In 1994, Northern-Ireland born Douglas Young was running two small branches of his English conversation school Formula 1 in the pottery town of Kasama, Ibaraki Prefecture. He and his English wife then moved to Hitachi Naka, where Douglas opened a main office and Alison had her first child. The family now numbers six, with daughter Erin nearly 8 and boys of 6, 4 and 2.

More recently they moved to a large house on the outskirts of Mito, with new offices. "We have some 350 clients, mostly children, with two full-time staff. I teach a little and soon Alison is coming back to work part time. I've been busy perfecting the Young English System, or Y.E.S., a methodology for teaching English. Essentially it's visual and perfectly applicable to other languages."

Douglas' ideas for teaching English have changed much over the last decade. When he first arrived, he tried everything. "But slowly I realized just how much bullshit there was going on . . . in anyone's language!"