Vanessa Villalobos founded JapaneseLondon.com to connect the UK and Japan on a local level, here in London. A lover of language and communication, she read English at Nottingham University before spending three years in Tochigi-ken on the JET Programme.

Vanessa went on to teach in Peru, gain a Cambridge RSA CELTA English teaching qualification, and to qualify as a secondary school English teacher at King's College London.

Her hobbies include public speaking, writing and eating plenty of Peruvian cebiche.

Jenny Stygall is a qualified English Language Teacher (CELTA) from Christchurch, New Zealand. She spent three years in Shimane prefecture in Japan and a year in Manchester and Bolton (U.K.) teaching students of all ages.

She specialises in helping students understand and use General/Business English at school or in the office, and exam preparation. She also has experience teaching medical English, pronunciation and people with special educational needs.

Jenny also enjoys Salsa dancing, cooking (and eating) ethnic food as well as meeting new people from the around the world.

Fran Bigman majored in history at Brown University in Rhode Island and then spent two years on the JET programme in Tottori City teaching senior high-school students.

Fran has taught EFL to adults at Fluency in English, a school in Cambridge and tutored many students privately both in Japan and the US. She has a MPhil in English from Cambridge and is starting her PhD there in October 2010.

Her hobbies include swimming, watching films from the 1940s, and cooking Indian food, and she is the oldest of seven children.

Tom Foskin is from Ireland and studied History and Sociology at UCC before spending two years in Japan on the JET Programme where he was based in Kumamoto. He has been in London now for 5 years - the majority of this time he spent managing So Restaurant. He was therefore able to feed his cravings for Japanese food on a daily basis!

He is passionate about sport and used to represent Ireland at Olympic Race Walking. He now plays tennis as often as he can and unfortunately has been tearing his hair out as he is a supporter of Liverpool FC.

Awurabena Kessie spent 3 years teaching English at Elementary and Junior High Schools in Japan. She also has 2 years experience teaching English to Japanese students in London. Living in 3 countries has left her with a great love of language, culture and an ability to speak Twi (a Ghanaian Language) and Japanese. She is currently studying to become a qualified Speech and Language Therapist.

Awurabena has a creative side which she explores through various arts and crafts in her spare time. She is an avid fan of Japanese, Korean and more recently Mexican soap operas.