This site is written and managed by Kiyoharu Hatano. He currently teaches English at his personal English school.

Here is a little bio about him.

He was born and brought up in the eastern part of Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan.

After graduating from high school, he took a year off before entering college, because he wanted to experience a "Ronin" -- a masterless samurai. Cool!

...Ah, I'm joking. He simply failed in the university entrance exam of his first choice. The term "Ronin" also refers to a high school graduate who failed in the year's entrance exams and is preparing for the next year's ones. Being a Ronin is common in Japan because of the difficult-to-enter-but-easy-to-graduate university systems here.

In the following year he got the cold shoulder again from the one, and eventually made it to Hokkai Gakuen University in Sapporo.

The incident happened on the entrance ceremony day. He was caught by a bunch of the KARATE team members and pressed for joining the team. He barely escaped from the monsters and started to think of joining some other club since he felt they were sure to appear again. Yeah, he thought, I wanna join some entertaining club that would make my campus life fun. And his choice was -- the English Speaking Society (ESS). What? Yes, ESS, who cares?

So the next day, he went to the club room of the ESS, opened the door, and said,

"Er, excuse me, I'm a beginner. Is it all right?"

Though he had studied English for six years at junior and senior high school and the subject was always his favorite one, he had no experience of talking to native speakers of English, and his pronunciation was just terrible. At one time, he was asked by a member if he had any questions. He answered something like "No-shing" with the intention of saying "Nothing". The whole room was filled with laughter. This episode became a legend in the Hokkai Gakuen University ESS ever after.

In spite of that kind of clumsiness, he was gradually into the English language. - This is just between you and me; his major was law, but his interest was not in it any longer. He was into English, parties with other famale college students, disco dancing, EWF, Boz Scaggs, ABBA, Billy Joel, Stylistics, Bee Gees ...ah, well, anyway, he improved his English skills and became chairman of the ESS when he was a junior. And that ...

-- Hey, isn't this supposed to be a "little" bio?

Um, OK, I'll skip the latter part. So, anyway, he started his English school in 1984.

The name of this site, "Kiyo's English Class", was originally the one for a Japanese website he first created in early 2000. That was his personal site meant to offer a place to think about English-learning and teaching in Japan. He closed the site in the following year to build his school website. So, the name sounds somewhat nostalgic to him. And in 2002, he happened to create a website as a homework assignment in HTML learning, and gave the name to it. KEC Journal started as one of the contents of the website, powered by Blogger.

He likes to go driving on weekends, play PC games (mainly RPGs and simulations), and reading books (no specific categories). Learning English would be his lifetime hobby. :)