ようこそ!

Chiba Center is an online community of Black creatives who are dedicated to studying the Japanese language and culture for professional opportunities and personal growth.

Whether you are a Black visual artist, Black musician, Black tattoo artist, Black photographer, Black DJ, Black singer, Black fashion designer, or Black creative of any kind, if you are perfecting your craft and want access to the Japanese market, then Chiba Center is your ticket to the world's third-largest economy.

We host video-based lessons via Google Meet. All classes include reading the written language (hiragana, katakana, and kanji). We do not teach handwriting because smartphones are ubiquitous in Japan. Our goal is functional, practical ability and we do not pay attention to tests like JLPT. We also occasionally host rooms on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.

We keep in touch via Discord.

The purpose of Chiba Center is to be a resource to the community and foster connections among Black creatives who want to be successful in the Japanese market. We do it "for the culture" and do not charge a fee for group lessons. We approach our study from a practical rather than academic viewpoint. Our goals are more about forging personal and business connections with Japanese friends and clients; we are not into repetitive handwriting of kanji, "textbook Japanese" or studying for the JLPT.

Founded by LOGIK & Richard Feicht & Brandon Breaux in Chicago in April 2020.

LOGIK is a multidisciplinary artist creating a new world at the intersection of art, culture, and tech. He founded StudioLOGIK from the same South Loop, Chicago loft space that hosted the initial Chiba Center classes. Before taking the plunge into web3 entrepreneurship, he was a creative director at Google and senior art director at Leo Burnett, where he founded subsidiary agency NAOMI. LOGIK played D1 basketball in his home state of Missouri, and is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. Before Chiba Center began, LOGIK visited Japan for a stay of over 1 month in which he visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Himeji, and other major sites.

Richard Feicht was the first Japanese instructor at Chiba Center, which began as very unstructured 1-on-1 lessons in LOGIK’s art studio at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Richard studied Japanese at DePauw University -a small liberal arts college surrounded by Indiana cornfields- for the purpose of aikido study in its country of origin.

Brandon Breaux is a multi-disciplinary artist from the South Side of Chicago whose work includes oil-on-canvas and digital art. Breaux graduated from DePaul University in 2006. He was the second student at Chiba Center, having visited Japan over a dozen times in the years prior. His art has been the subject of solo shows internationally, and he was named to the EBONY Power 100 list in 2022.