Eikaiwa Admin Dev Diary #10 - Doubts

I've been working on Eikaiwa Admin for 8 months now, and while I chip away at writing the infobox documentation, I'm starting to have serious doubts.

Early excitement

At the beginning, I was really gung-ho about this. It seemed like something I could do, enjoy, and earn enough money from that I could transition from teaching English to working as a technical partner for other schools.

Industry downturn

The writing has been on the cards for a long time. When I first came to Japan, the vast majority of lessons were adult group classes. Now, nearly 30 years later, the vast majority are children's lessons, to the point where many schools only teach children, and that's the image people have of eikaiwa schools.

That in itself is not a problem, but it's clear to all but a lucky or hardworking few that the demand for kids' lessons is in decline. There's huge competition from cram schools, online schools and AI apps, together with a noticeable shift from English conversation practice to test-taking practice. Furthermore, there are simply fewer and fewer children in Japan. And the icing on the cake? Japanese people are generally less interested in English. English movies, music, TV shows, overseas travel... it's just less appealing than it used to be.

It certainly feels like the market is being squeezed and the walls are closing in.

A negative spiral

I'm certainly feeling it in my school and it's killing my motivation. I've lost the fire I had, and at my age it'll be hard to reignite.

That feeling has affected my enthusiasm for Eikaiwa Admin.

I ask myself, will anyone even use this? Does anyone even need this? Can I really expect to offset the loss of earnings from my school by charging for this system? I'm now highly doubtful, and it's a little scary.

I'm not done yet

I will continue to work on Eikaiwa Admin. At the very least, I can use it in my school. But I have to be realistic about its potential.

For a few months there, I was spending all my free time on it, giving up my weekends to sit at my desk for 10~12 hours to work on it. Now, I think I need to treat it as a hobby, not a job. Continue to finish what I've started, but not put all my eggs in one basket.

Progress update

With all that said, not a week goes by without some kind of progress. I'm still working through the sidebar menu, writing infoboxes for every page. I'm about two-thirds through it. In the process, I've fixed up some bugs I discovered, and am keen to reach the bottom of that sidebar. Then I'll go through everything again to ensure there's a Japanese translation of all the UI elements.