Yoko Eshita joined Globalize DC in 2016 to help launch the Japanese Plus program. She was a consistent and joyful presence as our Japanese language teacher for five years of programming, including Japanese Plus, Japan in DC, and Japanese Tamago. She also served as a chaperone on our 2016 TOMODACHI US-Japan Youth Exchange Program.

Eshita-sensei is originally from Fukuoka, Japan. She majored in English Literature at Kyoto Women’s University, and International Relations at Linfield College in Oregon. She was trained as a Japanese teacher through the ALLEX program at Portland State University and has taught Japanese to high school students in Australia, adults in Kyoto, and college students and diplomats in the US. She is currently completing a master’s program in Second Language Acquisition at University of Maryland, College Park and was the Japanese mentor at the university’s Language House, a language immersion, living-learning program. She also interns at Kizuna Across Cultures as a liaison between high school students in Japan and the US.

Eshita-sensei departed our program after March 2020, when the pandemic struck and our Japanese Plus meetings were suspended for the remainder of the school year. She currently resides in Richmond, VA, where she teaches Japanese in a local public high school.