanks to us tutoring them, they start to enjoy that subject. And I did have that with um a student that I tutored for about a year and they I remember when we first met, she told me that she hated math and she just didn’t like math and I remember I thought, oh, I really should make her want like love math and like enjoy it. And I remember at the end when we were like almost um a year almost passed, she did tell me that it is her top three favorite subjects now. So I I’m really happy that I just even just with my effort, I made her love a subject and maybe her in the future, she might do end up doing math in university or math continue doing math even in work. And I think that just that small change is what like Kokosaba always tries to do. Yeah.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (09:40) Right. And as our students graduate, um, of course, they go into university and we’ve been operating for about seven years. We’ve had over four generations of students coming in and applying as tutors, you know, after they graduate high school. And that’s actually been the best experience because these tutors, these new tutors who are ex-students, they really understand and are passionate about our values as a company. And they have been some of our best tutors in in the company as well. And we really hope that they get to use Kokosaba as a platform again, um outside of tutoring to empower themselves and we just want to keep this beautiful cycle going.
ISTimes Global: (10:22) Thank you so much for your time.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (10:24) Thank you so much.
ISTimes Global: (10:26) I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Kokusaba Tutoring (Ishanaz): (10:27) Thank you.
About Kokusaba Tutoring
- Tutoring service founded in 2017 by Waseda University student
- Specializes in helping students transition to international schools
- Offers tutoring for IB, British curriculum, Japanese and English
- Focus on both academic support and cultural adaptation
- Tutors are current/recent university students who understand student challenges
- Flexible tutoring options: in-person, cafes, and online
- “Learn from an expert, learn with a friend” philosophy
- Provides mentorship and holistic student support
- Free trial lessons available
- Operates primarily in Tokyo but serves all of Japan
