Jim Gubbels

Jim Gubbels is one of the founding members of JACCU. He is connecting people who are interested in working with the organisation. Jim is also part of the experienced language teachers team. At JACCU, he is teaching beginner level Japanese language to Dutch and English speakers. He also has a special kanji course exclusively prepared for JACCU.

He has been teaching Japanese language and culture, both private lessons and group lessons for several years now. His main focus is helping beginners get to a level where they can have conversations with Japanese people, and understand how the language works. He also enjoys helping people with the writing system so that people can eventually read a variety of Japanese texts.

Embassy of Japan in the Netherlands
“Japanese Essay and Video Contest 2021”
“How Amazing!” Prize the 3rd place

Education

Jim studied Japanese Language & Culture at Leiden University from 2011 until 2015. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a thesis on Japan’s robot culture. After graduation, he has made four valuable trips to Japan doing volunteer work. He has been living with locals between the mountains and in the cities. This taught him many interesting things about the culture and language. He gained motivation to start teaching the language in Utrecht from 2014 onwards.

Another passion of Jim is practising Japanese percussion called ‘taiko’. Jim’s encounter with the Japanese taiko drums happened in 2014 at a taiko school set up by the world renowned ‘YAMATO: The drummers of Japan’ here in The Netherlands. After the first class, he had found his ikigai (reason for living) and has been practising taiko ever since with various taiko groups in Canada, Japan, and Australia. In 2019 he set out to form his own group ‘KAON’ as well as being invited to join a taiko/percussion group with a long history called ‘Circle Percussion’ in 2021.