Takahashi Juku

The tutoring center is a terrific place if you or your child is planning to apply to the private schools in Hawaii. They seem to have many resources available against their walls full of books and binders. My child loved two of her teachers, while the other two didn’t seem to benefit her at all and could’ve just assigned her the work and told her to come back. She’d come home asking me how to do certain problems and reading Q&As. If I am sending my child to get tutored, I expect for them to learn at least one thing or clarify their understanding on a subject at the end of the hour. If only she had spent all her hours with the two teachers who put effort into helping her understand each lesson… Too late for that now. I was told by a woman manager that my daughter would not be able to have those preferred two tutors. However I had the understanding that we were allowed to make decisions as to who we want our child to be taught by. When I asked why, she had no explanation and told my wife and I that our child would need to work with other teachers as well. This is tolerable… but please understand that I was clearly told I could have my child request a teacher if she had a preference. Later, we found that there was a misunderstanding. I am leaving this review with a mere 2 stars is because of the experience I shared with this young lady. I was told she was one of the managers, but she seemed flustered half the time we spoke with one another. Professionalism in this individual was lacking in numerous ways. She had not introduced herself as I had to look at their online website to figure out what her name was. The other two managers, who both introduced themselves and greeted me, are very helpful each time I walk in and have a question as are some of the staff/​teachers. With the teachers, they seem to always send me to the managers sitting up front which is not a problem when they are not busy up there. Usually they are either busy or I have no choice but to speak with the young woman manager. In that situation, I usually walk out and call the office later or I’ll ask a teacher who is willing to give me a better answer. If you are looking to prepare your child for private school admissions, this is definitely at the top of my list, but please please avoid speaking to the young lady. She will either leave you with more questions or have you wait around to speak with another manager, sometimes taking up to 15 minutes. I notice that calling them gets the job done quickest. Also, if your child works well with a certain teacher, you should wholeheartedly request them. I do not want anyone to go through the same mishap I had encountered. I believe the young manager is also a teacher as she has taught my daughter a handful of times. I honestly do not suggest this young lady as a teacher either, but a friend of mine said she works decently with preschoolers. My daughter is in elementary school and commented that this lady is very nice and a smiling machine, but was unable to thoroughly explain things. My daughter had asked for another way to define a word and this young lady just read off of the vocabulary list word for word. Not what I’m looking for in a teacher. Excuse me for the rant, but if you want to make the best out of your experience here, please talk to Jeff or Ian. They will take care of things in a quick and sincere manner. Simply put, they know what they’re doing! Dr. Takahashi sits in the front as well, but I have not had the chance to speak with him as he is usually busy. Hope this helped some parents out.

Five Stars!!!
Our third grade daughter was just accepted at a great private school in Honolulu… her first choice, and that would not have happened without her hard work and Juku’s excellent tutoring. We paid them a lot of money and they were worth every penny of it. Their tutors are smart, kind, funny, patient, and personable and notwithstanding the tedium of the tutoring our daughter enjoyed all of it, and, of course, her test scores on the ELSAT improved dramatically.

My child needed to improve his math skills. However… If you are not applying for certain private schools, dont waste your time here. After thousands of dollars were paid, my child did not make any strides here so we took a break from tutoring at this company. However, we were not informed that we would lose all of our money if we did not use it within a year.
Before we paid thousands of dollars, we were not told of a deadline to use the tuition. BUYER BEWARE. There is little to no individualization or personal contact with the owner. Having a different tutor every time you go in definitely did not suit my child because of the lack of continuity and each tutor having no idea of my child’s learning style.
He ultimately learned his math concepts by receiving extra tutoring at his school. I wish we saved the money we paid for tuition for future college expenses.

I went here during the ninth grade for SAT tutoring. The tutors here were hit or miss, although I will say I was impressed with the academic qualifications of some of them. Most of the tutors were friendly, and I remembered one of them even bought snacks for the students. Another tutor inattentively didn’t realize that I didn’t have work to do for the first 10 minutes of the tutoring session, as I was just sitting there, staring at her. Most of the times I went, I got a different tutor (this may be a good or bad thing, depending on how you see it).
I’m giving one star because of a bad experience. I was given work to review pre-​algebra for «review,» when I was already starting algebra. I didn’t need help in the former, as I did this for a few years already. I got irriated and walked out. In hindsight, I should not have done that and will admit my lapse in judgment as a kid.
However, the learning center didn’t do anything, except the owner sternly lectured my mom (basically giving her a guilt trip) about me. How rude! I should mention that other than walking out, I didn’t make trouble there. He didn’t even express concern about me (e.g. wondered where I went) or even wondered why I got upset and just focused on what a horrible student I was. My mom even told him why I got upset, but he didn’t do anything to express that he’ll try to rectify my situation and just expressed anger. I don’t know if how he acted was a result of being raised in a Japanese culture decades ago, but we were in America. I’d be OK if he were to scold me, but the situation of him trying to make my mom ashamed of her child was unacceptable. I do realize that walking out was bad behavior on my part and would express great anger if I had a kid doing that. But he should have just focused on telling my mom what happened and left it there and not make the situation personal and try to make a paying customer feel bad.

My son calls this «cram school», and that’s exactly what it is.
I’m not a pushy parent, but if your child needs to or wants to get their grades and/​or SAT scores up then this tutoring really gets results. IMHO I think there is only one other school that has a program that is comparable. Hint: It’s a private school that starts with «I» :)
Dr. Takahashi’s school is located across the old stadium park by Longs. The parking is horrible (not enough stalls for the amount of students), tuition is expensive — but I like to think of it as an investment — cause he needs to do well and be a billionaire to support us ;)
Edited to add that we were pleased with the results. After only 1 summer his SAT results went up 50 points in both English and Math.