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Experts fear English conversation could be ruining Starbucks experience

GINZA, Tokyo - At 8:12, the second floor of Starbucks in Tokyo's Ginza district is normally filled with a gentle loquaciousness that fills the air. However, these days you'll find, blended in with the standard prodigious garrulity and soothing non-threatening sounds of James Taylor, is a seemingly innocuous force that threatens to wither away the fundamental enthusiasm of the Starbucks experience.

English conversation has steadily moved into Starbucks across the metro-Tokyo to the point where the host is in emininent danger of being destroyed by the parasitic invader.

Mel Graeme, writing in the Economist Weekly, states that the problem has been worsened by "present austerities" in the post-Nova era.

"The spread of Eikaiwa into Starbucks was the inevitable corollary of teacher layoffs," Graeme explained to the GTA in a telephone interview. "I think we'll see the issue of peripatetic-Starbucks teaching to get worse, before it gets better."

The increase in teaching comes as a disappointment for those teachers who once sought out Starbucks as a refuge from their teaching duties.

"Working at Gaba, I usually get about 4 or 5 breaks a day. You could always go to Starbucks for 40 minutes," explained instructor Charles Smith. "But now, when you combine the English teaching dudes, the guy who's been studying 8 hours for the bar exam, the woman with 2 kids, and the guy who blatantly steals electricity from the outlet so he can update his Excel spreadsheets while sipping from a short cup of water, it's not worth it anymore."

Many also fear that teaching in coffee shops is also particularly dangerous due to the fact that it is usually unregulated.

Longtime Eikaiwa enthusiast and former Nova trainer Steve Harrington has been critical towards coffee shop teaching for "completely circumventing the training and certification systems" that have been established to ensure optimum teacher skills.

Harrington says people need to be concerned that the loss of students from recoginized Eikaiwa institutions could potentially destroy industry, now that the incipient signs of Eikaiwa extinction are increasingly more apparent.

"I think it is up to our generation to ensure the industry is able to survive for posterity," Harrington explained.

"If schools go bankrupt, where will our half-children go? I sure as heck don't want my kids to grow up in a world without organized English conversation schools."

The Gaba Teachers Association: Serving teachers at Gaba Japan, Nova Japan, Geos Japan, Aeon Japan, ECC Japan, and Berlitz Japan since 2005. The Gaba Teachers Association is dedicated to reporting the latest news from the English school industry. This is a site for that covers all news that impacts those who teach English in Japan. If you are teaching English at NOVA, GEOS, Berlitz, ECC or any other Eikaiwa school, check us out.
The GABA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION is the most provoc-ative name in eikaiwa news today. Since 1994, the Gaba Teachers Association has been dedicated to reporting the latest news from the English school industry in Japan.