About Kanji Dojo

Kanji Dojo is a Japanese language school in Melbourne, Australia.

Kanji Dojo was established by Hiroshi Watanabe in 2001 and offers a range of lessons and materials in all aspects of Japanese language. Lessons are offered in both an individual and class environment with materials being offered from beginner to advanced levels. At Kanji Dojo, everyone and anyone can learn or improve their Japanese language steadily and in a friendly environment with a very experienced teacher.

Kanji Dojo is the only school that can offer intensive kanji courses (like VCE kanji course or 300 kanji course) in the Victoria State and probably Australia wide.

Kanji Dojo and Hiroshi actively seek to support regional education in Japanese language. You can invite Kanji Dojo to your town for some courses. Please contact Kanji Dojo if you want to talk about this matter.

About Hiroshi

Hiroshi Watanabe’s professional career in teaching Japanese started in 1979. He taught to students from abroad at a Japanese language school in Osaka, Japan. He was sent to China (Da-Lian Foreign Language Academy) in 1984 and Thailand (The University of Chiengmai) from 1984-1986 by the Japan Foundation to teach Japanese as a specialist.

After working for some institutes (including Tokyo Japanese Language School (Naganuma School))and a University in the Tokyo area, in 1991 Hiroshi became a lecturer at the Japanese Language Centre for International Students at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku). Here he taught Japanese government funded undergraduate students until 2000 (except 1996-1997, when he was a visiting researcher at Macquarie University, Sydney).

In 1999 and 2000, Hiroshi, as a coordinator, was involved in the intensive introductory course of REX program run by the Japanese Language Centre which had a three month training course for teachers from Japanese government schools on teaching Japanese as a foreign language prior to their departure to the destination countries.

Hiroshi is a member of both The Society for Teaching Japanese As a Foreign Language (Nihongo Kyooiku Gakkai, 1977~), and the Japanese Language Teachers’ Association of Victoria (2001~).

Hiroshi established his own Japanese institute, Kanji Dojo for Japanese language learners in Melbourne in 2001. He caters to students at any level of Japanese grammar, kanji, vocabulary, and also shows how to develop Japanese speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills. Students being taught include VCE high school students, university students, and adult students at Kanji Dojo and some universities.

In January 2003, Hiroshi began to teach 200 VCE kanji successfully to high school students of the Japanese Studies Centre at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. In the summer of 2006, he opened his VCE kanji course in Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo. Hiroshi has created and makes use of some unique kanji learning materials such as workbooks, kanji card kits, kanji tables. He published his first kanji workbook “Coco & the Gold Flute” in 2002, designed to offer easier learning of essential Kanji through an enjoyable story. The kanji workbook and storybook was revised in 2004 (“Coco & the Gold Flute” is a kanji embedded ten chapter story).

Hiroshi’s teaching methods and materials encourage students to enjoy the sometimes daunting task of learning a new language such as Japanese. Many of Hiroshi’s students at Kanji Dojo love learning Japanese with these methods and find that they learn much quicker because of this.