About me - Fran Wrigley

I first visited Japan in 2007, on a short trip to Tokyo. I was captivated by this fascinating country - its culture, people and language. There was one problem. I didn't speak Japanese!

I spent the following decade learning this beautiful language. I worked in Nagoya, Japan, for four years, teaching English and then working as a freelance Japanese-English translator. I worked hard to achieve fluency, and in 2013 I passed N1, the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

I started teaching Japanese in Nagoya, when an American friend asked me to tutor him. When I came back to the UK I started teaching groups of students, and I founded Step Up Japanese in a little yellow classroom in sunny Brighton in 2015. And in 2020 I moved all my teaching online - so wherever you are in the world, you can join us at Step Up Japanese.

The truth is that learning Japanese isn't always easy, or quick. But it's a beautiful, brilliant language, and I love sharing that with my students. It's a lot of fun!

またね！Mata ne! See you soon!

フラン (Fran)