CreateBase is a junior high entrance exam prep school in Osaka Umeda. We were founded on a single conviction: when a child isn't improving, the cause is rarely effort. It is almost always the structure of how they are being taught.
Three structural choices that separate us from a typical Japanese cram school.
Children work in the same room, but each follows their own carefully-built curriculum. We reject both the inefficiency of pure lectures and the isolation of one-on-one tutoring. Every student progresses on their own track, in a focused shared space.
Practice problems are selected for each student individually based on what they need to confront. Lectures, when used, are kept to ten minutes or less. This eliminates two failures common to traditional schools: wasting the time of advanced students and letting struggling students passively listen without understanding.
All learning happens within the school, where instructors can intervene the moment a student gets stuck. Families are not asked to teach, supervise, or manage learning at home. The home is reserved for family time, not for substituting failed school instruction.
Most students attend three to four times per week, with each session running between three and four hours. The exact schedule is built around each student's life and stamina.
Each session runs three to four hours. We do not impose a fixed group schedule. Frequency, duration, and which days work best are determined together with the family at the time of admission.
During spring, summer, and winter breaks, we run intensive courses focused on specific gaps in each student's understanding. These are not generic review sessions but targeted remediation built from each student's most recent diagnostic results.
For sixth graders entering the final stretch, we also run weekend mock exam analysis sessions and past-paper specific intensive training in the months leading up to entrance exams.
Enrollment is by screening. Not because we want to select for ability, but because we want to confirm that we can actually help your child improve. This protects both sides.
Send us a message through the contact form on the homepage. Briefly describe your child's current school, grade level, and what concerns you most about their learning.
A free in-depth conversation with the founder. We discuss your child's history, your goals, and whether our approach is structurally suited to your situation. This conversation is also our chance to understand whether we can genuinely help.
Your child sits a diagnostic and joins a regular session. We observe how they think, where they get stuck, and how they respond to our format. Your child also experiences our environment first-hand.
We share what we observed and our honest assessment of fit. The family decides whether to proceed. We will decline cases where we cannot honestly promise progress, and we welcome families who want to take the time to think it over.
Schedule, course design, and learning targets are finalized. Sessions begin.
We are sometimes asked why we do not simply accept anyone who applies. The honest answer is that admissions screening protects the student more than it protects us.
A school that accepts everyone has to offer a generic product. Our system is not generic. It assumes a particular kind of working environment, a particular relationship between parent and school, and a particular willingness on the family's part to step back from constant intervention.
When these conditions are not met, the student does not improve, regardless of how good the system is. We have seen this enough times to take it seriously. If we cannot promise progress, we should not take the family's money.
Screening is therefore not an exclusion test. It is a fit assessment. We are equally willing to decline families whose values we admire but whose situation does not match our model.
Pricing is transparent and structurally simple. Specific monthly fees vary by grade level and frequency. Below is an overview. Detailed pricing is provided during the pre-enrollment consultation.
| Enrollment fee | One-time, paid at enrollment.Covers diagnostic system setup and curriculum design. |
|---|---|
| Monthly tuition | Calculated by grade level and weekly frequency.Includes all standard sessions, materials, and our custom problem-set system. |
| Seasonal intensive courses | Optional, billed separately for spring / summer / winter sessions.Tailored intensive content for each student. |
| What's included | Custom-built problem sets, in-session instruction, diagnostic reporting, parental progress communication.No hidden materials fees. No mandatory texts to purchase outside. |
| What's not | External mock exam fees (paid directly to the testing organization). |
Although the school is small by design, our students have entered top-tier junior high schools in the Kansai region.
Confirmed admissions include Nada Junior High School, widely regarded as the most academically rigorous junior high entrance examination in Japan, alongside other top-tier institutions.
We deliberately do not publicize a long list of school names. The reason is that admissions counts are easily inflated and easily misread. Two students from a school of two hundred is not the same achievement as two students from a school of ten. We prefer to discuss results honestly during the consultation, in the context of your child's specific situation.
If you would like detailed records, please ask during the pre-enrollment consultation.
My child currently attends a major prep school. Can they enroll alongside?
Yes, in many cases. Some families use us as the primary school after withdrawing from a major one. Others use us specifically to repair gaps the major school cannot address. The right configuration is discussed during the consultation.
Do you only accept high-performing students?
No. We accept students at a wide range of starting points. The screening is about fit with our model, not about academic level. We have helped students enter top-tier schools from very different starting points.
My child is in a lower grade. When should we enroll?
There is no single right answer. We accept students from third grade onwards. Earlier enrollment provides more time for foundational work, but later enrollment is also viable when the child is ready and committed.
We don't speak Japanese fluently as parents. Is that a problem?
Instruction is in Japanese, so the student needs Japanese capability. Parental communication can be handled in English by the founder. Please mention this in your initial inquiry so we can arrange the consultation in English.
Can we visit the classroom before deciding?
Yes. Classroom observation and a trial session are part of the standard admissions process. We do not believe families should commit to a school they have not seen.
CreateBase is operated and primarily taught by a single founder. This is not a marketing story; it is a structural choice.
Most cram schools depend on hiring large rotating staffs of part-time university students. The result is uneven instruction quality, high turnover, and a system that depends on a teacher's personality rather than the school's design. CreateBase was built to be the opposite: the system itself is what teaches, and the founder's role is to design and refine that system continuously based on each student's actual data.
The founder personally meets every family during pre-enrollment consultation. There is no sales staff, no enrollment quota pressure, no incentive to admit families we cannot help. This is by design.